Tag Archives: philip k. dick

[September 13, 1963] COMING UP FOR AIR (the October 1963 Amazing)

September 13, 2018 John Boston 5 Comments

by John Boston

So, there was a big civil rights march in Washington—quarter of a million people, the papers say. Lots of eloquent speeches and fine sentiments. It could make you think that the racial caste system that America was built on is finally starting to change. But I wonder. I work after school and on Saturdays at the local public library here in this small Kentucky town. Every now and then some of my fellow high school students drop in and spend some time at the magazine rack. One of the magazines they always look at is Ebony, which as you probably know is sort of a Life magazine for the Negro community: large-sized and glossy, with articles about famous or distinguished Negroes, social problems of interest, etc. It runs the same ads as Life and other slick magazines, but with Negro models.

These students leaf through Ebony looking at the ads, and snickering. Nothing is more hilarious to them than a Negro wearing a well cut suit, sipping an expensive whiskey, or behind the wheel of a prestigious car. These scoffers are not the local hoodlums; they are kids from respected families who make good grades and don’t get in trouble with the police—the Leaders of the Twenty-First Century, as they like to put it on the Mickey Mouse Club.

So marches in Washington are nice, and the proposed civil rights legislation will be great if it passes, but how much difference are they going to make along the back roads of Kentucky and similar places where attitudes like these prevail? I guess we’ll know in a few decades.

The October 1963 Amazing, on the other hand, is right here and we can pass judgment now. It’s a considerable improvement over last month’s, since there’s nothing in it that’s grossly stupid or offensive (Robert F. Young is nowhere in sight.) There’s nothing outstanding either, but at least some of this material falls short in more interesting ways than usual.

The lead story is Cordwainer Smith’s Drunkboat . Smith’s last seven stories—his production over the past three years—have all appeared in Galaxy, If, or Fantasy & Science Fiction, and this one’s appearance in Amazing strongly suggests that it was rejected by those higher-paying and at least slightly more prestigious outlets. It’s not hard to see why: it’s a mess. On the other hand, a Cordwainer Smith mess is more interesting than many other authors’ successes.

Sometimes with Smith, there is in the end a fairly straightforward story, but it’s told backwards or sideways, and swathed in stylistic antics and bizarre inventions, and the reader’s task is to appreciate them without becoming too distracted to figure out what the hell is going on. Here, the basic idea is one you hear every day on Top 40 radio, 30 or 40 times if you leave it on long enough: guy wants his baby back. Another guy, a Lord of the Instrumentality, has figured out a way to exploit this desire into a world(s)-changing discovery. To get there, you navigate a series of flash-backs and –forwards; an absurd if lively series of events at a hospital of the future, which offers some of the more bizarre medical techniques ever proposed; and a court of inquiry of the Lords of the Instrumentality, along with a rather alarming expository lump about how the Instrumentality actually operates. Much of this is told in a rather affected style that lies somewhere between saga and baby-talk. (First sentence: “Perhaps it is the saddest, maddest, wildest story in the whole long history of space.”)

The problem is the center doesn’t hold. The distractions overcome the story rather than seasoning it; it’s basically out of control. On the other hand, maybe that’s the point: the main character (the guy looking for his love) is called Artyr Rambo, seemingly named after a French poet who I gather was pretty far out of control himself. He was also fond of absinthe, which may have something to do with the story’s title (otherwise very poorly accounted for).

Anyway, three stars for the entertainment value of sorting it all out. A nod also goes to cover artist Lloyd Birmingham, who picks up on the story’s overtones of childishness with a cover that reflects a close reading of the story and is done in a style reminiscent of what children might do with scissors, construction paper, and glue, though of course much more complex and better executed.

The other novelet represents (be very afraid) the Return of the Classic Reprints, in the form of The Prince of Liars by one L. Taylor Hansen, from the October 1930 Amazing. The L is allegedly for Louise, though Sam Moskowitz says in his introduction that it’s not clear whether Louise actually wrote the several stories under this byline or whether she was fronting for her brother. This question might be more interesting if the story were. It starts out with a disquisition on relativity, then turns into a drawing-room frame story in which the narrator recounts what he was told by a mysterious character whose rooms are full of old books and artifacts.

The story proper starts out with more about relativity, then segues into one about a young Greek man, kidnapped by pirates, who escapes and takes refuge in a temple, where he encounters an extraordinarily beautiful woman, who isn’t what she seems, and soon enough he’s on an alien spaceship, and relativity comes back into play, etc. etc. It’s quite well written and is more the stuff of 1900-vintage scientific romance than of 1930s magazine SF, halfway between Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs I suppose, but lacking the intellectual incisiveness that keeps Wells interesting even at this late date. Three stars for literacy and readability, but pretty dated.

Philip K. Dick is here with his first short SF in almost four years, Stand-By . He’s been busy in the interim with his Hugo-winning novel The Man in the High Castle and with All We Marsmen, now being serialized in Worlds of Tomorrow. He's also, rumor has it, made a few unsuccessful attempts at contemporary novels. Stand-By starts with a brilliant small notion: the news clown (can’t you just see it down the road?) but then mostly throws it away. Instead, we are shown a world in which the American Presidency is occupied by a computer, with a stand-by President in case Unicephalon goes out of commission.

Stand-by dies, and his place is taken by lazy schlumpf Max Fischer, because he’s next on the union seniority list. Then Unicephalon goes on the blink, so it’s Max into the breach just as an extraterrestrial invasion fleet breezes into the Solar System. Unqualified President Max learns to enjoy power and its abuses in ways that I am sure could never happen here. News clown Jim Briskin becomes his completely serious antagonist, and upon Unicephalon’s resuscitation, Max is out and the alien invasion fades into the background. This reads more like a rambling stand-up routine than a story, but nonetheless it’s clever, amusing, and readable enough. Three stars, and a hope that Dick regains the form of some of his older and more penetrating stories like Autofac and The Father-Thing.

Roger Zelazny is back with The Misfit , a minor item on a familiar theme that might seem better if we didn’t know he’s capable of more. Protagonist is trapped in an artificial reality; he wants out to the real one; how will he know if he’s found it? Zelazny has the good sense to keep it very short. Three stars for insubstantiality well turned.

Larry Eisenberg contributes his second SF story, The Fastest Draw, which is clever but contrived and a bit turgid. An electronics genius is hired to perfect a simulated old-West gunfighter game for an eccentric millionaire and succeeds too well. For something this trivial, Eisenberg should take lessons in brevity from Zelazny—then maybe he’d rate more than two stars.

Sam Moskowitz has another SF Profile, this one of Edmond Hamilton, which is well below his usual standard both in substance and execution. It ignores major stretches of Hamilton’s career (all of the 1950s, and most of the 1940s, and his entire engagement with comic books) and is also execrably written, even for klunkmeister Moskowitz. Consider this sentence: “Romance and marriage was approached via many delays and detours.” Two stars, Sam, and you’re getting off easy. Don’t come back until you take some remedial English!

So, once more, this magazine seems to be looking up. But . . . from the Coming Next Month squib: “From the long-locked safe of Edgar Rice Burroughs comes a never-before-published manuscript” in which the protagonists “sail the fiery seas of Molop Az in the search for Hodon the Fleet One and Dian the Beautiful”! I’m scheduling my lobotomy now.

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Magazine/Anthology

[August 16, 1963] Time and Time Again (October 1963 Worlds of Tomorrow)

August 16, 2018 Victoria Silverwolf 2 Comments

[Did you meet the Traveler at WorldCon? Please drop him a line!]

by Victoria Silverwolf

I believe that time, even more than space, is the great theme of science fiction. Not only time travel, but also the ways in which the passage of time changes people and the way they live. Most SF stories take place in the future, and offer visions of the years, centuries, and millennia to come. Some feature precognition. Others deal with distortions in time, such as the slowing of time associated with velocities approaching the speed of light.

It's not surprising, then, that many of the stories in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow feature characters struggling with the mysteries and challenges of time.

The Night of the Trolls, by Keith Laumer

The narrator of this novella is thrust out of his own time and into another. He is placed in suspended animation for a routine test, which is only supposed to last a few days. He awakens to discover that nearly a century has passed. The secret government installation where he works is in ruins. The compound is still guarded by a gigantic, heavily armed, automated tank called a Bolo. (Such a device first appeared in Combat Unit, from the November 1960 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. That story takes place many centuries after this one, so no knowledge of it is needed to appreciate the new tale.)

Getting past the mechanical guardian is the narrator's first task. Later he discovers that an apocalyptic event left most survivors barely able to stay alive. Feudal lords leading lives of luxury rule over them. The narrator infiltrates the fortress of one such dictator. He encounters a figure from his past, and becomes involved in a scheme to activate another Bolo.

This is a fast-paced, vividly written adventure story. The narrator is one of the author's super-competent heroes. His ability to fight and bluff his way into the lord's stronghold strains credibility. The antagonist is a two-dimensional character of pure villainy. However, these are minor quibbles. The action-filled plot always holds the reader's attention, and there are moments of powerful emotional impact. Four stars.

The Hermit of Mars, by Stephen Bartholomew

The protagonist of this story also journeys alone through the years, but by his own choice. An archeologist, he was part of an exploration team sent to the red planet. A minor heart problem made it risky for him to return to Earth when the mission ended. He gladly volunteered to remain behind, because unhappy relationships with women made him a misanthropic loner. Unmanned spaceships send him supplies. For thirty-five years he lives alone, studying the incredibly ancient artifacts left behind by the extinct Martians. Two men arrive after all this time. It soon becomes clear that they are up to no good. They tolerate the hermit as a harmless old fool, but he proves to have a trick up his sleeve.

There is nothing particularly noteworthy, for good or bad, about this story. The author's style is serviceable, but undistinguished. There are no surprises in the plot. The resolution is something of a deus ex machina. There's an enjoyable bit of irony at the very end. Three stars.

The Good Friends, by Cordwainer Smith

An astronaut returns to Earth after an emergency. While recovering in a hospital, he inquires about the other members of the crew. The doctor caring for him tells him the frightening truth. Like other stories in this issue, a long period of time is involved.

This is a brief story with the flavor of an episode of The Twilight Zone. It will disappoint fans of the author's beautiful and mysterious myths of the far future. The style is simple and direct, without the intricate wordplay and imaginative images found in tales of the Instrumentality of Mankind. It's not a bad story, but it pales into insignificance compared to masterpieces like Alpha Ralpha Boulevard and The Ballad of Lost C'Mell. Three stars.

Orphans of Science, by Stephen Barr

This is an informal article about small mysteries. Why does light reflecting off metal create small white highlights? What, exactly, is white light? Why does a mirror reverse things from left to right, but not top to bottom? (The magazine's editorial explains the author's confusion on this point.) The rest of the article discusses a few more minor puzzles. These trivial ponderings are mildly interesting. Two stars.

All We Marsmen (Part 2 of 3) , by Philip K. Dick

This section of the novel concentrates on three characters. At the heart of the story is a boy who is severely autistic, one who has never spoken. The wealthy and powerful head of the Martian water workers union believes the child is able to foresee the future. He plans to have a skilled handyman, who suffers from episodes of schizophrenia, build a device that will allow the boy to communicate. The theory behind this is that the child perceives time moving at a very fast rate. This allows him to look beyond the present, but also prevents him from talking. An important subplot involves the handyman's father, who has a scheme to make a large profit by buying seemingly worthless Martian land. The boy draws a picture that provides hints about the future of this project.

So far, the narrative style is realistic. This changes drastically when bizarre images of death and decay fill the page. These are associated with the nonsense word gubbish. If I understand the author's intent correctly, this neologism appears in the boy's mind to describe the inevitable disintegration of all material things with time. As if this were not disconcerting enough, a meeting between the handyman and the union leader is described multiple times before it actually occurs. These descriptions repeat certain words and events, but have important differences. Surreal images of a disturbing nature fill the repetitions. Whether these are hallucinations, symbolic visions of the future, or indications that the child is somehow able to manipulate time, the effect is frightening.

I suspect that some readers will give up on the novel at this point. Before this section, the multiple plotlines were complex, but comprehensible. The sudden change to inexplicable images and strange distortions of reality make the plot difficult to follow. It's impossible to predict where the author will take me next, but so far the journey has been fascinating, and I'm eager to find out what our destination will be. Four stars.

The Lonely, by Judith Merril

This story takes the form of a transcription of a message intercepted from space. An eel-like alien lectures other aliens about human beings. It seems that very few sentient species reproduce sexually. Of those that do, humanity is almost unique in having only two sexes. A statue of a woman holding a rocket, created by unicellular aliens after humans visited their world, is involved. Eventually humans return to that world and find the statue.

This is a very strange story. I credit the author for coming up with aliens that do not resemble people at all. Other than that, the story's intent is unclear. It seems to be saying something about art and symbolism, as well as the way in which men and women view each other. Two stars.

To Save Earth, by Edward W. Ludwig

Earth's sun is going to explode in a little over twelve years. Six astronauts spend six years journeying to a distant planet, looking for a place where humanity can survive. The length of the trip causes mental disturbances. One becomes an alcoholic, one a kleptomaniac, one an amnesiac, one a paranoiac, one a schizophrenic, and one feels compelled to break things. The latter destroys their communication equipment. Unable to contact Earth, they face the horrifying challenge of making the long journey back, just in time to begin the exodus of its population. The new planet is inhabited by friendly aliens, who invite them to stay. The aliens offer them delicious food and drink, beautiful alien women as lovers, and a life free from all care. They must decide whether to turn their backs on Earth or endure the voyage home.

In sharp contrast to the previous story, these aliens are just slightly different from people. The familiar plot device of telepathy allows them to speak to their human visitors. As you can see from the synopsis above, the story has many other implausible events. Two stars.

The Masked World, by Jack Williamson

Six survey ships are lost without a trace after visiting a distant planet. The captain of the seventh ship discovers the skeleton of his wife, the pilot of the sixth ship. Near her remains is a strange plant, unlike anything else on the planet. Its DNA structure turns out to be the key to solving the mystery.

This is a very short story with a unique concept. I had to wonder why anyone would keep sending survey ships to a place where they always disappear. Three stars.

I see by the old clock on the wall that our time is up for today. See you next time!

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Magazine/Anthology

[June 16, 1963] Blues for a Red Planet (August 1963 Worlds of Tomorrow)

June 16, 2018 Victoria Silverwolf 5 Comments

by Victoria Silverwolf

The planet Mars and its inhabitants have long been favorite themes for science fiction writers, from The War of the Worlds to The Martian Chronicles. Will the age of space travel put an end to our wildest fancies about that alluring world?

The Soviet spacecraft intended to study Mars have all failed. NASA's Mariner program, so successful in studying Venus, is not scheduled to turn its attention to Mars until next year. Because the red planet is still something of a mystery, authors are free to use their imagination for a while yet. They may create a world where humans can live, or depict Martian canals and the civilization that created them.

The third issue of Worlds of Tomorrow upholds this tradition, with the first section of a major new novel set on Mars.

All We Marsmen (Part 1 of 3), by Philip K. Dick

The latest work from the author of last year's critically acclaimed alternate history novel The Man in the High Castle (which got only a mixed review from our esteemed host) is set on a traditional version of Mars. There are humanoid Martians (called Bleekmen), although they are a dying people. There are canals, although they are in a poor state of repair. Humans can survive on the planet, but only under harsh conditions.

By the end of this century, human colonies exist on Mars. Founded by Earth countries, businesses, or labor unions, they are under the control of the United Nations. Against this background, the reader is introduced to several characters.

Silvia Bohlen is a housewife and mother. She takes barbiturates to sleep and amphetamines to wake up. Her husband Jack is a repairman. While flying out on an assignment to fix a refrigeration unit, he gets a call from the UN to aid a group of Bleekmen dying of thirst. During this errand of mercy he meets Arnie Kott, head of an important union, whose own helicopter flight has been interrupted by the emergency. Kott despises the Bleekmen, and argues with Jack about the need to help them. Despite this disagreement, he comes to respect Jack's skill, and hires him for an important repair. In a flashback sequence, we learn that Jack came to Mars after an episode of schizophrenia.

Norbert Steiner and his family live next to the Bohlens. He works as a health food manufacturer, and secretly imports forbidden luxury foods from Earth. His son Manfred is severely autistic, and lives at a special facility for children with mental or physical disabilities. A shocking event involving Steiner leads to a crisis for his family and his neighbors.

There are many other characters I haven't mentioned and multiple subplots. It's not yet clear what direction this novel is going. There are hints that schizophrenics and autistics have precognitive abilities, and I believe this will be a major theme.

Some readers may be dismayed by the lack of a simple, linear plot. Others will find the novel depressing, as so many of its characters are unhappy with their lives. The picture it paints of a Mars inhabited by a large number of humans by the 1990's is likely to seem unrealistic. However, the author appears to have created a complex, serious work of literature, worthy of careful reading. Four stars.

A Hitch in Space, by Fritz Leiber

In a distant solar system, two men are aboard a spaceship on a routine mission. One of the men develops a bizarre psychosis. He imagines that his partner, the narrator, is really two people. When he's around, he calls him Joe, and thinks of him as a hero. When he's gone, he speaks to the imaginary Joseph, and insults him. The narrator puts up with this weird delusion, but when he goes outside the ship, the situation becomes dangerous.

This story combines psychological drama with a technological puzzle that could have appeared in the pages of Analog. As you'd expect from this author, it's very well written. The situation is interesting, if somewhat artificial. Three stars.

To the Stars, by J. T. McIntosh

A manufacturer of starships is blackmailed, on the basis that his ships are more dangerous than others. He disposes of this threat easily enough, with evidence that they cause no more deaths than any other ships. What is kept secret, however, is the fact that his ships are vulnerable at a particular moment during their time of use. When his daughter leaves on her honeymoon aboard one of his ships during this hazardous time, he takes measures to prevent a possible disaster.

I found the plot of this story contrived and inconsistent. The female characters are more fully realized than usual for this author. Unfortunately, the effect is ruined by an irrelevant paragraph explaining that women will never be equal to men in the business world, even two centuries from now. The reasons given are "women never trusted women" and "women didn't really want equality." Two stars.

The New Science of Space Speech, by Vincent H. Gaddis

This article discusses research into ways to communicate with extraterrestrials. It covers a lot of ground, from radio telescopes to dolphins, and from artificial languages based on mathematics to unexplained radio echoes. Some of this material is interesting, but the author covers too many subjects in a short space to do more than offer a taste of them. Two stars.

A Jury of Its Peers, by Daniel Keyes

A professor of physics invents a small computer that has consciousness. During a lecture he tells the students that the computer can think, forgetting that the state has passed a law against making such a claim in the classroom. A trial follows, with the computer itself called as a witness.

This scenario is clearly based on the famous Scopes Trial of 1925, which tested the law against teaching human evolution in Tennessee schools. Ironically, the law against teaching machine intelligence is in New Jersey, and the lawyer defending the professor is from Tennessee.

If this were merely an allegory for academic freedom, the story would be only moderately effective. However, the author has more in mind. The professor must face his own limitations, as well as those of the computer, when it gives its testimony. Although not the masterpiece one might expect from the creator of Flowers for Algernon [If he had a nickel for every time a reviewer said this…(Ed.)], this is a fine story with depth of characterization. Four stars.

The Impossible Star, by Brian W. Aldiss

Four astronauts explore the region of space beyond the Crab Nebula. A problem with their spaceship strands them on a small, rocky planetoid near a star of such immense mass that not even light can escape from it. (This may seem fantastic, but in recent years physicists have speculated that an object of sufficient size could produce a gravitation pull so strong that this could happen.) The men struggle with the bizarre effects of the black star. The stress of their situation soon has them at each other's throats. The concept is an interesting one. Even in an issue full of downbeat stories, this is a particularly bleak tale. Three stars.

Until the Mariner project takes away our dreams of glittering Martian cities, rising from ruby sands along emerald canals, let's keep reading about that fascinating world in the pages of our Earthling magazines.

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Book

[November 6, 1962] The road not taken… (Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle)

November 6, 2017 Gideon Marcus 14 Comments

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

by Gideon Marcus

What if the good guys had lost World War 2?

Imagine a United States split in three pieces: the East Coast is a protectorate of the Reich. The West has been colonized by the Japanese. A rump free state sprawls across the Rockies and western Plains. The Holocaust has extended to Africa, and the two fascist superpowers are locked in a Cold War with stakes as high, if not higher than in our real world.

Philip K. Dick has returned to us after a long hiatus with a novel, The Man in the High Castle. It is an ambitious book, long for a science fiction novel. Castle's setting is an alternate history, one in which the Axis powers managed to defeat the Allies…somehow (it is never explained). Dick explores this universe through five disparate viewpoint protagonists, whose paths intertwine in complex, often surprising ways:

Major Rudolf Wegener: An agent of the Abwehr, the German foreign espionage service known for its subversive, anti-Nazi activities. Wegener is desperate to make contact with the Japanese government to inform them of a German plan to turn the Cold War hot – a conflict the Japanese cannot win. His contact intermediary is…

Nobusuke Tagomi: Head of the Japanese trade mission in San Francisco, a deeply spiritual and traditional man who abhors violence. Like many Japanese posted in the former United States, he has an outsized fancy for American antiques such as those provided by…

Robert Childan: A prissy antiques dealer, who accepts the superiority of the ancient civilizations of the Far East, having adopted the Japanese mindset almost entirely. He is resolved to dismantle the cultural heritage of his nation one little treasure at a time – that is, until he discovers a new American culture growing like a flower in a footprint, a culture represented by the art whose creator is…

Frank Frink: Formerly a forger of American historical artifacts, he has turned his expertise to the creation of exquisite modern jewelry. He is a Jew in a world where being a Jew is a capital crime. He is married to but long-separated from…

Juliana Frink: A ravishing beauty and Judo expert living on her own in the Rocky Mountain States. She links up with a mournful Italian truck driver who turns out to be an SD (Nazi secret police) assassin tasked with murdering the author of…

The Grasshopper lies heavy: A sort of sixth character that unites the protagonists. It is a novel of alternate history in which Germany and Japan lost the Second World War. Banned in the Reich and Reich-controlled countries, it is a best-seller elsewhere. Its window on a world in which fascism did not triumph offers a scrap of hope, a vision of a world where sanity prevailed. It is interesting to note that the timeline of Grasshopper is not that of our universe, but one in which the British and Americans are the post-war superpowers.

There is a strong suggestion that what makes the world of Grasshopper so compelling is that it is, in fact, the real world. This goes beyond wishful thinking. At one point, Tagomi actually wills himself away from Castle's timeline. Castle's author, Hawthorne Abendsen confesses that he did not so much write Grasshopper as simply draft it per the dicta of the I Ching, an ancient Chinese oracle book whose use is widespread in the Japanese-influenced regions, and which Abendsen consulted throughout the writing of his book.

Castle takes a good third of its length to really get started. Ostensibly a thriller of an alternate Cold War, it is really a character study focused on the myriad minutiae of interaction. How do conqueror and conquered interact? How complete can cultural assimilation be? What is the character of pride in a defeated race? These are all good questions, and Dick does a decent job giving his take on their answers.

There are significant problems with Castle, however. For one, it suffers from lazy worldbuilding. The book is an opportunity for Dick to draw a wide cast of characters and depict their complex web of interactions. But the underpinnings of the world they inhabit are implausible. First and foremost, it would have been impossible, logistically, for the United States to have fallen to the Axis Powers. For that matter, I have doubts that the Soviet Union was ever in existential danger. Certainly the Reich never came close to making The Bomb – their racial theory-tinged science wouldn't have allowed it. It is sobering when you realize that the Allies managed to fight two world wars and develop the most expensive and powerful weapon ever known all at the same time. An Axis victory in World War 2 resulting in the conquest of the United States is simply a nonstarter.

Setting that aside (since we'd have no book otherwise) the Nazi feats in Castle, accomplished in just 17 years and including the colonization of Mars, Venus, the moon; as well as the damming of the Mediterranean(!) are just silly. In fact, a clever touch would have been to suggest that those feats were actually purely propaganda. They might well have been, but Dick plays it straight in the book.

Dick also seems to have not done much homework before writing Castle. The politics and depictions of Nazi characters could have been (and likely were) derived from a cursory read of Shirer's recent instant classic, Rise and Decline of the Third Reich, without much elaboration or extrapolation. Fair enough. Dick spends most of his time in the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America, anyway, so he doesn't need to develop the German side too much.

There again, however, we have no depth. The inner monologues of the Japanese (and the most Nippophile of subjects, Childan) are distinguished mostly by Dick's eschewing of the definite article. In other words, there is no "the" and precious few pronouns. That is technically how the Japanese language works, but it's not as if those concepts don't exist – they're simply implied. Moreover, it doesn't make sense that Childan would speak and think this way. The execution is clumsy. It makes the Japanese come off as pidgin-speakers, incapable of erudition in English.

The Japanese and Easternized Americans also exhibit a painful stiffness, and utterly spartan adherence to the ancient arts and ways. It's as if Dick had read Suzuki's Zen and Japanese Culture (one of the recent wave of books the Japanese have released to rehabilitate the image Westerners have of them) and took it as representative of all Japanese culture. I've been to Japan ten times. I've studied Japanese for two decades. I have a great many Japanese friends. They are as varied as any other set of people, and this monodimensional portrayal does them no favors – nor does it interest particularly.

Add to this the sterile, detached atmosphere of the book, as if the words were cloaked in gauze, and it makes for an often sloggish read. I understand that the style underscores the bleak hopelessness of life in the new America, but there should have been some variation among the characters. They all think similarly. A sort of cynical weariness. It's even justifiable, but it's oppressive and monotonous.

The reason for Dick's long absence from the science fiction genre (alternate history is not strictly science fiction; one of Dick's characters even says as much in Castle, but let's not split hairs) is that he, like Sturgeon and many others, tried to make it big with a mainstream book. Like Sturgeon, he was not successful, so it appears he has tried to bridge the gap between SF and the mainstream by picking a particularly popular topic. Shirer and Suzuki have certainly plowed the field for Dick, and early buzz around Castle is strong.

But unlike Heinlein's mainstream success, Stranger in a Strange Land or Sturgeon's less successful (but better) Venus Plus X, I find it difficult to discern an overall message in Castle. I find myself comparing Castle unfavorably with Orwell's 1984, a book that was not only an excellent novel, but also a profound cautionary tale against Communism and the pursuit of power for power's sake. Castle doesn't really say much other than "life under the Japanese would be pretty lousy, albeit better than under the Nazis." The interesting relationships between characters, and what Dick tries to convey through them, are subverted by the lack of plausibility of Dick's alternate 1962 and by the flawed and flat portrayals of those who live in it.

Of course, maybe these flaws are intentional. The ending suggests that the world of Castle isn't even real, just some sort of half-baked flight of fancy. One might conclude that all of the stereotypes, all the shallow history, the mind-numbing sameness of the characters are just beams to support the structure of a colossal cosmic joke. That Castle really is just a Dickian daydream set to paper, and that the styling of its components is designed to underscore the unreality of the story's proceedings. Seen in this light, Castle would be subtly brilliant.

However, I suspect that gives Dick too much credit. I think Dick was really just throwing vague ideas out there and hoping we'd Rorschach them into something coherent. Castle is a readable book, a well-timed book, and it knits a number of characters together somewhat entertainingly, at times profoundly. But it's also a sensational, shallow book. An overwrought, affected book. It's not bad – Dick is never bad – but it is not the masterpiece I think many people feel it is destined to be.

Three stars and a half stars.

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Book, Magazine/Anthology

[Nov. 17, 1959] Dead Center (December 1959 Galaxy and wargames)

November 17, 2014 Gideon Marcus 2 Comments

Hello, fellow travelers! As promised, here's a round-up of this month's Galaxy magazine.

Or should I say Galaxy Science Fiction? According to editor Horace Gold (and I somehow missed this), Galaxy was misprinted last month with the old logo and the old price! They really lost their shirt on that issue, sadly. On the other hand, Gold is going to try not being ashamed of what he peddles and see if it affects sales positively or adversely. I'm hoping for the former.

Diving into the stories, George O. Smith continues to write in a workmanlike fashion. His The Undetected is part thriller, part who-dunnit, part romance, and features a psionic detective looking for a psionic criminal. And you thought it could only happen in Astounding.

Virgil Finlay

The often-excellent Phillip K. Dick has a lackluster story in this ish: War Game. In the future, the tricky Ganymedians are constantly trying to sneak subversive toys past our customs censors. In this case, they succeed by occupying the attention of a pair of said censors with a sort of automated toy soldier kit. It's the sort of throwaway tale I'd have expected ten years ago.

Wallace Wood

On the other hand, it provides an excellent segue to an exciting new arena of gaming. A hundred years ago, the Germans invented sandbox "wargaming," wherein they simulated war with a set of rules and military units in miniature. A half-century later, H.G. Wells proposed miniature wargaming as a way of scratching the human itch for violence without bloodshed. Fletcher Pratt, popularized the naval miniature combat game in World War 2, playing on the floor of a big lobby.

A fellow named Charles Roberts has taken the concept of miniature wargaming and married it to the tradition of board-gaming (a la Scrabble and Monopoly or Chess, perhaps a prototype wargame). Thanks to his revolutionary Tactics, and its sequel Tactics II, two players can simulate war on a divisional scale between the fictional entities of "Red" and "Blue" using a gameboard map, cardboard pieces, and dice. While perhaps not as visually impressive as facing off thousands of tin soldiers against each other, it is far more accessible and inexpensive.

War leaves me cold; I am a confirmed pacifist. But there is fun in the strategy and contest that a wargame provides. I look forward to seeing what new wargames Roberts' Avalon Hill company comes up with. Perhaps we'll see games with a science fictional theme in the near future—imagine gaming the battles depicted in Dorsai! or Starship Soldier!

To the next story: Jim Harmon is a fine writer, and his Charity Case, about a fellow hounded by demons who cause his luck to be absolutely the worst, starts out so promisingly that the rushed ending is an acute disappointment. Maybe next time.

Dick Francis

Fred Pohl's The Snowmen is a glib, shallow cautionary tale covering subject matter better handled in Joanna Russ' Nor Custom Stale. In short, humanity's need to consume compels it to generate power from heat pumps that accelerate the process of entropy leaving Earth in a deep freeze.

I did like Robert Bloch's Sabbatical, about a time traveler from 1925 who quickly determines that the grass is always greener in other time zones, and one might as well stay home. I enjoyed the off-hand predictions about the future—that Communism will no longer be the big scare, to be replaced with Conservativism; the patriarchy will be replaced with a matriarchy; the average weight of folks will be dramatically higher. I guess we'll see which ones come true.

Finally, we have Andy Offut's Blacksword. I had hoped for an epic fantasy adventure. Instead, I got one of those satirical political romps wherein one man plays chess with thousands of inferior minds, and things work out just as he planned. And then it turns out he's just a pawn (or perhaps a castle) in a bigger political chess game. Inferior stuff.

Wallace Wood

All told, this issue tallied at three stars. The problem is that this issue wasn't a mix of good and bad but rather a pile of unremarkable stories. With the exception of the Sheckley and the Ley article, and perhaps Bloch's short story, it was rather a disappointment.

Of course, this month's Astounding prominently features Randall Garrett, again. Out of the frying pan, into inferno.

See you in two! Try not to get involved with any rigged quiz shows…

—
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Magazine/Anthology

IF Returns! (July 1959 IF; 7-07-1959)

July 7, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

There is a certain perverse joy to statistics. Think of the folks who spend hours every week compiling baseball scores, hit averages, etc. It’s a way to find a pattern to the universe, I suppose.

To date, I’ve sort of off-handedly rated issues on a 1 to 5 star scale. Last weekend, I went through my issues and compiled real statistics. Here’s my methodology:
Each story/article gets rated 1 to 5 with these meanings.

5: Phenomenal; I would read again.
4: Good; I would recommend it to others.
3: Fair; I was entertained from beginning to end, but I would not read again or recommend.
2: Poor; I wasted my time but was not actively offended.
1: Abysmal; I want my money back!

I generally skip editorials and book reviews (in the ratings; I do read them… except for Campbell's editorials).

I then average all the stories in the book. I do another, weighted, average where I factor in the length of a story (i.e. if the long stories are great and the short ones are terrible, the latter do not bring down the score as much). Generally, the two scores are close.

My preliminary analysis has confirmed what I’d already felt in my gut–Fantasy and Science Fiction is a consistently better magazine than Astounding. F&SF runs a consistent 3 or 3.5 average. That may not sound like a lot, but any score over 3 means there must be at least one good story inside. I haven’t reviewed a magazine that scored a 4 yet.
Astounding, on the other hand, runs in the 2.5 to 3 range. This is why I find the magazine a chore.

I haven’t don’t Galaxy yet, but I suspect it will fall in between the two above magazines.

Using my brand new rating system, let’s talk about the new IF Science Fiction. I’m afraid it’s not quite up to Galaxy’s standards, nor even those set by Damon Knight’s outing as editor, but it’s not horrible, either.

The issue starts strongly enough with F. L. Wallace’s Growing Season, about a starship hydroponics engineer with a contract out on his life. It’s a very plausible and advanced story whose only flaw is that it ends too quickly and in a pat manner. 4 stars.

The Ogre, on the other hand, is a disappointing turn-out from normally reliable Avram Davidson. As one reader observed, it falls between two stools, being neither chilling nor funny. It’s another story where an anthropologist would rather kill than revise a pet theory, in this case, the date of Neanderthal extinction. 2 stars.

Wynne Whiteford, of whom I had not heard before, though I understand he’s been around for a while, writes a rather hackneyed tale of immortality and body-snatching called Never in a Thousand Years. If you don’t see the end coming from the beginning, you’re not looking very hard. 2 stars.

Sitting Duck, by Daniel Galouye, is one of those stories with a uncannily relevant but unnecessary parallel subplot. In this case, aliens are hunting humans from artificial “blinds” in the shapes of homes, malls, and movie theater… just like the protagonist when he hunts ducks from blinds. It really doesn’t work as a story, but it’s not execrable. Just primitive. 2 stars.

I rather enjoyed Mutineer by Robert Shea, in which cities have reverted to city states (albeit high-technology ones), professions are regimented, and soldiers are both fearsome and feared. There are interesting parallels to be drawn to Classical Greece, perhaps. 3 stars.

Paul Flehr’s A Life and a Half is inconsequential, a bitter reminiscence by an old-timer about a century from now, noting how much better things were “back then.” It has a rather strong Yiddish tone throughout, however, so it’s not all bad. 2 stars.

Rosel George Brown continues to show potential that is never quite realized. In Car Pool, a young mother struggles with mixing alien and human children in a pre-school setting; at the same time, she wrestles with her plainness and puritanical virtuosity. I liked it, but it is not quite great. 3 stars.

Baker’s Dozens is about a series of duplicate persons who encounter life and death in a number of interesting ways in their interstellar journeys. The story is mainly a vehicle for author, Jim Harmon’s, groan-worthy puns. 3 stars.

IF ends as it began, with a quite good story by Phillip K. Dick called Recall Mechanism. It combines a post-apocalyptic world with investigations into psychiatry and precognition. I’m torn between assigning it a 4 or a 5. If only there were an integer between the two!