Tune in, starting November 13, for twelve days of Apollo 12 coverage!
by Gideon Marcus
Happy Anniversary
A year ago, Richard Milhouse Nixon won the Presidency in part on his "secret plan" to get us out of Vietnam. A few months into his term, besieged by increasingly strident demands for progress, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger urged patience. If things weren't resolved by November, then we would have cause to complain.
Last week, President Nixon revealed his plan for "Vietnamization" in a prime time television address. It called for eventual turning over of the reins of war to the South Vietnamese. However, the President refused to set a timetable for this turnover, saying that such would lead to undue Communist advantage. Nixon suggested that America might step down its bombing by, say, 20%, and see if the North Vietnamese match our draw-down, but the Paris peace talks are dead, and the U.S. would stay the course as long as was necessary.
The President concluded by asserting that the "silent majority" of Americans was behind his plan, and that no foreign power could defeat the United States: defeat could only come from within.
Well, you can imagine that this statement, tantamount to a continuation of President Johnson's pre-1968 policies, did not sit well with a lot of folks, including a host of Congressmen. The unquiet minority also plans to make their voices heard in a second Moratorium march in a few days. We'll see if it has more impact than the last one.
In Other News
If Nixon's address was something of a disappointment, in contrast, the latest issue of Galaxy makes for consistently pleasant reading:
by Jack Gaughan and Phoebe Gaughan
Editor Eljer Jakobsson introduces a new act by artist Vaughn Bodé. Looks like it will be funny, nudie, SF cartoons. Sure, why not?
Also of interest is Budrys' Bookshelf column. I often don't agree with his taste, but I generally enjoy the way he writes his reviews. I found it interesting that Isaac Asimov's unwanted advances toward women have now become so commonplace that Budrys felt he had to alloy his review of the Good Doctor's latest, Opus 100, in his very first paragraph:
"Now you take Isaac Asimov… Well, taking him from the pages of Opus 100, his hundredth book (Houghton Mifflin Company, $5.95), one finds him so various, so beautiful and new that it is only with a wrench of the mind one recalls the last time he pinched one's wife's bottom."
By the way, there is no Willy Ley column (RIP), and they have not found a replacement science writer.
Jamboree, by Jack Williamson
In the future, robots rule, adults are forbidden, and children are raised in Boy Scout-styled prison camps. Two twelve-year-olds attempt a revolution, but quickly learn the futility of resistance.
A bleak story with a downer ending, but at least it's memorable.
This novella is heralded as a "novel complete in this issue." It is, at least, a complete story, and not a bad one.
The premise: five thousand years from now, three trillion humans infest the planet. They all live underground, the surface being reserved for the cultivation of crops. Virtually no animals have survived into this dark future, so the few remaining individuals, the "I people", living on the surface, mostly get their protein from cannibalism. The underground people have all been evolved for docility, a trait phenotypically displayed by a lack of a fifth toe (presumably the pinky toe). These four-toes are known as "Nebishes".
When I first read about this setup, I assumed this was going to be a satirical, tongue-in-cheek story. It's not, except maybe for a few, farcical touches here and there. What it is is the story of Moses Eppendorff, a comparatively enterprising four-toe, who discovers a new food source and is rewarded with a trip Outside. Eschewing the typical Outside activity—going on a Hunt for I people—he instead takes a hike up a mountain, experiencing solitude for the first time.
He also encounters Moon, a 200+ year-old I person, his 200+ year-old dog, and a sentient spear from the before-times who calls itself Toothpick. Encouraged to abandon the underworld, Moses wanders with these companions, learning about the world including some fascinating biological changes the surface dwellers have evolved to avoid capture/kill. Ultimately, in the most jokey, but blessedly understated, part of the book, Moses, carrying his staff, leads the I-people to what they think is the promised land.
It's actually a pretty good yarn, one of the better overpopulation stories out there. It does an interesting job of contrasting modes of humanity by population density, and Bass creates a compelling world. The prose is occasionally clunky, and the transitions are such that the individual segments don't always dovetail seamlessly, but for a new writer (his first story came out last year), he shows a lot of promise.
Three stars.
Eternity Calling, by John Chambers
An alient bloodsucker, a semi-independent member of a sentient collective, happens upon a human starship. Its one inhabitant is a preacher looking for souls to save. By the end, the shaken terrestrial leaves convinced that the alien has a closer analog to a soul than he does.
This story starts so promisingly, with the extraterrestrial viewpoint vividly drawn. The latter half of the story is a simple dialogue, and not a particularly impactful one at that.
A terran explorer is drawn to a star for its pulsating bursts of energy. It turns out the inhabitants have a tradition of celebrating every quarter century with a pyrotechnic display. Specifically, they detonate nuclear bombs in orbit!
Of course, such activities are purely for their aesthetic appeal. Like the Chinese and their gunpowder firecrackers, the aliens wouldn't dream of using such devices for warfare. At least, they hadn't thought of it until humans gave them the idea…
Rather a silly story, and not as clever as the authors think it is. Two stars.
Continuing the tale of Edmund Gunderson, former bigwig at the former company colony on steamy Nildoror. Last installment, Gunderson was seeking permission from the native elephantines to travel to the Mist Country, where the Nildoror are reborn, though we don't know why Edmund wants to go there. His request is granted, provided he return with a human named Cullen, who has committed a nameless crime.
So, with a Nildoror escort, Gunderson goes on a long trek across the countryside. A highlight of this jaunt include Edmund's recounting of the event that shocked him into accepting the sentience of the natives, despite their having no formal civilization. Another is when he comes across two dying humans, hosts to an extraterrestrial parasite, and has to decide whether to put them out of their misery.
I wasn't sold on the piece last time, but I now feel I've gotten over the hump and can really live inside not just Gunderson's mind, but also that of his guide, the Nildoror named Srin'gahar. I prefer brooding Silverbob (q.v. The Man in the Maze and Hawksbill Station) to Zelazny look-a-like or borderline-smut Silverbob.
Four stars for this bit, and elevating the work as a whole.
Human Analogue Robot, Life Input Equivalents (HARLIE) is a sapient machine designed to mimic as well as analyze the thought processess of people. One day, Harlie goes on a jag, producing reams of nonsense poetry. These outbursts always follow the mass intake of human-produced modern art.
But is the problem the torrent of non-rational input, or is there something broken inside the computer? Is it a malfunction at all?
I'm not sure that I'm completely sold on the premise or the story, but I have to concede, it feels very modern. David Gerrold, by the way, is the hip young man who penned the script for the Trek episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles". I think this is his first traditionally published science fiction.
Three stars, and let's see where he goes next!
Horn of Plenty, by Vladimir Grigoriev
The inventor, Stepan Onufrievich, happens upon a decayed sign in Moscow, which exhorts citizens to deposit their scraps. It depicts a cornucopia with a man shoveling scrap into one end, producing consumer goods out the other.
Inspired, Onufrievich sets out to build a real Horn of Plenty…and he succeeds! But, this being the Soviet Union, happy times do not last long.
Of course, this story is fantasy, not science fiction, but the satire is nicely biting. I am surprised this one made it past the censors. I am also quite impressed with the translation job: the story reads breezily and charmingly.
Four stars.
Doing the math
Per my Galacto-sliderule, this issue finishes at a modestly entertaining 3.1 stars. That's a little deceptive as the novella and the Silverberg really are at the high end of their ratings, and the two-star stories are short. I feel that Jacobsson is transforming his magazine into something more current. Pohl did an admirable job, but the new Galaxy may end up once again in the vanguard of science fiction digests.
Just in time for the 20th anniversary of the magazine. Keep it up, Eljer!
A study just completed by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has concluded that cyclamates may cause bladder tumors in rats.
How does this affect you?
Decades ago, it paid to be plump. It was a sign of wealth and health. It was attractive! These days, we're in the Grape Nuts generation, and it's now all about fitness and being slender. How to reconcile the popularity of fizzy sweet sodapop and the desire to cut sugar from our diets (despite the Sugar Council telling us it's good for us)?
Early this decade, a slew of soft drinks came out, sweetened not with sugar, but with a blend of artificial sweeteners—saccharin and cyclamates. Diet Rite and Tab may not have tasted just like Coke and Pepsi, but they did the job and preserved the waistline.
But now, thanks to the HEW report, soft drink companies are all pulling their cyclamate sodas off the market as of February 1, 1970. Grab your vintage colas while you can, because they won't exist come next spring!
What does the future hold for diet sodas? Well, for now, saccharin is still legal, though by itself, it's a bit bitter (remember the "sach" tablets Winston Smith put in his coffee in 1984)? There is talk of putting sugar back into diet sodas…just less of it.
And, since this is a science fiction 'zine, we can always speculate that new and better sweeteners will be developed. Maybe even on purpose this time—did you know that both saccharin and cyclamates were discovered by accident? Constantin Fahlberg was researching coal tar derivatives and forgot to wash his hands before going for lunch, when he discovered saccharine was discovered in 1879. And grad student Michael Sveda was working on anti-fever drugs in 1937; some got on a cigarette, and when he took a drag, it tasted sweet.
Cue the commercials:
Bob: My cigarette just isn't doing it for me anymore.
Larry: Try mine! It's new.
Bob: Hey! Not bad…sweet!
Larry: You better believe it.
Three-inch aliens descend to Earth in a teeny saucer and smarten up a little mouse to be their telepathic eyes and ears to scout out the world. When the rodent's work is done, he is heartbroken to find that the aliens must leave, abandoning him to a life of loneliness, the sole example of his kind. Despondent, he kills himself.
Not only is the story an unecessary downer (the mouse was exposed to the worst humanity had to offer, but also the best—couldn't he have found human friends to love?) but it's written clunkily, as though Howard dashed it off quickly, and didn't bother to correct it. It's the kind of work I do if I neglect to read my work aloud before sending it in to a publisher.
Two stars.
A Feminine Jurisdiction, by Sterling E. Lanier
The latest Brigadier Ffellowes shaggy dog tale has him stranded just after the Nazi invasion of Crete (how timely!) on an Aegean island lost to time, housing a trio of mythical sisters. One of them has, shall we say, a stony-eyed gaze. Of course, we know the Brigadier will escape (how else could he live to tell the tale?) but the fun is in the how.
I could have done without the casual sexism. World-traveler Ffelowes surely could not have forged his opinion on matriarchies solely on this one stacked-deck example. Beyond that, the well Lanier plumbed for material is a little mined out. Still, it's a competent and entertaining yarn.
Three stars.
Penny Dreadful, by Ron Goulart
A ghost writer cum secret agent (or is it the other way around?) is on one of the planets of the Barnum system, a frequent Goulart setting, mostly known from his Ben Jolson stories. All he wants to do is collect his fee from deadbeats. In the process, he ends up cleaning up local politics.
Goulart, at his best, does light, spy/detective stuff really well. This is not his best. Indeed, it's among his worst—incomprehensible and somehow incomplete.
Two stars.
The CRIB Circuit, by Miriam Allen deFord
A young computer operator, who died of cancer in 1970, is revived after five centuries of cold sleep. But the Brave New World she wakes up into is not interested in welcoming her as a citizen, but only as a temporary subject of study before she is to be put down again. Must keep the population constant, you see! Can Alexandra come up with a way to extend her second life?
I had thought her solution would be a variation on the Scheherazade shtick from 1001 Arabian Nights, but it's actually a bit cleverer. There's also a nice sting in the tail of the piece. I should have seen it coming; that I didn't is a credit to DeFord's writing.
Four stars, and my favorite piece of the ish.
Come Up and See Me Some Time, by Gilbert Thomas
A pre-teen genius builds a psychic space ship and prepares to head off into another dimension, presumably to be reunited with his murdered mother. But not before giving an ostentatious and horrific reply to his father, who we learn is responsible for his wife's death.
Told from the point of view of the father, the tale is just silly. It's more of a mood piece than anything, and frankly, I didn't care enough about the schmuck to get into his head.
One star.
After the Bomb Cliches, by Bruce McAllister
Martin Potsubay is convinced The End Is Nigh. So he builds a bomb shelter, and when the air raid sirens begin to blow, ensconces himself inside. But the trumpets keep blowing, and in the end, there's no way to avoid Armageddon…or the heavenly recruitment officers!
This is definitely my favorite McAllister piece to date, bordering right between three and four stars. On reflection, I think I'll finally give him the win.
Four it is (but I still like the deFord better!)
The Sin of the Scientist, by Isaac Asimov
The Good Doctor takes Oppenheimer's "physicists have known sin" line and runs with it, defining "sin" in a scientific sense, and discussing which scientists have committed it. His answer is an interesting one.
Three stars.
Diaspora, by Robin Scott
A catastrophe has rendered the Earth uninhabitable, and just one small colony of 400 humans is left. Establishing themselves on a kind world, farm yields explode and the settlement prospers. Yet, their puritannical leader refuses to loosen the reins of privation. One rebellious type chafes under the tyrant, and so he plots an escape, establishing himself as an independent concern. This proves instrumental to the colony's success…and as it turns out, all according to plan.
This story is decently written, but the overly deterministic nature of the premise is a turn-off. The idea that the colony was founded with the expectation that it would need a malcontent to ensure its success, and that a ten-year agenda could be stuck to so as to carry out the plan, beggars belief. It's the kind of thing I expect from Analog.
Future-dwellers get bored of reconstituting historical personages, so they turn to reviving mythical people. After having their fill of hanging out with the whole panoply of (Western) legends, from Adam to Hercules to JFK, they banish them, too. But the result is there's never a hero around when you need one…
Silverbob phoned this one in. It has the veneer of literariness, but it just coats a hollow interior.
Two stars.
Ptui!
Like soda without sweetener, the latest F&SF was a bland mouthful. Still, the two good pieces are enough to keep me going, albeit with ever fading enthusiasm.
But perhaps next year, the editors will find the right formula to spice up their wares…
The new Supreme Court, whose prime continuity to the old one is the preservation of the name "Warren" in its Chief Justice, is now in session—minus one Justice…for now.
Warren Burger has taken over from Earl Warren, and one can already feel the rightward lurch of our nation's highest judiciary. Now, President Richard Milhouse Nixon plans to careen the Supreme Court in an even more conservative direction.
Tricky Dick's nomination to fill the seat left when LBJ's nominee, Abe Fortas, didn't get the job, is Clement F. Haynsworth. Haynsworth is currently a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Atlantic coast of the Upper South), a position he has held since being appointed their by Ike in 1957. The Senate Judiciary Committee on October 9th approved 10-7 the consideration of Justice Haynsworth.
The road ahead is far from clement for Haynsworth, however. For one, he bought 1000 shares of Brunswick (the bowling company) just before publishing a ruling he helped make on said company. After the heightened scrutiny on ethics that accompanied the Fortas nomination, Haynsworth is under an intense microscope. Labor groups maintained that he should have recused himself from a case involving a textile mill; he owned shares of a company that did business with the mill.
Critics of the storm say this is just tit for tat after the Fortas fight, rather than for any substantive reason. What's really at stake is Haynsworth is a reactionary. He affirmed the decision by local authorities to close the Prince Edward County schools to avoid integration, he upheld the constitutionality of school voucher programs used to fund segregated private schools, and he supported the management of the Darlington Manufacturing Company in South Carolina when it closed down to avoid its employees unionizing.
Will Haynsworth make it on the bench? It's hard to imagine he will. If a Republican minority was sufficient to deny Fortas a seat, then a Democratic majority will surely roadblock Haynsworth. If and when this happens, the question is whether Nixon will double down or conciliate. At stake this season are decisions on the tax exempt status of churches, the death penalty, punitive drafting of war protesters, and the rights of Black Americans.
Stay tuned…
Entertainment delayed
Just as we're playing the waiting game to see the direction jurisprudence goes in America, so the latest issue of Galaxy science fiction makes it clear that the future of SF, particularly in the pages of the former queen of the genre, is as yet uncertain.
by Jack Gaughan (as are, presumably, all of the other illustrations in this magazine)
The amazingly prolific Silverbob begins a serial that has elements of Delany (the incorporation of music and the choppy presentation…which may be a printing error knowing Galaxy) and Zelazny (the wild, decadent planet and weary protagonist).
Edmund Gunderson used to run Holman's World, a jungle planet with two sentient races—philosophical elephants and brutish apes—in order to collect the serpent worm venom that is a fundamental catalyst of tissue regeneration.
Ten years later, Holman's World is now Belzegor, reverted to the ownership of the pachyderm nildoror. The human infrastructure is rapidly succumbing to tropical rot, and who knows how long humanity will keep contact with the world?
Amid this backdrop of decay, Gunderson returns to the planet he ruled…purpose unknown. All we know is that his mission lies somewhere in the backwoods, and he requires nildoror permission to go there. We find out Gunderson is a bigot who cannot quite abide the idea that the nildoror are sentient beings rather than animals, but he does seem to be trying to break free of his bigotry. We also learn that the nildoror are now closely associating with the primate sulidor and even employing them as servants. Finally, it is revealed that drinking raw serpent venom causes the brief transfer of souls between alien and human. Whether this is imaginary or real is not yet known.
Silverberg has set up a lot of pieces, but not much has happened yet. The writing is competent, though not gripping. As with the Haynsworth decision, the jury is still out on this one.
Three stars.
Pennies, Off a Dead Man's Eyes, by Harlan Ellison
Old man Jedediah Parkman is dead at the age of 82, and all of the people he's helped over the years are coming to his funeral to pay respects. This includes an alien with the power of camouflage and lethal envelopment, who is passing for human for his survival. At the funeral, he witnesses a beautiful white woman (most out of place given the part of town and the race of Parkman and the other attendees) who takes the silver coins from atop Parkman's eyes.
What is her motivation? Why is she there? And just what connection does our storyteller have to Parkman?
This is one of the few Ellison stories that harnesses the writer's great talent to say something beyond what's on Harlan's mind/heart at the moment. It's also real SF, unlike so much of his work.
Five stars.
The Dirty Old Men of Maxsec, by Phyllis Gotlieb
Outside: the City. Cramped, stagnant, spartan. Its only compensation: the citizens are immortal, thanks to "the J."
Inside: MaxSec. A maximum security community populated by criminals whose only punishment is to be deprived of immortality.
The paradox: the people of MaxSec are reportedly happier, freer, and more innovative than the people of the City.
The story: Fenthree is a somewhat cynical citydweller, blackmailed into infiltrating MaxSec to find its secrets. He is quickly found out and imprisoned, to be an unwitting vessel for MaxSec's revenge on the outside world.
From there, the perspective of the story grows, now including Corrigan, strongman of MaxSec who is the architect of the retribution plan. To Linnaeus Ganzer, nearly 400 years old, developing the creeping death for Corrigan's plan. To Luz, the last lovely woman in MaxSec, catalyst to plans within plans.
A meandering, occasionally flippant, occasionally opaque piece, Gotlieb's is an interesting counterpoint to last month's "The Rock", covering the concept of a coordinated prison exile a la Australia of a couple centuries ago. That it also manages to make some interesting comments on the effects of immortality on society at the same time is impressive, although the two speculative threads do not interweave perfectly.
Three stars.
How to Kidnap a Moon, by Robert S. Richardson
Richardson is an astronomer whom we normally find in the pages of Analog. This article details the energy concerns for bringing the two moons of Mars into orbit around the Earth for easier access.
There isn't much discussion of how one might practically arrange such things—it's all just orbital mechanics and erg tabulations. It is also unclear how it would be easier to bring the rocks here for investigation rather than exploring them in situ. On the other hand, if we're ever to mine Phobos and Deimos (or by extension, any of the asteroids), I suppose there might be merit to bringing the planetoids home. If anything, they could be hollowed out and turned into natural space stations.
Anyway, three stars.
Broke and Hungry, No Place to Go, by Ron Goulart
A man whose job is to tell the computer which unnecessary mouths on the dole to eliminate (in the pursuit of efficiency) finds that he is now on the chopping block.
This is the kind of minor tale we might have found in one of the minor magazines last decade. Ron is phoning it in.
Two stars.
For Your Information (Galaxy Magazine, November 1969), by Willy Ley
In this posthumous piece, Willy Ley discusses the suggestion that the death of the dinosaurs was caused by an excess of radiation—from the periodic flipping of the magnetic poles or the explosion of a nearby supernova. He seems unconvinced, and he even goes so far as to say that the extinctions might not even have been that sudden.
Another bleak man-on-the-dole story. This time, a fellow who is dissatisfied with having nothing meaningful to do, decides to go to the last natural preserve in the country. It is a 10 mile by 10 mile stretch of wilderness with none of the comforts of home. When he decides he isn't enjoying being cold and hungry any more than he was enjoying being bored and fed, he tries to summon a recovery robot. But his call bracelet doesn't work…may never have been designed to work. A trap to weed out malcontents?
Mack Reynolds has extrapolated this kind of world with far more success, and Bob Sheckley has written satires like this with far more wit and barb. Spinrad can be great, but this is lesser Spinrad.
Last up, a very short final installment of the third (or second, depending on how you count them) Dune book. The plotters against Paul Atreides offer him a ghola (resurrected clone) of the newly dead Chani, Paul's true love. Knowing this will make Muad'Dib a thrall to the shadowy interests of a myriad of anti-Imperial organizations, Paul refuses. Then he goes out into the desert to die, as is the fitting end for blind Fremen. The Emperor leaves behind a newborn pair of twins, one male and one female, both fully sapient in the same manner that Paul's sister was conceived, Alia's mother having been high on the spice melange at the time.
In the end, this is very much a bridge book. All of its bits could have been condensed to a five-page faux encyclopedia article included at the beginning of the next book, with very little action and not a whole lot of interest, save the mildly engaging Duncan Idaho/Hayt bits in the last installment.
So, two stars for this bit and two stars overall. Just read the summarizing precis (almost as long as this last installment!) and the few pages of the story in this issue, and you'll be fine.
A Cautious Look to the Future
It's even harder to read the tea leaves when it comes to the future of Galaxy. On the one hand, by the numbers, this issue didn't crack three stars. On the other, the Silverberg could become a knockout, the Herbert is (blessedly) over, the Gottlieb was interesting, if not stellar (and the first woman-penned piece in how long?), and the Ellison was unusually excellent. Ley is dead, and that is a blow, but perhaps Richardson will replace him. His article certainly seems like an audition, though it wasn't as good as other pieces by him I've read in, say, Analog.
So, for news on Haynsworth and news on Galaxy… I guess we're playing the waiting game!
[And now, for your reading pleasure, a clutch of books representing the science fiction and fantasy books that have crossed our desk for review this month!]
by Victoria Silverwolf
Ye Gods!
Two new fantasy novels, both with touches of science fiction, feature theological themes. One deals with deities that are now considered to be purely mythological, the other relates to one of the world's major living religions. Let's take a look.
Fourth Mansions, by R. A. Lafferty
Cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon.
The title of this strange novel comes from a book written by Saint Teresa of Avila, a Spanish Christian mystic of the sixteenth century. This work, known as The Interior Castle or The Mansions in English, compares various stages in the soul's spiritual progress to mansions within a castle. From what I can tell from a little research, the Fourth Mansion is the stage at which the natural and the supernatural intersect.
(I'm sure I'm explaining this badly. Interested readers can seek out a copy of Saint Teresa's book for themselves.)
I understand that Lafferty is a devout Catholic, so this connection between his latest novel and what is considered to be a classic of Christian literature must be more than superficial. Be that as it may, let's see if we can make any sense out of a very weird book.
Our hero is Fred Foley, a reporter who is said to be not very bright, but who seems to have some kind of special insight or perception as to events beyond the mundane. (A sort of Holy Fool, perhaps.) He gets involved in multiple conspiracies of folks, who may be something other than just ordinary human beings, out to change the world.
There are four such groups, said to be not quite fit for either Heaven or Earth. Each one is symbolized by an animal.
The Snakes, also known as the Harvesters, are a group of seven people who blend their psychic powers to influence the minds of others. They are intent on bringing about a sort of hedonistic apocalypse. Their connection to Foley and other characters allows for telepathic communication, and sets the plot in motion.
The Toads are folks who are reincarnated, or somehow take over new bodies. (It's a little vague.) Foley's investigation into one such person starts the novel. They intend to release a plague, wiping out most of humanity and ruling over the survivors.
The Badgers are people who are something like spiritual rulers of a kind of parallel world that most ordinary people can't perceive. Foley pays a visit to a couple of these seemingly benign people for information. In one case, this involves a trip to a mountain in Texas that shouldn't be there.
The Unfledged Falcons are would-be fascists, military leaders trying to take over the world by force. Only one such person appears in the book, a Mexican fellow named Miguel Fuentes. He gets involved when the Snakes try to influence an American named Michael Fountain (see the connection in names?) and wind up entering his mind by mistake.
I would be hard pressed to try to describe all the bizarre things that happen. Lafferty has a way of describing extraordinary events in deadpan fashion. (We're very casually told, for example, that one character brought a dead man back to life when he was a boy. One very minor character is a demon, and another one is an alien.)
The book's combination of whimsey and allegory is unique, to say the least. There's a lot of dialogue that sounds like nothing anybody would ever say in real life. Did I understand it all? Certainly not. Did I enjoy the ride? Yep.
Four stars.
Creatures of Light and Darkness, by Roger Zelazny
Cover art by James Starrett.
Zelazny's recent novel Lord of Light offered a futuristic twist on Buddhism and Hinduism. This one makes use of ancient Egyptian gods, as well as a bit of Greek mythology. There are also a lot of original concepts, making for a very mixed stew indeed.
The time is the far future, when humanity has settled multiple planets. Don't expect a space opera, however.
We begin in the House of the Dead, ruled by Anubis. He has a servant who has lost his memory and his name. Anubis gives him the name Wakim, and sends him to the Middle Worlds (the physical realm) to destroy the Prince Who Was A Thousand. Meanwhile, Osiris, who rules the House of Life, sends his son Horus on the same errand.
You see, Anubis and Osiris keep the population of the Middle Worlds in balance, bringing life and death in equal amounts. The Prince threatens this system with the possibility of immortality. Although the two gods have the same goal, they are also rivals, so their champions battle each other as well as the Prince.
This is a greatly oversimplified description of the basic plot. A lot more goes on, with many equally god-like characters. There's a sort of scavenger hunt for three sacred items, with the protagonists hopping around from planet to planet in search of them.
Zelazny experiments with narrative techniques, from poetry to a play. There's some humor, as demonstrated by a cult that worships a pair of shoes. (They actually play an important role in the plot.) The pace is frenzied, with plenty of purple prose.
Full understanding of what the heck is really going on doesn't happen until late in the book, when we learn the actual identities of Wakim and the Prince. Suffice to say that this requires a lengthy description of apocalyptic events that took place long before the story begins.
Some readers are going to find this novel disjointed and overwritten. Others are likely to be swept away by the richness of the author's imagination. I'm leaning in the latter direction.
Roger Zelazny’s been busy this month! His new novel Damnation Alley expands his novella of the same name into an action piece which is exciting enough but ultimately unsatisfying, a sort of postapocalyptic pony express with futuristic vehicles and implausible characters.
Cover of Damnation Alley by Jack Gaughan
The story is set in a relatively near-future USA after a nuclear war which has split it into isolated states within a radiation-ravaged wasteland, the only relatively safe passage through which is a corridor known as Damnation Alley. There are pockets of radiation, giant mutant animals and insects, tornadoes and killer dust storms. The descriptions of these is the book’s real strength, with some of them verging on the genuinely poetic. Our protagonist is Hell Tanner, a former Hell’s Angel who is offered a pardon for his crimes by the State of California, if he’ll deliver a shipment of vaccines to Boston, which has been hit by an outbreak of plague. Of course, this necessitates driving through Damnation Alley, but never fear, Tanner is also driving a super-tough vehicle bristling with weaponry.
The whole thing is almost laughably macho in places, and I say that as someone who really quite likes both cars and adventure stories. Tanner is that implausible archetype, the bad guy who nonetheless somehow has other people’s best interests at heart. However, there’s also some nice contrasts set up between Tanner and the criminal world he inhabits and the much more normal parts of society he encounters on his journey, where people seem to be on the whole generally decent and kind, making Tanner’s casual violence seem all the more out of place.
The book has a lot of problems. Some are clearly the result of padding it out to novel length, with several episodes which go nowhere and add little to the story. The characterisation of everyone aside from Tanner is weak to nonexistent. In particular, the main female character, Cordy, is a frustrating cipher: she is a woman who Tanner essentially abducts, and yet she shows none of the emotions one might expect under the circumstances, while Tanner seemingly comes to think of her as his girlfriend despite neither of them making any moves in that direction.
However, the biggest problem is that there are too many holes in the story for it to stay afloat. Despite the devastation of the land around it, the state of California somehow still has the resources to build giant armoured cars bristling with every kind of weapon from bullets to flamethrowers. Only two human beings are apparently capable of making the trip from California to Boston, which is surprising given the aforementioned level of technology and that there is clearly no shortage of young men with a death wish. Tanner makes it almost to Boston before encountering anyone who makes a serious effort to steal the vaccines, which I also find somewhat implausible. And so on, and so on.
Damnation Alley held my attention for the duration of a train journey and had nicely surreal, well-paced prose in places, but it was just too unbelievable for me to really enjoy it. Two and a half stars.
by Brian Collins
Since he returned to writing some half a dozen years ago, Robert Silverberg has tried to reintroduce himself as a more “serious” writer. This is not to say his rate of output has slowed down in favor of more refined work; if anything the past few years have been the busiest for him since the ‘50s. This year alone we have gotten enough novels from Silverberg that a bit of a catch-up is in order. The first on my plate, Across a Billion Years, hit store shelves a few months ago, from The Dial Press (I believe this is Silverberg’s first book with said publisher), and it seems to have flown under the radar—possibly because there’s no paperback edition, and also it might be aimed at younger readers. The second book we have here, To Live Again, is from Doubleday, and it too is a hardcover original; but unlike Across a Billion Years, To Live Again is a new release, fresh out of the oven.
It’s the 24th century, and humanity has not only spread to other worlds but encountered several intelligent alien races along the way. Tom Rice is a 22-year-old archaeologist on an expedition to find the ruins of a bygone race called the High Ones, who apparently lived a billion years ago (hence the title) but who have since vanished. Whether or not the High Ones have gone extinct is one of the novel’s core mysteries, although Silverberg takes his time raising this question. The novel is told as a series of diary entries, or rather messages Tom sends to his sister Lorie. In a curious but also frustrating move, Lorie is arguably the most interesting character in the novel, yet we never see or hear her, as she’s not only away from the action but stuck in a hospital bed for an indefinite period. Lorie is a telepath, and enough people are “TP” to make up their own faction, although telepathy only works one-way and Tom himself is not a telepath. The one positive surprise Silverberg includes here is finding a way to tie telepathy together with the mystery of the High Ones, but obviously I won’t say how he does it.
As for bad surprises, well…
Even taking into account that Tom is a young adult who also has personal hang-ups (his father wanted him to enter real estate), his treatment of his colleagues is abhorrent in the opening stretch. He dismisses the aliens on the team as mostly “diversity” hires and has a standoffish relationship with Kelly, the female android on the team, whom he more than once compares to a “voluptuous nineteen-year-old.” Why someone of Tom’s age would make such a comparison is befuddling…unless you were really a lecherous man approaching middle age and not a recent college graduate. There are a few other humans here, but the only human woman present is Jan, whom Tom gradually takes a liking to—just not enough to do anything when he sees Leroy, a male colleague, sexually assault Jan near enough that he could have intervened. This happens early in the novel, and I have to admit that Tom’s indifference regarding Jan’s wellbeing, a weakness in character he never really apologizes for, cast a cloud over my enjoyment of the rest of the novel. I kept wondering when the other shoe would drop. That Tom and Jan’s relationship turns romantic despite the former’s callousness only serves to rub salt in the wound. The bright side of all this is that while some of Silverberg’s recent work has bordered on pornographic, Across a Billion Years is relatively tame, almost to the point of being old-fashioned.
Indeed, this feels like a throwback to an older era of SF, even back to those years when Silverberg (and I, for that matter) had not yet picked up a pen or used a typewriter. In broad strokes this is a planetary adventure of the sort that would have been serialized in Astounding circa 1945. We’re excavating alien ruins on Higby V, a distant planet where High Ones artifacts have been supposedly found. During a drunken escapade one of the alien diggers stumbles upon (or rather breaks into) a piece of High Ones technology, something akin to a movie projector, not only showing what the High Ones look like but revealing a clue as to the location of their homeworld. This should sound familiar to most of us, and I suspect Silverberg knows this too, because this novel’s biggest problem and biggest asset is how it uses perspective. We’re stuck with Tom as he sends messages to Lorie, recounting events in perhaps more detail than he has to, knowing in advance that his sister won’t receive these messages until after the fact. As with a disconcerting number of Silverberg protagonists, Tom can be annoying, and honestly quite bigoted; and since he is the perspective character we’re never relieved of his oh-so-interesting remarks. But, and I will give Silverberg this, he does put a twist on the epistolary format very late in the novel, which does the miraculous thing of making you reevaluate what you had been reading up to this point.
In other words, this is not an exceptional novel, but it does have its points of interest, and with the exception of an early scene and its ramifications (or lack thereof), nothing here made me want to throw my copy at a nearby wall. For the most part this is inoffensive—possibly even decent. Three stars.
Those who want a bit more sex with their science fiction can do worse than this one, which looks to be the fourth (or maybe fifth—I’ve lost count) Silverberg novel of 1969. It’s the near-ish future, and the good news is that for those with enough money, death is not necessarily the end. Courtesy of the Scheffing Institute, a person can have their memories stored periodically, making copies or “personae” of themselves, which can be transplanted to the brain of a living host. The host and the persona will cooperate, lest the latter erase the former’s personality and become a “dybbuk,” using the host’s body as a flesh puppet.
The infamous businessman Paul Kaufmann has recently died, with his persona waiting to be claimed. Paul’s nephew, Mark, and Mark’s 16-year-old daughter Risa each see themselves as ideal candidates for Paul’s persona, but one of the rules at the Institute is that close family members can’t host each other’s personae: the implications of, for example, a teen girl hosting her grandfather’s persona, would be…concerning.
While we’re on the lovely topic of incest, let’s talk more about Risa, who must be one of the thorniest of all Silverberg characters, which as you know is a tall order, not helped by the fact that Silverberg describes, in almost poetic detail, every curve of this teen girl’s nude body—and she does strut around naked a surprising amount of the time. Risa is such a depraved individual, despite her age, that she at one point tries seducing an older male cousin and rather openly has an Electra complex (they even mention it by name), which Mark is understandably disturbed by—with the implication being that Mark has lustful thoughts about his own daughter. This is the second Silverberg novel I’ve read in two months to involve incest, which worries me.
The only other major female character is Elena, Mark’s mistress, whom Risa sees as a rival for her father’s affections and who (predictably) starts conspiring against Mark. Not content to ogle at just 16-year-olds, Silverberg also takes to describing the nuances of Elena’s body in wearying fashion, which does lead me to wonder if he was working the typewriter one-handed for certain passages. It’s a shame, because there’s an intriguing subplot in which Risa acquires her first persona, a young woman named Tandy who had died in a skiing accident—or so the official record claims. Tandy, or rather the persona of Tandy, recorded a couple months prior to her death, suspects foul play. Of the women mentioned, Tandy is the least embarrassingly written, but then she is only tangentially related to the plot and, what with not having a physical body, Silverberg is only able to ogle at her so much.
I’ve not even mentioned John Roditis and his underling Charles Noyles, business rivals of Mark’s who are clamoring for Paul’s persona. You may notice that this novel has more moving parts than Across a Billion Years, and certainly it’s the more ambitious of the two, the problem being that its shortcomings are all the more disappointing for it. Silverberg raises questions that he can barely be bothered with answering, and he alludes to things that remain mostly unrevealed. Much of To Live Again is shrouded in speculation, which is to say it uses speculation as a night-black cloak to cover things we sadly never get to see.
Another rule at the Institute is that a persona has to be of the same gender as its host, a rule that characters mostly write off as bogus. And indeed why not? Why should a male host and female persona not be able to coexist? Or the other way around. The prohibition has to do with transsexualism, which is certainly uncharted water for the most part. There has been very little science fiction written about transsexualism or transvestism—the possibility of blurring and even crossing gender lines. Unfortunately the novel does little with the ideas it presents. There are multiple references to religion and mythology (the word “dybbuk” refers to an evil spirit in Jewish mythology), including lines taken from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. There’s a minor subplot about white Californians appropriating Buddhist practices, in connection with the Institute, but this is so tangential that the reader can easily forget about it.
Finally, I want to mention that I was reminded eerily of another novel that came out this year, Philip K. Dick’s masterful and deranged Ubik, which I have to think Silverberg could not have known about when he was writing To Live Again. Both take cues from the Buddhist conception of reincarnation, although in Dick’s novel people who have died are kept in a state of suspended animation called “half-life,” whereas Silverberg’s characters die the full death, or “discorporate,” only that their personalities (up to a point) are kept intact. Not to make comparisons, but given that Silverberg’s novel is longer than Dick’s I have to say he does a fair bit less with the shared material. Of course, these are both talented writers, who at their best do very fine work indeed. Silverberg has become a major writer, but sadly he is not firing on all cylinders with either of the novels I’ve covered.
This book made me think of a Bulwer-Lytton novel for the Space Age.
This book could make Damon Knight take back everything he said about van Vogt.
This book made me long for the complexity of Commander Cody shorts.
This book’s style is so out of date that I think it fell out of the TARDIS.
This book wishes it had the character depth of a Lin Carter work.
And yet, I can't hate it the way I hated Light A Last Candle. That book was one mass of forgettable hate, but The Glass Cage is not hateful. It's incompetent at every turn, from line editing to plot development (I really don't know how it got the hardcover copy I received), but the overall effect is an oral record of a children's game.
There's this guy, Stephen, he’s twenty! He's a neophyte to the priests of the computer, TAL! It keeps life going in the city beneath its glass dome! Stephen is a perfect physical specimen, and his only flaw is being too curious about things. But that's because he’s secretly a spy for the Rebellion outside the glass dome!
The sentences are short and rarely have the benefit of internal punctuation. The characters are, generally, exactly how they appear — wicked characters with their close-together eyes, good characters with their strong jaws, straightforward manner, and perfect blonde hair. If this is chosen for adaptation, Tommy Kirk is made for the lead part.
The treatment of nuclear power seems to come from another time, where the leaders of interstellar development are in the Baltimore Gun Club rather than NASA. The giant computer, TAL, is attached to a nuclear bomb, to go off at a certain date, destroying the whole glass dome and the people within! No need to worry, though, Stephen and his various Rebellion people get most everyone out in time, except for the bad guy head priest of TAL, who is determined to die with his machine. Stephen and the gangster leader of the in-Dome Rebellion try to get him out, but to no avail! The nuclear bomb is about to go off, so the two of them hop on their air-sled, turn it skyward, and smash through the glass dome, just as the nuclear bomb goes off! Luckily, the nuclear bomb just pushes them a few miles away from the blast, where they are safe and unharmed.
One point of the book that is surprisingly forward-thinking is its treatment of one of the main characters being severely disabled. Despite being paralyzed from the neck down, he is a leader of the Rebellion, commanding through his immense psychic ability. But that cannot keep me from giving it…
Two stars
[A bit of a downer note to leave on, but at least there's some fine stuff upstream. See you next month, tiger!]
The September Amazing is fronted by one of Johnny Bruck’s more cliched covers, this one from Perry Rhodan #59 from 1962. It’s notable mainly for the fact that the guy with two guns and a fierce expression seems to be diving through a matter transmitter, and we see, impossibly, both the origin and destination of this dive. I guess it’s Omniscient Artist point of view.
by Johnny Bruck
This issue, like the last, is dominated by the Silverberg serial Up the Line, which is supplemented by two reprinted novelettes, one new short story, and one short story billed as new: Harlan Ellison’s Dogfight on 101, which is reprinted not from an old Amazing, but from the August Adam, apparently one of the numerous Playboy imitators. In the letter column, editor White says to a complaining reader: “As you’ll note, the reprints have reached a new minimum in this issue—and we will be using the older, more ‘classic’ stories when possible.” That would be a relief!
As to the covers, White says: “At the present we are using cover paintings originally published in Europe, on European sf magazines. The reasons for this are complicated, but financial. In any case, the names of the artists are not known to us, or we would credit them. While control over the visual package of the magazine is beyond your Managing Editor, I have been able to commission stories around some of the paintings we have—and you’ll be seeing the first in our next issue, Greg Benford’s ‘Sons of Man.’ In cases where this has not been possible, we’ve tried to use covers which are in some sense symbolic of the stories in the issue—as with this issue’s, which seems to me at least loosely evocative of time-travel and Robert Silverberg’s Up the Line.” It’s not a connection I would have ever made on my own.
I complained about the last issue’s assorted typefaces of varying readability, and I wasn’t alone. White says to a correspondent “this was a result of a change in typesetters, and has been rectified with this issue, as you’ve already noticed. I share your feelings on the subject, since I proofed the galleys and suffered several headaches therefrom!” This issue’s typefaces are not entirely uniform, but there’s less variation and they are all readable, though all pretty small, making room for a lot more wordage than before.
There’s a long editorial by White, consisting of a potted history of the SF magazines segueing into commentary about Old Wave vs. New Wave, both fair-minded and forceful (and very quotable if only space permitted), ending up at the same obligatory place as his prior comments: he wants good stories from whatever camp. He mentions that one of the anti-New Wave partisans appears in the letter column—and how:
“New Thing writing has nothing whatsoever to do with style, but it has everything to do with content. This is the exact opposite of what most commentators say, but most commentators are wrong.
“The basis of the New Thing is what Colin Wilson refers to as the ‘insignificance premise,’ the idea that the universe is unknowable and life is meaningless—a popular notion with the ‘mainstream’ for a long time, as you are aware.
“It is the ‘insignificance premise’ that underlies the elements that are most praised by critics favoring the New Thing—the emphasis on the primacy of evil, on anti-heroes, on plotless stories, the rejection of science in favor of mysticism, and the worship of ugliness and disaster. . . .
“The ‘insignificance premise’ is the common denominator that underlies much-praised writers like Ballard, Disch, Ellison, Spinrad and Vonnegut. Style has nothing to do with it, in fact, New Thing writers can get away with the most atrocious style provided only their content reflects the devaluation of values.”
This is signed “Yours for the Second Foundation, John J. Pierce, liaison officer.”
Ohhh-kay. Moving right along: the book review column is as substantial as usual, and more than usually whiplash-inducing. James Blish reviewing John Brunner, and dismissing the Novel of Apparatus, writes: “I could not finish Stand on Zanzibar, since I disliked everybody in it and I was constantly impeded by the suspicion that Brunner was writing not for himself but for a Prize. I did finish The Jagged Orbit, but only because it was mercifully shorter. I recommend against it, and all others of its ilk. Most of them were dead ends before their authors and their enthusiasts had even been born.”
Turn the page and Norman Spinrad is reviewing Stand on Zanzibar and concluding: “If Stand on Zanzibar proves anything, it proves that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. None of the sections (the unedited film) are particularly brilliant by themselves. The total book is. It’s all in the editing.” But he cautions: “Stand on Zanzibar is a brilliant and dangerous book. Brilliant because with it Brunner has invented a whole new way of writing book-length sf. Dangerous because what he has done looks so damned easy. I predict (while hoping that I am wrong) that a lot of other sf writers are going to try their hands at books like this.” Other reviews include Greg Benford on Piers Anthony (“Omnivore isn’t that bad”), Blish again, as William Atheling, on Fred Saberhagen (lukewarm), and editor White on Hank Stine’s sex change novel Season of the Witch (“if not lip-smackingly good pornography, a reasonably good sf book, and a rather better novel qua novel”).
Leon Stover’s “Science of Man” article, John D. Berry’s fanzine review column and Laurence Janifer’s film review of Charly (“a disaster”) finish out the issue.
Robert Silverberg’s Up the Line concludes in this issue (begun last issue). Judson Daniel Elliott III (Jud for short), former graduate student in Byzantine history, is at loose ends, having just fled a tiresome legal clerkship for New Orleans—Under New Orleans, that is. Cities are now underground. He walks into a sniffer palace (public drug den) looking to meet the pulchritudinous young women swimming nude in a tank of cognac as a come-on out front, and hits it off with Sam (formally, Sambo Sambo), who explains that his daddy bought his very black skin in a helix parlor (DNA shop). Sam invites everyone home with him for an evening of sex and (more) drugs.
So we are in an aggressively decadent future full of sex and drugs (sorry, no rock and roll). It’s also a future in which time travel is an amusement as accessible as transatlantic tourism is to us today. Sam, when he’s not minding the sniffer palace, is a Time Courier, leading tourists around in the past. Hearing of Jud’s soft spot for Byzantium, he suggests that Jud sign on too. Jud bites, and soon has his “timer”—“a smooth flat tawny thing that looked like a truss”—that will take him up and down the time-line.
There is training, of course, much of which focuses on paradoxes and how to avoid them, and the new hires are warned that their actions could wreck all of time, including their own present, and that the Time Patrol is watching for any transgressions.
What’s wrong with this picture? Maybe the idea that a technology that could destroy the world that developed it (speaking of paradoxes) would be left to an operation that screens and trains its employees about as thoroughly as a car rental agency might, and lets them go out leading tourists through past centuries with little visible supervision, is beyond belief, as is the notion that the Time Patrol is going to be able to identify all misdeeds and reliably correct them.
And in fact, Jud’s Time Courier colleagues mostly have their own anachronistic, or anti-chronistic, side ventures. His pal Sam has an enviable collection of new-looking period artifacts. Then there’s Dajani, taken off the Crucifixion beat after being found “conducting a side business in fragments of the True Cross, peddling them all up and down the timelines.” His punishment, decreed by the Time Patrol? Six months’ demotion to an instructorship teaching Jud and the other new hires! And Metaxas, who becomes Jud’s mentor, has set up a secondary identity for himself in early twelfth-century Byzantium, as a swell with a luxurious villa and large estate who hobnobs with the Emperor.
by Dan Adkins
And for some of the Time Couriers, time up the line has become a playground for their . . . pathologies? Eccentricities? The Courier Capistrano is systematically seeking out his ancestry, obsessed with the idea that when he is ready to die, he will find a particularly vile ancestor, kill him, and thus erase himself, or else be erased by the Time Patrol who will go further up and make him un-happen. And Metaxas is systematically seducing his female ancestors, because his father was cold and brutal, and so were his forebears—“It is my form of rebellion against the father-image. I go on and on through the past, seducing the wives and sisters and daughters of these men whom I loathe. Thus I puncture their icy smugness.”
Gives one confidence in time-line security, right? But the implausibility of the set-up is beside the point, since this is not a sober extrapolation of how a time-traveling world would work. Rather, its point—one of them, anyway—is to provide a hook for Silverberg to write an entertaining, colorful, and richly detailed story about visits to what seems to be one of his favorite stretches of history, which he does quite successfully. (Especially recommended is the Black Death tour, September issue, pages 41-43).
But there are other things going on. One of them is the author’s determination to smash, or at least drastically stretch, the usual proprieties of SF publishing. If novels still came with alternative titles (think Moby-Dick; or, The Whale), this one might have been Up the Line; or, Up Yours! The story is full of irreverent sexual references, often with misogynistic overtones. For example, trainee Jud is given a hypno-sleep course in Byzantine Greek, after which he “could order a meal, buy a tunic, or seduce a virgin in Byzantine argot.” Elsewhere: “The sweet fragrance of her drifted toward me. I began to ache and throb.” On a tour given by the above-mentioned Capistrano, an oil-lamp seller admires one of the women tourists, “taking a quick inventory and fastening on blonde and breasty Clotilde, the more voluptuous of our two German schoolteachers,” and “feeling the merchandise”; Capistrano chases him away (“I thought she was a slave!” protests the vendor). “Clotilde was trembling—whether from outrage or excitement, it was hard to tell. Her companion, Lise, looked a little envious.”
There are also a number of actual sexual encounters, described with a sort of arm's-length near-explicitness rarely found in the demure precincts of the genre magazines: “Metaxas sent his ancestress Eudocia into my bedroom that night. Her lean, supple body was a trifle meager for me. But she was a tigress. She was all energy and all passion, It was dawn before she let me sleep.” And some are much more cursory: “I bathed, slept, had a garlicky slavegirl two or three times, and brooded.” And there are other sorts of in-your-face vulgarity as well (remember Sam, actual name Sambo Sambo).
But back to the main plot and our main man. Jud doesn’t share Metaxas’s obsession with anachronistic incest, but does become preoccupied with tracing his ancestry in the region (his mother was Greek). Metaxas then tells him that he knows one of Jud’s ancestors in 1105, and offers to fix him up. (“She’s ripe for seduction. Young, childless, beautiful, bored. . . . and she’s your own great-great-multi-great-grandmother besides!”) And when Jud first lays eyes on her—“Our eyes met and held, and a current of pure force passed between us, and I quivered as the full urge hit me. She smiled only on the left side of her mouth, quirking the lips in, revealing two glistening teeth. It was a smile of invitation, a smile of lust.” She’s named—what better?—Pulcheria.
Metaxas is all too ready to arrange an opportunity and give Jud a cover story. And in the event: “She was shy and wanton at once, a superb combination.” As for him? It transcends the lubricious, and we will draw the curtain. Except, after a rest: “Redundancy is the soul of understanding.”
But storm clouds are gathering, and there’s a plot to be resolved. Jud returns from his tryst to find that Sauerabend, one of his tourist charges, has disappeared. He has gimmicked his timer so he can control it independently. Jud’s efforts, along with his time-posse of Courier friends, to track down Saurabend and restore the time-line without further disturbance ultimately fall short, at least for Jud’s purposes. Without giving more away, Silverberg milks the paradoxical possibilities of time travel for all they’re worth.
It’s a very readable and enjoyable novel, chockful of incident and colorful detail as well as definitively head-spinning play with time paradoxes. It’s also coarse, bawdy, and sexist. While it’s tempting to say “two out of three ain’t bad,” the treatment of women, who appear almost exclusively as sex objects or as near non-entities or ditzes among the tourists, is hard to swallow, and we will no doubt hear a lot about it when the reviews of the book start to appear. On balance, though, four stars.
But wait, there’s more! I have mentioned Silverberg’s assault on the proprieties of SF magazines. But Up the Line was written for book publication, and behold, the book has appeared from Ballantine as I was writing this. For those with a prurient interest in prurient interests and their satisfaction, we can compare the proprieties of magazine and book publication very directly. Usually, novels are cut for serial publication, but my very crude word count reveals little difference in length between book and serial versions, so it doesn’t appear that there’s been major cutting. Conveniently, both versions are divided into 63 short chapters. I have done some spot checks of textual differences, and they are mostly the sort you would expect.
Chapter 2 recounts Jud’s meeting Sam and the young women swimming in cognac, described above, and the only differences in text are italicized:
“Wearing gillmasks, they displayed their pretty nudities to the bypassers, promising but never quite delivering orgiastic frenzies. I watched them paddling in slow circles, each gripping the other’s left breast, and now and then a smooth thigh slid between the thighs of Helen or Betsy as the case may have been, and they smiled beckoningly at me and finally I went in.” There follows some snappy repartee as Jud and Sam meet cute, exchanging religious identities. Jud: “I’m a Revised Episcopalian, really.” Sam: “I’m First Church of Christ Voudoun. Shall I sing a [n-word] hymn?”
In Chapter 29, Jud, tracing his genealogy, meets his grandmother, who is at a ripe young age, and:
“It was lust at first sight. Her beauty, her simplicity, her warmth, captivated me instantly. I felt a familiar tickling in the scrotum and a familiar tightening of the glutei. I longed for her to rip away her clothing and sink myself deep into her hot tangled black shrubbery.”
And then there’s the encounter from Chapter 36 quoted above, brief in the magazine text but less so in the book: “Metaxas sent his ancestress Eudocia into my bedroom that night. Her lean, supple body was a trifle meager for me; her hard little breasts barely filled my hands. But she was a tigress. She was all energy and all passion, and she clambered on top of me and rocked herself to ecstasy in twenty quick rotations, and that was only the beginning. It was dawn before she let me sleep.”
And in Chapter 41, there’s a rather longer description—too long to quote—of an encounter, with Empress Theodora, no less, that Jud ultimately finds “mechanical and empty.” Then in the book is the following passage, completely omitted from the magazine:
“When I was fourteen years old, an old man who taught me a great deal about the way of the world said to me, ‘Son, when you’ve jizzed one snatch you’ve jizzed them all.’
“I was barely out of my virginity then, but I dared to disagree with him. I still do, in a way, but less and less each year. Women do vary—in figure, in passion, in technique and approach. But I’ve had the Empress of Bysantium [sic], mind you, Theodora herself. I’m beginning to think, after Theodora, that that old man was right. When you’ve jizzed one snatch you’ve jizzed them all.”
As for Jud’s rendezvous with Pulcheria, there’s a lot that got cut out of the magazine, but I will remain reticent. You can compare for yourselves in Chapter 47.
So, writers, editors, and publishers in this year of sixty-nine, er, 1969, you now have some clear signposts, if not a bright line, distinguishing the permissiveness of the magazine industry from that of book publishing. May you use them prudently.
Ellison’s Dogfight on 101 is a heavy-handed satire on the less than original premise that highway driving has for some become a field for macho posturing. George the protagonist, with his wife or girlfriend in the car, is challenged by a punk named Billy and they go sailing down the road in their armed and armored vehicles trying to kill each other. A sample:
“George kicked it into Overplunge and depressed the selector button extending the rotating buzzsaws, Dallas razors, they were called, in the repair shoppes. But the crimson Merc pulled away doing an easy 115.
“ ‘I’ll get you, you beaver-sucker!’ he howled.” (Speaking of pushing the limits of SF magazines’ propriety.)
by Rick Steranko
And, in case you haven’t figured it out on your own: “ ‘My masculinity’s threatened,’ he murmured, and hunched over the wheel.”
This goes on for seven pages. Who knew that slam-bang action could get so tedious so quickly? In the end Billy gets his through a very old-fashioned maneuver by George, but that’s not the end; the story closes with a clanging anvil of irony.
But it’s certainly slickly done for what it is. At the end, Ellison gives credit where it’s due: “The Author wishes to thank Mr. Ben Bova of the Avco Everett Research Laboratory (Everett, Mass.) for his assistance in preparing the extrapolative technical background of this story.”
Two stars.
The Edge of the Rose, by Joe L. Hensley
Joe L. Hensley has published a sporadic trickle of stories in the SF magazines since 1953, with some detours into men’s magazines and several collaborations with Ellison. His The Edge of the Rose is an extremely well done routine story, with stock elements from the ‘50s SF toolbox nicely fitted together in classroom demo fashion. Stop here if you don’t want me to spoil the ending!
The SFnal setting, and the big problem: in the future, physical ailments have been conquered, but mental ones have multiplied. “Life was too technical, too complex, on a planet gone wild with factories supplying jewel-like parts for the light drive, on a planet still divided politically, where any day might bring the end. And men, the good ones, the ones who thought and tried, retreated from it all far too often—back to the warmth of the womb, security, and total dependency.” Only the extraterrestrial Tanna plant can treat this affliction. Protagonist Tosti wanted to be a doctor and do good like his dad, who died with back-to-the-wombism, but since the physical ailments are conquered, there’s no need for doctors. Feeling kind of empty, he signs up to go to Tanna to hunt the plant.
So along with the big problem, we’ve got a sympathetic character with his own smaller but existential problem. Tanna harvesting requires men (sic) to scour the rugged terrain of the planet, cut the plants they find, and get to high ground quickly so they can signal their ship to come get them before the plants deteriorate. But on the way up with his bag of plants, Tosti encounters a group of the Tanna natives, ill from Earth diseases the humans brought with them. He stops and builds a fire to keep them warm, and finds he can’t leave them; falls asleep; and when he wakes, they’re gone and his bag of plants is empty.
So he returns to base, unsuccessful, and the ship is about to leave, when who appears but a procession of the natives, bringing with them more Tanna plants than the humans have ever seen—live, robust growing plants, in pots! Tosti realizes he belongs here with the natives. (“This race had no one, and the terrible need of someone if they were to survive.”) So everybody’s problem is solved: the Tannanians are going to get some help, our empty-feeling protagonist has done good and sees how he can be sort of like Daddy, and Earth may be able to grow its own Tanna plants and cure all the womb-returners! And the reader gets the warm fuzzy feeling of happy endings for all. This is all done in hyper-efficient and plain language, scarcely a word wasted. Three stars for substance, four for craft that makes it read much better than its substance warrants. Though if every story were like this I’d get tired of them very fast.
Edmond Hamilton’s Lost Treasure of Mars, reprinted from Amazing, August 1940, is as hackneyed as its title. If editor White is going to use “the older, more ‘classic’ stories,” he hasn’t started yet. Archaeologist Gareth Crane is exulting over his find—"the legended jewel hoard of Kau-ta-lah, last of the great Martian kings of Rylik.” Just the thing to keep the Institute of Planetary Science, which fights the interplanetary microbial diseases that followed the development of space travel, in business! His servant Bugeyes, an “amphibian swampman” from Venus, is mainly preoccupied with how cold it is on Mars. (“ ‘Unlucky day when Bugeyes listen to Earthman’s blandishings and sign up for servant,’ he moaned.”) This near-Stepin Fetchit routine—indeed, the whole story—is a considerable comedown from much of Hamilton’s earlier work both in imagination and in maturity. Well, Ray Palmer was editor by 1940, and this seems to be what he wanted.
by Julian S. Krupa
And speaking of Palmer, and his editorial philosophy “Gimme bang-bang!”, on the next page after Bugeyes’s plaint, a rocket-car lands and two men and a woman get out (“ ‘A girl!’ Crane muttered. ‘What the devil—’ ”) The “girl” thinks Crane is seeking the treasure that in fact he’s already found by using her imprisoned father’s research. Her two companions, supposedly hired guides, are actually in business for themselves. Once they find the jewels Crane is hiding, they are deterred from killing everyone else only by Crane’s offer to lead them to an even greater treasure—the Greatest Treasure, in fact. So off they go to the ruined city of Ushtu! They are looking for the palace and its underground treasures, and of course there’s a trap in what seems to be the treasure chamber, and there’s no escape, except Bugeyes saves the day by going down the drain of a large vat of water, and the nature of the Greatest Treasure is revealed. Two stars, that high only because of Hamilton’s professional rendering of this cliché-pile.
The Shortcut, by Rog Phillips
by Murphy Anderson
Rog Phillips’s The Shortcut (Amazing, July 1949) starts out with henpecked Arthur driving his wife May, an egregious backseat driver, to the Chicago airport. He picks up a hitchhiker because he knows May will quiet down with a stranger present. The hitchhiker suggests a shortcut which makes no sense, but it gets them to the airport in five minutes rather than 30. The hitchhiker gives a gibberish explanation for this. He suggests getting a meal, on him, and gives directions, and after several turns, they are in Hollywood. The hitchhiker buys a newspaper which reports that May’s plane has crashed, killing all aboard. Arthur is guiltily elated. Then the hitchhiker starts talking about shortcuts in time. He says “you can’t change things, but you can take advantage of them when you know the shortcuts.” Suddenly May is back in the back seat badgering him, and they’re back on the way to the airport. Arthur takes out a lot of insurance on her. Then he tries to take shortcuts on his own, gets lost, and winds up at a bigger airport than Chicago’s, where to his shock May disembarks and greets him. He has taken a final shortcut to where he definitely didn’t want to go.
This story, which revolves around glib double-talk reminiscent of Who’s On First?, reads like it was written for the even then defunct Unknown, though it might not have made the cut there. Still, clever and amusing. Three stars.
Wanted—A New Myth for Technology, by Leon E. Stover
In the letter column, one J. Edwards asks: “Dear Sirs: Why do you print ‘The Science of Man’?” Mr. Edwards doesn’t think much of science columns in SF magazines generally, but he also observes: “Stover’s columns read more like editorials than science columns; he seems mostly to be pushing his own opinions, and not much else.” Is there an echo in this subculture? Of Stover’s last article, I wrote: “Stover seems to have abandoned his project of educating us all about anthropology. Here we have a protracted editorial on the necessity for humanity to get its act together and get right with the biosphere. . . .” The editor responds: “You may (or may not) be pleased to hear that next issue we inaugurate a new science column, ‘The Science in Science Fiction,’ by Dr. Greg Benford.” While he does not say that Dr. Stover is history, that’s the implication.
Stover’s present article goes even further afield from anthropology than last issue’s, being a talk he gave at a symposium at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he is “Chairman of a science fictionish Committee for Metatechnology.” He starts by summarizing at length an old story by H.G. Wells called The Lord of the Dynamos, and then begins his sermon: “Somehow, we’ve lost our affection for technology. Engineering enrollment is falling, student protests are rising. Who will make the machines and structures of tomorrow?” Excuse me if I tiptoe out of the church. Not rated. Welcome, Dr. Benford!
Summing Up
Not bad, still moving forward. Up the Line makes up for a number of sins, while adding its own. Amazing is a work in visible progress. I am trying not to say “promising” yet again.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
Samuel Johnson described second marriages as the triumph of hope over experience. It is tempting to say something similar about changes of editor at Amazing. But that impulse is at least postponed by the upbeat mien of this July issue.
by Johnny Bruck
That sky is about as blue as any I've seen on a magazine cover, and more importantly, the cover goes some way to answer the cry for a good cover by Johnny Bruck, whose hackneyed spaceships and guys with guns have become so tiresome on recent issues. This one is a bit cartoonish, but at least it’s clever and amusing—a spaceport scene with some impressive-looking spacecraft, but the people on the ground have eyes only for the bright yellow futuristic automobile, with huge tailfins, a transparent dome over the passenger compartment, and whitewall tires. Oh, it has side fins too. Maybe it flies.
The magazine’s contents also lean in a promising direction. Almost half of the magazine (70 of 144 pages, excluding the front and back covers) is devoted to the first part of Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line. It’s rare for magazines to give that big a chunk of available space to a serial installment, but it makes sense in a bimonthly magazine. As a side benefit, it leaves less room for the reprints, which take up only 27 pages. The book review column is back, with substantial reviews by William Atheling, Jr. (James Blish) and editor White. The letter column is here again, and the promised fanzine review column has now appeared, nine pages worth, by John D. Berry. White’s editorial says that the fan feature in Fantastic will be reprints of selected fanzine articles. The guest editorials in Amazing will be gone—the editorial spot’s going to be his. It all gives a sense of an energetic editor getting a quick start at implementing his desires.
A more dubious innovation is the new typeface. Multiple typefaces are nothing new at Amazing, but Silverberg’s serial, Leon Stover’s article, and the book and fanzine reviews and letter column are set in a tiny typeface that challenges my ill-made eyes (see the glasses in my photo?). Microscopic type for things like letter columns is an old tradition—just check your copies of the Hugo Gernsback Amazing if the silverfish haven’t gotten to them—but for this much of the magazine it spells headache for me and I suspect many others.
The biggest deal in this issue is of course Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line. Silverberg, formerly a capable journeyman magazine-filler, has in recent years become a much more powerful and original writer. In just the past two years he has produced four novels that put him in a different league entirely than did his earlier work: Thorns, To Open the Sky, Hawksbill Station, and The Masks of Time, with several more out or on the way this year.
by Dan Adkins
Per my practice, I will hold off reviewing and rating Up the Line until it is finished. But a quick peek reveals that it is a time travel story, told in the first person by a young man at loose ends who joins the Time Couriers—not the Time Police, the Couriers’ nemesis—and that it is a considerable departure from the relatively serious recent works mentioned above. Parts of it suggest that the author wrote with the stage in mind. The vaudeville stage, that is. E.g., as the protagonist explains to his new friend the Time Courier why he abandoned his budding career as law clerk to a Judge Mattachine:
“My uncle is Justice Elliott of the U.S. Higher Supreme Court. He thought I ought to get into a decent line of work.”
“You don’t have to go to law school to be a law clerk?”
“Not any more,” I explained. “The machines do all the data retrieval, anyway. The clerks are just courtiers. They congratulate the judge on his brilliance, procure for him, submit to him, and so forth. I stuck it out for eight days and podded out.”
“You have troubles,” Sam said sagely.
“Yes. I’ve got a simultaneous attack of restlessness, weltschmerz, tax liens, and unfocused ambition.”
“Want to try for tertiary syphilis?” Helen asked.
“Not just now.”
So Mr. Silverberg appears to be having a good time. Reading a little further confirms that he also seems to be trying to offend everyone in sight, which may explain why this new novel by a fast-rising author is appearing in the field’s lowest-paying magazine, rather than in the more stately mansions of Pohl, Ferman, or JWC, Jr. In any case, I look forward to completing these scabrous revels.
Only Yesterday, by Ted White
Editor White’s Only Yesterday is a more somber time travel story, in which the ill-at-ease protagonist Bob approaches a young woman as she gets off a train, asks if he can walk with her, says he’s a friend of a friend (she suggestibly supplies the friend’s name, and he agrees), and she invites him in for refreshments and to meet the family. He hits it off with her and her brothers and her parents, and offers to tell her fortune—a futuristic vision which turns into nightmarish war. She’s shocked and disturbed, and he quickly says he was making it up, offers a more palatable vision, and beats a hasty retreat. Revelation of who he is and why he’s there follows. It’s smoothly written and well visualized, but the ease with which Bob inserts himself into the family setting is too implausible to overlook. Still, nice try, very readable, three stars.
Hue and Cry, by Bob Shaw
Bob Shaw’s Hue and Cry is about as far as one can get from his very well received Light of Other Days. It's a cartoonish story in which a spaceship full of humans lands among sentient carnivorous reptilians who think of them only as food, scheme to eat them all, and are thwarted with a silly gimmick. Two stars, generously.
Poison Pen, by Milton Lesser
The reprints in this issue are a mostly malodorous batch from the doldrums of the mid-1950s. The best that can be said for them is that they don’t take up much space.
Milton Lesser’s Poison Pen (from Amazing, December 1955) is a silly botch of a story. For thirty years, humanity has been under the thumb of the extraterrestrial Masters. Now they’ve left, and people are dancing in the streets. The main thing we know about the Masters is that they made people keep diaries and read from them in neighborhood gatherings, and that practice continues. Why? Dr. Trillis says it’s because the Masters taught everyone “from the cradle” to be compulsive exhibitionists (how?) so they could control people, “and the older generation either had to go along with it or feel left out.” So people ought to stop with the diaries and the readings, he says. But they don’t. Worse, they start stealing other people’s diaries and making fake entries in them—false confessions of having been “co-operationists.” Executions begin. Our hero helps Dr. Trillis escape and they wind up in a settlement of people “who somehow haven’t been contaminated,” in New Jersey.
by Paul Orban
If the description sounds sketchy and incoherent, that’s because the story is. It’s an insult to the readers, pretty clearly dashed off without a thought of anything but a quick check. One star.
No Place to Go, by Henry Slesar
by Erwin Schroeder
Henry Slesar’s No Place to Go (Amazing, July 1958), by contrast, is at least a competent piece of yard goods. A crack team of astronauts goes to the Moon, takes a look outside, and sees Earth blow up, leaving them alive but stranded. Shortly, some of the astronauts are blowing up too. But wait—April fool! It was all a test! They were drugged with a hypnotic chemical, visions planted in their heads while they slept! The captain then tells the guy who didn’t blow up that he’s now second in command, and he’ll be going to Mars. It's cliches wrapped around a gimmick, but unlike Lesser’s story, it doesn’t reek of contempt for the readership. Three stars, generously.
Note that in our crude rating system, what I’ve just described as “cliches wrapped around a gimmick” gets the same grade as White’s much more capable effort. Just remember that there’s a lot of space between 3.0 and 3.9.
Randall Garrett’s Puzzle in Yellow (Amazing, November 1956) is a trivial gimmick story on that ever-popular theme, the Stupid Alien. Extra-terrestrial Ghevil is scoping out Earth for invasion and pillage by the “hordes of Archeron.” He wants to check out an isolated military installation, so he finds a remote building with big walls and turrets, and figures he’s found what he’s looking for. He kills the first person he sees emerge from the building, and disguises himself in the man’s uniform. He tries to enter and is shot dead. Take a wild guess what the installation he tried to enter actually is. The yellow of the title, by the way, refers to Ghevil’s blood. Two stars, barely.
The Pendant Spectator, by Leon E. Stover
Leon Stover’s “Science of Man” article this month is The Pendant Spectator, a phrase he got from Samuel Johnson’s novel Rasselas, which means, more or less, someone with a view from a height. “Spaceship Earth” is also invoked. Stover seems to have abandoned his project of educating us all about anthropology. Here we have a protracted editorial on the necessity for humanity to get its act together and get right with the biosphere, limiting population, developing energy sources (i.e., the sun) that will neither pollute the atmosphere like fuel combustion nor overheat the place like nuclear power, engaging in international cooperation, accepting a degree of coercive regulation in these and other causes, etc. It’s hard to argue with any of it, but it’s also hard to imagine that the SF readership is who needs to hear it, so it seems a bit pointless. This series seems about ready to die a natural death. Two stars.
Summing Up
So the harbingers seem to be blowing in the right direction, even if the actual fiction contents, possibly excepting Silverberg, are not much changed from the recent norm. “Looking good” would be premature, but “looking like it might look good” would fit. Or—as I’ve said more times than I can count about this magazine—promising.
Venus has gotten a lot of attention from Earth's superpowers. Part of it is its tremendous similarity to our home in some ways: similar mass, similar composition, similar distance from the Sun (as such things go). But the biggest reason why so many probes have been dispatched to the Solar System's second world (to wit: Mariner 2, Mariner 5, Venera 1, Veneras 2 and 3, and Venera 4) is because it's the closest planet to Earth. Every 19 months, Earth and Venus are aligned such that a minimum of rocket is required to send a maximum of scientific payload toward the Planet of Love. Since 1961, every opportunity has seen missions launched from at least one side of the Pole.
This year's was no exception: on January 5 and 10, the USSR launched Venera (Venus) 5 and 6 toward the second planet, and this month (the 16th and the 18th), they arrived.
Our conception of Venus has changed radically since spaceships started probing the world. Just read our article on the planet, written back in 1959, before the world had been analyzed with radar and close-up instruments. Now we know that the planet's surface is the hottest place in the Solar System outside the Sun: perhaps 980 degrees Fahrenheit! The largely carbon dioxide and nitrogen atmosphere crushes the ground at up to 100 atmospheres of pressure. The planet rotates very slowly backward, but there is virtually no difference between temperatures on the day and night sides due to the thick atmosphere. There is no appreciable magnetic field (probably because the planet spins so slowly) so no equivalent to our Van Allen Belts or aurorae.
This is all information returned from outside the Venusian atmosphere. Inference. To get the full dope, one has to plunge through the air. Venera 4 did that, returning lower temperatures and air pressures. This was curious, but it makes sense if you don't believe the Soviet claim that the probe's instruments worked all the way to the ground—a dubious assertion given the incredibly hostile environment. No, Venera 4 probably stopped working long before it touched down.
The same may be true of Veneras 5 and 6. TASS has not released data yet, but while the two probes were successfully delivered onto Venus' surface, we have no way of knowing that they returned telemetry all the way down. Indeed, the Soviet reports are rather terse and highlight the delivery of medals and a portrait of Lenin to Venus, eschewing any mention of soft landing. The news does spend a lot of time talking about solar wind measurements on the way to Venus—useful information, to be sure, but beside the point.
The Venera spacecraft and lander capsule
Anyway, at the very least, we can probably hope to get some clarity on what goes on in the Venusian air. It may have to wait until next time before we learn just what's happening on the ground, however.
To Hell
I bitched last month about the lousy issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Well, I am happy to say that the May issue is more than redeemed by this June 1969 issue, which, if not stellar throughout, has sufficient high points to impress and delight.
Silverbob has a knack for poetic, evocative writing as well as rich settings. He has successfully made the transition from '50s hack SF author to New Wave vanguard. Which is why this rather forgettable tale is all the more disappointing.
It's about a Sioux spaceman named Tom Two Ribbons who is part of a terraforming contingent on a virgin planet. Except what his compatriots call terraforming, he calls genocide, for the millions of indigenous Eaters that they are clearing out to make room for farms are, he claims, intelligent. To prove his point, he goes out among the aliens, dancing their way and his way, hoping to avert catastrophe.
But is any of it real? Or is it all a figment of his traumatized mind?
I just found it all a bit hollow and affected, and also confusing. Not bad, but nowhere near Silverbob's best.
Three stars.
Pull Devil, Pull Baker!, Michael Harrison
A Jewish dentist finds himself implacably hostile to an Aryan patient, and, to his dismay, finds himself wanting to cause him pain in the examination chair. Turns out the two have a history that goes back centuries to another life, when the drill was in the other hand, so to speak.
So unfolds an age-crossing riddle, at the end of which lies a treasure of untold riches, if only it can be deciphered.
I dug this one. Maybe I'm biased. Four stars.
The Landlocked Indian Ocean, L. Sprague de Camp
De Camp offers himself up as a sort of half-rate Willy Ley, explaining why, for so long, the Indian Ocean was conceived of as a big lake rather than part of the world sea. There's a lot of good information here, but it's not quite as compellingly presented as it could be.
Three stars.
A Short and Happy Life, Joanna Russ
Here's a great little prose-poem on ingenuity involving a barometer. Good stuff. Four stars.
A Run of Deuces, Jack Wodhams
Aboard a superluminary cruise ship, the bored passengers come up with a betting pool to relieve their ennui: the winner of the pot is whomever guesses at what distance from their destination the ship will pop out of hyperspace.
A lot of sex. A lot of languour. A predictable ending. A low three (or a high two, if you're not in a good mood).
Last month, we were (re-)introduced to the Matuchek family: Steve the werewolf, Virginia the combat wizard, Valeria the moppet, and Svartalf the familiar. When Valeria was kidnapped by the agents of Hell, it was only a matter of time before her parents (and their cat!) would have to penetrate the perverse underworld to retrieve her.
Enlisting the aid of a pair of dead mathematical geniuses, in this installment, the trio warps into the infernal dimension, where they must face off against hordes of demons, baffling spatial topography, and the most evil of beings humanity has ever known.
There is good Anderson, there is boring Anderson, and there is middlin' Anderson. This story is firmly in the "good" camp, with vivid descriptions, engaging (and often funny) characters, and the sort of light, fantastic adventure we haven't seen from Anderson since Three Hearts and Three Lions. Poul does somber, dour, very well, so I think it's more work for him to keep things light—even as our heroes are arrayed against the forces of darkness! It's never frivolous, but there's a fey quality that keeps things on the right side of horrific.
And that episode in Hell! I've never read the like. My only regret is that it's not longer, with a little more time for the Matuchek squad to come up with their novel solutions so that the reader can better follow along. Perhaps it'll get expanded into a full length book at some point. I hope so!
Four stars for this installment and the book as a whole.
The Fateful Lightning, Isaac Asimov
A boffo piece on the discovery of electricity. It's good, although I found the explanation of how lightning rods actually work somewhat incomplete.
Four stars.
Repeat Business, Jon Lucas
A mom-and-pop boat charter take on a quartet of "travel agents" who are obviously (to the reader, at least) a bunch of aliens. The E-Ts are sussing out the charterers and their sailing vessel to see if they might be a hit back home on Sirius or Spica or wherever they're from.
It's not a badly written tale, but it's so obvious, and the protagonists so clueless, that it feels sub-par. Maybe this would have passed muster a couple of decades ago. Now it's old hat.
Two stars.
Back to Earth
And there you have it: big news in the skies and in the SFnal pages of F&SF. There's really no unpleasant reading at all in this month's mag, even if it isn't all novel or cutting edge, and the Anderson really ends with a bang—or a flash of brimstone, perhaps. Combined with the exciting space news, and the recent launch of Apollo 10 (article to come!) I am really feeling over the Moon.
Vehicles travelling very rapidly were in the news this month, both in a good way and in a bad way.
On March 2, the French/British supersonic airplane Concorde made its first test flight in Toulouse, France. At the controls was test pilot
André Édouard Turcat.
Up, up, and away!
The plane reached a speed of 225 miles per hour (far below the speed of sound) and stayed in the air for twenty-seven minutes. Just a test, but expect a lot of sonic booms in the near future.
The same day, tragedy struck the Yellow River drag racing strip in Covington, Georgia. Racer Huston Platt was at the wheel of a car nicknamed Dixie Twister when it smashed through a chain link fence and hurdled into the crowd at 180 miles per hour.
Image of the disaster from a home movie taken by a spectator.
Eleven people were killed instantly. One later died in the hospital. More than forty were injured.
All this rushing around is likely to induce vertigo. Appropriately, the Number One song in the USA this month is Dizzy by Tommy Roe, a catchy little number that captures the feeling perfectly.
Even the cover art makes my head spin.
Speed Reading
With no less than thirteen stories in the latest issue of Fantastic, it's obvious that several of them are going to be quite short, resulting in quick reading.
The new stories slightly outnumber the reprints, at seven to six, but the old stuff takes up more than twice as many pages. Apparently today's writers like to finish their works at a quicker pace than their predecessors. Or maybe it's just a lot cheaper to buy tiny new works and fill up the rest of the magazine with longer reprints.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
As usual, the cover is also a reprint. It appeared on the German magazine Perry Rhodan a few years ago.
Also as usual, the original looks better.
Characterization in Science Fiction, by Robert Silverberg
This brief essay by the Associate Editor promotes more depth of character in the genre, and praises new authors Roger Zelazny, Samuel Delany, and Thomas Disch for their skill in that area of writing. Can't argue with that.
No rating.
In a Saucer Down for B-Day, by David R. Bunch
Illustration by Dan Adkins.
The magazine's most controversial writer returns with a tale that is closer to traditional science fiction than most of his works. The narrator is an Earthman who is returning to his home planet with an alien. He wants to show the extraterrestrial Earth's big annual celebration.
The author makes a point about a current social problem, maybe a little too obviously. Even if this had been published anonymously, it would be easy to tell it's by Bunch from the style. (Just the fact that the narrator says YES! more than once is a strong clue.) More readable than other stuff from his pen.
Three stars.
The Dodgers, by Arthur Sellings
A sad introduction tells us the author died last September. This posthumous work features an engineer and a physician who land on a planet where many of the alien inhabitants are suffering from weakness and green blotches on their skin. As soon as the humans arrive, a bag full of gifts for the extraterrestrials vanishes. The mystery involves an unusual ability of the aliens.
I hate to speak ill of the dead, but this isn't a very good story. The premise strains credibility, to say the least, and the ending is rushed.
Two stars.
The Monster, by John Sladek
Illustration by Bruce Eliot Jones
A fellow eager to be a space explorer replaces a guy who's been the only person on a distant planet for a long time. The world turns out to be a dreary, boring place. The environment is so bad that our protagonist can't go outside for more than a moment. His only company is a robot in the form of a woman.
The author makes his point clearly enough. You're likely to see it coming a mile away. Still, it's not a bad little yarn.
Three stars.
Visit, by Leon E. Stover
The Science Editor for Fantastic and Amazing (which must be an easy job; do they ever have any science articles?) gives us this account of aliens landing in Japan. The American military officers present consult with a science fiction writer and a cultural anthropologist. After a lot of discussion, the aliens finally come out of their spaceship.
For a story in which not much happens this sure goes on for a while. Much of the text consists of references to other SF stories. The ending is anticlimactic. It left me thinking So what?
Two stars.
Ascension, by K. M. O'Donnell
The introduction reveals that O'Donnell is a pseudonym for the editor.
But which editor?
Glancing at the table of contents, you see that the Editor and Publisher is Sol Cohen, and the Managing Editor is Ted White. Cohen or White?
Trick question! It's actually Barry N. Malzberg, who was very briefly editor for Fantastic and Amazing. (My esteemed colleague John Boston goes into detail about the situation in his article about the March issue of Amazing.)
Obviously this issue was assembled under the auspices of Malzberg. Nobody ever said the publishing industry was fast.
Anyway, this is a New Wave yarn about a future President of the United States. (The 46th, which I guess puts the story somewhere around the year 2024 or so.) Civil liberties are thrown out, the President has an advisor killed, he gets kicked out by the opposition and shot, the cycle goes on. Something like that.
You can tell it's New Wave (with an acknowledged nod to J. G. Ballard) because sections of the text are in ALL CAPITALS and it ends in the middle of a sentence. I suppose it's some kind of commentary on American politics.
Two stars.
The Brain Surgeon, by Robin Schaefer
Guess what? This is yet another pseudonym for Malzberg. Must have had trouble filling up the issue. (No surprise, given the miserly budget.)
A man sends away for a home brain surgery kit that he saw advertised on a matchbook cover. He gets the instruments and an explanatory pamphlet in the mail. But what can he do with it?
Something about this brief bit of weirdness appealed to me more than it should. There's not much to it, really, but what there is tickled my fancy.
Three stars.
How Now Purple Cow, by Bill Pronzini
A farmer sees a (you guessed it) purple cow in his field. There's some talk of UFOs in the area. Then there's a twist at the end.
Very short, without much point to it. A shaggy dog (cow?) story. A joke without a punchline.
One star.
On to the reprints!
The Book of Worlds, by Dr. Miles J. Breuer
Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear with this pre-Campbellian work of scientifiction from the pages of the July 1929 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Hugh Mackay.
A scientist discovers a way to view the fourth dimension. This allows him to see a enormous number of worlds similar to our own Earth, at stages of development from the first stirrings of life to the future of humanity. What he perceives has a profound effect on him.
Illustration by Frank R. Paul.
I have to confess that I wasn't expecting very much out of a story from the very early days of modern science fiction. This was a pleasant surprise. The author clearly has a point to make, and makes it powerfully. What happens to the scientist at the end may strike you as either poignant or silly. Take your pick.
Three stars.
The Will, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The January/February 1954 issue of the magazine supplies this moving tale.
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
The narrator's teenage foster son is dying of leukemia. The boy is obsessed with a television program about a time travelling hero called Captain Chronos.
(No doubt this was inspired by the author's work on the TV show Captain Video not long before the story was first published.)
Illustration by Jay Landau.
The boy has a plan, involving his collection of stamps and autographs. But does he have enough time left?
Just from this brief description, you probably already have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen. Despite the fact that the plot is a little predictable, however. this is a fine story. The emotion is genuine rather than sentimental. The ending is both joyful and sad.
Four stars.
Elementals of Jedar, by Geoff St. Reynard
Hiding behind that very British pseudonym is American writer Robert W. Krepps. This pulpy yarn comes from the May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Cover art by H. J. Blumenfeld.
A spaceship captain with the manly name of Ken Ripper and his motley crew of aliens from various worlds are in big trouble. Forced to land on a planet said to be inhabited by living force fields of pure malevolence, they have to figure out a way to escape with their lives.
Illustration by Rod Ruth.
Boy, this is really corny stuff. I have to wonder if it's a parody of old-time space opera. When the hero curses by saying Jove and bounding jackrabbits!, it makes me think the author is pulling my leg. The fact that one of the aliens on the spaceship is a humanoid twelve inches tall makes me giggle, too. Even if it's tongue-in-cheek, a little of this goes a long way.
Two stars.
The Naked People, by Winston Marks
This story comes from the September 1954 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Ralph Castenir.
The combination of a sore ear and a fight in a tavern sends the narrator to the hospital with a brain infection. When he comes out of his coma, he is able to see the ethereal figure of a unclothed man. The lecherous fellow is able to solidify himself sufficiently to have his way with a pretty nurse while she's unconscious and under his control.
Illustration uncredited.
Then a female ghostly being shows up, with an obvious interest in our hero. It seems that these folks have been hanging around, unperceived by normal people, since the dawn of humanity. They materialize enough to steal food and, to put it delicately, act as incubi and succubi.
I get the feeling that the author didn't quite know how to end the story. The hero fends off the advances of the lustful female being and saves the pretty nurse from the male one. He even marries her. But the naked people are still around, with all that implies.
An unsatisfying conclusion and a slightly distasteful premise make for a less than enjoyable reading experience.
Two stars.
And the Monsters Walk, by John Jakes
This two-fisted tale comes from the July 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Cover art by Walter Popp.
The narrator starts off aboard a ship bound for England from the Orient. Burning with curiosity, he investigates the secret cargo hold, although the captain warned the crew this was punishable by death. He finds boxes containing humanoid creatures.
Barely escaping with his life, he makes his way to shore. Mysterious figures are out to kill him. On the other hand, a Tibetan mystic and a beautiful young woman try to help him. In return, they want his aid in combating a conspiracy to destroy Western civilization by using demons to slaughter world leaders.
Illustration by David Stone.
John Jakes is best known around here for his tales of Brak the Barbarian. Those stories proved that he had studied the adventures of Conan carefully. This yarn convinces me that he is also very familiar with the pulp magazines of the 1930's.
I'll give him credit for not being boring, anyway. The action never stops, although you won't believe a minute of it. The author's intense, almost frenzied style keeps you reading.
Three stars.
I, Gardener by Allen Kim Lang
Our last story comes from the December 1959 issue of the magazine.
Cover art by Ed Valigursky.
The narrator pays a visit to a prolific writer. He speaks to a very strange gardener, who proves to be something other than what he seems.
I'll leave it at that, because I don't want to give away too much about the simple plot. You may be able to figure out who the model for the writer is, given the title of the story and the fact that the character's name is Doctor Axel Ozoneff. (The introduction to the story makes it obvious, so I'd advise not looking at it.)
Not a great story.
Two stars.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Alexei Panshin
Leiber looks at novels by E. R. Eddison, and Panshin has kind words to say about The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.
No rating.
Quickly Summing Up
Another average-to-poor issue, with only Miller's story rising above that level. At least most of the pieces make for fast reading, although a couple of the worst ones may make you furious at their lack of quality. You may be tempted to watch an old movie on TV instead.
From 1954, so it should show up on the Late, Late Show sometime soon.
China's got the Bomb, but have no fears—they can't wipe us out for at least five years…
So sang satirist Tom Lehrer in 1965 for the television show That Was the Week that Was. Well, here we are, about five years later, and the Chinese have graduated to the big time. 18 months ago, they tested their first H-Bomb, the big firecracker that involves nuclear fusion rather than fission, with a damage yield equal to more than 100 times that of the Hiroshima A-Bomb. A try at #2 last year was a dud, but one detonated less than a fortnight ago went off just fine, creating a 3 megaton blast.
Radio Peking announced the blast on December 29th, but the Atomic Energy Commission had detected the blast the day before. It was apparently timed in celebration of Mao Tse Tung's 75th birthday. (In China, if you go carrying pictures of the Chairman, you will make it with someone…)
The bright…uh…positive side to this is that China's missiles, if there be any, are probably mostly pointed at the Soviet Union. Apparently, the Russians have beefed up their border divisions, and inter-Communist relations are sub-frosty.
So perhaps we have another five years…
Bigger than a half-dozen magazines
On the homefront, the latest issue of Galaxy, the magazine with half again as much content as all the others, offers some boffo entertainment as well as a few duds.
by John Pederson Jr.
To Jorslem, by Robert Silverberg
The ever-productive Silverbob offers up what may (but may not) be the final installment in his vivid Nightwings series. I'm sure we'll see a fix-up soon, a la To Open the Sky. According to Bob, this is his modus operandi—sell novellas to Galaxy editor Pohl, and then corral them into a novel.
by Jack Gaughan
Following directly on the heels of the last story, the invaders have fully Vichy-ized the Earth. Tomis, formerly a star-surveying Watcher, and then an historian of the caste Rememberers, is now a Pilgrim. Accompanied by the haughty Olmayne, cast out of the Rememberers for her slaying of her husband to be with the (now dead) former prince of Roum, the two make their way toward the holy city of Jorslem. Tomis is burdened not only with Olmayne's company but also the knowledge that he has sold out humanity, giving the invaders records of the Terran subjugation of the aliens' ancestors—thus justifying the invasion.
The story is something of a travelogue, something of a search for redemption, and it's written absolutely beautifully. It's not New Wave, exactly, but it's qualitatively different from what filled Galaxy last decade (or, indeed, what continues to fill Analog). Maybe Silverberg is leading a one-man revolution.
"Jorslem" does not quite achieve five stars, however. The plot is thin, even as (and perhaps especially as) a climax to the series. The happy endings come too suddenly and a bit implausibly. Female characters exist to be lovers or harpies.
Nevertheless, the world is so beautifully rendered, and the prose so masterfully done, that you'll enjoy the journey regardless.
Four stars.
Now Hear the Word of the Lord, by Algis Budrys
An alien race has controlled the world since 1958, secretly and tirelessly infiltrating every level of our society. One lone voice, a representative of the World Language League, finds a member of this cabal and threatens to kill him in order to learn the true extent of the invasion. The truth is shocking enough to blow your circuits.
A humdrum plot, but excellent, sensual telling. Four stars.
Another aliens-among-us story. This time, the baddies are the Fnools, who perfectly ape members of a given profession—realtors, minor cabinet officials, what have you. Only one thing gives them away: they are all only two feet tall.
But what if there was an easily accessible way for them to grow to human height? All hope would be lost!
This is a silly story, and most of the goodwill it earns is thrown away by the rather tasteless ending.
Two stars.
Golden Quicksand, by J. R. Klugh
by Jack Gaughan
The ferret ship H.L.S. Solsmyga is running for its life from two Grakevi raiders at thousands of times the speed of light. Its crew are protected from the tremendous accelerations involved only by the use of liquid-filled, individual pods, linked by the computerized Shipmind. If only the Solsmyga could use its superior maneuverability to ditch its pursuers; but in fact, Commander Yuri Hammlin's mission is to lead the raiders into a trap.
The running battle is competently presented, with lush, pseudotechnical detail, and Gaughan peppers the story with pretty, albeit superfluous, pictures. Ultimately, though, it's just a combat story. There is an attempted stingy tail, but it's more of an appendix.
Three stars.
Our Binary Brothers, by James Blish
by Brock
A driven man achieves everlasting success on Earth, but that's not enough. Repelled by humanity's technological quagmire, he longs for a simpler, cleaner world. And he finds one orbiting a hitherto undiscovered dwarf star just a fifth of a lightyear away. There, he sets himself up as a God and slowly leads the unwashed masses there toward a better civilization.
But planets comprise multiple populations, and not all are as backward as the hill people first encountered by the Terran…
A well-written but one-note vignette. Three stars.
For Your Information: The Island of Brazil, by Willy Ley
This is a fascinating piece on a variety of Atlantic land masses that never were. It's a nice complement to his piece on Atlantis.
Five stars.
Kendy's World, by Hayden Howard
by Reese
Kennedy Olson was born to high hopes just before the National Emergency turned the United States into an increasingly autocratic police state. After the death of his hippie, goodnik father, the boy coasted through life on his athletic skills and his winning smile. Come his junior year in high school, "Kendy" had more than a dozen scholarship offers, but the most persuasive came from the small California campus of National University. Seemingly too good to be true, the old-fashioned college offered a well-rounded education, sports opportunities, and a chance to make a difference.
Except that NU is really a training ground for spies, and the big bad isn't the Soviets, but the unspeakable, top secret horror they found when they tried to land on Phobos…
From the author that brought us The Eskimo Invasion, this story appears to be the setup for another serialized novel. The writing is strictly amateur, and there's not much story here—just a series of unpleasant events. I am curious about the alien menace, though, if it ever be developed.
Two stars.
Finish with a bust
As promised, there's lots of good stuff, and a fair bit of mediocrity in this first Galaxy of 1969. Ending with the weakest tale probably makes sense, but it does leave a bitter taste in the mouth. Nevertheless, the issue finishes on the positive side of the three-star divide, and that's a good enough New Year baby for me!
How about two of them, with Dick Martin from Laugh-In…
A school for young wizards: What could possibly go wrong!
I wanted to like last year's City of Illusions, but the book fell flat. However, I saw the potential in Ursula K. Le Guin as a writer. Her ideas in the book were good, it was the execution that was lacking, so with her latest book out, A Wizard of Earthsea,I figured I’d give her another try.
Ged is an ambitious young wizard with a hunger for knowledge and power. The book follows his journey from childhood into adulthood, first starting when he attends a school for wizards. There he learns the basics of magic, makes friends and a rival. He also unleashes a dark being that wants him dead, but thanks to magic protection around the school, he is safe for the time being.
It isn’t until Ged graduates and becomes a practicing wizard for various villages that he really learns the hard lessons of magic. Now outside the protection of school, he is pursued by the dark being, eventually forced to turn and fight it, putting his skills to the ultimate test.
Fantasy as a genre doesn’t excite me as an adult, as it is often too whimsical and too escapist, too detached from our own world. A Wizard of Earthsea managed a careful balance, with an attention to the laws of magic and how it is able to be used. Wizards can only use so much magic at a time, and overexerting oneself or attempting a spell higher than one’s skill has physical consequences, causing wounds to appear on the body. Throughout the book, we see Ged test these limits, only to end up in lengthy recovery each time. Eventually, he does go too far and ends up permanently scarring himself.
I liked the concept of true names: learning the true name of a creature, plant, object or place is the key to all spells in this world. Even people have true names that they keep secret, instead using an alias in day to day life. While Ged is the main character’s true name, and the narrative refers to him as such, in dialogue he is called “Sparrowhawk” by other characters. I loved the intimate moments of friendship when true names were exchanged, showing a great amount of trust between characters.
Ged makes a compelling main character, with his distinctive flaw being his own hubris. Time and again, he tries magic that is way above his level only to be hurt. He attempts to raise the dead, despite knowing that it can’t be done, and suffers the consequences. It's because of his hubris that a dark creature is brought into the world who specifically hunts him, creating the main conflict of the book. But we’re shown that he has other values. He isn’t greedy. When he fights the dragon, his only motivation is duty to the town he serves. When the dragon offers him some of his treasure as a reward, he declines. Most of the time when Ged overexerts his magic, it isn’t in pursuit of fame. Ged truly wants to help people, even when it’s past his capabilities.
You know it's a good book when there's a map
With this book, I finally saw what I knew Le Guin was capable of as a writer. She's always created compelling unique worlds readers want to immerse themselves in, but now her writing can back up her ideas. Maybe because this is her first foray into juvenile fiction or perhaps she is simply growing as a writer.
I look forward to what she writes next.
Four stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
Tomorrow and Yesterday
The latest Ace Double (H-95, two quarters and a dime at your local drug store paperback rack) contains one novel looking forward in time, and one collection glancing backwards at the author's recent career.
We begin with a brilliant mathematician from California sneaking around through a remote area of Wisconsin, ready to kill a man. We cut away from this scene to find a government agent from Washington, D.C., in Los Angeles, preparing to assassinate the richest man in the world.
Why all this homicidal intent?
Flashbacks tell us what's going on. John Androki is a fellow who shows up out of nowhere. He convinces a rich guy that he can predict exactly how stocks will move up or down in the future. The millionaire sets him up with some cash in exchange for the information. Androki goes on to not only be the wealthiest person on Earth (yep, he's the intended target of the government assassin) but to wield immense political power all over the world.
Our protagonist is Bertram Kane, a brilliant mathematician (yep, he's the guy stalking a man in Wisconsin) who is working on a theory of multiple dimensions. He's a widower who's having an on-again off-again affair with Anita Weber, an art professor. His buddy is Gordon Maxon, a professor of psychology.
Maxon is convinced that Androki can perceive the future (hence the novel's title.) He calls him a downthrough, a word that's new to me. Kane isn't convinced, but when Weber dumps him for the incredibly rich and powerful Androki, he becomes suspicious.
Things get scarier when other mathematicians working on multiple dimensions are murdered. Coincidence, or is Androki arranging for their deaths? And is Kane next on the list?
You may figure out the main plot gimmick, which explains why Kane is out to kill a completely innocent man. (The government assassin's motive is less mysterious. Androki is changing America's relations with other nations in ways the United States government doesn't like.)
Basically a suspense novel with a science fiction gimmick, the plot creates a fair amount of tension, although parts of it are talky. There are quite a few murders along the way, and a pretty grim ending.
Three stars.
So Bright the Vision, by Clifford Simak
Cover art by Gray Morrow.
Four stories, dating from 1956 to 1960, by a noted author appear in this volume.
First printed in the June 1960 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, this lighthearted yarn starts with a huge agate appearing in a guy's yard, along with the tiny critters mentioned in the title. Chaos ensues.
The Noble Editor gave it a lukewarm review when it first appeared, and that's fair. It's a pleasant enough bit of gentle comedy, but hardly profound.
The April 1958 issue of Infinity Science Fiction is the source of this oddly titled (and odd) story.
An elderly fellow collects stamps from alien worlds, piling them up in his rat's nest of a home. Some of the stamps are actually made up of living microorganisms. When mixed with broth made by an overly friendly neighbor, they jump into action and start organizing the guy's messy collection.
There's a strong resemblance to the previous story, which also had tiny creatures helping folks at first, but going a little too far. This one is a lot stranger than the other one, and a little more complex. (I haven't mentioned the role played by stuff that the old man receives from an alien pen pal, or what the weird title means.) Interesting for its eccentricity, if nothing else.
The August 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe supplies the story that gives the collection its title.
At a future time when Earth is in contact with several alien worlds, the only thing of value humans can supply is fiction. Other beings don't make up things that aren't true, and they're fascinated by the concept.
The fiction is created via programmed machines, with a little human input. Writing by hand (or pencil, pen, or typewriter) is considered old-fashioned, and even vulgar.
The plot follows the misadventures of a so-called writer who has fallen on hard times. His machine is on its last legs, and he can't afford a new one. A fellow writer's secret leads to a sudden decision.
Much of the story consists of discussions of the importance of fiction. The automated fiction machines seem intended as a dark satire of uninspired hackwork. It's clearly a heartfelt work, and the author manages to convey his passion.
This yarn comes from the pages of the September 1956 issue of Science Fiction Stories.
A newspaper reporter investigates some odd events. There's the sudden, seemingly merciful death of someone suffering from a terminal illness. A scientist's papers are rearranged, giving him the clue he needs to complete his work. The reporter suggests, in a joking article, that these and other happenings might be the work of brownies. He's not too far off the mark.
Once again we have small beings helping humans. This time their efforts are entirely benign, unlike the golden bugs (who ignored people completely, and only worked for their own goals) and the microorganisms from the alien stamp (who went a little too far in their effort to organize things.) This is a sweet, simple little story, benefiting from the author's own experience as a newspaperman.
Three stars.
The title story is definitely the highlight of the collection. As a whole, that bumps the book up to three and one-half stars.
There's no question that Star Trek is a bona fide phenomenon. Now in its third season (and so far, quite a good season it is), it is a universe that has launched several dozen fan clubs, most with their own 'zines, many with Trek-fiction included. Professional tie-in merchandise is booming, too, from the AMT model kits of the ships in the show, to Stephen Whitfield's indispensable The Making of Star Trek, to Gold Key's dispensable comic book.
The latest release is the very first (that I'm aware of) professional original Trek story, Mission to Horatius by none other than SF veteran Mack Reynolds. That a familiar name should be tapped to write Trek tales is not a surprise. Episodes of the show have been written by SFnal talents Norman Spinrad, Ted Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Jerome Bixby; and James Blish has written two collections of episode novelizations (well, noveletizations).
So how does Reynolds' effort rate? First, let's look at the story:
The Enterprise has been out on patrol so long that ship's stores are low and the crew is beginning to suffer from "cafard". This malady is a kind of isolation sickness that can lead to mass insanity. Before the ship can return to starbase, however, it receives a distress call from the Horatius system just beyond the Federation.
There are three Class M planets in the system, all inhabited by pioneers who don't want to be Federated. They are the primitive society of Neolithia, which operates in bands and clans; the theological autocracy of Mythria, controlled by a happy drug called "Anodyne" (a la "Return of the Archons"); and the Prussian military state of Bavarya. This world is the most dangerous, as they have designs on conquering the Federation, and they are building an army of clones ("Dopplegangers") toward that end.
Uncertain as to from which planet the distress signal originated, Kirk leads a landing party composed of his senior officers to each planet in turn. Meanwhile, the strings on Uhura's guitar break one by one, and Sulu's pet rat gets loose. Cafard causes 40 crew members to be put in stasis. It's not a happy trip. But in the end, it's a successful one when Kirk finds the that Anna, the daughter of "Nummer Ein" on Bavarya, summoned the Enterprise to thwart her father's nefarious scheme,
Well. There's quite a lot wrong with this book. Reynolds makes serving on the Enterprise feel like the worst duty in the galaxy. Maybe this is realistic, but from what we've seen, the crew isn't this unhappy. As for "cafard", if our nuclear submarine crews don't suffer from such issues, I can't imagine a crack Starfleet crew would.
Reynolds' characterizations are only cursorily accurate. Indeed, Mission feels more like a lesser story in his Analog-published United Planets series of stories, featuring a decentralized set of worlds with every kind of government imaginable. There's an undertone of smugness as Kirk destroys one society after another—first by beaming down an anodyne-antidote into the Mythran water supply (if Scotty can manufacture ten pounds of the stuff in ten minutes, why can't he synthesize new strings for Uhura?), and then by destroying all five million dopplegangers on Bavarya…who may well have been sentient beings.
And finally, McCoy staves off cafard by making the crew believe that Sulu's rat has Bubonic Plague, and that it must be killed to save the ship. The rat does not have a happy ending.
Most eyeroll inducing passage: "Anna, womanlike, had been inspecting Janice Rand's neat uniform. Now she responded to the bows of the men from the Enterprise. She was perhaps in her mid-twenties, blond, and, save for a slight plumpness, attractive."
(emphasis added)
Even accepting that the target audience is on the younger side (given that the publisher is Whitman), this does not really excuse all the problems with Mission to Horatius. Moreover, the stirring introduction seems to have been written for an entirely different story!
There are pictures by Sparky Moore. They are adequate, but the characters don't look too much like our heroes.
Two stars.
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
In the run up to Christmas, I received a special treat through my letterbox: a second Orbit anthology for 1968. Will it do better than #3?
Orbit 4
Cover by Paul Lehr
Windsong by Kate Wilhelm
Starting with the series’ most regular contributor, Wilhelm’s story concerns Dan Thornton, an overworked executive. He is trying to solve the problem of an armored computer that should be able to act as a policeman. However, it cannot cope with the stress of unexpected situations. To get solutions he has been working with the psychologist Dr. Feldman to see if his dreams yield any ideas but, instead, he keeps dreaming about Paula. She was a free-spirited “windsong” from his teenage years, a person who could instantly analyse patterns to understand the world in ways others could not.
I have been noticing a pattern emerging with Wilhelm’s writing. She wants to experiment with form and content but rarely manages to deliver a strong balance between the two. In this case it is the style that works well, using the dream sessions in a way that would please the New Wave, but the actual plot leaves something to be desired, not really travelling anywhere fast and engaging in some obvious cliches.
Evens out at Three Stars
Probable Cause by Charles L. Harness
Harness recently returned from his parental leave and is back to writing, getting an even warmer reception this time around. Using his legal background, he brings us the discussion of a supreme court case, one where the constitutionality of a conviction depends on an interesting question. If a search warrant is granted based on a psychic reading, does this violate the fourth and\or fifth amendments?
Whilst some of the arguments here do not make much sense to me, I am neither a lawyer nor an American. As such, I am happy to bow to Harness’ knowledge of constitutional jurisprudence. What I question is the length of it all. At over 60 pages, this is the second longest story to yet grace the pages of Orbit. But it is just some justices sitting in a room discussing a piece of legal theory. This might be worth a vignette, but I needed more to justify a novella.
Two Stars
Shattered Like a Glass Goblin by Harlan Ellison
Rudy has finally gotten out of the army on medical, only to find his fiancée Kris in a marijuana-drenched squat in downtown LA. Is he just not “with it” anymore? Or is something more sinister going on?
If this was from an older writer, I would assume it was a crass attempt to be relevant. With Ellison I am willing to assume he is in earnest in writing a hippy horror story. It is not entirely clear if what we see really happened or if it just a massive drug trip, but that actually makes it work better for me.
Four Stars
This Corruptible by Jacob Transue
This is an author of which no information is given, nor one I've heard of before. Is it perhaps a pseudonym?
Thirty-five years ago, scientists Paul and Andrew departed on bad terms. Whilst the former went into seclusion, the latter became vastly wealthy. Andrew now seeks out Paul after learning of his new discovery, the ability to renew a person’s life.
This reads like a middling story from 15 years ago. Whilst some horrifying imagery raises it up, it is pulled back down by lechery.
Two Stars
Animalby Carol Emshwiller
A strange animal is kept in the city by its keepers. What could it be?
This is a stylistic piece that will depend on your tolerance for this kind of prose:
It was said, on the second day, that he did not look too unhappy. A keeper of particular sensitivity brought him both a grilled cheese sandwich and a hamburger so it might be seen what his preferences were, but still he ate nothing.
This reader was unhappy, feeling nothing.
One Star
One at a Time by R. A. Lafferty
In Barnaby’s Barn, McSkee tells tall tales. But what if they are true?
I feel about Lafferty’s writing the way Superman does about Kryptonite. As such, I struggle with him at the best of times. This one I found it impossible to read. I don’t like bar-room frames or tall tales, I was confused by the style and was generally perplexed throughout.
A subjective One Star
Passengers by Robert Silverberg
In an interesting take on the Puppet Masters concept, Earth has encountered strange creatures called passengers. They can “ride” anyone, at any time, with no way to detect or stop them. Once a Passenger leaves a person, the memory goes. Our narrator wakes up to find he slept with a woman whilst he was ridden. However, upon exercising in Central Park he believes he has found her, even though she doesn’t remember him.
Anyone who has read Silverberg of late knows of his strange recurring writings about young women, so I will not belabour the point here. Your rating will probably result from how you balance the concept against this tendency. I come down in the middle.
Three Stars
Grimm's Story by Vernor Vinge
The planet Tu is a world that contains almost no metals. Whilst some technologies, such as pharmaceuticals, hydrofoils and optics, have been able to develop, others, such as heavier than air flight, have not.
It is on this world that Astronomy student Svir Hedrigs is approached by Tatja Grimm, the science editor of Fantasie magazine. She has a dangerous mission for Hedrigs, to stop the destruction of the last complete collection of Fantasie.
In less skilled hands this could easily have been contrived and fannish. Instead, Vinge spins a fascinating intricate plot and fully imagined world, touching on a number of interesting themes with complicated characters. It stumbles a little at the very end, stopping it from gaining a full five stars, but still very good.
A high four stars
A Few Last Words by James Sallis
Hoover is beset by bad dreams. He decides to head to Doug’s coffee shop where we learn from them why the cities are now so empty.
Well written and atmospheric, appealing to this sufferer of parasomnia.
Four Stars
Continuing a steady Orbit
Once again, Orbit contains some of the best and worst of SF for me. This issue more than most, though, is going to be a subjective one. So much is based on style that it cannot help but appeal to personal taste. I know others have considered Animal among the best and Grimm’s Story among the weakest. Whatever your tastes, I think there will be something in here for you to chew on.
This completely passed me by on first release but an ad for it from the Science Fiction Book Club in last month’s New Worlds was enough to convince me to get it. But was it worth me trialing a membership from them?
The so-called “end of the universe” is an area where physical laws as we know them break down. Sometimes this abstract nothingness recedes, sometimes it expands and swallows galaxies, leaving impossible creations in its wake. The Warden Corps have been set up at its current edge to monitor and explore the strange phenomena.
Among those who come to the current planetoid of the Warden Corps is Helena Kraag. Whilst the daughter of one of the richest men in the galaxy, she has become withdrawn from people since the loss of her mother. At first, she attempts to look straight into the nothingness and loses her sense of identity. In spite of this she still travels with the rest of the crew into this impossibility.
Unfortunately, their Heisenberg shields fail as they enter. As you can probably guess, things start to get strange.
Now, you might expect this to just then be a kind of surreal trip, a la Alice in Wonderland or Phantom Tollbooth. However, what Joseph produces is a kind of fractured character exploration. As we move through these different bizarre situations we learn more about each of the members of the crew and gain understanding of what motivates them.
There are so many delicious details. Initially this looks like it is going to be some kind of 19th Century comedy of manners, but we soon learn this has been carefully set up. Rather it is a kind of conditioning, one to allow the fliers to maintain a solid form of identity. Even when it feels like I am reading the lyrics to I Am The Walrus, there is clear intent and structure behind it.
Joseph is also a master of language and you feel yourself getting knowledge and beauty within the surreality. For example:
Everything and nothing had both happened and not happened; time was as broad as it was long; space was neither here nor there; the loop of eternity threaded itself through the eye of zero.
This kind of sentence could have been gibberish. But the way he phrases it and following the scenarios we have gone through, I absolutely understand what he is getting at.
I could go through all the characters and scenarios to explore the meaning behind it, but I think it is better to take the journey yourself. As Helena says, it is “like falling through the hole in the zero.” It may not be something that is at once fathomable but it is a new experience worth having.
Although primarily known as a poet, he clearly understands science fiction well and has an affinity for it (see, for example, the poem "Mars Ascending"). Here is hoping for more such forays.
Moondust by Thomas Burnett Swann takes place in and around the ancient city of Jericho. Swann’s Jericho is a poverty-ridden city ruled by the Egyptians, its denizens apprehensive about the steady approach of the Wanderers, a flood of former slaves absconding from Egypt.
Bard ekes out a meager existence in this city with his mother and beautiful younger brother Ram. Ram is stolen one night and replaced by an unbecoming changeling. Bard accepts the fat, ugly Rahab and comes to think of her as a sister until years later when an elusive, feline creature known as a fennec arrives. Rahab then magically transforms into a beautiful woman with wings and disappears one night.
Determined to rescue Rahab, Bard enlists the aid of his friend, Zeb. Together they track Rahab down to the underground city, Honey Heart, where the fennecs rule as gods and Rahab’s kind, the People of the Sea along with beautiful human males–including the long lost Ram– are docile slaves to the fennecs. Bard and Zub must now find a way to wrest Rahab from the insidious control of the fennecs and make it out of Honey Heart alive.
Moondust is a highly imaginative and reasonably interesting story but I did not—could not bring myself to enjoy it. At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what bothered me about this novel. Then it finally occurred to me. This book has no soul, no humanity. Moondust feels like a book written from the clinical lens of a white Westerner who thinks he’s better than the people he’s writing about.
Apparently, people living in poverty must always be dirty and have very little regard for personal hygiene. If humans own slaves, those slaves must be black. What else could they possibly be? Beautiful women are nothing but whores. Fat people are ugly, and the Israelites had very big, very ugly feet.
I believe these small details were meant to add color to the story’s world, but obviously originate from a place of thinly veiled disdain.
The main character, Bard, is not one with whom I could sympathize. His little brother is stolen—kidnapped in the dead of night. Even though Bard bemoans the loss, not once does it occur to the self-absorbed nincompoop to go looking for his five-year-old sibling. Instead, he magnanimously accepts the supposedly fat, ugly changeling named Rahab left in his brother’s place as a sister and simply carries on with his life as if that makes any sense.
Years later, when Rahab literally sheds her “ugly” skin and becomes a beautiful creature of a woman, she then becomes a harlot. What else could she possibly become?
When Rahab disappears, summoned back to the underground city of Honey Heart by the fennec, Chackal, Bard immediately enlists the aid of his friend, Zeb and races off in search of his beloved sister. This raises the question of why he was so desperate to save the sibling unrelated by blood–who left voluntarily–but had possessed no inclination to go off in search of his biological brother, Ram.
Once Bard and Zeb descend into Honey Heart, the story loses all coherence for me. The contrived mish-mash of magic, ancient Eastern culture, and biblical myth falls short of a finely woven tale. Moondust merely rankled.
If I’ve learned anything from Swann it’s that you can learn the history and possess infinite academic knowledge of a culture but your words aren’t going to touch anyone if you can’t actually feel the soul—the humanity of the people.
Three Stars
by Jason Sacks
One Before Bedtime by Richard Linkroum
What an odd novel. One Before Bedtime is part mad scientist novel, part social satire, part speculative fiction, and part self-centered character rationalization.
I'm not sure this is a good book, per se, but is certainly odd.
See, in a way, this book is all about the social satire. It's about Jeff Baxter, a kid just home from Vietnam, where he's seen some stuff, man, and who has gone back to work at his a pharmacy in his small midwestern town. Jeff just has one minor problem: his skin is in rough shape and he needs for it to clear up so his girlfriend can be happy. Thankfully (perhaps), the pharmacist turns out to be a tinkerer. Cortland Pedigrew has his own set of chemicals and other tools in the basement of the pharmacy. Pedigrew invents a pill which can clear Jeff's skin.
There's just one problem. The pill somehow turns Jeff's skin from White to Black.
And there the troubles begin.
Because Jeff's girlfriend, Peggy, is a bit of a militant and freedom fighter. She walks around everywhere barefoot and speaks at rallies for Black rights and sings folk songs and reminds one of someone like Joan Baez in her steadfast commitment to the hottest social issues of the day. (She probably wouldn't have cared about Jeff's skin, either, but the poor guy was too self-deluded to notice.)
As the story goes on, Jeff, Peggy and several other characters find themselves mixed up in campus protests, urban riots, and unreasonable hatred. Along the way they're forced to see their own prejudices – often reflexive and instinctive – and, well, pretty much stay the same people they were before the events in this book start.
On top of all the oddball problems I've just described, this 168-page quickie is written from different perspectives. We get no fewer than four different approaches to this character's story, each exceeding the previous one in its banality and strange affect. I kept wondering, over and over, how dumb these characters are, how stuck in their idiotic ways they are so they can't actually see the world differently than they did before their loved one was turned black?
Of course, that's also all part of author Linkroum's goal here, I'm sure. It's clear from his approach that he's interested in exploring the idea that racism is arbitrary and simple-minded, that mere skin color is not a diffentiator of the worth of a person, and that our present great national troubles are as absurd as his chracters all act here.
If only Mr. Linkroum had been more satirical, more biting in his humor. Instead the plot of One Before Bedtime all feels a bit undercooked, a bit bland and a bit too on-the-nose for it to really work for me.
I tried looking up Richard Linkroum in my collection of science fiction mags and found no other examples of his work. This is despite the fact that the book was published in hardcover by J.P. Lippincott, a reputable publisher. Finally I was tipped that there's a TV producer who goes by Dick Linkroum who might be our author here. That makes sense because One Before Bedtime reads like a bad episode of the old Twilight Zone: a bit undercooked and way too preachy.
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