[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
by David Levinson
Free press
American readers and those who follow American politics are no doubt well aware of President Nixon’s speech on the “Vietnamization” of the war in Indo-China. All three national networks carried the speech, of course, and followed it up with analysis and commentary. This apparently didn’t sit well with the White House.
On November 13th, Vice President Spiro Agnew addressed a regional Republican committee in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he attacked the networks, accusing them of political bias in their news coverage. He complained that the president’s speech had been subjected to “instant analysis and querulous criticism” without giving the American people time to digest the speech for themselves. Agnew accused “a small and unelected elite” of exerting undue influence on public opinion without any check on their power. He even called it a form of censorship.
Vice President Spiro Agnew addressing the Midwest Regional Republican Committee.
Some television executives accused Agnew of attempting to undermine the freedom of the press and intimidate a form of journalism that requires a government license in order to broadcast. I’d say the intimidation was at least partly successful, since all three networks carried the Vice President's speech. However, the networks are also fighting back. The CBS news magazine 60 Minutes devoted a full hour to rebutting Agnew’s charges.
When asked if anyone in the administration had an advance look at the speech, White House press secretary Ron Ziegler denied it. He also said that the White House would have no reaction to statements by other members of the administration and that Nixon and Agnew had not discussed the speech. That’s nonsense. A speech like this would never be made without approval at the highest levels, and if it had been, the White House would have promptly issued a statement distancing Nixon from the remarks or at least trying to soften them. I’d say the administration has fired a shot across the bows of the news media.
White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler
Seeking common ground
Carrying on the love theme from last month, this month’s IF offers us two romances. But the real focus is on learning to communicate, especially without a common point of reference. It also gives us two sequels to stories from several years ago.
Suggested by “This One”. Art by Gaughan.
Diary Found in the St. Louis Zoo, by Robert Bloch
Bob Bloch gives us his report on the Worldcon, held in St. Louis this year. It’s his typical mix of name-dropping and bad jokes. I generally enjoy Bloch’s fiction (I met him once, and he was very nice), but his humor is just awful. Unlike the delightful and funny drawings by Jack Gaughan that accompany this article. If you want to know what really happened in St. Louis, read the Traveler’s con report. It was timelier and much more informative.
Barely three stars.
A photorealistic portrait of Harlan Ellison. Art by Gaughan
The ConSentiency is an interstellar society composed of several intelligent species. Among them are the Caleban, a strange people who seem to be only partially in this dimension. Only 84 of them have ever been seen, but they are very important, because they gave the ConSentiency jumpdoors, which allow people to travel vast distances. Now, 83 Caleban have vanished, leaving millions dead in the disappearance of each one.
Enter Jorj X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinaire (the Bureau of Sabotage keeps government from becoming too efficient, so that nothing happens without due deliberation). He makes contact with the last Caleban, who calls herself Fanny Mae, and learns that she has entered a contractual relationship with the wealthy and sadistic Mliss Abnethe. In an attempt to treat her sadism, Mliss was conditioned so that she cannot stand to see another sentient suffer, but Calebans can barely be perceived and do not outwardly show suffering.
The problem here is that the flagellations are killing Fanny Mae, and if she undergoes “ultimate discontinuity,” every being that has ever used a jumpdoor—which is almost everyone—will die. To complicate matters, the BuSab is not allowed to interfere with private individuals, which seriously limits Jorj’s options. To complicate things even further, Fanny Mae declares that she has fallen in love with Jorj. To be continued.
Some Gaughan-esque abstractions. Art by Gaughan
We’ve seen McKie and the BuSab before, in the story “The Tactful Saboteur,” which the Traveler gave a mere one star. This installment is better than that, though it’s mostly just Herbert setting the scene. It can be difficult reading at times, thanks to Fanny Mae’s odd speech patterns and the difficulties she and Jorj have finding common referents to understand each other, but that appears to be the point of the story.
Three stars for now, mostly because of the interesting philosophical questions about language and understanding.
Harry Harrison has written a J.G. Ballard story. There is an unexplained natural phenomenon—in this case a waterfall that makes Niagara look like a faucet with a slow leak—and a bunch of suggestive, but not obvious symbolism that is never clarified. Line by line, the writing is fine; I might have liked it if I had any idea what Harrison was trying to say.
Two stars.
By the falls, like it says on the tin. Art by Gaughan
If a Man Answers, by Richard Wilson
Doctoral candidate Walter Hurd takes a job in remote western New York, hoping to finish his dissertation. For an hour a day he beams messages into space, and for another hour he monitors reception. The isolation soon gets to him, and along with the mathematical formulas he starts sending poetry and, eventually, thoughts from his own journal. When he starts receiving a female voice sending out her thoughts, he quickly falls in love.
More abstracts. Art by Gaughan
Here’s our first love story. Parts of it are rather silly, especially the reason Walter’s Star Girl speaks English, but it doesn’t ignore things like the speed of light. It’s a bit long and highly improbable, however there is some nice writing.
A low three stars.
Child’s Play, by Larry Eisenberg
The deeply annoying Emmett Duckworth returns. This time, the implausible chemist has figured out how to create life, including a six foot tall rabbit. I do not like these stories. I’d sooner read the most formulaic of Retief stories or a full novel of Paul Atreides contemplating the grains of sand in his navel. That said, this is the least stupid story of the series. It almost makes sense, and is just readable.
A generous just barely three stars.
Aunt Sam? Art by Gaughan
This One, by James Sallis
A human linguist falls in love with an alien woman. They’re torn apart, and he must search the galaxy to find her again.
I keep trying to see more than one face here, but it doesn’t work. Art probably by Gaughan
Our second love story was highly touted last month. Call me hard-hearted and unromantic, but I hated it. It’s overwrought and melodramatic. With very few changes, it could be a Victorian tale of a man searching the seraglios of the Near East for his lost love.
A low two stars.
O Kind Master, by Daniel F. Galouye
Centuries ago, spherical energy beings conquered the Earth. Now, humans are pampered pets. A group of wild humans have a plan to destroy the Spheres, but they need to know if the tame humans can handle the loss of their masters.
A wild human dwelling with a city of the Spheres in the background. Art probably by Gaughan
This is a sequel of sorts to “The City of Force” from 1959. The Traveler thought that one was solid, but not outstanding (no star ratings in those days). I say this story is only a sequel of sorts, because in the earlier tale, humans were pests, not pets. That story also left humans with powers equal to the Spheres.
It’s all horribly old-fashioned, even by the standards of 1959. Add in a solution to beating the Spheres that should have been found back during the initial invasion and my general vague dislike of Galouye’s work, and I didn’t like this one.
Two stars.
The Story of Our Earth: The Coming of the Dinosaurs, by Willy Ley
Ley’s survey has reached the Triassic and the first dinosaurs. He starts off with a discussion of the importance of jaws in paleontology, and then runs through both early dinosaurs and the mammals of the period, as well as some marine creatures. Interesting, but a bit perfunctory.
Three stars.
Summing up
Maybe the worst issue that editor Ejler Jakobsson has overseen. Some of that may just be me being curmudgeonly. There’s also a lot that isn’t here. We’re told that there’s no letter column due to the length of Bloch’s con report. That may also be why there’s no preview for next month and why Lester del Rey’s book review column is barely more than a page, with little of the depth he usually has. There’s also no new author this month. I’ve liked Jakobsson’s work so far, so hopefully this is just an aberration. Fingers crossed for next month.
In lieu of a preview, have a fanigator. Art by Gaughan
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
Thirty years ago, Arkham House was founded as a small but luxurious publisher, with the intention of preserving the works of H. P. Lovecraft via hardcover editions that would last through the decades. Lovecraft died in 1937, before the vast majority of his work got to be published in book form, and indeed some of his finished work, such as The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, would not see publication at all until after his death. Arkham House's ambitions soon grew, and it's still going strong, even if works by the old pulp writers are now seeing affordable paperback releases.
Cover art by Lee Brown Coye
Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos is a bulky new anthology, here to celebrate four decades of weird fiction in connection with Lovecraft; and while it has a limited run of some 4,000 copies, you should consider yourself one of the lucky few if you can acquire it. Because of its length, and also it combining reprints with original stories never before published, the reviews are split between me and my good colleague George Prichard, I focusing more on the reprints while he takes most of the original stories. This should be fun, and a little spooky.
The Cthulhu Mythos, by August Derleth
Derlath has been the primary chronicler of Lovecraft’s career for the past thirty years, ever since he co-founded Arkham House with Donald Wandrei all those years ago; so it only makes sense he would provide a history (as he sees it, anyway) to the so-called Cthulhu Mythos. As Derleth points out, Lovecraft never referred to the Mythos as such, but it was a name those in his circle were keen on adopting—those in the circle including Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, the much missed Henry Kuttner, among others. Bloch wrote “The Shambler from the Stars” when he was but a teenager, and Lovecraft wrote “The Haunter of the Dark” as a response to Bloch’s story. Both are included here, along with a distant followup from Bloch titled “The Shadow from the Steeple,” all three presented “for the first time together in chronological order.” Otherwise Derleth sought to present these stories more or less as they appeared in publication order, the Mythos thus being showcased in a mostly linear fashion.
No rating for this introductory essay.
The Call of Cthulhu, by H. P. Lovecraft
Cover art by C. C. Senf.
First published in the February 1928 issue of Weird Tales.
While not strictly the first Mythos story, Derleth considers “The Call of Cthulhu” to be the proper genesis of this loose series, so it goes first. I’ve read this story a few times over the years and find myself warming up to it more with each reread. It’s one of Lovecraft’s more unconventionally structured stories—what we might call a compressed novel rather than a traditional short story. An anthropologist rummages through the papers of his recently deceased uncle and uncovers, gradually, a conspiracy involving an ancient cult, a young sculptor whose fever dreams were telepathically linked to unrelated parties, a Norwegian sailor who narrowly survived an encounter with one of the “Great Old Ones,” and of course, a statuette of the many-eyed and -tentacled Cthulhu. The opening paragraph is perhaps the most iconic in all of weird horror, a perfect mission statement on Lovecraft’s part. His obvious disdain for non-European cultures can be nauseating, but it’s also hard to deny the sheer density and sense of foreboding with his writing here.
One last thing: I noticed the narrator mentioning Arthur Machen and Clark Ashton Smith by name—the latter for his poetry, as at that time (Lovecraft wrote “The Call of Cthulhu” circa 1926) Smith had yet to break through with his prose fiction. But he would, soon enough.
Four stars.
The Return of the Sorcerer, by Clark Ashton Smith
Cover art by H. W. Wesso.
First published in the September 1931 issue of the long-forgotten Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror. I highly suggest tracking down copies, as H. W. Wesso did really striking covers for all seven issues.
Here we have the first of two Clark Ashton Smith stories, and this one is delightfully gruesome and gothic. A down-on-his-luck narrator agrees to work for the eccentric John Carnby as a typist and translator. Carnby lives in a decrepit mansion by himself, where supposedly there’s a bit of a rat problem—only the strange noises the narrator hears at night turn out to not be rats. His job is to type up many pages of manuscript, but also to translate passages from the Necronomicon, a cursed book penned by “the mad Arab” Abdul Alharred. (Readers may know, of course, that the Necronomicon is a fictitious text of Lovecraft’s invention.) Smith is often a joy to read simply for the elaborateness of his style, which seems to have its own kind of hypnotic pull; but the main draw of “The Return of the Sorcerer” is how Smith weaves together a narrative about a haunted mansion (haunted not by ghosts but rather a dark past), a man obsessed with the occult, and a creeping revenge plot. There’s also a surprising amount of gore, and while the twist is easy to anticipate, the execution of it is exquisite.
Four stars.
Ubbo-Sathla, by Clark Ashton Smith
Cover art by Margaret Brundage.
First published in the July 1933 issue of Weird Tales.
Paul Tregardis is a normal Londoner, except for his fascination with antiquity and the occult—a fascination that may well spell his doom. A chance encounter with a strange crystal in an antique shop will send Paul on a voyage the likes of which he could not have anticipated. This is a short moody piece that serves first of all to stitch together the Mythos with Smith’s own Hyperborea series. Hyperborea itself is an alternate distant past in which magic and sorcery ruled, and one sorcerer in particular, Eibon, was able to contact unspeakably ancient horrors for his own ends. Eibon himself is more spoken of than seen, although we do meet him in Smith’s “The Door to Saturn.” But The Book of Eibon, mentioned in “Ubbo-Sathla,” is perhaps Smith’s biggest contribution to the Mythos. Smith at his best can compress a mind-bending trek through time and space into just a handful of pages, and the climax here, in which our hapless protagonist travels backwards through time in a “monstrous devolution,” stands out as one of his most pyrotechnic and hallucinogenic passages.
Four stars, especially if read while on mind-altering substances.
The Black Stone, by Robert E. Howard
Cover art by C. C. Senf.
First published in the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales.
The creator of Conan the Cimmerian also wrote a few stories which clearly took after Lovecraft, with “The Black Stone” being the best of them. An unnamed narrator ventures out to Stregoicavar, an obscure village in the mountains of Hungary, a totally unassuming place if not for an ancient black monolith that lies just outside of town. About four centuries ago the area of the village belonged to a people of mixed ancestry, “an unsavory amalgamation,” who tormented the people in the lowlands, i.e., the ancestors of those who now live in Stregoicavar. But there was a war, in which the Turks had invaded and exterminated the mixed-race people, with only some ruins and the Black Stone to show for the ordeal. What separates “The Black Stone” from most of its ilk, indeed what it does better than the vast majority of horror now being written, is its sense of location and history. I had read this story before, when it was recently reprinted in a Howard collection, and on a second reading it’s still immensely eerie and mysterious. What the narrator witnesses when he spies on the Black Stone on Midsummer Night is one of the more disturbing passages in classic weird fiction.
Basically a masterpiece. Five stars.
The Hounds of Tindalos, by Frank Belknap Long
Cover art by Hannes Bok.
First published in the March 1929 issue of Weird Tales.
This is sometimes considered the first non-Lovecraft Mythos story, although Long’s own “The Space-Eaters” predates it by a year. Lovecraft would incorporate the titular hounds in at least one later story of his, and it’s not hard to see why. This is a story concerned partly with a topic I’m sure some of us are familiar with: drugs. Frank is a normal man who happens to be friends with Chalmers, a scientist-mystic who, in concocting an experimental drug, seeks to break down the fourth dimension (time), which he hypothesizes is an illusion. Needless to say the experiment goes very badly. We never see the hounds, although the late great Hannes Bok did depict them quite memorably once upon a time. They are, in keeping with Mythos lore, amoral more than anything, “beyond good and evil as we know it.” What could be a formulaic horror yarn is much elevated by Long’s admirable attempt at combining cosmic fear with scientific rationalism, resulting in a story that bends the mind as both horror and science fiction. It may have helped inspire Lovecraft to take a more SFnal direction with later Mythos stories like “The Dreams in the Witch-House” and “The Shadow Out of Time.”
Four stars.
The Space-Eaters, by Frank Belknap Long
Cover art by C. C. Senf.
First published in the July 1928 issue of Weird Tales.
Here’s Long again, this time with a less conventional (but also less satisfying) tale of unseen horror. This verges on being more of an autobiographical commentary on Long’s friendship with Lovecraft than a fictional narrative, but Long does not take the leap that would have pushed it over the edge. If Chalmers in “The Hounds of Tindalos” was a bit of a stand-in for Lovecraft then the narrator’s friend in “The Space-Eaters” is much more so: he is even named Howard, and is also a writer of weird fiction. There’s something about a creature with tendrils lurking in the woods, which similarly to the hounds moves through extra-dimensional space (although not through angles), such that normally it goes unseen. A local drunk falls victim to the titular eaters, with a strange gaping wound in his head, before the narrator and definitely-not-Lovecraft run the risk of meeting the same fate. As a story it’s a bit of a mess, and a bit too long, not to mention that this is more obviously an early Long story; but as a glimpse into the early days of the so-called Lovecraft circle, it’s certainly worth a read.
Three stars.
The Dweller in Darkness, by August Derleth
Cover art by Matt Fox.
First published in the November 1944 issue of Weird Tales.
Apparently not content to include other people's stories, Derleth took it upon himself to include two of his own, which are both connected with the Mythos. "The Dweller in Darkness" is the slightly stronger of the two and easily the longer (bordering on a novella), but I can't say Derleth's skills as a writer have been sorely missed as of late. This one involves Rick's Lake, a shunned area in rural Wisconsin (a favorite locale for Derleth, understandably given he's from there), two educated friends trying to solve a mystery, and an enigmatic professor of the occult named Partier. There's also an unfortunate local "half-breed" named Old Peter who is deathly afraid of what may be lurking in the area, and who gets taken along for a ride—of sorts. The atmosphere is quite rich, and I suspect Derleth took some inspiration from the Loch Ness monster mystery/hoax with both the locale and the lengths the narrator and his college friend go to witness the hitherto unseen horror. Unfortunately it's overlong, and the payoff is a little too reminiscent of Lovecraft's "Cool Air," only without the tragic grotesquery of that story's ending.
A high three stars.
Beyond the Threshold, by August Derleth
Cover art by Margaret Brundage.
First published in the September 1941 issue of Weird Tales.
Once again Derleth, and once again in rural Wisconsin. The narrator and his cousin visit their grandfather's mansion to study leftover papers from a deceased relative—one who had gone "beyond the threshold," perhaps ventured into another dimension. The grandfather is perhaps a little too determined to follow his leader, and the results are predictably tragic. This one starts off promisingly but then becomes a perfectly serviceably cross between Gothic and cosmic horror—a mixture I think Clark Ashton Smith pulled off with far more elegance and spectacle in "The Return of the Sorcerer." Something I didn't mention with "The Dweller in Darkness" is that both of Derleth's stories take place in a world where Arkham and Miskatonic University are real places, yes, but Lovecraft's fiction is also real, which I found to be distracting. For example the narrator will read a copy of The Outsider and Others, which Derleth himself had published. A little self-congratulatory, yes?
Barely three stars.
by George Pritchard
“The Shambler from the Stars”, by Robert Bloch “The Haunter of the Dark”, by H.P. Lovecraft “The Shadow from the Steeple”, by Robert Bloch
I am grouping these three stories together, as they are interlinked. As in the Derleth stories (and, later, the J. Ramsey Campbell one), Lovecraft's stories are both real, and exist in the world. Unlike my fellow reviewer, I found this added depth to the work. Perhaps it is simply due to my own experience, or that Bloch is a better author than Derleth is — both are possible. The three stories describe the accidental summoning of a creature (the titular Shambler), its aftermath, and partial defeat. Robert Blake, a Weird Fiction author from Milwaukee and a stand-in for Bloch, takes center stage for much of the first two stories, until his death at the Shambler's tentacles. From there, the narrative is taken over by William Hurley, who reaches out to Lovecraft himself to find out what happened to this "Blake" fellow!
I can think of no better tribute, from one horror writer friend to another, than dramatically killing each other off at the dastardly tendrils of a blood-soaked horror.
Four stars.
“Notebook Found In A Deserted House”, by Robert Bloch
This story, written in the form of a journal entry, suggests a sharper miniature of “The House on the Borderland”, with a strong American voice coming through. The USPS is apparently familiar with shoggoths.
Bloch’s great strength, amongst Weird Fiction authors, is his Artful Dodger-like ability to “do the voices”. Different characters sound different, speaking and thinking in distinctive ways that nevertheless seem natural to them. Too often, the characters in Weird Fiction “sound” the same, having similar cadences to whichever author is writing them, from Machen to Hodgeson. Furthermore, Bloch is willing to write characters further down the class ladder than other Weird Fiction authors. The genre may love M.R. James and the Decadents, but that mistrust for anyone who wasn’t an Oxford man of good standing has left marks that may never be worn away.
Four stars.
by Brian Collins
Hello again. I still have one more reprint, plus an original story here.
The Salem Horror, by Henry Kuttner
Cover art by Margaret Brundage.
First published in the May 1937 issue of Weird Tales.
Kuttner died in 1958, tragically young like Robert E. Howard (Howard shot himself, and Kuttner was struck down by a heart attack at only 42), but he wrote a great deal in a short time. "The Salem Horror" is very early Kuttner, and admittedly I sense some DNA left over from his very first story, "The Graveyard Rats," what with the claustrophobic setting and the close encounters with rats.
A novelist in the midst of writer's block moves to Salem to stay in a house that belonged to a witch, many decades ago, and which has since become a place of ill repute in the already-infamous town; but the novelist is convinced he may find inspiration there, and he may be more right than he knows. Kuttner was not a poet like Lovecraft or Smith, or even Howard when he was really trying; but the pulpy vividness of his style gives this tale of dark corners and growing obsession an immediacy that elevates what is mostly a one-man show into one of gripping eeriness. Kuttner, in trying to pay the bills, could repeat himself, but "The Salem Horror" very much builds on the sort of dread introduced in "The Graveyard Rats" rather than simply rehashing it.
A light four stars.
The Haunter of the Graveyard, by J. Vernon Shea
Elmer Harrod owns the house closest to a "disused" cemetery, which nowadays mostly is visited by vagrants and young lovers. Harrod himself hosts a late-night TV show in his own home, having the right setting for such a thing—a Gothic mansion that seems out-of-place in the 20th century. He shows and commentates over trashy horror movies, some of which are based on Lovecraft's fiction. (Yes, this is another story where Lovecraft's writing exists in the world of the story, but it's used to more interesting ends here.) Immediately you can tell "The Haunter of the Graveyard" was written in the past few years partly because of the role TV (and made-for-TV movies) plays, but also it very much takes place in a world (one very much like ours) where the Mythos stories have not only been vindicated to some degree but have even inspired other works of horror. Unfortunately the ending is a letdown, and I feel like Shea could have gone farther with his premise; but putting that aside, it's a little "far out," in a good way.
A high three stars.
by George Pritchard
“Cold Print”, by J. Ramsey Campbell
Sam Strutt is a compellingly loathsome figure. A PE teacher in England, he spends his free time seeking out transgressive gay pornographic literature, and being disgusted by the grime and filth of the world around him. He enjoys his work in a particularly sadistic fashion, both on and off the clock, though this is derived from Strutt’s personality rather than his sexuality. And yet, Campbell writes so that there is something compelling about Strutt, about his dedication and knowledge to the seeking out of the books he loves. Horror readers may recognize themselves in that seeking out of the awkward, the hidden, the forbidden, no matter the cost to oneself or to others.
An understanding is sought out, and an understanding is achieved…
And now, if you'll excuse me, my thoughts on this piece:
We exist in a world after Hemingway. After Hemingway, after Steinbeck, and after Jackson.
We exist in a world where Edward Bulwer-Lytton is no longer one of the most influential authors alive, and there are greater monsters than Joris-Karl Huysmans. While hugely popular during his lifetime, Bulwer-Lytton is now best known for contributing the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night…" to Peanuts. Huysmans, meanwhile, codified not only the descriptions of sexually charged Satanic ritual in the modern day through his novel Las-bas, but the type of character now referred to as "the Lovecraft protagonist" comes from his Decadent novel Against the Grain.
It is frustrating, then, to see re-imaginings, re-writings, and reckonings of Weird Fiction through the lens of Lovecraft, as though the genre had only been composed by one hand, for good and for ill.
I would be the first to admit that Weird Fiction has always lagged behind when it comes to depictions of sexuality. Some of Arthur Machen’s stories have had elements of sex, such as in “The White People”, and “The Great God Pan”. And I confess that Lovecraft’s own “Dagon” has always set both my Jungian and Freudian tendencies abuzz. But most often, Weird Fiction has enshrined its horror in physical and mental solitude. (Putting this at Lovecraft’s feet gives M.R. James short shrift, as well as avoiding Weird Fiction’s long standing conversation with the Decadent literary movement. How strange, to have this peculiar little offshoot outlast the others! One thinks of the relation between elephants and the common hyrax.)
What makes “Cold Print” so refreshing is that it doesn't shy away from sexuality. This has been a decade of seismic shifts, one of the greatest of those being in regards to portraying sex on the page, or speaking openly about it, putting sexuality and desire forefront in SF and fantasy fiction. Some of these examples have been better than others, but it is Ramsey Campbell’s “Cold Print” which has finally allowed Weird Fiction to put its hat in the ring. Let the other fellow beware—this is a "Campbell" worth watching.
Five stars.
“The Sister City”, by Brian Lumley
A kinder, yet more engaging, version of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. After this, I am sure that I will not be the only one wandering the fens, hoping to encourage the Second Change!
Four stars.
“Cement Surroundings”, by Brian Lumley
Giant centipede vs. Gatling gun. Need I say more?
Four stars.
“The Deep Ones”, by James Wade
A psychic researcher arrives in San Simeon to help with dolphin research. But trouble is in the waters — a peculiar love quadrangle begins to form between the psychic researcher, the project head, the comely assistant, and their prize dolphin! All the while, a mysterious hippie group wants the research to end. But why?
This is not strictly a bad short story, but in comparison to the rest of the collection, it’s definitely the weakest. What it lacks is a full sense of focus. “The Deep Ones” is not sure if it wants to be a serious yet dreamlike story, or a parody of Ballard, Lovecraft, hippiesploitation, and Weird Fiction. When you write something like this, you need to either fish or cut bait.
Three stars.
“The Return of the Lloigor”, by Colin Wilson
A deliberate rundown of Weird Fiction’s greatest hits, eagerly gathering them into a true culmination of a “mythos”. All the density of the genre’s best, without the awkward meandering! Unfortunately, about halfway in, the author reveals that he has not bothered to update any of the story’s politics since Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. A strong beginning, and a weak end.
Three stars.
Summing up
Many Weird Fiction authors are fascinating in their own right, regardless of how well they are remembered today. William Sharpe, for all his activism in life, has dropped to the bottom of the proverbial stack; while Robert Chambers’ one slim volume has outlasted his numerous romances. I am overjoyed that I have been allowed to help welcome in a new generation of the Weird, of what is now being called the Cthulhu Mythos. With no story in the collection dropping below three stars, I highly recommend you run (or swim and crawl, slither or creep or ooze) to purchase a copy of this work. Let nobody say that August Derleth does not extend his influence as wide and deep as the King in Yellow himself!
Every four years, Americans head to the polls to vote for who they want to lead the Free World. At least, that's what they think they're doing. What really happens is your vote determines if your choice for President wins your state. And then, representatives of the states, the so-called "Electoral College", announce who they've been empowered to choose. Technically, these representatives are not bound to uphold the will of the voter; in practice, bucking the election results has been for protest rather than consequence.
This means that the swingier the state and the bigger the state, the more attention it will get. For instance, California, somewhat evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and currently the most populous state in the Union, is more important to a candidate than, say, a reliable and sparsely settled state like Arizona.
No more? This week, the House passed a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would make Presidents directly electable. This would mark the first major change to the system since 1803.
It looks like half the Senate is in favor, but it will take two thirds of that chamber plus three quarters of the states for the measure to go through. Opposing such reform are representatives of small states and rural areas, as they wish to retain their outsized impact on the process. With the rapid rate of urbanization, particularly on the coasts, this proposed amendment threatens to wipe out the electoral relevance of most of the central region of our country, from the Rockies to the Mississippi.
But that's precisely why the time for such an amendment has come, its advocates propose. People vote—not acres.
The bill faces an uphill battle, but it's an idea whose time has probably come.
Magazine by the Few
by Ronald Walotsky
Even with an Electoral College, with 50 states, you still get something approximating the will of the people. With a science fiction magazine, you've only got six to fourteen pieces. That means any individual story can dramatically affect your enjoyment of an issue, and the variations in quality can make for a wild ride. Such was my experience reading the latest Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Susan Calvin, renowned roboscientist, has gone into semi-retirement, passing the torch to the new generation. Said successors develop a robot with flexible programming, one that can make free associations rather than rely on its own hard-coding. Its designers, all male, decide that such fuzzy thinking could only be ascribed to a female, and so they built the robot with feminine curves and a sexy contralto voice. JN-5, or "Jane", is a big hit with all the (male, of course) scientists and politicians.
Jane is employed to determine which of the 5500 stars with 80 light years of Earth would be most likely to be inhabitable so that humanity's limited interstellar capacity can be used most efficiently. Jane fingers three candidates, but she and her maker are killed in a freak accident. Only Susan Calvin can save the day.
The story drips with male chauvinism, but ultimately, that's the point. It's an uncomfortable ride, but wait for the end, which redeems the story.
A brilliant physicist discovers his wife has but one year to live. He builds a room in which time goes much more slowly so that he will have more time to discover a cure. When the wife gets lonely (since she's by herself for all of…what…a week?) the husband picks out a brilliant but plain woman to be his wife's companion.
Decades later, when the physicist discovers the cure, he returns to the room to find the two women making love. Jealously, he locks the room and accelerates time, leaving his wife to die, his wife's lover to live out the rest of her life with the corpse, and for both of them to be out of the physicist's ken in the blink of an eye.
I didn't like the story much when I read it, and now, having to revisit it for this summary, I realize that I hate it. Not just for the misogyny, but for the absurdity of the premise (there are no spinoff societal effects from inventing time control?!) and the laughability of the final insult—oh no! Wife is not only unfaithful but (whisper it) a homosexual!
A perennial extra, veteran of 450+ films, spends most of his life at the Silent Movies. He's not just reliving his glory days; it's how he can catch glimpses of his lost love, a fellow extra, who died in 1930, just as her career was beginning to take off.
The fellow knows every movie, every scene in which he and his girlfriend appeared. So why does she start showing up in films she never appeared in before, some that even date to before her start in show biz? And why does it seem she is mouthing messages for him alone? Is she enjoying a kind of celluloid life after death?
Once transportation via personal helicopter becomes a cheap and ubiquitous reality, everyone moves away from points north of 40 degrees latitude to reside in California, Florida, the Mediterranean, and other like climates. This is the tale of the last man in England, and the friend who tries to convince him to join the other emigrés.
I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one—was the Earth growing cold? Had their been a calamity in the Northern Hemisphere? No. People were just leaving wholesale out of personal preference.
Never mind that some people like seasons. Never mind that the tropics can't fit all those people. Never mind that Aleuts and Laplanders haven't left their ancestral homes despite the capability of moving to town if they want to.
Lots of folks like Bradbury. Maybe I started on him too late.
Two stars.
by Gahan Wilson
Worlds in Confusion, by Isaac Asimov
Wherein the Good Doctor takes on Velikovsky and his ridiculous, religion-cloaked-in-pseudoscience tome, Worlds in Collision. Did Jupiter really eject Venus as a comet? Did that rogue planet stop the Earth in its tracks, causing no ill effects beyond the Ten Plagues and the pausing of the day at the Battle of Jericho? Do people really believe this claptrap?
Four stars.
by Chesley Bonestell
"Russian astronauts have arrived on the rim of Copernicus only to discover that the Americans have already been there …"
A mission to Jupiter finds the gas giant teeming with life. On the Moon, a giant black edifice (made by people, not aliens) sifts human dreams, becoming the repository for archetypes—the goal to find a solution to strife and hatred in the world. On Earth, the globe is split between Communist, Free, and Black domains. The "Free" world is highly regimented, with children taken from their parents after a decade, and marital partners divorced on the same schedule.
Our protagonists, such as they are, are neurotic Westciv citizens, adapted, but not adjusted, to the new way of life. Their collected dreams represent the only way out of the mess technology has gotten us into.
What a lousy story this is. Turgid, mock-momentous claptrap. Budget Ballard. Thoroughly unentertaining, its message buried, and not a lick of science to be found in this so-called science fiction. I recognize that the definition of the genre now goes beyond nuts-and-bolts engineering stories to include softer sciences like psychology and sociology, and that the New Wave is an experiment in bringing a degree of literary-ness to SF, but this is too much of a thing.
A brilliant engineer-turned-hippie stumbles upon the principle of perpetual motion. In order to keep the discovery from being used for evil, he leaves his life of Bohemian idyll, cuts off his hair, and Makes it Big. Thus armored in respectability, he carefully manages the revolution's global introduction, ensuring peace and propserity for all humanity.
Upon returning to the backwoods town where he left his lady love and a life of languor, his erstwhile paramour chides him for selling his soul for progress when he could have had love.
This is the sort of story Lafferty or Davidson might have played more for laughs, Sheckley more for bitterness. Sturgeon presents it completely straight, and as always, he writes pretty well. His statement seems to be: rather than just be nice and preach love, actually do something to make the world better.
On the surface, he has a point. Free love is all very nice, but aren't those dirty hippies really just parasites on real working society? On the other hand, Sturgeon rigs the deck. His hero discovers the patently impossible after a few days' work. Moreover, there are plenty of believers in the hippie ethic who are working, giving, and improving the world. It's a mentality, not a nationality.
Sturgeon, who predates the Swinging Sixties, obviously bears some resentment toward the new crowd. Kicking straw men is not the answer.
Mr. Poole, executive of a powerful corporation, is in a flying-car accident. When he regains consciousness, he finds he is not a human at all but an "electric ant"—an android. Designed to be a figurehead, all of his memories are programmed, his life a lie.
He becomes determined to find the nature of his ongoing programming and discovers that there are no further limits on his thoughts and activities. He does, however, discover a punched tape spool that controls his sensory input. Poole begins fiddling with it, altering his subjective reality. His ultimate goal is to experience everything in the universe at once, something he thinks, as a robot, he can handle better than a human might.
Dick once again turns in a story about a middle-aged man going through an existential crisis. There is also the drug-use metaphor (Dick is into uppers, I understand). It doesn't make the most sense—the ant's reality is subjective, but the external universe also exists, so what, exactly does the tape spool control? Poole is determined to find out, taking himself on a psychedelic, 2001-esque journey whose mission is to prove or disprove Solipsism. I feel Dick takes the easy, the obvious way out, at the very end.
Niven returns to the realm of fantasy, but this time, with a completely new character and setup. Hanville Svetz is a hapless time traveler from more than a thousand years from now. Hailing from a polluted, dictatorial future, he has been sent back to 1200 AD to find an extinct beast for the Secretary General's zoo—a simple horse.
What Svetz actually finds, and the troubles that befall him on his quest are interesting and delightful. There is a deft, sardonic touch to this story, and room has been left for many follow-ups. I look forward to them.
Four stars.
Science Fiction for the woodpile
As with last month, the latest F&SF finished on the wrong end of the 3-stars mark. Though F&SF is the shortest of the SF digests, it took me the longest to finish. I just wasn't looking forward to it. I can see why my nephew, David, canceled his subscription a few years back. It's a pity that this twentieth anniversary issue is so dismal compared to the ones that came out when the magazine was young. That said, hope springs eternal, and I would hate to miss stories like Get a Horse!.
I just wish my job would let me skip the stories I don't like…
A few days ago, folks in the Soviet Union must have been surprised to see nudity on their television sets. Nude scenes from the controversial new play Oh, Calcutta! and photographs of sex magazines appeared on one of the Soviet Central Television networks.
The intent was not to titillate the audience (although that may have been an accidental side effect) but to point out the decadence of American culture.
The Soviet station's logo. You didn't expect me to show you the nudity, did you?
What does this have to do with the latest issue of Fantastic? Keep your hat (and other clothing) on and you'll find out.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
As usual, the cover is (ahem) borrowed from a German publication.
The original always looks better.
Editorial, by Ted White
The new editor introduces himself. He relates how he failed to produce a fancy, expensive magazine called STELLAR Stories of Imagination. Some of the stories intended for that stillborn publication will appear in Fantastic and Amazing. He also promises to provide what he calls different stories in the magazines. We'll see.
No rating.
What's Your Excuse, by Alexis Panshin
Here's a tale that was supposed to appear in STELLAR. A professor plays a trick on a graduate student who is in his late twenties, but who appears to be in his teens. The student has his own secret up his sleeve.
It's hard to say too much about this brief yarn, which depends entirely on its premise. Is it different? Yeah, I guess so. Is it good? Well, maybe not. A trivial oddity.
Two stars.
The Briefing, by Randall Garrett
Another very short story. The narrator is aboard a spaceship. He's about to be sent down to a planet in disguise, in order to shorten an impending Dark Ages.
Without giving away anything, let's just say that you may be able to predict the twist ending. Extra points for being a bit of a dangerous vision, at least.
Three stars.
Emphyrio (Part Two of Two), by Jack Vance
Taking up half the magazine is the conclusion to this new novel.
Illustrations by Bruce Jones (obviously.)
We first met our hero, Ghyl Tarvoke, with his head literally cut open. His brain controlled by those holding him prisoner, he was forced to tell the truth.
This led us into a long flashback, from Ghyl's childhood until he decided to run for mayor under the pseudonym of Emphyrio, the name of a semi-legendary hero.
Part Two begins with Ghyl losing the election, but coming in third. That's enough to draw the attention of the authorities. Ghyl's father was already in trouble with them, and the situation only gets worse.
After the death of his father, Ghyl agrees to join his friends in a plot to steal a starship from the Lords and Ladies who rule his world. He makes them promise not to do any killing or kidnapping or pillaging after this single crime. Don't expect any honor among thieves.
Ghyl winds up leading a group of Lords and Ladies through the wilderness of another planet. The place is full of dangerous animals and people.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
He is eventually captured (leading back to our opening scene of interrogation) and sentenced to exile. However, there are a lot more adventures ahead, as he discovers the truth about the Lords and Ladies, and about the real Emphyrio.
Last time I said that the novel was very good, but maybe a bit leisurely and episodic. It turns out that incidents I thought were of little importance have great significance. I underestimated the intricacy of the author's tightly woven plot. At least I acknowledged his ability to create complex, imaginative worlds and cultures.
Five stars.
On to the reprints! They all come from old issues of Fantastic. Apparently the new editor prefers to avoid taking things from Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, which may be a good thing.
Let's Do It For Love, by Robert Bloch
The November/December 1953 issue is the source of this farce.
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
A guy invents some stuff that makes folks love everybody. The narrator is a public relations agent who tries to promote the wonderful chemical. Too bad nobody wants universal siblinghood.
Anonymous illustration.
There's a touch of satire, of course, but this is mostly just a silly romp, full of wacky jokes and tomfoolery. If that's your thing, fine. The way the story deals with the inventor's shrewish wife may not please too many readers.
Two stars.
To Fit the Crime, by Richard Matheson
This ironic tale comes from the November/December 1952 issue.
Cover art by Barye Phillips.
A curmudgeonly poet insults his relations in creative ways as he lies dying. In the afterlife, he faces an appropriate fate.
Illustration by David Stone.
There's not much to this except for the poet's way with words. The unpleasant fellow's version of perdition may cause some amusement.
Two stars.
The Star Dummy, by Anthony Boucher
The Fall 1952 issue provides this lighthearted story.
Cover art by Leo Summers.
A ventriloquist imagines that his dummy talks to him. Oddly, that's not really what the story is about. It actually deals with a goofy-looking alien, newly arrived on Earth, looking for his vanished mate. The extraterrestrial and the ventriloquist wind up helping each other.
Illustration by Tom Beecham.
This is mostly a comedy, of a very gentle sort. One unusual aspect of the story is that it also deals with the ventriloquist's religious faith. There's some discussion of science fiction itself as well.
Slightly eccentric, moderately entertaining.
Three stars.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Ted White
Leiber discusses three new novels that add explicit sex to science fiction plots. (I told you I'd get to that!) For the record, the trio consists of The Image of the Beast by Philip Jose Farmer, The Endless Orgy by Richard E. Geis, and Season of the Witch by Hank Stine. Leiber gives them mixed reviews, but welcomes the new frankness with which they describe sexual behavior.
The editor offers a long, glowing review of Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny. I liked it, too.
No rating.
The Hungry, by Robert Sheckley
Back to reprints. This one comes from June 1954 issue.
Cover art by Ernest Schroeder.
A malevolent thing preys upon the negative emotions and physical suffering of a young married couple. Only the baby of the family and the pet cat can see it. The infant does what it can to help.
Illustration by Sanford Kossin.
Told from the viewpoint of the baby, this is an offbeat little story. Minor, but nicely done.
Three stars.
The Worth of a Man,by Henry Slesar
The June 1959 issue supplies this grim tale.
Cover art by Ed Valigursky.
A veteran of a future war has much of his body replaced with metal parts. He talks to a psychiatrist about his sense that somebody is out to hurt him.
Of course, his supposed paranoia is more than a delusion. What happens to him is disturbing, which is apparently the author's intent. I found it to be a powerful and all-too-plausible chiller.
Four stars.
Fantasy Fandom, by Ted White and Bill Meyers
I wasn't even going to discuss, let alone rate, this new column from the editor, in which he intends to reprint writings from fanzines. However, the first one knocked me out.
First published in Void, White's own fanzine, the essay by Meyers relates the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien to the author's childhood. It's a thoughtful, elegantly written piece, not so much about Tolkien as it is about the way that our early years influence how we react to literature.
I may be prejudiced in its favor, because Meyers grew up in the Chattanooga area, where I currently reside.
Five stars.
The Naked Truth
That was a very mixed bag of an issue. One excellent novel, one excellent essay, stories old and new ranging from below average to above average. You might want to skip some of the lesser pieces and go see a play instead.
The cast of Oh, Calcutta! You didn't expect me to show you the nudity, did you?
Regular readers of Galactic Journey or of SF magazines in general may have noticed that neither Galaxy nor IF published last month. With a bit of detective work, I’ve put together what happened.
The clues are on the masthead. Editor Fred Pohl is now listed as Editor Emeritus, while the editor is Ejler Jakobsson. The publisher is no longer Robert M. Guinn, but Arnold E. Abramson, and Galaxy Publishing has been replaced by Universal Publishing. (That last worried me for a moment, but I quickly remembered that Amazing and Fantastic are put out by Ultimate Publishing under Sol Cohen.)
There’s also an editorial from Fred, talking about the changes. Most importantly, he’s stepping back to focus more on writing. That and the fact that he’s sticking around to look over the new editor’s shoulder (Fred’s words) for a while suggests his departure is voluntary and doesn’t suggest any misgivings about the new ownership on his part. Plus, we should be getting new stuff from him more often.
Who is Ejler Jakobsson? He had a few horror stories back in the late 30s, cowritten with his wife Edith, but if his name sounds familiar, it’s most likely because he was the editor for the revival of Super Science Stories from 1949-1951. Coincidentally, that magazine had been edited by Fred Pohl before it was shut down by wartime paper shortages.
What changes can we expect? Fred prefers to let us see them as they happen, but the promo for next month hints at some. IF is getting a book review column by Lester del Rey. That may or may not mean the end of his “If… and When” column. We’re also getting a twelve part series by Willy Ley, “The Story of Our Earth.” That might suggest some changes over at Galaxy.
Of course, the biggest question is what sort of stories Jakobsson will buy. It will be a while before we get a good feel for that, since there’s bound to be a backlog of stories selected by Pohl. It took several months for the Fermans over at Fantasy and Science Fiction to change the course set by Avram Davidson, but Ted White has wrestled Amazing and Fantastic into a new direction almost immediately. We’ll see, but we should have a good idea by the time we start the new decade.
A bang or a whimper?
Since this is the last issue under Fred Pohl’s leadership, it’s fair to ask what sort of note he goes out on. Will he put out a strong issue, go out on a high note and remind us why this magazine has won three straight Hugos? Or will it be utterly awful and make us glad he’s gone? Not to ruin the suspense, but the July issue is really just another typical, middle-of-the-road example. There’s some good stuff and some not so good. Let’s start with the cover.
Art credited only as couresy of Three Lions, Inc. but actually by German artist Johnny Bruck.
You may recall that the last issue had a similar uncredited cover that Robert Bloch apparently used for his story Groovyland. Once again we have a Johnny Bruck cover, originally for Perry Rhodan #102, which an American author has used for inspiration. This time Keith Laumer has come up with a story much more clearly based on the art than Bloch’s was. I’m not keen on this trend, though it’s slightly better than what they do over at Amazing and Fantastic.
Long-time readers of Mack Reynolds’s work will be familiar with his stories of People’s Capitalism. That appears to be giving way to what he calls the Meritocracy. The biggest difference so far is the replacement of every citizen’s ten shares of Inalienable Basic with a Negative Income Tax.
In Mack’s latest novel, the NIT enables people to pick up and move to places anywhere in the world where the cost of living is lower. They often gather in rolling towns that consist of mobile homes that make the fanciest Airstream trailer look like a pup tent. Our protagonist is Bat Hardin, a man of mixed race who provides police services to a town on its way to South America. After crossing into Mexico, the town encounters unexpected hostility from the locals, including credible threats of extreme violence. Meanwhile, Bat’s authority in the town is being threatened by an extremely racist, newer resident. To be concluded.
Bat has been kidnapped to deliver a message: Gringos go home. Art by Gaughan
This is typical Reynolds of the better sort. He’s not just rehashing the same tired plot points, and while there’s the usual lectures on history and economics, they’re reasonably concise and to the point. Mack is quicker to point out the flaws in the system, but also subtler than usual. As a man who thinks he has no future in the Meritocracy because an Army test rated his IQ as 93, Bat is an interesting character, though he seems much brighter than that; we’ll see if whether that will be relevant to the plot or just Reynolds not being able to write someone of low average intelligence. Plus, we’ve got a tense situation. I look forward to seeing how this all plays out.
A solid three stars.
On the Dead Star, by Jack L. Austin
An explorer aboard a one-man scout, with only the ship’s computer intelligence for company, discovers an impossible structure on the surface of a Black Dwarf.
This month’s new author gets off to a good start. The writing was sound and the situation intriguing. Unfortunately, Austin loses his way. The story just goes on too long; it could easily have been half the length. As is often the case in such tales, the conclusion winds up being rushed. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, but the whole thing wraps up in a couple of paragraphs, with the action taking place off-screen. It could be better, but Austin is only 20 and has room to grow. I’ll give him a chance.
A low three stars.
Autohuman 14, by Bruce McAllister
This story of policeman Grabe Massel is hard to summarize without giving away the big mid-point revelation (though you’ll probably see it coming). Let’s just say he has a very close relationship with his car.
There’s probably a really good story to be told with this set-up, but I’m not sure this is it. There’s some excellent writing here, particularly the use of engine noise, but it also feels like there’s a barrier that dulls the impact of the narrative on the reader. Still, it may be the best thing McAllister has written. He may finally be getting close to a breakthrough.
Tarzan… er, Spork is back. This time he and the Ayor travel to a human-occupied planet and deal with an evil dictator. Along with the mix of A.E. van Vogt and Edgar Rice Burroughs that the previous stories have offered, this one has a large dollop of Doc Smith. There’s probably more to come, since Spork appears to be Lord Greystoke… er, a lost prince, but I’m not looking forward to seeing any of it.
Barely three stars.
Spork and an Ayor. Art by Reese
Authorgraphs: An Interview with Robert Bloch
In this month’s interview, Robert Bloch talks about discovering science fiction, learning his trade with the Milwaukee Fictioneers, particularly Stanley Weinbaum, and making ends meet during the Depression. I would have liked a few words about his relationship with H.P. Lovecraft, but it’s a good interview overall.
Three stars.
Portrait by Gaughan
The Half Man, by Keith Laumer
Long cut off from the rest of humanity, the planet Meries is being considered for reintegration into the human community. At some point in the past, the people and domestic animals of the planet became acquatic through genetic manipulation. Part of the team assessing the planet is Gon, the son of an itinerant trader and a local woman. Gon was raised on Earth and is having trouble making contact with the locals. He finally does so on the last day of the mission.
Gon has an encounter with a descendant of Earth dogs gone wild. Art by Barr
Keith Laumer tends to write stories that are either meant as humorous satire or two-fisted Competent Man adventures. Once in a while, though, he writes something deep and thoughtful. This is one of those rare occasions, despite the fact that it was written based on art created for another story in another language. Actually, it’s probably weaker for using that Johnny Bruck cover as the climax of the story. Still, it’s one of Laumer’s better pieces.
Charles Travers is arrested on false charges of treason and condemned to participate in the Tele-Games. His odds of survival are practically nil.
Nuetzel is unknown to me, but he’s apparently sold a few stories to a minor publisher and the semi-pro zine Spaceway. This story is fine, but nothing special. There’s a sting in the tail, but it doesn’t bite as hard as I think Nuetzel wanted it to.
Three stars.
If… and When, by Lester del Rey
How common is life in the universe? That’s a question that has had many answers over the years. Del Rey looks at those answers and how they’ve changed, along with the experiments and scientific findings that have caused those changes.
Four stars.
Where the Beast Runs, by Dean R. Koontz
Three hunters go after a creature that has killed several other groups just as experienced as they are. One of them will also have to confront a traumatic experience from his childhood.
The beast reflects Andy’s trauma back at him. Art by Adkins
With a few changes, this could have been a straight adventure set in Africa or South America. Like Bruce McAllister, Koontz shows a lot of promise, but never quite crosses the threshhold to being really good. He keeps getting close and does so here, but doesn’t quite get there.
Three stars.
Summing up
There it is. The last IF that is fully Fred Pohl’s. There’s nothing spectacularly good, but nothing spectacularly bad. As for the future under Ejler Jakobsson, we’ll have to wait and see. I’ll miss If… and When if it gets dropped for another book column. There’s also no letter column this month, but that might be to make space for some longer pieces as well as be an artifact of Pohl’s departure from the big chair. We are getting a new issue of Worlds of Fantasy in a few months. Let’s just hope that for IF and Galaxy all this, to paraphrase President Kennedy, symbolizes a beginning as well as an end, “signifying renewal as well as change.”
A sign of the changes to come. At least the Chapdelaine doesn’t look like more Spork.
There’s trouble brewing in the east. The border between the Soviet Union and China has long been a point of contention, going back over 100 years when the Czars imposed a border treaty on a weakened imperial China. All the socialist brotherhood in the world wasn’t enough to fix the problem in the post-War years (admittedly, the Nationalist government complicated things), and things haven’t gotten better since the Sino-Soviet split.
An agreement was almost reached 1964, but some impolitic comments by Mao got out and prompted Khrushchev to block the deal. Sino-Soviet relations got very tense during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia last summer, and the Chinese have been poking at the border, seemingly trying to get the Soviets to overreact.
The chief hot spot has been a small island in the Ussuri river claimed by both sides. Called Chenpao by the Chinese and Damansky by the Russians, it’s only 0.29 square miles; that’s a little over 185 acres or 17.5 American football fields. On March 2nd, a Chinese force surprised (or ambushed, depending on who you ask) a Soviet force on the island. After fierce fighting, both sides declared victory and withdrew. On the 15th, the Chinese shelled the island, pushing the Soviets back, but the afternoon saw a Soviet counterattack with tanks and mechanized infantry, which drove the Chinese off the island. The next day, the Soviets returned to recover their dead, which the Chinese allowed, but when they tried to recover a disabled T-62 tank (one of their newer models) the day after that, they were driven off by Chinese artillery. On the 21st, the Soviets sent a demolition team to destroy the tank, but the Chinese drove them back and recovered the tank themselves.
A map showing the location of Chenpao/Damansky Island
China is reportedly ignoring diplomatic overtures by the Soviets, and the situation remains tense. There are signs that China is preparing for a potential invasion by the Soviets, but the U.S.S.R. seems less inclined to escalate. It’s easy enough to want to sit back and watch a couple of powers hostile to the West fight, but both sides have the Bomb, and even a limited nuclear exchange could have severe consequences for the northern hemisphere.
Chinese soldiers pose with their captured Russian tank
Confronting the past
Though set in the future, most of the stories in this month’s IF have characters dealing with the events of the past. Or even experiencing them. But first a word about the art.
The cover illustrates Groovyland and is credited as courtesy of Three Lions, Inc., but see below
From what I can find out, Three Lions is a photo agency. If you want a picture of a boy eating ice cream or someone famous (they have a large collection of JFK photos from before he ran for president), they’ll license one to you. Apparently, they’re branching out into art. This is a reasonable illustration for the Bloch story in this issue, and I suspect Bloch used it as inspiration for his story. However, it was originally done by Johnny Bruck for the German magazine Perry Rhodan #216. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Bruck’s work has been repurposed many times as cover art for Amazing and Fantastic. I hope Galaxy Publishing isn’t going down the same road.
Here’s the original art by Johnny Bruck.
Groovyland, by Robert Bloch
An out of work screenwriter runs into a young woman at the employment office who offers him a place to stay. On the way back to her place, they hit a little green man, who says he’s here to conquer the world. When they find out he can replicate any song he hears once, including harmonies and instruments, they and their housemates offer to help him. Things kick off at the titular Groovyland, a theme park in the desert west of Los Angeles. Unfortunately, everybody has their own agenda.
The entrance to one of Groovyland’s main attractions. Art by Gaughan
Humor is subjective, and I said in the teaser last month that I find Bloch’s humor to be hit or miss. Never before have I read a story, even a much shorter story than this, where almost every paragraph expects a rimshot. And the paragraphs that don’t want a rimshot are more than made up for by those that want multiple rimshots. Some of the satire works, a couple of the band names are mildly amusing, and there’s a decent story in there somewhere, but it’s all drowned out by jokes that deserve a chorus of boos and a hail of rotten vegetables.
Barely three stars.
If… and When, by Lester del Rey
This month, del Rey looks at the way the growth of scientific knowledge has gradually depopulated the science fiction solar system. In doing so, he also looks at the sort of things life needs to flourish, not just air and water, but energy as well. Luckily, it’s almost certain that life exists somewhere in the galaxy.
Aboard a generation ship on its way to a distant star, something went horribly wrong (as things tend to in science fiction stories) and the personalities of various crew members that had been transcribed in to the ship’s computers fought a war among themselves. The people of Sinus B only have contact with the personality of Captain Gerlik who is mad, but keeps them alive. Now Pryboy Thorp finds himself making a perilous journey to the Nose Cone, for what reason he isn’t sure.
Pry makes a mad dash past a pairbot under the mad captain’s control. Art by Fedak
MacApp is a pretty good writer, and stories like this make me regret all the time he wasted on those awful Gree stories (some of which actually weren’t bad, and there weren’t anywhere near as many of them as loom in my memory). This is one of his better tales. Its biggest flaw is the description of the ship; I never felt like I understood how things were laid out. However, that doesn’t detract much from the enjoyment of the story.
Spork is a human raised among the alien Ayor, whom he guided to a new way of living in the previous story. The crash of a ship bearing other humans leads to the Ayor exploring their solar system and encountering a grave danger on one of the inner planets.
Spork and one of the Ayor have lost their ship. Art by Reese
The adventures of Spork continue, and it looks like there’s more coming. The comparison to Tarzan is inevitable, but it’s Tarzan written by A.E. van Vogt in one of his more esoteric moods. If that sounds interesting to you, you might enjoy it. Unfortunately, neither of those things appeals to me very much, the combination even less so.
A low three stars.
Destroyer, by Robert Weinberg
The Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride again, and Destruction is their fifth. Or is that an illusion created to keep the mind of a man implanted into a killing machine sane and functioning?
Making his first professional sale, Bob Weinberg is an active fan with a special interest in the pulps. You may have encountered the reader’s guides he created last year for the works of Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. His freshman effort feels more like Zelazny than the pulps, but there’s a bit of Howard woven in there, too. It’s a good start, and I look forward to more from him.
In Part 1, dreamer Tamisan took Lord Starrex and his cousin Kas into a dream based on an alternative version of the history of their world. Unable to break the dream without both companions, she found Starrex, but now Kas is not where they expected to find him. She will have to enter a dream within a dream, in the hope of getting them all home.
Starrex fights to keep Tamisan safe while she tries to break the dream. Art by Adkins
I said last month that I’m not a fan of this kind of story, and this didn’t do anything to change my mind. It’s not Norton; give me some Time Traders or the Solar Queen, and I’ll happily read it. Even so, this is objectively not one of her better works. It’s never made clear whether they’re in a dream or have slipped into a parallel world, and the answer to that question has a big effect on the meaning of the ending. At least, apart from that issue, Norton writes well and entertainingly.
A low three stars.
Authorgraphs: An Interview with Lester del Rey
This month’s interview must have been easy to get, since del Rey is right there in the office. He expounds on his career, science fiction in general, critics, TV and movies. But Lester, you’re too young to be such a curmudgeon.
Three stars.
Portrait by Gaughan
Summing up
IF continues rolling down the middle of the road. Even that’s shaky. The three longest pieces are a low three stars at best. At least we got a good, if not great, MacApp story and a very promising new writer, if he’s not another one-shot wonder as so many of the IF firsts have been.
A new Reynolds novel could go either way, but that title invites comparisons to Heinlein.
Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, is back from a tour of Europe. All of his visits made headlines, particularly when he went to the Vatican and a couple hundred students held signs that said, "Nixon go home!"
Hey now—we don't want him either!
The Dick met with the "Jesus of the Franks", General DeGaulle, for a high profile religious summit. Our President failed to return with the next Ten Commandments nor a commitment to allow Britain into the European Community (much less France's return to NATO).
Nixon is now back in the States. Apparently, Jack Benny managed to buy more than a gallon of gas at Texaco since he made it all the way to Andrews Air Force Base to amuse the President upon his return. Well, maybe the air fare was on the country's dime.
One of the places Nixon did not stop, but sent a staffer in his stead, was the funeral of Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. The Jewish leader's death was rather a surprise, and his interim replacement is something of a dark horse: 70 year old foreign minister Golda Meir. She is the first woman leader of the Jewish state, and one of the few female national leaders this century. It is possible she will step down in favor of her party confederate Yigal Allon when he stands for the next regular election against conservative rival General Moshe Dayan.
Into the wild Blue/Black yonder
As I type this, Apollo 9 is currently in orbit, its crew practicing a series of maneuvers that will be duplicated on this summer's trip to the Moon. It's sort of like a Gemini training mission (two of the astronauts, Scott and McDivitt, are Gemini veterans) but with Apollo hardware. It is fitting, therefore, that the latest issue of Galaxy deals with space in almost all of its stories:
Centuries after a nuclear apocalypse, the Earth's four billions reduced to just one hundred million, humanity lives in a patchwork of low-technology communities. There are the farmers, who make up the vast majority; the villagers who comprise a rude middle class; the Luddites, barbarians who plunder, mostly for fun; the arrogant Neo-Scientists, who enslave many so that a few may reconstruct the wisdom of the past; and the Empires—petty states whose influence extends no further than their capital regions.
And there are the witch-doctors, who use "magic" to heal and educate, and the pilgrims, who seek the truth. "Witch Hunt" is the tale of two such pilgrims, their tour of America's degraded communities, and a survey of their relative merits and lacks. Of course, the story reveals the truth they have been searching for.
There is more than a whiff of Silverberg's Nightwings serial here, and while the prose is not quite so beautiful, it is serviceable.
Hobie was a precocious child whose life was irrevocably influenced by Star Trek, though the TV show is never mentioned by name.
A successful teen and, later, frustrated serviceman, he can't shake the feeling that he is somehow separate from the human race. The story's conclusion bears much in common with that of "Witch Hunt". I wonder if putting thematically-similar stories together was deliberate or coincidental?
Something about this story reminds me a bit of the works in our Rediscovery anthologies, or perhaps a bit of the works in the fanzines. In particular, the focus on Trek and also the fact that the protagonist is a minor for much of the piece set it apart from many of the stories we encounter regularly. I had to check the byline to make sure it wasn't by Evelyn E. Smith, or Rosel George Brown, or Zenna Henderson, for example.
As a whole the story isn't bad, but unfortunately, Tiptree botches the end. Three stars.
How Like a God, Robert Bloch
by Reese
Pride goeth before a fall: Mok is an incorporeal being who refused to surrender his personality to the group; as a consequence, the divine Ser confines him to an alien, physical body and banishes him to a planet of primitives. There, Mok becomes a kind of Prometheus, elevating the aborigines' culture and technology. But is Mok a God…or a serpent in the garden?
Kind of a neat piece. I think it falls on the lower side of the three/four star divide.
Simak loves to write "pastoral science fiction" set in his stomping grounds of Minnesota, and so, "Buckets of Diamonds" reads a bit like The Andy Griffith Show meets The Twilight Zone. Drunk Uncle Charlie gets locked up in the pokey one day when he is found staggering down the street, an Old Master's canvas under one arm, and carrying a bucket of diamonds. Later, he disappears from jail and turns up driving a hovercar alongside a sour-faced alien…who presently encourages all of the citizenry to dispose of their technological gadgets!
All of this is much to the chagrin of Charlie's nephew-in-law, a local attorney who must sort the mess out.
Not much to this tale, which ultimately doesn't go anywhere, or when. Three stars.
Slave to Man, Sylvia Jacobs
Tony is an editor for one of those schlock-houses that produces "the sexies" (prurient pulps). One day, he notices he's getting a lot of torn off covers from returns that say "Help! Help! I am being held in bondage! I am only 15 years old!"
Who he finds when he seeks the poor soul out, and how said soul revolutionizes the sexies industry is both amusing and, perhaps, prescient.
The saga continues of two immortal aliens destined for a final confrontation somewhere in 21st Century America. Last time, we learned that Gralgrathor had self-exiled from his stellar Federation to go native amongst medieval Vikings. His confederate, Lokrien, murdered 'Thor's wife and child to incentivize his return to galactic civilization.
In this installment, Lokrien, now fully healed from vicious scars he carried for decades, is looking for 'Thor, who now goes by the name of Grayle. Grayle, as you recall from last time, escaped from the Caine Island maximum security prison, where he had been languishing for over a century. Both immortals have assistants: Lokrien's is a mercenary cabbie who is efficient with his fists; Grayle has picked up a lovely woman named Anne who insists on helping him despite not knowing the whole story.
Meanwhile, an enormous whirlpool is growing in the middle Atlantic, generating hurricane force winds across the hemisphere. It seems to be powered by the newly online broadcast power plant on the Eastern seaboard. Attempts to shut down the plant are all thwarted by some unknown force. You can bet that the aliens are somehow involved, however…
Still interesting stuff. Four stars.
For Your Information: The Drowned Civilization, Willy Ley
This month's article is a potpourri dedicated to three questions: 1) how easy would it be for a planet to capture a new moon, 2) how would the Earth's land contours change should the ice caps melt, and 3) what kind of creature is the biblical zaphan?
Three stars.
There and back again
Well, that was rather fun! Nothing spectacular, but all in all, a rapid, enjoyable read. Galaxy remains my favorite of the monthlies, and I can't wait to see how the Laumer turns out. I am also happy to see that we're getting at least one woman writer each month again. The magazine was at its best when that was the case back in the '50s, and Sylvia Jacobs turned in one of my favorites of the issue.
Until next time…keep up to date with Nixon on Laugh-In, and science fiction on the Journey!
You may recall that Brazil underwent a military coup back in the spring of 1964. The reasons were the usual ones, and the U.S. response can be characterized, at best, as “turning a blind eye,” because then-president João Goulart (popularly known as Jango) was leaning a little too far to the left. The military junta which has ruled Brazil since prefers to call it a revolution, not a coup, but whatever you call it, the result is the same.
Seeking to give themselves more legitimacy, the military instituted a two-party system in 1966. The National Renewal Alliance (ARENA) officially represents the military dictatorship, while the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) gets to make speeches against and vote no on things that are going to happen anyway. That way, the legislature doesn’t look like the rubber stamp it is.
Or was. Unrest has been growing, particularly among the young. Arbitrary arrests and the torture of politcal prisoners has been ongoing. In March, a teenager who was leading a protest against rising food prices was shot point-blank by military police. This murder sparked further unrest, to the point that officials felt they had no choice but to allow a large protest march, hoping it would let the students blow off steam. The March of the One Hundred Thousand in June saw little violence, as the protestors demanded an end to the military government.
The March of the One Hundred Thousand. The banner reads “Down with dictatorship. People in power.”
Enter Márcio Moreira Alves. He started out as a journalist and opposed the Goulart government. After initially supporting the coup, he soon began to oppose it as well, with his primary cause being an end to the torture of political prisoners. He was elected as a Federal Deputy in 1966 and has continued his fight. In September, he called for a boycott of Brazil’s Independence Day celebrations on September 7th, and urged young women not to dance with military officers (or perhaps not date them, I have seen both mentioned in reports).
That was too much. The Justice Department asked the legislature to lift Alves’s immunity so that he could be tried for treason. On December 12th, a joint session of the Federal Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate resoundingly refused to do so with a vote of 216-141.
Márcio Moreira Alves delivering the speech that got him into trouble.
The very next day, President Arturo da Costa e Silva issued Institutional Act Number 5. This act, which is not subject to judicial review or legislative oversight, allows the president to rule by decree, eliminates habeas corpus for political crimes, establishes censorship, and lets the government suspend any public servant who is found to be subversive or uncooperative, along with a number of other heavy-handed measures. Costa e Silva ordered hundreds of arrests of government critics the very next day.
There is strong opposition even within ARENA, the party founded to support the junta. Whether this is merely a crackdown or the beginning of cracks in the foundation of the dictatorship remains to be seen.
Passing judgment
If last month’s issue was about forgetting, this month’s IF is about the law and judgment. There’s something else that ties almost all the fiction here together, but we’ll get to that at the end.
Time travelers on their way to meet their ancestor. Art by Vaughn Bodé
The “Hoax” Story, by H.L. Gold
Former editor H.L. Gold offers a guest editorial on the two threads in science fiction that have dominated since the days of Verne and Wells. Today we might call them hard science fiction and speculative fiction, though Gold doesn’t use those terms. It’s interesting, but rather muddled. Gold’s definition of what constitutes a hoax seems ridiculously broad and not connected to his theme.
Three stars.
Beside the Walking Mountain, by Burt Filer
After being cashiered out of the GS (never explained, but probably something like Galactic Service), Hatch bought the planet where he ruined the careers of his superior and himself, hoping to right some of the wrongs they committed. Now that superior has returned to finish what he started and get revenge on Hatch. And he has the law on his side.
In desperation, Hatch tries to get his barge over the moving mountain. Art by Brock
Filer has been an inconsistent author, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Here, he demonstrates the full range of his quality in one story. He’s created an interesting, if implausible, planet, with a mountain that follows the terminator during the 14-month day. The conflict is solid, though the antagonist may be a little overdone. But the resolution falls flat on its face. Largely because eminent domain doesn’t work the way the author thinks it does. In fact, the precedent cited in the story invalidates the ending.
A boy is taking home an interesting lizard he’s caught. His walk is interrupted by a group of time-traveling lizardoids descended from his new pet. They want him to let their ancestor go, so she can lay her eggs safely.
A tight little story with a sting in its tail. Harrison packs a lot into a very small space and does so with skill. The boy is also a believable and skeptical modern boy, which is a nice touch. Is that enough to get it to four stars? For me, it falls just short.
A very high three stars.
At Bay with Baycon, by Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch reports on last year’s Worldcon in Oakland. After a rocky start and the requisite namedropping, he settles in to a fair report, though a lot of the humor is forced. Of course, the Journey covered Baycon several months ago, and we had pictures.
Three stars.
How many of these folks can you identify? Art by Gaughan
The Defendant Earth, by Andrew J. Offutt
It turns out that Mars, Venus, and a few other places in the solar system actually are habitable and are joined in an interplanetary union of sorts. Now, they’d like to give Earth the chance to join, but there’s one problem. The Martians are unhappy with the way they have been depicted in science fiction, going all the way back to Wells. It falls to Ohio lawyer Joe Blair to negotiate a solution.
Offutt is another author who’s been very uneven, but he does a good job here. The story is enough fun that I can overlook the lack of explanation for why the job fell to the protagonist and the reliance on a somewhat tired cliché for the resolution. It’s not a deep tale, but it is enjoyable.
Three stars.
If… and When, by Lester del Rey
This month, Lester del Rey has been reading The Biological Time Bomb by Gordon Rattray Taylor, which looks at all the recent advances in the biological sciences, what scientists are working on and advances they expect to see in the not too distant future. Organ transplants, cloning, sex selection of children, tinkering with DNA (both intentionally and unintentionally), artificial life. There’s a lot coming down the road that society, politics, and the law are going to have to deal with. Hopefully, science fiction will have plotted a safe path forward by the time these changes hit us.
John Wilson is in something resembling a fugue state, unsure of anything, even his own name. His consciousness drifts between two worlds. In one, he’s on trial for arson and murder, though he has apparently been framed by an anti-science political party which is using him to further their agenda. In the other, he works as a witch doctor in a fractured United States, secretly using science to help the superstitious peasants. There he has been arrested by the secret police for witchcraft.
This isn’t happening in the world you might expect. Art by Gaughan
This rumination on anti-science and anti-intellectual attitudes is a sequel to a much older story (“Witches Must Burn,” Astounding, August 1956), but having read that isn’t necessary. Most of it is summarized by the prosecution in Wilson’s trial. Either way, it’s not very good. The drift between the worlds is interesting at first, but having the viewpoint character addled and unsure of what’s going on around him wears out its welcome quickly. Gunn still managed to keep my interest most of the way, but then we get several pages of philosophical rambling about science and the duty of scientists, followed by a climax that’s difficult to believe. Even less believable is the suggested connection between the two worlds Wilson inhabits. And all that in about twice the length the story needed.
A high two stars.
Authorgraphs: An Interview with Harry Harrison
In what appears to be a new feature, we have another interview transcribed directly from tape and again without the questions. This month, as you can tell from the title: Harry Harrison. This was a little more interesting than last month’s interview with Roger Zelazny, but then Harrison is a dozen years older and has spent time living in Europe. The highlight for me was him talking about his transition from comic book writer and inker to SF author.
Three stars.
A caricature, but recognizably Harry. Art by Rudy Cristiano
The Fire Egg, by Roger F. Burlingame
This month’s new author is a 38-year-old minister and former Fulbright scholar who wrote his story—which begins with a peasant finding the titular fire egg—as an assignment in the Famous Writer’s School. It’s well-written, as you might expect from the author’s background. Unfortunately, it’s also obvious and superficial. The sting at the end feels more sarcastic and nasty than ironic and deep.
In part 1 of this story, a man and two women found themselves in a pleasant but sealed off region with six portals leading away. The man knows nothing, one woman a little, and the other more than she’s saying. As the first installment ended, Rex and Regina had run into trouble while exploring one of the worlds beyond the gateways. In this part, the explorations continue, and many questions are answered, with some surprising revelations. Finally, the trio must make a momentous decision.
Rex and Venus discover an empty world. Art by Gaughan
Last month, I feared that McIntosh didn’t have enough room to explore all six worlds. The final three are given very short shrift, with each character exploring one alone and merely reporting on what they found. Everything is rushed, the reason behind the sense of ennui and doom afflicting all of humanity made little sense to me, and the solution was far too extreme. A weak finish to a promising start.
A low three stars for this installment, but still three stars for the novel as a whole.
Summing up
In baseball, they tell batters to swing through the ball, not at it. The same goes for golf and probably every other sport that involves hitting one thing with another. It’s the follow-through that makes the difference, and that’s what is missing from all the stories in this issue except for Harrison and Offutt. The rest feel like the author simply rushed to get the story over and offers no sense of what, if anything, might come after. Gunn hints at it, but I don’t see how he gets from the end to what he tells us is coming. (Admittedly, I was bored and rushing to get it over with myself by that point.) The result is another C- issue with no standout stories. IF deserves better.
Courtesy of my friends at Royal Holloway’s student and staff film club, I’ve been able to see two horror films recently released in the UK, which will soon have their stateside debut. One is a little patchy but still provides entertainment for the horror fan; the other is already being rightly hailed as a classic of British horror cinema.
Torture Garden
Torture Garden is an anthology movie, a subgenre I quite like as it allows the chance to show shorter, more compact narratives along a particular theme. This one, also, is written by Robert Bloch, a master of short, wickedly pointed, stories.
Burgess Meredith as Doctor Diabolo. Can you guess who he really is?
Through the framing device of a carnival horror-show hosted by Doctor Diabolo (Burgess Meredith), who offers customers a glimpse of their possible sinister fates, this film brings us four narratives linked by a common theme of people being driven by desire or ambition to commit horrible deeds. In the first, a man (Michael Bryant), desperately in debt, murders his uncle (Maurice Denham) to get his hands on his inheritance, only to find out that his uncle’s source of income is more supernatural and sinister than he believed. In the second, an ambitious film starlet (Beverly Adams) learns that Hollywood is, in fact, run by literal immortals, and is given the chance to join them. In the third, a celebrity pianist (John Standing) becomes the object of a rivalry between his fiancée (Barbara Ewing) and a possessed piano. In the final story, a Poe collector (Jack Palance) finds that a rival enthusiast (Peter Cushing) has managed to capture the ultimate piece of Poe memorabilia—the undead writer himself.
As the above should indicate, the film has an excellent cast, and is produced by Milton Subotsky, whom readers of this journal should remember from the two Doctor Who movies. Amicus, the production company, has form on producing anthology movies, having put out Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors three years ago. The strongest segments are the first and last, with the first story featuring a credibly demonic cat, and the final one providing a wry metaphor for the way in which collectors—and fans—enter into exploitative relationships with writers.
Peter Cushing is of course one of the best things in the movie.
The film unfortunately lacks the cohesion of the best anthology movies. While, as I noted, there’s a linking theme between the episodes, it doesn’t particularly connect to the framing story, and, while it shares the concept with Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors of people being shown how to avoid a disastrous fate, the “twist” at the end is nowhere near as clever as the one in the earlier movie. The Hollywood segment is poorly characterised, full of excuses to show women in their underwear, and has an antisemitic subtext that made me rather uncomfortable (I suspect that Bloch, himself of Jewish ancestry, was trying to satirise the idea of a Jewish cabal running Hollywood, but it doesn’t quite manage to convey the right tone). While I quite like the concept of a sentient piano becoming attached to its owner, it’s difficult to find its attacks on its human rival anything other than ridiculous. Two and a half out of five stars.
The Devil Rides Out
Based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley, produced by current kings of the UK horror scene Hammer Films, and starring Christopher Lee, The Devil Rides Out is a much more polished and focused production.
Lee plays Nicholas, Duc de Richelieu, who, together with his friend Rex van Ryn (Leon Greene) has come to the UK to visit his late friend’s son Simon (Patrick Mower), in whom he takes an avuncular interest, only to learn that Simon has fallen in with a Satanic cult. The story follows de Richelieu and van Ryn’s efforts to rescue Simon and a young female cultist named Tanith (Nike Arrighi) from the clutches of Satanic priest Morcata (Charles Gray). Adapted by Richard Matheson, the plot is a fairly straightforward one of (supernatural) good versus (supernatural) evil, without any of the twists and ironies of many recent horror movies, and, much as I enjoy those, I also found the narrative here refreshing and satisfying.
Christopher Lee is horrified at a Satanic orgy
Simon is played by a newcomer on the scene, Patrick Mower, who is certainly one to watch; although handsome and strong-jawed, he has a sinister quality which makes the idea of him falling in with Satanists believable. It’s good to see Christopher Lee playing a hero for once, escaping his usual typecasting as a monster, even if the chemistry between him and Charles Gray isn’t quite as compelling as that between him and Peter Cushing. There is a very well-done giant spider effect at one point, and fans of vintage cars will be delighted by all the 1920s and 1930s roadsters on display. There are elements of the new folk-horror genre in the scenes of English cultists cavorting in the woods of Hampshire.
Less positively, the film draws some associations between non-White people and Satanism that left me rather uncomfortable: the heroes are all English (and upper-class), but the cult boasts African and Indian members, and, when a demon is summoned at one point, it takes the form of a grinning, pop-eyed and semi-clad Black man. The spider aside, some of the effects are rather unconvincing, and the cult has so many members that one wonders how it manages to keep itself secret. There’s a slight hint of the exploitation genre that seems unfortunately popular now, and the fact that the youth in question aren’t inherently evil but are being led astray by an older person (and need to be rescued by another older person) doesn’t do much to mitigate that.
Charles Gray as cult leader Mocata
Nonetheless, this is Hammer on good form, providing a strong narrative with a satisfying conclusion and a lot of credible shocks and tension. The combination of good source material with a competent screenplay and plenty of talent behind and in front of the camera is a sure winner. Four out of five stars.
It's been more than a quarter of a century since the Communist Party of the United States ran candidates for President and Vice-President. That was back in 1940, when Earl Browder and James W. Ford were nominated.
They didn't win.
This month, the Party chose Charlene Mitchell and Mike Zagarell for the honor.
Zagarell is technically too young to serve as Vice-President, but I don't think he'll have to face that problem.
Overdue Notice
One month isn't anywhere near as long as twenty-eight years, but the failure of a July issue of Fantastic to hit the shelves of drugstores and newsstands (in June, of course, given the proclivities of the publishing industry) may have caused as much anxiety among readers of imaginative fiction as the lack of a Commie candidate caused in Red voters.
Not to worry. My esteemed colleague John Boston has explained the situation in typically erudite fashion in his latest review of Amazing. I'll wait here while you go take a look.
Ready? Good. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's take a look at the August, not July, issue of Fantastic to see if our patience has been rewarded.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
Our first hint that the delay hasn't changed things very much, if at all, is the fact that the cover is once again a reprint from an issue of the popular German space opera serial Perry Rhodan.
We begin in promising fashion with our old pals Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, in another witty and imaginative adventure from the living master of sword-and-sorcery.
Illustration by Jeff Jones.
The two lovable rogues have gotten their hands on some incredibly valuable magic jewels. Each one of them tries to cash in on the stolen goods, making use of different fences.
The Mouser goes to a blind fellow, who has a nubile female assistant. Fafhrd seeks out a woman of mature years, who insists on an intimate encounter before the deal is completed. Suffice to say that things don't work out as they expect.
As you'd expect, this is a beautifully written and highly enjoyable tale. It's a bit lighter in tone that some other stories in the series; an anecdote rather than an epic, perhaps.
As a bonus, the likable character Alyx, created by Joanna Russ, makes a guest appearance. Obviously Leiber approves of the way Russ is influenced by his work, and he has acknowledged this in a gracious manner.
A new writer makes his third appearance in print with this science fiction story. Narrated by a spaceman to an unknown listener over drinks, it tells how an inexperienced crew member got in trouble. It seems he clumsily injured an alien. Put on trial, he is found guilty and punished in a way the aliens can't convey to the humans. He seems perfectly fine, until strange things start happening.
What the aliens did to the fellow is the whole point of the narrative. It's pretty much a puzzle story. For that kind of thing, it's reasonably interesting. It could have appeared in Analog, except for the fact that the aliens aren't shown to be inferior to humans. It's not bad, but not outstanding in any way.
My advice to Mister Tiptree is to keep writing; the man shows promise.
Three stars.
Horror Out of Carthage, by Edmond Hamilton
Here come the reprints. This old-fashioned yarn comes from the September 1939 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Cover art by Harold W. McCauley.
Our cast of characters includes the manly hero, an older archeologist, and the latter's beautiful daughter. They're on a dig to locate the Temple of Moloch at the site of Carthage.
Illustrations by Jay Jackson.
Right away we're told that the daughter feels as if someone is trying to force her out of her body. It's no surprise, then, when the mind of a woman of the ancient vanished city takes possession of her physical form. Pretty soon our hero's mind goes far back in time to inhabit the body of a Carthaginian man.
The big problem is that Carthage is about to be wiped off the map by invading Romans. (The two folks from the doomed city came forward in time to escape that fate.) Can the hero find a way to save his beloved from being sacrificed to Moloch, and return to his own time with her? Come on, you know the answer to that already.
War, with elephants.
This is a typical old-time pulp adventure story, with characters who are walking archetypes. It's got some vivid scenes, so it's not boring. Carthage is constantly described as a wicked, barbaric place. That sounds more like Roman propaganda than accurate ancient history, but I'm no expert.
The July 1948 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this unusual work.
Cover art by Arnold Kohn.
A mysterious entity sends a musical note from an ethereal realm to the material world. In mundane reality, a man strikes up a conversation with an airline stewardess. They are obviously attracted to each other, but eventually go their separate ways.
Illustration by William A. Gray.
This is a very strange story, and I have described it badly. The author creates a highly detailed mythological background, much of it difficult to comprehend. I'm not really sure what he's getting at. Did the musical note cause the pair to fall in love?
I found this peculiar tale rather haunting, if confusing. It's definitely not the same old thing, anyway.
Three stars.
When Better Budgies Are Built, by Bryce Walton
The November 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures is the source of this futuristic farce.
Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.
The narrator is a vacuum cleaner salesman. He gets pulled into the future by a guy using a forbidden time machine. It seems that two rival merchandisers, the only ones left in this new version of the USA, are about to start selling gizmos that will supply everything that anyone could want, for a price. The problem is that one of the corporations has an army of robots who are able to sell anything to anybody.
Illustration by William Slade.
What makes this even more alarming is the fact that the head of the company is a would-be dictator planning to use the robots to sell people on the idea that he should be their leader. In exchange for a piece of future technology that will make him rich when he goes back to his own time, the narrator figures out a way to defeat the irresistible robot salesman.
Pretty silly stuff, really. The plot depends on the robots being absolutely perfect at selling merchandise and ideas, without any clue as to how they do this. We don't get to find out what the narrator earns for his service, either.
The ending makes use of a stereotype about women that is more goofy than offensive.
This two-fisted, he-man yarn comes from the October 1948 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by James B. Settles.
A Cro-Magnon runs away from his tribe after a fight with the bullying leader. He witnesses a sphere arrive and discharge two men and a woman. After saving the trio from a wolf, he jumps into the vessel to escape a sabretooth tiger. The four go off to another planet.
Illustration by J. Allen St. John.
The folks on this world are under attack by green monsters. The Cro-Magnon defeats the creatures easily, while the effete males around him cower in fear. Naturally, the woman is instantly attracted to his manliness.
The author is obviously trying to promote the idea that men should be fearless warriors. The Cro-Magnon's contempt for the decadent males surrounding him is evident, and the author appears to share it.
Even if I ignore all that, as an adventure story it failed to hold my interest. There are parts of it where there seems to be something missing; one scene jumps to another without any kind of transition.
Here's a tale of paranoia from the March 1955 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Ed Valigursky.
A guy gets fed up with everything being fake. He goes on and on about this, until his exasperated wife calls in a buddy to talk some sense into him.
Illustration by Virgil Finlay.
The two fellows argue about stuff being phony for a while. The guy reveals what he thinks is behind all these ersatz things. There's a twist ending you'll see coming a mile away.
Definitely a one idea story. It's like one of Philip K. Dick's what-is-reality tales, with all the subtlety and complexity surgically removed. Or maybe it's more like a clumsy version of Robert A. Heinlein's famous solipsistic nightmare They.
This screwball comedy comes from the September 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.
A nutty scientist uses a gizmo to remove an actor's head, as far as anybody can tell. Apparently he can still talk and breathe and such. He tells the actor to get a job without his handsome face within a month, or stay that way forever.
Illustration by Robert Gibson Jones also.
The actor's head is stored, in some way or other, like a photographic negative. Only pure alcohol can make it go back to normal. Let's just say that beer and a cat are involved in the ridiculous climax.
This thing is even more of a lunatic romp than I have indicated. The nutty scientist does all kinds of impossible things, from teleportation to literally flying.
Of possible interest to fans of pure wackiness.
Two stars.
The Wrong People, by Ralph Robin.
Yet another comedy, from the November/December 1953 issue of the magazine.
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
A married couple who pretty much dislike everything, including each other, inadvertently conjure up a being from somewhere else in space and time. The creature is friendly enough, it seems, even if it scares the daylights out of the humans at first.
Illustration by Ed Emshwiller.
After they calm down, they think it's some kind of genie or something, ready to offer them whatever they want. This misunderstanding doesn't end well, leading to a shockingly gruesome conclusion.
There seems to be a touch of satire here, although you have to dig deep to find it. The sudden change in mood at the end really threw me for a loop.
Two stars.
Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Princess of Mars, by Charles R. Tanner
The author retells the story of ERB's famous novel in the form of a humorous poem.
Illustration by Jim.
I found it too sophomoric for my taste in literary spoofing. I may be prejudiced, as I am not a fan of Burroughs.
One star.
Worth Waiting For?
This issue started off well, but quickly sank into mediocrity and lousiness. Amazing and Fantastic seem to have reached the bottom of the barrel when it comes to reprints. Too much thud-and-blunder adventure, too much stupid comedy. It's enough to make you sick.
Cartoon by Frosty, from the same issue as Ralph Robin's story.
![[December 2, 1969] Communication Breakdown (January 1970 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/IF-1970-01-Cover-478x372.jpg)
Vice President Spiro Agnew addressing the Midwest Regional Republican Committee.
White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler
Suggested by “This One”. Art by Gaughan.
A photorealistic portrait of Harlan Ellison. Art by Gaughan
Some Gaughan-esque abstractions. Art by Gaughan
By the falls, like it says on the tin. Art by Gaughan
More abstracts. Art by Gaughan
Aunt Sam? Art by Gaughan
I keep trying to see more than one face here, but it doesn’t work. Art probably by Gaughan
A wild human dwelling with a city of the Spheres in the background. Art probably by Gaughan
In lieu of a preview, have a fanigator. Art by Gaughan
![[November 18, 1969] Weird Rising (<em>Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos</em>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/691118cover-672x372.jpg)
![[September 22, 1969] Unsmoothed curves (October 1969 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/690922fsfcover-658x372.jpg)
![[July 10, 1969] Sex! Now That I Have Your Attention . . . (August 1969 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/COVERSMALL-672x372.jpg)
![[June 2, 1969] The ever-whirling wheel (July 1969 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/IF-1969-07-Cover-495x372.jpg)
Art credited only as couresy of Three Lions, Inc. but actually by German artist Johnny Bruck.
Here’s the original art by Johnny Bruck.
Bat has been kidnapped to deliver a message: Gringos go home. Art by Gaughan
Spork and an Ayor. Art by Reese
Portrait by Gaughan
Gon has an encounter with a descendant of Earth dogs gone wild. Art by Barr
The beast reflects Andy’s trauma back at him. Art by Adkins
A sign of the changes to come. At least the Chapdelaine doesn’t look like more Spork.![[April 6, 1969] The Weight of History (May 1969 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/IF-1969-04-Cover-500x372.jpg)
A map showing the location of Chenpao/Damansky Island
Chinese soldiers pose with their captured Russian tank
The cover illustrates Groovyland and is credited as courtesy of Three Lions, Inc., but see below
Here’s the original art by Johnny Bruck.
The entrance to one of Groovyland’s main attractions. Art by Gaughan
Pry makes a mad dash past a pairbot under the mad captain’s control. Art by Fedak
Spork and one of the Ayor have lost their ship. Art by Reese
Starrex fights to keep Tamisan safe while she tries to break the dream. Art by Adkins
Portrait by Gaughan
A new Reynolds novel could go either way, but that title invites comparisons to Heinlein.![[March 8, 1969] Around the Universe (April 1969 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/690308cover-519x372.jpg)
![[January 4, 1969] Not following through (February 1969 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/IF-1969-02-Cover-570x372.jpg)
The March of the One Hundred Thousand. The banner reads “Down with dictatorship. People in power.”
Márcio Moreira Alves delivering the speech that got him into trouble.
Time travelers on their way to meet their ancestor. Art by Vaughn Bodé
In desperation, Hatch tries to get his barge over the moving mountain. Art by Brock
How many of these folks can you identify? Art by Gaughan
This isn’t happening in the world you might expect. Art by Gaughan
A caricature, but recognizably Harry. Art by Rudy Cristiano
Rex and Venus discover an empty world. Art by Gaughan
Another Hugo winners issue. Dare we hope?![[August 14, 1968] The World, the Flesh and Charles Gray (the horror movies <i>Torture Garden</i> and <i>The Devil Rides Out</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/680814posters-1-672x372.jpg)
![[July 14, 1968] Long Time No See (August 1968 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/COVER-2-672x372.jpg)
