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Magazine

[January 12, 1961] A matter of taste (February 1961 Galaxy, Part 2)

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How should I rate a story which is objectively well done, but which I just don't like? 

We taught our daughter manners at a very early age.  When she encountered a food she didn't enjoy, she was to say, "This is not to my taste," rather than something more forceful and potentially bruising of feelings.  I recognize that my readers are turned on by different things than I am; one person's trash is another's treasure, etc.  But at the end of every review, I have to come up with a numerical score, and that score necessarily reflects my views on a piece. 

This conundrum is particularly acute with the current issue of Galaxy, dated February 1961.  None of the stories are bad.  Many are well crafted, but I found the subject matter in some of them unpleasant.  But they may be the bees knees for you.  Take my reviews with that disclaimer in mind, and you should be all right.

I covered the first half the issue time-before-last.  I'd rated all of the stories a solid three stars–reader feedback indicated that they liked the stories more than I (which is what led to the musings with which I started this column).  Part two begins with C.C.MacApp's The Drug.  Is the ability to transcend one's consciousness beyond one's skull the key to eternal health and happiness?  An exploration of a fun idea as well as a pleasant slice-of-life depiction.  Three stars.

Gordy Dickson is back with An Honorable Death, contrasting a decadent but advanced Terran society with a primitive, vibrant aboriginal culture.  It's got a wicked sting in its tail.  This is one of those stories that made me uneasy, but whose quality is undeniable.  Three stars… but you may give it more.

One of my readers once said that he "bounces" off Daniel Galouye, a writer with real talent, but whose writing is not to everyone's taste.  I happen to like his stuff quite a lot, though his latest, The Chaser, about two spacewrecked fellows on a planet whose population is engaged solely in romantic games of tag, doesn't seem to have much of a point.  Three stars.

Damon Knight offers the cutting and unpleasant Auto-da-fe, about the last man on Earth and the 59 sentient canines over whom he reigns.  As he reaches his last years of life, will he allow the dogs to breed and thus become master of the Earth?  Another off-putting story of high quality.  Three stars.

Rounding things out is a delightful novelette from the master of interstellar adventure, Murray Leinster.  Doctor shows us a galactic polity of humans imperiled by a plague that appears unstoppable, but is, for the moment, limited in scope.  Just one planet has succumbed, but its sole survivor, a precocious 10-year old girl who has lived her life in an aseptic bubble, has been shipped off-world in defiance of quarantine.  Is she infected?  If so, has she doomed the inhabited universe to destruction?  Or is she the key to the plague's eradication?  Leinster's viewpoint character, the spaceship's doctor who must deal with the enormity of the situation, is a compelling one, and I greatly liked the relationship forged between him and the girl.  Four stars.

Add it all up, and you've got an issue that barely tops three stars–enjoyable, but not superlative.  I don't think that tells the whole tale, however.  Galaxy (and its sister, IF) are taking chances, and for that, they are to be commended.  I'm very interested to know how you feel about these stories.  Drop me a line, would you?

My editor says I'll get more response if I include a picture of a pretty girl and a cat…  Is she right?

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Magazine

[January 6, 1960] Watch your tongue?  (February 1961 Galaxy, Part 1)

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The old saying goes, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."  As you know, I am rarely reserved when I don't like a piece of work.  Every once in a while, I get a gentle chiding.  One reader said he didn't want to hear about stories I don't like–just the ones I do.  Another opined that my fans might tire of my consistently negative reviews of a certain author. 

I don't want to discount these criticisms as I think they are valid.  On the other hand, if I am unreserved in my scorn, I am similarly effusive about what I like.  My columns are rarely completely negative.  Moreover, I recognize that even the works I don't like often appeal to others, and I love receiving letters from folks who disagree with my judgments. 

Besides, you good folk likely come here to see me as much as to get reading recommendations.  Alfred Bester said in F&SF last month that he prefers English non-fiction to American as English authors will intrude into the text.  There are only so many ways to package facts; the only distinguishing character is the personality of the packager.  Certainly, I read Asimov as much for the science lesson as for the fun anecdotes.

So, enjoy all of me, even the kvetching.  And if you don't, feel free to tell me just how much you dislike me.  I may even agree with you…

On to the task at hand–reviewing the first half of the February 1961 Galaxy!

Evelyn Smith (formerly Gold, same name as the editor, natch) takes up most of it with Sentry in the Sky, a story about a malcontent in a futuristic caste system who is enlisted to become a long-term spy mole on a more primitive world.  It's not bad, but it is awfully simplistic, and the point meanders.  Moreover, it relies on awfully human aliens.  Of course, it's satire as much as anything else–the primitive world has a culture that is immediately familiar to 20th Century people.  Let me know what you think.  Three stars.

Doorstep is a cute short by Keith Laumer about an overachieving general and the UFO he tries to crack open.  Sort of a poor man's Sheckley; something I'd expect from 1952.  Three stars.

Willy Ley's article is pretty interesting this month.  He covers the new science of "seeding" clouds to create rain in Let's do Something about the Weather.  Three stars.

Finally, we have what may be the very first piece from a new writer, Volume Paa-Pyx by Fred Saberhagen.  It's a fun twist on the future where those with specific aptitudes get placed in appropriate professions.  When is a police state not a police state?  Three stars.

It doesn't take a slide rule to calculate this issue: Three stars across the board!  Nothing exceptional, nothing horrid.  Satisfying, but ummemorable.  Let me ask you–is it better to be delivered a dose of strong ups and downs or a steady, bland mean?

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Magazine

[January 2, 1961] Closing out the month (the January 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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If you are in the accounting profession, you are familiar with the concept of "closing the books," wherein you complete all your reconciliations and regard a month as finished.  Here at the Journey, Month's End does not occur until the last science fiction digest is reviewed.  Thus, though the bells have already rung for the new year of 1961, December 1960 will not officially end until I get a chance to tell you about the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction!

It's an uneven batch of stories, but definitely worth wading through the chaff for the wheat.  Avram Davidson's The Sources of the Nile combines both in roughly equal proportions.  The story begins with an encounter between the narrator, a down-on-his-luck writer, and a haggard old fellow who once was able to predict the whims of fashion with uncanny accuracy.  Is it precognition?  Time travel?  Excellent taste?  No–as the protagonist learns, the source of his success is a modest family in a modest apartment that just seems to know.  Next year's popular books, next year's clothing fads.  Well, the narrator is denied certain fortune when, after a glimpse of this locus of prescience, he loses contact with the family.  He is thus doomed, like the guy who tipped him off, to search the world for this holy grail.

Davidson has adopted an avante garde style these days.  At first, I was much impressed.  After a dozen pages of over-cute overexertion, I was tired of it.  I applaud innovation, but not at the expense of readability.  Three stars.

Then we have Vance Aandahl's The Man on the Beach, sort of a poor man's The Man Who Lost the Sea.  Aandahl is not Ted Sturgeon, and his short tale, of an astronaut who lost his ship to murderous aborigines, somehow misses the mark.  Two stars.

But then there's the ever-reliable Cliff Simak with Shotgun Cure, in which an ostensibly benevolent alien visits a country doctor (how Cliff loves those rural settings!) and offers him a cure for every illness in the world.  There's just one catch: it also lowers the intelligence of the cured.  What price health!  A fair idea told in excellent Simak style.  Four stars.

Charles De Vet's The Return Journey is also worthy: What recourse exists when a colony of Terrans expands beyond the boundaries set by treaty with the native aliens?  Sometimes the winning move is never to have played.  Four stars.

Rehabilitated, by Gordon Dickson, is a cross between Keyes' Flowers for Algernon and Sturgeon's More than Human.  A fellow seems ill-suited for work in the modern (read: near future) era.  He is rescued from a life of crime by a do-gooder outfit that rigorously trains him for a new profession: planetary colonist.  But it turns out that he is wholly unqualified for the job, having an IQ of just 92.  What was the point, then?  The organization is actually a network of telepathic misfits, all suffering from some degree of mental illness, from instability to retardation.  Working together, they maintain a balance such that each member's strengths compensate for another's weaknesses.  The training for colonization was just a a sort of dry run.  I have "Three stars" listed in my notes, but upon reflection, I think I'll bump it up to Four. 

This trio of excellence is followed by a twosome of mediocrity.  William Eastlake's What Nice Hands Held is a story of romance, infidelity, poverty, status, and magical realism in an heterogeneous Indian lodge.  Again with the trying too hard.  The other is Robert Young's silly Hopsoil, about Martians visiting a post-apocalyptic Earth and raising a most unusual crop in our oddly fertile soils.  Two stars for both.

Asimov's article this month, Here it Comes, There it Goes, is a bit of a disappointment.  It's a summary of one of the current fads in cosmology, the idea that matter is created and disintegrated continuously, and that's how the Universe is, always has been, and always will be.  The Good Doctor's arguments (which are, to be fair, not his) are not particularly compelling.  Three stars.

F&SF is trying out poetry again.  Lewis Turco's A Great Grey Fantasy didn't strike my fancy.  Perhaps it will strike yours.  Two stars.

Rounding out the issue is a tour de force from an author who has been on fire these days, Poul Anderson.  Time Lag is a gripping novelette of the attempted conquest of one Terran colony by another.  It is told from the point of view of Elva, a married mother from the peaceful, apparently pastoral planet of Vaynamo.  Her husband is killed and her village savaged by an advance party of Chertkonians lead by the ruthless Captain Bors.  Elva is forced into the position of Bors' mistress, and while Bors is not particularly cruel about it, we are never made to forget that Elva is an unwilling partner. 

Interstellar travel is a relativistic affair in this story.  The journeys between Vaynamo and Chertkoi take fifteen years of objective time even though they take only weeks of subjective time.  Thus, Time Lag is told in a punctuated series.  Through Elva's eyes, we get a glimpse of the overcrowded and polluted Chertkoi, stiflingly authoritarian and caste-conscious.  Elva is taken along for the second assault on Vaynamo, in which the capital is atomized from orbit.  She bravely confers with a captured general under the guise of extracting intelligence and learns that the Vaynamonians, possessed of a highly advanced science themselves (as one would expect; they did come from star-travelling stock), are not quite so helpless as the Cherkonians have surmised.  Elva uses her position as consort to the increasingly prestigious Bors to obtain a degree of succor for the Vaynamonian captives, though her efforts are never entirely successful. 

The third assault from Chertkoi is the last.  Thousands of ships, the fruits of the labor of billions of oppressed souls, are unleashed against Vaynamo, a planet with a population of just ten million.  Bors, now a Fleet Admiral, is certain of his victory.  But is it really assured?

What elevates this story above a simple good-versus-evil story is the parallel drawn between the planetary and personal conflicts.  Elva has been enslaved, but she has not been defeated.  Her strengths go far beyond the blatantly visible.  Bors never breaks her; in fact, Elva quickly becomes his master, though he is never aware of the fact.  Similarly, Vaynamo does not need to win by matching the vulgar rapacity of Cherkoi; rather, the world relies on compassion, deliberateness, and immense inner strength.

Time Lag is a refreshingly feminine story from a feminine viewpoint, something which Anderson has been getting pretty good at.  I appreciated that there was no suggestion of taint upon Elva for her plight.  Like Vaynamo, she endured violations and pain, but she emerged an unbroken heroine. 

Five stars.

That comes out to an aggregate of 3.25 stars making F&SF the winning digest for the month (IF was just behind at 3.2, and Analog trailed far behind at 2.5).  I think IF wins the best story prize, however, with Vassi, and IF certainly wins the "most woman authors" award, with two (the only ones to appear in all three magazines).

And now 1961 can truly begin!

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Book

[Dec. 29, 1960] Out of this World (Ben Barzman's Twinkle Twinkle Little Star)

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I don't know who Ben Barzman is, but he's written an interesting little book. 

The synopsis makes the novel sound as if it is composed of more cheese than the Moon.  186 million miles away, on the opposite side of the Sun, is another Earth.  It is a virtual twin, to the point of having the same landmasses, the same biological history, even the same human history up through the end of The Great War.  Thanks to their not having a Second World War, they are far ahead of us in the social, medical, and energy sciences (though not, apparently, in the rocket and atomic sciences).  Scientists of our Earth manage to create a new ray, a ray so powerful that it becomes a living, intelligent entity, which facilitates contact with this other Earth.  The counter-Earth responds by sending a delegation to our planet to determine whether or not we are worthy of receiving their technological gifts.

Sounds silly, doesn't it?  Like something that might have been written in the '30s or earlier.  And, in fact, if you read the story just for the science fiction, you'll be disappointed.  I suspect Barzman is not a scientificitioneer by trade.  Luckily, what he gives us goes far beyond the basic plot.

This tale really is an exploration of alternate timelines, of personal and global what-ifs.  Taken that way, it's quite a beautiful story.  The first half of the book has virtually no s-f trappings at all.  Instead, we get a gentle, self-deprecatingly witty autobiography of a Canadian fellow who ventures off with a friend to see the world on the eve of World War 2.  He has a passionate affair with Marie-Ange, a young French girl in St. Lo (while his friend, Wilfred, maintains an above-board relationship with her).  War breaks out and he and Wilfred become a two-person bomber crew, savaging the very French countryside they had enjoyed so recently.  During a brief break in England, the Germans devastate a nearby block in their nightly Blitz, and the narrator rescues a shell-shocked young girl, who ends up being adopted by a Texan biophysicist.  Wilfred and the narrator are later shot down; the event is fatal to Wilfred and permanently (though not severely) disabling to the narrator.

After the War, the protagonist returns to St. Lo to find Marie-Ange.  She is dead, killed in the war during an Allied bombing raid, though not by one of his bombs.  The narrator then dispiritedly drifts through life, desultorily reporting from Paris for his tyrannical Uncle Derbet's newspaper.  Until Jane, the girl he rescued during the War, comes to visit.

She is a brilliant biophysicist now, and lovely to boot.  She has come to Paris to work with the famed but reclusive scientist, Dr. Morescu, who lost his Jewish wife and child to the Nazis during the War.  Jane and the narrator fall in love, but their ardor is tempered by a mental block she developed as a result of losing her entire family in the Blitz incident.  This prevents them from any serious sort of physical consummation. 

In the end, the novel is an exploration of the lives of these somewhat damaged people in a world still reeling from the last War.  Their turning point, the moment of healing, comes in their interaction with the other Earth.  In the counter-Earth, Wilfred and Marie-Ange never died.  The narrator never went to war.  Jane's family is alive and well, as is Dr. Morescu's.  Moreover, the other world has benefited from the millions of souls who never perished during WW2: artists, scientists, doctors.  Yet, it is not without its share of drama.  When the two worlds interface, we see what might have been and get clarity on what has actually happened.  And without spoiling too much, there are happy endings all around.

Taken as a sideways-in-time story, it's quite effective.  Barzman writes in a droll, contemporary style that engages.  Twinkle's characters are well-drawn, and the world they live in are refreshingly removed from the rather constrained, conservative landscapes we normally encounter in both our lives and our science fiction. 

Four stars.

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Magazine

[December 21, 1960] Short and Long Term (the January 1961 Analog)

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There's a big difference between weather and climate.  Weather is immediate; climate is gradual.  50 years from now, when the Earth's average temperature has climbed a half a degree or more, thanks to the warming effects of human-caused pollution, people will still point to a cold day in January as proof that nothing has changed.

That's because, just as for the proverbial frog in the slowly boiling pot of water, gradual change is difficult to perceive.  Only by assiduous collection of data, and by the subsequent analysis of that data, can we detect long-term trends.

Thus, it is too early to tell whether or not Analog is ever going to pull itself out of its literary doldrums.  I had such high hopes after December's issue; January's has dashed them.

It doesn't help that Randall Garrett is still one of Campbell's favorite writers.  I'm not sure if Garrett's stories are lousy because Campbell tells Garrett what he should write, or if they're lousy because Garrett writes what he knows Campbell will take.  Or maybe Garrett and Campbell independently share awful taste.  In any event, the long long lead novella, The Highest Treason, is a one-star drek-fest if ever there was one. 

In brief: In the far future, humanity has been reduced to mediocrity after the triumph of bleeding-heart liberal, Commie-pinko sentiments.  Job seniority is determined solely by time in service.  Decisions are made by group-think.  Innovation is scorned as antisocial.  There being no classes, there is no motivation to excel. 

This strawman of a culture is threatened by a Sparta-esque race of bald humans with pointy ears..I mean, complete aliens.  Earth's defeat is only a matter of time.  One brilliant man dares to reverse the trend by defecting to the enemy with a cunning plan.  He becomes the conquering race's greatest general, winning battle after battle, becoming the most vile traitor to humanity.  Then he orders the utter decimation of a populous Terran colony. 

This goads the Terrans into activity.  It would not have stirred us to action to have our colonies reduced and their people enslaved.  No.  Only a canny traitor could motivate our rennaissance.  Humans quickly develop superweapons that tilt the advantage Earth's way.  The war is over in no time, and the era of stifling complacency is over.  Hurrah.

The moral: No alien will ever threaten mankind unless we let them.  And if we let them, only a human can horrify us out of out lethargy—because humans are better than aliens in every way, even being worse. 

Dumb story, dumb premise.  It's also poorly written and overpadded.  True to Garrett form, only passing mention is made of the existence of women.  Three times to be exact–they are offered as a prize to the traitor, hanged from lampposts by the traitor, and disparaged as fickle philanderers by the traitor.  All excused by the context of course.

Bleah.

The issue only improves from there; how could it not?  Tom Purdom has a weird blood and guts piece called The Green Beret, about a young Black American who joins the UN peacekeeping forces to enforce anti nuclear proliferation rules.  I'm not sure what the point is, but I give Purdom points for giving us an atypical protagonist.  I don't understand why the UN forces wear green berets, though—they have been wearing blue ones since the Suez Crisis four years ago.  Two stars.

Onward and upward.  Walter Bupp (John Berryman) gives us Card Trick a sequel of sorts to Vigorish.  In the universe portrayed, psi powers exist, and gambling parlors take great pains to ensure they are not used to sway odds.  In this story, a fellow is accused of possessing and abusing psionic abilities to win at cards; then he is strong-armed into joining a union of psionic gamblers.  He's certain he is a "Normal," however.  Is it a frame-up?  Or does he have a new kind of power?  Three stars. 

G. Harry Stine provides the non-fiction article for the month, Time for Tom Swift.  It starts off well enough, contending that our current methods for getting into space will never result in a sustainable off-planet presence.  They fail the "grandma test," he says.  No little old lady can withstand the rigors of rocket take-off..much less afford the ticket!  But then he goes on to describe some cockamaimee futuristic designs that are clearly in the same camp as the Dean Drive and electrostatic boosters.  Two stars.

That leaves "Leonard Lockhard's" interesting legal study, The Lagging Profession, likely inspired by actual events: In the story, Arthur C. Clarke (the real guy) retains a law firm to investigate the possibility of patenting his idea for geosynchronous (24-hour orbit) communications satellites.  It turns out the idea can't be patented because it was described in an article 15 years ago.  Moreover, it couldn't even have been patented at the time because the rockets and miniaturized components required for the concept did not exist.  We are left with the conclusion that high concepts related to space travel are unpatentable under the laws in their current state.

This may well be true.  On the other hand, patents are not the only motivation for invention.  Space travel is such an expensive proposition that the sheer cost will provide the protection from competition normally provided by patents.  I suspect Clarke's synchronous satellites will be with us well before the decade is out, if our current pace of space development is any indication—you can bet they'll all have Ma Bell's name on them, too.  Four stars.

Part Three of "Mark Phillips'" Occasion for Disaster makes up the rest of the issue.  I'll hold comment until next month.  Giving the serial a three-star placeholder, the January 1961 issue of Analog garners a disappointing 2.5 star rating.

Weather or climate?  Only time will tell.

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Magazine

[Dec. 13, 1960] Ringing In a bit Early (January 1961 IF)

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1961 began on November 10, 1960.

I see some of you are scratching your heads in confusion; others are nodding sagely.  It's a long-held tradition in the publishing industry that the date printed on magazines is the date through which they are expected to be on the bookstands, not the date they are first displayed.  IF Science Fiction, a bi-monthly, comes out a full two months before it's "expiration date."  Thus, I picked up a copy with a January 1961 stamp well before Thanksgiving 1960!

Since IF was acquired by the folks who bring us Galaxy Science Fiction, it has been something of a weak sister to that elder magazine.  This month's issue may turn all that around.

First, though, we have to get through the lead novella, Absolute Power, by the wildly inconsistent J.T. McIntosh.  I imagine he got top billing because he is the most famous of the crop appearing in this issue, but what a stinker.  Power features a smug man dispatched by a wealthy magnate to a backward planet in order to improve the consistency of production of a luxury foodstuff.  The aboriginal inhabitants never time their deliveries with the arrivals of the freighters, you see, and the stuff perishes quickly.  That part of the set-up is fine.  But said smug person is also tasked with making docile the magnate's intolerable daughter, who is sent to the planet, too.

When I was a kid, I enjoyed The Taming of the Shrew, but as I've matured, I've found it increasingly offensive and decreasingly humorous.  McIntosh's version is no improvement on the formula, and by the end, you'll want to give that supercilious "hero" a sock in the jaw just to wipe the smile off his puss.  One star.

Now, observe the smile on my puss.  Once you get past that kidney stone of a story, it's all good-to-amazing. 

Take Assassin by Bascom Jones, Jr., for instance.  A man is sent to wipe out the entire population of Earth, relying on subtlety and spycraft.  While not a brilliant story, Jones (who has only written one other story, for Galaxy) does an excellent job of dropping hints of the story's context rather than dumping it on the reader in a heap of exposition.  Three stars.

The off-beat R.A.Lafferty is back with The Polite People of Pudibundia.  Why is it that the humanoid Pudibundians are so incredibly polite, to the point of shielding their eyes with tinted goggles so as never to affront each other with direct gaze?  And why has every Terran who ever visited Pudibundia died shortly thereafter?  You'll have to read it to find out!  Three stars.

Then we have Vassi, by Art Lewis.  I've never heard of this fellow before, but if this novelette is any indication of what we can expect, good God, man, keep writing!  It is really the intersection of two tales, one of personal grief and tragedy, the other of exploration with a tinge of desperation.  Uniquely crafted and very poignant, the last pages are something of a difficult read, but I promise it's worth it.  Five stars.

Jack Sharkey is an author whose work has increasingly attracted my admiration.  His The Contact Point is an interesting tale of the first meeting between alien races.  Can you guess the kicker?  Three stars.

On to a pair of woman-penned short stories.  The first is Gingerbread Boy, by Phyllis Gotlieb (who has, hitherto, stayed in Cele Goldsmith's magazines), an excellent tale about the troubles faced by a race of androids, created as offspring substitutes, when they are superseded by "real" children.  Four stars. 

Number two is the fun The House in Bel Aire by the expert Margaret St. Clair.  Be careful whose house you break into—you may offend the Mistress of the Palace.  Reminiscent of the third Oz book (for Baum-o-philes).  Four stars.

Finally, Joseph Wesley (whom you may know by his pen-name, L.J. Stecher) has an engaging story, A Matter of Taste, wherein an invulnerable interstellar insurance adjuster is called in to avert imminent conquest and enslavement by a powerful race of mentalist aliens.  Nicely done, though the ending is a bit pat.  Three stars.

That leaves us with a book that scores a touch over three stars (and if you skip the opening novelette, a solid 3.5).  Moreover, there were none of the editing errors that have come to plague even the best of the scentificition digests these days.  Fred Pohl is definitely shaping IF into something to look forward to six times a year!

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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[Dec. 11, 1960] Something Bright (the 1960 Galactic Stars!)

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The chill of winter is finally here, heralding the end of a year.  It's time for eggnog, nutmeg, presents, pies, and family.  But more importantly, it's time for the second annual Galactic Stars awards.

Forget the Hugos–here's what I liked best in 1960.

In a tradition I began last year, I look back at all fiction that debuted in magazines (at least, The Big Four) with a cover date of this year as well as all of the science fiction books published.  Then I break down the fiction by length, choose the best by magazine, and finally the best overall.  All using the most modern and sophisticated scientific techniques, of course.

Last year, my choices mirrored those chosen at the Labor Day Worldcon for the Hugo awards.  We'll see if my tastes continue to flow in the mainstream.  I break my length categories a bit finer than the Hugos, so there are bound to be some differences from that aspect, alone. 

(stories within the category are ordered best to least)

Best Vignette (1-9 pages):

A Day in the Suburbs, by Evelyn Smith (F&SF)

Words and Music, Arthur Porges (IF)

The Barrier Moment, Poul Anderson (Analog)

Best Short Story (10-19 pages):

From Shadowed Places, Richard Matheson (Combat Unit, Keith Laumer, runner-up) (F&SF)

Something Bright, Zenna Henderson (Galaxy)

Gun for Hire, Mack Reynolds (Analog)

Best Novelette (20-45 pages)

Immortality for Some, J. T. McIntosh (Analog)

Meeting of the Minds, Robert Sheckley (Galaxy)

All the Traps of Earth, Clifford Simak (F&SF)

Best Novella (46+ pages)

To the Tombaugh Station, Wilson Tucker (F&SF)

The Lost Kafoozalum, Pauline Ashwell (Analog)

(none in Galaxy/IF)

Best Novel/Serial

A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller (1st Place)

Deathworld, Harry Harrison (2nd Place)

The High Crusade, Poul Anderson (3rd Place)

Science Fact

Element of Perfection, Isaac Asimov (F&SF)

F&SF and Analog competed for the top of their categories, with Galaxy/IF not winning a single one.  This carried over into the novels, with Canticle originally appearing in F&SF, and Deathworld and Crusade both Analog stories. 

This is consistent with the overall magazine rankings…

Best Magazine

Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.17 stars)

Analog (2.92 stars)

Galaxy/IF (2.75 stars)

…particularly when you understand that Analog's rating is encumbered by John Campbell's wretched "science" articles. 

All in all, there were fewer stand-out (5-star) stories in 1960.  On the other hand, women wrote three of the fourteen fiction winners, a proportion larger than their representation by a factor of two. 

I think the answer is clear—if we want better fiction, we need more women writing it!

Finally, adding a new category to accommodate the large and small screen:

Best Dramatic Presentation

The Time Machine, George Pal

with a special nod to…

The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling (the 1st Season)

As always, tell me your favorites for 1960.  Here's hoping for an excellent 1961 in science fiction/fantasy! 

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Book

[Dec. 8, 1960] Signs of Aging (Murray Leinster's The Wailing Asteroid)

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If anyone can claim the title of “Dean of Modern Science Fiction,” it is Murray Leinster.  For decades, the gentle old man of the genre has turned out exciting interstellar adventures leavened with humor and hard science. 

But old men are prone to losing their faculties, and I fear we're seeing the first signs of it.

I was sent an advance copy of Leinster's latest novel, The Wailing Asteroid, last month.  The premise is excellent: a few years from now, an object within the solar system suddenly begins broadcasting a repeating plaintive musical message.  The transmission is indecipherable, but clearly of artificial origin and of automatic nature.  A wunderkind engineer by name of Joe Burke realizes he's heard this music before, in a dream he's had since he was 11, when his father brought home a strange little black cube from a 20,000 year old archaeological site in France. 

The music isn't all Burke got from the dream; included in its details were the clues to build a hand-weapon of almost limitless power, one which he adapts for use as a space drive.  Burke, with the help of a yachting buddy and an introverted savant, as well as his fiancee and her sister, decides to build a craft that will take them to this mysterious wailing asteroid. 

Once there, the team finds an abandoned fortress filled with unfathomable weaponry.  There isn't a shred of written material, but it is clear that humans crewed this structure.  Who built this outpost, and against what was it built to defend?

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?  Except it is written in what I can only term “The New Leinster.” He writes in short sentences.  There are no long ones.  Why should he write that way?  I do not know.  I only know that they are repetitive.  They repeat.  Why should Leinster write short sentences that repeat?  I can't know.  It is annoying.  It is difficult to read.  There are no long sentences.

Pared down properly, the whole thing would be a novella, and it would be a nice addition to two issues of Analog.  But it's not, which makes it a slog, though you will want to find out what happens.

I applaud the active inclusion of two women among the book's stars.  It would have been nice if Leinster had given them more to do than stenotype, cooking, and pining after their fiancees (Burke's fiancee's sister falls for the yachting chap).  On the other hand, I suppose we still live in a world where men aren't allowed to take shorthand and home economics classes, and the story is set in the near future.  How progressive can Leinster be?  In any event, it's hard to get too upset about characters as thin as the ones Leinster has written.  Their dialogue is interchangeable and written in the same choppy format as the non-dialogue prose.  The science is flawed, too, particularly orbital mechanics, and the rest is zap-gun stuff as you might find in pulps from the 30s.

However, the few-page vignette devoted to the doomed cosmonaut who is dispatched before Burke begins his journey, is almost worth the price of the book.  And the story is interesting despite Leinster's efforts to the contrary.

2.5 stars.

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Book

[Dec. 3, 1960] Correcting an Oversight (The Crossroads of Time, by Andre Norton)

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I didn't start Galactic Journey with the intention of spotlighting female writers and characters in science fiction.  It just happened organically.  A good many of my readers are women, and their interests may have influenced me.  Or perhaps I simply became bored with the status quo.  Woman authors tend to be more experimental or, at least, stylistically unique.  And good female characters are a rare surprise (though increasing in frequency).

For a column that emphasizes the literary contributions of the species' better half, there has been one curiously large omission.  Not once have I reviewed a work by Andre Norton.

Norton, despite the masculine pen name, is a woman, and she is one of the genre's most prolific writers.  I think she has escaped my ken because she tends to write juveniles and fantasy novels, so she doesn't appear in my magazine subscriptions.  I also attempted to start one of her books at a reader's suggestion (Star Gate), and I found it impenetrable.

But last month, I was caught up with current publications and an Ace Double from a few years back attracted my interest: The Crossroads of Time by Norton paired up with Mankind on the Run by Gordon Dickson.  I finished Norton's short novel over Thanksgiving weekend, and here's what I found:

Blake Walker is a man twice orphaned.  He was abandoned in infancy, and his adoptive policeman father died in Blake's teen years.  Now he is a 20-year old student, freshly arrived in New York.  His world is turned upside down when he crosses paths with the Time Wardens, agents from an alternate timeline where humans have figured out how to travel to parallel universes.  These agents are on the trail of the fugitive, Pranj, who plans to set up shop as a dictator in one of these worlds or “levels.”

Walker is, like most of Norton's characters, a resourceful loner.  In addition, he is possessed of a sense of premonition and a strong psychic shield, the latter of particular importance as the denizens of the Pranj's timeline all have strong psionic abilities.  It is Walker's premonition that enables him to save an agent from one of the fugitive's lackeys, which leads to Walker's recruitment by the agency.  On his first mission, he ends up a prisoner of Pranj, but he is able to make his escape on a level-traveler. 

This is where the book really began for me (some halfway through).  We are treated to a tour of several New Yorks, each one a challenge for survival: Ixanilia, a repressive aristocratic place founded by European refugees from an ascendant Mongol Empire; a nameless island where stone towers occupy our Manhattan, and North America's only inhabitants are far-ranging Pacific Islanders; a level where the Nazis took England and savaged America to collapse.

It is this last level that Pranj intends to rule.  Walker throws his lot in with a band of plucky survivors led by the capable leader and Buffalo Soldier called “The Sarge.” Walker manages to link up with a group of Wardens and assault Pranj's local headquarters, whose barriers to psychic beings prove less effective against Walker as he is a latent.  He is aided in his endeavor by a cute little kitten, who proves to be a tigress both in courage and in effect.  I shan't spoil the ending, but it is a happy one.

This new sideways-in-time genre is one of my favorites.  While, the first half of Crossroads is occasionally rough sledding, Norton gradually sheds the hoary pulpisms that suffuse the work, and things shift into higher gear once Walker begins his jaunt to the levels.  I was pleased by the appearance of both a Negro and a cat as pivotal, compelling characters.  In fact, even Blake is not White, (his ethnicity is a mystery, but it appears to be mixed) and his adoptive father was Black.  I found this degree of departure from the norm refreshing.  No female characters, though we do learn that women comprise a good number of Sarge's able team of soldiers.

Norton has written Crossroads with sequels in mind (she suggests as much in the final lines of the book.) The Time Wardens are akin to Poul Anderson's “Time Patrol” whose time-traveling agents ensure the sanctity of its history, and I could easily see a series developing. 

It's a solid 3.5 stars of entertainment to fill a weekend with.  So find a copy if you can, and hope for a sequel!. 

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Magazine

[Nov. 28, 1960] Odds and Ends (the December 1960 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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Here's a math problem for you, kids!  If more than half of your magazine is taken up by a 2-star short novel, how likely is it that you'll still end up with a good issue?

Answer: not very.

I'm used to Fantasy & Science Fiction having a long table of contents page.  This one (the December 1960 issue) comprises just ten entries, and all save the Asimov article are vignettes.  I wonder if we'll be seeing a slew of larger stories now that Editor Mills has depleted his stock of tiny ones.

Anyway, it's quality, not quantity that counts.  So how was the quality?

Winona McClintic is a sporadic contributor to the magazine, and she offers up The Way Out of Town, in which an infestation of snakes blocks all of the vehicular arteries in and out of every city in the (unidentified) state.  They cause havoc, widespread and personal, as one might expect. 

That's about it; the story is over almost as it starts.  Mills says in the prologue, "Readers who like only those stories with beginnings and middles and ends, in which everything is clearly explained,may not be fully satisfied with the following."  He's right!  Two stars.

Up next is Rope's End, by Miriam Allen deFord.  The premise is excellent: a Terran accidentally kills an alien on the extraterrestrial's world.  His sentence is to wear a rope around his neck for twenty years–one that is constricted every year.  I like everything about it but the ending; and it's not even the ending that bothers me so much as the protagonist's inability to suspect how things would turn out given how much time he devoted to the problem.  Three stars.

Avram Davidson has a two-pager about sexually frustrated teens whose unfulfilled desires channel into a powerful psychokinetic talent.  Called Yo-ho, and Up, it is silly and rather difficult to read.  Two stars.

I don't usually go for poetry, but Rosser Reeves (who is, apparently, a businessman by day) has a nice piece on alternate worlds called Infinity.  I dug it.  Four stars.

Speaking of digging, The Beatnik Werewolf is (I believe) the first effort by Dan Lindsay.  What's a shaggy vegetarian hepcat…er…dog to do when he falls in love after two hundred years as a lone wolf?  Cute, if inconsequential.  Three stars.

Dr. Asimov's article is on dolphins and echo-location this month.  A could-be fascinating topic, particularly the bits about the ability to produce sound being used for navigation long before its purposing for communication.  But the good doctor seems rather scattered this time around.  Three stars.

The last piece is a reprint from a literary mag New World Writing #16 called The Listener by John Berry.  It's not really science fiction or fantasy, but I enjoyed it a lot, this tale of the meeting between an itinerant fiddler and an old, old lighthouser.  Four stars.

Using my trusty slide rule, this all adds up to about 2.5 stars.  A less than auspicious end of the year for what is normally my favorite science fiction magazine.  It's a good thing the competition was in excellent form this month.

See you at the end of the month for a review of November, a preview of December, and a space-based peeping tom whose presence we can all be thankful for.

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