{"id":11067,"date":"2019-09-20T11:41:10","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T11:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=11067"},"modified":"2019-09-25T11:44:55","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T11:44:55","slug":"new-worlds-sf-153-august-1965","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=11067","title":{"rendered":"New Worlds SF #153, August 1965"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ISFDB<\/a>
\nLuminist<\/a><\/p>\n

Other reviews:1<\/sup>
\nGraham Hall, Vector<\/em> #34 (August 1965)<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Michael Moorcock; Assistant Editor, Langdon Jones<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nBill, the Galactic Hero<\/em><\/strong> (Part 1 of 3) \u2022 serial by Harry Harrison \u2217\u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Source<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Brian W. Aldiss \u2217<\/strong>
\nAnd Worlds Renewed<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by George Collyn \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Pulse of Time<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by W. T. Webb \u2217<\/strong>
\nBy the Same Door<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Mack Reynolds \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nPreliminary Data<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Michael Moorcock \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nSongflower <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Kenneth Hoare \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover <\/em><\/strong>
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Harry Harrison
\nAn Effective Use of Space<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial by Michael Moorcock
\nDr Peristyle<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 question column by Brian W. Aldiss
\nStory Ratings 151<\/em><\/strong>
\nBook reviews<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Michael Moorcock [as by James Colvin], Ron Bennett, and Hilary Bailey<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

This issue sees even more of a mix of fiction types than hitherto\u2014we have parodic comedy from Harrison, traditional SF from Collyn and Hoare, horror from Webb, and more progressive work from Aldiss and Moorcock.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bill, the Galactic Hero<\/em><\/strong> by Harry Harrison is the first part of the eponymous novel (the second and third parts have different titles rather than \u201cpart 2\u201d or \u201cpart 3\u201d for some reason), and it is initially a parody of futuristic military adventure SF (I suspect, in particular, Robert A. Heinlein\u2019s Starship Troopers2<\/sup><\/em>).
\nThe story opens with our hero Bill ploughing a field with a robomule on Phigerinadon II when a military recruitment parade comes along the road. Bill follows the procession into the village and is soon manipulated into joining the army by underhand means (ego-reducing drugs dissolved in the free drinks, and hypno-coils that control his body movements). He marches away to a camp, and the next day meets his instructor:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI am here to break your spirit,\u201d a voice rich with menace told them, and they looked up and shivered even more as they faced the chief demon in this particular hell.
\nPetty Chief Officer Deathwish Drang was a specialist from the tips of the angry spikes of his hair to the corrugated stamping-soles of his mirrorlike boots. He was wide-shouldered and lean-hipped, while his long arms hung, curved like those of some horrible anthropoid, the knuckles of his immense fists scarred from the breaking of thousands of teeth. It was impossible to look at this detestable form and imagine that it issued from the tender womb of a woman. He could never have been born; he must have been built to order by the government. Most terrible of all was the head. The face! The hairline was scarcely a finger\u2019s width above the black tangle of the brows that were set like a rank growth of foliage at the rim of the black pits that concealed the eyes\u2014visible only as baleful red gleams in the Stygian darkness. A nose, broken and crushed, squatted above the mouth that was like a knife slash in the taut belly of a corpse, while from between the lips issued the great, white fangs of the canine teeth, at least two inches long, that rested in grooves on the lower lip.\u00a0 p. 10-11<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story then describes Bill\u2019s basic training, which includes some very funny set pieces, such another recruit\u2019s account of why humanity is at war with the Chingers, supposedly a race of seven-foot high saurian aliens (but see the later passage):<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chingers are the only non-human race that has been discovered in the galaxy that has gone beyond the aboriginal level, so naturally we have to wipe them out.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat the hell do you mean, naturally? I don\u2019t want to wipe anyone out. I just want to go home and be a Technical Fertilizer Operator.\u201d
\n\u201cWell, I don\u2019t mean you personally, of course\u2014gee!\u201d
\nEager opened a fresh can of polish with purple-stained hands and dug his fingers into it. \u201cI mean the human race, that\u2019s just the way we do things. If we don\u2019t wipe them out they\u2019ll wipe us out. Of course they say that war is against their religion and they will only fight in defence, and they have never made any attacks yet. But we can\u2019t believe them, even though it is true. They might change their religion or their minds some day, and then where would we be? The best answer is to wipe them out now.\u201d\u00a0 p. 14-15<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On completion of his training, Bill is assigned to a spaceship, and he has various adventures: one of his comrades turns out to be a spy (he\/it is a robot operated by a seven inch high Chinger); and then Bill experiences his first interstellar flight:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re moving,\u201d [Tembo] said positively, \u201cand going interstellar too. They\u2019ve turned on the star-drive.\u201d
\n\u201cYou mean we are breaking through into sub-space and will soon experience the terrible wrenching at every fibre of our being?\u201d
\n\u201cNo, they don\u2019t use the old sub-space drive any more, because though a lot of ships broke through into sub-space with a fibre-wrenching jerk, none of them have yet broke back out. I read in the Trooper\u2019s Times<\/em> where some mathematician said that there had been a slight error in the equations and that time was different in sub-space, but it was different faster not different slower, so that it will be maybe forever before those ships come out.\u201d
\n\u201cThen we\u2019re going into hyper-space?\u201d
\n\u201cNo such thing.\u201d
\n\u201cOr we\u2019re being dissolved into our component atoms and recorded in the memory of a giant computor who thinks we are somewhere else so there we are?\u201d
\n\u201cWow!\u201d Tembo said, his eyebrows crawling up to his hairline. \u201cFor a Zoroastrian farm boy you have some strange ideas! Have you been smoking or drinking something I don\u2019t know about?\u201d\u00a0 p. 44<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The next few chapters largely focus on a space battle with the Chingers and its aftermath; Bill is a hero during the engagement, and he later recovers from his injuries in the hospital:<\/p>\n

[The doctor] unclipped the wires that held up Bill\u2019s arm and began to unwind the bandages while the troopers crowded around to watch.
\n\u201cHow is my arm, Doc?\u201d Bill was suddenly worried.
\n\u201cGrilled like a chop. I had to cut it off.\u201d
\n\u201cThen what is this?\u201d Bill shrieked, horrified.
\n\u201cAnother arm that I sewed on. There were lots of them left over after the battle. The ship had over 42 per cent casualties, and I was really cutting and chopping and sewing, I tell you.\u201d
\nThe last bandage fell away and the troopers ahhhed with delight.
\n\u201cSay, that\u2019s a mighty fine arm!\u201d
\n\u201cMake it do something.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd a damn nice seam there at the shoulder\u2014look how neat the stitches are!\u201d
\n\u201cPlenty of muscles, too, and good and long, not like the crummy little short one he has on the other side.\u201d
\n\u201cLonger and darker\u2014that\u2019s a great skin colour!\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s Tembo\u2019s arm!\u201d Bill howled. \u201cTake it away!\u201d He squirmed across the bed but the arm came after him. They propped him up again on the pillows.
\n\u201cYou\u2019re a lucky bowb, Bill, having a good arm like that. And your buddy\u2019s arm too.\u201d
\n\u201cWe know that he wanted you to have it.\u201d
\n\u201cYou\u2019ll always have something to remember him by.\u201d
\nIt really wasn\u2019t a bad arm. Bill bent it and flexed the fingers, still looking at it suspiciously. It felt all right. He reached out with it and grabbed a trooper\u2019s arm and squeezed. He could feel the man\u2019s bones grating together while he screamed and writhed. Then Bill looked closer at the hand and began to shout curses at the doctor.
\n\u201cYou stupid sawbones! You thoat doctor! Some big job\u2014this is a right arm!\u201d
\n\u201cSo it\u2019s a right arm\u2014so what?\u201d
\n\u201cBut you cut off my left arm! Now I have two right arms . . .\u201d
\n\u201cListen, there was a shortage of left arms. I\u2019m no miracle worker. I do my best and all I get are complaints. Be happy I didn\u2019t sew on a leg.\u201d He leered evilly. \u201cOr even better I didn\u2019t sew on a . . .\u201d\u00a0 p. 57-58<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This installment has a strong start and finish, even if the middle part is more light adventure than comedy, and it\u2019s a very good start to the issue.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Source<\/em><\/strong> by Brian W. Aldiss has a blurb (see above) which filled me with a feeling of foreboding that was subsequently borne out.
\nThe story starts with a detachment of \u201cSeekers\u201d\u2014they travel throughout the Galaxy looking for man\u2019s greatest achievement\u2014who have recently arrived on a ruined, primitive Earth.
\nOne of the Seekers, Kervis, and his year wife Ysis, take a car and travel away from camp. During this Kervis starts seeing visions of Ysis as an old crone. After a few pages of this kind of thing, Kervis stops the car and gets out, sheds his clothes and wanders off alone through the undergrowth. He eventually comes upon a group of primitives who have Ysis with them, and the pair then go on until they come to a building. Here Kervis wanders through various passages, and is again separated from Ysis. He eventually comes upon what he thinks is a statue of a beast holding a woman and, when he realises the woman is real, he frees her from the beast. Kervis later experiences a mystical event.
\nAt the end (spoiler maybe, but probably not), Kervis and Ysis return to camp, where he is relieved of his command by the other Seekers. The expedition leaves but Kervis stays behind\u2014he has apparently fulfilled his destiny.
\nThis is all rather baffling, and pretty boring as well.
\nAnd Worlds Renewed<\/em><\/strong> by George Collyn gets off to a clunky data-dump beginning despite its Ballardesque chapter titles:<\/p>\n

The two men could not have been more different.
\nThere was Junter Firmole\u2014rock-hard, ruthless, intolerant, ambitious, homicidal and leading entrepreneur in an era of cut-throat trade. Perhaps to his grandchildren he would appear as white-haired, lovable and gentle. To the peoples of Humankind he was an ogre with which to frighten naughty children; a man of blood who drank his wine from a human skull.
\nThen there was Nefo Setiri, environmental artist\u2014an absent-minded and obsessed visionary with as much financial acumen as a two-week-old child. Twenty years would pass before he would reach his creative peak in the formulation of the Pleasure Worlds of Ilgadin with Hi Li City\u2014his masterpiece\u2014at their spangled heart. At the time of which I speak he had attempted nothing greater than continental construction\u2014the remodelling of Antarctica was his graduation test-piece at the Slade. Nor, at that time, did he seem destined for greatness, since the range of his creative imagination was so undisciplined that those patrons who had planetary commissions in their gift fought shy of his genius.
\nYeman Sorl, dictator of Tramoth and first prospective patron, laughed in Setiri\u2019s face where he would have crawled on his belly to Firmole, and the elaborate blueprints for the remodelling of the Tramoth worlds hit the dictatorial cigars for a twelve-month.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After several goes at that last sentence I\u2019m still not sure what it means.
\nThe story goes on to tell of Setiri\u2019s capture by space pirates, who send him to a labour camp on a planet when he can\u2019t pay the ransom. While he works there he takes artistic exception to the way that the planet is being reshaped and, after managing to catch the visiting Firmole\u2019s eye, manages to convince him that he could make a better job. Setiri gets the commission:<\/p>\n

Setiri intended a work in three textures\u2014climate, vegetation and physical configuration. The finished work to be a range of intensity across a spectrum from limpid water-soft to sun-baked hard.
\nIn climate the planet would shade from insufferably hot at the equator to temperately cool at the poles; with no precipitation at the former but perpetual rain at the latter.
\nThe poles would be seas of permanent water with no island or peninsula to impinge upon their liquidity. At 10\u00b0 latitude this would shade into a sheer insubstantiality of marshlands, a morass that would spread across thirty degrees of latitude. This would then give way slowly to two belts, each of twenty degrees; the first of tropical rain forest, the second of prairie grasslands. The central belt, stretching ten degrees north and south of the equator would be raw ochrous desert and each hemisphere would mirror the other.
\nThe seas would necessarily be flat; the swamps interspersed by isolated hillocks; the forest clothing square-cut plateaux ; the prairies, rolling hills of grass ; but the desert would be a region of soaring mountains and plummeting canyons\u2014a wasteland in all three levels.\u00a0 p. 81-82<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Setiri completes the project he prevents Firmole from visiting the works by use of a force field and, when the latter later arrives at the opening ceremony, it looks as if he is going to denounce the work. However (spoiler), Firmole\u2019s daughter approves of it and then, when a particular angle of sunlight catches the planet, Firmole sees his own face momentarily etched on the planet\u2019s surface.
\nA neat ending.
\nThe Pulse of Time<\/em><\/strong> by W. T. Webb opens with a cardiac consultant called Humbolt who is visited at home by a man who wants him to come to attend to his employer. Even though Humbolt isn\u2019t told the employer\u2019s name, or where he lives, he gets in a chauffeur driven car and goes.
\nWhen Humbolt arrives at the house of \u201cMr X\u201d, he meets a very old man who, as they chat, shows him a variety of curios, culminating with (spoiler) photos of an alien visitor to Earth, etc.
\nThis unlikely and unconvincing set up is for a striking final image:<\/p>\n

Mr. X opened the door, entered the small room beyond it and switched on the light. On one wall Humbolt saw a clock-face rising above a cabinet made of flesh-coloured plastic. Mr. X opened the doors of the cabinet to reveal several glass globes joined together by transparent tubes. A red liquid circulated round the tubes and the globes and in and out of the clock-face. And the largest of the globes contained something that to him was horribly familiar.
\n\u201cAs you see,\u201d said Mr. X. \u201cThis clock has a human heart for a mainspring. It is not keeping good time. And I would like your advice on how to correct it.\u201d
\nHumbolt felt outraged. As a student he had often seen the heart of a chicken or a goat kept alive artificially. But this . . .
\n\u201cYou monster!\u201d he said to Mr. X. \u201cDon\u2019t you realise that I am fully aware that this heart must have been cut out of a living person?\u201d
\nBy way of reply Mr. X opened the lapels of his dressing gown to reveal a thorax made of transparent plastic. Within it, immersed in colourless oil, a mass of machinery of alien design, worked rhythmically and constantly, like the mechanism of a clock.\u00a0 p. 94<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This struck me as the kind of story you might find in the Pan or Fontana series of horror anthologies.
\nBy the Same Door<\/em><\/strong> by Mack Reynolds opens with a man visiting a business which provides transfers to alternative worlds. He asks to be sent to one where they openly discuss the secret perversion alluded to in many books and magazines of his world but which is never described.
\nThe man gets his wish, and the story concludes appropriately (spoiler: the reader is still in a universe where the secret perversion is mentioned but not described).
\nI saw the end coming about three paragraphs ahead, but there is a neat irony to it that made me smile.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Preliminary Data<\/em><\/strong> by Michael Moorcock is the first of his long running \u2018Jerry Cornelius\u2019 series, and opens with Jerry and a Brahmin physicist called Professor Hira discussing, at length, the cosmology of various religions, concluding with comments on the cyclical nature of time:<\/p>\n

\u201cThen at the end of the manvantara the cycle repeats itself, does it? The whole of history all over again!\u201d
\n\u201cSome believe so. Others believe that the cycles vary slightly. It is basically an extension of our convictions concerning reincarnation. The strange thing is that modern physics begins to confirm these figures\u2014in terms of the complete revolution of the galaxy and so on. I must admit that the more I read of the papers published these days, the more confused I become between what I was taught as a Hindu and what I have learned as a physicist. It requires an increasing amount of self-discipline to separate them in my mind.\u201d
\n\u201cWhy do you bother?\u201d
\n\u201cMy career, old man, at the University, would suffer if I let mysticism influence logic.\u201d The Brahmin spoke with some irony and Cornelius smiled.\u00a0 p. 99<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a more of this before the story breaks and picks up with both men in bed together (possibly a first in a UK SF magazine). The men discuss a Mrs Brunner. When Cornelius later goes home to his wife Maj-Britt in Sweden, Brunner is there waiting for him. After a tense stand-off Brunner kidnaps Cornelius and Maj-Britt, and takes them to her secret cave-lab in Lapland, where they meet Professor Hira. \u201cG-day\u201d is discussed.
\nThe rest of the story isn\u2019t entirely clear\u2014at some point Jerry undergoes a process that leaves him feeling \u201ctotally alive\u201d, policemen turn up and the mouth of the cave, and then, in the ensuing struggle, Jerry is shot. Then he (or his spirit?) watches as Brunner give a speech to the assembled scientists about project DUEL:<\/p>\n

\u201cDUEL\u2019s purpose was two-fold, as you know. The first job was to feed it the sum total of human knowledge and have it systemise and relate this knowledge into a single unified integer. This was at last achieved three days ago and I congratulate you.
\n\u201cIt is the second part which mystified most of you. The technical problem of how to feed this programme directly into a human brain was overcome with the help of notes donated by Doctor Leslie Baxter, the psycho-biologist. But what sort of brain could accept such a fantastic programme? That question is answered as I answer the question you have all been asking. DUEL\u2019s ultimate use is to satisfy an aim which, whether we realised it or not, has been the ultimate aim of all human endeavour since homo sapiens first evolved. It is a simple aim and we are near achieving it. We have been working, ladies and gentlemen, to produce an all-purpose human being! A human-being equipped with total knowledge, hermaphrodite in every respect\u2014self-fertilising and thus self-regenerating\u2014and thus immortal, re-creating itself over and over again, retaining its knowledge and adding to it. In short, ladies and gentlemen, we are creating a being which our ancestors would have called a god!\u201d\u00a0 p. 109-110<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cornelius and Brunner are then combined by DUEL to become that god-like hermaphrodite. It gathers a huge mob of people which surges around Europe before finally rushing lemming-like into the Atlantic. Cornelius Brunner is the only survivor.
\nThe first half of this story could have been shorter, and I didn\u2019t understand exactly what happened after the shooting, so I found the story\u2019s mix of the contemporary, the bizarre, and the comic only partially successful. It is notable, perhaps, as the first in the long-running series, and for its thematic experimentation and formerly taboo content (the bisexuality of Cornelius, and the hermaphrodism).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Songflower <\/em><\/strong>by Kenneth Hoare is marred by a couple of clumsy sentences on the first page3<\/sup> but turns out to be a colourful if slight tale about a spacer who goes on a pub crawl with an alien friend. The spacer later buys a singing plant from one of the natives, who cooks him a meal first:<\/p>\n

[The Terran] led the way through the shop, dusty despite the air conditioning, and into the room beyond. The contrast was so great that Alec drew in his breath in surprise. The walls were lined with fine scarlet fibres, shining in the light of an artificial sun, dimmed to the rich glow of an autumn evening. On the walls hung relics of many different cultures. On the carved chests that stood by the walls and on shelves by the old-fashioned electric fire, leaping and crackling with blue-white flames, stood bowls of plants.
\nHundreds of exotic varieties were contained in that room, some in gastight containers to reproduce the conditions of their native planets. Some were tiny and starlike, others huge and fleshy in great stripes of contrasting colour. There were feathery water plants and spiky desert blooms. Representations of flowers in a dozen different art-forms stood or hung about the room.
\n\u201cFlowers are my greatest interest,\u201d said Fred, \u201cbut I think you will find that I do not neglect the provision of a proper cuisine.\u201d
\nThe change in the little Terran was very noticeable. He seemed to expand like one of his flowers in the exotic atmosphere of the room. The effect was enhanced when he shrugged off his drab street jacket and pulled on a scalloped robe designed for a Dafnian batrachian.
\nThey sat down at a table constructed from the flat shell of some turtle-like creature. After a moment a robot appeared in answer to Ellington\u2019s signal, carrying a tray loaded with food in each of its four hands, and proceeded to set out the food.
\nAn hour later, Alec declined another drink. \u201cNot another mouthful. I really couldn\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0 p. 118<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The mediocre Cover <\/em><\/strong>is uncredited, and there is much less Interior artwork<\/em><\/strong> than normal\u2014just a single illustration by Harry Harrison. Budgetary constraints, I presume.
\nAn Effective Use of Space<\/em><\/strong> by Michael Moorcock mostly discusses this issue\u2019s contents:<\/p>\n

We decided to run Harry Harrison\u2019s new novel as a serial for several reasons. The main reason, of course, is that the book is as generous a piece of unpretentious entertainment as we have read for a long time. Another reason was because it fitted well into our editorial policy, illustrating how the space story can be used effectively to make a serious point in a light-hearted way.
\n[. . .]
\nPreliminary Data<\/em> is something of an experiment, an example, if you like, of the anarchic approach to SF story-telling, all we ask is that you take it in the spirit the author intended and don\u2019t take it too seriously\u2014further episodes should fill you in.
\nWe felt that this month was a good time, too, to begin the first of Dr. Peristyle\u2019s columns answering readers\u2019 queries on SF. The pungent and forthright gentleman made his debut in Vector<\/em>, Journal of the BSFA, but we felt his opinions deserved a wider airing and invited him to contribute to New Worlds<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moorcock also mentions that John Brunner\u2019s The Whole Man<\/em> (UK title Telepathist<\/em>)4<\/sup> is on the forthcoming Hugo ballot, and plugs a number of seemingly anarachic publications from Future City Press (\u201cThe issue of Amazing Rayday<\/em> we have to hand at first seems to be a wild effusion of unrelated words, drawings and photographs, but a closer look shows that this publication has a hysterical logic of its own.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Dr Peristyle<\/em><\/strong> column is uncredited, but I discovered5<\/sup> that these were written by Brian W. Aldiss. The plan announced in the editorial is that this will alternate with the letter column (it turns out that this was the first of only three columns which would appear).
\nThe questions get arch, eclectic answers (there is another example in the image above):<\/p>\n

David E. Mortimer
\nAssuming SF is written by technically advanced countries, did the Arabs write SF or something like it when they led the world in mathematics and astronomy?
\n.<\/span>
\nInteresting question. Frankly I don\u2019t know the answer, learned though I am; I suspect it to be buried below the desert sand, so that some Abdul Anderson, some Mohammed Moorcock, is forever lost to us. But evolution rather than technology is the real power behind SF, for it provides a speculative dimension to work in. And isn\u2019t SF essentially a city literature? Who ever wrote it in a tent?\u00a0 p. 122<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Story Ratings 151<\/em><\/strong> were discussed in the review of that issue.6<\/sup>
\nThe Book reviews<\/em><\/strong> come from three people: Michael Moorcock, Ron Bennett, and Hilary Bailey. Moorcock opens with a useful review7<\/sup> of The Old Die Rich<\/em> by H. L. Gold:<\/p>\n

H. L. Gold was perhaps the most incisive editor ever to produce an SF magazine, on matters of technique he knew the craft of SF writing inside out and the fact that he rewrote a considerable portion of the material published in Galaxy<\/em> under his editorship earned him many writers\u2019 gratitude rather than their chagrin. I personally know several writers who feel they owe their present knowledge of technique to Gold\u2019s pungent comments on what he rejected and his doctoring of what he accepted. Some feel that this resulted, in the end, in a magazine that contained craftsmanly but characterless stories\u2014stories, in fact, with too much ironed out. What is sometimes said of the last years of Galaxy<\/em> under Gold\u2019s editorship might also apply to his own work and one is inclined to feel that if he never wrote a bad story, he never wrote a brilliant one, either.\u00a0 p. 124<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moorcock later adds that Gold was the master of the twist ending and one of the first modern SF writers to make it his trademark. He concludes by stating that the volume contains the \u201cquintessence of a certain kind of slick, clever SF writing,\u201d but that it doesn\u2019t have the seriousness of intention that newer writers \u201clike Aldiss, Ballard, Vonnegut\u2014or even Moorcock\u201d<\/span> exhibit. So? Do all writers need to produce serious work?
\nMoorcock also reviews New Writings in SF 4<\/em> by John Carnell ( \u201cthe undemanding reader who is happy with fresh twists on old themes will find plenty worth reading\u201d).
\nRon Bennett reviews The Joyous Invasions<\/em> by Theodore Sturgeon, and Hilary Bailey seems pleased enough with routine sounding stuff from John Lymington, Rick Raphael, and L. P. Davies.<\/p>\n

This is worth getting for the first part of the Harrison novel, but the rest is middling stuff. \u00a0\u25cf<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. Graham Hall enjoyed Harrison\u2019s \u201crollicking parody\u201d, which he thought stands \u201chead and shoulders above most of the SF [. . .] published in the past few years.\u201d He adds:<\/p>\n

Harrison proves that his faster-than-light writing pace can be adapted from the tension of Deathworld<\/em> to the humorous mockery of the military-galactic novel. Such characters as Petty Chief Officer Deathwish Drang, the Rev. Tembo, Eager Beager and Bill himself will go down in SF\u2019s Hall of Fame\u2014but one word of warning: Heinlein fans\u2014it\u2019s illegal to assault anybody, including American SF writers inhabiting Denmark.\u00a0 p. 16<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Aldiss is \u201ca let-down\u201d but paradoxically \u201cworth reading\u201d; Collyn\u2019s story is less experimental but more to Hall\u2019s taste; Webb\u2019s \u201cisn\u2019t far from the conventional horror story\u201d; Reynold\u2019s vignette is infuriating but stuck in his memory.
\nHall says this about the Moorcock and Hoare pieces:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll steer clear of [Preliminary Data<\/em>], not wishing to show my ignorance by under or overestimating it. Apart from becoming terribly confused in the first few pages, I enjoyed it. No more will I say.
\nThe idea behind Songflower<\/em> is rather good, and the vividness of the writing certainly lifts it above the normal. I have a feeling that Kenneth Hoare may be a pen-name for a more established writer.\u00a0 p. 16<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2. I haven\u2019t read Starship Troopers<\/em> as I didn\u2019t get very far with Robert Heinlein in my youth. Part of this was due to my struggle with Stranger in a Strange Land<\/em> (I got fed up of the lectures halfway through and gave up), and a sub-optimal sampling of his other work (Glory Road<\/em> was okay, as were Double Star<\/em>, Waldo & Magic Inc.<\/em>, etc. but nothing made me want to read further). I note on consulting my bookshelves that I also read The Best of Robert A. Heinlein<\/em> but remember little of it (apart from Crooked House<\/em> and Zombies<\/em>).
\nI enjoy Heinelin\u2019s work more nowadays, funnily enough\u2014I\u2019ve recently read Jonathan Hoag<\/em>, The Roads Must Roll<\/em>, Waldo<\/em>, Goldfish Bowl<\/em>, etc. and enjoyed all of them to a greater or lesser extent.<\/p>\n

3. As for the clumsy sentences in the first page of Hoare\u2019s Sunflower<\/em>, in my opinion, \u201cThey made planetfall soon after dawn at the capital\u201d, would be better as \u201cThey made planetfall at the capital soon after dawn.\u201d And \u201cAs Alec walked along by his scaly green flanks, 7 was bumbling away happily to himself\u201d should be \u201cAs Alec walked alongside 7\u2019s scaly green flanks, [7\/the alien\/the creature] bumbled away happily to himself.\u201d Both p. 114.<\/p>\n

4. Brunner describes the genesis of The Whole Man<\/em>\/Telepathist<\/em> in the letter column of the next issue, #154:<\/p>\n

The review Langdon Jones gave to Telepathist<\/em> is so kind I hate having to point out that there are a couple of facts he got wrong. He says: \u2018The book consists of three short stories dating from 1958 to 1959\u2019. Actually it doesn\u2019t. There were only two Gerry Howson yarns\u2014novelettes\u2014published confusingly under three titles, of which the second, disapproved of by the American magazine editor, survives as the title of the American edition of this final book: The Whole Man<\/em>. Of these, the first has dwindled to pp. 143-159, twenty thousand words compressed into about four. That was City of the Tiger<\/em>. The other, completely rewritten, is sandwiched around it to make Book Three, \u2018Mens\u2019\u2014except that barring p. 115 the whole of the first \u00a0seventeen chapters are original material: i.e., the first two Books and part of the third as well.\u00a0 p. 127<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both of the novelettes (City of the Tiger<\/em> and The Whole Man<\/em>) appeared in the Carnell edited Science Fantasy<\/em> (#32<\/a> & #34<\/a>) and were then reprinted in the USA (in Fantastic Universe<\/em>, November<\/a> and December<\/a> 1959; The Whole Man<\/em> was retitled Curative Telepath<\/em> in that latter issue).<\/p>\n

5. David Pringle and Langdon Jones confirmed that Peristyle was Aldiss in the British Science Fiction Magazine Collectors group on Facebook, 16th<\/sup> September 2019.<\/p>\n

6. The ratings for this issue appeared in #155. The Harrison is a worthy winner, but the rest of the stories are in an odd sort of order:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

7. David Pringle mentioned J. G. Ballard’s review of Gold’s book in The Guardian<\/em> (21st<\/sup> May 1965) in the British Science Fiction Magazine Collectors Group:<\/p>\n

H. L. Gold’s collection of short stories is described as a how-to-do-it book for would-be science-fiction writers (a diminishing band), on the strength, one assumes, of the notes the author provides after each story rather than the stories themselves. Gold, the former editor of Galaxy<\/em>, who established the brittle and atmospheric stories which were the magazine’s hall mark, was noted for his rejection slips\u2014these brilliant and acid gems are far more worth publishing than his stories. Unluckily he is nowhere near so acerbic in assessing his own efforts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It sounds like Ballard was on the receiving end of a few of those rejection slips. \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB Luminist Other reviews:1 Graham Hall, Vector #34 (August 1965) _____________________ Editor, Michael Moorcock; Assistant Editor, Langdon Jones Fiction: Bill, the Galactic Hero (Part 1 of 3) \u2022 serial by Harry Harrison \u2217\u2217\u2217\u2217 The Source \u2022 short story by Brian W. Aldiss \u2217 And Worlds Renewed \u2022 short story by George Collyn \u2217\u2217 The Pulse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-worlds"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-2Sv","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11067"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11103,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11067\/revisions\/11103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}