Summary:
Algis Budry’s serial, Michaelmas, begins in this issue, but its tale of a newscaster who secretly influences world events with the help of Domino, his AI, is duller than I expected from such a accomplished critic. Fortunately, there is a very good story from Michael G. Coney, The Cinderella Machine, that sees Carioca Jones, the manipulative and amoral media star, prepare for a revival of her work in the exotic Peninsula (against a background of bonded prisoners providing organ transplants for their masters). There are also a couple of good stories from Don Trotter (who doesn’t like AI spaceships and space pirates?) and Raylyn Moore.
The non-fiction columns are worthwhile too.
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_____________________

Editor, Edward L. Ferman; Assistant Editor, Anne W. Deraps

Fiction:
Michaelmas (Part 1 of 2) • novel serial by Algis Budrys ∗∗
Theory and Practice of Economic Development: The Metallurgist and His Wife • short story by Richard Frede ∗∗
Call Me Maelzel • short story by Don Trotter ∗∗∗
The Castle • short story by Raylyn Moore ∗∗∗
The Cinderella Machine • novelette by Michael G. Coney ∗∗∗∗
The Purple Pterodactyls short story by L. Sprague de Camp ∗∗

Non-Fiction:
Books • by Algis Budrys
Cartoon • by Gahan Wilson
Films: Things to Come • essay by Baird Searles
Moving Ahead • science essay by Isaac Asimov
Coming Soon: All-Star Anniversary Issue
Letters

_____________________

Michaelmas (part I of II), by Algis Budrys, is the magazine’s second serial this year (the three-part Man Plus by Frederik Pohl ran in the April to June issues), and it opens with the Laurent Michaelmas, a global newscaster in a near-future world, flicking through various news channels at home. Domino interrupts him with the news that an astronaut called Norwood, believed dead in an orbital shuttle crash, is alive.
As Michaelmas and Domino discuss the matter (and in the pages that follow) we learn that (a) Domino is an AI connected to the world’s communications systems which enables Michaelmas to secretly exert a benign influence on world events; (b) Norwood is currently in a Swiss sanatorium run by two shady characters called Nils Limberg and Kristades Cikoumas (their facility normally offers rejuvenation treatments); (c) Norwood was due to command a UNAC (United Nations Astronautics Commission) mission to Jupiter; and (d) Michaelmas is concerned that this event means that someone or something is unhappy with the current course of world events (he asks Domino if they have been discovered at this point, but the AI says no).
The rest of the first part of the serial continues this stream of talking head scenes and (alongside conversations with Domino) Michaelmas next speaks to Horse Watson, an old, burnt-out reporter friend, on the flight to Zurich, where Michaelmas has accepted a broadcasting contract to cover Norwood’s first post-recovery press conference (Watson is accompanied by his colleague Joseph Campion, an ambitious up-and comer who will later feature as a suspect in Watson’s death in a helicopter accident). Then, when Michaelmas arrives in Switzerland, there is more chatter with an attractive forty-something TV producer called Clementine Gervaise. (Michaelmas wonders if this woman, who Domino points out is similar to what his deceased wife would be like at this age, is a honeytrap.)
The rest of the first part of the story is a swirl of events (or, more accurately, Michaelmas and Domino talking about events that are occurring off-stage): Limberg arranges to send a package to a trouble-making US politician; Watson’s helicopter crashes on the way to the possible landing site of Norwood’s shuttle; Michaelmas drives to the sanatorium with Gervaise and talks to various people (in particular, Norwood and Getulio Frontiere, UNAC’s press relations man) before attending the press conference; and, finally, there are two significant developments: (a) we learn that Norwood is privately alleging that he found a false (possibly Soviet-made) telemetry component in the shuttle just before the crash, and (b) Domino senses something very odd while searching the sanatorium’s network:

“Anomaly.”
“Yes. There is something going on there. I linked into about as many kinds of conventional systems as you’d expect, and there was no problem; he has the usual assortment of telephones, open lines to investment services and the medical network, and so forth. But there was something — something began to happen to the ground underfoot as I moved along.”
Michaelmas sucked his upper teeth. “Where were you going?” he finally asked.
“I have no idea. I can’t track individual electrons any more readily than you can. I’m just an information processor like any other living thing. Somewhere in that sanatorium is a crazy place. I had to cut out when it began echoing.”
“Echoing.”
“Yes, sir. I began receiving data I had generated and stored in the past. Fefre, the Turkish Greatness Party, Tim Brodzik…that sort of thing. Sometimes it arrived hollowed out, as if from the bottom of a very deep well, and at other times it was as shrill as the point of a pin. It was coded in exactly my style. It spoke in my voice, so to speak. However, I then noticed that minor variations were creeping in; with each repetition, there was apparently one electron’s worth of deviation, or something like that.”
“Electron’s worth?”
“I’m not sure what the actual increment was. It might have been as small as the fundamental particle, whatever that might turn out to be. But it seemed to me the coding was a notch farther off each time it…resonated.”
[. . .]
“Why did you feel that? Did you think this phenomenon had its own propulsion?”
“It might have had.”
“A…resonance…was coming after you with intent to commit systematic gibberish.”

As the above passage illustrates, sometimes you feel like you are wading through porridge. This work has other problems too: (a) even though there is a lot happening nearly all the events occur off-stage, and none are particularly interesting (b) it is set in a future world that just isn’t that well developed—and that comment isn’t because our history didn’t turn out the way that it does here, the story just doesn’t present a convincing counterfactual (there is a definite first draft feel here¹); finally, and perhaps most problematically, there is no obvious idea of what the novel is about. All that said, I suppose this part is okay, but I have serious reservations about what the second half is going to be like.
∗∗ (Average). 22,300 (of 44,400) words. Story link.

•

Theory and Practice of Economic Development: The Metallurgist and His Wife by Richard Frede opens by establishing Horowitz as a hen-pecked husband who lives in an overheating apartment. On Saturdays he usually goes fishing and, during one particular trip out on the Many Happy Returns, something very odd happens:

[It] was at that moment that there was such a mighty tug on the dropline that Horowitz was in fear of losing his finger. Then, just as suddenly, there was no tension to the line at all. But as Horowitz looked over the side into the water, a large flounder about twice the size of any flounder Horowitz had ever seen before, surfaced next to the dropline. The fish had a hook and line in its mouth, and it seemed to gaze up at Horowitz and to judge him. After some little time the fish said, “Would you kindly remove your hook from my mouth?”  p. 70

During the ensuing conversation the fish tells Horowitz that taking the hook out rather than cutting the line will reduce the risk of infection, that it is an enchanted businessman, and that it knew better than to take the bait but couldn’t resist, etc. Then, after Horowitz returns the fish to the water, it tells him that it owes him one.
When Horowitz later tells his wife about this fantastic event she is contemplative rather than dismissive and tells him to go back and ask the fish for a better apartment. Horowtiz does so and, after the fish expresses his surprise that he is back so soon, tells him, “It’s in the mail”.
This is the first of a number of demands that the wife makes as she quickly becomes dissatisfied with what she has been given (a country home, a bigger apartment in the city, and a seat as a US Senator soon follow). When Horowitz is eventually told to tell the fish that she wants to be President (spoiler), the fish gets fed up and tells Horowitz that they are both going back to their original apartment. Horowitz says he would be happy to return there but asks if his wife can stay where she is. The fish says it’ll arrange a divorce, that Horowitz can go back to the original apartment, and that his wife can live with her mother.
This entertainingly combines the fantastic elements involving the fish with the mundanity of married life (in this latter respect it somewhat resembles a humorous mainstream story). The ending is a bit of a dud, though.
∗∗ (Average). 4,200 words. Story link.

•

Call Me Maelzel by Don Trotter² gets off to a lively start with a ship AI called Maelzel pranking one of the crew:

I could hear water splashing on the deck in Lloyd’s shower, then the slap of his feet on the wet tiles. I had planned to zap him right away, but he started singing in his wheezy tenor that song about the sailor who’s spent a year and a quarter in his ship’s crow’s-nest and he goes up the river to see Budapest… but you probably know it. “Yardarm Arnie?” Anyhow, it’s a particular favorite of mine, and it sounded kind of nice echoing around in Lloyd’s shower stall. So I let him finish first, and on the final “…mizzen mast, tooooo!” I cut off the hot water and ran up the pressure on the icy as high as it would go. Exit Lloyd, raging wet.
“Goddarnit, Mazey! This time…” he started in, mad as a kicked kitten.
I hit the decompression warning in his cabin, a basso profundo WHOOT! WHOOT! that totally drowned him out. I think he might have called my bluff, but for realism I dropped the air pressure a little, just enough to make his ears pop, and let the emergency airbag fall from its recess in the ceiling. It was as convincing as hell, if I do say so myself.  p. 78

When Lloyd makes it to the muster station he is only wearing a pair of soaking wet shorts under a transparent airbag, and is then subjected to the stares of the rest of the (unpranked) crew. They subsequently vote Maelzel into “Durance Vile” (limbo) for one day.
While Maelzel is disconnected from everything apart from the emergency systems, we get some backstory about the AI and learn that, because of a previous mission which ended in disaster, Maelzel has been, like the ship, hugely overspecified. This means Maelzel is underemployed, bored, and consequently needs to finds ways to entertain itself.
After Maelzel is released from limbo he gets up to his tricks again, this time slowly increasing the gravity and making the crew think about diets and exercise. When they find out about this some days later, they are just about to throw Maelzel back into Durance Vile when they are attacked by pirates. Of course, none of them believe Maelzel’s warnings until just before they are boarded, by which time it is too late:

At each of the four cardinal points of the lounge a tall skinny character appeared, back to the bulkhead, little round shield and big swashbuckling cutlass poised, ready to slay dragons or die trying. At the sight of my crew strewn all over the carpet they relaxed their defensive attitudes, and a couple of them started laughing. The one over by the aquarium, apparently the leader, swaggered over to where Sash was lying, half stunned, against the bar. He poked him with his cutlass.
“On your feet, reptile,” he said without rancor. Sash climbed slowly to his feet, then, with apparent effort, put his grin back in place. He looked his captor in the eye, then returned the careful eying the other was giving him.
Our uninvited guests were worth looking at. Two men and two women, each a shade under seven feet and several shades under two hundred pounds, they were as bald as a bar of soap and naked as a porno flick; nude, but not lewd, they were tattooed. All over. The one holding his cutlass at Sash’s throat had his musculature done in bright red and fine detail, from quadriceps and biceps down to the tiniest facial muscles. He looked like an anatomy chart, or like St. Bartholomew after the Armenians finished flaying him. The lady with her foot on the lens of my best holo projector was done up like a Gila monster, in black and orange pebble pattern, with each pebble carefully shaded to look raised. Black, whole-eye contacts made her eyes appropriately shiny and beady. I wondered how she felt about St. Bartholomew calling Sash “reptile.” The man down by where the fountain splashed into the pool was mostly in bare skin and tattooed zippers — some of which were partly unzipped to show right lung and liver, one temporal and both frontal lobes of his brain, and selected other bits of his internal workin’s, all in five colors and exquisite detail. The woman who had joined St. Bart in front of Sash was done over in spiders — big ones, little ones, hairy and smooth, they swarmed up her arms, legs, and torso (two enormous tarantulas cupped her breasts), all exact trompe l’oeil. If she’d been ticklish, she wouldn’t have lasted two minutes. Her head was done in furry black, with pairs of iridescent patches to match the contacts she wore, the locations of the false eyes being characteristic of the Latrodectus genus: the Widows, black and other colors.  pp. 84-5

That’s a passage that would grace a modern day issue of Planet Stories.
After an initially peaceable takeover, St. Bartholomew gropes Tilly, one of the crewmembers, and Sash gets slashed open when he tries to protect her.
The rest of the story sees the crew try to get Sash to sick bay, while avoiding mentioning Maelzel by name (to leave the AI with the element of surprise). Then (spoiler), when the pirates start wandering around the ship, Maelzel picks them off one by one (the first of the victims gets spaced through one of the ship’s toilets!)
If you are looking for a colourful and entertaining space opera with AIs and space pirates,³ then this will be right up your street.
∗∗∗ (Good). 6,850 words. Story link.

•

The Castle by Raylyn Moore opens with Beryl the narrator being woken by her husband Miles, who has just had a nightmare where he was attacked by children. After Miles tells her about the experience he goes back to sleep, but she cannot. She thinks about various matters, during which we learn (a) that their house is a part-time toy museum which houses their huge collection and is open to occasional visitors, (b) Miles is Beryl’s second husband, and (c) he is building a huge play fort in the back garden overlooking the gully at the edge of their property. This latter venture does not proceed smoothly:

The first time the children had attacked the castle was before it was quite finished. Miles had left it late one afternoon with the mortar wet and returned in the morning to find the stones prized out of place. It looked as if a heavy pinch bar had been used. “I can scarcely believe it was children,” Beryl had said. “Think of the strength it must have taken.”
“Which is why I’m sure it was children,” Miles insisted. “They’re all just bubbling over with misdirected energy, aren’t they? And if they’re determined enough, they can do anything.”
[. . .]
The next time, the vandals had somehow sheared off the towers of the completed citadel, and once they had blasted a hole under the front wall with some explosive, presumably dynamite, though it didn’t make sense that children should have access to dynamite. (The Hullibargers had been out the evening it happened, and so had heard no sound.)  p. 101

Most of rest the story concerns their otherwise idyllic life (neither seems to work and they do as they wish), but one action after another subtly portrays Miles as a self-centred man-child (earlier in the story Beryl says, “There’s an old wives’ tale that all American men are really little boys in wolf’s clothing”). This is finally made explicit in the last scene (spoiler), where the couple come home to find two children/intruders in the castle and Miles agrees to fight them for it:

He plunged up the slope ready for battle, and the two emerged from behind the stone kremlin to meet him as agreed. For a long time she remained frozen near the bottom of the hill, watching what was happening simply because she couldn’t make herself stop watching. It went on for a long time. They fought desperately, as if for their lives, kicking, gouging, smashing.
And after a while she had to admit that of the three little boys, all of a size, struggling fiercely on the leaf-covered slope, she could no longer tell, through the lowering dusk, which was Miles.  p. 108

I think this is really a slightly surreal mainstream story rather than a fantasy (you would have to squint to see it as the latter), but I enjoyed its slow burn descriptive passages and quirkiness.
∗∗∗ (Good). 6,050 words. Story link.

•

The Cinderella Machine by Michael G. Coney is set in his “Peninsula” series, and opens with Joe Sagar on Flambuoyant, the hydrofoil of the former 3-V star Carioca Jones. Sagar is thinking of a girl he once knew and loved called Joanne, an ex-prisoner who seems to have made a particular sacrifice in this dark future world of prisoner bondage and organ transplants:

I’d been reminded of Joanne by the sight of Carioca’s hands, white and smooth beside mine as they gripped the rail. Recently she had taken to wearing long gloves, but today the skin was bare, and I could see the thin pale lines around her wrists—the only physical reminder of the grafts.  p. 112

The rest of the beginning of the story is equally busy, and sees mention of a forthcoming 3-V film festival, The Carioca Jones Revival Season, a protest march by The Foes of Bondage to the State Pen demanding that the organ pool be disbanded (which, paradoxically given the above, will also feature Jones), and Jones’ order from Sagar of a pair of long gloves made from slitheskin (an emotion-sensitive material).
We are also introduced to Carioca Jones’ pet:

The afternoon had turned to chill early evening as we made our way towards Carioca’s mooring at Deep Cove. I helped her onto the landing stage and dutifully returned to the boat for the unwieldy Nag, her moray eel. Nag is a normally comatose beast and very little trouble—a welcome change from the unpredictable, defunct [land-shark] Wilberforce. I placed the fish on the landing stage, and he undulated slowly after Carioca like an evil black snake, the oxygenator pulsing near his gills. He wore a jeweled collar; Carioca always dresses her pets well.  p. 114

The next part of the story is equally busy, and sees an official from the State Pen ask Sagar for his help in stopping the march by the Foes of Bondage. Sagar tells him he is unable to help. Then, when Sagar later goes out to visit Jones, he is introduced to douglas sutherland, an ex-con with metal hands. It materialises that sutherland was a bonded man who received a reduced sentence after his freeman (owner, essentially) took his hands after the freeman had a farming accident. Sagar also learns that Sutherland was previously a surgeon, but now operates a sculptograph, a device that rejuvenates skin, and that he will be treating Jones before her appearance at the Revival to make her more youthful looking.
When prompted by Jones to demonstrate the machine to Sagar, sutherland gets rid of Nag the eel—the creature has been pestering sutherland and he obviously detests it—and he puts a lump of raw fish in the sculptograph. Sutherland then removes a wart on Sagar’s hand, leaving the treated part blemish free and less aged. He tells Sagar that the rejuvination effect should last for around three days, and adds that, to achieve a permanent change, he would need to use human meat. . . . Three days later, the skin starts sloughing off of Sagar’s hand in a most unsightly manner, but the wart does not reappear.
There are (spoiler) another few pieces put in place before the story’s mousetrap ending, and these involve (a) Sagar going to a sling gliding competition¹ and picking up a young woman who he takes for a drive and later starts kissing—only to find out that she is, of course, the much younger Carioca Jones (this part of the story does not really convince); (b) the State Pen official giving Jones human flesh from the organ pool to get the Foes of Bondage march cancelled; and (c) sutherland seeing the scars on Carioca Jones’ wrists just before he treats her backstage at the Revival . . . .
The climax of the story sees Sagar discover how the State Pen official managed to get the march cancelled shortly before he hears screaming from backstage. Then Jones appears:

The curtains slashed down the center, and a creature appeared, blinking at the light, her screams dying to whimpers as the brightness hit her and illuminated her old, old face, her leathery wrinkled skin, her vulture’s neck of empty pouched flesh. . . .
She stood slightly crouched, her fingers crooked before her; but there was nothing aggressive in her stance—it was more as though she was backing away from an attack.
She wore a plain black dress which accentuated the pallor of her legs, her arms, her face. She was Death incarnate; it seemed impossible that a creature so old, so ugly, should possess the gift of life. Slowly she raised her hands until they shadowed her face and the spotlight picked out the white graft scars on her wrists. She gripped the folds of the curtain above her head while a trickle of spittle glistened at the corner of her slack lips, and the most terrible thing was her breasts, high and pale and full and youthful, voluptuous, as they rose from under her dress when she arched her back as though in terminal agony.
For an instant she stood rigid; in the dazzling light she couldn’t have seen us, and it was just possible she was not aware of her audience, or even of her whereabouts. Her single final scream died away into a croak, and she sagged; her arms dropped to her sides; her ancient eyes grew slitted and cunning as she glanced quickly from side to side, seized the curtain and whirled it about her like a cloak. We heard the echo of a cackle of laughter. The folds fell back into place, the stage was empty. She was gone.  pp. 128-129

Wonderfully over the top.
Sagar goes looking for Jones and finds she has tried to commit suicide (she thinks that sutherland has used the human flesh she provided and that the changes will be permanent), but then, as Sagar phones for an ambulance, he finds Nag’s empty collar and no sign of the land-eel. . . .
This is a highly entertaining piece with a brilliantly twisty plot and characters that are, to a greater or lesser extent, wonderfully flawed: Jones is obviously a narcissistic and amoral villain, and Sagar is no angel either (even if he does model “normal” most of the time).
∗∗∗∗ (Very good). 8,400 words. Story link.

•

The Purple Pterodactyls by L. Sprague de Camp is another of the supernatural adventures of Willy Newbury.⁵ In this one he is on holiday by the sea with his wife Denise and, when they visit a nearby amusement park, Willy notices something at the rubber ring stall:

The prizes were even more original: a flock of plush-and-wire pterodactyls. They came in several models and sizes, some with long tails and some with short, some with teeth and some with long toothless beaks. The biggest were over a yard across the wings. They were made so that you could hang one from your ceiling as a mobile.
If the wind was strong, you could lock the wings in place and fly the thing as a kite. They were all dyed in shades of purple.
“Purple pterodactyls!” I cried. “Darling, I’ve got to have one of those.”  p. 144

Willy’s attempts to win one of the pterodactyls are unsuccessful, and he also isn’t able purchase one (he asks the stall’s proprietor, Mr Maniu, when he sees him at the beach the next day, but is refused). Willy’s luck changes later, however, when he buys an old ring for a quarter and, when his wife takes him to a jeweller to have it valued, discovers that the ring is ancient and the stone a real emerald. Then, when Willy is asleep that night, the djinn of the ring reveals himself to Willy and says it can perform “little favours” for him. Willy asks the djinn to help him win a purple pterodactyl.
This begins a spat that sees, after Willy subsequently wins more than one of the prizes, (a) Maniu hire his own djinn to stop Willy winning any more; (b) Willy going back to win a third pterodactyl when his own djinn tells him of this; (c) words disappearing off a speech Willy gives at a local women’s club meeting; (d) Willy winning another two pterodactyls; and then (e) Willy and Denise having their boat capsized by a freak squall that comes out of nowhere.
At this point Willy realises that he is involved in a potentially lethal vendetta, so he promises the djinn his freedom if he can get Willy out of his predicament. The story then ends (spoiler) with a shriek in the night, and Willy seeing Mr Maniu on the beach the next morning, his body covered in sand as usual . . . then Maniu’s decapitated head rolls off the mound.
When Willy sees the djinn in a dream several nights later he promptly gives him the ring and his freedom. Then he wakes up and has sex with his wife, as you do when you’ve just caused someone’s death.
This piece isn’t as slight a story as some in the series, but it does have a deus ex machina ending and is tonally a bit off: not only does the final line about sex with his wife not sit well with previous events but, if it wasn’t for Willy’s awful behaviour (who need five purple pterodactyls?), relations between the two men would not have deteriorated. I’m probably reading too much into a piece of light fantasy, but still. . . .
∗∗ (Average). 5,650 words. Story link.

•••

The issue’s Cover is by Greg Bear, who started writing SF regularly around this time as well (although there were a handful of earlier stories). He would become much better known for his fiction.
Algis Budrys’ Books column (which is immediately after Michaelmas) covers four SF art books, and begins with a discussion of Brain W. Aldiss’s Science Fiction Art:

It’s asking too much of a Brian Aldiss, for instance, to put together a large, effective collection of sometimes quite aptly juxtaposed or dramatically enlarged pulp artwork, without beginning with a philosophical rationale:
“…sf and Gothic (writing) are basically intertwined. The same holds true for sf illustration.”
And then, and only then, do we get the book, which, as it happens, I rather like because Aldiss and I appear to have the same prejudices as distinguished from critical bases. I would guess we have closely correlated reminiscences. I don’t for a minute believe his statement. I didn’t believe it as applied to sf writing. But in shaking my head fondly and chuckling over and suddenly becoming lost in associational memories as I turn the large (about 12″ x 15″) acceptably produced pages of this coffee table paperback, I don’t care. It’s obvious the editor understands pulp creativity, whatever he may think of it, and loves the genre, however he may rationalize it. As for his critical findings — which are set forth logically and systematically, if not in accordance with my prejudices — I doubt that five percent of the book’s consumers will care a rap one way or the other[.]  p. 60

Budrys briefly mentions the omission of Murphy Anderson (an artist I’ve never heard of but who was apparently a Planet Stories artist during WWII) before moving on to the next review, The Science Fiction Book by Franz Rottensteiner. The critical essay in this book gets a complete pasting (sample comment, “The essay is drivel, but so elegantly organized that it sounds meaningful and might even be quoted with impunity in many scholarly circles”) but apparently the artwork and other graphic material is worth a browse.
The third book reviewed is One Hundred Years of Science Fiction Illustration by Anthony Frewin, which devotes half its space to per-Gernsbackian artwork (this is “informative and entertaining” according to Budrys). Last, but not least (that would be the Rottensteiner), is Fantastic Science-Fiction Art, 1926-1954 by Lester del Rey. This one has reproductions which Budrys says are not up to the standard of the Rottensteiner, and are slightly less dramatic than the Aldiss, but:

For leafing and sitting, sitting and thinking and leafing, this is the book for the magazine SF nostalgist. Less broad than the Frewin, less contentious and tumultuous than the Aldiss, it says: “This stuff was eye-catching once; OK, let it catch your eye again without any hype from me.” And provided you are a Frank R. Paul fan — which I guess I am gradually getting to be, after all, despite all resolve, but I do draw the line at Morey — effective and evocative it is, even with its emphasis on Paul.  p. 66

Gahan Wilson’s Cartoon is grisly, and I didn’t get it (not unusual).
Baird Searles uses his film column, Things to Come, to discuss, well, the things to come in what sounds like an expanding field (and this before the release of Star Wars in May 1977):

Regular readers will know that a feature of this column through the years has been a “Things to come” postscript, where I make note of productions in the works — or rumored to be in the works, as it often turns out (the movie industry being prone to announce things that are sometimes only an itch in the producer’s wallet). Never did I think that there would come a point when I would be forced to devote a whole column to things to come, but as I’ve been intimating for some months now, the dam is about to bust (my Ouija board typer just wrote “damn” for dam, which may be all too true), and you might be interested in what may be (see cautionary note above) looming ahead for your screens.  p. 110

The rest of the article lists a huge number of projects, including many that never saw the light of day (I don’t believe that The Demolished Man or Bug Jack Barron ever appeared as movies, for example).
Searles finishes with mention of a TV advertisement:

The highlight of this month’s TV viewing was, of all things, a commercial. It featured a Dr. Asimov, described in little letters under his chin as a “science writer.” He was telling us about radial tires and I was so intrigued that I almost went out and bought some. Luckily, I remembered in time that I didn’t own a car.  p. 111

Talking of Isaac Asimov, his science column in this issue, Moving Ahead, discusses how technological change affects historical outcomes and, in particular, discusses steamboats, steamships, and the economics of the Civil War. There is one particular quote of note:

[All] through history knights have sneered at merchants, the fact is that in the long run the merchants win and the knights lose. The Dutch merchants beat the Spanish knights, and the British beat Napoleon who thought “perfidious Albion” was only “a nation of shopkeepers.”

This reflects a continual observation in a WWII history podcast I’ve been listening to for the last year or so: logistics and materiel invariably win in the long run. This is what happened in WWII, and it looks like what is going to happen again in Ukraine (political will permitting).⁶
Coming Soon: All-Star Anniversary Issue gives a brief line-up of the names for the October issue.
The (infrequent) Letters column consists mostly of responses to a Barry Malzberg article and Harlan Ellison letter which appeared in the April issue (and which were about the restrictions of the field and the writers’ intentions to leave). The first long letter is by Greg Bear, who comments:

Poking about aimlessly for reasons to explain the Exodus, I come across a common element. Ellison, Malzberg and Silverberg all share an acerbic view of the world, heavily clouded with anger, portents of doom, and general distrust of humanity at large. These sentiments fit well into the sixties, when a large number of people felt the curling wave and hopped aboard. But now the wave has broken and most of the riders lie gasping on the sand, getting very tired of saying “See! I was right after all!” We have slumped into a period with many similarities to the fifties — only now, ecology and nuclear energy have replaced the communists, von Daniken has replaced James Dean. The prophets are in the shallows, still splashing, trying to start up more waves. But sooner beat an exhausted horse after a long race. We still need the splashers, Ellison-Silverberg-Malzberg et al, but they’re facing a hard slough. I beg them not to retire, saddened. The energy will come again, and they’ll be just as necessary, even if older. So go now, rest, try your dreams in other fields, recharge.  p. 157

The second letter is by George Warren, who makes this point:

Mr. Ellison might come to understand that it isn’t being typed as a science fiction writer that’s holding him back; it’s the fact that he’ll never be able to grab that second trapeze — the larger audience he wants and deserves — until he lets go of the first one. And the name of the first one is not Science Fiction but Television.
Ellison needs to get the hell out of Hollywood. He has gone as far in it as a man of talent, taste and temperament can go; beyond that limit — how many years is it, now? — only the shorted-out cyborgs of whom he complained recently on late-night television manage to advance and prosper. Men of superior gifts tend to go down the tube. Maybe if both of our April singers of sour songs gave Budrys’s taxonomic essay some thought, too, they might in time come to reflect that when one is raped by his enemies (the clique for Malzberg, the tube for Ellison) the proper response is not to savage his friends.  p. 158

Lee McGarry observes that, “You don’t get [a] popular (“Jaws”, “Perry Rhodan”) audience unless you write popular stuff”, a blindingly obvious observation that appears to be lost on some writers, who think the world is out of step, not them—a point also made by Arthur D. Hlavaty, who says, “When the map does not match the territory, there is no way of changing the territory and no point in crying about the problem.”
John Wehrle asks:

Do you really want to write for a bunch of longhaired William F. Buckleys? Is it so important that you make it with this little clique of self-styled elitists? Does their snobbery really render your work meaningless? All this whining around sounds like the kid who couldn’t make the football team.  p. 160

Finally, Richard Taylor says:

I read Barry Malzberg’s resignation from the SF genre with some regret, not because I am particularly fond of his work — I find much of it too pretentious for my taste — but because I recognized in his words an affliction that seems to be common among so called genre writers, and particularly common among SF writers: A hatred for the field.
That Mr. Malzberg desires to be a member of the literary elite I can fully sympathize with. The literary elite are, after all, elite. They are paid for their status within the elite group as much as they are paid for their work, which is often sub-standard, even by genre considerations. However, being a member of the literary elite will not, of itself, cause Mr. Malzberg’s work to improve; will not of itself make something greater of the man Barry Malzberg than he was before; will not give Barry Malzberg the satisfaction of being a complete artist. These things derive from the paper, the pen, the mind and the will. Testimonials, if they come at all, come later.  p. 160

All this seems very much a storm in a teacup now.

•••

Setting aside Budry’s middling serial, the short fiction in this issue isn’t bad—one very good story, two good ones, and nothing poor. The non-fiction columns are worthwhile too.  ●

_____________________

1. The book version of Michaelmas (which appeared the following year) was 65,000 words long compared to the 45,000 words of the serial version. There is this note in the book:

This novel incorporates features of a substantially shorter and significantly different version published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Copyright © 1976 by A. J. Budrys.

As I knew at the time that F&SF had a habit of abridging their serials (although it appears from the above comment that Budrys may have revised and/or expanded a shorter initial version of the work in this case), I waited for the book publication before I read this for the first time in the late seventies. I did not enjoy that version either.

2. According to ISFDB, Don Trotter only published three stories. On the basis of this one that is a pity.

3. Call Me Maelzel by Don Trotter reminded me of another recent AI/pirates tale, Knock, Knock Said the Ship by Rati Mehrotra (F&SF, July-August 2020).

4. The sling-glider launch mechanism in Michael G. Coney’s “Peninsula” stories always confused me a little, but this piece has a good description:

Presdee’s turn came. I watched the spray trailing silver from the distant hydrofoil as it raced for the Fulcrum post; some distance behind followed the figure of Presdee on waterskis, the dartlike glider harnessed to his back. As the speed increased, Presdee rose into the air, kicked off the skis and tucked his legs back into the narrow fuselage. I could just make out the thin thread of the rigid Whip connecting him to the speeding boat. He angled away, gaining height as the boat slowed momentarily and veered to bring him on a parallel course. The Whip was locked into position, now projecting at right angles to the boat, rising stiffly about thirty degrees into the sky where Presdee soared. Then the Eye on the other side of the boat engaged with the Hook of the Fulcrum post and snapped the hydrofoil into a tight turn at full speed.
The flailing Whip accelerated Presdee to a speed which couldn’t have been far short of three hundred miles per hour; he touched his release button and hurtled across the sky, heading northwards up the Strait. p. 121

I note that one of the stories in this series, The Hook, the Eye, and the Whip (Galaxy, March 1974), is mostly about sling-gliding.
I would also note that I am at a loss as to why none of these “Peninsula” stories (bar one atypical piece) ever made it into the “Year’s Bests” (there is a list of stories at ISFDB).

5. The ISFDB page for the “Willy Newbury” series.

6. The history podcast I mentioned above is the fascinating We Have Ways of Making You Talk, hosted by the historian James Holland and the comedian Al Murray.