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Book, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 12, 1966] Which Way to Outer Space? (New Writings In SF 8)

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by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Space has been big news in the British press recently. Not the current struggles of America’s Gemini-9 link-up, but rather the saga of the UK’s presence in the ELDO.

ELDO logo

The European Launch Development Organization was formed by a treaty signed in 1962 between Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands for the development of a three-stage rocket launch for satellite use (you can read an excellent report Kaye Dee did on the project two years ago). However, the new British Labour government has been unhappy with the increasing costs and with the fact that Britain was paying around 40% of the cost rather than investing in its own rocket program, like some of the other nations have been.

The issue apparently came to a head when estimates for the Europa 1 launcher had risen to £150m, with no expectation of much practical use before 1969. For the last week negotiations had been happening feverishly to try to come up with a solution, with concerns that Britain would have no involvement in space in the future and the whole Eldo project could end up being scrapped.

ELDO launch brochure
Brochure for the upcoming Europa 1 launches from Woomera

Thankfully, a solution has been found. Britain will still be involved but their share of the cost will be reduced to 27%, whilst other countries shares increasing to meet this shortfall, making the payments between the largest countries more equitable.

New Writings in SF 8

Space is also the main theme of this quarter’s New Writings anthology, with new angles used to look at the familiar subject.

New Writings in SF8 Cover

Before we start on the stories, can we address the fact that these Dobson hardbacks are incredibly ugly to look at? They are just the same image and format reproduced in different colors each time. The Corgi paperback editions all have much more attractive covers which are likely to intrigue the reader:

Covers for New Writings anthologies 1, 2 & 3 in paperback from Corgi
The first three New Writings anthologies in paperback from Corgi

Could the publishers please make more effort? Or at least give us some variety after two years of the same dust jacket?

Anyway, on to the stories, let us see what Carnell’s crew comes up with:

The Pen and the Dark by Colin Kapp

We have the return of Kapp’s Unorthodox engineers for a third installment (one in Carnell’s New Worlds and the other in New Writings 3). These stories seem to have fans enough to encourage more tales in this world, although I have personally not been enamored by what has been presented so far.

This time the team go to investigate a strange phenomenon on the planet Ithica. An alien vessel had appeared there, then vanished, leaving a mysterious pillar of darkness. The whole area appears to defy their understanding of physics and so the team must investigate further.

I have read some people find the stilted, unnatural dialogue in this series as a great way to give his world depth. To me it is just irritating, as it does not stray far enough from our own language to read as much other than wooden. This was also compounded for me by the fact that it is filled to the brim with scientific jargon I struggled to understand. I have a suspicion it may have been made up, as they say at the end:

And even if they’d tried to tell us, I doubt our capacity to have understood. Try explain the uses and construction of a Dewar flask to an ant – and see who gets tired first.

However, what I did appreciate was the atmosphere of adventure into the unknown he creates which dragged me along this obscure journey. Perhaps more one for the Niven fans out there?

Three stars

Spacemen Live Forever by Gerald W. Page

Page is a new writer to me but has apparently had a couple of pieces published in the American magazines. Here he produces a very grim take on the long intergalactic voyage.

Torman Graylight is first officer on a ship transporting a sleeping population to a new planet. He is the only person awake apart from second officer Kelly. But when Kelly dies in an accident, Graylight’s loneliness gets the better of him and he decides to wake one of the sleepers. But will this be enough for the two of them to survive the years of travel through the void of space?

Whilst these kinds of grim nihilistic tales are not generally to my taste, I do appreciate the skill with which he presents the atmosphere, giving us a real sense of hopelessness and isolation.

Four Stars

The Final Solution by R. W. Mackelworth

Mackelworth also serves up a grim vignette, this one on the inherent self-destructiveness of fascism. In this future, human racial supremacists (closely modelled on Nazis) encounter another species with similar ideology on The Rose World. They decide to do a series of tests to determine racial hierarchy.

Even though short it is a very poignant and necessary piece on the ease with which militarism and racism can take over a society. The only parts that stop me from giving it a full five stars are that some of the elements (e.g., calling the alien leader Slan) and the ending make the story a little too explicit, but it is still a very strong short.

A high four stars

Computer’s Mate by John Rackham

Captain Sven Soren is piloting the Stellar One through the gaps between atoms as a means of breaching light-speed, with the first attempt to Vega. To achieve this, they need a massive computer to control the ship’s complex mechanisms. Coming with it is Grant Wilson, whose job is to care for the machine and act as the link between crew and computer.

Their first “star-jaunt” is a success, with them finding an Earth style world and its inhabitants. However, the crew are distrustful of Wilson as he himself acts like a computer and are unwilling to heed his warnings of the dangers ahead.

I have decidedly mixed feelings about this piece. Whilst it is nice to see a story about a mentally disabled person (particularly where he gets to be the hero, rather than a victim) the abuse of the rest of the crew because of his differences still feels out of place. There are also large sections which are just philosophizing on the nature of life and humanity, which can be interesting at times but often seem to be used at the expense of the women crew members. And whilst it is nice to see multiple women involved in spaceship operations, they are not really shown to do much that is positive.

I think I will go straight down the middle and give it three stars.

Tryst by John Baxter

On the outer reaches of an Asimov-esque galactic empire, there is a barren, nearly forgotten colonized world called Dismas. their only real link with the central imperium is an annual ship sent to help support the colony and bring back any saleable merchandise.

However, on this shipment all the boxes of equipment sent instead contain boxes of rose petals and the new machines are made from paper and foil. Even the ship in orbit is mysteriously deserted. The young rebellious Nicholas is sent to take the ship back to Centre and find out what has happened.

This is a thoroughly sensory story, beautifully described with a real sense of wonder and melancholy. Unfortunately, the ending was a bit of a disappointment for me and the only thing keeping it from a full five stars.

Four stars

Synth by Keith Roberts

And of course, at last we come to the obligatory Keith Roberts tale! This time making up the final third of the anthology. However, this piece does not seem to have any relation to the space theme of the rest of the book, rather being one of artificial intelligence.

In the twenty-second century, Megan Wingrove is named as a co-respondent in a major divorce case, between famous painter Henry Davenport and his wife Ira Davenport, with it being claimed Megan had an affair with Henry whilst working as their maid and Ira’s companion. What makes this case unusual is that Megan is a synth, a kind of advanced robot with an organic skin and muscle structure.

As well as seeking damages for mental anguish, Ira wants to have Megan destroyed for being dangerous and behaving immorally. We observe the case unfolding as they debate as to whether or not it is possible for a human to have a sexual relationship with a synth and whether a synth can be deemed to be responsible.

I was initially cynical that Keith Roberts would be able to do this kind of tale justice but he manages to produce both a really tense courtroom drama as well as delving into questions of consent and love. This story manages to be applicable to real life (you could see the same questions emerging in a similar situation with a domestic servant) whilst also being distinctly science fictional. He gives more thought to what it would mean for human emotions and longings to hit up against our technological capabilities than I can think of in any similar story.

I am as surprised as anyone to find myself giving a Keith Roberts story a full five stars!

Back to Earth

Readjusting their focus back to traditional science fictional subjects and having a nice mix of new and old talents has really brought out the best in Carnell’s anthology series. Here they put new perspectives on these subjects and come out with a marvelous selection. Even the stories I didn’t like as much I think may have more to do with my personal foibles than the quality of the writing.

Hopefully, this can continue in issue #9 and not regress to the poor state of affairs we saw in the prior collection.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Old Series Never Die, They Just Fade Away

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

A Home Run The First Time At Bat

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


Your fans mean it, Mister Sledge.

I've Seen This All Before

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


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

Predictably, the front cover is also a rerun.


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

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

Just Like a Man, by Chad Oliver


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

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


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

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


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

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

Three stars.

The Trouble With Ants, by Clifford D. Simak


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Five stars.

Where Is Roger Davis?, by David V. Reed


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

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


Illustrations by Julian S. Krupa.

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


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

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

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

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

Two stars.

Almost Human, by Tarleton Fiske


Cover art by Harold W. McCauley.

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


Illustration by Rod Ruth.

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

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


Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

Two stars.

Satisfaction Guaranteed, by Isaac Asimov


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

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


Illustration by Enoch Sharp.

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

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


Anonymous cover art for a British edition.

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


Cover art by Thomas Chibbaro.

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

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

Three stars.

A Portfolio – Virgil Finlay

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


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


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


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

What can I say? His work is stunning.

Five stars.

Satan Sends Flowers, by Henry Kuttner


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.

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


Illustrations by Tom Beecham.

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

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


His first crime is the murder of his mother.

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

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


Back and front cover art by Richard Powers.

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

Three stars.

The Way Home, by Theodore Sturgeon


Cover art by Barye Phillips.

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


Illustrations by David Stone.

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


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

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


Cover art by Mel Hunter.

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


Cover art by Peter Curl.

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

Five stars.

Worth Tuning In Again?


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

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


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

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 6, 1966] The World is Ending (Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison)

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by Jason Sacks

The Earth is starting to collapse.

Smog fills the air of our greatest cities, species are dying throughout the world, and the global population continues to increase geometrically, threatening our very existence as human beings on this planet. Half the people in the world live in extreme poverty while most of the other half worry about falling into poverty. Famine threatens much of the world, even as the world’s arable land decreases due to over-farming.

If things keep going as they have been, we will be facing unparalleled destruction by the end of the century.

Rachel Carson and her important book

Our great thinkers are stepping up to warn us about global destruction. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring is a terrifying description of environmental degradation, while Ralph Nader’s 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed is a timely reminder the government doesn’t always look out for the interests of everyday people. John Kenneth Galbraith stated the roots of the problem well in his 1958 book The Affluent Society, most people are blind to the destruction we’re creating:

The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered, and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wire that should long since have been put underground. They pass into a countryside that has been rendered largely invisible by commercial art… they picnic on exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream and go on to spend the night at a park which is a menace to public health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings. Is this, indeed, the American genius?

Galbraith’s fictional family is all too real, all too likely to overlook the terrible ways we’re destroying our planet. The worst part of his scenario is a sad truth: all these issues are likely to compound, to become worse and worse over time. Eventually these trends will become so powerful, there will be no way to reverse them. If we don't reverse them, our planet is doomed.

Population growth vs the rate of food production, from a Malthusian perspective

Add to those problems the massive impact of the Mathusian theory of population growth, which states (to simplify it dramatically) that population growth is exponential while increases of food, water and other key commodities is linear. Anyone extrapolating out Malthus’s theories will discover our world population is fast outstripping our ability to feed and clothe them. Malthusians believe we’re facing a ticking population bomb – and they also believe too many people are ignoring that bomb.

A new science fiction novel has come around to remind us of that the bomb exists and is ticking.

Make Room! Make Room!

Make Room! Make Room is a major departure for author Harry Harrison. Harrison is probably best known for his Stainless Steel Rat series, which are light and silly action-adventure stories. In this book he shows his versatility with one of the most compelling and downbeat speculative fiction novels I’ve ever read.

Harrison takes the destruction of the planet to its logical conclusion. By 1999, on the edge of the new millennium, Earth is ravaged. Thousands of species of animals have gone extinct. The world’s population has exceeded 7 billion and continues to grow. Meat and vegetables are commodities more precious than gold. All the oil has been mined from the planet and all the trees have been chopped down.

As Make Room! Make Room! begins, we learn New York City is massively overpopulated. Some 35 million people live in the metropolis, and thousands of people living on the streets. Thousands more live in abandoned cars, now made useless by the lack of oil in the world. Police officers are barely paid, and they live in tiny apartments powered by batteries whose generator is a man riding a bicycle.

Only a small wealthy class of people continue to live in the city, residing in air conditioned, spacious apartments, showering with rare and precious clean water and enjoying the occasional cherished strip of black market steak.

In this world we follow police officer Andrew Rusch as he tries to track down the murderer of a rich man who lives in one of those spacious apartments. We watch Rusch fight through his wretched world to find the killer, find a new love, lose an old companion, and fight like hell to acquire even the most basic things he needs to survive. Even the pathetic SoyLentil steaks are a rare, delicious luxury. Harrison puts us in the well-worn shoes of his characters, forcing us to understand their privations and pain on a personal level.

Make Room! Make Room! is a combination cautionary tale and hard-boiled detective novel, as if Raymond Chandler and Rachel Carson had a child who they gave to Philip K. Dick to raise. Like Dick’s brilliant Dr. Bloodmoney (my favorite book from 1965), Make Room! Make Room! takes place in an anti-utopian society which has experienced a profound collapse in every one of its structures. Unlike Dick’s masterpiece, however, there is little or no catharsis or heroism in Harrison’s book. Everything is misery in Make Room! Make Room!.

Every aspect of Harrison's world brings emotional, financial, or physical pain to the people who live there. The mere act of existing in this anti-utopia is pure torture. And the true sadness of this book is that Rusch and his new girlfriend Shirl only sometimes see this world for the hellhole it is. Other times they wander through the world, like goldfish never seeing the water they’re swimming in.

Young Mr. Harrison

Harrison does a compelling job of extrapolating out the effects of environmental degradation, and he does a masterful job of portraying governmental breakdown. Despite the presence of police, the world seems nearly lawless, with civil servants shown as woefully unable to help in the world and with rebellions cutting off aqueducts into the city. While politicians argue endlessly about stupid things, bureaucrats cut back on food and water rations. Rioting breaks out in the streets and the police are unable to do anything about it. I’m not sure if Harrison is a libertarian, but his portrayal of government here shows a deep distrust of the net the current presidential administration has endeavored to create for all of us.

Another of Harrison’s main ideas is the blindness most people have to the events they’re part of. In one powerful scene late in the book, the government orders a large family to move into the apartment Andy and Shirl are sharing. The family is huge, with ten kids, a couple who have died and a few more on the brink of death. The family are filthy and pathetic, loud, obnoxious and self-involved. They have no class, which bothers Andy and Shirl deeply. But more than class or loudness, the family is horrible to live with because they are representative of the larger, broken society in which they live.

They have too many kids. Those kids get a maximum of three years education. Nobody can find a job. The family live on government rations. They have nothing to look forward to, nothing to strive for, no reason to think things will ever improve for them. Life is misery and eventually you die. If you’re rich and connected, perhaps the police will track down your murderer. If not, you’ll just die like the hundreds who die each day, unloved, unmourned, just another boring statistic in this Malthusian wasteland.

Make Room! Make Room! is a professionally written, powerful novel which took me to a place I don’t want to visit again. Harrison creates a rich and compelling anti-utopia extrapolated from the pages of The New York Times. He shows us a frightful future that seems all too likely to happen. Maybe this book will do a little bit to spur readers  to fight for our ecology and to keep population growth low. Malthus would approve.

3.5 stars.

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Serial

[May 31, 1966] Worth Remembering (June 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Decoration Day

First the war, then the licking of wounds.  Not all wounds are physical.  After the Civil War rent this nation in two, spring became a time for remembering the dead, their blood shed in almost incomprehensible numbers.  In 1868, the ritual honoring of fallen veterans became an official holiday known as Decoration Day (for the decoration of graves).  Over time, the name changed to Memorial Day, and last month, President Johnson proclaimed the custom's birthplace to be Waterloo, New York, the event first occurring a century ago.

The last Civil War veteran passed away in 1956, but this year's Memorial Day still found us licking our wounds.  Indeed, last week marked the bloodiest seven days for American soldiers since Korea: 966 casualties in Vietnam alone, 146 of them fatal.  Will next year's day of remembrance be worse?

The Issue at Hand

A cute segue would be in poor taste at this juncture, so I'll simply proceed to the review.  The latest issue of Analog drew my attention with its striking astronomical cover.  Let's turn the page and see what delights and disappointments Herr Campbell has for us this month.


by Chesley Bonestell

The Ancient Gods (Part 1 of 2), by Poul Anderson

In the letter column, Poul Anderson talks about discovering a beautiful painting by Chesley Bonestell.  It depicts a the night sky as seen from a planet perhaps 200,000 light years north of the Milky Way.  I would guess that this painting, as well as perhaps a viewing of last year's film, Flight of the Phoenix, provided the inspiration for the author's latest tale. 


by John Schoenherr

I shall give nothing else away save that those who know me know I'm a sucker for astronomically correct tales of exploration, and that Flight of the Phoenix got my nomination for the Best Dramatic Hugo.

Four stars so far.

Early Warning, by Robin S. Scott


by Stan Robinson

Lee is a big man, a skilled man, a man whose job is to throw monkey wrenches into supposedly foolproof systems like the D.C./Kremlin Hotline and Pentagon intelligence computers.  Is he a double-agent?  A mole?  Or something more?

There's really not enough to this story to engage; it feels more like a fragment of a Joe Poyer thriller than a complete piece.  Just some workmanlike action writing and a smug, Campbell-pleasing sting. 

Two stars.

CWACC Strikes Again, by Hank Dempsey


by Gray Morrow

"Hank Dempsey" (I have it on reliable information that this is a pseudonym for Harry Harrison, apparently trying to make the big lucre by pushing all of Campbell's buttons) is back with CWACC: the Committee for Welfare, Administration, and Consumer Control, last seen last year.  Pronounced "Quack," the goal of this two-person operation is the support and representation of eccentric inventors.  You see, to the scientific community, they're just kooks, but we all know that those industrious garage inventors produce way more of the world's innovation than the anonymous folks in white coats.  Right?

Anyway, in this episode, CWACC's administrator teams up with an enemy, the local kook-catching flatfoot, to rescue a CWACCer, whose invention is being used by con artists to sucker in, of all people, the police commissioner.  Along the way, "Dempsey" gets some pseudo-scientific shots in, like the assertion that the common cold can be defeated by sufficient vitamins in one's diet. 

Vaguely readable garbage.  One star.  I hope it was worth selling your soul for four cents a word, Harry!

Live Sensors, by Carl A. Larson

This nonfiction article started auspiciously, promising to compare the biological sensors with which animals are naturally equipped to the most refined artificial detectors.  The overall package is lacking, however.  There are lots of interesting tidbits on the capabilities of creatures, but they are interspersed with larder passages that don't do too much.  Never do we find out how we might utilize or at least learn from natural sensing devices. 

It would also help if Analog employed subheadings.  Three stars.

Stranglehold, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

My nephew David rang me the other day (on Sunday, when the rates are lowest) to tell me how much he enjoyed the new Chris Anvil story.  This may be a ringing endorsement (ha ha!) but I always take David's recommendations with a grain of salt, especially where Anvil is concerned.

A scout team following up on a lost comrade lands on a planet despite receiving a warning that such would be dangerous.  Once planetside, they find themselves subjected to illusion after terrifying illusion, only their unshakeable monitors telling the truth about reality (why wouldn't their perception of the monitors also be changed?)

Turns out the inhabitants have some kind of telepathy and can change their perception of reality and those of others.  After the team escapes with their rescued friend, they determine that a race with psychic phenomena cannot develop science since they fudge the results to their liking.  Contrarily, a race that chooses a scientific path atrophies psychic phenomena because…well, just because.

Therefore, all races, including humanity, have psychic potential, and it's only because we chose the path of science that spoonbending isn't more prevalent.  Q.E.D.

Gee, I wonder how this story got published.

What I really don't understand is what possible advantage the alien trait of mass hallucination affords.  If it were real transmutation being employed in this story, there might be something to it, but there isn't.  A being that thinks it is having its physical needs met when it is not quickly becomes a sick and/or dead being.  Maybe it's more of a reality enhancer, as in the first Cugel the Clever story, which I guess would make more sense.

Anyway, Stranglehold feels like what would happen if Bob Sheckley ever wrote for Campbell.

Two stars.

Escape Felicity, by Frank Herbert


by Kelly Freas

In Frank Herbert's latest, a lone interstellar scout plunges his ship deep into a nebulous cloud.  He is determined to fight off the "push" that causes all of his corps to return to Earth after a certain point.  But is the compulsion programmed in by BuPurs to keep scouts from going native?  Or is there an external agency involved?

I found this one of Herbert's more compelling pieces, though it falls apart a bit at the end.  And it feels like the title is a pun in search of a story; I can't figure out its applicability to this one.

Three stars.

Doing the Math

Thus, Analog ends up near the bottom of the pack with a 2.6 star rating, only beating out the mostly-reprint (and consistently lackluster) Amazing 2.5.  Ahead of Campbell's mag are New Worlds (3.1), Galaxy (3.1), Impulse (3.0), IF (3.0), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.8).

Worthy material comprised about an issue-and-a-half out of six this month.  Women produced 11.25% of the new fiction, at the high end of the usual range.

All told, June 1966 may not be remembered in times to come, particularly as impressive as last month was.  But, as noted at the beginning of the article, sometimes having to remember is painful.

Until next month…

If you need a mood-lifter now, tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest and best hits!




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[May 22 1966] O.K.? No Way! (Doctor Who: The Gunfighters)

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By Jessica Holmes

I love musicals. I love — despite its flaws — this weird little science fiction show: Doctor Who. You’d think if you put the two together you’d end up with something I adore. It didn’t work.

Yes, this is essentially a musical serial– or rather, a serial with musical narration and more than one actual on-screen musical number. It sounds completely bizarre, and that’s because it is.

Rather than the usual incidental music peppering Doctor Who’s serials, this time around the action is interspersed with a ballad written by Tristram Cary and performed by Lynda Baron. Cary has provided music for Doctor Who before, in The Daleks, Marco Polo and The Daleks’ Master Plan. I wish I could say I remembered any of the music in those serials, but I can’t. All the same, I have found that his latest offering has wormed its way into my brain, and I keep catching myself humming the tune… much to my dismay.

This one’s also an alleged historical with more inaccuracies than I can count, so to save us all a lot of time I’ll quickly explain the very basics of what ACTUALLY happened in Tombstone on October 26, 1881.

Image: Tombstone in 1881

THE GUNFIGHT NEAR-ISH TO THE O.K. CORRAL

The conflict in Tombstone had been a long time brewing, the result of a long feud between the lawmen of Tombstone and the outlaw Cowboys finally coming to a head. That’s a long story and not really relevant, but it involves exciting things like stagecoach robberies, smuggling, political rivalries, and all that good stuff. What really kicked things off, however, was a drunken argument and a new gun-control law.

The night before the fight, Doc Holliday and Ike Clanton got into an argument, which Town Marshal Virgil Earp put a stop to before things could get out of control. However, Clanton didn’t drop the matter, and threatened both Holliday and the Earp brothers. The town of Tombstone had recently made it illegal to carry a weapon within the town limits (unless you were just passing through), giving Virgil the pretext he needed to pistol-whip and disarm Clanton. Virgil hauled Ike before a judge, who fined him for the offence, and then let him go. Clanton, none too pleased about being disarmed and whacked on the noggin, fetched five of his Cowboy buddies, including his brother Billy and the McLaury brothers.

Having got wind of the Cowboys being in town and apparently armed, Virgil deputised his brothers Morgan and Wyatt. Along with Doc Holliday they went to disarm the outlaws, finding them at an empty lot near the Old Kindersley Corral. It didn’t go well.
It’s not clear who shot first, but when the smoke cleared Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers lay dead, and the only uninjured man on the opposing side was Wyatt Earp. Ike, for his part, had run from the fight.

In the aftermath, Ike brought charges against the Earps and Holliday for killing his brother, and following an investigation and trial, they were found to have acted within the law.

This is all a massive oversimplification of a very complex situation, but I’ve distilled it as best as I can.

And now for Doctor Who’s version of events.

Image: The main street of Tombstone, the sign of the OK Corral visible in the background.

A HOLIDAY FOR THE DOCTOR

Welcome to Tombstone, Arizona. It’s a nice little frontier town, mostly quiet until today. The notorious Clanton brothers (of which there are three: Ike, Billy and Phineas) have ridden into town to settle a score with Doc Holliday, noted gunfighter, gambler, and… dentist.

My American friends, I am so sorry for what you’re about to endure. Much as I often find American attempts at an English accent to be grating, I have to admit we’re much, much worse at yours. Some of these chaps are overshooting America, crossing the Pacific and landing in Australia.

Image: Stephen and Dodo in bad cowboy costumes, with the Doctor clutching his jaw in the foreground.

The Doctor and company arrive and soon make the acquaintance of Town Marshal Vir–sorry, WYATT Earp. Virgil won’t be turning up until much later, sorry.

The Clantons discuss their plans to find Doc Holliday with their associate Seth Harper, but they're overheard by the bar singer, Kate. Kate immediately hurries off to warn her lover, Doc.

Doc, for his part, looks like they’ve tried really hard to make him bear a believable resemblance to the Doctor, despite the fact he was only thirty years old at the time of the fight. Kate and Doc get into a contest over who can overact the clumsily-written dialogue the hardest. That scenery must be really delicious.

Image: Kate and Doc

I have to give credit where it’s due– the set is large and detailed enough to be believable. It’s even big enough to safely gallop a horse through.

Wyatt introduces the Doctor and company to local Sherriff Bat Masterson, and the Doctor claims that they’re a travelling band of players: Steven ‘Regret’, singer, Miss Dodo Dupont, pianist, and he of course is Doctor Caligari. This bit is quite funny, I’ll give them that.

The Doctor finds Doc canoodling with his lady friend in the back room of his parlour, and is not reassured to learn that he’s Doc’s first customer. Meanwhile, Dodo and Stephen try and fail to blend in with the locals as they swagger over to the saloon. It would help if their outfits weren't more fit for a fancy dress party than the Old West.

Image: Kate and Doc stand either side of the Doctor, who is sitting in the dentist's chair.

However, the Cowboys overhear the young pair talking about the Doctor, and under the mistaken assumption that they’re associates of Doc Holliday, confront the pair.

Stephen and Dodo try to protest, but the Cowboys are having none of it. If they're really musicians, why not entertain everyone with a song?

With a couple of handy hostages at the saloon, Seth waylays the Doctor as he emerges from his appointment looking rather the worse for wear. He extends a cordial invitation for a get-together at the saloon, which after some insistence the Doctor accepts.

Having overheard this, Doc insists that the Doctor take his gun. He’s not being charitable, mind you, he just wants to make sure that the Cowboys mistake the Doctor for him.

Image: Stephen and Dodo look at a songbook while being held at gunpoint by one of the Clantons.

Back at the bar, the Cowboys confront Stephen and Dodo, who insist they’re really musicians, nothing to do with Doc Holliday. Well, if that’s so, how about a song?

Dodo mimes along to the player piano quite convincingly as Stephen sings the same ballad that’s been narrating all the goings on. He’s not bad, considering he’s being held at gunpoint. His commitment to maintaining a bad American accent isn’t doing him any favours though.

DON’T SHOOT THE PIANIST

The ever-so-heroic Doc Holliday watches as the Doctor heads to the saloon, anticipating that the Clantons will kill him in Doc’s place. However, Kate also heads back to the saloon, much to the relief of Stephen who has been made to sing the same song four times over.

So of course we all want to hear it yet again from her, don’t we?

Image: Stephen sings for the Clantons

In comes the Doctor, completely oblivious to the tension in the room until he hears the name Clanton and gets some inkling of the trouble he’s in.

His protestations that he’s not Holliday fall on deaf ears, but luckily for him Holliday had a change of heart. Hiding upstairs, Holiday fires off a few well-placed shots at just the right moment to enable the Doctor, Kate and Stephen to disarm the Cowboys.

Image: The Doctor and Kate hold the Clantons at gunpoint.

Wyatt and Bat turn up, taking the Doctor into custody for his own protection– a fact that seems to be lost on Stephen, who immediately falls in with the Cowboys in the hopes of breaking him out. Of course, the Cowboys are only helping him so that they can get at ‘Doc’, but it takes the poor lad a while to catch on.

As for Dodo, she’s ended up with Doc Holliday, who won’t let her out of her room in case she gives away the ruse. After all, he’ll be safe with Earp.

Image: The Doctor sits in a jail cell.

It is at this point that the musical narration started to wear out its welcome. No, that didn’t take long at all, did it?

The Cowboys coach Stephen on what to do at the jailhouse to break the Doctor out, and Stephen finally realises that he can’t trust them, though he doesn’t let on. He sneaks off to the jailhouse and passes the Doctor a gun through the window of his cell, telling him to bluff his way out and escape before the Clantons come for him.

So what does the Doctor do? He hands the gun over to Wyatt and tells him about the escape plan.

Image: Stephen talks to the Doctor through the window of his cell.

Methinks the Doctor ought to swap his cowboy hat for a dunce cap. It’s also here that I noticed that the Doctor consistently calls Earp ‘Wearp’. Why? The Doctor knows who Earp is, and it’s too consistent to be a line flub, so I don’t really get it.

The Clantons catch Stephen sneaking back from the jailhouse, and poor Stephen finds himself being carted off by an angry mob intent on stringing him up as an associate of Holliday.

Dodo and company spot them heading away, so Doc leaps into action to rescue… his dentist chair. Seth spots him as he comes down the stairs, but Doc is a quicker shot. Leaving Seth dead on the floor, he has Kate saddle up three horses; Dodo will be leaving town with them.

The Clanton-led mob arrives at the jailhouse with an ultimatum: hand over ‘Doc’, or Stephen will swing in his place.

Image: Wyatt stands in front of Stephen, brandishing his gun. Stephen has a noose around his neck.

JOHNNY RINGO

Though the Doctor is more than willing to meet the mob’s demands, Earp isn’t about to give in. He sneaks around the back of the mob and knocks out Phineas Clanton, taking him into custody as the barman comes running up to tell everyone that he’s just seen the real Doc Holliday shoot Seth.

With their brother in custody, the other Clantons back off, heading to the saloon to drink it dry. They need a new associate. They need Johnny Ringo.

Because I can’t resist adding in a historical note: Johnny Ringo was a real outlaw, but he wasn’t involved in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but later incidents involving Doc Holliday and the Earps.

Image: Stephen and the Doctor talk to Charlie the barmman.

Doc, Kate and Dodo take a room in the next town, out of immediate danger but close enough that they can get back to Tombstone at a moment's notice. I say out of danger, but Doc manages to get into a brief offscreen shootout in the two minutes it takes him to scrounge up some supper.

Back in Tombstone, Johnny Ringo rides into town. Rather serendipitous, given that the Clantons didn’t have a way to contact him. It just so happens that he, too, has a score to settle with Holliday. Suspicious that Charlie the barman might warn the Earps about his presence, he shoots him dead.

Image: Johnny Ringo lights a cigar with a gas lamp.

Just in case we weren’t paying attention, the singing narration reiterates what just happened to Charlie in a desperate attempt to make us feel sad.

Meanwhile, Dodo wants to go back to Tombstone so badly she’s willing to hold Doc at gunpoint. He’s far more amused than threatened, but he does agree to take her back.

The Doctor and Stephen meet Ringo in the saloon and find the dead body of poor Charlie the barman. Seeing as they’re both looking for Holliday, Ringo takes Stephen to search for him. Stephen is apparently fine with teaming up with the very obvious outlaw.

Image: The Doctor talks to Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson

Ringo and Stephen soon arrive in the next town and head for the saloon, figuring that Holliday will be in there gambling. However, they don’t find Holliday, but Kate.

Say, if Holliday and Dodo are on their way back from that town, wouldn’t they have passed Stephen and Ringo on the road?

The narration, long having worn out its welcome, thoroughly gets on my nerves. It is very rare that narration is even necessary in the first place. For an extra helping of lazy writing, the song tells us that Kate and Ringo were once lovers. Apparently there is no other way of conveying that. It’s not as if they could simply ACT as if they have a romantic past. Oh, wait, they do.

Image: Ringo points a gun at Kate

And because I’m already annoyed and on my high horse, I want to note that I have been unable to find any evidence of the real Kate and Ringo having ever been involved with one another, romantically or otherwise.

Kate tells Ringo that Doc headed out for New Mexico, hoping to throw him off the trail. However, Ringo has other ideas. He’ll be heading back to Tombstone, and Kate’ll be coming with him.

In the Tombstone jailhouse, Wyatt has left his younger brother Warren to guard the imprisoned Clanton. The other Clantons come by the jailhouse, and poor young Warren is too slow to get the draw on them. Leaving him bleeding on the floor, the Clantons break their brother out of jail.

Image: Warren Earp lying face down on the floor.

The music and narration try to make it sad, but you can’t manufacture an emotional response to the death of a character I have absolutely no reason to care about.

Here’s another departure from history. Warren Earp was real, but not only did he have nothing to do with the fight at the O.K. Corral, the Clantons never did a thing to him! He died in 1900, long after this whole incident.

THE OK CORRAL

Someone, anyone, I beg of you. Please shoot the narrator.

At the saloon, Wyatt makes the Doctor a deputy, and his brother Virgil finally turns up to lend a hand. They soon find out what happened to Warren, and the dying man manages to tell them who did this to him before going to the great rodeo in the sky.

Image: The Earps kneel over their dead brother.

A furious Wyatt sends Virgil to tell the Clantons they’ll be waiting for them come sunup.

Ringo tells the Clantons to do as Virgil says. While they’re facing off against the Earps, Ringo can come up from behind and shoot them in the back. Well, that’s hardly sporting, is it?

Image: Virgil Earp delivers his message to the Cowboys.

Virgil gets back to Tombstone and tells the others that although he didn’t see Ringo himself, he saw his horse. So much for secrecy, eh, Ringo?

The Doctor despairs at this development. It seems like they’re hopelessly outgunned. However, he didn’t count on Doc Holliday.

He’s back, and he’s itching for a fight. Now that Doc’s here, the Doctor quite eagerly hands over his badge and gun. He’s not really cut out for all this wild west stuff.

Later that night, the Doctor frets over the coming duel. Shouldn’t the Clantons get a fair trial?

Image: The Doctor speaks to Pa Earp

The Sheriff is relieved to hear he’s not the only sane man in town, so he sends the Doctor to try talking to the Clantons. Yes, I’m sure they’ll be perfectly reasonable and this can all be solved over tea and crumpets.

Hold on a minute. Is the Doctor trying to meddle with history? The one thing he always says he cannot and WILL NOT ever do?

All the same, it doesn't amount to much, given he only speaks to the Clantons' Pa, and the brothers have already left.

Image: The Earps walk down the street to meet the Clantons

As the lawmen and the Cowboys assemble for their final standoff, the ballad warbles on, undermining the dramatic framing of the scene.

Doc almost gets caught out by Ringo, but the timely intervention of Dodo saves him. There’s a tense moment as Ringo grabs her and takes her hostage, leaving Doc with no choice but to drop his gun.

However, what self-respecting gun-toting sharp-shooting wild west hero would carry only one gun? Not Doc Holliday, that’s for sure. As Ringo stoops to pick up Doc’s gun, Doc whips out another and shoots him dead. Telling Dodo to get to safety, he joins the firefight.

Image: Doc Holliday aims his pistol

The half-hearted anti-violence message the Doctor keeps attempting to bring up would be a lot stronger if Doc didn’t look so darn COOL when he’s shooting people.

When the smoke settles, the Clantons are all dead, and the lawmen don’t have a scratch on them. The goodies beat the baddies, and violence solves everything.

Image: The Earps and Holliday stand side by side. Only their legs are visible.

The Doctor laments the injustice of it all, but nobody cares. I don’t even think the writer cares. Doc sees them off, giving the Doctor a wanted poster as a souvenir. As for the Earps, they don’t show up again. It’s unclear what will happen to them.

As the travellers leave, they hear Kate off in the saloon, singing that bloody ballad. I’m sure it’s a coincidence that the Doctor starts immediately hurrying the others into the TARDIS.

They depart to parts unknown, landing on an unknown world in the far future. According to the Doctor, this is an age of peace, enlightenment and prosperity. If that’s so, then who is that caveman-looking fellow approaching the TARDIS?

Image: The TARDIS viewscreen. On the screen is a hunched man dressed in furs.

Final Thoughts

I don’t know anyone who actually liked this serial. I don’t really know who it’s for. It’s too ahistorical to appeal to anyone who watches for the history aspect. I can’t imagine many parents were all that pleased with the amount of on-screen violence, though their children might have found it exciting.

The only attempt at a message or moral is that ‘violence is bad’ and I think we’ve seen how thoroughly it undermines itself on that count. As for the musical narration, that’s just baffling.

I get the feeling that this story wants to be a fun, comedic and light-hearted wild-west romp. The problem is that it’s not that fun. Take out the singing and people would probably see it as unusually dark and gritty for Doctor Who. There’s a few funny bits, but not really enough that landed for me to call it a successful comedy.

This feels like an attempt by Donald Cotton to recapture the success of his earlier story, The Mythmakers. It even repeats the plotline of the Doctor being mistaken for someone else. I am not sure what exactly is different here. Did the Mythmakers simply have a funnier script? Better comedic actors? I think a combination of the two is quite possible. Also possible is that it doesn’t have a singing narrator– sorry, I know I keep going on, but the narrator really did annoy me.

Basically, The Gunfighters doesn’t succeed at being anything other than a mildly diverting time-waster.

I do hope that there will be something better in store next time.

Text reads: Next Episode | DR. WHO AND THE SAVAGES

2 out of 5 stars

While you're waiting, tune in to KGJ, our radio station! Nothing but the newest and best hits!




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Magazine

[May 20, 1966] Things to Come and Things that Are(June 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Future

Over in England, they're swimming in science fiction anthology-esque shows, from Out of the Unknown to Doctor Who.  What have we got Stateside?  Lost in Space?  My Favorite Martian?  Ever since The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone went off the air, TV has been something of an SF wasteland.  That may all be changing come Fall.

A new show, called Star Trek is supposed to be kind of an anthology/serial — the same crew every week, but wildly different stories, many by actual science fiction authors.  It could end up being like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or Forbidden Planet (i.e. pretty but dumb), or it could be the revolution necessary to bring science fiction to the masses.  We won't know for another four months.  I'm prepared for disappointment, but I also can't help being a little excited.

The Present

Until then, I've got a pocket full of futures right hear in front of me with this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction.  As usual, it's a grab-bag of good and ho-hum, the latter in greater proportion… but whaddaya want for four bits?

Dig it:


by Hector Castellon

This Moment of the Storm, by Roger Zelazny

Zelazny has made a name for himself with his fantastic but punchy prose, sort of an SFNal Hemingway, the vanguard of the American New Wave.  For me, he's hit or miss, though his hits are worth waiting for.  Storm looked like it was shaping up to be a hit, but I'd say it's a near miss.

Dozens of light years from Earth lies Tierra del Cygnus, a rustic "stopover" colony where folks on decades-long STL interstellar trips can break out of hibernation and stretch their legs before embarking for their final destination.  Our protagonist, Godfrey Justin Holmes, is a Hell Cop, responsible for civic peace and weather safety with his 130 floating, autonomous metal eyes.  He'd settled on Cygnus after fleeing a tragic personal loss, and on Cygnus, he believes he has found the key to mending his heart.

But in the midst of solving this long term problem, an acute short term one arises: the biggest storm his area of the planet has seen in recorded history is brewing.  And for a week, it lashes with unabated fury.

I have the same problem with Storm that I did with Keith Roberts' Lady Anne: I'll be reading right along, enjoying the evocative prose, but after a few pages, I find myself wondering, "What the hell is all this?  Get to the point, man!"  Pretty writing isn't enough.

Beyond that, Storm feels utterly conventional.  Take out the spaceflight trappings, which is easy to do as they are not central to the story, and you've got a thoroughly terrestrial story. 

It's not bad, mind you.  Zelazny does a masterful job of introducing the world and the relevant considerations in subtle snatches of detail rather than a single burst of exposition.  Others might also enjoy the blunt, first person perspective; I eventually found it a little tiresome and too reminiscent of the better …and call me Conrad.

So, a minor work from a major player.  Three stars.

The Little Blue Weeds of Spring, by Doris Pitkin Buck

A winged woman commits the horried crime of breeding outside her caste.  Her punishment is exile to ground-bound humandom on Earth.  But a plucked bird can still find ways to soar…

A nice poetic piece that's perhaps a bit too trivial.  Three stars.

Care in Captivity Series: Tyrant Lizards Tyrannosaurus Rex, by Barry Rothman

This is one of those non-fact pieces, in this case, about raising a tyrant lizard what had been frozen for 70 million years.  Very slight stuff.  Two stars.

The Adjusted, by Kenneth Bulmer

A pair of caretakers mind the last vestiges of humanity, locked in cages, fed porridge, clad in rags, but hypnotized to think they are leading fulfilling lives.  It's all part of the computers' plan, you see — a way of dealing with the hordes unemployed and pointless humans. They can't just be killed off, but they also can't be left to their own chaotic devices.

Of course, there's a sting in the story's tale, one that you'll see a mile away.  It's not very clever, at first, but there's something compelling about a world of humans under the thrall of machines, all living in a shared fantasy world, slave to some sinister but inscrutable purpose.

It might make an interesting movie someday.  Three stars.

Migratory Locusts, by Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas suggests that since locusts are just grasshoppers that get too crowded together, maybe humans will turn into something else altogether when Indian/Chinese conditions become the worldwide norm.  I suppose there's an SF story in there somewhere.  In this case, there's not enough here here to provoke much thought.

Two stars.

Memo to Secretary, by Pat de Graw

Pat de Graw offers up an ode to bureacratic paperwork, Stone Age style.  Nicely done, particularly the line about the wing/ed/itorial bull.

Four stars.

A Quest for Uplift, by Len Guttridge

A carny agent out looking for freaks in a world where access to health care has largely addressed unwanted deformity follows a tip that leads to a genetic lineage of true levitators.

Unfortunately, elevation turns out to be involuntary — and communicative.

Guttridge's narrator tells the story in an unbroken harangue that will glaze your eyes over by page three.  It also manages to be casually and offputtingly offensive several times over.

One star.

Forgive Us Our Debtors, by Jon DeCles

Ah, but then we have a rather sublime tale of an empath whose job is planetary evaluation.  On the world of Red Kitra (a fine name), said empath is tasked with attuning to a world's entire ecology to determine if the glimmer of sentience lies therein.  He ends up in a literal and metaphorical web of karma, learning the value of life, as well as the meaning of charity, in the process.

I may be a little biased as I happen to be friends with Jon, but I think this is inarguably the best piece of the issue.  Four stars.

The Isles of Earth, by Isaac Asimov

Another list article from Dr. A, this time on the size and distribution of Earth's islands.  Diverting, I suppose, but nothing you won't find at the beginning of any decent atlas (of which I have about two dozen — I like atlases!)

Three stars.

The Pilgrims, by Jack Vance

We wrap up with the penultimate tale of the ordeals of Cugel the Clever, hapless magical errand boy in the far future setting of The Dying Earth.  As related in prior episodes, this is a set of stories that gets less appealing as it goes on, though Vance does mix in some amusing literate ribaldry.

This particular installment doesn't even have a proper ending.  Let's hope the series as a whole does.

Three stars.

The Edge of Tomorrow

All told, the latest F&SF merits a drab 2.9 stars, definitely one of the weaker entries of the past year.  But every month offers a chance at redemption, and the next issue is only a few weeks away.  Will the July issue offer a collection of immortal classics or more of the humdrum same?

The anticipation, waiting to find out, is half the fun!

While you're waiting, tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest and best hits!




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 18, 1966] What's the Difference? (Two versions of Mindswap by Robert Sheckley)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

What's The Big Idea?

Science fiction writers often take novellas that have appeared in magazines and turn them into novels, to be published as books. Sometimes this doesn't require any expansion of the original at all, particularly if it's half of an Ace Double.

Case in point, as Rod Serling might say, is The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick, which appeared in the December 1964 issue of Fantastic.


Cover art by Lloyd Birmingham. It's not really a complete short novel, but you'll rarely see the word novella in a magazine.

It showed up as half of Ace Double G-602 without any changes. (In case you're wondering, the other half was something called The Mind Monsters by somebody named Howard L. Cory.)


Cover art by Kelly Freas. It's still not a complete novel.

On the other hand, an author can make use of the big (and profitable) idea of reusing old material by adding new stuff to it. One example is The Whole Man by John Brunner. The first half is original, while the second half makes use of two previously published novellas.


The cover art is anonymous, and deserves to be so, in my opinion.

With that background in mind, let's take a look at a recent example of stretching a novella into a novel.

What's The Story?

I'll start with the magazine version of Mindswap, Robert Sheckley's comic tale of a fellow whose consciousness goes bouncing around the universe from body to body. It appeared in the June 1965 issue of Galaxy.


Cover art by George Schelling. The table of contents calls Mindswap a, you guessed it, complete short novel.

Our Gracious Host didn't care for it, awarding it only two stars. That's a matter of taste of course, as I'll discuss later. For now, let me outline the plot, so we can compare it with the novel.

Marvin Flynn is a fellow who wants to travel to other planets, but who can't afford the extremely high price of space travel. Fortunately, the process of switching bodies with somebody, even over interstellar distances, is a lot cheaper. (Maybe not the most plausible premise in the world, but let's go with it.)

He answers an ad from a Martian who wants to mindswap with an Earthling. The bad news is that the Martian is a crook, who has already sold his body to a previous customer, and who runs off with Marvin's body. Marvin has to mindswap again, in order to avoid dying when he gets kicked out of the criminal's body.

Having no other choice, he winds up in an alien body, working as an egg catcher. These aren't ordinary eggs. They talk, for one thing. In addition to that, the dinosaur-like beings who produce the eggs hunt down those hunting the eggs. Facing a very unpleasant demise in the jaws of one of these creatures, Marvin mindswaps once more.

This time he's in the body of an insectoid alien, and he has a ticking ring in his nose that might be a bomb, ready to go off in the near future.

Things are already complicated enough, but it gets a lot weirder. You see, the act of mindswapping tends to cause the swapper to perceive reality in odd ways. The story turns into a parody of cowboy fiction when Marvin hallucinates that he's in the Old West.

Without going into too much detail about a complex plot, let me just say that Marvin falls in love, loses the woman he adores, searches for her with the help of a peculiar companion, confronts the villain who stole his body, and winds up back on Earth. There's a twist at the end.

What's New?

Mindswap just came out as a hardcover novel from Delacorte Press. Is it worth paying the three dollars and ninety-five cents they're asking at the bookstore? Let's find out. (Or you could just wait for the paperback edition, which should cost just about as much as the magazine did.)


Cover art by James McMullan. By the way, The Game of X isn't science fiction, but a comic spy novel.

At first, there seems to be very little difference between the novella and the novel. That changes at Chapter 24 (out of 33) or, if you prefer, on page 151 (out of 216.) Either way, that means that not quite one-third of the book is new.

In the short version, Marvin runs into the Martian crook a lot quicker. In the long version, there's a major section of the book where he gets involved in a swashbuckling adventure. Reality has completely broken down at this point, so you'll just have to accept the fact that he starts acting and talking like somebody in an Errol Flynn movie. After that, we get the same twist ending as in the magazine.

What's So Funny?

Appreciation of comedy is very much an individual thing; more so, I think, than appreciation of any other form of art. Maybe I like the Marx Brothers and you like the Three Stooges. Each of us would have a difficult time convincing the other of the superiority of our differing preferences. Without arguing for the merits of Sheckley's work, allow me to discuss the various forms of humor he employs.

Slapstick

Maybe we can define this as amusement at another person's woes, as long as they're ludicrous. When Marvin is about to get his head bitten off by a dinosaur, or when he expects to have the bomb in his nose explode, we can laugh at his anxiety.

Parody

I've already mentioned the spoofs of Western and swashbuckling fiction. There's also a section where, for ridiculous reasons, characters start speaking in pseudo-Shakespearean verse. The novel as a whole seems to be a parody of science fiction itself.

Wordplay

This occurs all through the book. Right at the start we hear Marvin and his buddy talk in futuristic slang that borrows from other languages. (Might Sheckley be making fun of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange?)

The author delights in silly names, of which there are dozens, if not hundreds, scattered throughout the novel. Marvin's companion during his search for his lost love alternates speaking in a thick, stereotypical Mexican accent and formal English. During the swashbuckling section, everybody talks in a highfalutin' fashion that you'd only hear in a romantic novel or a Hollywood movie.

Illogic

Reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter, Sheckley's characters often reason in ways that might seem superficially logical, but which expose their inside-out and upside-down thinking.

The Martian detective searching for the criminal (I didn't mention him, did I?) figures that probability is on his side; he's failed to solve 158 cases, so he's bound to solve this one.

The hermit who mindswaps Marvin from the egg hunter's body into the insectoid body (I didn't mention him either, did I?) speaks in verse because he thinks it protects him from the dinosaurs. His proof? That he hasn't been killed yet.

The pseudo-Mexican helping Marvin in his search (I did mention him, didn't I?) has an unusual theory of searching; just go somewhere and wait, so that the searcher becomes the searchee.

Overall, I have to say that the book amused me. It doesn't have quite the same satiric bite as some other Sheckley works, but it made me smile all the way through.

Three and one-half stars.

What's Next?

I'm sure that other writers will continue to turn stories into novels. (The series of linked stories by Robert Silverberg that started with Blue Fire and which recently ended, or so it seems, with Open the Sky cries out to be a novel.)

My sources in the publishing industry tell me that Larry Niven's impressive novella World of Ptavvs has been expanded into a novel, and will appear in a few months. Here's a sneak preview.


Cover art by Norman Adams

And just to prove that authors aren't the only ones to reuse old material, just take a look at this book from 1963.


Look familiar?

All of us should heed the example of writers, artists, and publishers, and reuse whatever we can. It's the patriotic thing to do.


Junior looks like he might be searching through old science fiction magazines.

If you want to hear some great current music, then tune in to KGJ, our radio station! We never reuse the old songs!




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[May 10, 1966] Rocky Jaunts (June 1966 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Real-life Adventures

Out in the southeast corner of California is a hidden treasure, a beautiful national park known as Joshua Tree, named for the surreal plants that characterize the region.  And in the heart of a tiny, unincorporated community there, resides the place called Space Cowboy Books.

Jean-Paul Garnier, the Space Cowboy, invited us out to see the spring bloom in the wilderness.  We were able to take him up on his offer too late to see the flowers, but we did see some amazing petroglyphs and water/wind eroded facades.  Even better was the absolute quiet of the place, the aural equivalent of a dark sky (which they also have there).

Of course, it was a several hour trip up Highway 395, over Highway 60 to Interstate 10, and then up Highway 62, which terminates at Joshua Tree. 

But we had beautiful scenery, each other for conversation, and a brand new 8-track player in the car for music.

I also had the newest issue of Galaxy, which I was able to read while the Young Traveler drove.  Ah, the luxury of having children!

And so, a tour of the trips I went on while on a trip:

Fictional Adventures


by Gray Morrow

Heisenberg's Eyes (Part 1 of 2), by Frank Herbert


by Dan Adkins

Frank Herbert is back.  Hooray.

Actually, the setup's not too bad: It's the far future, and humanity has complete control of its genetic destiny.  Society is divided between the dronish "Sterries" (sterile humans), the occasional persons who can have potentially viable offspring, and the immortal (but also sterile) Optimen, who run everything, a triumverate's administration lasting a century.

Children cannot be borne the natural way; for an embryo to make it to maturity, a doctor's intervention is required.  So begins Eyes, on the eve of a "cutting" that will turn the artificially united progeny of a Mr. and Mrs. Durant into a human being — perhaps even an Optiman.

But before the horrified gaze of the assigned surgeon, some external force modifies the fertilized ovum, making the modification to immortal perfection impossible.  An expert is called in, who salvages the embryo, but in the process causes it to become that rarest of beasts: a nascent human that can reproduce on its own.  Such a thing is strictly forbidden, yet the expert and his accomplice nurse take pains to ensure that the contraband embryo's nature is hidden from the world.  Or so they think.

This takes up about half of this installment, and so a quarter of the book.  I have to give credit to Herbert's ability to spew a half dozen pages of medical jargon and keep it interesting. 

Things slow down in the second half, when we meet the ruling trio and discover that the plot has wheels within wheels.  It also involves an underground race of Cyborgs, who have been biding their time for tens of thousands of years to regain ascendancy over the planet, though they are as clueless about how the modification of the Durant's child occurred as everyone else.  Part 1 ends with the first shots being fired in a renewed war between the Optimen culture and the Cyborgs.

A couple of issues: Eyes is written in typical Herbertian style, which is to say in this weird third person omniscient viewpoint that switches characters every sentence and overuses italicized depiction of internal monologues.  Perhaps, as one of the oligarchs states in Eyes, "Efficiency is the opposite of Craftsmanship," but I still think the story could have been a lot better at half the length in the hands of someone else.  Like Dune.  Also, no society remains static for tens of thousands of years — not Egypt and not the weird world of Eyes.  And then, of course, there's the pseudo-telepathy the Durants enjoy that involves a code of finger presses.  It reminds me of shows where a paragraph of Morse code can be deduced from four dots and a dash.

Anyway, three stars for now.  Herbert's done worse, and I've yet to see him do much better.

Priceless Possession, by Arthur Porges

In the depths of space, the 23rd Century equivalent of the ambergris-bearing whale is the anenome-like "Star Sailor" or "S-2."  Its micron thin sail, produced over thousands of years, is the most valuable commodity in the universe.  On board a particular merchant ship, an Ensign and a Lieutenant find their cupiditous designs hindered by a captain who believes he is in telepathic communication with the current prey.

It's not a happy story, but it's pretty good.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Brownian Motion, Loschmidt's Number and the Laws of Utter Chaos, by Willy Ley

Beginning with an explanation of the word 'gas' (which is as deliberately coined as 'radar' or 'Kleenex'), Ley goes on a whirlwind trip through the history of fluid dynamics.  It's one of Ley's better pieces, though a little rushed and occasionally following the pattern of the Brownian Motion he ultimately explains.

But then, that's history for you.  Four stars.

The Eskimo Invasion, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Out in the wilds of Canada, an anthropologist has made a terrible discovery: a tribe of "Eskimos" are really something else, the female of their species infinitely appealing…and able to have children every month.  And they worship the Great Bear, a Cthulhu-esque entity that will devour/conquer/lead the world.  Can Dr. West make it back in civilization to warn humanity?

This is a well-written tale, but the premise is so dumb that I found myself irritated with it after a night's contemplation.  Two stars.

Galactic Consumer Report No. 2: Automatic Twin-Tube Wishing Machines, by John Brunner

The second in Brunner's Consumer Report series (the last dealing with budget time machines), this piece offers recommendations for and cautions against various models of "Wishing Machines," which are supposed to be able manufacture anything.  Not as amusing as the last one, but diverting enough.

Three stars.

This piece is followed by Algis Budrys' books column, which I am increasingly enjoying.  I read this latest one, describing Sheckley's Tenth Victim, Wilhelm and Thomas' The Clone, and Brunner's The Squares of the City for its humorous commentary and the illustration of the signs of good and bad editing and publishing.

When I Was Miss Dow, by Sonya Dorman

On a planet of amorphous proteans, a young, sexless being destined to become Warden of its people, takes on a human female form in order to more easily interact with the Terran mission to the planet.  As Miss Martha Dow, said creature falls fake head over custom-built heels with an elderly biologist — and ultimately, the feelings are reciprocated.

I found myself really enjoying this unrestrainedly emotional piece, intertwining human and alien feelings in a vivid manner.  This is the first published piece by Dorman using her full first name (previously, she had simply been "S"), and I'm delighted that she finally feels comfortable enough to use it.  I know I always look forward to her byline!

Four stars.

Open the Sky, by Robert Silverberg


by Gray Morrow

At long last, we come to (what I believe to be) the conclusion of Silverberg's Blue Fire series.  It's been a long trip, with five entries spanning more than a half-century of history.  We've seen the Vorster religion arise, a spiritualist cult of the atom worshiping the blue flame of a cobalt reactor.  We've watched as the cult schismed and the green-robed Harmonists made their sect more overtly religious and converted the colonists of toxic Venus.  Last installment, the Harmonist martyr, Lazarus, was ressurected by Vorst for purposes unknown.

Now we know why: on Venus, the genetically modified human espers have developed faster than light teleportation.  Vorst wants to use them to power the first interstellar starship.  To do this, he needs to reunite the religions — and Lazarus owes him a favor.  Luckily, Vorster knows this will all work out: he is a precog, after all…

The writing of this final installment is as good as ever, and it's nice to see all of the pieces fall into place.  However, the story as a whole suffers from the common failing of all stories involving precognition.  When you know how a story will, nay, must end, the tension is gone.  All that's left is the exposition.

By itself, Open the Sky will be confusing and unengaging to the new reader.  As the capstone to an epic, it serves its purpose adequately but not stunningly. Thus, I award three stars for the section, and four stars for the work as a whole, treating it as the serialization of a novel whose publication is as inevitable as Vorster's trip to the stars.

Journeys' End

All in all, it's been a good weekend, both in the real world and within the world of fiction.  While Pohl's magazine could not quite consistently offer the spectacle that Jean-Paul of Joshua Tree treated us to, nevertheless, it did end up on the positive end of the ledger.

In any event, two trips for the price of one is a good deal!  Why don't you take the June Galaxy along with you on your next jaunt and enjoy the same experience?

And while you're on your journey, tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest hits!




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[May 8, 1966] A Respite (June 1966 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Hope Springs Eternal

. . . but, as Groucho Marx might put it, hope springs can get rusty, too.

The June Amazing on its face presents bad news and good news.  In the first category is the beginning of a new two-part serial by Murray Leinster, generically titled Stopover in Space.  One can only hope (that word again!) that there is more to it than the empty blather of Killer Ship from last year. 


by James B. Settles

All the shorter stories are reprints.  But two of them are by very reputable authors, Arthur C. Clarke and Henry Kuttner, taken from the magazine’s ambitious false spring of 1953-54 (the Renascence), and two others are from the immediately post-Ray Palmer times (the Liminal Period), by writers who later made pretty good names for themselves, Walter M. Miller, Jr., and Kris Neville.  The fifth is the last published story by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, who commendably learned to write after the fiascoes of The Man from the Atom and its sequel.

Of course the Clarke and Kuttner stories are not exactly rediscoveries.  Clarke’s Encounter in the Dawn, retitled Expedition to Earth, was the title story of the first collection of his stories, published by Ballantine in 1953 and pretty widely known.  Kuttner’s Or Else was the lead story in his collection Ahead of Time, also from Ballantine in 1953.  It was anthologized in the UK in Edmund Crispin’s first Best SF volume, and reprinted again in last year’s The Best of Kuttner from the UK’s Mayflower Books.  These stories will probably be familiar to those well read in SF.

The rest of the package is as usual: another inanely self-serving editorial by editor Ross and a few letters mostly praising the reprint policy, though one of the correspondents also says don’t overdo it with the reprints, it’s time for more Robert F. Young and Ensign De Ruyter.  He appears to be serious.  The cover, simultaneously dull and busy, is reprinted from the back cover of the July 1942 Amazing.  It’s called Satellite Space Ship Station, and artist James B. Settles provides a rather pedestrian view of space travel. 

Stopover in Space (Part 1 of 2), by Murray Leinster


by Gray Morrow

As is my habit, I will hold off reading or commenting on the serial until I have both installments.  I am struggling to reserve judgment, but can’t fail to notice that the same egregious padding that so distinguished, or extinguished, last year’s Killer Ship shows up in the first paragraph here: “Scott ran into the situation on a supposedly almost-routine tour of duty on Checkpoint Lambda.  It was to be his first actual independent command as a Space Patrol commissioned officer.  Otherwise the affairs of the galaxy seemed to be proceeding in a completely ordinary fashion.  On a large scale, suns burned in emptiness, novas flamed, and comets went bumbling around their highly elliptical orbits just as usual.”

If This Be Utopia, by Kris Neville

First after the serial is Kris Neville’s If This Be Utopia, from the May 1950 issue, a slightly heavy-handed satire about a regimented future in which everyone is assigned to a job and pressured mercilessly to perform, and those who don’t measure up—or are made examples of by their superiors—get demoted to worse fates.  Our hero is a middle manager who is cracking under the stress and taking it out on his underlings until his superiors take it out on him.  It’s a bit too obvious, but still decently done.  Three stars.

Encounter in the Dawn, by Arthur C. Clarke

Encounter in the Dawn, from the June-July 1953 issue, is fairly typical for Clarke, a sort of lecture-demonstration of the stuff of SF and his understanding of the cosmos, without too much in the way of plot.  But that’s OK.  Clarke’s writing skill and his restrained sentimentality about the vastness of the universe and the depths of time carry the reader along.  He’s the antithesis of Ray Palmer’s policy of “Gimme bang-bang.”

This one begins: “It was in the last days of the Empire,” which is threatened by an unspecified “shadow that lay across civilization.” Three regular guys of the Galactic Survey, continuing their quest for knowledge despite the doom overhanging their homes, arrive at a new solar system and land on what is obviously Earth.  They take a look around and befriend Yaan, a primitive human or proto-human, with gifts of game killed by their robot.  They get the call to come home for the Empire’s last stand, leave Yaan a few high-tech gifts like a flashlight, and take off.  Tragedy looms over them, but life and intelligence will go on.  Three stars.

Or Else, by Henry Kuttner

Kuttner’s Or Else (August-September 1953 issue) is well done also, as one would expect, but there’s not much to it.  A couple of Mexican subsistence farmers are shooting at each other, contesting the ownership of the only source of water in their valley.  An alien drops in by flying saucer, demonstrates various superpowers, says his race has appointed themselves peacekeepers of the solar system, and Miguel and Fernandez have to stop trying to kill each other because violence is wrong.  They agree and shake hands, the alien buzzes off, and they start shooting again because there’s still only one water hole in the valley.


by Dick Francis

Profound, huh?  While SF may occasionally contribute to the global dialogue on war and peace, this one is best described as chewing less than it purports to bite off.  It also relies on cartoony ethnic stereotyping—but then everything in the story is pretty cartoony, and Kuttner at least lends the viewpoint character, Miguel, some shrewdness.  Thinking the alien is really a norteamericano, he says, “First you will bring peace, and then you will take our oil and precious minerals.” Two stars for execution, not much for substance.

Secret of the Death Dome, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s first published SF story, Secret of the Death Dome (January 1951 issue), is another kettle of sweat altogether, the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a magazine whose cover depicts a hairy-chested guy wrestling with a crocodile. 

The Martians have landed, and how: they have plunked down a large and impervious dome in the desert (actually, a couple of feet above it), where they engage in cryptic communication, and snatch anyone who comes too near and vivisect them.  One guy came back without his legs.  The newly wed Barney came back without his genitals, falling off his horse and dying on arrival.  (The Martians are surveilled by the military on horseback.)


by B. Edmund Swiatek

This makes Jerry mad.  Barney was his best friend and Barney’s new wife was Jerry’s old flame.  So Jerry, who can’t sleep, saddles up and heads out, to do . . . what?  He has no idea.  The Martians scare his horse away, and he hears from base that when it came back riderless, Betty—the widowed Mrs. Barney—took it and is on her way.  So he heads toward the dome and crawls under it looking for a way in. 

You can guess the rest.  He’s captured, gets control of the situation through brains and guts, rescues the by then-captured Betty, sowing death and destruction among the Martians all the way, learns why they are here (the secret of the title, including what the Martians wanted with Barney's genitalia), and drives them away forever.  Whew!  The details don’t matter.  At the end, the just-bereaved Betty tells Jerry not to contact her—“. . . for a couple of months, anyway,” the back of her neck flushing as she turns away.

The style is consistent with the content, cynical tough-guy-isms all the way down.  For example, when the colonel gets the call that Barney has returned, he sends Jerry to check things out.  “Jerry was just a sergeant, but there wasn’t any need for brass.  Death is for privates.” And so on.  Two stars for this testosterone-soaked epic.

Elaine’s Tomb, by G. Peyton Wertenbaker

G. Peyton Wertenbaker’s Elaine’s Tomb, from the Winter 1931 Amazing Stories Quarterly, is, in its quaint way, the best of this issue’s short fiction, and a vast improvement over his earlier work.  Alan, the narrator, teaches at a small college and falls in love with Elaine, one of his students.  Of course he doesn’t do anything about it, and hares off to Egypt with his colleague Weber who has a line on some ancient temples hardly anybody else knows about.  He confesses his romantic situation to Weber en route.  In a temple, there’s a preserved ancient Egyptian king, and a carved curse against anybody who molests him.  Alan touches the recumbent body, and shortly comes down with a fever that shows no sign of abating.  But Weber has found the secret of suspended animation, and promises to put Alan under at the moment of death, and revive him when he finds the secret of life, which must be around the temple somewhere, and unite him with Elaine.


by Leo Morey

Alan awakens, and it’s the far future, Wellsian variant, populated by people who have forgotten most of the know-how of civilization; the machines take care of them, and when one breaks down, they just put another one in its place.  They live pleasant lives and some of them even write books.  In one of these, Alan learns of Elaine’s Tomb, up north near what used to be called Chicago, in the frozen barbarian-populated wastes.  Turns out Weber couldn’t revive him, but he could suspend Elaine to wait for him.  Further adventures and reunion (or union, in this case) follow.

The story is archaic in attitude but modern in its plain style, well imagined and visualized without wasted verbiage, with enough plot to sustain its 40-page length, and altogether a pleasure to read.  Am I really going to give this antique four stars, as I did with another of Wertenbaker’s late stories, The Chamber of Life?  Guess so. 

Summing Up

So, hope fulfilled—admittedly, to expectations lowered by experience.  That's because editor Ross this time selected modern stories, plus an older one that is written in a modern style and not centered around the cranky crotchets of bygone decades, unlike some earlier selections I would prefer not to name.  The result is mostly pretty readable, with a couple of stories better than that, and nothing bloody awful.  But the specter of the Leinster serial still looms over the next issue.  We shall proceed with trepidation.

If you want to hear some great modern tunes, then tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest hits!




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[April 30, 1966] Ormazd and Ahriman (May 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Good News and Bad News

The ancient Persians believed in two roughly co-equal deities: Ormazd, the God of Creation and Light, and Ahriman, the God of Destruction and Darkness.  Unlike, say, the dual concept of the Chinese Yin and Yang, one was decidedly good and the other bad.  Indeed, these twin deities may have inspired the near parity of the Christian God and Satan.

Apparently, these forces hold sway even today.  This month's Analog started off so well, it bid fair to be a contender for best magazine of the month.  Then about half way, the influence of Ahriman took ascendance, and the issue faded away to a truly dreadful ending.  Ah well.  I come not to bury John Campbell but to review him.  At least we start with the good stuff…

Mixed Bag


by John Schoenherr

The Wings of a Bat, by Paul Ash

Anyone who's anyone knows that Paul Ash is really Pauline Ashwell, one of 1958's Hugo nominated Best New Writers — and boy, she's still just great.

Her latest tale stars a middle-aged doctor cum veterinarian stationed at Indication One on the shores of Lake Possible.  Cycads and dinosaurs dominate the landscape, and with good reason: Indication One is based sometime in the Cretaceous!  Against all of his instincts and inclinations, said doctor is tasked with raising a baby pteranadon named Fiona. 

Part country vet story, part mining camp adventure, this tale is by turns and sometimes simultaneously witty and exciting.  I loved it so much, I immediately read it a gain, this time aloud to the family as their bedtime story on two consecutive nights.

If this doesn't get nominated for the Hugo and/or the new SFWA Nebula awards, there's something wrong with the universe.  Five stars!

Call Him Lord, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Kelly Freas

Centuries from now, when Earth is just one of many hundreds of human planets, the crown prince of the Empire is dispatched to humanity's cradle for a tour.  One man is tasked to be his bodyguard, escorting the arrogant man-child as he rides, wenches, and bullies his way across the countryside.  But is this a mere sight-seeing tour…or a test?

While the story is slightly overdrenched in testerone and stoic manliness, Dickson is an excellent writer and his tale compels.  I dug it.  Four stars.

The Meteorite Miners , by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Earth has been the site of countless meteor impacts, many of them secondary strikes of ejecta loosed from prior events.  What we learn from the mineral concentrations at these craters can tell us a lot about the primordial history of our planet…and even the universe.

It's a fascinating topic, and it should have gripped me, but the presentation was a bit too abstruse and disjointed to hold my attention.  It took me several sessions to finish.

Three stars.

Titanium – The Wonder Metal (uncredited, but probably John W. Campbell, jr.

The piece is followed by another non-fiction article, this time a more lay-oriented essay on titanium, what makes it great, and what made it so hard to use economically. 

It's fine.  Three stars.

Two-Way Communication, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

When an inventor develops a universal receiver that allows the owner to transmit right into an announcer's microphone, chaos ensues.  Is it the ultimate democracy or a recipe for anarchy?

In this cute story, Anvil argues the former.  With constant and immediate input (and censure) the vast wastelands of radio and television are made verdant with quality programming.  The author forgets two important factors: 1) most TV and much radio isn't live these days, so interruptions at the source wouldn't have as much effect as depicted — this isn't 1951 after all; 2) people are jerks — interruptions would be constant and annoying.

Still, it was not unpleasant reading.  Call it a low 3 stars.  Ormazd and Ahriman are wrestling, but neither has ascendance.  Yet.

Under the Wide and Starry Sky…, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

In this edge-of-the-future story (indeed, the depicted Gemini 9 mission is scheduled to occur less than three weeks from now), one astronaut is lost during an extravehicular jaunt.  His partner must use all of his wits to rescue him before their oxygen and fuel run out.

Joe Poyer has written a couple of other stories for Analog, both of which showed a fair ability when it came to depicting technology but little talent for characterization or detailed plot.  Starry Sky plays to the author's strengths, presenting a nice little Marooned-esque tale in a vivid fashion.  It ends quickly enough that you don't mind where it's undeveloped.

Three stars.  There are stars of light among the black sky.

The Alchemist, by Charles L. Harness


by Kelly Freas

Ah, here's where it all goes to Hell.  This long, flip, utterly unengaging tale manages to combine alchemy, psionics, making the Russians look stupid, and making scientists look stupid, all in one sure-to-please-the-editor package. 

This is truly an example of Ahrimanic possession as the last story by the author was one I liked very much.  But The Alchemist?  One star.  Feh.

Doing the math


Geraldine "Gerry" Myers, mathematician at the Mission Planning and Analysis Division at the Manned Space Craft Center in Houston

As might be expected from such a violent collision of positive and negative forces, the whole thing ends up about a wash: 3.1 stars.  This puts it above IF and New Worlds (3 stars) as well as Worlds of Tomorrow (2.6)

The May 1966 Analog finishes below Impulse (3.2), Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5), and the astonishing, but mostly reprints, Fantastic (4).  Thus, Analog is the dead median for this month!

Nevertheless, it has contributed two stories to one of the best months for 4 and 5 star material since the Journey began.  You could fill three big magazines with nothing but excellent stuff.

Women did so-so in April, only writing ~6% of new material, though Judy Merril had a good reprint in Impulse.

And so, the battle between good and bad (quality) continues.  Will Ormazd be ascendant next month?  Or will Ahriman have the final laugh?  Stay tuned…

[Don't miss the next (and FINAL) episode of The Journey Show:

1966 and the Law — smut, marriage, voting rights, justice, and more. With Erica Frank and Ethan Marcus! With special musical guest, Nanami!

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