Tag Archives: people's capitalism

Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial, TV

[April 30, 1969] Eulogies (May 1969 Analog)

April 30, 2024 GalacticJourney 5 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Goodnight, Percy

If you're anything like me, Peyton Place is something that happened to other people. After all, last season, the first primetime soap opera was scheduled opposite Laugh In, and before that, the 9:30 PM slot in the midst of ABC's insipid Tuesday-night line-up.

But now I feel a little bad that the groundbreaking show is being taken off the air. Based on the 1956 book of the same name by Grace Metalious, the Massachusetts-set serial was salacious for the time, involving as it did a lot of S-E-X, divorce, blackmail, murder, and more. Jack Paar called it "Television's first situation orgy." Johnny Carson quipped that it was "the first TV series delivered in a plain wrapper."

Stars Diana Hyland (standing), Pat Morrow (in can), and Tippy Walker

At one point a few years ago, some 60 million folks tuned in each week for the fun. But nowadays, when the local theater is going blue/stag, and Candy is a mainstream hit ("Is Candy faithful? Only to the book!"), Peyton Place all seems a bit staid. They tried to mix things up by bringing in more teen storylines and also integrating the cast by hiring Percy Rodrigues (Star Trek's Commodore Stone) as the local doctor.

with Ryan O'Neal

Still, you can't beat Dick and Dan, and the series plummetted in the ratings (really—what were they thinking, scheduling it across from Rowan and Martin?) After 514 episodes, the show is going off the air. Which, of course, just means we'll see it endlessly in morning reruns opposite the regular soaps—and you can bet we'll get a revival sometime in the future. In the meantime…

"Goodnight, Lucy. Goodnight, Marshall Dillon. And goodnight to all you kooks on Peyton Place."

Goodnight, Johnny

by Kelly Freas

ABC at least knew when to pull the plug on its sinking stone. Analog editor John Campbell, while he did some brilliant work in the '30s and '40s, seems content to stuff his magazine with the dullest dreck that science fiction has to offer. The latest issue is Exhibit 1 for the prosecution:

Dragon's Teeth, by M. R. Anver

by Kelly Freas

A peace conference on a neutral asteroid promises to end a brutal war between humanity and the alien Cadosians. But a faction of extraterrestrials has plans to distrupt the summit by introducing a deadly virus. The question is how they'll smuggle it in…or in whom?

This is a competently put together adventure/mystery—no more, and no less. As such, it's a fine first effort from Mr. Anver, but nothing to write home about.

Three stars.

The Chemistry of a Coral Reef, by Theodore L. Thomas

Science writer and fictioneer Ted Thomas offers up a long piece on coral reefs and how they're made. For an article on stuff that takes place in our oceans, it's awfully dry. Well, at least I know now what they're made of: calcium carbonate. Good for all those fish with indigestion, I guess.

Two stars.

Operation M. I., by R. Hamblen

by Leo Summers

Three weeks of hyperspace are crushingly dull, and the intergalactic service is worried about the morale of their solo couriers, who have to endure the period without diversion. Apparently, books and booze aren't enough.

So the ship's computer on the latest FTL ship is programmed to act like a nagging mother-in-law so each pilot is more irritated than bored.

Terrible piece. One star.

Persistence, by Joseph P. Martino

by Kelly Freas

This is a sequel to the story Secret Weapon. The Terrans have now got a leg up on their war with the Arcani, now destroying 3-4x as many vessels as they are losing. However, this proportion is still below what the Big Brains in military intelligence expected. Our hero, Commander William Marshall, is certain that the aliens have developed Faster Than Light ("C+") communications and are using them to thwart our patrols.

The story is devoted to the reverse engineering of a captured Arcani corvette, tediously going through each electronic gizmo to see how it is wired and what it is wired to. Eventually, the existence (or lack) of a C+ radio will be proven.

Once again, the story is dull as dirt, and worse, poorly edited. There's an art to writing successive paragraphs using different words. Martino will repeat set phrases several times in a row, the sign of an unfiltered brain-to-typewriter stream of consciousness.

Also, women of the future still remain in the 1950's, socially.

Two stars.

The Five Way Secret Agent (Part 2 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

by Kelly Freas

As we saw last month, Rex Bader, last of the private dicks in the People's Capitalism of America's late 20th Century, had been tapped by no fewer than five organizations to spy on each other as Bader went off to Eastern Europe and make contacts. This passage explains it all:

He stared at the screen in disbelief.

This whole thing was developing into a farce. Roget wanted him to make an ultra-hush-hush trip into the Soviet Complex to contact his equal numbers with the eventual aim of creating a world government based on the international corporations.

Sophia Anastasis, of International Diversified industries, thought such a world government would upset the status quo to the detriment of what was once called the Mafia, and wanted all details.

John Coolidge and his group [the successor to the FBI] were afraid such changes would upset the governmental bureaucracy and the military machine and wanted to prevent it from happening.

Colonel Simonov felt the same from the Soviet viewpoint, and wanted to maintain the status quo.

Dave Zimmerman was all in favor of world government but wanted the Meritocracy which would run it to be elected from the bottom up in each corporation, rather than being appointed.

And every damned one of them thought that their part of the operation was a secret.

Once Bader gets to Czechslovakia and Romania, the book reads like typical Reynolds: historical parallels (none after 1969, of course), tourism (we learn about the national drinks of the Warsaw Pact), and mildly droll high jinks. It seems that Bader's cover is blown wherever he goes, suggesting a traitor somewhere in the works among his five employers.

There could have been a good mystery here, but it's all thrown in too little, too late. Moreover, it's clear that this two-part serial is really just the first half of a longer book.

As a result, the whole is lesser than the sum of its parts. I give this segment three stars, and three stars for the book as a whole (so far).

Initial Contact, by Perry A. Chapdelaine

by Kelly Freas

The Eridanians are coming! Responding from signals broadcast by Project Ozma, an alien ship has been dispatched from Epsilon Eridani. After twelve years at near light speed, the vessel is about to arrive—and the press is filled with concerns of an impending alien takeover.

It all stems from a mistranslation of their latest message, suggesting their intent is conquest rather than coexistence. In the meantime, there is a lot of Keystone Copping as the head of the Ozma IX project tries to tamp down on the paranoia.

by Kelly Freas

The best part of the story is the "universal message" broadcast by the Eridanians, hatched up by author Chapdelaine. He explains it in the story—see if you can figure it out yourself.

But in the end, the story is rather pointless and forgettable. Two stars.

Goodnight May

Doing the math, I find that April (postmarked May on the magazines) was a dreadful month for short science fiction. Not a single magazine topped 3 stars, and Analog came in at a dismal 2.3. For posterity, the rest were New Worlds (2.7), Venture (2.7), Amazing (2), Galaxy (3), and IF (3), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.7)

Even more disheartening: you could take all the 4-star works (nothing hit 5 stars this month) and barely fill a Galaxy-sized thick digest. Women wrote 20% of all the new pieces published in April, which sounds impressive until you realize that six of the works were short poems in New Worlds, all by Libby Houston.

I am already hearing rumblings about Galaxy and IF's editor Fred Pohl getting the heave-ho, and Amazing's editorial musical chairs is legendary. ABC dumped Peyton Place—is it time for someone to cancel John Campbell?

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 4, 1969] Hey, Mack! (April 1969 Analog)

April 4, 2024 Gideon Marcus 1 Comment

by Gideon Marcus

Mars ho!

Well, this is exciting! For the first time ever, two identical Mariner probes are on their way to an interstellar destination. On March 27, Mariner 7 blasted off for Mars, joining its sister, Mariner 6, which was launched last month.

Normally, twin probes are launched for redundancy, and it's a good thing. Venus-boundMariner 1 died when its booster exploded back in '62. Mars-bound Mariner 3 never hatched from its egg (the shroud of its Atlas-Agena rocket) back in 1964. Mariner 5, which went to Venus in 1967, was a solo mission (indeed, a spare Mariner of the 3/4 class).

But now we've got two Mariners winging their way to the Red Planet, which means we'll get twice the coverage and a redundant set of data, always a welcome occurrence for scientists! We'll have more on them when they pass by Mars in July.

Mack ho!

by Kelly Freas

Just as we have two Mariners dominating the head of this article, so we have science fictioneer Mack Reynolds dominating this latest issue of Analog science fiction. Under his own name, and under his pseudonym "Guy McCord", more than half of this issue is a Reynolds contribution. If you like the guy, you'll like the mag. If not…

The Five Way Secret Agent (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

by Kelly Freas

We once again return to the Reynolds' late 20th Century, where America languishes under the stratified People's Capitalism. This novel is also the second adventure of one of the last private detectives, Rex Bader (whose first job was just a couple of months ago. As with that freshman outing, Bader is offered a job that seems too good to be true, and he refuses, but no one else buys that he did.

In this case, the job was offered by the head of one of the world's biggest corporations. He wants Bader to go to cross the Iron Curtain to contact other corporation buffs so as to help take down the Meritocracy—the powers that be that have entrenched themselves in the highest levels of society.

The mob also contacts Bader, wanting him to be their double agent. Then the Defense Department gets involved. Finally, a group of latter-day Technocrats make their pitch. Presumably, the "fifth way" will be Rex Bader's own.

This book is typical Reynolds: the setting has been well established over the years, all the way back to the Joe Mauser, Mercenary days. There are historical dissertations woven in at every opportunity, mostly on early 20th Century political theory. The writing is serviceable, somewhat wry—a more grounded Keith Laumer.

What makes this particular piece stand out are the new wrinkles Reynolds introduces. First, this is the first time we've learned how elections work in this world: it's based on income—one vote for every dollar earned (investment income does not impart voting rights). Thus, the masses on "Negative Income Tax" have no franchise.

Reynolds continues to invent plausible future technology, too. My favorite is the pocket TV/phone/credit card/identity all citizens carry. A handy device, but also vulnerable to surveillance—which is done by computers which listen for key words; if they hear any, they alert a government agent.

So on the one hand, as far as quality of writing and enjoyment is concerned, I'd give this piece three stars. But I admire Reynolds for doing stuff few others do, so I'm actually awarding four.

Hey But No Presto, by Jack Wodhams

by Leo Summers

Folks are being snatched out of psionic teleportation booths as they try to go to Earth. They get sent to this backwater planetary resort where they are charged outrageous rates to stay in mediocre lodgings. They stay because the cost to go home is set even higher. An interstellar cop is sent to investigate.

This one-note tale is so padded, it could replace a warehouse of pillows. One star.

They're Trying to Tell Us Something (Part 2 of 2), by Thomas R. McDonough

Last month, Tom McDonough talked about pulsars—those rapidly beeping star-type objects—and did his darndest to convince us that they are artificial beacons operated by Little Green Men (LGM).

This second part is more of the same, though he actually does mention other possibilities, including the most fashionable one that they are rotating neutron stars. My problem with this segment is it is heavy on the layman's lingo and light on the showing of work. It all feels a bit fluffy. Also, he talks about how pulsars emit light bursts at twice the frequency as their radio bursts, and he makes it seem like that's mysterious. If the pulsar is really a rotating neutron star, then it makes sense for any emissions to be linked. Why we only get radio signals from one side, I don't understand off the top of my head, but I suspect anyone with a Bachelors in Physics could tell me.

Three stars.

Cultural Interference, by Walter L. Kleine

by Leo Summers

A couple of scientists begin an experiment with broadcast power. Coincidentally, a couple of extraterrestrial spaceships accidentally intercept and soak up the power, causing them to crash. Chaos ensues.

Wireless power seems to be the rage these days, figuring prominently in Keith Laumer's serial, And Now They Wake. This particular tale is overpadded and pointless.

Two stars.

Opportunist, by Guy McCord

by Kelly Freas

This is the third tale of Caledonia, a backwards planet probably in the same universe as his United Planets tales in which every world has its own uniquely evolved political and social structure. Caledonians all hail from a single crashed colony ship, and their culture is a mix of Scots and indigenous American, based on the few books that survived planetfall (shades of Star Trek's "A Piece of the Action".

In this installment, Caledonia has been largely subjugated by mining concerns from Sidon, and the native Caledonians must resort to guerrila tactics. John of the Hawks, Chief Raid Cacique of the Loch Confederation is captured by the Sidonians and offered a job in their civilian government. After being told the virtues of civilization and capitalism, he decides to hang up his claidheamhor and war bonnet and sell out.

I din't like it. Two stars.

Oh ho!

Well now, here is a case of science fiction definitely being less compelling than science. With the exception of the serial, this was a drab ish, barely scoring 2.7. This puts Analog under Fantasy and Science Fiction (3), IF (3.1), Galaxy (3.5), and New Worlds (3.6). Campbell's mag only beat out the usual losers: Fantastic (2.5), Famous #8 (1.8), and Famous #9 (2).

From eight mags, you could barely fill two big ones with the good stories this month, although part of the reason for that is Famous being so awful. Women produced just 7% of the new fiction stories this month.

I guess the moral is: read your newspapers and your Pohl (and UK) mags first. Pick up Analog only if you've finished the rest. Or if you really like Mack Reynolds…

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 28, 1969] Slidin' (February 1969 Analog)

January 28, 2024 Gideon Marcus 1 Comment

by Gideon Marcus

Mudslides

Winter is the wet season for Southern California, and we've been just drenched these past weeks. I understand seven inches of rain fell in the Los Angeles area, causing terrible mudslides, property damage, and injury. Apparently, things were made worse by a spate of arson last year that got rid of the stabilizing undergrowth.

Ontario's Foothill Boulevard looking west toward Red Hill Country Club Drive, flooded. (Daily Report photo)

I've had many friends ask if we're alright, afraid we might have been swept downstream in the torrent. Rest assured that Vista is disaster-proof (knock on wood), and our house is at the top of a hill. We had some deep pools of water in the backyard, but they've since drained. Our neighbors have gotten invaded by bugs seeking refuge from the storm, though.

A man runs past a station wagon that was washed two blocks down Carnelian Avenue, along with part of the road surface. (Daily Report photo)

Ups and Downs

If the physical world is getting washed away, one edifice that manages to stand firmly, if not always proudly, is Analog, science fiction's most popular magazine. Has this month's issue slid at all, or is it holding fast? let's see:

A Womanly Talent, by Anne McCaffrey

by Kelly Freas

We're back in the world of psionic talents, perhaps related to the stories that involve ladies in towers. A pair of politicians want to pass a law protecting and enabling the psionically adept, legitimizing things like professional prognosticators and psychic manipulators. A Luddite strawman, name of Zeusman, is against it.

Meanwhile. Ruth is the wife of Lajos, a precog. She is frustrated because she has an unidentified talent, and also because she really wants to be a mom. Eventually, the latter frustration is relieved, and her daughter ends up demonstrating what Ruth's power really is.

Aside from the tale beginning with ten pages of conversation that reads more like a Socratic dialogue than a story, I just find McCaffrey's writing so flat and amateur. I'm sure all the psi stuff was music to editor Campbell's ears, including lines like "Those who truly understand psionic power need no explanation. Those who need explanation will never understand," but it doesn't work for me. Beyond that, McCaffrey's attitudes on the relations of the sexes is so atavistic, although I suppose she gets points for talking about sex at all. Maybe Campbell likes that, too.

Two stars.

You'll Love the Past, by J. R. Pierce

by Leo Summers

A time traveler from the 21st Century takes a trip in a time machine to the 24th Century. A war has transformed society: America is now largely mixed race, with the whitest of the population an inbred and stupid group. Socially, the continent is organized into placid socialist cooperatives run by religious Brothers, advanced technology provided by the Japanese. It's the sort of world one can be happy in…provided one is favored by the status quo. Every so often, one of the non-favored tries to escape.

Not a bad story, even if it seems to be obliquely casting aspersions on Communists of darker hue.

Three stars.

The Man Who Makes Planets, by G. Harry Stine

by Leo Summers

Yet another piece set in the (anti-) Utopian future of People's Capitalism, where North America has become a stratified welfare state, and money is a thing of the past.

Rex, last of the private dicks, is engaged by a government minister to find out who stole the plans for a miniaturized nuclear bomb, and why said criminal is blackmailing him, threatening to distribute the plans should a ransom not be paid promptly.

The solution to this mystery is actually trivial, and the story isn't quite long enough for what it's trying to do. Nevertheless, I always find this setting interesting. And perhaps prescient. There was piece in last week's newspaper about the National Urban League's proposal for a universal income…

Three stars.

Wolfling (Part 2 of 3), by Gordon R. Dickson

by Kelly Freas

Back in part one, Jim Kiel was sent from Earth to study the intergalactic empire whose fringes were discovered when a Terran probe made it to Alpha Centauri. An anthropologist and ubermensch, Jim is essentially a spy, though the High Born of the empire don't know that—they think that he's an interesting curiosity, favored for his bullfighting skills and independent thinking.

This installment begins just after Jim's first encounter with the Emperor, a genial, capable man who, nevertheless, seemed to suffer a stroke. A stroke that no one but Jim noticed. Much of this middle installment is devoted to Jim's navigation of High Born society, attempting to master the reading machines to determine if Earth really is a long-lost colony of the empire or something else, and also how he discovers and foils an insurrection attempt with designs on incapacitating the empire's leader. In the last portion, Jim is promoted to the equivalent of a Brigadier General and sent to quell a rebellion. This is actually a trap designed to kill him, but he neatly sidesteps it. Now he wants to know why he's marked for death.

The pot continues to boil. There's a lot of the flavor of Dickson's Dorsai series, but with a different, perhaps even more interesting, setting.

Four stars.

A Chair of Comparative Leisure, by Robin Scott

by Leo Summers

A stammering professor somehow manages to be the most magnetic, as well as effective at conveying information. Does his technique go beyond the verbal?

(Yes. He has the power of psychic projection. Whoopee. Two stars.)

Calculating the damage

You win some, you lose some, and this month's issue clocks in at exactly three stars. While nothing could compare with the superlative four-star Fantasy and Science Fiction, three stars is still lower than New Worlds (3.3) and Galaxy (3.2). It does beat out IF (2.8) and Fantastic (2.2), however.

You could fill as many as three issues with good stuff out of the six that were put out—in large part thanks to how great F&SF was this month. Nevertheless, women contributed very little of that, with only 6.67% of new fiction written by female writers, most of that Anne McCaffrey's drudge of a story.

Still, in an uncertain world, I can't complain too much. Especially since, mudslides or no, the Post Office still manages to get me my magazines on time!

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 6, 1968] Who's the one? (December 1968 Galaxy)

November 6, 2023 Gideon Marcus 1 Comment

by Gideon Marcus

Dashed hopes

It really looked like it was going to be a happy Halloween. On October 31st, President Johnson made the stunning announcement that he was stopping all bombing in Vietnam. This was in service to the Paris peace talks, which subsequently got a huge shot in the arm: not only were the Soviets on board with the negotiations, but the South Vietnamese indicated that, as long as they had a seat at the table, they were in, too.

The holiday lasted all of five days. In yesterday's paper, even as folks went to the polls to choose between Herbert Humphrey and Tricky Dixon (or, I suppose, Wacky Wallace), the news was that South Vietnam had pulled out. They didn't like that the Viet Cong, the Communists in Vietnam (as distinguished from the North Vietnamese government), were going to get a representative at the talks. So they're out.

It's not clear how this will affect the election. As of this morning, it was still not certain who had won . Nevertheless, it is clear that Humphrey's chances weren't helped by the derailing of LBJ's peace plans. If a Republican victory is announced, it may well be this turn of events led to the sea change.

Well, don't blame me. My support has always been for that "common, ordinary, simple savior of America's destiny," Mr. Pat Paulsen. After all, he upped his standards—now up yours.

Respite

Once again, a tumultuous scene provided the backdrop to my SFnal reading. Did the latest issue of Galaxy prove to be balm or bother? Read on and find out:

by John Pederson Jr. illustrating One Station of the Way

The Sharing of Flesh, by Poul Anderson

by Reese

Evalyth, military director of a mission to a human planet reverted to savagery after the fall of the Empire, watches with horror as her husband is murdered, then butchered by one of the planet's inhabitants. Cannibalism, it turns out, is a way of life here; indeed, it is considered essential to the rite of puberty for males.

The martial Evalyth vows to have her revenge, tracking down the murderer, Mora, and taking him and his family back to their base, where they are subjected to fearsome scientific examinations. But can she go through with executing the killer of her husband? And does Mora's motivation make any difference?

There' s so much to like about this story, from the exploration of the agony of love lost, to the examination of relative morality, to the development of the universe first introduced (to me, anyway) in last year's A Tragedy of Errors. It doesn't hurt that it stars a woman, and women are integral parts of this future society, with none of the denigrating weasel words that preface the introduction of female characters in Anderson's Analog stories (could those be editorial insertions?)

This is Anderson at his best, without his archaicisms, multi-faceted, astronomically interesting, emotionally savvy.

Five stars.

One Station of the Way by Fritz Leiber

by Holly

Three humaniforms watch on cameloids as the star descends in the east. Sure enough, at a home in the east, a divine being prepares to impregnate a local female so that she will bear a divine child.

Heard this story before? There's a reason. But the planet of Finiswar is not Earth, the aliens are not remotely human, and the white and dark duo who pilot the spaceship Inseminator are anything but gods.

An excellent, satirical story. Four stars.

Sweet Dreams, Melissa by Stephen Goldin

A little girl is told a bedtime story about a big computer that stopped doing its job right. That's because the machine couldn't think of casualties and war statistics as simple numbers, battle strategies as abstract puzzles. The problem is its personality; if the computer's mind could be reconciled with its function, the machine could work again. But can any mind be at peace with such a frightful purpose?

A simple piece like this depends mostly on the telling. Luckily, Goldin is up to the task. Four stars.

Subway to the Stars by Raymond F. Jones

by Jack Gaughan

Harry Whiteman is a brilliant engineer with a problem: he's too much of a "free spirit" to keep a job, or a wife. Desperate, when the CIA approaches him about a singular opportunity, he takes it, though the resents being bullied into it.

In deepest, darkest Africa, the Smith Company is working on…something. Ostensibly a mining concern, it produces no gems. On the other hand, whatever it is is important enough that the Soviets have based missiles in a neighboring country—pointed right at the company site!

Whiteman is hired, for his irreverence more than his ability, and begins work as a double-agent. Once on location, he finds the true purpose of the site: it's a switching station of an intergalactic railroad station! But it turns out that the folks at the Smith Company also have multiple agendas…

A mix of Cliff Simak's Here Gather the Stars (Way Station) and Poul Anderson's Door to Anywhere, it is not as successful as either of them. It takes too long to get started, and then it wraps up all too quickly. It's genuinely thrilling as Whiteman peels back the multiple layers of the Smith operation and the factions within it, and when the missiles do find their target, the resultant chaos is compelling, indeed. But then it turns into a quick, SFnal gimmick story better suited to Analog than Galaxy.

I think I would have rather seen Simak takes this one on as a sequel to his novel. Jones just wasn't quite up to it.

Three stars.

For Your Information: The Discovery of the Solar System by Willy Ley

As it turns out, the science article in this month's issue addresses two issues on which I've had keen recent interest. The first is on the subject of solar systems, and if they can be observed around other stars. Ley discusses how the gravity of an unseen companion can cause a telltale wiggle as the star travels through space, since the two objects orbit a common center of gravity (rather than one strictly going around the other).

In the other half of the article, Ley explains how atomic rocket engines work: shooting heated hydrogen out a nozzle as opposed to burning it and shooting out the resultant water out the back end—it is apparently twice as strong a thrust.

What keeps this article from five stars is both pieces are too brief. For the first half, I'd like to know about the stellar companions discovered through astrometry. He mention's Sirius' white dwarf companion, but what about the planets Van de Kamp claims to have discovered around Barnard's Star and so on? As for the atomic article, I'd like to know what missions a nuclear engine can be used for that a conventional rocket cannot.

Four stars.

A Life Postponed by John Wyndham

by Gray Morrow

Girl falls in love with cynical jerk of a boy. Boy decides there's nothing in the world worth sticking around for, so he gets himself put in suspended animation for a century. Girl follows him there. He's still a cynical jerk, but she doesn't care because she loves him. They live happily ever after.

I'm really not sure of the point of this story, nor how it got in this month's issue other than the cachet of the author's name.

Two stars.

Jinn by Joseph Green

It is the year 2050, and aged Professor Morrison, stymied in his attempts to make food from sawdust, is approached by a brilliant young grad student. Said student is brilliant for a reason: he is a Genetically Evolved Newman or "Jinn", with a big brain and bigger ideas. The student has solved Morrison's problem. However, another Jinn wants humanity to go to the stars, and he fears if the race gets a full belly, they'll lose interest.

The conflict turns violent, the point even larger: is there room for baseline homo sapiens in a world of homo superior?

Green doesn't paint a particularly plausible future, but there are some nice touches, and the points raised are interesting ones. I'd say it's a failure as a story but a success as a thought-exercise, if that makes sense.

So, a low three stars.

Spying Season by Mack Reynolds

by Roger Brand

We return, once again, to Reynolds' world of People's Capitalism. It is the late 20th Century, and the Cold War adversaries have reached a more or less peaceful coexistence. The greater challenge is existential: ultramation has taken away most jobs, and the majority of the populace is on the dole. How, then, to avoid stagnation for humanity?

In this installment, Paul Kosloff is an American of Balkan ancestry, one of the few in the United States of the Americas who still has a steady job, in this case, that of teacher. He is tapped by the CIA to go on sabbatical in the Balkan sector of Common-Europe. Ostensibly, his job is not to spy for the USAs, but to sort of soak in the culture of the area over a twelve-month span.

Very quickly, Kosloff finds himself entagled with an underground revolutionary group, with law enforcement, and with several fellows who enjoy sapping him on the back of the head.

Suffice it to say that all questions are answered by the end, the major ones being: why an innocuous pseudo-spy should be a target, why the CIA would send him on a seemingly pointless mission in the first place. In the meantime, you get a bit more history of this world and some tourist-eye view of Yugoslavia. In other words, your typical, middle-of-the-road Reynolds story.

Three stars.

Counting the votes

While not as stellar as last month's issue, the December 1968 Galaxy still offers a more satisfying experience than, well, most anything going on in "the real world". It clocks in at a respectable 3.45, which brings the annual average to 3.23.

Compare that to the 2.81 it scored last year, and given that Galaxy is once again a monthly, I think it's safe to say that, at least in one way, "Happy days are here again."

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 2, 1968] Future History Lessons (November 1968 IF)

October 2, 2023 David Levinson 4 Comments

by David Levinson

Saving the past

Around the turn of the century, the British in Egypt set out to regulate the flooding of the Nile by building a dam at Aswan, near the First Cataract, a little under 150 miles north of what is today the border between Egypt and Sudan. They limited the height of the dam in order to prevent the submergence of the island of Philae and the many monuments there, but still raised the height twice by the mid-1930s. The reservoir nearly overflowed the top in 1946, and it became increasingly clear that the dam’s storage capabilities were insufficient for modern Egypt.

King Farouk favored the construction of dams in Sudan and Ethiopia, where cooler temperatures would mean less loss of water due to evaporation, but when he was overthrown, the new government under Nasser preferred a larger dam at Aswan under Egyptian control. One of the reasons for the nationalization of the Suez Canal was that shipping fees would pay for the new dam. The change in plans alarmed archaeologists, who pointed out that the entirety of the ancient province of Nubia would be flooded, inundating numerous ancient monuments and sites. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan appealed to UNESCO for help, and thus was born the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia.

The most impressive of the monuments to be rescued are the temples of Abu Simbel, built by Ramses II in the mid-13th century B.C. to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. Best known is the Great Temple, dedicated to Amun, Ra-Horakty, Ptah and the deified Ramses himself. The entrance is flanked by four statues of the pharaoh, each over 65 feet tall. Nearby is a temple dedicated to Hathor and Ramses’ favorite wife Nefertari.

Ramses gets a face lift.

But how do you rescue something like that? A freestanding temple can be taken apart stone by stone and rebuilt elsewhere. This was done with the temple of Kalabsha, in work funded and supervised by West Germany. The Ramesseum was carved into sandstone cliffs. One suggestion was to build a clear freshwater dam around the temples and create underwater viewing chambers. Instead, an international team of archaeologists, engineers, and heavy construction experts have spent the last four years carefully carving the entire site into enormous blocks with an average weight of 20 tons and moving the whole thing to a new site some 650 feet back from the Nile and over 200 feet higher. The work is finished, and on September 22nd the reconstructed Ramesseum was opened to the public. Let’s hope that the many other rescue projects are just as successful.

Optimists and pessimists

This has been a rough year all around the world, and so it’s natural to turn to our entertainment to make us feel better. Unfortunately, the trend in science fiction seems to be toward unhappy endings, and this month’s IF seems to lean more to the pessimistic side. It also takes us to Ancient Egypt in the far future.

The Waw is bored. Art by Vaughn Bodé

The Computer Conspiracy (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

Regular readers of the big American SF magazines will be familiar with Mack Reynolds’ People’s Capitalism, in which every citizen is granted Inalienable Basic shares that pay dividends that are enough to live off, while the more ambitious can earn Variable Basic shares and move up in the world. Meanwhile, the Universal Credit Card serves all economic and identification functions. All of that is made possible by a massive computerized data bank. What if a hostile power could tap into that data bank, or worse yet change or erase the data?

Action in the subway of abandoned Manhattan. Art by Gaughan

This first half of Reynolds’ new novel is delivered mostly in the form of lectures telling the protagonist things he already knows. Reynolds can usually make this sort of thing interesting, but normally he doesn’t rely on pages of dialogue for his exposition. Much of it seems to be based on Vance Packard’s The Naked Society from a few years ago, which he explicitly mentions. This is interspersed with a couple of action scenes, one of which is overly detailed to the point of being interesting only to practitioners of karate, and the other is largely taken from the recent Among the Bad Baboons. All in all, not Reynolds’ best work, but I don’t see how the second half can be anything but story, so the whole thing should be better.

A low three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey delves into the science of ecology, which studies the interrelationships of living things and their environment. It’s the sort of thing that will be crucial in establishing a colony on another planet, but it’s rarely dealt with in science fiction, except as an occasional aside. It’s also sadly neglected in the real world, though that’s beginning to change. There’s a lot here for SF writers to explore.

Four stars.

Creatures of Light, by Roger Zelazny

Sometime in the distant future, all of humanity lies between the poles of the House of Life, ruled over by Osiris, and the House of Death, ruled over by Anubis. Now, an old threat is returning from outside, and various factions must take steps to stop it.

Anubis and Osiris determine the fates of humanity. Art by P. Reiber

The obvious comparison here is to Zelazny’s Lord of Light, though the “gods” here make the spacemen pretending to be the Hindu gods look like apemen banging rocks together. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote in a letter to Science earlier this year, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It’s all very Zelazny in terms of style and construction. However, there’s no actual story here; it’s just the author introducing various characters and establishing the conflict.

It says on the cover that this is an excerpt from an upcoming novel. That’s enough to save its rating, but the Lord of Light excerpts that ran in F&SF were much more successful as stand-alone pieces. I’m probably interested in seeing the whole thing, but something with a bit more of a traditional structure (if possible) would have been better.

A tentative three stars.

Where the Time Went, by James H. Schmitz

Everyone is familiar with those times when you set out to get a lot done, and suddenly it’s the end of the day and you’ve accomplished next to nothing. That happens to writer George Belk every day until his agent puts him in touch with someone who can help.

I suspect Schmitz was inspired by a couple of days like those George describes. It’s a cute story, but it doesn’t play to any of the author’s strengths, especially his ability to create characters.

Three stars.

Now That Man Is Gone, by James Blish

The Waw has been nine years old for over 2,000 years. Humanity has been extinct for 1,994 years. The aliens who care for him call him the Waw, because he is the Next-to-Last, but there is no sign of the Ya. Until now.

Art uncredited

This is the most optimistic story in the issue, which seems odd coming from Blish, though it is tinged with melancholy as well. It’s also the inverse of a concept that forms the core of many Ray Bradbury stories. Nice enough, but nothing special.

Three stars.

Wizard Ship, by F. Haines Price

Primitive tribesman Hin bravely boards a ship of the gods which has descended from the sky. He soon figures out that the gods are mere mortals who plan to sell him into slavery. The three unscrupulous spacers aboard also don’t realize that primitive isn’t the same as stupid.

Price is this month’s new author, and it shows in his writing. The story is too long, and the darkly ironic ending isn’t worth the trip.

A low two stars.

Bookmobile, by Charles L. Harness

A report from an alien librarian describes how humanity lost the ability to read thanks to everything moving to audio.

What an incredibly stupid story; nothing about it makes any sense. It ignores the fate of the deaf when everything is spoken and nothing is written, which is odd considering a key point is that the librarian can’t hear. I’m also not sure how you look things up when it’s all audio. Harness is an attorney, you’d think he would find that important.

One star, because it makes me angry every time I think about it.

The Perfect Secretary, by Mike Kirsch

On the day Albert Willis opens his new business, a strange man offers him a free trial of an automatic secretary. It can write articles and letters, retrieve reference materials from a host of locations, and pretty much do his job for him. It’s rather more than he or its makers suspect.

Willis is presented with his new secretary. Art by Wallace Wood

An awful story about awful people being awful. And it comes with another dark ending. Kirsch seems to be another new author, though maybe he’s sold things in other genres. The writing is decent enough, but all the characters are horrible.

Two stars.

Summing up

That’s another month of IF in the bag. There sure are a lot of familiar authors here not putting their best foot forward. And Zelazny’s piece really deserves a grade of Incomplete. There’s not even enough there to tell us what the rest is going to be like. Add in all the attempts at being dark and gritty, and the whole thing’s rather unsatisfying. At least the serials are back.

Science fiction from A(simov) to Z(elazny). That Zelazny piece might be another part of the new novel.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 10, 1968] Back in the Saddle Again (August 1968 Galaxy)

July 10, 2023 Gideon Marcus 5 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Not F-UN

Bjo Trimble, a superfan from the wayback, put together a fan shindig in Los Angeles last weekend. Called F-UN Con, it is not only an SF convention, but it's also the first Star Trek convention, with a whole day of programming dedicated to the show.

This article is not about F-UN Con.

Why did we fly to the Bay Area this past weekend rather than trundling up to L.A., which is closer? Well, we know the gang in 'Frisco, and they've been putting together informal conclaves every year. We couldn't very well shuck tradition just for a new event, even if it's nominally in our back yard.

It was a good decision. For one thing, they had a bit of Star Trek up there–this lovely reproduction of the captain's chair.

And now that The Prisoner is showing in the States, we're getting some lovely costumage, too!

Speaking of traditions that are worth upholding, the latest issue of Galaxy feels like a return to the quality of yore. Usually, magazines pack their summer issues with their least impressive offerings, but such was not the case this time around. Take a trip with me!

by Vaughn Bodé

Among the Bad Baboons, by Mack Reynolds

by Vaughn Bodé

Mack Reynolds continues his stories of life under "People's Capitalism" in the '80s, this time focusing on the last of the Bohemians, living in the decaying ruins of Greenwich Village. With most of the country now on the dole, and white flight having been taken to its logical extreme, the cities are now all but abandoned, save for the "babboons"–lawless squatters–and the "hunters", who go downtown to shoot for thrills.

This story is more a vehicle for philosophical discussion than plot, and I found the end a bit distasteful. That said, there are some fascinating suppositions in this tale. One is that the current regime, in which prospective authors send their manuscripts to editors, who then publish them through traditional channels, will be supplanted by a revolutionary new process. In the '80s, any author can take their novel (or story, or artwork) to a computer and have it stored for infinite reproduction. These reproductions can then be read on a tv-phone (or in the case of art, facsimile duplicated).

This means that anyone can be a writer or an artist, and anyone can appreciate any work, any time. And since everyone is on the dole anyway, why not be an artist or a writer? Well, it does mean there's a lot more competition, and it's harder to become a phenomenon, but on the other hand, there's no barrier to entry.

Now, Reynolds assumes most people won't want to be artists, and they will be content to watch 24 hours of television a day while tranked up on cheap drugs. Maybe he's right. But as someone who already publishes nontraditionally (what is Galactic Journey and The Fantasy Amateur Press Association if not decentralized publishing), it's an exciting prospect.

Three stars, for the ideas, if anything.

Going Down Smooth, by Robert Silverberg

by Brock

Silverbob puts on his best Ellison impression with this tale of a therapist computer gone nuts listening to neurotic patients all day.

It's not bad, but it doesn't go anywhere. I'd stick with the original.

Three stars.

A Specter is Haunting Texas (Part 2 of 3), by Fritz Leiber

by Jack Gaughan

I really had not been looking forward to this second installment of Leiber's tale. Last time, as you recall, a spaceman-actor had landed in post-apocalyptic Texas (now ruler of all North America save the two Black republics in the southwest and southeast) to 1) perform in a short tour and 2) make good on a pitchblende claim in the Yukon. The eight-foot tall, cadaverous, cybernetic thespian was recruited in a hit on the current President of Texas, whereupon he escaped to join causes with the revolutionary Mexican underclass.

It was all a bit silly, and while I appreciated what Leiber was doing, it didn't quite resonate with me. This time, however, the needle fell into the groove. As Chris Crockett La Cruz assumed the role of La Muerta, spurring the downtrodden Mexicans with promises of Vengeance and Death, Leiber's writing took on sublime proportions. The way he navigates the line between satire and seriousness so deftly, with such beautiful language and characterization, even as the characters are all caricatures, is an accomplishment for the ages.

Five stars for ths installment.

For Your Information: In Australia, the Rain …, by Willy Ley

The topic for this month's non-fiction piece is an interesting one: the artificial lakes, rivers, and resulting hydropower systems of Australia. The presentation, however, leaves much to be desired. I want to know the impact of these developments, both on settlement and on the environment, not be given pages of details of their precise geographical location.

Three stars.

The Time Trawlers, by Burt K. Filer

by Dan Adkins

A thousand years from now, humans will fish the future just as they now fish the seas. As the solar system's population grows to number into the quadrillions, our race must pluck planets from 30 billion A.D. to plunder them for their resources. An 18-year old fisherman with "the knack" for finding rich worlds, decides he doesn't want to do it anymore after seeing what the process does to already-inhabited planets. He embarks on a one-man crusade against the practice, hatching a novel scheme to bring it to an end.

Never mind the silliness of the premise, or the fact that culture looks pretty much like 20th Century Earth in the tale. It's a good story, well-told. Sure, it feels a bit like early vintage Galaxy, but I like that era!

Four stars.

The Star Below, by Damon Knight

by Jack Gaughan

Thorinn, that diminutive traveler introduced in The World and Thorinn and later in The Garden of Ease, has returned. This time, he has stumbled across an enormous warehouse filled with all manner of wondrous items. From rich garments to strange engines to a talking box, all are marvels to the medieval-minded explorer.

Of course, it's at this point that our suspicions are confirmed that the myriad of worlds Thorinn passes through are all parts of a giant generation ship, this being the cargo hold. What makes this segment so compelling is the description of these (to us) more-or-less familiar items to a man with no conception of technology. The interactions between Thorinn and the little computer, particularly the way the box learns English, feel very natural. I only wish Thorinn could have taken the box with him; it'd make an interesting companion.

Four stars.

HEMEAC, by E. G. Von Wald

by Joe Wehrle

Long ago, the robots took over the human power plants, and they also claimed a number of human hostages, who they began to educate in their own, logical images. But the robots are breaking down, and the "renegade" humans are pounding at the gates.

What is HEMEAC, a teenaged robot-trained youth supposed to think when his teachers all start behaving erratically and the wild people defile the sacred halls of cybernia?

This is another tale with a classic (i.e. '50s) sense to it. I particularly enjoyed the rendering of the robots, and HEMEAC's not-entirely-successful attempts to make rigid his thought processes.

Four stars.

Missed it by THAT much

Put it all together, and you get an issue that soars almost to four stars in quality–surely to contend for the best magazine of the month. It's reads like this that keep me going, and also cause me to commend editor Pohl for keeping the proud publication on an even keel. I know some disagree with his lambasting of the New Wave (and, indeed, Pohl is not averse to printing examples of it), but I think there is value to the continued production of novel, interesting, but also conventional SF prose.

I can't wait for next month!

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Book, Magazine

[November 29, 1964] All-star (December 1964 Analog)

November 29, 2019 Gideon Marcus 8 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

The Big Guns

Thanksgiving is over, and the holiday season will officially begin tonight with the lighting of the first of the Hannukah candles. After that, it's just a short skip and a jump to that more widely celebrated holiday.

I am, of course, referring to the Winter Solstice.

It is an appropriate season, then, for science fiction's most-read magazine, Analog, to finish its year of publication with a bang. Fantasy and Science Fiction is fond of issuing "All-Star" magazines, in which the majority of the authors are big names. The December 1964 Analog isn't so dubbed, but nevertheless, it's chock full of heavy hitters. Let's take a look!

Armed Assault

by Robert Swanson

Tempestuous Moon, by Joseph H. Jackson

It has been the subject of wives' tales and farmers' almanacs that the phases of the Moon have an effect on the weather. In particular (they maintain), some points in the lunar cycle are likelier to be rainy than others. And now Analog has got a breathless article confirming the folk wisdom. Take that, doubting eggheads!

It's true that (editor) Campbell is notorious for printing the worst pseudoscience pieces, and Jackson's article is mostly blather. However, if his data be accurate, they are compelling. While the phases of the Moon should have no effect on the Earth, per se, they do correspond to geometries between the Sun and the Moon with respect to the Earth. And both of those bodies do have a profound effect on our planet every day in the form of tides. I can conceive that a strong tide, for instance when the Sun and Moon's forces combine to cause Spring Tides, might create lower atmospheric pressures, reducing the amount of moisture the air can hold, causing rains. Neap Tides would have the opposite effect.

Or it could all be garbage. Are there any pieces in reputable journals?

Plague on Kryder II, by Murray Leinster

Calhoun the interstellar Med Service man and his adorable pet/assisant, Murgatroyd, are back. This time, they are investigating an impossible plague, one which seems to suppress the immune system rather than directly infecting the body. Worse, this disease kills tormals, the monkey-like race that Murgatroyd belongs to. Since this latter is an impossibility, tormals being immune to all diseases, Calhoun suspects foul play.

by Kelly Freas

I love the Med Service stories. Sadly, they are suffering from the same malaise that has infected all of Leinster's writing to date. It causes him to write only in short, declarative statements, often repeating himself for no reason. Also, this tale's solution is given mostly in exposition, which kills the fun of the mystery.

Still, even substandard Calhoun and Murgatroyd is pretty fun, and the picture of the sick tormal is too cute for words. Three stars.

Shortstack, by Leigh and Walt Richmond

by Kelly Freas

The latest vignette by the Richmonds is an odd one, more a dramatized advertisement for a unique power generator. It uses the heat differential between the top and bottom of a plastic cylinder to drive an engine and also to distill water.

Harmless, kind of interesting. Three stars.

Contrast, by Christopher Anvil

by Kelly Freas

A man trapped out in a wilderness that would give Deathworld a run for its money gets buzzed by an obnoxious tourist. When said sightseer falls out, the hermit takes his skimmer and rides to safety. The moral of the story: don't take what you have for granted, and a stint in the muck might do you good.

Enjoyable, despite the smugness of the ending. Three stars.

Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes (Part 3 of 3), by Mack Reynolds

by Robert Swanson

We return to the world of the early 21st Century, where society has stratified into stagnancy: in both East and West, the top 1% rule everything, the bottom 90% are jobless and tranquilized, and only the middle 9% have any real agency. Last time, Estruscan professor and gladiator-extreme, Denny Land, had just won a tripartite contest over custody of a Belgian scientist who had invented anti-missile missiles, something with the potential to destabilize the world.

But when the Americans go to pick up the scientist, he has disappeared! And rather than express disconcertment, Land's boss, Joe Mauser seems almost unsurprised…

Land goes back to his old school with a promotion and bump in caste, but he can't hide his frustration and disenchantment. Reenter Bette Yarborough, who recruits Land into the Sons of Liberty to try to upend the whole rotten world order. And then comes an even unlikelier ally in the cause — former foe and Sov-world agent, Yuri Malshev. Together, can the three create a revolution?

And what if the revolution has already happened, and nobody knows?

This installment was the most engaging, well-paced and thoughtful, though there may have been one too many wheels within the wheels. Perhaps a Part IV would not have been amiss. I was grateful that Bette turned out not to just be a love interest (though more than one female in the universe would have been nice). If anything, Denny and Yuri had more chemistry…

Anyway, four stars for this segment. Call it three and a half for the novel as a whole. I appreciate that Reynolds is willing to make "if this goes on" predictions. I wonder how right he will prove to be…

Rescue Operation, by Harry Harrison

by Adolph Brotman

An alien astronaut crash lands on the shore of an Adriatic village. Injured and barely conscious, he is taken to a local scientist for help. But can an effective treatment be developed in time?

This simple story is given depth and emotion by the unusually talented Harrison, who will probably get my nomination for one of the year's best authors. Four stars.

The Equalizer, by Norman Spinrad

by Adolph Brotman

In Israeli's Negev desert, a scientist wrestles with his conscience — and his superior — over the the new bomb he's invented. On the one hand, it will give the little Jewish state inordinate power; on the other hand, power never remains exclusively owned for long.

An interesting think piece whose title has a double meaning. Three stars.

High Marks

Well, color me surprised! Analog, normally a disappointing performer, scored a respectable 3.2 stars — second only this month to the superlative Galaxy (3.6). Science Fantasy and Worlds of Tomorrow both scored an even 3 stars, largely thanks to better-than-average long pieces balancing out less impressive small ones.

And on the negative side of the ledger, we have a lackluster IF (2.8), a still-Davidson weighted Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.6), and Cele G. Lalli's mags did worst of all: Fantastic got just 2.3 stars, and Amazing broke the two barrier, scoring a jaw-dropping 1.9. What happened?

Women published just 5 and a half of all the stories in magazines this month, all of them very short. Betty Friedan would be rolling in her grave, and she's not even dead!

Ah well. 1965 approaches, a chance to wipe the slate and start anew. But before then, you will want to see our Galactic Stars awards when they come out in a few short weeks! Then you won't have to wade through the dross to get the gems — we'll have done the work for you.

Happy Holidays!

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

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Book, Magazine

[October 30, 1964] The Deadly Barrier (November 1964 Analog)

October 30, 2019 Gideon Marcus 8 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Trapped on the wrong side

In the 1940s, the sound barrier was as mighty a wall as the Maginot line. Planes approaching Mach One lost control of their wings, heat built up and melted vital components — the demon living in this wall refused to let any pass.

It wasn't until 1947, when Captain Chuck Yeager took to the skies in his rocket-propelled X-1, that the barrier was first breached.

Our genre has its own deadly wall. If left unpierced, it leaves a reader like those poor, challenging planes and pilots of yore: broken and dispirited. It is the Three Star barrier, the divide between fine and feh — and this month, five of the six science fiction magazines that came out in the English-speaking world failed to break through it.

Sure, some issues made brave attempts. Both New Worlds and IF came right to the edge, the latter with some memorable stories, and the former maintaining bog-standard mediocrity down the line.

But timidity breaks no records. Playing it safe pierces no barriers.

Cele Goldsmith's mags, Amazing and Fantastic, both fell well short of the mark, managing only 2.6 stars. Perhaps if she'd lassoed the best parts of both of this month's issues together, she might have managed a breach.

And the less said about the struggling Fantasy and Science Fiction (also 2.6 stars), the better. Pour one out for a faded glory, folks.

An Analog to failure

That leaves the November 1964 Analog. Can Campbell's mag, once the undisputed leader of the genre, succeed where all its compatriots have failed? Read on…

by John Schoenherr

Invasion by Washing Water, by D.R. Barber

But, first, this message.

Are you a British astronomer? Are you tired of having your photographic negatives eaten by bacteria? Do you want to know why your shots of celestial bodies get ruined periodically by fuzz and rot? Well never fear! D.R. Barber has the answer:

Invaders from Venus.

Yes, Mr. Barber has determined that, when the Earth and Venus are aligned just right, and a major geomagnetic storm is raging, that the conditions are perfect for Venusian microbes to land in England to destroy our film. Of course, this only seems to happen in England because of vagaries of our atmospheric currents. And it's impossible for there to be a terrestrial origin for the bugs. Oh no.

Sigh. Only in Analog. One star.

Gunpowder God, by H. Beam Piper

by John Schoenherr

Our first attempt to break the Three Star barrier involves a sideways leap. Veteran SFictioneer Piper writes of Calvin Morrison, Corporal in the Pennsylvania State Police of Earth — our Earth. Through a freak accident, caused by careless activities of the universe-traveling Paratime authority, Morrison is warped to another Earth.

In this timeline, Indo-Europeans went east instead of west, crossing the Siberian land bridge, and colonizing the Americas. Come this world's 1964, the eastern seaboard is a patchwork of feudal kingdoms on the brink of a gunpowder revolution. Calvin Morrison, a Korean war veteran and all-around man of action, is perfectly placed to become a big wheel, the titular "Gunpowder God". Very soon, he is "Kalvan", organizing the troops of Hostigos against the Nostori Hordes and their tepid allies, the Principality of Sask.

But the agents of the Level One timeline, sole possessors of the secret of timeline travel, are rushing to stop Kalvan before he gives away Paratime's game…

Piper has basically recycled the plot to L. Sprague de Camp's lovely Lest Darkness Fall, in which a 20th Century man goes back to 6th Century Rome to save it from the Byzantines. And what Piper does well, he does quite well. There are fine tactics, good war depictions, the bones of an interesting plot.

But only the bones. I was expecting a novel; instead I got a short novella. Everything suffers as a result. Kalvan is welcomed all too eagerly and learns the local lingo (akin to Greek, it seems) in no time. His romance with Skylla, a princess who dresses and is treated as a man, is perfunctory — to say nothing of the wasted opportunity to develop such an interesting character!

Plus, there's this weird assumption that Aryans are the catalyst of culture, even though the geography and environment of North America are wildly different from that of Europe — and Europe's technological preeminence was never assured (and largely based on developments in other parts of the world!)

So Gunpowder God skates to the edge of the Three Star barrier but progresses no further. Strike One.

Gallagher's Glacier, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

by Kelly Freas

In the future, corporations have a stranglehold on the solar system's shipping lanes. One crazy man hatches a plan to install a fusion drive into an ice asteroid and become the first independent trader. But since the corporations have the monopoly on drive-making equipment, no one can join him in his independence…unless some plucky captain is willing to take his company ship and defect.

Wow. As written, that sounds like a pretty good yarn! But when the Richmond's tell it, they give you nothing more than the above paragraph and a lot of padding.

Glacier barely hits Star Two, much less Three. And that's Strike Two.

Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes (Part 2 of 3), by Mack Reynolds

by Robert Swanson

Our third attempt comes with the second installment of Mack Reynold's latest serial. When last we left Denny Land, erstwhile Professor of Etruscan Studies and now national gladiatorial champion, he was headed to Spain. His top secret mission: to meet up with Auguste Bazaine, inventor of the anti-anti-missile technology that could destabilize the world, plunging it into atomic fire. But though he does manage to find Bazaine at a cocktail party, Denny is sapped on the neck, and Bazaine is kidnapped. The Sov-world, the West-world, and Common Europe all blame each other.

There is only one resolution: trial by combat. All three regions will send a three-man team into a one-hectare arena. Whomever comes out alive will be privy to the anti-anti-missile secrets…if Bazaine is ever found.

I find it ironic that the characters spend so much time lambasting the gladiatorial games, the reliance on bread and circuses of the world's idle masses. Yet this series of books is really just an excuse for some riproaring modern fight fiction. Is this a subtle message?

Less subtle is the writing, which is competent, but not up to what Reynolds can deliver when he tries. Bette Yardborough, "the girl" on Denny's spy team, gets the worst of it. To wit, this immortal dialogue:

Bette said softly, "Between your accomplishments as a scholar, and a . . . a man of violence, I would assume you have had little time for women, Dennis Land."

Was she joshing him? Denny shot a quick scowl at her. He growled, "I'm no eunuch."

She laughed again, even as she turned away to go below. "After seeing you dispatch those two trained Security lads, I'm sure you're not, Dennis."

Sweet Dreams is never going to break the Three Star Barrier with this kind of stuff, even if the fighting scenes and the world Reynolds' created are pretty interesting. And I don't have high hopes for the conclusion next month, either.

Strike Three! Oh wait. The umpire has run onto the field and called FOUL BALL. Apparently, we can't count an unfinished serial. All right. Onwards and…someway-wards.

Guttersnipe, by Rick Raphael

by John Schoenherr

Here's an oddly technical story involving sanitation and water workers… OF THE FUTURE! Their tremendously complex operation is threatened when radioactivity is found seeping into the drinking supply of one of the cities. After many loving descriptions of apparatus and mechanisms, the source is found and eliminated.

If anyone could have broken the Three Star Barrier, it'd be the fellow who brought us 400 mph cars in the Code Three series. Sadly, the piece reads like a science article on water reclamation rather than an sf story.

Mind you, I like articles on water reclamation, but I don't buy Analog to read them.

And so, Rafael's piece falls short of the barrier, somewhere beyond the Star Two line.

Strike Thr… Oh. Another foul against the line. Apparently science factish stories don't count either. Fine. One more piece to go.

Bill for Delivery, by Christopher Anvil

by Kelly Freas

About a decade ago, Bob Sheckley wrote a great little story called Milk Run. It's about the AAA Ace duo trying to form a livestock shipping company. Each of the animals on board their one transport had its own foibles, and dealing with one species exacerbated things with the others.

Chris Anvil's piece is much the same plot except less interesting and more saddening.

Another Star Two piece and (looks around for the umpire) STEEEERIIIIIIKE THREEEEE!

You're Out

In the end, I can't imagine Analog's dismal 2.2 star ranking really surprises anyone. Still, it would have been nice for at least one of this month's mags to break the Three Star Barrier. I tell you, it's times like these that I wonder about turning in my quill.

On the other hand, if I may mix my metaphors further, no single panning returns a nugget. The quest for gold is a diligent process that accumulates the stuff grain by grain. As bad as this month was in aggregate, it still gave us a decent number of good stories.

And that's why we keep doing this. Because without us, you'd be stuck slogging through all the dreck. Now, you can enjoy the gold without dealing with the dross.

You're welcome. I need a drink…

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

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 2, 1964] Terrestrial Adventures (October 1964 Analog)

October 2, 2019 Gideon Marcus 5 Comments

[Don't miss your chance to get your copy of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age. If you like the Journey, you'll love this book (and you'll be helping us out, too!)

by Gideon Marcus

Close to Home

Time was, science fiction meant space adventure. As far back as Burroughs, trips to Venus and Mars were commonplace, and by the '50s, authors routinely took us to the stars.

But while each week sees a new satellite launched toward the heavens, tremendous advances are taking place here on Earth, too. In just the last week, the news has been filled with some stunning achievements in the field of travel.

In the Air

For instance, the YF-12A interceptor, a Mach 3+ interceptor capable of flying at 100,000 feet, was just publicly unveiled. It's a beautiful, wicked-looking machine, and unlike the X-15 rocketplane, it's about to be an operational part of the Air Force's inventory.

With planes like the F-12, it's no wonder that this Mach 3 bomber, the B-70 Valkyrie, has been restricted to just two prototypes — fast as it is, it's not fast enough to evade modern interceptors! Still, it's a beautiful bird, and I think engineers will get useful data from flying it — if for nothing else, lessons to be learned for the upcoming Concorde trans-Atlantic passenger jet!

On Land

The new "Shinkansen" train, linking the cities of Tokyo and Osaka, may not be jet-propelled; nevertheless, the speed with which it whizzes across the Japanese countryside is certainly Jet Age. Now, one can travel between Japan's two principal cities in less than three hours.

I can't wait for Governor Brown to build one of these babies between Los Angeles and San Francisco!

At Sea

Operation Sea Orbit is coming to an end: the three nuclear-powered ships, CVAN Enterprise, CGN Long Beach, and DLGN Bainbridge circled the Earth without refueling, the first global showing of the flag since Teddy Roosevelt's "Great White Fleet".

Between the Navy's nuclear ships, the Air Force's atomic space drives, and the proliferation of nuclear power plants around the county, the latter 20th Century will definitely be the Age of the Atom!

And on Paper

With all this big news of Earthbound traveling, it's perhaps no surprise that Analog, the most read science fiction magazine has most of the stories of its October 1964 issue set on our planet.

by Robert Swanson

Inconstant Moon, by Joseph H. Jackson

Or, in the case of the science article, the Earth's closest neighbor. It has been speculated for some time that there may be some kind of vulcanism going on under the dead-seeming crust of the Moon. In support of that are the occasional observations by astronomers of new craters, of colored puffs of smoke, and other oddities.

There is something of a breathless quality to Jackson's piece, and the fact that it appears in Campbell's Analog makes it more suspect. In any event, it sure would have been nice if there were color pictures of these phenomena instead of the black and whites included in the article.

Three meteorites.

Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes (Part 1 of 3), by Mack Reynolds

Author Reynolds is no stranger to the Eastern Bloc, having extensively traveled through it in the '50s (as well as many other parts of the world). It's no surprise, then, that his stories set in the nearish future, in which the Soviet Union has reached parity with the West, smack of plausibility if not inevitability.

Mack first projected the future with his African series starring Black American Homer Crawford, who goes to the continent to unify its northern portions. It's a flawed pair of books, but the political scene is well developed.

The subsequent series starring Joe Mauser, in which everyone is on the dole and corporate disputes are resolved by division-level mercenary engagements, is better. It may well be in the same universe, just further along in time.

The background is that the North America has evolved into a stratified society, employing "People's Capitalism" wherein all get a basic income and a supply of tranquilizers and television entertainment. Maybe a quarter of the populace is employed. Behind the Iron Curtain, the "Sov-World" has developed similarly, though the external trappings remain Marxist-Leninist.

Between them lie Common Europe, led by the ambitious French under The Gaulle, and the "Neut World", the underdeveloped fourth corner of the power square.

by Robert Swanson

Unlike the previous stories in this universe, we get a new protagonist, Etruscan Studies professor Denny Land, of the "Middle Middle" class. His enthusiasm for researching ancient combats gets him embroiled in the new gladiatorial games, which to his great surprise, he ends up winning. But when he tries to go back to teaching, he finds that his superior, a member of the 1% "Upper" caste, resents Land's fame and sends him on indefinite leave.

This leaves Land ripe to be recruited by the American government as a spy, providing cover for a mission to Spain to turn, kidnap, or eliminate a French professor whose recent invention could break the decades-long balance of power of the early 21st Century.

There is something compelling yet mechanical about Reynolds' writing — it always makes you want to turn the page, but it is never flashy or inspiring. His world building is fascinating, however.

I think, in the end, it merits four stars. I suspect the latter parts will fall into the standard three star zone, but we'll see.

The Mary Celeste Move, by Frank Herbert

by John Schoenherr

Do you remember that sense of trepidation when you first got on Ike's superhighway system? The panic you felt when you realized you had to navigate four lanes of traffic to get around?

Frank Herbert offers up this minor piece in which the freeway system has become something like the jet-speed expressways of Rick Raphael's Code Three universe. The problem at hand is that people are getting on, panicking, and deciding it's easier to resettle at the other end of the country than to risk the nerve racking trip home.

Two cars.

Flying Fish, by John T. Phillifent

by John Schoenherr

On a distant planet (this is the one off-planet story), humanity meets an alien race that tells us we are limited and incapable of advancing to their lofty level. This being an Analog story, of course it's the alien that's wrong — and limited, to boot — and anyway, if humanity has limits, those only make us better.

It's not a great story, and I rolled my eyes at the pivotal character, Captain Beefcake, being infinitely selfless and flawless (as proven mathematically by the protagonist!) Still, it's not poorly written, and I was about to give it three stars until I wrote the above and convinced myself out of it.

Two ubermenschen.

Professional Dilemma, by Leonard Lockhard

by Leo Summers

Lockhard (really attorney Thedore L. Thomas) has penned some interesting stories of the intersection of patent law and science fiction. This one is of the same subject matter but not the same quality — it rambles, it's not really SF, and it's conclusion is a ho hum.

Two trademarks.

Situation Unbearable, by Herbert Pembroke

by Michael Arndt

Our last story, by a brand-new author, begins with the premise of Brian Aldiss' recent novel, Greybeard. To wit, humanity's birth rate has declined to almost nothing, and nobody seems to know why. Well, almost nobody, but the one geneticist who might have a clue seems to have gone catatonic after encountering some horrific truth.

Can he be snapped out of it before it's too late?

This one takes a long time to get going, and the ending is a bit silly (the story is presented as a mystery, but the embedded hints aren't strong enough — did any of you guess what was going on?) I think Pembroke has the makings of a decent thriller writer, but he whiffed on this one.

Two baby bottles.

Summing up

All told, this was not a stellar issue of Analog, clocking in at just 2.6 stars. I don't think it has anything to do with where the stories took place, though — this is just becoming a tired mag whose heyday was two decades ago. Still, I am interested to see where the Reynolds goes.

As for the other mags, Science Fantasy was the clear winner, garnering an impress 3.5 stars with its first issue under new management. Worlds of Tomorrow was also worthy, scoring 3.1 stars.

Everything else was pretty dismal. Amazing is tentatively a 2.7 (jury remaining out on the Brunner serial), Fantasy and Science Fiction got 2.7 stars, Galaxy was an unusually low 2.6, as was IF (also a Pohl mag), and Fantastic finished at 2.4.

Women writers got extremely short shrift. We only saw a 6% participation; "Partners in Wonder" indeed.

As dreary as those numbers are, most magazines had at least one piece to recommend them, often their longest. You could take all the better than average stuff from this month's crop and fill two magazines. Thin ones.

Which gives me hope for next month, on or off the planet. Come space travel with me?

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

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction