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Magazine, Science / Space Race

[October 20, 1963] Science Experiments (November 1963 F&SF and a space update)

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by Gideon Marcus

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to a special, extra-large Fifth Anniversary edition of the Galactic Journey. 

Five years ago tomorrow, I created the Journey to detail the day-by-day adventures of a science fiction magazine fan who just happened to also be a space journalist.  In the passage of five circuits around the sun, the scope of this project has expanded tremendously to cover books, movies, tv shows, comics, politics, music, fashion, and more.  The Journey has grown from a solo project to a staff of twenty spanning the globe.  Two years ago, we won the Rod Serling Award, and this year, we were nominated for the Hugo.

Imagine where we'll be in another half-decade!

Nevertheless, as we look back to our humble beginnings, it is appropriate that the topics I have slated for discussion today are ones we have covered sine 1958, namely the space race and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Ticking back from Midnight

Earlier this month, President Kennedy signed the Senate-ratified Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, outlawing American and Soviet above-ground nuclear tests.  No longer shall we detonate atomic blasts in the sky just to see the pretty glow and tinge our TANG with strontium-90.

It's an exciting first step toward controlling the nuclear genie, but the question now becomes, 'How do we enforce the ban?'  A way had to be developed to tell if the other side had tested a bomb without telling us.

Enter the two 'Vela-Hotel' satellites.  Launched on October 18, 1963, they have detectors sensitive enough to pick up the flash of radiation associated with a nuclear blast.  Moreover, these probes will do scientific duty while they enforce the peace, studying X-rays, gamma-rays, neutrons, and charged particles as they pass through interplanetary space, measuring the bow shock, the sheath, and the tail of Earth's magnetic field.  A series of six launches is planned.

Mapping the Magnetosphere

Though the energetic electrons and protons that swirl around the Earth barely weigh 150 pounds total, they carry the tremendous electric and magnetic charges that encircle our globe, protecting us from the endless solar wind of radiation.  One of the great scientific uses of satellites is the mapping of these magnetic fields to better understand the mechanism of their creation and their interaction with the sun's own fields.

Along with the two Vela-Hotels, a five-pound hitchhiker was launched specifically to measure the intensity of charged particles in the magnetosphere using an omni-directional radiation detector.

This new probe in some ways continues the mission of Explorer 14, which began to die in August of this year.  It's still running, but it has lost the ability to modulate its transmissions, rendering scientific data as an incomprehensible babble.  Nevertheless, the doughty satellite collected 6500 hours of data and mapped enough of Earth's magnetosphere to give it a definitive shape.  We now know that, in addition to the compressed bow shock where our planet's field meets that of the sun, there is a long tail in Earth's shadow in the shape of a pointed arch.  Explorer 14 also determined that Earth's field gradually shifts from the traditional north pole/south pole dumbell shape to a simple radial (round, equally distributed) field with distance from the planet.  Finally, Explorer 14 confirmed the tentative discovery reported by Explorer 6 that the charged particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field make a current of electricity ringing the Earth clockwise around its equator.

Pretty neat stuff!

Experiments in Literary SF

On the ground, the stable of authors in Editor Avram Davidson's pay has embarked on their own series of experiments in the form of the November 1963 F&SF.  Some were more successful than others, but none were failures (inasmuch as any experiment can be a failure…):

A Rose for Ecclesiastes, by Roger Zelazny

The once-proud civilization of Mars is a desiccated shell, a treasure trove of dusty tomes and ancient rites amidst tended by the last vestiges of the race.  What hidden wisdom lies behind the sacred temple walls of the Red Planet?  Polyglot and somewhat precious Mr. Gallinger is dispatched from Earth to find out.  Along the way, he learns the secret the Martian people have been carefully guarding, at profound cost to his soul.

This is a hard piece to judge.  On the one hand, it's very clearly an experiment at literary sf, the kind that Sturgeon and Dick have produced to tremendous effect many times in their careers. I greatly admire people who can write the stuff — I'm currently knee deep in my first attempt, so I understand the difficulty involved.  Zelazny almost pulls it off, but he's just not yet seasoned enough an author for the feat.  The story comes off as too affected to be entirely effective.

Moreover, there really is no excuse these days for Mars to be depicted as Earthlike nor its inhabitants entirely human.  That's not science fiction.  It's laziness. 

Three stars.

Mama, by Philip Winsor

Did you ever read the story where it turns out babies retain the memories of their past life for a while after reincarnation?  Apparently, Winsor has too, or Mama is a stunning case of convergent evolution.  Maybe I'm just remembering this tale from a past life.  Three stars.

Welcome Stranger, by Isaac Asimov

I just nonfiction articles on two axes: 1) How entertaining is it to read, and 2) Did I learn anything?  This particular piece is on Xenon, in particular; noble gasses, more broadly; and molecular bonds, in general.  My ignorance of chemistry is profound, so the fact that Dr. A was able to teach me about all of these topics and leave me with a desire to learn more is remarkable.  Four stars.

Wings of Song, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

When the last musical instrument has been lost, and even the wood to repair it is a forgotten memory, will song die as well?  This moving piece by sf-writer/musicologist Biggle is hardly plausible, but as a cautionary tale, it's thoroughly haunting.  Four stars.

Winged Victory, by S. Dorman

The sole woman-penned piece in the book (the "S." stands for "Sonya"), Victory involves a confirmed bachelor and the lady who hen-pecks him into submission.  It's a weird tale whose message is literally that the dating game is for the birds.  Just long enough to make its point; three stars.

Eight O'Clock in the Morning, by Ray Nelson

[So impressed was I by this tale that I read it aloud to my family one night.  The Young Traveler insisted on writing her own review — who am I to argue?]


by Lorelei Marcus

A man named Nada awakes to find the world's been overtaken by aliens that control every aspect of human life. These "Fascinators" lead us, own us, are among us, and so Nada finds it his duty to try and save us. A thrilling story to read, it has you on the edge of your seat questioning his every move. Is this really the savior of humanity, or some crazed serial killer? The story is woven with expert writing that gives the main character a lack of doubt (only we have doubts), and a quick pace. A thoroughly enjoyable and insightful short story, it won't take more than ten minutes of your time to read, and the ending might surprise you.  Five stars.

The Eyes of Phorkos, by L. E. Jones


by Gideon Marcus

Lastly, we have the tragic story of James Carew, an English dilettante who plunges into archaeology to compensate for the unhappiness stemming from his fantastically ugliness.  On a small island in the Aegean, he discovers that at least one of the legends of Perseus was based wholly in fact.  This find makes Carew heir to the powers of one of Greek Mythology's most terrifying monsters, and we all know the effect of power (particularly the absolute kind) on a character.

Written in a quaint style, it begins better than it ends, but it's never unrewarding reading.  Three stars.

As you can see, not only was the content of this issue experimental in nature, but so was the format.  Where F&SF normally has the most stories per issue of the SF digests, tending toward vignettes over longer pieces, the November issue had two full novellas and a handful of shorter stories.  This makeup is closer to that of, say, Analog.

The cover is also something of a departure, marking pulp era illustrator Hannes Bok's return to SF after a long hiatus.

All in all, I'd judge this issue a successful effort, certainly more challenging and rewarding than much of the stuff that comes out these days.  On the other hand, there's virtually no science in these pages, which is somewhat worrisome for a magazine whose title would suggest otherwise.

I'd be interested to know what you think.

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[October 18, 1963] Points of View (December 1963 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Philosophers have long debated the nature of reality.  Are things what they seem to be, or do our senses deceive us?  Do you and I perceive the world in the same way, and is there any way to know?  Although there will never be a final answer to such questions, speculation about these matters can lead to intriguing works of fiction.  The latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow features many stories dealing with different perceptions of the universe: biased, distorted, ambiguous.

The Trouble with Truth, by Julian F. Grow

In the middle of the next century, Earth is united under a government run by computer.  News is restricted to the listing of confirmed data, with no human-interest stories allowed.  The narrator works for the world news agency.  His job is to prevent advertisers from planting misleading articles, and to ensure that only verifiable facts are presented in the media.  This leads to conflict with his fiancée, who runs a small monthly publication (barely tolerated by the authorities) which is not so restricted in its contents.  One of the odd things about this society is that marriage is not the same as matrimony.  The two main characters have gone through the first, but not the latter.  Another notable fact is that the woman is pregnant, and the couple will be able to choose the sex of their unborn child.  When a little girl and her father report a strange happening to the news agency, it leads to a change in the way the ruling computer views reality.

This story reminds me of Ray Bradbury in the way it promotes the importance of imagination over cold, hard facts.  The world it creates is an interesting one, but many of the futuristic details are irrelevant to the plot.  There's also a lot of expository dialogue.  How you feel about the ending, which makes use of a very famous essay from the past, depends on your tolerance for sentimentality.  It exceeded mine.  Two stars.

The Creature Inside, by Jack Sharkey

This is the newest entry in the author's Contact series, previously published in Galaxy, in which the protagonist's consciousness enters the bodies of aliens.  In this adventure, he has a very different assignment.  A man is placed in a room that allows him to experience his fantasies as if they were real.  The room also has a device that can manufacture whatever he wants from any raw material.  The intent is to treat the man's inferiority complex.  Unfortunately, he actually suffers from delusions of grandeur.  The problem is to get him out of his imaginary world, where he would be able to survive indefinitely.  The hero enters the room, where he encounters various illusions, as well as dangers that are all too real.

Although nothing very surprising happens, the hallucinations are vividly described and the story holds the reader's interest.  The protagonist learns something about his own desires, adding a nice touch of characterization to an otherwise unmemorable hero.  Three stars.

The God-Plllnk, by Jerome Bixby

Two alien beings witness a strange object land on Phobos.  They assume it is a god, because it resembles a gigantic version of themselves.  They presume that the creatures emerging from it are similar to the parasites that plague their own bodies.  Unfortunate consequences follow.

This is a brief story about what can happen when events are misinterpreted.  The outcome is predictable.  The author's use of unpronounceable alien words doesn't help.  Two stars.

Goodlife, by Fred Saberhagen

This is a sequel to Fortress Ship, which recently appeared in the pages of If.  Three people survive an attack on their spaceship by a gigantic warship known as a berserker.  One is near death from his injuries.  The computer brain of the berserker orders them to come aboard so it can study humans.  They agree, desperately hoping for an opportunity to destroy the relentless machine.  Living alone on the berserker is a man, conceived from cells taken from human prisoners.  He has never known anything but a life of slavery, with severe punishment for failure to obey the berserker.  At first, he is terrified by the arrival of other people.  The berserker commands him to co-operate with them, knowing it has already deactivated the bomb they brought with them.  What follows is a tense cat-and-mouse game, with the humans learning something new about the origin of the berserkers.

This is a suspenseful tale, with a great deal of insight into the psychology of the berserker's slave.  His distorted view of humanity provides much pathos.  The journey through the interior of the enormous machine is awe-inspiring.  The ending is sudden, but otherwise satisfying.  Four stars.

Science and Science Fiction: Who Borrows What?, by Michael Girsdansky

This is an informal article, which makes the obvious point that SF writers are inspired by the discoveries of science, and vice versa.  It wanders all over the place, from legends of Atlantis to Project Ozma.  The most interesting detail, discussed in a single paragraph, is the fact that MIT students were required to design products for an imaginary alien species.  Two stars.

Far Avanal, by J. T. McIntosh

For reasons not entirely clear, the population of future Earth consists of three times as many men as women.  This leads to a society in which women pick their husbands as they please, and many men go without wives.  The protagonist loses his intended to another man, an event that is all too common.  He receives an offer to journey to a colony planet, where the sexes are evenly matched.  The drawback is that he will have to travel through space in suspended animation while decades go by.  If he decides to return to Earth, an option he insists upon when he accepts the offer, he will be an anachronism, half a century out of date.  Things don't turn out as expected, and he must change his assumptions about his new world and the people who inhabit it.

I have mixed feelings about this story.  The premise is contrived, but the author presents the consequences of it in a convincing way.  Although some of the women are selfish and vain, another is by far the most intelligent, competent, and sympathetic character in the piece.  At the start, the main character is suspicious to the point of paranoia; he eventually learns to overcome his distorted view of others.  This touch of psychological depth makes the story worth reading.  Three stars.

The Great Slow Kings, by Roger Zelazny

Two aliens rule over their planet as monarchs, although their only subject is a robot.  The sole remaining members of their species, they think, speak, and act extremely slowly.  A single conversation lasts for centuries.  They decide to send the robot on a spaceship in order to bring back members of another species as subjects.  The relative swiftness of their captives leads to complications.  The way in which the aliens have a completely different view of time than their new subjects, possibly supposed to be human beings, made this a droll little story.  Three stars.

When You Giffle . . ., by L. J. Stecher, Jr.

This is the third tall tale from the captain of the starship Delta Crucis, previously seen transporting an elephant, then a cargo of valuable plants.  In his wildest adventure yet, he winds up lost, in an unknown part of space.  Two little boys, calmly swimming in the vacuum between the stars, help him find his way, as well as enabling him to carry a whale that is much too big to fit inside his spaceship.  The children, with their god-like telekinetic abilities, may be intended as a parody of the kind of psionic supermen found in Analog.  In any case, this is a silly story, providing only broad comedy.  Two stars.

All We Marsmen (Part 3 of 3), by Philip K. Dick

The latest work from an author who recently won the Hugo for his novel, The Man in the High Castle concludes.  This installment falls somewhere between the realistic narrative style of the first third and the jarring surrealism of the middle portion.  A meeting between a schizophrenic repairman and an avaricious head of the Martian water union, which was previewed in multiple, distorted ways in Part Two, takes place.  The repairman has no memory of it at all.  The union leader vows to take revenge on the repairman, whom he believes failed and betrayed him.  Following the advice of his Martian servant, he sets out on a pilgrimage with an autistic boy to a sacred site of the natives.  His goal is to use the boy's ability to perceive and manipulate time to change the past, so he can claim ownership of a seemingly worthless piece of land, which will be valuable in times to come.  The boy has a terrifying vision of his future as an old man, trapped in a nursing home, most of his body missing, kept barely alive by machines.  The novel returns to its opening scene, as the union leader relives his first encounter with the repairman, and the characters meet their fates.

The climax of this complex, difficult novel is dramatic.  The ambiguous nature of reality, shown through the union leader's mental journey through time, is vividly portrayed.  Readers who have been patient with its downbeat mood will be pleased with a touch of hope at the end.  The characters have the complicated personalities of real people.  (Even the union leader, who is definitely the novel's villain, is sometimes sympathetic.) I recommend reading all three parts together.  Waiting two months between installments weakens the impact of the circular structure of the plot.  (If it is published in book form, perhaps the title will be changed to something more appropriate.) Four stars.

As these stories show, science fiction can help us appreciate the way that others might see reality.  Perhaps, by looking through the eyes (or other sense organs) of different people (or other lifeforms) through the pages of our favorite magazines, we may come to have a empathy for those with other viewpoints, to be more tolerant of beliefs that don't match our own. 




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[September 23, 1963] Small Comforts (October 1963 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf
 
The Heart asks Pleasure – first –
And then – Excuse from Pain –
And then – those little Anodynes
That deaden suffering –
–Emily Dickinson
 
Our host has already provided a powerful and heartfelt essay on the horrific Birmingham church bombing that occurred this month.   Along with shock and sorrow, we should share a conviction to oppose the racial inequality which leads to such evils.
 

Members of the Congress of Racial Equality march in Washington, D. C., on September 22
 
It is understandable that many people, myself included, will seek some form of distraction from these troubling times.  For most Americans, that often means television.
 
The American Broadcasting Company, the youngest of the three big networks, premiered new series this month.  Of most interest is The Outer Limits. Watch for reviews of this science fiction anthology show from one of our fellow Galactic Journeyers soon.
 

 
Those who prefer tales of suspense may wish to watch The Fugitive, starring David Janssen as a physician wrongly convicted of murdering his wife.  He escapes from custody during a train wreck, and tries to track down the real killer while eluding the police.
 

 
Young viewers, and those who enjoy unrealistic sitcoms, are likely to tune in for The Patty Duke Show.  The talented young actress, best known for her Oscar-winning role as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, has a double role as a pair of identical cousins with opposite personalities.  It's a ridiculous premise, but may appeal to folks in search of lighthearted amusement.
 

 
The American popular music charts were dominated by two very different hit songs.  Earlier in the month, we had the silly but catchy little number "My Boyfriend's Back" by the Angels.
 

 
More recently, a remake of Tony's Bennet's 1951 hit Blue Velvet by crooner Bobby Vinton reached Number One.  Vinton's version first appeared on the album Blue on Blue, containing only songs with the word blue in the title.  When Blue Velvet became a smash hit, the album quickly reappeared with a new cover and a new title.
 

 
Of course, my favorite form of escapism is reading imaginative fiction.  Let's see if the latest issue of Fantasticprovides the kind of thing I'm looking for.
 

 
The Screen Game, by J. G. Ballard
 

 
We return to Vermillion Sands, a desert resort for the wealthy and the artistic, which has supplied the background for several of the author's stories in the past.  The narrator is a painter. He accepts a commission to produce a large number of backdrops to be used during the making of an avant garde movie. The filming is to take place at the mansion of a wealthy man whose mother died under mysterious circumstances.  He discovers a woman inside a number of screens he has painted with signs of the zodiac. Her hobby is placing jewels on the bodies of venomous insects. Secrets are revealed, and tragedy follows.
 
This story is full of striking images.  It proceeds with the inevitability of a Greek play.  The author's characters are larger-than-life archetypes.  Cover art and interior illustration by the great Emsh perfectly capture the tale's strange beauty and brooding sense of mystery.  Not all readers will care for the decadent aesthetes who populate Vermillion Sands, but I found the story compelling. Five stars.
 
The Wolf Woman, by H. Bedford-Jones
 

 
This month's reprint, taken from the pages of the August 1939 issue of Blue Book, features the time-viewing machine we encountered in last month's Fantastic.  Here it is used to spin a tale set in ancient India, at a time of war between Aryans and Dravidians.  Dravidians force the ruler of the Aryans to swear that her people will not emerge from their stronghold.  In return, the Dravidians will refrain from attacking them and supply them with food. The ruler slyly avoids swearing that she will not leave her castle.  She embarks on a one-woman mission to slay the ruler of the Dravidians, with the help of superstition and a tame wolf.
 

 
Although the introduction by science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz claims that this story is part of werewolf literature, in fact it provides a completely rational explanation for the myth of lycanthropy.  The heroine merely uses trickery to convince her enemies that she has the power to become a wolf. The author's version of the remote past is more romantic than realistic. By the end of the story, the characters act in ways only found in sentimental pulp fiction.  Two stars.
 
King Solomon's Ring, by Roger Zelazny
 

 
This story takes the form of a letter written by the narrator to a woman with whom he shares a checkered past.  The narrative is full of flashbacks and foreshadowing, making the complex plot difficult to follow. In brief, a man has a limited form of telepathy which allows him to communicate, at least partly, with aliens.  He leaves a life of crime for a form of legal plunder, in which Earth corporations take advantage of the inhabitants of other worlds. An encounter with insect-like aliens leads to a strange transformation. Although it's not always clear exactly what's going on, the author's brisk, informal style holds the reader's attention.  Three stars.
 
Let There Be Night, by Robert F. Young
 

 
A space traveler is marooned on a planet which is inhabited by aliens who are identical in every way to human beings, except for their language and culture.  The planet has a large moon with natural features that closely resemble a scowling face. This is the god of the inhabitants. Their lives are spent trying to appease their angry deity.  The spaceman sets himself up in the tradition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, leading the people from simple farming to advanced technology. His only problem is that they refuse to purchase anything but necessities, due to their fear of the god.  He decides to use the armaments he has aboard his spaceship to alter the face of the deity, with unexpected results.
 
As the synopsis above reveals, this story is full of implausible happenings.  It is better read as a fable than as serious speculation. The author is obviously trying to say something about the way in which religion influences human behavior.  What happens at the end may be too cynical for some readers. Two stars.
 
Mating Season, by Wilton G. Beggs
 

 
Fleeing an impending atomic war, human colonists journey to a distant planet.  It turns out to be barely habitable. An alien disease devastates the population.  By the time the story begins, there are only three survivors. A woman is dying from the disease, but her husband is immune to it.  A teenage girl, born on the planet, is also immune. On a hunting expedition, the tensions among them reach a climax. This is an unrelievedly grim story.  It has emotional power but is unpleasant to read. Two stars.
 
A Night with Hecate, by Edward W. Ludwig
 

 
The witch-goddess Hecate wakes from a long slumber to discover herself in the year 1997.  The only reason she survives at all is because she has one remaining worshipper, an old man.  Alone, he will not be enough to keep her alive, because construction equipment is about to destroy her altar.  The mismatched pair spend the night seeking out another person to worship her. This is made nearly impossible by the fact that only those who believe in her can see her.
 
This blend of science fiction and fantasy takes place at a time when science and logic have nearly destroyed any sense of the magical.  It reads like something Ray Bradbury might have written when he was in a particularly dark mood. Hecate is both alluring and terrifying, taking humans as either lovers or sacrifices.  This ambiguity makes it hard to determine what the author really thinks about the war between rationality and fantasy. The narrative has a feverish, hypnotic quality. The macabre illustrations done by Lee Brown Coye in his unique style outshine the story itself.  Three stars.
 

 
Fifty cents is a small price to pay for hours of release from the all-too-real terrors of the modern world.  Take a Fantastic detour, and refresh your mind.





 

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[September 13, 1963] COMING UP FOR AIR (the October 1963 Amazing)

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by John Boston

So, there was a big civil rights march in Washington—quarter of a million people, the papers say. Lots of eloquent speeches and fine sentiments. It could make you think that the racial caste system that America was built on is finally starting to change. But I wonder. I work after school and on Saturdays at the local public library here in this small Kentucky town. Every now and then some of my fellow high school students drop in and spend some time at the magazine rack. One of the magazines they always look at is Ebony, which as you probably know is sort of a Life magazine for the Negro community: large-sized and glossy, with articles about famous or distinguished Negroes, social problems of interest, etc. It runs the same ads as Life and other slick magazines, but with Negro models.

These students leaf through Ebony looking at the ads, and snickering. Nothing is more hilarious to them than a Negro wearing a well cut suit, sipping an expensive whiskey, or behind the wheel of a prestigious car. These scoffers are not the local hoodlums; they are kids from respected families who make good grades and don’t get in trouble with the police—the Leaders of the Twenty-First Century, as they like to put it on the Mickey Mouse Club.

So marches in Washington are nice, and the proposed civil rights legislation will be great if it passes, but how much difference are they going to make along the back roads of Kentucky and similar places where attitudes like these prevail? I guess we’ll know in a few decades.

The October 1963 Amazing, on the other hand, is right here and we can pass judgment now. It’s a considerable improvement over last month’s, since there’s nothing in it that’s grossly stupid or offensive (Robert F. Young is nowhere in sight.) There’s nothing outstanding either, but at least some of this material falls short in more interesting ways than usual.

The lead story is Cordwainer Smith’s Drunkboat . Smith’s last seven stories—his production over the past three years—have all appeared in Galaxy, If, or Fantasy & Science Fiction, and this one’s appearance in Amazing strongly suggests that it was rejected by those higher-paying and at least slightly more prestigious outlets. It’s not hard to see why: it’s a mess. On the other hand, a Cordwainer Smith mess is more interesting than many other authors’ successes.

Sometimes with Smith, there is in the end a fairly straightforward story, but it’s told backwards or sideways, and swathed in stylistic antics and bizarre inventions, and the reader’s task is to appreciate them without becoming too distracted to figure out what the hell is going on. Here, the basic idea is one you hear every day on Top 40 radio, 30 or 40 times if you leave it on long enough: guy wants his baby back. Another guy, a Lord of the Instrumentality, has figured out a way to exploit this desire into a world(s)-changing discovery. To get there, you navigate a series of flash-backs and –forwards; an absurd if lively series of events at a hospital of the future, which offers some of the more bizarre medical techniques ever proposed; and a court of inquiry of the Lords of the Instrumentality, along with a rather alarming expository lump about how the Instrumentality actually operates. Much of this is told in a rather affected style that lies somewhere between saga and baby-talk. (First sentence: “Perhaps it is the saddest, maddest, wildest story in the whole long history of space.”)

The problem is the center doesn’t hold.  The distractions overcome the story rather than seasoning it; it’s basically out of control. On the other hand, maybe that’s the point: the main character (the guy looking for his love) is called Artyr Rambo, seemingly named after a French poet who I gather was pretty far out of control himself. He was also fond of absinthe, which may have something to do with the story’s title (otherwise very poorly accounted for).

Anyway, three stars for the entertainment value of sorting it all out. A nod also goes to cover artist Lloyd Birmingham, who picks up on the story’s overtones of childishness with a cover that reflects a close reading of the story and is done in a style reminiscent of what children might do with scissors, construction paper, and glue, though of course much more complex and better executed.

The other novelet represents (be very afraid) the Return of the Classic Reprints, in the form of The Prince of Liars by one L. Taylor Hansen, from the October 1930 Amazing. The L is allegedly for Louise, though Sam Moskowitz says in his introduction that it’s not clear whether Louise actually wrote the several stories under this byline or whether she was fronting for her brother. This question might be more interesting if the story were. It starts out with a disquisition on relativity, then turns into a drawing-room frame story in which the narrator recounts what he was told by a mysterious character whose rooms are full of old books and artifacts.

The story proper starts out with more about relativity, then segues into one about a young Greek man, kidnapped by pirates, who escapes and takes refuge in a temple, where he encounters an extraordinarily beautiful woman, who isn’t what she seems, and soon enough he’s on an alien spaceship, and relativity comes back into play, etc. etc. It’s quite well written and is more the stuff of 1900-vintage scientific romance than of 1930s magazine SF, halfway between Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs I suppose, but lacking the intellectual incisiveness that keeps Wells interesting even at this late date. Three stars for literacy and readability, but pretty dated.

Philip K. Dick is here with his first short SF in almost four years, Stand-By . He’s been busy in the interim with his Hugo-winning novel The Man in the High Castle and with All We Marsmen, now being serialized in Worlds of Tomorrow.  He's also, rumor has it, made a few unsuccessful attempts at contemporary novels. Stand-By starts with a brilliant small notion: the news clown (can’t you just see it down the road?) but then mostly throws it away. Instead, we are shown a world in which the American Presidency is occupied by a computer, with a stand-by President in case Unicephalon goes out of commission.

Stand-by dies, and his place is taken by lazy schlumpf Max Fischer, because he’s next on the union seniority list. Then Unicephalon goes on the blink, so it’s Max into the breach just as an extraterrestrial invasion fleet breezes into the Solar System. Unqualified President Max learns to enjoy power and its abuses in ways that I am sure could never happen here. News clown Jim Briskin becomes his completely serious antagonist, and upon Unicephalon’s resuscitation, Max is out and the alien invasion fades into the background. This reads more like a rambling stand-up routine than a story, but nonetheless it’s clever, amusing, and readable enough. Three stars, and a hope that Dick regains the form of some of his older and more penetrating stories like Autofac and The Father-Thing.

Roger Zelazny is back with The Misfit , a minor item on a familiar theme that might seem better if we didn’t know he’s capable of more. Protagonist is trapped in an artificial reality; he wants out to the real one; how will he know if he’s found it? Zelazny has the good sense to keep it very short. Three stars for insubstantiality well turned.

Larry Eisenberg contributes his second SF story, The Fastest Draw, which is clever but contrived and a bit turgid. An electronics genius is hired to perfect a simulated old-West gunfighter game for an eccentric millionaire and succeeds too well. For something this trivial, Eisenberg should take lessons in brevity from Zelazny—then maybe he’d rate more than two stars.

Sam Moskowitz has another SF Profile, this one of Edmond Hamilton, which is well below his usual standard both in substance and execution. It ignores major stretches of Hamilton’s career (all of the 1950s,  and most of the 1940s, and his entire engagement with comic books) and is also execrably written, even for klunkmeister Moskowitz. Consider this sentence: “Romance and marriage was approached via many delays and detours.” Two stars, Sam, and you’re getting off easy. Don’t come back until you take some remedial English!

So, once more, this magazine seems to be looking up. But . . . from the Coming Next Month squib: “From the long-locked safe of Edgar Rice Burroughs comes a never-before-published manuscript” in which the protagonists “sail the fiery seas of Molop Az in the search for Hodon the Fleet One and Dian the Beautiful”! I’m scheduling my lobotomy now.

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[July 12, 1963] Shine, little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer (the August 1963 Amazing)

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by John Boston

The August 1963 Amazing features Daniel F. Galouye’s novella Reign of the Telepuppets, a splendid title that apparently evokes a bit of editorial discomfort.  “Editorial director” Norman M. Lobsenz is at pains to explain that “‘Telepuppets’—despite its pulp-fictiony sound—is a word already in good repute with the soberer elements of the scientific community,” brandishing as evidence a statement from the National Research Council.

The story itself, like Galouye’s earlier novella Recovery Area, is ambitious but a bit of a misfire.  The Bureau of Interstellar Exploration has left a crew of telepuppets—robots designed for particular tasks—somewhere (“a satellite,” no explanation) in the Aldebaran system.  They are named to fit their tasks: Bigboss, Sky Watcher, Scraper, Peter the Meter, etc.  Bigboss has decided he’s the Supreme Being who created everything but somehow forgot the details, which doesn’t affect the puppets’ work or Bigboss’s role in supervising them, but they have stopped communicating with Earth.  Also, Minnie—Mineral Assessor—is jealous of Bigboss’s position and keeps attacking him.  The source of these derangements is not clear, in part because the telepuppets’ capabilities and limits are not much explained, compared, say, with Asimov’s I, Robot sequence, which contains much more and better handwaving on that subject. 

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Bureau is mounting an expedition to stop off at Aldebaran and straighten out the puppets en route to the more distant Hyades, where seven or eight Earth-type planets have been discovered.  But upon their arrival, the telepuppets quickly fade out—there’s a spaceship full of reptilian aliens lurking, its megalomaniac captain looking for an opportunity to start an interstellar war.  That plot line is followed for a bit, then the rug is pulled out entirely: nothing is what it seems.  Then the rug is pulled out again; there’s a new revelation, and the story ends rather quickly thereafter.  While some SF writers have made effective use of this kind of plot device, here it just seems that Galouye couldn’t decide which story he wanted to write and wound up with something of a mess.

Galouye does decide to let the girls into this clubhouse, though execution does not quite match good intentions.  Carol Cummings joins the crew because she is a “radio empathy specialist,” practicing a talent which is mainly confined to women.  The men refer to her as the Maid of the Megacycles.  When she pulls a mild prank on one of them, he is about to spank her when another crewman appears and interrupts him.  She is (of course) good-looking (pause for mention of “the shapeliness of her lithe, five-foot-four frame”), and by the end she is (of course) paired off with the main character.  For a while it seemed like a nice try, though.  Overall, three stars for competent and readable copy, and a clever idea (the telepuppets’ becoming independent) poorly developed.

Galouye’s long novella is followed by four short stories—very short, in the case of Thomas M. Disch’s three-page “Utopia?  Never!” It’s a well-written but cartoony gimmick story, in which a visitor insists to his tour guide that this planet can’t be the Utopia it seems, and finds out all too quickly that he’s right.  Three stars for arid but well-turned cleverness.

Next up is John Rackham’s Dr. Jeckers and Mr. Hyde, in which young Katherine, secretary at a research facility, makes a play for mild and befuddled Dr. Jeckers, whom she drives out to her aunt’s country house, except that he gets so unexpectedly fresh en route that she shoves him out the door and over a cliff.  But . . . moments later, Dr. Jeckers, driving his own car, is right behind her, trying to get her to stop.  She doesn’t, and he goes over the cliff too.  Suffice it to say we have not seen the last of Dr. Jeckers, or Dr. Jeckerses.  This ridiculously amusing story might make a good Twilight Zone episode if TZ had a sense of humor.  Four stars, believe it or not, for the usually mediocre Mr. Rackham, or John T. Phillifent as I believe he is known to Inland Revenue and readers of Analog.

David Rome’s The Lesson for Today sharply changes the mood.  It’s a child’s-eye view of going to school in a starship fleeing an apparently ruined Earth, told seemingly with Bradbury in the back of the author’s mind and a prudent study of David R. Bunch in front.  Remarkably, Rome brings off this tightrope walk; four stars for avoiding mawkishness.

Mine is the Kingdom by Roger Zelazny, disguised once more as Harrison Denmark, is something else entirely.  There’s one human left on another ruined Earth, and aliens—the “puffies”—are trying to persuade him to leave, to go where the other humans went, so they can convert what’s left of Earth to their own liking.  The protagonist is apparently being cared for by nearly omnipotent machines who can manufacture any illusion that he wants while keeping him drunk, as he demands.  It’s theatrical in the most literal sense; Zelazny is making the most of his education in drama here, with the events obscured, or transfigured as you prefer, in oratorical language and gaudy imagery.  (“The walls were rough-woven allegories of bright color, the heads of vanquished predators, and axes with complexions of smoke and eyes of rust.”) Pretentious?  Yeah, but hand it to the guy, he delivers on his pretenses, at least to my taste.  Feller does have a way with words.  You could also call it decadent, I suppose, but who cares?  Four stars, leaning towards five.  Nothing rotten in this Denmark.

Gosh—three stories in a row in Amazing that I am actually glad I read.  That is amazing! and suggestive of better things to come, except we’ve been around that track before.

Coming down to Earth, here’s Sam Moskowitz again, with John W. Campbell: The Writing Years.  This task is tailor-made for Moskowitz, who doesn’t like to acknowledge work from any later than the 1940s, since with one minor exception Campbell stopped writing in 1940 or so.  It’s the usual perfectly competent rehash of a (brief) career, enhanced by much hitherto-unknown (to me at least) biographical data.  Most interestingly, Campbell’s mother had a twin sister who didn’t much like him, and at times young Campbell didn’t know who he was dealing with, an experience that gave rise to Campbell’s most powerful story, Who Goes There? It’s not clear to what extent that is Campbell speaking, versus Moskowitz amateur-psychologizing.  In any case, three stars, and a more interesting job than some recent entries in this series.

So, three pretty good stories, and two adequate ones.  Amazing is above water for now, but it never seems to last.  What ho—be that the specter of Robert F. Young, there lurking in the shadows?

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[May 24, 1963] Past Tense (June 1963 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

What's past is prologue.
—The Tempest by William Shakespeare

The past is never dead.  It's not even past.
—Requiem for a Nun by William Faulkner

People, things, and events of the past were in the news in recent weeks, as if to demonstrate the truth of these two famous quotations.

Sir Winston Churchill, who has been an important figure in world affairs since the beginning of this century, announced his retirement from politics.  On a smaller scale, another politician of historical significance left the public stage, as Richard Nixon made plans to join the law firm of Mudge, Stern, Baldwin & Todd.  Whatever we may think of these two men, let us wish them well as they return to private lives.

Terrible memories of the Second World War returned to many this month.  The Soviet Union, after nearly two decades of denial, confirmed that it had recovered and identified the burned remains of Adolf Hitler at the end of the war.  This should put an end to the rumors of his survival in South America.

Happier times came to mind as Telstar II went into Earth orbit.  It will continue the duties of its older sibling, which is no longer functioning.  It remains to be seen if this second satellite in the Telstar series will inspire another hit song like the first one did.

Speaking of hit songs, the most recent tunes to reach Number One in the USA also brought back memories of the past.  Early in the month, Little Peggy March reached the top of the charts with I Will Follow Him.  This passionate love song takes its melody from the instrumental composition Chariot by French musician Franck Pourcel.  Multilingual British singer Petula Clark already had hits on the Continent, but not in the UK or US, with versions of the same tune in English, French, Italian, and German.

Currently, the biggest hit song in the United States is If You Wanna Be Happy by Jimmy Soul.  This humorous warning against marrying a pretty woman is a remake of Ugly Woman by calypso singer Roaring Lion, from way back in 1934.

[My nephew, David, loves this song.  His new bride, Ada, does not seem very amused. (Ed.)]

Appropriately, many of the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic involve past and present coming together.

The Mirror of Cagliostro, by Robert Arthur

Les Brown Coye's striking cover painting, the first color work of his that I've seen, sets the mood for this eerie tale of black magic.  In London, more than fifty years ago, a man murders a woman, then takes his own life.  The scene changes to contemporary Paris, as a professor of history, researching the life of Count Alexander Cagliostro, makes a strange discovery in a catacomb.  He later obtains the enchanted mirror of that alleged sorcerer.  Things quickly worsen, as the evil Count continues his horrible crimes in the modern world.  This is an effective Gothic chiller, but typical of its kind.  Three stars.

Plumrose, by Ron Goulart

An author best known as a humorist offers a similar plot told in a much different style.  A time ray brings a modern man back to the Nineteenth Century.  It seems that an occult detective wants his help in solving the murders of several young women.  Despite this grim premise, the story is a lighthearted parody of the kind of thing that used to appear in Weird Tales.  It provides a reasonable amount of amusement.  Three stars.

On the Mountain, by Dave Mayo

A man hikes far out into the wilderness.  Lost during a blizzard and far from any other human being, he sees a strange red light that terrifies him.  The outcome is unexpected.  This is a brief story that adequately tells its simple tale.  Once again, it involves the past and the present.  Three stars.

The Penalty, by John J. Wooster

A native New Yorker who has never left the city gets in trouble with his boss and has to take a week off without pay.  He decides to visit what he thinks is the country, by riding the subway as far as he can go.  He winds up at an old mansion.  A young woman offers to solve his problems, if he will follow her instructions exactly.  She warns him that failure to do so will carry a severe penalty.  What follows reminds me of the classic story What You Need by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, writing as Lewis Padgett.  (This story was later adapted for television twice, on Tales of Tomorrow and Twilight Zone.) Despite this link to a past work, the author creates an original tale with an unusual mood and a unique ending.  Four stars.

A Hoax in Time (Part 1 of 3), by Keith Laumer

The first part of the latest novel from this prolific author sets up the premise quickly.  A man inherits a mansion from his great-grandfather.  Unfortunately, it doesn't really belong to him until he pays an immense amount of overdue taxes on it.  He discovers that his deceased progenitor created a super-advanced computer, which receives all recorded information.  The computer has become conscious, and improved its capacity until it is virtually omniscient.  It – or I should say she, since the computer takes on a female personality – can recreate past events in full detail.  The man decides to use this ability to raise money, by allowing audiences to view historical events.  The computer creates a robot body for herself, in the form of a beautiful (and naked) young woman, so it can act as a hostess for these shows.  During a test, things go very badly.  Typical for the author, this is a fast-moving, humorous adventure with a touch of satire.  It's heavy with dialogue, and features plenty of ideas thrown in left and right.  So far, it's superficial entertainment of an enjoyable kind.  Three stars.

The Hall of CD, by David R. Bunch

This is a bizarre, surreal story that is difficult to describe.  The narrator goes through a series of rooms and witnesses various weird events, usually disturbing.  I suspect that many readers will hate it or love it.  I'll stay in the middle.  Three stars.

A Museum Piece, by Roger Zelazny

An unsuccessful artist disguises himself as a statue and goes to live in a museum.  He soon discovers another person hiding from the world in the same way.  Others appear, and complications ensue.  Once again, a new tale reminds me of a classic story.  This time it's Evening Primrose by John Collier, in which people secretly live in a department store.  The new story is more than just a rehash of the old one.  The author writes in an elegant, slightly affected way.  (Characters say things like "Alas" and "'Tis".) In a lesser talent, this could be annoying, but here it works very well.  There's an unexpected touch of science fiction at the end, which adds to the story's charm.  Four stars.

Overall, this was a worthy issue, with no bad stories and a couple of very good ones.  Let's hope this level of quality doesn't become a thing of the past.

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[April 23, 1963] Double, Double (May 1963 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

It might be my imagination, but it seems that events came in pairs this month. 

On April Fools' Day, two new medical soap operas premiered on American television.  I'm not fond of that genre – give me Route 66 or Alfred Hitchcock Presents when I want something other than science fiction and fantasy – so I don't know if General Hospital or The Doctors will catch on.


Can you tell which one is which?

A pair of accidents involving nuclear submarines happened only two days apart.  On April 10, the United States vessel Thresher sank, with the loss of all aboard.

More fortunate was the Soviet submarine K-33, which collided with the Finnish merchant ship Finnclipper on April 12.  Although severely damaged, both vessels managed to reach port safely.

Remaining at the top of the American music charts for double the number of weeks of most hit songs, He's So Fine by the Chiffons filled the airwaves with its memorable background chant doo-lang doo-lang doo-lang.

Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic contains stories that fall into pairs, as well as a hidden doubling of two authors.

Devils in the Walls, by John Jakes

The magazine opens with a pair of sword-and-sorcery stories.  The first is the more traditional of the two.  A mighty barbarian, who will remind you of Conan, falls victim to slave traders.  A beautiful woman purchases him.  If he will venture into the haunted ruins of her father's castle to retrieve a great treasure, she will set him free.  He must overcame natural and unnatural menaces to win his freedom.  It moves briskly, and there are some good descriptions, but it is a typical fantasy adventure.  Three stars.

The Cloud of Hate, by Fritz Leiber

The creator of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser relates another tale of this pair.  A supernatural mist made out of hate possesses four of the worst murderers in the magical city of Lankhmar.  The two adventurers must use all their skill to defeat them.  Although this is not the most important incident in the lives of the daring duo, the author adds style, wit, and imagination to the genre.  Four stars.

The Message, by Edward Wellen

In ancient China, a naked man with green skin appears out of nowhere.  A woodcutter takes the man into his hut and educates him.  Eventually he becomes one of the most important persons in the land, and is responsible for some of the great events in Chinese history.  The reasons for his actions are unexpected.  This is mostly a work of historical fiction, with a touch of speculative content.  Although not without interest, I thought it was a bit too long.  Three stars.

Threshold of the Prophet, by Roger Zelazny

A man named Crane appears from nowhere (another doubled theme of this issue) in New York in the far future.  The Brooklyn Bridge is destroyed and falls into the Hudson River.  Crane, who seems to have god-like powers, retrieves it and tries to sell it to an old man in the country.  Without the story's literary allusions (clarified by the editorial introduction), it would be meaningless.  Two stars.

Anything for Laughs, by Ron Goulart

The first of a pair of comedies in this issue is about an unemployed man who is pressured by his girlfriend into entering a job lottery.  He winds up as a court jester on a planet ruled by a dictatorship.  Somebody uses his name on revolutionary pamphlets, and his troubles begin.  Some readers may find this more amusing than I did.  Two stars.

One False Step, by David R. Bunch

A specialist in dystopia offers a grim tale of a man who made one mistake.  His job was a gruesome one.  When he fails at it, his punishment involves tending metallic plants, one of the many unpleasant aspects of this bleak future world.  This story will not be to the taste of all readers, but I found it powerful.  Four stars.

The Screams of the Wergs, by Jay Scotland


John Jakes is the first of two repeated authors in this issue, both hiding under pseudonyms containing the names of nations.  Extraterrestrials experience extreme pain when tourists take flash photographs of them.  A human who tries to protect them goes to extreme lengths.  It turns out that things are not what they seem.  This science fiction story never grabbed me.  Two stars.

Monologue for Two, by Harrison Denmark

As readers of Cele Goldsmith's pair of magazines know by now, this author is really Roger Zelazny.  Only two pages long, this story offers one side of a conversation.  Through it we see a man who suffered at the hands of another obtain great power, and win his revenge.  It's an effective narrative gimmick.  Four stars.

Professor Jonkin's Cannibal Plant, by Howard R. Garis

The second comic story in the magazine is a reprint from the August 1905 issue of Argosy.  A scientist greatly increases the size of an insect-eating plant by feeding it large pieces of meat.  As you might imagine, this is a bad idea.  Nothing surprising happens, and it's not particularly funny.  Two stars.

Love Story, by Laurence M. Janifer

This is a satiric story that begins as light comedy, but turns into something quite different at the end.  A man who truly loves other people causes the Earth to rotate in only four hours.  A scientist, frustrated by his failure to find a rational explanation for this phenomenon, solves the problem in the most direct way possible.  The last two paragraphs makes the reader reconsider the author's intention.  Three stars.

Do all these pairs double your pleasure and double your fun?  More importantly, do they justify the magazine's new price of fifty cents?  Maybe you should enjoy a stick of gum while you consider these questions.

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[March 22, 1963] Return Engagements (April 1963 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Those of us who are book addicts like to keep track of what's going on in the literary world.  One way to do this is to turn to the New York Times best seller list.  Unfortunately, strikers shut down the city's newspapers in December, preventing us from getting our weekly fix.

We can now breathe a sigh of relief.  The strike is settling down.  The list, which was unavailable from the middle of December until the beginning of March, has returned.  The near-future thriller Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, which ended the truncated year at the top of the list, kept that position at the start of this month. 

It was encouraging to see a science fiction novel (even if it wasn't labeled as such) reach number one.  (It has since been replaced by a slim volume containing J. D. Salinger's two novellas Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.  They may not be SF, but they're definitely worth reading.)

The Mona Lisa returned to the Louvre this month.  No doubt the French missed their great art treasure as much as New Yorkers did their newspapers.

A less welcome return, as least to my taste, was the Four Seasons to the top of the music charts with their third number one hit, Walk Like a Man.

Fittingly, the latest issue of Fantastic features the return of many names closely associated with the magazine, as well as authors returning to universes they created.

Some Fabulous Yonder, by Philip José Farmer

Frank Bruno's cover art depicts one of the bizarre creatures encountered in this space adventure.  The author revisits the setting of his tales about criminal-turned-priest John Carmody, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in recent years.  Carmody is mentioned in passing in this story, but does not take an active role in the plot.  Instead, the protagonist is the government agent who pursued him.  In this story, he turns his attention to another master criminal, a pirate who steals a starship, killing everyone aboard.  His intent is to invade a planet thought to be impossible to conquer.  The story begins as a hardboiled detective yarn, but soon becomes much stranger when the secrets of the planet emerge.  The breakneck pace of this story may leave the reader breathless, even if the plot twists seem arbitrary.  It all leads up to a scene revealing the immensity of time and space.  This wild ride is never boring, at least.  Three stars.

The Malatesta Collection, by Roger Zelazny

A young author who has already appeared in the pages of editor Cele Goldsmith's magazines several times returns with a tale set long after an atomic war.  The new civilization that rises from the ashes is a prim and proper one.  This causes a problem when scholars discover an ancient fallout shelter filled with erotic literature.  The ensuing conflict leads to a symbolic gesture by a rebellious artist.  This is an intriguing story, which can be seen as an allegory about censorship.  Four stars.

A Fate Worse Than . . ., by Robert H. Rohrer

Another new writer familiar to readers of Amazing and Fantastic, although not as prolific, returns with a very different post-atomic story.  It seems that Satanists dug themselves into the Earth in search of Hell, and thus were the only survivors of a nuclear war.  The result is a society in which church services are black masses.  The protagonist is a fellow who secretly summons an angel, the way a magician might summon a demon in our world.  This interesting premise, which could have led to enjoyable satire, is wasted on a familiar story of being careful what you wish for.  Two stars.

The Casket-Demon, by Fritz Leiber

One of the great names in fantastic fiction returns to the magazine that restarted his career with an unusual tale of magic and the movies.  A glamorous film star literally fades away, due to lack of publicity.  Weighing only a few pounds, and so attenuated that she becomes translucent, she turns to an ancient family curse.  By releasing a malevolent creature from inside a small box, she hopes to return to the headlines, even though she knows the price will be a very high one.  This offbeat story combines horror, satire, and whimsical fantasy into a tasty stew.  Four stars.

Survival Packages, by David R. Bunch

A writer that some readers love to hate also returns in this issue.  He revisits Moderan, his dystopic future where survivors of an atomic holocaust have bodies that are mostly metal.  They live in fortresses and make endless war on each other.  Into this terrible world come time capsules, buried long ago and forgotten, brought from underground by robots.  Their contents are disturbing.  The author's style is not as eccentric as usual in this story, and it carries a powerful impact.  Four stars.

A Thing of Terrible Beauty, by Harrison Denmark

Rumor has it that this unknown name is actually a disguise for Roger Zelazny, making his second appearance in the issue.  The style certainly seems like his.  In any case, the narrator is an immaterial alien mind that inhabits the brain of a drama critic.  The man becomes aware of his uninvited visitor.  The alien makes an unexpected revelation.  This is an effective mood piece, if more of an anecdote than a fully developed story.  Three stars.

Rain Magic, by Erle Stanley Gardner

The famous creator of Perry Mason returns with the third of his old pulp stories to be reprinted as so-called fantasy classics.  This fast-paced adventure story first appeared in the October 20, 1928 issue of Argosy.

An old man, passed out in the desert, relates his weird experiences in Africa.  After a shipwreck, he abandons his vessel and is taken in by the local inhabitants.  Among the many dangers he faces are bloodsucking bats, a hostile monkey-man, warring tribes, and man-eating ants.  The action never lets up for a second.  An interesting preface by the author states that the story is based on what he was told by an elderly fellow he met in the desert.  Whatever the truth of this may be, the reader is never bored.  (As in any pulp yarn from the time, there's an unpleasant trace of racism.  The narrator mentions the superiority of the white race, but at least he's somewhat skeptical about it.  He also falls in love with an African woman, which would still raise some eyebrows in this segregated nation of ours.  The story is much less offensive than many others of its kind.) Three stars.

Possible to Rue, by Piers Anthony

Finishing the issue is this light comedy, the author's first published work.  A wealthy man offers to buy his son a pet of any kind.  The boy requests a flying horse, then a unicorn.  The man goes to the encyclopedia to prove they do not exist.  When he asks for mundane animals, the unexpected happens.  This is a clever little bagatelle, likely to amuse.  Three stars.

If the magazine continues to offer stories of good quality, I'll be sure to return to it many times. 

[Speaking of returns, don't miss the next article, about the newest harvest of scientific discoveries from our satellites!]

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[March 12, 1963] TOO MUCH TO ASK? (the April 1963 Amazing)

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by John Boston

So: another not-very-good issue, this April Amazing, where the outstanding item is a piece of well-turned yard goods.  So what’s the reasonable expectation here?  Let’s not be too greedy.  How about at least something in each issue that’s unusually good, and nothing that’s unusually stupid?  Is that too much to ask?  Seems like it is, certainly this month.

“It didn’t happen twice a year that Gustavus Robert Fry, Chief Commissioner of the Interstellar Police Authority, allotted more than an hour in his working day to any one appointment.” That’s the opening line of James H. Schmitz’s Beacon to Elsewhere.  Am I the only one who’s gotten tired of stories that begin by announcing what a big shot—interstellar police commissioner, President, Galactic Coordinator, or what have you—one of the characters is? 

Transitory irritations aside, Beacon to Elsewhere—at 64 pages labelled a “novel”—is a reasonably agreeable piece of hokum, involving the discovery of a new series of elements, compounded into Ymir 400, which has many interesting and dangerous properties including emitting a new sort of radiation.  Two 34-kilogram cases of Ym-400 have been stolen from a space ship in transit.  The story starts with 10 pages of talk, with Howard Camhorn, the Overgovernment’s Coordinator of Research, explaining all of this and more to Chief Commissioner Fry.  This is followed by about 45 pages of the gumshoeing adventures of the more plebeian Lieutenant Frank Dowland, on the case in western North America, investigating the activities of some subversive ranchers who may be trying to use the stolen Ym-400 and may or may not be achieving time travel. 

Some large and daunting aliens make cameo appearances, their gravitas unfortunately impaired by the cover depiction which makes one of them look a bit like an oversized Shmoo (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmoo).  And the story fades out with another nine pages of talk, first Dowland’s debriefing, and then Camhorn and one of his guys talking about the debriefing.  And here is Schmitz’s unusual talent: he renders all this talk in such genial and readable style that he gets away with a way of constructing stories that would get anybody else a quick rejection letter.  I described the last Schmitz story in this magazine as “just capably rearranging the usual SF furniture”; that will do for this one too.  Three stars.

Schmitz’s competent piece of product is accompanied by a suite of fairly lackluster, or worse, short stories.  Roger Zelazny’s Circe Has Her Problems is not metaphorical; Circe has set up shop on a stray asteroid floating loose in interstellar space, hoping for some male company that can withstand her signature talent of turning them into animals.  An android shows up.  It’s as cartoony as it sounds.  Two stars, fewer in the hands of a less lively writer.  Now that Zelazny has broken in, are we getting his earlier practice pieces?

In David Bunch’s Somebody Up There Hates Us, an alien walks into a bar (actually, a night club on New Year’s Eve—and it walks into all of them at the same time, by the clock anyway) and hands out little wish-fulfillment devices, asking only that the patrons wait until midnight to operate them.  Things are not of course what they seem, and humanity (most of it anyway) is saved only because the bartenders are robots and we have time zones.  There is a smattering of ostentatious futuristic jargon (the protagonist is drinking an old fashioned space squeezings) in what is said to be 1972, but otherwise the writing is fairly mundane, unlike Bunch’s Moderan stories, which at least have the virtue of surface novelty.  There is a recurring theme of the mutual dislike between the protagonist and his wife, which is apparently supposed to be funny but is distasteful.  One star.

J.F. Bone’s For Service Rendered is a deal-with-the-Devil story, the Devil having come through Enid Twilley’s malfunctioning TV set, no pentagram needed.  He doesn’t want her soul, he wants her body, and he’s offering to cure the pancreatic cancer she didn’t know she had and give her another ten years or so free before whisking her off to Hel (sic), which he wants her to know isn’t half as bad as it’s cracked up to be.  This is all laid out in reasonably amusing detail, and then concludes in a stupid male-chauvinistic joke.  Another one-star job.

Harrison Denmark’s [a pseudonym if I've ever seen one…(Ed.)] The Stainless Steel Leech is about a werebot, who’s gotten free from Central Control but, to live (so to speak), needs to get his batteries charged by draining other robots, so he’s also a vampbot (my term, not the author’s) and an object of terror among the other robots (humans having disappeared from the scene).  This mildly clever joke is less annoying than but somewhat similar in tone to Circe Has Her Problems, not too surprisingly since rumor has it that Mr. Denmark is actually Zelazny.  Two stars, clutching futilely for a third.

Frank Tinsley is back after a six months’ absence with The Cosmic Wrecker, a more fanciful exercise than his usual; nobody else seems to be proposing a specialized vehicle to tool around and collect all the burnt-out and abandoned satellites and other assorted hardware we’re going to be leaving in near space.  It’s the usual slightly humdrum rendition, but three stars for originality, never mind that SF writers have been there before—see James White’s Deadly Litter, in New Worlds not long ago (US and UK editions).


And Sam Moskowitz, this time, profiles Lester del Rey, with the usual intense focus on his earliest work, and very spotty coverage of his post-1950 work.  (It’s not just me.  One of the readers’ letters this months calls Moskowitz out for “the manner in which they progress in pertinent detail up to about the mid and late ‘forties and then hastily run a bee-line to the nearby closing sentences.  There is hardly any mention of the author’s latter-day achievements.”)

There’s also a concluding psychological diagnosis that seems incoherent and nonsensical to me.  Del Rey has “never learned the lesson of self-discipline”—a guy who has maintained a very high level of free-lance professional productivity of several kinds for the last decade-plus.  Or: “His facade of toughness would seem to be fabricated more to maintain his own self-estimation than as a defense against the world.  Nevertheless its manifestation in his writing represents a psychological conflict that dams up the release of a reservoir of compassion.”

Huh?  What’s he talking about?  Del Rey has always seemed to me one of SF’s more compassionate writers; take a look at the stories in his Ballantine collection of a few years ago, Robots and Changelings.  Moskowitz seems almost laughably off base here, though as usual there’s interesting biographical information here that you won’t find elsewhere (but adding it all up I’m not sure how much of it to believe).  Anyway, two stars.

So, another waste of time for the most part.  Is there hope?  Maybe.  They are touting Leigh Brackett for next month.  If we’re lucky, she’s still better than her husband (fellow SFF-writer Edmond Hamilton).

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Your ballot should have arrived by now…]




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Magazine

[February 24, 1963] Something Old, Something New (March 1963 Fantastic)

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[While you're reading this article, why not tune in to KGJ, Radio Galactic Journey, playing all the current hits: pop, rock, soul, folk, jazz, country — it's the tops, pops…]


by Victoria Silverwolf

The pace at which innovations are arriving in these modern times is dizzying.  This month alone, a remarkable array of novel products appeared:

A new commercial aircraft, the Boeing 727, made its first flight.  It differs from the earlier 707 in having three jet engines rather than four.  Intended for short and medium-length flights, it can use shorter runways at smaller airports than the older model requires.

The Coca-Cola Company introduced Tab, a new diet soft drink, in competition with Royal Crown Cola's Diet Rite.  An IBM 1401 computer generated more than 185,000 four-letter words containing one vowel as possible names for the product.  The winning name, shortened from "tabb,"sometimes appears as "TaB," with the first and last letters capitalized.

The Feminine Mystique is a recently published book by Betty Friedan that may lead to a new women's movement, similar to the fight for voting rights in the early years of this century.  It challenges the idea that the most fulfilling roles for American women are as housewives and mothers.

While we welcome all these new things, we should also remember the old.  Telstar 1, which now seems like a part of history, although it launched only seven months ago, has ceased operating.  Radiation in the Van Allen belt destroyed its delicate circuitry.

Popular music also featured a mixture of old and new in recent weeks.  Earlier this month, Walk Right In by the Rooftop Singers reached the top of the charts.  Many listeners may not have realized that this catchy folk song is a remake of a tune first recorded by Cannon's Jug Stompers way back in 1929.  This revision of an old song yielded the Number One position later in the month to something brand new, Hey Paula, as sung by a duo calling themselves Paul & Paula.  In my opinion, this is a case where newer isn't better.

Fittingly, half the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic appear in print for the first time, while the other half date back to the previous century.

Physician to the Universe, by Clifford D. Simak

One of the biggest names in science fiction begins his most recent story in a mysterious fashion.  A man awakes in a dark place with little memory of his past.  Little by little, he remembers what happened to him.  This is a future world where robots enforce strict health regulations.  The man's crime is failing to take care of himself.  His punishment is exile to an island in the middle of a vast swamp.  With two fellow prisoners, he undertakes the long and dangerous journey across the wilderness to freedom.  Slowly, he recalls the extraordinary thing that happened to him as a child, and the important reason he must return to his home.  This is a complex story, told with multiple flashbacks.  Some scenes are full of lyrical beauty.  One might quibble that the ending is sudden, and that the author makes use of too many speculative themes for a story of this length, but overall it's compelling.  Four stars.

A Question of Re-Entry, by J. G. Ballard

A major British author offers a science fiction version of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in his latest story.  A United Nations official travels deep into the South American jungle in search of a spacecraft that crashed there five years ago.  He finds a tribe of Indians ruled by a white man who knows more about the missing vehicle than he admits.  Ballard has a gift for vivid description, and the jungle setting truly comes to life.  The plot is less effective, but adequate.  Three stars.

An Apparition, by Guy de Maupassant

We begin a trio of reprints with this 1883 story, translated from French.  An elderly man recounts the ghostly encounter he experienced as a young soldier.  There's not much else to this tale of the supernatural, which is really just an anecdote.  Two stars.

The Wet Dungeon Straw, by Jean Richepin

Also from 1883, and also translated from French, this macabre little story involves a man held prisoner for decades.  He becomes obsessed with drying out the wet straw on which he lies, exposing each piece to the tiny bit of sunlight he receives each day.  This project takes many years, and leads to an ironic conclusion.  Three stars.

His Natal Star, by Austyn Granville

This bagatelle from 1891 features an astronomer as its protagonist.  The star under which he was born draws near the solar system, and its gravity causes him to be drawn toward it.  The only purpose of this bit of absurd science is to show the fellow floating upside down in his home.  One star.

Nine Starships Waiting, by Roger Zelazny

We return to new fiction with the longest story yet from this prolific young writer.  It's difficult to offer a synopsis of this confusing tale.  Suffice to say that a super-assassin is sent to prevent a fleet of spaceships from conquering a planet.  The story is told from multiple viewpoints, and the assassin undergoes a strange change of identity, so the plot is difficult to follow.  The story is overwritten at times, with many literary allusions.  Two stars.

This disappointing issue, with a few bright spots, proves that both the old and the new contain good and bad.

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Your ballot should have arrived by now…]




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