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[June 23, 1962] Only the Lonely (July 1962 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

In this age of Cold War tensions, it's a little disconcerting to discover that the United States made two failed attempts this month to detonate a nuclear warhead in space.  The project, whimsically known as Operation Fishbowl, launched Thor missiles from Johnston Island, a tiny atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean under the command of the US Air Force.  The missiles launched on June 2 (Bluegill) and June 19 (Starfish) had to be destroyed in flight due to technical problems.  (Radar lost track of Bluegill, and the Starfish rocket engine stopped prematurely.) Some of the debris from Starfish landed on Johnston Island, potentially contaminating persons stationed on the atoll with radioactive material.

If that weren't scary enough, the three inmates who escaped from Alcatraz a couple of weeks ago are still at large.  It's probable that they drowned in San Francisco Bay, but I'd advise those of you who live in the area to keep your doors locked.

Raising the alarm in these troubling times are two newly published documents drawing attention to the problems we face.  The left-wing organization Students for a Democratic Society released a manifesto entitled The Port Huron Statement a week ago, promoting universal disarmament and other social and political reforms through non-violent civil disobedience. 

(It's interesting to note the cover price is the same as that of the magazine I'll eventually get around to reviewing.)

At the same time, The New Yorker (which costs ten cents less than Fantastic or The Port Huron Statement) published an excerpt from Silent Spring, an upcoming book from marine biologist Rachel Carson which discusses the danger posed to the environment by chemical pesticides.

With all of this depressing news, it's not surprising that a melancholy ballad of loneliness and lost love has been at the top of the charts for the entire month.  Ray Charles isn't the first musician to have a hit with Don Gibson's 1958 country song I Can't Stop Loving You — besides Gibson himself, Kitty Wells released a popular version the same year, as did Roy Orbison in 1961 — but his version is by far the most successful.  It seems likely that this unique combination of rhythm and blues with country-western will have a powerful impact on popular music.

In keeping with this mood, it's appropriate that many of the stories in the current issue of Fantastic feature characters haunted by loneliness, isolation, and lost love.

The great Emsh provides the cover art for The Singing Statues by British author J. G. Ballard.  It takes place in the futuristic resort community of Vermilion Sands, which has already appeared in a handful of Ballard's stories.  The narrator is an artist who creates sculptures that produce sound in response to those who view them.  (There are also indications that these works of art are somehow grown in the surreal landscape of Vermillion Sands, with its copper beaches and dry sea beds.) A beautiful, wealthy, and reclusive young woman purchases one of his works, believing that it sings to her in a way which perfectly reflects her soul.  Unbeknownst to her, however, the artist has actually placed an electronically distorted recording of his own voice inside it.  When the recording runs out, he goes to her luxurious home under the pretext of making repairs to the statue, actually placing new recordings within it.  His deception leads to unexpected revelations.  Ballard writes with a fine sense for imagery.  His tales of the decadent inhabitants of Vermillion Sands may not be for all tastes, but they are skillfully rendered works of art.  Four stars.

This month's Fantasy Classic is The Dragon of Iskander by Nat Schachner, from the pages of the April, 1934 issue of Top-Notch, a magazine which published adventure fiction from 1910 to 1937. 

Things start with a bang, as an archeological expedition in a mountainous region of Chinese Turkestan is attacked by a flying, fire-breathing dragon.  Our two-fisted American hero, along with his loyal servant and a couple of suspicious characters, makes his way into the mountains, where he discovers a lost kingdom founded by Alexander the Great.  Daring escapes and violent action results, and it's no surprise that a beautiful young woman shows up to stand by the hero's side.  This story is typical of old-fashioned pulp action yarns, and certainly moves at the speed of lightning.  It's marred by some casual racism (the Chinese character is often called "yellow," and non-Americans are generally cowardly and treacherous) and the fact that the true nature of the dragon isn't terribly convincing.  Two stars.

After this tale of an isolated nation, we turn to a story about a lonely individual.  A Drink of Darkness by Robert F. Young deals with a man who has destroyed his marriage and ruined his life through alcohol.  At the end of his rope, he meets a gaunt man who takes him to a strange land where a journey across a dark plain leads him to a towering mountain.  The alcoholic assumes that the gaunt man is Death.  During their trek he opens mysterious doors which lead to various times in his past life.  He relives the loss of his happiness to the bottle.  This is a bleak story, but it offers a glimmer of hope.  The true identity of the gaunt man is concealed until the end, although an astute reader may pick up a clue earlier.  Whether or not you believe the twist ending is appropriate, you are likely to respond to the story's emotional power.  Four stars.

The second half of Poul Anderson's short novel Shield continues the adventures of the fellow who has invented a force field.  Held captive by a crime boss, sought by both the Americans and Chinese for the secret of his invention, he receives help from an unexpected source.  An extended chase follows at a fast and furious pace.  Not quite as interesting as the first half, this section still provides plenty of action and a complex, fully developed character in the aide/mistress of the crime boss, who proves to be another example of the persons suffering from emotional loss in this issue.  Three stars.

The people in The Thinking Disease by Albert Teichner have become isolated from each other by their own technology.  Robots designed to self-destruct when there is any possibility of harming human beings (with a nod to Isaac Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics) somehow change from loyal servants to berserk killers at unpredictable times.  Their masters live in fear of leaving their homes.  The protagonist discovers a way to project his consciousness outside his body, enabling him to fight off the rebel machines.  The explanation for how the robots could hurt people, and the manner in which they can be controlled, is rather disappointing.  Two stars.

One Long Ribbon is, I believe, the first published story from Florence Engel Randall.  The protagonist is a recently widowed mother with a young son.  Her husband was a pilot, stationed at one air base after another, who was never able to give her a stable home.  Years before his death, he made arrangements to purchase a house for her in case of his demise.  When she moves in, she discovers that the other people living on her street act as if they can't see her.  Her son claims that he can't see the children that she sees playing outside.  This is a Twilight Zone kind of story with an unexpected explanation for its strange events.  Four stars.

Overall, this is a pretty good issue, although I wouldn't recommend reading it alone.

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[June 13, 1962] THE SINCEREST FORM? (the July 1962 Amazing)

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by John Boston

The July Amazing starts off ambiguously, with Stonehenge on the cover—often a bad sign, you could find yourself in Atlantis if you’re not careful.  But it illustrates A Trace of Memory, a new serial by the reasonably hardheaded Keith Laumer, so we may be spared any deep wooliness.  I’ll defer reading and comment until it’s complete.

So what else is there?  Excepting the “Classic Reprint,” this is the Literary Pastiche issue of Amazing.  The first of three short stories is The Blonde from Barsoom by Robert F. Young, featuring an aspiring fantasy writer whose work is virtually plagiarized from Edgar Rice Burroughs, as we are shown entirely too clearly.  It is vivid, because he has a knack for projecting himself into Burroughs’s world, and it soon enough occurs to him that maybe he could project himself into a more pleasant and less strenuous world.  Two stars for this slick but annoying trifle.

Then there is Richard Banks’s The Last Class, a Zola pastiche, which we know because it is subtitled (With Apologies to Emile Zola), and the blurb-writer helpfully adds that Zola wrote a similar story of the same title set just after the Franco-Prussian War.  This version is set in a regimented future world where people seem to live underground and get around via matter transmitter, and features a schoolteacher who tells her students about the Twentieth Century, when people were free, and gets caught at it.  It’s pretty well done, except that the teacher is referred to throughout as Miss Hippiness because she has big hips.  Would anyone refer to a sympathetic male central character as Mr. Beergutty or Mr. Hairybackish?  It’s an annoying distraction from an otherwise reasonably commendable story, holding it at three stars. 

This Banks—not to be confused with the more established and prolific Raymond E. Banks—has published one prior story in F&SF and one that sounds pretty SFnal (Roboticide Squad) in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

In between these two is William W. Stuart’s A Prison Make, in which a guy wakes up in a disgusting institutional setting which proves to be a jail, charged with something that he doesn’t remember—but in this world, law enforcement can rummage around in your mind, and they can damage your memory doing it.  He’s got a lawyer—a robot on wheels in very poor repair who doesn’t hold out much hope.  The story is about his adjustment to his absurd and outrageous situation, and if it sounds a bit familiar, that’s because it’s a downmarket SF rendition of Kafka’s The Trial.  As with the other stories, you don’t have to figure it out on your own, since the blurb-writer refers to it as a “Kafkaesque tale.” Well, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best, or at least the most interesting.  This one too is well done if a little heavyhanded in places, but without any stupid missteps like Mr. Banks’s character-naming gaffe.  Four stars.

So maybe it’s not such a bad idea to have SF writers emulating great mainstream writers of the past.  Who’s next?  I hear James Joyce is kind of interesting.  Just—please—no more Hemingway.  (See Hemingway in Space by Kingsley Amis from last year’s Judith Merril “best of the year” anthology.)

Interestingly, there is no editorial comment other than in the blurbs on the fact that three of the five fiction items here are overtly derived from the work of other authors.

The “Classic Reprint” this month, G. Peyton Wertenbaker’s The Chamber of Life from the October 1929 Amazing, is actually pretty good.  Once more we have the nearly omnipresent plot device of this old SF: ordinary guy is invited by scientific genius to check out his invention, and trouble follows.  But Wertenbaker could write: he had a plain and understated style which compares well to the clumsier and more stilted diction of some of his contemporaries, and he avoids the tiresome digressions of the recent Buck Rogers epic.  Here the invention is the ultimate motion picture: all senses are engaged and the viewer is precipitated into an encompassing hallucinatory world, in this case, a regimented utopian society of the future.  This guy was ahead of his time; too bad he hung it up in 1931, after only half a dozen stories.  Four stars.

Ben Bova contributes another science article (the second of four, we are told), The Three Requirements of Life in the Solar System, which is better organized and more to the point than the one in the previous issue.  The three requirements are a “building block atom” for construction of large molecules, a solvent medium in which large molecules can be built, and an energy exchange reaction.  On Earth, these are of course carbon, water, and hydrogen-oxygen respectively.  Bova then runs down the possibilities for life on each of the planets (for Mars, “almost certainly”; for Venus, “quite possibly”; Jupiter “might”; and the rest, “probably not” or worse).  That “almost certainly” is a surprise; but Bova asserts, “Even the most conservative astronomers will now grudgingly admit that some form of plant life no doubt exists in the greenish areas of the Red Planet.” That’s certainly news to me.  Three stars.

Bova’s articles, by the way, are illustrated by Virgil Finlay (unlike Frank Tinsley’s, which had at most diagrams or badly printed photos)—an interesting conjunction.  Finlay illustrates this month’s sober rendition with something like a fanged lobster with tentacles (“Artist’s rendition of author’s conception of Jovian sea-creature”), and last month he presented a pageant of DNA, the animal kingdom from trilobite to H. Sapiens overlaid with the double helix, its meticulous detail badly betrayed by Amazing’s mediocre printing.

***

One other item of interest appears in Or So You Say, the letter column: one Julian Reid of Canada takes Mark Clifton to task at great length for the misanthropy of his recent stories in Amazing, and compares them knowledgeably and unfavorably with Clifton’s earlier work.  Clifton replies at almost the same length, asserting variously that he was just kidding, he venerates humanity and that’s why he bothers to needle it, and his mail is running fifty to one favorably about those stories. 

***

And, looming inescapably, in inexorable pursuit . . . B_______ B_________.

(Don't miss your chance to see the Traveler LIVE via visi-phone, June 17 at 11 AM!  A virtual panel, with Q&A, show and tell, and prizes!)

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[June 10, 1962] A star shall rise (July 1962 IF Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

I've said before that IF Worlds of Science Fiction is sort of a poor sister to Galaxy Science Fiction.  Since 1959, they've been owned and run by the same team; IF pays its writers less; the quality used to be markedly lower on average (with occasional stand-outs).

We seem to be entering a new era.  The July 1962 IF was a cracking read once I got past the first story, which was short anyway.  Not only were the stories fairly original, but even where they weren't, the writing was a cut above.  And not in that arty, self-indulgent way that F&SF deems "literary," but in a real way that emphasizes characterization.  It's a departure from the mode of the 50s, particularly the lesser mags, where the focus was on the gimmick, with the actors playing second-fiddle to the plot.  Plus, Ted Sturgeon has made a permanent home here, which is always a good sign.

So read on – I think you'll enjoy the trip.

Aide Memoire, by Keith Laumer

This latest story in the Retief saga is definitely the weak point of the ish.  Our omnipotent, long-suffering interstellar diplomat is sent to resolve a violent generational gap amongst a race of turtles.  It seems that members of this long-lived race grow shells as they age.  The agile young ones have been whipped to an irreverent fervor by humanity's enemy, the Groaci.  It's paint-by-numbers satire, and the Retief shtick, when unsupported by an interesting plot, wears thin.  Two stars.

From Gustible's Planet, by Cordwainer Smith

Gluttonous, nigh-invulnerable ducks from another planet invade the Earth.  The result is not so much oppression as incessant annoyance.  I'm not sure where, or even if, it really fits into his "Instrumentality" universe, though it ostensibly is set there.  Anyway, the normally sublime Smith is reduced to offering us what is essentially a one-joke story, but it's Smith, so it's still worth reading.  Three stars.

The Chemically Pure Warriors, by Allen Kim Lang

A caste of humans have been bred to be septically pure, as clean of and as vulnerable to bacteria and viruses as any bubble baby.  Yet, they have also been trained for generations as humanity's space troopers.  Such is their indoctrination that a movement has risen amongst them that they are the superior race, and the "Stinkers" or baseline humans, must ultimately be exterminated.

Warriors takes place on the colony world of Kansas where a battalion of these sterilized soldiers are based in the midst of a Japanese-extracted group of pastoral "Indigenous Humanoids."  When one of the troopers attempts to go native, this proves the catalyst for a short-lived but terrible conflict between the two groups. 

IF experiments not only with writers and concepts, but with story lengths.  The novella just isn't that common a format, but it works nicely here.  There is enough time to portray the spit-and-polish roboticism of the soldiers, the gentle Buddhism of the Japanese (the culture and language of whom is reasonably accurately portrayed – I have to wonder if Mr. Lang has spent some time overseas).  Warriors owes much to Dickson's Naked to the Stars, or perhaps the time is simply due for a pacifistic sf movement.  My favorite passage:

"The ultimate breakdown in communication is silencing one side of the dialogue…  That's why killing a man is the ultimate sin; it removes forever the hope of understanding him."

Four stars.

Uncle Sam's Time Machine, by Theodore Sturgeon

Seems old Ted was hosting a bunch of Scouts at his house, and their clocks had run down.  All were agog when he dialed into 2500 Khz on his radio and the ticking of the time station, WWV, filled the house.  Within 60 seconds, they knew exactly what time it was – to the billionth of a second!  Sturgeon was so pleased with the reaction of the boys that he decided to write in to the government to find more about the broadcaster.  The goldmine of information they sent him astounded and delighted him, so he passed it onto us.

Now you may feel differently about this article, but I loved it.  It doesn't hurt that I am a Ham Radio fanatic, Morse-code fluent, and I tune into WWV (and its Hawaiian counterpart, WWVH) at least weekly.  But anyone can appreciate the sheer volume of information the Bureau of Weights and Measures squeezes into those clicks, tones, and messages you can hear if you tune in.  And they're improving on the signal all the time.  A fine example of our taxpayer dollars at work, and a fun Sturgeon piece to boot.  Five stars.

The Recruit, by Bryce Walton

In the near future, a young punk is drafted into a government police force.  He swaggers through his role until the time comes to conclude his mission, a mission which is not clearly spelled out until the end.  The "teener's" duty is a tantalizing mystery, and the conclusion is well set up.  It's a brutal, vivid story by a fellow best known for his decades of pulp tales.  Recruit feels kind of like Sheckley on a dark day.  Four stars.

All That Earthly Remains, by C. C. MacApp

Amid the turmoil of a recent right-wing revolution in an Andean nation, a half-Hispanic American scientist is dispatched to the mountains to investigate a mysterious explosion.  The blast has exposed an underground complex, home to fantastic technologies.  Are its builders demons?  Aliens?  Or something more?

Ten years ago, this would have been a simple "gotcha" tale.  In MacApp's hands, it's a carrier wave for the interpersonal drama of a handful of the opposing personalities sent to explore the tunnels.  The enduring question they are presented – if there is concrete proof of God, will that make us all Atheists?  Four stars.

A Bad Town for Spacemen, by Robert Scott

A short, effective piece whose only failing is the rather clumsy expositional bit near the end.  But I like the sentiment, the double-meaning, and the otherwise strong implementation.  Four stars.

***

So there you have it.  An excellent 3.7 star issue, which is only really marred by the truly awful illos, which I suspect are mostly padding for length.  Definitely worth subscribing, as Editor Fred Pohl exhorts you to do at the magazine's conclusion.  What are you waiting for?

(And don't miss your chance to see the Traveler LIVE via visi-phone, June 17 at 11 AM!  A virtual panel, with Q&A, show and tell, and prizes!)

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[May 31, 1962] Rounding Out (June 1962 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Ah, and at last we come to the end of the month.  That time that used to be much awaited before Avram Davidson took over F&SF, but which is now just an opportunity to finish compiling my statistics for the best magazines and stories for the month.  Between F&SF's gentle decline and the inclusion of Amazing and Fantastic in the regular review schedule, you're in for some surprises.

But first, let's peruse the June 1962 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and see if, despite the new editor's best efforts, we get some winners this month (oh, perhaps I'm being too harsh – Editor is a hard job, and one is limited to the pieces one gets.)

Such Stuff, by John Brunner

Thanks to recent experiments, we now know what people cannot survive long when deprived of the ability to dream.  But what about that bedeviled fellow who enjoys an escape from nightmares?  And what if your mind becomes the vessel for his repressed fantasies?  A promising premise, but this Serling-esque piece takes a bit too much time to get to its point.  Three stars.

Daughter of Eve, by Djinn Faine

After an interstellar diaspora, there are but two remaining groups of humans on a colony world.  One is a large population of radiation-sterilized people; the other comprises just one man and his young daughter, the mother having died upon planetfall.  From the title of the story, you can likely guess the quandary the sole fertile man is faced with.  The childlike language of the viewpoint character (the daughter) is a bit tedious, but this first story by Virginia Faine (nee Dickson – yes, that Dickson) isn't bad.  It stayed with me, and that's something.  Three stars.

The Scarecrow of Tomorrow, by Will Stanton

Reading more like a George C. Edmondson tale than anything else, this pleasantly oblique tale describes the encounter between two farmers and a murder of crows…with a partiality for things Martian.  I reread the ending a half-dozen times, but I'm still not quite sure what it all means.  Nicely put together, though.  Three stars.

The Xeenemuende Half-Wit, by Josef Nesvadba

During the War, a prominent German rocket scientist is stumped by a thorny guidance problem.  Can his savant son help him out?  And is it worth the price?  Another moody, readable piece from Nesvadba.  I'm sure there's a point, but I'm not quite sure what it is.  Three stars.

The Transit of Venus, by Miriam Allen deFord

I don't usually go for expositional stories, but deFord makes this one work, particularly with the story's short length.  In a world of regimentedly liberal mores, one prude dares to turn society on its ear with a scandalous go at winning the Miss Solar System beauty pageant.  A fun piece from a reliable veteran.  Three stars.

Power in the Blood, by Kris Neville

I didn't much like this story when it was It's a Good Life on The Twilight Zone, and I like it less here.  Some addled old woman with the power to destroy slowly deteriorates the world until there's naught left but wreckage.  Disjointed, unpleasant, and just not good.  One star.

The Troubled Makers, by Charles Foster

About the reality-challenged psychic who bends reality to his will, and the Watusi Chief who helps him around.  You've seen versions of this story a dozen times or more in this magazine over the years, but it's not a bad variation on the theme.  An assiduous copy of the mold from a brand new writer.  Three stars.

The Egg and Wee, by Isaac Asimov

I normally enjoy the Good Doctor's essays, and this one, comparing the ovae of various creatures and then segueing to a discussion of the smallest of biological creatures, isn't bad.  But it misses the sublimity that his work can sometimes achieve.  Three stars.

Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: LI, by Grendel Briarton

Mr. Bretnor's latest is much worse than normal, perhaps in Garrett territory.  But, I've never included these puns in my ratings, so I shan't now.  Lucky for F&SF.

The Fifteenth Wind of March, by Frederick Bland

Penultimately, we've got the jewel of the issue.  As magical winds scour the Earth with increasing frequency and intensity, one thoroughly ordinary British family attempts to find shelter before it's too late.  Both extraordinary and humdrum at once (no mean feat), it's a poignant slice of unnatural life.  Four stars.

The Diadem, by Ethan Ayer

Mr. Ayer's first printed story involves two women and the goddess that connects them.  It tries hard to be literary, but is just unnecessarily hard to read.  Two stars.

It should be clear to one with any facility with math (and who read every article this month) that the June 1962 F&SF was not the prize-winner this month.  In fact, the Goldsmith mags took surprising first and second place slots with 3.4 and 3 stars for Fantastic and Amazing, respectively.  Galaxy and Analog tied at 2.7 stars.  F&SF rated a middlin' 2.8, but it may have had the best story, though some will argue that Fantastic's The Star Fisherman earned that accolade.  It also had the laudable achievement of featuring the most woman authors…though two is hardly an Earth-shattering number. 

Speaking of women, the next article will feature women in the army.  And on that progressive note…ta ta for now!

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[May 26, 1962] Home is the Sailor (June 1962 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

In recent days the eyes of the world were focused on the most important event yet during the administration of President Kennedy. No, not Scott Carpenter’s successful, if suspenseful, orbiting of the Earth, so ably reported by our host. I’m talking about Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to the leader of the free world in a skintight beaded dress that drew at least as much attention as her little girl's voice.

In other musical news, after three weeks at the top of the Billboard's Hot 100 with their smash hit Soldier Boy, the Shirelles, pioneers of the girl group sound, have yielded the position to British clarinetist Mr. Acker Bilk with his performance of Stranger on the Shore.  (Bilk is only the second artist from across the pond to make it to Number One on the American pop charts. The first was just slightly less than a decade ago, when Vera Lynn reached that position with Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart. I suppose we'll have to wait another ten years before the British invade the Yankee airwaves again.)

Bilk's haunting, melancholy melody could easily serve as background music for the cover story in the June 1962 issue of Fantastic.

Another beautiful painting from young artist George Barr graces the latest offering from editor Cele Goldsmith.  It perfectly suits – and, I imagine, provided the inspiration for – Robert F. Young's lead novelette The Star Fisherman.

The protagonist's profession takes him deep into interstellar space, where he uses nets to capture small meteors which are used as jewels to be worn in women's hair.  Already the reader can tell that this is a romantic and poetic tale with the mood of a legend.  I was reminded, to some extent, of the work of Cordwainer Smith.  The fisherman captures the body of an old man in a spacesuit and a photograph of a young woman in the severe clothing of a religious cult.  He instantly falls obsessively in love with her and uses the clue of her attire to track her down.

The author takes many risks here.  He deliberately offers us a science fiction story which has the mood of fantasy.  He walks a very thin line between heartfelt emotion and sentimentality.  He creates a character with whom one must empathize, but who sometimes does terrible things.  I believe that he succeeds, as well as constructing an intricately designed plot which leads to an inevitable conclusion.  For all these reasons I must award a full five stars.

I wish I could say the same about Ended by David R. Bunch, since I have generally been a defender of his unique style.  Unfortunately, this story begins in such an opaque manner that I had no idea what was happening.  Eventually it becomes clear that two very strange characters who were about to fight each other instead dig down to a region where they are offered the opportunity to pay for hedonistic pleasures.  Apparently the author intends a satire of the modern world ignoring the possibility of universal destruction and instead wasting time in pursuit of escapism.  With a character named Glob Gloul the Gloul and a place called the Hall of Hedo-and-a-Ho-ho, it's hard to take the allegory seriously.  Two stars.

A step up is the first half of Poul Anderson's short novel Shield.  It's a fast-moving, action-packed adventure story set in a thoughtfully worked out future which is only revealed slowly as the plot progresses, much in the manner of Robert A. Heinlein.  The protagonist has just returned to Earth from one of several missions to Mars, which is inhabited by intelligent life.  (The author is wise enough to provide only a glimpse of these aliens, leaving the rest to the reader's imagination.) With the help of a Martian friend, he has invented a device which creates a force field around the wearer.  Anderson provides a plausible explanation for this technology, and describes its abilities and limitations in realistic detail. 

Although the hero is intelligent and capable, he is young and somewhat naïve about political realities.  Not realizing the full importance of his invention, he is soon pursued by American Military Security agents, who are the most powerful force in a world where the United States, after a nuclear war, has forced all other nations to disarm.  He is also the target of Chinese spies.  (The Soviet Union is not mentioned, and the reader may presume that it was the loser of the war.) As if that were not enough, he has to fight off low level crooks as well as a sinister crime lord and his beautiful assistant.  It all reads like a futuristic version of one of Ian Fleming's bestselling spy novels.  The author writes in a vivid, clear style and draws the reader into the story right from the beginning.  Although the crime boss is a bit of a stereotype, his female aide is a complex, fully realized character.  Four stars.

This issue's so-called Fantasy Classic is less than a decade old.  The Past Master by Robert Bloch is reprinted from the January 1955 issue of Bluebook.  Three different viewpoint characters are used to tell the tale of a mysterious man who arrives out of nowhere with immense amounts of money.  He attempts to purchase many great works of art.  When legitimate methods fail, he hires criminals to obtain them.  The man's motive may not come as a great surprise to readers of science fiction, but the story is effectively told.  The author's ability to write in a trio of distinct voices is a nice plus.  Three stars.

By coincidence, both Fantastic and this month's issue of Analog offer stories about weather control.  "Rain, Rain, Go Away" by James A. Cox deals with the political effects of such technology as well as its unintended consequences.  It's fairly predictable and not very engaging.  Two stars.

***

Robert F. Young's tragic love story alone is worth paying a dime and a quarter for the magazine.  Whether Poul Anderson is able to maintain the suspense of his novel remains to be seen.

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[May 21, 1962] Old AND New (UK's New Worlds Magazine)

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By Ashley R. Pollard

Here, as I sit writing in May 1962, I’m contemplating change.  The change that occurs when the old is phased out, and new things are built that replace the familiar.  What spurred this moment of reflection was the news of the last trolley bus run in London which, as fate would have it, happened on the eighth of May in my manor—London slang for my local area.  The irony is that the trolley buses were built to replace the old trams, but have now themselves fallen to the same fate of being old, and no longer appreciated for the modern convenience they once were.

Science fiction is arguably about change, hopefully not in the didactic way of, say, the classroom lecture, but rather through exploring the changes that comes from the introduction of the new.  While I’m sure that some of the Galactic Journey’s readers may consider American SF stories to be the wellspring of all that the future holds, Britain does have magazines of its own to bring stories to aficionados of the genre on this side of the Atlantic.

One of them is called New Worlds.

I will say that the history of this magazine is rather complex, and presented me with a Gordian Knot to unravel; unlike Alexander the Great, I’m not able to slice through it with a sword as the popular legend has it.  Instead I shall unravel the story by starting at the beginning, and work through to the end.  As an aside, I understand this is a better fit for what Alexander actually did, which was to pull pole pin out of the knot and unravel the loose ends, but I digress.

The roots of New Worlds lies in science fiction fandom, which in 1934 was being actively promoted by Hugo Gernsback and Charles D. Hornig at Wonder Stories, who had created the Science Fiction League as an association to further the growth of fandom.  People from around the world could apply to form an SFL chapter, and in 1935 Maurice K. Hanson and Dennis A. Jacques formed Chapter 22 of the SFL in Nuneaton, near Leicester for those who’ve never heard of the place.


Hanson, in 1937

Chapter 22 was the third of five SFL chapters formed on this side of the Atlantic: the other four being in Leeds, Belfast, Glasgow, and Barnsley.  And while they may have been the third chapter, Hanson and Jacques produced in 1936 the first fanzine published in the United Kingdom called Novae Terrae.

A total of twenty-nine issues of this British fanzine were produced between 1936 and January 1939.  I understand the workload associated with producing it eventually became too much for Hanson, and he handed it over to John Carnell, who renamed it New Worlds: a translation of the Latin title into plain English.  However, Carnell only produced four issues before the war started in 1939 and paper rationing came into effect.


Carnell, in 1936

But, when production started again in 1946, New Worlds had been transformed into a professional magazine produced by Pendulum Publications.  The first issue didn’t sell very well, but the second did, which was attributed to the cover art being very eye catching.  As a result, Carnell had all the covers stripped off the unsold copies of issue one, and reissued the magazine with the same cover art as issue two, but without the content lettering—see the illustrations for comparison.  With the new cover issue one also sold well, and things looked promising.  Unfortunately, as luck would have it, the publisher went bankrupt.

However, a group of passionate science fiction fans came together and formed Nova Publications Limited to keep New Worlds on the newsstands.  The publication schedule was what I would describe as irregular, some might say sporadic, but New Worlds thrived and went from two issues in 1949, rising to three in 1950 and four in 1951, up to six issues in 1952 before falling back to three in 1953.  Then there was a nine month hiatus, due to problems with the printer, but regular monthly issues in a new digest format appeared after Nova Publications was taken over by Maclaren & Sons.

Ever since then New Worlds has graced the newsstands across the country, and for a short time even America.  The magazine provides a source of science fiction to British readers who may not have easy access to the American magazines that Galactic Journey reviews each month.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to read May’s issue, which contains the following stories: Terminal by Lee Harding; Think of a Number by Steve Hall; Dictator Bait by Philip E. High; The Analyser by Bill Spencer; and the concluding part of a serial called The Dawson Diaries by John Rackham.  However, I will say that I’ve enjoyed most things I’ve read by Philip E. High and the tease for the story is intriguing, “Finding an alien who could change shape at will would be harder than finding the proverbial needle. There is one way, however, of flushing him out of hiding, given time and the necessary will-power.” Colour me interested.

In addition, this month’s issue of New Worlds features section has a guest editorial by J. G. Ballard, in addition to the regular readers letters page called Postmortem, a section called The Literary Line-Up, and Book Reviews by Leslie Flood.

And to end this month’s column, I would like to point to something new.  In a few days time the Coventry Cathedral will be consecrated.  The old one was destroyed by the German Luftwaffe during the second world war.  The design for the replacement building was the winner of a competition held in 1950, but the foundation stone wasn’t laid until 1956.  Now the building is finished the consecration of the cathedral will take place on May the 25th and is remarkable for being so modern—dare I say a science fictional church for a better tomorrow?

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Magazine

[May 17, 1962] Not as bad as it looks (June 1962 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

A wise fellow once opined that the problem with a one-dimensional rating system (in my case, 1-5 Galactic Stars) is that there is little differentiating the flawed jewel from the moderately amusing.  That had not really been an issue for me until this month's issue of Analog.  With the exception of the opening story, which though it provides excellent subject matter for the cover's striking picture, is a pretty unimpressive piece, the rest of the tales have much to recommend them.  They just aren't quite brilliant for one reason or another. 

So you're about to encounter a bunch of titles that got three-star ratings, but don't let that deter you if the summaries pique your interest:

The Weather Man, by Theodore L. Thomas

"Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," so the old saw goes.  But in Thomas' future, the Earth's weather is completely under the control of the all-powerful Weather Bureau; and it follows that the associated Weather Council is ruler of the world.  One councilor decides to stake his political future on the odd request of a resident of Holtville, California whose dying wish is to see snow before he dies…in July.

A couple of notable points: We seem increasingly confident that weather will be a trivial problem to solve.  That's reassuring given the threat of global warming.  Another is the featuring of Holtville, a tiny farm town in the middle of the country's richest farmland: the Imperial Valley.  I know the place fairly well – it's the next town over from my hometown of El Centro, the county seat.  Aside from its healthy Future Farmers of America chapter, its surprisingly able High School Speech Team, and that it was the residence of a brief ex-girlfriend, it has no outstanding qualities.  Just another stinky, buggy, windy settlement in an irrigated hot desert.

Anyway, Weatherman is a dull, plodding piece, and in contrast to the later stories in this issue, has very few trappings of a far, or even near, future.  Aside from the boats that sail over the sun, that is.  I'm not sure how pinpoint weather modification is somehow easier by tampering with a star rather than its planet.  I couldn't swallow it.  Two stars.

Three-Part Puzzle, by Gordon R. Dickson

In galaxy where the races divide neatly into Conquerers, Submissives, and Invulnerables (the last uninterested in conquering and incapable of beating into submission), what do you do when you discover humanity fits into none of these categories?  A cute tale no longer than it needs to be.  Three stars.

Anything You Can Do! (Part 2 of 2), by Randall Garrett

This latter installment depicting the battle of superhuman Stanton brothers vs. the frighteningly alien Nipe (begun last month) ends satisfactorily.  In fact, Garrett weaves together a number of plot threads with some fair skill, explaining the weird psychology of the shipwrecked ET; resolving the mysterious situation of the twin Stantons, one of whom had been crippled from birth and yet no longer has any physical ailments; and concluding the Nipe menace without resorting to bloodshed.  I am shocked, myself, to admit that I liked a Garrett story from start to finish, without qualifications.  Could the Randy fellow have turned a corner?  Three stars for this part, three-and-a-half in aggregate.

Interstellar Passenger Capsule, by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Dr. Hall takes on the currently popular topic of panspermia, the idea that life is spread around the cosmos by interstellar meteors.  It's overlong, a bit meandery, and I don't believe for a second that meteorites have been found with spores in them (at least, spores that were there before their carrier hit the Earth).  It reads like something submitted for a high school paper.  In that context, it might get a 'B.'  Here, it barely rates two stars.

The Sound of Silence, by Barbara Constant

An interesting, almost F&SFish piece about a young mind-reader who struggles to come to grips with her powers.  Lonely is the existence of a telepath with no one to send thoughts to.  I've never heard of Ms. Constant, but this was a solid piece, and a somewhat unique take on a hoary topic.  Three stars.

Novice, by James H. Schmitz

Young Telzey Amberdon has got quite a task ahead of her!  Can this second-year law student prove the sentience of an extraterrestrial race of giant cats while thwarting the nefarious schemes, upon Telzey and the kitties, of her evil aunt?  Here's an interesting story that combines telepathy, a female protagonist, and felines.  We also see progressive details like a Galactic Federation Councilwoman and a wallet-sized law library.  Its demerits are a slightly disjointed narrative style and a coda that is a bit creepy in its implications.  Nevertheless, I'd love more in this vein, please.  Three stars. 

***

That tallies up to an average of 2.7 – not very promising on the surface, but if you take out the leading novelette and the lackluster science fact article, you're left with some very readable, if not astonishing, stuff.  I'm not sorry I read this ish, which is more than I can say for some of the prior ones.

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Magazine

[May 15, 1962] RUMBLING (the June 1962 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Oh groan.  The lead story in the June 1962 Amazing is Thunder in Space by Lester del Rey.  He’s been at this for 25 years and well knows that in space, no one can hear—oh, never mind.  I know, it’s a metaphor—but’s it’s dumb in context and cliched regardless of context.  Quickly turning the page, I'm slightly mollified, seeing that the story is about Cold War politics.  My favorite! 

Only a few weeks ago, one of my teachers assigned us all to write essays about current affairs, to be read to the rest of the class.  Mine suggested that the government of China is no more to be found on Taiwan than the government of the United States is in London, and it might be wise to drop the current pretense keeping Taiwan in China’s United Nations seat, along with the fantasy of invading mainland China and reinstating Chiang Kai-shek to the power he couldn’t hold on to.  After I had read this, one of the other students turned to me and said, “John . . . are you a communist?” I assured him I am not, but in hindsight, I should have said, “That’s right, Jimmy.  I get my orders straight from Albania.”

Compared to this black and white comic-strip world-view, Thunder in Space is a masterpiece of sophistication—it’s at least on the level of the Sunday funnies, which are in color.  (A few colors, anyway.) There are two nuclear-armed space stations, the US Goddard and the Russian Tsiolkovsky.  An apparent accident destroys the Soviet space fleet, and the American government refuses to help out by resupplying their station unless they unilaterally disarm it. 

But our boys in space are having none of it, and our and their space crews realize they have more in common with each other than with their governments, so there’ll be some changes made.  This feel-good fable for SF fans and other technophiles is not especially plausible—the response of governments to insurrection on military bases in low orbit would likely be speedy and definitive—but the story is reasonably readable and conventionally well-assembled, and refreshing in the acknowledgment that our leadership may be as brutal and ruthless as theirs.  On the other hand, del Rey can’t let the title go, and there are annoying attempts to justify it, such as one character’s declaration that “Most of the thunder down there is caused by the chained lightning we’re carrying up here.” Three grudging stars.

Near-future political problems also preoccupy Tom Purdom in The Warriors, in which a foreign mercenary force is struggling to get to the airport despite the resistance of the local forces.  But violence has been abolished!  So the contending mercenary armies maneuver respectively to evade and to block each other, since touching in combat is now a crime, and the result is a taut narrative of bobbing and weaving.  This all seemed silly and annoying at first, but maybe that’s the point: we’ve got to do something to abolish warfare as we know it, and if not this, what?  Got a better idea? 

So it’s at least thought-provoking: but there’s something else to think about here too.  The casus belli is the USA’s attempt to spirit away the African country Belderkan’s resident genius, Doctor Warren, whose inventions have helped make Belderkan prosperous; the locals are trying to get to him to persuade him to change his mind. 

Right now, we’re in the age of decolonization.  Almost 20 countries have become independent in the last couple of years; Algeria will vote on independence in July, after years of bloody warfare.  But will their independence be real, or just another guise for the exploitation of their resources by more powerful countries?  Consider the former Belgian Congo, which elected someone a little too independent for some tastes, who was quickly deposed and murdered in a rebellion sponsored by the ex-colonial power (and, it is rumored, by others, maybe including us).  I’m not sure Purdom meant to evoke all these concerns, or if he just needed a plot motor, but either way, the result is to his credit and mitigates the story’s weakness as fiction.  Three stars.

But enough of politics; let’s have something gaudy and irresponsible.  The most well-turned piece of fiction here is from J.G. Ballard, though Passport to Eternity is not among his best.  It’s a trifle about an affluent, bored future couple trying to decide where to go on vacation.  Each option is more ridiculous than the last, and then the options show up uninvited at their house with their sales pitches.  It ends badly. 

This hectic lampoon is mostly a satire on the profligate and disjointed invention of much grade-B SF.  Ballard refers to clothing made of “bioplastic materials,” then: “Upstairs in her wardrobes the gowns and dresses purred on their hangers like the drowsing inmates of some exquisite arboreal zoo.” Or: “She was a Canopan slave, hot-housed out of imported germ, a slender green-skinned beauty with moth-like fluttering gills.” So: amusing, but in an hour you’ll be hungry again.  The story’s first line, “It was half past love on New Day in Zenith and the clocks were striking heaven,” recalls the famous first line of Orwell’s 1984.  Is Ballard comparing the tyranny of excessive consumer choice to the tyranny of Big Brother?  Beats me.  Three stars, plus for style and minus for content.

(Note that in this one-dimensional rating system, the middle rating covers a multitude of sins and virtues in various combinations.) [One dimensional indeed! (ED)]

This month’s Classic Reprint is a cut above the usual: ridiculous, but amusingly so, rather than stupidly or offensively.  The Council of Drones by the mysterious W.K. Sonneman, from the October 1936 issue, follows a standard plot of the times: ordinary guy, Fred, living on his father’s farm, is invited by his friend the brilliant scientist to see his invention; things go wrong; perilous adventures ensue.  This time it’s “Cross-Rays, with Lifex Modulation”: swapping of human consciousness with other organisms.  Fred’s father keeps bees, so obviously Fred’s consciousness should be swapped with a queen bee’s.  But the promised five minutes turns into hours and days.  Fred is in despair.  But then his father comes, smoking the hive and stealing the honey, and Fred, enraged, goes bee, as it were. 

He persuades the other bees to go along with his schemes, first of self-defense and then of . . . why not . . . world domination, much assisted by the fact that bees from the eggs the queen lays after the insertion of human intelligence are themselves pretty intelligent.  This is all done straight, or at least straight-faced, with a number of apiaristic footnotes along the way.  Sam Moskowitz’s introduction praises the author’s “intimate knowledge of the bee society,” plausibly speculates that he was a beekeeper himself, and touts the value of “scientifically informative science fiction.” (Come back Lamarck, all is forgiven!) Three charmingly archaic stars.

Ben Bova is back, this time with a science article, Extra-Terrestrial Life: An Astronomer’s Theory.  It is a somewhat rambling and disorganized article touching on how life arose on Earth and what it might look like elsewhere, by way of much biochemistry, emphasizing this DNA stuff we are starting to hear a lot about.  But Bova is an engaging writer and there’s a lot of interesting information here.  Three stars. 

Bova is also featured in the editorial, complete with low-resolution photo, making me wonder whether he is about to replace the unfortunately dull Frank Tinsley as the regular science-monger.  Incidentally, the astronomer of the title is Bova, employed as a “technical communications executive,” but also described as “an ardent amateur astronomer.”

Sam Moskowitz contributes another “SF Profile,” this one The Saintly Heresy of Clifford D. Simak.” It’s reasonably perceptive and informative, but—like his profile of Theodore Sturgeon—it neglects Simak’s excellent recent stories while dwelling in detail on his apprentice work of the 1930s, with no mention, for example, of his well-received novels Ring Around the Sun (1953) and last year’s Time Is the Simplest Thing.  And Moskowitz’s clumsy and often outright ungrammatical writing is even more noticeable than usual.  Three stars.

And finally . . . to break the three-star monotony . . .

Bndct Brdfrt.

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Book, Magazine

[May 11, 1962] Unfixed in the Heavens (The Seed of Earth, by Robert Silverberg)

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by Gideon Marcus

A hundred and fifty years from now, the stars are finally attainable.  With the invention of a reliable and quick interstellar drive, the galaxy is now ripe for colonization.  But humanity is too fat and happy to leave the nest; the world government is forced to conscript candidates to become unwilling pioneers.  Six thousand men and women are sent on sixty starships every day toward some farflung world.  The goal: to ensure that the human race can be spread as widely as possible.

This is the premise of Robert Silverberg's newest piece, a short novel published in the :June 1962 Galaxy called The Seed of Earth.  It's really two novellas in one, the first half dealing with the lives of four conscriptees as they are selected and prepared for departure, and the second half about what happens to them once they reach their destination. 

Seed has an interesting, complicated history.  The second part originally appeared in the May 1957 issue of Venture as The Winds of Siros.  In this story, two newlywed colonist couples are abducted from their settlement by voyeuristic aliens who lock them in a cave and watch the emotional drama ensue.  After the four escape, the women determine that they were with the wrong men and change partners.  It's all supposed to be rather daring and progressive.

Venture was a short-lived companion to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, designed to be a "more adult" alternative to F&SF.  What this really meant was more stories about sex, and since the stories were almost exclusively written by men (and modern society being what it is), there were a lot of demeaning, disturbing pieces in Venture. 

The example that turned me off of the magazine was, in fact, also by Robert Silverberg.  Called Eve and the Twenty-three Adams (March 1958), it featured an all-stag starship crew and the lone woman included on the roster to "service" them.  When she expressed reluctance at her role, she was drugged into submission for the duration of the flight.  It was all very light-hearted, just a rollicking tale.  Like Garrett's Queen Bee.

Silverberg's difficulty with the concept of feminine agency was also evident in Siros (and thus, in Seed).  The male colonists get to choose whom they want to marry from among the female colonists, and while the women have the right of refusal for the first few rounds, all of them must end up with someone, ultimately.  Now, as Siros plays out, we see that the system is not particularly rigid and, in the end, the woman colonists do have some choice in the matter.  But it's informal, and it's at the sufferance of the men.  Hardly an equal situation.

In fact, there is a strong streak of puritanical prudishness in Seed.  At one point, a woman's pregnancy is described as "a lapse in virtue."  I recognize that Silverberg's intent was to show that our current (late 50's/early 60's) morality is antiquated and needs to be shaken up.  Hence, the laudable plot elements of wife-swapping and polyamory that form the core of Siros/Seed Part 2.  But it just doesn't seem plausible that Earth of 2117 would be exactly as, if not more, conservative as modern day, and that only by unleashing humans on a raw world can they undo the straitjacket. 

Seed's first part was added to Siros to make the piece long enough for publication as a stand-alone novel.  Ballantine and Doubleday, the "respectable" s-f publishers, rejected it.  H.L. Gold, Galaxy's editor, accepted Seed for its paperback series (I reviewed one of them: the excellent The City in the Sea), but the series was discontinued before Seed saw print.  Ultimately, it ended up in the magazine proper.

Part One of Seed isn't bad: a quartet of reasonably interesting character portraits with a bonus view through the eyes of the fellow tasked with finalizing the crew selections.  The characterization is better in this half, which makes sense – the Silverberg writing Part One was older than the one who wrote Part Two.  The problem here isn't so much the writing or the flow.  It's the flaws in the fundamental premise.  In Seed, forced emigration has gone on for a generation.  Are there really hundreds of thousands of habitable planets within 30 light years of Earth ripe for colonization without any need for protective technology or planetary engineering?  Are there even that many planets?  Does it make sense to invest just one hundred strangers in a colony rather than shipping more than one load to a promising destination? 

And how is it plausible that a draft for colonization is even required?  To all accounts, Silverberg's world is no utopia – in fact, it seems hardly different from our current one, societally and technologically.  Surely there would be 2,190,000 immigrant candidates out of billions every year.  Contrast Seed with Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky – there, one was lucky if one could leave Earth. 

The Seed of Earth is ultimately a rather unsuccessful "fix-up" story.  The beginning doesn't flow well into the end, and neither portion rings very true.  I'd charitably give three stars to the first part and two to the second, for an aggregate of 2.5 stars.  That's probably overgenerous, but I can give Silverberg credit for the effort, at least.

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Magazine

[May 4, 1962] Cleft in Twain (June 1962 Galaxy, Part 1)

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by Gideon Marcus

A few years ago, Galaxy Science Fiction changed its format, becoming half again as thick but published half as often.  196 pages can be a lot to digest in one sitting, so I used to review the magazine in two articles.  Over time, I simply bit the bullet and crammed all those stories into one piece – it was cleaner for reference.

But not this time.

You see, the June 1962 issue of Galaxy has got one extra-jumbo novella in the back of it, the kind of thing they used to build issues of Satellite Science Fiction around.  So it just makes sense to split things up this time around.

I've said before that Galaxy is a stable magazine – rarely too outstanding, rarely terrible.  Its editor, Fred Pohl, tends to keep the more daring stuff in Galaxy's sister mag, IF, which has gotten pretty interesting lately.  So I enjoyed this month's issue, but not overmuch.  Have a look:

The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass, by Frederik Pohl

Instead of an editor's essay, Pohl has written a cute vignette on overpopulation without remediation.  Old Man Malthus in a three-page nightmare.  Apparently, good old Phineas didn't think to pack Enovid when he brought perfect health back in time to the Roman Empire.  Anyway, I liked it.  Four stars.

For Love, by Algis Budrys

Budrys strikes a nice balance between satirical and macabre in this post-alien-invasion epic.  The last remnants of Homo Sapiens, driven underground after a tremendous ET tetrahedron crashes into the base of the Rockies, launch a pair of daring attacks against the invaders.  But at what cost to their humanity?  Four stars.

The Lamps of the Angels, by Richard Sabia

I viciously panned Sabia's first work, I was a Teen-Age Superweapon; his latest is an improvement.  A thousand years from now, the human race is on the verge of reaching out for the stars, and one Mexico City-born pilot is selected for the honor of scouting Alpha Centauri.  But if humanity was meant to explore beyond the sun, surely God would have given us hyperdrives at birth.  A bit clunky in that "translated foreign languages way" (and I can be guilty of the same charge), but also compelling.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Names in the Sky, by Willy Ley

Every now and then, Ley returns to his former greatness and gives us a really good article.  This one, on the origins of the names of planets and stars is filled with good information pleasantly dispensed.  Of course, I'm always more kindly disposed towards articles that deal with etymology and/or astronomy… Four stars.

On the Wall of the Lodge, by James Blish and Virginia Blish

The latter portion of the magazine takes a sad turn for the worse.  Lodge is an avante garde piece about (I believe) a fellow whose life takes place in a television show.  It tries too hard and doesn't make a lot of sense.  More significantly, it lost my interest ten pages in.  Thus, I must give it the lowest of scores: one star.

Dawningsburgh, by Wallace West

A cute piece about a callow tourist on Mars, who resents the other callow tourists of Mars, and the attempts to revive departed Martian culture with robots, to make a few bucks for the callow tourist industry.  Three stars.

Origins of Galactic Philosophy, by Edward Wellen

Wellen's Origins series has deteriorated badly.  This latest entry, involving a space entrepreneur and the robot society he finds, is utterly unreadable.  One star.

Dreamworld, by R. A. Lafferty

Last up is a whimsical piece on a literal nightmare world with an telegraphed ending made tolerable by Lafferty's unique touch.  Worth two or three stars, depending on your mood (and on which side of the bed one woke).

***

I'll save The Seed of Earth, by Robert Silverberg, for next time.  Here's hoping it is in keeping with the first third rather than the second third of the magazine.  In the meantime, stay tuned…and try not to get drafted.

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