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[August 12, 1963] WET BLANKET (the September 1963 Amazing)

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by John Boston

[Want to talk to the Journey crew and fellow fans?  Come join us at Portal 55! (Ed.)]

Just as I feared, the September 1963 Amazing marks the return, after too short an absence, of Robert F. Young, who in Boarding Party moves on from his twee recapitulations of the Old Testament to, I kid you not, Jack and the [REDACTED] Beanstalk.  Alien space traveler needs to enrich the soil in the on-ship farm, finds an out-of-bounds planet with the right kind of dirt, and lowers a big tube to suck it up; but one of the natives (those protected by the out-of-bounds designation) climbs the tube, and makes off with a “Uterium 5 Snirk Bird, a Toy Friddle-fork, and Two Containers of Yellow Trading Disks,” it says here.  The aliens all have names of four syllables separated by hyphens, and you can fill in the blanks for this one.  One guttering star—a tiny red dwarf at best.

But the issue opens with Poul Anderson’s Homo Aquaticus, illustrated on the cover by a swimmer with a menacing look and a more menacing trident, next to a nicely-rendered fish, in one of artist Lloyd Birmingham’s better moments.  This is one of Anderson’s atmospheric stories, its mood dominated by Anglo-Saxon monosyllables.  No, not those—I mean fate, guilt, doom, that sort of thing.  The story’s tone is set in the first paragraph, in which the protagonist “thought he heard the distant blowing of a horn.  It would begin low, with a pulse that quickened as the notes waxed, until the snarl broke in a brazen scream and sank sobbing away.”

This is rationalized as the wind in the cliffs, but we know better.  The good (space)ship Golden Flyer and its crew have been sentenced to roam the galactic hinterlands after some of their number betrayed other ships of the Kith, a starfaring culture separated from planetary cultures by relativistic time dilation.  Right now they’re looking at what used to be a colony planet, but all they see is ruins, until their encounter with the colony’s descendants, as given away by the title.  In the end, doom and fate are tempered with rationality and mercy.  Three stars, but towards the top of Anderson’s middling range.

After these two short stories, there is only one other piece of fiction in the issue, A. Bertram Chandler’s long novella The Winds of If, an entry in what now seems to be a series about goings-on on the Rim (of the galaxy), with a couple of magazine stories and a novel, The Rim of Space, already published.  The plot: tramp space freighter is about ready for the knackers, or breakers, or whatever, but the crew gets hired by a Commodore Grimes to take an experimental ship on a long flight—a lightjammer, propelled by the pressure of light against large sails. 

Two women, a journalist and an engineer, are added to the crew, which already includes one woman.  Soap opera ensues, and one of the women decides to present her inamorata with a really special gift—genuine faster-than-light travel.  The lightjammer is by now at 0.9 per cent of light speed, so a little push should put it over, right?  Like a bucket of gunpowder detonated at the stern?

I’m really not the one to judge—hey, I’m still a couple of years away from high school physics—but hasn’t Chandler stumbled into a sort of relativistic Fool’s Mate here?  There’s an obvious arithmetical problem; wouldn’t you need a lot more 9s after that decimal point to get close enough to c for such a little push to put you over?  But more importantly, doesn’t matter get more massive the closer you get to c, meaning a corresponding increase in inertia would defeat any attempt to sneak over the line with a little added acceleration?  Where’s Julio Gomez when you need him?

Anyway, in the story it works, and it precipitates the characters into a series of strange experiences which I won’t detail, save to say that the soap opera intensifies and permutates, and we get a good dose of low-level male-chauvinism as the women prove slaves to their emotions.  Aside from that, it’s smoothly written and perfectly readable if you don’t have anything better to do, but that and the cartoon science get it two stars.  Also, the characters smoke cigarettes.  A lot.  On board an enclosed vessel that has only the air it can bring with it or manufacture in flight.  How likely is it that smoking would be tolerated on a long-haul spaceship?  Inquiring minds think that’s about as silly as the gunpowder-bucket FTL drive.

This month’s non-fiction piece is Ben Bova’s article Neutrino Astronomy—reasonably informative but dull, and briefly worse than dull as he unveils the Useless Simile of the Month.  One section of the article is headed The Stellar Pituitary Gland, and it says here: “Neutrinos might well control the aging process in the Sun, much as the pituitary gland is suspected to regulate aging in human beings.” P’tooey!  Two stars.

So, once again, Amazing brightened up for a month, with several excellent stories last month, but now as usual the wet blanket of mediocrity has descended again. 




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Magazine

[May 30, 1963] Held back? (June 1963 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Graduation day is rapidly approaching.  Around the world, high school seniors are about to don cap and gown and emerge from their academic cocoons.  They will be transformed creatures, highly improved in comparison to their state upon entering school.  They'll go on to be the next Picasso, Wright, Salk, or Meitner.  Such are our hopes, anyway.

Science fiction is in the midst of a similar transition.  Gestated in the womb of Mary Shelley's mind, SF was born in the late 19th Century, Mssrs. Verne and Wells serving as midwives.  In the 20s, it entered grammar school under the tutelage of Hugo Gernsback, editor of Amazing Stories.  At the time, SF was an undistinguished pupil, little different from its fellows at Pulp Elementary.  But in 1937, SF entered Astounding Middle School, which had a most extraordinary principal, John W. Campbell, aided by a student council led by Heinlein, Asimov, and Leinster.  It was a Boys' School, of course, though a few females snuck or fought their way in.  This was the period in which SF began to shine, displaying a characteristic intelligence, innovation, and devotion to scientific principles.

The genre entered Galaxy High School in 1950 after taking a few preparatory classes at F&SF School for the Gifted.  Galaxy High was (and to a limited degree still is) a co-ed school, and it was here that SF fully flowered, displaying hitherto unseen nuance, breadth, and passion.  Its vista spread beyond the solar system to the stars.  Having mastered the subjects of math, physics, and engineering in Middle School, it now turned to the subtler arts: psychology and sociology.  It achieved high marks in English such that some of its compositions were included in literary anthologies alongside the works of other, older genres.

After 12 years of High School, SF is approaching its own time of graduation.  Where will it head from here?  There is some indication that the genre will head to New Wave University, possibly at its British campus, where it can major in philosophy and advanced writing techniques.  Or it may elect to go to the twin Goldsmith Universities.  The opportunities there include exciting placement in the worlds of both science and fantasy.  Plus, that's where the women are…


(Accurate depiction of the SF genre — note the demographic ratio)

But there are also signs that SF may not be ready to graduate at all.  Its output isn't what it used to be, and in many cases, it seems to be just going through the motions.  Lately, the genre has been visiting its old stomping grounds, Astounding Elementary (recently renamed to Analog School for the Psychically Inclined).  Each time, the result is a regression in the quality of its work.

Just take a look at SF's latest exam results, the June 1963 Analog.  Outwardly, it reflects the work of a mature student.  After all, it's a full 8.5" by 11" in dimensions and printed on slick paper.  But note the content — if you were on a college (or army) recruiting board, would you take this as a sign of promise?

The Big Fuel Feud (Part 1 of 2), by Harry B. Porter

There is a war being waged inside the United States (or perhaps it is merely a spirited competition) between the factions that favor liquid-fueled rockets and those that like the solid-fueled kind.  In other words, does your propellant splash or crumble?  There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods, and they are of differing importance depending on whether your application is putting people in space or blowing up people in Russia.  The author lays out, comprehensively and legibly (if a bit disorganizedly, particularly at the end) the history and current state of the art in solid fuels.

I found it interesting, but then, it's also my pigeon.  Three stars. 

The Trouble with Telstar, by John Berryman

Some science fiction takes place in the far future against an as yet dimly conceivable tableau of advanced technologies and galactic locales.  Other SF is taken right out of tomorrow's headlines.  This is, perhaps, the easier to write.  On the other hand, it is also the most readily accessible.

Berryman, who normally writes competent psi-related stuff for Analog, turns in this competent (if annoyingly male-chauvinist) straight engineering piece on in situ satellite repair.  In it, the nationalized space telcom has discovered a fatal flaw in its new Telstar line of communications satellites.  Unfortunately, six of the constellation of eighteen have already been launched, and the problem cannot be duplicated precisely on the ground.  A technician advances the idea of diagnosing and repairing the issue in space, arguing that it's cheaper and quicker than starting all over on the ground.  Not only is the proposal accepted, but (to his dismay) the technician is drafted for the job.

Trouble is set in or around 1966 and features the real-world Saturn rocket and Air Force "Dyna-Soar" spaceplane.  The details of the repair trip are incredibly authentic, down to the manufacture of specialized tools for disassembly of the Telstars in orbit, and the depiction of the tech's several spacewalks.  I found myself utterly riveted by this snapshot of the near future, convinced of its reality.  Four stars.

Hermit, by J. T. McIntosh

A lone male officer at a remote military outpost has orders to destroy any incoming human vessel.  But when a lifeboat appears with one beautiful young woman aboard, he must decide between following his instructions or following his heart.

This is a setup that, when done well, can be quite compelling.  My favorite example is Hallunication Orbit, in which the solitary caretaker of a far-off observatory must determine whether his visitors are real or not.  Interestingly, that fine example was written more than a decade ago by none other than…J.T. McIntosh!

Hermit compares poorly with McIntosh's earlier tale.  Not only is it clear from the beginning that the "castaway" is a spy, but the sentry's actions are illogical, treasonous, and only explained by exposition in the last few paragraphs.  Two stars, and an admonition — don't plagiarize, especially from your own work!

Territory, by Poul Anderson

The trouble with do-gooding is that it's a contract with no consideration.  If the people you're helping don't understand your motivations, they don't appreciate the help.  At least, that's Anderson's assertion in Territory, in which human scientists were trying to avert an impending Ice Age are slaughtered by the aliens they were trying to help.

The project is salvaged by Nicholas van Rijn, a recurring Anderson character whose key traits include girth, malaprops, obnoxiousness, and the pursuit of profit.  He determines that the aliens won't take assistance, but they will jump into a mutually lucrative trade deal that accomplishes the same goal.  Win-win-win.

Well, wins for the characters — not for the reader.  Van Rijn is barely tolerable at his best, and when Anderson has the sole surviving scientist, a young woman, fall for the lout, it took great restraint to not throw the issue into a nearby toilet.  Two stars.

Ham Sandwich, by James H. Schmitz

Last up is an inconsequential story that is nowhere more at home than in the pages of Analog.  An oily character, specializing in the desires of the rich, offers True Insight to those who can afford it.  Such Insight is marked by the cultivation and demonstration of psychic powers, which can be greatly aided through the purchase of certain tools, available for just $1200 a-piece.

One reads the story waiting for the other shoe to drop, and when it does, it is with a dull thud.  The flim-flammer is brought in on bunko charges — turns out he really is con artist.  But he's then let free to continue his scheme in another city because, it turns out, he is effective at discovering latent psychic talents, who can then be recruited by the government.

It's just not very good.  Two stars.

Pencils down everyone.  It's time to grade the last test results before graduation day.  Oh my…  This month's Analog scored a dismal 2.6 stars.  That's as bad as June's Galaxy (our High School is failing our pupil, too, it seems).  But let's not judge out of hand, shall we?  Amazing clocked in at 2.8, New Worlds at 2.9.  Mediocre, but not entirely damning.  Fantastic scored 3.2 stars, and F&SF garnered an impressive 3.5 star grade.

In the end, I wouldn't say this is a set of failing marks.  Rather, they indicate that the genre has spent more than enough time in school and must strike out on its own to new vistas to reach the next level.  Let us allow SF to graduate

We might also consider replacing the Principal at Analog — his methods are highly outdated, and we don't want to unduly burden any new pupils, now do we?

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Magazine

[May 18, 1963] (June 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Every so often, you get a perfect confluence of events that makes life absolutely rosy.  In Birmingham, Alabama, the segregationist forces have caved in to the boycott and marching efforts of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  Two days ago, astronaut Gordo Cooper completed a day-and-a-half in orbit, putting America within spitting distance of the Russians in the Space Race.  And this month, Avram Davidson has turned out their first superlative issue of F&SF since he took the editorial helm last year. 

Check out the June 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction and see if you don't agree:

No Truce With Kings, by Poul Anderson

Centuries after The Bombs Fell, the North American continent has scratched its way back to the early 20th Century, technology-wise, but enlightened feudalism remains the order of the day.  Kings begins on the eve of civil war in the Pacific States of America after a coup has placed an expansionist government in charge in San Francisco bent on reestablishing Manifest Destiny.  Colonel McKenzie of the Sierra Military Command must fight to preserve the old confederacy in the face of superior forces as well as the belligerent "neutrality" of the Esps — communal mystics who seem to have developed terrible psychic weapons.

Don't worry — the story really does belong in this magazine, and not Analog!

Anderson, of course, has been a pleasure to read for many years (since his inexplicable dip in the late '50s.) Kings is a nuanced, character-driven war story filled with lurid descriptions of battles and strategic considerations.  It's a bit like The High Crusade played straight, actually.  Four stars for the general reader, five if combat is your bag.

Pushover Planet, by Con Pederson

This piece starts well enough, with a pair of dialect-employing space miners landing on an uncommonly idyllic world and meeting an uncommonly friendly alien.  The ending, on the other hand, is pure ironic corn, and on the whole, the story feels like an idea Bob Sheckley rejected as not worth his time to write.  I don't know who Pederson is any more than Davidson does (apparently, the Editor doesn't even know where to send payment for this story written nearly a decade ago).  In any event, I don't think the magazine got its money's worth.  Two stars.

Starlesque, by Walter H. Kerr

About an alien stripper who takes it all off.  Not worth your time.  Two stars.

Green Magic, by Jack Vance

Oh, but Vance's latest work absolutely is!  Dig this: beyond our world lie the realms of White and Black magic, each featuring the powers and denizens you might expect.  But beyond them, and possessing powers more abstract and strange are the realms of Purple and Green magic (and further still, those of the indescribable colors, rawn and pallow).  One Howard Fair would follow in his Uncle Gerald's footsteps to become adept in the wonders of Green magic, no matter the warnings from a pair of its citizens.

A brilliant, unique piece that lasts just long enough and grips throughout.  Five stars.

The Light That Failed!, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor continues with his series on the luminiferous ether, this time discussing the famous Michelson-Morley experiment.  This test was supposed to show Earth's "absolute speed" through the cosmic medium.  Instead, it disproved the ether's existence and set the stage for Einstein's and Planck's modern conceptions of the universe.  Vital stuff to know.  Four stars.

The Weremartini, by Vance Aandahl

Young Vance Aandahl (no relation to Jack Vance) has produced his first readable story in a long time, about an epicurian English professor whose alternate form is exactly as it says on the tin.  Weird, disturbing, but not bad.  Three stars.

Bokko-Chan, by Hoshi Shinnichi

A barkeep builds the perfect assistant — a beautiful but empty-headed robot woman to occupy the attentions (and tabs) of the tavern's patrons.  Billed as the first Japanese SF story to appear in English, it reads like a barbed children's story.  I suspect it's better in the original language (and I'd love to get a copy, since I could read it — I actually was aware of Hoshi-san before he appeared in these pages), but it's not bad, even in translation.  Three stars.

Tis the Season to Be Jelly, by Richard Matheson

Only Matheson could successfully manage this tale of post-atomic, mutated hicks.  Stupidly brilliant, or brilliantly stupid.  You decide.  Three stars.

Another Rib, by John J. Wells and Marion Zimmer Bradley

Just 16 men, the crew of humanity's first interstellar expedition, are all that remain of homo sapiens after catastrophe claims our mother star.  All hope seems lost for our species…until a native of Proxima Centauri offers to surgically alter some of the spacemen, expressing their latent female reproductive organs.

Rib is an interesting exploration of what it means to be a man, and the varying degree of push required (if any!) for a person to transition from one gender to another.  A bold piece.  Four stars.

There Are No More Good Stories About Mars Because We Need No More Good Stories About Mars, by Brian Aldiss

Things wrap up with a bitter poem about how science has ruined Mars for SF, but who cares — we'll always have Barsoom.  Three stars.

The resulting issue is a solid house made of the finest bricks albeit rather low quality mortar.  Good G-d, even Davidson's editorial openings are decent now.  Maybe he reads my column…

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Magazine

[April 9, 1963] IFfy… (May 1963 IF Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Every month, science fiction stories come out in little digest-sized magazines.  It used to be that this was pretty much the only way one got their SF fix, and in the early '50s, there were some forty magazines jostling for newsstand space.  Nowadays, SF is increasingly sold in book form, and the numbers of the digests have been much reduced.  This is, in many ways, for the good.  There just wasn't enough quality to fill over three dozen monthly publications.

That said, though there are now fewer than ten regular SF mags, editors still can find it challenging to fill them all with the good stuff.  Editor Fred Pohl, who helms three magazines, has this problem in a big way.  He saves the exceptional stories and known authors (and the high per word rates) for his flagship digest, Galaxy, and also for his newest endeavor, Worlds of Tomorrow.  That leaves IF the straggler, filled with new authors and experimental works. 

Sometimes it succeeds.  Other times, like this month, it is clear that the little sister in Pohl's family of digests got the short end of the stick.  There's nothing stellar in the May 1963 IF, but some real clunkers, as you'll see.  I earned my pay (such as it is) this month!

The Green World, by Hal Clement

Hal Clement (or Harry Stubbs, if you want to know the name behind the pseudonym) has made a name for himself as a writer of ultrahard science fiction, lovingly depicting the nuts and bolts of accurate space-borne adventure.  The Green Planet details the archaeological and paleontological pursuits of a human expedition on an alien planet.  The puzzle is simple — how can a world not more than 50 million years old possess an advanced ecosystem and a hyper-evolved predator species? 

Clement's novella, which comprises half the issue, is not short on technical description.  What it lacks, however, is interesting characters and a compelling narrative.  I bounced off this story several times.  Each time, I asked myself, "Is it me?"  No, it's not.  It's a boring story, and the pay-off, three final pages that read like a cheat, aren't worth the time investment.  One star.

Die, Shadow!, by Algis Budrys

Every once in a while, you get a story that is absolutely beautiful, filled with lyrical writing, and yet, you're not quite sure what the hell just happened.  Budrys' tale of a modern-day Rip van Winkle, who sleeps tens of thousands of years after an attempted landing on Venus, is one of those.  I enjoyed reading it, but it was a little too subtle for me.  Still, it's probably the best piece in the issue (and perhaps more appropriate to Fantastic).  Three stars.

Rundown, by Robert Lory

Be kind to the worn-out bum begging for a dime — that coin might literally spell the difference between life and death.  A nicely done, if rather inconsequential vignette, from a first-time author.  Three stars.

Singleminded, by John Brunner

In the midst of a ratcheted-up Cold War, a stranded moon-ferry pilot is rescued by a chatty Soviet lass.  The meet cute is spoiled, by turns, first by the unshakable paranoia the pilot feels for the Communist, and second by the silly, incongruous ending.  I suspect only one of those was the writer's intention.  Three stars.

Nonpolitical New Frontiers, by Theodore Sturgeon
ans. Al Landau, gideon marcus, hal clement, harry s
Sturgeon continues to write rather uninspired, overly familiar non-fiction articles for IF.  In this one, Ted points out that fascinating science doesn't require rockets or foreign planets — even the lowly nematode is plenty interesting.  Three stars.

Another Earth, by David Evans and Al Landau

When I was 14, (mumblety-mumblety) years ago, I wrote what I thought was a clever and unique science fiction story.  It featured a colony starship with a cargo of spores and seeds that, through some improbable circumstance, travels in time and ends up in orbit around a planet that turns out to be primeval Earth.  The Captain decides to seed the lifeless planet, ("Let the land produce…") thus recreating the Biblical Genesis. 

I did not realize that Biblically inspired stories were (even then) hardly original.  In particular, the Adam and Eve myth gets revisited every so often.  It's such a hoary subject that these stories are now told with a wink (viz. Robert F. Young's Jupiter Found and R.A. Lafferty's In the Garden).

Why this long preface?  Because the overlong story that took two authors (and one undiscerning editor) to vomit onto the back pages of IF is just a retelling of the Noah myth.  An obvious one.  A bad one.  One star.

Turning Point, by Poul Anderson

Last up, the story the cover illustrates features a concept you won't find in Analog.  A crew of terran explorers finds a planet of aliens that, despite their primitive level of culture, are far more intelligent than humans.  The story lasts just long enough for us to see the solution we hatch to avoid our culture being eclipsed by these obviously superior extraterrestrials.  Not bad, but it suffers for the aliens being identical to humans.  Three stars.

Thus ends the worst showing from IF in three years.  Here's a suggestion: raise the cover price to 50 cents and pay more than a cent-and-a-half per word?

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Magazine

[April 1, 1963] Stuck in the Past (April 1963 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

The world is a topsy-turvy place.  Whether it's a coup in Guatemala, or pro-Peronista unrest in Argentina, or a slow-motion civil war in Indochina, one can't open the newspaper without seeing evidence of disorder.  Even at home, it's clear that the battle for Civil Rights is just getting started, with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference planning a sit-in campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, the most segregated city in the country.  It's been a long time coming, but there's no question that many folks (on the wrong side of history) are upset at the changing order of things. 

So it's no wonder that some turn to the old familiar pleasures to escape from reality.  And while most science fiction magazines are now flirting with a new, literary style (particularly F&SF), a direction the British are starting to call "The New Wave," Analog Science Fact – Science Fiction sticks stolidly to the same recipe it's employed since the early 1950s: Psi, Hokum, and Conservatism. 

I suppose some might find the April 1963 Analog comforting, but I just found it a slog.  What do you think?

Which Stars Have Planets?, by Stanley Leinwoll

You'd think an article with a name like this would be right up my alley, but it turns out to be some metaphysics about planets causing sunspots.  Because, you see, Jupiter's orbital period of 12 years is close to the solar sunspot cycle of 11 years.  And if you add up the orbital periods of Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and divide by four, you get 11 years. 

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!?

Nothing.  Not a damned thing.  The latter observation is numerological folderol, and the former is meaningless given that sunspots don't only show up on the side facing Jupiter.

Two stars for the pretty pictures.

"What'll You Give?", by Winston Sanders

Last month, Editor Campbell wrote a piece about how the gas giants of our solar system were untapped reservoirs of chemical wealth just waiting to be exploited.  "Winston Sanders" (a frequent pseudonym of Poul Anderson) has obliged Campbell by writing about a Jupiter mining mission in which a deep-diving spacecraft encounters trouble while scooping the ammonia and methane from the giant planet's atmosphere. 

By all rights, it should be an exciting piece, and yet, it almost completely fails to be.  A tidbit the Young Traveler taught me as I was writing my latest novel: don't assume your audience will find the technical details fascinating.  You have to make them relevant to the characters, described through their reactions. 

I could have done without the hackneyed nationality depictions, too.  Three stars, because the topic is good.  The execution is less so.

Sonny, by Rick Raphael

Hayseed army recruit plays havoc with local electrical systems when he telepaths home instead of writing like everyone else.  The military sends him to Russia to send mental postcards.

It's as dumb and smug as it sounds — the most Campbellian piece of the issue.  It is in English, however.

Two stars.

Last Resort, by Stephen Bartholomew

Things start well-enough in this story about an astronaut slowly but fatally losing air from his capsule.  I liked the bit about using a balloon to find the leak (it drifts to the hole, you see), but all trace of verisimilitude is lost when the spaceman lights not one but two cigarettes during the crisis!  Maybe smokes of the future don't burn oxygen. 

And, of course, the story is "solved" with psi.  Because this is Analog.

Two stars.

Frigid Fracas (Part 2 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

After Middle Middle class mercenary, Major Joe Mauser, utterly louses up his chance at joining the ranks of the Uppers through military daring, he signs up with the underground movement whose aim is to tear the class system down altogether.  He is dispatched to the Sov-world capital of Budapest with the cover of being a liaison, but he's really an agent to see if the Workers' Paradise is similarly inclined to revolution.

This, the fourth installment in this particular future history, is rich on color but poor in credibility, and there's a lot more talking than doing.  It's not as disappointing as Reynolds' recent "Africa" series, but I expected a better conclusion to a promising saga.

Three stars.

Iceberg From Earth, by J. T. McIntosh

Iceberg is an espionage potboiler whose setting is a trio of colonized planets that, blessedly, isn't Earth, Mars, and Venus.  I did appreciate that the hero agent was a woman (the iceberg); I was sad that she wasn't the viewpoint character — instead, it was a rather lackluster and anti-woman fellow spy.  I did like the solar system McIntosh created, though.  Three stars.

A Slight Case of Limbo, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

Lastly, if not quite leastly, is this tale about a stout-hearted guy with a weak heart who gives his life to save another.  Except that the other is an alien who swaps the human's ticker with a machine, which turns out to be a mixed blessing.  The story meanders all over the place, and the ending is right out of a mediocre episode of Twilight Zone.  Still, it's not bad — I think I was just disappointed that the Simakian beginning had a Serlingian end.  Three stars.

And so we've come to the end of the April digests (though technically, Analog is now a slick).  Campbell's mag clocks in at a sad 2.6 stars.  Galaxy is the clear champion, at 3.5 stars.  Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fantastic, and New Worlds are all pleasantly above water at 3.2, and Amazing trails badly at 2.1.

Four of 41 fiction pieces were by women — par for the course.  There were enough 4 and 5-star stories to fill two good digests, my favorite of which was On the Fourth Planet, by Jesse Bone.

Speaking of quality, I am proud to announce that Galactic Journey is a finalist for the Best Fanzine Hugo!  Thanks to all who of you who nominated us, and I hope we'll have your continued support come Labor Day.  Either way, we're just happy to have you along for the ride. 

What have you enjoyed the most about the Journey?

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[October 9, 1962] Middlin' middle sibling (November 1962 IF Science Fiction)

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


by Gideon Marcus

Another month, another load of science fiction digests delivered to my door.  Normally, they arrive staggered over several weeks (the various publishers know not to step on each other's toes – the field is now pretty uncrowded, so there's room for everyone to play), but since I was traveling the last week, I'd already accumulated a small pile upon my return.

Top of the month has been devoted to the magazines edited by famous author/agent Fred Pohl, e.g. Galaxy and IF — and starting next year, Worlds of Tomorrow!  The first two alternate every month, and odd months are IF's turn.  Thus, enjoy this review of the November 1962 IF Science Fiction, which was a bit of a slog leavened with bright spots:

Podkayne of Mars (Part 1 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein

A few years ago, Robert Heinlein wrote A Menace from Earth.  Unlike virtually every other story to date, it starred (in 1st Person, no less) a precocious teen girl, and it was perhaps the first blend of science fiction and romance.  My 11 year-old (the Young Traveler) adored it and asked me if there was any more like it.  Sadly, there wasn't. 

Until this month. 

Heinlein's new novel, Podkayne of Mars, is another 1st Person piece from the viewpoint of a brilliant young woman.  Young Podkayne (Poddy) Fries dreams of becoming a spaceship captain, maybe the first to lead an expedition to the stars.  But to realize her dream, she has to get off of the Red Planet, a sort of futuristic Australia colonized by the best and worst of Terra's children. 

I tore into Podkayne with a gusto that slowly but inevitably waned.  Have you ever engaged in conversation with a promising raconteur only to find, after a few minutes, that her/his increasingly meandering tale doesn't and won't have a point?  And now you're stuck for the long haul.  That's Podkayne.  Heinlein simply can't divorce his rambly, screedy persona from his work.  The result is disturbing, as if there is a creepy old man lurking behind Podkayne's bright young blue eyes. 

The story is interesting enough to keep me reading, and I appreciate the somewhat progressive treatment of women, but this is a tale that would be served best if written by someone else.  Zenna Henderson might make it too moody; I suspect Rosel George Brown would render it perfectly.  Two stars for this installment, with some improvement at the end.

The Real Thing, by Albert Teichner

Value is determined by scarcity.  When the authentic article is easy to be had, and it is the counterfeit that is rare, we can expect the latter to climb in value.  Someday, we may find plastic to be more desirable than the material it emulates; or we may deem robots to be more human than people.  Teichner's story explores the latter idea as fully as a few pages will allow, and he pulls it off.  Three stars.

The Reluctant Immortals, by David R. Bunch

Bunch, on the other hand, writing of an overcrowded Earth that has become a driver's nightmare, does a less convincing job.  There's good artsy weird, and then there's tedious artsy weird.  Guess which one this is?  Two stars.

The Desert and the Stars, by Keith Laumer

IF has published a tale of Retief, that interstellar ambassador/superagent, every two months for the last year.  I'm glad Laumer will soon take a break from the character.  I won't say that this particular piece, in which Retief diplomatically foils an attempt by the Aga Kaga to poach the new farming colony of Flamme, is a story too far – but I think we're getting there.  Retief's exploits are getting a little too easy, almost self-parodying.  On the other hand, there are some genuinely funny moments in Desert, and the bit where the diplomat communicates solely in proverbs for several pages is a hoot.  Three stars.

The Man Who Flew, by Charles D. Cunningham, Jr.

A murder mystery in which a telepathic detective puzzles out the how and the who of the untimely demise of his client's wife; an event with which the detective seems to be uncannily familiar.  This is Cunningham's first work, and it shows.  It tries too hard at too worn a theme.  Two stars, but let's see how his next one goes.

Too Many Eggs, by Kris Neville

If the fridge you buy is sold at an unexplained deep discount, you may be getting more than you bargained for – especially if the thing dispenses free food!  I don't know why I liked this piece so much; it's just well done and unforced.  Four stars.

The Critique of Impure Reason, by Poul Anderson

Few things can ruin a bright mind like the field of modern literature criticism, and when the mind corrupted belongs to a highly advanced robot on whom the future of space exploitation depends, the tragedy is compounded manyfold.  Only the resurrection of a literary genre seemingly impervious to serious analysis is the answer.  Three stars, though the trip down grad school memory lane was a bit painful.

The Dragon-Slayers, by Frank Banta

A tiny, cute vignette of a simple Venusian peasant family with a dragon problem, and the gift from the boss that proves far more valuable than intended.  Three stars.

In all, 2.6 stars.  Once again, IF leaves the impression that it might someday be a great magazine if it ever grows up.  Nevertheless, no issue yet has compelled me to cancel the subscription, and several have made me glad of it.  May Galaxy's little sister flower into the beauty of the elder and set a good example for the new baby due next January…

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[September 13, 2017] GRAZING THE BAR (the October 1962 Amazing)

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


by John Boston

Space!  Mankind’s dream!  Well, some people’s dream.  A lot of us seem to be more concerned with making a living, taking care of families, trying to keep a straight face at school, and other highly terrestrial activities.  But even in this small town in the boondocks, people mostly seem to take pride in the first human ventures off the planet, though you do hear the occasional grumble that all that money could be better spent right here on Earth.

I wasn’t so confident a couple of years ago, when I witnessed the second most remarkable thing I have seen here.  (First place is claimed by the man I saw walking a raccoon on a leash.  Raccoons do tend to have their own agendas.) I was downtown on a Saturday morning, which is when the farmers come into town to take care of their business.  The banks are open then, which I am told is not the case in larger cities.  The farmers come in their cars, their pickup trucks, and in some cases their horse-drawn wagons, all parked around the courthouse square.  On this Saturday, a man was preaching from the back of one of the wagons . . . against the evils of space travel.  “If Man reaches out to touch the face of God’s Moon,” he thundered, “God will BLAST HIM FROM THE EARTH!” But no one paid any attention, and I’ve heard nothing further about his prophecy.

I was reminded of this episode by the cover story of the October Amazing, Poul Anderson’s Escape from Orbit.  It’s another near-space epic like Third Stage from the February issue, also, like that one, illustrated by a Popular Mechanics-style cutaway depiction of guys in a space vehicle.  The situation: meteor destroys spacecraft, crew escapes in lifecraft without propulsion, now they’re stuck in Moon orbit with no one close enough to rescue them, and a solar flare due in 48 hours.  The only bright spot is that the ship’s big, heavy main air tank is nearby and retrievable, giving them enough to breathe until they get killed by the flare.  The air tank—that’s it!  In a paroxysm of arithmetic (work shown only at the end), the protagonist, second banana at Orbital Command on Earth, sees the solution. 

This five or six pages’ worth of story is stretched to 20 by extensive detail about our hero’s home and inner life, including his unsatisfactory wife, the woman he wishes he had married, his physical deterioration (he’s 34) and how he feels about it, his career anxieties, etc.  It takes five paragraphs to get from the early morning ringing phone to actually answering it, and several pages to get him out the door and on the road to Base.  Maybe somebody told Anderson he needed more human interest in his stories, or maybe he hoped to sell this one to Cosmopolitan (well, no, not with the complaints about the wife) or the Saturday Evening Post.  Whatever.  The whole thing is forced and clumsy.  Two stars.

This month’s “Classic Reprint” is The Young Old Man by Earl L. Bell, from the magazine’s September 1929 issue, which serves mainly to show how boring a story can be even if short.  Campers in the Ozarks encounter a storekeeper who looks about 45 but he’s obviously ancient, just look at his eyes.  The revelation is that immortality, which he received via thaumaturgist in the 11th Century, isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.  How fortunate we are that most SF writers these days at least try to develop their ideas, rather than just laying them out like a dead fish on ice.  One star.

Things look up a bit after that one.  Ben Bova has taken a break from his article series and contributed a short story, Answer, Please Answer , about a couple of guys wintering in Antarctica (draftees in a war with the Soviets), who by coincidence are both astronomers.  So in their considerable spare time, they look for extraterrestrial signals from variable stars, and boy do they find them and are they sobering.  This is as much a one-gimmick story as Anderson’s, but it’s much better done by this guy with a decade’s less experience writing fiction.  It builds up smoothly, dropping in just enough background on the characters to make them characters, comes to its revelation, then stops.  Three stars for unpretentious cleverness and competence.

Jeff Sutton’s After Ixmal is readable but silly: a super-computer develops consciousness, albeit the consciousness of a petulant child, tricks humanity into destroying itself, lords it over the dead Earth for eons until it discovers a rival consciousness, and goes to war with it, just because.  As SF it’s barely thought through at all, and as fable or myth or whatever it lacks the necessary sonority, gravitas, etc.  Two stars.

The versatile Robert F. Young, who knows so many ways of being entirely too cute, is back with Boy Meets Dyevitza.  Captain Andrews of the United States Space Force, who thinks he is the first Earth-person on Venus, encounters Major Mikhailovna of the USSR, who is washing her stockings in a stream, having beaten him there the previous day.  As for conditions on Venus, hey, this is science fiction, so: “The data supplied by the Venus probes during the early 60’s, while inconclusive with regard to her cloud-cover, had conclusively disproved former theories to the effect that she lacked a breathable atmosphere and possessed a surface temperature of more than 100 degrees Centigrade, and had prepared him for what he found—an atmosphere richer in oxygen content than Earth’s, a comfortable climate [etc.].” See?  Science!  Extrapolation!  [And complete bollocks — Young should know better.]

Then the human indigenes show up, wearing brass collars; shocked by the Earthfolks’ naked necks, they later kidnap them and put brass collars on them, which can’t be removed by human tools and prevent them from getting very far from each other.  They are married, Venusian style.  But they discover they don’t really mind, and (to summarize brutally) the folks back home say “Awwww,” and—never mind.  Two stars for Young’s usual professional execution, heavily discounted for cloy.

The fiction contents are rounded out by Pattern, the second story in the SF magazines by the very youthful Robert H. Rohrer, Jr. (b. 1946), less slick but more interesting than Young’s polished artifact: a life form consisting of organized electricity tries to take over and consume the energy flows of human spaceship pilot Captain Brenner.  This is not exactly an original plot—see, or remember, van Vogt’s The Voyage of the Space Beagle—but it’s much better worked out than, say, After Ixmal, with a nasty twist at the end.  Three stars and good if not great expectations for this new writer.

Sam Moskowitz’s SF Profile is The Secret Lives of Henry Kuttner—not one of his best.  Per his custom, he describes Kuttner’s early pulp stories in detail and gives very short shrift to his later and better work, emphasizing his pseudonyms and what Moskowitz thinks is his work’s derivative aspects (sometimes rightly and sometimes decidedly not), and summarizing his career: “Lured by opportunism, suffering from an acute sense of inadequacy, he refused to stand alone, but leaned for support upon a parade of greats: H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Stanley G. Weinbaum, A. Merritt, John Collier, A.E. van Vogt, and, of course, C.L. Moore.” This about the man who by the early ‘40s had become one of the most capable writers in the field, who produced a disproportionate number of the best-remembered stories of the ‘40s and early ‘50s, and whose work was pored over by the likes of Sturgeon and Bradbury.  Terrible analysis, terrible judgment.  Two stars, being generous.

Frank Tinsley, it turns out, isn’t gone.  He’s here with The Nuclear Putt-Putt, an article about Project Orion, a proposed gigantic spaceship to be powered by a succession of nuclear bombs.  Small ones, to be sure, but still.  Especially since this insane behemoth is apparently supposed to launch from Earth.  Can we say radiation?  Fallout?  Not a word about how these are to be contained.  Two stars for overlooking a rather obvious problem.

And Benedict Breadfruit . . . is gone as of this issue.  His last bow is actually reasonably clever . . . unlike most of its predecessors.

So the magazine bumbles along.  The wearying thing is not how bad its worst stories are, but that the top of its range is still readable competence and little more.

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

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by Victoria Silverwolf

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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by Victoria Silverwolf

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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[February 26, 1962] Record Beating (March 1962 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

You've almost assuredly heard of Radio Corporation of America (RCA).  They make radios (naturally), but also record players, televisions, computers.  They have produced the foundations of modern consumer electronics, including the color television standard and the 45 rpm record.  And now, they've really outdone themselves: they've created cassettes for tape recording.

Until now, if you wanted to listen to music or a radio show, you had to either buy it as a pre-recorded album or record it yourself.  The only good medium for this was the Reel to Reel tape recorder – great quality, but rather a bother.  I've never gotten good at threading those reels, and storing them can be a hassle (tape gets crinkled, the reels unspool easily, etc.).  With these new cassettes, recording becomes a snap.  If the price goes down, I'll have to get me one.

What brought up this technological tidbit?  Read on about the March 1962 Analog, and the motivation for this introduction will be immediately apparent.

His Master's Voice, by Randall Garrett

The RCA-themed title for Garrett's latest is most appropriate.  Voice is the next in the exploits of the ship called McGuire.  As we learned in the first story, McGuire is a sentient spacecraft that has imprinted on a specific person – an interplanetary double-agent working for the United Nations.  Like the last story, Voice is a whodunnit, and a bit better handled one than before, as well.  Garrett's slowly improving, it seems.  Three stars.

Uncalculated Risk, by Christopher Anvil

Every silver lining has a cloud, and every scientific advance is a double-edged sword.  Anvil likes his scientific misadventure satires.  This one, about a soil additive that proves potentially subtractive to the world's arable land, is preachy but fun.  Three stars.

Rough Beast, by Roger Dee

The most fearsome carnivore in the known universe breaks free from an interstellar zoo and runs amok on one of the Floria Keys.  Can a group of scientists, a host of pacifist aliens, one cranky moonshiner, and a nervous tomcat stop the creature in time?  A shaky, over-adjectived beginning, but the rest is a lot of fun (and I guessed the ending moments before it was revealed).  Four stars.

The Iron Jackass, by John Brunner

Brunner is a prolific author whose work I've rarely encountered, perhaps because he's based across the pond; Rosemary Benton plans to review his newest book next month.  Jackass is a fun tale involving an off-world steel mill, the Central European miners who work it and shun automation, and the robots that threaten to put the miners out of business.  I saw shades, in Jackass, of the recent Route 66 episode, First-Class Mouliak, which took place in a Polish steel community in Pennsylvania.  Three stars. 

Power Supplies for Space Vehicles (Part 2 of 2), by J. B. Friedenberg

Mr. Friedenberg has returned to tell us more about motors of the space age.  This time, it's all about solar-heated turbines, and it's just about as exciting as last time.  I give credit to Friedenberg for his comprehensiveness, if not his ability to entertain.  Two stars.

Epilogue, by Poul Anderson

Anderson is going through a phase, digging on somber, after-the-end stories (witness After Doomsday).  His latest novella takes place fully three billion years in the future, after humanity has destroyed itself and self-repairing and replicating machines have taken over.  Sparks fly between silicon and carbon-based life when a crew of time-lost humans returns to its mother planet for one last farewell. 

An excellent idea, and Anderson's typically deft characterizations, are somewhat mitigated by robots that are a bit too conventional in their culture (no matter how radical their physiology), and by the fact that, in the end, Epilogue becomes a straight technical puzzle story.  Four stars.

The Numbers

This all adds up to a 3.2-star issue, respectable for any magazine and downright shocking for Analog.  This makes it the #2 digest for March 1962 (behind F&SF at 3.8, and ahead of IF (3.2), Amazing (2.8), and Fantastic (2.5).  Women once again wrote just two of this month's pieces, one of which was a tiny poem.  The best stories came out in F&SF, the best of which is hard to determine – the Pangborn, the Young, or the Wellman?

Stay tuned for Fantastic to start the exciting month of March!

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