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[June 10, 1966] Summer Reruns (July 1966 Fantastic)


by Victoria Silverwolf

Old Series Never Die, They Just Fade Away

Summertime is right around the corner, here in the Northern Hemisphere, and all patriotic Americans know what that means; reruns on television. Not only does this save the production companies money, it allows defunct programs to continue to appear on TV screens long after they're gone, like ghosts haunting a house. (Of course, they're easier to exorcise than traditional specters; just pull the plug.)

Two popular, critically acclaimed, and long-running series recently cast off this mortal coil, ready to enter the monochromatic afterlife of reruns.

Late last month, the courtroom drama Perry Mason slammed down the gavel for the last time with The Case of the Final Fade-Out. The story involved a television studio, so a large number of crew members made cameo appearances, pretty much as themselves. There was also a very special guest star.


That's executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson on the left and Hollywood columnist Norma Lee Browning on the right. The fellow in the middle? That's bestselling author Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, dressed up for his role as a judge in the final episode.

At the start of this month, The Dick Van Dyke Show came to a conclusion with the appropriately titled episode The Last Chapter. Van Dyke's character, television writer Rob Petrie, finishes the book he's been working on for five years, and looks back on his life.


Because The Last Chapter was really just an excuse to reuse sequences from previous episodes, I'm offering you this scene from the penultimate episode, The Gunslinger. Surrounding Van Dyke in this Western parody are cast regulars Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Deacon.

I'm sure that both of these hit series will be reincarnated in American living rooms for quite a while.

Not all summer television programming consists of reruns, to be sure. There are so-called summer replacement series as well. In a week or so, we'll enjoy (or avoid) the first episode of The Dean Martin Summer Show (not to be confused with The Dean Martin Show, which has been going on since last year. Are you still with me?) It will be hosted by the comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin.


Rowan on the left and Martin on the right, in a scene from their 1958 Western spoof Once Upon a Horse. I wonder if they'll have any success as TV hosts.

A Home Run The First Time At Bat

Although it's not unknown for popular songs of yesteryear to return to the charts — auditory reruns, if you will — listeners are usually searching for something original. Newcomer Percy Sledge offers an notable example with his smash hit When a Man Loves a Woman. This passionate, soulful ballad, currently Number One in the USA, is not only the first song recorded by Sledge, it is the first song recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a city famous for its music studios, to reach that position.


Your fans mean it, Mister Sledge.

I've Seen This All Before

The reason I've been talking about reruns, before I get to the contents of the latest issue of Fantastic, isn't just the fact that they've been filling up the magazine with reprints for some time now. As we'll see, many of the old stories in this issue have reappeared several times before. Reruns of reruns, so to speak. Whether fans of imaginative literature will be willing to spend four bits for fiction they may have already read in collections or anthologies remains to be seen.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

Predictably, the front cover is also a rerun.


The back cover of the June 1943 issue of Amazing Stories. It looks better in the original version.

Before I get to the reruns, however, let's start with something new.

Just Like a Man, by Chad Oliver


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Three men are in an aircraft, flying over the surface of an Earth-like planet. A sudden storm forces them to abandon the vehicle, stranding the trio in an area resembling an African savannah. Because the place is full of leonine predators, they hightail it to the relative safety of a nearby rainforest.


Climbing one of the planet's gigantic trees in order to get away from the hungry cats.

They wind up far above the ground, among an unsuspected community of highly intelligent primates. These mysterious creatures help them survive, and even offer the possibility of reaching their home base, located five hundred miles away across uncharted wilderness.


Among the primates, who are not as hostile as shown here.

This is a decent tale of adventure, and the enigmatic primates are interesting. The planet is so similar to Earth — the feline predators are pretty much just lions — that you might forget you're reading a science fiction story. Overall, it's worth reading, if not outstanding in any way.

Three stars.

The Trouble With Ants, by Clifford D. Simak


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

From the January 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures comes this final story in the author's famous City series. (By the way, the title of this work was changed to The Simple Way when it appeared in book form.)


Illustration by Rod Ruth. From this point on, all the illustrations are reruns from the original appearances of the stories.

In the far future, people are gone from Earth, with the exception of one fellow in suspended animation. Long ago, humans increased the intelligence of dogs, gave them the power of speech, and built robots to serve their needs. The canines, in turn, taught other animals to speak.

Complicating matters is the fact that a man caused ants to develop technology of their own, including robots the size of fleas. Now the ants are constructing a building, for an unknown purpose, which threatens to take over the planet.

An ancient robot returns from humanity's new home in a mysterious fashion. It seeks out the man in suspended animation as part of its quest to understand the ants.

Brought together as a fix-up novel in 1952, the City series won the International Fantasy Award the next year. It is usually considered a classic of science fiction, and has been reprinted many times.


One of the many editions of this work. Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

Highly imaginative, and with a sweeping vision of the immensity of time, Simak's tales also have a gentleness and intimacy that touches the reader's heart. The mood is one of quiet melancholy, and the acceptance of the fact that all things will pass away.

Although SF fans are likely to have read this story before, its quality makes it a welcome repeat. (One can rarely say the same thing about television reruns, or else viewers would stay glued to their screens.)

Five stars.

Where Is Roger Davis?, by David V. Reed


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

Let's take a break from stuff that has already been reprinted multiple times, and take a look at the first reappearance of this yarn, taken from the yellowing pages of the May 1939 issue of Amazing Stories. (The author is unknown to me, but I have discovered that he also writes for comics, particularly Batman. Apparently a couple of episodes of the new television series are based on his scripts for the comic book.)


Illustrations by Julian S. Krupa.

Two young men working for a New York City tour bus encounter an invisible, telepathic Martian. One of them is seduced by the alien's plot to take over the world, and soon becomes a megalomaniac.


The fact that the Martian makes robbing a bank as easy as pie is another factor in his decision.

The other fellow has to figure out a way to keep the Martians from conquering Earth.

The mood of the story changes drastically from light comedy at the start to grim tragedy by the conclusion. Given the year it was written, I wonder if the dictatorial intentions of the first man were influenced by the rise of Fascism.

The author claims that this story is a true account, sent to him by the second man. There are also bits of imaginary news articles scattered throughout, in an attempt at verisimilitude. These don't work very well, particularly the long one at the end. The only thing I found mildly intriguing, if implausible, was the way the hero manages to plot against beings who can read his mind.

Two stars.

Almost Human, by Tarleton Fiske


Cover art by Harold W. McCauley.

The introductory blurb makes it clear that the author of this story, reprinted from the June 1943 issue of Fantastic Adventures, is really Robert Bloch, using a rather absurd pseudonym. (As is common practice, this was done because he had another story in the same issue under his own name.)


Illustration by Rod Ruth.

A hoodlum makes his way into the secret laboratory of a brilliant scientist. His moll has been working for the guy, so the crook knows the genius has created a robot. The machine is being educated like a child. The gangster teaches it to be an invincible criminal, and to kill without mercy. As you'd expect, things don't work out very well.

This piece reads like hardboiled fiction from a crime pulp. The final scene is particularly gruesome, in typical Bloch style. The author shows a certain knack for the Hammett/Chandler mode, but that's about all I can say for it. Not that great a story, but somebody thought it was worth reviving for an anthology.


Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

Two stars.

Satisfaction Guaranteed, by Isaac Asimov


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

Speaking of robots, here's one of several stories about the robopsychologist Susan Calvin by the Good Doctor, from the April 1951 issue of Amazing Stories.


Illustration by Enoch Sharp.

Calvin only plays a minor part in this story, which focuses on a rather mousy, insecure housewife. Her husband works for the same robotics firm as Calvin, so he brings home a test model of a new machine. It looks like a handsome young man, and is designed to be helpful around the house in many different ways. The husband goes off on a business trip, leaving his wife alone with the robot.

The housewife is frightened of it at first, but soon learns to accept it. It even helps her with home decorating, clothing, and makeup, so she learns self-confidence. A final, unexpected gesture on the part of the machine, seemingly out of character for a robot, wins her the envy of her snobbish acquaintances. Susan Calvin explains why the machine's action was a perfectly logical way of obeying the famous First Law of Robotics.


Anonymous cover art for a British edition.

The author must be fond of this tale, because he has already included it in two different collections of his work. The one shown above, as the title indicates, includes stories that take place on Earth rather than in space, despite the misleading illustration and blurb. The story also appears in an omnibus that brings together his two robot novels as well as several shorter works.


Cover art by Thomas Chibbaro.

Besides that, it is also included in the same Roger Elwood anthology as Bloch's story. My sources in the television industry tell me that it is being adapted for the British series Out of the Unknown, and should appear late this year. (Will there be American reruns? One can only hope.)

Is it worth all this attention? Well, it's not a bad yarn, if not the greatest robot story Asimov ever wrote. The housewife is something of a stereotype of an overly emotional female, dependent on a man for her happiness. (This is in sharp contrast to the highly intelligent and independent Doctor Susan Calvin.) At some point you may think that the author is violating his own rules about robot behavior, but it's all explained at the end.

Three stars.

A Portfolio – Virgil Finlay

I'm not sure if I should even discuss this tiny collection of illustrations by the great artist, but at least I can share them with you.


For The New Adam (1939) by Stanley G. Weinbaum. The magazine calls it The New Atom, which is an egregious error.


For Mirrors of the Queen (1948) by Richard S. Shaver.


For The Silver Medusa (1948) by Alexander Blade (pseudonym for H. Hickey.)

What can I say? His work is stunning.

Five stars.

Satan Sends Flowers, by Henry Kuttner


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.

The January/February 1953 issue of Fantastic is the source of this variation on an old theme.


Illustrations by Tom Beecham.

A man sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for immortality. (The premise is similar to that of the Twilight Zone episode Escape Clause, but the twist ending is different.) He ensures that he will remain young, healthy, and all that, so Satan can't play any tricks on him. Obviously, he figures he'll never have to pay up.

The Devil demands surety in the form of certain subconscious memories the fellow possesses. After assuring him that he won't even know he's lost anything, the man agrees. Unafraid of either earthly punishment or damnation, he lives a life of total depravity.


His first crime is the murder of his mother.

Eventually, he persuades the Devil to give him back what he lost, even though Satan warns him that he won't like it. This turns out to be a bad idea.

Like most other stories in this issue, this one has already appeared in a book. (It acquired the new title By These Presents.)


Back and front cover art by Richard Powers.

I should mention that the husband-and-wife team of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore almost always collaborated, even if the resulting story appeared under only one name. Whoever might have been responsible for whatever parts of this work, it's a reasonably engaging tale. I'm not sure I really accept the explanation for what the man's unconscious memories represent, but I was willing to go along with it.

Three stars.

The Way Home, by Theodore Sturgeon


Cover art by Barye Phillips.

This quiet story comes from the April/May 1953 issue of Amazing Stories.


Illustrations by David Stone.

A boy runs away from home. Along the way he meets a wealthy man and his glamourous female companion, in their fancy car; a man with an injured hand who has been all over the world; and a pilot in a beautiful airplane. Without giving too much away, it's clear from the start that these men represent possible future versions of himself.


Is this the road to the future, or to home?

Like Asimov's story, this piece has already appeared in two of the author's collections, but with a slight change in the title.


Cover art by Mel Hunter.

(I'm not sure if I should really count these as two different collections, because all the stories in Thunder and Roses already appeared, along with others, in A Way Home. Such are the vagaries of the publishing industry.)


Cover art by Peter Curl.

In any case, this is a beautifully written little story, subtle and evocative. To say much more would be to ruin the delicate mood it creates.

Five stars.

Worth Tuning In Again?


Cartoon by somebody called Frosty, from the same magazine as Satan Sends Flowers.

I wouldn't call this issue bad at all, although there were a couple of disappointing stories.  It's no big surprise that the Simak and the Sturgeon were excellent, and Finlay's art is always a delight.  It's enough to make you want to tear yourself away from all those reruns on television and turn to some literary reruns instead.


In the world of cuisine, reruns are known as leftovers.



Tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest and best hits!  Even the reruns are great!




[March 6, 1966] Is More Less? (April 1966 Amazing)


by John Boston

Two Weeks in Philadelphia

“GIANT 40TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE”
“BIG 196 PAGES”

These are the blurbs on the cover of the April Amazing.  Yeah, and W.C. Fields said, “Second prize is two weeks in Philadelphia.” After February’s dreary procession of the better forgotten from Amazing’s back files, the promise of an all-reprint issue with 32 more pages is dubious at best.  The architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe likes to say, “Less is more.” We are about to test the converse hypothesis.


by Frank R. Paul, Robert Fuqua, and Hans Wessolowski

But first, the setting for this diamond.  You see the drab cover, with the collage of tiny reproductions of early Amazing covers crowded to the edge by a bulldozer of type.  Inside, besides the fiction, there is Hugo Gernsback’s editorial from the first issue of Amazing, no more interesting than you would expect, and a two-page letter column, which unlike prior columns includes a letter critical of the reprint policy.  More interesting and commendable is A Science-Fiction Portfolio: Frank R. Paul Illustrating H.G. Wells, seven pages of illustrations from early issues of Amazing featuring Wells reprints. 

But onward, to the fiction.  To begin, or to warn, I should note that much of this issue is dedicated to Big Thinks: the fate of humanity, the proper roles of the sexes in human society, and . . . class struggle!

Beast of the Island, by Alexander M. Phillips

Things begin reasonably well, and not too grandiosely, with Alexander M. Phillips’s Beast of the Island, from the September 1939 Amazing.  A couple of guys are plane-wrecked on an uninhabited Pacific island and discover there seems to be some large animal snuffling around—an animal that can talk, or try to.  On exploration, they find a cave, complete with ancient skeleton and trunk, which contains a journal detailing the failed struggle of some 17th century sailors to survive the attacks of this terrible beast, foreshadowing their own struggle.  This is a quite competent adventure story and the ultimate revelation of the nature of the beast (not to coin a phrase) is reasonably clever for its time.  Three stars.


by Robert Fuqua

The mostly-forgotten Phillips first appeared in Amazing in 1929 and published about a dozen stories in the SF/F magazines, the last in 1947.  Best known of these is probably his fantasy novel The Mislaid Charm, published first in Unknown, then in hardcover by Prime Press, one of the early SF specialty publishers.  He is also that unusual figure, a pro turned fan, having become a mainstay of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, which did not exist when he started writing. 

Intelligence Undying, by Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton’s Intelligence Undying, from the April 1936 issue, is in equal measure splendid and ridiculous.  The brilliant but elderly Doctor John Hanley, frustrated because life is too short to complete all the work he has imagined, has a solution: he orders up a newborn infant (prudently, a “white male child”) from the legions of abandoned children, and decants the contents of his brain into the child’s.  (Never mind that old country saying about trying to put ten pounds of . . . whatever . . . into a five-pound bag.) This kills the old Hanley, but he has named a young graduate student friend to be the child’s guardian.

That is an interesting set-up, but Hamilton immediately abandons it.  We flash forward to John Hanley the 21st, interrupted in his laboratory in the year 3144 because the rocket ships of the Northern and Southern Federations are fighting.  (“The fools, the blind fools!  After I’ve worked a thousand years and more to give them greater and greater powers, and they use them—.”) Soon enough the victorious Northerners show up to “protect” him, so he immobilizes them and the rest of the world by activating a device that disturbs their semi-circular canals so no one can stand up.  Hanley announces to the world that nations are abolished and he will be ruling them now.  Wounded, he orders the Northerners to go immediately and pick him up another male child.


by Leo Morey

Flash forward again to John Hanley 416, or the Great Jonanli, as he is worshiped worldwide.  The world’s population is idle, supported by the great automated factories Jonanli has established.  But now, he announces to the world, he has discovered that the Sun is about to collapse, rendering Earth uninhabitable.  There is nothing for it but to move to Mercury!  “There was stunned silence and then from the view-screens came back to him a tremendous, wailing outcry of terror. ‘Save us, Jonanli!  Save us from this death that comes upon us!’ ” He tells them that they’ve got to do some work to save themselves but just gets more wailing in return.

So the Great Jonanli reprograms (as our great scientists would put it today) all the auto-factories to crank out robots to build the spaceships, give Mercury some rotation (it was not known in 1936 that it does rotate), terraform it (as we put it today), build cities, and start plants growing.  “The humans of Earth helped in none of this but lay supine in terror, crying out constantly to Jonanli and staring in terror at the sun.”

As the sun visibly falters, Earth’s population is ushered onto the spaceships, ferried to Mercury, and dumped there by the robots, who then destroy themselves.  John Hanley stays on Earth awaiting the end and dies buried in snow, having learned his lesson, leaving humanity to figure out once more how to take care of itself.

Technological progress leading to stagnation and rebirth (or the lack of it) is of course one of the great themes of SF, both its regular practitioners and drop-ins like that E.M. Forster guy.  Here Hamilton renders it with studied crudeness, a comic book without the pictures, terror and majesty pitched to the guy reading the racing form on the subway, forget the Clapham omnibus.  Three stars for this absurd tour de force.

Woman’s Place

Two of the stories courageously address the question that haunts . . . somebody’s . . . mind: what is to be done about women—and before it’s too late!  Two tales of women-dominated societies probe this urgent question.

The Last Man, by Wallace West

Brightness falls from the air in Wallace West’s The Last Man (from the February 1929 issue); all ridiculous, no splendor, Sexists in the saddle, bad taste in mouth.  In the far future, men have been abolished.  “The enormous release of feminine energy in the twentieth to thirtieth centuries, due to the increased life span and the fact that the world had been populated to such an extent that women no longer were required to spend most of their time bearing children, had resulted in more and more usurpation by women of what had been considered purely masculine endeavors and the proper occupations of the male sex.


by Frank R. Paul

“Gradually, and without organized resistance from the ‘stronger’ sex, women, with their unused, super-abundant energy, had taken over the work of the world.  Gradually, complacent, lazy and decadent man had confined his activities to war and sports, thinking these the only worth-while things in life.

“Then, almost over night, it seemed, although in reality it had taken long ages, war became an impossibility, due to the unity of the nations of the earth, and sports were entered into and conquered by the ever-invading females.”

Artificial reproduction was developed and “the men were dispensed with altogether,” except for a few museum specimens.  Later: “In the ages which followed, great physiological changes took place.  Women, no longer having need of sex, dropped it, like a worn-out cloak, and became sexless, tall, angular, narrow-hipped, flat-breasted and un-beautiful.”

So here we are with M-1, the Last Man, physically a throwback (i.e., pretty hunky), who lives in a (rarely visited) museum with a caretaker, and is obliged to put himself on display in a glass cage one day a week for the benefit of women who want to gawk at this freak.  These women are “narrow-flanked flat-breasted workers, who stood outside the cage and gazed at him with dull curiosity on their soulless faces.”

But there’s an exception—an atavistic woman, conveniently telepathic, who shows up one night outside the glass cage, having slipped away from her keepers: “Hair red as slumberous fire—eyes blue as the heavens—a face fair as the dream face which sometimes tortured him.” Later: “her face assumed a faint pink tinge which puzzled him, yet set his pulses throbbing.” She calls herself Eve, and of course decides to call him Adam.  M-1 is horrified and fascinated, and slowly comes around to her rebellious point of view as she shows him around and takes him covertly to the birth factory, which has replaced cruder forms of reproduction.  Eve broaches the idea that they might escape and restart humanity the natural way. They are discovered, flee, and Eve hides in the museum and shares his rations.

In the museum, they find a large quantity of TNT, and hatch their plot to destroy the birth factory.  Afterwards, as they escape in a flying car, heading for the mountains, “the first rays of the rising sun splashed into the cockpit a shower of pale gold,” and never mind that they have just destroyed the prospects of a society of millions of people, like it or not.

So: women, if they don’t have to spend all their time minding children, will take over the world of work, and then somehow push men out of the world of sport (“sports were entered into and conquered by the ever-invading females”), and kill almost all of the men, and then (despite the earlier talk of “feminine energy”) create a stagnant, joyless, and regimented world in which progress has ceased and all but a few must spend twelve hours a day in tedious labor.  Whoa!  Guess we better keep them barefoot and pregnant!  Sounds like the author’s unconscious taking out its garbage.  One star, and a coupon good at any psychiatrist’s office. 

Pilgrimage, by Nelson Bond

Nelson Bond’s Pilgrimage offers a more genial take on the evils of matriarchy—that is, with less unalloyed misery on display than in The Last Man.  This story is said to be revised from its first appearance as The Priestess Who Rebelled in the October 1939 Amazing


by Stanley Kay

Civilization has fallen, and in the Jinnia Clan (not far from Delwur and Clina), the Clan Mother is in charge—of the warriors, with (like Wallace West’s future women) “tiny, thwarted breasts, flat and hard beneath leather harness-plates”; the mothers, the “full-lipped, flabby-breasted bearers of children . . . whose eyes were humid, washed barren of all expression by desires too often aroused, too often sated.” Then there are the workers: “Their bodies retained a vestige of womankind’s inherent grace and nobility. But if their waists were thin, their hands were blunt-fingered and thick.  Their shoulders sagged with the weariness of toil, coarsened by adze and hod.”

And there are the Men, with their “pale and pitifully hairless bodies,” not to mention their “soft, futile hands and weak mouths”; apparently they are in short supply and excluded from all useful activity except breeding.  There are also Wild Ones, rogue unattached males who want nothing more than to get their hands on Clan women and have their way with them.  They are sometimes recruited to join Clans, but their supply is dwindling too.

Our heroine, young Meg, has just hit puberty, and doesn’t much like the prospects she sees around her.  Nothing will do but to be a Clan Mother herself.  And with no hesitation, the wise and learned Clan Mother takes her on.  Meg learns “writing” and “numbers” and is introduced to “books.” But before she’s ready to roll as a Clan Mother, she’s got to go on her Pilgrimage to the Place of the Gods, far west and to the north.  She’s made it past the “crumbling village” of Slooie and into Braska when she is attacked by a Wild One, but saved by someone unexpected—Daiv of the Kirki tribe, “muscular, hard, firm,” who quickly tells her twice that she talks too much, and suggests that she mother a clan with him.

Daiv is quickly dismissed, and Meg sets out again, on foot, because her horse ran away during the affair of the Wild One.  But Daiv shows up again and introduces her to “cawfi,” and also to kissing.  “Suddenly her veins were aflow with liquid fire.”

At last, after the long journey northwest from Jinnia, she arrives at the Place of the Gods, and there they are: “stern Jarg and mighty Taamuz, with ringletted curls framing their stern, judicious faces; sad Ibrim, lean of cheek and hollow of eye; far-seeing Tedhi, whose eyes were concealed behind the giant telescopes.” The Gods are Men!  Real men, like Daiv!  What to do?  Return to the sterile and diminishing life of the Clan?  No!  She heads “back . . . back to the fecund world on feet that were suddenly stumbling and eager.  Back from the shadow of Mount Rushmore to a gateway where waited the Man who had taught her the touching-of-mouths.”

This of course makes very little sense, to send the Clan Mother-in training off on a pilgrimage that will undermine the entire basis of the society she is supposed to preside over, but that lapse of logic would seem to be beside the author’s urgent point.  Two stars; it’s less unpleasant than The Last Man

White Collars, by David H. Keller

White Collars, by David H. Keller, M.D., from the Summer 1929 Amazing Stories Quarterly, is a social satire, of sorts.  Keller was known for absurd extrapolation.  His most famous story may be Revolt of the Pedestrians, in which humanity has evolved, Morlocks-vs.-Eloi style, into automobilists (of cars and powered wheelchairs), whose legs have atrophied, and back-to-nature pedestrians, and of course they struggle for supremacy. 


by Hynd

Here, the trend towards more education for everybody has resulted in a huge oversupply of the college and professional school graduates, who are all too ready to remove your tonsils or teach you Greek, if only more people needed those services.  These White Collars, who are on the march with picket signs as the story opens, demand employment fitting their educations, and refuse to perform any of the practical work that is actually needed or accept the decline in social status that would go with it.  They’d rather live in desperate but genteel poverty and complain about it. 

The story consists largely of conversations between Hubler, a millionaire plumber, and Senator Whitesell, who is in the dam-building business but (as he puts it) “bought a seat in the Senate,” encouraged by his business associates, who “felt that our group was not being properly cared for.” (It’s hard to tell if this too is satire, or if everyone was a little less subtle about these things in Keller’s day.) Hubler takes Whitesell on a tour of the White Collars’ neighborhood, including a visit to the Reiswicks, the family whose daughter Hubler’s son is in love with.  The family will have none of an offer of productive but lower-status work and the daughter will have nothing to do with the son of a plumber. 

Senator Whitesell goes back to Washington, and the general problem is resolved with draconian legislation providing for involuntary servitude, complete with labor camps, and suppression of criticism.  This does wonders for formerly idle intellectuals: “They became different men and women, they sang at their work, and the number of babies born in the Labor Hospitals to happy mothers and proud fathers steadily increased.” The private problem of the Reiswicks is solved by a combination of emigration and the last-minute kidnapping and forced marriage of their daughter to the plumber’s son—but she decides she likes the idea after she sees his modern kitchen.

This of course is all mean-spirited and reactionary, as well as ridiculous, but hey, it’s satire, though Keller is no Jonathan Swift.  (And I wonder what Keller had to say a few years later about the New Deal.) Keller is at least a competent writer.  So, two stars, barely.

Operation R.S.V.P., by H. Beam Piper


by Robert Jones

Between West and Keller, we have a brief respite from gravity in H. Beam Piper’s Operation R.S.V.P., from the January 1951 issue, which presents the lighter side of the struggle for world domination.  Piper at this point had published several solid and well-received stories in Astounding, still one of the field’s leaders.  This one is flimsier: an epistolary story, told in memos among the Union of East European Soviet Republics and the United People’s Republics of East Asia, which are engaging in nuclear saber-rattling, and Afghanistan, which is outsmarting them both.  It is clever and well-turned and not much else; it aspires to little and achieves it handily.  Two stars.

The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years, by Don Wilcox

Don Wilcox, whose actual name is Cleo Eldon Wilcox, but who has also appeared as Buzz-Bolt Atomcracker (in Amazing, May 1947, for Confessions of a Mechanical Man), published SF from 1939 to 1957, almost entirely in Amazing and its companion Fantastic Adventures, mostly in the Ray Palmer era.  The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years, from October 1940, is a fairly well-known if not much-read story, chiefly because it was the first to explore the idea of a generation starship, preceding and possibly inspiring Robert Heinlein’s much more famous Universe.


by Julian Krupa

The good ship S.S. Flashaway carries 16 couples, plus the narrator, Prof. Grimstone.  He will serve as Keeper of the Traditions, traveling in suspended animation and being revived every hundred years to keep things on track, handily providing a viewpoint character for this centuries-long story.  Upon his first revival, he hears many babies crying; there is a population crisis.  Why?  Boredom, apparently.  Grimstone suggests wholesome activities: “Bridge is an enemy of the birthrate, too.” But alas: “The Councilmen threw up their hands.  They had bridged and checkered themselves to death.”

Solutions?  One character says, “We’ve got to have a compulsory program of birth control.” Prof. Grimstone in his recommendations “stressed the need for more birth control forums.” Not to be indelicate, but I don’t think people trying to avoid pregnancy use a forum.  And you’d think the people planning this trip would have made some provision for it—maybe even something futuristic, like, oh, a pill that would suppress ovulation or fertilization.  But I guess you couldn’t really talk much about that in a family magazine in 1940.

So, leap forward 100 years, and Grimstone awakes to find people lying around starving.  Babies are still the problem.  These people were born outside the quota, and by decree are not allowed to eat regularly.  Grimstone sets matters straight: everybody eats, there’s a new regime, everybody outside the quota is surgically sterilized, and inside the quota they’re sterilized after the second child.  And they’re all happy about it.

A century later, there’s no population problem, but factions are at each other’s throats, and Grimstone has to make peace.  And it goes on, century by century.  Wilcox has put his finger on the central problem of the generation ship idea: there’s no reason for the intermediate generations, who didn’t sign up for life in a big tin can and have nothing else to look forward to, to remain loyal to the mission and to keep the discipline necessary for a small community to survive for centuries.

There’s a pretty decent story here, unfortunately swathed in wisecracking Palmerish pulp style—the first line is “They gave us a gala send-off, the kind that keeps your heart bobbing up at your tonsils,” and that’s pretty representative.  It’s also weighed down by the taboos of the time in the overpopulation episode.  Wilcox gives the impression of a writer of limited gifts struggling to do justice to a substantial theme, which is both refreshing and frustrating.  Three stars, for effort and for originality in its time.

The Man from the Atom (Sequel), by G. Peyton Wertenbaker

The issue closes with G. Peyton Wertenbaker’s The Man from the Atom (Sequel)—yes, that’s the title—from the May 1926 Amazing.  You will recall that the narrator Kirby was invited over to Dr. Martyn’s place to try out his expander/contractor, pushed the Expand button like any good SF mark-protagonist of the 1920s and ‘30s, and found himself growing so large that his feet slipped off Earth and he wound up in a super-cosmos in which our universe was but an atom, trillions of years in the future.  He’s not thrilled about it, either. 


by Frank R. Paul

But he works the Shrink button and gets himself sized to land on another planet, thrusting his feet through the clouds as he downsizes.  There he falls into the hands of supercilious humanoids who imprison and interrogate him, but shortly the beautiful Vinda—daughter of the King of the planet, of course—shows up, providing “endless days of wonder and enchantment” (not biological, we are assured), and also offering a way back.  Well, not exactly back.  The way back is forward, because (after invocation of Einstein and the curvature of space), “the whole history of the universe is rigidly fore-ordained, and so, when time returns to its starting point, the course of history remains the same.” More or less, anyway.

So the humanoids make some calculations, he pushes the Expand button again, and before long arrives on (a slightly different) Earth, only to learn that Dr. Martyn has been imprisoned for murder after his disappearance, or rather, the disappearance of the corresponding Kirby in this world.  Now he's released, of course.  But after a while, home, or near-home, is not enough for Kirby; he pines for Vinda; and soon enough he is pushing the Expand button again, hoping to rejoin her in the next cycle of the universe, even if he has to fight the other version of himself that this cycle’s Dr. Martyn has previously dispatched.

This sequel is a noticeably higher class of ridiculous than its forerunner, better written and with considerably more ingenuity of detail along the way, so it laboriously climbs to two stars.

And I Only Am Escaped Alone To Tell Thee

Well, it could have been worse.  Two of these stories, Beast of the Island and, barely, The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years, are actually worth reading for reasons other than laughs or historical interest.  The rest are not, except for the overdone spectacle of Intelligence Undying.



[Don't miss TODAY'S episode of the Journey Show, starting at 1:00 PM Pacific — we have an all star cast of artists who will be doodling to YOUR specification.

Y'all come!]




[October 22, 1965] Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (November 1965 Fantastic)


by Victoria Silverwolf

Days of Our Lives

I'm stealing the name of a new soap opera, due to premiere on NBC next month, because it sums up the way that past, present, and future came together in the news this month.

Yale University put an item known as the Vinland Map on public display on October 12. This is a map of the world, said to date back to the Fifteenth Century, which seems to indicate that Norsemen visited the Americas long before Christopher Columbus. In case you're wondering about the date, it was Columbus Day, in a nice bit of irony.


A detail of the Vinland Map. That's Greenland to the right, and a chunk of North America to the left.

As you might expect, there's controversy over whether this is the real thing or a forgery. Today, nobody knows for sure if this visitor from yesterday is genuine, but maybe we'll find out tomorrow.

If authentic, the Vinland Map is a voice from the past. In a similar way, folks in the present are trying to send a message to the future.

On October 16, the penultimate day of the New York World's Fair, a time capsule was lowered into the ground. (A similar object was buried nearby, during the 1939 World's Fair.) It is scheduled to be opened in the year 6939. (I'm a little skeptical as to whether such a thing can really survive and be found nearly five thousand years from now, but I like the idea.) The contents include . . . well, see for yourself.


People in that distant era will also know that we weren't very careful about spelling.

The Beatles seem destined to represent the artistic achievements of our time, if somebody actually finds the time capsule, opens it, and figures out how to play a record. They are once again at the top of the American popular music charts this month, and show no signs of leaving that position any time soon.

The latest smash from the Liverpool lads is, appropriately, called Yesterday. Unlike their other hits, it's a slow, melancholy song about lost love. Paul McCartney plays acoustic guitar and sings, backed by a string quartet. The other Beatles do not perform on the record, so it's really a McCartney solo performance.


By the way, Act Naturally is a remake of a Number One song by Buck Owens. The Beatles go Country-Western!

Flipping Through the Calendar

Given the peculiarities of the publishing business, it's no surprise that I'm reading the November issue of Fantastic in October. With their policy of filling about half the magazine with reprints, it's also not a shock to discover that we go back in time to fill up the pages. First up, however, is a new story set in a strange world that mixes up the past and the present.


Cover art by Julian S. Krupa. It's actually taken from the back cover of the July 1939 issue of Amazing Stories.


Look familiar? We'll hear more about the Space Devastator later.

Axe and Dragon (Part One of Three), by Keith Laumer


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Our hero is one Lafayette O'Leary, an ordinary working stiff, living in a crummy boarding house. He has a lot of intellectual curiosity, performing experiments in his tiny room and reading obscure books. He happens to find a Nineteenth Century volume on hypnotism, and learns about a technique whereby he can experience a dreaming state, while remaining aware that he is dreaming, and exercising some control over it.

(This isn't so crazy a premise as it might seem. More than fifty years ago, the Dutch psychiatrist Frederik Willem van Eeden coined the term lucid dream for such states of mind.)

Of course, he gives it a try. He winds up in a world that seems to be a bit medieval, a touch Eighteenth Century, a tad modern, and partly straight out of a fairy tale. The limitations on his ability to alter this dream world — if that's what it is — show up when he tries to give himself a set of fancy modern clothes, and winds up dressed like somebody in a swashbuckling movie.


Lafayette, ready for action.

At first, he enjoys the situation, happily replacing the lousy wine in a tavern with fine Champagne. Thought to be a wizard, he gets mixed up with the local equivalent of the cops. Still thinking this is just a dream, he tries to disappear, with only partial success.


Our hero tries to vanish, but can't quite do it.

Lafayette winds up in the palace of the King, where he is thought to be a prophesized hero, destined to save the realm from an ogre and a dragon. He also meets the King's magician, who seems to know more about what's going on than he admits. For one thing, he's responsible for the steam-powered coaches and electric lights in this otherwise nontechnological world.


The magician looks on as Lafayette admires himself.

Eventually, our hero meets the King's beautiful daughter, as well as the master swordsman who is her current boyfriend. Jealousy rears its head, and a challenge to a duel arises.

Lafayette assumes that his opponent, like everybody else in this world, is just a product of his imagination. Therefore, he reasons, the foe can't really be any better with a sword than he is. It looks like he might be in for an unpleasant surprise.


Tune in again for the next exciting chapter!

So far, at least, the tone of this novel is very light. Laumer almost seems to be parodying his own tales of the Imperium, with the protagonist finding himself in alternate realities. Unlike those serious stories, this one is a comedy. The people inhabiting the dream world speak in a mixture of archaic language and modern slang. The police are about as effective as the Keystone Kops. It's entertaining enough to keep me reading, but hardly profound.

Three stars.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Ray Bradbury

The rest of the magazine consists of stuff from the old days, both the prose and the art. First we have a piece with a title that is fitting for my chosen theme. It comes from the May 1947 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones, for what looks like a very odd story.

The protagonist is a would-be writer, reduced to pawning his typewriter due to his failure to find his way into print. (Surely based on the author's own early years, I assume.) He comes home to find a strange device. It sends him messages from the far future.


Illustration by Virgil Finlay.

Tomorrow's world is a dreary place, under the rule of a brutal dictator. A woman sent the machine back in time, insisting that the writer kill the remote ancestors of the tyrant. If he doesn't, the woman will be executed. If he does, the future will change, and she won't remember him at all. Since he's fallen in love with her, he will lose her either way. Besides this dilemma, he faces the moral crisis of murdering two innocent people.

This early work shows Bradbury developing his style, although it is not yet fully formed. You may think that's a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, it's got some emotional appeal, some passages of poetic writing, some implausibilities, and some lapses in logic. The ethical problem at the heart of the story — would you kill Hitler's ancestors? — is an important one, but here it's mostly used as a plot point.

Three stars.

I'm Looking for "Jeff", by Fritz Leiber

From the Fall 1952 issue of Fantastic comes this horror story, created by a master of the macabre (and other things.)


Cover art by Leo Summers. The Capote story is his very early work Miriam, which is a fine, eerie tale.

A bartender claims that a mysterious woman shows up regularly, although the owner of the joint can't see her. The reader is aware right from the start that she's a ghost.


Illustration by Emsh.

She uses her feminine wiles to pick up a customer, offering her affection in return for a promise to do something particularly violent to somebody named Jeff. The fellow, entrapped by her seductive charms — even the scar that runs across her face doesn't mar her beauty — agrees. He encounters Jeff, and makes a terrifying discovery.

There are no surprises in this variation on the classic theme of vengeance from beyond the grave. What elevates it above the usual ghost story is truly fine writing. The woman's first appearance, when she is a barely detectable wisp, is particularly fascinating.

Four stars.

Wild Talents, Inc., by Robert Sheckley

The September/October 1953 issue of Fantastic supplies this comic yarn.


Cover art also by Leo Summers, what little you can see of it.

As you'd expect, the company named in the title deals with people who have psychic powers. It's pretty much an employment agency for such folks. Their latest client presents a problem.


Illustration by Emsh

It seems the fellow can observe anyone, at any location. Unfortunately, he's very much an oddball. His only interest is in recording their sexual activities in excruciating detail. The guy in charge of the company has to figure out a way to protect the public from this Peeping Tom, while making use of his peculiar ability in an acceptable way.

The whole thing is pretty much a mildly dirty, mildly clever, mildly amusing joke. You might see it as a spoof of the kind of psi-power stories that appear in Analog far too often. A minor effort from an author who is capable of much sharper satire.

Two stars.

Tooth or Consequences, by Robert Bloch

Another comedy, this time from the May 1950 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Arnold Kohn

It starts off like a joke. A vampire walks into a dentist's office . . .. It seems even the undead need to have their cavities filled. The vampire also swipes blood from the supply kept refrigerated in the same medical building. When the red stuff is then secured under lock and key, to prevent further thefts, the vampire tells the dentist he better get some of it for him, or else. There's a twist at the end you may see coming.

I suppose there's a certain Charles Addams appeal to the image of a fanged monster sitting in a dentist's chair. Otherwise, there's not much to this bagatelle.

Two stars.

The Eye of Tandyla, by L. Sprague de Camp

We go back to the May 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures for this sword-and-sorcery yarn, one of a handful of stories in the author's Pusadian series. (The best-known one is probably the novel The Tritonian Ring, also from 1951.)


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones

The setting is far back in time, long before recorded history. (The story goes that de Camp wanted to create a background similar to the one appearing in Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan, but in a more realistic fashion.) A wizard and a warrior must steal a magical gem from the statue of a goddess for their King, or be executed. Their plan involves disguising themselves with sorcery and sneaking into the place.


Illustration by Virgil Finlay.

To their amazement, it proves to be really easy to grab the jewel. So simple, in fact, that they smell a rat. They cook up a scheme to put the gem back in its place, steal a similar one from another place, and present that one to the King instead. Complications ensue.

You can tell that this isn't the most serious story in the world. The plot resembles a farce, with its multiple confusions and running back and forth. It's got the wit often found in Fritz Leiber's work of this kind, but not quite the same elegance. I'd say it's above the level of John Jakes, or even — dare I say it? — Howard himself, if not quite up to the very high standard of Leiber.

Three stars.

Close Behind Him, by John Wyndham

The January/February issue of Fantastic is the source of this chiller.


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg. The so-called new story by Poe is actually Robert Bloch's completion of a fragment.

Two crooks rob the house of a very strange fellow. The guy catches one of them in the act, so the hoodlum kills him.


Illustration by Paul Lundy.

The pair make their getaway, but are followed by blood-red footprints wherever they go. You can bet things won't go well for them.

This is a pretty decent horror story, nicely written, although — once again! — not up to the level of Fritz Leiber, particularly since we've got an example of his excellent work in the field of tales of terror in this very issue.

Three stars.

Space Devastator, by Anonymous

I'm not sure if I should even mention this tiny article, excerpted from the pages of the July 1939 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

Anyway, it's less than a page long, and speculates about a huge station in orbit, equipped with a bunch of big mirrors.


Illustration by Julian S. Krupa

The notion is that such a thing could destroy entire populations from space by focusing the sun's rays and burning up cities. Casual mention is made of the fact that it could supply solar energy as well. I suppose it's imaginative for 1939, but it's so short — the original version was probably somewhat longer — that you can't get much out of it.

Two stars.

What Day is Good for You?

Today comes out a big winner over Yesterday and Tomorrow in this month's Fantastic. Leiber's contemporary ghost story is clearly superior to tales set in the future or in the legendary past. Otherwise, this isn't that great an issue, ranging from OK to below average.

You might well get more entertainment out of an award-winning film, such as this Italian comedy, which got the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film last year. Sophia Loren plays three different women, and Marcello Mastroianni three men, in a trio of lighthearted tales of love.


For some reason, every poster I've seen for this movie features Loren in her underwear. I wonder why that might be.

And you'll definitely enjoy the next exciting musical guest episode of The Journey Show, October 24 at 1PM Pacific!