Enough talk about Cambodia, Israel, and the Race Problem. How about some happy news for a change?
Satchmo, sometimes known as Louis Armstrong, had a birthday this last Independence Day. The famed trumpter and gravel-throated crooner, known for his ear-splitting smile and breaking racial barriers, has just finished his seventh decade.
"It's awful nice to be breathing on your 70th birthday, let alone feeling in the pink," he observed.
A big tribute was held in Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium for Armstrong on July 3rd, perhaps the most influential jazz musician since the genre was born. While he did not puff his cheeks to blow his horn (he is still recovering from a kidney infection), he did sing for his audience, joined by a number of fellow jazz greats. Proceeds from the event will go to the Louis Armstrong Statue Fund.
So, happy birthday to New Orleans' favorite son. What a wonderful world.
Hello, Jimmy!
As Galaxy approaches its 20th birthday, I see it has reverted to the format the magazine took back in 1958: it is once again an overlarge bi-monthly (like sister mag IF, which means we essentially get three mags every two months). On the one hand, this makes room for bigger pieces, like the superlative story that headlines this month's issue. On the other hand, it means more room for dross like Heinlein's new serial that taillines the book.
Read on. You'll be grateful I did the screening for you…
Antiwar protesting isn't just for civilians anymore.
About 25 junior officers, mostly Navy personnel based in Washington, have formed the "Concerned Officers Movement". Created in response to the growing disillusionment with the Indochina war, its purpose is (per the premiere issue of its newsletter) to "serve notice to the military and the nation that the officer corps is not part of the silent majority, that it is not going to let its thought be fashioned by the Pentagon."
Reportedly, C.O.M. came about because an officer participated as a marshal at the November 15, 1969 Moratorium anti-Vietnam War march, got featured in the Washington Post, and later received an unsatisfactory notation for loyalty in his fitness report. The newsletter and movement are how other officers rallied in his support.
Because C.O.M. work is being done off duty and uses non-government materials, it is a completely lawful dissent. According to Lt. j.g. Phil Lehman, one of the group's leaders, there has been no harassment from on high as yet.
We'll see how long this remains the case.
Really tired of it all
After reading this month's issue of Galaxy, I'm about ready to start my own Concerned Travelers Movement. Truly, what a stinker. Read on and see why:
For those who don’t know, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) was founded five years ago in what would become the first successful attempt at forming a professional writers’ association for science fiction writers—at least here in the States. With the SFWA came the Nebula, an award made to be on par with the Hugo in terms of prestige, but voted on by SFWA members rather than Worldcon attendees; in other words, an award by authors for authors. SF in the American “pulp” tradition (as differentiated from SF of the H. G. Wells sort) has been around for not quite 40 years, and those of the older generation have clearly taken on a retrospective attitude as of late. If the New Wave asks where SF might be heading, then those who’ve been in charge of the SFWA, including Damon Knight and Robert Silverberg, are now asking where SF has been.
We thus have a massive reprint anthology, published by Doubleday in a rather colorful hardcover edition, called The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One. It is, as far as I can tell, the largest SF anthology since Dangerous Visions, running 560 pages. We don’t often cover reprint anthologies at the Journey, but this one is a huge endeavor, and since most of the stories included predate the Journey it would be negligent to not cover it. It’s also such a long book that we have no choice but to split the review into multiple parts. Now, many of these stories are actually not new to me, although this knowledge does little to help me when it comes to evaluating some three decades of short SF.
Since those of you reading this might not be familiar with events in Berkeley, California, I thought I should report here the death of James Rector, a 25-year-old man shot by a sheriff deputy while on a roof watching the protest against the destruction of community improvements to a vacant lot belonging to the University of California, otherwise known as "People's Park."
Shot on May 15, he died on the 19th after several surgical attempts to repair vital abdominal organs damaged by the load of buckshot. A similar volley blinded another man, Alan Blanchard, on the same roof on the same day. If you have an urge to climb onto a roof to view a protest, suppress it. Law enforcement authorities do not recognize buckshot as lethal and are allergic to perceived threats from above. (I am quite opinionated about events like this. You may wish to seek other reports to obtain other views of the same events.) Below is a poem printed as a flyer, circulating on the streets now.
Michael McClure, "For James Rector"
We now return you to your regularly scheduled article
Cover of Ubik by Philip K. Dick
A Marathon Start
Beginning to read Philip K. Dick’s new book Ubik (1969, Doubleday) is like starting a marathon in the middle. Seeing other runners rushing by, you try to keep up, faster and faster, fearing to trip up. Not only does the book start in the middle of a crisis in what appears to be an important US company, but it also has a vocabulary full of made up words of which the meaning can only be inferred: “psis,” “teeps,” “bichannel circuits”; and the dead (if their relatives can afford it) are kept in “moratoriums” instead of crematoria or cemetaries. How can you keep up with things you can’t understand in a future you can only glimpse as felt by unfamiliar characters?
Author Philip K. Dick
Wondering if all Dick’s books are like this, I picked up library copies of his Eye in the Sky and The Cosmic Puppets (both 1957). The latter begins with a quiet, bucolic scene of children playing beside a porch. No rush. The former begins with an accident that causes injury, involving something called a “bevatron” and a “proton beam deflector.” No rush even there. For the most part, the vocabulary is ordinary in at least the beginning of these two. A little research turns up the fact that Dick first used the word “teep” (for telepath), for instance, in his story “The Hood Maker,” said to have been written in 1953, published in 1955, a year in which he used the same invented abbreviation in Solar Lottery.
Why is Ubik so different from other s-f books, even his own? Well, I had to persist to find out, and maybe you will too. I bet you’ll never guess where I found this book. I did not buy it. I found myself in a hand made hippie pad in the woods, dropped off by my husband Mel while he and one of the owners of the place went off to (I think) get wood for the winter. The other owner left with them or for some other errand, and I was alone in their kerosene-smelling dwelling, without anything to do. Wandering upstairs, I found bedding and pillows, and this book.
Not the actual house, but close
Since I hadn’t finished it by the time they returned, I borrowed it. This was the first really “science-fictiony” book I ever read. (I don’t count Flowers for Algernon, which I reviewed here on January 28, 1966, because that book has no assumptions out of the ordinary save one: that an experimental drug exists that can increase intelligence—no rocket ships, no bug-eyed monsters, no “vidphones.”)
Maybe Science Fiction Is Experimental Writing?
Anyway, persisting, I find myself in a future in which all the paranormal phenomena we humans have imagined are real and the foundation of industrial espionage and security, and the dead have a “half-life,” their brains wired into "consultation rooms" as their frozen bodies stand in caskets in a “moratorium," as above. The head of Runciter Associates, the company in crisis as above, must consult his dead wife Ella about the crisis. The “half-life” phenomenon, it is stated, “was real and it had made theologians out of” everyone. The citizens of this future are understandably prone to panic, to anxiety, to uncertainty.
Epigraphs for each chapter appear to be advertising for Ubik, which is variously represented as a “silent, electric” vehicle, a beer, a type of coffee, a salad dressing, a plastic wrap, etc. What is Ubik and where does it come from? No one knows. (Read the last epigraph in which it reveals its own nature to the extent it can.) Soon Runciter’s employees run into Pat, an “anti-precog.” It seems that she is an unusual practitioner of anti-precog[nition] in that she neither time-travels nor appears to do anything at all. But she changes the present and future by changing the past, leaving the affected people with little but (only sometimes) a trace memory of any previous present they have just experienced. Is all that strange enough for you? Wait! There's more.
There's Jory, dead at 15 years of age, who is on the wrong side of the struggle in the book between light, intelligence, and kindness, and greed, ignorance, and darkness. Keep an eye on him. His parents pay to keep his casket in the same areas as other "half-lifers," although his strong "hetero-psychic infusion" is clearly disturbing Ella Runciter and others.
Science-fiction satire?
Also keep in mind that in the previous year Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater was published with a helmeted pig riding a unicycle on the cover and has been described as satire. Satire is seldom funny-ha-ha, but it is often funny. This book is occasionally funny-ha-ha, especially in the ridiculous clothing that appears to be popular in this dystopian future (1992).
For instance take this passage, in which an important space mogul enters wearing ”fuscia pedal-pushers, pink yakfur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse, and a ribbon in his waist-length dyed white hair.” OK, maybe that isn’t so far from what you might see now on Haight Street. But if this book were made into a movie, retaining Dick’s careful costuming would ensure it would be laughed off the screen.
The Cryonics Connections
Robert Ettinger in World War II uniform
Also notice that in 1967 the first person had been frozen, Professor James Bedford, preceded in 1962 by Robert Ettinger's book The Prospect of Immortality, in which he introduces the idea of cryonic suspension. Attempted cryopreservation of human beings was a real thing from then on. Which is part of what suggests that this book is satire as well as science fiction. And compare the plot of this book with that of Robert A. Heinlein's A Door into Summer, serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in October, November, and December of 1956 (published as a book a year later). In Heinlein's book a company executive is outmaneuvered and winds up in "cold sleep," waking up in the year 2000.
Mum's the Word
But anything more I write about the plot beyond what I’ve already written could well give away the plot. I can give you this hint, though, asked by the above-mentioned anti-precog (Pat) after most of the characters have experienced a bomb blast on Earth's moon: “Are we dead, or aren’t we?” And this one: the book makes it clear that human beings are so constituted that we can only know what our brains tell us (and, by the way, who is "us"?), which interpret what our senses (or in this book also our extra senses) send to it.
Oh, and one more thing. Oddly enough the last sentence in the book does not give anything away: "This was just the beginning." In any case I give it 5 stars out of 5 and recommend that you at least peek into it and see if it makes you crazy.
And Now for Something Completely Different
I'm going to tell you the truth about why my husband Mel and I spend so much time commuting between Humboldt County and San Francisco/Berkeley. It's The Book.
Good thing I've got a Selectric
The Book is dominating my life right now. I've spent many nights, holidays, any days I'm not working as a temp for Humboldt County, transcribing and writing as well as interviewing. For perhaps a year now I have been working with John Jefferson Poland, Jr., otherwise known (by his preference) as "F**k" Poland (or "Jeff"). After founding a sexual freedom "league" in New York City, he moved to Berkeley and founded similar groups there and in San Francisco, but insisting that a woman take up the cause and run the San Francisco group.
He wanted to produce a book on women in the sexual freedom movement–every variety from those who were brought all unwary to an SFL ("Sexual Freedom League") meeting or party to those who were/are leaders and spokeswomen for the cause.
I had done both interviewing and transcribing (the latter for a living), so it was mainly a matter of pointing me in the right direction and saying something like "go to it!" Jeff has been present at some of the interviews, in some cases commanded to be quiet so the women could speak for themselves.
"Meetings" are informational affairs in which leaders of the movement talk about the politics behind the parties and how they are conducted. "Parties" are what might be called orgies, with cheap red wine, a raised thermostat, and mattresses almost covering the floor of a Berkeley house. No man or men who seek entry without female companion(s) are admitted. It's heterosexual couples or single women only allowed. (Gays are excluded because two men could couple up and then only reveal themselves as straight predators of women when they are inside in the semi-dark and difficult to roust.)
And then there's me with my tape recorder, microphone, notebook, and voice, talking with women, making dates for interviews elsewhere and elsewhen. Real names are not used, except for one leader of the movement, Ina Saslow, who was arrested with Jeff during a nude demonstration on a public beach, then jailed, has her own chapter in her own words.
Empty theater, full stage
One night in San Francisco recently there was a party in an empty auditorium. The only celebrity attending was Paul Krassner, and he must have come with a woman, given the rules. Did he come with me? I'm so tired and busy right now I can't pull up the full memory. I mainly recollect standing with him behind a phalanx of mostly empty seats and watching the stage, on which were at least a dozen writhing couples. We agreed that it was an extraordinary sight. Oddly, I do not remember specifically whether he or I was wearing a full set of clothes at the time, but I think we were.
The Book is still in process. I will report progress when there is any, if desired. By the way, the book bears Jeff's name and my pseudonym as authors and is due to be published by The Olympia Press, Inc. (New York). Initial plans are to publish a hardback book with pictures of both authors/editors. Who wants to review my book when it comes out?
Ubik – A Second View
by Jason Sacks
Our dear editor has asked me to tack on a small response to Vicki’s review of Ubik, because I’m a huge fan of Mr. Dick’s work. I’ve read nearly everything he has written, and I feel that Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney and especially Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are some of the finest science fiction novels of the '60s thus far.
On display in Ubik are all the elements which make Dick's work so transcendent and meaningful for me. We get miserable lead characters and subjective takes on reality; we get petulant children and time shifts and a weird, uncanny type of emotional resonance which only PKD can deliver.
I’m not going to dwell on the plot here, partially because my brilliant colleague has already done a great job summarizing this singular novel. And I’m also not going to dwell on plot because, well, this book has a plot, yeah it has a plot, but Ubik also has many plots, or no plots, or subtle plots, or infinitely recursive plots, or just some plotting that’s very particularly Phil Dick.
Am I making sense? I don't think I’m making sense….
And my lack of real coherence at this point is kind of appropriate, too. Because, like so many of Dick’s novels, Ubik has an incredible density of story; he presents layers and layers of events which build character and environment and plot and perceptions and problems, all tumbling and cascading upon itself in a kind of shambolic construction which constantly threatens to fall down upon itself. But all the while, as he seemingly casually is creating these seeming arbitrary events and twists, Dick gives readers these incredible moments, these flashes of insight, which reveal he has been managing his story well all along, until we amble to an ending which feels tremendously satisfying.
Ubik has a lot to do with psychics and psychic warfare between corporations who all aim to dominate each other. An attentive reader of Dick is well aware of his passion for both psychics and bizarre faceless corporations, but in Ubik he has created an elaborate, complex idea structure around the psychics – there are scales of precogs, and people who can cancel out precogs, and the literal rewriting of reality based on the work of the precogs, and a constant sense that nothing, absolutely nothing we see, is real — at the same time all of it is real.
Image from the back cover of the new hardback.
Again Mr. Dick’s writings always make me sound like a madman when I try to describe them. The reviewer’s dilemma!
But that’s the transcendent mindset the author puts you in with Ubik. He grounds readers in reality and then just as quickly yanks reality away from readers. One minute he’s depicting home appliances which demand dimes to open a fridge and 50 cents to use the bathroom faucet. The next he’s describing a prosaic journey to the moon, no big deal just a regular day at the office. The next minute we are following the results of a human-shaped bomb and tracking survival, and we suddenly start seeing entropy appearing everywhere, and the whole thing just moves at the speed of an SST, though perhaps the pilot of the plane is going from New York to London by way of Shanghai.
Is this review vague enough? I apologize, reader. As Vicki points out, I could be more specific, but seriously, if this sounds at all up your alley, Ubik will be a tremendously memorable read for you.
Which leaves the very tough question of a rating for this book. If Androids Dream is the absolute apex of science fiction (and I think it is), this book is one rung slightly below that level – if only because no character is quite as vivid as that book’s complicated and completely memorable Rick Deckard. That is a five star book, which means I give Ubik…
A few years ago, when I was reading a lot of fanzines, I came upon an article impudently titled Heinlein: By His Jockstrap, concerning attitudes towards sex in the works of Robert Heinlein. Wow! This SF fandom is pretty racy! Or so I thought. Not everyone appreciated that article, though, starting with Mr. Heinlein.
Alexei Panshin
The article’s author, Alexei Panshin, was a budding SF writer himself, having a few months earlier published the impressive Down to the Worlds of Men in If. Since then he has published more stories of varying merit, and a just-published novel, Rite of Passage, which on a first and superficial reading seems quite impressive—and, not at all ironically, quite Heinleinesque. He also published more articles about Heinlein in fanzines. You’d think the guy was working on a book.
And of course he was. But it’s more complicated than that.
The Pioneer by Invitation
According to Panshin, in another fanzine article, this one in the April 1965 Yandro, he was solicited by Advent: Publishers in 1964 to write a critical study of Heinlein’s fiction. Advent publishes books about SF, such as Damon Knight’s In Search of Wonder, James Blish’s The Issue at Hand, and the symposium The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism. The proposed book would be the first book-length study of any writer from within the SF ghetto. Panshin accepted and got to work. He wrote to Heinlein, introducing himself, stating he was planning to write a book better than the “Jockstrap” article, and asking some questions about his life and work. There was no response—to Panshin, anyway.
Panshin also wrote to a number of others about Heinlein, later learning that Heinlein had been angered by these letters, and had seemingly discouraged the recipients from responding. In any case he got few responses. One who did respond was the widow of Sergeant A.G. Smith—the dedicatee of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers—who offered to let Panshin see Smith’s correspondence with Heinlein.
The 800-Pound Gorilla
Heinlein was furious, and ultimately wrote Advent a letter, which Panshin has seen and which he describes as attacking his qualifications to write the book, accusing him of employing ungentlemanly, unethical, and in part dishonorable and illegal means of gathering material, and forbidding Advent to quote from Heinlein’s copyrighted works, use his name or picture, or do anything else requiring his permission. He refused Advent’s offer to review the manuscript pre-publication, and reserved the right to sue or bring criminal action as appropriate if the book were published.
Advent, successfully intimidated, then backed out and sent Panshin a $50 kill fee, leaving him with a completed book and nowhere to go with it. His efforts to find a way to smooth things over were futile. Panshin concluded his Yandro article by quoting the man himself:
“FARNHAM’S FREEHOLD, page 88: ‘ . . . a book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man. Book burners—to rape a defenseless friendly book.’ ”
So, what to do? What Panshin did do was to break out portions of his book manuscript (some with substantial revisions) and submit them for publication in various fanzines, mostly the solemn and prestigious Riverside Quarterly. Not surprisingly, after having all this impressive material published in a short period of time, Panshin last year received the first Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer.
Meanwhile, Advent had a change of heart. After Panshin’s award, and also after it reorganized from a partnership to a corporation (thereby protecting the former partners, now owners, from personal liability), it would publish Panshin’s book after all. And now we have it.
The Book
by Alex Eisenstein
So what exactly do we have? It’s impressive within its (self-imposed) limits. It is a work of genre criticism, explicitly in the vein of Knight’s In Search of Wonder, which is cited repeatedly. It makes no effort to connect with the wider (some might say narrower) world of mainstream literary criticism. Panshin obliquely justifies his genre focus by conceding that SF is “minor,” but “not because it is essentially trivial, like the endless number of locked-room mysteries, not because it is bound forever to repeat a single form, like the sonnet or Greek drama, and not even because most of its practitioners are second-rate or worse, though most of them are.
“Even the best science fiction is minor to the extent that most people are not prepared intellectually or emotionally to accept it.”
So there! Fans are slans! But seriously, this proposition provides at least a fig leaf of a basis for treating SF as its own discrete literary territory, though no one is required to agree.
Panshin then proceeds, year by year and story by story, to summarize and comment on all of Heinlein’s SF, and some non-fiction items, from the beginning through The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. This material is divided into “The Period of Influence” (1940-42), “The Period of Success” (1947-58), and “The Period of Alienation” (1959-67). These take up over half the book.
It sounds deadly, but it is not; the length of the comments is proportional to the interest of the works and what Panshin has to say about them. They get longer as he gets closer to the present, appropriately, since as he demonstrates, there’s a lot more wrong with the more recent books than many of the older ones. Panshin is a plain and succinct enough writer that this long exercise mostly retains its interest and does not become wearying, at least to my taste.
Some of Panshin’s judgments are initially startling. He says of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress—widely welcomed, after several weak books, with cries of “Heinlein is back!”—that it “has its interest, but it is not as a novel. It is as a dramatized lecture.” To start, he concedes: “Line-by-line, it is fascinating reading” and “less flawed by sermons and constructional weakness” than his other recent books. But he goes on to nail the book’s sentimentality, lapses of logic, and deficiencies of style (Panshin knows Russian and doesn’t think much of the “babu-Russian” in which the narrator thinks and speaks). If (like me) you have reread this book and found it less captivating the second time around, Panshin tells you why, if you haven’t figured it out yourself.
Among many other judgments, Panshin thinks Beyond This Horizon and Have Space Suit—Will Travel are Heinlein’s best works, a view I suspect doesn’t command a majority among Heinlein readers. (“Only a misanthrope could dislike Have Space Suit—Will Travel,” he says. Calling Dorothy Parker!)
Panshin uncontroversially thinks Heinlein’s best work was done during his middle period, when “he was in solid control of his writing tools and nearly everything he did was first rate.” However, his pick for the five best books of this period are all juveniles, while he dismisses the Hugo-winning Double Star as “good light entertainment, but no more than that,” since Heinlein doesn’t provide a more detailed account of the workings of the political system in which his protagonist is working. He says the generally well-regarded By His Bootstraps is “tightly constructed, as intricate as a bit of musical comedy choreography, and arrives at a destination”; but it lacks “anything to get your teeth into”; and, later on, he describes it as “neatly composed, if completely empty.” Continuing the latter theme: “Delilah and the Space-Rigger . . . is a smoothly-written but empty little bit of nothing about women breaking into previously all-male space jobs.” I hope Betty Friedan is not a Heinlein reader. But whatever you think of Panshin’s opinions, he has his reasons and generally shows his work (the “Delilah” comment is an exception).
After slicing Heinlein’s work horizontally by time, Panshin slices it vertically by substance and method, with chapters labelled Construction, Execution, and Content. (There’s also a short chapter on Heinlein’s non-fiction—if you were curious about Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?, here’s your chance.) In these chapters he makes a number of observations about Heinlein’s modus operandi, of which some are quite acute while others seem a bit wandering and/or pointless.
For example of the latter, under the subhead Attitude is a several-page digression-filled discussion of whether Heinlein’s works are realistic or romantic (realism wins, mostly). The discussions of Context and Characterization are more fruitful. Panshin says, “Characterizing situations has always been one of Heinlein’s strongest points, and I think it is safe to say that he has always done better with developing his societies than he has with developing individual characters.” Further: “Heinlein in general has preferred to show how things work in such consistent detail that his societies speak for themselves; they don’t need to be explained or justified.” He illustrates this point with an extensive discussion of the building of The Menace from Earth, in what is likely the most sustained attention that story has ever received. He concludes: “Heinlein has by and large been able to build complex, consistent societies, the complexity coming from individual elements that fit together at the same time that they are used to further the story action,” this time taking Beyond This Horizon as his text and making a good case for its merits, at least in that regard.
Concerning characterization, he says: “Heinlein’s characterization has not shown the variety that his contexts have, but in a way this makes very good sense. Basically, Heinlein has used the same general characters in story after story, and has kept these characters limited ones.” And here we arrive at territory that most Heinlein readers will find familiar. “There is one unique and vivid human Heinlein character, but he is a composite of Joe-Jim Gregory, Harriman, Waldo, Lazarus Long, Mr. Kiku, and many others, rather than any one individual. I call the composite the Heinlein Individual. . . . It is a single personality that appears in three different stages and is repeated in every Heinlein book in one form or another.
“The earliest stage is that of the competent but naïve youngster. . . . The second stage is the competent man in full glory, the man who knows how things work. . . . The last stage is the wise old man who not only knows how things work, but why they work, too.” Other characters are barely individualized. “Their most striking feature is their competence, reflecting that of the Heinlein Individual.” “After this small circle, Heinlein ordinarily relies on caricature, and he has a number of set pieces which he produces as needed. One is that of Whining, Useless, Middle-Aged Mama. . . . Matching this is the Pompous Male Blowhard. . . . A third is the Nasty Young Weasel. . . . Further caricatures could be named, but let’s stay with those.”
Fair cop! But, says Panshin, this is all fine. “Heinlein’s characters, it seems to me, are clear if not striking, and for his purposes this is probably enough. . . . Heinlein has concentrated on developing unfamiliar contexts for his stories; if he were to populate these contexts with wild characters, the result might seem chaotic.” Note the similarity to C.S. Lewis’s observation, in his 1955 lecture On Science Fiction, recently published in his Of Other Worlds, that “[t]o tell how odd things struck odd people is to have an oddity too much. . . .”
There is much more about the what and how of Heinlein’s work, of varying interest and cogency, but you should read it yourselves; you will anyway, later if not now.
Panshin sums up in the chapter titled “The Future of Heinlein”—not what Heinlein will do, but how he will be regarded, based on his work to date. Here, however critical Panshin has been, his bottom line is unequivocal: “It is clear right now that even if his career were to be over, Heinlein would retain a historical place in company with Wells and Stapledon.” That’s because, first, of “the storytelling techniques that Heinlein developed and that have been generally copied within the field”—mainly the shift he exemplified from the basically speculative to the basically extrapolative, which by the way is what killed off the “sense of wonder” mourned by some. “Heinlein’s insistence in talking clearly, knowledgeably, and dramatically about the real world destroyed forever the sweet, pure, wonderful innocence that science fiction once had. . . . In a sense, Heinlein may be said to have offered science fiction a road to adulthood.”
Second, Panshin says, SF has mostly “concentrated almost as a matter of course on the atypical situation, the abnormal, the extraordinary. It has never been willing to stand still and examine the ordinary person functioning normally in a strange context. . . . We want variety in our fiction, to be sure, but the future is already strange.” Heinlein, says Panshin, “is the one science fiction writer who has regularly dealt with the strange-but-normal.” That’s a considerable exaggeration, but the more-than-a-grain of truth is that Heinlein has paid more consistent non-satirical attention than almost anyone else to the mundane details of life in his future and extraterrestrial settings, and it’s one of the more attractive and influential aspects of his work.
Panshin says he wouldn’t be surprised if Heinlein’s reputation is ultimately similar to Kipling’s. Maybe so. My own suspicion is that Heinlein’s reputation will diminish over the years, especially if he continues moving in the direction of his most recent works. Panshin is right to predict that SF is “likely to receive increasing amounts of serious critical attention and regard” going forward, but I suspect that it is the growing sophistication and competence of its practitioners by the standards of general literature that will drive such a change. It is those newer writers who will garner the broader recognition, and those they have learned from, like Heinlein, will be largely forgotten except by the remaining hard-core genre enthusiasts.
Summing Up
Heinlein in Dimension is not a great book, but it is a pioneering one, with much of interest and value, and is well worth reading, shortcomings and all. Four stars.
Is something stirring at Amazing? After several issues devoid of non-fiction features, this one starts a book review column by Harry Harrison, whose brief stint as nominal editor of the British magazine SF Impulse ended a few months ago. Is a remake in order? A change of guard in the wind? There’s no hint.
by Johnny Bruck
The cover itself is also a change, not having been looted from the back files of Amazing or Fantastic Adventures. The pleasantly lurid image of space-suited men watching or fleeing a battle of spacecraft is not credited, but other sources attribute it to a 1964 issue of Perry Rhodan, Germany’s long-running weekly paperback novella series, artist’s name Johnny Bruck. I wonder if the publisher is paying him, or anyone.
Also perplexing is the shift in presentation on the cover. Last issue, the display of big names was ostentatious. Here, the only thing prominently displayed is “Winston K. Marks Outstanding New Story Cold Comfort,” sic without apostrophe. Marks is one of the legion who filled the mid-1950s’ proliferation of SF magazines with competent and forgettable copy. After a couple of stories in the early ‘40s, he reappeared with a few in 1953, contributed a staggering 25 stories in 1954 and 20 in 1955, and trailed off thereafter; he hasn’t been seen in these parts since mid-1959. But here he is, name in lights, while Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and Philip K. Dick are relegated to small type over the title. Odd, and probably counter-productive, to say the least.
Frank Herbert’s serial The Heaven Makers concludes in this issue. Imagine an SF novel oriented to the reference points of Charles Fort, Richard Shaver, and soap opera. And then imagine—this is the hard part—that it’s nonetheless pretty readable.
First, we are property! Just like Charles Fort said. You may think you understand human history, but everything you know is wrong! Earth is secretly dominated by the Chem, a species of very short, bandy-legged, silver-skinned alien humanoids who have been made immortal, and also connected tele-empathically, by a discovery of one of their ancient savants—Tiggywaugh’s web (definitely sic). Only problem is . . . they’re bored. Eternity weighs heavily on them. They must be entertained and distracted!
So, the Chem send Storyships around the galaxy, though Earth’s is the only one we see. This ship rests on the bottom of the ocean, from which vantage the Chem shape history in large and small ways both by direct intervention and by remote manipulation and heightening of human emotional states. The result: wars that might be settled quickly at the conference table can be prolonged and intensified, and susceptible individuals can be driven as far as murder. These events are recorded, processed, spiced up with their own emotional track, and broadcast to pique the jaded souls of the Chem.
One of the stars of this industry is Fraffin, proprietor of Earth’s Storyship, but he’s suspected of letting hints drop to Earthfolk about what’s going on, a major crime among the Chem. Kelexel, posing as a visitor, has been sent by the authorities to get to the bottom of things, after four previous investigators have found nothing and, suspiciously, resigned. But Kelexel is quickly corrupted himself. Fraffin shows him a “pantovive” of a man manipulated by the Chem into murdering his wife, which Kelexel finds quite gripping. He also becomes obsessed with the woman’s daughter, Ruth (the Chem are quite captivated by the physiques of humans, and can interbreed with them). Fraffin, having found Kelexel’s vulnerability, sets out to procure her for him. So three dwarfish figures show up at her back door, immobilize her with some sort of ray, and carry her away to be mind-controlled and ravished by Kelexel.
At this point, the nagging sense of familiarity I was feeling came into focus. Herbert has reinvented Richard Shaver’s Deros! Shaver, a former psychiatric patient, wrote up his delusions of sadistic cave-dwelling degenerates tormenting normal people, which (with much reworking by editor Ray Palmer) boosted Amazing’s mid-1940s circulation to unheard-of levels, until the publisher put an end to the disreputable spectacle a few years later. Now Herbert has gussied up the “Shaver Mystery” for prime time! The distorted physical appearance . . . check. The mind control rays . . . check. The underground caverns . . . not exactly, these characters are underwater instead. But that’s a minor detail.
by Gray Morrow
Oh, yes, the soap opera part. Up on dry land, Andy Thurlow, a court psychologist, is Ruth’s old boyfriend; she threw him over for someone else, who turned out to be a low-life. Andy’s never gotten over it. Her father, holed up after his Chem-driven murder of her mother, won’t surrender to anybody but Andy. Meanwhile, Andy, who is wearing polarized glasses as a result of an eye injury, has started to see what prove to be manifestations of Chem activity, invisible to anyone else. Andy also gets back with Ruth, who has moved out on her husband; he takes her back to the marital house and waits so she can pick up some possessions. But the Chem snatch her as described, and her husband falls through a glass door and dies.
Back at the Chems’ submarine hideout, Kelexel is having his way with the pacified Ruth, who, when he’s not using her, studies the Chem via the pantovive machine, learning more and more, while Kelexel harbors growing misgivings about the whole Chem enterprise. Andy, up on land, is trying to persuade Ruth’s father the murderer to cooperate with an insanity defense while wondering if the strange manifestations he has seen account for Ruth’s disappearance. The plot lines are eventually resolved in confrontations among Kelexel, Fraffin, Ruth, and Andy with dialogue that is more reminiscent of daytime TV than Herbert’s turgid usual. In the end, Herbert actually makes a readable story out of this sensational and largely ridiculous material. Three stars.
Cold Comfort, by Winston K. Marks
by Gray Morrow
Winston Marks’s "Outstanding New Story" Cold Comfort is an amusing first-person rant by the first man to be cryogenically frozen for medical reasons and revived when his problem can be cured. He’s pleased enough with his new kidneys, but isn’t impressed by this brave new world in which corporations now overtly dominate the world, there’s a nine-million-soldier garrison in East Asia, etc. etc. E.g. , “I am only now recovering from my first exposure to your local art gallery. Who the hell invented quivering pigments?” It’s at best a black-humorous comedy routine, but well enough done. Three stars.
The Mad Scientist, by Robert Bloch
by Virgil Finlay
After Marks it is downhill, or over a cliff. The Mad Scientist by Robert Bloch, from Fantastic Adventures, September 1947, is a deeply unfunny farce about an over-the-hill scientist who works with fungi, who has a young and beautiful wife with whom the protagonist is having an affair. They want to get rid of the scientist with an extract of poisonous mushrooms, but he outsmarts them, and what a silly bore. The fact that the protagonist is a science fiction writer and the story begins with some blather about how dangerous such people are does not enhance its interest at all. One star.
Atomic Fire, by Raymond Z. Gallun
by Leo Morey
Raymond Z. Gallun’s Atomic Fire (Amazing, April 1931) is a period piece, Gallun’s third published story, in which far-future scientists Aggar Ho and Sark Ahar (with huge chests to breathe the thin atmosphere, spindly and attenuated limbs, large ears, a coat of polar fur—evolution!) have discovered that the Black Nebula is about to swallow up the sun and kill all life on Earth. The solution? Atomic power, obviously, to be tested off Earth for safety (the spaceship has just been delivered). Unfortunately, their experiments first fail, then succeed all too well; but Sark Ahar’s quick thinking turns disaster into salvation! As the blurb might have read. Gallun had an imagination from the beginning, but the stilted writing makes this one hard to appreciate in these modern days of the 1960s. Two stars.
Project Nightmare, by Robert Heinlein
by William Ashman
In Robert Heinlein’s Project Nightmare, from the April/May 1953 Amazing, the Russians deliver an ultimatum demanding surrender, since they’ve mined American cities with nuclear bombs. The only hope is a colorful and miscellaneous bunch of clairvoyants to locate the bombs before they go off. It’s a fast-moving but superficial, wisecracking story, a considerable regression for the author. Some years ago he published an essay titled On the Writing of Speculative Fiction, and presented five rules for the aspiring writer. I think this story must illustrate the last two: “4. You must put it on the market. 5. You must keep it on the market until sold.” I suspect Heinlein intended this one for the slicks, and when none of them would have it, started down the ranks of the SF mags until it finally came to rest in Amazing, which, compounding the indignity, managed to lose his customary middle initial. Two stars.
Philip K. Dick’s The Builder (Amazing, December 1953/January 1954) is from his early Prolific Period—he published 31 stories in the SF magazines in 1953 and 28 in 1954, handily beating Winston K. Marks’s peak. How? With a certain number of tossed-off ephemerae like this one, in which an ordinary guy is obsessed for no reason he can articulate with building a giant boat in his backyard. A rather peculiar boat too, with no sails or motor or oars. And then: “It was not until the first great black drops of rain began to splash about him that he understood.” That’s it. Two stars for this shaggy-God story which is unfortunately not shaggy enough.
Summing Up
Well, that was pretty dreary. The issue’s only distinction is the unexpected readability of Herbert’s novel, which is the best, or least bad, of the serials this publisher has run. The most one can say about the reprint policy is that it has its ups and downs, and this issue is definitely the latter.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
For a lot of people, February tops the list as their least favorite month. In the northern hemisphere, it’s cold and dark, and spring seems a long way off. The only things to break up the monotony are Valentine’s Day, which isn’t for everybody, and (most of the time) Carneval or Mardi Gras, which in the United States only matters if you’re near New Orleans and for lots of practicing Christians is immediately followed by giving up something nice for Lent.
As I look over my notes of newsworthy events for the last month, I see the usual things – coups, politics and power plays – but nothing that really catches my interest. Oh, there’s a couple of things that might develop into something, but they need time to come to fruition. Fortunately for my purposes, Fred Pohl has accidentally given us a little artistic puzzle to talk about, but let’s save that for the end.
The Words
In this month’s IF, the big Heinlein serial draws to a close and a brand-new serial begins. As does a new non-fiction series on fandom. Plus a new Saberhagen story. It’s a lot to whet a reader’s appetite, even if the cover is a bit mediocre. But that’s where our art mystery begins.
Roan’s first day on the job isn’t turning out well. Art attributed to Morrow
Conscription has been part of American military planning for a little over a century, and it’s never been popular. From the draft riots of the Civil War to young men burning their draft cards today, there has always been resistance. During the Civil War, wealthy men could hire substitutes to go in their stead, and during the First World War, selection was done by local draft boards, which were subject to local pressure and tended to draft the poor. The interwar period saw the introduction of the lottery system in an effort to overcome the inequities of the past, and, with a brief return to local draft boards during World War Two, it has persisted to today.
On January 6th, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee became the first Black civil rights organization to come out against the draft, citing the lack of freedom at home for so many and the fact that Blacks are over-represented. This statement gave the Georgia House of Representatives an excuse to refuse seating the newly elected Julian Bond. Mr. Bond is one of the founders of the SNCC and endorsed the statement issued by the group. He is probably also the most visible of the eleven Black men recently elected to the Georgia House. The claim was that by endorsing the opposition to the war and the draft, he could not swear to uphold the constitution of the United States.
Julian Bond outside the Georgia House. What possible objection could they have to him?
A long tradition
It is timely that, amid the draft protest furor, January 27th saw the death of Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, once known as America’s most notorious draft dodger (or 'slacker' as they were called during and after WWI). The scion of a wealthy Philadelphia brewing family, he enjoyed a playboy lifestyle before the war. He drove race cars and was one of the first people to learn to fly, even owning a Wright Model B. He registered for the draft, but failed to appear for a physical and was declared a deserter. He managed to stay on the run for two years, but was finally arrested in 1920 in his family home, with his mother waving a gun and threatening the authorities. Sentenced to five years, Bergdoll was released under guard to recover an alleged cache of gold, but he escaped and eventually made his way to Germany. There were two attempts to kidnap him, both ending disastrously for the would-be kidnappers. He married a German woman and settled down, though he made two extended trips back to America. He returned to the States for good with his family in 1939. Sentenced to serve the rest of his original term and an additional three years, he left prison in 1944 and moved to Virginia. He died of pneumonia, aged 72. He is survived by his ex-wife and eight children.
Bergdoll’s original wanted poster.
The issue at hand
In the theme of this heightened era of military involvement (and lack thereof) this month’s IF plays host to several seasoned veterans, as well as the monthly new recruit. The stories range in quality from 1-A to not quite 4-F. The cover is even given to a story about a draft dodger, though one not one tenth as interesting as Grover Bergdoll.
A drab cover for a drab story. Art by Hector Castellon
I’m sure many of the Journey’s readers will remember the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, which featured Marshal Dillon himself, James Arness, as an alien super-carrot. Based loosely on John Campbell’s novella Who Goes There?, it’s a fine piece of Red Scare paranoia, though not quite as good as Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Once the heroes have defeated the alien menace, reporter Ned “Scotty” Scott broadcasts a warning to the world to “Keep watching the skies!”
Great Balls of Fire
1965 has been a good year for watching the skies. From the return of American astronauts to space after a hiatus to the brilliant display of Comet Ikeya-Seki. The year wrapped up spectacularly in December. As my colleague Victoria Silverwolf reported, a brilliant fireball shot through the heavens over Ontario, Michigan and Ohio before crashing near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Despite rumors, no sign has been found of Russian satellites or little green men. Then on Christmas Eve, a meteor exploded over the village of Barwell, England. This time numerous pieces made their way to Earth. No one was injured, but there was some property damage. Pieces have been found, confirming the object was a stony meteorite of the sort known as a chondrite.
Meteorite hunters descend on Barwell.
Death from above and below
There’s plenty of menace from the skies in this month’s IF. Actually, the threat is mostly humans attacking other humans, but not always. Sometimes it’s humans attacking aliens.
A triphib attacks. The story isn’t as Burroughs-esque as you might think. Art by Pederson.
Some people are objectively better at some things than everybody else. Sandy Koufax can pitch a baseball better than almost anybody, and Muhammad Ali is arguably the best boxer we’ve seen in his weight class in a long time.
The problem arises when that excellence in a specialized area leads to an assumption of excellence in other, unrelated areas. I certainly wouldn’t turn to either of the aforementioned men for suggestions on nuclear policy or to bring peace to South-east Asia. Worse still is when whole groups assume superiority over others based solely on an accident of birth.
Heart of Darkness
Last month, I discussed the difficulties faced by the United Kingdom in handing over power to the locals in Rhodesia due to an unwillingness on the part of the white government under Ian Smith and the Rhodesian Front to share power with Black Rhodesians. Alas, the situation has now collapsed completely. On November 5th, the colonial governor declared a state of emergency, blaming Smith and two African nationalist organizations, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union and the Zimbabwe African National Union.
Ian Smith signs the Unilateral Declaration of Independence
On the 11th, the Smith government unilaterally declared independence. Within hours, the United Nations Security Council condemned the action 10-0 with France abstaining. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson has been granted the authority to rule Rhodesia by decree, though what good that might do is hard to see. Wilson steadfastly refuses a military solution and expects economic embargoes to force Smith to capitulate. But with two neighboring nations, South Africa and the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, more than willing to ignore any embargoes, it is likely to be a long time before we see a resolution to this situation.
Conflicts Great and Small
Fittingly, there’s plenty of superiority, assumed and otherwise, in this month’s IF. Let’s get to it.
This art for “Cindy-Me” bears absolutely no relation to the story. Art by Morrow
![[July 6, 1970] The Day After Judgment (August/September 1970 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/700708galaxycover-411x372.jpg)
![[June 10, 1970] I will fear <i>I Will Fear No Evil</i> (July 1970 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/700610galaxycover-435x372.jpg)
![[May 6, 1970] Wondrous and Astounding (<em>The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One</em>, Part One)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/SCNCMVLM161970-516x372.jpg)
![[May 22, 1969] News / Beginnings (Review of Ubik) / My Book (Preview)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/690522ubikcover2.jpg)
![[July 12, 1968] The Pioneer and the Gorilla: <i>Heinlein in Dimension</i>, by Alexei Panshin](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/heinlein-in-dim-261x372.png)
![[May 6, 1967] Stirred? Shaken? (June 1967 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/amz-0667-cover-504x372.png)
![[March 2, 1966] Words and Pictures (April 1966 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/IF-1966-03-Cover-1-657x372.jpg)
![[February 8, 1966] Feeling A Draft (March 1966 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/IF-1966-03-Cover-641x372.jpg)
![[January 4, 1966] Keep Watching the Skies (February 1966 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IF-Cover-1966-02-652x372.jpg)
![[December 2, 1965] Superiority Complex (January 1966 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/IF-1966-01-Cover-646x372.jpg)
