Fantastic Stories of Imagination - December 1964

 

Norman M. Lobsenz (editor)
Fantastic Stories of Imagination December 1964 (1964)
Someone deposited a stack of these at my local Half Price Books so I bagged all those issues which looked interesting, seeing as they were going for just two dollars each. The thing which looked interesting about this was it being the original home of Philip K. Dick's The Unteleported Man which I'd never read in this form. Dick added a second half for the reprint as an Ace Double, then eventually expanded the thing and renamed it Lies Inc., which I have read, and about which I don't remember a great deal beyond that it probably didn't need quite such a lengthy guitar solo half way through side one. The Unteleported Man seems to have been Phil trying his hand at a spy thriller, or at least something which borrows from spy thrillers. It's fairly typical of what he was writing in the early sixties, although feels a little more forced than usual, or at least lacking both the usual jazzy sparkle and the humour - which is perhaps why he revisited it. The story runs that Earth is suffering from overpopulation and so everyone is encouraged to relocate to a distant colony planet, communication with which has proven suspiciously difficult; so we don't know if the migrants are enjoying a new life in outer space, or if the teleport is simply a more technologically advanced gas chamber, meaning those Germans are up to their old tricks again. The paranoia is pronounced even by Phil's standards, and I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with the suggestion of Germans being up to their old tricks again, but it generally works better than it did as Lies Inc.

Elsewhere we find Harry Harrison's They're Playing Our Song, Gordon R. Dickson's It, Out of the Darkest Jungle, Christopher Anvil's Merry Christmas from Outer Space, and John Starr Niendorff's I Am Bonaro. There's also The Fanatic by Arthur Porges which I read but can't remember any of the details, whether I got anything out of it or what. I'm likewise sketchy where Merry Christmas from Outer Space is concerned because I read no further than the first page. It's one of those stories told as a series of letters, a conceit which has always struck me as gimmicky, kind of lazy, and usually the last resort of a scoundrel, so I didn't bother. Similarly gimmicky and lazy is It, Out of the Darkest Jungle being written as a screenplay, either in reference to its achingly stereotypical b-movie narrative, or because Dickson just couldn't be arsed.

You might expect better from Harry Harrison, but in this instance you would be mistaken. Being 1964 and the height of Beatlemania, They're Playing Our Song is about a hit pop combo called the Spiders. They play a concert for their screaming fans, a couple of whom manage to sneak past security and make it to the groups' hotel room, only to be eaten alive because the Spiders really are spiders.

Clever.

I Am Bonaro was all right - nothing Earth shattering, but certainly readable. I have a few more issues of Fantastic to get through, but on the strength of this one, even with the presence of Philip K. Dick, I'm not too surprised it hasn't lasted.

Analog April 1961

John W. Campbell (editor) Analog April 1961

(1961 but felt more like 1931)
Up until last November, I'd read only one issue of Analog. It was kind of shit, but I assumed I'd simply picked up a dud copy of an otherwise decent magazine and so casually accumulated a further five back issues as I happened upon them in junk shops on the grounds of the covers holding promise, and I'd get around to reading them eventually, and maybe there would be something amazing in one of them. This is now my third and I think I'm beginning to see the central flaw in my strategy regarding back issues of Analog. In this instance I was drawn in by the prospect of fresh Simak. The Fisherman actually turns out to be the serialised version of the novel which was later published as Time is the Simplest Thing, and is therefore wonderful, even in this truncated form. The problem is the sharp contrast it throws across everything else in the magazine.

Beyond Simak, the collection isn't entirely without redeeming features but you really have to work at it. We kick off with one of Campbell's characteristically unsavoury editorials, this time discussing colonialism by comparing examples from science-fiction literature with the history of Africa, the Americas and elsewhere. The racism is very much in the casual school but, perhaps unsurprisingly, his views of less technologically developed societies and their worth in the great scheme of things are typically appalling. I therefore also skipped Campbell's essay about innovations in the manufacture of light bulbs because fuck that guy.

Excepting J.F. Bone's underwhelming but mercifully short A Prize for Edie, the remainder comprises tales of space pilots, teams, men who address each other as sir, colonels, and other species of square, enjoyment of which probably depends on the reader having some kind of military background and being the sort of fellow who enjoys a well-mixed Martini after a few hours on the golf course. Lloyd Biggle Jr.'s Still, Small Voice - in which military types attempt to influence the politics of a pseudo-medieval planet - is just about saved by its culminating revolution sparked through the invention of the trumpet. I gave up on Christopher Anvil's Pandora's Envoy after five or six pages, skipping ahead to Robert Donald Locke's Next Door, Next World.

Lance kissed her. A tender kiss, yet gusty enough that he lifted her from the ground and her high-heeled shoes kicked in free fall.

The pilot found his girl's breath warm, loving. Yet her cheeks seemed colder than even the crisp air should account for. And her body was trembling.

Lance is a dashing space pilot, and his girl is the colonel's daughter. Lance flies off into space and when he returns, he finds the colonel has never had a daughter because of space warps and alternate realities 'n' shit. I'm sure it was mind blowing back in April 1961. Anyway, following Next Door, Next World I took another shot at Pandora's Envoy and found it wasn't quite so bad as it had seemed; but honestly, most of this stuff would seem pitiful in competition with Andre Norton, never mind Simak.

There's also a section of book reviews comprising mostly plot summaries of the offerings under scrutiny. This novel features an intrepid space reporter named Jed who travels to Titan to cover the Interplanetary Space-Golf Tournament, but when Jed arrives he finds that a mysterious stranger is already checked into his hotel under his name. At first he decides to blah blah blah…

Three down, three of these turkeys to go...

Analog November 1966

John W. Campbell (editor) Analog November 1966 (1966 obviously)
The more I learn of John W. Campbell, the less I like, and this didn't help. I've recently been listening to Frank Zappa's We're Only in It for the Money album and have found myself particularly entertained by Bow Tie Daddy, a short jolly burst of ragtime sarcasm.

Bow tie daddy dontcha blow your top,
Everything's under control.
Bow tie daddy dontcha blow your top,
'Cause you think you're gettin' too old.
Don't try to do no thinkin',
Just go on with your drinkin',
Just have your fun, you old son of a gun,
Then drive home in your Lincoln.

Anyway, I get the impression that Analog was probably essential reading for the bow tie daddies of America. This is the second issue I've read, and the first featured Henry G. Stratmann's The Last Temptation of Katerina Savitskaya which is probably the worst short story I've ever encountered.

'What the fuck, Lawrence, man?' I hear you ask. 'Why you be putting yourself through that shit? Man, that's fucked up.'

I was in one of those used book stores resembling the front room of some hoarder - weird smells, nothing in any particular order, and half of the stock piled in random towers here and there. I found this and bought it, being quite partial to a spot of Murray Leinster. Only when I got home did I realise that I'd already read Quarantine World as one of the three collected in SOS from Three Worlds.

Oh well.

Unfortunately, while SOS from Three Worlds is not without charm, it was never anything mind-bending, and Quarantine World is arguably its weakest story; which leaves us with Christopher Anvil's Facts to Fit the Theory, Stewart Robb's Letter from a Higher Critic, and the final instalment of Randall Garrett's serialised Too Many Magicians. There's also a scientific article about alternative dimensions which seemed to be mostly sums and was therefore incomprehensible to me; plus book reviews, letters, some editorial about antibiotics and the FDA, and an advertisement for a five album boxed set from Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass on the back cover. The issue to follow this one apparently featured Amazon Planet by Mack Reynolds, as summarised thus:

Amazonia, being the only planet colonised by a bunch of fiercely feminist women, was naturally all the more fiercely determined that the other misguided (read: "male-guided") planets of the United Planets weren't going to interfere in any way whatever.

Which made it a l-i-t-t-l-e difficult for a United Planets man to land on the planet—even if Amazonia needed his help badly. But when a little, inoffensive contract negotiator man got into a slight mix up over names—they read his name Guy as Gay—he was in for trouble of types he had never dreamed of. Amazonia has some very unusual marriage customs it seems…

See what I mean?

Anyway, Facts to Fit the Theory is a short story taking the form of memos and letters exchanged between various star colonels and solar lieutenants discussing military protocol as applied to the defense of some planet during an alien incursion, so I couldn't be bothered to finish that one. Letter from a Higher Critic is yet another story taking the form of a letter, this time composed by someone from the far future disputing the facts of ancient history, which is actually our present, and for reasons which aren't really sufficiently novel as to form the basis of a short story; and the title Too Many Magicians probably tells you as much as you need to know about Randall Garrett's thing, which employs the address my Lord in more or less every other sentence, ingeniously features a character named Sir Lyon Gandolphus Grey, and amounts to an unusually long episode of Midsomer Murders written as a tenth generation Tolkien knock off. It isn't quite so bad as Anvil or Robb's contributions, but I nevertheless gave up about half way through. There just didn't seem to be a point in reading any more.

Yup. Excepting one of Leinster's lesser works, this was rubbish, I tell you what. Even Bow Tie Daddy deserved better.