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[January 4, 1969] Not following through (February 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

The misrule of law

You may recall that Brazil underwent a military coup back in the spring of 1964. The reasons were the usual ones, and the U.S. response can be characterized, at best, as “turning a blind eye,” because then-president João Goulart (popularly known as Jango) was leaning a little too far to the left. The military junta which has ruled Brazil since prefers to call it a revolution, not a coup, but whatever you call it, the result is the same.

Seeking to give themselves more legitimacy, the military instituted a two-party system in 1966. The National Renewal Alliance (ARENA) officially represents the military dictatorship, while the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) gets to make speeches against and vote no on things that are going to happen anyway. That way, the legislature doesn’t look like the rubber stamp it is.

Or was. Unrest has been growing, particularly among the young. Arbitrary arrests and the torture of politcal prisoners has been ongoing. In March, a teenager who was leading a protest against rising food prices was shot point-blank by military police. This murder sparked further unrest, to the point that officials felt they had no choice but to allow a large protest march, hoping it would let the students blow off steam. The March of the One Hundred Thousand in June saw little violence, as the protestors demanded an end to the military government.

The March of the One Hundred Thousand. The banner reads “Down with dictatorship. People in power.”

Enter Márcio Moreira Alves. He started out as a journalist and opposed the Goulart government. After initially supporting the coup, he soon began to oppose it as well, with his primary cause being an end to the torture of political prisoners. He was elected as a Federal Deputy in 1966 and has continued his fight. In September, he called for a boycott of Brazil’s Independence Day celebrations on September 7th, and urged young women not to dance with military officers (or perhaps not date them, I have seen both mentioned in reports).

That was too much. The Justice Department asked the legislature to lift Alves’s immunity so that he could be tried for treason.  On December 12th, a joint session of the Federal Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate resoundingly refused to do so with a vote of 216-141.

Márcio Moreira Alves delivering the speech that got him into trouble.

The very next day, President Arturo da Costa e Silva issued Institutional Act Number 5. This act, which is not subject to judicial review or legislative oversight, allows the president to rule by decree, eliminates habeas corpus for political crimes, establishes censorship, and lets the government suspend any public servant who is found to be subversive or uncooperative, along with a number of other heavy-handed measures. Costa e Silva ordered hundreds of arrests of government critics the very next day.

There is strong opposition even within ARENA, the party founded to support the junta. Whether this is merely a crackdown or the beginning of cracks in the foundation of the dictatorship remains to be seen.

Passing judgment

If last month’s issue was about forgetting, this month’s IF is about the law and judgment. There’s something else that ties almost all the fiction here together, but we’ll get to that at the end.

Time travelers on their way to meet their ancestor. Art by Vaughn Bodé

The “Hoax” Story, by H.L. Gold

Former editor H.L. Gold offers a guest editorial on the two threads in science fiction that have dominated since the days of Verne and Wells. Today we might call them hard science fiction and speculative fiction, though Gold doesn’t use those terms. It’s interesting, but rather muddled. Gold’s definition of what constitutes a hoax seems ridiculously broad and not connected to his theme.

Three stars.

Beside the Walking Mountain, by Burt Filer

After being cashiered out of the GS (never explained, but probably something like Galactic Service), Hatch bought the planet where he ruined the careers of his superior and himself, hoping to right some of the wrongs they committed. Now that superior has returned to finish what he started and get revenge on Hatch. And he has the law on his side.

In desperation, Hatch tries to get his barge over the moving mountain. Art by Brock

Filer has been an inconsistent author, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Here, he demonstrates the full range of his quality in one story. He’s created an interesting, if implausible, planet, with a mountain that follows the terminator during the 14-month day. The conflict is solid, though the antagonist may be a little overdone. But the resolution falls flat on its face. Largely because eminent domain doesn’t work the way the author thinks it does. In fact, the precedent cited in the story invalidates the ending.

Good and bad average out to three stars.

Praiseworthy Saur, by Harry Harrison

A boy is taking home an interesting lizard he’s caught. His walk is interrupted by a group of time-traveling lizardoids descended from his new pet. They want him to let their ancestor go, so she can lay her eggs safely.

A tight little story with a sting in its tail. Harrison packs a lot into a very small space and does so with skill. The boy is also a believable and skeptical modern boy, which is a nice touch. Is that enough to get it to four stars? For me, it falls just short.

A very high three stars.

At Bay with Baycon, by Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch reports on last year’s Worldcon in Oakland. After a rocky start and the requisite namedropping, he settles in to a fair report, though a lot of the humor is forced. Of course, the Journey covered Baycon several months ago, and we had pictures.

Three stars.

How many of these folks can you identify? Art by Gaughan

The Defendant Earth, by Andrew J. Offutt

It turns out that Mars, Venus, and a few other places in the solar system actually are habitable and are joined in an interplanetary union of sorts. Now, they’d like to give Earth the chance to join, but there’s one problem. The Martians are unhappy with the way they have been depicted in science fiction, going all the way back to Wells. It falls to Ohio lawyer Joe Blair to negotiate a solution.

Offutt is another author who’s been very uneven, but he does a good job here. The story is enough fun that I can overlook the lack of explanation for why the job fell to the protagonist and the reliance on a somewhat tired cliché for the resolution. It’s not a deep tale, but it is enjoyable.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, Lester del Rey has been reading The Biological Time Bomb by Gordon Rattray Taylor, which looks at all the recent advances in the biological sciences, what scientists are working on and advances they expect to see in the not too distant future. Organ transplants, cloning, sex selection of children, tinkering with DNA (both intentionally and unintentionally), artificial life. There’s a lot coming down the road that society, politics, and the law are going to have to deal with. Hopefully, science fiction will have plotted a safe path forward by the time these changes hit us.

Three stars.

Trial by Fire, by James E. Gunn

John Wilson is in something resembling a fugue state, unsure of anything, even his own name. His consciousness drifts between two worlds. In one, he’s on trial for arson and murder, though he has apparently been framed by an anti-science political party which is using him to further their agenda. In the other, he works as a witch doctor in a fractured United States, secretly using science to help the superstitious peasants. There he has been arrested by the secret police for witchcraft.

This isn’t happening in the world you might expect. Art by Gaughan

This rumination on anti-science and anti-intellectual attitudes is a sequel to a much older story (“Witches Must Burn,” Astounding, August 1956), but having read that isn’t necessary. Most of it is summarized by the prosecution in Wilson’s trial. Either way, it’s not very good. The drift between the worlds is interesting at first, but having the viewpoint character addled and unsure of what’s going on around him wears out its welcome quickly. Gunn still managed to keep my interest most of the way, but then we get several pages of philosophical rambling about science and the duty of scientists, followed by a climax that’s difficult to believe. Even less believable is the suggested connection between the two worlds Wilson inhabits. And all that in about twice the length the story needed.

A high two stars.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Harry Harrison

In what appears to be a new feature, we have another interview transcribed directly from tape and again without the questions. This month, as you can tell from the title: Harry Harrison. This was a little more interesting than last month’s interview with Roger Zelazny, but then Harrison is a dozen years older and has spent time living in Europe. The highlight for me was him talking about his transition from comic book writer and inker to SF author.

Three stars.

A caricature, but recognizably Harry. Art by Rudy Cristiano

The Fire Egg, by Roger F. Burlingame

This month’s new author is a 38-year-old minister and former Fulbright scholar who wrote his story—which begins with a peasant finding the titular fire egg—as an assignment in the Famous Writer’s School. It’s well-written, as you might expect from the author’s background. Unfortunately, it’s also obvious and superficial. The sting at the end feels more sarcastic and nasty than ironic and deep.

A high two stars.

Six Gates to Limbo (Part 2 of 2), by J.T. McIntosh

In part 1 of this story, a man and two women found themselves in a pleasant but sealed off region with six portals leading away.  The man knows nothing, one woman a little, and the other more than she’s saying. As the first installment ended, Rex and Regina had run into trouble while exploring one of the worlds beyond the gateways. In this part, the explorations continue, and many questions are answered, with some surprising revelations. Finally, the trio must make a momentous decision.

Rex and Venus discover an empty world. Art by Gaughan

Last month, I feared that McIntosh didn’t have enough room to explore all six worlds. The final three are given very short shrift, with each character exploring one alone and merely reporting on what they found. Everything is rushed, the reason behind the sense of ennui and doom afflicting all of humanity made little sense to me, and the solution was far too extreme. A weak finish to a promising start.

A low three stars for this installment, but still three stars for the novel as a whole.

Summing up

In baseball, they tell batters to swing through the ball, not at it. The same goes for golf and probably every other sport that involves hitting one thing with another. It’s the follow-through that makes the difference, and that’s what is missing from all the stories in this issue except for Harrison and Offutt. The rest feel like the author simply rushed to get the story over and offers no sense of what, if anything, might come after. Gunn hints at it, but I don’t see how he gets from the end to what he tells us is coming. (Admittedly, I was bored and rushing to get it over with myself by that point.) The result is another C- issue with no standout stories. IF deserves better.

Another Hugo winners issue. Dare we hope?




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 26, 1968] Comfort OK? Looking Forward, Not Backwards New Worlds, January 1969

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again.

A recent comment from our leader here at Galactic Journey caused me to pause for thought. As he summed up the year in science fiction, it struck me that we are about to end one year (not that un-obvious, admittedly) and about to begin the last year of the decade, in what must be one of the most significant decades in recent human history.

Personally, the near-end of the decade seems to have crept up on me, but I can’t deny that it has certainly been eventful. Who knows, judging by all the recent activity (e.g. the Apollo missions!) we could be seeing people on the Moon in the next couple of years. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Anyway, I digress. My point is that I was suddenly made aware of how much things have changed in the last decade.

Which in a roundabout way brings me to the many changes involving New Worlds in the last few years. The New Worlds of 1968-69 is a very different beast from that of ten years ago. Some will say ‘better’ – more intelligent, more literary, more complex, more adult in nature – whilst others will say ‘worse’ – perhaps summarised as “Where’s my Science Fiction?”

After reading Gideon’s final article of November, I wrote him a letter, noting:

“More seriously, despite my personal grumblings, New Worlds is miles ahead of what the magazine used to be, even if its science-fictional content varies enormously. Much more inner space than outer space these days.

And there’s a whole debate over whether we can count it as an SF magazine any more – many of its older readers think not! – but it is noticeably different to pretty much anything else out there at the moment. I do hope that New Worlds can keep going next year, although it's not entirely certain.

That applies not just to the US but to Britain as well, of course – there is no other magazine to compare it to, as all the others have been cancelled!"

This year exemplified that range of content. In the last issue alone we had, on one hand, the stunning Samuel R. Delany story, Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones, which I am still thinking about, and on the other a story about a man repeatedly raping a paralysed patient and making her pregnant. Talk about eclectic….

Cover by Gabi Nasemann

Anyway, this month’s issue feels like the return of the old guard. Although the cover is in the new format started last month – a strangely coloured but generic photo of two heads, text from one of the main stories within – the roster of authors is mainly the usual. Even these stories are mostly connected to previously published stories… more later.

Lead In by The Publishers

More about the contributors this month: Ballard, Disch, Langdon Jones. They also sneak in an apology for the contents of this issue being different to what was expected due to the Post Office delivering the manuscripts too late for publication. Hmm.

The Tank Trapeze by Michael Moorcock

Last month the magazine declared that Mike Moorcock’s character Jerry Cornelius would continue in future issues by stories written by others, starting with James Sallis’s Jeremiad.

For whatever reason this hasn’t happened, and so we get a story from Jerry’s originator instead, the sixth by my reckoning. And we’re straight into contemporary issues, with assassin-for-hire Jerry being in Czechoslovakia whilst the Russians take over the country. Jerry plays cricket whilst Dubrovnik burns, seduces (or is seduced) by a woman and executes a young boy-monk, who may or may not be important. Memorable, shocking, surreal – a typical Jerry Cornelius story. 4 out of 5.

Anxietal Register B by John T. Sladek

Back in the April 1968 issue Sladek wrote New Forms, an increasingly surreal fictious form. It was amusing and quite popular (I liked it.) As befits the current mood of this issue, if it works once, why not do it again?

This time it is about testing how anxious you are. Mundane responses are encouraged amongst shockingly provocative ones – “Have you ever suffered from: arthritis… rheumatism…homosexual tendencies” etc. It is still amusing, but its impact is diminished as the shock novelty value of the first time is less of a surprise second time. 3 out of 5.

Epilogue for an Office Picnic by Harvey Jacobs

A story in the form of a unrequited love letter between "Bald Mr. X from Data Processing" to "Sherill" – or  Sheril, or Sherrill – the writer isn't sure. An odd tale that's meant to be amusing. I just found it sad. 2 out of 5.

The Summer Cannibals by J. G. Ballard

Ah, J. G. “Chuckles” Ballard. Lots of imitators of late, none really of his ability. After the last few stories by him have underwhelmed me (see The Generations of America in the November 1968 issue), we’re back into a better story of Ballard’s usual observational descriptions of societal bleakness – sex, cars, money, belongings, the American lifestyle. (Anybody else notice how often Ballard’s characters are just walking?)

With its sections of different prose styles, photos and sheer oddness, this is a better piece of work than his last one, although I’m not quite sure about the strange juxtaposition of sex and car parts. (Really. Try reading the section entitled “Elements of an Orgasm”.)

As perplexing yet as iconic as ever, The Summer Cannibals is typical Ballard and therefore welcome, if only to be brought down by the point that this is like Ballard-things we’ve read before and – of course! – another extract of something that will soon be a novel. Does it matter? Echoing the tone of Ballard – not really. Appreciate the style, consider the content. 4 out of 5.

Spiderweb by John Clute

An author we’ve read before, back in the November 1966 issue, but has been very quiet since. This seems to fit the current New Worlds template – a surreal story of love, sex, race and graphic hallucinations, although mainly sex. Vivid imagery. Bug Jack Barron has a lot to answer for by setting a standard for this sort of thing. 3 out of 5.

Article: Sim One by Christopher Evans


The welcome return of Dr. Christopher Evans brings us an interesting article about how close we are to creating a life-like human robot. I think Asimov would be pleased at the progress, but I keep thinking about Philip K. Dick’s stories about simulacra and personally am a little horrified. 4 out of 5.

Hospital of Transplanted Hearts by D. M. Thomas

Erm.. poetry warning. If you’re a regular reader of my reviews, you know my general view on poetry. But perhaps you know more about it than I do, New Worlds reader.

Just to be clear – New Worlds editors really like D. M. Thomas. As in, REALLY like. Declaring the poet to be “without question, one of England’s very best poets” in the Lead In, they like this particular poem so much it is available as a poster, courtesy of Charles Platt.


Here, I’m less enthused. This was the ‘poet’ who wrote that awful Mind Rape poem back in the March issue, after all, but I try not to let that affect me.

Here the poem is like a pick and mix jumble of statements and phrases so you can make up your own as you skip through the Battleships-type grid. It is amusing, but less important than it would like to be. It is certainly not an event on the scale of the Second Coming of the Messiah that New Worlds seem to want to create. (How’s that for a Christmas reference?)

The thing about creative work such as poetry is that people often passionately agree or disagree about such things. This may be a case in point. Others may love it – me, less so. 3 out of 5.

Juan Fortune by Opal Nations

A story in deep homage to Ballard here – broken into sections, with lists of characters WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS like a play…and (of course!) all about sex. Seems pointless to me. (the prose, not sex!) 2 out of 5.

Ouspenski’s Astrabahn by Brian W, Aldiss

It hurts to write about this one. “The longest part of the Charteris series”, it says in the Lead In, about to be published as a book. As a series I have grown to actively dislike, I have little to say on this one. Yes, it’s clever, and as ever with Aldiss, well written. But at the same time, it’s an incomplete extract of a story that may make little sense if you haven’t read the previous parts and secondly, it degenerates (like some of the previous parts) into a variety of prose styles that I can only politely describe as stylistic gobbledygook.

Does the story, such as it is, make sense? Is it worth my time? In the end I didn’t care about the characters, the setting or the story.

Others will disagree, I’m sure – I’m just pleased that this, whatever it is, is finished, and I can move on (see also Bug Jack Barron earlier this year too.) 2 out of 5.

Book Reviews

J.G. Ballard reviews The Voices of Time by J. T. Frazer in a very Ballardian way, Langdon Jones reviews Silence by John Cage as if it was a questionnaire, John Brunner reviews four psychology books published by Allen Lane, whilst at the same time trying to persuade me that as a reader of science fiction I should read such books (I’m personally not too convinced), and William Barclay reviews Jack Trevor Story’s books, an author I only know because of Hitchcock’s film of his novel, The Trouble With Harry.

It is left to James Cawthorn to review some British science fiction books, although Thomas M. Disch reviews Quicksand by John Brunner. Joyce Churchill (who I believe is a pseudonym for M. John Harrison) briefly reviews a bunch of anthologies and John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. Langdon Jones also gives us the sad news of Mervyn Peake’s recent death, illustrating it with some of Peake’s drawings.

Summing Up

I think Moorcock and his team have been pushed to get an issue out this month. (Perhaps they’ve been Christmas shopping instead?) Whilst Langdon Jones has been away, his absence, not to mention the effect of Post Office delays, as mentioned in the Lead In appears to have led to what feels like an issue cobbled together from remainders from old established authors with nothing really new to say, just finishing off what has already been started.

I realise that some readers may see the issue as a comfort, as in the return of old friends, but to me, it is like a shop clearing the shelves of tired, old stock ready for the new year. The Ballard is entertaining, but even then just a variation on a previous theme. I’ve said on many previous occasions (even last month!) how much I’ve come to dislike Aldiss’s Charteris stories, and it doesn’t help that this conclusion fills up much of the issue. At least the Jerry Cornelius was good.

I know that there are readers that will love both the Ballard and the Aldiss and even D. M. Thomas’s ‘poem’, but not me, sadly. The standard has been raised so much in recent years that it is almost a given now that each issue of New Worlds will surprise, amuse, antagonise and annoy. For the first time in a long time, this issue for me has really let me down.

Really the only good thing I can say about the issue is that at least these series are finished, and as the new year begins, we can look at new material in the future – looking forward, not backward. Rather appropriate for the end of one year and the beginning of the next, I think.
On a more positive note, have a great Christmas, and I look forward to returning next year when (hopefully) I will be less grumpy. “Bah, Humbug!” and so forth.

I'm off to look at the Christmas Radio Times to cheer myself up and see what's worth watching and listening to (Morecambe and Wise?)

Until next time!



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[December 2, 1968] Forget It (January 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

Forget the future

It’s official. As if it weren’t already clear from the events in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia over the summer, the Soviet Union has now openly declared that no communist nation in the Soviet sphere of influence will be allowed to go its own way or engage in any sort of reforms not approved by Moscow. Addressing the Congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party on November 13th, Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev stated, “When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.” That’s the justification for military intervention wherever the U.S.S.R. feels like, especially within the Warsaw Pact. We all know who will get to decide if something is a move towards capitalism.

Leonid Brezhnev after addressing the Soviet Central Committee earlier this year.

The backlash has already begun. After years of strained relations, Albania formally withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in protest over the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Of course, they have Yugoslavia as a buffer state, and the close proximity of Greece and Italy probably also offer a deterrent. As we go to press, Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu has publicly condemned this new doctrine as a violation of the Warsaw Treaty. Only time will tell how this shakes out.

Forget the past

Forgetfulness seems to be the theme of this month’s IF. The issue is book-ended with stories featuring protagonists with amnesia, while two of the remaining three stories offer a man who doesn’t know his name and an entire year blotted from everybody’s memory.

Just some random art not associated with any of the stories. Art by Chaffee

Six Gates to Limbo (Part 1 of 2), by J.T. McIntosh

A man awakens naked in a field with no idea who he is or how he got there. It proves to be a pleasant place about 50 miles in circumference, surrounded by a dome of gray mist. He dubs the place Limbo. Set in the dome, about 20 feet above ground are six ovals that he believes to be portals. Eventually, he also finds a house with a well-stocked kitchen, a library full of books (printed on Earth, all before 3646), and three bedrooms, two of which have women’s clothes in them.

In the basement, he finds three coffins with windows set in the lids. One is empty and is labeled Rex, giving him a name. The second, labeled Regina, contains a very pretty woman, while the third holds a beautiful woman apparently named Venus. Regina comes to, already knowing her name and also with the ability to know where anything (and anyone) is.

After a time, Rex passes through one of the gateways. He discovers a huge city called Mercury, which is laden with a sense of doom that depresses all its inhabitants. On his return, Rex discovers a freezing sub-basement with clues that the gateways are portals to other planets. Regina deliberately triggers Venus’s awakening, and the three get along fairly well, without Venus interfering in the relationship between the other two.

As this installment ends, Rex and Regina pass through another portal and find themselves on a hot, desert planet. While investigating an immigration office, Rex blunders and the police – or worse – are summoned. To be concluded.

Rex investigates the first portal. Art by Jack Gaughan

McIntosh has given us an interesting set-up and an intriguing mystery, but I don’t see how he’s going to extract Rex and Regina from their current predicament and explore four more worlds in just one installment. I’m eager to see the rest of this. But one thing really stood out to me. Take note Robert Silverberg and many other authors, in and out of science fiction: McIntosh makes very clear to the reader that Regina is quite petite without once referring to her breasts or hips, nor is there anything describing her as childlike. He does describe her once as a girl in comparison to Venus, but Rex clearly views her as an adult. Similarly, we know that Venus is voluptuous without any reference to her secondary sexual characteristics.

A high three stars.

The Year Dot, by William F. Temple

Bart Cabot grew up an orphan in a small town. His fascination with the X-men in the next valley repeatedly gets him into trouble with the Sheriff. He’s also curious why the year 1978 is missing from all the records in the library, but nobody else seems to see a discrepancy. Finally, he pushes the Sheriff too far, and only intervention by one of the X-men saves his life. Bart learns a lot about what’s going on and has a choice to make.

Doesn’t look like any of the X-Men I know. Beast maybe? Art by Brock

The story’s well told, if nothing special. There’s a strong implication that what’s going on is global, but the focus of the story makes it feel entirely local. The missing year thing doesn’t make a lot of sense, either. And calling the aliens in the next valley X-men is just confusing to anyone with a passing knowledge of comic books.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, Lester del Rey looks at changes in agriculture. Sure, we have things like corn that produces large, uniform ears, strains of plants that grow in soil that was once unsuitable, and fertilizers to replenish exhausted fields. But do those fertilizers replenish minerals that occur in vanishingly small amounts; do the new strains take up those sorts of minerals, if the soils they now grow in even have them? Maybe that will affect taste (ask a vintner about how the tiniest variation can affect their product) or maybe the lack of those “unimportant” minerals will have unsuspected health effects. Lots to think about.

Three stars.

The Steel General, by Roger Zelazny

Zelazny picks up where Creatures of Light left off. Wakim, the servant of Anubis, desperate to find out who he once was, and the Prince Who Was A Thousand do battle in time. Eventually they are transported to another planet, where Horus, son of Osiris, comes also seeking to kill the Prince, as does the Steel General, who supports the Prince merely because he is the underdog.

Anubis doesn’t want Wakim to learn who he really is. Art by P. Reiber

Now Zelazny has me hooked. The intermediate material following Wakim leaving the House of the Dead that weakened the previous story might have fit better at the beginning here, but this works without that, too. Although the ending is something of a cliff-hanger, there’s enough here to make a complete tale, and it’s a doozy. Poetic, mythic, Zelazny at his best.

A high four stars.

Operation High Time, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Simes are an offshoot of humanity who must take life energy from normal humans, or Gens (short for Generators; Sime from symbiote maybe?). The process was once fatal, but the two groups have found ways to live together, with many restrictions on the Simes. Protagonist Farris is a Sime who has found a way to ease some of those restrictions. His lobbying in Washington leads to his strongest opponent in the Senate being kidnapped. Following a hunch, Farris is kidnapped as well.

Farris is imprisoned with his political nemesis. Art by Brand

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been complaining about badly-done exposition by authors who should know better. This month’s new author shows how to do it right. The exposition in this story comes in small, natural chunks, giving just enough for the story to make sense while hinting at much more. The rest of the story is also done quite well. This is probably the best IF First debut since Larry Niven.

A very high three stars.

In the Shield, by Dean R. Koontz

The latest from Dean Koontz starts off with an amnesiac man in a spaceship filled with weapons that have no maker’s marks on them. In short order he winds up with two unexpected companions and then follows post-hypnotic orders to go to one of the main worlds in the galaxy.

That was the look on my face at about this point in the story. Art by Reese

The story starts off fine, but quickly brings in two astronomically unlikely coincidences, and then goes completely off the rails, descending into a sophomoric attack on religion. Koontz keeps missing the mark, but he does aim high. Maybe he should aim a little lower until he has the chops to match his ambition.

Right on the line between two and three stars. I’ll be generous and give it the lowest three stars possible.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Roger Zelazny

Zelazny on himself, science fiction, writing and so on. According to the editor’s blurb this was transcribed directly from a recording of him answering questions (which we don’t get). Interesting and informative, if a bit shallow.

Three stars.

I wonder if he’s always this dapper. Art by Gaughan

Summing up

Yet another middle-of-the-road issue. I’m starting to come around on McIntosh, but he’s on probation until next month. Zelazny managed to pull me in, where I had been less interested, and we got a very impressive debut from an author I hope to see more of. But there are times when I feel like Galaxy gets all the choice stories, and IF is left with the dregs.

Can’t say anything here really excites me.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 26, 1968] Warhol, Delany, Cornelius and Perversity New Worlds, December 1968

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again.

Some degree of normality this month. Yes, I actually got a copy of the new New Worlds (and if you’ve been following the drama of the last few issues, you’ll know that the regular arrival of an issue is no longer a given.)

But is it any good? 

I thought that the last issue in November was a bit of an improvement, but as we’ve said before, that is no guarantee of the next issue being good – or even there being a next issue at all.

Nevertheless, I was hoping that this issue would at least match the previous.

Cover by Gabi Nasemann

Well, we can’t accuse editor Mike Moorcock and his team of resting on their laurels. The cover shows a new development straight away. We have what is rather expected – the generically meaningless picture of a young woman in strangely coloured tones – but then along the right-hand side we have the start of Brian Aldiss’ story …And the Stagnation of the Heart. I guess that this is an attempt to make you read more within.

Lead In by The Publishers

More about the contributors this month. Perhaps the most interesting thing here is that Bill Butler, poet and proprietor of The Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, has recently been arrested on obscenity laws.

Other than that, the usual descriptions of the authors and their work to date.

…And the Stagnation of the Heart by Brian W, Aldiss

Ah, the return of Brian Aldiss, with a story that (thank goodness) isn’t a Charteris story, that ongoing series of stories set in the Acid House Wars, but instead a continuation of an idea that Aldiss first began back in the March 1966 issue of Impulse (Remember that?) with The Circulation of the Blood. There Aldiss told of Clement Yale, a scientist who was involved in developing an immortality drug, which, unless there were accidents or murder, could extend human life to the point of near-immortality – for a price. The main consequences then as a result were that those who could afford the drug (mainly in Europe and North America) were developing a new social order. In "…And the Stagnation of the Heart" Yale and his wife go to India, where they see the other side of the coin.

In India and Pakistan, the immortality drug is banned, with appalling consequences. Yale discovers that Calcutta is a city overrun with people and has famine as a result. Yale basically sees the other side of the coin – what could happen in the world with uncontrolled population growth?

Brian does well to describe both the beauty and the squalor of a Third World country and examines what can happen if places are denied immortality. It also poses the question of whether it would be right for these people to have access to a drug which would make them near-immortal.

I’m not sure what the importance of shooting goats in the story means, other than to perhaps emphasise the difference in lifestyles between India and more developed countries.

Nevertheless, a thought-provoking story, tempered only by the fact that it feels incomplete.  4 out of 5.

The Apocalypse Machine by Leo Zorin

Zorin’s story is a satirical monologue, a speech detailing a new apocalypse machine to its prospective customers. In an understated way, this involves setting off a nuclear device in London’s Hyde Park and initiating earthquakes in various parts of the city. All die in the end. Interesting idea that is firmly anti-nuclear/anti-war, written in a satirical manner. 3 out of 5.

Article: Warhol Portraits, Still Lifes, Events by Andrew Lugg

A summary of the work to date of film-maker and artist, Andy Warhol. Fascinating – an article that had me applauding one minute and shaking my head in disbelief the next. Can’t say that Warhol’s a dull character, though. 4 out of 5.

The Delhi Division by Michael Moorcock

The welcome return of Mike Moorcock’s Avengers-like super-agent Jerry Cornelius! Jerry goes to India (see also Aldiss’s story set in India – coincidence?) to assassinate someone with the help of Mata-Hari-like Sabitha. The attempt fails and so different time streams dominate.

This is one where different time streams seem to be tangled—somewhere (or rather somewhen, perhaps) Cornelius has a child, others not. As a result, this one is less fun than previous stories as Jerry shows a much more melancholic side to his persona here.

Generally though, The Delhi Division is still deliberately provocative and occasionally scurrilous. I’m interested by the point that, as this month’s Lead In says, there will be more Jerry Cornelius but written by other people next month. I wonder where they will go. 4 out of 5.

The Colours by Thomas M. Disch

Or as you Americans will say, “The Colors”. This is a piece about the effect on Raymond and the people around him by a machine that shows colours to create moods. Really, it’s about the effect of drugs on a listless society, although this may be a metaphor for TV. It may feel relevant to the drug-taking young people of society today, but to me it seems filled with meaning and yet meaning little. I’m not really sure what it is trying to say, although that may be the point. 3 out of 5.

The New Agent by Joel Zoss

We have mentioned in the past of New Worlds' determination to shock, and this is one of those stories.

It is about Nickolas Dugonie, a nurse who has a relationship with a paralysed patient, Phyllis Wexler. Nickolas’s obsession with the immobile patient leads to them having sex and Phyllis becoming pregnant, although this also seems to lead to a reawakening of Phyllis, something she keeps secret from all except Dugonie. Deeply unpleasant, and yet memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. You want a shockingly nasty story? You got one. This one is more deserving of the outrage Bug Jack Barron got, in my opinion. 2 out of 5.

Peace Talking by Bill Butler

Ah, poetry, this time of an anti-war nature. Move along, please. As with most of these attempts to raise my cultural experience, I try but find them short and unmemorable. 2 out of 5.

Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones by Samuel R. Delany

This may be the big seller of the issue, as Samuel is one of the big internationally recognised Science Fiction writers of the New Wave. It doesn’t disappoint. A real highlight in its complexity, style and sheer energy.

It is a story told in the first person by a individual with various aliases but generally with the initials HCE, a criminal who is attempting to sell some stolen goods in a New York bar. Before the delivery takes place, his buyer is found dead. HCE discovers that he is being followed by Special Services, who then disappears. HCE meets up with Hawk, a Singer (who to me sounded a little like a new version of Heinlein’s Rhysling from The Green Hills of Earth.) Hawk manages to get HCE into a grand mobster’s party in order for HCE to sell his stuff. There HCE sells his stuff to Arty the Hawk (whose similarity in name is a little confusing), a big-time gangster, but just afterwards the party is raided and there is a fire.

Picture by James Cawthorn

Using his new-found money, HCE makes a name for himself. He sets up an ice cream parlour on Triton, a moon of Neptune, to cover his other activities and becomes a rival to Arty the Hawk. The story ends with the Hawk and HCE meeting and agreeing to work together rather than kill each other. Afterwards HCE is left contemplating this new situation.

This story shows how much of a breath of fresh air Delany is to the science fiction genre, being both classic in content and “cutting-edge” at the same time. At its most basic level, it is a crime story set across different planets, but it is more than that.  It made me think of it as something Heinlein would write if he was a New Wave writer and not the writer of Stranger in a Strange Land, taking old science-fictional elements and making them seem new. Lyrical but not baroque, Delany creates visual imagery without lengthy verbiage. I read the story more than once and found more details I had missed the first time around. Potentially Award-nomination stuff. 5 out of 5.

Book Review – Two Kinds of Opium

It may not be too much of a surprise to see the new New Worlds focus on non-genre books in its reviews of late. With that in mind, this month has a mixture of genre and non-genre publications. First off, “W.E.B.” (possibly ‘William Ewart Barclay’, a pseudonym for Mike Moorcock) reviews books that are about China (China Observed by Colin Mackeras and Neale Hunter, The Oriental World by Jeannine Auboyer and Roger Goepper and Peter Swann’s The Art of China, Korea and Japan ) as well as John Selby’s The Paper Dragon about the Opium Wars of the 19th century.

M. John Harrison in his new role as book reviewer deals with what we would see as more traditional science fictional fare , under his own name and as the pseudonym Joyce Churchill- The Final Programme by a certain Mike Moorcock, Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch, Jesus Christs by A. J. Langguth, Black Easter by James Blish, Nova by Samuel R. Delany (heard of him?) Picnic on Paradise by fellow New Wave writer Joanna Russ, The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle and The Reproductive System by John Sladek. With new hands to the wheel, it is good to see more science fiction reviewed, even if you may disagree with the reviews, as I often did.

There are then some Biology books reviewed by Caroline Smith and a very brief mention of some books reviewed by W.E.B. again, which range from a book on The Death of Hitler to The Making of Star Trek. Eclectic, eh?

Summing Up

With a new front cover style, this issue of New Worlds seems to have a new energy this month. As ever, the stories are eclectic and wide-ranging, from those I liked (Delany, Aldiss, Moorcock) to the pointless (Disch, Zorin) to the one I hated (Zoss) which seemed to just want to shock.

A better-than-typical New Worlds issue then, although recently they have not been bad, in my opinion. The Delany is really a potential award-winner, I think, and alone makes the issue worth buying.

(And where would New Worlds be without a provocative photo or a mention of J. G. Ballard? This is an advertisement on the back cover.)

Until next time!




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Magazine, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 2, 1968] Role Models (December 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

The passing of a great

As I sat down to write this article, I heard the news of the death of Lise Meitner. If that name isn’t familiar to you, it should be. Einstein once called her “the German Marie Curie,” which might be understating things. She is arguably the most important woman physicist of the 20th century and possibly one of the most important theoretical physicists, period.

Born in Vienna in 1878, she became only the second woman to earn a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna in 1905. She later moved to Germany and worked at the University of Berlin. There, she and Otto Hahn discovered the most stable isotope of the element protactinium, which she dubbed protoactinium before dropping the second “o.” In 1939, she and Hahn, along with Otto Robert Frisch and Fritz Strassmann, discovered and explained nuclear fission. There are also at least two nuclear phenomena which bear her name.

Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner circa 1912.

Meitner was able to escape Nazi Germany in 1938 with the help of Niels Bohr. She settled in Sweden, where she spent the rest of her professional life. Her role in the discovery of nuclear fission garnered her a lot of celebrity after the end of the War; she was even interviewed by Eleanor Roosevelt on her radio show. She was a popular speaker and instructor and traveled extensively to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

She received numerous accolades throughout her career, and the institute that oversees Germany’s first research nuclear reactor bears her and Hahn’s names. But the Nobel eluded her. Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944 for the discovery of nuclear fission (ignoring not only Meitner, but also Frisch and Strassmann). The Nobel committee plays things pretty close to the vest, but word is that Lise Meitner was nominated many times in the fields of physicist and chemistry. In 1966, President Johnson honored her with the Enrico Fermi Award.

After retiring in 1960, she moved to the United Kingdom to be closer to family and continued giving lectures. She was in poor health in recent years, unable to attend the Fermi Award ceremony. She died in her sleep at the age of 89.

Lise Meitner in 1963.

Stereotypes

As Lise Meitner’s life shows, women play an active and important role in science, and ought to do so in science fiction as well. Unfortunately, there seem to be fewer women writing SF than there were a decade ago, and there don’t seem to be all that many as key characters in stories either. Two of the stories in this month’s IF don’t have any, two offer mothers, two more femmes fatale, and as far as the first story goes, the less said the better.

A previously unknown piece by the late Hannes Bok, probably the last new Bok cover ever.

The Holmes-Ginsbook Device, by Isaac Asimov

This absurd story is ostensibly about coming up with a better way than microfiche to present printed information (no one has ever heard of putting words on a page and stacking those pages into a book). The "message" is that staring into a microfiche reader keeps you from staring at women. It's patently offensive. And not in a way that challenges our acceptance of societal norms like something in Dangerous Visions. Women are here only the be ogled and groped.

He looks familiar. Art by Gaughan

One star and a guaranteed winner of the Queen Bee Award.

The Starman of Pritchard’s Creek, by Julian F. Grow

Young Widder Poplowski has set her cap for Dr. Hiram Pertwee. He might be inclined to encourage her, but her nine-year-old son is a hellion, and her motherly love is excessively fierce. While picnicking along Pritchard’s Creek, the three of them encounter a talking, self-propelled steam engine and a living trash heap. Getting kicked in the head by his horse may be the least of Pertwee’s problems.

Whatever it is, it ain’t natural. Art by Wood

This is our third encounter with Dr. Pertwee, and it’s a good bit better than the last. This one is well-suited to the western theme, and the doctor’s voice is very well done. I’d say the tone aims to imitate Twain, but doesn’t come close. Of course, not coming close in an attempted imitation of Twain leaves a lot of room to still be good.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey looks at couple of areas where science and science fiction keep overtaking each other: there’s too much free oxygen on Venus, the steady-state theory might not be dead yet, and quantum particles that move faster than light.

Three stars.

The Canals of Santa Claus, by Bram Hall

Three wildcat miners are forced to put down on an uncharted planet. They dub the planet Santa Claus for its black growths that resemble Christmas trees (Yule was taken), but can’t explain the regularity of their spacing or the canals of salty water that flow without any change in elevation.

Hall is this month’s new author, and it’s not bad for a freshman effort. There’s nothing really new or groundbreaking, but it’s well handled, and there’s a bit of a sting in the tail.

Three stars.

The Comsat Angels, by J.G. Ballard

Since 1948, the world has become aware of a boy genius roughly every other year. Invariably, they fade from public view after a year or two, never seeming to live up to the potential they showed. A television production team begins digging into the story, but are soon broken up and reassigned. What shadowy organization is pulling the strings?

I’ve never been a fan of Ballard’s work, which I generally find too avant-garde and over laden with allusion and symbolism. This story, however, has a beginning, a middle, and an end (in that order) and lacks the ennui and decadence of the Vermilion Sands stories. I enjoyed it, with two complaints. First, the boy genius discovered in 1965 is Robert Silverberg of Tampa, Florida. He would be a good deal younger than science fiction’s own Silverbob (who isn’t from Florida), and the name pulled me out of the story every time he’s mentioned. None of the others seem to have been given the name of someone else from the genre or elsewhere, so it struck me as odd. Secondly, the connection to comsats seems very strained. But otherwise an enjoyable story.

A high three stars from me; others might like it better.

The Tin Fishes, by A. Bertram Chandler

Continuing his tour of the planets he once opened and charted, Commodore John Grimes has arrived on the water world of Melisse. Giant, unkillable starfish are attacking the huge oysters the natives use to grow pearls, the planet’s only export. Since both of the major Rim officials are incompetents he had posted to a place he thought they could do no harm, he figures it’s his duty to investigate.

Chief Wunnaara may be the only reliable person on the planet. Art by Virgil Finlay

This is a fairly standard Grimes story, with a bit of mystery and spy thriller thrown in. Entertaining enough if you like this sort of thing. I was a bit put off by the ease with which Grimes went to bed with the prime suspect, considering he’s spent the last several stories missing his wife very much. I guess mores and morals are different out on the Rim.

Three stars.

The Pawob Division, by Harlan Ellison

I’m not even going to try to describe this story by Harlan Ellison. It’s full of silly, made-up words like phlenged and thrillip’d to describe the use of alien senses and whatnot. I suspect that if it had been sent in by an unknown, it would have been sent back, maybe with an encouraging letter to keep trying.

A low two stars.

The Computer Conspiracy (Part 2 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

Professor Paul Kosloff heads into Common Europe and Common Eur-Asia to try and find out who’s behind the plot to tamper with the computer records of the United States of the Americas. Somehow, the bad guys seem to know his every move.

More action exactly like the action in Part 1. Art by Gaughan

Part 1 of this serial was so heavy on (poorly delivered) exposition, I predicted this installment would have lots of story. I was wrong; there’s just as much exposition in this half. The action is also just as over detailed; I don’t know what an “Okinawa fist” is, nor does knowing what the protagonist shouts as he delivers a karate blow tell me anything. All in all, it winds up being a typical, if slightly subpar, Mack Reynolds adventure. But it might be worth revisiting in 50 years or so to see how well Mack did at prognosticating the effects of an increasingly interconnected world.

Three stars for this installment and the novel as a whole.

Summing up

Maybe the awful first story influenced my impression of the rest of the issue, and some of these stories deserve better ratings. On the other hand, this is the second issue in a row with a one-star story, and that’s a rating I very rarely give. With the two worst stories coming from the two biggest names in the issue, I’m starting to wonder at some of the editorial decisions being made. But Galaxy doesn’t seem to be doing quite this poorly. At least Fred has promised another Hugo winners issue next year, so we have something to look forward to.

There’s the Zelazny we were promised. This issue really needed it.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 22, 1968] Hello Again!  New Worlds, October & November 1968

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello. Testing, testing.. Anyone there?

This feels a little like one of those lonely messages out on the ether, post-apocalypse. I was last here for the July 1968 issue, whose publication, if you remember, was at a time of turmoil…. And then nothing for nearly four months.

Until now, when, like the proverbial British buses, two turn up (nearly) at once.

So – let’s start with the October issue.

I can only assume that the late arrival of the October issue was in part because of the recent kerfuffle. Editor Mike Moorcock explains the situation in this issue (and which you can read about in more detail in my last review), that with the effective banning of sales in English newsagents New Worlds is to survive mainly on subscriptions in the future, with a dollop of cash from the Arts Council, admittedly.

To Moorcock’s credit, he doesn’t dwell on the matter. But this whole issue feels like a statement of intent and a possible return to what I would regard as ‘normal’ – for New Worlds, anyway. It’s now being published from a new address, for one thing.

Cover by Malcolm Dean

And that ‘return’ seems to be echoed in the cover, too. Thank God – a ‘proper’ cover illustration. You know, with a picture, and something that looks like it’s taken more than ten minutes to produce. Whilst I could argue that it’s not the most complex piece of artwork ever shown – and a tad on the gory side – at least it is what I would regard as art.

Lead In by The Publishers

Some changes here too. Editor Mike Moorcock has brought readers (those of us who are left, anyway) up to date with what has been happening in the Lead In, even if some kind of strange time warp has happened as the Editor claims that his comments were made “last month” and not actually in the April issue. Readers with a good memory and less impacted by this may remember when Moorcock promised more pages and pictures in colour – clearly now that isn’t going to happen.

Other than that, the usual descriptions of the authors and their explanations of their stories, for those of us too unintelligent to work it out for ourselves.

Disturbance of the Peace by Harvey Jacobs

Do you remember The Shout? in the last issue? (I know, but it’s been a while.) Disturbance of the Peace reminded me a little of that, as it is an observational piece about I’m not sure what.

The story is focused on Floyd Copman, set in a fairly contemporary Manhattan. Floyd has a pretty mundane job in a bank, where in amongst the dull details of a day we find that Floyd is being watched by a dishevelled customer, who spends all of his day staring at Floyd. It becomes a bit of an obsession, and despite multiple attempts to remove him the situation inevitably ends up with the man’s return. It is quite unnerving for Floyd, and eventually results in both the old man having a fit and Floyd fainting.

What’s the point of the story? There’s lots of description of the city Floyd travels in and the things he sees, not to mention things happening around Floyd – the descriptions of his co-workers are supremely awful – and yet it all seems to be of little purpose. It’s more of a mood piece to me, but at its best it reminded me a little of John Brunner’s work. 3 out of 5.

The Generations of America by J. G. Ballard

"Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert F. Kennedy. And Ethel M. Kennedy shot Judith Birnbaum."

In which Ballard lists, in huge blocks of continuous text, people shot by other people.

I don’t know if all the names mentioned are real, although I have no evidence to suggest that they are not – there are some such as Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, but the rest could easily be made up – but if the point is that lots of people have been shot in America, the point is made. Whilst the very, very long list makes the point that far too many people are shot, the purpose of the prose may also be to highlight the fact that many of the shootings that happen in the US are to people of whom we know nothing. They should be remembered, and it is perhaps an indictment of society that most of them are not.

The issue for me is that not only do I find reading long lists difficult, the block of text as presented is difficult to focus on – which I accept may be the purpose of the prose. It shows that Ballardian thing of repetition, after all – something he – repeats – often in his work.

But this feels like a Ballard clutching at straws, even if this is Ballard again riffing off American culture, and not in a good way. Is it fiction? I don’t know. It makes a good point, admittedly, but I think it is less exciting, less meaningful than his work from before, and weaker as a result. 3 out of 5.

Bubbles by James Sallis

If you’ve read my previous reviews, you may know that newly-appointed Associate Editor Sallis has been foisting much poetry upon us readers lately – something I’ve not appreciated. Happily then, this is a prose piece, and rather like Disturbance of the Peace it’s good on observational description, but this time about London. As we get all these lyrical sentences, the plot, such as it is, is about remembering someone – Kilroy – who is about to die. A story thus of a life lived and the places they frequented before showing us that life moves on. 3 out of 5.

Article: Into the Media Web by Michael Moorcock

An interesting article about how all media – audio, visual and print is interconnected like a spider’s web. Mike explains that future media will show an improvement in quality but at the same time have a lowering of standards in order to ensure mass appeal and remain commercial. How we manage a balance between all of this will be an important point in the future.

I can’t say I disagree.

Moorcock then manages to make his point using the analogy of Westerns and how they were important as printed stories, became less popular but have now been resurrected by returning to their core values through the medium of television. It shows the relative complexity of the interrelationships between media. Is this article inspired by the recent troubles here at New Worlds? Well, possibly, except that it is an extract from a longer article, and therefore possibly written before the furore. It can be said though that it is a reflection on the current state of play in the media, and it may not be coincidence that much of New Worlds' latest difficulties are in part due to Moorcock’s insistence on doing what this article says the media must do – setting new boundaries, of being different and not touting formulaic stuff. This article, like all good articles, was informative and also made me think. 4 out of 5.

Casablanca by Thomas M. Disch

No, nothing to do with the Humphrey Bogart movie. Disch’s story seems to be a satire on Americans abroad, showing us their insularity and pettiness. (We really are having a go at the US this month, aren’t we?) It all begins relatively normally before Mr. and Mrs. Richmond, our hapless Americans, find themselves in Casablanca in the middle of an anti-American demonstration and the unleashing of nuclear weapons, the once powerful now rendered impotent. It’s a compelling example of what happens when insular arrogance created by self-importance suddenly becomes redundant.
With its depiction of Americans lost in another country and befuddled by local customs, Disch's story reminded me of less of the movie Casablanca than the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock’s film, The Man Who Knew Too Much. Talking of Hitchcock, others must think highly of this one too, because I understand the story has recently appeared in one of those Alfred Hitchcock anthologies and is reprinted here. 4 out of 5.

Drawings by Malcolm Dean

by Malcolm Dean

I expected this section a little, as for the last few issues we’ve had graphic stories in various forms. This feels to me like it is the New Worlds version of Gahan Wilson’s efforts in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction – but as you might expect in a British magazine, darker, and perhaps odder. 2 out of 5.

Biographical Note on Ludwig van Beethoven II by Langdon Jones

The return of ex-Associate Editor Langdon Jones. Fresh from his publication of the Mervyn Peake Gormenghast material, this story begins like a typical biography (the clues in the title!) of a musician before the reader realises that it is satirical. It has many of the hallmarks expected in Langdon Jones’s usual material – florid language, poetry, musical scores, lyrics and so on. An inventive flight of fantasy, clearly meant to be a satirical musing on the music business and culture at large. I know some readers will like it more than me. For me, a middling 3 out of 5.

Photographs by Roy Cornwall

And again, something that’s been missing from recent issues, those pictures of strange artwork. This new version has buildings with patterns of light and shadow – and of course, a naked lady. No explanation – I guess we are just meant to be inspired – or aroused. 2 out of 5.

We’ll All Be Spacemen Before We Die by Mike Evans

Ah, poetry. 3 out of 5.

Bug Jack Barron (Part 6 of 6) by Norman Spinrad

At last – the final part of this story. It has only taken ten months to get here. (sarcasm inserted – feel free to vent your own frustration here.) Despite taking five parts to get to this point, some of the story is condensed here in the summary, even though it has never been seen before!

Quick recap – In the last part, Henry George Franklin makes a drunken claim on Jack’s TV show that he had sold his daughter to a white man for $50 000. After the show, Benedict Howards, the owner of the Foundation for Human Immortality, demands that Franklin is kept off the air and threatens to kill Barron if he doesn’t. Barron’s response? He goes to visit Franklin in the Mississippi.

After being told the story by Franklin, the two are fired upon. Franklin is killed. Barron is convinced that Howards is behind the buying of the little girl – and more so other mysterious disappearances in the area. He becomes determined to test Howards in his next TV show.

He agrees to meet Howards in Colorado and records the meeting. When Howards admits to killing Franklin, he discovers Barron’s recording. The result is that Barron wakes up in hospital having being made immortal. The secret is out – it is the glands of these young children that create immortality, but they are killed in the process. And Sara has also been treated.

Barron is now part of the process – can he now incriminate Howards on air? On his return to New York, he tells Sara what has happened. They now have a decision to make – does Jack live forever or tell the world and die now?

Before the show goes live, Sara contacts Barron, and after taking LSD tells Jack that she thinks he is not making the decision to attack Howards because of the need to protect her. To solve this, she jumps off Barron’s apartment balcony.

The story then takes up the narrative from here.

With the suicide of media star Jack Barron’s ex-wife, things are now set for a final showdown between Jack and Howards. The death of Sara was in part caused by Howards in an attempt to free Jack from being tied down to Howards.

I don’t think I need to say too much here. Suffice it to say that things are tied up as justice is done and Sara is avenged. If you’ve read all that has gone before, you’ll understand what’s happening. Everyone else? Less so – and perhaps be less inclined to bother.

Perhaps the more important point is: was it all worth it? After all, a story stretching across six issues has to merit some value, surely? I started reading it myself way, way back in November 1967 with some degree of optimism at a new and exciting means of telling a story and by the end am exhausted, willing the story to have departed long before it did. I suspect that reading it as a novel may reduce this feeling a little, but for me after its initial signs of promise it was too much for too long. Let’s also not forget that its publication nearly brought down the magazine as well. It outstayed its welcome, for me. Time will tell if other readers look on it as wearily as I do. Hard to think that at the start I was thinking 4 and 5 out of 5, now it feels more like 3 out of 5.

Time for something new.

Book Review and Comment – Boris Vian and Friends by James Sallis, and the conclusion of Dr. Moreau and the Utopians by C. C. Shackleton

Firstly, James Sallis (remember him?) reviews Boris Vian’s novel Heartsnatcher, translated from the original French by Stanley Chapman. This allows Sallis to quote great chunks of Vian’s text. Unsurprisingly for such an obscure work, Sallis can’t recommend it highly enough. He relates it to work by authors such as Ballard and Thomas Pynchon but also more recent writers here such as Aldiss, Disch, Sladek and Langdon Jones, describing Vian’s book as a new logic of the imagination.

It might gain some interest as a result.

The only other book of note briefly mentioned here is the paperback publication of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which “has all of Clarke’s virtues well-displayed.” For what it’s worth, I agreed when I reviewed the hardback novel here back in July. There'll be more on this later.

Lastly, we have the conclusion of an article by C. C. Shackleton (aka Brian Aldiss) begun last issue about H. G. Wells’ ideas of utopia. It may be difficult to read without referring back to the earlier, and longer, part, but I followed it easily enough. Unsurprisingly, as Aldiss/Shackleton is a huge admirer of Wells, the article is positive, saying at the end that Wells pretty much started the idea in science fiction that the genre (and therefore much of Wells’ work) is “a study of man and his machines and society’s changing relationship to science and technology.” To which I would add, “Well, yes – him and Jules Verne.” I’m sure there’s others that could be mentioned too.

Summing up the October New Worlds

A big sigh of relief this month. Although the issue is somewhat of a mixed bag and with nothing too controversial, it does feels more like a normal issue of New Worlds, with the usual mixture of allegory and confusion usually engendered by its presence.

Interestingly, although it has always been there in the last few years, this was the first time that I did notice how American (Americentric?) the issue felt. Perhaps it was because it’s been a while since I read a copy, but I really noticed it this time. Is this a consequence of New Worlds now being sold where most of you are? Perhaps. However, with American writers throughout and the prose filled with American characters and places, the quaint old idea of New Worlds being a “British” magazine seems to have gone – even when most of the stories seem to be attacking America satirically or ideologically.

The return of stalwarts like Ballard, even if he has passed his prime, will be a reason to buy this one, although being mainly subscription-based, the magazine may only be preaching to the already-converted.

For me the most memorable item, unusually, was Moorcock’s article. It’s not common for me to be impressed by the non-fiction, but this one really made an impression. The fiction, by comparison, was rather pallid. Nice prose, nothing especially extraordinary. If I was pushed to make a choice, I would suggest that Disch’s Casablanca was the fiction piece I appreciated most.

Most importantly, this issue means the end of Jack Barron, which took a long, long time to get there but finally ended. It is due out in book form fairly soon, I gather – if they can find any bookshop willing to stock it, of course!

The November New Worlds

So just as I was writing up my thoughts on the October issue, the November issue arrived. Looks like Mike and the gang are trying to make up for lost time! The issue is here.

Cover by Gabi Nasemann

One of those images that I suspect only a recreational drug user will understand. A step back from the October issue, I think.

Lead In by The Publishers

The key point here is that Moorcock points out that all of the fiction in this issue is from new writers. I see this raising of potential talent as a good thing, but my more cynical self suspects lower rates were paid. I also suspect greater variability in quality. We will see!

Area Complex by Brian Vickers

To the first – the cover story. I liked this one. It’s an account compiled from writings by a number of teenage gang members living in a gang in a future Clockwork Orange kind of dystopia. As you might expect, it is a tough existence, living in decaying cities with lives filled with sex and violence. The group often kills others from rival groups, whilst trying to survive.

The big twist at the end is that the group are a religious sect living in a post-disaster world. This also gives the writer chance to have a pop at religion as is rather expected in New Worlds these days. It doesn’t end happily, but then that’s what we’ve come to expect in these British anti-utopian stories.

What impressed me most was how this story epitomised the New Wave stuff at the moment. If anyone remembers Charles Platt’s Lone Zone back in July 1965 it reminded me of that, but with lots of elements that could be from Aldiss, Ballard, Anthony Burgess (Clockwork Orange) and Langdon Jones in style and content, for example, but are instead from a new writer. Old ideas in new ways, perhaps. A good start to the issue, if typically depressing. 4 out of 5.

Pauper’s Plot by Robert Holdstock

A story of a future life in a factory where the protagonist spends his life as a factory slave pauper, wanting to kill his Overseer, Mister Joseph. Effective description of an awful life that is devoted to work – they have no free time, no chance to go outside. There’s an obvious analogy to the factory and the machine our protagonist is slaved to being life’s dreadful grind. Think of it as a Dickensian novel set in the future – rather like the musical film Oliver! I saw the other week, but without the music, which I kept thinking of whilst reading this. Again, not a bad effort, even if the ending is a bit of a let-down. 3 out of 5.

The Pieces of the Game by Gretchen Haapanen

Another story in poetic prose, that style so beloved by Associate Editor James Sallis. The plot, such as it is, tells us of Sarah, living in a smoggy Los Angeles from which she manages to escape the daily drudgery – in other words, similar to Holdstock’s story! The tale is OK but doesn’t really say a lot, other than creating pictures in your head.

But never mind a plot: be in awe of the pretty prose (though occasionally set out in that way of type in various directions across the page that I am starting to really dislike). 4 out of 5.

Black is the Colour by Barry Bowes

Another story determined to be controversial dealing with the issue of colour. A white man suddenly wakes up one morning to find that he is now black. Deliberately provocative prose – the ghost of Bug Jack Barron hasn’t quite gone away, has it? – but the story makes the point that people of different coloured skin are treated differently in society, and it’s not long before the storyteller’s life suffers as a result. Not a particularly original idea, but it makes its point pretty well. 3 out of 5.

How May I Serve You? by Stephen Dobyns

A story of consumer capitalist culture, it describes a future world where a man who loves the physicality of coinage goes on a spending spree at Schartz’s, using his own manufactured money. He is arrested and we discover that it is an unfortunate consequence of being reconditioned. A nice take on the influence of money and consumable goods in our lives. I’m surprised that “Coca-Cola” hasn’t had something to say on the story though – or do they see it as subliminal advertising? 3 out of 5.

Crim by Graham Charnock

A story that feels a bit Bug Barron in nature. CRIM is a story of future warfare combined with media saturation. Lots of violent imagery, separate characterisations and made up language. This feels similar to some of the other fiction in this issue and gets across the idea that war is bad in a Brian Aldiss Barefoot in the Head kind of way. The difference here is that CRIM feels like it is trying too hard. 3 out of 5.

Article: Graphics for Nova Express by Richard Wittern

Images for what is presumably a new edition of William Burroughs’s Nova Express that seem a bit pointless without context. 2 out of 5.

Sub-Synchronization by Chris Lockesley

Ah, the inevitable New Worlds sex story! Actually, after that initial attempt of using a discussion of sex to grab your attention, it soon becomes something about time, in that disjointed poetic manner that James Sallis seems to like. I didn’t understand it myself. 2 out of 5.

Baa Baa Blocksheep by M. John Harrison

Another disjointed story about grotesque characters doing something incomprehensible. Like most of the allegorical stories here, it is about impressions and poetic description rather than anything else.

It seems to be about this Arm, who with another person named Block go to work for Holloway Pauce, who for some bizarre reason is experimenting on sheep. Whilst this is going on, we get Ballard-ian extracts of stories that Arm is trying to get published, of characters named Gynt and Morven. Deliberately odd and unsettling, obtuse and simultaneously designed to provoke, it becomes memorable for vivid but fractured sections of prose. For example, the first line is: ”Arm scuttled the streets like a bubonic rat–furtive by nature, flaunting in the exigencies of pain."

Typical New Worlds material. I’m sure it all means something… somewhere, but after two readings, I’m still not sure what that is myself. Appreciate the lyrical imagery; don’t look for meaning. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews: The Impotence of being Stagg by R. G. Meadley and M. John Harrison

Harrison reviews as well as writes in this issue – I suspect that this will become a regular thing.

Unsurprisingly, the reviewers do not like old-style SF, such as that published by Doubleday, and so give a thumbs-down to Joe Poyser’s Operation Malacca, Lloyd Biggle Jr.’s The Still Small Voice of Trumpets and Flesh by Philip Jose Farmer, although they grudgingly admit that Farmer’s more-sexual tales are more entertaining than the rest. I have tended to think of Farmer as a New Wave writer in the US – Harlan Ellison certainly did in Dangerous Visions, so my surprise is that they have anything bad to say about it at all.

Of the other reviews, R. A. Lafferty’s The Reefs of Earth is regarded as a “slight work… well worth a glance if you have nothing else to read”. The publication of Philip K. Dick’s first novel Solar Lottery shows “how far Dick has progressed in the thirteen years since its first publication, and little else.” Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is “a book for all the family” and will “hardly offend anyone” being seen as “An inoffensive and mundane little piece of Establishment SF.” Lastly, Charles Harness’s third novel, The Ring of Ritornel is seen as “brash, fascinating, eclectic,fast and glossy” but is a less satisfying work when compared with his earlier novels.

Article: Phantom Limbs by Frances Johnston

A medical article that is a little reminiscent of those written by Dr. Christopher Evans back in the early Moorcock issues of New Worlds. It begins with the recent film The Charge of the Light Brigade before going on to discuss the need for artificial replacement limbs and the future of such devices. I guess that it is close to being a robot, but not quite. It’s interesting but feels oddly out of place in this magazine. 3 out of 5.

Summing up the November New Worlds

An issue pleasing in its variety, but rather expectedly more variable in its quality. What we have here is a number of new writers taking inspiration from previously published authors, but as a result we have a lot of techniques we’ve seen before repeated. I recognise Ballard, Aldiss and Langdon Jones in those. The content is more of the usual – strange, disjointed, atmospheric.

I enjoyed most Area Complex, but wasn’t too excited about the Lockesley and the Charnock. The Harrison may be the most bewildering, but Barry Bowes’s story is the one that might cause most outrage, although it isn’t really saying anything new, sadly.

Out of the two issues, I think that the November issue is stronger, simply by having more stories with more of a range, even when a number of them resort to techniques that seem a little familiar. The idea of having an issue with all new writers to this magazine is a good one and shows that there is new talent out there to encourage. The downside of this is that the magazine doesn’t have any big names like Aldiss, Ballard or Disch to encourage the faithful, which might be what the magazine needs to get those reader numbers up, even when some of these new writers seem to be similar in prose, tone and style. Nevertheless, a good issue with good intentions, and one that feels fairly strong, if not entirely successful. It’s a fresh start of sorts, and I look forward to the next issue – hopefully next month!

Until next time – I wish everyone a Happy Halloween.



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 2, 1968] Future History Lessons (November 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

Saving the past

Around the turn of the century, the British in Egypt set out to regulate the flooding of the Nile by building a dam at Aswan, near the First Cataract, a little under 150 miles north of what is today the border between Egypt and Sudan. They limited the height of the dam in order to prevent the submergence of the island of Philae and the many monuments there, but still raised the height twice by the mid-1930s. The reservoir nearly overflowed the top in 1946, and it became increasingly clear that the dam’s storage capabilities were insufficient for modern Egypt.

King Farouk favored the construction of dams in Sudan and Ethiopia, where cooler temperatures would mean less loss of water due to evaporation, but when he was overthrown, the new government under Nasser preferred a larger dam at Aswan under Egyptian control. One of the reasons for the nationalization of the Suez Canal was that shipping fees would pay for the new dam. The change in plans alarmed archaeologists, who pointed out that the entirety of the ancient province of Nubia would be flooded, inundating numerous ancient monuments and sites. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan appealed to UNESCO for help, and thus was born the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia.

The most impressive of the monuments to be rescued are the temples of Abu Simbel, built by Ramses II in the mid-13th century B.C. to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. Best known is the Great Temple, dedicated to Amun, Ra-Horakty, Ptah and the deified Ramses himself. The entrance is flanked by four statues of the pharaoh, each over 65 feet tall. Nearby is a temple dedicated to Hathor and Ramses’ favorite wife Nefertari.

Ramses gets a face lift.

But how do you rescue something like that? A freestanding temple can be taken apart stone by stone and rebuilt elsewhere. This was done with the temple of Kalabsha, in work funded and supervised by West Germany. The Ramesseum was carved into sandstone cliffs. One suggestion was to build a clear freshwater dam around the temples and create underwater viewing chambers. Instead, an international team of archaeologists, engineers, and heavy construction experts have spent the last four years carefully carving the entire site into enormous blocks with an average weight of 20 tons and moving the whole thing to a new site some 650 feet back from the Nile and over 200 feet higher. The work is finished, and on September 22nd the reconstructed Ramesseum was opened to the public. Let’s hope that the many other rescue projects are just as successful.

Optimists and pessimists

This has been a rough year all around the world, and so it’s natural to turn to our entertainment to make us feel better. Unfortunately, the trend in science fiction seems to be toward unhappy endings, and this month’s IF seems to lean more to the pessimistic side. It also takes us to Ancient Egypt in the far future.

The Waw is bored. Art by Vaughn Bodé

The Computer Conspiracy (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

Regular readers of the big American SF magazines will be familiar with Mack Reynolds’ People’s Capitalism, in which every citizen is granted Inalienable Basic shares that pay dividends that are enough to live off, while the more ambitious can earn Variable Basic shares and move up in the world. Meanwhile, the Universal Credit Card serves all economic and identification functions. All of that is made possible by a massive computerized data bank. What if a hostile power could tap into that data bank, or worse yet change or erase the data?

Action in the subway of abandoned Manhattan. Art by Gaughan

This first half of Reynolds’ new novel is delivered mostly in the form of lectures telling the protagonist things he already knows. Reynolds can usually make this sort of thing interesting, but normally he doesn’t rely on pages of dialogue for his exposition. Much of it seems to be based on Vance Packard’s The Naked Society from a few years ago, which he explicitly mentions. This is interspersed with a couple of action scenes, one of which is overly detailed to the point of being interesting only to practitioners of karate, and the other is largely taken from the recent Among the Bad Baboons. All in all, not Reynolds’ best work, but I don’t see how the second half can be anything but story, so the whole thing should be better.

A low three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey delves into the science of ecology, which studies the interrelationships of living things and their environment. It’s the sort of thing that will be crucial in establishing a colony on another planet, but it’s rarely dealt with in science fiction, except as an occasional aside. It’s also sadly neglected in the real world, though that’s beginning to change. There’s a lot here for SF writers to explore.

Four stars.

Creatures of Light, by Roger Zelazny

Sometime in the distant future, all of humanity lies between the poles of the House of Life, ruled over by Osiris, and the House of Death, ruled over by Anubis. Now, an old threat is returning from outside, and various factions must take steps to stop it.

Anubis and Osiris determine the fates of humanity. Art by P. Reiber

The obvious comparison here is to Zelazny’s Lord of Light, though the “gods” here make the spacemen pretending to be the Hindu gods look like apemen banging rocks together. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote in a letter to Science earlier this year, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It’s all very Zelazny in terms of style and construction. However, there’s no actual story here; it’s just the author introducing various characters and establishing the conflict.

It says on the cover that this is an excerpt from an upcoming novel. That’s enough to save its rating, but the Lord of Light excerpts that ran in F&SF were much more successful as stand-alone pieces. I’m probably interested in seeing the whole thing, but something with a bit more of a traditional structure (if possible) would have been better.

A tentative three stars.

Where the Time Went, by James H. Schmitz

Everyone is familiar with those times when you set out to get a lot done, and suddenly it’s the end of the day and you’ve accomplished next to nothing. That happens to writer George Belk every day until his agent puts him in touch with someone who can help.

I suspect Schmitz was inspired by a couple of days like those George describes. It’s a cute story, but it doesn’t play to any of the author’s strengths, especially his ability to create characters.

Three stars.

Now That Man Is Gone, by James Blish

The Waw has been nine years old for over 2,000 years. Humanity has been extinct for 1,994 years. The aliens who care for him call him the Waw, because he is the Next-to-Last, but there is no sign of the Ya. Until now.

Art uncredited

This is the most optimistic story in the issue, which seems odd coming from Blish, though it is tinged with melancholy as well. It’s also the inverse of a concept that forms the core of many Ray Bradbury stories. Nice enough, but nothing special.

Three stars.

Wizard Ship, by F. Haines Price

Primitive tribesman Hin bravely boards a ship of the gods which has descended from the sky. He soon figures out that the gods are mere mortals who plan to sell him into slavery. The three unscrupulous spacers aboard also don’t realize that primitive isn’t the same as stupid.

Price is this month’s new author, and it shows in his writing. The story is too long, and the darkly ironic ending isn’t worth the trip.

A low two stars.

Bookmobile, by Charles L. Harness

A report from an alien librarian describes how humanity lost the ability to read thanks to everything moving to audio.

What an incredibly stupid story; nothing about it makes any sense. It ignores the fate of the deaf when everything is spoken and nothing is written, which is odd considering a key point is that the librarian can’t hear. I’m also not sure how you look things up when it’s all audio. Harness is an attorney, you’d think he would find that important.

One star, because it makes me angry every time I think about it.

The Perfect Secretary, by Mike Kirsch

On the day Albert Willis opens his new business, a strange man offers him a free trial of an automatic secretary. It can write articles and letters, retrieve reference materials from a host of locations, and pretty much do his job for him. It’s rather more than he or its makers suspect.

Willis is presented with his new secretary. Art by Wallace Wood

An awful story about awful people being awful. And it comes with another dark ending. Kirsch seems to be another new author, though maybe he’s sold things in other genres. The writing is decent enough, but all the characters are horrible.

Two stars.

Summing up

That’s another month of IF in the bag. There sure are a lot of familiar authors here not putting their best foot forward. And Zelazny’s piece really deserves a grade of Incomplete. There’s not even enough there to tell us what the rest is going to be like. Add in all the attempts at being dark and gritty, and the whole thing’s rather unsatisfying. At least the serials are back.

Science fiction from A(simov) to Z(elazny). That Zelazny piece might be another part of the new novel.




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[July 2, 1968] What’s the Point? (August 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

The appearance of doing something

One of the German Empire’s colonies before the First World War was German South West Africa, nestled between what are today South Africa, Angola, and Botswana. After the war, South Africa was granted a mandate over the colony by the League of Nations, similar to Britain’s control over Palestine or France’s over Lebanon and Syria. The League was dissolved in 1946 and replaced by the United Nations. In general, mandates were intended to be replaced by United Nations Trusteeship, and the General Assembly recommended that South West Africa be one of those, however South Africa refused. In 1949, South Africa declared that it was no longer subject to U.N. oversight where South West Africa was concerned, as they began to extend their apartheid system into the former colony. The following year, the International Court ruled that the U.N. should exercise supervision in the administration of the territory in place of the League, but South Africa rejected the Court’s opinion and has refused any involvement by the U.N.

A political cartoon from after the First World War.

Independence movements have swept through Africa over the last decade, and as I noted in January of last year, South West Africa is not immune. The predominant organization is the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), and they have been lobbying the U.N. for several years. In 1966, the General Assembly terminated the mandate, giving the U.N. direct supervision of the territory. Last year, they established the United Nations Council for South West Africa to administer the territory until independence. South Africa remains recalcitrant. And so, on June 12th, the Assembly approved Resolution 2372, which, in accordance with the wishes of the people as represented by SWAPO, changed the name to Namibia. Well, that, some finger-wagging at South Africa and the nations supporting the illegal occupation of Namibia, and a request that the Security Council do something to get South Africa out. Don’t hold your breath.

Sam Nujoma (r.), President of SWAPO, shakes hands with Mostafa Rateb Abdel-Wahab, President of the Council for Namibia

Noir, nonsense, and the blatantly obvious

The stories in this month’s IF range from the patently obvious to those that leave the reader wondering why the author bothered. There are a couple of mildly entertaining stops along the way, and the high point may surprise you (even if it is more molehill than mountain).

Supposedly for Rogue Star, which doesn’t have a starship crash. Or this many characters. Art by Chaffee

Whaddya Read?, by H.L. Gold

The founding editor of both IF and Galaxy offers a defense of modern science fiction. Maybe the new stuff isn’t as different as most people seem to think. It’s just better written.

Three stars.

Getting Through University, by Piers Anthony

A few stories ago, dentist Dr. Dillingham was kidnapped by aliens and has since bumbled around the galaxy, from one emergency patient to the next. Now, he’s been given the opportunity to attend dental school and gain proper accreditation. All he needs to do is pass the entrance exam.

The doctor deals with a difficult case instead of prepping for his exam. Art by Vaughn Bodé

Surprisingly, given the previous stories and the author’s general output, I rather liked this one. A lot of what happens is ridiculously obvious, but it doesn’t lead to quite where you might suspect. This is almost the quality that Cele Lalli used to get out of Anthony. Maybe there’s hope for him after all.

A somewhat above average three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey looks at Project Orion, the idea of using nuclear bombs to propel a starship. It’s not as crazy as it sounds, but he’s not shy about discussing some of the problems connected with a successful launch of the project (including the hundred billion dollar price tag). This is a clear-headed look at an interesting idea full of possibilities for science fiction authors.

Three stars.

In Another Land, by Mary Urhausen

Seeking to escape a regimented society and a failed love affair, the narrator attempts suicide only to find himself in a utopia. That utopia feels like the sort often imagined 50 or 60 years ago, but this month’s first time author does what she can with it. The shift from first person perspective to third person is slightly jarring, but gives the story what little bite it has. New author Urhausen shows definite skill. Here’s hoping she can hone it into something a little meatier.

Three stars.

Last Dreamer, by A. Bertram Chandler

Commodore John Grimes just wants to go home, but the strangeness at the Rim of the galaxy keeps throwing adventures in his way. This time, it’s a habitable planet with no sun, where everything is out of a bad fairy tale, and everyone speaks in rhymed couplets.

It comes as no surprise that Dan Adkins can’t draw a fire-breathing dragon. Art by Adkins

I generally enjoy the Grimes stories, but this is just silly – and that in a series that has had intelligent rats and an appearance by the Olympian gods. Of course, Chandler knows it’s silly and does get some humor out of the Commodore’s grumpiness about the situation. (He really should have ended a sentence with the word “orange,” though. Let’s see them rhyme that.) Overall, a disappointment; the more so because Chandler teased us with a story from the very beginning of Grimes’s career, but has since stuck with the older man near the end of his service. Let’s see some more of the younger man, whether wet behind the ears or just coming into his prime.

A low three stars.

Merlin Planet, by E.G. Von Wald

Sticking with fantasy pretending it’s science fiction, we have the story of the new man on a Terran trading team on a world where the locals can do magic (thanks to some psychic handwaving; what hath Campbell wrought?). Fortunately, the wizards can be stopped for a time by doing complicated math in your head. Unfortunately, instead of the requested mathematician, headquarters has sent a business law expert.

That’s not how you use a magic staff. Art by Wehrle

If you can get past the magic, the story isn’t terrible. However, it is twice as long as it needs to be. I saw the solution as soon as the new guy revealed he couldn’t do high order math. The rest was just an interminable wait until he figured it out. Right on the line between two and three stars, but the length drags it down for me.

A high two stars.

Song of the Blue Baboon, by Roger Zelazny

Zelazny takes us into the mind of a man who either betrayed Earth to alien invaders or carried out a clever stratagem to defeat them. The problem is that he never engages with his theme. The ambiguity of the ending could be read a couple of ways. Pretty, but shallow.

A low three stars.

What the Old Aliens Left, by D.M. Melton

Here’s our first tale with strong noir elements: an honest cop, a corrupt system, a dangerous dame. The lure of great wealth? The technology left behind by a dead alien civilization.

Most of the action takes place in a bar, too. Art by Brand

Melton continues to improve. He’s never going to get to the point where I’m excited to see his name on the cover, but at least it’s a sign of a probably-entertaining read. He might be getting a handle on writing women, but he’s working from a strong template here, one that’s not necessarily great, but at least gives them their own motives. On the whole, the story probably could have been tightened up here and there. Less going back and forth from the bar, for instance. Still an entertaining read.

Three stars.

West Is West, by Larry Tritten

The inhabitants of the planet West wallow in the cliches of old-school westerns and have names like Randolph Scott Cartwheel, even if many of them are duck-billed saurians. Sheriff Matt Cooper has to bring in Cartwheel for the unprovoked killing of another saurian. Then things go a bit noir, with a femme fatale and the Maltese Longhorn Steer.

A shootout is about the only thing missing from this story. Art by Wehrle

Tritten appears to be another newcomer, though he’s not acknowledged as an IF First. The parody here is laid on with a dumptruck and feels dated. The cliches are familiar, but the western genre has largely moved on from them. There’s no room for Clint Eastwood’s man with no name (though Rowdy Yates would likely feel at home). Ron Goulart could have pulled this off.

A low three stars.

Rogue Star (Part 3 of 3), by Fredrik Pohl and Jack Williamson

This thing doesn’t deserve a recap. I’ll merely note that the climax features actual stars battling each other. The flaws are many, but I’ll limit myself to just two. For starters, “protagonist” Andy Quam should have just stayed home. Everything would have turned out exactly the same, and he wouldn’t have had to deal with all the stress. There are also a number of unresolved subplots, most notably the strange behavior of Earth’s sun. We’re told why it’s happening, but nothing is done about it.

Two stars for this installment and barely two stars for the novel as a whole.

Edmond Hamilton just smashed planets together. What a piker. Art by Gaughan

Summing up

If you told me that, in an issue with stories by the likes of Roger Zelazny and Jack Williamson, the one I would like best was by Piers Anthony, I’d have laughed at you. Look, it’s not a great story; it’s just the one that annoyed me the least. Maybe the summer heat is making me cranky.

That’s a promising lineup.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 16, 1968] More Scandal! New Worlds, July 1968

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

It’s been a while, but it’s good to be back.

Something I suspect Editor Mike Moorcock has been saying too, because since I last wrote THINGS HAVE HAPPENED.

Quick recap, then. You might remember that last issue I said that newsagents W. H. Smith and Sons, Britain’s biggest newspaper and magazine vendor, in collaboration with John Menzies, refused to distribute the March issue of the magazine on the grounds of ‘obscenity and libel’, and that the national newspapers here once they got hold of the story brought it to national attention?

Well, it got further. In May, questions about the magazine, as a consequence of being partly paid for by the national Arts Council, were raised in the House of Commons, no less.

With national coverage in the House of Commons a Tory asked a question of Jennie Lee, the Minister for the Arts, asking why public money was being used in this manner (since the Arts Council is funded by taxes).

So New Worlds is now part of the records of British government, forever!

From what I understand Miss Lee gave a spirited riposte to the criticism, but what impact this will have on the magazine, I must admit that I don’t know. I’m lucky in that I get my copy through a subscription, but as most copies are purchased by casual buyers off the shelves in the newsagents this can only be bad – especially as I’ve said in the past that sales have recently declined, and Moorcock is desperate to increase revenue. It also means that readers are unlikely to see a copy at their local library.

On to this month’s issue.

Cover by Stephen Dwoskin

These covers seem to have regressed, haven’t they? This is the latest that to me echoes the bad old days at the end of the Carnell era, when there was just no money for artwork. Sound familiar? If you’re looking to grab attention, this isn’t it.

Lead in by The Publishers

Some changes here too. Editor Mike Moorcock has brought readers (those of us who are left, anyway) up to date with what has been happening in the Lead In, even if some kind of strange time warp has happened as the Editor claims that his comments were made “last month” and not actually in the April issue. Readers with a good memory and less impacted by this may remember what Moorcock said back in April, when more pages and pictures in colour were promised – clearly now that isn’t going to happen.

The rest is just the usual descriptions of the authors and their explanations of their stories, for those of us too unintelligent to work it out for ourselves.

Scream by Giles Gordon

Giles’s second published effort, after his story Line-Up on the Shore in the December 1967 issue of New Worlds .

Scream is another of those Ballardian-like stories divided into sections and often filled with stream of consciousness adjectives so beloved of New Worlds of late. It describes the effects of a single scream – in a city, on the people who hear it. Some panic and run whilst others are just confused. Result – a tale that feels like it wants to be seen as new, but really isn’t. There are lots of pseudo-meaningful phrases clumped together in a manner it would be wrong of me to describe as a story, emphasised by the point that the text has printed prose running at different angles around the page, which does little to endear the story to me as a reader.


Scream can be summed up as being full of allegorical symbolism, combined with language determined to grab your attention but to increasingly meaningless effect. It is memorable, but not always for good reasons. I hope I never have to come across the words “love juice” in New Worlds again. 2 out of 5.

Drake-Man Route by Brian W. Aldiss

And now on to the return of another regular and much-loved writer. Bad news, though – Drake-Man Route is another Charteris story. These have had diminishing returns for me since the first, Just Passing Through in the February 1967 issue of SF Impulse. And this one soon degenerates into the gobbledegook last seen in Auto-Ancestral Fracture in the December 1967 issue. Charteris has returned to England from Europe and travels north from London to try and communicate what he has seen. Lots of strange events occur as a result, with Charteris travelling with people who lapse into gibberish as a consequence of PCA Bombs in the Acid War, and meeting Brasher, the leader of the People of the new Proceed, the religious group created after the war. There are details on how Brasher got to this point, before they all drive off into an inconclusive ending marked by poetry, song lyrics and, guess what – more text running in unusual directions around the page.

Some may like these stories for their use of imaginative language, strange poetry, and drug-related symbolism. Others (like me) may be less impressed. Almost makes me rather read Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land instead, of which I’m really not a fan. I really hope there’s not many more of these. 2 out of 5.

Bug Jack Barron (Part 5 of 6) by Norman Spinrad


This one seems to have gone on forever. I now realise that with next issue being the final part I have been reading this story for over six months. Such an extended space of time does not help keeping up with this, although the summary of what has gone before helps, even if it now extends over a whole page in small print.

Things take a turn this issue, finally! After what feels like months of incessant ranty dialogue, Jack is contacted by the wife of Teddy Hennering, the Senator who co-founded the Freezer Bill with Howards and who Jack took to task live on air back in the first part of this story. He has been killed because he was about to reveal something about the Foundation – murdered by Howards, according to the wife. Jack dismisses the call as one borne of hysteria, but then the next day she is killed by a hit-and-run driver.

On Jack’s TV show that night negro Henry George Franklin makes a drunken claim that he had sold his daughter to a white man for $50 000. After the show Howards demands that Franklin is kept off the air and threatens to kill Barron if he doesn’t. Barron’s response? Feeling that Howards is somehow involved, he goes to visit Franklin in the Mississippi.

After four parts of lengthy dialogue and debate we finally get something happening. Spinrad moves the plot along and clears the decks for presumably what will be a final showdown between Barron and Howards in the final part. For that reason, it is better, but still feels weary. 3 out of 5.

Instructions for Visiting Earth by Christopher Logue

Poetry time. This one is about how aliens should blend into the background by being predictable and conformist, but at the same time tells us of the things that make humans human. Despite it being rather unmemorable poetry, this one gains points for being both pleasingly short and – gasp! – understandable. 3 out of 5.

Plastitutes by John Sladek


Remember last month’s New Forms, Sladek’s story of a form that wasn’t a form? Here, Sladek’s at it again, producing a comic strip-style story that reminded me of the Charles Platt cut-up diatribes we’ve seen in recent issues. I quite liked the Platt versions, this one less so, a tale of satirical nonsense involving IBM, pictures of car parts and fake conversations between idealised figures of manhood and womanhood. Difficult to describe – this has to be seen rather than understood. The McLuhan is strong in this one. 3 out of 5.

Methapyrilene Hydrochloride Sometimes Helps by Carol Emshwiller

The latest in a number of recent stories by Carol in New Worlds, who seems to be blazing a trail for telling odd stories from a female perspective. This time it is a dialogue given by a woman/robot/alien (who knows?) about the strange relationship she has with a male Doctor and his daughter. Lots of biological comments and various body parts are involved. As predicted, it is odd, and I’m not sure I get it. 2 out of 5.

Two Voices by D. M. Thomas

I approached this one with caution after the awful “Head Rape” poem of the March issue. Thankfully this one is not quite as traumatic, although much longer than what we normally get – more of a poetic essay than a poem, involving two different perspectives. Unsurprisingly the story involves sex, birth and death (I think.) The accompanying artwork feels like something out of a psychedelic-Beatles creation. So – marks for style, ambition and intelligence, if not for literary quality. 3 out of 5.

The Definition by Bob Marsden

Another story obsessed with sex, though using deliberately florid and shocking language in an attempt to shock. It tells of the night (and the morning) after a rock concert party, with the associated sex, drugs and rock and roll. I suspect it is meant to be satirical, but rather than being innovative and interesting, this was just silly – the point where a drunken character is hit on the head with “an autopenis” was the limit for me.  2 out of 5.

A Landscape of Shallows by Christopher Finch

Art  by Francois Vasseur

A tale that in its dry observations and depiction of its settings, not to mention in its detailed descriptions of vehicles, feels like a Ballard-style tale. Set in an Arabian country, Drover works for Delta Studios, who create advertising campaigns created by computer that use all senses – sight, hearing, taste and smell. There he meets Amaryllis, who tests the machine used to create Drover’s experiences, and this leads to a one-night stand, although the focus of the story seems to be on Drover’s occupation.

I must admit that for much of this story I couldn’t work out what was real and what was imagined by Drover as he relates his dream-like descriptions back. I suspect that this uncertainty may be the point of the plot. Some interesting ideas though – as well as the idea of fully immersive art, I quite liked the idea of the car radio that adapts to the user and their moods. Despite its relatively linear structure, I found I was enjoying this more than I thought I would, probably because it followed the needlessly poetic and pseudo-intellectual style of the previous stories. Still Ballard-light, though. It actually reminded me a little of the last Langdon Jones story published here, in its determination to change form between sections. 4 out of 5.

The Circular Railway by John Calder


As the Lead-In tells us, John’s last work here was Signals in the September 1966 issue. The Circular Railway is a story that on the surface does little more than describe a dreamlike journey taken on a railway, in poetic tones. But of course, being allegorical, it probably means more than it suggests. Overall, it makes me think of a typical train journey for me – one that is putting me to sleep. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews – Dr. Moreau and the Utopians by C. C. Shackleton

No poetry reviews this month – instead, C. C. Shackleton (also known as Brian Aldiss) points out that the writings of H. G. Wells seem to be back in favour once more, and then addresses the idea that H. G. Wells has often been considered as an optimist. This may be surprising when you consider Wells’ works such as The Island of Dr, Moreau, which told of the horrors created by genetic manipulation.

Nevertheless, Shackleton eventually gets to the point of the review – that a book by Mark R. Hillegas entitled The Future As Nightmare looks at Wells’s ideas of utopia and how such ideas are regarded by his contemporaries and successors. Annoyingly, just as it seems to be getting to a point, the review is then truncated, to be continued next issue (optimistically).

An interesting article – but then as Aldiss/Shackleton is also a huge admirer of H. G. Wells, I would expect nothing less.

Summing up New Worlds

Clearly the long lay-off has given the New Worlds team chance to catch up on some poetry. As we had none in the last issue, this month we have two. I suspect that this may be new Associate Editor James Sallis’s fault.

We also seem to have had a new typewriter installed in the printing works, as we have not just one but two stories that mess around with
T
H
E
TEXT a BiT.

Aldiss has been guilty of such experimental prose before, whilst I think back to Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination back in the 1950’s.

I always feel that such textual acrobatics are more about style than substance, sadly. It’s not really new, nor really clever. And whilst I can appreciate the idea of writers playing with form, is it really necessary to have two doing the same thing in the same issue? It feels a little like desperation to me. The fact that, as much as Brian has done to retrieve New Worlds from the brink of bankruptcy, his Charteris stories do little or nothing for me doesn’t help.

But then I could say that about some of the other stories in this issue as well. The issue generally is filled with material that is odd, unpleasant, or both!

Most of all, this issue feels again like New Worlds is in a holding pattern. There are lots of middling or low scores, suggesting that this issue feels a bit like it is treading water. At its worst this feels like an issue that actually seems desperate, where there’s a need to publish but it is an issue made up of what’s available, rather than the best that New Worlds can be. There’s nothing here that I found particularly memorable, and the emphasis on trying to shock the readers seems to have diminishing returns – for me, at least.

This is a little worrying. I expect to find at least one story or article or review each issue to keep my interest and my subscription paid. This issue didn’t really have anything, although it could be argued that that in itself is a point of discussion.

As frustrating as this issue was, I know that I should be grateful to see anything this month – it is good to have New Worlds back again, even if who knows for how long.

I did not notice an advertisment for the next issue, worryingly.

Nevertheless, until next time – whenever that is!



 

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 2, 1968] Necessary Evils (July 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

The Baltimore Nine

You may recall one of the more spectacular draft protests last October when Father Philip Berrigan and three other men forced their way in a Selective Service office in Baltimore, Maryland and poured blood into filing cabinets containing draft records. Father Berrigan has acted again, this time along with eight others. The group included Tom Lewis, who was also part of the earlier protest, Berrigan’s brother Daniel, also a priest, and two women.

The Baltimore Nine shortly after their arrest. Fr. Philip Berrigan is 2nd from the left in the back row.

On Friday May 17th, the group entered the Selective Service office in Catonsville, Maryland and began stuffing several hundred A-1 draft records into wire incinerator baskets. Clerk Mary Murphy tried to stop them, but was restrained by one of the protestors. They then made their way back outside and set fire to the records using home-made napalm while quietly reciting the Lord’s Prayer. A short time later, they were arrested, and firefighters extinguished the fire. The following Monday, they sent flowers and a letter of apology signed “The Baltimore Nine” to Mrs. Murphy and the other clerks.

On one hand, the escalation to fire is concerning. Imitators may be less inclined to ensure that no one is harmed. On the other hand, the sight of a group including two priests and a monk defying what they call an unjust war and an unjust law may make people think, especially Catholics. These aren’t a bunch of hippies and long-haired college students who just don’t want to fight in a war.

Of war and women

Two themes run through this month’s IF: war as a necessary evil and female characters who are present solely as motivation for male characters. To be fair, there are as many female protagonists as there are plot pawns, but the latter outweigh the former.

Abbott and his men are the first to reach the Sleeper’s chamber. Art by Gray Morrow

The Sleeper with Still Hands, by Harlan Ellison

For 600 years the Sleeper has rested in a chamber beneath the Sargasso Sea, reading everyone’s thoughts and smoothing out ideas of aggression and war. Now, two men, Leaf and Laurrayne, believing that the enforced peace has held humanity back and stopped progress, have learned to shield their thoughts from the Sleeper and taught the skill to others. Each has sent a group to be the first to find the Sleeper and turn off his prying mind so that “Man’s Destiny could be fulfilled.”

Is this the true path of progress? Art by Gaughan

This is far from Harlan’s best work, but it’s still decent (if you like Ellison). He’s trying to say something profound at the end, but he’s being too obscure in the execution.

Three stars.

We Fused Ones, by Perry A. Chapdelaine, Sr.

Twins Rebecca and John Ellents were captured by the Bewegal and converted into organic micro-computers. Together they tell their journey from targeting computer to child’s toy and how they hope to rescue humanity from the alien threat.

Bodé’s style works surprisingly well in this horrific picture. Art by Vaughn Bodé

Chapdelaine’s sophomore effort improves on his first. It’s still a bit long, and we could have done with less of the gruesome conversion process. Maybe the most interesting part is watching the steady downgrading of military technology to increasingly less important civilian tasks.

Three stars.

If—and When, by Lester del Rey

Most science fiction, according to Lester del Rey, asks either “what happens if” or “what happens when.” In this new feature, he’ll be looking at various items in the news that fit those categories and how they might apply to science fiction. This time he offers an interesting study on keeping the immune system from rejecting transplanted organs, quasars, and the idea that there is matter that decreases in mass as it approaches the speed of light. It’s not unlike Ted Thomas’ Science Springboard over in F&SF, though del Rey seems to have a better grasp on some of what he’s talking about. Maybe because he doesn’t really go beyond the “That’s interesting” point. We’ll see how this feature shakes out over the next few months.

Three stars.

Gone to the Graveyards, Everyone, by Paul M. Moffett

Thanks to the Life Maintainer, war has become a competition. Death is almost never Permanent, and the Limited War is an important part in the world’s economy. What happens when there’s a shift in economic needs?

A killed soldier on his way back for repair. Art by Wehrle

This month’s new author is clearly inspired by Mack Reynolds, both the latter’s Joe Mauser stories and economic themes. Not bad, though it could have used a bit of tightening here and there and fewer capital letters. I wouldn’t object to more from this author.

Three stars.

The Muschine, by Burt K. Filer

Metal is extremely rare on the planet Isolde, so the human colonists have made do with organic machines, from the muscles that turn the screw on protagonist Luke Owens’s ship to intelligent biobots like Rudder, who steers it. Something has started wrecking boats along the coast, and it’s going to take expensive help from Earth to solve the problem. Even that may not be enough.

Luke and the man from Earth try to negotiate. Art by Brand.

After some rocky early stories, Filer may be improving. This is a fair, if flawed, tale whose greatest sin is that it’s too long.

A low three stars.

The Soft Shells, by Basil Wells

Vahni is a Turman, moving on from finlin childhood to adolescence as her people move from the sea to the land. To her distress, she is assigned to the household of the Soft Shell Jackson, the only one of his kind on the planet. At first, anyway. Her new father’s greatest concern is what will happen when more of his kind arrive.

The Turmans return to their land city. Art by Wehrle

Wells started out in the 1940s and took a break for the first half of the 1960s. Since his return, he’s tried to write stories that fit more modern tastes with limited success. This is probably his best effort so far, though the open ending is a bit unsatisfying.

Three stars.

The Hides of Marrech, by C.C. MacApp

Judson Kruger is undercover on the planet Marrech, trying to track down the ring selling the hides of the otter-like natives.

Kruger has a run-in with some of the locals. Art by Vaughn Bodé

Presumably, this is the same protagonist as Inspector Kruger from a couple of earlier stories. The good news is that, while the tone is light, MacApp isn’t trying to be outrageously funny in a Ron Goulart style. It’s a serviceable story.

Three stars.

In the Oligocene, by John Thomas

A man’s obsessive love drives him to invent time travel after the object of his affection is killed.

Oligocene fauna are mostly harmless. Art by Brock

Thomas’s second outing is so different from the first, you might think they were written by different authors. It’s hard to say much about this story without giving the whole thing away. My biggest problem is that Paula is more plot device than person. Events happen to her, and nothing she says or does has any effect. On the other hand, that might be intentional; it would be appropriate.

Three stars.

The Cure-All, by Win Marks

Nick has a summer job at NASA as an orderly who collects samples from returning astronauts. Then an astronaut who went out an albino and returned black-haired and brown-eyed sneezes on him.

Mildly amusing, but it’s too long, and the quarantine procedures are absurdly lax.

A low three stars.

Rogue Star (Part 2 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson

Andy Quamodian has rushed back to Earth at the behest of Molly Zalvidar. Cliff Hawk, the man she chose over Andy, has created a rogue star, a sentient star which is not part of the galactic community. The rogue has absorbed Cliff’s consciousness and decides it’s in love with Molly. A bunch of pointless stuff happens, and it kidnaps her and takes her to a highly radioactive cave. To be concluded.

The rogue inhabits a mining machine to interact with Molly. Art by Gaughan

Ugh. Molly is completely passive except when she does something stupid to put herself in greater danger. Protagonist Andy Quam is little better, running around with his hair on fire and achieving nothing. This collaboration between two good authors is so much less than the sum of its parts.

Two stars.

Summing up

There it is: a lukewarm heap of mediocrity with a bad finish. For a while there, it felt like IF was turning into a magazine that deserved those back-to-back Hugos, but there’s been a marked decline in the last couple of months. Maybe it’s just the serial. Meanwhile, the new feature has potential, though the first offering is a bit scattered. I’ll give it time to find its feet. Our Man in Fandom seems to be gone, which is all right. It felt like Carter had run out of things to say. Still, Pohl could have acknowledged his contribution over the last couple of years.

Chandler will probably be serviceable. Maybe Zelazny can lift us out of the doldrums.




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