ISFDB link

Other reviews:¹
Joachim Boaz, Science Fiction Ruminations
Andrew Darlington, Eight Miles Higher
P. Schuyler Miller, Analog Science Fiction, December 1968
Michael Moorcock, New Worlds #153, August 1965
Charles Winstone, Vector #33
Various, Goodreads

_____________________

Editor, John Carnell

Fiction:
High Eight • novelette by Keith Roberts [as by David Stringer] ∗∗∗
Star Light • reprint short story by Isaac Asimov ∗
Hunger Over Sweet Waters • novelette by Colin Kapp ∗∗∗
The Country of the Strong • reprint short story by Dennis Etchison ∗∗
Parking Problem • short story by Dan Morgan ∗
Sub-Lim • novelette by Keith Roberts ∗∗∗
Bernie the Faust • reprint novelette by William Tenn ∗∗∗

Non-fiction:
Cover • by  Sir George F. Pollock
Foreword • introduction by John Carnell

_____________________

Keith Roberts follows up his pair of stories in the last volume with another brace in this one. High Eight is an atypical story for Roberts in that it is set in North America and written in that mid-Atlantic or imitation Yank voice that British writers sometimes use for stories presumably intended for the US market:

Stan was Outside Works Controller to Saskeega Power, Rick was line maintenance boss for the company. They were great buddies; they’d been through school together, clocked nearly fifteen years together at Saskeega. Rick was sitting on his boss’s desk skinning through a copy of the company magazine when the phone blew.  p. 13

The phone call tells them of a suicide at one of the remote hill stations, High Eight, and they both go off to supervise the operation to recover the body and complete the repairs:

They passed number seven; a few miles on and they could see High Eight perched over a cliff, its white walls shining in the sun. When they reached it Stan swung off the road and stopped. They got out. There were a couple of cars parked, one of the station service trucks and the Sheriff’s estate wagon. They walked towards the building and Sheriff Stanton came out the door. One of his deputies backed out after him, taking a bulb out of a flash camera. Stanton nodded to the Saskeega men, wagged his thumb at High Eight. He said, “Better take a look, fellers, your steak-frier’s sure done him proud.”
They went in.
It could have been worse. The body was lying curled up just inside the door, a little old man, grey-haired, clothes ragged. Just an old hobo. The flash had blown him clear instead of taking him in and cooking him, his hands were charred but that was all. He’d smashed the back of his skull on the guard-rail. Not that that mattered, he’d been dead when he hit it. A yard or so away was a tin box. The lid had come off, there were old papers scattered, a couple of photographs. And there were the bus bars shining in the half dark, the transformers singing all round.  p. 15

Later that night, when Rick goes home to his wife Judy, she tells him she can understand why the man did it, having herself experienced Bad Feelings at the site:

He’d taken her up to High Eight one day, and it had scared the Hell out of her. The big housings singing like cats, the static over their tops making blue crackles in the dark. She’d lived with the fear for years, but she’d got no better.
He could see the thing was on her back again. She said, “Why’d he do it, Rick, you find out why he did it? Maybe, you know, did he leave a note or something, say why . . . ?”
He said, “No note, honey, nothing. Just wasn’t a reason, I guess. Poor old guy was crazy, is all.” He stood squarely, facing her and frowning, worrying about something outside his experience and wondering how to quieten her.
She shook her head violently. She said, “I know why he did it, Rick, I can see why, can’t you?” She gulped. Then, “Was he . . . much burned?”
“Look, Judy . . .
She said. “It was the lines. It’s always the lines. Like the rails in a . . . station, in a subway, they pull, Rick, you never felt them pull? You stood there with the train coming and the noise and felt the rails pull harder and harder . . .”
“Honey, please . . .”
She ignored him. “It’s that way with the lines, Rick. They drew him. Can’t you see him up there, that poor old man, lonely, nobody to go to, nobody around? That’s when they pull most, when there’s nobody around. He was hungry and cold and the night was coming and there were the lights on the wall inside High Eight, like sort of red and amber eyes watching and saying come on, it’s O.K., come on . . . and the singing all round, and the shining things behind the rail pulling and pulling—”
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Judy, for God’s sake.”  p. 15-16

This passage telegraphs the arc of the story, which is (spoiler) an ever-increasing number of suicides and unexplained deaths in that part of the grid. Later, High Eight starts attracting large groups of people, and eventually Rick and his supervisor realise that a malevolent entity which lives in that part of the grid is responsible.
I’ve already noted the unusual American voice (although there is more use of “bloody” as an epithet than I suspect an American would ever use) but what is characteristic is the story’s ‘technology out of control’ doom-mongering:

Cameron shook his head. It was like he couldn’t think straight any more. “You can’t just let it build, Stan. It’s too bloody awful to think about. If this thing gets started—”
Mainwaring shook his head. “Rick, I’m in a vice. I’m caught in the same trap as everybody else. It’s the sort of trap only the human race could have invented for itself. It could have sprung any time. It’s chosen now. We’re hooked on our own technology.
“Those lines have got to stay in. We need ’em. We’re dead without them. Could be we’re dead with them as well, that’s just too bad. But we can’t turn the clock back. We can’t scrap electricity just because it’s turned mean.”  p. 41

The strengths of the story are its pacing and intensity, which will sweep readers away to a greater or lesser extent, and the horror elements (there is some gory description of the electrocuted people, and a last scene involving Cameron’s wife where matters spiral out of control).
I thought this was very good when I read it years ago—I didn’t think it was as good this time around, but it is still one of Roberts’ better early stories.
The first of three reprints (which few NWISF readers would have seen before) is Star Light by Isaac Asimov (Scientific American, Oct 1962). This is a short squib (four pages) about a spaceship pilot getting away with a theft by jumping to a far distant part of the universe where the police can’t follow. Once there he intends to use a newly invented computer (stolen from a murdered partner) to do a spectral analysis of the stars to determine his location. Of course when he arrives at his destination (spoiler) a star has gone nova, which ruins the plan. There is no explanation why the computer can’t be reprogrammed to ignore this one variable or why he can’t jump back to where he started from. A weak gimmick story.
Hunger Over Sweet Waters by Colin Kapp is set on Hebron 5, an alien planet that is mostly ocean, and which hosts a number of mineral extraction factories and research bases which are built on widely spaced artificial islands connected by a long railway that also floats. The latter connects the stations to one of the few land masses on the planet.
The protagonist of the story is a chemist called Blick, whose station is two hundred miles from base, and his problem is that the supply train is sixteen hours overdue and the communication lines are down. He contacts a colleague called Martha at one of the other stations using an alternative circuit, and they discuss their perilous situation. If the problem is what Blick thinks it is—a huge break in the line—the machinery to repair it will have to come from off-planet, which will take weeks. The pair have limited food and this will not last until help arrives. Further, Blick, who is married, and Martha, who is single, have history (although they have not been lovers) as indicated in one of the conversations they have about their predicament:

“First,” said Blick, “[. . .] we move you down here and pool such foodstuffs as we have available. We’ll work out some sort of rationing system which will give us a chance of surviving for a maximum period.”
“Whoa!” said Martha, laughing. “Whose welfare are we interested in? I don’t really see how mine is going to be improved by moving into your cabin, and I can diet here as well as anywhere. Apart from the social prospects, give me one good reason why I should be any better off at your station than at mine?”
“In a word,” said Blick, “water. Your supply is limited to your tank, and that was due to be refilled by the train that didn’t arrive. I’d guess that only gives you a maximum of two day’s supply in hand unless you give up such luxuries as washing, in which case you can last out for about a week. Here I can use my resin columns to produce as much pure water from the sea as we’re ever likely to require. Stay there if you like, but remember where to come if you get thirsty.”
“I might even do that if you can twist your crazy columns into producing gin, but if you think I’m going to walk five kilometres just for a drink of water, you don’t know Martha Sorenson.”
“How much water have you got, Martha?”
She was silent for a moment. “None, and you damn well know it, Blick.”
“Uh! I’ll come and give you a hand with your supplies. Shall I come tonight or in the morning?”
“Best make it the morning, Blick. I’ve something I must sort out before I leave.”
“Such as?”
“Me,” said Martha, putting down the phone.  p. 69-70

The rest of the story mixes (a) their problematic relationship and (b) their efforts to build a boat which will take them to base using the limited materials they have to hand.
The relationship material concerns Blick’s love for Martha, even though he is married, and Martha’s resistance (her marriage was broken up because of a third-party and she does not want to do the same to Blick’s wife). This isn’t as always handled as well as the passage above would suggest and is, in places, a bit cringe-worthy and/or mawkish. It is interesting to see, however, a hard science fiction writer such as Kapp introducing material like this into his work. For the period the story was written he makes a better attempt than most at dealing with the complexities of interpersonal relationships (and apart from the Blick-Martha dynamic, there is an uncomfortable situation with his boss at the end of the story which is pragmatically resolved).
The science material concerns the construction of their rescue boat using the ion-exchange columns to copper-plate a wax mould. This is moderately interesting, but I say that as someone whose degree was in physics and chemistry: non-scientists may find this harder going, but I didn’t think there was an overabundance of detail.
The final section details their voyage to base in the boat. This is slightly anti-climactic, probably as they do little more than drift with the current in the hope of hitting land. That said, Kapp manages to add a little twist at the end which injects some excitement.
Overall this is an uncomplicated piece but an enjoyable one. It will be of interest to those who like his ‘Unorthodox Engineers’ series.
The Country of the Strong by Dennis Etchison (Seventeen, 1962) is set in a vaguely post-holocaust landscape, and starts with a man taking another woman’s daughter to the park. Before they go the woman shows the girl’s club foot to him.
At the park the man and the girl meet another couple and they all end up attending the “Daily” at the pool. This turns out to be (spoiler) an occasion where the SS (the Selective Survival teams mentioned earlier in the story) euthanize malformed children. They discover the girl’s club foot.
This is a chilling but rather plotless story about eugenics, and one that could have as easily been set in Nazi Germany: it would have probably been a better story, if not an SF one, if it had been.
Parking Problem by Dan Morgan begins with a data dump prologue that introduces the story’s gimmick, an extra dimensional chamber that is later put into use as parking lockers which can store three hundred and sixty vehicles in the space occupied by a normal garage.
The story then starts with a local crime boss giving one of his flunkies a key that will open any locker and sending him off to steal a car. The garage the flunky robs yields a pink tricycle, obviously of alien design. Another tricycle appears after the flunky has left, driven by an alien set on recovering the first vehicle.
When the crime boss realises that the vehicles can pass through matter his thoughts turn to robbing banks. In due course, the police and military and the alien get involved.
This is all done as “humour”, presumably to mask the gimmicky idea, the stereotypical characters, and the weak storyline. This is quite poor.
Sub-Lim by Keith Roberts, like his story above, starts off in a style that you would be hard pushed to recognise as his:

No don’t get me wrong, Doc, not pictures, Images. That was how he explained it to me, he said a film director, say Hitchcock, anybody you want to name, is always worrying consciously or subconsciously about Images, trying to get some shape on the screen that’ll help the actors along, make you feel what’s going on. He said that was what a good film was, not a lot of shots of actors and such, but a set of Images that made you feel what you were supposed to. He said it was done with the picture composition and the lighting and everything. And he said, for instance, if you saw every thriller ever made and studied them all over and over you could work out a shape from all the Images all the directors had ever used, and the shape would sort of represent fear, all on its own. He said if you drew it and showed it to a guy he’d get scared to death and he wouldn’t know why. He said if the Image was right it would sort of lock onto his mind and make him feel whatever it meant. He said it was possible to make an Image for every emotion, every one in the book, once you’d got the hang of drawing them.  p. 136

This is another story which makes use of Roberts’ cinema background,² and concerns the invention of a subliminal film technique by a small company that is on the verge of going bankrupt—that is until they discover they can manipulate the emotions of viewers using certain images projected in parallel with a normal film. The story features four main characters: the narrator; J. R., one of the company owners; Connie the receptionist; and Freddy, who draws the subliminal images.
The first half, which covers the production of the films and their spectacular success, is a little unbelievable and a bit dull to be honest, but the story improves towards the end. In that latter part, as well as dumping most of the style above, the narrator (spoiler) becomes involved with Connie, who turns out to be devious and manipulative (she later dumps him for J. R. and a promotion). The narrator then goes to see Freddy and forces him to draw a love image to help him win back Connie. This works, but she knows what he has done, and she goes to Freddy and gets a suicide image. . . .
The last scene is an entertainingly unhinged Grand Guignol finale.
Bernie the Faust by William Tenn (Playboy, 1963) concerns the eponymous businessman, a pushy and distrustful individual, receiving a strange visitor in his office who proceeds to offer him a twenty-dollar note for a five-dollar one. Bernie is not impressed:

I looked him over and I said, “Wha-at?”
He shuffled his feet and coughed some more. “A twenty,” he mumbled. “A twenty for a five.”
I made him drop his eyes and stare at his shoes. They were lousy, cracked shoes, lousy and dirty like the rest of him. Every once in a while, his left shoulder hitched up in a kind of tic. “I give you twenty,” he explained to his shoes, “and I buy a five from you with it. I wind up with a five, you wind up with a twenty.”
“How did you get into the building?”
“I just came in,” he said, a little mixed up.
“You just came in.” I put a nasty mimicking note in my voice. “Now you just go right back downstairs and come the Hell out. There’s a sign in the lobby—NO BEGGARS ALLOWED.”
“I’m not begging.” He tugged at the bottom of his jacket.
It was like a guy trying to straighten out his slept-in pyjamas. “I want to sell you something. A twenty for a five. I give you—”
“You want me to call a cop?”
He looked very scared. “No. Why should you call a cop? I haven’t done anything to make you call a cop!”
“I’ll call a cop in just a second. I’m giving you fair warning. I just phone down to the lobby and they’ll have a cop up here fast. They don’t want beggars in this building. This is a building for business.”
He rubbed his hand against his face, taking a little dirt off, then he rubbed the hand against the lapel of his jacket and left the dirt there. “No deal?” he asked. “A twenty for a five? You buy and sell things. What’s the matter with my deal?”
I picked up the phone.
“All right,” he said, holding up the streaky palm of his hand. “I’ll go.”
“You better. And shut the door behind you.”  p. 161-162

After getting rid of the man from his office Bernie reflects on the encounter, and realises that it may be part of a TV reality show with stupendous prizes, so he goes to the address on the card that the man gave him before leaving. Over the course of the day Bernie not only buys the twenty for five but makes more deals. These involve selling his share of various things (San Francisco Bridge, etc.), and culminate with the sale of his part of the planet.
Afterwards, Bernie contacts a TV agent friend to find out more about this reality show, only to be categorically told that no such production exists. After reflecting on the man’s strange appearance and the weird TV set he had in his room, Bernie realises (spoiler) that he may actually have sold part of the Earth to an alien. When an academic friend subsequently points out he is an authorised reseller for the United Nations, Bernie realises he may have sold the whole planet, and needs to undo the deal. . . .
This is pleasant, humorous stuff, and (spoiler) ends up with the biter well and truly bit. That said, it is told in a very American (New York?) voice which makes it feel a little dated.

I usually detest psychedelic artwork or photographs on SF magazine Covers but I rather like this one by  Sir George F. Pollock. I doubt that this image was used for the usual cost saving reasons given that there is a “Sir” involved.³
The Foreword by John Carnell is one of his boilerplate introductions. He ends with this:

All the stories, however, have been selected with a view to entertainment; the fact that science fiction has a penchant for making people think is an added bonus for which there is no extra charge.  p. 10

I think he has said all this before, so it’s déjà vu all over again.⁴
This is one of the better volumes of the series with four fairly good stories (most only have one or two).  ●

_____________________

1. P. Schuyler Miller notes that the Asimov (Star Light) and Etchinson (The Country of the Strong) “come from sources that most readers won’t see” but that the Tenn (Bernie the Faust) “should be familiar to most American readers by this time”.
The Stringer (High Eight) “combines what reads like practical knowledge of high-tension technology with a concept of life like something out of Hoyle’s “Black Cloud” or Stapledon’s “Last and First Men”.” He adds that the Kapp (Hunger Over Sweet Waters) “is another kind of technological story that would have fitted very well here in Analog—overcoming disaster on a world where there is little or no land. It’s my favorite in the book, though the Etchison story is more grimly cruel and powerful—a horrible vignette of life after mutations have become common.”
He finishes by noting that the Morgan (Parking Problem) is a “comedy”, and that Roberts (Sub-Lim) “quite outdoes Pohl and Kornbluth in his satire of advertising ethics.”
He concludes, “You should like ’em all.” (p. 165-166, Analog, December 1968)

Michael Moorcock says of New Writings in SF 4 that “the undemanding reader who is happy with fresh twists on old themes will find plenty worth reading—though the best of these are the reprints from Isaac Asimov, Dennis Etchison, and William Tenn. He adds that the other stories by Kapp, Morgan and Roberts “are up to the standard normally expected from these writers”, and notes new writer Stringer’s debut.
He finishes with this: “Editor Carnell says in his introduction that readers are demanding more accuracy and authenticity in their SF. True enough—but this includes greater accuracy of character-observation, too, and this is in the main lacking in the stories so far published in this series. (p. 125-126, New Worlds #153, August 1965)

2. Mike Ashley states in his essay Keith Roberts: The Patient Craftsman (p. 2, Science Fiction Monthly, December 1975): “Roberts’ father had been a cinema projectionist at Kettering, and [Escapism] reveals much of Roberts’ obvious boyhood association with cinemas.”

3. There is a little more information about Sir George Pollock here. The 1971 reissue had a new cover by “SOLUTION”, whoever they are:

4. One of Yogi Berra’s “Yogi-isms”. Given my grasp of the English language I’m aware of the irony. (I only had to write the previous sentence three times to get something that sounds right.)  ●