Tag Archives: p. schuyler miller

[December 8, 1969] Do Better (January 1970 Amazing)


by John Boston

The January 1970 Amazing continues in its newly-established course—“ALL NEW STORIES Plus A Classic”—though it’s fronted in the all-too-long-established manner, with another capable enough but generic cover by Johnny Bruck, reprinted from a 1965 issue of Perry Rhodan. Editor White has acknowledged this practice and, I suspect, is looking to end it when circumstances and the publisher permit.

Cover of Amazing Stories for January 1970. The illustration, by Johnny Bruck, shows a team of astronauts walking away from a crashed rocket on a desert with a pink sky. The text on the cover announces the stories Questor by Howard L. Myers, Moon Trash by Ross Rocklynne, Merry Xmas and Post/Gute by John Jakes, a novel by Philip K. Dick, and the essay Science in S F by Greg Benford and David Book.
by Johnny Bruck

The usual complement of features are here, starting with a long editorial meditation about the Moon landing, reactions to it, the progress (or lack thereof) of technology generally, and a note of cogent pessimism about the future of the space program: we can do it, but will we? The book reviews continue long and feisty, with White slagging James Blish’s generally well-received Black Easter, concluding: “At best, then, Black Easter is not a novel, but only an extended parable. At worst, it is a tract. In either case, it pleads its point through the straw-man manipulations of its author in a fashion I consider to be dishonest to its readers.” The milder-mannered Richard Delap says that Avram Davidson’s The Island Under the Earth “isn’t a horrid book like some of the dredges of magazine juvenilia we’ve seen recently; it’s soundly adult and imaginative but just too uneven and incomplete to be a good one.” Damning with faint praise, or the opposite? New reviewer Dennis O’Neil, a comic book scripter and “long a friend of SF, and a one-time neighbor of Samuel Delany,” compliments Thomas M. Disch’s Camp Concentration: “Of all the adjectives which might be applied to Camp Concentration—‘artful,’ ‘brilliant,’ and ‘shocking’ come to mind—maybe the most appropriate is ‘heretical.’ ” He then reads the book in terms of Disch’s assumed religious background. “Catholicism is a hard habit to kick. James Joyce didn’t manage it, and neither does Tom Disch.”

The regular fanzine reviewer, John D. Berry, is on vacation, so White turns the column over to “Franklin Hudson Ford,” apparently a pseudonym of his own, for a long and praiseful review of Harry Warner’s fan history All Our Yesterdays. The letter column is even more contentious than the book reviews, with one correspondent addressing “My Dear Mr. Berry: You and your coterie of comic-stripped idiots” (etc. etc.). John J. Pierce, he of the “Second Foundation” and denunciations of the New Wave, explains that he really does have some taste: “If the romantic, expansive traditions of science fiction are to be saved, they will be saved by the Roger Zelaznys and the Ursula LeGuins, not by the Lin Carters or the Charles Nuetzels”—a point I had not realized was in contention. William Reynolds, an Associate Profession of “Bus. Ad.” at a Virginia community college, tries to correct White about the operation of the Model T Ford and provokes a response as spirited as it is mechanical. One Joseph Napolitano complains about “new wave stories”: These new wave writers “don’t want to work. Its [sic] not easy to come up with an idea for a story and they just don’t want to take the time and use what little brains they have to do this.” (Etc. etc.)

After all this amusing contention, it is unfortunate to have to report that the fiction contents of this issue are pretty lackluster.

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

I’m a great admirer of Philip K. Dick’s best work, and some of his less perfect productions as well. So it’s painful to report that A. Lincoln, Simulacrum, is a bust. It has its moments, but there aren’t enough of them and they don’t add up to much, even though the novel’s themes reflect some of Dick’s long-standing preoccupations.

Protagonist Louis Rosen is partner in a firm that manufactures and sells spinet pianos and electric organs. But now his partner Maury is branching out into simulacra—android replicas of historical persons, designed by his daughter Pris. They’ve started with Edwin M. Stanton, President Lincoln’s Secretary of War. How? “. . . [W]e collected the entire body of data extant pertaining to Stanton and had it transcribed down at UCLA into instruction punch-tape to be fed to the ruling monad that serves the simulacrum as a brain.” Ohhh-kay.

More importantly, why? Because Maury thinks America is preoccupied, in this year of 1981, with the Civil War, and it will be good business to re-enact it with artificial people. Pris is now working on a Lincoln simulacrum.

Sepia drawing by Michael Hinge. It shows a man in a business suit talking on a telephone while he smokes a cigarette, and the face of a woman also talking on a telephone.
by Michael Hinge

Staying over at Maury’s house, Louis meets Pris, recently released from the custody of the Federal Bureau of Mental Health, which provides free—and mandatory—treatment for people identified as mentally ill per the McHeston Act of 1975. Louis mentions that one in four Americans have served time in a Federal Mental Health Clinic. Pris was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and committed, in her third year of high school.

Louis asks her to stop her noisy activities because it’s late and he wants to go to sleep. She refuses, and says, “And don’t talk to me about going to bed or I’ll wreck your life. I’ll tell my father you propositioned me, and that’ll end Masa Associates and your career, and then you’ll wish you never saw an organ of any kind, electronic or not. So toddle on to bed, buddy, and be glad you don’t have worse troubles than not being able to sleep.” Louis thinks: “My god. . . . Beside her, the Stanton contraption is all warmth and friendliness.”

In a later encounter: “Why aren’t you married?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you a homosexual?”
“No!”
“Did some girl you fell in love with find you too ugly?”

In addition to this finely honed nastiness, Pris is also capable of considerable depression and self-pity. After the Lincoln is completed:
“Oh, Louis—it’s all over.”
“What’s all over?”
“It’s alive. I can never touch it again. Now what’ll I do? I have no further purpose in life.”
“Christ,” I said.
“My life is empty—I might as well be dead. All I’ve done and thought has been the Lincoln.”

Louis is shaken by these encounters. He sees a psychiatrist and gives a paranoid account of events to date, threatening to kill Pris. Further: “I was not kidding when I told you I’m one of Pris’ simulacra. There used to be a Louis Rosen, but no more. Now there’s only me. And if anything happens to me, Pris and Maury have the instructional tapes to create another.” Later he reiterates, in a conversation with the Stanton: “I claim there is no Edwin M. Stanton or Louis Rosen any more. There was once, but they’re dead. We’re machines.” The Stanton acknowledges, “There may be some truth in that.”

And if you’ve missed the point about humans and simulacra, here it is from the other direction. The Stanton says he would have liked to see the World’s Fair. Louis says: “That touched me to the heart. Again I reexperienced my first impression of it: that in many ways it was more human—god help us!—than we were, than Pris or Maury or even me, Louis Rosen. Only my father stood above it in dignity.”

The characters get involved with Sam Barrows, a rich guy who is the talk of the nation, in hopes of a profitable business relationship. Barrows is selling real estate on the Moon and other extraterrestrial locations. He sensibly trashes Maury’s idea of Civil War re-enactment, but his proposal is hardly an improvement; he wants to create simulacra of ordinary folks to go live in his off-planet housing developments and make them seem homier to potential buyers. (Sounds very practical, right?)

Pris then takes up with Barrows and begins calling herself Pristine Womankind. Meanwhile, Louis is getting progressively crazier, propelled by his obsession with Pris, and eventually winds up committed to the Federal Bureau of Mental Health—and is glad. There are a few more events and revelations I won’t spoil.

So, what follows from this prolonged but foreshortened precis?

First, this is not a very good SF novel, because it doesn’t follow through on its SFnal premises and also doesn’t make a lot of sense in general. It starts with the premise that historical replicas can be convincingly manufactured, and can exercise volition and easily adapt to a world a century in their future. OK, show me. But Dick doesn’t. We actually see relatively little of the Stanton and the Lincoln over the course of the novel. Further, we’re told that these artificial people are variations on models developed by the government. For what? And where are they and what are they doing? There’s no clue about the effects of this rather monumental development, other than allowing an obscure piano company to tinker with it.

The novel’s envisioned future doesn’t add up either. We’re told the setting is the USA in 1981, but there is routine space travel and colonization of the Moon and planets. More mind-boggling, there is the Federal Bureau of Mental Health—created by statute in 1975!—under which the entire population must take mental health tests administered in schools, and those deemed mentally ill are committed to a mental health clinic. As already noted, a fourth of the population has been committed at some point. And what political or cultural crisis or revolution has not only countenanced such an authoritarian regime, but also come up with the money for such a gigantic system of confinement?

Dick also seems to have made up his own system of psychiatry. Louis is diagnosed with a mental disorder requiring commitment through the James Benjamin Proverb Test. While interpretation of proverbs is sometimes used in psychiatric diagnosis, I can’t find any indication that this Benjamin Test exists anywhere besides Dick’s imagination.

Louis is asked to interpret “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”

“ ‘Well, it means a person who’s always active and never pauses to reflect—’ No, that didn’t sound right. I tried again. ‘That means a man who is always active and keeps growing in mental and moral statute won’t grow stale.’ He was looking at me more intently, so I added by way of clarification, ‘I mean, a man who’s active and doesn’t let grass grow under his feet, he’ll get ahead in life.’
“Doctor Nisea said, ‘I see.’ And I knew that I had revealed, for the purposes of legal diagnosis, a schizophrenic thinking disorder.’”

Turns out the correct answer—which Louis says he really knew—is “A person who’s unstable will never acquire anything of value.” But if any of the other interpretations of this deeply ambiguous platitude—or acknowledgement of its ambiguity—proves one a schizophrenic, I guess I’d better turn myself in. (Cue soundtrack: “They’re Coming to Take Me Away.”)

The doctor goes on to explain that Louis has the “Magna Mater type of schizophrenia”:

“ ‘The primary form which ‘phrenia takes is the heliocentric form, the sun-worship form where the sun is deified, is seen in fact as the patient’s father. You have not experienced that. The heliocentric form is the most primitive and fits with the earliest known religion, solar worship, including the great heliocentric cult of the Roman Period, Mithraism. Also the earlier Persian solar cult, the worship of Mazda.’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said, nodding.
“ ‘Now, the Magna Mater, the form you have, was the great female deity cult of the Mediterranean at the time of the Mycenaean Civilization. Ishtar, Cybele, Attis, then later Athene herself . . . finally the Virgin Mary. What has happened to you is that your anima, that is, the embodiment of your unconscious, its archetype, has been projected outward, unto the cosmos, and there it is perceived and worshipped.’
“ ‘I see,’ I said.”

Now, nowhere is it written that an SF writer can’t invent future psychiatry, any more than future physics or sociology, or alternative history. But plopping this scheme down in the America of 12 years hence, without support or explanation of how we got there from here, is incongruous and implausible. And the nominal date of 1981 is not the issue. The novel is firmly set in the familiar USA of today or close to it, with androids, spaceships, and psychiatry based on ancient religions in effect stuck on with tape and thumb tacks.

Of course, absurdity and incongruity are far from rare in PKD’s work, but they generally appear in the context of madcap satire or grim lampoon (consider Dr. Smile, the robot psychiatrist-in-briefcase in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, whose function is not to cure, but to drive the protagonist crazy so he can evade the draft). But that’s not what’s going on here. This novel, though it has its witty moments, presents overall as thoroughly sober and serious, assisted by Louis’s flat first-person narration.

So, if it’s not good SF, is it good anything else? Editor White said in the last issue, “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.” Pris is an appallingly memorable character, both for her conduct and for her effect on others, and her part of dialogue is finely honed. A novel that closely examined her and her effect on those around her might be quite impressive. But in a novel that starts out with android historical figures and ends up in a national coercive mental health system, with spaceships and moon colonies along the way, there’s too much distraction for Pris and her relationships to be adequately developed.

The bottom line is that the author has mixed up elements of SF and the “mainstream” novel without developing either satisfactorily or adequately integrating them.

In the last chapter, the author makes a conspicuous effort to bring the novel’s disparate elements together, and winds things up in the most quintessentially Dickian fashion imaginable. In fact, it all seems a little too pat. But wait. Remember editor White’s cryptic statement in last issue’s editorial that this serial was not cut, but was “slightly revised and expanded” for its appearance here? There’s a rumor that this last chapter was not actually written by Dick, but was added by White. True? No doubt we’ll find out . . . someday.

A readable failure. Two stars.

Moon Trash, by Ross Rocklynne

Ross Rocklynne (birth name Ross Louis Rocklin) started publishing SF in 1935 and became very prolific in the 1940s, placing more than 10 stories most years through 1946, many in the field leader Astounding Science Fiction, but most in assorted pulps. After that his production fell off, he disappeared from Astounding, and ceased publishing entirely from 1954 to 1968, when he reappeared with a burst of stories in Galaxy. He was a heavyweight by production, but seemingly a lightweight by lasting impact. Only five of his stories were picked up in the explosion of SF anthologies of the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, and to date he has published no books.

Sepia drawing by Ralph Reese. It shows two boys wearing astronaut helmets looking at a strange, tall alien creature with many tentacles and huge eyes.
by Ralph Reese

Moon Trash is a contrived piece about young Tommy, who lives on the Moon with his cranky old stepfather Ben Fountain; his mother seems to be dead though it’s not explicit. Tommy has bought the official ideology of keeping the Moon spick and span, and Ben gets annoyed when Tommy picks up things that Ben has dropped along the way. Then Tommy finds a bit of trash that somebody dropped about a million years ago, and it leads them to a cave full of artifacts of an alien civilization, including precious gems.

Ben’s not going to tell anybody and is going to see how he can make money from this find, but in his greed he pulls a heavy statue over and it kills him. Tommy reports that Ben fell down a crater wall, returns the artifact Ben had taken to the cave, tells no one about it, and resolves he’s going to work and become a big shot on the Moon. The obvious subtext of the title is that even on the Moon there will be people who are down and out or close to it—people like Ben are the Moon trash, though young Tommy is a class act. Three stars, barely.

Merry Xmas, Post/Gute, by John Jakes

John Jakes had been contributing to Amazing and other SF magazines, mostly downmarket, since 1950, to little notice or acclaim until he devised his Conan imitation Brak the Barbarian for Fantastic. In his very short Merry Xmas, Post/Gute, an impoverished author tries to get the last remaining book publisher to read his manuscript, only to be told it is closing its book division as unprofitable. It’s as heavy-handed as it is lightweight. Two stars.

Questor, by Howard L. Myers

Howard L. Myers—better known by his very SFnal pseudonym, Verge Foray—contributes Questor, a semi-competent piece of yard goods of the sort that filled the back pages of the 1950s’ SF magazines. Protagonist Morgan is part of a raid brigade attacking Earth, without benefit of spaceships, which are passe in this far future. He’s a Komenan; Earth is dominated by the Armans; it's not clear why we should care. Morgan is special; his assignment is to pretend to be a casualty and fall to Earth; but he’s hit by a “zerburst lance” and both he and his transportation equipment are injured. He lands in a Rocky Mountain snowbank and emerges, after some recuperation, to find himself in a valley he can’t climb out of.

Sepia drawing by Jeff Jones. It shows a human figure shooting lightning from a bazooka.
by Jeff Jones

But all is not lost. A talking mountain goat, named Ezzy, appears (intelligence and fingers engineered by long-ago humans), and offers to help him out. We learn just what Morgan is looking for on Earth—it’s called the Grail! Or, the goat says, “it can be called cornucopia, or Aladdin’s Lamp—or perhaps Pandora’s Box. . . . The only certain information is that it has vast power, and has been around a long time.” Morgan later adds, “We only know it appears to assure the survival and success of whatever society has it in its possession.” Can we say pure MacGuffin? And of course there is a wholly predictable revelation at the end involving the goat. Two stars for egregious contrivance.

The People of the Arrow, by P. Schuyler Miller

Sepia drawing by Leo Morey. It shows a prehistoric battle with spears and clubs between minimally dressed humans and apes. A steep mountain can be seen in the background.
by Leo Morey

This month’s “Famous Amazing Classic” is P. Schuyler Miller’s The People of the Arrow, from the July 1935 Amazing, and it does not impress. Kor, the leader of a migrating prehistoric tribe (having recently dispatched his elderly predecessor), returns with a hunting party to discover that their camp has been attacked by ape-men (he can tell by their footprints). They have wreaked terrible carnage and have carried off the women they did not kill. So the hunting party pursues the ape-men and wreaks terrible carnage on them with their superior armament (see the title). Miller does make a credible attempt to suggest the workings of Kor’s mind and his appreciation of the changing landscape he traverses, but it’s all pretty badly overwritten and mainly notable as a large bucket of blood. Miller—now best known as book reviewer for Analog and its predecessor Astounding—did much better work later. Two stars.

The Columbus Problem: II, by Greg Benford and David Book

Last issue’s “Science in Science Fiction” article asked how difficult it would be to locate planets in a star system from a spaceship traveling much slower than the speed of light. This issue, they ask how difficult it would be from a spaceship traveling much faster—say, a tenth of light-speed. (The authors say flatly: “To the scientific community, . . . FTL is nonsense.”) Then they take a quick turn for several pages of exposition about how an affordable and workable sub-light spaceship could be designed. The Goldilocks option, they suggest, is that proposed by one Robert Bussard: a ramscoop (magnetic, since it would need about a 40-mile radius) to collect all the loose gas and dust floating around in space and channel it into a fusion reactor.

Sounds great! Once you solve a few technical problems, that is. And then finding planets is a breeze. They’ll all be in the same plane, as in our solar system—it’s all in the angular momentum. Approach perpendicular to that plane, and Bob’s your uncle. Then a fly-by can reveal basics of habitability—gravity, temperature, what’s in the atmosphere—but looking for existing life and habitability for terrestrials will require landing, preferably by remote probes of several degrees of capability.

This one is denser than its predecessor, but as before, clear, clearly well-informed, and aimed at the core interests of, probably, most SF readers. Four stars.

Summing Up

So, assuming one agrees with me about the serial, there’s not much of a showing here for this resurrected magazine, though it’s far too early to be making any broad judgments. Promised for next issue are (the good news) a serial by editor White, who has demonstrated his capabilities as a writer, and (the bad news) a story by Christopher Anvil! No doubt a Campbell reject. Let’s hope the promising overcomes the ominous.



[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…]




[July 26, 1962] The Long and Short of It (August 1962 Fantastic)

[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

July isn't quite over yet, and already I feel overwhelmed by all that's been going on in the world:

Two new nations, Rwanda and Burundi, have been created from the Belgian territory of Ruanda-Urundi.  Similarly, France has recognized the independence of its former colony Algeria.

Despite protests, the United States continues to test atomic weapons.  The USA also detonated a hydrogen bomb in outer space, hundreds of miles above a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.  The explosion created a spectacular light show visible from Hawaii, more than seven hundred miles away.  It also disrupted electronics in the island state.  An underground nuclear explosion created a gigantic crater in the Nevada desert and may have exposed millions of people to radioactive fallout.

AT&T launched Telstar, the first commercial communications satellite (which we'll be covering in the next article!)

The world of literature suffered a major loss with the death of Nobel Prize winning author William Faulkner.

In Los Angeles, young artist Andy Warhol exhibited a work consisting of thirty-two paintings of cans of Campbell's Soup.

The Washington Post published an article revealing how Doctor Frances Oldham Kelsey, a medical officer for the Food and Drug Administration, kept thalidomide, a drug now known to cause severe birth defects, off the market in the United States.

Even popular music seems to be going through radical changes lately.  Early in the month the charts were dominated by David Rose's raucous jazz instrumental The Stripper.  It would be difficult to think of a less similar work than Bobby Vinton's sentimental ballad Roses are Red (My Love), which has replaced it as Number One.

It seems appropriate that the latest issue of Fantastic offers no less than nine stories, one long and eight short, to go along with these busy days:

Sword of Flowers by Larry M. Harris

Vernon Kramer's cover art for the lead story captures something of the mysterious mood of this mythical tale.  The setting is a strange world where the climate is so gentle that the inhabitants have no need for shelter.  They also have the ability to create whatever they imagine.  However, because their lives are so simple and happy, they rarely use this power.  An exception is a man, twisted in mind and body, who comes up with the concepts of royalty and servitude, so that another man in love with a beautiful woman can become her slave.  It all leads to tragedy, and an ending directed at the reader.  It's a compelling legend written in poetic language.  Five stars.

The Titan by P. Schuyler Miller

This issue's Fantasy Classic has a complex history.  Serialized in part in the 1930's, although never published in full until revised for the author's 1952 collection, this is its first complete magazine appearance.  The story takes place on a dying planet where the decadent upper class takes blood from the healthy lower class.  The plebeian hero follows the patrician heroine above ground and falls in love.  They become involved in a plot to violently overthrow the rulers and confront a huge, dangerous creature known as a Star Beast.  Most readers will be able to figure out what planet is involved and the true nature of the Star Beast.  Although said to be daring for the 1930's, it's pretty tame for the 1960's.  Unfortunately, this is the longest story in the issue.  Two stars.

Behind the Door by Jack Sharkey

A woman who seeks out dangerous experiences encounters a mysterious man whom she believes will provide the ultimate thrill.  He turns out to be something other than expected.  A fairly effective horror story.  Three stars.

The Mynah Matter by Lawrence Eisenberg

A man determined to purchase a talking bird deals with a pet store owner who refuses to sell any of his animals.  It seems that they are all reincarnations of famous people.  This is a slight, whimsical comedy, but somehow likable.  Three stars.

And a Tooth by Rosel George Brown

A woman whose husband and children die in an accident goes into a coma from the shock.  Experimental brain surgery restores her to consciousness, but gives her two separate minds.  The author does a good job of narrating from both points of view, and the effect is chilling.  Four stars.

A Devil of a Day by Arthur Porges

This is yet another variation on the old deal with Satan theme.  A man sells his soul for the chance to have absolute power over the city of Rome at a certain time during the Sixteenth Century.  Readers familiar with a specific historical event will be able to predict why this is a very bad bargain.  Two stars.

Continuity by Albert Teichner

A precocious student raises a peculiar question that haunts a physics teacher.  If our universe consists of matter that we can sense and forces that we cannot sense, could the reverse be true in another universe?  The result is unexpected.  This is an odd, philosophical story, intriguing but not always clear.  Three stars.

Horseman! by Roger Zelazny

A new writer, who also appears in this month's issue of Amazing, offers a brief prose poem.  A mysterious rider appears in a village asking after others of his kind.  What happens when he finds them is surprising.  The story is beautifully written, and one hopes that the author will go on to produce longer works.  Four stars.

Victim of the Year by Robert F. Young

A man down on his luck receives a note from a woman at the unemployment office.  She claims to be an apprentice witch with the assignment to cast spells to make his life miserable.  She repents of her actions, and together they must face the wrath of her coven.  The story reads something like a less elegant version of a Fritz Leiber fantasy.  Three stars.

The best stories in this issue are short ones, proving once again that good things come in small packages.  Speaking of which, stay tuned for an article on the series of small packages circling the Earth that are making an outsized impact on their mother planet…

(P.S. Don't miss the second Galactic Journey Tele-Conference, July 29th at 11 a.m.!  A chance to discuss Soviet and American space shots…and maybe win a prize!)




Astoundingly bad (11-15-1958)

I'm willing to concede that we (currently) live in a “man's world.” Men make up most of the protagonists and characters in science fiction, and the vast majority of science fiction authors are men.  This month's Astounding does not buck this trend–virtually every story has no, or at best a token, female presence.  I suppose I should be grateful for this, however, as I would rather have no women in my stories than see them horribly mistreated and poorly portrayed, as I saw happen rather gratuitously in the second half of the magazine.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Poul Anderson's “Bicycle Built for Brew” ended as it started with a fine premise, an interesting if whimsical storyline, and horrible execution.  The resourceful engineer of the Mercury Girl managed to escape from the occupied planet by fashioning a ship from a sealed crate and several barrels of beer (providing the reaction mass for propulsion).  The national and gender stereotypes were tired by page 2 of the last installment, and they don't get better here.  All's well that ends, and I was happy to see this story finish.

Miller's pre-book-review column focused on UFOs, which are still popular.  I remember reading in an Asimov or Ley article that the number of UFO sightings climbed sharply in the late '40s coincident with the testing of new jets and sounding rockets.  At the same time, the number of reported demonic encounters dropped dramatically.  You may draw your own conclusions from this.

“Seller's Market,” by Chris Anvil, is another inconsequential but readable story of the type that has characterized his writing since he started.  It depicts a small military force on a harsh planet as it struggles against a nominally superior but fatally flawed foe.

And now, I can put it off no longer.  The story that ruined my morning and my impression of Randall Garrett, and by extension, Astounding magazine: “Queen Bee.”

I don't think misogyny can adequately convey the sentiment in this story.  “Hatred of women,” may get closer to the mark.  The setting of the story was interesting-enough: Four men and three women marooned on a wild planet for life.  However, the story begins with the viewpoint character hitting a woman (she was hysterical, of course), and it goes downhill from there.

It is decided, pursuant to codified law (!) that the males and females must breed constantly and switch partners each time such that a colony with a maximum of genetic diversity can be produced.  One of the women, the only married one, seems fine with this, much to the consternation of her old-fashioned husband.  The other two women resist the idea for some reason.  One of them is diagnosed by the resident doctor as a “man-hater,” and the other is a Taming of the Shrew Kate-type character.  That's all right–the male characters beat sense into them, quite literally.  The man-hater, after being walloped a good one realizes the error of her ways and becomes pregnant shortly thereafter.

But the other hold-out won't budge despite several clouts and a full course of spanking (!!) Eventually, she kills the other two women so that she, as the only woman, can enjoy an indispensable (and perhaps beating-free) status.  Given the circumstances, I'm not sure that I find her actions unreasonable.  Of course, the men are horrified, and they exact a horrible revenge… er… mete out appropriate justice.  They hold a trial and find her not guilty by reason of insanity.

And then they lobotomize her, turning her into a mindless child-bearing factory.

What is so maddening about this story is its contrast with Judith Merril's story in this month's F&SF.  The set-up is quite similar, except the women don't have to resort to constant brutality to keep the men-folk in line.  One could argue that the arrangement in Merril's story was consensual and thus a whole different matter.  This only emphasizes the horror of Garrett's scenario: the women in his story didn't sign up to be mothers of a colony.  They certainly never agreed to be dominated and brutalized by their fellow castaways. 

Perhaps, if the story had been meant as satire, I could have taken it.  But I think Randy Garrett's premises, that men should automatically be in charge, that a woman's duty is to bear children, and violence against women is the best method to keep them in line, must ring natural and true to Mr. Garrett, to Mr. Campbell, and if the readers of Astounding do not subscribe to them, I imagine they do not generally find them egregious.

Well, I did.  This is worse than the story that turned me off of Venture ("Eve and the Twenty-Three Adams" by Robert Silverberg; the set-up was similar–in that one, all starships came equipped with a ship's whore, and when the story's ship's whore wouldn't perform, the Captain drugged her up so that she could fulfill her role while unconscious).  Garrett's lost me as a fan, and I am sending a copy of this article straight to Mr. Campbell. 

Sorry to end this piece on a down note.  I will hopefully have cheerier things to discuss next time around.  The final score: 4 stars for the first half, 1.5 stars for the second, 2.25 for the whole magazine.

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Astounding Science Fiction, November 1958 (10-24-1958)

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: An actual review of an actual science fiction magazine! 

NOVEMBER 1958, ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION

I usually save Astounding for last among my subscriptions.  I have mixed feelings about this magazine.  On the one hand, it is physically of the lowest quality compared to its competitors (F&SF being easily the highest).  Editor John Campbell, with his ravings about psionics, perpetual motion and Hieronymous machines, as well as his blatant human-chauvinism, is tough to take.  But he has a fine stable of authors, and some of the best stories come out of his magazine.

This issue's headliner, Poul Anderson's short novel, “Bicycle Built for Brew,” does not look like it will be among them.  It is the first half of a two-parter set some time in the next century in the Asteroid Belt.  The setting is interesting, and so is the set-up: a renegade faction of an Irish-colonized nation of asteroids has taken over Grendel, a small asteroid under the sovereignty of the "Anglians," and the crew of the trader, Mercury Girl is stranded until it can find a way out. 

Unfortunately, this is one of those “funny” stories, the kind of which Bob Sheckley is a master and Poul Anderson is not.  Moreover, Anderson phonetically transcribes the exaggerated accents of his multinational cast of characters, which quickly becomes a slog to read.  I had high hopes for Anderson after “Brainwave” (1953), but everything since then has been generally (though not entirely) mediocre to turgid.  It's all very male-chauvinistic stuff, too.  More so than most contemporary authors.

"Goliath and the Beanstalk," by Chris Anvil is forgettable, like all of Anvil's stuff I've read to date.  He and Robert Silverberg are much alike: prolifically generating serviceable, uninspired space-filler.

The next story is by a fellow named Andrew Salmond, a name so unfamiliar to me, that I suspect it is a pseudonym for one of the regular contributors [But it's not!  Andrew Salmond is a fan from Glasgow, who served a stint in the RAF during the War (Ed. (12-6-63)].  "Stimulus" is a mildly interesting yarn about Earth being the one planet in the universe made of contra-terrene matter (also known as anti-matter), and the effect this has on spaceflight and humanity's future in general.  The gotcha is that the situation was recently imposed upon the Earth–right before our first moon launch, in fact.  Can you guess how the Earth figured out what had happened?  I (he said smugly) did quite early on. 

By the end of the story, humanity is the most powerful race in the galaxy and rather insufferable about it, too.  I'm sure this appealed to Editor Campbell, given his taste (editorial requirement?) for stories where humans are better than everyone else. 

Gordy Dickson's "Gifts…" is not science fiction at all, and it reads like a screenplay for a short television episode.  It is about a man given the opportunity to wish for whatever he wants, and his decision whether or not to use the power.  Slight stuff.

Katherine MacLean's “Unhuman Sacrifice” is reason enough to buy this issue.  I had not read much of MacLean's stuff before, but I will be on the look-out for her stories from now on.  Her tale of a spaceship crew's encounter with an alien species with a singular life cycle, told from the viewpoint of both the humans and the aliens, is fascinating and haunting.  I won't spoil it by telling you anything more. 

Asimov's new science column continues.  This time, it attempts to answer why, in a galaxy filled with billions of suns, Earth has yet to be contacted by alien civilizations.  He ultimately concludes that galactic civilizations are likely to form in the center, where stars are densest, and may well avoid the backward edges, where we live.  He further opines that we may well have been discovered by vastly superior races (for any race that could find us must be far beyond us, at least technologically) and are being left alone so as not to disturb our development.  It's a cute idea, but it is also indistinguishable from our being undiscovered.  Until the flying saucers announce themselves outside of the deep Ozarks, we have to assume We Really Are Alone.

P. Schuyler Miller's book review column remains the most comprehensive available.  His comparing and contrasting of Bradbury with Sheckley, Matheson and Beaumont is interesting and arch.  The rest is good, too.

The issue wraps up, as always, with Campbell's letter column, Brass Tacks.  I skipped it, as always.  Campbell may fill his magazine with fine stories, but I find the quality of his own opinions (like the quality of Astounding's paper) to be lacking. 

New magazines come out on the 26th.  Stay tuned!

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