ISFDB link

Editor, Keith Seddon

Fiction:
The End of All Songs (Part 4 of 4) • serial by Michael Moorcock ∗
Act 1, Scene 3,000,000 and Counting . . . • novelette by J. K. Dixon ∗
The Fall of Xierozogenes • short story by Jocelyn Almond [as by Carol Bewley] ∗∗∗

Non-fiction:
Cover • by Eddie Jones
Interior artwork • Eddie Jones, Michelle Robson, Jocelyn Almond, Terry Brace, Richard Glynn Jones
Editorial • by Keith Seddon
And I Type Rather Fast . . . : An Interview with Michael Moorcock • by Mark Ambient
Book Reviews • by John Grubber, Jocelyn Almond
Stop Press . . . Next Issue

The final instalment of The End of All Songs by Michael Moorcock¹ starts with two long chapters which are almost entirely taken up with Amelia’s continued attempts to accept her relationship with Jherek and  adjust to life at the End of Time. These matters have surfaced before, and her lack of success in coming to an accommodation becomes even more wearying and joyless here. This material is quite at odds with the rest of the novel, and at times reads like a deranged version of something out of Woman’s Romance (if there is such a magazine).

There is a brief respite from all this in the third chapter, where the Duke of Queens marries Sweet Orb Mace. The idea spreads like wildfire through the denizens of the End of Time and they all join in with enthusiasm, as Jherek finds out:.

Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, laughed a tinkling laugh, as was her wont. She was surrounded by Captain Mubbers and his men, all dressed in the same brilliant powder-blue she wore, save for strange balloon-like objects of dull red, on elbows and knees. “Lord Jagged rescued them, I gather, and I insisted that they be my special guests. We are to be married, too, today!”
“You — to them all!” said Amelia in astonishment. She blushed.
“They are teaching me their customs.” She displayed the elbow balloons. “These are proper to a married Lat female. The reason for their behaviour, where women were concerned, was the conviction that if we did not wear knee-and elbow-balloons we were — um?”
She looked enquiringly at her nearest spouse, who crossed his three pupils and stroked his whiskers in embarrassment. Jherek thought it was Rokfrug. “Dear?”
“Joint-sport,” said Rokfrug almost inaudibly.
[. . .]
“And we are to be Mr. and Mr. Mongrove-de Goethe!” It was Werther, midnight blue from head to toe. Midnight blue eyes stared from a midnight-blue face. It was rather difficult to recognize him, save for his voice. Beside him lounged in an attitude of dejected satisfaction the great bulk of Lord Mongrove, moody monarch of the weeping cliffs.
“What? You marry? Oh, it is perfect.”
“We think so,” said Werther.
“You considered no one else?”
“We have so little in common with anyone else,” droned Mongrove. “Besides, who would have me? Who would spend the rest of his life with this shapeless body, this colourless personality, this talentless brain . . . ?”
“It is a good match,” said Jherek hastily. Mongrove was inclined, once started, to gather momentum and spend an hour or more listing his own drawbacks.
“We decided, at Doctor Volospion’s fairground, when we fell off the carousel together, that we might as well share our disasters . . .”
“An excellent scheme.” A scent of dampness wafted from Mongrove’s robes as he moved; Jherek found it unpleasant. “I trust you will discover contentment . . .”
“Reconciliation, at least,” said Amelia.
The two moved on.
“So,” said Jherek, offering his arm. “We are to witness three weddings.”
“They are too ludicrous to be taken seriously,” she said, as if she gave her blessing to the proceedings.
“Yet they offer satisfaction to those taking part, I think.”
“It is so hard for me to believe that.”
They found Brannart Morphail, at last, in unusual finery, a mustard-coloured cloak hanging in pleats from his hump, tassels swinging from the most unlikely places on his person, his medical boot glittering with spangles. He seemed in an almost jolly mood as he limped beside My Lady Charlotina of Above-the-Ground (her new domicile).
“Aha!” cried Brannart, sighting the two. “My nemesis, young Jherek Carnelian!” The jocularity, if forced, was at least well-meant. “And the cause of all our problems, the beautiful Amelia Underwood.”
“Carnelian, now,” she said.
“Congratulations! You take the same step, then?”
“As the Duke of Queens,” agreed Jherek amicably, “and Mistress Christia. And Werther and Lord Mongrove…”
“No, no, no! As My Lady Charlotina and myself!” p. 27

Unfortunately, this reversion to the cheerier and more comic aspects of the novel does not endure. In the last chapter Jagged tells Jherek and Amelia that he can send them to the beginning of time so they can live a simpler life. However, they will not have access to Power Rings, and will only live for several generations before dying. They choose to go.

The story finishes with the couple going for a final stroll along a seaside promenade that Amelia creates, before heading for the beginning of time.
An exasperating finish, and a disappointing end to the trilogy.
Act 1, Scene 3,000,000 and Counting . . . by J. K. Dixon is yet another contribution to this magazine from a OSW (one-shot wonder, a writer who only ever published one story in the SF field).

This story has a group of so-called experts descending into a huge underground excavation in England called the Burrow, which is being built to house 20 million people, the residents only coming above ground for work or leisure. I say ‘so-called experts’ as I’m not exactly sure what it is they are meant to do on their survey: they seem to spend their time either data dumping or bickering with each other:

‘I have a theory,’ Dobson declared behind him. ‘I’ve noticed lately that life follows a definite pattern—’
‘Knit one, purl one,’ offered Wilkins from the front, shouting over his shoulder.
‘—which derives from the type of existence we lead.’
‘Tell me mo’, brother Moses!’ said Emma.
The van turned a corner and everyone lurched to one side, righted themselves, swore at Wilkins.
‘Because of the crush of population,’ Dobson continued, ‘none of us has any sense of external privacy. I know this to be true of myself. I never have the time to think clearly and extensively for any great period of time. If I was a research technician this would be fatal, of course. Where would I obtain the information and inspiration to continue my studies?’
‘The Reader’s Digest,’ someone suggested. There was general laughter.
‘What conclusions do you draw, Doctor Freud?’ asked Sarah. Tyce stole a glance at her eyes—they were slightly red in the sockets.
‘I maintain that each of us builds his own world of privacy inside his head, and the outside world becomes nothing more than an incidental affair, a world of scenes, of happenings, which affect our inner worlds only slightly. It feeds us information like computer-tape with which we populate our hallucinations. Experience becomes fragmented, arbitrary, each event a little nugget of fact from which we draw conclusions and add depth to our inner sanctums.’
‘You’re saying that each of us is only part here?’ asked Emma. Her hair fell in a curtain to one side as she cocked her head at the geologist.
‘That’s right. The weight of population, the closeness of our existence, conspire to make us withdraw into ourselves, to fragment our experience of the outside world into units of information to be digested and processed and altered to fit our concept of the world as it exists.’
‘What we have here,’ commented Emma, ‘is a basic lack of understanding.’
‘That’s right, that’s right!’ said Dobson. He was becoming excited. ‘A failure to transmit our basic logic-structures—’
‘What I mean,’ said Emma, ‘is that I don’t understand a word you’re rattling on about.’ p. 17

Running parallel to this is team leader Tyce’s infatuation with one of the woman on the team, Sarah, who is unhappily partnered to someone else but still unavailable.
The climax occurs when (spoiler) a vast re-echoed sound causes the team members to experience hallucinations. Predictably Tyce’s are fantasies, some sexual, about Sarah.

This is overlong, and the interpersonal relationships exhibited by the team are unbelievable due to their wild dysfunctionality. I’d give it some credit for ambition, though (it has a number of New Wave quirks, both stylistic and typographical).

The Fall of Xierozogenes by Jocelyn Almond² is that rarest of things in this magazine: a story I actually liked. It tells of a nobleman called Morgbraith travelling through the mountains to kill the last dragon. He is accompanied by a barbarian aide who senses his reservations:

‘ ’Tis said,’ Norlan remarked presently, ‘that the Monstrous Thrawn was the deformed offspring of the Dragons: a degenerate, wingless creature, crawling upon the surface of the earth like a worm.’
‘So it is said,’ Morgbraith agreed.
‘And so the Dragons rejected it and disowned it as a child of their noble blood, and cast it out to live alone and wretched in the wilderness.’
‘So it is said,’ Morgbraith assented.
‘The Dragons felt no pity for the weak,’ Norlan observed. ‘Pity is the sentiment of weaklings for weaklings. Men and Dragons do not pity.’ He was silent for a while, then, turning to Morgbraith a face ash grey in the ghastly light, he said gravely: ‘Remember that, Boy.’
And Morgbraith raised his eyes to the grim, grey crags of the mountains and thought of the ancient, solitary creature that he knew to be lurking somewhere in the darkness of the mountains’ shadows: the Dragon which had dwelt there alone, years beyond numbering, the last of his noble race, brooding in the deep caverns of his forefathers. And Morgbraith knew that Norlan knew what he thought, and he said quietly: ‘I shall remember it.’ p. 43

When Morgbraith finally enters the dragon’s cave the encounter does not turn out as he expects. A minor piece, but I rather liked this poignant tale.

This issue’s cover is my favourite of Vortex’s short run, and it surely must be one of Eddie Jones’s best pieces. It makes this issue really look like an SF magazine. There is an unadorned copy of the painting on the rear cover.

The Interior artwork is by some expected names (Eddie Jones, Michelle Robson, and Jocelyn Almond) and some previously unseen here: Terry Brace produces some professional level work for Dixon’s story, and Richard Glynn Jones has a few decorating the interview with Michael Moorcock.
The Editorial by Keith Seddon is another one where he gets into categories and labels again, and he also mentions he is receiving a lot of speculative fiction submissions:

As an Editor I find myself in the position of Intermediary between the Writer and the Reader. The material which is submitted for publication in VORTEX might be divided into three categories; Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction. A large proportion of the material I receive would be placed in this last category, which new form of writing is now superseding the older forms of SF. Much of the new Speculative Fiction I refer to is poorly written. The exploratory nature of it naturally tends towards experimental efforts by amateurs. Nevertheless, there is much of this type of material of an acceptable standard that has been rejected by VORTEX because of our present policy of publishing a variety of types of that which has previously been grouped as SF. It seems that other terms such as ‘Gothic’ and “Surrealistic’ are now needed to apply to styles within the new category of Speculative Fiction which at present is extended to a wide range of literature. p. 1

And I Type Rather Fast . . . : An Interview with Michael Moorcock by Mark Ambient (my memory is that this was a pseudonym for the editor, but I can’t point to anything to confirm this) mostly has Moorcock talking about writing and Jerry Cornelius.

Keith Seddon follows the interview with a sidebar review of The Condition of Muzak, where he manages to say almost nothing about the book other than that it isn’t as good as The English Assassin. He recommends it nevertheless.
There are a couple of pages of Book Reviews by John Grubber and Jocelyn Almond. John Grubber spends most of his panning The Time of the Hawklords by Michael Moorcock & Michael Butterworth, before doing a volte face in the penultimate paragraph:

If you can stagger through the bad grammar, the weak vocabulary and the flagging dialogue of this review, you might be able to stand up to The Time Of The Hawklords.
Despite all its technical faults and its ridiculous plots (or, maybe, because of it) this book is fun to read, and a pleasant way to cure insomnia.
The book proves that The Day Of The Amateur is in no way over. p. 47

Jocelyn Almond is less than impressed with Spock Messiah:

To resurrect an old idea in a new form that lacks the original novelty and enthusiasm is about as satisfying as digging up your grandmother’s grave to see if she would look any fresher in a new dress. I am sure that there are many other Star Trek fans who would agree when I say that if we cannot have Star Trek as it was. we would rather not have it at all than make do with its bastard offspring of poor TV cartoons, stories adapted from the original scripts and uninspiring novels.
Nevertheless Star Trek was and will continue to be a standard. In its heyday its widespread appeal opened up the SF genre to a new and more diverse audience than had previously attempted to explore science fiction. Whilst the nostalgia that surrounds Star Trek remains, books like Spock Messiah will continue to sell, though I’m afraid that this last bandwagon trek through the wild west of Kyros, complete with Red (Kyrosian) Indians is more than enough for me.
There is one consolation: believe it or not, and you probably won’t. Captain Kirk does not get the girl. Is there some mistake, or can it be a genuine attempt to break with the old tradition? It could be that poor old Kirk is just worn out after all these years. p. 48

Stop Press . . . Next Issue promises a lurch towards very traditional SF with its line-up for issue #5. Leading off will be the first part of The Chaos Weapon by (Carnell) New Worlds and New Writings in SF stalwart Colin Kapp. Also appearing will be the known if new-ish writer Terry Greenhough³, and unknown writer Mark Ambient. Also promised is an interview with this month’s cover artist Eddie Jones.

Probably the best issue of the magazine so far.

---

1. Michael Moorcock provides a short but interesting introduction to the paperback edition of The Dancers at the End of Time, 2003, where he discusses the characteristics of Jherek Carnelian as compared to the other heroes in his multiverse. He goes on to briefly discuss and recommend The British Barbarians by Grant Allen, 1895, which has a time-traveller from the future confronting the social mores of the day.
Before Moorcock gets to all this, he starts with an amusing, self-deprecating anecdote:

This book, a particular favourite of mine, is my homage to the inspired dandyism of our fin-de-siecle, to The Savoy, The Yellow Book, Beardsley, Beerbohm, Dawson, Whistler, Harland and, of course, Oscar Wilde. I had a passion for Wilde and Firbank in my late teens. For a while I took to wearing oddly-cut jackets and trousers, dipping carnations in green ink and dusting my embarrassingly robust features with talc in the hope of looking paler and therefore more interesting.
As a result of this obsession I had the first pair or Edwardian flared trousers (made by Burton) as well as the first high-button frockcoat to be seen in London since 1910. I like to think I suffered a little for my passion and boldly wore my suit where none before dared pose, ignoring all commentary or expressions of amusement, until one day Keith Roberts, author of Pavane, remarked approvingly how in that suit I had the bluff domestic air of a Hamburg Zeppelin commander and irrevocably damaged my romantic self-image. When bell-bottom trousers became the general style, I packed away my suit, laid a symbolic green carnation on top and left it to be eaten by maggots in the same Ladbroke Grove basement which ultimately returned all my best-loved finery to nature and which is still occupied, I believe, by the ghost of Mrs Cornelius.

2. I found out that Carol Bewley was a pseudonym for Jocelyn Almond on Amazon:

There is a short introduction to the story in the book:

The Fall of Xeirozogenes was first published in April 1977 in the fourth issue of a British science fiction and fantasy magazine, Vortex. At the time, I was twenty years of age, and later that year I married the editor, Keith Seddon.
Over the years, many strange rumours about Vortex have spread abroad, most of them absurdly untrue. One of the rumours was that the editor wrote all the stories himself! This is ridiculous, but it is, however, true that there was a shortage of good work available — only about one in a hundred stories submitted to the magazine was of publishable standard, so that it was necessary to augment this slightly. For this reason I wrote The Fall of Xierozogenes and it was published in the magazine under the pseudonym of Carol Bewley, though the illustrations bore my real name. I chose ‘Carol’ because I was a great fan of Lewis Carroll, and still am. ‘Bewley’ was inspired by the stately home, Beaulieu in Hampshire, which I happened to have visited shortly before.

Almond died in 2014, having suffered from chronic rheumatoid arthritis from the age of 25, a condition that resulted in her husband becoming her long-term carer. If you want to know more about her life after this story, I suggest you read Dark Gifts from Black Isis, which is Appendix I in Keith Seddon’s book Another Grief Observed (you can read it through the ‘Look Now’ function on Amazon but, be warned, it is a very bleak account).

3. I recognised Greenhough’s name when I first got this magazine as I had read his previous stories in Science Fiction Monthly, November 1975 (Artist) and Andromeda #1, 1976 (Doll).

ISFDB link

Editor, Keith Seddon

Fiction:
The End of All Songs (Part 3 of 4) • serial by Michael Moorcock ∗∗
My Time, Your Time • short story by David Penny ∗
The Agonies of Time • novelette by Ravan Christchild ∗

Non-fiction:
Cover • by Rodney Matthews
Interior artwork • Eddie Jones, Michelle Robson, Richard Hopkinson, Jocelyn Almond
Editorial • by Keith Seddon

I mentioned when reviewing the last issue that there was a strong sense of déjà vu from the first issue—that is even more pronounced this time around. Once again we have Moorcock’s serial, another series novelette by Ravan Christchild, and an editorial by Keith Seddon. The only variation is a story by David Penny (there is no artist interview, not even a Next Issue section). I note in passing that this latter writer was the first to appear in Vortex, apart from Moorcock, who wasn’t a complete unknown. He had previously published a short story, The Durable Man, in Galaxy, March 1974.

His contribution to this issue, My Time, Your Time, has a narrator called Percy Bysshe (after Shelly) who is rebuilding an old house on the planet Tipit after a tour as a deep space pilot. The house was left to him by his parents hundreds of years ago—the long time-interval is a result of the time-dilation effects he was subject to while in space.
He meets a young woman called Sandi. She is an outcast from the village due to the fact that she spends her time with an alien krie, a dragonfly-like inhabitant of the planet that can teleport. The two become romantically involved, and they later use the krie to move a small space shuttle and explore the Galaxy. They think (spoiler) that the krie can teleport across vast distances  without any time dilatation effects but they are mistaken.

This, for the most part, has a pleasant rural/seaside feel, like of some of Michael Coney’s work, but the problem it has is that the world building is completely unconvincing. Although hundreds of years have gone by during his time in space, he returns to a society that has barely changed. There has been no linguistic drift, or much in the way of technological progress: he buys a typewriter to write his memoirs, drinks vodka and orange, and the only meal in the story is fried ham and eggs. This isn’t the future—it’s the 1970s on another planet.
A readable enough story for all that, just an amateur one.

The End of All Songs by Michael Moorcock gets off to a good start in the ancient city, where Jherek and company see the Lat arrive and unsuccessfully attempt to use their energy weapons:

Popping a translation pill into his mouth (he had taken to carrying them everywhere just recently) Jherek said: “What brings you to the city, Captain Mubbers?”
“Mind your own smelly business, sonny jim,” said the leader of the space-invaders. “All we armjoint want to do now is find a shirt-elastic way out!”
“I can’t understand why you wanted to come in, though…” He glanced apologetically at Mrs. Underwood, who could not understand anything that was being said. He offered her a pill. She refused. She folded her arms in an attitude of resignation.
“Spoils,” said another of the Lat.
“Shut it, Rokfrug,” Captain Mubbers ordered.
But Rokfrug continued: “The knicker-patch place seemed so rotten-well protected that we thought there was bound to be something worth having here. Just our shirt-elastic luck—”
“I said shut it, arse-brain!”
But Captain Mubbers’ men seemed to be losing faith in his authority. They crossed their three eyes in a most offensive manner and made rude gestures with their elbows.
“Weren’t you already sufficiently successful elsewhere?” Jherek asked Rokfrug. “I thought you were doing extremely well with the destruction, the rape and so on…”
“Pissing right we were, until…”
“Cork your hole, bum-face!” shouted his leader.
“Oh, elbow-off!” retorted Rokfrug, but seemed aware that he had gone too far. His voice became a self-pitying mumble as Captain Mubbers gazed disapprovingly back at him. Even his fellows plainly thought Rokfrug’s language had put him beyond the pale.
“We’re under a bit of a strain,” said one of them, by way of apology. p. 3

During this conversation Inspector Underwood and his men arrive on an airship piloted by the Duke of Queens. The latter is now a special constable and sports a yellow truncheon.
The ancient city is malfunctioning, and a huge power drain causes a gaping pit open up on the plain beyond the city. Mongrove and Yusharip arrive and tell them that the End of the Universe is nigh. Mongrove is in his element, and Yusharip informs them that the only way to survive is to use their spaceship as a refuge and eke out a spartan existence. Neither the Duke of Queens or Jherek is interested in this kind of existence, and Jherek wanders off with Amelia, who has confessed that she loves him.

After this it all becomes a bit of a plod. Captain Bastable and Una Persson turn up but are not that concerned about the momentous events that are unfolding. Then Lord Jagged and the Iron Orchid arrive, and we then get an endless data dump: Jagged admits (spoiler) to being Jherek’s father, explains his origins, and reveals that he has discovered how to time travel without a machine. He then goes on to explain how he is going to create a time loop to save their society. All will be well.

Soon all would be as it had always been, before the winds of limbo had come to blow their world away. Flesh, blood and bone, grass and trees and stone would flourish beneath the fresh-born sun, and beauty of every sort, simple or bizarre, would bloom upon the face of that arid, ancient planet. It would be as if the universe had never died; and for that the world must thank its half-senile cities and the arrogant persistence of that obsessive temporal investigator from the twenty-first century, from the Dawn Age, who named himself for a small pet singing bird fashionable two hundred years before his birth, who displayed himself like an actor, yet disguised himself and his motives with all the consummate cunning of a Medici courtier; this fantastico in yellow, this languid meddler in destinies, Lord Jagged of Canaria. p. 29

While they are waiting for these changes to be completed Amelia suggests a party. She creates a ghoulish, disturbing spectacle for the venue. At the party she and Jherek seem estranged, and it appears that Amelia has become entirely like the other denizens of the End of Time.
This instalment drags quite badly, and I can think of at least one reason why, which is the length of the entire novel: the first two novels in this trilogy are around 160-170 pages long but this one runs to 300 pages, and it feels like it wasn’t edited for pace or concision.

The Agonies of Time by Ravan Christchild gives more of a clue about why this appeared under a pseudonym¹: one of the main characters is a rock star called Sexton Cromlech who has a stage show (and a private life) that encompasses necrophilia, vampirism, and various other predilections:

Steve Mitchell averted his eyes as an expensive-looking black coffin was wheeled on stage. Sipping his lager, he felt suddenly tired and dizzy. He looked quizzically into the brew.
“May I join you?” Mitchell looked up and found that the owner of this voice was a pretty young blonde, wearing a short sleeved blouse with diamond necklace, and white lightweight trousers in washable Trevira.
He stood up and pulled out a seat for her.
“My name’s Ella,” she said, sitting down, “Ella Creem. What’s yours?”
“Er Steve. Steve M . . .”
“Say,” she said, looking up at his pale face, “you okay?”
Mitchell smiled weakly. “A bit drunk, I think.” He sat down.
“I don’t go too much on this show,” said Ella Creem, looking at the stage, where a lovely female ‘corpse’ was sitting up in her coffin and fellating Cromlech.
“Me neither. Would you like a drink, Ella?”
“Ohh, gin and lemonade, please.”
Mitchell signalled to the waiter. He had to shout his order, for the audience suddenly gasped aloud as Cromlech orgasmed, dark red blood spilling from the fellatrix’s mouth while the backing vocals (‘The Rites of Eternity’) chanted climatically:

We love the dead
We love the dead
We love the dead
We love the dead
Make us dead with you !

“Not quite my cup of tea at all,” Mitchell told Ella Creem. p. 37

This section occurs at the very start of the story, in a stage show that (vaguely, and probably only to me) recalls David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album (I should really get the album out and see if you can fit the lyrics to the music).
For the first three chapters or so there is a loose story that involves Cromlech, Mitchell, Dorrell, and a new character called Electra Vanderpump. It isn’t long, however, before we get more parallel world German airship action, time-travelling, and Multiverse and Lord of Chaos chatter. Added to that mix, presumably because it isn’t rich enough, there is an Archbishop having messy sex with a woman.

According to a note at the end of these novelettes, they were ‘loosely based . . . on a forthcoming novel, The Englishman’s Lady.’ This appeared in the late-80s under a different title,² and I’m curious about the extent to which the novel version is different.

The Cover is another eye-catching effort by Rodney Matthews and, once again, appears unadorned on the rear cover.

Inside there is more extensive artwork and a lot more use of colour, although a lot of this is only a grey or yellow background colour for the text (the grey is a stupid choice as it makes the text harder to read). The inner cover is a single colour wash of a picture by Eddie Jones, next issue’s cover artist.

The Interior artwork is provided this issue by Michelle Robson, whose illustrations for the serial are no match for James Cawthorn’s (the latter’s filler images from the last two issues appear again); Richard Hopkinson once more provides what I would describe as talented amateur work and, again, Jocelyn Almond demonstrates that her black and white work is better than her full-colour (that latter comment refers to p. 42, not reproduced here).
The only non-fiction this issue, as mentioned before, is the Editorial by Keith Seddon. In this one he discusses what readers, and more specifically SF readers, want and get from their fiction.
Geek’s Corner: the first two issues were copyright Cerebus Publishing, and published and printed by Shalmead Ltd; this one has the same copyright but is published by Container Publications Ltd. and printed by Shalmead Ltd.  More of this to come.
A poor issue, and the magazine’s lowest point.

1. Since my speculations about the Christchild pseudonym in the last issue, I found another reference about a vicar on John Guy Collick’s blog (the passage after the Vortex #3 cover image—unfortunately, the Moorcock’s Miscellany link to the original post doesn’t work). There is more information at SFE, but it doesn’t say what the origin of this is.
2. The Agonies of Time by Ravan Christchild at Amazon.uk and AbeBooks.co.uk.
   

ISFDB link

Editor, Keith Seddon

Fiction:
The End of All Songs (Part 2 of 4) • serial by Michael Moorcock ∗∗∗
The Machine at Cheviot House H.Q. • novelette by Ravan Christchild ∗
Mutant! • short story by James Corley ∗

Non-fiction:
Cover • by Rodney Matthews
Interior artwork • by James Cawthorn, Jocelyn Almond, Rodney Matthews, Richard Hopkinson
Editorial • by Keith Seddon
Landscapes of the Mind • interview of Rodney Matthews by Steve Axtell
Next Issue

The second part of The End of All Songs by Michael Moorcock picks up pace at the end of this instalment but still meanders somewhat at the start.
Jherek and Amelia go to a party that the Duke of Queens has organised. After the latter’s visit to the 19^th century he has created a strange, huge version of Scotland Yard for this event, where people float around on various platforms in the cavernous interior.

At the party there are a number of conversations, including an extended (and rather dull) one where Jherek talks to two versions of his mother, the Iron Orchid, who has split into multiple ‘selves’ for the party. She appears to be jealous of Amelia, and the latter recognises this when she joins them at the end of their chat. After the Iron Orchid leaves Amelia cuts Jherek off just as he begins to propose to her.
At this point it occurred to me that as the denizens of the End of Time adopt more of the attitudes and customs of the nineteenth century, the less happy everyone is, and the less fun the novel is.
After this Jherek and Amelia discuss time-travel with a disgruntled Brannart Morphail (whose hump is now as big as the rest of him, and who has a larger club foot to keep his balance), and then go with the Duke of Queens to see five space travellers held in his menagerie:

“These are from Yusharisp’s planet,” explained the Duke of Queens,”but they are not him. They are five fresh ones! I believe they came to look for him. In the meantime, of course, he has been home and returned here.”
“He is not aware of the presence of his friends on our planet?”
“Not yet.”
“You’ll tell him tonight?”
“I think so. At an appropriate moment.”
“Can they communicate?”
“They refuse to accept translation pills, but they have their own mechanical translators, which are, as you know, rather erratic.”
Jherek pressed his face against the force-bubble. He grinned at the inmates. He smiled. “Hello! Welcome to the End of Time!”
China-blue eyes glared vacantly back at him.
“I am Jherek Carnelian. A friend of Yusharisp’s,” he told them agreeably.
“The leader, the one in the middle, is known as Chief Public Servant Shashurup,” the Duke of Queens informed him.
Jherek made another effort. He waved his fingers. “Good afternoon, Chief Public Servant Shashurup!”
“Why-ee (skree) do you continue-oo too-too-to tor(roar)-ment us?” asked the CPS. “All we (kaaar)sk(skree) is (hiss) that-tat-tat you dooo-oo us(ushush) the cour(kur-kur-kur) tesy-ee of com-comcommunicat(tate-tate)ing our requests to your representat(tattat)ives!” He spoke wearily, without expectation of answer.
“We have no ‘representatives’, save ourselves,” said Jherek. “Is there anything wrong with your environment? I’m sure that the Duke of Queens would be only too pleased to make any adjustments you saw fit…”
“Skree-ee-ee,” said CPS Shashurup desperately. “It is not(ot-ot) in our nat(tate-tate)ure to (skree) ake(cake-cake) threat(et-et-et)s, but we must warn you (skree) that unless we are re(skree)lea(skree)sed our peo(pee-pee)ple will be forced to take steps to pro(pro-pro)tect us and secure(ure-ure) our release. You are behaving childishly! It is imposs(oss-oss)ible to believe(eve-eve-eve) that a race grown so old can still(ill-ill) skree-skree yowl eek yaaaarrrrk!”

Amusing stuff.
They cut short this exchange when Mongrove arrives at the party with news of his space travels. Once everyone assembles he tells them that their energy rings are consuming the universe, but the denizens of the End of Time are not much interested, and become bored.

Jherek and Amelia return home and build a castle for themselves. Bishop Castle visits, and lets them know the Iron Orchid has gone time travelling. Then Inspector Springer, several policemen, and Ameila’s husband Harold arrive at the front door.

“I ’ave, sir,” said Inspector Springer with heavy satisfaction, “been invested with Special Powers. The ’Ome Secretary ’imself ’as ordered me to look into this case.”
“The new machine — my, um, Chronomnibus — was requisitioned,” said the time-traveller apologetically from the background. “As a patriot, though strictly speaking not from this universe…”
“Under conditions of utmost secrecy,” continued the Inspector, “we embarked upon our Mission…”
Jherek and Mrs. Underwood stood on their threshold and contemplated their visitors.
“Which is?” Mrs. Underwood was frowning pensively at her husband.
“To place the ringleaders of this plot under arrest and return forthwith to our own century so that they — that’s you, of course, among ’em — may be questioned as to their motives and intentions.”
Inspector Springer was evidently quoting specifically from his orders. “And Mr. Underwood?” Jherek asked politely. “Why is he here?”
“’E’s one o’ the few ’oo can identify the people we’re after. Anyway, ’e volunteered.”
She said, bemusedly: “Have you come to take me back, Harold?”
“Ha!” said her husband.

And so begins a livelier chapter where the inspector and his men search the castle. During this, an energy ray takes off the top of the castle, and Bishop Castle arrives to tell them that the Lat are laying waste to everything. Amelia, Jherek, and Harold leave in the locomotive and escape to one of the ancient cities, where energy weapons will not function as the ancient machines prohibit their use.

While they are hiding in the city a memory bank starts a philosophical conversation with Harold, and Jherek tells Amelia this is where he was conceived, and then proposes to her. Just at that point Captain Mubbers and the rest of the Lat arrive.
The pacing of the first two parts of this novel is not as steady as that of the first two; there are too many longeurs. Hopefully, the next two parts will pick up speed.

The Machine at Cheviot House H.Q. by Ravan Christchild is the second story adapted from his novel The Englishman’s Lady (see the quote at the end of this section), and so it uses characters, locations, etc. from last issue’s story. This rather makes it feel like a second serial and, as such, gives this issue a distinct Groundhog Day feel.
The main characters that reappear in this one are Steve Mitchell, Karen Black and Johnny Terrier (although there are others). They feature in a very loose tale that starts with an invasion of an alternate world Britain by German airships (although this happens when the characters are watching Survivors¹ in a Bonanza²-themed room):

They watched in silence as the TV cameras panned over a part of Southern England, showing columns of men marching across the fields, meeting little resistance. Great black and silver airships hovered in the sky above, occasionally releasing a biplane or two after refuelling. More zeppelins lay on the ground amidst billowing clouds of mustard gas, disgorging tanks and soldiers. Briefly, the viewers saw one of the airships explode silently intoflame, before the screen went blank.
“This,” said Steve Mitchell seriously, looking at Johnny Terrier, “will complicate matters somewhat.”
Terrier nodded, thinking of the red and gold uniform in his suitcase, and the Smith & Wesson .38 in his drawer. p. 13

The rest of the story involves the appearance of a huge metallic structure that destroys the village of Portmeirion (presumably another oblique media reference, this time to The Prisoner³). This phenomena leads to discussion of the Multiverse, a Conjunction, and the Lords of Chaos.
I wouldn’t want all this to give the impression that there is much of a story here because there isn’t; most of the writer’s energies are focused on an arch, contemporary and (although not in the following passage) mildly transgressive delivery:

“Mr. John Lennon, of the ‘Beatles’ jazz-band, has been found dead at his Kensington home. Mr. Lennon’s apartment on the Bayswater Road was broken in to by police after his friend, the American Negro tap-dancer, Mr. Robert Dylan, became disturbed at not having seen him for several days. Mr. Lennon’s death is unexplained at the moment; police say that no dangerous drugs were found in the apartment.
“A letter bomb was delivered to Alastair Burnet, television personality and former editor of the Daily Express, yesterday. He called the police when he saw Indian stamps on the envelope. The letter was sent last week to his address in Glasgow and was forwarded to his Kensington, London, home. Experts defused the package.
“A raid by police on a council house in Bushey, Hertfordshire, early this morning, resulted in the arrest of a young woman. A police spokesman said later that the raid had not yielded satisfactory results. A quantity of literature was taken away, as well as a large amount of scientific and laboratory equipment.
“Sport, and rain has stopped play at Lords. The West Indies, in their first innings, are 206 for two. In Mexico, the Chinese have beaten Team America by four goals to one.
“That’s the news at eleven, we’ll be back at midday with the latest car crash results from Los Angeles. Now, over to Kenneth Everett in the music studio.” p. 15

I liked this one slightly more than the last (the scenes are moderately interesting—they just don’t amount to anything) but maybe I am just becoming acclimatised.
There is an interesting note about Jocelyn Almond’s involvement (the editor Keith Seddon’s future wife) at the end of the piece, which perhaps gave rise to the rumours that Christchild was a pseudonym for Seddon (denied at the time and a few years ago):

This story is very loosely based on Ravan Christchild’s forthcoming novel, THE ENGLISHMAN’S LADY. Certain themes and plots in this story will be investigated in the next story, THE AGONIES OF TIME. Two characters in this story, Sebastian Dorrell and Electra Vanderpump, were created by Jocelyn Almond. Their original adventures and exploits are related in the novels THE DEATHS AND TIMES OF SEBASTIAN DORRELL, THE SICILIAN DRAGON, and THE RETICENCE OF PEACOCKS. p. 24

Mutant! by James Corley is either heavily influenced by, or a pastiche of, J. G. Ballard’s work.
In this story the world is subject to a vast increase in solar activity, and there is an increase in number of mutations. Various scenes play out against this backdrop, all centred on a research scientist called Stoddard, who is at a marine research facility in the Indian Ocean.

The story opens with him visiting Pamela, a female colleague who he has been in a relationship with. They argue, and she eventually pulls a knife on him so he leaves. After this Stoddard collapses outside the facility. As he later recovers he talks to one of his Indian colleagues, and we get some background information about what is happening in the world.
Once he is up and about again he goes walking and sees evidence of mutant sea birds. He also sees Penelope sunbathing in the fierce sunlight, oblivious to the radiation:

Stoddard had been kept awake most of the night thinking of the figure on the beach, pulling at the desperate problem she posed. He had decided against the theory that this was a macabre form of suicide. Her body had flared in to a vivid redness but there was no blistering of the smooth, perfect skin. Obviously Pamela had been coming here for days. She had not abandoned herself to the sun but had gradually accepted it, exposing herself at first only momentarily while building up tolerance to the rays.
But was it insanity? Could she perhaps believe she lay sunbathing on some Mediterranean beach? Was she on holiday somewhere inside her skull? Had she forgotten the world was lurching under the impact of shattered genes? Did her mind pretend to itself that nothing had changed? He could have borne a realisation of her insanity but something told him that the girl was as sane or saner than Stoddard himself.
Her actions as she turned over were deliberate and calm, they showed none of the emphatic motility of madness. She was dressed modestly now in the fine, pale sand which clung to her sweating body. Once it seemed she looked straight at him but her eyes passed on, unseeing or uncaring that there was a watcher on the cliff-top. p. 47

Years pass and, long after they stop receiving any radio broadcasts, they see a silver sphere flying over the island. This is attributed to something that has mutated beyond humankind. The story ends.
The parts of this are well enough done, but (again) they don’t cohere into a whole.

While I don’t dislike this issue’s Cover by Rodney Matthews, I’m not sure it is a particular favourite of mine—but it certainly hold the eye. Matthews is also the subject of an interesting interview by Steve Axtell, Landscapes of the Mind. I am always interested to hear about the jobs writers and artists have in their early life:

When I left school, the art mistress and everyone were all saying, “You must become an artist or something.” So I went around to the local print factory, where they offered me a job as a retoucher. Then I thought, “Christ, I can’t sit and do this all day.” So I went on to do some metal working, taking the surface off a thumb, slitting the odd finger here and there, so I thought, “Christ, I can’t do this.” And I ended up at the West of England Art College, which I left prematurely after one and a half years because a job came up. Although I didn’t like it, the period which then followed at the ad agency was important because there I learned the basic disciplines — creative lettering, layout, presentation, visualizing, typography and something of printing.
After leaving the ad agency, I went to work as a freelancer, in an outfit called PLASTIC DOG GRAPHICS. Here were laid the foundations on which I have built my style and direction. To start with I had to do a lot of mediocre stuff in order to make a living, but every now and then a job (usually a college poster or a record sleeve) would present me with an outlet for my fantasies. My partner and me were currently playing in bands, so it wasn’t surprising that much of our graphic work came from the musical business. Notably United Artists and Sonet of Sweden. Sonet together with its several small subsidiaries, and headed in London by Rod Buckle, produced mainly Jazz, Blues and Folky albums. I was invited to design the covers for many of these. In fact, a lot of my stuff has come about by being rejected by record companies or bands or what have you. p. 40

The Interior artwork this issue is by James Cawthorn, who provides three B&W illustrations, Jocelyn Almond contributes the same for the Christchild story, and Richard Hopkinson provides a B&W illustration for the Corely. I’m not entirely sure that the three colour title illustrations⁴ are produced by the same artists as who do the B&W pages (with the exception of the one for the Christchild story which looks like Almond’s work): all the colour work is uncredited, where the B&W work by Almond and Hopkinson is signed.

A new feature this issue is that the cover art is reproduced without type on the back cover, and the inner front and inner rear cover have a monotone reproduction of one of the works by Rodney Matthews printed along with his the interview.

The Editorial by Keith Seddon is one of those pigeon-holing pieces that discusses the various types of fantasy and SF. This kind of thing has always seemed a bit of a waste of time to me: where does describing Frank Herbert’s Dune as ‘Science Fantasy’ get you?
Next Issue is a new feature and a self-explanatory one:

In conclusion, and given I’ve already mentioned the feeling of déjà vu above, this issue is like the first: an average effort at best. There are, though, glimmers of improvement.

1. The Survivors was a 1970’s TV series set in a post-apocalypse UK. More at SFE and Wikipedia.
2. Bonanza was a long running TV Western. The Wikipedia page.
3. The Prisoner was an excellent SF TV series that ran during 1967. Even though I’m pretty sure that Rover gave me nightmares I have the boxset to watch again one day (Rover was a terrifying creature or machine that looked like a huge bubble of chewing gum, as wide as a man is tall, and which pursued escaped prisoners from the Village. When it caught them it pressed itself over their face till they lost consciousness and, I think, sometimes killed them.) More at SFE and Wikipedia.
4. The title pages for the Moorcock and Corley stories (the Christchild is above):

 

ISFDB link

Editor, Keith Seddon

Fiction:
First Entry • short story by Steve Axtell ∗
The End of All Songs (Part 1 of 4) • serial by Michael Moorcock ∗∗∗
The Englishman’s Lady • novelette by Ravan Christchild
The Touch of a Vanished Hand • short story by Robert Holdstock ∗∗

Non-fiction:
Cover • by Rodney Matthews
Interior artwork • by Michelle Robson, James Cawthorn (5 for story, 5 in article), Jocelyn Almond (4), Stephanie Little
Editorial • by Keith Seddon
“Sci-Fi, Sword-and-Sorcery” • interview of James Cawthorn by Eric Sutton

The first I knew of this large size SF magazine (quarto¹ according to ISFDB) was when I stumbled upon the second issue in W. H. Smith’s in Union Street, Aberdeen, in early 1977, while wandering down to the bus stop after school. I bought the second issue and pored over it until, a week or so later, this back issue arrived at my newsagent.
It opens with a standard post-New Worlds Editorial by Keith Seddon (Moorcock’s large format New Worlds cast a long shadow, one that would reach even beyond Interzone’s first issues in the early 1980s) and has the seemingly obligatory experimental/speculative fiction pitch:

Vortex has come into being for the simple reason that there is no other monthly magazine of its type. Perhaps most like Vortex was Michael Moorcock’s large format New Worlds which has not been published for over seven years.
Until now, readers have had to satisfy themselves with paperback SF, which has maintained a strong conservatism; not many experimental books have appeared. Not that publishers are to blame for this state of affairs—with the economic recession we are still living through, publishers understandably wanted to stick with sure bets. And even with a straight SF novel, there is still an element of risk.
With the emergence of Vortex, such risks become almost nonsensical, in that each issue will contain several items of fiction, only one of which will be in any way experimental.
Experimental fiction is usually labelled Speculative Fiction, which is reasonable, because not many authors attempt to experiment within the ‘rules’ of Fantasy or Horror or SF. Besides which, the purpose of experimenting is usually to see what happens when certain of these rules are adjusted.
We all know what straight SF, and Fantasy consists of, because we have had the paperbacks to rely upon.
What then is Speculative Fiction? Firstly, it is the hardest of all the forms of fiction to actually write. Because it explores alternatives, challenges established mores, and tends to be more philosophical than scientific, it becomes more difficult to convince the reader of the validity of the changed rules that have been used in any particular item of fiction.
In a way, Speculative Fiction is the most down to earth of all the forms of fiction that are shrouded under the umbrella of Science Fiction; because Speculative Fiction reflects the times. It is often used as a commentary on Social History.
Such fiction is the richest in possibilities. p. 1

If speculative fiction is ‘the richest in possibilities,’ it rather makes you wonder why only one of the stories each issue ‘will be in any way experimental.’ In some respects the promise of fiction-type diversity is remarkably similar to Moorcock’s early ‘don’t frighten the horses’ editorials in the first of his paperback format issues of New Worlds.

First Entry by Steve Axtell² is a relatively short piece of fiction that gets matters off to a solipsistic start. A man sets up camp near a mansion that is not shown on any maps. This activity is interspersed with several flashbacks to his post-war childhood.
In the morning he climbs the surrounding wall and goes to the mansion. There he is greeted by a beautiful woman who takes him upstairs and makes love to him.
The surreal ending (spoiler) has him wake up to find he has become an old man, andbeside him, the woman is a pile bones. He flees outside, and then finds himself floating in a body of water that he can’t escape. Meanwhile, on the hill above, the mansion burns.
This reads like a transcribed dream, and not a particularly coherent one at that.
The End of All Songs by Michael Moorcock was the start of a four-part serialisation of the final novel in his ‘The Dancers at the End of Time’ trilogy.³ Previous to this there had been two shorter novels published (An Alien Heat and The Hollow Lands) as well as four novellas in New Worlds anthology series (volumes #7 through to #10). I had really enjoyed the first two of these latter novellas, Pale Roses and White Stars, and had then obtained the two novels (which were in paperback by then, having been published in 1972 and 1974).
I thought at the time that this serialisation would save me waiting for the usual year or eighteen months for the paperback version, but I see it was soon published in July of the same year. That said, I’m not sure it is that clever an idea to launch your magazine with the third novel in a trilogy: God knows what new readers made of it.
The first two novels in the trilogy introduce the exotic inhabitants at the End of Time, a dissolute and amoral but innocent and amusing group of characters who use their power rings to satisfy any whim. One of them, Jherek Carnelian, falls in love with a 19^th century woman called Amelia Underwood and then pursues her. Their problematical relationship (Underwood is an uptight married woman of her time wrenched into the future, and Carnelian has no concept of ‘virtue’ or ‘sin’) involves two time-travel trips back to the late 19^th century. The first trip ends up with Jherek being hanged but surviving as he is spat back to the future. Meanwhile, alien space travellers have visited Earth warning of the end of the Universe. At the end of the second book Jherek and Amelia are stranded in the Silurian era. (There is a longer synopsis of these amusing books below.⁴)
This instalment starts with the pair trying to make the best of their situation, trying to work out what of the local flora and fauna is edible, etc. They are not left on their own for long before another (unidentified) time-traveller turns up and, after a brief conversation, departs, leaving them a picnic hamper. The idea of a multiverse is either introduced (or restated, I forget) as he mentions he has gone past the End of Time into another universe.
In short order they are joined by Inspector Springer and the Lat (who essentially play the role of rude comic dwarves in the piece) and return with the Jherek and Amelia to their camp for tea. The Lat wander off, build a raft and are attacked by sea scorpions.

Captain Bastable and Una Persson turn up to rescue the survivors and take them all to the Time Centre. Over coffee ‘Sergeant Glouager’ (presumably Karl Gloauger from Behold the Man) tells them about the fluctuations in the Multiverse, and Una Persson tells them about the Conjuction of a Million Spheres, when the multiverse repairs itself. I wondered at this point if this novel was when Moorcock starting tying all his work together.

Jherek and Amelia are sent back to the End of Time in a sequence that has a nice time travel passage:

Jherek watched them retreat. The thrumming grew louder and louder. His back pressed against Mrs. Underwood’s. He turned to ask her if she were comfortable but before he could speak a stillness fell and there was complete silence. His head felt suddenly light. He looked to Mrs. Persson and Captain Bastable for an answer, but they were gone and only a shadowy, flickering ghost of the black wall could be seen. Finally this, too, disappeared and foliage replaced it. Something huge and heavy and alive moved towards them, passed through them, it seemed, and was gone. Heat and cold became extreme, seemed one. Hundreds of colours came and went, but were pale, washed out, rainy. There was dampness in the air he breathed; little tremors of pain ran through him but were past almost before his brain could signal their presence. Booming, echoing sounds — slow sounds, deep and sluggish — blossomed in his ears. He swung up and down, he swung sideways, always as if the capsule were suspended from a wire, like a pendulum. He could feel her warm body pressed to his shoulders, but he could not hear her voice and he could not turn to see her, for every movement took infinity to consider and perform, and he appeared to weigh tons, as though his mass spread through miles of space and years of time. The capsule tilted forward, but he did not fall from his seat; something pressed him in, securing him: grey waves washed him; red rays rolled from toe to head. The chair began to spin. He heard his own name, or something very like it, being called by a high, mocking voice. Words piped at him; all the words of his life.
He breathed in and it was as if Niagara engulfed him. He breathed out; Vesuvius gave voice.
Scales slipped by against his check and fur filled his nostrils and flesh throbbed close to his lips, and fine wings fluttered, great winds blew; he was drenched by a salty rain (he became the History of Man, he became a thousand warm-blooded beasts, he knew unbearable tranquillity). He became pure pain and was the universe, the big slow-dancing stars. His body began to sing. p. 44-45

After they arrive they return to Jherek’s ranch, and they are invited to a party where Mongrove, returned from space, will reveal his news about the state of the Universe.
This is a pleasant enough instalment, but you get the distinct impression of the deck chairs being rearranged for the final section of the novel.

The Englishman’s Lady by Ravan Christchild⁵ appears to be a coherent piece at first but then degenerates into an almost arbitrary collage of various events and scenes. In among this there are a few threads of narrative, which take place in different times and possibly universes. One concerns Lady Caroline being tasked by Prime Minister Gladstone to go to India on an airship and warn her husband about an imminent uprising. She later meets Captain Terrier on board and they start an affair (there are several instances of casual sex throughout the story).

They later go to see a whole list of rock bands at a three-day concert:

Captain John Terrier escorted the Countess Caroline Giles of Warwick into the Playroom, the best known night-club of French-occupied Cologne. Coloured lights (lashed at them from all angles as they entered the Bastille Bar, where electric guitar music was playing at a volume just below the threshhold of pain.
The service in the Bastille Bar was by waitress, and so Captain Terrier and the Countess sat at a table of smooth green onyx.
Terrier ordered the drinks; two martinis, one (his own) with a measure of Scotch whisky added.
They sat and watched the guitarist, an ambitious young man called Erik (The Red) Klapton, who was backed by a group called the Dominoes. He struck Captain Terrier as being extremely good with a guitar; the Countess thought him rather ugly. P. 21

(The illustration above isn’t of Clapton but an earlier incident on the airship involving Ziggy and the The Spiders from Mars . . . .)
Another thread involves Terrier fighting in Iceland, and there is also an account of war in Kiev tacked on at the end (there is a lot of random violence to go with the sex).
Initially this anarchic, tongue-in-cheek stuff (part Captain Bastable, part Jerry Corneilius and part Oh, What a Lovely War!) is relatively absorbing, but it goes on far too long (it is about 10,000 words) and, ultimately, it makes no narrative sense. And this is the first of a three-story series . . . .
The last story is The Touch of a Vanished Hand by Robert Holdstock. The narrator starts with a short account of psychological problems he had in the past, stemming from when a man held his hands. He then describes a relationship with another man called Gable on the planet Sirius-7. When they use a mechanism to jump to another planet, Gable vanishes and the narrator is left with the permanent feeling of Gable holding his hands. The rest of this short story describes his subsequent travels, including a visit to the vanished man’s son:

“I was not greatly endeared to my father. Nor he to me.”
His voice was Gable’s voice. I wanted to listen to him talk for hours, but he fell silent.
“Why did your father leave? Why did he become so depressed?”
“Why?” He laughed. He kicked at some mechanism hidden in the reeds and his lake erupted into turbulence. He stripped off his clothes and walked to the water’s edge. Gable in every way. I felt my stomach knot and suppressed the desire I felt. He stepped into the waves and shouted, “I was greater than him. In every way.” He began to swim and he turned on his back and there was a smile of horrifying coldness upon his face. “I took his soul. I drained him. I became Him . . . and more.”
The pressure on my hands increased. Was Gable listening? I squeezed the unseen hands and felt the despair of the trapped man. I wondered in what hell Gable was existing. Was his son interested in knowing his father’s fate? Should I tell him? p. 40

The narrator then experiences hallucinations, and the feeling of a woman’s body under Gable’s hands, before he realises (spoiler) that he is the one who has been lost in transit.
This one didn’t entirely work for me, and the gloomy tone (typical of this period) doesn’t help, but it is okay, I suppose, for all that.

The Cover for this issue, and for the next two, is provided by Rodney Matthews. It was certainly an eye-catching magazine on the newsstands, and I still like it (and the other issues) now. The cover artwork would be reproduced without the titling on the back cover of future issues, but this one is blank, as are the inside front and rear cover. The Interior artwork is mostly good amateur level work (by Michelle Robson, Jocelyn Almond and Stephanie Little), and some of it is in colour⁶, but the real event is a number of large size illustrations by James Cawthorn. He also contributed to the second part of the serial⁷ and they are even better.
“Sci-Fi, Sword-and-Sorcery” is an interesting interview of that artist, by Eric Sutton. Cawthorn is an interesting subject and there are chunks of it that are quite quoteworthy. This is on SF for escapist readers, for example:

Maybe I read science fiction as an escape, but to me all literature is escapist, for it takes you away from your everyday life. It could be the most morbid fiction you could imagine, but it’s still taking you away. I think that when people say SF is escapist, what they mean is that it’s fantastic. Of course, some SF readers are obviously in retreat from life. In America you had whole hordes of people who literally wished they ‘could find a good book to live in‘, specifically Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. They took to it in droves, its history, customs, languages; it was so much nicer than living in the real world. They wanted to stay inside it. Also Frank Herbert’s Dune. That became a cult, and I’m sure the reason is this: it created an entire, fictional world in which you could submerge yourself you didn’t have to come out unless you were forced to. Most of these cultists are of an age when they should be exploring what’s actually going on in the world, building up their own futures, and it makes you wonder what pressures they’re under. Maybe the real world over there is so off-putting that they can’t stand it. That’s real escapism and sounds like a case for a psychoanalyst. I agree that escapism does have a specialised meaning in that case, because these people really are trying to get away; they’re not reading just for amusement, but because they don’t like their lives. They want something else. p. 31

At the time of making this comment, American had just lost the Vietnam war (and endured tumultuous protests about this conflict at home) and President Nixon had only avoided impeachment by resigning.
There is this on pulp fiction:

As for pulp literature, I like it. You see, it’s a sort of . . . it has a sort of nostalgia for me, even though I wasn’t old enough to be reading it during the early thirties when it was in full flood. I like the whole tradition of garish covers, thick pulp pages with untrimmed edges . . . I wish the situation still existed. At its peak two hundred titles a month went on the bookstands — Westerns, Romances, Historical, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Flying Stories. There was even a magazine called Zeppelin Stories, which shows you how specialised the market could get. Writers worked under a tight discipline. The best learned that they could produce very good stuff while working to a tight schedule and under the moral and political restrictions imposed on them by the social conditions of their time. Because don’t forget that this was during the Depression when people wanted what you call escapist literature. You had to be a prolific writer, also. And the pulps accepted things which more respectable magazines wouldn’t touch, among them SF and some types of horror and fantasy. p. 32

And this on sex in SF:

There was a great deal of eroticism in the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, though because of the time at which he wrote it was largely implicit rather than explicit. If you have ever read his first published novel, A Princess of Mars, it is there from beginning to end, sometimes very powerfully, and quite possibly unconsciously. Later writers such as Howard carried it further out into the open, within the limits of the magazine market. One of the most obvious things about S&S, which has been analysed by many people, is that it’s full of leather, buckles, furs, straps, swords, jewels, all the trappings of the standard erotic story.
When you get writers cashing in on its sudden popularity by including overt sex, they kill the whole motive power of this type of fiction. It’s the fact that the sex element is more or less submerged that drives the story forward. Modern film-makers have almost destroyed the classic horror subjects, such as vampirism, by misusing their freedom to be very explicit in what they put on the screen. p. 36

I think it is observations like these that make me like what little I’ve read of his book reviews.

Overall, this new magazine is a very mixed bag. The pluses for me were the artwork, the Moorcock serial, and the single piece of non-fiction, the minuses were the short fiction, influenced by the worst aspects of the New Wave.

1. The magazine size is 210 by 274mm, so closer to B5 Extra, 201mm by 276mm.
2. This is Axtell’s only piece of fiction although he would contribute an interview with Rodney Matthews in the next issue. This suggests that ‘Axtell’ may be a pseudonym for Seddon.
3. Although this is supposed to be the third part of a trilogy, it is more like the second half of a very long novel. Each novel flows seamlessly into the next.
4. The first novel, Alien Heat, opens at the End of Time with Jherek Carnelian (the first naturally created human in many years) and his mother having a picnic. They discuss the meaning of the word ‘virtue,’ which Jherek finds baffling. They later make love, before departing in a recreated airborne locomotive to Jherek’s house. You can get a feel for the series from this scene:
   He sounded his whistle.
   “Shuffle off to Buffalo!”
   Responding to the sonic signal, the little locomotive took magnificently to the air, shunting up the sky, with lovely, lime-coloured steam puffing from its smokestack and from beneath its wheels.
   “Oh, they gave him his augurs at Racine-Virginia,” sang Jherek Carnelian, donning a scarlet and cloth-of-gold engineer’s cap, “saying steam-up, you’re way behind time! It ain’t ‘98, it’s old ‘97. You got to get on down that old Nantucket line!”
   The Iron Orchid settled back in her seat of plush and ermine (an exact reproduction, she understood, of the original) and watched her son with amusement as he opened the firedoor and shovelled in the huge black diamonds which he had made specially to go with the train and which, though of no particular use in fuelling the aircar, added aesthetic texture to the recreation.
   “Where do you find all these old songs, Carnelian, my own?”
   “I came across a cache of ‘platters,’“ he told her, wiping honest sweat from his face with a silk rag.
   The train swept rapidly over a sea and a range of mountains. “A form of sound-storage of the same period as the original of this aircar. A million years old, at least, though there’s some evidence that they, themselves, are reproductions of other originals. Kept in perfect condition by a succession of owners.”
   He slammed the firedoor shut and discarded the platinum shovel, joining her upon the couch and staring down at the quaintly moulded countryside which Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, had begun to build a while ago and then abandoned.
   It was not elegant. In fact it was something of a mess. Two-thirds of a hill, in the fashion of the 91st century post-Aryan landscapers, supported a snake-tree done after the Saturnian manner but left uncoloured; part of an 11th century Gothic ruin stood beside a strip of river of the Bengali Empire period.
   You could see why she had decided not to finish it, but it seemed to Jherek that it was a pity she had not bothered to disseminate it. Someone else would, of course, sooner or later.
   “Carrie Joan,” he sang, “she kept her boiler going. Carrie Joan, she filled it full of wine. Carrie Joan didn’t stop her rowing. She had to get to Brooklyn by a quarter-past nine!” He turned to the Iron Orchid.
   “Do you like it? The quality of the platters isn’t all it could be, but I think I’ve worked out all the words now.”
   “Is that what you were doing last year?” She raised her fine eyebrows. “I heard the noises coming from your Hi-Rise.” She laughed. “And I thought it was to do with sex.” She frowned. “Or animals.” She smiled. “Or both.” p.10-11
   (Nice little nod to Ballard’s novel there.)
   They go on to a party hosted by The Duke of Queens. He has recreated the 28^th century Great Fire of Africa with burning cities sculpted from water! Jherek meets various people including the eternally gloomy Mongrove, the time-traveller Li Pao, Lord Jagged, and Mistress Christia the Everlasting Concubine, who is having sex with a gorilla (although this is O’Kala Incardanine in another form). Most significantly he meets a very proper lady time-traveller from the 19^th Century called Mrs Amelia Underwood, and Yusharip, a space traveller who is prophesising the end of the Universe (this theme runs in the background throughout the novel). As is the custom among the denizens of the End of Time, they both end up are captives in a menagerie. When Jherek decides to fall in love with Amelia it sets in place the arc of the novel’s events.
   Lord Jagged subsequently suggests to Jherek that he steal Yusharip from My Lady Charlotina so he can trade him to Mongrove for Mrs Underwood (Jherek subsequently delights in the thrill of being called a ‘thief’). When Jherek and Amelia finally spend time together the novel turns from a farce into a culture clash comedy of manners. Eventually they kiss, and it is at this point My Lady Charlotina gets her revenge by snatching Mrs Underwood and sending her back in time to the 19^th Century. Jherek eventually follows in a time machine similar to the one in Behold the Man. There are lots of other in-jokes in the book too, such as Jherek being told to use the name ‘Lord Carnell’ (after the previous editor of New Worlds, John Carnell) when he is recruited by a 19^th century con-man called Snoozer Vine, who uses Jherek to break into fancy hotels.
   The first novel reaches a climax when Jherek is sentenced to hang for murder—the caper in the hotel goes awry and Snoozer Vine shoots a doorman—by a judge who looks exactly like Lord Jagged but who refuses to acknowledge that he knows Jherek. At the point of the gallows trapdoor dropping he finds himself back at the End of Time, courtesy of the Morphail effect. There are various mentions of this effect throughout the novel—a phenomenon that expels time travellers from a particular period so that time won’t be altered—and other time travel detail that suggests that something underhand is occurring.
   The second book, The Hollow Lands, again starts with a mother and son picnic, this time at Shanslorn, one of the ancient cities. And once again they head off to a party, this time a regatta organised by My Lady Charlotina where the entrants have got the wrong idea about historical ships: the Queen Elizabeth is a huge wooden woman. . . . Later Jherek talks time-travel with the scientist Brannart Morphail (he of the Morphail effect) before going to hunt for a new time-traveller who has been detected by Morphail’s instruments. When The Duke of Queens flying hen breaks down they end up in a forest where they hear a band of wandering musicians who turn out to be the Lat, an aggressive group of one-eyed, three pupiled dwarves who attempt to kidnap them.
   Jherek escapes, only to fall down a tunnel into Wonderland, which is a nursery run by a robotic nurse. The nursery appears to have been in a closed time loop for millions of years. The Lat later turn up, and it isn’t long before Nurse sorts them out. She later speaks to Jerry (as she calls Jherek, who she has developed a soft spot for) about the current time-period, and agrees to send him back to 1896 so he can be reunited with Mrs Underwood.
   Back in 1896 there is more entertainment to be had as Jherek once again upsets the conventions of the times. He meets H. G. Wells on his way to Amelia’s home and has a sincere conversation with Wells about time travel. The next highlight is at Amelia’s house— Jherek is having tea with her when Mr Underwood arrives home, and the conversation spirals entertainingly out of control. The best part of the book.
   Amelia and Jherek end up leaving the house to escape an irate Mr Underwood and are later unsuccessfully pursued by police.
   The last part of the book has them in the company of a number of Café Royale writers and editors when Inspector Springer (the arresting policeman from the first book) arrives to apprehend them. Jagged rescues the pair and puts them in a time machine back to the End of Time. It malfunctions en route and they overshoot their own period and end up in the Silurian era.
   If the first book is a social comedy, this one is more or a farce. ∗∗∗+ for both books.
5. Seddon denied that he was Christchild at the time and, I have been told, repeated this a few years ago. The Steve Mitchell character from this story reappears, however, in Mark Ambient’s Due West: Vermilion Sun on Horizon: Dying in issue #5. Ambient, like Axtell, is another one story, one interview author . . . .
6. I think the colour title plates of the Christchild and Holdstock stories may be by the designers rather than the artists listed. They are of a markedly different style from the B&W artwork for the stories.
7. Cawthorn didn’t illustrate the third and fourth parts, I assume because he didn’t get paid (I vaguely recall a comment from Michael Moorcock about not getting paid the money for the serial rights after the magazine collapsed, but can’t remember where I read it).