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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 2, 1969] Love and Hate (December 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

A paper dragon

Back in April, I wrote about a border skirmish between the Soviet Union and China. That wasn’t the end of the matter. The Soviets went on a minor diplomatic offensive, trying to get India to join an alliance against China and to pull North Korea back into the Soviet orbit. Violence flared up again in August on the Terekty River on the border between the Sinkiang region of China and the Kazakh SSR. As in April, both sides accused the other of crossing the border.

Rumor has it that Soviet Foreign Minister Alexei Kosygin attempted to contact the Chinese government in an effort to calm tensions and reopen negotiations on the border. His efforts were reportedly rudely rebuffed by Chairman Mao. At the funeral of Ho Chi Minh in early September, the Soviet and Chinese delegations went out of their way to avoid being in the same room with each other, even attending the funeral at different times.

When Kosygin left Hanoi on September 11th, his plane was denied entry into Chinese airspace, forcing a long detour. But while the plane was refueling in India, Kosygin was informed that the Chinese were ready to talk. He promptly flew to Peking, where he and Chinese Foreign Minister Chou Enlai met at the airport. They agreed to reinstate diplomatic relations and reopen talks on the border.

l. Soviet Foreign Minister Alexei Kosygin, r. Chinese Foreign Minister Chou Enlai

Despite that, Mao continued to ramp up his hostile rhetoric towards the Soviets. China also began moving large numbers of troops north to the border regions. That was followed by two unannounced nuclear tests at the end of September, most notably China’s largest detonation to date (3 megatons) on the 29th. The very next day, Chinese Defense Minister Lin Biao put the armed forces on the highest level of alert.

And then on October 9th, Mao blinked. China announced that they would no longer claim territory annexed by Tsarist Russia over the last 300 years through “unequal treaties.” The only concession demanded is that the Soviet Union acknowledge that the treaties were unfair. The status quo has been restored, and the only result of six months of high tension is several ulcers and a huge sigh of relief around the world.

Love among the ruins

Love runs through most of the stories in this month’s IF. Not as a romantic theme, but rather as an examination of the ways in which it affects the events of the stories and is in turn affected by events.

Vaguely suggested by Ancient, My Enemy. Art by Gaughan

Ancient, My Enemy, by Gordon R. Dickson

Udbahr is a hell world. Daytime temperatures are so high it is impossible for humans to survive outside of special shelters. On top of that, protein is so scarce, the only source for the natives are each other or the humans who have come to prospect and explore the ruins of an ancient civilization.

One such person is Kiev Archad, currently acting as a guide for female graduate student Willy Fairchild. Unfortunately, she is full of ideas that don’t mesh well with the ways in which humans and Udbahrs interact. Despite that, a relationship develops between the two. The final obstacle to their romance is a native named Hehog, who has decided that he and Kiev are ancient enemies, reborn every generation to take turns killing each other.

Hehog taunts Kiev. Art probably by Gaughan

This is not the Dickson story I was expecting. From the title, I thought this would be one of his military pieces, maybe a new Dorsai tale. This is personal in a way those stories aren’t, and it’s very, very good. But Dickson didn’t quite hit the mark for me. He never really sells the relationship between Kiev and Willy; worse, even though Kiev is the viewpoint character, we never really get into his head, which makes the ending a bit inscrutable. And for all that, and because I know Dickson is capable of doing better, I have to lower my rating. Don’t be surprised to see this one nominated for a lot of awards, though.

A very, very high three stars.

Now No One Waits, by Neil Shapiro

Wrecked on a dead world, a man and a woman have little hope of rescue. They spend their time in meaningless sex and exploring the ruins of a lost civilization.

The doomed couple study the map room. Art by Gaughan

Shapiro seems to be a new writer, though he isn’t this month’s IF first; maybe he has a sale or two outside science fiction. In any case, the writing is solid for the most part. The ending, though, didn’t seem to grow naturally from what came before and also felt rather obscure. A writer with potential.

A slightly below average three stars.

What Time Was That?, by Barry Malzberg

Malzberg offers us a New Wave tale of the invention of a time machine, told in first, second, and third person. It mostly works.

Three stars.

A crackpot’s time machine. Art probably by Gaughan

Heroes Die But Once, by Norman Spinrad

A newlywed couple are exploring the galaxy, hoping to find a habitable world and make their fortune. They find one, but they also find aliens who decide to stress test their relationship.

I don’t know if this is a printing error or a deliberate choice, but it’s awfully hard to read. Art by Gaughan

A reasonable effort by Spinrad, with more than a touch of Ellisonian cynicism. It’s not a pleasant read, but then it’s not trying to say pleasant things.

Three stars.

The New Thing, by John Brunner

From the title and author, I was expecting a piece satirizing the New Wave. Instead, it’s an examination of what happens to societies in the extremely far future when a sort of interstellar Guinness Book of Records makes it clear that there truly is nothing new under the sun (or any other star).

Waiting rooms will never change. Art probably by Gaughan

It’s a bit long-winded and consists almost entirely of people sitting around and talking. Nevertheless, it mostly works.

Three stars.

In the Beginning, by Glenn Chang

This month’s official new author asks if love can endure beyond the end of all things. The theme is jejune, and the ending rather trite, but the author is only 18. He shows promise, and more experience with the real world could result in some good stories.

Three stars.

The Story of Our Earth (Part 4), by Willy Ley

Ley’s history of the planet has reached the Carboniferous period. He talks about the origins of coal (no matter what Sinclair Oil may say, it wasn’t dinosaurs) and how our understanding of the period has changed. From there he moves to the Earth’s first ice age and the Permian period. He focuses on the primitive reptiles of the time and the importance of teeth to paleontologists.

Four stars.

The Man Who Would Not, by James E. Gunn

It’s hard to say anything about this without giving the whole thing away. In essence, it’s a conversation about the end of an experiment. Beyond that, I’ll only say that it is both downbeat and hopeful.

Four stars.

Art by Gaughan

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

Honestly, I just don’t feel motivated to summarize the end of this serial. Aliens, a guy with memories he can’t quite explain, blah, blah, blah. The hero triumphs in the end. Sort of. Everybody on Earth is dead except for a few hundred people in south-eastern Nebraska. If you’re familiar with Laumer, he does this better in other books; if you aren’t, this is not a good place to start.

A low three stars for this part (some of the action is OK) and barely three stars for the whole thing.

The hero and an ally fight an invader. Art by Gaughan

Summing up

I’m starting to feel like I know what IF is going to be like under the new management. Just looking at the scores, it doesn’t seem all that different from the Pohl days. That’s true for the peaks and averages, but the lows don’t seem to be as low. Plus, the overall tone is fresher. My only real complaint is the art being all Gaughan all the time, and uncredited. We’re not getting his best work. Otherwise, I’d say IF is looking good as we move into a new decade.

Sounds like the big story would have fit right in this month.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[Oct. 31, 1969] Struggling to get out (November 1969 Analog)

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Science Fiction Theater Episode #10

Tonight (Oct. 31), tune in at 7pm (Pacific) for our special, Halloween-themed episode!

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

Inside Lebanon

Feel that?  It's the calm before the storm.

For the past week, the nation of Lebanon has been rocked from within by "Palestinian" guerrillas.  Yesterday, at the behest of leaders in Cairo, Damascus, and Tripoli, the raiders settled down, awaiting what looks like will be a significant negotiation between Arab power brokers.

I'm no expert on the issue, but here's what I've gleaned.  When Israel declared independence in 1948, a significant percentage of the Arab population within the nascent nation's borders left the former mandate of Palestine.  Some fled violence, like that inflicted by classy folk such as Menachem Begin of the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist group.  Others left at the exhortation of their Arab brethren, who proclaimed that they were about to drive the Jews into the sea.

Hundreds of thousands of Arabs ended up in neighboring countries: Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon.  Indeed, exiled Arabs now comprise 12% of the population of Lebanon—fully 300,000 people.  They live in camps administrated by the draconian Lebanese Deuxième Bureau.

The "Palestinian Liberation Organization", founded in 1964 with the goal of "the liberation of Palestine", initiated terrorist attacks against Israel after The Six Day War in 1967.  Such are being carried out from enclaves in other countries with more or less tacit permission from those countries' governments.

The recent irruption in Lebanon arose from the Lebanese cracking down on these raids.  The violence, thwarted from heading southward, flooded internally—into Beirut, Tyre, Lebanese Tripoli, and other major cities.  Egypt, Syria, and Libya all leaned hard on the Christian Arab nation to let loose the reins on the guerrillas.  Lebanon has relented, and the negotiations will proceed shortly.  Participants will be Dr. Hassan Sabri El Kholi, personal envoy of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Libyan Interior Minister Mousa Ahmed, and guerrilla chief Yasser Arafat.  While there's no telling what the outcome will be, one has to imagine the Palestinians will be allowed to resume their raids into Israel again.

With the War of Attrition occupying Israel on its western and eastern fronts, it now looks as if the Jewish state is about to be busy defending from the north, too.  Most folk are betting on the Israeli Defense Force, but can the country survive under siege forever?

Time will tell.

Inside Analog


by Vincent Di Fate

Like Lebanon, the crisis facing Analog comes from within, as evidenced by the latest issue.  From without, the magazine looks like it always has—handsome, professional.  But within, one can see the rot.  Not that it's all bad; indeed, much of it is decent.  But what works is stagnant, and what doesn't work is very much the sort of thing we expect from long-toothed editor John Campbell.

Gottlos, by Colin Kapp

Starting off, we have what looks like a Bolo story—one of those Keith Laumer tales featuring a sentient, super-tank.  Unlike Laumer's stories, this one has a lot of action, with the Fiendish mauling dozens of opposing vehicles, overruning a command post, and then meeting its match with the arrival of the ebony Gottlos.

After Fiendish is destroyed, we learn that it was actually a remotely controlled tank.  Its pilot, Manton, had so thoroughly melded with the machine, that the result was a gestalt personality, one motivated by violence and vengeance.  With his vehicle destroyed, Manton falls into an apparent funk, shaken by the appearance of a more powerful machine.  The real terror of Gottlos is that it seems to need no radio controls at all.  Is it autonomous?  A kind of cybernetic beast?

Kapp has written more of a philosophical than predictive piece, describing how a society might decay under the strain of endless war and complete mechanization.  I appreciate Kapp's skill with English, but the story itself seemed a bit implausible in its setup.

Three stars.

Telepathy – Did It Happen?, by J. B. Reswick and L. Vodonik

Oh boy.  A pair of cranks conducted a telepathy experiment.  Here's the notion: telepathy is only reliable about 1-2% of the time.  But what's really happening, they suppose, is that there's just so much interference that the message gets clogged with static. If one conducts thousands of tests using a simple message, the errors will be reduced, and the message will stand out.

The setup they used involved a binary message and transmitter.  After many trials, the experimenters determined that had gotten the error down low enough to show that something had objectively been transmitted.  Of course, the researchers admitted that their data only supported this conclusion if you read the results backwards (i.e. if the 1s of the original message were logged as 0s and vice versa.)

Given the thin margins of success, if you gotta flip the results on their heads to get any kind of answer, I suspect it's all bogus.  Which is how I'm beginning to feel about psionics in general.

One star.

Weapon of the Ages, by W. Macfarlane


by Leo Summers

Humanity is hounded by vicious extraterrestrials when they try to go to the stars.  One pilot crashlands on a neutral world, is conducted to a mysterious weapon, and manages to wipe out a set of local marauders.  The weapon's use has side effects, one which the owner's race is prepared for, but not the human who fired it.

Macfarlane is trying for a cute sting-in-the-tail story, but the whole thing is nonsensical, so it lacks the desired impact.

Two stars.

The Ambassadors, by as by J. B. Clarke


by Leo Summers

A set of three disparate aliens makes contact with the galactic organization of which the humans are a member.  Said aliens claim to be vastly superior to our federation, but they say they'll be generous and give us a few technological wonders—if only we'll give them an example of one of our best starships, so they can gauge our level of progress.  Since homo sapiens has (per the story) an unique ability to sniff out a scam, a human is sent to investigate to see if the aliens are on the level.

Things that suggest the aliens are hoaxing: they showed up in a borrowed spaceship, no one has ever heard of their stellar confederation, and their "capital" planet is a smoggy wasteland.  Points in their favor: the three wear a common uniform and despite profound apparent racial differences, work together in perfect harmony.  Conclusion, they must represent an ancient and tight-knit federation!

Much is made of the fact that most species in the galaxy are bi-sexual.  Not that you'd know from this story, whose only female human is a "pert secretary."  The leader of the alien delegation is a female, to the surprise of the humans receiving them.  Cue the snide comments about how women always have to speak for the menfolk (the implication being that such arrogance is misplaced).  In the end, the gender of the aliens is the key to unpuzzling the obvious hoax.

Clarke spends a lot of time setting up a puzzle whose solution is apparent from nearly the beginning.  The characters have to be obtuse to make the story work.  Obtuse and sexist. 

One star.

Shapes to Come, by Edward Wellen


by Vincent Di Fate

A scientist in an isolated base on the Moon has completed his work: he has perfected a spore that will inject itself into any alien genetic structure, instilling an irresistible trust of the human form.  By seeding the stars with this spore, when we meet any extraterrestrials, they will necessarily greet us with love and affection.

But before the spore can be deployed, an alien armada shows up.  Can you guess what completely unexpected result ends the tale based on the story's setup?

This is comic book level stuff.  Two stars.

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


by Kelly Freas

Concluding the two-part serial begun last ish, The Yngling latter half is choppy but worthy.

When we last left our hero, the psi-adept Nordic warrior, Nils Ironhand, he had been sent into the lion's den.  More specifically, to the domain of Kazi, an immortal (through soul transferrence into new bodies) who reigns through unbelievable cruelty.  His armies are poised at the doorstep of Europe, and in short order, more than thirty thousand of his "orc" hordes will sweep through the Balkans bent on rapine and ravagery.

Nils presents a condundrum to the psionic tyrant as his signature trait is the lack of an internal monologue.  Thus, his mind cannot be read, barely even sensed.  He also is completely without guile.  Interestingly, while this wordless mentality is portrayed as an unique characteristic, and perhaps a side effect of Nils' psi powers, it can't be that rare in the real world.  Indeed, one of the Journey's very own, Tam Phan, possesses this trait.  Now, Tam is also a fantastic warrior, so there may be a connection.


Tam and familiar faces at a local gathering of Vikings

In any event, after Nils gets to witness some particularly gruesome examples of Kazi's barbarism, he escapse, makes it back to Hungary, and organizes a resistance comprising Magyar, Ukrainian, Polish, and Bohemian knights…as well as hundreds of his kinsman, who have just crossed the Baltic, fleeing the impending Ice Age.  The resulting battle is lengthy, desperate, and strategic in detail.  Of course, you can guess who wins.

This is a tough book to rate!  It's firmly in the genre of magical post-Apocalypse, along with Omha Abides, Spawn of the Death Machine, Out of the Mouth of the Dragon, and so on.  I happen to like this genre, and while I'm growing to loathe psi stories, in these settings, I can just pretend it's a kind of magic, or maybe lost technology.

The key to writing this genre well, and Dilmas does, is to bathe it in sensuality and adventure.  In many ways, Nils is more akin to Conan than any scientifical hero you'd expect to find in Analog.  I also greatly appreciate that Dilmas manages to convey the most unspeakable of tortures completely obliquely.  A few artful words can chill far more than pages of explicit gore.

Too, I enjoyed the grand depiction of the battle, complete with fog of war and the uncertainty that accompanies it.  So vivid is this portion of the novel, that one could probably adapt a cracking wargame from it.  Jim Dunnigan, are you listening?

It's not all roses, of course.  As in the first half, the various sections of the novel don't quite hang together well, like bricks without mortar.  Much is bridged in shorthand.  Also, Nils having to retell the same story to half a dozen European lords to rally them against the orcs was a bit tiresome.  Perhaps all of these things will be smoothed when this story inevitably gets picked up by Ace.  Or maybe not—they like their books short.

Anyway, I'd give this installment four stars, three-and-a-half for the whole.  Fans of this sort of thing, like my nephew, David, may notch up their assessments a touch.

Doing the math

Boy, Analog has been bad lately.  I know it seems like I just keep saying it over and over again, but until these doldrums end, I'll have to find creative ways to repeat myself.

At 2.3 stars, Analog is by far the lowest in the pack.  IF got 3.1; Vision of Tomorrow got 3.2; even Amazing got 3.2; Galaxy got 2.9; so did Venture; Fantasy and Science Fiction got 2.7; and New Worlds got 2.8.

Women wrote about 10% of what was published this month, and you could fit all the four and five star stuff in two digests.  Given that eight came out for November, that's a pretty weak showing.

Perhaps if Ted White, Ed Ferman, Charles Platt, and Ejler Jakobsson went over to Condé Nast headquarters for a negotiation, Campbell might loosen the reins on his writers.  Couldn't hurt!




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 24, 1969] How sweet it isn't (November 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Rats!

A study just completed by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has concluded that cyclamates may cause bladder tumors in rats.

How does this affect you?

Decades ago, it paid to be plump.  It was a sign of wealth and health.  It was attractive!  These days, we're in the Grape Nuts generation, and it's now all about fitness and being slender.  How to reconcile the popularity of fizzy sweet sodapop and the desire to cut sugar from our diets (despite the Sugar Council telling us it's good for us)?

Early this decade, a slew of soft drinks came out, sweetened not with sugar, but with a blend of artificial sweeteners—saccharin and cyclamates.  Diet Rite and Tab may not have tasted just like Coke and Pepsi, but they did the job and preserved the waistline.

But now, thanks to the HEW report, soft drink companies are all pulling their cyclamate sodas off the market as of February 1, 1970.  Grab your vintage colas while you can, because they won't exist come next spring!

What does the future hold for diet sodas?  Well, for now, saccharin is still legal, though by itself, it's a bit bitter (remember the "sach" tablets Winston Smith put in his coffee in 1984)?  There is talk of putting sugar back into diet sodas…just less of it.

And, since this is a science fiction 'zine, we can always speculate that new and better sweeteners will be developed.  Maybe even on purpose this time—did you know that both saccharin and cyclamates were discovered by accident?  Constantin Fahlberg was researching coal tar derivatives and forgot to wash his hands before going for lunch, when he discovered saccharine was discovered in 1879.  And grad student Michael Sveda was working on anti-fever drugs in 1937; some got on a cigarette, and when he took a drag, it tasted sweet.

Cue the commercials:

Bob: My cigarette just isn't doing it for me anymore.
Larry: Try mine!  It's new.
Bob: Hey! Not bad…sweet!
Larry: You better believe it.


by Jack Gaughan

Of course, with a lede like the one I just wrote, you can guess that the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is less than palatable.

The Mouse, by Howard Fast

Three-inch aliens descend to Earth in a teeny saucer and smarten up a little mouse to be their telepathic eyes and ears to scout out the world.  When the rodent's work is done, he is heartbroken to find that the aliens must leave, abandoning him to a life of loneliness, the sole example of his kind.  Despondent, he kills himself.

Not only is the story an unecessary downer (the mouse was exposed to the worst humanity had to offer, but also the best—couldn't he have found human friends to love?) but it's written clunkily, as though Howard dashed it off quickly, and didn't bother to correct it.  It's the kind of work I do if I neglect to read my work aloud before sending it in to a publisher.

Two stars.

A Feminine Jurisdiction, by Sterling E. Lanier

The latest Brigadier Ffellowes shaggy dog tale has him stranded just after the Nazi invasion of Crete (how timely!) on an Aegean island lost to time, housing a trio of mythical sisters.  One of them has, shall we say, a stony-eyed gaze.  Of course, we know the Brigadier will escape (how else could he live to tell the tale?) but the fun is in the how.

I could have done without the casual sexism.  World-traveler Ffelowes surely could not have forged his opinion on matriarchies solely on this one stacked-deck example.  Beyond that, the well Lanier plumbed for material is a little mined out.  Still, it's a competent and entertaining yarn.

Three stars.

Penny Dreadful, by Ron Goulart

A ghost writer cum secret agent (or is it the other way around?) is on one of the planets of the Barnum system, a frequent Goulart setting, mostly known from his Ben Jolson stories.  All he wants to do is collect his fee from deadbeats.  In the process, he ends up cleaning up local politics.

Goulart, at his best, does light, spy/detective stuff really well.  This is not his best.  Indeed, it's among his worst—incomprehensible and somehow incomplete.

Two stars.

The CRIB Circuit, by Miriam Allen deFord

A young computer operator, who died of cancer in 1970, is revived after five centuries of cold sleep.  But the Brave New World she wakes up into is not interested in welcoming her as a citizen, but only as a temporary subject of study before she is to be put down again.  Must keep the population constant, you see!  Can Alexandra come up with a way to extend her second life?

I had thought her solution would be a variation on the Scheherazade shtick from 1001 Arabian Nights, but it's actually a bit cleverer.  There's also a nice sting in the tail of the piece.  I should have seen it coming; that I didn't is a credit to DeFord's writing.

Four stars, and my favorite piece of the ish.

Come Up and See Me Some Time, by Gilbert Thomas

A pre-teen genius builds a psychic space ship and prepares to head off into another dimension, presumably to be reunited with his murdered mother.  But not before giving an ostentatious and horrific reply to his father, who we learn is responsible for his wife's death.

Told from the point of view of the father, the tale is just silly.  It's more of a mood piece than anything, and frankly, I didn't care enough about the schmuck to get into his head.

One star.

After the Bomb Cliches, by Bruce McAllister

Martin Potsubay is convinced The End Is Nigh.  So he builds a bomb shelter, and when the air raid sirens begin to blow, ensconces himself inside.  But the trumpets keep blowing, and in the end, there's no way to avoid Armageddon…or the heavenly recruitment officers!

This is definitely my favorite McAllister piece to date, bordering right between three and four stars.  On reflection, I think I'll finally give him the win.

Four it is (but I still like the deFord better!)

The Sin of the Scientist, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor takes Oppenheimer's "physicists have known sin" line and runs with it, defining "sin" in a scientific sense, and discussing which scientists have committed it.  His answer is an interesting one.

Three stars.

Diaspora, by Robin Scott

A catastrophe has rendered the Earth uninhabitable, and just one small colony of 400 humans is left.  Establishing themselves on a kind world, farm yields explode and the settlement prospers.  Yet, their puritannical leader refuses to loosen the reins of privation.  One rebellious type chafes under the tyrant, and so he plots an escape, establishing himself as an independent concern.  This proves instrumental to the colony's success…and as it turns out, all according to plan.

This story is decently written, but the overly deterministic nature of the premise is a turn-off.  The idea that the colony was founded with the expectation that it would need a malcontent to ensure its success, and that a ten-year agenda could be stuck to so as to carry out the plan, beggars belief.  It's the kind of thing I expect from Analog.

Three stars.

After the Myths Went Home, by Robert Silverberg

Future-dwellers get bored of reconstituting historical personages, so they turn to reviving mythical people.  After having their fill of hanging out with the whole panoply of (Western) legends, from Adam to Hercules to JFK, they banish them, too.  But the result is there's never a hero around when you need one…

Silverbob phoned this one in.  It has the veneer of literariness, but it just coats a hollow interior.

Two stars.

Ptui!

Like soda without sweetener, the latest F&SF was a bland mouthful.  Still, the two good pieces are enough to keep me going, albeit with ever fading enthusiasm.

But perhaps next year, the editors will find the right formula to spice up their wares…


by Gahan Wilson




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 20, 1969] There was a ship (November 1969 Venture)

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by David Levinson

”There was a ship,” quoth he.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Northwest to Alaska

Almost from the moment Europeans discovered the Americas, they’ve been looking for a sea route to Asia across the top of the continent. Dubbed the Northwest Passage by the English (because they were trying to travel west), the name stuck, and the route has been of interest ever since. The McClure Arctic expedition showed there was a sea route in 1850, though much of it was blocked by ice, and the journey was partially completed by sledge. Roald Amundsen became the first to go from Atlantic to Pacific entirely by ship between 1903 and 1906.

When oil was discovered last year at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic coast of Alaska, attention turned once again to the Northwest Passage. A pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to a mostly ice-free port like Anchorage or Valdez faces a number of technological and legal challenges, so, even though planning is well underway and several hundred miles of pipe have already been ordered, oil companies are taking a look at the viability of shipping through the Northwest Passage.

Enter the SS Manhattan, an oil tanker owned and operated by the Esso company; she’s also the largest merchant vessel registered in the United States. She has been refitted with an icebreaker bow by the Finnish shipbuilder Wärtsilä, which built a huge ice tank to help optimize the design.

The SS Manhattan breaking through the ice of the Northwest Passage.

The Manhattan left Pennsylvania in August and sailed for Alaska under the command of Captain Roger A. Steward. Sea ice in the M’Clure Strait forced her take a more southerly route through the Canadian Arctic archipelago. After she reached Prudhoe Bay, a token barrel of crude oil was placed aboard, and the return voyage began. The ship cleared the Passage on September 14th, becoming the first commercial vessel to make the transit.

Is the Northwest Passage now open for commerce? Maybe, maybe not. The Manhattan required the support of several American and Canadian coast guard icebreakers to get through. Also the legal challenges a pipeline faces may be nothing compared to the sea route. Canada considers all waters in the Arctic archipelago to be internal waters, not an international shipping lane. In fact, at one point a group of Inuit hunters stopped the ship and demanded the captain request permission to pass through Canadian territory. He did so, and permission was granted.

So there are legal problems. Whether the Passage can be used year-round is also unknown. There’s talk of sending another ship this winter to see if the way is open then. Time will tell, but I’m betting on the pipeline.

Involving, but avoiding, calamity

There’s something about a shipwreck that seems to resonate with people. From The Wreck of the Hesperus (the bane of schoolchildren for nearly a century) to A Night to Remember (something of a disaster itself at the box office), wrecks are found all through popular entertainment. Science fiction is no exception, although the ships are usually in space. This month’s Venture offers no fewer than three ship related disasters, not to mention a plane crash and a global disaster.

Thankfully, the issue itself is not a disaster.  Quite the contrary, actually.

Art by Tanner

This issue’s cover is a slight improvement over the last. It’s recognizably science fiction, and there’s a second color.

Plague Ship, by Harry Harrison

The route from the Moon to Mars is supposed to be a milk run. But then a meteorite strike leaves the ship’s doctor, on his first ever space trip, the only surviving officer.  After that, disaster follows fast and follows faster, to paraphrase Poe. The disease hinted at by the title isn’t even the last dreadful thing to befall the ship.

Disaster strikes the Johannes Kepler. Art by Tanner

The constant occurrence of a new disaster every few pages sometimes feels a bit overdone, but that may be the result of the condensed novel format. A full novel would give the characters some room to breathe between incidents. I enjoyed this a lot, but a little voice in the back of my head kept whispering that someone with more of a naval background, say A. Bertram Chandler, would have made this more believable.

A high three stars.

In Alien Waters, by Richard E. Peck

A scoutship crewed by water-breathing aliens crashes on a habitable world. They’re searching for intelligent life, even highly improbable surface dwellers, but don’t sense any. They effect repairs and attempt to take off. Interspersed with this story is a man reminiscing about the wreck of a ship he was on.

A somewhat abstract view of one of the aliens. Art by Keller

This is a decent story, but it’s weakened by the interwoven narratives. It quickly becomes obvious what ship the human narrator is talking about, which leaves the final line without any punch. The story might have been better served if Peck had moved more of that thread to the end, so it isn’t so obvious. That or relied a lot less on the impact of the final line.

Three stars.

IQ Soup, by Larry Eisenberg

Eisenberg inflicts another of his awful Emmett Duckworth stories on us. This one is even stupider than usual. The only nice thing I can say about it is that it’s less than a full page long.

One star

Basic, by Christopher Anvil

Another of Anvil’s tales of the Interstellar Patrol and their unusual methods of recruitment and training. It’s much like the others, and there isn’t much more to say. It’s clearly meant to come before Test Ultimate in the September Analog, but reading order shouldn’t make much difference.

A low three stars.

Escape Velocity, by Robin Scott

Astronaut Hogate struggles to fight down his fears as he sits on the launch pad. He’d be fine if there was something to do, but whenever they pause the countdown all he can do is think about everything that brought him to this place. When his capsule fails to make orbit, he’s forced to try out an experimental escape pod.

Ground Control to Major Tom. Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong. Art by Keller

You might want to listen to David Bowie’s recent single while reading this one. This is very good, but I’m not sure Scott is quite up to what he was trying to achieve; it falls just short of the four stars it could have been.

A high three stars.

The Snows Are Melted, the Snows Are Gone, by James Tiptree, Jr.

In a world apparently devastated by nuclear war, a girl with no arms and a very intelligent wolf undertake a journey to investigate some wild humans. It’s difficult to say much more about this without telling the whole story, but it is so much more.

A girl and her wolf. Art by Bhob Stewart

The timing is difficult, but if this wasn’t written in response to Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog, I’ll eat my hat. I will admit that I’m not entirely sure about what Tiptree was trying to say right at the very end, but it’s an impressive piece. My only complaint is really that the girl manages to do a couple of things much faster than it seems she ought to even with wolf assistance. Initially, that was enough to pull it under the four-star line, but I’ve changed my mind. Either way, Tiptree is now officially an author to watch.

Four stars.

Summing up

Another issue of Venture in the books. It’s getting better, though maybe not quite up to the standards of its parent magazine, F&SF. The biggest improvement has to be in the art. Tanner’s cover is better than the previous issue’s, though it still leaves a lot to be desired, and the addition of other (dare I say better) artists inside is a step up. I’m particularly taken with the two pieces signed "Keller". They’re sort of a combination of psychedelic and Art Nouveau that works very well.

More of all of this, please, except for Emmett Duckworth and maybe Chris Anvil.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 12, 1969] My country, right or… (November 1969 Galaxy)

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

Justice delayed

The new Supreme Court, whose prime continuity to the old one is the preservation of the name "Warren" in its Chief Justice, is now in session—minus one Justice…for now.

Warren Burger has taken over from Earl Warren, and one can already feel the rightward lurch of our nation's highest judiciary.  Now, President Richard Milhouse Nixon plans to careen the Supreme Court in an even more conservative direction.

Tricky Dick's nomination to fill the seat left when LBJ's nominee, Abe Fortas, didn't get the job, is Clement F. Haynsworth.  Haynsworth is currently a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Atlantic coast of the Upper South), a position he has held since being appointed their by Ike in 1957.  The Senate Judiciary Committee on October 9th approved 10-7 the consideration of Justice Haynsworth.

The road ahead is far from clement for Haynsworth, however.  For one, he bought 1000 shares of Brunswick (the bowling company) just before publishing a ruling he helped make on said company.  After the heightened scrutiny on ethics that accompanied the Fortas nomination, Haynsworth is under an intense microscope.  Labor groups maintained that he should have recused himself from a case involving a textile mill; he owned shares of a company that did business with the mill.

Critics of the storm say this is just tit for tat after the Fortas fight, rather than for any substantive reason.  What's really at stake is Haynsworth is a reactionary.  He affirmed the decision by local authorities to close the Prince Edward County schools to avoid integration, he upheld the constitutionality of school voucher programs used to fund segregated private schools, and he supported the management of the Darlington Manufacturing Company in South Carolina when it closed down to avoid its employees unionizing.

Will Haynsworth make it on the bench?  It's hard to imagine he will.  If a Republican minority was sufficient to deny Fortas a seat, then a Democratic majority will surely roadblock Haynsworth.  If and when this happens, the question is whether Nixon will double down or conciliate.  At stake this season are decisions on the tax exempt status of churches, the death penalty, punitive drafting of war protesters, and the rights of Black Americans.

Stay tuned…

Entertainment delayed

Just as we're playing the waiting game to see the direction jurisprudence goes in America, so the latest issue of Galaxy science fiction makes it clear that the future of SF, particularly in the pages of the former queen of the genre, is as yet uncertain.


by Jack Gaughan (as are, presumably, all of the other illustrations in this magazine)

Downward to the Earth (Part 1 of 4), by Robert Silverberg

The amazingly prolific Silverbob begins a serial that has elements of Delany (the incorporation of music and the choppy presentation…which may be a printing error knowing Galaxy) and Zelazny (the wild, decadent planet and weary protagonist).

Edmund Gunderson used to run Holman's World, a jungle planet with two sentient races—philosophical elephants and brutish apes—in order to collect the serpent worm venom that is a fundamental catalyst of tissue regeneration.

Ten years later, Holman's World is now Belzegor, reverted to the ownership of the pachyderm nildoror.  The human infrastructure is rapidly succumbing to tropical rot, and who knows how long humanity will keep contact with the world?

Amid this backdrop of decay, Gunderson returns to the planet he ruled…purpose unknown.  All we know is that his mission lies somewhere in the backwoods, and he requires nildoror permission to go there.  We find out Gunderson is a bigot who cannot quite abide the idea that the nildoror are sentient beings rather than animals, but he does seem to be trying to break free of his bigotry.  We also learn that the nildoror are now closely associating with the primate sulidor and even employing them as servants.  Finally, it is revealed that drinking raw serpent venom causes the brief transfer of souls between alien and human.  Whether this is imaginary or real is not yet known.

Silverberg has set up a lot of pieces, but not much has happened yet.  The writing is competent, though not gripping.  As with the Haynsworth decision, the jury is still out on this one.

Three stars.

Pennies, Off a Dead Man's Eyes, by Harlan Ellison

Old man Jedediah Parkman is dead at the age of 82, and all of the people he's helped over the years are coming to his funeral to pay respects.  This includes an alien with the power of camouflage and lethal envelopment, who is passing for human for his survival.  At the funeral, he witnesses a beautiful white woman (most out of place given the part of town and the race of Parkman and the other attendees) who takes the silver coins from atop Parkman's eyes.

What is her motivation?  Why is she there?  And just what connection does our storyteller have to Parkman?

This is one of the few Ellison stories that harnesses the writer's great talent to say something beyond what's on Harlan's mind/heart at the moment.  It's also real SF, unlike so much of his work.

Five stars.

The Dirty Old Men of Maxsec, by Phyllis Gotlieb

Outside: the City.  Cramped, stagnant, spartan.  Its only compensation: the citizens are immortal, thanks to "the J."

Inside: MaxSec.  A maximum security community populated by criminals whose only punishment is to be deprived of immortality.

The paradox: the people of MaxSec are reportedly happier, freer, and more innovative than the people of the City.

The story: Fenthree is a somewhat cynical citydweller, blackmailed into infiltrating MaxSec to find its secrets.  He is quickly found out and imprisoned, to be an unwitting vessel for MaxSec's revenge on the outside world.

From there, the perspective of the story grows, now including Corrigan, strongman of MaxSec who is the architect of the retribution plan.  To Linnaeus Ganzer, nearly 400 years old, developing the creeping death for Corrigan's plan.  To Luz, the last lovely woman in MaxSec, catalyst to plans within plans.

A meandering, occasionally flippant, occasionally opaque piece, Gotlieb's is an interesting counterpoint to last month's "The Rock", covering the concept of a coordinated prison exile a la Australia of a couple centuries ago.  That it also manages to make some interesting comments on the effects of immortality on society at the same time is impressive, although the two speculative threads do not interweave perfectly.

Three stars.

How to Kidnap a Moon, by Robert S. Richardson

Richardson is an astronomer whom we normally find in the pages of Analog.  This article details the energy concerns for bringing the two moons of Mars into orbit around the Earth for easier access.

There isn't much discussion of how one might practically arrange such things—it's all just orbital mechanics and erg tabulations.  It is also unclear how it would be easier to bring the rocks here for investigation rather than exploring them in situ.  On the other hand, if we're ever to mine Phobos and Deimos (or by extension, any of the asteroids), I suppose there might be merit to bringing the planetoids home.  If anything, they could be hollowed out and turned into natural space stations.

Anyway, three stars.

Broke and Hungry, No Place to Go, by Ron Goulart

A man whose job is to tell the computer which unnecessary mouths on the dole to eliminate (in the pursuit of efficiency) finds that he is now on the chopping block.

This is the kind of minor tale we might have found in one of the minor magazines last decade.  Ron is phoning it in.

Two stars.

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

In this posthumous piece, Willy Ley discusses the suggestion that the death of the dinosaurs was caused by an excess of radiation—from the periodic flipping of the magnetic poles or the explosion of a nearby supernova.  He seems unconvinced, and he even goes so far as to say that the extinctions might not even have been that sudden.

Three stars.

Dead End, by Norman Spinrad

Another bleak man-on-the-dole story.  This time, a fellow who is dissatisfied with having nothing meaningful to do, decides to go to the last natural preserve in the country.  It is a 10 mile by 10 mile stretch of wilderness with none of the comforts of home.  When he decides he isn't enjoying being cold and hungry any more than he was enjoying being bored and fed, he tries to summon a recovery robot.  But his call bracelet doesn't work…may never have been designed to work.  A trap to weed out malcontents?

Mack Reynolds has extrapolated this kind of world with far more success, and Bob Sheckley has written satires like this with far more wit and barb.  Spinrad can be great, but this is lesser Spinrad.

Two stars.

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

Last up, a very short final installment of the third (or second, depending on how you count them) Dune book.  The plotters against Paul Atreides offer him a ghola (resurrected clone) of the newly dead Chani, Paul's true love.  Knowing this will make Muad'Dib a thrall to the shadowy interests of a myriad of anti-Imperial organizations, Paul refuses.  Then he goes out into the desert to die, as is the fitting end for blind Fremen.  The Emperor leaves behind a newborn pair of twins, one male and one female, both fully sapient in the same manner that Paul's sister was conceived, Alia's mother having been high on the spice melange at the time.

In the end, this is very much a bridge book.  All of its bits could have been condensed to a five-page faux encyclopedia article included at the beginning of the next book, with very little action and not a whole lot of interest, save the mildly engaging Duncan Idaho/Hayt bits in the last installment.

So, two stars for this bit and two stars overall.  Just read the summarizing precis (almost as long as this last installment!) and the few pages of the story in this issue, and you'll be fine.

A Cautious Look to the Future

It's even harder to read the tea leaves when it comes to the future of Galaxy.  On the one hand, by the numbers, this issue didn't crack three stars.  On the other, the Silverberg could become a knockout, the Herbert is (blessedly) over, the Gottlieb was interesting, if not stellar (and the first woman-penned piece in how long?), and the Ellison was unusually excellent.  Ley is dead, and that is a blow, but perhaps Richardson will replace him.  His article certainly seems like an audition, though it wasn't as good as other pieces by him I've read in, say, Analog.

So, for news on Haynsworth and news on Galaxy… I guess we're playing the waiting game!

See you then.




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

[October 8, 1969] Suddenly . . . (November 1969 Amazing))

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by John Boston

. . . Amazing has become a normal science fiction magazine. (Stop snickering.) It’s been moving in that direction, but this November issue’s editorial says: “Beginning this issue, our old policy of reprints has been thrown out the window. . . . We will be publishing one, and only one classic story in each issue, and it will be a bonus to the fully new contents of the magazine.” Or, as the cover blurb puts it, “ALL NEW STORIES plus a Famous Classic.”


by Johnny Bruck

That phrase may seem oxymoronic, but here’s how editor White figures it: the magazine, with its new, smaller typefaces allowing more wordage, now contains about 70,000 words of new material, plus another 15,000 words, making a total per issue greater than any of the other SF magazines and allowing him to call the remaining reprints bonuses. Thus the booster’s reach exceeds the mathematician’s grasp, but I’m not complaining.

Promotion aside, congratulations to White for finally prying publisher Sol Cohen loose from his prolonged insistence on filling as much as half the magazine with reprints of (euphemistically) uneven quality. White says he “cannot truly say it was a result of my actions alone”—presumably meaning Cohen had been softened up by the complaints of his predecessors—but good for him for finally getting it done.

So what we have here are one quite long serial installment, a novelet, and two short stories, plus a reprinted short story from 1942, all new, as well as the usual complement of features. As promised last month, there is a science article by Greg Benford and David Book, and as then implied, Dr. Leon E. Stover is conspicuous by his absence, and not missed.

A book review column, shorter than usual but just as vehement, features editor White’s praise of Lee Hoffman’s The Caves of Karst and a new reviewer, Richard Delap, whaling on Bug Jack Barron: “Science fiction’s answer to Valley of the Dolls has now made the scene with all the pseudo-values of its mainstream counterpart unrevised and intact in a transposition to pseudo-sf.” Delap also doesn’t care much for the new collection of old stories The Far-Out Worlds of A.E. van Vogt, but this disappointment is expressed more in sorrow than in gusto. These two reviews are reprinted from a fanzine, but Delap will be contributing regularly to this column going forward.

The fanzine reviews and letter column fill out the issue. In the letter column, White notes that James Blish has moved to England and his book reviews will be less frequent. Other highlights of the letter column include Joe L. Hensley complaining in kind about the misspelling of his name on last issue’s cover, Bob Tucker reviving his 36-year-old beef about staples, to White’s consternation, and both White and John D. Berry, the fanzine reviewer, weighing in on the purpose of that column in response to a complaining reader. White takes issue with a reader who thinks the use of “sci-fi” is only a minor problem, and announces to another reader that he has dropped the movie reviews for the present. He also notes that he continues to write stories but his agent insists on sending them to Playboy—where, I note, nothing by White seems yet to have appeared.

Oh, the cover. I almost forgot. It’s the good cover by Johnny Bruck that we’ve been waiting for—not especially attractive, but very interesting. Foregrounded is an African-looking face peering out from what at first looks like the fur-lined hood of one of the Inuit or other far-North American peoples, but on closer examination is a collage of partial images of pieces of equipment and (I think) living things. It’s a surreal picture that, unusually, doesn’t look like imitation Richard Powers. Provenance is the German Perry Rhodan #250, from 1966.

On the contents page, Greg Benford’s story Sons of Man is listed as “The story behind the cover.” White said last issue that he doesn’t have control over the covers, but he’s been able to commission stories, including Benford’s, to be written around the pre-purchased covers. So I guess Sons of Man is actually the story in front of the cover. Inside, the story is illustrated by none other than editor White—his first professionally published art. It’s adequate, but he shouldn’t quit his day job. In other interior illustration news, Mike Hinge has done small illustrations for the headings of the editorial, book reviews, and other departments.

A. Lincoln, Simulacrum (Part 1 of 2), by Philip K. Dick

The biggest news in this issue is Philip K. Dick’s serial, A. Lincoln, Simulacrum. Per my practice, I won’t read and rate this until both installments are available, but there’s plenty of talk about the novel here. White’s editorial says without elaboration that it is totally uncut—in fact, it’s “slightly revised and expanded” for its appearance here.


by Mike Hinge

White does leave us with a bizarre anecdote. Several years ago, he showed Dick a photo of himself looking rather like Dick (both with full beards and dark-rimmed glasses). Dick asked for a copy, since his agent was after him to provide a photo for a British edition of The Man in the High Castle. So Dick sent the photo of White—and it appeared on the book. White says: “So here’s a chance to say, ‘Thanks, Phil,’ for the chance to associate myself, albeit deceitfully, with one of his best books.”

About the novel, White says:

“. . . Phil told me, ‘I put a lot of myself into this one—I really sweated into it.’ It’s more of a novel of character than any previous Philip K. Dick novel, and in writing and scene construction it approaches the so-called ‘mainstream’ novel. It is also something of a ‘root’ novel, planting as it does in 1981 many of the themes and constructs which pop up in later books of his loose-limned future history. And it is the first and only Philip K. Dick novel to be told in first person by its protagonist.”

Sons of Man, by Greg Benford


by Ted White

Greg Benford’s Sons of Man is a well crafted story using the familiar device of telling two unrelated stories in parallel, gradually revealing that they are not so unrelated after all. In one, Livingstone, who has moved to the northwestern wilderness to get away from civilization, finds a man named King collapsed in the snow near his cabin with severe burn injuries of no obvious origin, then sees a face peering into his window, and later, bare footprints two feet long. King’s been Sasquatch hunting and they seem to be hunting him back.

Meanwhile, on the Moon, Terry Wilk is trying to make sense of the records of an ancient spacecraft that crashed after visiting Earth early in human prehistory. Members of the New Sons of God cult are looking over his shoulder to make sure he doesn’t find out anything heretical. The story reads like it might develop into a series but stands on its own. The style seems a little awkward at the beginning, as if it’s something Benford started earlier in his career and came back to later, but overall, it’s very readable, cleverly assembled, and generally enjoyable. Four stars.

A Sense of Direction, by Alexei Panshin

Alexei Panshin’s short story A Sense of Direction is set in the same universe of “the Ships” as his Nebula-winning Rite of Passage. The interstellar Ships lord it over the people of the colonies that they established. Arpad, whose father married into a planetary culture and left (was left by) his Ship, was reclaimed for the Ship when his father died. He’s miserable in its unfamiliar culture, and makes a break for it during a landing on another planet. But the folkways there are so bizarre and repellent that he quickly changes his mind and sneaks back. So, like most of Panshin’s work, it’s Heinleinian: The (Young) Man Who Learned Better, capably done but just a bit too schematic and pat. Three stars.

A Whole New Ballgame, by Ray Russell

Ray Russell contributes A Whole New Ballgame, a compressed soliloquy on a theme previously aired by Larry Niven (in The Jigsaw Man), with a first-person semi-literate narrator. It’s just about perfect in its small compass and inexorable logic. Four miniature stars.

Sarker’s Joke Box, by Raymond Z. Gallun

The “Famous Classic” this month is Sarker’s Joke Box, by Raymond Z. Gallun, from the March 1942 Amazing. It’s yet another testament to the corrupting effects of Ray Palmer’s editorship. It begins: “Clay Sarker had me covered with his ugly heat-pistol. Kotah, the little Venusian scientist he’d held captive for so long, crouched helplessly chained, there, in one corner of Sarker’s cavernous mountain hideout. My life wasn’t worth the cinders in a discarded rocket-tube.” “Gimme bang-bang” wins out again! Pull out your copy of the June 1938 Astounding Science-Fiction, or the anthology Adventures in Time and Space, and compare Gallun’s much classier Seeds of the Dusk to this one.


by Robert Fuqua

But the story is not a total loss. The narrator is a cop, and he and his buddies have rousted Sarker out of his last stronghold in the Asteroid Belt. Now he’s trapped in a cave on Earth while the other cops are closing in. But Sarker—“that black-souled demon of space”—turns his heat-pistol on Kotah and then on his own apparatus that fills the cave, which blows up quite satisfactorily, then enters a metal cylinder and closes and seals it behind him. When the main body of cops arrive, they try to penetrate it, but—it’s neutronium! They can’t scratch it. And to compound matters, Sarker’s lawyer appears and announces that since they’ve declared Sarker to be in custody, they’ve got to try him within 60 days or he goes free. So the cops redouble their efforts to get through the neutronium. At this point, the story turns into a scientific puzzle without (much) further resort to hokey melodrama. It’s perfectly readable and commendably short. Three stars.

The Columbus Problem, by Greg Benford and David Book

Greg Benford’s second appearance in the issue is the first “Science in Science Fiction” article, done with David Book. It’s called The Columbus Problem and it starts out with a quotation from a Poul Anderson novel about a spaceship arriving at a new star system: “The instruments peered and murmured, and clicked forth a picture of the system. Eight worlds were detected.” Benford and Book then explain just how difficult and time-consuming it would actually be to detect the planets of an unfamiliar star system upon arrival at it, with our present technology or likely enhancements of it. They do a fine job of plain English explanation without becoming tedious. It beats hell out of Frank Tinsley’s earlier science articles for Amazing and edges Ben Bova’s. Four stars.

Summing Up

So, deferring judgment on the serial, here’s a lively issue of which much is quite good and nothing is a chore to read. Amazing!

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

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

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by David Levinson

An unexpected, expected coup

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

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

King Idris from a couple of years ago.

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

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

Libya’s new Prime Minister, Soliman Al Maghreby.

A deep but dazzling darkness

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

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

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

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

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

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

A high three stars.

To Kill a World, by Irwin Ross

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

An alien invader, or is it? Art uncredited

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

Four stars.

Genemaster, by Barry Alan Weissman

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

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

Barely three stars.

For Sacred San Francisco, by Alfred Coppel

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

A San Franciscan gunner, not our protagonist. Art uncredited

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

Three stars.

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

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

Three stars.

By Civilized Standards, by Neal Barrett, Jr.

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

A high three stars.

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

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

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

Gonyl is not in good shape. Art uncredited

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

A low three stars.

Appropriate Punishment, by Theresa M. Treadway

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

Three stars.

Judgment night. Art uncredited but clearly signed by Gaughan

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

Summing up

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

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

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




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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

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

Options in Space

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Options in Print

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


by Kelly Freas

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

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

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


by Kelly Freas

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

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

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

A Relic of War, by Keith Laumer


by Vincent Difate

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

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

Four stories.

The Big Rock, by Robert Chilson


by Kelly Freas

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

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

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

Three stars.

Proton to Proton, by R. Dean Wilson

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

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

Three stars.

Test Ultimate, by Christopher Anvil


by Vincent Difate

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

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

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

Jump, by William Earls


by Vincent Difate

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

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

Two stars.

Compassion, by J. R. Pierce

by Leo Summers

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

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

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

Three stars.

Doing the math

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

Lesser entries for October include:

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

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




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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

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

Government by the Many

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

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

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

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

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

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

Magazine by the Few


by Ronald Walotsky

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

Feminine Intuition, by Isaac Asimov

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

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

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

Three stars.

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

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

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

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

One star.

The Movie People, by Robert Bloch

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

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

A pleasant, sentimental story.  Three stars.

A Final Sceptre, a Lasting Crown, by Ray Bradbury

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

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

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

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

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Worlds in Confusion, by Isaac Asimov

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

Four stars.


by Chesley Bonestell

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

The Soft Predicament, by Brian W. Aldiss

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

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

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

One star.

The Man Who Learned Loving, by Theodore Sturgeon

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

The Electric Ant, by Philip K. Dick

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

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

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

Three stars.

Get a Horse!, by Larry Niven

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

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

Four stars.

Science Fiction for the woodpile

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

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




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

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

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

Time for a change

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

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

Transistors have made it to geology.

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

Making waves


by Gray Morrow

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

Tomorrow Cum Laude, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

Truly Human, by Damon Knight

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

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

Three stars.

The God of Cool, by J. W. Schutz

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

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

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

Five stars.

Element of Chance, by Bob Shaw

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

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

Two stars.

The Soul Machine, by A. Bertram Chandler

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

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

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

Ersalz's Rule, by George C. Willick


by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

Two stars.

Take the B Train, by Ernest Taves


by Jack Gaughan

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

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

Four stars, but a bit of a missed opportunity.

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

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

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

Stella, by Dannie Plachta

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

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

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

Three stars.

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

Aftershocks

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

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

Stay tuned!


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




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