Summary:
This issue has another stand-out story by David I. Masson, A Two-Timer, which is about a time-traveller from 1637 travelling to modern times—and written in the kind of English such a person would use. Apart from this original stylistic touch it is, at times, an particularly affecting satire.
The rest of the issue is rather lacklustre—and I include in this description the non-fiction, which is not as interesting as usual.
[ISFDB page][Luminist copy]

Other reviews:¹
Christopher Priest, Vector #38 (February 1966), p. 28
Mark Yon, Galactic Journey
Various, Goodreads

_____________________

Editor, Michael Moorcock; Assistant Editor, Langdon Jones

Fiction:
A Two-Timer • novelette by David I. Masson ∗∗∗∗
The Orbs • essay by John Watney ∗∗
Entry from Earth • short story by Daphne Castell ∗∗
Hi, Sancho! • short story by Paul Jents ∗
Temporary Resident • short story by Philip E. High ∗
The Sword Against the Stars • short story by A. F. Hall ∗

Non-fiction:
Cover
Interior artwork • by James Cawthorn, A. Thomson
Onward, Ever Onward . . . • by Michael Moorcock
The Craft of SF • book reviews by Langdon Jones
Streaked Through With Poetry • book reviews by James Cawthorn
Healthy Domination • book review by R. M. Bennett
Letters to the Editor
Next Month

_____________________

This issues leads off with A Two-Timer by David I. Masson. which is the second of five stories that he would produce for the magazine this year. It begins with a man in 1637 noticing an unusual occurrence:

. . . I was standing, as it chanc’d, within the shade of a low Arch-way, where I could not easily be seen by any who shou’d pass that way, when I saw as it were a kind of Dazzle betwixt my Eyes and a Barn that stood across the Street. Anon this Appearance seem’d as ’twere to Thicken, and there stood a little space before the Barn a kind of a clos’d Chair, but without Poles, and of a Whiteish Colouring, and One that sate within it, peering out upon the World as if he fear’d for his life. Presently this Fellow turns to some thing before him in the Chair and moves his Hands about, then peeps he forth again as tho’ he fear’d a Plot was afoot to committ Murther upon his Person, and anon steps gingerly out of one Side, and creeps away down the Alley, looking much to right and to left. He had on him the most Outlandish Cloathes that ever I saw. Thinks I, ’tis maybe he, that filch’d my Goods last Night, when I had an ill Dream.  p. 6-7

The rest of the story continues in the same style (you soon get used to it) and sees the man watching take the machine and end up in 1966. Much of the first quarter of the story is taken up by his learning how to further operate the machine. He soon finds that he has arrived in the ground floor flat of a modern building and, after one or two unproductive encounters with the neighbours (he can’t understand them), he tries to get out of the front door to investigate the outside world, but fails. He then learns that the machine can be made to move in space as well as time, and moves in stages to the middle of a road in nearby suburb. There he strikes up a conversation of sorts with a man washing his car, moves the machine to his driveway, and eventually accepts an invitation to stay with the man and his wife. The next part of the story sees the traveller settle in with the couple, who later suggest that he go back in time to recover some of his possessions so he can sell them to fund his stay in the present. When he travels back to his own house he comes upon himself sleeping in bed—there is a strange shimmering motion over his face, and a strange attraction drawing him towards himself. He flees back to the present. At this point in the story (about halfway) the traveller goes into town with his host to sell his belongings, and what was an interesting and novel time-travel piece becomes a more satirical and observational affair with a near-continual description of, and commentary on, what he sees and experiences. Some of this is tartly observed, and some particularly affecting; I could quote pages of it:

You will wonder especially, what sort of People they were indeed, that I was fallen among; and tho’ it took many Weeks in the Learning, yet I shall make bold to take only as many Minutes, in the Telling it. They spoke much then, of the Insolence of Youth, which they thought new, but it seem’d to me, that there was nothing new but Wealth and Idleness, that feed this Insolence.  p. 28

But the Spring of this, is in the Wives, for these own no Man’s Controul, not even in Law, but manage all things equally with ’em, and take all manner of Work, as bold as Men (for they are as well school’d), and High and Low dress them selves in Finery, and leave their Children to bring them selves up (so that many run wild), and are fix’d upon Folly and Mancatching, as I saw from a Journal, made in Colours (and more like a great Quarto, then a Journal) that is printed for Women alone. They go bare-legg’d or with Legs cover’d in bright Stockings but marvellous fine, and closefitting ; and their Legs shewing immodestly above the Knee. In this Journal I saw all manner of sawcy Pictures.  p. 28

They have great Safety, in the Streets and in the Fields, so that Thefts and Violence to the meanest Person are the cause of News in the Courants; but they slaughter one another with their Cars for that they rowl by so fast, and altho’ they are safe from Invasion, by their Neighbour Nations in Europe, yet they are ever under the Sword of Damocles from a Destruction, out of the other End of the Earth, by these same Air-Craft, or from a kind of Artillery, that can shoot many Thousands of Leagues, and lay wast half a Countrey, where it’s Shot comes to ground, or so they wou’d have me believe.  p. 29

In their Punishments they have no Burnings, no Quarterings, no Whippings, Pilloryings, or Brandings, and they put up no Heads of Ill-doers. Their Hangings are but few, and are perform’d in secret; and there are those in the Government that wou’d bring in a Bill, to put a stop even to that, so that the worst Felon, shou’d escape with nothing worse, then a long Imprisonment.  p. 30

Yet do they have a sweeter and a quieter Living, than any we see. I saw few Persons diseas’d or distemper’d, or even crippled. The King’s Evil, Agues, Plagues and Small Pox, are all but gone. Not one of a Man’s Children die before they come of age, if you can believe me; and yet his House is never crowded, for they have found means, that their Women shall not Conceive, but when they will. This seem’d to me an Atheistical Invention, and one like to Ruin the People; yet they regard it as nothing, save only the Papists and a few others.  p. 29

Yet in truth they are a Staid, and Phlegmatick Folk, that will not easily laugh, or weep, or fly in a passion, and whether it be from their being so press’d together, or from the Sooty-ness of the Air, or from their great Hurrying to and from work, their Faces shew much Uncontent and Sowerness, and they regard little their Neighbours. All their Love, is reserv’d to those at Home, or their Mercy, to those far off; they receive many Pleas, for Money and Goods, that they may send, for ailing Persons, that they never knew, and for Creatures in Africa and the Indies, whom they never will see. Every Saturday little Children stand in the Streets, to give little Flags an Inch across, made of Paper, in return for Coyns, for such a Charity. As for their Hatred, ’tis altogether disarm’d, for none may carry a Sword, or Knife, a Pistol, or a Musquet, under Penalty, tho’ indeed there be Ruffians here and there, that do so in secret, but only that they may committ a Robbery impunedly upon a Bank, or a great Store of Goods, and so gain thousands of Pounds in a moment.  p. 31

In truth, this goes on for a little too long but, as I was reading, it struck me as an excellent effort at reproducing the thoughts our ancestors might have about the current time. Normally in time travel stories we see people from our time go to the past or future and comment upon what they see, or we have people from the future come to our time—I can’t think of many time travel stories with this perspective shown in this one, and certainly not done as well. The story ends (spoiler) with the narrator and the wife becoming close as they use the time machine together on short trips (initially to check the weekend weather). Later they are found on the bed kissing by the husband, and the narrator hastily departs for his own time. He arrives shortly after he left, and goes back to his house to stock up on things to sell in the future, but by the time he returns to the machine it is gone. This may be a fairly perfunctory ending, but at the very least it provides the witty title. A very good story, and one I’d have in my ‘Best Of’ for 1966 (probably along with last issue’s The Mouth of Hell).
∗∗∗∗ (Very good). 15,700 words.

•

The Orbs by John Watney² begins with the female narrator, Julia, telling of the appearance of huge floating “orbs,” (think of a much larger, longitudinal version of the spaceships in the movie Arrival) that appeared decades previously over certain parts of the Earth. After an initial period, where they provided better weather as well as a sense of general well-being for the humans below, they descended and sucked up all the people and other loose debris underneath them. This was repeated at intervals thereafter. Julia’s tells of her grandfather’s memories of this day, and how one woman fell back down onto a tree, living long enough to describe what had happened to her:

“She screamed. ‘There’s no-one there,’ she said, ‘just cold invisible hands, taking your clothes off, hanging you upside down, and the water swishing at you from all sides. I slipped off the hook. I don’t know how. I lay in a sort of gutter. The water was swishing over me all the time. I could hardly breathe. I was being pushed along by the water. The bodies were above. They were being split open like fish by invisible knives. Everything was falling down on top of me. The bodies swung away on the line. I fell down a chute’.” The woman died. But there have always been a few survivors, and their accounts, incoherent though they have been, have always been much the same: the invisible hands and knives, the continuous water, the bodies swinging emptily away into the interior of the Orb. Of course, the accounts come only from the early days when the victims were not anaesthetised, when indeed no-one knew the rhythm of the Orbs and were not able to calculate in advance the exact moment they would descend in search of their prey.  p. 51

The final part of the story (spoiler) reveals that Julia has been selected as part of the next sacrificial group, and we learn of the system that developed after Earth’s initial failed resistance. The story closes with Julia’s calm participation in a sacrifice ceremony. The weakest part of this is the alien abattoir part in the middle of the story, a silly idea that should have been left in the 1930’s pulp magazines. But the beginning of this is okay, as is the ending which describes human society’s adaptation (beauty contests are one of the ways the best are selected for the orbs). Julia’s dutiful acceptance of her fate is a particularly interesting (and novel) aspect of the story.
∗∗ (Average). 5,050 words.

•

Entry from Earth by Daphne Castell gets off to a colourful start at a music festival on the alien planet of Pigauron. After this setup, the story cuts to Lord D’aon Auwinawo, a visiting cultural minister from Tren who is bored with the event and returns to his tents, only to be unexpectedly visited by Mirilith tak, an Assistant Secretary for the Festival, and Slok, a bulldog-like alien. The latter is the “Personal Complainant” to another of the attendees, and is there with a grievance about the noise D’aon’s slaves make by singing during the night.
D’aon stays awake that evening to listen to them, and then orders them entered into the festival where they are received politely. After their performance, D’aon talks to one the slaves about their history, and this reveals a pattern of enslavement. The story (spoiler) subsequently ends with them singing “The Rivers of Babylon” revealing them to be Jewish slaves captured from Earth.
This has a colourful start, and an okay idea, but you can see the end coming from a mile off, even without the foreshadowing.
∗∗ (Average). 3,050 words.

•

Hi, Sancho! by Paul Jents starts with a fugitive in the future making a perilous crossing of one road (with high-speed traffic) to get to another, northbound, one that will take him to the city. After he manages to hitch a lift he ends up at an old flame’s house and, after a night with her, later ends up with a black man who wants to stage a bombing. Worried about the loss of innocent life, the fugitive hides the explosives and calls security.
The story then cuts to the fugitive’s interrogation, which involves a data dump about camps in Africa and a forced eugenics program. He escapes again, and takes the explosive back to the institution where he was imprisoned. In the closing passage there is some reference to Don Quixote that I didn’t get (and the character thus named refers to the fugitive as Sancho).
This is fast-paced, readable stuff, but it seems little more than a series of random episodes linked together.
∗ (Mediocre). 4,650 words.

Temporary Resident by Philip E. High opens with a Terran representative called Savaran almost rammed by another car on a planet called Spheriol. Savaran continues his journey but, further down the road, he sees his own car being towed—it appears to have side impact damage. Matters become even odder when he arrives at his Embassy to find it staffed by people he doesn’t know. The next morning he wakes up to see a doctor standing by his bedside who explains that he is in “transition”, and is on another “plane of existence”.
Later he meets people from his life who he thought were long dead, and discusses Terran defence plans with one of them. At this point (spoiler) the story cuts to a Spheriol minister talking to a man called Detrick, who is explaining that Savaran’s experience is all a ruse (he is at a false location which is staffed with actors) set up to let them defeat the anti-interrogation brain psychographing he has undergone.
The final twist, which has Savaran turn up at the building where the Minister and Detrick are meeting, sees Savarand fade out of existence after he arrives there. The Minister then reveals to Detrick that he is the one experiencing a plane of existence shift, but a real one, and not a pretence like Savaran. Or something like that—it’s one of those stories whose endings can lose you.
This doesn’t convince, and it’s essentially the same old Terran spy nonsense that has been appearing in the magazines for decades already. And a Phil Dick-ian twist at the end doesn’t improve it much.
∗ (Mediocre). 5,250 words.

•

The Sword Against the Stars by A. F. Hall³ begins pretty much as it goes on:

Dated the 42nd year of our exile The earth this year is death and stinking rubble, a pall of broken glass and rusted, empty cans. The earth this year is a thousand blasted cities, bleak and broken skylines, skeletons of buildings connected with crazy paving. There are some parts of our city which still burn with sporadic fires; a water main bursts and somewhere a stray dog howls. The earth this year is scarred and seared to wasteland, a planetary ghetto where all that’s left is dying, crawling to its slow, inevitable ending. The earth this year is sick of a million plagues, gaunt famines and a mad child’s crying.  p. 101

This initially appears to be a post-nuclear holocaust tale but we later discover that the devastation is the result of an alien invasion. The rest of the story is mostly description, and there is very little incident: a “dust priest” turns up at the narrator’s settlement; the group go scavenging in a city; the narrator finds a sword (which prompts much speculation about why there are red jewels in the handle):

The seven rubies must represent the stars—but why are the stars red? The sun is made of gold and the moon is silver but the stars glow with an angry light. When I was very young I used to think that the stars were white diamonds scattered on black velvet, I would have made the stars out of diamonds if the sword had been mine. It was only the forger of the sword who knew better, he must have known that the stars were hostile and he set seven red stones in his sword, red for the colour of war. He chose red stones so that those who came after him should remember when they saw his warning—but we who came after, we forgot. How did he know?  p. 109

Although the description is well enough done, there is far too much of it: this makes for a dull piece.
∗ (Mediocre). 4,200 words.

•••

The Cover, a flat, static affair, is uncredited, and sets the tone for the non-fiction.
There are two pieces of Interior Artwork this issue, one from James Cawthorn and the other from A. Thomson. It is a pity they can’t afford more internal illustration as I’d like to see more of Cawthorn’s work in the magazine.
Onward, Ever Onward . . . by Michael Moorcock uses most of this editorial to respond to a complaint from a “hardcore ‘fanzine’ fan” that “publishers have betrayed the spirit of The Golden Age”. Most of the rest of this section cycles through various generalities about (a) reactionaries through the ages (b) subjective standards, and (c) notions vs. real ideas. I’m not sure any of this adds much to the developing new wave vs. old wave controversies, and certainly not when there are statements like this:

Another complaint sometimes heard is that there isn’t enough science in present-day sf. Here the person is usually complaining that there isn’t enough concentration on the physical sciences. The emphasis has tended to shift towards the ‘soft’ sciences like psychology and sociology, partly because the person who has these days managed to master modern physics is too busy to take time out to write fiction. Good speculation along these lines is nowadays virtually impossible for the amateur, whereas this wasn’t the case ten or twenty years ago.  p. 4

He also talks about Masson in some detail (which I’ll talk about below) before summing up his argument with this:

There is still a lot of progress to be made before science fiction as a form fulfils all its promise, both as a vehicle for intelligent escapism and as serious literature, but nostalgia for the past will achieve nothing. Writing standards are being raised, plots become more sophisticated, characters more convincing. There are fewer new real ideas in the world than there are notions—but it is how we dramatise them that is important. To get them across we must reject many of the conventional trappings of the past and writers must look to themselves rather than their predecessors for the ways in which they will present their stories.

The problem Moorcock has, unfortunately, is that very few of the writers he publishes in New Worlds are better than those that came before—they are just mediocre in a different way.
I briefly mentioned above that Moorcock talks about Masson’s work in this editorial, and this is what he has to say:

David I. Masson, in fact, whose third published story takes pride of place in this issue, is one of the few writers producing, as you will see in future issues, science fiction stories which have genuine scientific speculation as their basis. Not content with this alone, Masson manages to work in, as his leit-motif, a moral at the same time. Unlike the old-style sf writer, however, he respects his readers’ intelligence sufficiently not to hammer his points home. In Traveller’s Rest (NWSF 154) he wrote about the tyranny of subjective time and the fact that most of our troubles are self-created; neither points were overtly made, but both were intrinsic to the story. In Mouth of Hell (NWSF 158) he told the story of a tragic expedition into a vast crater in which every detail was scientifically plausible and which ended on a sardonic note that showed that the things which people died to achieve yesterday become part of today’s complacently accepted norm. The story in this issue is a more obvious satire, in which the 1960s are seen through the eyes of a time-traveller from the seventeenth century.
Writers like Masson are capable of hard scientific speculation but are also capable of taking a deeper look at the whole basis of our assumptions about ourselves. And these writers do not have the irritating glibness that mars so many of the sf tales of ten years or so ago—a glibness that often, it seems, passes for profundity in the eyes of some readers.  pp. 4-5

I recognise the last point (one of the most irritating things about Analog magazine, over various periods, are the bumper-sticker aphorisms that fill the spaces at the ends of stories—which almost never stand up to more than a moment’s scrutiny), but I am baffled by Moorcock’s comment about Traveller’s Rest—which apparently shows that “most of our troubles are self-created.” How so? In that story a soldier leaves a time-dilated front-line (spoiler), goes home, settles down and raises a family—only to be unexpectedly recalled to the war decades later to find that virtually no time has elapsed at the front. I’d suggest that he is a pawn in a greater game and not the author of his own misfortunes.

There are quite a few reviews this issue, and by several hands. The first one, in The Craft of SF by Langdon Jones, is of a writing manual, Of Worlds Beyond by Lloyd Arthur Esbach. Jones is not impressed (with the exception of the Taine article) and there are several waspish put-downs:

[The Heinlein] is not a terribly interesting article, suggesting, as it does to me, the kind of thing one would expect to get back from the Ealing Correspondence School for Successful Writing, although I must admit that some of the elementary rules about writing cannot be too often repeated.  p. 113

Jack Williamson’s contribution . . . rambles on pleasantly and interestingly.  p. 114

It is a pity that a lot of the quotes [van Vogt] makes from his own work are of very doubtful quality.  p. 114

In his contribution, Humour in Science Fiction, L. Sprague de Camp gives his thoughtful views on the subject [of writing]. However, I feel that some of his conclusions are less than authoritative. De Camp states that humour will not work if it is associated with subjects that people feel particularly strongly about—death, persecution, etc. The black comedy of Nabokov in stories like Laughter in the Dark and Bend Sinister or of Joseph Heller in Catch 22—or even of Harry Harrison in Bill, the Galactic Hero is appallingly funny, even though having a tragic basis. This kind of humour is the most effective I know.  P. 114

In his article, The Science of Science Fiction Writing, John W. Campbell writes with the embarrassingly jovial manner of an ageing scoutmaster. The constant use of the word ‘yarn’ instead of ‘story’ is somewhat irritating, together with the cinema-poster superlatives.  p. 114

He concludes:

The aspiring writer, I think, will benefit little from this book, but the articles make moderately interesting reading if you happen to be stranded with nothing to read and 13/6 in your pocket.  p. 115

Next up is Streaked Through With Poetry by James Cawthorn, which opens with a brief review of five early titles by Samuel R. Delany, although he provides mostly general comments about the content and style of the books:

[As] with Cordwainer Smith, the writer most closely allied in style to Delany, the value of the story is not so much in the plot-elements (several of which have been exploited to great effect by such writers as Van Vogt and Aldiss) as in the manner of the telling. Younger than Smith, Delany displays a command of the language which is comparatively even more impressive and seems less prone to the preciousness which so often mars the older writers’ work.  p. 115

The other two books that Cawthorn covers are two Burroughs influenced works, The Wizard of Lemuria by Lin Carter and Barbarians of Mars by Edward P. Bradbury (Michael Moorcock). Cawthorn liked the Carter better than I expected him to (nearly all the comment I see online about Carter dismisses his work):

Basically both books are derivative of Burroughs and Howard, the difference being that Bradbury is content to be derivative, while Carter unashamedly duplicates the work of the masters, in effect superimposing Conan upon a Barsoomian background. Yet Wizard does not lack pace, and the climax is exciting despite the fact that the build-up—which involves the fate of the Universe, no less!—is lost in a welter of trivial bloodletting. Next time around, perhaps we can have rather more of Lin Carter and rather less of John.  p. 116

Cawthorn always struck me as one of the less ideological driven and more normal of the New Worlds’ reviewers.
Finally, in Healthy Domination, R. M. Bennett reviews The Best of New Worlds, edited by Michael Moorcock. This was an unusual ‘Best’ volume that took stories from the last few years of Carnell’s editorship, and the first year or so of Moorcock’s. Bennett says the volume is “good, meaty reading” and states five out of the fifteen stories deserve special mention:

Probably the author most likely to appear in an anthology of stories reprinted from New Worlds is J. G. Ballard and his arid, stylistic trend setter, The Terminal Beach is a welcome inclusion, whilst also included is one of the most controversial of modern sf shorts, Langdon Jones’ somewhat over-rated I Remember, Anita. Hilary Bailey’s The Fall of Frenchy Steiner opens with a brilliant picture of London under a Hitler conquest but despite being entertaining the story falls off towards an unconvincing and disappointing conclusion. James Colvin’s The Mountain is merely disappointing. To counteract this feeling there is included, however, James White’s Tableau, as complete, as mature, as entertaining and as satisfying a story as is anyone’s good fortune to read (how has Tableau missed becoming an anthology “standard?”).  p. 117

There are quite a few Letters to the Editor this month as well (is Moorcock short of material or short of budget?) A few are pro/anti missives about a previous review of Fredrik Pohl & C. M. Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants, one of which, by J. D. McMillan, from Broughton, spins off into a discussion of what kind of SF should appear in the future:

[The] time when science fiction “will explode into something that will produce many works of lasting importance”, to quote this month’s editorial, has not yet arrived. And although I feel sure that by this time most serious students of the genre would agree with you when you go on to says “If this means a rejection on the part of the writers of most of the conventions of sf, then the rejection must be made. We must progress, must adapt or die,” there seems to be little concrete indication or guidance these days as to what exactly we ought to be trying to adapt to. There is some talk on your part of “symbolism”, “surrealism” and the creation of “mythological figures”, and on the part of J. G. Ballard of “a more introspective and cerebral science fiction” that, will “share the vocabulary of ideas in painting and music”. But are these (and I take them to be the most up-to-date ideas on the subject) to be regarded as ends in themselves, or merely as yet further conventions to be adapted or rejected along with all the others, in the interests of at last producing these elusive “works of lasting importance?  pp. 123-124

There is also a letter from P. Hunt, from Wimbledon, which I thought might be pseudonymous parody written by Moorcock himself:

This weekend I bought a copy of New Worlds, the first sf book I have read for about five years. I gave it up because I considered that the standard had greatly deteriorated. I’m sorry, but this New Worlds seems even worse. I ask—‘Why are your authors so pre-occupied with the sexual angle?’ It is worked into very story, willynilly. This sex-mesmerism seems to have permeated all literature. The stories of years ago, gave one a sense of wonder, and of magic. The authors mentally transported one out to the galaxies, or took us through the avenues of Time. These stories were a joy to read. Now the leading character gets bogged down with some voluptuous tart, and nothing happens remotely resembling true Science Fiction. Also, I notice that most of your writers have atheistic leanings, and express it through the mouths of their characters. When I read sf I don’t want atheism flung at me, nor religion either, for that matter. The sf writers of the not too distant past were true craftsmen. They could make the impossible seem credible. If the story contained a female character, she was necessary to the story. As far as I am concerned, true sf writing ceased in 1939.  p. 125

He sounds a bit like me—I wonder if we are related.
Finally, Charles Platt closes with a letter stating that recent stories by David I. Masson and David Newton “both exhibit entirely fresh approaches which successfully integrate the science-based idea with the rest of the story.”

Next Month announces, after a majority reader vote, an increase in the price and size of the magazine.

•••

This issue is a game of two halves, with the Masson story offset by a handful of slushpile stories and more lacklustre than normal non-fiction. However, it is well worth getting for A Two-Timer. ●

_____________________

1. Christopher Priest (Vector #38, February 1966) opens his review by saying that Masson’s story “is only his third-published story, but it’s also the third I’ve enjoyed” before adding:

The appeal of the story, however, is not the satire but the way in which it is written. The style is strictly period and, contrary to my expectations, was totally readable. (What a pity, it occurred to me as I read the story, that the printers didn’t catch the spirit of the thing and give us illuminated capitals and f’s instead of s’s !) I recommend this story out of hand: it’s good, honest science fiction, complete with time-paradoxes, and yet it is a satire and the points it makes are valid and at all times amusing.  p. 28

Priest goes on to say that “the rest of the issue is not up to this high standard.” He found John Watney’s The Orbs’ idea of a grateful human society sacrificing itself to an alien one “a false assumption” as well as finding it “a bit sick.”
Hi, Sancho! by Paul Jents is a “paranoid-protagonist story” with a “twist at the end that made him groan.” (At least, unlike me, he understood it.)
Philip E. High’s Temporary Resident is “a fairly original idea” but has “two-dimensional” characters and the writer “insults the reader’s intelligence by hammering home the point of the story at least three times.”
The Sword Against the Stars by A. F. Hall was not to Priest’s taste and he found it “a bit passe.”

2. This was John Watney’s only story, although it looks from his ISFDB page that he wrote a biography or book about Mervyn Peake (which may have been his connection to Michael Moorcock, the editor of New Worlds).

3. This is A. F. Hall’s only SF story, according to ISFDB.  ●