Norman M. Lobsenz (editor)
Fantastic Stories of Imagination March 1963 (1963)
Here's another one of these, costing peanuts and picked up from the second hand place mainly because Simak is mentioned on the cover. It also seemed like I should have another go at enjoying J.G. Ballard, but A Question of Re-Entry isn't quite the lost astronaut tale I might have hoped for, instead concentrating on those sailing up and down the Amazon in hope of locating his capsule. As with most Ballard that I've read, it's well written with a reasonably literary flourish but the narrative just sort of floats along without doing much of anything and I couldn't get on with it, and the missing astronaut element may even have been tagged on so as to justify publication in one of these digests for all the difference it makes. That said, at least I finished the thing, in contrast to Roger Zelazny's Nine Starships Waiting which I gave up after about five mystifying pages.
In addition to the usual short stories, Fantastic was in the habit of reprinting forgotten or otherwise mislaid works from before the dawn of the science-fiction and fantasy digests, of which three turn up in this issue. Guy de Maupassant's An Apparition is distinctly underwhelming, the plot being that it's a ghost, which most of us will have guessed from the title. I've encountered the name of Maupassant as significant in the history of literature, but this example contains few clues as to why. Marginally more whelming is Jean Richepin's The Wet Dungeon Straw which is essentially a slightly depressing shaggy dog story but is peculiar enough to be enjoyable. Finally Austyn Granville's His Natal Star features a person who finds himself subject to the gravity of a distant star, and enough so as to cancel out the pull of the Earth. The story, such as it is, is mostly our man walking around on the ceiling marveling at all those tables and chairs up there, but it worked for me.
Coming at last to the main feature, Simak's Physician to the Universe - which it turns out I haven't read before - is odd even by Cliff's standards, sustaining the atmosphere of a de Chirico painting, albeit one depicting a swamp, for the full forty or so pages. Here Simak does that van Vogt thing of having each paragraph bring more questions than it answers and when the end delivers resolution, it actually sort of doesn't and leaves us more bewildered than ever. This is something I enjoy about Simak's writing, namely that his explanations often serve to emphasise the sheer scale of the mystery more than they illuminate. Here his protagonists are exiled to a swamp serving as a form of limbo - locales which Simak has used more than once to place his characters outside of space, time, and conventional reality. Somebody will one day write a thorough examination of Simak's oeuvre, it patently being of a depth and complexity sufficient to warrant such an undertaking, and light will hopefully be shed on the significance of the swamp to which he returns time and again. Until then I don't have much idea, but it's fun to ponder.
Fantastic Stories of Imagination March 1963 (1963)
Here's another one of these, costing peanuts and picked up from the second hand place mainly because Simak is mentioned on the cover. It also seemed like I should have another go at enjoying J.G. Ballard, but A Question of Re-Entry isn't quite the lost astronaut tale I might have hoped for, instead concentrating on those sailing up and down the Amazon in hope of locating his capsule. As with most Ballard that I've read, it's well written with a reasonably literary flourish but the narrative just sort of floats along without doing much of anything and I couldn't get on with it, and the missing astronaut element may even have been tagged on so as to justify publication in one of these digests for all the difference it makes. That said, at least I finished the thing, in contrast to Roger Zelazny's Nine Starships Waiting which I gave up after about five mystifying pages.
In addition to the usual short stories, Fantastic was in the habit of reprinting forgotten or otherwise mislaid works from before the dawn of the science-fiction and fantasy digests, of which three turn up in this issue. Guy de Maupassant's An Apparition is distinctly underwhelming, the plot being that it's a ghost, which most of us will have guessed from the title. I've encountered the name of Maupassant as significant in the history of literature, but this example contains few clues as to why. Marginally more whelming is Jean Richepin's The Wet Dungeon Straw which is essentially a slightly depressing shaggy dog story but is peculiar enough to be enjoyable. Finally Austyn Granville's His Natal Star features a person who finds himself subject to the gravity of a distant star, and enough so as to cancel out the pull of the Earth. The story, such as it is, is mostly our man walking around on the ceiling marveling at all those tables and chairs up there, but it worked for me.
Coming at last to the main feature, Simak's Physician to the Universe - which it turns out I haven't read before - is odd even by Cliff's standards, sustaining the atmosphere of a de Chirico painting, albeit one depicting a swamp, for the full forty or so pages. Here Simak does that van Vogt thing of having each paragraph bring more questions than it answers and when the end delivers resolution, it actually sort of doesn't and leaves us more bewildered than ever. This is something I enjoy about Simak's writing, namely that his explanations often serve to emphasise the sheer scale of the mystery more than they illuminate. Here his protagonists are exiled to a swamp serving as a form of limbo - locales which Simak has used more than once to place his characters outside of space, time, and conventional reality. Somebody will one day write a thorough examination of Simak's oeuvre, it patently being of a depth and complexity sufficient to warrant such an undertaking, and light will hopefully be shed on the significance of the swamp to which he returns time and again. Until then I don't have much idea, but it's fun to ponder.
