Tag Archives: science fiction

Magazine/Anthology

[April 27, 1960] Galactic on Galaxy (June 1960 Galaxy)

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It's that happy time of year when the sun is up late and the weather is perfect.  Of course, the weather is usually perfect here in the nicest unincorporated part of northern San Diego County (though there are rumors that our little farming community is going to vote on incorporation soon).

One of my favorite Spring-time activities is to lounge on the veranda (well, my daughter's tree house) with a portable radio, a cup of coffee, and good book.  Today's entree is the newest issue of Galaxy.  It's a double-sized issue, so I'll be breaking it out over two articles.  A body needs time to digest, after all. 

Fred Pohl has written a new serial evocatively titled Drunkard's Walk I won't go into too much detail as it's only half published, but thus far, I'm enjoying it.  In an overpopulated Earth (12 billions, 6 of them in "The Chinas"), university education is the province of the elite.  One young mathematics professor appears to be the target for assassination.  He's attempted to kill himself numerous times, always in that twilight between sleep and waking, as if in a trance. 

There are some neat technologies featured.  In particular, I liked Pohl's depiction of education by television, broadcast via satellite and graded by computer.  As someone who has generally found the classroom stifling, I marvel at how nice it would be to get a college degree in the comfort of my own home.

Next on tap is L.J. Stecher's Upstarts.  How can Earthers hope to parlay on a level playing field with a race that dominates the entire Galaxy?  By developing its own secret, starhopping technologies, of course.  The fascinating idea here is that though there are some 17 starfaring alien species, only two of them (one being humanity) clawed their way to sentience by natural evolutionary processes.  All of the rest were raised to sapience ("Uplifted," to coin a phrase) by the slavering Vegans, who now find themselves a minority group in the new galactic order and want to enlist the assistance of the Terrans to get back on top.


by Dillon

Good stuff, and with a haunting ending.

The Good Neighbors is a fun, short Edgar Pangborn piece about the sudden appearance of an enormous winged beast that terrorizes the American skies for many days before the pitiful creature is harangued to death by a swarm of jet fighters.  Pangborn writes with a pleasant sense of whimsy that I appreciate.


by Wallace Wood

Rounding out the first half, Willy Ley has an interesting piece on rocket fuels and the comparative advantages of liquid vs. solid propellants.  He also answers some of his readers' questions.  They must have been a better crop than usual as VeeLee seems pleasantly less peeved than he has been of late.

See you in two days with the other half.  Get yourself a copy and send me your thoughts!

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Magazine/Anthology

[April 21, 1960] Roads not taken (May 1960 IF)

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If there's anything this month's IF, Science Fiction proves, it's that you get what you pay for.

Last year, Galaxy editor, H. L. Gold, cut story rates in half to 2 cents a word.  Shortly thereafter, he took over the helm of the promising but unsuccessful digest, IF.  Its quality has been in steady decline ever since, and I can only imagine that he pays IF writers even less.

IF's name is ironic.  Under the stewardship of Damon Knight, it had a short-lived renaissance culminating in the February 1959 issue.  Had this continued, IF might be the leader of the current, heavily winnowed, crop of science fiction digests.  Alas, such a history can only be contemplated, never directly perceived.

Why all the doom and gloom?  The May 1960 IF is definitely the worst issue I've read to date.  While not unmitigatedly bad, it never rises above the passable.  In detail:

Chris Anvil's lead novella, The Tourist Named Death is a bland and amateurishly written interplanetary spy romp with lots of action but little depth.  It is written in a style I like to call sequential: "Bob did this.  Then he did that.  He saw this and reacted like this.  Then he did that."  I'd think that, by now, Mr. Anvil would have matured past this level of ability.  But, perhaps for a penny a word, he doesn't much care to apply himself.

James Bell is a brand-new author whose Freshman effort, Thirty Degrees Cattywonkus, is barely passable.  A fellow, upon exploring his new house,discovers that a parallel dimension is impinging on his, but not quite orthogonally.  The promising premise degenerates quickly.  Maybe next time.

Then you've got When Day is Done by part-time minor-leaguer, Arnold Castle.  The story, about businessmen who engage in simulated big-game hunting after work, would be an interesting first chapter to a longer tale, but as a stand-alone, there just isn't enough there.

C.C. MacApp is another greenhorn whose first-ever story is A Pride of Islands.  I had trouble following this story, perhaps because it failed to ever engage me, but I believe it is about the descendants of a wrecked spaceship crew who have reverted to savagery.

Now, to leaven my harshness, I will say that it's great that Gold (and his executive officer for IF, Fred Pohl) are giving new authors a chance.  With the folding of so many science fiction digests in the last decade, the authors of tomorrow have had precious few venues in which to hone their craft. 

I just wish they'd hurry up and get better…

The first solid story of the issue comes from the reasonably consistent Philip Jose Farmer.  HEEL is basically Homer's Illiad with a science fiction twist: the Gods are really interstellar television producers filming a decade-long epic.  The Greeks and Trojans are just hapless pawns dancing to the tune of a Director they know only as Zeus.


by Virgil Finlay

It's a cute concept, and as I'm currently rereading the plays of Aeschylus, I'm particularly receptive to classically themed works.  On the other hand, there is a dashed-off feeling to the story.  I don't think Farmer strained himself putting this one together.

Back to the crop of new authors, A.M.Lightner's (Alice Martha) first story (I believe) is A Good Day for the Irish.  A Terran entomologist (refreshingly, a female protagonist) emigrates to a paradisical colony only to find it in the midst of a terrible blight.  Could the cure be the very infestations she had been enlisted to prevent?  This is another story that might have benefited from greater length. 

Finally, we have Charles Fontenay's novelette, Matchmaker.  It is an engaging, if unremarkable, piece about the extreme measures to which a government will resort to ensure the computer-ordered union of two otherwise unfated individuals.  On a side note, I liked the vacuum-powered letter delivery systems.  I can imagine such systems being commonplace in the near future.

Thus, the May 1960 IF ends on a stronger note than it began, but all told, it's a pretty unimpressive magazine.  I'll keep my subscription, of course.  There is precious little out there right now, and perhaps things will get better.  Hope springs eternal.

See you soon, and if you have any opinions on these pieces, whether or not they are in line with mine, please drop me a line.  I welcome all comments.

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Book

[April 17, 1960] Stiff Upper Lips (Fletcher Pratt's Invaders from Rigel)

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It is said that dead men tell no tales; but don't tell that to Fletcher Pratt, who has managed to publish a book four years after his death!

I must confess, I did a double-take when I recently saw Invaders from Rigel at the bookstore.  The beloved Fletcher Pratt, one of the genre's titans, and inventor of one of the first playable naval wargames, passed away in 1956.  Yet, here was a brand-new book with Pratt's name on the cover.

Well, not really.  As I began to read the Avalon hardcover, I felt a pang of deja vu.  Not only was I certain that I'd read the tale before, but the writing struck me as belonging to an earlier era—more Savage Pellucidar than Starship Troopers. 

Sure enough, when I went through my voluminous collection, I found the story in the Winter 1932 Wonder Stories Quarterly, edited by the renowned Hugo Gernsback.  It was originally titled Onslaught from Rigel, and surprisingly little modification was made for its novelization, which I suppose honors Pratt's memory.

The story, in brief: It is 1962, and a mysterious comet has crashed into the North American continent.  The virtual entirety of the populace and animals are converted to lifeless iron.  A handful of folk find themselves transformed into metal parodies of human beings.  They are now essentially invulnerable, require no food, air, or water—just an occasional dose of electric charging and lubrication.  The first third of the book is a post-apocalyptic picking up of pieces story.  The remainder details the struggle of these metal men and their blue-skinned allies from the Southern Hemisphere against the elephantoid Rigelians.

It is a ludicrous story written in the pulpiest fashion, and the "science" bits at the end are egregious.  My readers know what a literary snob I am, so I must have hated the book, right?

Actually, I quite enjoyed it.  Sure, it was silly in the extreme, and the battle scenes were a trifle overlong, but three things made the book a worthy read, though perhaps a guilty pleasure:

1) It is well-written and pleasantly rip-roaring.

2) It reads like a cross between Burroughs and a comic book, and I like Burroughs and comic books.

3) It quite intentionally, and rather subversively, has strong female characters.  In both senses of the word "strong."  You see, with both men and women made of tough metal, there is no nonsense about the "weaker" sex.  Instead, you've got the plucky Victoria, who is a better shot than any of the men and becomes the gunner/engineer on a rocket-plane.  And you've got the quippy, tough Hungarian dancer, Marta Lami, who is not only fun to read, but an integral part of the struggle against the aliens.

After reading story upon story featuring nothing but male characters, with the existence of females usually only implied, Invaders from Rigel was a refreshing switch.

Now, because I had both versions of the story, I can tell you what editing was done.  For the most part, it was confined to "updating" the science-y bits.  For instance, the book mentions atomic weapons and jet planes.  At one point, a helicopter is substituted for an autogiro.  The original story took place in 1946.

On the other hand, the editing was not terribly consistent or rigorous.  For instance, in 1962, the Dutch still own Batavia.  Also, airplanes revert from jet to rocket power later in the book.  The editors also took out some of the purpler bits of prose from the original.  I'm still not decided on whether this is an improvement or not.  There's not much cutting, in any event.

Do I recommend picking up a copy of the book?  That's up to you.  It's a quick read, and I enjoyed it, but you may turn up your nose at it, and I wouldn't blame you for it.  Alternatively, you might pick up Judith Merril's Out of Bounds or Agent of Vega, by James H. Schmitz; both are anthologies that came out this month.

Next up, a slew of exciting space news.  Stay tuned!

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Magazine/Anthology

[April 13, 1960] An unfulfilled promise (May 1960 F&SF)

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Every month, there is the perennial hope that this will be the month a truly great story will be published. Every month, a stack of science fiction digests arrives at my door. There are few moments as exciting as that day (my postman holds them all so they arrive at once; I like big events). With great enthusiasm, I tear into my magazines. Sometimes the promise is fulfilled. Sometimes it isn't.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction most consistently delivers the stand-out stories, so I usually save it for last. Other months, I am a greedy child and eat dessert first. This time around, I split the difference.

First up is Fritz Leiber's short story, The Oldest Soldier. It's a good piece, very atmospheric. I originally thought it was another story about an immortal, a la Long Live Walter Jameson, the Twilight Zone episode, but upon further reflection, I think it's about one of the many time traveling soldiers in Leiber's The Big Time universe.

Fred McMorrow follows Leiber with the thematically similar, The Man from Tomorrow. It takes place in a New York steak and booze joint. A reporter and a crustily jovial bartender are debating the appeal of gambling when they are accosted by a fellow from the future. As a time traveler, the man has a perfect knowledge of events, and as a marooned prisoner of the 20th Century knowing everything that will happen (down to the most minute detail, it seems, and with no ability to alter events), he is miserable with boredom.

The reader is left with the question: Is it better to know the future and capitalize upon it, or to revel in the uncertainty of what's to come?

I did not like Rex Lardner's American Plan, about a fellow who goes to Mars as a tourist and ends up a prisoner in his hotel. As Damon Knight says in his book review column, it is not sufficient to slap a few science fiction trappings (in this case, a Martian setting) onto an otherwise conventional story and call it "genre."

John Collier's That Tender Age (a New Yorker reprint) is even worse. A would-be lodger interviews with potential landlords. He has a nomadic history, and he's had experience sojourning with cannibals. Early on, he makes it clear, inadvertently, that he has predatory designs upon the landlord's daughter, and at the end, cannibal and landlord's daughter head off to the woods, hand-in-hand, presumably never to return.

What makes this story unbearable is its run-on construction, with no quotation marks or attributions of expression. While Collier does indicate who is speaking through tone and use of proper nouns, it's tedious going. Moreover, the end is telegraphed from the beginning, which makes the conclusion all the more ridiculous. At least it's short.

Gordy Dickson has One on Trial, a short story about a ruthless executive who is forced to go on a sort of robotic safari as penance for his sins.  Never one to play by the rules, he finds his own way out, unrepentant and unchanged.  Not bad.

A Specimen for the Queen is the conclusion (?) to Arthur Porges' "Ruum" series, in which a taxidermist alien robot is deposited in the backwoods of Canada to assemble a preserved zoological collection. In the millions of years that the robot has been on Earth, it has amassed quite an exhibit, including one sentient biped. In this story, the robot encounters a detachment of Galaxy-conquering human-sized bees, who have mounted a scouting expedition to the Canadian wilds.

Has the robot finally met its match? Or are the bees grasping a tiger by its tail? Entertaining, if somewhat disturbing.

Dr. Asimov has a fascinating (if you are mathematically inclined) article on the fundamental constant, Pi. Of particular interest, to me anyway, was his presentation of Liebniz's series, which can be used to calculate Pi, provided one has a lot of spare time. It's quite simple: 4/1-4/3+4/5-4/7+4/9… and so on. You can do it with a pen and paper, but it will take you hundreds of thousands of iterations to get close to the answer, since you'll keep bouncing high and low around it.

Or, you can do what I did and rent some time on a local computer; I borrowed the university's lightning-fast IBM for a few hours. I cleverly reduced the computation time by having my program calculate the average of the last two numbers in the sequence (since one is an upper bound, and the other is a lower bound, to the value of Pi, the actual value must be somewhere about halfway). After 20,000 iterations, I narrowed Pi down to 3.1415926. Good enough for government work!

Finally, we come to Philip Jose Farmer's Open to me, my sister. Lane, the lone surviving astronaut of a five-man expedition to Mars discovers a wildly alien symbiotic biology. This beautifully described, but somewhat simplistic, set of species is responsible for the life-giving canals of Mars, which are actually biologically constructed water transport tubes.

Stranger still is Martia, also a lone survivor, but from a different solar system, who shelters Lane after he nearly drowns in one of Mars' natural hydroponic pools. Tantalizingly humanoid but repulsively alien, she and Lane enjoy a budding friendship and attraction over 25 fascinating, well-written pages. Near the end, Lane discovers how Martia's race breeds—an exchange of an internally carried worm-like parasite.

Whereupon, revolted by his attraction to a female with such a shocking sex life, Lane goes beserk, binds Martia, and kills her parasite. Lane is, soon after, captured by some of Martia's people, who plan to rehabilitate him (to Lane's horror).

It was such an unnecessarily violent end to such a beautiful story. Moreover, it was implausible. Early on, Farmer took great pains to describe Lane as a fellow in touch with his "feminine" side, able to bend ideologically without breaking. And yet, by the end, Lane cannot suffer this threat to his machismo. He cannot love/lust after an alien whose reproduction is, to him, so distasteful.

I get what Farmer is trying to do here, but I don't like it.

Which raises another question: What's worse? Consistent mediocrity, or the promise of greatness capped by a disappointing ending? Both the story and the issue fall into the latter category.

Ah well. There's still one more magazine to go.


Cover by Mel Hunter

P.S. I have exciting news! Very soon, the format of this column will change, and all of you lovely readers can get automatic notification (via instant telegraphic message) whenever a new piece is published.

P.P.S. I have found a kindred spirit, though his focus is both more scattershot chronologically and focused topically: Science Fiction Ruminations

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TV

[April 11, 1960] A Steady Flame (Twilight Zone wrap-up)

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Some shows start with a bang and quickly lose their spark; some are a slow burn, taking a while to find their stride; The Twilight Zone has remained a class act from the beginning.

As of Friday, April 8, 1960, there have been 27 episodes.  They have ranged in quality from fair to outstanding, and the current crop of four (I like to review them in monthly batches) comprises superior installments.

I think the success of the show can be attributed in large part to the high bar that creator and writer, Rod Serling, has set for its production.  This is a person who clearly knows his craft and seeks out like talents (Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, etc.) to draft screenplays.  Much of the credit must be doled out to the directors, cinematographers, and composer Jerry Goldsmith, to say nothing of the frequently excellent acting talent that CBS has managed to contract.

So much for the general praise.  On to the reviews!

Long Live Walter Jameson sets the standard for this batch.  The eponymous Professor Jameson is a brilliant history teacher with a knack for vivid anecdotes.  It's almost as if Jameson has lived through each of the periods and settings he describes, which is, of course, the case.

This is a thoughtful, fascinating piece that describes the blessing and curse that is immortality.  It's hardly the first, of course.  The one I remember most vividly is The Gnarly Man, by L. Sprague de Camp, but it is always a worthy topic.  In a piece I wrote many years ago, I once put these words into the mouth of a 5000 year old man:

"Imagine being in library with every book you ever want to read, and all the time in the world in which to do so.  And you read them… and you still have all the time in the world."

The following week, People Are Alike All Over.  Two astronauts, a rock-chinned type and a frightened intellectual, go to Mars where they find a remarkably human populace.  But why does the fine house crafted for the scientist (the hero-type having died soon after landing) have no windows or doors? 

I'll spoil it for you.  Roddy McDowell (the panicky scientist's actor) has been turned into a zoo specimen, relegated to live out the rest of his life as an exhibit in his "native habitat."  I get the message, but I still think it was a weak story idea.

Execution is another time travel fish-out-of-water story, but unlike The Last Flight, the voyager is a thoroughly unlikable chap.  Snatched from the hangman's noose in 1880, the murderous viewpoint character finds himself in 1960, the guest of a dapper chronologist (is that what you call a time travel expert?) The criminal remains true to type, killing and looting, being driven close to madness by the ever-present 20th century cacophony.  The ending comes as a surprise, for the most part. 

An interesting point—time travelers often are inordinately worried about changing the past, but no one gives a thought to changing the future.  After all, the present is really just someone else's past, and any gross modification of the present (say, sending one of its inhabitants permanently into the past) must to a resident of the future, make a severe alteration to the timeline.  Food for thought.

Finally, we have The Big Tall Wish, the first episode to date that features a black protagonist (and several black supporting actors).  An over-the-hill boxer tries to win a come-back fight with the help of the wishes of a little boy. 

The episode doesn't feature the madness or the weirdness of its predecessors.  Rather, it is a slow, wordy piece.  My daughter particularly enjoyed the heart-warming relationship between the boxer and his child friend.  That said, the twist (there's always a twist on this show) is very effective, and we are left with this conundrum: is a fight won with magic preferable to one honestly lost? 

That's the wrap-up for this month.  I'll be back in two days with this month's F&SF!

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Book

[April 7, 1960] Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair (The Haunted Stars)

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From the stars comes a warning… and a challenge.

Time permitting, I like to read a new science fiction book at least once a month.  The digests are reliable sources of good stuff, but there is only so far a writer can develop an idea in the space of a novella or short story.  Sure, there are occasionally serials in the magazines, but then one has to wait three months to see how they turn out. 

There were three science fiction books released last month, so far as I can tell.  One was a collection of Murray Leinster stories called The Aliens.  I understand its best story is the eponymous lead novella, which I reviewed earlier.  Louis Charbonneau released a science fiction horror called Corpus Earthling that I haven't had a chance to pick up.

And then there was The Haunted Stars, by Edmond Hamilton.  Hamilton is a bit of an elder statesman when it comes to science fiction.  He wrote for the pulps as far back as the 20s, and his writing is stylistically rather archaic. 

An example from Stars:

"Fairlie looked up at the sky as he followed Hill.  Orion strode mightily toward the zenith, followed by the upward-leaping stars of Canis Major, and all the heavens were sown with constellations that wavered wind-bright.  He remembered what Christensen had said, that both long-ago enemies had conquered interstellar space, not just interplanetary."

Not that this is a bad thing.  I grew up on Burroughs and Howard and Lovecraft, and I can go for some purple prose every so often.

His latest novel stars urbanite linguist, Robert Fairlie.  When alien artifacts are found in 30,000 year old ruins on the Moon (in 1965—Hamilton is an optimist), Fairlie is tapped as part of a deciphering team.  The alien language is translated with remarkable speed after Fairlie, on a whim, uses Sumerian as a guide.  It turns out that the aliens are completely human, and it is likely that terrestrial humanity are the race's descendants.

Along with this discovery comes a chilling revelation: the aliens did not abandon the stars willingly.  Rather, some other faction wiped out their star empire to a planet, and then admonished them never to attempt star travel again.

Well, who can resist a challenge like that?  Thus, our government works feverishly to develop a starship using alien technology for a mission to the alien's home star of Altair. 

Stars is actually quite reminiscent of Raymond Jones' book, The Aliens.  My favorite part of both tales is the linguistic challenge in the beginning.  One of my very favorite stories, H. Beam Piper's Omnilingual, is only about the translation of an alien tongue.  A similar nonfiction example is presented in C.W. Ceram's recent book, The Secret of the Hittites.

I suppose most readers will not be sated by long discussions of phonology and vowel shift, however.  Hamilton does deliver the literary goods in a punchy, articulate fashion.  While the plot is paint-by-numbers and the characters largely forgettable, there are some masterful touches that make the book worthy reading.

Hamilton takes the time to convey everyday feelings: cold, boredom, fatigue.  These mundane bits are often foregone.  There is a particularly good, almost stream-of-consciousness, passage through most of Chapter 11 as a trepidatious Fairlie packs for his star trek to Altair.  The descriptions of an alien world, superficially similar to Earth but subtly wrong are well done.

There is interesting technology, too.  At one point the scientists all marvel at these little alien recording spheres.  They don't utilize analog magnetic patterns (as one sees in wire and tape recorders) but rather some kind of etched information, perhaps digital, read with some kind of narrow beam.  I've never seen this concept before; it's very exciting yet plausible.

All in all, I rate the book a solid 3 stars out of 5.  It's not literature for the ages, but it is competent and fun stuff.  Pick it up while it's in the bookstores, and send me a letter telling me what you think.  I'll post it in this column, of course.

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Magazine/Anthology

[March 31, 1960] What goes up… (May 1960 Astounding)

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Every science fiction digest has a flavor.  Part of it is due to the whimsy of the editor, part of it is the niche the magazine is trying to fill, and part of it is luck of the draw.

Astounding can be summed up in just a few words: psionic, smug, workmanlike, crackpot, inbred.

Not necessarily in that order.

You see, every editor has an agenda.  For F&SF's Tony Boucher, and his successor, Paul Mills, it's to have as literary a magazine as possible.  For Galaxy and IF's H. L. Gold, it's to present solid science fiction without resorting to hackneyed clichés of the pulp era.

For Astounding's John Campbell, the motivation might once have been to mentor young writers so that they could create the best science fiction of the day.  Certainly, Campbell's magazine pioneered the field in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s.  But these days, Campbell seems determined to be the strongest champion of psychic phenomena and other silliness. 

For instance: perpetual motion.  Campbell promises to fully educate us on the "Dean Drive" next month, a flop of a device (so I understand) that supposedly turns rotational energy into linear energy for propulsion purposes. 

For instance: psychic paper.  The "Heironymous Machine," a meaningless circuit that is just as effective (so its creator and defenders claim) whether it be made out of electronic components or simply drawn on a sheet.

For instance: virtually every story that appears in Astounding must feature psychic powers and/or some reference to one of Campbell's pet projects.

It reminds me of how Fantastic Universe catered to the UFO crowd during its sunset years, much good it did them. 

The result of this editorial policy, and the over-reliance on just a few of the field's less exceptional authors, is a magazine that usually ranks lowest of the Big Three (combining Galaxy and IF).  Last month was a striking exception to this rule.  This month, we may not be so lucky.

The May 1960 Astounding only has five pieces apart from the second part of the "Mark Phillips" serial, Out like a Light.  I won't review the serial until its completion next month.

Astounding perennial Randall Garrett contributes the lead novella, the promising but ultimately flawed Damned if you Don't.  In 1981, an enterprising scientist develops a perfect, tiny energy source that threatens to throw the entire planet's economy into chaos.  Everyone is out to stop him, from the power company to the government.  The first half is pleasant reading, with some reasonably good characterization and suspense as to who's actually after the powerful "Converter" machines.  There's another nod to Murray Leinster by name.  At one point, there is a description of a computer small enough to have been knocked over by a single person, which is an interesting extrapolation of miniaturization trends.

But then the story gets talky.  There is a meaningless aside describing a lukewarm Middle Eastern and European war in the late '60s that leads to a clamp down on private scientific investigations.  It is meaningless not only for its implausibility but also for the fact that it doesn't really have any bearing on the story.  Then there are pages of discussion on how release of the device will destroy the world as we know it.  These are capped off with the realization that the device has been stolen, and it's all a moot point.  So much for that story.

Then we have John Cory's three-pager Egocentric Orbit.  Twice before, astronauts have been launched into space and refused to come down.  In this story, following the third orbital astronaut, we find out why. 

Laurence Janifer, one half of the pair that is Mark Phillips (the other being Randall Garrett) has a decent story under the pseudonym "Larry M. Harris."  It's a period piece set in 1605 called Wizard, and it involves a brotherhood of telepaths attempting to thwart the inquisition, which threatens to wipe their breed from the Earth.

The final fiction entry is Mack Reynold's pedestrian Revolution, which entertains a number of ridiculous propositions.  Item: the Soviet Union will surpass the United States in production in just seven years.  Item: a revolution is easy to incite so long as you throw lots of money at the problem.  Item: if you think the USSR is productive now, wait until bright-eyed Syndicalist Technocrats take over!

Much like Garrett's opening story, the latter half is composed mostly of speeches justifying the plot line, and the ending features the revolution's catalyst, a western agent, suggesting that the revolution be aborted lest the USSR someday truly trounce the West.  Pretty bad stuff.

On the other hand, Dr. Asimov is back with a nice long piece (The March of the Phyla) on the various animal groups and the successive adaptations that allowed them to increasingly become masters of their environment rather passive creatures vulnerable to the caprice of Mother Nature.  It's a bit teleological in its presentation, but quite informative. 

I just have to wonder when Asimov will supplant Ley at Galaxy and monopolize all of the digests.  Nice racket if you can get it…

So, there you have it.  A magazine largely written by just two authors (Garrett and Janifer), suffused with smugness, even the non-fiction, featuring psionics and super-inventions, none of it terribly well-written.  Campbell's got to find some new blood, or Astounding is going to founder, I fear.  Perhaps Harry Harrison offers some hope—his Deathworld was the overwhelming favorite of the fans, per the Analytical Laboratory (the magazine's reader survey) for January and February.  More like that would help.

There's an exciting launch coming tomorrow.  If it's successful, I'll see you on the 2nd with an update on… TIROS.

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Magazine/Anthology

[March 26, 1960] Among the Best (April 1960 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction regularly beats out the other regular digests in terms of consistent quality.  This month's, April 1960, is no exception.

There's a lot to cover, so let's dive right in:

Daniel Keyes, who wrote the superb Flowers for Algernon, has returned with the issue's lead novelette, Crazy Maro.  Our viewpoint character is an attorney who has been contracted by unseen agents from the future to secure psychically adept (and invariably disadvantaged) children for work in a later time.  The fellow meets his match, however, when he is asked to recruit the titular Maro, a young black man with an uncanny talent for reading the emotions of others.  Much of the novelette is a mystery story, with the lawyer trying to puzzle out the root of Maro's power.  It's a powerful piece, assuredly, though the very end is unnecessarily melodramatic.

Another serious piece is The Hairy Thunderer by "Levi Crow" (Manly Wade Wellman in disguise).  The writing is deceptively simplistic, describing the arrival of a hairy pale foreigner to the lands of an American Indian tribe.  The European commences to ensnare the tribe with his boom stick and, more effectively and terribly, his firewater.  A young man of the tribe, Lone Arrow, is able to resist him with the magical assistance of a certain eight-legged class of arthropods.

The moral of the story, that one should be kind to spiders for they are misunderstood but fundamentally good creatures, is one that resonates strongly.  I'm always hoping that, when I die, the Spider Gods will look favorably upon me for the compassion and mercy I have shown Their Kind.

G.C. Edmondson's forgettable short story, Ringer features a fellow who is replaced by a robotic doppelganger.  The twist is that the viewpoint is always that character, whether in human or android form.

The incomparable Edgar Pangborn brings us The Wrens in Grampa's Bears, in which "Grampa," the narrator's Great Grandfather, hosts a brood of beneficient angels within his long beard.  Their existence is only hinted at, and the story is mostly a mood piece capturing the sunset of an old man's life in the Summer of '58, a man whose memories encompass both Gettysburg and satellites.  Yet, the theme of the tale is not how much things have changed, but how they stay essentially the same. 

A Certain Room, a short by Ken Kusenberg, translated from German by Therese Pol, is a silly, archaic piece.  What happens when you fiddle with the objects in a room that have a causal connection to bigger, worldwide events?  Not much good.

George Elliott has the issue's second novelette, the fantasy-less, science-fiction-less, but nevertheless compelling Among the Dangs.  It is a mock account of an anthropologist's sojourn amongst the fictional Dang tribe of Ecuador.  Enlisted for his talent for mimicry and his dark skin, the protagonist spends years living with the Dang, learning their customs and even taking a wife, so that he can become one of their high prophets.  His initial motivation is to compose a thesis for an advanced degree.  But so complete is his indoctrination that it is only through a titanic force of will that he breaks free, and the experience forever marks him. 

The piece originally appeared a couple of years back in Esquire, and it is a strange story to find within the covers of F&SF.  On the other hand, while the content is neither science fictional nor fantastic, there is a certain flavor to it that allows it to fit nicely in the middle of this issue.  I'm not complaining for its inclusion.

I'm not sure what to do with Rosel George Brown.  I really want to like her, but she has this tendency toward first-person pieces featuring scatterbrained housewives.  Their situations are tediously conventional and exhaustingly frenetic.  I have to wonder if the stories aren't semi-autobiographical.  A Little Human Contact continues in this vein, and while it's not horrible, it is still not the masterpiece I know Brown is capable of.  Of course, I may be looking in the wrong place–Amazing and Fantastic are still around, and I understand she's due to be published there soon. 

Isaac Asimov has an excellent non-fiction piece this month, It's About Time, describing the evolution and fundamental incompatibility of our various calendar systems.  The conclusion: trust the astronomers and go with Julian dating.

I won't spoil Joseph Whitehill's In the House, Another since it's a one-trick pony.  Cute, though.

Rounding out the issue is Gordy Dickson's latest novelette, The Game of Five.  It is strangely reminiscent of his earlier The Man in the Mailbag, but it's not as good.  Both stories involve a man infiltrating an alien culture to rescue a captured woman.  In both stories, it quickly turns out that the situations are more complex than they seem at first blush.  In both stories, the "captured" woman turns out to be an agent of some kind.

But though Five is competently written, the Hercule Poirot moment, that bit at the end where the hero explains the mystery, is not supported strongly enough by clues in the narrative.  The world is also not as interesting as the one depicted in Mailbag.  Unlike the former title, I don't this one will get nominated for any Hugos.  Not that it's bad, mind you—just not up to the bar Dickson has set for himself.

That's it for April 1960.  I have a whole new crop of magazines and books to review for next month.  I also have far more time to devote to the column now that I am between day jobs.  Cry not for me—it was a decision long coming and well worth it. 

In the meantime, before we get onto things fictional, I have some scientific news with exciting science fiction ramifications…

…but you'll just have to wait two days for it!

—




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Magazine/Anthology

[March 21, 1960] Conservation of Quality (April 1960 Astounding)

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I believe I may have discovered a new physical law: The Conservation of Quality.

Last year, Galaxy editor Horace Gold decided to slash writer pay in half.  The effect was not immediately apparent, which makes sense since there was likely a backlog of quality stuff in the larder.  But the last issue of Galaxy was decidedly sub-par, and I fear Gold's policy may be bearing bitter fruit.

On the other hand, Astounding (soon to be Analog) editor John Campbell has been trying to reinvent his magazine, and this latest issue, dated April 1960, is better than I've seen in a long time.  To be sure, none of the stories are classics for the ages, but they are all readable and enjoyable.


by Kelly Freas

Randall Garrett still pens a good quarter of the magazine, and you know how I feel about him, but he's not bad this month.  For the lead serial, Out Like a Light, Garrett teams up again with Laurence Janifer under the pseuonym "Mark Phillips" in a sequel to That Sweet Little Old Lady.  FBI Agent Malone and Garrett look-a-like Agent Boyd investigate a series of Cadillac heists only to discover a ring of teleporting juvenile delinquents.  I had expected the story to drag, and it is occasionally too cute for its own good, but I found myself enjoying it.  We'll see if they can keep up the interest through two more installments.

Next up is the enjoyable short story, The Ambulance Made Two Trips by ultra-veteran Murray Leinster.  Mob shake-down artist meets his match when he tangles with a psionically gifted laundromat owner who can alter probability to make violence impossible—with highly destructive results!  It's a fun bit of wish fulfillment even if it (again) stars the Heironymous device, that silly psychic contraption made out of construction paper and elementary electronics.  I'm not sure whether Campbell inserts references to them after editing or if authors incorporate them to ensure publication.

Harry Harrison is back with another "Stainless Steel Rat" story featuring Slippery Jim diGriz (the first having appeared in the August 1957 Astounding).  My nephew, David, had rave reviews for The Misplaced Battleship, in which con man turned secret agent tracks down the construction and theft of the galaxy's biggest capital ship.  I liked it, too: stories with lots of interstellar travel get extra points from me, and Harrison is a good writer.  Not as compelling as Deathworld, but then, that was a tour de force.


by John SchoenHerr

Wedged in the middle of Harrison's tale, on the slick-paged portion of the magazine, rocketteer G. Harry Stine has an entertaining plug for model rocketry.  It is a hobby that has grown from a dangerous homebrew affair to a full-fledged pastime.  Safe miniature engines are now commonplace, and launches can be conducted in perfect safety—provided one observes all the rules.  Stine prophetically notes that the first person to walk the sands of Mars is already alive and in high school, and he (of course, he) probably cut his engineering teeth on model rockets.  Maybe so.

The story published under Randall Garrett's name is The Measure of a Man, and it's surprisingly decent.  The lone survivor in a wrecked Terran battleship must find a way to get the hulk back to Earth in time to warn humanity of an alien superweapon before it is used.  Again, I like stories with lots of planets and spaceships.  I also liked the direct reference to Leinster's The Aliens, a really great story.

Finally, we have Rick Raphael's sophomore effort, Make Mine Homogenized, a surprisingly good story about a tough old rancher, a cow that starts producing high octane milk, and hens that lay bomb-fuse eggs.  The first half is the superior one, in which the rancher discovers that her (yes her!) "milk" is highly combustible and that, when mixed with the fuse eggs, creates an explosion that puts Oppenheimer's work to shame.  The second half, when the AEC gets involved, is still good, but it digresses and becomes more detached.  I really enjoyed the intimacy of the beginning.  I'm a sucker for accurately detailed farm stories, having grown up on a farm. 


by Kelly Freas

So, there you have it.  A perfectly solid Astounding from cover to cover.  Who'da thunkit?

Happy Spring everyone!

—




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Magazine/Anthology

[March 9, 1960] First shoe of the month (April 1960 Galaxy, 1st half)

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Good old Galaxy magazine.  Dependable, occasionally brilliant, very thick.

So thick, that I traditionally break down my review of each bi-month's issue into two articles, and who am I to buck tradition?  Without further ado, the April 1960 Galaxy.

First up is Earl Goodale's Success Story, a surprisingly entertaining satire on an interstellar soldier's life and career.  It's sort of a cynical answer to Heinlein's Starship Troopers.  I don't know much about Mr. Goodale—this is only his second story, as far as I can tell.

Clifford Simak must have a number of expensive bills to pay, for he's published quite a number of stories this year already.  His latest, Condition of Employment, about a down-on-his luck engineer who is desperate to make one last flight home to Mars, is not as good as All the Traps of Earth, but better than The Gleaners, both of which came out last month (in F&SF and IF, respectively).  I particularly liked the disdain which the story's protagonist felt for the ominpresent, oppressive greenery of Earth.  I feel some empathy—I grew up in the desert, and I find an unbridled environment of foliage (and its attendant insect populations) unsettling rather than attractive.

The Nuse Man is back, compliments of author Margaret St. Clair.  The Airy Servitor, about a thought-activated invisible butler much akin to Aladdin's genie, is a lot of fun.  My favorite line: "Bert and Franny wore expressions suitable to persons who have just seen a dining room explode."  Beware itinerant salesmen from the future bearing gifts they don't understand.

When I saw Cordwainer Smith's name on the cover, I became quite excited.  After all, his No, no, not Rogov was a tour de force.  The Lady Who Sailed the Soul has the trappings of a good story, it has the subject of a good story, but somehow it fails to be a good story.  This tale of the first and only relativistic interstellar spaceship pilot is overwrought and somehow anti-feminist despite having feminist protagonists.  Perhaps because they are such caricatures.  I also dislike stories where women are motivated solely by love for their man.


by DILLON

Finally, we have James Stamers' Solid State, a dull tale of crystalline teleportation (as in using enlarged crystal lattices as vessels for instant transit) that I barely remembered even just after reading.  They can't all be winners, I suppose.

That's it for this batch.  See you when the other shoe drops!

—

Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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