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Magazine

[March 12, 1965] Sic Transit (April 1965 Amazing)

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by John Boston

No-Sale, Sale

The big news, previously rumored, is that Amazing and its stablemate Fantastic are to change hands.  The April Science Fiction Times just arrived, with the big headline “ ‘AMAZING STORIES’ AND ‘FANTASTIC’ SOLD TO SOL COHEN.” Cohen is the publisher of Galaxy, If, and Worlds of Tomorrow, but will resign at the end of next month to take up his new occupation. 

Why is this happening?  Probably because circulation, which had been increasing, started to decline again in 1962 (when I started reviewing it!).  The SF Times article adds, tendentiously and questionably, that “the magazine showed what appeared to be a lack of interest by its editors.” Read their further comment and draw your own conclusions on that point.

Whatever the reason, it’s done.  The last Ziff-Davis issues of both magazines will be the June issues.  Whether they will continue monthly is not known, nor is who will edit the magazine—presumably meaning Cele Lalli is not continuing. 

The Issue at Hand


by Paula McLane

The previous two issues were much improved over their predecessors.  Of course the improvement could not be sustained (viz. the current issue), but it has at least reverted to the slightly less mean than on some occasions.

The Shores of Infinity, by Edmond Hamilton


by George Schelling

Who was it who first said “If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will like”?  Dorothy Parker?  Mark Twain?  Pliny the Elder?  Anyway, Edmond Hamilton’s latest in his backwards-looking saga of the far future featuring the Star Kings may not even rise to the level of that truism.  The generically titled The Shores of Infinity spends about 10 of its 33 or so pages on background and build-up, and then the generically named John Gordon of ancient (i.e., contemporary) Earth takes off to the capital of the Galaxy to hobnob with the Emperor in the imperial city of Throon. 

There, he learns of more rumors of the previously encountered mind-controlling menace, is sent off on a dangerous secret mission to investigate, is captured, victimized by treachery and benefited by its reversal, and the author seems as bored by the whole perfunctory and hackneyed business as I was.  It’s ostentatiously inconclusive, so we are guaranteed more.  To paraphrase W.C. Fields, second prize would be two more sequels.

A recurring theme here is Gordon’s alienation from the beautiful Princess Lianna.  This seems to be the special Woman Trouble issue of Amazing; see below.  (Note to Betty Friedan: if the viewpoint characters were female, it would of course be the Man Trouble issue.  Tell women more of them should be writing SF.) Also worth mentioning is the cover, by Paula McLane, which portrays a giant space-helmeted visage peering into a room where two small diaphanous figures are trying to close the door against him.  Obviously metaphorical, right?  Actually, it’s a quite literal rendering of a passing scene in the story.

Anyway, this one has little going for it except the usual space-operatic rhetoric (“The vast mass of faintly glowing drift that was known as the Deneb Shoals, they skirted.  They plunged on and now they were passing through the space where, that other time, the space-fleets of the Empire and its allies had fought out their final Armageddon with the League of the Dark Worlds.”) The problem with this decoration is there’s not much here to decorate.  Two stars, probably too generous.

No Vinism Like Chau-Vinism, by John Jakes


by George Schelling

John Jakes’s long novelet No Vinism Like Chau-Vinism [sic], the title obviously a play on the all too familiar song There’s No Business Like Show Business, inhabits the territory demarcated by Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants, Ron Goulart on a good day, and the Three Stooges.  In the future, everything is showbiz.  The populace is entertained and distracted by constant scripted and broadcast warfare between commercial forces, in this case the American Margarine Manufacturers Association versus the United Dairy Expedition Force, fighting of course in Wisconsin.

The script is disrupted by the appearance of a real gun in the hands of the rogue margarineer (Jakes calls them margies) Burton Tanzy of the Golden-Glo Margarine Company, who executes a cow on live TV, initiating a slapstick plot in which among other things besides real guns, the fake commercial war turns into a real union dispute.  The protagonist Gregory Rooke of the Dairy forces must try to calm things down and restore order, lest the public get wind of the fraudulence of their world.  His chief antagonist proves to be his ex-wife, who has dumped him to pursue her overweening ambitions, consistently with the Woman Trouble motif, though things work out better for Rooke than for poor forlorn John Gordon.

This story is actually quite amusing; Jakes has a knack for the farcical tall tale.  Unfortunately it goes on too long and palls a bit by the end, keeping the final reckoning down to three stars.

De Ruyter: Dreamer, by Arthur Porges

Arthur Porges contributes Ensign De Ruyter: Dreamer, another in his tiresome series about the space navy guy who triumphs over cartoonishly stupid extraterrestrials through the clever use of basic science—in this case, it’s Fun with Electromagnetism.  These stories barely rise to the level of filler.  One star.

Greendark in the Cairn, by Robert Rohrer

Robert Rohrer continues in his “almost there” vein with Greendark in the Cairn, featuring a space captain who is either going nuts, or is being driven nuts by transmissions from the extraterrestrial enemy, but figures out how to defeat them and prevent himself from giving the game away.  It’s gimmicky and facile but well rendered.  Two stars, but do try again.

Speech Is Silver, by John Brunner

The earnest John Brunner undertakes a satire of American commercialism in Speech Is Silver, in which the protagonist Hankin is selected in the Soundsleep company’s “Great Search” for the man with the perfect voice for a program of sleep counseling—that is, counseling while one sleeps on how to handle the difficulties of the day.  Except of course that’s not really how things work, and his new-found fame destroys his life.  (Also—Woman Trouble again—his wife, who prodded him to enter the Soundsleep competition, leaves him, apparently because he was never ambitious enough, like Rooke’s wife in No Vinism [etc.].) At the point where Soundsleep decides to replace him with a younger near-double, Hankin detonates.

Like the Jakes story, this one is an acid satire on contemporary image-mongering American capitalism.  Its problem, aside from being too long (also like Jakes), is that it isn’t crazy enough.  Brunner’s calm and methodical style and storytelling muffle the plot’s antic qualities.  Maybe he should get Jakes to introduce him to the Three Stooges.

Two stars.

Religion in Science Fiction: God, Space, and Faith, by Sam Moskowitz

Sam Moskowitz forges on with Religion in Science Fiction: God, Space, and Faith, rendered on the cover as Science-Fiction Views of God With a Profile of C.S. Lewis.  It’s a rambling description of various SF stories on religious themes, starting reasonably interestingly with several older books that most readers will not have heard of, continuing with the promised account of C.S. Lewis, followed by Stapledon, Heinlein, Wyndham, Simak, Leiber, Keller, Bradbury, Blish, Miller, del Rey, Boucher, and Farmer.

In this recitation Moskowitz manages to miss Arthur C. Clarke’s Hugo-winning The Star and his equally well-known The Nine Billion Names of God; Isaac Asimov’s The Last Question; Leigh Brackett’s tale of a different sort of theocracy, The Long Tomorrow; Harry Harrison’s anti-theological polemic The Streets of Ashkelon; Katherine MacLean’s acerbic Unhuman Sacrifice; and, astonishingly, Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land.  Remarkably, he says, “Heinlein, who introduced [religion] into the science fiction magazines, has long since tired of it as a focal plot device.”

But this (mis-)observation does not deter him from his conclusion: “Neverthess, the decision is made.  The science fiction writer has come to the conclusion that scientific advance will not mean the end of belief.  He feels certain that a truly convincing portrayal of a hypothetical future cannot be made without considering the mystical aspects of man.”

Can we say fallacy of composition?  Two stars: another “almost,” some interesting material, some of it unfamiliar, the whole brought down by Moskowitz’s fatuous generalizations.

Summing Up

So, mostly not too bad (except for the egregious Ensign Ruyter), but mostly not as good as it should and could have been either.  There have been issues that would make one regret that this regime is ending, but this isn’t one of them.




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Magazine

[March 8, 1965] An Alien Perspective (April 1965 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Understanding the Other

Civilization is about building a society out of disparate units.  It has to go beyond the family and clan.  The key to organizing a civilization is empathy, recognizing that we are all different yet we share common values and rights.  Once we understand each other, even if we don't agree on everything, then we can truly create "from many, one."

Science fiction allows the exploration of cutting edge sociological subjects, one of them being the understanding of the "other".  That's because the genre has a ready-made stand-in for the concept: the alien.  Indeed, many science fiction stories are allegorical; they address colonialism, the Cold War, societal taboos, in ways that might currently be too touchy or on-the-nose for conventional fiction.  We can hope that, with the bottle uncorked, less allegorical stories will be required in the future. 

Of all the science fiction magazines that come out every month, I think Fred Pohl's trio of Galaxy, IF, and Worlds of Tomorrow has the strongest tradition of incorporating aliens (Analog also has aliens, but thanks to its editor's sensibilities, they are almost invariably both more evil and inferior to human beings; Campbell likes a certain kind of allegory…)

Meeting the Minds


by George Schelling (it says it illustates War Against the Yukks, but it doesn't)

This month's Galaxy is a case in point, with six of its nine tales involving aliens of one kind or another.  There's some good stuff in here, as well as a number of slog stories.  Let's look, shall we?

Committee of the Whole, by Frank Herbert


by Nodel

Watch your step — there's a rough patch right at the start. 

Whole is a meandering preach piece about an inventor who appears before a Congressional committee with news of a new, revolutionary invention.  I'll just tell you about it because the first two thirds of the story are less suspenseful than obtusely annoying: it's a ray gun.  Its applications are infinite, but the one most of the Congressmen are worried about is that every owner has a weapon more powerful than the atom bomb at their disposal.  And, because of the way the invention has been disseminated, everyone in the world has access to them.

The result, the inventor opines, is going to be a world of true libertarian equality.  "An armed society is a polite society" is how the expression goes.  It's the kind of naive sentiment that would go over well at Analog, but for adults, it's just ridiculous.  In equalizing humanity through armed neutrality, the inventor has made aliens of us all.  I'll wager that Earth's population of humans will be dead inside a week…and probably most of the animals. 

One star, and yet more disdain for the Herbert byline.

Wrong-Way Street, by Larry Niven

Ah, but then our fortunes truly turn around.  Wrong Way Street gives us the unplanned adventure of Mike Capoferri, a scientist stationed on the Moon late this century to investigate an alien base and space ship.  They have lain on the lunar plain for countless millions of years, and their provenance and function are completely unknown.  That is, until Mike unwittingly not only discerns the motive force for the space ship, but also activates it.  Here, understanding the alien way of thinking proved hazardous to Mike's health.  Can he get home?  Will the human race survive his journey?

This is author Niven's third story, and he continues with the same deftness he displayed with his recent short novel, World of Ptavvs.  I guarantee that the ending of Street will stay with you.

Four stars.

Death and Birth of the Angakok, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Peterluk is a young Eskimo out hunting when a horrifying bunch of one-eyed Seal People arrive.  He panics and entreats his powerful Grandfather, holed up in Peterluk's igloo, to aid him with his mystical powers.  But Grandfather is too weak to assist and, in the end, Peterluk is left to defeat one of the aliens with a conventional rifle.

When the Seal People ship surfaces from beneath the ice, much to Peterluk's surprise, it disgorges not aliens but white people in uniform.  And Peterluk begins to doubt the power, and even the human nature, of his strangely humped, ever demanding Grandfather.

Confusing at first, Angakok is actually a pretty neat tale of two types of aliens (human and truly extraterrestrial) as seen from the point of view of one completely naive to other cultures.  While the bones of the plot are fairly conventional, I appreciated the novel viewpoint.

Three stars.

Symbolically Speaking, by Willy Ley

Any meeting of the minds between human and alien will require a common symbology to convey ideas.  A science fiction writer looking for inspiration for such a symbol set could do worse than to read Willy Ley's latest science article for Galaxy, in which he discusses the evolution of symbols for the planets, alchemical substances, numbers, etc.

Fairly dry, but there's interesting information here.  Three stars.

A Wobble in Wockii Futures, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Gray Morrow, channeling Bill Gaines

Tom and Lucy Reasoner are a recurring pair in a series of stories, this being the fourth.  Sort of a "Nick and Nora" meets Retief, the stories of the Reasoners began charmingly enough, with Tom an interstellar diplomat with a mystery to solve, and Lucy his sometimes discerning assistant.

Last time around, Tom had not only gotten inducted into the interstellar assassin's guild, but he'd also catapulted Earth onto the galactic scene, dramatically increasing his home planet's clout.  Now the humans have gotten themselves hip-deep in a planetary investment that made turn out to be completely worthless.  Tom must find out who hoodwinked the Terrans and why before humanity is bankrupted.

This installation has the same problem as the last one — Lucy is sidelined and played for stupid, and the humor of the tale just isn't funny.  Dickson can, and usually does, do better.

Two stars.

Wasted on the Young, by John Brunner

The concept of the "teenager" is a fairly recent one.  It used to be that kids enjoyed a relatively short childhood before transitioning to the labor force and/or marriage.  Now there is an intermediate phase before adulthood during which a youngster can learn the ropes of grown-up society.

Brunner's latest story posits an even longer period of immaturity, one in which kids are given free credit until age thirty to do whatever they want.  The catch: once they reach their fourth decade, they have to pay back what they've spent by being productive members of society.  Thus, the wastrels find themselves indebted indefinitely, while those who lived a spartan life get to be free agents.

Hal Page, age 32, believes he knows a way to cheat the system…but in the end, society has use for people who have spent it all, even their life.

There's a great idea here, but I feel it was somewhat wasted on the gimmick (and not particularly logical) ending.  Still, three stars.

The Decision Makers, by Joseph Green


by Jack Gaughan

Allan Odegaard is a Practical Philosopher, a kind of emissary for humanity to other worlds.  His job is to judge whether a planet is inhabited by intelligent life or not; if so, Terran policy is to keep hands off.  As one would expect, such a determination is often strongly opposed by financial interests.

Capella G Eight is an ocean planet, though during times of Ice Age, three continents emerge from the sea as the water level drops.  Its dominant life form is a seal-like creature.  Though it possesses a relatively tiny brain pan, somehow it lives in a communal society and can use tools.  Is it intelligent?  Does the fact that these creatures live near a rich uranium deposit factor into Odegaard's decision?

We've seen this kind of story before — H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy series is probably the purest example, though J.F. Bone's The Lani People should also be noted.  It's a worthy subject, and Green does a pretty good job, though the ending is abrupt and not quite as momentous as I would have liked.

All in all, it's the best story I've seen from Green in an American publication (he tends to stick to the English side of the Atlantic.) Three stars.

Slow Tuesday Night, by R. A. Lafferty

We're back to Earth for this one.  We all know that the pace of life has only quickened over the generations.  Lafferty, whose middle name would be "whimsy" if the initial were a W. and not an A., writes of a future society in which society is speeded up a hundred-fold compared to now.  Fortunes are made and lost in minutes.  Marriages last an hour on a good night.  And a lifetime can be lived in a week.

It's cute, but the satire wears thin about halfway through.  Also, there are only two female characters, and their sole goal appears to be competing for the earliest wedding of the evening.

A low three, I guess.

Sculptor, by C. C. MacApp

Eight years ago, a disgraced spaceman abandoned his crewmates on an alien world, rushing home with a set of invaluable statues — and a hole in his memory about the affair.  Now he has been shanghaied by a criminal bent on returning to this world and plundering it for more of the exquisite figurines.

What race made these wrought-diamond minatures?  And why does the amnesiac spaceman feel such dread on the planet's surface?

This is another "they looked like us" yarn that has been around since Campbell kick-started the genre with Who Goes There (and Heinlein made it popular with The Puppet Masters).  It's so prevalent, in fact, that there's another example of it in this very issue! (Angakok) Despite not really treading on new ground, it may well be the best work I've seen from C. C. MacApp, a fairly recent author who never fails to never quite succeed.

Three stars.

War Against the Yukks, by Keith Laumer


by Gray Morrow

Six years ago, the Journey had the (dubious) pleasure of reviewing Missile to the Moon.  It was one of a long line of movies involving a man-less society, run by a bunch of sex-starved female beauties just waiting for a hunk to tip the order on its ear.

Laumer's latest is the same old story: this time, the men are an anthropologist and his stereotypically British assistant, who are whisked to Callisto where they encounter the last remnants of an ante-diluvian war between the sexes.  High Jinks ensue(s?)

Only the author's puissance at writing elevates this story above the level of dreck.  Even then, it's a disappointment.  I understand that satirizing a hoary cliche can be fun, but the whole point of Galaxy is that the magazine doesn't even acknowledge the existence of said cliches, much less indulge in them.

It really deserves two stars.  I'll probably give it three anyway.

Summit's End

This month's Galaxy was as alien-heavy as usual, and there was a broad variety of stories.  On the other hand, with the exception of the Niven, there were no stand-outs.  Indeed, the issue read more like an overlong issue of IF (which has also dipped in quality) than Galaxy of old.

Nevertheless, Ad Astra per Aspera.  What goes down must come up again, and when humanity finally does meet the alien denizens of the stars, should they exist, our starship crews will doubtless have been inculcated with the lessons learned in SF, particularly in magazines like Galaxy.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 2, 1965] Doctor Who And The B-Movie Rejects (Doctor Who: The Web Planet)

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By Jessica Holmes

Hello, everyone. Today we're going to have a look at The Web Planet, the latest serial on Doctor Who, written by Bill Strutton. Now I don’t want to alarm you all, but we’ve got an infestation, and I think we’re going to need a bigger bottle of ant powder…

THE WEB PLANET

The Web Planet opens on a desolate landscape with some good miniature work by the art department. It’s barren and somewhat lunar, with strange column-like rock formations dotting the landscape. Stretching across the rocks, however, are threads of  a great web. I wouldn’t like to see the spider that made that.

The arrival of the TARDIS breaks the silence for a moment. All is eerily quiet, both outside and inside, as the Doctor worries about what dragged them to the web planet, and why.

We might be about to get a clue.

Behold…the Zarbi.

Are we meant to pretend we can’t see the human legs? Are they meant to match the insect legs? I’d say they look like they came out of a B-Movie but those have higher standards.

But what’s worse than the visuals is the noise these things make. They never. Shut. Up. It's like they're trying to induce a migraine.

I must also apologise for the blurriness of the images in this article. I do my best to get the clearest frame, but somebody seems to have smeared the camera with petroleum jelly, possibly to hide the dodgy effects.

And another thing before I move on. Ants? On the WEB planet? Would a spider costume have been two legs too many, or do we have an arachnophobe in the art department? Not that I'm complaining too much. Spiders have far too many legs for my liking.

The ship lurches about as the din increases, and loses all power. The noise is painful for the whole crew (and me) but it hurts Vicki most, so Barbara takes her to the medbay while Ian and the Doctor decide to go exploring.

And here we have them modelling the TARDIS springwear collection.

In the medbay, the women talk a little about Vicki’s schooling, and she mentions learning medicine as a standard subject, rather a step up from the ‘three Rs’ of Reading, wRiting and 'Rithmetic.

Yes, it is ridiculous. We know.

Anyway, it seems the youth will whine about school until the end of time (gosh, I sound like an old lady), as Vicki laments having to spend a whole hour a week at school.

Poor thing.

Barbara also finally manages to tell Vicki that she and Ian went to Rome, when Vicki takes an interest in the golden bracelet Barbara got from Nero. I’m a little surprised she kept it. Then again, gold is gold.

This scene doesn’t move the plot along, but I still like it as a chance to give the characters breathing room. There’s a tendency in Doctor Who (or indeed any other adventure story) to get so wrapped up in the plot that the characters are little more than narrative chess pieces. A short break now and then does wonders for both the pacing and the character development. Being early in The Web Planet, a quiet scene like this isn’t slamming the brakes on the plot.

Outside, the Doctor makes an attempt to be scientific about examining his surroundings, but when he asks to borrow Ian’s pen, the writing implement has other ideas and flies off. Now, this would probably bother most people, but the Doctor assumes it to be a clever sleight of hand by Ian. When Ian protests that it wasn’t him, does the Doctor take a bit more of an interest? Does he, heck. Ian’s raised voice produces a marvellous echo off the rocks, and all thoughts of scraping up bits of mica are forgotten as the Doctor gleefully amuses himself with the sound of his own voice.


He looks like a child who's just been told he can have whatever he wants at the toy shop.

Back inside the TARDIS, some unknown force starts to pull on Barbara's arm. It lets up after a short while, and she returns to the infirmary, troubled. It’s eerily quiet. It feels like something is about to happen.

Outside, Ian spots a pyramid-like structure. It’s very old. The men approach it, but can’t see what’s at the top.

Ian spots a pool of something he assumes is water, but the Doctor stops him before he touches it, and asks for his tie. Upon dipping it in the liquid, it begins to smoke, and Ian complains that he’s ruined his Coal Hill School tie. Ian, get a little perspective.

As they turn to go, that awful noise starts again.

Barbara can even hear it in the TARDIS, and watches in horror as the console itself begins to spin about (I didn’t even realise it could move) and the doors swing open. Her arm lifts again, and as if in a trance, she walks out onto the surface.

Vicki wakes up to find herself completely alone.

Ian and the Doctor hear the echoes of her cries, but as they run to help Ian gets caught in some sort of web, so the Doctor carries on alone. Meanwhile, Barbara walks ever forwards towards a bubbling pool of acid.

In the TARDIS, the control room starts to lurch around once more, and the familiar wheezing sound of the engine starts up, while Vicki can do nothing to stop it.

By the time the Doctor gets back to where he parked the TARDIS, his ship is long gone.

Whatever’s going on on the web planet, they’re in deep trouble.


'Now, where did I park the car…'

This is a very quiet episode, in more than one sense. Not that much happens, but I don’t think I’d call it boring per se. Honestly, I quite like being able to keep up with my notes for once.

That said, for viewers with a shorter attention span, The Web Planet might be a little too quiet and slow paced.

The mystery of just what the heck is going on is interesting, though. I mean, the answer is going to be ‘a weird space alien thing that we humans don’t know about’ but The Web Planet brings a real sense of scratching the surface of the unknown, the truly alien. This is what science fiction is for, after all.

THE ZARBI

So, TARDIS gone, Ian tied up, Barbara wandering towards a pool of acid. It’s all going a bit pear-shaped around here. This is why you should always remember to leave your handbrake on.

However, just before Barbara reaches the acid pool, one of the Zarbi makes that annoying noise, and she changes direction. It seems that it’s guiding her away from it. That’s interesting.

The Doctor finds Ian free of the webbing but covered in blisters and in a good deal of pain. It seems that the web had some sort of irritant on it. As if Ian wasn’t having a bad enough day, the Doctor informs him of the TARDIS’ disappearance.

Barbara carries on in her trancelike walk, and then an unexpected stranger pops up.


Boo.

I’m sorry, but that’s the funniest costume I’ve ever seen. That is absolutely ridiculous and I love it. It’s so bad it’s brilliant. It’s some sort of insectoid entity, more human-like in appearance than the Zarbi.

Meanwhile, Ian is having an existential crisis and the Doctor might be having a heart attack. So everything’s going well there. The thin atmosphere is starting to have an effect. It’s not deadly, but it’s very uncomfortable.

The Doctor spots some ridges in the sand, and realises that the TARDIS has been dragged away. He looks up and spots some unintentional comedy in the distance as the box scoots across the landscape. I don’t know why it’s funny, it just is.

Elsewhere, the bug man is guiding Barbara along, to join more bug men. I’ll give the costuming department credit, their wings are rather good. They treat her gently, and the one who was leading her removes her bracelet and throws it into an acid pool, snapping her out of the trance.

Ian and the Doctor traipse around trying to track the movements of the TARDIS. They lose the trail, but find a new trail of claw marks.

Ian steps in some sort of shell, which I can’t understand how he didn’t see given the size of it. The Doctor examines it and figures based on the wildlife and the landscape they might be on a planet called Vortis. However, Vortis doesn’t have a moon, and in the sky there are several.

Barbara explains to the insect people what’s been going on and how she came to be wandering the wilderness. They listen quite politely, and I had just written down in my notes ‘they seem friendly enough’ when one of them yelled ‘Kill her!’, so I guess I’m not the best judge of character. Another stops him, though, before he can bash Barbara.


They're also wonderful dancers.

These insect-like people, the Menoptra, greatly fear the Zarbi, and fear that Barbara will betray their location to them, willingly or not. While they talk, Barbara snags a stick with her feet, and manages to trip one of the Menoptra and flee.

Elsewhere, Ian and the Doctor spot lights in the sky, and below them, the home base of the Zarbi. As if on cue, a bunch of Zarbi show up.

Inside the TARDIS, the doors open of their own accord, and Vicki makes the questionable choice to leave, hoping to find the others.

Instead, she finds the Zarbi.

The Zarbi escort Ian and the Doctor to the settlement, which seems to have been grown rather than built. They reunite with Vicki, and the Doctor demands to know what the Zarbi want.

It doesn’t take long for Barbara to run into some Zarbi herself. What is the plural of Zarbi? Zarbis? Zarbii? Zarbodes?

Back in the Menoptras’ hideout, they’re debating whether to break radio silence and attempt contact with the Menoptra Invasion Force. Invasion? Interesting. We’ll put a pin in that.

However, they can’t get a response, and realise the cave is blocking their signal. Before they can go outside and try to get better reception, the Zarbi come along with a hypnotised Barbara, who has led them straight to the B-movie rejects. They smash their communication device and put up a brave fight, but the Zarbi are much bigger than the Menoptra. In the fight, the Zarbi kill one and capture another, but the third manages to flee.

The captured Zarbi removes a sort of metal collar from Barbara’s shoulders, waking her up. It seems the Zarbi need a metal conduit to control people. Specifically, gold. Ah, so that’s why the bracelet affected her!

Barbara asks what’s going to happen now, and the Menoptra informs her the Zarbi will take them to the ‘Crater of Needles’, which sounds delightful.

Back at the Zarbi base, the Doctor tries to communicate through mime, but doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

Some sort of alarm goes off, and the Zarbi force the Doctor into a… well, I think he describes it best himself when he calls it a hairdryer. It seems to be some sort of communication device, as once inside, an unknown voice asks the Doctor a question: “Why do you come, now?”

ESCAPE TO DANGER

The Doctor explains to the unseen voice that they come in peace, but the voice asks why they attack. It thinks that the Doctor is with the Menoptra, but won’t let him fully explain that he’s not with them, and moves to demonstrate what the Zarbi will do to the Menoptra, and uses some sort of energy weapon to fire on the TARDIS.

However, rather than destroying the machine, the energy pulse appears to restore power to the TARDIS.


It takes work to maintain that hairdo.

The voice asks the Doctor how his ship’s shielding works, and the Doctor in exchange wants to know how their weapon works. The voice makes him an offer: if they can use his ship’s defences against the invaders, they’ll grant him freedom.

The Doctor asks where Barbara is, and the voice tells him she’s at the Crater of Needles. He can get her back, but first the voice wants to know where the Menoptra forces are massing. The Doctor agrees to find out, and the Zarbi allow him to take Ian into the TARDIS to retrieve some equipment, but they keep Vicki as a hostage.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor practices medicine for once and gives Ian some ointment. He states the bleeding obvious that the Zarbi are ants, and Ian asks how they can be so big.

Answer: THEY CAN’T. It's just physics. They literally cannot get the oxygen required to sustain such a huge size. Ants this big would suffocate. Oh, and that's assuming an Earth atmosphere. I doubt the atmosphere on Vortis could sustain any arthropods much bigger than a centipede.

With Ian on the mend, the Doctor tells him to try and track Barbara down while he works.

They lug a device out of the TARDIS, and the Doctor tells the voice that something is interfering with his instruments, probably to do with the nearby Zarbi. The voice is reluctant to stand down the local Zarbi, but agrees when faced with the prospect of not getting help at all.

The nearby Zarbi become docile and stop making noise, their minds apparently going dormant, and Ian is able to slip away.

He promptly runs into a Zarbi. He tries to sneak past, but it stops him and he has to wrestle it in a deeply ridiculous manner. Ian wins, but then goes and gets himself trapped. That went well. The Zarbi forces come for him, but they’re such lumbering clumsy human-ant abominations that it’s not exactly difficult for him to give them the slip.

The voice accuses the Doctor of trying to escape, and demands to know why. He refuses to answer the question, and is completely fearless. If the Zarbi kill them all, his knowledge dies with him. Could he be lying? Sure. But the Zarbi can’t know either way.

The Doctor then asks Vicki to run into the TARDIS and grab a little red box. She brings it, and he insists he said a white box, as this is one of his specimen boxes. However, the Zarbi on guard seems to be very frightened of it. But what is it? It's a dead spider. I wouldn't be at all happy to find it in my bathtub, but it's a tiny thing compared to the Zarbi.


Well, I think it's a spider. Not sure where most of the legs are. Maybe it had an accident.

Outside, Ian meets up with the lone Menoptra, who is called Vrestin. She tells him the Zarbi have enslaved many of her friends at the Crater of Needles, where they tear off the Menoptra’s wings so they can’t fly away. Ian asks what else they expect when they invade a planet, but Vrestin insists that Vortis is their planet, and they’re reclaiming it.

She tells him that the Zarbi are an unintelligent species who used to live with the Menoptra, in peace, until they were made militant by a dark power, the Animus, which is the voice the Doctor’s been talking to. Nice to put a name to it. The structure inhabited by the Zarbi colony and the Animus grew at that time, and Vrestin calls it the Carcinome. At least I think she does. The Menoptra have a very strange (and annoying) speech pattern placing the emPHAs-is on thE wrong sy-LAb-LE, so I might have misheard.

The Menoptra had no weapons, and by the time they sensed the danger, the Zarbi were too strong to overcome, so they had to flee the planet. At that time, the strange moons appeared in the sky. One became their home, but it’s not a good place to live, so they must try to reclaim Vortis.

The Menoptra sent Vrestin to the surface along with two others to prepare the way for the invasion force. The Zarbi killed one, and the other is at the Crater with Barbara.

She teams up with Ian to go to the rescue, but of course Ian can’t fly, so it’ll take two hours to reach the Crater. The Zarbi soon catch up, so the pair run to hide, and their situation goes from bad to worse as the ground beneath their feet gives way. Well, I guess they’ll be very well hidden under a few tonnes of rock and dust.

Final Thoughts

Being quite a straightforward story so far, I’m not sure what else there is to add about The Web Planet. It’s a pleasantly strange trip out into the unknown. I like the decision to include non-humanoid aliens, even if the execution leaves something to be desired.

I've also enjoyed the sweet little bits of interaction between the Doctor and Vicki. It seems our Doctor has turned into a right softie, offering Vicki sweets to cheer her up when things get tough. Perhaps he's trying to make up for not doting on Susan as much as he perhaps should have.

I'll be back again later this month with a write-up on the second half of The Web Planet (and a big can of bug spray), so goodbye for now, and don't let the big bugs bite.



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Magazine, Serial

[February 28, 1965] Tragedy and Triumph (March 1965 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Casualty of War

Malcolm X was shot on my birthday.

While I was celebrating with friends on February 21, 1965, enjoying cake and camaraderie at a small Los Angeles fan convention, Malcolm X, one of the highest profile fighters for civil rights in America, was gunned down.  At a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), a group X founded, three shooters attacked the 39-year-old father of four (soon to be five), wounding him sixteen times.  He did not survive the trip to the hospital.

Two of the assailants were captured, but their motive is still unclear.  All fingers point to the Black Muslims, however.  After his disillusionment with and fraught departure from the group, X had cause to worry that they intended to rub out a man they thought of as a traitor.  Indeed, X had received a number of death threats prior to the OAAU meeting. 

Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Black Muslims, had to arrive at a rally at New York's Coliseum on February 26 flanked by police protection.  Addressing the large audience, he made clear that he'd come to savage X, not to praise or bury him. 

Malcolm X was a controversial figure.  Whereas Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s non-violent methods have earned him almost universal admiration from America (those who fight the old order, anyway), X was a militant Afro-American.  It was only recently that his attitude toward Whites began to soften, the result of a pilgrimage to Mecca, which he shared with many light-skinned Muslims.  Nevertheless, there is no question that the war for civil rights has claimed one of its most important generals. 

As Black Americans prepare for a freedom march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, the cynic in me wonders who will be next.

Cheering News

In recent months, that kind of a downer headline would segue easily, if dishearteningly, into a piece on how the latest Analog was a disappointment.  Thankfully, the magazine is on an upswing, and the March 1965 Analog, last of the "bedsheet" sized isues, is one of the best in a long while.


by John Schoenherr

The Twenty Lost Years of Solid-State Physics, by Theodore L. Thomas

Theodore L. Thomas takes a break from his rather lousy F&SF science vignettes to talk about the patenting of the first transistor.  Apparently, a fellow named Lilienfeld worked out the theory long before Shockley et. al., filing a patent as early as 1930!  Yet, Lilienfeld never tried to build the thing, and the invention had no effect on the world save for complicating the filing of later patents by others.  Sad, to be sure, although Lilienfeld had a prolific career otherwise, and I'm given to understand that materials technology was not sufficiently advanced to make the device back then anyway.

Still, it makes you wonder what other inventions lie buried at the patent office, lacking a vital something to bring them into common use.

Four stars.

The Case of the Paradoxical Invention, by Richard P. McKenna

Speaking of inventions that haven't found their era, McKenna offers up a motor powered by the stream of radioactive particles from a decaying source.  The problem is, it appears to be both physically possible and impossible simultaneously.

The math is over my head, and probably over the head of most of Analog's readers, too.

Two stars.

The Iceman Goeth, by J. T. McIntosh


by Leo Summers

Andrew Coe is an iceman.  Years ago, he had his emotions wiped clean, both punishment and societal protection, for Coe had murdered an ex-lover for unfaithfulness.  Now he makes a living with a clairvoyant and telepathy act — except it's no act.  He's the real deal. 

It appears nothing will change the colorless unending cycle of work and sleep, but outside Coe's harshly circumscribed life, the city he resides in is slowly going mad.  Psychotic breaks followed by motive-less murders and suicides have been steadily on the rise.  The police are at wits end as to their cause until a scientists pinpoints their origin to an unexploded dementia bomb, dropped in a war 50 years before. 

To find the thing, Coe will have to have to use his full mental powers, only accessible if he gets back his emotions.

There is a five star story here, one where the drama resides in the decision to restore Coe to his former self.  Coe is a killer; is it worth it unleash one madman on the world to stop a hundred?

The problem is, that's not how McIntosh plays it.  Instead, Coe simply finds the bomb, receives a pardon, gets a new girl, and everyone lives happily ever after.  No mention is made of his past crimes.  We never learn about the woman he killed.  If anything, McIntosh almost seems to excuse Coe's act as forgivable given the circumstances.

Deeply dissatisfying, but God, what potential.  Three stars.

(Have we seen this concept of the iceman before?  It seems awfully familiar.)

Balanced Ecology, by James H. Schmitz


by Dean West

The McIntosh is followed by a tale as delightful as the prior story was disappointing.  On the planet Wrake, the ecosystem is uniquely interdependent.  Among the groves of diamondwood trees reside the skulking slurps, whose primary prey are the ambulatory tumbleweeds, whose seeds are tilled by the subterranean and invisible "clean-up squad".  Other denizens are the monkey-like humbugs, with an annoying tendency to mockingbird human expressions, and the giant tortoise-like mossbacks, who sleep for years at a time in the center of the forests.

Ilf and Auris Cholm are pre-teen owners of one of these woods, heir to a modest fortune thanks to their well-moderated timbering operation.  When greedy off-worlders want to effect a hostile takeover for a clearcutting scheme, do a pair of kids stand a chance?  Not without a little help, as it turns out…

I really really liked this story, almost an ecological fable.  The only bumpy spot, I felt, was the part where the villain revealed his evil scheme in a bit too much of a stereotypical, if metaphorical, cackle.

Four stars.

The Wrong House, by Max Gunther


by Adolph Brotman

Out in the suburbs, they're building giant subdivisions with rows of handsome houses on gently curving lanes.  Many find them charming, but others find them unsettling — like the young woman who confesses (in The Wrong House) to her engineer husband that her home seems somehow "unfriendly."  To his credit, the man takes his spouse seriously and determines to understand why the air duct pipe is warm instead of cool, and just what all those strange electronics installed in their attic might be…

Another good story, maybe a little too pat, but well executed.  Four stars.

The Prophet of Dune (Part 3 of 5), by Frank Herbert


by John Schoenherr

Now we come to the centerpiece of the issue, the sweeping serial scheduled across the first five months of 1965.  In this latest installment, Paul Atreides and his mother, the Bene Gesserit Lady Jessica, fulfill prophecy and become spiritual leaders of the Fremen, the indigenes of the desert planet Arrakis.  Meanwhile, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, usurper of the Atreides fiefdom on Arrakis, schemes to parlay his control of the geriatric spice melange into rulership of the entire galactic Empire.

There were times when the immense scope and obvious attention to detail threatened to elevate Dune into four star, even classic territory.  And then Frank Herbert's fat fingers got in their own way and gave us such classic passages as this:

Paul heard hushed voices come down the line: "It's true then–Liet is dead."
Liet, Paul thought.  Then: Chani, daughter of Liet.  The pieces fell together in his mind.  Liet was the Fremen name of the Planetologist, Kynes.

Paul looked at Farok, asked: "Is it the Liet known as Kynes?"

"There is only one Liet," Farok said.

Paul turned, stared at the robed back of a Fremen in front of him.  Then Liet-Kynes is dead, he thought.

I guess Kynes is dead.  He's also called Liet.  I thought.

How about this one:

"This" — [Baron Harkonnen] gestured at the evidence of the struggle in the bed-chamber–"was foolishness.  I do not reward foolishness."

Get to the point, you old fool! Feyd-Ruatha thought.

"You think of me as an old fool," the Baron said.  "I must dissuade you of that."

Fool me thrice, shame on Herbert.  The third-person omniscient/everywhere/everyone vantage is clumsy; a better writer could go without such exposition and switching of viewpoints, instead saving it, perhaps, for the times when Paul goes into one of his prescient fugues.

But I do want to keep reading, if for nothing else than to know what happens.

Three stars.

Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann

For some reason, Analog's editor, John W. Campbell Jr., decided to include a set of homilies from the inside of Old Saint Paul's Church in Baltimore, dated 1692.  At first, my atheistic side bridled, but I ultimately found the platitudes refreshing and timeless.

No stars for this entry, for it's not really a tale nor an article.

The Legend of Ernie Deacon, by William F. Temple


by Dean West

Last up, we follow the exploits of Arthur, captain of a two-place merchant ship plying the lanes between Earth and Alpha Centauri.  It's a twelve year trip, reduced to a subjective 18 months thanks to time dilation.  It's still a long time, but Art finds it lucrative and satisfying, trading full-sense movies called "Teo's" for the life-saving medicine, varos.  Legend is a philosophical piece, discussing the morality of preferring a vicarious life to a "real" one (and of facilitating the addiction thereto), and also evaluating the reality of fictional creations whose existence comes to shadow that of their creators (e.g. Holmes over Doyle).

Good, thoughtful stuff, with an ending that can be viewed as mystical or simply sentimental.

Four stars.

Summing Up

The counter to tragedy is hope, and the latest Analog gives me a lot of hope — that the magazine that ushered in the Golden Age of science fiction will rise to former glory (some may argue that the magazine never fell; it has maintained the highest SF circulation rates for decades.) In fact, Analog is the month's highest-rated mag, at 3.3 stars, for the first time in years.

Fantastic followed closely at 3.2; all the rest of the mags were under water:

Amazing and New Worlds both merited 2.9 stars (but the former made John Boston smile, so that's something).  Science-Fantasy scored a sad 2.6.  Fantasy and Science Fiction was a lousy 2.3.  IF, at 2 stars, was so bad that I'm not sorry to stop reviewing it; that harsh task now falls on the shoulders of one David Levinson, whom we shall meet next month.

And February does end with one more bit of tragedy: out of 45 fictional pieces published in magazines this month, only one was written by a woman.

Here's hoping March offers better news on that front, and others.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 22, 1965] Theory of Relativity (March 1965 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

(More Than) One Big Happy Family

A lot of dramatic events happened this month, many of them violent and tragic, from a huge earthquake in the Aleutian Islands (fortunately, far away from inhabited areas) to, just today, the murder of civil rights activist Malcolm X.

Although not as world-shattering as other news stories, one incident that caught my eye was the bizarre story of Lawrence Joseph Bader/John Francis "Fritz" Johnson. Why two different names? Thereby hangs a tale.

It seems that Mister Bader, a salesman from Akron, Ohio, vanished during a storm while on a fishing trip on Lake Erie, back in 1957. His wife had him declared legally dead in 1960. Meanwhile, Mister Johnson showed up as a local TV personality in Omaha, Nebraska.


Broadcasting from an ABC affiliate

A guy who knew Bader ran into Johnson, and knew something was fishy (pun intended.) He brought Bader's niece to take a look at him. Sure enough, Johnson was really Bader, now married to another woman. Fingerprints proved the case.

Amnesia or a hoax? The authorities aren't sure. Johnson claims that he has no memory his life as Bader, but other folks point out that he had some problems with the IRS and may have wanted to start his life over. Sounds like a soap opera plot to me. Anybody remember the old radio drama John's Other Wife? Stay tuned!

Two Brothers and One Son

The man with two families came to mind again when I took a look at the American music charts recently. Earlier this month, the Righteous Brothers reached Number One with You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'.


They're not really brothers, so I may be stretching a point until it breaks.

Later, Gary Lewis and the Playboys hit the top with This Diamond Ring. Gary is the son of comedian Jerry Lewis.


I wonder if any of Dean Martin's seven children will have hit records.

Family Affairs

Fittingly, some of the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic involve close relatives, and others feature characters without families of their own.


Cover art by Gray Morrow.

Monsters & Monster-Lovers, by Fritz Leiber

Before we get to the fiction, let's take a look at an article from one of our greatest writers of imaginative tales. The title tells you what he's talking about; the current popularity of all things monstrous. It's a wide-ranging piece, listing many of the notable frightening creations of literature, pondering their appeal, noting that they flourish during relatively peaceful times, and dismissing the possibility that the discoveries of science will eliminate them from our minds. Perhaps the author tries to cover too much ground, but his essay is enlightening, elegantly written, and gave me the names of some classics I need to track down.

Four stars.

The Pillars of Chambalor, by John Jakes


The magazine's only interior illustration is also by Morrow.

Our old pal Conan Junior — excuse me, I mean Brak the Barbarian — shows up again in this issue's lead story. This time he's lost in a desert wasteland, near the ruins of an ancient city. In the time-honored tradition of sword-and-sorcery yarns, a huge monster attacks him, leaving him dying from its venom.

A wicked old man and his sweet young daughter show up. It seems the greedy fellow is after a fabulous treasure within the abandoned city, and needs Brak's mighty strength to open the doors behind which it lies. He'll provide an antidote for the poison if the barbarian swears to perform this service. (It amused me that the plot depends on Brak never breaking his word once he makes a promise, but then feeling free to turn against the old guy once he's opened the doors.)

Complicating matters is the fact that the ruins consist of about one hundred gigantic pillars, each one containing the bodies of the inhabitants of the vanished city, frozen in stone by a wizard. It won't surprise you to learn that they don't stay that way, or that we haven't seen the last of the critter that attacked Brak.

Predictable, but written with vivid imagination, this swashbuckling adventure is a decent way to pass the time. I find Brak a lot more tolerable in short stories than in longer pieces, although I wouldn't want to read a bunch of them at once.

Three stars.

Mary, Mary, by John Baldwinson

Here's a science fiction story that reads like fantasy, from an author completely unknown to me. In the future, folks usually work for fifteen years, saving little or none of their pay, then retire to lives of leisure, supported by a rich and benevolent government. The protagonist has a different plan.

She scrimps and saves, finally leaving her job with enough money to create a garden full of exotic plants from far-flung worlds. Many of these are as intelligent as animals, and some can even move around, acting as servants and watchdogs.

Although she's a loner, spending nearly all her time in the garden, the woman yearns for human company as well. She falls in love with a retired spaceman, and everything seems just fine. Too bad she doesn't realize her floral friends can feel jealousy.

Although the resulting tragedy comes as no surprise, there are some striking images and poetic writing to be found here. Despite the futuristic trappings, this is really a dark fairy tale, full of beings both beautiful and frightening. It reminds me of some of the romantic fables of Robert F. Young, which is OK in my book.

Four stars.

102 H-Bombs, by Thomas M. Disch

There's a lot going on here, so hold on to your hat and I'll try to walk you through it. In a future of constant armed conflict — don't call it war! — all male orphans in the USA begin military training at the age of ten. Our hero is named Charlie C-Company. (He got that last name due to a bureaucratic mix-up when he was inducted into the Army.) At this point, the story's satiric look at the armed forces made me think of Catch-22, a novel by Joseph Heller that came out a few years ago.

Anyway, Charlie is one of the winners of a contest to write an essay entitled "What I Would Do If I Owned the Empire State Building." You see, that famous structure is just about the only thing that survived an attack during this conflict that isn't officially a war. He and one hundred and one other winners — notice the title of the story — are flown to New York New (sic) and, well, things get complicated.

Not only does he make telepathic contact with a girl his own age who is one of the winners, he also finds out the real purpose behind the contest, learns something about himself, and becomes part of a larger, closely related group. The outcome has serious consequences for the whole world.

You get the feeling that Disch knows exactly how clever he is, so this is a story to admire rather than love. It's a real roller coaster of a tale, throwing all kinds of concepts at you left and right, always keeping your attention but making you feel a bit dizzy when it's over. It's worth the ride, anyway.

Three stars.

Look Out Below, by Jack Sharkey

This surreal tale features a main character without family or close companions.  He lives alone, on the top floor of a tall building, in a suite where everything is pure white.   Happy, but a bit lonely, he rides an elevator to the floor just below his own.

The things here are white, but with pale gray pinstripes.  He moves into a suite on this level that isn't quite as luxurious as the one he left.  The coffee, for example — like his food, clothing, and other belongings, it apparently appears from nowhere — is just slightly bitter.

Shortly after returning to the top level, uneasy dreams and yearnings draw him down two floors, where an alluring woman leads him to a crimson-lit place of music, drinking, smoking, and violence.  He soon descends even lower, leading to an enigmatic ending.

This is a very strange story, and not one I expected from the pen of a writer I associate with comedy and adventure.  I expect that I'll be pondering its meaning for a long time.  The author's intent seems to be allegorical, although I can't decipher all the symbols he uses.  The overall effect of reading it is intriguing, but frustrating.

Three stars.

The Headsman, by Irvin Ashkenazy

Like the lead story, this backwoods fantasy features a protagonist who meets an unusual father and daughter. The author isn't exactly new — digging into a pile of old pulp magazines reveals that he had a story published in Weird Tales nearly three decades ago — but he isn't exactly a household name, either.

The main character is an art dealer who goes deep into the wilds of Appalachia in search of priceless antiques. You see, a uranium prospector's journal indicates that the remains of a very old community exist way back in the hills. Did I mention that the prospector's headless body was found with his journal? That little fact, plus the title, should give you a clue that this is a horror story.

Anyway, the dealer locates the only two people who live in a ghost town in the mountains, a self-proclaimed preacher (and moonshiner) and his attractive but simple-minded daughter. After a lot of arguing and negotiation, the hillbilly tells the dealer how to get to the lost community. It was settled by supporters of Cromwell who fled to America at the time of the Restoration. (If nothing else, I learned something about English history from this story.)

The dealer finds the place and has a lot of spooky experiences. At the end, we discover the true nature of the hillbilly's daughter, and you can probably guess what happens to the dealer.

The plot involves many kinds of supernatural events, not all of which make sense. I also have to question the fact that there's apparently active volcanic activity in the Appalachians. The hillbilly and his daughter are old-fashioned stereotypes, and there's an unpleasant touch of racism in the suggestion that there's something weird about them because they're of mixed ancestry.

(As an inhabitant of Tennessee, where this story takes place, I have to mention another implausibility. The hillbilly and his daughter consistently address the dealer as y'all. Anyone who has lived in the American South for a length of time knows that this very useful word is the second person plural, and would never be used to refer to a single individual.)

As a parting note, let me contrast the weaknesses of this tale with the excellent backwoods fantasies of Manly Wade Wellman, found in his collection Who Fears the Devil?, which happens to win a glowing review from Robert Silverberg in this issue's book column.

Two stars.

The Man Who Painted Tomorrow, by Kate Wilhelm

This writer has appeared in genre magazines for nearly a decade — her first story was also in Fantastic — but is probably better known for being married to Damon Knight.   That may change some day, because she brings us an interesting and unusual tale that displays a great deal of imagination.

The main character's mind is pulled into the far future now and then, where he inhabits one of the four-armed bodies of the people of that time.  They bring him there to paint pictures of his present, with the help of a robot.

His main qualification for this task is the fact that he can draw very accurately, but without artistic creativity, which would distort the reality of his renditions.  His paintings become part of a museum, where other works depict humanity's history from the prehistoric past to what would be the protagonist's future, but the distant past of his hosts.

Eventually the man learns something about the world of the future, and a mysterious door that holds a secret his hosts try to keep hidden from him.  The ending brings present and future together, with both tragedy and hope.

The author has a gift for creating believable characters, which adds realism to the speculative aspects of the plot.  The conclusion may not be a total surprise, but it brings the sense of a fitting resolution.

Four stars.

It's All Relative

For the most part, this was an enjoyable issue. One of the stories wasn't very good, but I suppose every family has a black sheep.


The woman on the far right is Marilyn Munster. As you can see, she doesn't quite fit with the rest of her family, poor thing.

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Magazine

[February 16, 1965] Return to a Quagmire (March 1965 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Sliding Downhill

In the twenty years since the beginning of the Cold War, there have been many potential flashpoints between East and West.  In 1950, Chinese-backed North Koreans almost took the entire Korean peninsula in a see-saw, later stalemated, conflict that lasted until 1953.  Berlin twice became the hot spot — during the 1948 blockade and after the building of the Wall in 1961.  Cuba, too, has been a fraught locale, with the 1959 Communist takeover followed by the disastrous American-backed invasion in 1961 and then the near-calamitous Missile Crisis of 1962.

And then there's Vietnam.

Formerly part of French Indochina, the region has been divided into two roughly equal halves since 1954, when Ho Chi Minh's Viet Cong threw off the colonial yoke in 1954.  Since then, the Communist North has engaged in both insurgent and conventional tactics against the South.

Of course, the United States has backed South Vietnam despite it being a rather corrupt and authoritarian state that, for the past two years, has seen a revolving door of junta leaders running the country.  American involvement included air support and "military advisers", our presence including about 20,000 troops, all told. 

And then came the Gulf of Tonkin incident last August, in which American naval vessels reportedly were attacked off the coast of North Vietnam.  That opened the door for a flood of American air strikes, including into neutral Laos to bomb the "Ho Chi Minh" supply trail.

It was perhaps inevitable that the Viet Cong would hit back, first with a bombing of an American billet in Saigon last month, and now, on February 6, with a mortar attack on Camp Holloway, near Pleiku in central South Vietnam.

8 soldiers died in that attack, more than 100 were injured, and there was extensive damage to American equipment.  In retaliation, the U.S. launched Operation Flaming Dart, yet further intensifying the air war.  Wives and children of American personnel were ordered to leave Vietnam, Hawk surface to air missile batteries were set up at the airbase in Da Nang, and a general escalation of the conflict appears inevitable.  Publications, from the conservative Chicago Tribune to liberal LIFE Magazine, are clamoring for direct involvement.

That means American troops abroad, and anyone between 18-25 not currently enlisted in the military better start reconsidering their plans for the next few years.  People like my nephew, David, who just turned 23.  He's married, has a young son, and goes to UCLA, so perhaps he's safe.  For now. 

In any event, the papers are full of Vietnam news these days, and the voices against escalation are being drowned out by the hawks. 

It looks like we're about to slide, slow-motion-wise, into another Korea.  Call me an iconoclast peacenik, but I'm registering my protest early.  This won't end well.

No Relief in Sight

For those hoping that the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction would offer a respite from the world's glum news, I'm afraid I have to disappoint you.  The return to form we rejoiced in last month quickly fizzled.  This month's mag is a dud:

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, by Roger Zelazny

In the sultry oceans of Venus resides a leviathan of a fish, a kind of mammoth angler called "Ikki".  Bane to boaters, menace to fisheries, Ikki has been the target of big game hunters and professional exterminators.  None have succeeded.

Rich dilettante Jean Lucarich is willing to pick up where others have left off, driving a 10-acre raft equipped with tranquilizer harpoons and giant cages off in search of the modern day Moby Dick.  So keen is her desire that she has hired her old flame, a deep sea adventurer, to be a baiter.  His job is to lure the Ikki in range of Jean's craft…and capture.

Persons who are more familiar with literary fiction can probably tell me what style Zelazny (the author) is going for.  I found it overwrought and, in places, difficult to parse.  But what bugged me the most was the utterly archaic (virtually Burroughsian) rendition of Venus.  Zelazny's version of the Planet of Love is kinda warm, rather than 800 degrees Fahrenheit.  Its day is roughly like an Earth's day, rather than 250 days long.  The air is breathable, the water potable. 

I nitpick because there's no way that the author doesn't know his Venus is wrong.  Mariner 2, first interplanetary probe, finished its mission two years ago.  It was in all the papers.  Indeed, the story would have been more palatable had it taken place on Earth, say, in some remote corner of the Indian Ocean.  It might even have been so, originally — some reject planned for Collier's or some other mainstream mag.

Anyway, it's not bad, but it's not really SF, and I found it too consciously literary.  One Bradbury is quite enough.

Three stars.

Final Appeal, by J. H. Brennan

This first piece by the Ulsterian Brennan involves the quest for justice when the judges are all automated.  It's one of those pieces that requires such an implausible development of technology (in this case, no human involvement at all in the rendering of judgment) that the "clever" solution falls flat.

It doesn't help that the solution, itself, while it may appeal to the mainstream of society, will be distasteful to a more free-thinking sort.

Two stars, and only because it kept me along for the ride until the inevitable disappointment (which came about a page too late).

Essentials Only, by Jack Sharkey

An absent-minded professor accidentally opens up a portal to a virgin alternate-Earth.  He invites his friend to join him for a lifetime of simple pleasures, but of course, they need to bring their girlfriends.  And their girlfriends insist on some modicum of civilization.  And that includes certain, essential people.  And their possessions.  And more luxuries, just in case.  And so on.

Jack Sharkey varies between mildly impressive to (more often) rather dreadful.  But this story is pleasantly droll, inoffsenive.

Three stars.

The End of Eternity, by Ernesto Gastaldi

According to F&SF's new editor, Joseph Ferman, the state of Italian SF is pretty poor: mostly send-ups of cliches we abandoned in the Pulp Era.  But, Ferman promises, this imported tale (translated by Harry Harrison) is something different.

He's wrong.  End takes place in modern day Rome on the eve of its nuclear destruction.  The bomb that will destroy it, scientists say, is so powerful that the space-time continuum might be ruptured.  By the way, the protagonist is named "Romulo", and the story is redolent with reminders of the antiquity of the city.  Can you guess what will happen?

Two stars for this Italian version of the creation myth.

Tripsych, by Ron Smith

Ferman praises Smith for his satirically broad rendition of three hoary SF ideas in as many vignettes.  However, the world doesn't need more bad stories, even if their badness is intentional.

Two stars.

Illusion, by Walter H. Kerr

In 1951, J. T. McIntosh wrote Hallucination Orbit, the definitive tale on cracking up while on solitary assignment in space.  Kerr's poem is on the same topic and compares unfavorably in all respects.

One star.

Better Than Ever, by Alex Kirs

There's a movie playing "over there".  It takes a month to watch, and no one can tell you what it's about.  But those who see it come back…changed.  More mature, no longer plagued with their frailties and foibles.  Better, one might say.  An adman named Clinton is one of the last, stubborn holdouts, increasingly alienated as everyone he knows, one by one, goes to see this movie. 

This is his story.

Well, sort of.  Nothing much happens in this short piece, mostly just a portrait of social isolation — an isolation Clinton refuses to remedy with the obvious solution.  Can you blame him?

Anyway, it's a fair piece, I guess.  Probably some kind of metaphor.  I don't know. 

Three stars, sure.

Oh, East is East and West is East, by Isaac Asimov

In a recent Analog, editor Campbell included a geographical quiz: which states of the U.S.A. are the farthest North, South, East, and West?  It's kind of a trick question since it hinges on the fact that Alaska straddles the 180th meridian and, thus, is both the farthest East and West (and North, but that's obvious to anyone who's read the paper since 1959, when Alaska became a state).

I got the answer right, but then, my first book was an atlas.  The Good Dr. A. got it wrong, and thus produced an article to explain why he was really right.  It's cute, but it doesn't tell you any more than a decent map would. 

Three stars.

Ado About Nothing, by Bob Ottum, Jr.

There is a wall at the end of the universe posted with a sign that says that nothing exists beyond the wall.  If you don't believe it, put a quarter in the wall and look through the peephole for yourself.

It's a silly vignette, but it appealed to the former editor, Avram Davidson, whose collected materials Ferman is apparently still depending on.

Two stars.

Uncollected Works, by Lin Carter

If 50 million monkeys at 50 million typewriters could eventually produce the works of William Shakespeare, what could a computing machine with infinite monkeys worth of random creative capacity produce?

Lin Carter has been around for a while, at least in SFF and Lovecraftian fandom circles, but this is the first story of his I've run across.  Told from the perspective of an old literary critic, given to sentimental verbosity, it's a charming piece.  It doesn't make a lick of sense, but it's charming.  I feel like a little more thought could have made the scientific conceit more plausible, which would have then made the story more effective.

Three stars, anyway.

Maiden Voyage, by J. W. Schutz

Thankfully, the end of the issue is the bright spot.  Schutz, currently American Consul General in Tangiers (Morocco), offers up this novelette in epistolary, detailing a scientific mission to Mars in the mid 2030s.  Refreshingly, it stars a woman, and in a chatty, engaging style, describes the rigorous training, arduous journey, and perilous events that she endures. 

It's straight science fiction, more what I'd expect from Analog than F&SF these days, and I enjoyed it.  Bravo, especially for a first effort.

Four stars.

War Report

Both Vietnam and F&SF have been troubled spots for some time, with only isolated moments of hope to keep us going.  I guess the question is this: do we continue to throw good money after bad?  Maybe we should stick both out for another year and see what happens.  If neither improves, maybe it's time to pull out, at last…




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Magazine

[February 12, 1965] Mirabile Dictu, Sotto Voce (March 1965 Amazing)

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by John Boston

It’s an age of minor miracles.  Nothing to shout about, but last month’s pretty good issue of Amazing is followed by another one that’s not bad either. 

The Issue at Hand


by Gray Morrow

Greenslaves, by Frank Herbert

This March issue opens with Frank Herbert’s novelet Greenslaves, a rather startling, if not entirely amazing, performance.  In the future, Brazil and other countries are making war against insect life, since it’s a disgusting reservoir of disease and a source of damage to crops.  (The U.S. is an exception, owing to the influence of the radical Carsonists; the reference is presumably to Rachel, not Kit or Johnny.) But the campaign seems to be backfiring, with insects mutating, and epidemics.  The events of the plot are cheerfully bizarre, but the message is similar to that of the more ponderous Dune epic: attend to ecology.  Things work together and if you mess with the balance, you may harm yourselves.


by Gray Morrow

Unlike the more dense and turgid Dune serials, though, this story is crisply told and moves along quickly and vividly to its point.  It also recalls Wells’s story The Empire of the Ants—not a follow-up or a rejoinder, but a very different angle on the premise of that classic story.  Four stars for this striking departure both from Herbert’s and from Amazing’s ordinary course.

The Plateau, by Christopher Anvil

The ground gained by Herbert is quickly given up by Christopher Anvil’s The Plateau, which if it were an LP would have to be called Chris Anvil’s Greatest Dull Thuds.  Actually, my first thought was that it should be retitled The Abyss, but then I realized it is over 50 pages long.  Maybe—following our host’s example in discussing Analog—it should instead be called The Endless Desert.  It’s yet another story about stupid and comically rigid aliens bested by clever humans, which no doubt came back from Analog with a rejection slip reading “You’ve sold me this story six times already and it gets worse every time!”


by Robert Adragna

The premise: “Earth was conquered. . . .  At no place on the globe was there a well-equipped body of human combat troops larger than a platoon.” Except these platoons seem to have an ample supply of mini-hydrogen bombs and reliable communications among numerous redoubts at least around the US, as they bamboozle the aliens in multiple ways, including a cover of one of Eric Frank Russell’s greatest hits: making the aliens believe the humans have powerful unseen allies on their side.  The whole is rambling, hackneyed, and sloppy (late in the story there are several references to the aliens as “Bugs,” though they are apparently humanoid, and then that usage disappears for the rest of the story).  Towards the end, a sort-of-interesting idea about the nature of the aliens’ stupidity emerges, leading to a moderately clever end, though it’s hardly worth the slog to get there: it’s the same sort of schematic thinking that Anvil typically accomplishes in Analog at a fifth the length or less.  So, barely, two stars.

Be Yourself, by Robert Rohrer

Robert Rohrer’s Be Yourself is a little hackneyed, too, but at six pages is much more neatly turned and much less exasperating and wearying than the Anvil story.  Alien invaders have figured out how to duplicate us precisely; how do we know which Joe Blow is the real one?  No one who has read SF for more than a week will be surprised by the twists, but one can admire their execution.  Three stars.

Calling Dr. Clockwork, by Ron Goulart

Ron Goulart’s Calling Dr. Clockwork is business as usual for him, an outrageous lampoon, this time of hospitals and the medical profession.  The protagonist goes to visit someone in the hospital, faints when he sees a patient in bad condition, and wakes up in a hospital bed, attended by various caricatures including the eponymous and dysfunctional robot doctor, and it looks like he’s never going to get out.  Three stars for an amusing farce, no longer than it needs to be.

Wheeler Dealer, by Arthur Porges

The difference between an amusing farce and a tedious one is limned to perfection by Arthur Porges’s Wheeler Dealer, in which his series character Ensign De Ruyter and company are stranded on a nearly airless planet inhabited by quasi-Buddhist humanoids with giant lungs who can’t spare time to help the Earthfolk mine the beryllium they need to repair their ship before they run out of air.  Why no help?  Because the locals are too busy spinning their prayer wheels.  So De Ruyter shows them how to make the wheels spin on their own and thereby gets the mining labor they need.  Porges, unlike Goulart, is, tragically, not funny.  The story (like the previous De Ruyter item, Urned Reprieve in last October’s issue) is essentially a jumped-up version of a squib on Fascinating Scientific Facts that you might find as filler at the bottom of a column in another sort of magazine.  It does not help that the plot amounts to the simple-minded offspring of Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God.  Two stars.

The Man Who Discovered Atlantis, by Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg provides another smoothly readable and informative entry in his Scientific Hoaxes series, The Man Who Discovered Atlantis, about Paul Schliemann, grandson of Heinrich Schliemann, discoverer of the buried city (cities) of Troy.  The younger Schliemann wasn’t able to accomplish much on his own, so he exploited the fame of his grandfather to perpetrate a hoax about the discovery of Atlantis, or at least of its location and confirmation of its existence.  Silverberg succinctly recounts the origin and history of the Atlantis myth as well as the charlatanry over it that preceded Paul Schliemann’s, and suggests that had Plato known what would come of his references to Atlantis, he probably wouldn’t have brought it up.  Four stars.

Summing Up

So . . . two pretty decent issues of this magazine in a row!  One very good story, two acceptable ones, and quite a good article, and the other contents are merely inadequate and not affirmatively noxious.  Do we have a trend?  One hopes so, but . . . promised for next month is another of Edmond Hamilton’s nostalgia operas about the Star Kings.  We shall see.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 8, 1965] Roman Holiday (Doctor Who: The Romans)

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By Jessica Holmes

This month, we’ve got a bit of a surprise in Doctor Who: comedy. Yes, comedy. Do not adjust your television set. We’ve got Dennis Spooner back in the writer’s chair, and it seems that Mr. Spooner is having a little experiment with the format. Does it work, or like the reign of so many emperors, does it fall apart and die an undignified death? Let’s find out.

THE SLAVE TRADERS

So, remember how last time, the TARDIS fell off a cliff? Forget about it.

A month has passed since the TARDIS crashed, and the Doctor and crew are lounging about in a luxurious villa, sipping wine, eating grapes, and generally doing as the Romans do. Confused yet?

As I mentioned above, something you’ll notice quickly about this serial is the tone. In a bit of a first for the series, which does have its funny moments, The Romans is best described as a farcical comedy.

In the village near the villa, a couple of men with dreadful hairdos are browsing the market. They’re in need of new slaves to trade, and they take quite a liking to Barbara and Vicki, who, like true tourists, are proving to be absolutely useless at haggling. Where did they get the money? Is there a bureau de change somewhere deep inside the TARDIS? How many sesterces do you get to the Pound?

Slavers aren’t all that are up to no good in this little Roman town, however. An old lyre-player, minding his own business, is walking along the road outside town when a rough-looking man drags him into the bushes and murders him, for no immediately apparent reason.

Meanwhile, we interrupt The Romans to bring you Cooking With Barbara. Because one can only presume the men have never touched an oven in their lives, Barbara’s just fixed them up a lovely Roman meal of peacock breasts, quail’s tongues and pomegranates. She must be good, because I swear the Doctor is on the cusp of bursting into song. He’s a little less enthused when Barbara reveals that they had ants' eggs for starters.

Well, it’s certainly authentic. I know they say ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’, but I think I’ll stick with pasta if it’s all the same.

Following the meal, the Doctor announces to the surprise of his companions, that he’s taking a trip away for a few days, leading to this gem of an exchange:

IAN: You never told us you were going away.
DOCTOR: Oh? Well, I don't know that I was under any obligation to report my movements to you, Chesterfield.
BARBARA: ChesterTON.
DOCTOR: Oh, Barbara's calling you.

It turns out that our leads, though normally made to act in a serious manner, have a knack for comedy.

Bored of just lazing about the villa, the Doctor’s going to Rome. Eager for a change of pace, Vicki begs to come with him, to which he happily agrees. I’m starting to think he’s seeing her as a Susan replacement.

Now Ian and Barbara have some alone time, and Barbara wastes no time in checking Ian out, and she likes what she sees. By which I mean she thinks he makes a very fine Roman, once she’s finished restyling his hair. Nothing else going on here. Nope. No-siree.

Leaving aside the light comedy, the two Roman slavers are heading up to the villa to catch some Britons. Talk about mood whiplash!

Barbara and Ian don’t stand a chance. There’s no telly in the villa (nor a fridge… though Ian does forget that little fact, much to Barbara’s amusement), so there’s not much more to do than lie around drinking wine and teasing each other.

Fortunately, Ian isn’t quite so far gone that he can’t put up a fight against the home invaders. Barbara, on the other hand….

Bless her. She tries to help, she really does. She grabs a heavy pot as the men begin to tussle, and whacks it as hard as she can against the nearest man’s head.

Unfortunately, that head happens to belong to Ian. Oops.

On the road, the Doctor and Vicki come upon the murdered musician. As the Doctor picks up his lyre to examine it, a Roman centurion comes along, mistaking him for a famous musician, his arrival in Rome eagerly anticipated by Caesar Nero himself. Not one to pass up an opportunity to get into trouble, the Doctor goes along with it, and assumes the identity of Maximus… something or other. He can’t remember it, so why should I?

Barbara and Ian end up captives of the slavers and separated, as Ian is sold off to be a galley slave while Barbara is hauled off to be sold at auction in Rome.

Later, as the Doctor and Vicki rest for the night, the centurion accosts the man he hired to kill the old lyre player, as the job doesn’t seem to be quite done, and Nero pays very well to kill lyre players better than he.

That sounds like a very Nero thing to do.

So, with his life on the line, the assassin goes upstairs to finish the job.

Well this is… different. I don’t quite know what it is about it, but something about The Romans isn't working for me. The setup is a bit awkward and clunky, and the choice to give the episode a comedic tone is odd and confusing. It’d be one thing if it was dark comedy, but it’s not. It’s like watching a Carry On film on a broken television set that switches over to a serious historical drama every few minutes (the feeling made all the worse by Mr. Hartnell’s having been in both shows!) The episode is funny enough, but the tonal clashing kept me from really engaging with the episode.

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME

With the arrival of the assassin, the Doctor has no choice but to defend himself with his lyre and an amphora of something which I sincerely hope is just water.

He seems to be quite enjoying himself, but just as the Doctor has the upper hand, Vicki walks in on them, sending the assassin fleeing out the window. The Doctor even remarks that just outsmarting his enemies has made him forget the joys of fisticuffs.

While it’s funny and all to see the Doctor win a fight, I’m not sure his remarks on brawling being fun are sending a good message to the kids watching. I know, I’m no fun.

Still, at least his boasts of his fighting prowess make Vicki laugh. I’m growing to enjoy their dynamic. They’re getting along like a house on fire.

Vicki remarks that the centurion has vanished, and the Doctor surmises that it was he who hired the assassin in the first place, to avoid dirtying his own blade, as was common among the Romans.

Barbara arrives in Rome, a little worse for wear but still in one piece, and wonders whether she’ll see Ian again. A wealthy-looking Roman, Tavius, watches Barbara as she attempts to coax her cellmate to eat something, even though there isn’t really enough food for the both of them. He says he wants to help her, but she has to trust him. On a first impression, I certainly wouldn’t.

Tavius attempts to buy her directly from the slave trader, but the slaver refuses. Barbara’s going to the auction. Her cellmate, however, is not. She’s far too weak; nobody would buy her. Instead, she’s going on a trip to the circus. How nice, you might think, but this is the Roman circus we’re talking about. Less of the acrobats and clowns, more of the people slaughtering animals, being slaughtered by animals, slaughtering each other, the occasional mock sea-battle (no, really), and generally creating a bloodbath for the amusement of the masses.

Pinnacle of civilisation, my backside.

Some stock footage later, Ian’s ship is caught in a storm, and Ian takes advantage of the roiling seas to pounce upon the guard and steal his keys.

Back in the eternal city, Vicki and the Doctor arrive just in time for the start of the slave auction, but before they can spot Barbara and get her to safety, the Doctor whisks Vicki away, obviously wishing to shield her from the more unsavoury aspects of Roman life. What's the point of holidaying in history if you're just going to pretend the nasty bits don't exist?

The Roman men are very eager to get their hands on Barbara (watching them treat her like a piece of meat is rather disgusting), but Tavian massively outbids them all.

At the seaside, Ian’s just washed up ashore. The storm smashed the ship to bits, but a fellow slave, Delos, managed to save the pair of them and get Ian to shore. Ian decides to head for Rome to find Barbara, and Delos agrees to come with him.

Back in Rome, Tavian manages to make a compliment on Barbara’s kind nature sound creepy, explaining it as the reason he bought her to be a servant to the Empress Poppaea, Nero’s wife, but his tone suggests an ulterior motive.

The Doctor finally arrives at the palace, though by a stroke of misfortune doesn’t find out that Barbara is also here. Tavian greets him with a cryptic remark about someone waiting for him in another room.

At last, the moment we’ve all been waiting for (or at least, been mildly curious about): the arrival of the Roman emperor. Enter Imperator Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. I think we’ll just stick with Nero.

Ian and Delos arrive in Rome, looking rather the worse for wear. They’d better hit up the baths before attempting any rescue. They get about two steps before being accosted by guards. As runaway slaves, they’re bound for the arena. Perhaps the lions will be put off by the smell?

Curious about Tavian’s earlier remark, the Doctor investigates the palace and comes upon the murdered body of the centurion from earlier. It looks like he might have got more than he bargained for in this little ruse of his!

Things are getting interesting, and I didn’t get as much whiplash from pivoting between comedy and drama. Let’s push onwards.

CONSPIRACY

Back at the palace, Vicki and the Doctor have just spent the night, when Tavian beckons him and tells him he’s taken care of the body, and that the Doctor might want to wait before enacting the next bit of the plan. A little confused, the Doctor tries prodding to find out what that plan actually is, but Tavian says it’s better that he himself doesn’t know, and so doesn’t give him any details.

That’s helpful.

Tavian presents Barbara to the Emperor and Empress, and Nero’s eyes nearly pop out of his head when he sees his wife’s lovely new servant.

Poppaea, however, is less than pleased, warning Barbara to keep any aspirations of becoming Empress in check. Somehow, I don’t think Nero is Barbara’s type.

It’s not as if that matters to Nero, however. He corners Barbara alone in the palace, and begins to chase her around as if he were a schoolboy — except at my school, a boy chasing a girl around like that would find himself in detention.

The following sequence is not as funny as it wants to be, because I know enough about Nero to know that nothing good would come of him catching Barbara, and no amount of hijinks, near-misses and slapstick is going to make me forget that.

The Doctor might not agree with me, as his reaction to seeing the Emperor chasing a screaming woman around the palace is to laugh.

Really, Doctor? I bet you wouldn’t find it so funny if you knew it was Barbara.

Vicki meets the palace poisoner, a surprisingly personable woman for someone who makes murder weapons. There are so many people in the palace going around murdering each other that it’s practically a Roman tradition at this point. True. Nero had his own mother murdered. His first wife, too.

Speaking of Nero, he’s still stalking Barbara, begging her for a teeny weeny kiss. As if that’s all he wants! I know it’s technically ‘wrong’ and ‘interfering with history’, but I wouldn’t blame Barbara if she decided to respond to his demand for a teeny weeny kiss with a teeny weeny stab wound. Poppaea turns up just as Nero pulls Barbara onto the bed, but thankfully intervenes and sends Barbara away before things get any more disturbing.

The Doctor tries to find out from Nero if he knows anything about conspiracy in the palace. Nero doesn’t know a thing (big shocker), but he does tell the Doctor that he’s to perform at a banquet that evening.

Meanwhile, Vicki listens in as the poisoner supplies Poppaea with some poisoned goblets, one of which she is to give to Nero’s new slave, and put an end to any aspirations of usurping her. Uh-oh.

At the banquet, Vicki and the Doctor reunite, and meanwhile Nero surprises Barbara with a little gift: a golden bangle. She’s not one bit impressed, but she manages to smoothly recover and propose a toast to Nero, downing her goblet.

It’s at this moment when Vicki remembers to mention her visit with the poisoner, and casually remarks that she thinks she might have poisoned Nero, having switched the goblets around. She didn’t think it was very fair to poison the slave girl. I have decided I like Vicki.

The Doctor manages to stop him drinking it just in time, as Barbara conveniently leaves the banquet. The near-misses are just getting a bit annoying, now. The Romans would be over in five minutes if it weren't for all the coincidences keeping the group apart.

Nero hands off the poisoned cup to his manservant who has been annoying him all episode by just trying to do his job. Doctor, I know that you have to respect causality and all that, but couldn’t we just let Nero have a little bit of poison? Not enough to change history, just to make him regret that indoor plumbing hasn’t been invented yet.

Her plan foiled, Poppaea has the poisoner dragged off to the arena. What a charming lady.

The feasting commences, and something happens that irks me terribly: everybody is sitting bolt upright, rather than lounging on couches as any respectable Roman would.

It’s just an odd oversight for a serial that has been eager to show the details of Roman life, even down to mentioning real Roman food.

To avoid embarrassment, the Doctor thinks up a cunning ruse: he tells the Emperor that his music is so subtle only the truly gifted can hear it and appreciate it. When he then proceeds to mime playing the lyre, Nero acts as if enraptured by his skill, and the others, not wishing to end up on the Caesar’s bad side, play along. Yes, it’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. Who do you think gave Hans Christian Andersen the idea?

However, once Nero leaves, the guests burst out in laughter. Too vain and too much of a buffoon to understand the joke, Nero spitefully laments he’s been made a fool of, as the Doctor got a great big round of applause for his performance. How dare he upstage Nero! He plans to take revenge, and bids Barbara to come with him to the arena. While there, he fancies seeing a fight. Give you three guesses who’s getting tossed into the ring.

A bloodbath isn’t all Nero came here for, however: he has a special plan for the Doctor. He arranges to have him come to play at the arena… and then the lions will be released.

Ian and Delos emerge to a rather small fighting pit. It doesn’t look like there’s room to swing a cat, let alone have a fight. Ian and Barbara are shocked to see each other, but there’s no time for a reunion right now.

Ian quickly gets the upper hand (big surprise), but when he has Delos disarmed and at his mercy, he doesn’t go in for the kill, to the displeasure of Nero. Delos manages to turn the tables on him, and soon has Ian on his knees, his blade to his throat. A moment of tense anticipation follows, everyone looking at Nero to see what his verdict will be. Disgusted with Ian’s act of mercy, Nero sticks his thumb down and orders Delos to cut off his head.

INFERNO

Delos has Ian utterly at his mercy. He looks at Ian, raises his sword…and then lunges at the Caesar.

True to form, Nero uses Barbara as a human shield as the guards descend upon Ian and Delos. In the kerfuffle, Ian tries to whisk Barbara away, but with Nero keeping a tight grip on her, and having only seconds to make an escape, he has no choice but to flee with Delos, promising to come back for her.

At the palace, Poppaea is awaiting Tavius, and orders that he get rid of Barbara, or she’ll try again to kill her — and him, too. Tavius warns Barbara of Poppaea’s murderous intentions, and she tells him that Nero is planning to use her to trap Ian, and that he’s going to feed the musician to the lions. Tavian promises to think of something, and warn the musician for her.

Elsewhere, the Doctor and Vicki are examining Nero’s plans for rebuilding Rome. The Doctor gathers that they’re in AD 64. July, to be precise. It looks like things are about to start hotting up.

Tavius warns the Doctor that he’s to play in the arena tomorrow, and that today is his last chance to kill Nero. Well, that explains a lot, doesn’t it? The murders, Tavius’ suspicious helpfulness. After all, secret murder is a Roman pasttime.

Nero arrives to give the Doctor the good news about his upcoming performance, but is a bit put out when the Doctor 'guesses' that he’s to perform at the arena. Just to rub it in, he launches into a string of lion-related puns that would even make my Dad wince.

However, he should be paying less attention to wordplay and more attention to what he’s doing, as while he talks, he holds his glasses behind his back, and the sun is shining bright outside. I think you can guess where this is going. Without him realising, the papers behind him begin to smoulder and soon catch alight.

So, it looks like the Doctor is doomed. You’d think so. However, this is Nero we’re talking about. The burning plans give him the bright idea to raze the Roman capital to the ground and rebuild from the ashes. The Doctor is a genius!

The mind boggles that nobody has killed Nero yet for sheer ineptitude.

Later that night, the guards are preparing for the ambush, but Ian and Delos are clever, sneaking in with a bunch of men who have been brought before the Emperor for a very special task: to light the city on fire.

Tavian finds Ian among the group, and reunites him with Barbara. At the same time, Vicki and the Doctor have wisely decided to quietly make their exit from the palace.

Ian, Delos and Barbara safely escape the palace as the arsonists head off to torch Rome, and Tavian watches them go, sincerely wishing Barbara good luck. In his hand, he clutches a cross. This one shot turns my understanding of Tavian on its head, and makes him a much more interesting character. An early Christian in the Roman court. It’s a much more interesting drive for his actions than mere political ambition. Nero was an incredibly cruel man, after all. Christianity doesn’t look too kindly upon murder, but Tavian is only human. If you saw someone with great power abuse it day in, day out, wouldn't you try to do something about it?

The revelation does raise its own questions, however. Does Tavian really do the things he does for the greater good, in service to his fellow man, or is he just another schemer with his faith incidental? A good person who does bad things, or a bad person who sometimes chooses to do good?

It could be either way, but my gut leans towards the former.

As a pedantic aside, the cross is an anachronism. This early in the history of Christianity, Christians would use the icthys (the Jesus fish) as their secret symbol rather than the cross. Of course, the icthys is less readily recognisable.

Outside the city, the Doctor and Vicki spot the fire going up, and are a bit more impressed than at all bothered. Never mind all the people about to die a horrible death — both from the fire, and the Christians that Nero will scapegoat and persecute for the blaze. Vicky scolds the Doctor for nagging her about tampering with history earlier in the serial, now that he’s gone and given Nero the idea for the Great Fire of Rome.

He insists it wasn’t his fault and that it would have happened anyway, but is a little too amused by the idea that he caused this. Perhaps he is not so unlike Nero, who laughs as the city burns, strumming his lyre all the while. Sources differ on what Nero’s true actions were on the night of the fire, and whether he ordered it to be set at all, but we’re here to watch a fun romp through time, not to get embroiled in an academic debate on which Roman historians we believe.

Back at the villa, Ian and Barbara arrive to find a lot of cleaning up to do. Specifically, cleaning up the shards of a certain broken vase. This whole scene is quite funny, and I like how Barbara and Ian have settled in to a more familiar dynamic, much more playful and less restrained than they have been in the past. I would even go so far as to say it borders on flirtatious.

As Ian complains it’s not his fault he got hit with the vase, Barbara insists that it is because she only picked it up to help and he went and got his head in the way. Realising that Barbara knocked him out, he figures that she should clean it up and settles down to watch her, the picture of smugness.

By the time the Doctor and Vicki make it back, the villa is back to normal, and Ian and Barbara are cleaned up in their fancy Roman clothes again, lounging around as if they hadn’t moved since the Doctor left for Rome.

Off the crew go again, to places unknown, much to the disbelief of Vicki, who refuses to believe that the Doctor doesn’t know what he’s doing. Oh, Vicki. You have absolutely no idea.

The women head off to change, while the Doctor studies the controls. Noticing something seems to be bothering him, Ian asks what’s up. The Doctor responds that they materialised for a split second, and something’s caught them, is now slowly dragging them down….but towards what?

Final Thoughts

I don’t quite know what to make of The Romans. It’s a little too farcical for me to judge it on its merits as a pure historical, but is a bit too serious for me to really assess it as a comedy. It’s in a sort of in-between state of two genres meshed together in an inelegant fashion. The comedy here doesn’t work with the subject at hand. I get the sense that the jokes are there despite the topic rather than being based on Roman life and history.

I feel a bit out of my depth here, as critiquing comedy is pretty far outside my usual remit, and much more subjective than any other genre. Many probably like The Romans' use of comedy. I just don’t know how to feel about it. I think that the jokes were (mostly) funny, yes. And I’d love to see more humour woven into the fabric of Doctor Who. However, I think I’d like to see it better implemented in future, complementing the story rather than interrupting it. Perhaps something of a more satirical nature would gel better with the usual tone of the show.

Just a little something to ponder until next time.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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Book, Magazine, Serial

[February 6, 1965] Too much of a… thing (March 1965 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

Monthly Muchness

We're at a bit of a lull here in early February.  Not that things haven't been exciting, but they've been familiar headlines.  For instance, Sheriff Clark and his merry men locked up nearly 3000 Afro-American demonstrators who were marching in Selma, Alabama for their voting rights.

In Laos, one of the two right-wing factions supporting the neutralist government tried to coup the neutralist government.  It was defeated by the other right-wing faction.  Meanwhile, the Pathet Lao Communists continue to fester in the margins.

And China, a new member of the nuclear club, maintains its fracture with its Communist brethren to the north, the USSR (although the current meeting of Soviet Foreign Minister Kosygin and Chinese Head of State Zhou Enlai may thaw things).

Similarly, the March 1965 IF offers nothing particularly outstanding, as has been the case for several months now.  I really think editor Fred Pohl should consider returning IF to a bimonthly schedule.  Or perhaps Worlds of Tomorrow needs to be retired so that IF can get choicer stories.

In any event, come read what you've missed:

The Issue at Hand


by McKenna

Stone Place, by Fred Saberhagen

First up is the latest in Saberhagen's Berserker tales.  If you've been reading IF for a while, you know that this series involves enormous, sentient battleships that hate life, destroying human fleets and colonies wherever they can.  The author has done a good job developing the unearthly logic of the alien destroyers as well as written good yarns about the victories Terrans have managed to pull off against them.

Stone Place is the final battle.  The Berserkers have pulled together all two hundred of their ships scattered throughout the galaxy.  In counter, the Terrans have assembled a nearly equivalent armada.  The problem is that the human ships do not all owe allegiance to a central government, and there is friction aplenty.  Can humanity unite for long enough to defeat a threat to the entire species?


by Jack Gaughan

A few things make this latest outing a comparative disappointment: the beginning is slow, the politics are frustrating, and the cruelty of the Berserkers shockingly lurid.  Moreover, the tactics employed against the Berserkers are somewhat glossed over, making the ultimate result feel informed rather than earned.  I wish such a momentous chapter in the saga had been given a novel's worth of development.  Without the nuance and cleverness of the prior stories, and because of the heightened nastiness, three stars is all I can award Stone Place.

Meeting on Kangshan, by Eric Frank Russell

On an interstellar cruise liner, one of the veteran ship's officers makes the acquaintance of a grizzled, cantankerous marine.  Conversation ensues.

And that's about it.  I'm not sure what the point was.  Two stars.

All We Unemployed, by Bryce Walton

Written as half screenplay, half epistolary, All We Unemployed details the horrors of being the last employees in a automated factory that has decided that human elements are undesirable.  It's a pretty dumb story, saying nothing new (and in fact, feeling queerly familiar).

One star.

Of One Mind, by James Durham


by Gray Morrow

James Durham is the novice writer of the issue.  He offers up a piece in which humanity discovers barrier-less telepathy before it is ready, with disastrous results.  Very few survive the ensuing massacre, including the protagonist, an astronaut on his way to Mars.

There are some nice bits in Mind, particularly its realistic portrayal of space travel.  But on the whole, it doesn't hang together well at all.  It might make a decent novel, if the writer develops his chops some more.

Three stars

Million-Mile Hunt, by Emil Petaja

By contrast, Petaja is an old hand, a veteran of the pulp era.  However, he's been on hiatus for more than a decade…and it shows.  Hunt, about an ornery space prospector and the odd alien who dogs him mercilessly, just trying to help, is outdated stuff.  The solar system is home to half a dozen alien species, and people zip from setting to setting as if driving from block to block of a city.  The revelation at the end is weird and not particularly well-joined with the narrative.

Two stars.

Starchild (Part 3 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson


by Gray Morrow

And finally, we come to the end of this three-part serial, sequel to The Reefs of Space.  At last, we will find out who the mysterious Star Child is, and how the rebels living in the reefs that gird our solar system have been able to subvert Earth's authoritarian Planning Machine and even blink out the Sun.

Except, we don't.  Instead, we're treated to forty pages of exposition that tell us that the ultimatum made to Earth (by whom?  some mystical stellar force centered about the star, Deneb?  it's not clear) to overthrow the Plan of Man involved dozens of years of perfect timing that indicate the outcome was predestined.  See, before the Sun went out, all of the nearby stars winked in succession.  Since light travels at a finite rate, that meant the scheme required not only synchronization of efforts on a galactic scale, but also knowledge that it would work (since they only made plans to do it once). 

Plus, it was apparently child's play for the Denebians(?) to take over not only the Planning Machine on Earth, but its copy that was sent to the reefs on the Earth vessel, Togethership.  In any event, none of the characters are given anything to do but watch.  Not Boysie Gann, the putative protagonist.  Not the stubborn Earth general bent on recovering the Togethership.  Not Quarla, the young woman from the reefs who sails from plot point to plot point on her seal-like fusorian, as the story requires.

It's the worst kind of pulp space opera.  Not even the settings are interesting, and setting is all we have at this point.  The first story of the series was fair, with an exciting middle.  This second installment had promise but quickly went to the dogs.

One star, and please let's not have another.

Summing Up

Wow, that was a stinker.  It's clear Pohl is shoving all of his junk into one drawer, including the stuff he probably couldn't sell anywhere else (Starchild).  And Pohl is touting that we've got novels from Schmitz and Doc Smith to look forward to.  Given that those two produce stuff in the same vein as Starchild, I am really not looking forward to the next several months.

Perhaps it's time I passed on the mantle.  Any volunteers?




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 4, 1965] Space Prison of Opera (February Galactoscope #1)

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Please enjoy this duet of stories by a pair of veterans (both the authors and the reviewers!)


by Cora Buhlert

The Escape Orbit by James White

The Escape Orbit by James White

When I spotted The Escape Orbit by James White in the spinner rack at my local import store, what first attracted me was the cover, showing two humans fighting a tusked and tentacled monstrosity. But what made me pick up the book was the tagline "Marooned on a Prison Planet". Because stories about space prisons are like catnip to me.

Though the space prison in The Escape Orbit is rather unconventional, housing human prisoners-of-war in the sixty-one year war with an alien race called "Bugs", because nobody can pronounce their real name.

At the beginning of the novel, the surviving officers of the battlecruiser Victorious ("erroneously named," the narrator Warren muses) are taken prisoner and dumped on what they assume is an uninhabited world. They are proven wrong, when one Lieutenant Kelso appears. Kelso informs the newcomers that the Bugs have dropped off half a million human prisoners-of-war on the planet with only scant supplies. Escape is supposed to be impossible. If the humans manage to flee anyway, there is a guardship in orbit. Kelso also insists that the newcomers are in danger.

It turns out that the human prisoners on the planet are divided into two groups. The Escape Committee, led by Kelso, who focus all their efforts on escaping, and the Civilians, led by one Fleet Commander Peters, who have resigned themselves to their fate and set up villages. The Civilians and the Committee are hostile towards each other and on the verge of fighting. The newcomers are expected to side with one group. But before making a decision, Warren wants to listen to both sides. And since he was Sector Marshall before he was captured, that makes him the highest ranking officer on the planet.

Warren and psychologist Ruth Fielding realise that the situation on the prison planet is volatile. The Committee is losing members, so those who remain become ever more fanatical. Ruth points out that the Committee are chauvinists, because most female prisoners join the Civilians and then seduce Committee members. Warren fears that as the Committee becomes more fanatical, they may try to take over the planet and cause a civil war. To prevent this, Warren decides to use his position to keep things calm. He joins the Escape Committee as a counterweight to Fleet Commander Peters and the Civilians.

The Great Escape… in Space

Warren takes over the Committee, learns about the escape plan and schedules the escape for three years in the future. He starts a good will initiative towards the Civilians to persuade them to help. Warren also tries to squash the not so latent male-centered prejudice among the Committee and appoints Ruth Fielding to his staff.

Warren may be no chauvinist, but he doesn't know much about women and people in general. And so he is surprised that the Civilians are forming families and having children. At this point, one suspects Warren needs a crash course in human biology. Furthermore, Warren also manages to bungle the chance at a relationship with Ruth Fielding – twice.

Once Warren succeeds in winning many Civilians over, the bulk of the novel focusses on the preparations for the escape. However, Warren also furthers the progress of technology, improves the communication network as well as the distribution and preservation of knowledge and even organises the colonisation of another continent.

As the escape draws closer, tensions erupt both between Civilians and Committee members as well as within the Committee itself. Things come to a head when a new group of prisoners arrives a few days before the escape. Hubbard, one of the new prisoners, reports that the war is over, because humans and Bugs have managed to battle each other to a standstill and both civilisations are falling apart. Even if the escape succeeds, it will be futile, because there is no military to return to.

Warren imprisons Hubbard and goes ahead with the escape anyway. The attempt succeeds and Committee commandos manage to hijack both the enemy shuttle and the guardship. The surviving Bugs are taken prisoner and sent to the planet, while their ship is crewed by the most loyal Committee members.

Warren returns to the planet once more to explain his true plan. For he had realised even before the arrival of Hubbard that the human military would collapse and that there was little hope of rescue. Warren also realised the prison planet was on the verge of civil war and would regress to savagery within a few generations.

By giving everybody a shared purpose, Warren managed to smooth over the tensions, preserve knowledge and create a stable society. Furthermore, he also used the escape to separate potentially violent Committee members from the general population. Warren announces that he will take off with the Committee members deemed unsuited to peaceful life and leave the rest of the former prisoners behind to rebuild civilisation. He also admonishes them to communicate and cooperate with the Bug prisoners, so future wars can be avoided.

I'm usually pretty good at gauging where novels are headed, but The Escape Orbit surprised me. Initially, the book seemed like a science fiction version of the WWII prisoner-of-war escape tales that have proliferated in both the German and English speaking world in recent years. The best known English language example is The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill from 1950, which was turned into a Hollywood movie two years ago. Meanwhile, in West Germany there is a flood of POW novels such as So weit die Füße tragen (As far as the feet will go, 1955) by J.M. Bauer or Der Arzt von Stalingrad (The Doctor of Stalingrad, 1956) by Heinz G. Konsalik, who specialises in such tales and also penned Strafbataillon 999 (Penal battalion 999, 1959), where the twist is that prisoners and guards are nominally on the same side. All of these novels were huge bestsellers and turned into successful movies and TV series.

Not actually Sector Marshall Warren and Major Ruth Fielding, but O.E. Hasse and Eva Bartok in the 1959 film adaption of Heinz G. Konsalik's bestselling novel "The Doctor of Stalingrad"

In The Great Escape and the various West German novels, escaping from the terrible conditions of a POW camp is a matter of survival. However, the conditions on the prison planet in The Escape Orbit are far from terrible. And so I quickly sided with the Civilians and wondered why Warren and the Committee were so eager to escape, when they were better off on the planet than wasting their lives in what was clearly a pointless war. For a time, I even had the sinking feeling that I had accidentally purchased a military science fiction novel akin to Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 Starship Troopers, which I disliked immensely, once I realised I was not in fact reading about a dystopia, but about a society the author considered admirable.

But White tricked me, for Warren was on the side of the Civilians all along and the escape plan was a way to occupy the Committee fanatics and keep them from interfering with the establishment of a peaceful society. Of course, military (science) fiction can be both pro- and anti-war. The Escape Orbit comes down firmly on the anti-war side. I was surprised to see a high ranking officer like Warren portrayed sympathetically, because in West German postwar literature and film, any officer with a rank higher than captain is usually portrayed as a blustering idiot or bloodthirsty warmonger, probably inspired by real world experiences with both types during WWII.

I knew nothing about James White before picking up this novel. Turns out White is a long-time science fiction fan and author best known for his Sector General stories about a hospital space station. White hails from Belfast (Andersontown, the city in the novel, is named after the suburb where he lives) in Northern Ireland, where religious tensions run high. Thus, White knows how easily hostilities between opposing groups can escalate into violence.

The Escape Orbit is not quite as brand-new as I assumed, since the novel was serialised, almost identically, as Open Prison (a more appropriate title in my opinion) in New Worlds last year, reviewed by our own Mark Yon.

The Escape Orbit is very much an anti-Analog novel, where humans are not superior to the aliens, where war is pointless and cooperation, both between humans and aliens and opposing groups of humans, is preferable to fighting. This is certainly a message for our times, as the spectre of war raises its ugly face again in South East Asia.

Four stars

Space Opera by Jack Vance


By Rosemary Benton

Jack Vance is a gifted writer who has received a lot of attention in the last year. He has rightfully been awarded praise for his world building in Ace Double F-265 and "The Star King", but thus far has proven to be somewhat inconsistent in the pacing of his stories. This is not to say that he hasn't been rapidly improving his writing. At times his storytelling has been spot on, such as in "The Kragen".

Thankfully, with "Space Opera" he does not fall short in either department. The pacing and world building are both excellent, but with Vance's latest release there still remain issues that prevent his works from rising beyond "entertaining", or even "ambitious". He has yet to become "timeless", but by God does he come close sometimes.

"Space Opera" is Vance's newest novel. In it he tells the story of humanity's pride, and how fragile it is. In the far future, Earth's high society is still very much preoccupied with its perceived perfection of music as an art form and humanity's generally superior understanding of music as a universal concept. Dame Isabel, a patron of the operatic arts, takes it upon herself to honor a promise made to a troupe of visiting musicians from the elusive planet Rlaru. As they sent a troupe to visit Earth, so will she bring some of Earth's finest music to their planet. In preparation for this she gathers an exclusive selection of singers and musicians, she brings the world's foremost musicologist aboard the good ship Phoebus, and sets off to Rlaru with missionary zeal. On the way they will of course stop to educate other alien races on the magnificence of Earth's musical accomplishments. The success of the undertaking is… complicated.

What Makes Something High Art?

Our cast of protagonists begin their journey with a very well defined and well researched mindset. The first few chapters of "Space Opera" are lousy with musical terms, phrases and theories that are absolutely esoteric for general audiences. Intentionally, Vance is setting up a practically aristocratic 19th century approach to how culture should be defined: if a culture's art is too accessible, then it's not sophisticated. If it's not sophisticated, then it's inferior.

Exclusivity is a prime ingredient to make a culture great in their eyes. Exclusivity of musical theory, exclusivity of musical venues, exclusivity of the language of music (in this case favoritism of German and French language operas on Dame Isabel's expedition), everything about an advanced musical sensibility in a culture should speak to exclusivity. Which of course also translates to the most desirable audience being comprised solely of wealthy patrons. The favored company of Dame Isabel is academic specialists, and the audiences she most voraciously seeks at each stop along her tour are the alien societies' elite.

The best parts of Vance's story are when these very human expectations are subverted. On Sirius the company is unable to make sufficient adjustments for the cultural norms of the native population and the performance fails spectacularly. On Zade they are vetted by a native music critic who mirror's Earth's own narrow minded music specialists. He judges the performance of Dame Isabel's troupe by applying his own culture's standards against Earth's operas, and finding them deficient dismisses them and then asks for monetary compensation for his time. On Skylark the troupe finds that just because the people planet-side express appreciation for operatic craft does not mean that such appreciation is meant truthfully – it turns out that their attempts to keep Dame Isabel's people on for more performances is just so that the convict population can begin switching out the crew's musicians for physically altered convicts with comparable musical proficiency.

Music's Greatest Power

The emotional resonances of music are the pinnacle of Vance's exploration of music's power. On Yan, Earth's operas are interpreted to represent that which has been lost by the planet's people. The response is one of violence from the spectral remnants of the native population. On fabled Rlaru, Earth's operas are too dry for the natives to become interested in. Their culture already achieved the highest levels of artistic perfection, so seeing another people's comparatively primitive attempt at high art is boring and uninspired. However, a passionate performance held in back of the ship by a ragtag, informal group of the performers draws a massive, appreciative crowd.

"Space Opera" is a novel of massive potential, but Vance tries to compress the issue of human beings' cultural superiority complex in too short a time. The setup is exceptional. We know exactly where Dame Isabel, Roger Wool, and Bernard Bickel are coming from in terms of background, personality, and motivation. They go through a harrowing ordeal in the process of reaching Rlaru, and their time on Rlaru is extremely memorable. The fall of the plot is that there is not sufficient time given for the characters to reflect on their experiences. Because of this "Space Opera" ultimately falls short on its final satirical delivery.

Dame Isabel, the character whom I would argue is the central protagonist of the story, concludes her expedition to spread Earth's "highest" cultural medium by returning to Earth and holding a brief press conference reflecting on her and the crew's experiences. She starts the story as an elitist and remains one by the end of the novella. Roger Wool, her bumbling nephew, returns to Earth with his on-again, off-again fiance Madoc Roswyn, and some vague promise of a forthcoming book about the Phoebus' adventure. He begins as the naive, clueless, kept relative of Dame Isabel, and concludes the story as such.

The one character who has the largest arc was Bernard Bickel, Earth's premier musicologist. Despite being relegated to the role of a world building tool and Dame Isabel's consultant, his dialogue in the last few pages at least hints at growth. At the press conference mentioned earlier he comments in a round about way that the expedition gave him an appreciation for the varied reactions Earth's music got on the different planets they visited. But the story's detachment to his experiences relegates any development of his character, and more importantly what he represents, to the background.

At the best he seems like an anthropologist accompanying an invading fleet. Along the way he watches the Earth musical missionaries meet disaster after disaster on their blind quest to prove humanity's superior grasp of music. At worst he could be seen as a character who should have been the primary protagonist, but was swept under the ornate, oriental rug of Dame Isabel's sponsorship and her nephew's charming fumbling.

The Curtain Call

"Space Opera"'s concept would make a great full length novel. But as nearly a novella, it's just doesn't go deep enough. I thoroughly believe that Vance has something really special here, but unless he expands the story in the future it's a piece that will fade into the background of science fiction in time. Perhaps Vance will come to see "Space Opera" as a practice piece for writing satire, but as it stands right now it's merely a three star story.




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