Tag Archives: science fiction

Magazine/Anthology

[June 9, 1961] Common denominator (July 1961 IF)

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Science fiction digests, those monthly magazines filled with s-f short stories, are often like little anthologies.  Editors will let their "slush pile" stack up, and when they have enough of a kind of piece, they publish them in a themed issue.

I don't know whether the theme of the July 1961 IF science fiction was intentional or not, but it definitely focuses on the issues of over-population and over-mechanization.  That is, in the future, there will be too many of us, and we won't have a whole lot to do. 

I'm not particularly concerned about the former.  We live on a big planet, and although our presence on it definitely has an impact, I don't think living space is going to be an issue for a long time, if ever.  On the other hand, the latter topic holds a strong fascination for me. 

We've already seen a precipitous drop in the percentage of people employed in agriculture.  Industry looks like it will shed workers soon, too, as the use of robots increases.  That leaves the nebulous "service" sector, whose added value to our lives seems rather arbitrary.  Eventually, I foresee a world where no one has to grow or build anything…and then what will work mean to us?

It's a worthy topic for discussion.  Sadly, the writing in the July 1961 IF fails to impress and often downright disappoints.  Here's what we've got:

Jim Harmon is an often lackluster IF perennial.  His novelette The Planet with no Nightmare, involves an insomniac space explorer and the strange planetoid he and his two crewmates discover.  On said world, the animals play dead when startled, but when no one's watching, they disappear.  It has a promising opening, but the end is no great shakes.  Three stars.

Then there's William Stuart, who started with a bang and hasn't quite recreated his initial spark.  The Real Hard Sell tells of a salesman in a world where selling is the only human profession remaining.  Like many of the stories in this issue, it is frightfully conventional except for its premise.  Still, as a satire of our current commercial practices, it's not bad.  Three stars.

Now brace yourself – those were the good stories of the issue.

The Stainless Steel Knight is John Rackham's attempt at humor featuring a hapless Terran agent, a faithful alien companion, and colonies that adhere to storybook milieus.  In this case, the planet the agent visits is modeled on England of the Middle Ages.  As to following the issue's theme, the story is all about the agent's mission to slay a "dragon", a leftover automated tractor/combine that threatens to put the colonists' serfs out of work.  Well, the Arthurian hijinx was better in Edward Eager's Half Magic, the Middle English better in Anderson's The High Crusade, and the medieval satire better in Pratt and De Camp's The Incomplete Enchanter.  Two stars.

Once again, James T. McIntosh saves his dreck for IF.  He often can write so well, but Doormat World, about a returned colonist taking advantage of Earth's spate of super-pacifism, is a poor, disgusting little piece.  One star.

A Taste of Tenure is a surprisingly clumsy piece by Gordon Dickson in which a businessman, promoted to the executive level, finds himself unable to discharge his predecessor's secretary, protected as she is by the government's strict "right to work" laws.  Again – interesting premise, but utterly conventional despite taking place two centuries from now, and the ending is a confused muddle.  Two stars.

Finally, we have The Junkmakers, by IF newcomer Albert Teichner.  It has a great concept: planned obsolescence taken to an absurd extreme: enormous communal potlaches are held at five year intervals and given an almost religious significance.  If there were any characters in this story, or much of a plot, it'd be a real winner.  As it is, it's the outline of a piece for someone more skilled (Cordwainer Smith?) to develop into a masterpiece.  Two stars.

So there you have it.  A collection of stories by IF's reliable stable on an interesting theme that barely breaks the two-star barrier.  This is easily the worst issue of IF I've read.  Editor Fred Pohl better start enforcing some higher standards, or I predict this magazine will end up following the path trod smooth by Infinity, Venture, Imagination, and thirty other digests born in the 50s.

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Book

[June 3, 1961] Hope Springs (Poul Anderson's Orbit Unlimited)

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Today's article is about second chances.

The newspapers are full of scary news these days.  Overpopulation.  Tension between the East and West.  The threat of global disaster.  Some feel that we are headed toward a doomed future, one of increased authoritarian governments, of scarcity, of rationing.  That we lost something when the last frontiers closed, forcing us to turn inward, toward oblivion.

Poul Anderson's just come out with a new book along those lines: Orbit Unlimited.  It's a fix-up of sorts, composed of four stories, two of which I've reviewed before.  There are many scenes and as many viewpoint characters, but they all revolve around a central premise: a hundred years from now, freedom is ended, humanity is stagnant, and just one sliver of hope remains – a harsh world around the star e Eridani called Rustum.

I was not particularly charitable to Anderson when I first reviewed Robin Hood's Barn and The Burning Bridge, the two stories that comprise the first half of Orbit.  He'd recently written the abysmal Bicycle built for Brew, and in general, he was at the tail end of a multi-year slump (and I had no way of knowing its end was near).  Moreover, the stories did not do well on their own; giving them a common premise gave them a combined value greater than their sum.

So Anderson's stories are getting a second chance, just as the Earth gets a second chance, if only in the pages of Orbit Unlimited.

The first tale struck me much more favorably this time around.  Robin Hood's Barn is the story of the choked, nearly hopeless Earth, and the old, canny politician, Svoboda, who tries to force one last gasp of colonizing desire by increasing the government's tyranny.  The first time around, I took the story at face value, and it felt like yet another of those smug tales where one fellow has a preternatural ability to manipulate others such that the pieces always move as desired.  Plus, there were no women in the story, and that always gets a strike from me unless there's a plausible reason.  More on that later.  On reexamination, it seemed Svoboda's gamble was far less certain, really an act of desperation that just barely paid off.  That made it all much more palatable.

Now that I knew that Orbit's next story, The Burning Bridge, was set in the same universe, I was able to see it in a new light.  I'd been lukewarm toward this story the first time.  In Bridge, the colonial fleet in mid-flight when a message from Earth is received.  Things are better, they are told, and they should come home.  It's a tempting offer, one that Fleet Captain Joshua Coffin is sure the majority of the colonists will take.  But he knows what they've fled, and he suspects that the respite will be a temporary one, perhaps already vanished after the decades it will take the fleet to return.  So he forges a second message, one with more forceful language, one which could tip the vote in the direction he wants. 

Again, this story is oddly anti-woman.  The women colonists are kept segregated from the all-male astronauts even to the point of dressing in all-concealing clothing as the women do in some Moslem countries.  That degree of conservatism seems counter to our current prevailing trends.  Nevertheless, I found Bridge compelling.

Part three, And yet so Far, came out in one of the last issues of Fantastic Universe back in October 1959.  I didn't read it so I missed this story.  In Far, the fleet has arrived at Rustum, but one of the vessels has suffered a catastrophe and now is adrift in the midst of planet's deadly Van Allen Belts.  Sleeted with radiation, the ship is inaccessible and yet it must be accessed for it carries cargo vital to the colony's success.  Admiral Nils Kivi refuses to consider a risky salvage mission for many reasons, not the least of which is his innate hostility for colonist Jan Svoboda, politician Svoboda's son.  But Kivi has a soft spot for Svoboda's wife, Judith, and Jan is not above using her to manipulate Kivi into coming around.  This is an impactful, bittersweet vignette.  I can't imagine it being terribly successful without the context of the preceding tales, however.  Moreover, it was published before Bridge, which must have confused hell out of anyone who read both stories.

The final and longest piece, The Mills of the Gods, has not, to my knowledge, appeared in any magazine.  It is set ten years after planetfall.  The three thousand colonists have vastly supplemented their numbers with children born in both the normal fashion and "exogenetically" – from frozen sperm and ova brought along to augment the colony's limited genetic range.  There is an overt prejudice against the exogenes and a general oppressive conservatism to the colony in general.  In cultural outlook, it feels like something out of the 19th Century (or perhaps the depths of the last decade).  Men run business.  Women tend house.  It is as if the people of Rustum, in their escape from oppression, could think of no alternative to it.  Rather like the Pilgrims seeking freedom from religious intolerance so that they could practice their own peculiar version in the New World. 

At the start of Mills, one of the exogenes, Coffin's foster son, Danny, runs away from home.  When he is not found on the relatively small mesa that forms the colony's borders, it is presumed that the youth descended toward sea level, into the thick atmosphere and alien ecology of Rustum's flatlands.  Only Jan Svoboda is capable of helping Coffin make the trek to rescue Danny, and he must be bribed into it by the colony's wily mayor, Theron Wolfe.

This was my favorite of the book's episodes.  Few writers can convey an alien world with both vividity and mundanity like Anderson.  Their journey below the cloud deck into the noxiously dense atmosphere of Rustum was as exciting a travelogue as any Burroughsian tale of Pellucidar or Barsoom, but with the bonus of being scientifically rigorous.  Of course, the emotional interplay between the religious Coffin and the cynical Svoboda formed the heart of the story, without which the scenery would have been pretty but pointless. 

I'm not sure if Anderson had the entire novel in mind when he wrote the first words of Barn or if the concept evolved over time.  There is such a consistency to the themes that I have to believe the skeleton was pre-plotted.  Throughout, there are the recurring instances of what I'd term "selfless manipulation."  The manipulator never relishes his actions, and it is only hoped that the results will be favorable.  There is never an omniscient viewpoint from which we get the satisfaction that things will go as hoped (though the events of each succeeding story suggest that they did and will). 

Orbit also repeatedly portrays humanity with an inclination toward the reactionary.  Time and again, people must consciously choose to break free of the chains of conservatism, which is never depicted positively.  In this context, the atavistic roles for women make more sense.  Given that, both prior and subsequent to Anderson's bad period, the author portrayed women quite progressively, I have to think that the theme of sharp gender dichotomy was intentional – i.e. another facet of undesirable conservatism.

I could be entirely wrong, reading into Orbit what Anderson never intended.  It could just be a happy accident that the four stories hang together so well.  I doubt it, however; Anderson has proven to be a highly nuanced writer when he wants to be.  Orbit has something to say, and it speaks with a clear voice throughout. 

It's worth hearing it out.  3.75 stars.

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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[May 27, 1961] RED STAR, BLUE STAR (May 1961 UK Fandom report)

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[Ashley Pollard is back with this month's report on the space and sci-fi scene across the Pond!  Yes, I did use the term "sci-fi" advisedly…]

Last month a Red Star rose in the East.  This month a Blue Star rose in the West as Alan Shepherd became the first American in space.  He was aboard the Freedom 7 Mercury capsule launched atop the Mercury-Redstone 3 booster — showing it's possible to reach space without getting to orbit. While this may be seen as a bit of disappointment, it clearly demonstrates American caution in testing systems before clearing them for flight.  Something I’m sure the astronauts approve of, as they sit atop what is a potential bomb if things go wrong.

I understand that there’s another flight using the Redstone booster in July to look forward to, but my friend Gerry Webb, a member of the British Interplanetary Society, informs me the larger Mercury-Atlas booster is required to propel a man into orbit.  However, I’m sure it won’t be long until an American astronaut orbits the Earth as both the Russian and American space agencies strive to be the first to achieve the next new record.  I will be following the action as the Space Race hots up.

Meanwhile, at the last Thursday night’s London Circle meeting, once one had gotten through the frothing going on about memberships cards and the current fan feud that rolls on, we sat down and discussed the lamentable state of the British space programme.  I braced myself with a Gin & Tonic, with ice and a slice, for the lamentation of the space geeks.

To summarize Great Britain’s role in space, we lag far behind both United States and the Soviet Union, our government having cancelled Blue Streak early last year, which was a medium-range ballistic missile that would’ve made a good basis for a British rocket.  It was being tested at the Woomera Rocket Range in Australia (named, aptly, after an Aboriginal spear throwing aid).  Woomera has plenty of room to fire rockets into space, unlike the Home Counties or anywhere else for that matter on the British Isles.

Shortly after announcing the cancellation of the Blue Streak our government changed its mind and said it would develop a two-stage rocket called Black Prince: using Blue Streak for the bottom stage and our Black Knight missile for the top.  Gerry tells me that the names are generated from the British government’s Rainbow Code that uses a colour and a randomly generated word for aerospace projects.  Unfortunately, for British fans of space rocketry, our government then went and cancelled the Black Prince project for being far too expensive.

I’m afraid that only leaves us the fictional British rocket programmes to fly the flag for us in space.

We start with the "British Experimental Rocket Group" from Quatermass by Nigel Kneale (the television show which wrapped up almost a decade ago, but which spawned two sequels).  As space projects go, it can’t be said to have been a complete success for two very good reasons.  First was the loss of ship on landing, and then there was the small matter of the crew dying and the mutated survivor wanting to chomp down on the inhabitants of the City of London.

However, that still leaves us with Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, which I haven’t mentioned before.  He is the eponymous hero of the Eagle comic’s lead strip.  Dan Dare is the lead test pilot of the "Interplanet Space Fleet", whose adventures in space are still delighting its readers after ten years of weekly installments.  The series was created by Frank Hampson who consulted Arthur C. Clarke on the comic strips' science.  While lots of spaceships have been lost, favourites like Dan Dare’s own Anastasia fly around the Solar system rescuing those in need of help, and defeating the various nefarious plans of enemies like the Mekon: large headed green alien overlords from Venus (and I expect you thought I would say Mars – still green though).

And finally we have UNEXA, the "United Nations Exploration Agency."  This organization launches space missions and is the creation of Hugh Walters who has written a series of children’s science fiction that starts with Blast Off at Woomera.  Ah that Woomera, which is no longer the centre of British aspirations in space.  Sometimes fiction is better than fact.

Needless to say, most of those around the table with me had that look on their faces I always see when I mention something that’s considered off piste in polite science fiction company.  And don’t get me started about the furore it causes if one dares to use Forrest J Ackerman’s term for our genre: Sci-Fi . I can only hope that in the future that people who enjoy reading and watching SF, including comics, will be accepted as fans like the rest of those who only read books and magazines . Besides I like pronouncing Sci-Fi as Skiffy, because skiffy rhymes with spiffy.  Moreover, I think that reading SF is a smart thing as the world around us transforms from steam and steel into space and computers.

The other topic du jour has been George Blake née George Behar who was sentenced to 42 years in prison for being a spy for the Russians.  Spying has become a topic of interest in my circles because of the link to secrets, and the nature of those secrets were the topic of a long discussion.  Featuring prominently were atomic bombs, which were up until a few years ago the sole purview of those science fiction types who like to fantasize about going into space.  I only comment about the spying, because as I said last time I’ve been watching the TV spy show The Avengers, which has just finished being broadcast for the season.  As has Supercar for that matter.

I note that there are a lot of what would have been considered quite science fictional elements in Avengers.  Perhaps not overtly showcased, but covertly in the use of science McGuffins to drive the stories forward.  It should come as no surprise to hear the show being called Spy-Fi, which underscores my point.  Language evolves, and as long as terms are not used to denigrate a genre, then I really don’t mind if you call what I read or watch Sci-Fi.

So, we now live in a world where science fiction can no longer be denied yet, we are still able to start endless bickering over whether it’s called science fiction, SF, Sci-Fi or even speculative fiction, a term I encountered when used by Robert A. Heinlein, though I understand he wasn’t the first to coin the expression.  The point being is that I prefer to imagine a future where we can all be the best of what we can be, and that we live being non-judgemental and have unconditional positive regard for our fellow human beings whether they be right or wrong.  Now isn’t that a science fictional ideal worth pursuing as we blast off into the Final Frontier.

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Magazine/Anthology

[May 21, 1961] Pineapple Upside-down Month (June 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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Have you ever heard/seen Karl Orrf's Carmina Burana?  It's an opera of sorts, the performance of a set of medieval poems to music.  It is likely that you're at least familiar with its opening number, the catchy Oh Fortuna!.  Well, having seen Carmina, I can tell you that even Orff knew there wasn't much to the rest of the piece – as evidenced by the fact that Oh Fortuna! gets performed twice, once at the beginning and once at the end.  You can snooze through the rest.

This month's Fantasy and Science Fiction is like Carmina: a tremendous beginning followed by a largely snoozeworthy remainder.  I suppose that, if you want to complete the analogy, you can simply read the opening piece again after finishing the book.  You probably will.

For Cordwainer Smith's Alpha Ralpha Boulevard is one of the best stories I've read in a long time.  Most tales of the future are either frustratingly conventional or completely opaque.  Not so in Boulevard, which features a world dominated by "Instrumentality", an omniscient computer dedicated to the happiness of humanity.  16,000 years from now, after a placid, highly regulated existence, people are, at last, offered the luxury of uncertainty (or at least the illusion thereof). 

With just a few subtle strokes of his pen, Smith presents the trappings of an alien yet utterly believable world: the trio of reborn humans, programmed to think themselves French; the compelling homunculi, servant animals bred into a mockery of the human shape; the servile androids; the contrived movie-set surroundings; the ancient, decayed ruins of the old technology.  Moreover, Boulevard has a great story, the quest for meaning in a predestined world.  It's a masterpiece – evocative and brilliant.  Five stars.

Arthur C. Clarke's Crime on Mars is an adequate (but not exceptional) little art heist mystery.  I find it interesting that he publishes these very straight sf stories here rather than other, perhaps more suited, mags.  Perhaps there wasn't room in the other digests (or perhaps F&SF pays the best rates!) Three stars.

George, on the other hand, by John Anthony West, is a dreadful slog: a henpecked husband slowly succumbs to a creeping paralysis over the course of an evening; the story is told mostly in shrill exchanges between the afflicted and his spouse.  One Star. 

Doris Pitkin Buck's Birth of a Gardener is another domestic dispute piece with some vague nonsense about anti-matter.  Although Gardener makes good use of Buck's personal expertise in horticulture, her knowledge of science is less complete.  Two stories.

Mark Twain's reprinted A Curious Pleasure Excursion, an advertisement for a comet ride in the style of the great ocean cruises of the last century, is clever and funny — an all-too-brief island of quality in an sea of dreck (to continue the sailing metaphor).  Four stars.

Go for Baroque is the second woman-penned piece in the magazine, by mystery writer Jody Scott.  I think it's about a crazy time traveler who cures the sane of our world with his chaotic, exuberant madness.  Maybe.  It's hard to tell.  It is written in this "modern" style that I see more and more in more literary places, half stream-of-consciousness, half nonsense.  I really don't like it.  Two stars.

By popular demand, I include this month's pun-ishment, the latest tale of Ferdinand Feghoot.  Read at your personal peril.

Older writers are interesting.  They tend to stick to old techniques and clichés even as they adapt them to current themes.  Miriam Allen Deford's, The Cage, reads like a Lovecraft tale, complete with a mad scientist regaling a young reporter of his horrifying plan.  In this case, it is the breeding of a race of super-insects to supplant humanity in the event of a nuclear war.  But the author somehow elevates the story to something more than the sum of its parts, steering it subtly to a thoughtful conclusion.  Three stars.

What do you get when you combine the carefree misogyny of Randall Garrett with the increasingly impenetrable prose of (the once masterful) Avram Davidson?  Why, Something Rich and Strange, about a connoisseur of seafood and women who sails off to find a mermaid to love, a task at which he is ultimately successful.  With many pages devoted to lurid descriptions of pescatory cuisine, I had a strong suspicion that the tale would end with the protagonist eating his fishy sweetheart.  Rather, it turns out that the siren is an old hag with, nevertheless, admirable culinary talents.  The punchline is thus, "She's not much to look at, but she sure can cook!"  One star.

So perhaps I may end up owing my friend, Mike, a beer or two after all, since he may be right that 1961 will not be F&SF's year to win the Best Magazine Hugo.  Normally my favorite of the Big Three SFF digests, F&SF came in at the bottom of the heap this month at just 2.75 stars.  Compare this to Analog's 3 stars, and Galaxy's stellar 3.5 stars. 

On the plus side, this month saw the most stories by women: four out of twenty-two.  I won't call it a trend until I see this proportion again, of course.  Interestingly, the top contenders for Best Story were both written by Cordwainer Smith.  Maybe the fellow should start his own magazine…

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Magazine/Anthology

[May 14, 1961] Friendly disputes (June 1961 Analog)

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I've got a long-running feud going on with Mike Glyer, editor of the popular fanzine, File 770.  Well, feud is probably too strong a word given that we're good friends and avid mutual readers.  In fact, we usually get along quite well.  All fans are united by love for the genre and our status as oddballs, after all.  But Mike and I just can't seem to agree on Analog, a monthly science fiction magazine.

Here are the indisputable facts: Analog is the elder statesman of the digests; it pioneered real sf back when all the other outlets were pushing pulp adventure.  Analog has the biggest circulation of any of the current digests, somewhere around 200,000 per month. 

Now for the disputable ones.  Analog is the most conservative of the mags.  It's generally Terran-centric, with Earthlings portrayed as the most cunning, successful beings in the galaxy (which is why, of course, most aliens look just like us).  While the serialized novels in Analog are often excellent, the accompanying short stories tend to be uninspiring.  The science fact columns are awful.  Editor John Campbell's championing of psionics and reactionless engines (in real-life, not just fiction), crosses into the embarrassing.  All these factors make Analog the weakest of the Big Three magazines, consistently lagging in quality behind Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. 

Of course, Mike disagrees.  He's even wagered that Analog will take the Hugo award for Best Science Fiction Magazine this year.  I think he's dreaming.  F&SF has won three years in a row, and barring some unexpected decline in quality, it will do so again. 

I'll take that bet, Mike Glyer!  Two beers to your one.

As evidence for my case, I present this month's Analog, dated June 1961.

I will give Campbell credit where it is due.  While women are rare in Analog (as they are everywhere in published sf lit), Campbell does make an effort to "discover" female authors.  That's how we got the delightful Pauline Ashwell, and now we have the promising Leigh Richmond.  Her first story, Prologue to an Analogue, involves a coven of witches that solves world crisis after world crisis with their televised incantations.  Is it sorcery, technology, or something entirely different?  A story that manages to be both Campbellian yet also pretty neat.  Three stars.

I'm not sure why L. Sprague de Camp's Apollonious Enlists was included.  Normally, Sprague writes fun, light fantasy.  This piece is non-fiction, an essay on the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Ptolemaic Egypt, with some pointed parallels drawn with our modern methods of government.  I guess there weren't any fiction vignettes handy to fill the 8-page slot.  Two stars.

Fallen Angel shows us a far future in which the Terran dominion is but a small corner of a larger Galactic Federation.  We have something of an inferiority complex as, compared to the blond, perfect Grienan, leader race of the Federation, humanity seems barely out of childhood.  In fact, we have only made it as far as we have thanks to "Experiment," an anarchistic enclave in which humans express their base impulses until they are thoroughly tired of them.  Only a small proportion of the population are truly incurable, and they become permanent residents.  It's a program that seems barbaric to the rest of the civilized galaxy and is ridiculed accordingly.

In Angel, the aristocratic Grienan are taken down a peg when its ambassador volunteers to go through Experiment and loses all of his highfalutin culture and manners, almost losing his very humanity (Grienanity?) See?  Terrans really do know best!

High is a prolific writer who's hitherto stayed on the British side of The Pond.  His latest work does little to recommend that he emigrate.  Two stars.

Lloyd Biggle Jr. is like a Cepheid star – highly variable.  His latest, Monument, may be the high point of his career to date.  I wasn't optimistic.  The set-up involves a backward paradise planet, populated by (of course) completely human aliens, a marooned Terran who vows to protect the natives from a rapacious Earth Federation, and the inevitable coming of the representatives of said polity.  There's no real science fiction in this tale of classic exploitation – you could transplant the "aliens" to an island in the Pacific Ocean and replace the Federation with the United Nations (and, perhaps, that's the point; I prefer my analogies slightly less direct).

And yet.  It's a well-told story, engaging throughout, and it's fundamentally an honest one.  There are no gimmicks or silly twists.  Just a series of interesting scenes, compelling characters, and a problem to be solved.  Four stars.

The science fact this month, George Willard's The Complex Problem of the Simple Weather Rocket starts well enough, describing the armada of radio balloons deployed daily by meteorological agencies, but it quickly degenerates into a fannish gush, recommending a switch to little sounding rockets based on the machines currently employed by model rocket enthusiasts.  Kind of a pointless article, especially given that weather balloons are cheap, and now they are augmented by the TIROS weather satellites with their hourly photos.  Two stars.

That leaves the third installment of Cliff Simak's very good serial, The Fisherman, which I won't review until it's all done next month.  Running the numbers, Analog clocks in at a straight three of five stars: acceptable, but not astonishing.  Certainly not Hugo material.  At least not this year…

Sneak preview: Last night, the Young Traveler and I went to the drive-in to take in George Pal's latest, Atlantis: the Lost Continent.  It was a hoot, and we'll tell you all about it next time…on Galactic Journey!

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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 11, 1961] Spotlighting Women (The Second Sex in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Part 3)

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Here's a question I've gotten more than once: what is the point in spotlighting woman writers?  Shouldn't I simply point out the good stories as I find them, and if they happen to be written by women, bully for them?  Why should I create an artificial distinction?

Those are actually fine questions, about which I've given much thought.  I make no claims to being an expert, or even someone whose opinion should matter much to you.  All I have is my taste, my gut and (lucky for me) my own column in which to voice my opinions.  So take my words as strictly my viewpoint.

We live in a particular kind of world.  Men are the default: the default heroes, the default writers, even the default pronoun.  Open a history book, and it will be filled with the names of great men.  Women are a seeming afterthought.  You may not even have thought twice about it.  It seems "natural" that movies should star men, that books should star men, that men should be the generals, the presidents.

But, there is a change a brewing.  Black men universally won the right to vote in 1865.  Women secure duniversal suffrage in 1920, fully three generations after the least privileged men.  The gap is narrowing.  This year, a Black man became skipper of a U.S. Naval vessel.  1961 also marks the year a woman became a shipboard U.S. Naval officer for the first time.  Women are now just one generation behind the least advantaged of the men.  Someday, we may be on a level playing field, all races of men and women.

Science fiction is supposed to be forward-looking, yet socially it seems stuck in the present, or even the past.  One almost never reads about woman starship captains or woman presidents or woman…well… anything.  I don't think this is the result of deliberate collusion by the science fiction writing community.  It's just that society is the air we breathe.  We are unconsciously bound by its rules and traditions.  Unless something shakes up our viewpoints, we'll stick in our ruts and continue to accept this male-dominated paradigm as the natural order of things.

So when I spot something unusual that I think should be universal, I note it.  I encourage it.  I enjoy it.

Without further ado, part #3 of my encyclopedic catalog of the woman writers active as of this year of 1961:

Zenna Henderson: It should come as no surprise to any regular reader of my column that I love Zenna Henderson.  While her The People stories do not comprise all of her work, they are representative — unabashedly personal tales, bittersweet and feminine, utterly unlike anything else.  Henderson's science fiction career began early last decade and is one of the most vivid hallmarks of the divide between the digest and pulp eras.  I strongly recommend Rosemary Benton's recent article as a introduction to his brilliant author and her work.

Katherine MacLean: One rarely forgets first impressions, and MacLean made a significant one on me with Unhuman Sacrifice, single-handedly saving the November 1958 Astounding, the first magazine I ever reviewed for this column.

This was actually a sort of a rediscovery — she has been publishing stories since the late '40s, many of which I read in Galaxy.  I wonder if she's now near the end of her career.  Once a prolific writer, her pace slackened after 1953, and I've only seen one of her stories since Sacrifice, the good Interbalance.  Perhaps she's just busy with other things, or maybe she publishes in the few remaining magazines I don't cover on a regular basis.  In any-wise, Ms. MacLean is highly regarded, both by me and the general community.  Check her out, and don't miss her early work published under the name of her former husband, Charles Dye.

Anne McCaffrey: Speaking of first impressions, one of the fun aspects of my job as surveyor of our genre is spotting new authors as they arrive.  Ms. McCaffrey hit the ground running with her 1959 story, The Lday in the Tower.  She topped herself with the recent The Ship who Sang.  Two points make a line; if we continue the trend, it is clear that Ms. McCaffrey is destined to produce some pretty spectacular stuff.  I can't wait!

Judith Merril: There once was a SF club in New York City.  It was called the Futurians, it only lasted 8 years (ending around the same time as WW2), and it had an outsized impact on the genre.  The 1st WorldCon was a Futurian event, for instance, and its members included future famous personages such as Isaac Asimov and Fred Pohl. 

And Judith Merril (who was Mrs. Pohl for a little while).  She has been a pillar of the community ever since, both as a writer and a prolific anthologizer; she has produced a series of "Best of" books since 1956, and her taste is sharp.  My experience with her own writing has been mixed.  They comprise just two stories and a novel.  The stories were good, the novel was terrible (though Fred Pohl and P. Schuyler Miller liked it; what do I know>).  I suspect Judy will be around for a long time, so I imagine I'll have more on which to evaluate her by the next time I do one of these.

C.L. Moore: I may be stretching a point in calling Ms. Moore a current writer.  A veteran of the pulp era, Ms. Moore wrote most prolifically in partnership with her late husband, Henry Kuttner (who I knew best as Lewis Padgett).  He died in 1958, and I've not seen hide nor hair of her since.  For this reason, the Journey has covered none of her works, and while I'm sure I must have read some of Moore (psuedonymously, collaboratively, or solitarily), I couldn't tell you about any of those stories off the top of my head (though I do own the Galaxy Novel, Shambleau; perhaps I shall try it out.)

Andre Norton: Despite the name, Andre Norton is a woman, and she has enjoyed a burgeoning career since her debut a little over a decade ago.  She is given to florid, adventury prose, filled with strapping folks and derring-do.  In a recent review of one of Ms. Norton's latest books, Alfred Bester opined dismissively that perhaps women just can't write action.  Well, he's wrong.  Now, mind you, I haven't yet read much Norton.  I started Stargate, which failed to grab my interest, and I finished Crossroads of Time, which I quite enjoyed.  She's got a new one coming out this Summer, which I'll call the tie-breaker. 

Meanwhile, Bester hasn't published a story since 1959.  Maybe men just can't write science fiction anymore…

I'll have the fourth (and final) installment in this series sometime next month.  Cheer-i-o!

(Part one is here!)

(Part two is here!)

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Magazine/Anthology

[May 3, 1961] Passing the Torch (June 1961, Galaxy, 2nd Half)

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Something is changing over at Galaxy magazine.

Horace Gold, Galaxy's editor, started the magazine in 1950, near the beginning of the post-pulp digest boom.  He immediately set a high bar for quality, with some of the best authors and stories, and including a top-notch science columnist (this was before Asimov transitioned from fiction).  Galaxy only once won the Best Magazine Hugo (in 1953, and that one it shared), but it paid well, eschewed hoary cliches, and all-in-all was a pillar of the field.  It was the magazine that got me into reading science fiction on a regular basis.

Warning bells started to clang in 1959.  The magazine went to a bi-monthly schedule (though at a somewhat increased size).  Author rates were slashed in half.  Gold, himself, suffering from battle fatigue-induced agoraphobia, became more erratic.  This new Galaxy was not a bad mag, but it slipped a few rungs. 

Fred Pohl came on last year.  He was not officially billed as the editor, but it was common knowledge that he'd taken over the reigns.  Pohl is an agent and author, a fan from the way-back.  I understand his plan has been to raise author rates again and bring back quality.  While he waits for the great stories to come back, he leavens the magazines with old stories from the "slush pile" that happen not to be awful.  In this way, Galaxy showcases promising new authors while keeping the quality of the magazine consistent.

The June 1961 Galaxy is the first success story of this new strategy.

Last issue, I talked about how Galaxy was becoming a milquetoast mag, afraid to take risks or deviate far from mediocrity.  This month's issue, the first that lists Pohl as the "Managing Editor," is almost the second coming of old Galaxy — daring, innovative, and with one exception, excellent. 

Take Cordwainer Smith's Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons, in which an interplanetary ring of thieves tries to steal from the richest, and best defended planet, in the galaxy.  Smith has always been a master, slightly off-center in his style; his rich, literary writing is of the type more usually seen in Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Kittons is ultimately a mystery, the nature of the unique (in name and nature) "kittons" remaining unknown until the last.  A brutal, fascinating story, and an unique take on the future.  Five stars.

Breakdown is by Herbert D. Kastle, one of the aforementioned novices.  Despite his green status, he turned in an admirable piece involving a farmer who finds the world increasingly differing from his memories.  Is he sliding across alternate universe?  It is a cosmic prank?  A gripping story, suitable for adaptation to The Twilight Zone.  Four stars.

The one dud of the issue is Frank Herbert's A-W-F Unlimited: thirty pages of pseudo-clever dialogue and inner monologue set in a mid-21st Century ad agency as its star executive attempts to fulfill a recruiting drive contract for the space corps.  I got through it, but only by dint of effort.  1 star.

Poul Anderson has another entry in his Time Patrol series, though My Object all Sublime does not betray this fact until the end.  It's a slow, moody piece; the reflections of a man from the far future, flung into the worst areas of the past as punishment for a nameless crime.  In one thought-provoking passage, the condemned man notes that being from the future in no way guarantees superiority in the past, for most people are not engineers or scientists with sufficient knowledge to change the world.  Moreover, they arrive penniless, and who can make a difference without money?

This is actually a problem I've considered (i.e. what I'd do if ended up stuck far back in time).  While I probably wouldn't recognize salt-peter if I smelled it, I suspect just introducing germ theory and Arabic numerals would be enough to carve a niche.  Zero must be the most influential nothing in the history of humanity…  I rate the story at four stars.

Rounding out the issue is Fred Saberhagen's The Long Way Home.  Two thousand years from now, a (surprisingly conventional) man and wife-run mining ship discovers an enormous spacecraft out among the planetoids near Pluto.  How it got there and where it's going pose enigmas that should keep you engaged until the end of this competently written tale.  Three stars.

In sum, the June 1961 Galaxy weighs in at a solid 3.5 stars.  If you skip the Herbert, you end up with a most impressive regular-length magazine.  Given that Pohl also edits Galaxy's sister mag, IF (also a bi-monthly, alternating with Galaxy), I am eagerly looking forward to next month!

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Magazine/Anthology

[April 30, 1961] Travel stories (June 1961 Galaxy, first half)

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My nephew, David, has been on an Israeli Kibbutz for a month now.  We get letters from him every few days, mostly about the hard work, the monotony of the diet, and the isolation from the world.  The other day, he sent a letter to my brother, Lou, who read it to me over the phone.  Apparently, David went into the big port-town of Haifa and bought copies of Life, Time, and Newsweek.  He was not impressed with the literary quality of any of them, but he did find Time particularly useful.

You see, Israeli bathrooms generally don't stock toilet paper…

Which segues nicely into the first fiction review of the month.  I'm happy to report I have absolutely nothing against the June 1961 Galaxy – including my backside.  In fact, this magazine is quite good, at least so far.  As usual, since this is a double-sized magazine, I'll review it in two parts.

First up is Mack Reynolds' unique novelette, Farmer.  Set thirty years from now in the replanted forests of the Western Sahara, it's an interesting tale of intrigue and politics the likes of which I've not seen before.  Reynolds has got a good grasp of the international scene, as evidenced by his spate of recent stories of the future Cold War.  If this story has a failing, it is its somewhat smug and one-sided tone.  Geopolitics should be a bit more ambiguous.  It's also too good a setting for such a short story.  Three stars.

Willy Ley's science column immediately follows.  There's some good stuff in this one, particularly the opening piece on plans to melt the Arctic ice cap to improve the climate of the USSR (and, presumably, Scandinavia and Canada).  Of course, if global warming happens on schedule, we won't need any outlandish engineering marvels to make this happen; we can just continue business as usual.  Hail progress!

I also appreciated Ley's reply to one of his fans, who asked why he rarely covers space launches anymore.  His answer?  They come too quickly!  Any reporting would have a 4-5 month delay – an eternity these days.  It's hard enough for me to keep up.  Four stars.

The Graybes of Raath is Neal Barret, Jr.'s third story in Galaxy.  It should be a throw-away, what with the punny title, the non-shocker ending, and the hideous Don Martin art.  But this tale of a well-meaning immigration agency attempting to find the home of a family of itinerant alien farmers is actually a lot of fun.  Barrett is nothing if not consistent.  Three stars.

Now here's a weird one.  Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth have a new duet out called A Gentle Dying.  Now, the two have worked together for many years; that's not the surprising part.  Nor is the fact that the story, about an incredibly elderly and beloved children's author's last moments, is good.  No, it's strange because Kornbluth has been dead for five years!  I can only imagine that Pohl (now de-facto editor of Galaxy, per last month's F&SF) dusted this one off after having waited for the right venue/slot-size.  Three stars.

Last up is R.A. Lafferty's absolutely lovely The Weirdest World.  Can a marooned alien blob find sanctuary, even happiness, among aliens so strange as those that live on Earth?  I've always kind of liked Lafferty, but this one is his best to date, with its gentle writing, and its spot-on portrayal of cross-species telepathy.  Five stars.

This column began with travel, and it ends with travel.  My wife and I are in Las Vegas for a weekend, enjoying the food and the sights.  Sinatra doesn't seem to be at the Sands right now, but that's all right.  We'll catch Ol' Blue Eyes another time.

While we were here, we ran into Emily Jablon, a famous columnist and Jet Setter who spends much of her time flitting across the world.  She gave us some tips on travel that were new even to us!  Of course, we introduced her to Galactic Journeying, and what better way than with this month's Galaxy?

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Magazine/Anthology

[April 26, 1961] Dessert for last (May 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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Del Shannon's on the radio, but I've got Benny Goodman on my hi-fi.  Say…that's a catchy lyric!  Well, here we are at the end of April, and that means I finally get to eat dessert.  That is, I finally get to crack into The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  While it is not the best selling science fiction digest (that honor goes to Analog by a wide margin), it is my favorite, and it has won the Best Magazine Hugo three years running.

So what kind of treat was the May 1961 F&SF?  Let's find out!

Carol Emshwiller returns with the lead story of the issue, the sublime Adapted.  It can be hard to resist the incessant mold of conformity, even when blending in means losing oneself.  Emshwiller's protagonist loses the battle, but, perhaps, not all hope.  Four stars.

The somber Avram Davidson teams up with unknown Sidney Klein (perhaps the idea man?) with The Teeth of Despair.  It's a cute but forgettable story involving a cabal of underpaid professors, a loser with a metal dental plate, a quiz show, and something that isn't quite telepathy.  Ever wonder how Van Doren did it?  Three stars.

All the Tea in China is offered up by Reginald Bretnor, the real name behind the Ferdinand Feghoot puns (q.v.).  Watch as despicable Jonas Hackett, a mean cuss who wouldn't commit a kind act for the entirety of the Orient's signature beverage, is given what for by Old Nick.  Nicely told.  Three stars.

Somebody to Play With, by Jay Williams, is a compelling story with a brutal sting in the tail.  It may make sense for the adults of a tiny colony on an alien world to be overly cautious, but does the desire for security warrant genocide?  Telling from a child's point of view, Williams skillfully conveys the claustrophobia of the outpost, the wonder of the strange world, the thrill of making an extraterrestrial friend, and the heartbreak of betrayal by one's closest kin.  Four stars.

I know nothing about C.D. Heriot save that I imagine he is British.  He writes Poltergeist in an affected manner that almost, but not quite, dulls the impact of this story of a neglected pre-adolescent who conjures up her own malicious playmate.  In the hands of Davidson, it'd rate four or five stars; in this case, just three.

Stephen Barr's Mr. Medley's Time Pill is By His Bootstraps all over again, and it commits the same sin: telling both sides of a time loop story.  We already know what will happen after reading the first half; what is the point of conveying it twice?  Two stars.

The Country Boy is the latest in G.C.Edmondson's Mexican-themed tales, a direct sequel to Misfit.  As is often the case with Edmondson, the story is clever, but the banter isn't, though he tries.  Too hard, really.  Three stars.

Heaven on Earth is The Good Doctor Asimov's science contribution for this issue, on the measurement of the celestial sphere and its resident stars.  It's all about degrees, base-60 number systems, and an Earth-sized planetarium.  I love his mathematical articles; I feel he often does his best work with what could be the most sterile of subjects.  Four stars.

The Flower is 11-year old Mildred Possert's submission.  Editor Mills thinks she shows promise, and I don't disagree.

Henry Slesar gives us The Self-improvement of Salvatore Ross, involving a fellow who can bargain for anything – including physical traits.  He swaps a broken leg for pneumonia, his hair for cash, and so on.  The twist ending is a bit out of nowhere, but it's a good story nonetheless, the sort of thing that might get adapted for The Twilight Zone.  Three stars.

The appropriately named Final Muster is, indeed, the last story in the book (and the inspiration for the issue's cover).  I believe this is Rick Rubin's first effort, and he hits a triple right out of the box.  The premise: by next century, war is such a specialized, abhorred profession that soldiers are frozen in stasis and thawed only when needed.  This is a volunteer corps whose ranks are filled with combatants who cannot find joy in peaceful civilian life.  But what happens when war ends entirely?  A thoughtful story whose only fault is that it perhaps doesn't go quite far enough in its projections.  Four stars.

With dessert finished, we can now run the numbers.  This issue came out at 3.3, edging out this month's Analog (3), and IF (2.75).  Analog had the best story of the month (Death and the Senator).  There was one (count them) woman writer out of 21 stories, an abysmal score. 

A lot of space news coming up soon what with Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, or John Glenn scheduled to be the first American in space on May 4th.  Stay tuned!

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Book

[April 20, 1961] People are not the same all over (Pilgrimage, by Zenna Henderson)

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[Here is Rosemary Benton's article for April 1961.  She asked if she could do Zenna Henderson's compilation of The People stories, none of which she had previously read; I hadn't picked up the book since I have the stories in magazine form.  I thought it a smashing idea since it would give us all a fresh insight on Henderson's works.  I've been vindicated…(the Editor)]

In my quest to break my bookshelf under the weight of my science fiction, horror and fantasy collections, this month I picked up noted author Zenna Henderson's latest publication. To anyone who frequents Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy, Zenna Henderson and her alien race, the People, should not be unknown to you. Pilgrimage: the Book of the People contains Ararat (1952), Gilead (1954), Pottage (1955), Wilderness (1956), Captivity (1958) and Jordan (1959), all tied together through an overarching narrative that tells the story of a human observing the People. As each one of the People takes their turn recounting their time on Earth, the book progresses along such themes as self-discovery, selflessness for the betterment of community, and the definition of home and belonging.

Pilgrimage: The Book of the People is, by authorial intent, the application of the accumulation of her personal experiences. Zenna Henderson clearly puts everything of herself into her stories, making her writing highly personal yet relatable. Her years in Arizona, first as a student at Arizona State and then as a teacher, crystalized the American West as the perfect setting for her stories of the People. In each of the chapters of Pilgrimage, the reader can detect hints of Henderson's spirituality, her compassion for humanity, and her willingness to believe in positive change effected by mindset and actions.

Born to Mormon parents but non-practicing beyond her marriage to Richard Harry Henderson in 1944, Zenna Henderson retains a deep sense of spirituality which she expresses in Methodism and in her writing. The People are a universalist group who believe that distance is without consequence when it comes to their relationship with the all knowing all being creator they call "the Presence." They are unafraid to acknowledge their religion and meet all other religions with respect. As Valancy, one of the People, says to the human Dita, “Two worlds and yet you're so like us” (162). Through words and non-violence the People manage to solve all of their dilemmas. It can read as a little saccharine, but Henderson's cleverness in creating solutions through diplomacy adds a refreshing taste to her stories. 

Either out of moral obligation or because they are simply decent people, Zenna Henderson's main cast holds a special understanding for the mentally ill. I found this to be highly interesting to observe as you don't see much science fiction that treats the mentally ill as multifaceted characters. In fact, the majority of the overarching narrative in Pilgrimage is told from the perspective of a suicidal woman, Lea, who is receiving counseling from Karen, one of the People. Her journey of stepping away from the edge is just one of the many reasons to pay attention to Henderson's approach to mental health. Of particular note is the minor character, Lucine, in “Wilderness”. Henderson takes the time to build her as a disabled little girl who is prone to fits of rage but still remorseful for her violence. This makes her eventual mental break and the manhunt that follows particularly painful. We can see that her death would not be befitting of her crimes, and the reader can't help but sympathize with such a debilitating illness as severe mental retardation. 

But mental anguish and flawed characters are not all that Zenna Henderson brings to tangible life within the genre of science fiction. Henderson is in a unique place to write on immigration, and she delves into the complications of it with full gusto. I understand that she taught at the Japanese interment camps in Sacaton, AZ; Henderson was able to see first hand the forced displacement of people from their homes. Her experience at a US Air Force dependents' school in France likewise taught her more about people exiled from their places of origin. Science fiction is replete with adventurers flung far away from their homes, but in few cases do we see frontier life complete with details of longing for a home that can never be returned to; one that the characters are tragically adrift from forever. In describing the People's collective memory of the voyage from their world, the human Melodye succinctly observes that, “Racial memory was truly a double-sided coin” (99). Henderson likewise writes about the loss of culture and recorded memory (33). The fear in the flight from one's home is made very clear on page 182 when Henderson writes, “From terror and from panic places. From hunger and from hiding – to live midway through madness and the dream”. 

In addition to her use of the world as she saw it, nowhere else in Henderson's writing do you see her own personal experience shine more brightly than in her portrayal of teaching and teachers. There is a fascinating realism and maturity that Henderson infuses her younger characters with. These are three dimensional children who are a product of their environments and whose stories reflect that. They express rage, harbor ambitions, and are powerful but still young. Most importantly they want to heard and be listened to. The story of the Francher Kid, a foster child in an unfortunate household, is a prime example of Henderson's ability to write a compelling child character who is a conflicted, lonely and trapped. I believe Henderson's description of Francher as a “My Child” best speaks to the author's authority on the topic of merging experience with fiction, “We teacher-types sometimes find [a My Child]. They aren't our pets; often they aren't even in our classes. But they are the children who move unasked into our hearts and make claims upon them over and above the call of duty” (178). Her explanation of how teachers relate to their charges rings true on page 17 as well, “They pour out the most personal things quite unsolicited to almost any adult who will listen – and who's more apt to listen than a teacher?”. Teachers in Henderson's writing seem to represent the closest equivalent Humans can get to the glowing moral fiber of the People. They are portrayed as saviors, love interests, authority figures, and even heroes.

Perhaps the most noticeable fault in Henderson's writing is the air of assurance that everything will turn out alright due to the moral uprightness of the People; their steadfast adherence to doing what is right erases any deep senses of urgency in the plot. The effect is that Henderson's writing is a slow, contemplative walk rather than a sprinting, adrenaline race to the finish.

On the other side, a slow burning plot gives the author time for investment in the characters. And even with their moral fortitude, the main characters are not boring guides. They experience a full range of situations that test her message of acceptance and tolerance, and although the reader can rest assured that things will work out, how they work out is entertaining to read, and often a touch bittersweet.

In sum, I highly recommend Pilgrimage: The Book of the People — of all the speculative fiction books you could read this year (1961), it may turn out to be the best.

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