Summary: this issue doesn’t have any classics or particularly renowned stories but there are two particular highlights: Buoyant Ascent, from Hilbert Schenck, is a very good and exciting submarine rescue novella and, at the other end of the literary spectrum, we have Keith Roberts’ low-key, post-collapse, anti-hero Hugo finalist The Lordly Ones. These would make this issue well worth a look on their own but there is a solid supporting cast too: Manly Wade Wellman contributes a superior haunted house tale, Ron Goulart provides an amusing look at robotic home security in the future, and Lee Killough shows how jaded, time-bound immortals amuse themselves. Robert F. Young’s ‘Spacewhale’ story is also worth a look. Highly recommended.
[ISFDB] [Archive.org] [Subscriptions]

_____________________

Editor, Edward L. Ferman

Fiction:
Buoyant Ascent • novella by Hilbert Schenck ∗∗∗∗+
What of the Night • short story by Manly Wade Wellman ∗∗∗
Before Willows Ever Walked • short story by Tom Godwin ∗
Steele Wyoming • short story by Ron Goulart ∗∗∗
Secrets of the Heart • short story by Charles L. Grant ∗∗
“As a Color, Shade of Purple-Grey” • short story by David Lubkin ∗∗
“The Mindanao Deep” • short story by Robert F. Young ∗∗+
Achronos • short story by Lee Killough ∗∗∗
The Lordly Ones • novelette by Keith Roberts ∗∗∗+

Non-Fiction:

Cover • Barclay Shaw
Cartoon • by Gahan Wilson
Books • by Algis Budrys
Films • by Baird Searles
Note to Subscribers
The Noblest Metal of Them All • science essay by Isaac Asimov
Coming Soon
Letters

_____________________

This issue leads off with Buoyant Ascent, an exciting novella from Hilbert Schenck, and another of a recent batch of stories with a nautical background. This one opens with its protagonist, Izzy Kaplan, trying to play possum:

The phone rang steadily in the dark bedroom and Molly Kaplan blearily brought her wristwatch dial close to a sticky eye. “Jesus, three thirty!” She waited, knowing it was a wrong number. Yet the damn thing kept going. “Shit!” She fumbled for the receiver in the dark, got it, reversed it twice, and finally managed a “Yeah?”
“Dr. Israel Kaplan, please. Cmdr. B.J. Smith calling, U.S. Navy.”
Molly could hardly believe it. “Listen, buster, it’s three-fucking-thirty in the morning!” she shouted in the general direction of the receiver.
A pause. “I understand that . . . is it Mrs. Kaplan? . . . but we have a very urgent emergency. I certainly wouldn’t call you at this time for any other reason.”
Molly, her temper thinning steadily, leaned over and flicked on the bedside light. A soft yet handsome woman in her late forties, she managed to squeeze her bowed, full lips into a fearsomely thin line as she stared at the silent form of her husband.
Izzy Kaplan was not, in fact, asleep, but he had convinced himself that a position of utter passivity coupled with an absolute minimum of respiratory activity would see him through whatever was stirring up his wife.
“Izzy!” shouted Molly, now running at full volume. “It’s the fucking Navy with some kind of super emergency for you. What the hell are you doing with them now? What’s going on?”  pp. 6-7

We learn that Izzy is a hyperbaric specialist, and the Navy have phoned him because one of their submarines has had an accident and is now lying at an angle 940 feet under the sea. There is bad blood between Kaplan and the Navy but he agrees to help as one of his ex-students is on board, and is now in command after the death of the captain. After brief sex with his wife, Izzy drives out to Quonset airbase to catch a helicopter to the USS Tringa, the huge catamaran mother ship for the DSRV (Deep Sea Rescue Vessel) the Navy hope to deploy. However, if that method isn’t feasible, an alternative method using ascent suits may have to be used:

Kaplan could now think of nothing but a high-speed ascent in the water column; the head back in the suit, the gas gushing up the throat, the continuous surge and snap and ripple of the fabric from the tremendous velocity drag. But the throat was the key. Form a tube. Think of forming a tube! The rain pattered steadily on the windows and the slick, black road curved smoothly, almost empty in the glare of the street lights.
Turning east for Quonset, Izzy considered the exit circle of error on the sea surface. How large would the arrival-location uncertainty be? Nine hundred and forty-feet times what angle? If they had to draw the rescue vessels back too far, an embolized escapee might die before they got him out of the water and into a decompression chamber. That data must exist, thought Izzy, at least for some six hundred-footers. We can extrapolate it.  p. 12

The rest of the story sees Izzy arrive on the Tringa only to have the Admiral in charge stonewall Izzy’s suggestion of a rehearsal for a backup buoyant ascent procedure (there is previous bad blood between the pair, and too much money has been spent on the DSRV project). Izzy therefore contacts his wife who works for (and is having an affair with) a Senator. During this conversation Izzy threatens to contact the press about the couple’s dalliance if the Senator doesn’t co-operate and lean on the Admiral.
Once Izzy gets his way, he is flown by fast jet to London Heathrow (which, apparently, has grown an “RAF runway”) to speak to a contact who can provide similar suits, and thereafter flies north to a diving company at Lochstrom in Scotland. There they put dummies in the suits, take them down to nine hundred feet, and troubleshoot the procedure. On the first ascent there is a pressure spike that would kill the escapees, but the very smart owner of the facility eventually (spoiler) works out that the flutter valves in the suit are slowing down the escaping air and modifies them.
The final, exciting part of the story sees Izzy back at the site of the accident to see the buoyant ascents (the DSRV has been unsuccessful). The first escapee, a woman, survives almost unscathed, but later there are casualties, some fatal; the last one out, after a period during which the weather has deteriorated and they have had to revise their surface rescue procedure, is Izzy’s student, Commander Ferguson. He suffers a spinal embolism and dies, even though Izzy enters the decompression chamber to treat him.
The final scenes see an overwrought Izzy lose his temper with the Admiral (who should have started the buoyant ascent rescue earlier), his wife, and the Senator (ill-chosen comments from both) before he goes to do the post mortem on his friend.
If you are up for a fast-paced, near-future techno-thriller with larger than life, shouty (and consequently non-PC) characters, and which oozes verisimilitude, then this will be right up your street. (PS It’s exactly the kind of story you should find in Analog).
∗∗∗∗+ (Very Good to Excellent). 17,550 words. Story link.

•

What of the Night by Manly Wade Wellman begins with a man called Parr taking shelter in a disused Southern Highlands house when his car breaks down. After he eats he falls asleep on the dank and dirty sofa.
When he wakes he sees a glow of light, and a young woman called Tolie asks if he is alright. Parr is instantly smitten by her, and then he notices that the surroundings are clean and in good order. Tolie introduces Parr to the owner of the house, Mr Addis, and another man called Fenton. The latter serves them all a thimbleful of drink (they toast “unity and Sitrael”), and then Parr is invited to see Addis’s room. There, Parr sees Addis has books on magic (one is by John Dee, “the Queen’s Sorceror”) and also has a pentacle painted on his desk, “to help his work”.
After this the pair return to the living room for a second round of drinks and toasts, and then Parr visits Tolie and Fenton’s rooms. When Parr is in the latter’s room, he realises that Fenton is in love with Tolie and jealous of him.
During this experience Parr asks twice if he is dreaming, and also learns that the occupants of the house do not know what he means by “Korea” and “telephone”. He eventually asks them if they are haunting the house: Addis partially dodges the question and suggests they have their fifth drink. As they prepare to do so, Fenton declares his feelings for Tolie and knocks the drink out of Parr’s hands: he tells Parr if he has the fifth drink he will be trapped here. Parr flees.
Some time later Parr stumbles into to a local town, where he learns that the house has been deserted for ninety years. He also learns of Addis’s strange habits and death, and the deaths of Tolie and Fenton when they stayed overnight at the house.
Most haunted house tales would stop there, but there is an effective coda in this story where the local preacher takes Parr back to the house to recover his car (no-one else from the town will take him). When they go inside the gloomy house Parr asks the preacher to perform an exorcism. The preacher says that isn’t a ritual he knows, but he conducts a baptism, a communion (both for Parr), and then the rites for the dead: each of these acts unburdens and lightens the house:

Finally they both stood and Preacher Ricks repeated the service for the burial of the dead. The gloom seemed to thicken itself around them. But at last the hushed voice came to, “Come, ye blessed children of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you.” Then light suddenly stole into the room. Parr, looking sidelong at the open door, saw sunshine in the yard that had been so shadowed.
Preacher Ricks cleared his throat. “Do you think it looks sort of different in here?” he asked Parr. “Like as if it had somehow cleared up?”
“In here and outside both,” replied Parr. “Maybe you’ve truly put those spirits to rest.”
“Let’s devoutly hope so.”
They walked out. No haze, no shadows.
“Bring your car along behind mine, back to Sky Notch,” said Preacher Ricks. “We’ll see if some kind soul there won’t let us have some breakfast.”  p. 64

A quietly effective and atmospheric piece.
∗∗∗ (Good). 5,100 words.

•

Before Willows Ever Walked ¹ by Tom Godwin begins with Jake Derken experiencing, not for the first time, the lash of a Joshua tree’s branch as he returns to his house from the mail box. He then goes in to tell the other occupant of the house, Joe Smith, that there isn’t a letter from his granddaughter. We subsequently learn that (a) Smith is the alcoholic, dying house guest of Derken, (b) Derken is attempting to inherit Smith’s estate by isolating him from his grand-daughter, and (c) Derken hates Joshua trees.
After the two men discuss whether plants have feelings, and whether the Joshua tree might have sensed Derken’s antipathy towards them, a letter falls out of the pile of circulars. Smith sees it is from his granddaughter, and quickly opens and reads it.
Derken then has to work fast to preserve his scam: he pretends to phone the daughter but tells Smith line isn’t working and that he’ll go into town to call her. When Derken later goes out he is given a letter and cheque to post to the granddaughter, but he stops in the desert and burns it. Then, as he walks back to the car, he gets hit by a falling Joshua tree branch. Derken rages at the tree and then stamps on a young offspring nearby.
The rest of the story works through various plot developments (spoiler): Smith stops drinking so Derken starts adulterating all Smith’s food and drink with vodka to hasten his demise; several days later, Smith dies (but not before realising what Derken has been doing); Derken then waits for the will to go through probate while avoiding the surrounding Joshau trees, which seem to be getting closer to the house; finally, another letter arrives from the granddaughter saying she has scraped together enough cash to send a PI to find out what has happened to Smith.
The climactic scene sees Derken rush to the bank to get the money and flee but, at the place he stamped on the young Joshua tree, he crashes his car and is trapped in the wreckage. Then the adult tree speaks to Derken “in his mind” while it summons a lightning storm (the fact that Joshua trees can do this has been suggested in an earlier conversation). The lightning then strikes the Joshua tree, which falls on Derken and kills him.
I don’t think that my disbelief was suspended for even a single moment by this story’s silly premise and, even if it had been, the car crash at the end is far too convenient.
∗ (Mediocre). 7,000 words.

•

Steele Wyoming by Ron Goulart opens with a group of “Outside” down-and-outs roasting a dog for dinner (“Tastes pretty good” . . . “It’s the wild oregano gives it zing”). One the group, Otto, claims he invented Steele Wyoming, a revolutionary guardbot, and proceeds to tell his tale of riches to rags.
This account begins with him rescuing a female friend, Bev, the owner of a pest extermination company called Zapbug (a running joke is that her sonic repellents cause Otto continual problems) from a group of Poverty Commandos and Suicide Cadets who are attacking her mansion. When Otto later tries to convince her to give up her career for him, she says he’ll need to amass greater riches first.
This subsequently leads Otto to create Steele Wyoming, which he then demonstrates to Carlos, a contact at NRA (National Robot & Android):

Carlos chuckled. “He’s very impressive, amigo.”
“Designed to scare the crap out of any looter, rapist, housebreaker or other unwanted Outsider.”
“Steele Wyoming, huh? Catchy.”
“A cowboy name.” I’d gotten butsub on my fingers somehow. Wiping them on the plyocloth, I tossed it aside and one of my little servobots came scooting over to gather it up.
Carlos, slowly, circled Steele Wyoming. “I assume he’s lethal as well as frightening?”
“Tell him, Steele.”
“First off, let me say howdy, Mr. Trinidad, sir,” drawled the big android in his rumbling Old West voice. He reached a huge horny hand up to tip his highcrown stetson. “I kin be lethal or I kin merely stun varmints. Depends on how the nice folks who owns me wants the deal to go down.”
Carlos laughed, pleased. “He’s terrific, amigo.”
“What I figured,” I said while Carlos stood gazing up at the seven foot tall cowboy android, “is that to a great many people in America, even in this year of 2020, the cowboy remains a symbol of honesty, dedication, law and order.”
Steele adjusted his hat on his head.
“That is surely true.”  p. 86

The rest of the story (spoiler) sees the homicidal results of Wyoming’s trigger happy attitude² (starting with a noisy subrock millionaire neighbour, and followed by the three policemen who see Wyoming dumping the body). Further complications result from Bev’s infidelity.
Amusing stuff.
∗∗∗ (Good). 4,750 words.

•

Secrets of the Heart by Charles L. Grant opens with the child narrator all alone in a house (“the others are gone”, “some of them died”, “it wasn’t my fault though”) when five adults turn up at her door. They have had a car accident and need to use the phone, etc., so the girl invites them in and lets them make a call and asks if they want coffee.
This domestic routine continues for a while, but the telegraphing at the start of the story is then fleshed out. First, the girl tells the adults about her “rules”, then she makes one of the adults stop breathing, and then none of them are able to open the doors or windows, or leave the house.
Later on (spoiler), one of the men asks if she is a telepath or telekinetic before she eventually lets them go (although they do not know she has arranged for a truck to crash into them when they get back to their car). The story ends with her deciding that she will leave the house and make the outside world obey her rules.
This reads like a slightly muddled version of Jerome Bixby’s It’s a Good Life and, if you have read that story, there won’t be much new for you here.
∗∗ (Average). 3,600 words.

•

“As a Color, Shade of Purple-Grey” by David Lubkin (F&SF, March 1980) is a groan-worthy half-page Feghoot (pun story) which sees an astronaut return to a colourful welcoming party after a forty year trip to Tau Ceti. The punchline (spoiler) has him fainting because of “fuschia shock”.
∗∗ (Average). 120 words.

•

“The Mindano Deep” by Robert F. Young (F&SF, March 1980) is one of the later stories in this writer’s ‘Spacewhale’ series³ and opens with Jonathan on the asteroid-size leviathan Starfinder. He is watching various events from the American War of Independence concerning Nathan Hale, Colonel Prestcott, and Patrick Henry (during these episodes we learn that Starfinder the spacewhale has the ability to travel through space and time). We also learn that a young woman called Ciely Blue, who also lives on Starfinder, appears to be under the guardianship of Jonathan and is currently attending school on Earth.
Once this series housekeeping is dealt with Jonathan decides to use his solo time to “dive to the bottom of the Space-Time Sea” in Starfinder, i.e. go back to the creation of the Universe. At this point we see that Starfinder communicates with Jonathan using mental hieroglyphics:

The rest of the story is a strange account which sees reality dissolve around Jonathan when they get to the bottom of the Space-Time Sea, leaving him standing in a little room with two doors, a fireplace, and a picture window. Later he sees a model of the whale and, when he looks through the portholes, sees a miniature version of himself doing the same; this Mobius-reality effect is then repeated a couple times more, most strikingly when he goes through one of the doors of the room and, while looking over his shoulder, sees himself—and eternity’s worth behind him—doing exactly the same.
These weird events are accompanied by various philosophical observations, the last of which comes from Starfinder, which suggests that Jonathan himself has created this microcosmic reality as there is no macroscopic one at the beginning of Time. After this they climb up off the bottom of the Space-Time sea and return to 1978.
This non-story, its initial series-itis, and the (possibly cod-) philosophical musings may sound like an unpromising mix but I enjoyed it anyway, even though it doesn’t really work.
∗∗+ (Average to Good). 4,900 words.

•

Achronos by Lee Killough (F&SF, March 1980) opens with Neil Dorn—an unsuccessful, burnt-out artist—going to a faraway beach to get away from it all. There, after finding a tribolite (an unusual find in that location), he comes upon what he initially thinks is a group of children:

They circled him, looking at him with curious eyes. He stared back. He had been wrong. They were not children, though they were still very young, hardly past adolescence. They were as tall as he and slender as willows, with skin tight and smooth. Clear, lively eyes watched him from unlined faces. And they were completely nude, he discovered with a start. What he had taken to be scraps of bathing suit were only designs painted on their skin.  p. 117

Initially he struggles to understand their speech but, over the course of the next few hours, he discovers they are adults from the future, and learns that the beach they are on is an “achronos”, a timeless place connected to all other times.
The woman who tells him all this, Electra, eventually gets bored discussing the matter and insists that Dorn draws her, and then the others demand the same. After he finishes sketches of them all, Dorn and Electra spend the night together (or what passes for night in this place—the light levels never change).
Later, one of the other women, Hero, gets Dorn to paint an oil portrait of her, and he learns more about the group:

Hero was beginning to emerge from the canvas. She looked different than he intended. Instead of a Parrish subject, she looked more like something created by Toulouse-Lautrec, bright and gay on the surface but hard and sad beneath. He peered at her. To his surprise, he found the painting correct. His eyes had seen and his hands transmitted what his mind did not notice. He remembered her remark about boredom.
“Where would you rather be than here?” he asked.
Her sigh came from her soul. “Just about anywhere. I want to see different faces, experience new weather. I’d like to see the night sky again. I’ve always wanted to go to the stars. I was going to go to Zulac after school, but of course that trip was ruined along with the laser cannon on Pluto.” Her voice grew wistful. “I was just two years late to ever visit the stars. I’m trapped here instead.”  p. 124

Dorn realises that, unlike him (he has previously left the achronos to get his art materials) the group cannot go back to their own time as they left in the last few moments of safety.
The story concludes (spoiler) when Dorn and Hero are interrupted by the news that a dinosaur has stumbled in to the achronos. Dorn and the others watch as Clell baits and fights the creature before the group finally rush in for the kill. Immediately after the dinosaur’s death Electra wants Dorn to paint her with its blood, even though Hero is bleeding to death, untended, beside them. When Dorn refuses, Electra joins in the orgy that has started. Dorn’s unease intensifies and he realises that he may not be safe with these capricious and bored individuals. He retrieves his artwork and drives out of the achronos with a head full of artistic visions.
A fairly good piece about, essentially, jaded immortals.
∗∗∗ (Good). 5,200 words.

•

The Lordly Ones by Keith Roberts^{4, 5} (F&SF, March 1980) is not so much a story but an extended character portrait of the narrator, Tom, and it begins with his childhood memories of driving a pedal car in the family’s garden:

Wherever I traveled though, I would always end up in my favorite place of all. I called it Daisy Lane, from the big mauve clumps of Michaelmas daisies that grew close by each year. Here, by careful reversing, I could slide myself right out of sight between tall bushes. Once in position I could not be seen from the house at all, but I could see. I could stare down through the gaps in the hedge at the men working in the field, easing the car backward a little by the pressure of a pedal if one of them paused and seemed to glance my way.  p. 141

Tom’s shyness (or solitariness) is further limned when he is put in a special class at school—although Tom can read and write perfectly well, an inability to answer questions and his physical clumsiness give the impression that he is “slow”.
When Tom later enters the world of work he is first employed, courtesy of his gardener father, at the council nurseries. However, things do not go well (he is always breaking pots and then there is trouble with one of the women that works there) and, after that, Tom works at the town tip and then as a binman. Finally, at the age of 45, he becomes a lavatory attendant at “The Comfort Station”.
Tom describes his job at the lavatory in some detail—we learn how he cleans and repairs the facility until it is spotless and in good order—and we are briefly introduced to a couple of other (fleeting) characters: there is the woman who takes care of the other side of the facility (a distant figure), and Mr Ireland, Tom’s sympathetic and helpful supervisor who takes to visiting him on a semi-regular basis.
For most of the story, however, Tom is at the comfort station on his own (he has taken to living in one of the storerooms), and there are disturbing signs from the start of the story that society has experienced some sort of cataclysm: apart from the fact that no-one has come to the comfort station or its bucolic surroundings in the country for some time (including Tom’s co-worker), he has also seen bodies in the deserted nearby town where he goes to get food and supplies; there are also lights in the distant hills during the hours of darkness.
Later on (spoiler) we get a few hints as to what may have happened (and an insight to some of the social problems of UK society in the late 1970s):

I do not know why the Trouble happened. There was a lot on the telly about the black people fighting the whites and the unions trying to take over, but I could never understand it. I do not know why black people and white people should fight. I knew a black man once when I was on the carts. He was a very quiet person and used to bring small fruit pies to work that his wife had made. He shared them with me sometimes. They were very nice.

Tom starts looking after the other side of the comfort station as well as his own, and later goes into town later to stock up on as many supplies as he can find. Then the sounds of battle draw closer, and the water comes back on for a while. But, despite all this, it appears as if Tom is suspended in time:

I supposed it will sound funny, but I felt at peace. I have been feeling like that a lot since everybody went away. I cannot really find the right words to describe it.
When I wake up in the mornings, the sun makes a patch low down on the wall by my head, always in the same place. Birds are singing in the trees by the stream, and I know if I go to the window the sun will be on the brick wall round the car park, and the hills. As it moves round through the day, all the shadows change until they point the other way. Sometimes, if there is a wind, the dust blows across the car park in little whirls. When I lock the doors last thing at night, the moon is coming up. The moon makes shadows too of course, and they change as well, as it goes across the sky. The moonlight makes the car park look nearly white, but the shadows by the stream are black, like velvet. At night it always seems you can smell the water more clearly. The mist usually comes when it is starting to get light. It makes long streaks that reach as high as the bridge parapet. Nothing else happens. I do not want anything else to happen, ever again.  pp. 152-153

One night, however, he finds signs of blood in the lavatories; then, shortly afterwards, he is surrounded, and guns fire through the windows. Tom is told to come out by unseen characters. As he leaves the comfort station, Tom wishes he was back in his pedal car again:

I have had a silly thought, the silliest of all. I would like my little car back again now. I always felt safe in it; I could pedal it through the door and they would laugh. They would see I was only a little child after all.  p. 156

This penultimate paragraph not only links back to the opening passage, but perhaps distils Tom’s shy and uncomplicated character, outlined over the course of the story, into one line.
When I first read this story in the 1980s I didn’t think much of it—I suspect I was impatient at the amount of description and the lack of a plot—but this time around I enjoyed it a lot more. Some of the description is particularly evocative (there are a number of passages that I would like to have quoted) and the unusual protagonist and setting make for an original piece: there aren’t many End-of-the-World stories that take place away from the main events and feature lavatory attendants.
One that I will reread again at some point.
∗∗∗+ (Good to Very Good). 9,550 words. Story link.

•••

The rather dark Cover is by Barclay Shaw and shows the guardbot Steele Wyoming from the Ron Goulart story. The only interior artwork is a Cartoon by Gahan Wilson (a miss for me, pretty much as usual).
The Books column by Algis Budrys provides negative reviews of both of the books covered. In particular, Budrys doesn’t seem to think much of Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta by Doris Lessing:

For my money, only the most masochistic reader could penetrate much beyond the second chapter unless he were paid to do so. The scalp crawls at the news that Lessing is so enthused with her construct that this particular file drawer in the Canopean archives represents only the first in a series of projected books. We may be in at the inditing of a note of professional suicide.  p. 48

Budrys also doesn’t care for the post-apocalyptic A Secret History of Time to Come by Robie Macauley. He thinks it offers nothing new (Budrys points to several other novels on the same theme) and has complaints about the abilities of both the writer and his editors:

Nothing. Nothing ever comes to a recognizable conclusion. For all Macauley’s prose skill, and his ability to make an individual scene come alive, we get nothing but broken promises. If the whole of his message is that in the blasted future that is exactly how life will be, then that is a fit task for a nicely crafted short story [. . .]. Macauley’s excellences work against him; time after time, he maneuvers his characters, or his reader, into a situation that cries out for more about it, and every time he detumesces.
A literary gent like Macauley can pull that sort of trick forever, provided someone will continue to pay the freight. Any damn fool can write great opening scenes if he doesn’t have to know what they’ll lead to. Any clown can take a snip of this and a bit of that and keep it up for 60,000 words until it’s time for the cop-out ending.
Is this damned thing any good to read? Do you hear me, Knopf? IS THIS DAMNED THING ANY GOOD TO READ?  p. 52

Films by Baird Searles reviews a three-part British mini-series from the late seventies, An Englishman’s Castle,⁶ which is set in an alternate world where Germany invaded and conquered Britain in 1940. The story sees a current day scriptwriter leant on by his superior to remove references to a Jewish character. Later, as well as dealing with this issue, and his bolshie and rebellious son, he (spoiler) discovers his mistress is Jewish . . . . Searles liked this a lot and, one episode in (I bought the DVD on strength of Searles’ comments), so do I.
Note to Subscribers explains a delay to F&SF subscription copies due to a fire at the mailing plant.
The Noblest Metal of Them All by Isaac Asimov is an interesting essay on the Noble metals (maybe that’s just the Chemistry part of my degree speaking) which starts by discussing the relative density of lead and gold, and eventually concludes by hypothesising about the rise in the concentration of Iridium 70 million years ago. Asimov suggests this may have been caused by a huge solar ejection/flare but Wikipedia now ascribes this (for the area concerned) to the asteroid that formed the Chicxulub crater (and killed the dinosaurs).⁷
Coming Soon is a brief note that mentions, along with Marta Randall’s Dangerous Games, Stephen King’s The Way Station, the first in a very long series (and one of the few things by King I didn’t read all the way through while I was keeping up with his output).
The Letters column includes praise from writer Arthur Jean Cox for Michael Shea’s The Angel of Death (there is a note from Ferman about his forthcoming The Autopsy). Next is a letter from James Tucker about the omission of Fritz Leiber and Ray Bradbury from the 30^th Anniversary issue of the magazine, which he follows up with a question about F&SF’s most prolific contributors. Ferman replies:

If we omit non-fiction and verse, the writers with the most stories published in F&SF are: Avram Davidson, 45; Poul Anderson, 44; Ron Goulart, 43; Robert F. Young, 38; Miriam Allen deFord, 31; Zenna Henderson, 30; Fritz Leiber, 29 and Gordon R. Dickson, 29.

Interesting in many ways, especially the number of de Ford’s contributions.
The third letter is a long one from Sam Moskowitz about the magazine’s history and his own, and it has a few interesting passages:

I also said [in my review]: “Boucher and McComas have a fair knowledge of fantasy in a generalized fashion, but withal one staggeringly inadequate to the task of selecting the best little-known stories from the past.” I also said they would have to downplay fantasy and supernatural and give more stress to science fiction (which they discovered all by themselves), but Tony was furious at my comment regarding his inadequate background to select reprints.  p. 158

Though I had sold science fiction professionally to Planet Stories and Comet as far back as 1940, after World War III decided I would take a regular fulltime job, let the other writers get wealthy at writing science fiction, and engage in it as a hobby, contributing a good deal of what I wrote free of charge to fan magazines and putting an extraordinary amount of research, time and money into it. By the year 1956 I was fed up with fan magazines. Teen-age editors rewrote and cut material at will (sometimes inserting libelous remarks where none had previously existed), edited grammatical errors into my material and worst of all, often held material five years or more without publishing it.  p. 158

The last letter, by Joy A. Schlenberg, is partially in response to a comment about an “amateur witch”.

•••

This is a strong issue. I particularly liked Hilbert Schenck’s exciting Buoyant Ascent, and Keith Roberts’ Hugo finalist The Lordly Ones. There is also a solid supporting cast with no obvious duds. Highly recommended.  ●

_____________________

1. The title of Tom Godwin’s story comes from a superstition which suggests there was once a time when willow trees could walk at night.

2. One wonders if Steele Wyoming’s lethality was modelled on Clint Eastwood’s movies of the time (the spaghetti Westerns and Dirty Harry series).

3. The ISFDB page for Robert F. Young’s ‘Spacewhale’ series. I note that the first story does not seem to be set in the same world as these (it has a Spacewhale, but there are substantial differences—see my review here).

4. The Lordly Ones  was Keith Roberts’ only Hugo finalist—it placed 4^th in 1981 behind The Cloak and the Staff by Gordon R. Dickson, Savage Planet by Barry B. Longyear, and Beatnik Bayou by John Varley, and ahead of The Autopsy by Michael Shea and The Ugly Chickens by Howard Waldrop.
Roberts also wrote a sequel to this story, The Comfort Station, which appeared two months later in the May 1980 issue of F&SF.

5. Robert’s title The Lordly Ones comes from a song that is referenced in the story:

There was a song we had to learn at school, about the Lordly Ones. Miss Chaston, who taught us music, said that meant the fairies. It was a strange song and puzzled me very much at first. It said they lived in the hollow hills but I thought the other children were singing “the Harlow hills” and that all fairies lived at a place called Harlow, wherever that might be. I often used to make mistakes like that.
I did not think about the song again for years. Then, when I was working on the dust carts there was a man called Smudger. I never knew his proper name. He was a big man, much bigger than I, and had a lot of friends. I used to go with him sometimes to a hotel near the town center to have a drink. I would never have dared go to such a place on my own. The public bar was up the yard, and to get to it you had to pass a room lit by candles where all the guests were eating their dinner. The first time I looked in I thought some of the ladies were the most beautiful I had ever seen, and for some reason I remembered the song at once. I knew they were not fairies of course, just very rich people, but afterwards whenever I went there, the song always started in my mind.
Then when I had my flat I used to sit quite a lot looking down over the cathedral wall at the grass and driveways inside, especially if there was a wedding there or some other big function, which often happened. The people who came were very grand. Some of them even wore top hats like in the films. So I thought they must be the Lordly Ones too. So, although I was always getting shouted at for being clumsy or in the way, I thought if I could get the job at the Station, some of them might come there and see the towels all clean and soap in the dispensers, and be pleased. I wonder if Mr. Ireland knew that, and that was why he set me on.  p. 147

6. An Englishman’s Castle on Wikipedia.

7. The Wikipedia page for Iridium.  ●