Summary:
This digest-sized British fiction magazine regularly published science fiction in its pages (sometimes as a “Science Fiction Choice”), and this issue not only has the very good first part of the novella-length version of John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids (a post-nuclear-holocaust novel about persecuted mutant telepaths) but also has good fantasies from Willard Marsh and Joan Aiken. The other non-SF material (which includes stories by H. E. Bates and Paul Gallico) is, more or less, of equal standard. All of it is unpretentiously entertaining.

Galactic Central link
Archive.org copy

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Editor not listed

Fiction:
Queer Fish • short story by Kem Bennett ∗∗∗
Star Over Frisco • reprint short story by Willard Marsh ∗∗∗+
Summer in Salander • novelette by H. E. Bates ∗∗∗
Brandy for the Colonel • short story by Paul Gallico ∗∗∗
Elixir of Love • short story by C. S. Forester ∗∗
Last Message • story story by C. H. Milsom ∗∗
Music for the Wicked Countess • short story by Joan Aiken ∗∗∗
Memory of a Fight • short story by Gerald Kersh ∗∗
Both Watches of the Hands • short story by Rowan Ayers ∗∗∗
The Chrysalids (Part 1 of 2) • novella serial by John Wyndham ∗∗∗∗

Non-fiction:
Not Quite Cricket • poetry and prose extracts
Animal Crackers • poetry and prose extracts
Food for Thought • quiz
Apples • poem by Laurie Lee
Argosy Crossword

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Argosy¹ (the UK digest magazine, not the American pulp) isn’t an SF magazine but, as I was skimming through some issues, I noticed that a couple of them had a serial version of John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids.² Further research revealed that this was a variant and much shorter version of the novel, so I thought it would be interesting to read both and compare them here (I’ve just reviewed the much longer novel: you may wish to skim that post before reading on).
The plot of the novella is essentially the same as the one in the novel: David, the narrator, is a (secret) telepath in a post-nuclear-holocaust world whose agrarian society has harsh laws to deal with any sign of difference or mutation. In this first instalment these strictures are limned in a number of set pieces: when raiders from the Fringes appear, one of the freakishly long-limbed mutants they capture bears a striking resemblance to David’s father; when David’s sister is born, no-one in the house acknowledges the birth until the inspector calls to issue a certificate of normalcy; David’s father Joseph Strorm falls out with a neighbour over huge greathorses that Strorm considers deviant. We also learn more generally about this world, and its offences and blasphemies, etc.
All of the aforementioned is brought into stark focus when David’s Aunt Harriet arrives at the family house with her own new-born child. In an excellent scene, we learn the baby is a mutant, and that she wants to swap it temporarily for Petra to fool her local inspector. Not only do David’s parents refuse but they denounce her as well. After she leaves, she drowns herself in a river.
This is followed by a long section where Uncle Axel describes the outside world, its radioactive Badlands and Blacklands, and its mutant races—all of this knowledge gained from his days as a sailor.
Petra then reveals herself as a massively powerful telepath when she almost drowns. This, and a second incident, sow the seeds of suspicion in David’s community . . . .
A very good first half.

I expected that the Wyndham piece would be the only science fiction or fantasy story here (other copies have a “Science Fiction Choice” indicated) but there are others. The first of these is a fantasy, Star Over Frisco by Willard Marsh (first published³ as Astronomy Lesson in The Yale Review, 1954). This begins with a man and a woman meeting for the first time as they leave a cinema in San Francisco. When they go for a coffee, we find out that she is Pearl Rembrandt, a switchboard operator, and he is Humphrey, a sandwich maker at a restaurant.
They go for a walk and fall in love. As they look at the sky Pearl sees a shooting star and makes a wish. She tells Humphrey that she wished for a star of her own, and then:

They came down into the leaf-locked slope of Portsmouth Square, opposite the Hall of Justice where no one should have been behind bars, no misery should have been abroad when love, their love, was proof enough against all chaos.
And then Humphrey tripped over the star.
At first they didn’t recognize it. It lay, small and deceptive, in a cushion of grass. They knelt above it, jointly lifting it to the wayward light. It was cool to the palm, and blurrily orange-coloured. It had five points that seemed to shift and twinkle, depending on how you looked at them.
“I thought they’d be bigger, somehow,” Pearl said.
“They’re all different sizes,” Humphrey said, with a casualness he had to force. It was a beauty, all right, no getting around it.
“Sort of makes a nice souvenir, doesn’t it? To round the evening off.”
Humphrey weighed the star experimentally. “Maybe we could have it dipped in bronze or something to preserve it. You know, like baby-shoes.”
He didn’t realize the psychological implication of the remark till Pearl giggled in embarrassment.  p. 20

The next day Humphrey has time to kill before meeting Pearl again that evening, so he goes to a museum where he notices a meteorite on display. He learns from the attendant that it contains many valuable metals, and realises that the star (which Pearl has kept) may be valuable. When Humphrey then goes to his regular bar he tells Ace the bartender about the previous night’s find, and mentions that it may be of value. Ace suggests that Pearl will have come to a similar conclusion, and plants a seed of paranoia in Humphrey’s mind.
The story ends with Humphrey going to Pearl’s house earlier than planned and, when he gets into her apartment, he is aggressive and threatening. Initially she is bewildered, but agrees to give him the star back. Then she realises it may be of value, and tells him she is going to keep it.
The last few lines (spoiler), in which the star destroys more than their love, is a genuinely surprising end to the story and one that lifts this piece into an entirely different league. It should be better known.

The second fantasy in this issue is Music for the Wicked Countess by Joan Aiken,⁴ which concerns a new schoolteacher called Mr Bond arriving at Castle Kerrig, a small village in Ireland. One day, after he starts at the school, he plays the piano for the children. They like his performance and tell him that he should play for the Wicked Countess who lives in the castle in the middle of the woods (there is also a casual mention of leprechauns). Mr Bond thinks they are pulling his leg as he knows there is no castle in the area, something he confirms later on a fruitless walk:

He ate some bread and cheese in a bad temper and sat down to play it off at his own piano. He played several dances from Purcell’s Fairy Queen, and had soon soothed himself into forgetfulness of the children’s provoking behaviour. Little did he know that three white faces, framed in long golden hair, were gazing through the window behind his back. When he had finished playing for the night, the maidens from the forest turned and went regretfully back to the Castle.
.
“Well,” asked the Wicked Countess, “and does he play as well as the village talk has it?”
“He plays till the ears come down off your head and go waltzing along the road. Sure, there’s none is his equal in the whole wide world, at all.”
“I expect you are exaggerating,” said the Countess sadly. “Still, he would be a useful replacement for Bran the Harpist, ever since the fool went and had his head chopped off at the Debatable Ford.”
She looked crossly over to a corner where a headless harpist was learning to knit, for, being unable to read music, he could no longer play.  p. 86-87

After this, the Countess tries various ruses to get the teacher to her castle: lost keys; one of the maidens changes into a snake and gets pickled in a jar; a potion in his milk is drunk by the blue tits; an invitation goes unread, etc.
Eventually the Countess approaches Mr Bond as he walks in the forest, and invites him to the castle. He manages to avoid drinking the tea (and potion) provided, but agrees to play for her. After two leprechauns return with his piano (and carry it up the stairs), she invites him to play one of his own compositions. This sets up the story’s payoff, which is that, released from the chore of playing folk songs and country dances for the children, he launches into his own avant-garde compositions. These destroy the magic tower block by block, leaving the occupants to flee and Mr Bond alone in a clearing with his piano.
Thereafter the Countess and Mr Bond ignore each other . . . .
This is minor stuff, and I don’t think the ending will necessarily convince anyone, but it’s pleasant and lightweight fun.

Elixir of Love by C. S. Forester probably qualifies as an SF story, too, although it’s a fairly slight piece. In this one an Oxford professor sees the mass-mating of goldfish in the narrator’s garden pond. He concludes the goldfish’s simultaneous behaviour must be because of something in the water. He tasks his laboratory staff to isolate the compound.
Some weeks later the professor is atypically forward with a blind date at a dinner party the narrator sets up; the story eventually ends with some decorous description of an amorous wedding party.

One other story which may be of interest to fantasy readers is Both Watches of the Hands by Rowan Ayers—it isn’t fantasy but is such a wild flight of fancy it is halfway there.
The story opens with a despondent ex-Navy lieutenant called Michael Hancock, who is now in civvy street operating pleasure cruises and not enjoying the experience:

Nothing ever seemed to work out as it should. When the tides were right, the weather drove the holiday-makers inland to cinemas and amusement arcades. When the weather was right, Silver Streak was generally lying uselessly and unproductively on the soft, oozy mud that remained when the tide had run half a mile out to sea.
And on the rare occasions when both were right, there was usually something wrong with the engines, and he had to spend several sickening, dirty hours bent double in the narrow engine-room space, while his rival, the Mary Lou, chugged mockingly about the bay, loaded to the gunwales with eager passengers.  p. 97

Just as he is about to depart on another trip three naval ratings Hancock knows from his military service arrive and ask permission to come aboard. Not only do they treat Hancock like he is still their skipper, but they begin to carry out their duties as if they are on a Navy ship. Not only that, they subject the passengers of the pleasure boat trip to naval procedure. There is initial resistance from them and, to a certain extent, from Hancock, but everyone soon gets into the swing of things:

Michael still could not believe the situation. Before him, on either side, stood ten solemn men and women, ostensibly at ease. Neither their sex nor their age seemed to intrude any more into the neat pattern of well-established naval discipline, and he felt that he had to make no concessions, even to himself.
He was the Captain, this was his ship, and these were his crew. Nothing else could now be allowed to challenge the fantastic absurdity of the position. He hoped and prayed that Leo, his own regular bowman, who always went below for a sleep the minute the Silver Streak left the jetty, would not emerge through the open hatch to restore any of the reality.
“I should just like to say a few words,” Michael began, and was surprised by the tone of his voice. Someone in the ranks began to mutter.
“Keep silence, there,” shouted Brewis with dramatic effect.
“For some of you,” continued the Captain, “this may be your first seagoing appointment.” It was an opening he had used before many times. “And you may find things a little strange at first. But I want you to settle down into the routine as quickly as possible, and make this a really happy and efficient ship.”
He dug his hands into the pockets of his duffel and glowered at the motley crew before him. “That can only be achieved,” he said, “by teamwork, and complete co-operation, from the oldest among you, right down to the youngest boy.”
For a moment he caught sight of the awe-stricken child who had been proving such a pest, and the sight nearly deflated him.
“That is all I have to say,” he added quickly, “except to wish you good luck, and safe landfalls.”
“Hear, hear,” said the reedy voice of the small man.
The young blonde in the port watch began to clap very softly, until Brewis turned on her savagely and withered her into silence with one of his special disciplinary glances. A couple in the starboard watch were gazing at Michael, wide-eyed. They too had somehow been caught up in the fantasy of the moment, and saw before them a strange new life opening out. Visions of walking the plank, keelhauling, cockroaches, whippings, and being clapped in irons hovered indistinctly about their brains.  p. 104

Matters take a semi-serious turn when the passengers form a watch on both sides of the boat, and the enemy is sighted (the Mary Lou). Action Stations is called, and they set course for it at full speed . . . .
This one is a lot of fun.

As for the rest of the fiction, Summer in Salander by H. E. Bates⁵ is a novelette labelled as a “New Short Complete Novel.” Initially it reads like mid-period J. G. Ballard:

Manson lifted one corner of the green gauze window-blind of the shipping office and watched, for an indifferent moment or two, the swift cortege of a late funeral racing up the hill. It flashed along the water-front like a train of cellulose beetles, black and glittering, each of the thirty cars a reflection of the glare of sun on sea.
He wondered, as the cars leapt away up the avenue of jade and carmine villas, eyeless in the bright evening under closed white shades, why funerals in Salandar were always such races, unpompous and frenzied, as if they were really chasing the dead. He wondered too why he never saw them coming back again. They dashed in black undignified weeping haste to somewhere along the sea-coast, where blue and yellow espada boats beat with high moonlike prows under rocks ashen with burnt seaweed, and then vanished for ever.  p. 26

To an extent the Ballard comparison holds true for the rest of the story as it is, essentially, a psychological portrait of the protagonist, Manson, although he is a more conventional character than would be found in Ballard’s work.
We learn that Manson is a shipping manager or some such in an unspecified Mediterranean backwater, and that he is due to meet an out of season ship when it arrives that afternoon. When he gets on board the purser tells him that the only passenger disembarking cabled ahead asking Manson to organise a hotel room for her. Manson has no knowledge of any cable, and expresses his irritation at being used as a travel agent. Manson then meets Vane, the female passenger, for the first time:

 “It was awfully good of you to meet me,” a voice said.
When he turned, abruptly, at the same time as the sweat-bright faces of the policeman, the customs officer, and the purser, he saw her standing behind him, a tall, black-haired girl, with an amazing combination of large pure blue eyes and black lashes, her hair striped across the front with a leonine streak of tawny blonde.
He found himself at once resenting and resisting this paler streak of hair.
“It was really very good of you,” she said. “My name is Vane.”
He checked an impulse to say, “Spelt in which way?” and she held out a hand covered with a long yellow glove.  p. 28-29

Although Manson is discomfited and annoyed at the situation he is in, Vane soon proves to the dominant character. It isn’t long before Manson is eating out of her hands, beginning with him recovering a left-behind handbag from her cabin (the unmade bed and smell of perfume give Manson a “startling sensation of intimacy”), helping her with her bags, and then taking her to his hotel.
The rest of the story shows how Manson, generally a passive, beached character, is drawn into Vane’s orbit (she is, by contrast, assertive and energetic). When Vane says she would like to go to the hills that weekend, he ends up going with her.
The second part of the story has them travel by car and mule to a house in the mountains, along with a servant Manuel. During their stay, Manson becomes ever more infatuated with her, and eventually comes out of his shell to insist that they should go up to the high plateau together (hopefully leaving Manuel behind so they can be alone together). Manuel suggests that the trip is not a good idea, but Manson pressures Vane to go on what turns out to be a fateful trip.
I’m not sure that the story ultimately amounts to much, but it provides such good descriptions of both place and person and character that it’s definitely worth a read. It certainly made me think about digging out more of Bates’ work. (Since writing this last, I’ve read his transgressive The Good Corn in next month’s issue—more of this in my next Argosy review.)

Queer Fish by Kem Bennett is a story about Arthur, a dock worker and sometime boatman, and his bete noire (because of Arthur’s occasionally illegal salmon fishing), the local water-bailiff. After Arthur baits the bailiff in the pub one evening he goes to his boat. There he is held up at gunpoint by two strangers who were in the bar earlier, and forced to take them to France. Or at least it seems that way until we learn that (spoiler) Arthur has put them ashore on another part of the English coast (they were too seasick to notice). Arthur is greeted by the police on return but, because of his actions, he gets the better of the bailiff (the police don’t care about the salmon he caught on the way back). A cleverly plotted if minor, story.

Brandy for the Colonel by Paul Gallico⁶ opens with a retired French colonel overhearing his housemaid talking to a young man, an aspiring painter. He learns they are unhappy because they cannot go to Paris to live together as she will lose her dowry if she does. After this passage there is a character sketch of the retired colonel, which tells us of his love of the local brandy, and the termagant of a wife who keeps him away from it:

And, to conclude this portrait of a man better than most of us, if Colonel Bobet had any complaints about the character of his wife, he kept them to himself. He had chosen her when she was young, beautiful, kind, and good-tempered. If age and disappointment in what life had brought her had now curdled these attributes, it was not her fault, he reasoned. Even a life in which much can be arranged can play shabby tricks, such as the old wound that cost him his brigade and perhaps the marshal’s baton. And besides, every man was born to bear trials, and she was his.  p. 63

The colonel then attempts to resolve the matter with his wife (who controls the maid’s dowry) and the wealthy Marquis (who owns the local brandy company, and may have been a war-time collaborator), but fails. After this the colonel summons his old Resistance comrade Pantoufle, and sets in progress a plan which gets the couple the money they need to go to Paris, and also satisfies his wife’s desire to get her house painted.
The final act reveals (spoiler) that Pantoufle is now the advertising manager of a brandy firm that is a rival to the Marquis’, and the paint job on the colonel’s house now reveals an advertising slogan that can only be seen from the Marquis’ house.
The ending isn’t terribly convincing, but the story is a pleasant and interestingly contrived tale with some good, if stereotypical, French colour.

Last Message by C. H. Milsom (a one-shot wonder according to Galactic Central) is set on a ship in heavy weather whose radio operator picks up an SOS from a ditched aircraft. After the ship rescues the survivors (spoiler) the pilot tells the ship’s captain that they sent no distress message as the aircraft’s radio operator died trying to fix the aerial.
The nautical description in this story is convincing but the reveal is rather abrupt.

Memory of a Fight by Gerald Kersh is a relatively brief (and minor) vignette of a Roman boxer’s career. This involves meeting his twin brother in his last fight.

The magazine has, as well as the fiction, a number of filler items. Two of these are poem and prose features, Not Quite Cricket, which has two poems and one vignette (which escaped me) on that subject, and Animal Crackers, which is three pages of forgettable verse and prose extracts about animals. That said, I was taken by a line from a 1681 letter of Sir Thomas Browne to his son, “I beleeve you must be carefull of your Ostridge this returne of cold wether . . .”

Apples is an okay poem from Laurie Lee. The magazine also contains Food for Thought, a quiz, and the Argosy Crossword.

I enjoyed this magazine more than any other I’ve read recently. Some of it is particularly good (the Wyndham and the Marsh), and most of the rest is either noteworthy (the Bates) or just good, unpretentious entertainment⁷ (the Gallico, Aiken, Ayers, etc.). This mid-1950’s British magazine is also a lot less buttoned-up and conformist than I expected. Recommended.  ●

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1. There is some limited information about this magazine on Wikipedia and Galactic Central.

2. The serialisation of SF novels in mainstream publications wasn’t unusual in the 1950s: John Christopher’s The Death of Grass appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, for example, while a version of Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (as Revolt of the Triffids) appeared in Collier’s.

3. Willard Marsh’s story was also reprinted in F&SF, June 1955 (using its Yale Review title, Astronomy Lesson).

4. The Wikipedia piece above about Argosy reveals that Joan Aiken (known for the The Wolves of Willoughby Chase) was the magazine’s feature editor from 1955 to 1960. Her Science Fiction Encyclopedia page is here.

5. H. E. Bates is best perhaps best known for his Darling Buds of May books (which were made into a very successful TV series which I’m not sure I ever watched). His Wikipedia page is here.
There are a couple of useful websites listed in that latter webpage. One, the H. E. Bates Companion, gives this information about Summer in Salander:

In the second volume of his autobiography (The Blossoming World, 67), Bates would summarize the tale as follows: “a woman both rich and selfish sets out, having left her own husband, to destroy, rather after the manner of a spider with a fly, a young man she meets while on holiday on an island.” In a late essay (“H.E. Bates — By Himself”) Bates cites this story as the rare case in which a work of imagination is later replicated in real life, with a “precise replica of the Mrs Vane of my story: rich, selfish, bored, running away from her husband and looking for someone to play cat and mouse with” appearing on board ship when Bates and his wife were returning to the island he used as the story’s setting.

I don’t think this accurately describes the story. First, Vane doesn’t play “cat and mouse” with Manson—she dominates their relationship from the start but doesn’t intentionally torment him—and she doesn’t set out to “destroy” him either. Manson is the one who insists on going up to the high plateau despite Vane’s resistance, and his fall is an unfortunate accident.

6. Paul Gallico wrote The Poseidon Adventure among others. His best known story appears to be The Snow Goose, which is available as a PDF on the Saturday Evening Post website.

7. One wonders if there is an opening in the current SF magazine market for a publication which runs more entertaining stories—an Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine* for the twenties, if you will.
*The Scithers version (in spirit if not in actuality).  ●