There's a new anthology of original science fiction and fantasy stories in bookstores this month. It's certain to be the topic of a lot of discussion among SF buffs, and maybe even some arguments.
It's also big; more than five hundred pages, and it'll set you back a whopping seven bucks. It's so big, in fact, that Galactic Journey is going to slice it into three pieces and discuss it in a trio of articles. (Why three? Because it's got thirty-three stories in it, and eleven articles would be silly.)
Let's dig into the first part of this mammoth collection and see if it's destined to be the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of speculative fiction, or just another dud.
Wraparound cover art by the husband-and-wife team of Leo and Diane Dillon, who also provide an interior illustration for each story.
Before we get to the nitty-gritty of fiction, we've got no less than two forewords by Isaac Asimov and a lengthy introduction by the editor.
In The Second Revolution, the Good Doctor outlines the history of modern science fiction from Gernsback through Campbell, and into the New Wave. Astounding was the first revolution, you see, and now we're in the second one. That may be a little simplistic, but it gets the point across.
Harlan and I, on the other hand, is a personal essay about Asimov's relationship with the editor, ending with a teasing anecdote. Ellison adds a long footnote offering a different version of their first encounter.
More substantial is Thirty-Two Soothsayers, the editor's longwinded but endlessly entertaining and informative account of what this book is supposed to accomplish, and how it came to be. Ellison wanders all over the place in this piece, and it's a fun ride. In brief, the stories he chose are supposed to be both enjoyable and provocative, with new ideas that might not appear in the usual SF markets. We'll see.
(If you're wondering why thirty-two and not thirty-three, it's because one writer supplies two stories; but that's for another time.)
I should mention that each story comes with an introduction by the editor and an afterword by the author, except for the one case when those roles are reversed. You'll see what I mean in a while.
I'm going to do something a little different here. I'll rate the quality of each story with the usual one to five stars, but I'll also add an indication for how dangerous each one is. This will be determined by sexual content, violence, profanity, experimental narrative style, taboo subject matter, etc. GREEN = safe to proceed, YELLOW = caution indicated, RED = hazardous conditions.
An unnamed character flees through the universe in an attempt to escape those who have overthrown his reign. To say anything else would give away the point of the story, which is an allegory.
Three stars. YELLOW for questioning the deeply held beliefs of some readers.
In a premise similar to his excellent novel Thorns, the author presents a severely injured astronaut who has been put back together by aliens. In this case, however, his body has been restored to normal, but his mind has been made more sensitive to the emotions of others. That doesn't work out well.
Silverberg has become a fine writer, one of the best now working. Like Thorns, this is an uncompromising look at human suffering.
Five stars. YELLOW for scenes of extreme cruelty.
The Day After the Day the Martians Came, by Frederik Pohl
Set in the very near future, this tale deals with humanity's reaction to the discovery of ugly, semi-intelligent lifeforms on the red planet. Mostly, people make nasty jokes about them. The intent of the story is to expose human prejudices, in a way that's about as subtle as a brick thrown through a window.
Three stars. YELLOW for dealing with a major social problem in the USA today.
This is, by far, the longest story in the book. It is also incredibly dense and fast-paced, so any attempt to describe the plot would be a miserable failure. That said, I'll just mention that it takes place in a very strange future, involves an artist and his tax-dodging ancestor, and contains a ton of wordplay. There are scenes of slapstick violence that are simultaneously hilarious and offensive. It's a wild rollercoaster ride, so keep your seatbelt tightly secured.
Five stars. RED for a Joycean narrative style and Rabelaisian humor.
The Malley System, by Miriam Allen deFord
In the future, the worst criminals receive a very unusual punishment. This is a grim story, that doesn't shy away from the horrors perpetuated by human monsters.
In a decadent future, a man uses the only time machine in existence to kidnap people from the past, in order to satisfy the whims of his sadistic granddaughter. He picks the wrong potential victim. This is a spine-chilling little science fiction horror story with a twist in its tail.
This is a direct sequel to the previous story, with an introduction by Bloch and an afterword by Ellison. An infamous murderer finds himself in the far future, where the inhabitants enter his mind in order to enjoy his sensations as he kills.
Written in an experimental, almost cinematic style, this is an unrelenting look at the evil that lurks inside all of us. Not for weak stomachs.
People get so-called time gas supplied to their homes through pipes. It allows them to enjoy better times in the past. As with any form of technology, things can go wrong. This is a light comedy with a unique premise.
Three stars. GREEN for whimsy.
The Man Who Went to the Moon – Twice, by Howard Rodman
A young boy takes a trip to the Moon by holding on to a balloon, becoming a local celebrity. Many years later, as a very old man, his only claim to fame is not as valued as it once was. Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury, this is a gentle, quietly melancholy tale.
The Communist East has won a hot war with the Capitalist West. The protagonist is a bureaucrat given the task to determine which of two term papers truly represents the Party line. Meanwhile, a seemingly harmless substance allows him to perceive what appear to be multiple and contradictory truths about the Mao-like Party leader.
That's a vague synopsis, because this is one of the author's stories in which you've never quite sure what is real and what is illusory. Ellison strongly hints that it was written under the influence of hallucinatory drugs. Be that as it may, it's a provocative and disturbing look at the possible nature of reality.
Four stars. YELLOW for politics, drug use, and existential terror.
A man is sentenced to death for his crime. His organs will be harvested for transplant. Through a series of unusual circumstances, he manages to escape from prison, but his troubles aren't over yet.
The full impact of this story doesn't hit the reader until the very end, when we find out the nature of the man's offense. Other than that, it's an ordinary enough science fiction action/suspense story.
Three stars. GREEN for futuristic adventure.
One Down, Two To Go
So far, this is a fine collection of stories, without a bad one in the bunch. Sensitive readers might want to stay away from the more dangerous ones, but most mature SF fans will enjoy it.
Philip K. Dick has a new novel out. And guess what, it’s very strange. Are you shocked?
The Ganymede Takeover, by Philip K. Dick & Ray Nelson
The space slugs have taken over the Earth.
Those slugs come from the distant planet Ganymede. Earth is their first invasion target ever. But they have ambitions. The Ganymedeans have managed to conquer and occupy our planet. However, the slugs are failing at their third objective: to absorb the people of Earth as their servants.
Resistance is strong in at least one area of the planet: the Bale of Tennessee. There, he will have to fight the Neegs, who are led by a violent revolutionary named Percy X. The dreaded assignment of conquering that area goes to Mekkis, an insecure slug whose fortune bodes poorly.
Mekkis and his fellow conquerors have one great weapon at hand they can use to defeat the humans. A human, the neurotic Dr. Baldani, condemned as quisling, has developed a reality distortion bomb, which can destroy all of humanity. But will he allow that weapon to be used?
The Ganymede Invasion, a rare collaboration between Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, is dense as hell and weird as hell. Dick and Nelson make a pretty good team. Nelson smooths out Dick while Dick makes Nelson weird. Their San Francisco writers’ workshop friends must love the stories the pair creates
The esteemed Mr. Nelson
Truth be told, I missed Dick’s wild randomness at times; I was genuinely shocked that nearly all the elements introduced in the first chapter resolve by the end! Meanwhile, Nelson pushed Dick to go even further with his usual psychedelia, with references to supermarket carts with submachine guns and to vorpal meat cleavers, among many other stunning images. It’s the Summer of Love and this book came from the San Francisco area, so how can you ask for anything timelier?
The Black Panthers at the California state capitol, earlier this year
Percy X is the most intriguing character in the novel. Percy can be seen as an analog to Malcolm X, which would make the Neegs the equivalent of the Black Panther Party. Or he can be seen as a reflection of Perseus, the Greek legend who slayed monsters and came to found the republic of Mycenae. Either interpretation would fit this story. Percy is a crusader, a fighter against the literal monsters of the Ganymedeans and is a true hero. Heck, the name Ganymede implies a reference to Medea.
Philip K. Dick, Nancy Dick, and Robert Silverberg conversing in lobby, Baycon
I haven’t discussed the sentient hotel rooms or talking, neurotic taxi cabs or even a key Quisling type character in the book. There’s just too much to cover in a review like this and I want you to be surprised by what you read.
The Ganymede Invasion isn’t great Dick, but it is hugely entertaining. And like nearly every novel by PKD, Ganymede is a short quick read. I recommend this oddball collaboration.
The third collection of Ellison stories contains the now-typical set of introductions which folks often like as much as the stories they precede. It's a thin volume, with just seven pieces, and it suffers for being less tonally nuanced than the prior two collections. The subject is pain, Harlan's personal pain, and while I'm sure the tales were cathartic to write for him, by the end, they all start to sound like Harlan kvetching to us over a Shirley Temple at around 3am.
Not that they're bad–Harlan is a gifted author–but they are somewhat one-note and unsubtle. To wit:
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: The last five humans are trapped in the bowels of the sapient computer who hates and torments them. This is the unexpurgated version of the story that appeared in IF a few months prior, with less veiled references to homosexuality and genitalia.
It's a raw, powerful piece. Four stars.
Big Sam was My Friend: An interstellar carnival makes a stop on a planet with a tradition of human sacrifice. Big Sam, the circus strong man, can't let them go through with it…with disastrous results. Interesting more for the detail than the events.
Three stars.
Eyes of Dust: On a world devoted to and obsessed with personal beauty, can deformity be tolerated? Be careful – perfection may need imperfection to exist!
Another passionate story, but somehow forgettable. Three stars.
World of the Myth: Three astronauts are stranded on a planet: a cruel but charismatic man, the woman who loves him, and the nice fellow who loves the woman. They meet a race of telepathic ants, conversation with whom reveals the true nature of the parties communicating. Can the astronauts stand that knowledge?
It's a neat setup, but a rather prosaic story. Three stars.
Lonelyache: A widower is tormented by dreams in which he is hounded by assassins, forced to dispatch them in the most brutal of fashions. Gradually, the man becomes aware that there is an inchoate…something…sharing his apartment, feeding on his unhappiness. Can he escape its thrall before it's too late?
The story with the most Harlan-esque voice. Three stars.
Delusion for a Dragon Slayer: To all respects, Warren Glazer Griffin was the milquetoastiest of milquetoasts. But when he died in a freak accident, he was allowed to live an afterlife fantasy in which he indulged all of his suppressed depravities. The result isn't pretty.
Three stars.
Pretty Maggie Moneyes: Inspired by a true encounter (and with the best introduction of the collection), this is the tale of the woman who sold her soul for comfort, lost it permanently to a slot machine, and resorted to desperate measures to get free.
An amnesiac narrator on a planet of liars. Le Guin takes us far into Earth’s future where humanity has regressed under the domination of a group of aliens called the Shing.
Our main character is Falk, who looks almost human except for his slitted yellow eyes. He wakes up in the forest with no memory of where he came from and mentally reduced back to the mind of a baby. Falk is taken in by a family and rehabilitated, all the while learning their culture, which fears the Shing who now control Earth and hinder civilization from developing to be any larger than scattered small groups of people across the planet. The Shing are most notable for being liars, something Falk is warned about throughout the book. However, in order to reclaim the answers that were stolen from him, Falk must leave the family and seek out the Shing.
The book drags during the first 80 pages as Falk travels alone through nature. This part serves well to relay the isolation of his journey and to show the effect the Shing’s presence has on Earth’s development. However, overall nothing of great significance happens in this part of the book.
Once Falk gets captured by a hostile group of humans, he meets a slave woman named Strella with whom he plots his escape in exchange for her guiding him to the Shing. Here the book becomes interesting, particularly when something Strella says suggests that the reason Falk has been stripped of his memory might be because that is how the Shing punish criminals. It made me wonder if Falk is really the good guy after all.
However, it isn’t until Falk reaches the City of Illusion that the story reaches its full potential and lives up to its name, as deceptions are uncovered and more information is revealed to Falk, who doesn't know what is true and what is false – including everything he has experienced up until this point. He’s unable to trust the Shing and unsure if they have ulterior motives. I had a lot of fun reading these chapters. Something would be revealed only to be quickly disproved and it made for an exciting read where I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next because I barely knew what the truth was – much like the hero.
The end chapters redeem the slow beginning. For a small world, Le Guin well establishes Earth as something distant and foreign to a modern reader. The plot exercises the brain and leaves the reader in suspense. However, this book is far longer than it needed to be. For 160 pages long, the first 80 pages are particularly empty and I think Le Guin could have achieved the same story by cutting out half the words.
I enjoyed this book, but it failed to impress. 3 stars.
The Strength to Dream
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
The Young Philosopher himself
There have been many surprising entries into SF writing, but perhaps none more so than Colin Wilson taking on H. P. Lovecraft.
Best known as a philosopher, Colin Wilson received great acclaim for his first book The Outsider and continues to be successful in this arena, including last year’s Introduction to The New Existentialism.
He has also attempted to express some of his ideas in popular crime fiction, such as Ritual in the Dark and The Glass Cage.
Neither of these avenues lead directly to science fiction, let alone Lovecraft. So how did it happen?
Apparently, Wilson is a fan of the concepts of Lovecraft and had written an essay saying so but expressing distaste for his actual prose. August Derleth saw this and wrote to Wilson suggesting he write his own book on these themes.
The result is The Mind Parasites, what could be described as Post-Lovecraftian. An optimistic existentialist new-wave cosmic horror, which is likely to either impress or appall the reader!
The story starts in 1997, with Dr. Austin learning of the suicide of his friend and colleague Dr. Weissman. The news unsettles him, but the world suicide rate has been increasing over the decades and is in fact a major concern of many people. Delving into his papers, Austin discovers Weissman had been experimenting with ways of expanding his consciousness but became fearful of an evil presence.
At the same time Dr. Austin is working on a dig in Turkey. They discover a remarkable Proto-Hattian settlement where the inhabitants worship “Aboth the Unclean” and have massive blocks of stone which should have been impossible to move in 10000 BC. The site becomes a sensation when an elderly August Derleth notes how much this mirrors the stories of writer H. P. Lovecraft.
These two facts come together to form a startling discovery: for centuries mankind has had its progress impeded by a force that feeds on our despair. The Mind Parasites!
Whilst the concepts and themes are definitely of the cosmic horror seen in 30s Weird Tales, it is also most clearly something different.
Firstly, its writing is more academic than purple prose. This story is said to be compiled from a variety of papers in the early 21st century, explaining the unusual world events in the early 1990s. The fact that it is being told from the future provides an explanation for the style and shows the author giving real consideration to the context.
Secondly, in keeping with Wilson’s “New Existentialist” ideals, the characters are not simply the victims of ideas too big to grasp. Instead this is an ode to the limitless potential of the human mind. Rather than nihilistic, the ending is optimistic and the revelation about the true nature of the titular creatures was a fascinating surprise to me.
Thirdly, and what is likely to repel some readers, is that large passages are devoted to discussion of various theories of the mind and man’s place in the universe. These sections read more like Huxley’s Heaven and Hell than an Ashton Smith fantasy. That is not to say there is not plenty of action, with scenes involving wars, ESP and space flight. But your tolerance for exploration of Wilson’s pet theories is likely to dictate your enjoyment.
Grading this on a standard scale is tough as it is so strange and experimental. So I am giving it a – very subjective – five stars!
And because we have so many books to review, we'll be having another Galactoscope in just two days! Stay tuned…
Is something stirring at Amazing? After several issues devoid of non-fiction features, this one starts a book review column by Harry Harrison, whose brief stint as nominal editor of the British magazine SF Impulse ended a few months ago. Is a remake in order? A change of guard in the wind? There’s no hint.
by Johnny Bruck
The cover itself is also a change, not having been looted from the back files of Amazing or Fantastic Adventures. The pleasantly lurid image of space-suited men watching or fleeing a battle of spacecraft is not credited, but other sources attribute it to a 1964 issue of Perry Rhodan, Germany’s long-running weekly paperback novella series, artist’s name Johnny Bruck. I wonder if the publisher is paying him, or anyone.
Also perplexing is the shift in presentation on the cover. Last issue, the display of big names was ostentatious. Here, the only thing prominently displayed is “Winston K. Marks Outstanding New Story Cold Comfort,” sic without apostrophe. Marks is one of the legion who filled the mid-1950s’ proliferation of SF magazines with competent and forgettable copy. After a couple of stories in the early ‘40s, he reappeared with a few in 1953, contributed a staggering 25 stories in 1954 and 20 in 1955, and trailed off thereafter; he hasn’t been seen in these parts since mid-1959. But here he is, name in lights, while Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and Philip K. Dick are relegated to small type over the title. Odd, and probably counter-productive, to say the least.
Frank Herbert’s serial The Heaven Makers concludes in this issue. Imagine an SF novel oriented to the reference points of Charles Fort, Richard Shaver, and soap opera. And then imagine—this is the hard part—that it’s nonetheless pretty readable.
First, we are property! Just like Charles Fort said. You may think you understand human history, but everything you know is wrong! Earth is secretly dominated by the Chem, a species of very short, bandy-legged, silver-skinned alien humanoids who have been made immortal, and also connected tele-empathically, by a discovery of one of their ancient savants—Tiggywaugh’s web (definitely sic). Only problem is . . . they’re bored. Eternity weighs heavily on them. They must be entertained and distracted!
So, the Chem send Storyships around the galaxy, though Earth’s is the only one we see. This ship rests on the bottom of the ocean, from which vantage the Chem shape history in large and small ways both by direct intervention and by remote manipulation and heightening of human emotional states. The result: wars that might be settled quickly at the conference table can be prolonged and intensified, and susceptible individuals can be driven as far as murder. These events are recorded, processed, spiced up with their own emotional track, and broadcast to pique the jaded souls of the Chem.
One of the stars of this industry is Fraffin, proprietor of Earth’s Storyship, but he’s suspected of letting hints drop to Earthfolk about what’s going on, a major crime among the Chem. Kelexel, posing as a visitor, has been sent by the authorities to get to the bottom of things, after four previous investigators have found nothing and, suspiciously, resigned. But Kelexel is quickly corrupted himself. Fraffin shows him a “pantovive” of a man manipulated by the Chem into murdering his wife, which Kelexel finds quite gripping. He also becomes obsessed with the woman’s daughter, Ruth (the Chem are quite captivated by the physiques of humans, and can interbreed with them). Fraffin, having found Kelexel’s vulnerability, sets out to procure her for him. So three dwarfish figures show up at her back door, immobilize her with some sort of ray, and carry her away to be mind-controlled and ravished by Kelexel.
At this point, the nagging sense of familiarity I was feeling came into focus. Herbert has reinvented Richard Shaver’s Deros! Shaver, a former psychiatric patient, wrote up his delusions of sadistic cave-dwelling degenerates tormenting normal people, which (with much reworking by editor Ray Palmer) boosted Amazing’s mid-1940s circulation to unheard-of levels, until the publisher put an end to the disreputable spectacle a few years later. Now Herbert has gussied up the “Shaver Mystery” for prime time! The distorted physical appearance . . . check. The mind control rays . . . check. The underground caverns . . . not exactly, these characters are underwater instead. But that’s a minor detail.
by Gray Morrow
Oh, yes, the soap opera part. Up on dry land, Andy Thurlow, a court psychologist, is Ruth’s old boyfriend; she threw him over for someone else, who turned out to be a low-life. Andy’s never gotten over it. Her father, holed up after his Chem-driven murder of her mother, won’t surrender to anybody but Andy. Meanwhile, Andy, who is wearing polarized glasses as a result of an eye injury, has started to see what prove to be manifestations of Chem activity, invisible to anyone else. Andy also gets back with Ruth, who has moved out on her husband; he takes her back to the marital house and waits so she can pick up some possessions. But the Chem snatch her as described, and her husband falls through a glass door and dies.
Back at the Chems’ submarine hideout, Kelexel is having his way with the pacified Ruth, who, when he’s not using her, studies the Chem via the pantovive machine, learning more and more, while Kelexel harbors growing misgivings about the whole Chem enterprise. Andy, up on land, is trying to persuade Ruth’s father the murderer to cooperate with an insanity defense while wondering if the strange manifestations he has seen account for Ruth’s disappearance. The plot lines are eventually resolved in confrontations among Kelexel, Fraffin, Ruth, and Andy with dialogue that is more reminiscent of daytime TV than Herbert’s turgid usual. In the end, Herbert actually makes a readable story out of this sensational and largely ridiculous material. Three stars.
Cold Comfort, by Winston K. Marks
by Gray Morrow
Winston Marks’s "Outstanding New Story" Cold Comfort is an amusing first-person rant by the first man to be cryogenically frozen for medical reasons and revived when his problem can be cured. He’s pleased enough with his new kidneys, but isn’t impressed by this brave new world in which corporations now overtly dominate the world, there’s a nine-million-soldier garrison in East Asia, etc. etc. E.g. , “I am only now recovering from my first exposure to your local art gallery. Who the hell invented quivering pigments?” It’s at best a black-humorous comedy routine, but well enough done. Three stars.
The Mad Scientist, by Robert Bloch
by Virgil Finlay
After Marks it is downhill, or over a cliff. The Mad Scientist by Robert Bloch, from Fantastic Adventures, September 1947, is a deeply unfunny farce about an over-the-hill scientist who works with fungi, who has a young and beautiful wife with whom the protagonist is having an affair. They want to get rid of the scientist with an extract of poisonous mushrooms, but he outsmarts them, and what a silly bore. The fact that the protagonist is a science fiction writer and the story begins with some blather about how dangerous such people are does not enhance its interest at all. One star.
Atomic Fire, by Raymond Z. Gallun
by Leo Morey
Raymond Z. Gallun’s Atomic Fire (Amazing, April 1931) is a period piece, Gallun’s third published story, in which far-future scientists Aggar Ho and Sark Ahar (with huge chests to breathe the thin atmosphere, spindly and attenuated limbs, large ears, a coat of polar fur—evolution!) have discovered that the Black Nebula is about to swallow up the sun and kill all life on Earth. The solution? Atomic power, obviously, to be tested off Earth for safety (the spaceship has just been delivered). Unfortunately, their experiments first fail, then succeed all too well; but Sark Ahar’s quick thinking turns disaster into salvation! As the blurb might have read. Gallun had an imagination from the beginning, but the stilted writing makes this one hard to appreciate in these modern days of the 1960s. Two stars.
Project Nightmare, by Robert Heinlein
by William Ashman
In Robert Heinlein’s Project Nightmare, from the April/May 1953 Amazing, the Russians deliver an ultimatum demanding surrender, since they’ve mined American cities with nuclear bombs. The only hope is a colorful and miscellaneous bunch of clairvoyants to locate the bombs before they go off. It’s a fast-moving but superficial, wisecracking story, a considerable regression for the author. Some years ago he published an essay titled On the Writing of Speculative Fiction, and presented five rules for the aspiring writer. I think this story must illustrate the last two: “4. You must put it on the market. 5. You must keep it on the market until sold.” I suspect Heinlein intended this one for the slicks, and when none of them would have it, started down the ranks of the SF mags until it finally came to rest in Amazing, which, compounding the indignity, managed to lose his customary middle initial. Two stars.
Philip K. Dick’s The Builder (Amazing, December 1953/January 1954) is from his early Prolific Period—he published 31 stories in the SF magazines in 1953 and 28 in 1954, handily beating Winston K. Marks’s peak. How? With a certain number of tossed-off ephemerae like this one, in which an ordinary guy is obsessed for no reason he can articulate with building a giant boat in his backyard. A rather peculiar boat too, with no sails or motor or oars. And then: “It was not until the first great black drops of rain began to splash about him that he understood.” That’s it. Two stars for this shaggy-God story which is unfortunately not shaggy enough.
Summing Up
Well, that was pretty dreary. The issue’s only distinction is the unexpected readability of Herbert’s novel, which is the best, or least bad, of the serials this publisher has run. The most one can say about the reprint policy is that it has its ups and downs, and this issue is definitely the latter.
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by John Boston
The April Amazing splashes an impressive array of marquee names on the cover: Hugo winners Frank Herbert and Philip K. Dick, the well-remembered sardonic satirist William Tenn, and Richard Matheson and Jerome Bixby, famous not only from the printed page but from celebrated Twilight Zone episodes made from their stories. The once prominent David H. Keller, M.D., is relegated to the inside of the magazine.
by Frank R. Paul
This blaze of celebrity serves to distract from the cover itself, which looks like it emerged from one of Frank R. Paul’s off days, though that is partly the fault of the present editorial regime; the picture is drastically cropped from its first appearance on the back cover of the July 1946 Fantastic Adventures, where it was considerably more impressive, though still far from the artist’s best.
This is one of the magazine’s accidental theme issues; I can’t speak for the serial yet, but the majority of the short fiction is at least partly preoccupied with domesticity, its meaning and its travails.
Frank Herbert’s The Heaven Makers is a two-part serial, and as usual I will wait for the end before commenting. The blurb says it “offers the chilling hypothesis that all the world really is a stage with each of us . . . its players.” How many times have we read that one? To be fair, new ideas are scarce these days, and treatment is all; it’s not the meat, it’s the motion, as a salacious old blues song has it. A quick glance at the first page reveals the dense and turgid writing for which Herbert has become known. To be fair (again), his virtues sometimes take longer to announce themselves than his faults.
William Tenn’s The Last Bounce, from the September 1950 Fantastic Adventures, is a remarkably bad story for the writer who at the time was several years past the classic Child’s Play and whose almost as well-known Null-P was a few months away. It’s a tale of stellar exploration, complete with mystery planet, deadly monsters, scientific mumbo-jumbo, and clichéd characters and dialogue. There’s even an embarrassing spacemen’s anthem, which shows up more than once. And domesticity (or its absence) rears its head! There is considerable musing about Why Men Risk All to Brave the Unknown and Why Their Women Put Up With It and Wait for Them. It would be nice to be able to read this as satire, but I can’t convince myself. More likely, Tenn made a barroom bet that he could write the most hackneyed piece of tripe he was capable of and some editor would buy it. You win! One star.
David H. Keller, M.D., is here with A Biological Experiment, from Amazing, June 1928—his third published story. The blurb says, correctly, that it anticipates 1932’s Brave New World. (You know the one about tragedy and farce? Here it’s the other way around.) Here is a veritable epic of domestic relations. Like Keller’s first story, Revolt of the Pedestrians, this one posits an extreme departure from our natural (well, familiar) social arrangements followed by a drastic reaction and restoration of the traditional. Unfortunately there’s entirely too much talk here, and the action that follows it is cartoonish.
by Frank R. Paul
In the far future everyone is sterilized at an appropriate age; marriage is “companionate,” easily terminable, and babies are made in factories and provided to couples who apply for and obtain the necessary permit. But Leuson and Elizabeth, a couple of young rebels, want to go back to the old ways. Why? Because no one is happy! Love has disappeared from the world!
So says Leuson, towards the end of a seven-page monologue. (Elizabeth says, midway through: “Tell me again why they are not happy. I have heard you tell it before but tell me again. I want to hear it out here in the wilderness where we are alone—together.”) Leuson has stolen some books from the Library of Congress, where he works, to learn the history and how to survive the old-fashioned way. The happy couple elopes (a word Leuson discovered in his research) to live happily in a mountain cave, along the way capturing a goat to milk. Unfortunately, far from modern medicine, Elizabeth dies in childbirth (good idea, that goat). Along the way it has been revealed that this was a covertly sponsored rebellion; the couple’s parents have subtly nudged them along towards this destiny.
And now, the plan’s consummation, at the annual meeting in Washington of the National Society of Federated Women! “Five thousand leaders of their sex had gathered for the meeting and every woman in the nation was listening to the proceedings over the radio.” Leuson appears, carrying a basket, and reprises his seven-page lecture. “On and on he talked and as he talked there arose in the hearts of the women who listened a strange unrest and hunger for something that had once been their heritage.”
And at the end of this spiel . . . “He reached down into the basket and, picking up his daughter, held the baby high above the heads of the five thousand women and showed them a baby, born of the love of a man and a woman in a home.” The finale: “And as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, the women of the nation cried in unison: ‘Give us back our homes, our husbands, and our babies!’” Fade to black.
Richard Matheson’s Little Girl Lost (Amazing, October/November 1953) is a capable potboiler, efficiently recycling with stock characters a stock plot of the 1940s and ‘50s—domesticity upended by the weird and threatening. Young Tina disappears in her living room; her parents Chris and Ruth can hear her but not see her or figure out where she is. What to do in the wee hours with an invisible child but call Chris’s friend Bill, “an engineering man, CalTech, top man with Lockheed over in the valley.” Bill quickly susses it out: “I think she’s in another dimension.” (Later, he adds, “probably the fourth.”) Meanwhile, in the spirit of the times, Ruth is more or less continuously hysterical.
by Ray Houlihan
And so is the dog, but to better effect. He’s whining and scratching to be let in, and when he is admitted—to keep from waking the neighbors—he runs straight to the dimensional hole the people can’t see, and now little Tina has company. Soon enough, Chris blunders partly into the hole, grabs kid and dog, and Bill pulls him out by his legs, which are protruding into our dimension. Domestic tranquility is restored, and they switch the couch and the TV so if anything goes through again it will be Arthur Godfrey. It’s facile and economical, and perfectly fashioned for TV; it made one of the better Twilight Zone episodes five years or so ago. Three stars.
Philip K. Dick’s Small Town (Amazing, May 1954) is equally domestic, but not quite as domesticated, as the Matheson story. Here, the strains of a bad marriage exacerbated by an oppressive job burst out into the larger world. Verne Haskel doesn’t get along with his wife, hates his job, and finds comfort only in his basement, where, starting with an electric train layout, he has built a scale model of the entire town and tinkers with it constantly. As his frustrations build, he begins tearing things out of his faithful representation and remaking the model town, culminating in ripping out Larson’s Pump & Valve, the site of his torment, stomping it to pieces, and replacing it with a mortuary. And, of course, it turns out reality (or “reality”—this is after all PKD) now conforms to the fruits of Haskel’s tantrum—and things end with a suggestion (this is after all PKD) that there’s a higher power than Haskel keeping an eye on things.
Three stars, more lustrous than Matheson’s to my taste.
The issue winds up with Jerome Bixby’s Angels in the Jets (Fantastic, Fall 1952). At least one person likes this story; Frederik Pohl anthologized it in his 1954 anthology Assignment in Tomorrow. I disliked it when I read that book, and it hasn’t improved much since. Intrepid space explorers land on an inviting planet; one crew member is inadvertently directly exposed to its atmosphere, which renders her psychotic; she contrives to expose everyone else; and the protagonist, who has been out exploring while all this was going on, returns to the prospect of living in isolation as long as his bottled air holds out, or giving up, joining the crowd, and becoming psychotic right away. (Not much domesticity here, except for the hints of the deranged social order, or disorder, emerging among the psychotics.) A story that starts out at a dead end and consists of reaffirmations that it’s a dead end is not much of a story to my taste. But at least it’s well written. Two stars.
Summing Up
Hey, it's been worse in this bottom-of-the-market magazine. We have pretty readable and competent stories by Dick and Matheson and an amusing bad period piece by Keller, balanced against lackluster pieces by Tenn and Bixby; and the brooding prospect of Frank Herbert at length looms over it all as final judgment is postponed. Redemption? Maybe. To paraphrase generations of disgruntled baseball fans: Wait till next issue.
[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…]
Three titles for you today across two books (reminds me of the old astronomical saw: "Three out of every two stars is a binary"). None of them are great, but one of them is surprisingly decent given the source.
"Fast-paced, readable fun," pretty much describes everything Mr. High has written of late, and perhaps ever (my records only go back to 1961). His latest effort, Twin Planets, (from Paperback Library) does not break the mold.
It starts promisingly enough: A fellow named Denning is driving his car when it suddenly becomes very cold, the policemen are dressed quite oddly, and the sun is now a sullen orange orb on the horizon. Has he traveled to the future? Into another dimension?
Turns out, the answer is both. Earth has an analog that the natives call "Firma", with a slightly different history. Centuries ago, aliens appeared and froze the planet's rotation (with attendant momentum-related catastrophe). The world is now divided into a temperate zone, a hot zone, and a frigid region (where Denning had been transported).
Denning has a twin on Firma, name of Liston. Possessed of insatiable sexual desire that couples with his intelligence and strength, he is banished to one of the inhospitable zones early in the book, to be recruited by the resistance. Said resistance also taps Denning, who comes into his own superhuman powers–as well as a raging libido and attractiveness to women.
Turns out Denning and Liston are biological constructs, originally to be linchpins of the resistance, but by the end of the book free agents with a hankering to topple the aliens who run Earth from the shadows. Lots of running around, killing people, implied sexual exploits, and a happy ending.
This is a very old style of book. And while some of the ideas are quite interesting, for the most part, they are set aside for the action. Also, the competent women characters suffer for being hapless victims of their hormones, unable to resist the pheromones of their superhero companions. I raced through the first quarter of the book, but the last quarter took me several days, despite the novel's brevity.
Next up is Ace Double #G-614. Ace is known more for publishing "fast-paced, readable fun" than "thought-provoking classics" but you never know. After all, Tom Purdom's I Want the Stars and Terry Carr's Warlord of Kor both came out as halves of Ace Doubles.
Not so this first novel, I'm afraid. Mr. Shaw, whose name is completely unknown to me, starts off with a bang. If Anne McCaffrey wrote The Ship Who Sang, this book is the tale of "The Ship Who Barked". On board the inventively named "Spaceship-One" (presumably, Mr. Shaw is English) is a lone crewmember: a disembodied dog's brain. His mission is to scout out the Sirius system, which has been identified as a likely target to possess planets. Indeed, it has four planets, all identical copies. Only one of them is inhabited, by a Eloi-ish race of humans with Greek/Italian-esque names and blonde hair, who live symbiotically with a race of prehensile-handed dogs. Turns out the canines are the real power behind the throne (with truly groan-worthy names like "Chienandros" and "Perralto." Our hero, who calls himself "Ishmael", must work with them to secure colonizing rights while also delivering a message of warning to war-ravaged and overpopulated Earth.
There are things I liked about this book. Ishmael is a fun narrator, reminding me of Hank "The Beast" McCoy from Marvel's X-Men comic. The opening forty pages or so, before the ship gets to Sirius, are quite fun, indeed. The ship uses time travel as a space drive (letting the universe move underneath, as it were), which I've only seen once before, in Wallace West's The River of Time.
But the science is about thirty years out of date (planets formed by stellar collision, indeed), every gizmo is detailed for the pulp fans, and the setting and characters have as much subtlety as brutalist architecture.
This is the one I was really worried about. The Richmonds, a married couple that (reportedly) collaborates telepathically, have heretofore been Analog exclusives. The best they've managed thus far are a pair of passable three-star shorts, the rest being bad to dreadful. And in contrast to the other three tales, it's the beginning that's discouraging. Terry Ferman ("Terran Freeman?") is an electrical engineering student who, upon twiddling with a certain radio transmitter, finds himself on a faraway planet. He is now a captive of a computerized jailer, who refers to him as a basic galactic citizen and impresses upon him a rudimentary knowledge of the star-spanning polity he is supposedly a member of. Terry is also given a set of nifty tools including a ray gun, X-Ray glasses, a pocket translator, and a compass. At this point, I was sure this was going to be some kind of interstellar spy story, thinly cloaked wish fulfillment for boys.
But as the book goes on, Terry's situation becomes more complex. He meets Grontag, a dinosaur-like alien, also a student of electricity, who was similarly summoned unwillingly. They befriend "Tinkan", a robot that has become independent of the computer and developed a will of its own. It becomes clear that some sort of catastrophe has befallen the galactic civilization, and the marooned team must figure out what happened, why, and who might be responsible.
It's a very technical story, with lots of doodads created by someone who clearly has a background in electrical engineering. The pacing is excellent, however, with each section more interesting than the last. The Richmonds also have interesting things to say about repressive civil relationships like slavery and marriage. After the slow start, I finished the book in just two sessions, which is saying something.
Three and a half stars.
Five out of Two
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
One of the little curiosities of the ease of getting American science fiction novels in Britain depends on whether they have a UK edition coming out.
If there is no UK publisher on the horizon it is a little harder to get hold of, but no one worries if a bookseller imports them. You may not be able to pick them up at WH Smith’s or your local library but most good booksellers with an interest in SF will probably be able to help you find a copy.
On the other hand, if it has a UK edition coming out, you will really struggle to get hold of an overseas version and have to wait for the local version to be produced. This is the case with both the books I am reviewing, and whilst I had a contact send me an early copy of The Einstein Intersection, I had to wait for The Revolving Boy:
At the start of this book there is not much to suggest this is going to be science fiction. Yes, this is set very slightly in the future, but it is simply a slightly more conservative United States of the 1970s, not something requiring much imagination given signs of backlash like Republican gains in US midterms or Mary Whitehouse’s crusades over here. At first sight it appears to be about a good relationship between a mother and a child with autistic tendencies. The common depiction of autism in science fiction is often very negative.
Take, as an example, this passage from Disch’s recent Mankind Under Leash:
The nuts – in this whole cellblock you won’t find anything else. And these, I should point out, are only the worst, the most hopeless cases. ‘Autism’ is the technical word that the psychologists use to describe their condition.
Whilst in The Revolving Boy young Derv feels the need to spin around on occasion. His mother is willing to accept this as something he does. She only interferes when he is spinning on the stairs and so works for a compromise:
She told Derv in an offhand way that he must not spin on the stairs and why.
‘But what if I have to?’
Although she knew he thought of it this way, in terms of coercive psychological need, she was a little taken aback by the straightforward way he put it.
‘How many do you have to take?’
‘Just two on the stairs. I take another when I get outside.’
‘Then suppose you take the three when you get outside.’
‘All right,’ he said
It was as easy as that.
It shows such a mature and well-reasoned approach to a child with autistic tendencies. No suggestion it is caused by a ‘refrigerator mother’, not showing a complete inability to communicate with the outside world, but a child with a different perception and how you can work with them in a loving way to allow them to function in a world where most people do not have these tendencies. As someone who appears to have a lot of these tendencies, I was very heartened by this.
At the same time he makes friends with Prin, who is quiet and has perfect pitch. Together they are able to form a bond that allows them to connect in a world that can be hard for those that do not fall into patterns expected by wider society.
The source of science fictional content comes from the fact that Derv turns out to have been the first child born in space. When he was weightless and away from other signals he seems to have become connected to an electromagnetic signal from another solar system. As he gets older he finds himself leaning towards this signal whenever he is awake. This comes to the attention of Project Ozma who believe he may be the key to discovering extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Despite the concept of a child being able to point the direction for our radio telescopes, the whole story goes to great pains to appear realistic and make it seem less fantastical than most of what you would read in Analog or If.
But at its heart it is also a character story, the tale of him and Prin growing up. It is heart warming, clever and a real delight to read.
All of us here at Galactic Journey see Delany as one of the brightest talents currently writing science fiction, so it is with great anticipation we wait for his next novel. He began with writing his tales of a fantasy-tinged future Earth with The Jewels of Aptor and the Toron novels, but more recently has moved to outer space tales such as Babel-17. He seems now to have come back down to Earth but is also attempting to do something more ambitious than before.
Greek myths have been a regular source of inspiration for writers of the fantastic. The tale of Theseus and the Minotaur itself has been retold by authors as different as Jack Williamson and Thomas Burnett Swann. Here Delany blends in a number of Greek myths into this tale, but adds a kind of Ballardian spin to it, where our popular culture is seen just as much of a myth to these folks. With The Beatles being seen as a later example of the Orpheus myth and advertising slogans used as nuggets of wisdom at the start of chapters.
The Orpheus myth is probably the most central of the tales here, for Lo Lobey himself is a musician and his driving force is to save his beloved Friza from Kid Death. However, the way legends are treated in this book is fascinating, that there is not really a distinction between truth and fiction, and it is entirely possible for one to imitate the other. I can’t help but wonder if Delany has some familiarity with the ideas of C. S. Lewis but is choosing to apply them in a non-Christian context.
In this future, humans have all left the Earth and others are inhabiting it in the remains of humanity. We are introduced to this concept so casually I almost missed it when it is stated by PHAEDRA (a computer with the kind of silly reverse acronym people are fond of these days). It is an interesting concept that manages to at once be central to the story but also you could enjoy without knowing. For this is what Delany does, carefully layering understanding so it can be read in multiple ways, just like the myths that are being imitated.
For there is so much more in here than I have space to elucidate. Among others it touches on areas such as racism, gender, ESP, colonialism, the nature of truth and more besides.
I have seen Delany’s earlier works compared with the late great Cordwainer Smith’s writing. The Einstein Intersection, I would posit, is much more reminiscent of Zelazny. As such it is less accessible than The Ballad of Beta-2 but also more ambitious and thankfully succeeds.
Delany continues to be one of the brightest new lights of science fiction writing and this continues to reveal new depths to his talents.
Five Stars
by Jason Sacks
Sometimes Too Much Plot is Too Much
One of the things I love about Philip K. Dick’s novels is how they always seem to be about one thing but usually end up being about something very different. Usually his fake-out strategy works brilliantly, but in his latest novel, Dick seems to believe his own fake-out.
Counter-Clock World starts with an idea which could inspire a full novel just in its implications: What if time, somehow, started rolling backwards? How would living in a counter-clock world affect human relationships, our relationship with history, families, the economy, society? Would rebirth be a horror or pleasure? How would those who mourned the dead, maybe even moved beyond their mourning, handle the change? What would be the implications to a society if a specific person was reborn, a person who might be especially evil or especially good or just especially controversial?
These are all tantalizing questions, and Dick does explore most of them in this fascinating book. Of course, Dick being Dick, he explores many of them obliquely, in veiled allusions and small asides in dialogue. Far from making his ideas feel weaker, though, this commonplace element gives the book a naturalistic feel (as outlandish ideas often do in Dick novels) while also feeling profoundly strange.
I gotta say, there are also plenty of ridiculous ideas in this book, like how he shows cigarettes are smoked from stub to full cigarette (with the odor diffusing as the cigarette grows), or the idea that food is regurgitated and reconstituted into its source foods (okay, rather a disgusting idea), or how eventually everyone reverts to baby age and then has to crawl back into a womb and be absorbed into a body (a surprisingly moving scene in the book).
But there are also plenty of eerie moments in Counter-Clock. As the book begins, Officer Joseph Tinbane is cruising past a cemetery when he hears a voice beckoning him from a grave. Landing, he discovers an old woman has woken up in her coffin and is begging for help escaping her home six feet underground. Dick quickly establishes this as a normal part of Tinbane’s job, as Dick relates this event often becomes an all-night ritual which requires enlisting the services of something called a Vitarium.
Thankfully, the officer knows a man named Sebastian Hermes, reborn himself and the owner of The Flask of Hermes Vitarium.
This being a Dick novel, rebirth hasn’t been an ideal experience for Hermes. Sebastian is even more neurotic than he was when alive, haunted by nightmares of his awakening in his grave and stuck in a complicated marriage with someone who doesn’t quite understand him. Hermes sort of dreams of emigrating from California to Mars, but he’s literally grounded on Earth, digging up the bodies of those who died, more or less systemically since the Hobart Effect struck and changed everything.
So I’ve given you an idea of this book, and its world, and yeah, you say, I’m in. I'll buy the book because this all sounds fascinating.
Hold off for a second before running to the paperback stands at your local Korvettes, because all my setup is kind of prologue.
A rare photo of Mr. Dick, his wife and child
What if I told you Dick’s main topic for this issue is the idea of what happens if a popular religious prophet is reborn, and the prophet is in opposition to an evil Library?
Yep, it’s a Philip K. Dick novel, so you gotta be ready for a swerve.
See, Dick’s attention is really on the recently resurrected body of the Anarch Thomas Peak, dead prophet and founder of the Udi cult. The Anarch is articulate, philosophizing from the likes of Plotinus, Plato, Kant, Leibnitz, and Spinoza. Naturally, a group of fascist librarians hate the Azarch, and somehow the book descends into being a crazy oddball escape heist which involves LSD bombs, the slowing down of time, nuclear weapons striking a library, and the odd paradox of what happens when you kill someone who was already dead.
Yeah, Counter Clock World is more than a little crazy, which is no surprise really. What is surprising, though, is how Dick never quite gives this book the usual foundation in humanity most of his novels contain. This book lacks the warmth of Dr. Bloodmoney, or the existential horror of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer or the deep empathy of Martian Time-Slip. Instead we get an inelegant jumble which never quite lives up to the considerable potential of its amazing premise.
The December Amazing, all business, with the editorial and letter column seemingly dropped permanently , makes a nice-looking package, with a cover by Frank R. Paul shamelessly dominated by near-fire engine red. It’s taken from the back cover of the January 1942 Amazing, where it was titled “Glass City of Europa.” The caption there says "Transparent and opaque plastics make this a wonder city of ersatz science. Transportation is by means of giant, domesticated insects."
by Frank R. Paul
Interestingly, this cover is not only cropped from the original, as is usual, but altered: someone has airbrushed Jupiter from the upper left-hand corner! There’s nothing in its place but more red. Now that’s editing! Of a sort.
The featured fiction on the cover is the beginning of John Brunner’s two-part serial Born Under Mars. As usual I will withhold comment (and reading) until both parts are available. A quick inspection suggests that this one represents Brunner the capable post-pulp storyteller and not the author in his highly variable philosophical mode, the poles represented by his worthy The Whole Man and his unfortunate mess The Bridge to Azrael.
by Gray Morrow
Vanguard of the Lost, by John D. Macdonald
John D. Macdonald is best known for crime fiction—a lot of it. Since 1950 he has published 40-odd crime novels, most if not all original paperbacks. His current project is a series of novels about a private eye named Travis McGee—eight of them in three years. In all this criminous fecundity it’s easily forgotten that Macdonald was once an up-and-coming SF writer, and pretty prolific at that too. From 1948 to 1952 he published almost 50 stories in the SF magazines, in addition to a number in the borderline-SF pulp Doc Savage, all the while maniacially generating crime stories as well. He used multiple pseudonyms and sometimes had multiple stories in the same magazine issue. In his spare time he cranked out two decently-received SF novels, Wine of the Dreamers and Ballroom of the Skies. A lot of his work was excellent, too; highlights include A Child Is Crying, Flaw, Game for Blondes, and my own favorite, the compact and nasty Spectator Sport, all of them promptly anthologized.
by Julian S. Krupa
Then it all stopped. He had one last story in 1953 in Fantasy and Science Fiction, and since then it’s been all crime, almost all the time. He did appear in the Merril annual “best SF” volume a couple of years ago with a weak fantasy from Cosmopolitan, The Legend of Joe Lee, and in 1962 published The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything, a crime novel (rather, a farce with some crime and attempted crime in it) with an SF premise: the time-slowing gimmick of Wells’s The New Accelerator and its numerous successors, including Macdonald’s own Half-Past Eternity, a novella for the pulp Super Science Stories in 1950.
Crime, it appears, paid—at least better than SF. And in fact the SF market of the 1950s could never have accommodated the number of novels he produced. His post-1952 short fiction, meanwhile, was split between the crime fiction magazines and the more lucrative likes of Cosmopolitan, Collier’s, and the Saturday Evening Post.
After that buildup, it’s unfortunate that Macdonald’s Vanguard of the Lost, from the May 1950 Fantastic Adventures, doesn’t amount to more. Aliens have landed! Well, not landed yet, but their fleet of ships is traversing the globe. Larry Graim, statistician by day and SF writer by night, goes up to his building’s roof to check them out, and meets there Alice, a feisty young woman who proves to be the one who denounces Graim’s work relentlessly in the SF magazine letter columns (“the poor man’s Kuttner and the cretin’s van Vogt”).
Graim is disoriented by the fact that these aliens’ rather beat-up-looking, uncommunicative spaceships first seem to be mapping the earth, and then land and release large machines that start building things with no visible sentient direction. It’s completely different from the plots he’s familiar with from the SF magazines, so he and Alice go try to figure out what’s behind the seemingly mindless display. En route there is much mild satire of Everyman reacting to the unprecedented. The denouement is uninspiring and ends on a note of slapstick, to be followed by wedding bells to complete the meet-cute plot. It’s readable and vaguely amusing. Three stars.
The second novelet in the issue is David H. Keller’s first, and probably most famous, story, The Revolt of the Pedestrians (Amazing, Feb. 1928). In the future, everybody is on wheels, all the time. The mania for speed has overtaken everything else; the roadways are progressively more dominated by automobiles; pedestrians first become fair game and then are banned altogether, and hounded out of existence—or so it is thought. By the time of the story, the legs of the ordinary citizen have atrophied, and everyone gets around the house and the office in miniature personal cars. But . . . hidden in the wilderness, a remnant population of pedestrians is thriving, and scheming, and perfecting their science, and soon they shall declare themselves and their demands.
by Frank R. Paul
This of course is all quite ridiculous. But aside from that minor problem, this story is actually pretty good. It’s well paced in a rambling sort of way, very smoothly written, with engaging central characters, with Keller’s soon-to-be-characteristic expositional chunks going down smoothly, and without the cranky and rancorous ideological overtones of some of his later stories. And bear in mind that the absurd extrapolations here are a cruder version of the satirical method that later served Galaxy so well (compare Pohl’s The Midas Plague). Three stars—four if one compares it only to other works of its time.
I pinned Fletcher Pratt long ago as one of the more tedious SF writers going (actually, gone: 1897-1956). I remember as a child trying to force my way through his Double Jeopardy, thinking that if Doubleday published it and it was reprinted as a Galaxy Novel, there must be something to it. Then I encountered Invaders from Rigel, in which elephantine extraterrestrials turn humans into metal by manipulating radiation, and realized the futility of persevering with it, or with him. (In fairness, Pratt’s outright fantasy, both his collaborations with L. Sprague de Camp and his unaccompanied work, was much superior.)
The Pratt-fall du jour is Dr. Grimshaw’s Sanitarium, from the May 1934 Amazing. Our hero John Doherty is sent to the sanitarium by his employer for a rest after his courageous thwarting of a train robbery, which left him with some psychological difficulty. It soon becomes apparent that Dr. Grimshaw is a sinister character and there’s something funny going on. He’s turning people into midgets! Soon enough the Doctor gets wise to Doherty and his friends and really gives them the midget treatment, so they end up having to survive in the grass, which is now apparently taller than they are, and subsist on insects that they manage to kill with makeshift weapons (reportedly, June bugs are reasonably tasty but houseflies are disgusting). But now the end is near! Grimshaw’s got a cat, and all is lost. Two stars, barely.
by Leo Morey
Interestingly (sort of), when editors Leo Margulies and Oscar J. Friend solicited self-nominations for an anthology to be titled My Best Science Fiction Story, published in 1949, Pratt submitted this one, though he did acknowledge rewriting it for a more modern audience. I did not investigate the revision.
The Flame from Nowhere, by Eando Binder
by Julian S. Krupa
Eando Binder’s The Flame from Nowhere (Amazing, April 1939) is a routine period adventure story: forest fire proves impossible to stop, turns out it’s really an atomic fire, must have atomic fire-fighting methods, our hero quickly whips them up in a flurry of mumbo-jumbo, making the penultimate sacrifice, two stars. Next!
Philip K. Dick’s The Commuter, from the August/September 1953 Amazing, during the magazine’s brief flirtation with high pay rates and a stab at higher quality, is one of many facilely clever stories from his early period of prolific glibness. It starts with a small man asking a railroad clerk for a ticket book to Macon Heights, being told there is no Macon Heights, and disappearing. It happens again. A railroad official takes the train and finds it does stop at Macon Heights, which research shows was a proposed development that was rejected by the authorities years ago. So what’s happening to reality? The story, which foreshadows more substantial work by Dick on the same theme, is a trifle with a barb; it effectively conveys the official’s fear for his familiar world and life. Three stars.
He Took It with Him, by Clark Collins
The issue concludes with He Took It With Him, by Clark Collins, actually a pseudonym of Mack Reynolds, who mostly used it for articles in men’s magazines, such as Beat’s Guide to Paris, in French Frills for October-December of this year (Beat? In 1966? What a square.) and Guide to Fallen Women in Sir Knight in 1961. This story is from the April 1950 Fantastic Adventures. Bentley, a selfish rich guy with cancer who’s got a year to live, buys a noted scientist with a promise to build the research institute the scientist dreams of if he will only figure out how to preserve Bentley until such time as he can be revived and cured. The new Institute will be charged with keeping him safe, and also hiding his money, converted to gold and diamonds, until he is awakened to (of course) a nasty surprise that’s not too obvious to the reader. Readable, modestly clever, three stars.
by H. W. MacCauley
Summing Up
So, a middling reading experience—nothing too terrible, most of it at least agreeably readable, one surprise from the unlikely source of Dr. Keller, and the prospect of the Brunner serial pending.
(For an excellent experience, you don't want to miss Part 2 of "The Menagerie", the next episode of Star Trek — join us tonight at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings)!!)
by Victoria Silverwolf
with apologies to Roy Orbison
Solitary Confinement
To be a citizen of a nation inside another nation must be a very lonely feeling. Italy contains two of these countries, the tiny nations of San Marino and Vatican City. A third member of that exclusive club came into existence on October 4, when the former British colony of Basutoland won full independence, changing its name to the Kingdom of Lesotho. Lesotho is completely surrounded by the nation of South Africa.
King Moshoehoe II, constitutional monarch of Lesotho.
A Song for the Sorrowful
You don't have to be living in any of those three countries to feel lonely, of course. People experiencing that painful emotion might obtain some solace from the current Number One song on the American popular music charts. The Four Tops have a smash hit with their powerful ballad Reach Out (I'll Be There), with lyrics that are clearly aimed at a lonesome listener.
They seem to be reaching out to the record buyer.
Fiction for the Forlorn
Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic is full of stories featuring characters who are literally, or metaphorically, isolated.
Cover art by Bob Hilbreth, stolen from the December 1946 issue of Amazing Stories.
The original, illustrating a story that was part of the infamous Shaver Mystery.
Broken Image, by Thomas N. Scortia
Illustrations by Gray Morrow.
The only new story in this issue features a protagonist who feels himself estranged from those around him, human or not.
His name is Baldur, and he has been surgically altered to resemble one of the humanoid aliens inhabiting a planet for which Earthlings have plans. It seems that humanity has evolved beyond sectarianism and violence, and seeks to bring the blessings of peace to other worlds.
(If I sound a little sarcastic, that's because the story's view of humanity is somewhat ambiguous. Baldur is completely loyal to the idea of Man as a perfect being, but his vision of the species is, as we'll see, a little distorted.)
One group of aliens oppresses another, going so far as to execute rebels in a particularly gruesome way.
Such as this.
The plan is to have Baldur act as a messiah for the lower class. Highly advanced technology allows him to perform healings and other miracles.
(At this point, you've probably figured out that Baldur is intended as a Christ figure. The oppressors are kind of like the Romans, the lower class is sort of like the Judeans, and so on. Given that analogy, some of what happens won't surprise you. The character's name also suggests an allusion to myths about the Norse god Baldr, sometimes spelled Balder or — a ha! — Baldur.)
There's a human woman, also in disguise, to help Baldur in his role as the savior of the oppressed. However, it turns out that she's hiding something from him, and that the folks in the starship orbiting the planet have schemes of which he is not aware.
This is a pretty good story, which held my interest all the way through. The Christian metaphor might be too blatant, and there's a twist ending that made me scratch my head. It explains why Baldur thinks of humanity as superior to other species, but I'm not sure if it really works.
(One interesting thing is that Baldur is not only physically changed, but mentally as well. His memories seem to be slightly distorted. Since we see everything from his point of view, although the story is told in third person, he serves as what some literary critics are starting to call an unreliable narrator. This all goes along with the twist ending.)
Three stars.
You're All Alone, by Fritz Leiber
Illustrations by Henry Sharp.
There's a title that suggests loneliness, for sure.
Before I get into the story itself, let me go over the rather complex history of the text. It seems that Leiber intended it to appear in Unknown, the fantasy magazine edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. as a companion to Astounding. Unknown died before the story could be published.
Leiber expanded the work from about forty thousand words to approximately seventy-five thousand, hoping to have a book publisher accept it as part of their fantasy line. The company stopped publishing fantasy before it sold.
Back to the drawing board! Leiber next sent it to Fantastic Adventures, who agreed to buy it if — guess what? — it was cut back to forty thousand words. It finally appeared in the July 1950 issue. That's the version that's been reprinted in the current issue of Fantastic.
Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.
We're not done yet! The seventy-five thousand word version wound up as one half of a double paperback, under the name The Sinful Ones. The publisher came up with the suggestive new title, altered the text slightly to make it racier, and added sexy chapter titles like The Strip Tease and Blonde Prostitute, trying to convince the reader that it was hot stuff.
Anonymous cover art. The companion novel, about a lady bullfighter, looks . . . interesting.
Back to the story itself. (At forty thousand words, it actually justifies, if just barely, its label by the magazine as a Complete Novel.)
Carr Mackay works at an employment agency in Chicago. A frightened young woman comes into his office, followed by a big blonde woman. The younger woman is obviously terrified of the blonde, but tries to ignore her. She talks to Carr, pretending to have a job interview, and asking him if he's one of them.
By the way, the blonde woman has a big, vicious, scary pet dog, but it's not anywhere near as large as shown in this illustration, or the cover of Fantastic Adventures!
Before leaving, she scribbles a note warning him to watch out for the blonde and her two male companions, and leaving a cryptic message to meet her at a certain location if he wants to learn more.
Of course, this all sounds like the paranoid ravings of a lunatic. Things get weirder when the blonde slaps the young woman across the face, and she forces herself not to react. Then a co-worker shows up, acting as if he's introducing Carr to somebody, but there's nobody there. Some kind of practical joke?
It's hard to deny that something strange is going on when Carr shows up at his girlfriend's place, and she goes through the motions of greeting and kissing him, but he's not where she apparently thinks he is. She ignores the real Carr, and continues to interact with an imaginary one.
She should really be smooching the empty air instead of a ghostly figure, but that's artistic license for you.
Although he's reluctant to accept the truth, Carr realizes that almost all humans are mindless automatons, just going through the motions like wind-up toys. Only a very few, like the young woman, the blonde and her companions, and himself, are conscious beings. He meets with the woman, leading to dangerous encounters with sinister folks and wild adventures in a world full of clockwork people and those who take advantage of the situation.
A moment of happiness in a public library after hours. I like the subtle hint that the light above their heads is an eye watching them.
The premise is a fascinating one, and the author conveys it in a convincing manner. There's some philosophical depth to the idea, too. Who among us hasn't felt like a cog in a big machine? It moves very quickly, almost like a Keith Laumer novel. (Maybe the longer version allows for more exploration of the concept.)
I could quibble that not everything about the plot is completely logical. Inanimate objects sometimes act as if they're part of the mindless mechanism of life, and sometimes don't. The conscious people are able to knock off the hats of the automatons, for example, and steal their drinks, but the keys of a piano move by themselves when the person supposed to be playing them isn't there.
The floating hands are more artistic license.
Despite this tiny flaw, and the fact that the ending seems rushed, it's an enjoyable short novel. As you'd expect from Leiber, it's well-written. As a bonus, it provides a vivid portrait of the city of Chicago, in all its bright and dark aspects.
From the July 1954 issue of Amazing Stories comes this tale of a family isolated from their own time.
Anonymous illustration.
Mom, Dad, and three kids are enjoying a typical morning at home, although there's some kind of fog or smoke outside, and the radio isn't working. The lone boy heads off for school, but quickly comes back. There are soldiers everywhere blocking his way.
It turns out that their home is now seven years in the future. The Cold War has heated up, leading to a dystopian society. (Apparently a bomb caused the time travel effect.) The soldiers are stunned to see a woman and children out in the open, and are even more amazed at the food available in the house.
A political officer (another sign that the United States government has become authoritarian, along with the casually mentioned book burning) suggests that they wait for another bomb to send them back to their own time.
Although the plot is simple enough for an episode of Twilight Zone, this is a powerful story, sending a clear warning of the dangers of escalating world conflicts. (The theme seems even more relevant today, with the situation in Vietnam, than it did just after the Korean War.)
Four stars.
Scream at Sea, by Algis Budrys
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
The January-February 1954 issue of the magazine provides this example of extreme loneliness.
Illustrations by Ernie Barth.
A man survives an explosion that destroys his ship. He manages to hang on to a piece of the vessel that's got some canned ham and water, so it serves him as a sort of raft. The ship's cat happens to escape the disaster as well.
The only other character in the story.
The author manages to create a true sense of isolation and desperation. It's not a bad piece, but there isn't a trace of science fiction or fantasy at all! There's a twist in the tail that would have been more appropriate for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine than Fantastic.
(By the way, the editor's blurbs for the last two stories are backwards! I guess that's a sign of how little the publisher cares for these poorly funded magazines full of unpaid reprints.)
Three stars.
Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Artists Behind Him, by Anonymous
Serving as a coda is this portfolio of illustrations for stories by ERB that appeared in Amazing years ago.
For The Land That Time Forgot (1918, reprinted 1927), illustration by Frank R. Paul.
Same credits as above.
For The City of the Mummies (1941), illustration by J. Allen St. John.
For Black Pirates of Barsoom, same year, same artist.
For Goddess of Fire, same year, same artist.
I don't have much to say about these old-fashioned pictures. They're OK.
Three stars.
Some Solace For Solitude
If you're feeling lonesome, picking up a copy of this issue might provide some relief for a few hours. All the stories are worth reading, and a couple of them are better than average. If that doesn't raise your spirits sufficiently, visiting your neighbors might do the trick.
That astronaut won't be lonely. Cartoon by Frosty from the same issue as the Budrys story.
. . . Not that it showed up very often when it did. But the previous issue, which at last attained the status of “not bad,” raised hopes, now dashed again.
The theme of this August 1966 Amazing is plainly announced on the cover, a crude and silly-looking image by James B. Settles, from the back cover of the July 1942 Amazing, titled Radium Airship of Saturn. You might also think that it doesn’t make much sense, but you’d be wrong! What you see is actually the top two-thirds of the 1942 version; what you’re missing is the surface of Saturn, and a caption: “The motor in this air-ship is a disintegrating rocket-blast caused by the breaking down of a copper core by a stream of powerful radium rays concentrated on it. It acts like a giant fireworks rocket.” It’s science!
by James B. Settles
Inside, the theme is carried forward with the conclusion of the Murray Leinster serial begun in June, a new novelet by Philip K. Dick, and five reprinted stories, particulars below. The brightest spot in the issue is the absence of an editorial, though the usual brief and praiseful letter column is present.
While the editor misses no chance to bad-mouth the magazine’s prior regime, directly and through his selection of letters to publish, one thing has remained constant, and has seemingly intensified: the abominable proofreading. (“Strickly speaking,” indeed.)
There's also a different sort of difficulty facing Amazing and Fantastic now. It's been rumored for a while that they are not paying the authors for the reprinted material, which is now confirmed for those not plugged into the more authoritative gossip channels. Kris Vyas-Myall has helpfully flagged the new issue of the fanzine Riverside Quarterly, in which the editor mentions that he confirmed with Kris Neville that he did not get paid for his recently reprinted story, and confirmed with Damon Knight, president of the newly constituted Science Fiction Writers of America, that this is the general practice.
I suppose this may reflect the publishing practice prevalent in earlier years of buying "all rights" (sometimes simply by so noting on the author's check, with no more formal contract than that). So maybe it's legal, but it stinks. Knight has called on the members of SFWA to boycott the publisher until it changes its ways, and editor Leland Sapiro suggests that readers do the same with the magazines. I'd take that advice, but duty dictates otherwise.
Murray Leinster’s latest Western treads a familiar path. There’s a new sheriff, but he’s not really quite in town yet, because somebody doesn’t want him there, and it probably has to do with the stagecoach full of gold that is expected to arrive any day now. It seems like business as usual from the author of Kid Deputy, Outlaw Guns, and Son of the Flying ‘Y’.
Oh, wait. Sorry. Wrong rut. Trying again:
In Murray Leinster’s latest space opera, Lieutenant Scott of the Space Patrol is on his way to take over his first command, Checkpoint Lambda, a station orbiting the star Canis Lambda, whose system is of no special interest except that no fewer than six space lanes cross there. (Didn’t know space has lanes? People established them, I suppose so no one will get lost.) En route, Scott learns that several passengers had been supposed to leave Lambda on a ship recently, but didn’t, under peculiar circumstances—and one of them was “a girl.” This bears repetition, to the author and to Scott; a few pages later, Scott is reviewing the available facts, and notes that “passengers—including a girl—hadn’t left the checkpoint when they should.”
by Gray Morrow
Now, what could be happening? Scott doesn’t know, but he does know the Golconda Ship is expected to show up at Lambda in the near future. That ship is owned by a bunch of guys who went somewhere nobody knows and came back with a load of “treasure” which made them rich, and they go back for more every four years or so. What kind of treasure? Gold, platinum, radioactives, miracle cures from an unknown planet, the secret wisdom of an ancient civilization? Doesn’t say, now or at any other point until the end of the story. For the author’s purposes, you don’t need to know. It’s just a game piece.
So what seems to be going on here? Owlhoots! Er, sorry. Gangsters! Scott is strongly discouraged from debarking onto Checkpoint Lambda, but insists, and finds himself going through the motions of normality with some slovenly types pretending to be the station crew. He meets their nominal mastermind, one Chenery, who pretends to know Scott—and, before too long, he encounters the real power, whom Chenery recruited, and who is known as—Bugsy! He is there to provide and direct the muscle, er, blastermen.*
* No, Bugsy and the Blastermen did not play at last Saturday’s sock hop. That was somebody else.
So, here are the pieces in play: a good guy, some bad guys, treasure to be fought over, “a girl” to be protected. What else do we need? Oh yes, an external menace. How about the Five Comets? The Canis Lambda system has no planets—they all blew up eons ago, and the Checkpoint is attached to one of the bigger pieces—but it has some really fine comets, and they are all going to arrive at about the same time, right athwart the Checkpoint’s orbit—and there’s no astrogator, except for Scott! (One might ask why the powers that be wouldn’t put the Checkpoint in some other location than the entirely predictable convergence point of multiple comets, but one would be wasting time to do so.)
The “girl”—an adult woman, of course—does have a name, Janet, though no others are disclosed. Her full name would have to be (apologies to Alfred Hitchcock) Janet S. MacGuffin (“S” for Secondary), since she drives a part of the plot. One of Scott’s challenges is to keep her safe from . . . well, let her tell it. She says that Chenery “did keep the others from—harming me.” Such an eloquent dash!
But clearly, as in last year’s Killer Ship, women have no role in tough situations other than to create the need for men to protect them. At one point, Scott parks Janet for safekeeping in one of the Checkpoint’s lifeboats, gives her a snap course in operating it if necessary, and reassures her: “It’s not a very good chance. But there aren’t many women who could make it a chance at all. I think you can.” She doesn't have to try. Later, though, Scott gives her something to do—maneuver the station to avoid comet debris while he’s busy elsewhere—and she blows it. But he promises himself not even to hint at criticizing her, and at the end, after all is safely resolved, she is performing women’s other function in Leinster’s fiction as she and Scott get better acquainted.
This one is a little less vapid than Killer Ship, and considerably less irritating, since it lacks the constant reminders that interstellar travel will be just like the eighteenth century. It’s just as verbose as Killer Ship, but the padding is a little better connected to what is actually going on in the story, and there is a bit more cleverness to the plot. So, two stars for this played-out and left-behind author.
Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday, by Philip K. Dick
The other new story is Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday, by the more-prominent-every-day Philip K. Dick, which once more vindicates my warning: when big names show up at the bottom of the market, there’s a reason for it. This is a story about time running backwards. It starts with a guy getting up in the morning (wait a minute—morning?), getting some dirty clothes to put on, and picking up a packet of whiskers to glue evenly onto his face, presumably to be absorbed over the course of the day. So where do these whiskers come from, and who puts them into packets, and how are they distributed? What happens if you run out? And why does anyone bother with them?
by Gray Morrow
It goes on. People begin conversations with “good-bye” and end with “hello,” but they don’t talk backwards in between. Et cetera. Sorry, it doesn’t work. PKD’s specialty is making preposterous ideas at least momentarily plausible, but this one is too long a stretch. It’s not enough for the reader to suspend disbelief; for this story you’d have to shoot it out of a cannon.
There’s more, of course, but not better. Dick does have enough knack as a storyteller to keep things readable as the reader fumes over the contradictions, so, two stars.
The Voice of the Void, by John W. Campbell, Jr.
The Voice of the Void was John W. Campbell, Jr.’s fourth published story, from the Summer 1930 Amazing Stories Quarterly, and at first it’s sort of refreshing: the story of humanity’s quest for survival as the sun is burning out, first disassembling large parts of the solar system and moving pieces closer to the sun, then looking for a new home around a younger or longer-lived star.
by Hans Wessolowski
The story is about 98% character- and dialogue-free, though the astronomer Hal Jus has several cameos along the way. Instead, it chronicles a long course of human discovery and problem-solving, grandiose and grave in equal measure. It is a little reminiscent of Edmond Hamilton’s Intelligence Undying of a few issues back, if that story had been administered a mild sedative.
But things turn dark soon enough. Humanity wants Betelgeuse for its new home. But it turns out there’s no vacancy there—that system is inhabited by energy beings who don’t take kindly to human invasion. Allegedly they are not intelligent, but their facility at fatally repelling unwanted visitors suggests otherwise. Now, Betelgeuse is not necessary to human survival. There’s another star handy; it doesn’t have planets, but the human fleet is so large that humanity could hang out for a few years in orbit and build some suitable planets. But we want Betelgeuse! So the indigenes have to go, and are exterminated in a siege of human-devised energy rays.
Well, that puts a damper on things. Gratuitous genocide can ruin one’s whole reading experience. Two stars with clothespin on nose.
The Gone Dogs, by Frank Herbert
Frank Herbert’s The Gone Dogs (November 1954 issue) is a slightly more interesting bad story than many, rather crudely written—surprisingly so, since it appeared only a year before Herbert’s much more capable and ambitious Under Pressure a/k/a The Dragon in the Sea. On the other hand, it’s free of the turgidity of his current work, especially the characters’ internal monologues about the motives and intentions of one another. Pick your poison.
In the story, an artificially mutated virus is killing off all the world’s dogs, abetted by the fact that humans carry the virus; how to save the species? One solution, highly unauthorized, is to give the last few to the Vegans, who are trying to breed dogs, or something like them. Matters are enlivened along the way by a psychotic dog lover who’s determined to grab one of the last living dogs for herself (and will kill it with the virus she’s carrying). At the end there's a slightly silly and anticlimactic twist.
One thing that’s annoying here is the hyper-facile and acontextual (thoughtless, for short) deployment of standard components from the SF warehouse. At one point the main character needs to dodge a congressional subpoena. What better way than to flee to Vega? All by himself, with a forged pass to a faster-than-light spaceship which any idiot, or at least a biologist, can apparently navigate solo across interstellar distances, without notice and whenever the need arises. There’s no reason in the rest of the story to believe in this capability. This sort of thing was common in ‘50s SF but that doesn’t make it more palatable. Two stars.
The Pent House, by David H. Keller, M.D.
David H. Keller, M.D., is in the position, unusual for him, of providing the least ridiculous story in the issue, chiefly because he essays so little. The Pent House, from the February 1932 Amazing, is a minor exercise in benign crankiness. A rich guy who is also a doctor discovers that humanity is about to be wiped out by the spread of a cancer germ, so he sets up a nice sealed-off apartment on top of a tall building, makes arrangements for a generous supply of life’s necessities and amenities, and advertises for a couple who really like each other to take on a lucrative job for five years. The lucky winners persuade him to stay with them in the (large) apartment.
by Leo Morey
Blissful years pass. The woman of the couple is not feeling well, so the old rich doctor goes in to look at her and some hours later tells the husband, “It’s a girl.” He hadn’t noticed his wife’s pregnancy. Maybe this is not the least ridiculous story here after all.
More time passes, the five years are up, and the old guy goes downstairs to check things out. Turns out the cancer epidemic was thwarted by medical science. So things are the same? No—noisier, dirtier, generally less civilized (to summarize an extensive rant). “It seemed to me that the world has escaped the cancer death so it could die from neurasthenia,” pronounces the doctor. He’s ready to pay the couple the fortune they have earned and bid them adieu, but the wife says forget it, just order up some more supplies and let’s lock the door for another five years of "Heaven in a penthouse." Two stars for competent rendering discounted for triviality.
The Man Who Knew All the Answers, by Donald Bern
The Man Who Knew All the Answers, from the August 1940 Amazing, is bylined Donald Bern, who was actually Al Bernstein, who has half a dozen or so credits in Amazing and Fantastic Adventures in 1940-42, and nothing else in the SF magazines. Frankly, just as well. This is a silly story about a nasty guy named Scuttlebottom, who stumbles (literally) into Ye Village Book Stall, and encounters the proprietor (“He wore a pince-nez. He looked exactly like a person who wears a pince-nez.”), who sells him a book called The Dormant Brain. The book teaches him to become telepathic, so now he knows what everybody thinks of him, which is unpleasant, and he then comes to a contrived bad end as a result of his new talent. One star per the ground rules, despite this story’s utter lack of any reason for existing.
The Metal Martyr, by Robert Moore Williams
Robert Moore Williams’s The Metal Martyr, from the July 1950 Amazing, is a mildly clever but overall pretty silly story about a robot, named Two, who develops the delusion that he is a man—this in the far future, long after a rumored rebellion by robots against humans, and the fall of human civilization. Two flees the robot enclave to avoid having its brain dissolved and replaced, and comes across a couple of humans, named Bill and Ed, never mind the intervening millennia. Two visits them at their home cave, but some of the humans get scared and threaten it, so Two flees deeper into the cave. There it discovers the remains of an ancient mining site full of machinery, skeletons, and books explaining the past and how things got to their present metal-poor state—and showing no robots, revealing that humans once did just fine without them. Two recovers from its delusion of humanity. After giving the humans their past back (although they, unlike robots, can’t read), Two heads back to robotdom and its rendezvous with the acid vat.
by Edmond B. Swiatek
Williams was once a titanically prolific contributor to pulps of all genres, but most frequently SF and fantasy, and within them, most frequently to Ray Palmer’s Amazing and Fantastic Adventures, where he was part of the regular crew that filled those magazines with juvenilia. Palmer was gone before this one appeared, but it is true to the tradition. Two stars, charitably.
Summing Up
There’s not much to say. The last issue finally achieved consistent readability, a first for the Sol Cohen regime. Now, back into the murk and muck.
Seasons don't mean a whole lot in San Diego. As I like to say, here we have Spring, Summer, Backwards Spring, and Rain. All of these are pretty mild, and folks from parts beyond often grumble over the lack of seasonality here.
I grew up in the Imperal Valley where we had a full four seasons: Hot, Stink, Bug, and Wind. San Diego is a step up.
Judith Merril, who writes the books column for F&SF these days asserts that there is a seasonality to science fiction as well, with December and January being the peak time of year in terms of story quality. If it be the case that the solstice marks the SF's annual zenith, then one might expect the equinoxes to exhibit a mixed bag.
Given the prolificity with which Dick produces SF these days, one can hardly believe there was a long time when he'd taken a hiatus from the genre. This latest story fuses his recent penchant for mind-expanding weirdness with the more straight science fiction characteristic of his work in the 50s.
To wit, Douglas Quail is a humdrum prole who dreams big. Specifically, he really wants to go to Mars, but such privilege is reserved to astronauts and high grade politicians. Luckily, there is an organization whose business is literally making dreams come true…or perhaps I should say Rekal Incorporated makes true come dreams. They inject their clients with artificial memories, lard them with convincing physical ephemera, and so a dream becomes reality — at least for the customer.
But when Quail is put under for the procedure, it turns out that he already has memories of a trip to Mars, which have been imperfectly wiped. In short order, Quail becomes the center of a spy thriller, pursued by countless government agents.
On the surface, this is a fun gimmick story, but knowing Dick, I'm pretty sure there's a deeper thread running through the plot. Indeed, clues are laid that make the reader wonder if the entire story is not the phantom adventure, deepening turns and all. As with many recent Dick stories, the question one is left with is "What is reality?"
Four stars.
by Gahan Wilson
Appoggiatura, by A. M. Marple
A flea with an amazing tenor and the music-loving but otherwise talentless cat on which he resides, get swept into the world of urban opera. Can their friendship withstand sudden fame?
This silly story by newcomer Anne Marple shouldn't be any good, but the whimsy of it all and the utter lack of explanatory justification keeps you going for a vignette's length.
Spring is the time for romance, and so a fitting season for this piece, a love story between a computer with the soul of a poet, and the young woman who wins its heart.
Lyrically told, avante garde in the extreme, and just a bit naughtier than the usual, But Soft makes me even more delighted to see Carol Emshwiller return to the pages of this magazine.
Five stars.
The Sudden Silence, by J. T. McIntosh
The city of New Bergen on the planet of Severna goes silent, and a rescue team is dispatched from a nearby world to find out what could suddenly quiet the voices of half a million souls.
This novelette would be a lot more tolerable if 1) the culprit were more plausible and 2) McIntosh didn't have two of the male members of the team more interested in seducing their crewmates than saving lives.
It's a pity. McIntosh used to be one of my more favored authors. These days, his stuff is both disappointing and difficult to read for its shabby treatment of women (though at least he includes them in his futures, which is uncommon).
Two stars.
Injected Memory, by Theodore L. Thomas
The latest mini-article from Mr. Thomas is about the promise of skills and experiences induced with genetic infusions. It's a neat idea, lacking the usual stupid execution the author includes at the end of these. I don't know if the article's inclusion in this issue alongside the Philip K. Dick story mentioned above was serendipitous or deliberate, but I suspect the latter.
Three stars.
The Octopus, by Doris Pitkin Buck
Time is an octopus, tearing us in both directions.
Decent poem. Three stars.
The Face Is Familiar, by Gilbert Thomas
I had to look this story up twice to remember it, which should tell you something. A Lovecraftian tale of terror recounted by one man to another in Saigon. The latter has seen real horror. The former saw his wife preserved after death in an…unorthodox manner…which just isn't as shocking or interesting as is it's supposed to be.
Some nice if overwrought storytelling, but not much of a story. Two stars.
The Space Twins, by James Pulley
There was a hypothesis going around for a while that long term exposure to weightlessness would have not just adverse physical but psychological impacts. In this piece, two astronauts on their way around Mars revert to their time in the womb and have trouble returning.
Clearly written before Gemini 6, it comes off as both quaint and facile.
Continuing the adventures of Cugel the Clever in his quest to bring back a magic item to the wizard Iucounu, this latest chapter sees the luckless thief happen across an enormous carved edifice. Its goal is to entice the TOTALITY of space-time into the presence of the great sorcerer, Pharesm.
Of course, nothing goes as planned for Pharesm or Cugel. Clever byplay, some good fortune, lots of bad fortune, and a bit of time travel ensue.
Vance strings nonsense words and scenes together with enviable talent, but the shtick is honestly running a bit thin.
Three stars.
The Nobelmen of Science, by Isaac Asimov
Instead of a science article, the Good Doctor offers up a comprehensive list of Nobel Prize winners by nationality. Seems a bit of a copout, though I imagine it'll be useful to someone.
Lastly, Niven returns with an effective story of two astronauts who head to Sirius and encounter a clearly artificially seeded world. Is it merely an algae farm planet, or is there something more sinister going on, associated with one of the continents, fringed with an ominous black ring?
Niven is great at building a compelling world, and the revelation at the end is pretty good. It's a bit overwrought, though. Also, I'm not sure why Niven would think Sirius A and B are both white giants when Sirius B is famously a dwarf star.
Anyway, four stars, and a good way to end an otherwise unimpressive section of the magazine.
Spring comes finally
And with the equinox, I turn the last page of the issue. In the end, the April F&SF is a touch more good than bad, which is appropriate given the now-longer days. Will the magazine obey the seasonal cycle and turn out its best issue in June (at odds with Ms. Merril's predictions)?
Only time will tell!
Spring is also the time for new beginnings — a fitting season to release its new daughter magazine, P.S.!
When I'm reading a book or magazine, if I come across a mistake in printing it takes me right out of the story. If it's a simple misspelling, it's no big deal, yet there's still that brief moment when my mind unwillingly goes back to reality.
More serious problems, such as a few lines duplicated or in the wrong place, cause greater distress. In the most extreme cases, as when entire pages are missing, the experience is ruined.
I bring this up because my copy of the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow contains an egregious example of this kind of technical shortcoming.
Dig That Crazy, Mixed-Up 'Zine, Man
Cover art by Gray Morrow.
Allow me to provide you with a metaphorical road map for the route you need to take between the front and back covers of the publication.
Pages 1 through 15: OK so far.
Pages 18 through 21: Hey, what happened to the other two?
Pages 16 through 17: Oh, there they are.
Pages 22 through 45: Smooth sailing.
Pages 48 through 55: Here we go again!
Pages 46 through 47: Another two pages out of place.
Pages 56 through 164: No more detours, thank goodness.
If I've managed to annoy and confuse you with that, now you know how I felt when I read this issue. The short, sharp shock (to steal a phrase from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado) of jumping from an incomplete sentence on page 15 or page 45 to a completely unrelated incomplete sentence on page 18 or page 48, then having to flip through the magazine to find page 16 or page 46, then having to hop back to page 15 or page 45 to remember what the incomplete sentence said, was a pain in the neck. (That's another allusion to the short, sharp shock. Ask your local G and S fan what it means.)
Thus, if I seem a little more critical than usual, blame it on the printer (not on the Bossa Nova.) With that in mind, let's get started.
The Ultra Man, by A. E. Van Vogt
Illustrations by Peter Lutjens.
I'll confess that I have a real blind spot when it comes to Van Vogt. I know he's one of the giants, like Asimov and Heinlein, of Astounding's Golden Age, but I almost always find his stuff hard going. Often I can't follow the plot at all. When I think I understand what's going on, it usually seems overly complicated. Given my prejudice, I'll try to be as objective as possible.
The setting is an international lunar base. A psychologist demonstrates his newly acquired psychic ability to a military type. It seems the headshrinker can tell what somebody is thinking by looking at his or her face. Suddenly, he spots an alien disguised as an African who intends to kill him.
(There's an odd explanation for why the alien takes the form of an African. Something about that would give him the protection of race tension. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. That's my typical reaction to Van Vogt.)
We soon find out that other folks have been gaining psychic abilities, all of them following a very strange pattern. The people retain the power for a couple of days, then lose it for a while, then get it back in a much more powerful form for a brief time. If there was any sort of explanation for this bizarre phenomenon, I missed it.
Like the first illustration, this is more abstract than representative.
Anyway, the psychologist and the military guy get involved with a Soviet psychiatrist and with aliens intent on conquering humanity. Only the psychologist's intensified psychic powers, of a very mystical kind, save the day.
Science fiction is often accused of being a literature full of power fantasies, and this story could serve as Exhibit A. (Just look at the title.) The psychologist's abilities eventually become truly god-like.
I have to admit that this thing moves at an incredibly fast pace. It reads like a novel boiled down to a novelette. I can't call it boring, at least, even if it never really held together for me.
Two stars.
The Willy Ley Story, by Sam Moskowitz
Uncredited photograph.
The tireless historian of science fiction turns his attention to the noted rocket enthusiast, science writer, and SF fan. As usual for Moskowitz, there's a ton of detail, as well as a seemingly endless list of early publications by Ley and others. For an encyclopedia article, it would be a model of thoroughness. As a biographical sketch for the interested reader of Ley's writings, it's pretty dry stuff.
Two stars.
Spy Rampant on Brown Shield, by Perry Vreeland
Illustrations by Gray Morrow.
A writer completely unknown to me jumps on the James Bond bandwagon with this futuristic spy thriller.
It seems that the Cold War has been replaced by a struggle between the good old USA and some kind of unified Latin America. The enemy Browns — named for their uniforms, I believe, and not intended, I hope, as a reference to their ethnicity — have a shield that will protect them from nuclear weapons. This means that the dastardly fellows can attack the Norteamericanos with impunity.
The protagonist is the typical highly competent secret agent found in this kind of story, although said to be more cautious than others. He gets a cloak of invisibility so he can sneak into the office of the Brown scientist in charge of the shield and get the plans for it.
Our hero stuns his target.
The invisibility gizmo has several limitations. Dirt and moisture render it less than effective in hiding the user. (In an amusing touch, the hero has to keep changing his socks.) Some kind of scientific mumbo-jumbo is used to explain why it shimmers when more than one source of light, of particular intensities and locations, strike it.
Much of the story consists of the spy just waiting, so he can walk through a doorway, opened by somebody else, without drawing attention. In an interesting subplot, he has to fight altitude sickness as well, because the headquarters of the scientist are located at a great elevation, way up in the Andes.
Walking through the streets of La Paz, the highest capital city in the world.
The twist ending, during which we find out the true nature of the Browns' shield technology, is something of a letdown. It also allows the hero to escape from the Bad Guys, thanks to dumb luck and pseudoscience.
Two stars.
The Worlds That Were, by Keith Roberts
Here's a rare American appearance by a new but quite prolific British author. The narrator and his brother, from an early age, have been able to escape the slum in which they live and enter other times and places. He meets a woman in a dreary public park and brings her home. This leads to a battle with his brother, who sabotages the paradises into which he brings the woman, even trying to kill her. At the end, the narrator learns the truth about his brother and the power they share.
This is a delicate, emotional, poetic tale, full of vivid descriptions of both the beautiful and the ugly. Despite the speculative content, in essence it is a love story. Notably, the narrator, despite his incredible ability, is quite ordinary in most ways. Similarly, the woman isn't an alluring beauty or a temptress, but a fully believable, realistic character. This makes their romance even more meaningful.
Five stars.
Delivery Tube, by Joseph P. Martino
Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.
More proof of the continuing effect on popular culture of the late Ian Fleming, if any be needed, appears in yet another spy yarn. The setting is the fictional Republic of Micronesia. (Given the fact that we're told this is one of the most populous nations on Earth, which is hardly true for the many tiny islands collectively known as Micronesia, I'm guessing this is supposed to be something like Indonesia.)
Anyway, the supposedly neutral Micronesians, with help from Red China, possess atomic bombs and at least one satellite to send into orbit. The paradox is that they don't seem to have any way to launch either the bombs or the satellite. Our hero, with the help of some local opposition parties and anti-Communist Chinese, investigates the mysterious construction project happening on Micronesia's main island.
What are they building in there?
Along the way, he gets mixed up with an old enemy, a Soviet agent. The USSR wants to find out what Micronesia is up to as well, so the two foes become temporary allies. A lot of familiar spy stuff goes on. I'm pretty sure you'll figure out what the construction is all about long before the hero does.
Two stars.
Alien Arithmetic, by Robert M. W. Dixon
People who hate math can skip this part of my review.
The author considers various ways to record numbers, other than our familiar base ten Arabic numerals. Before he gets to the alien stuff, he talks about Roman numerals, and demonstrates how to perform addition with them. It makes you glad you don't use them in daily life.
After a brief discussion of binary arithmetic, familiar to many of us in this modern age of electronic computers, we get to some weirder ways of symbolizing numbers.
First comes an odd and confusing system in which the column on the right uses only 0 and 1, the one to the left of that 0, 1, and 2, the one to the left of that 0, 1, 2, and 3, and so forth. As an example, 4021 translates as (4x1x2x3x4) + (0x1x2x3) + (2x1x2) + (1×1) = (96) + (0) + (4) + (1) = 101. (The author claims it translates to 99, but I'm just following his exact method of calculation, using the same example and the same steps. Somebody doublecheck me, but I think I'm right! For 99, I think the number would be 4011.)
Next we turn to a way of recording numbers by combining symbols for their prime factors. This is easier to explain via the author's diagram than in words.
An example of number symbols based on prime factors. The symbol for six combines the symbols for two and three, and so forth.
These imaginary number systems seem awfully impractical to me. The author vaguely links them to imaginary aliens, but that's really irrelevant. My formal education in mathematics ended with first semester calculus, so I'm no expert, but this kind of thing interests me to some extent (which is why this part of the review is longer than it should be.)
We jump right into a drastically changed far future Earth, so it takes a while to figure out what's going on. Many centuries before the story begins, aliens conquered the planet. It's considered an unimportant, backwater world, so they use it as a hunting preserve. (I'm assuming this includes humans as prey, although this isn't made explicit.) They also mutated Earth creatures into new forms, so the surviving humans have to face dangerous animals.
As if that weren't enough to ruin your day, there are also human renegades who kidnap children, for a purpose not revealed until the end. The plot deals with a man out to rescue his daughter from the renegades. Help comes from blue-skinned, telepathic human mutants.
Beware the trees!
A lot of stuff goes on besides what I've noted above. Despite the science fiction explanation for everything, this fast-paced adventure story felt like a fantasy epic to me. The beings in it seem more magical than biological. It's not a bad tale, if a little hard to get into.
Three government agents wake up a computer repairman. It seems that the super-computer that monitors all the data in the world for possible threats against the United States has a problem. It claims that it needs to launch nuclear weapons against a region of Northern California. The G-men managed to stop that by jamming a screwdriver into the machine's tapes.
The danger, or so it says, comes from a fellow who manufactures gumball machines. This seems utterly ridiculous, of course, so the government guys want the repairman to figure out what's wrong with the computer. Just to be on the safe side, they investigate the gumball magnate, and study the candy machines as well as the stuff they contain. They communicate with the stubborn computer, even trying to convince it that it doesn't really exist.
You don't really think it will fall for that, do you?
You can tell that there's more than a touch of the absurd to the plot, along with a satiric edge. The author throws in the computer's religious beliefs, as well as an outrageous ending. The whole thing has the feeling of dark comedy. (There are references to the USA having attacked both France and Israel, due to the computer's perception of threats.) Like a lot of works by this author, it has a plot that seems improvised. It always held my interest, anyway.
Three stars.
In Need of Some Repair
So, were the works in this issue as messed up as the page numbers? For the most part, I have to admit they were. With the shining exception of an excellent story from Keith Roberts, both the fiction and articles were disappointing, although they got a little better near the end of the magazine. My sources in the publishing world tell me that this will be the last bimonthly issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, and that it will turn into a quarterly. This should give the editor, and the printer, time to deal with its problems.
Even an amusement park has to close down once in a while to fix things.
The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well! If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article! Thank you for your continued support.
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