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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 10, 1967] Return to sender (February 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

President Johnson commissioned noted (and favorite of our editor, Janice) artist Peter Hurd to draw his official Presidential portrait.  This was the result:

Reportedly, upon seeing the painting, Johnson described it as the ugliest thing he had ever seen.  Aghast, the artist asked what the President had wanted in a portrait.  Lyndon whipped out this piece painted by Normal Rockwell:

I understand that Hurd returned his commission and that a new picture will be made.  Maybe by someone with the initials L.B.J.

Law of Analogy


by Jack Gaughan

It was certainly a blow to the shocked Hurd, but I kind of know how Lyndon felt.  I had a similar reaction upon finising the latest issue of Galaxy.  This was, for the most part, not the magazine I was hoping for.

Our Man in Peking, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Yes, as Winter follows Fall, so we have yet another tale in the saga of Dr. West and the half-alien Esks.  Briefly: an alien came to Earth and bred with a local woman.  Her progeny, and their kids, too, all breed humanoids who look like Eskimos, but who mature in three years and give birth in a month.  Twenty years after the first was born, there are now more than a billion of them.  And instead of being stopped or even investigated to any real degree, the governments of the world refuse to see them as anything other than mutant Eskimos, deserving of love, affection, and free food.  The Chinese have welcomed them with open arms to till hitherto unprofitable fields, but Canada, Scandinavia, and other places have also taken them in.

Only one man, the notorious Dr. West, who tried but failed to sterilize the Esks with a tailored plague, will admit the true menace of the Esks.

Last installment, West was in a comfy Canadian prison for his attempted genocide.  In this one, he has been sent on a mission to Red China, brainwashed to learn the details on an as-needed basis, mind-controlled to have no say in his actions.  He is shot down over the mainland along with an Air Force Major so caricatured in his manner that I wondered if Gaughan's art would depict him with straw coming out of his joints.

After much rigamarole, West finds himself in the presence of the current Communist leader, Mao III (do the Chinese give descendants appellations like that?) And then the true nature of West's mission is revealed…

Hayden Howard really isn't a very good writer, and there aren't actually any characters in this story–only marionettes who dance to the author's strings without any will of their own.  I also could have done without the word "Chink" used a couple dozen times.

What keeps the tale from getting just one star is this morbid fascination with how this wholly unrealistic scenario will turn out.  We're supposed to get the conclusion next month.  God willing, that'll be the end of the Esks, one way or another.

Two stars.

Return Match, by Philip K. Dick

The outspacers have gambling casinos across the galaxy.  The only problem?  They tend to be lethal for their patrons.  Joseph Tinbane, a cop for Superior Los Angeles, takes on the aliens' latest contraption: a pinball machine that evolves not only to be unbeatable, but ultimately to attack the player!

Dick's vivid writing is on display here, so there's nothing wrong with the reading.  But the concept is pure fantasy, up to and including the conclusion where Tinbane is menaced by giant pinballs.  I can only imagine that PKD turned on, dropped out, and dashed off this tale before the hallucinations disappeared from his memory.

Three stars.

For Your Information: Who Invented the Crossbow? by Willy Ley

Ley's latest piece is an interesting, but somehow perfunctory piece on the evolution of the crossbow.  A few more pages of Asimov treatment would have helped.

Three stars.

The Last Filibuster, by Wallace West

War between North and South America is averted when the governments of both nations are captured and impressed to do the fighting.

I like the sentiment: politicians would be a lot less willing to send their sons (and daughters) to war if their lives were on the line.  But the story is just sort of silly and obvious.

Besides, who could believe that an armed mob could invade the Capitol to kidnap Congress?  It beggars the imagination.

Two stars.

They Hilariated When I Hyperspaced For Earth, by Richard Wilson


by Vaughn Bodé

The leader of a boring world that has stalled in its progressive mediocrity comes to Earth to steal our Secretary General, an efficient Ugandan who knows how to get things done.  A lot of "comedy" ensues.

Not only is the story a bore, but I can't forgive it for getting "They all Laughed" stuck in my head.

Two stars.

The Trojan Bombardment, by Christopher Anvil

How we defeat an enemy without firing a shot?  Why by shooting shells filled with booze, cigarettes, and sexy ladies at them!  After all, that's what they're really fighting for, isn't it?

Fellow traveler Cora Buhlert recently noted that she can smell a Campbell reject a mile away, and Bombardment is almost assuredly an Anvil story too stupid even for Analog.

One star.

The Discovery of the Nullitron, by Thomas M. Disch and John Sladek

Speaking of stupid, here's another "funny" piece, in the style of a Scientific American article, on the new decidedly supra-atomic particle called the Nullitron, putatively discovered by the authors after a jag in Ibiza.

One star.

Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne, by R. A. Lafferty

A dozen of the Earth's greatest scientists team up with a computer to improve history.  Their first time traveling target: to salvage relations between Charlemagne and the Caliph, allowing Arabic knowledge to flow freely.  They will know that they have succeeded because all of their records will change before their eyes!

Of course, if they had read William Tenn's The Brooklyn Project, they'd know that, as part of the time stream themselves, they'd never know what had changed.

Still, it's kind of a fun piece.  The journey's the thing, not the destination.

Three stars.

The Palace of Love (Part 3 of 3), by Jack Vance


by Gray Morrow

The saving grace of this magazine is this final installment of Vance's latest serial.  Keith Gersen has tracked down Viole Falushe, one of the five "Demon Kings" crime lords who killed his parents, to the mobster's private domain.  The Palace of Love is a mystical retreat, designed to provide pleasure to discerning patrons.  But its staff and denizens are all slaves of Falushe, though they aren't completely aware of the fact.

Half of this last act involves the long, meandering road to Falushe's Palace of Love.  It is only in the final sixth that we learn the truth about the place, who Drusilla is and her relation to Falushe's object of childhood infatuation, Jheral Tinzy, and whether or not Gersen can succeed in his revenge.

I found it all gripping stuff.  Vance has a knack for sensual writing; you always know what things smell like, what color they are, how they sound.  Yet the prose is never overlabored.  If the first book in the series starts auspiciously and ends with a dull thud, this second one only has one slow patch, in its second sixth.

For that reason, I give this installment and the book as a whole four stars, and it'll be in the running for the Galactic Star at the end of the year.

Summing up

Even with Palace shoring things up, this month's Galaxy clocks in at a dismal 2.4 stars.  And given that the Vance is likely to end up published in paperback, it's probably not even worth buying this mag for the one story (unless, of course, you want the serial complete in original form).

I'll be surprised if Galaxy doesn't come in last this month.  I'll also be really disappointed in that event; I don't think I could easily face another, worse slog!

That would truly be the ugliest month I've ever seen…



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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 2, 1967] Different perspectives (February 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

We all know the adage about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Trying to see the world through others’ eyes is a good way to understand them, and that can help ease tensions and make it easier to find compromises. Of course, it’s also possible to come up with some pretty ridiculous ideas about the way other people think.

Failures of diplomacy

At the end of 1965, I wrote about the troubles in the British colony of Rhodesia. The white minority government refuses to consider the idea of granting equal rights or a role in government to Black Rhodesians. Early in December, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Rhodesian Prime minister Ian Smith, and ousted Rhodesian Governor General Humphrey Gibbs met aboard the HMS Tiger to try to hash out a solution. Smith left with a proposal he seemed willing to accept, but rejected it out of hand as soon as he returned to Salisbury. In response on December 16th, the United Nations Security Council approved an oil embargo and economic sanctions against Rhodesia 11-0, with France, the Soviet Union, Mali and Bulgaria abstaining. Four days later, Wilson withdrew all offers and announced that the United Kingdom would only accept a Black majority government. On the 22nd, as the trade ban was about to go into effect, Smith declared that the U. N. had forced Rhodesia out of British control and out of the British Commonwealth, making the country an independent republic by default.

Bechuanaland to Rhodesia's south may have peacefully become Botswana last year, but it seems that most of southern Africa is ready to go up in flames. While dealing with the condemnation of the rest of the world, the Smith government is also fighting two Black nationalist movements. Meanwhile, armed resistance is developing against South Africa’s illegal control of South West Africa, and armed independence movements are appearing in the Portuguese overseas provinces of Angola and Mozambique (formerly Portuguese West and East Africa respectively). If any of these embers becomes a conflagration, it’s hard to see how this won’t also spill over into South Africa as well.


Wilson returns with what looked like an acceptable deal, but Smith swiftly vetoed it.

Through alien eyes

John Campbell supposedly said he wanted someone to write an alien that “thinks as well as a man, but not like a man.” At least one author in this month’s IF makes a pretty good attempt at doing so. Others at least offer characters trying to understand how aliens (and in one case a door) think.


At least they aren’t even pretending this illustrates something in the magazine. Art by Wenzel

The Soft Weapon, by Larry Niven

A dozen years after the discovery that the galactic core is exploding, the mad (not because of his manic-depression, but because he’s courageous) puppeteer Nessus has hired Jason and Anne-Marie Papandreou, who operate the passenger ship Court Jester, to take him to see the Outsiders in deep space. While concluding his unspecified business, Nessus has also purchased a stasis box, an item potentially containing a piece of technology from the long-gone Slaver empire. On the way back, Jay decides to make a detour to Beta Lyrae, hoping the sight will snap Nessus out of his funk.

There, they fall into the clutches of the kzinti Chuft-Captain and the crew of the Traitor’s Claw. Among other things, the box proves to contain a strange device which can change its shape. Some of the settings include a rocket booster and a talking computer, but the device also seems capable of converting matter to usable energy with perfect efficiency. It’s up to Jay to use what he thinks the device is in order to escape with his wife and client and keep a dangerous technology from winding up in the hands of kzinti.


Jay discovers a hidden setting. Art by Gaughan

Niven has given us insight into the kzinti mind before and goes into greater detail here. We also get his speculation on what might be valued in a society of sentients descended from herbivores. The action is done fairly well, we have a female character who isn’t just motivation for the protagonist, and the story flows quite well. This might be the best thing Niven has written yet.

A high four stars.

Gods of Dark and Light, by Bruce McAllister

Gregory Shawn is a member of a religious movement which has come to V-Planet-14 to live according to their own rules. Things aren’t going well. Most of the story consists of Gregory’s prayers as the harsh conditions test and shape the group’s faith. These are interspersed with the prayers of one of the native life forms.

There isn’t much to say about this one. I think McAllister has something he’s trying to say, but it’s not entirely clear. The whole thing is very dark.

Two stars.

Forest in the Sky, by Keith Laumer

The Terran Mission to the planet Zoon is having trouble finding the natives. It turns out the Groaci have beaten the CDT to the punch, though they aren’t doing any better. Once again, it’s Retief to the rescue.


The Terran Mission sets off to look for the local government. Art by Castellon

I noted back in October that Laumer seemed to be having fun with Retief again. That still seems to be the case, but while this is more than just going through the motions, it’s still the same old formula. If you’re new to Retief, this is probably a lot of fun. Otherwise it’s palatable, but more of the same.

A low three stars.

The Fan Awards, by Lin Carter

This month, Our Man in Fandom takes a look at the Hugos. Carter traces the development of the award and tells us a bit about who Hugo was. Next month, he promises to talk about some of the Hugo winners and to look at the new Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Three stars.

The Iron Thorn (Part 2 of 4), by Algis Budrys

Hunting his first Amsir, Honor White Jackson learns that his prey is an intelligent being with better technology than his own people have. Eventually, he decides to defect to the Amsir and is taken to their home, a deep bowl filled with dense air and greenery. A vision of his people’s paradise. But paradise it is not. The food of the Amsir is poisonous to humans, and Jackson faces death by starvation. His only hope is to find a way into the Thorn Thing, a short metal tower with a locked door at the top of a ladder. The door instantly destroys any Amsir attempting to go through it after issuing a warning in an unknown language. The only one who can get close is Ahmuls, who is deformed in such a way that he resembles humans more than he does Amsir. If the door likes humans, then presumably there’s something Jackson can eat on the other side. As this installment ends, Jackson convinces the door to open and dives through, followed by Ahmuls and the spears of the Amsir.

To be continued.


Jackson enters the Thorn Thing. Art by Gray Morrow

This story certainly moves fast. Nothing feels as rushed as it did in the first part, but Budrys isn’t wasting any time. I have some suspicions about what’s going on. Much of that will probably be resolved next month, though I have no idea how it will all be wound up.

Three stars.

Confession, by Robert Ray

Father Hume sits on his veranda, waiting for the oppressive heat of an Australian afternoon in the back of beyond to dissipate. He closes his eyes for a moment, but must have nodded off, since there is suddenly a stranger in his back garden. A stranger who would like the Father to hear his confession, but can’t wait until church tomorrow. What Father Hume hears will change his life and, hopefully, the world.

On first reading, this seemed like the sort of story you read, don’t mind and then forget. As I’ve thought about it, though, some other aspects have occurred to me. I can’t really say anything without giving the whole story away and ruining its impact, but it’s a little better than I first credited it.

A solid three stars.

The Evil Ones, by Richard Wilson

Wally Hengsen beat a murder charge with an insanity plea. Now, he’s biding his time until his organization can bust him out. When an alien spaceship lands on the grounds of the rest home, he starts looking for an angle to play, but a reminder of events in New Guinea during the War sets him on a different path.


Hengsen wonders if he really does belong in an asylum. Art by Vaughn Bodé

This is a decent story. It sags in a couple of places, and Hengsen’s change of heart relies so much on a flashback that it feels a little out of place. On the other hand, it does finish strongly, which is probably enough.

Three stars.

The Dangers of Deepspace, by Mather H. Walker

A colonel of the Deepspace service is interviewing a volunteer and seems to be doing his best to discourage the young man from signing up.

Here we have this month’s first-time author. The whole thing is very obvious, doesn’t entirely make sense and isn’t worth your time. The nicest thing I can say is that the prose is serviceable.

Barely two stars.

A Beachhead for Gree, by C. C. MacApp

Steve Duke and friends go behind enemy lines. They make contact with the locals, use a ruse to infiltrate an enemy base and thwart Gree’s plans.


This time the locals are humanoids who can build wings for themselves. Art by Burns.

I’m going to make several carbons of that summary and whenever a Gree story appears, I’ll just cut one out and paste it into my manuscript. Will this interminable series never end?

Two stars.

Summing up

No matter how you look at it, this month’s IF is par for the course. One really good story, some decent stuff and some junk. And as good as it’s been so far, the serial needs to start paying off next month. At least we have the special Hugo edition to look forward to next month. The authors are good, but will they offer up their best stuff?


No mention of Frank Herbert this time. Hmmmm.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 2, 1966] Mixed Bags (January 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

November was no more or less eventful than most months, but nothing really caught my eye. The Republicans made modest gains in the mid-term elections, California elected a so-so actor as governor and New Orleans is getting a football team in what certainly looks like recompense to Representative Hale Boggs and Senator Russell Long for shepherding the merger of the American and National Football Leagues through Congress. But there’s really nothing there to talk about. So, as with the last time this happened, let’s talk about the art.

Art matters

Regular readers of this column will know that I am often less than complimentary to the art in IF, especially the interior illustrations. There have been some changes in Fred Pohl’s stable of artists over the last year, some, but not all, for the better. John Giunta seems to have disappeared entirely, but several artists have stepped in to fill his shoes. We’re seeing a lot more from Wallace Wood and his assistant and imitator Dan Adkins, neither of whom is all that good, despite their years in the industry. On the other hand, Virgil Finlay has returned after a long absence, and he’s one of the best in the business.

We’re also seeing more of the mononymous Burns after a short absence. Unfortunately, his current style seems to combine the worst of Nodel and Giunta (and I like Giunta’s work generally). This month brings us a new artist: Vaughn Bodé. His figures are a bit cartoony, but not objectionable. I also like his landscape and VTOL aircraft. I won’t be sorry if we see more of his work.

A return to form

Something of a mixed bag in this month’s IF. A decent end to one serial and a promising start to a new one. A silly story and something experimental from established writers. Let’s take a closer look.


Just for a change, the cover actually depicts something inside. Art by Morrow

The Iron Thorn (Part 1 of 4), by Algis Budrys

Honor (pronounced “honner”) White Jackson is pursuing a bird-like Amsir across a red desert. As long as he wears his pointed metal cap and maintains line-of-sight to the Iron Thorn, he will be warm and able to breathe the thin air. If he can make his kill and bring it home, he will become a full-fledged Honor. Surprisingly, his quarry carries a metal spear (his own equipment is made largely of Amsir parts) and speaks, ordering him to yield when it thinks it has the upper hand.

On his way back, he is met by his older brother Black, who cautiously tests his reaction to the discoveries he has made. Disturbed by what he has learned, White (now Secon Black) enters the Iron Thorn for the first time and speaks with the Eld Honor, who says he may have what it takes to become Eld himself one day. Our protagonist comes to the conclusion that if he stays, he will be killed, and so, after giving a drawing of an armed Amsir to a girl he’s had his eye on, he sets out into the desert to be captured by an Amsir. He succeeds after killing the man who killed his father (making him Red Jackson) and is taken to a giant dish-shaped valley, filled with green plants and air dense enough to let the Amsir fly. There is also an Iron Thorn at its center, upright and shining, unlike the one his people call home. A vision of his people’s heaven, Ariwol. To be continued.


Honor White Jackson chases his prey, but who is hunting whom? Art by Gray Morrow

Last month, I noted that I’ve never really enjoyed Budrys’s work, but was pleased to learn that I liked his story in that issue. The streak continues. There’s an awful lot packed into these 35 or so pages, but it mostly works. The exposition, in particular, is a masterpiece of “show, don’t tell”. Parts of it are a bit rushed; the protagonist goes through three names (and has a secret fourth, Jim), and his decision that his life is in danger seemed precipitous. Maybe that will be fleshed out more if this appears as a novel. It’s a good start, though, and I look forward to more.

A solid three stars.

A Hair Perhaps, by J. F. Bone

Major William Bruce has arrived at the remote, top secret tracking station where he will spend the next two weeks all alone. When he is kidnapped, along with his living quarters, by aliens who plan to use him as their first test subject to determine if humans are worth enslaving, he has to find a way to defeat them with the limited tools at hand.


Two examples of Bodé’s art I mentioned earlier. I like the first one, but the figures need a little work, especially the human. Art by Vaughn Bodé

It’s been a few years since we saw anything from Bone. Unfortunately, like his last offering, this one is a stinker. Not as bad as “For Service Rendered”, but not up to his usual quality by a long shot. Bruce is thoroughly unpleasant (and explicitly stated to be so in the text), and the whole story is in service of a weak punchline.

Two stars.

– Still More Fandoms, by Lin Carter

Our Man in Fandom picks up where he left off and gives us some more fandoms that appeal to many science fiction fans. He starts off with one of the biggest groups, the Baker Street Irregulars, devoted to Sherlock Holmes, moves on to a couple of fellows in Missouri who are trying to start a fan group dedicated to James Branch Cabell, and on to the well-established Oz fandom. He finishes up with a look at the somewhat fragmented comics fan groups. Contact information is provided for the Cabell group and a couple of comics groups.

Three stars.

The Scared Starship, by D. M. Melton

Mars has been divided between the western and Sino-Sov blocs, with some neutral territory where finds must be shared. Rainbow Smith tells us how the group he was exploring with found a dead alien and a starship. The captain and the geologist rescue the find from the machinations of the evil Mao Lee, but it’s computer specialist Margot Harris who figures out how to get to the starship and win it over for the “good guys”.


Brains and beauty, but I don’t know how she gets all that hair in her helmet. Art by Nodel

Melton’s biggest problem thus far has been the handling of female characters. That’s largely corrected here, though there is one passage that feels more like “how men think women think”. Unfortunately, we have a nasty bit of Yellow Peril storytelling in the vicious Mao Lee (and an accompanying picture by Nodel). The whole Cold War tension subplot could have been dropped, leaving a decent problem story.

A low three stars.

By the Seawall, by Robert Silverberg

A great stone wall, sixty meters high and twenty meters thick, extends six thousand kilometers along the Eastern seaboard to protect humanity from the monsters which have risen from the sea. Micha-IV is an artificial person whose job is to patrol a one kilometer section of the wall, triggering additional defenses against monsters that scale the wall, reporting damage and also conducting tours. Suddenly, people have begun jumping off the wall, with or without a parachute; suicide either way. Micha-IV struggles to understand.

This can best be summed up as Robert Silverberg writes a J. G. Ballard story. How you feel about both those writers will probably determine how you feel about the story. I like Silverberg and don’t care for Ballard, but I can see that others might enjoy this.

Three stars.

On the Shallow Seas, by Robert Mason

Lant is a convict on the prison world of Exonam. Prisoners spend their days harvesting golden oysters. Fail to meet your quota of meat and you don’t eat, but find a rare gold pearl and you’ll be pardoned.


The “oysters” aren’t much like Earth shellfish. Art by Burns

Mason is this month’s new author. There’s enough here that shows promise. Line by line, the writing is good, though we’re treated to almost every prison story cliche there is. My biggest problem is the use of gold as the plot's linchpin. There’s no real reason for it to be that valuable. Mason would have been better served by using something much scarcer or making up his own element or alloy.

A low three stars.

The Impersonators, by C. C. MacApp

Inspector Kruger of the Interstellar Division has been sent to the planet Phrodd to arrest the embezzler Borogrove O’Larch. It’s diplomatically sensitive, because Phrodd is an alien world, so Kruger will have to step carefully. The locals are also perfect mimics, and O’Larch has hired a lot of them to pretend to be him. Kruger is soon at his wits’ end.

I usually groan when I see MacApp’s name and breathe a small sigh of relief when I see it’s not a Gree story. I sighed too soon. MacApp does not have a hand for humor. Laumer or Goulart could have had moderate success with this, but the story here is just plain bad.

Two stars.

Snow White and the Giants (Part 4 of 4), by J. T. McIntosh

A group of strange young people have come from the future to witness the Great Fire of Shuteley. They also have an interest in Val Mathers and his cousin Jota. Now trapped in the heart of the fire storm in a protective dome set to disappear at dawn, Miranda guides Val through his memories of Jota to help him understand what they hope to do. All his life, two things have been true for Jota: people who got in his way died, and he could have any woman he wanted.

In Miranda’s day, some three percent of people have the Gift, and they’re making society ungovernable. The much smaller percentage who are immune aren’t enough to stop them. Miranda and her team have come to the past to save Jota’s life in the hope that will eliminate the Gift, but they’ve failed. However, by convincing Val that he can have children without them turning out mentally handicapped like his younger sister, Miranda has accidentally succeeded. Now, Val and his sister just need to survive the collapse of the dome. Can Miranda meet the price he demands?


Val and Greg fight for the future. Art by Gaughan

And so McIntosh brings everything to a reasonably satisfying conclusion. There’s a small flaw in the plot, in that Jota has no children and so his death ought to have eliminated the Gift. But there’s a bite in the final paragraph that more than compensates for any weaknesses elsewhere.

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

Summing up

After last month’s excellent outing, this issue is something of a return to form. The serials are the main reason to read the magazine, and the stuff in between is average at best. Next month we have the continuation of the Budrys novel, which is promising, as is a new Niven tale. A new Retief could go either way. But the March issue will have a contribution from every winner of a professional Hugo at TriCon: Asimov, Ellison, Herbert and Zelazny, plus a cover by Frazetta. So we’ve got that to look forward to.




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