{"id":13206,"date":"2020-09-11T17:34:46","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T17:34:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13206"},"modified":"2020-09-11T17:34:46","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T17:34:46","slug":"science-fantasy-78-november-1965","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13206","title":{"rendered":"Science Fantasy #78, November 1965"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Summary: The quality of this issue is better than than usual (and more consistent). Although there is nothing particularly outstanding, Josephine Saxton\u2019s debut story, The Wall<\/em>, is noteworthy.
\n[ISFDB page<\/a>] [Archive.org copy<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Other reviews:1<\/sup>
\nJohn Boston and Damien Broderick: Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-67<\/a><\/em> (p. 268 of 365)
\nGraham Hall, Vector #36<\/a><\/em>, November 1965, p. 12<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Kyril Bonfiglioli; Associate Editor, J. Parkhill-Rathbone<\/p>\n

Fiction:2<\/sup>
\nThe Day of the Doomed King<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Brian W. Aldiss \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Saga of Sid<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ernest Hill \u2217<\/strong>
\nBeyond Time\u2019s Aegis<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Craig A. Mackintosh and Brian Stableford [as by Brian Craig] \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe Wall<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Josephine Saxton \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nYesterdays\u2019 Gardens <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Johnny Byrne \u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Weirwoods<\/em><\/strong> (Part 2 of 2) \u2022 serial by Thomas Burnett Swann \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Keith Roberts
\nSF or Not SF? A Letter from a Reader<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Brian Stableford
\nLetter from a Reader<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Kenneth F. Slater<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

The Day of the Doomed King<\/em><\/strong> by Brian W. Aldiss is set, presumably, in medieval times, and starts with the wounded King Vukasan and his general, Jovann, taking refuge in a countryside church after Turkish forces have defeated their Serbian army. When the king wakes up after resting he sees a wooden screen in the room with a painted design, and the nearby lake through the window.
\nThe pair then leave for the capital to raise the alarm and another army but, en route, the king sees a magpie with a lizard in its mouth. The bird dies, and Vukasan thinks this as an omen, so he decides to detour to a nearby monastery to ask a seer what this means.
\nAfter the pair pass a shepherd boy, who points to signs of the pursuing Turks, and a cart with a dead driver, Vukasan still insists on going to the monastery rather than going straight to the capital. When Vukasan consults the seer, he gets two predictions, one good, one bad. The good one tells of a greater Serbian Empire:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou rule wisely, if without fire, and make a sensible dynastic marriage, securing the succession of the house of Josevic. The arts and religion flourish as never before in the new kingdom. Many homes of piety and learning and law are established. Now the Slavs come into their inheritance, and go forth to spread their culture to other nations. Long after you are dead, my king, people speak your name with love, even as we speak of your grandfather, Orusan. But the greatness of the nation you founded is beyond your imagining. It spreads right across Europe and the lands of the Russian. Our gentleness and our culture goes with it. There are lands across the sea as yet undiscovered; but the day will come when our emissaries will sail there. And the great inventions of the world yet to come will spring from the seed of our Serbian knowledge, and the mind of all mankind be tempered by our civility. It will be a contemplative world, as we are contemplative, and the love in it will be nourished by that contemplation, until it becomes stronger than wickedness.\u201d\u00a0 p. 16<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After this the king hears the other prediction\u2014where the Turks triumph and his reign is lost to history\u2014and the seer concludes by saying that he cannot tell which one will pass. He does, however, point out that the contemplative nature of the Vukasan\u2019s society will not help win the war against the Turks, and points to the King\u2019s delays and detours on his current journey.
\nVukasan (spoiler) then wakes to find he is still in the church that he and Jovann first stopped at, and realises the journey to the monastery was a dream, or a vision. He dies, and Jovann arranges a proper funeral. Because of this further delay, the future Serbian empire seen in the vision never happens.
\nThis is a well described, mainstreamish story, and one that offers a brief if tantalising alt-history vision.3<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Saga of Sid<\/em><\/strong> by Ernest Hill starts with a vicar watching a christening party from the vestry and thinking quite un-vicar like and borderline misanthropic thoughts before going in to officiate at the service. During this, the baby speaks:<\/p>\n

They gathered around: the Jacques, the godparents, the woman next door, Hetty\u2019s parents and old Molly Braddock absent from the cherry-picking with a sprained ankle. He took the child and held it, swathed in its christening robes, over the bowl that now for practical purposes had replaced the ancient Norman font.
\n\u201cThe child\u2019s name?\u201d he whispered.
\n\u201cThey are going to call me Sid,\u201d the baby said, \u201cI don\u2019t like it very much as a name, but if it keeps them happy . . .\u201d\u00a0 p. 21<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After the vicar\u2019s initial irritation at what he presumes is a practical joke, the story moves on to its next scene, an abortive kidnapping attempt by a bell-ringer who overheard the baby, and a passing circus owner to whom he has sold the information. Baby Sid acts dumb at this point and the bell ringer exits stage left, pursued by the circus owner.
\nThe rest of this rambling story charts Sid\u2019s development, and there are subsequently mentions of Asgard, monotheism, and various other subjects. Eventually, his mother takes him to the vicar to be exorcised, whereupon Sid learns he can\u2019t bear to be near mistletoe.
\nAfter the exorcism (spoiler) a transparent green flying saucer appears carrying Odin and Frigg, who inform Sid that his body hosts the soul of Baldur, which they rescued from \u201cHel.\u201d They take Baldur away, leaving Sid\u2019s body behind, which is now a normal infant.
\nThis is a very odd piece and, although it has some interesting parts, they don\u2019t fit together into a coherent or plausible story.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Beyond Time\u2019s Aegis<\/em><\/strong> by Craig A. Mackintosh and Brian Stableford begins with what seems to be gibberish:<\/p>\n

Time is not merely a dimension measuring the passage of days and nights. Time is a property of the minds of men. And because the race of Man is finite, so too, in a sense, is Time. The present is ever moving to the future, and one day there will come a time when it has run its course. Then, for mankind, there will be no more future.
\nThere will still be days and nights but, for the human race, Time will have stopped. There will be no more progress, no more hope for the future. Time will have exhausted the spirit which makes men build. And then cities will fall, and Man will cease to live\u2014he will only exist.
\nBut there are forces other than Time. And there will always be rebels.\u00a0 p. 39<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anyway, the rebel mentioned above calls himself the Firefly (\u201cbecause I reject this world and its torpor, and cast my own light\u201d), and he has an number of adventures in this strange future world while on a quest to find a time walker, a man who Firefly hopes can take him back to the past, and a better life.
\nInitially Firefly consults a seer called The Red Wolf Queen at an inn; next he talks to a man in the desert who appears to have part of the sun suspended between two towers; then he meets a warrior called the Condor, who has a shield with fine art painted on it, created by the latter\u2019s uncle, to whom the Condor later introduces the Firefly. Then there is a man dancing in the desert who is scared of his own shadow (and which later consumes the man); the Lungfish, who says that he and his kind are a bridge between mankind\u2019s current existence and the new one coming when time finally stops; a religious cult who think the moon brings night; and, finally, a giant who thinks he is God and who makes statues.
\nPenultimately, the Firefly comes to a village and, in one of the houses, talks to a dwarf who offers him the chance to travel in time. The Firefly accepts the offer and finds himself in a city with many people around him, while he hears the voices of all the characters he has encountered on his quest. When the experience stops he realises the dwarf drugged him.
\nFinally, the Firefly comes to the Crossroads of the World, a series of metalled roads, and gets lost in the mist. After blundering around for a while, he meets the Guide, who points towards The Peak of the Thunderer. There he finds the The Man Who Walked Through Time, but learns it is only possible to travel forward in time, not back. In the ensuing discussion The Man Who Walked Through Time tells the Firefly that the Lungfish is correct about what man\u2019s next evolution will be, and is part of a colony of mutants helping homo superior<\/em> to evolve. Firefly refuses to have anything to do with the project, but The Man Who Walked Through Time knows that the Firefly will come back because everyone else in the world is happy except him.
\nThis is, despite the description above, an entertaining enough read, and I was tempted to give it three stars\u2014but there\u2019s no escaping the fact that this story is episodic and far too padded. And God knows what all that allegory and symbolism is about\u2014it\u2019s a pretty typical example of the kind of overblown story you would expect from two smart undergraduates.4<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Wall<\/em><\/strong> by Josephine Saxton has a pretty good blurb from Bonfiglioli (or more likely from Parkhill-Rathbone), \u201cA story as vivid as a Kafka nightmare, and as true as you think.\u201d The piece begins by describing a saucer shaped valley with huge towering mountains at the sides, and a thick wall running through the middle:<\/p>\n

It was a very high wall, thirty feet in height, and it was very ancient in its stone, dark blue, hard, impenetrable, but rough and worn. Crystalline almost, its surfaces sprang this way and that, revealing whole lumps of glittering faceted hardness, with smooth places where mosses and orange lichens had got hold; and at its foot many creeping plants; tough twisted vines bearing clusters of ungathered raisins, convolvulus white and pink, and ivy in many colours, thick, glossy and spidery. Here and there stones had fallen from its old structure, two and three feet thick, and in one place, almost halfway across the floor of the valley, there was a hole through the wall, only six inches across its greatest measurement, and three feet from the floor, which was moist red clay on the north side, and dry white sand on the south side. The top of the wall was sealed to all climbers by rows of dreadful spikes which curved in every direction, cruel, needle sharp, glassy metal rapiers set into green bronze. They were impenetrable in every way, these swords, and stood endless guard between north and south.\u00a0 pp. 72-73<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On either side of the wall are a man and a woman, who can only communicate through the hole. The story describes the pair and their love for each other, even though their relationship is restricted to talking and holding hands.
\nEventually the man and woman decide to part, and they both move away from the wall to see if they can find other people with whom they can have a normal life. When they move up the slopes of either side of the valley, they meet people of the opposite sex, and make love with them. Afterwards they both look across the valley and see what the other has done, rush back to the wall, and start climbing it so they can be together. At the top of the wall (spoiler) they end up impaled on the spikes and then, at either side of them, they can see the bodies of many other couples along the top of the wall who have come to the same end\u2014something they never noticed before.
\nAfter they die the story ends with another couple moving towards the wall.
\nThis story impressed me less this time around than it has on previous readings, but that is probably because part of the story\u2019s power is the final image of the lovers impaled on the top of wall\u2014the effect of this is obviously lessened on the fourth (or fifth?) reading. And there are also parts of the story that felt like they could have done with some polishing. Still, this allegorical fantasy is one of the more notable stories the magazine published, and if you haven\u2019t come across it, it\u2019s worth a read.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Yesterdays\u2019 Gardens <\/em><\/strong>by Johnny Byrne starts with a young girl pestering her uncle to let her go outside into the garden which, we learn later, is a post-nuclear war wasteland (withered vegetation, the night a \u201cbig light\u201d came, etc., etc.):<\/p>\n

The child altered carefully the position of a bed. She didn\u2019t appear to hear him. \u201cWhy do you never go into the garden?\u201d she said suddenly.
\n\u201cGardens are bad for people. They\u2019re bad for the hair, bad for the bone and worse for little children.\u201d Uncle Ernie spoke as if he were remembering a well-remembered lesson. His niece echoed him parrotlike:
\n.<\/span>
\nLittle boys and
\ngirls should know
\nthat gardens in
\nair are bad they
\ngive pain in the
\nhead pain in the
\nbone and all the
\nlovely hair is
\nvanished by the
\nnasty jealous air
\n.<\/span>
\n\u201cWhy is the garden dry and yellow?\u201d She never looked at him when she asked this question. \u201cWhen I was little it was green and noisy. Why isn\u2019t it noisy now?\u201d\u00a0 p. 80<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story goes on like this for a while before the girl eventually gets a box she has been repeatedly asking the uncle for, and then talks to (what I presume was) an invisible friend.
\nParts of this are reasonably well done but it\u2019s all rather inconsequential, and I didn\u2019t entirely understand what happens at the end (if anything).<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Weirwoods<\/em><\/strong> by Thomas Burnett Swann concludes in this issue with a much shorter part (42 pp.) than the first, and starts with Tanaquil paralysed and surrounded by cats that Vel has put under a spell, including her pet Bast:<\/p>\n

She was not surprised when he sprang onto the couch and placed an affectionate paw on her arm. Often he slept beside her. Often he laid his head against her cheek. Dearest Bast, your fur is warmth on a cold night. Friendliness. Familiarity. But where is Arnth? Where is my father? They too need your protection.
\nHe prodded her with his paw. Then, foot over foot, he mounted her body and peered into her eyes. He was a heavy animal; it was hard to breathe with the weight of his pressing claws. She felt the heat of his breath and smelled an acrid, salty scent which she did not recognise. Not only his scent was different. He looked somehow\u2014alien. Perhaps she had frightened him with her stillness. On other nights she had cradled him in her arms. He peered at her with nothing which she could read. Slowly, with deliberate grace, like a trained leopard in one of the great circuses at Tarquinia, he raised his paw.
\nThen she recognized the smell on his fur. It was blood. The prodding paw, the slow advance, and now, the fixedly staring, almost hypnotic eyes, were gestures shrewdly calculated to tease and torture her. He did not intend to hurry his play. His eyes looked as cold as a topaz under the water. Perhaps they had always been cold. But now she was able to read them without the sentimentalizing haze of her affection, and she grasped the terrible truth that love can never be compelled, from man, from sprite, from beast; that one who loves, however she longs for requital, however long she waits, may receive in return the reverse of what she gives, the dark side of the moon.\u00a0 pp. 84-85<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Vegoia comes to Tanaquil and Arnth\u2019s rescue, and tells them that she only meant the cats to disable the guards so Vel could escape\u2014but now there has been a massacre in the town. She tells Arnth that he must take Tanaquil away before the slaves wake and take their revenge on any of the masters who are still alive.
\nAfter the drugs eventually wear off the pair have a difficult time getting out of the town, and face abuse and threats on the way out, but eventually reach the forest. There, they meet Vegoia again. Much to Tanaquil\u2019s chagrin (she now harbours carnal thoughts for Arnth), she watches as he and Vegoia embrace.
\nAfter this dramatic start to the second instalment, the rest is a downhill slide: Vegoia and Arnth spend the night together, and then she sends him to make love to Tanaquil. The visit is a disaster, with Tanaquil telling him she doesn\u2019t want Vegoia\u2019s \u201cleavings.\u201d Then Vel appears and attacks her, but dies when he jumps on a hatchet that Tanaquil picks up to defend herself.
\nThe rest of the story is even gloomier: Tanaquil grieves (unsure whether this is for Vel, or her father, or both), and then Vegoia falls ill: it soon becomes apparent she is dying. Vegoia later takes Arnth to a clearing in the forest that is special to her and, after she explains what is happening to her, she sends him away. That night a corn-sprite summons him, and he canoes across the lake to talk to her spirit, and later finds her body.
\nA month later, Arne and Tanaquil leave for Rome and, as the last passage shows, they are now a couple:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll go to Rome,\u201d she said. \u201cI understand that there\u2019s a shortage of women. Didn\u2019t the first Romans have to steal their mates from the Sabines?\u201d
\n\u201cBut that was a long time ago.\u201d
\n\u201cHow do you know there isn\u2019t still a shortage?\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s their problem,\u201d said Arnth firmly. \u201cYou\u2019re with me.\u201d
\n\u201cAm I, Arnth?\u201d
\nShe placed a hand on his arm. It was a comfortable hand. What had Vegoia said? \u201cIt is the measure of a man that he can move from woodfire to hearthfire without bitterness, without reproaching the gods, his enemies, or himself.\u201d He would never forget that brief, bright burning in a wintry forest, the blue and the amber.
\nBut hearthfires were also good.\u00a0 p. 126<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is an enjoyable novel, but it is nowhere as good as The Blue Monkeys<\/em>, and the first part is better than this second\u2014especially as the tragedy in the latter seems a little overdone. There is no particular explanation for Vegoia\u2019s demise (although she has a heart at the end, which may explain matters). Maybe Tanaquil\u2019s romantic rival just needed to disappear for plot reasons.5<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

This issue\u2019s Cover <\/em><\/strong>by Keith Roberts is one of his better pieces and, if you can drag your eyes away from the face in the painting (which I finally managed to do after a number of decades), you can see the magpie with the lizard in its beak lower left, which is part of a scene from the Brian W. Aldiss story.
\nSF or Not SF? A Letter from a Reader<\/em><\/strong> by Brian Stableford takes up the editorial space with one of those \u201cWhither SF\u201d letters. It starts with some pigeon holing before moving on to the magic of SF and its sense of wonder.
\nLetter From a Reader<\/em><\/strong> by Kenneth F. Slater is another long letter at the back of the issue (you wonder if Bonfiglioli has realised he can fill small holes in the line-up with reader\u2019s correspondence). Slater\u2019s letter is of more interest than Stableford\u2019s, and it makes a number of points. First off he has this to say about the end of the pulps:<\/p>\n

I must start by disagreeing with one point you make\u2014hack writing was not the death of the pulps\u2014the hack writer is still with us, ploughing the same old furrow for the pb editor. The pulps died because of a triple factor of economics (that old pulp paper just wasn\u2019t that cheap any more), and competition from three sources\u2014the \u2018comic\u2019 books\u2014the One-eyed Monster\u2014and the paperback. Incidentally, the hack still plies his trade for the comics, which are read by the same age-groups (the ten-year-old to the thirty-year-olds . . . and year by year that thirty goes up) who before the second WW were the main pulp market.\u00a0 p. 127<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After this he talks about the survival of the SF magazines, literary excellence vs. readability, and the overuse of certain tropes (\u201cthe overworked holocaust\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

There is nothing particularly outstanding in this issue (although the Saxton is noteworthy), but the overall quality is much better than normal.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

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

____________________<\/p>\n

1. John Boston (Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-67<\/a><\/em> p. 268-270) confirms that The Day of the Doomed King<\/em> is \u201ca retelling of a Serbian legend\u201d (he gleaned this information from Aldiss\u2019s The Twinkling of An Eye<\/em>) and says:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not my cup of tea but nonetheless very good, one of the early stories in which Aldiss began to shake the dust of SF as he had known it off his boots and to head for more ambiguous territory.\u00a0 p. 269<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019d suggest this process had been going on for at least a couple of years by this point (Shards<\/em>, Man on Bridge<\/em>, Pink Plastic Gods<\/em>, Man in his Time<\/em>, etc.).
\nAs for the others, he relays Bonfiglioli\u2019s summary of reader comments (in Science Fantasy<\/em> #80) about the Saxton, says the Hill is \u201cbetter and funnier than [its] description makes it sound,\u201d and adds that the Byrne is \u201cliterary and surreal\u201d and \u201ca return to form.\u201d (He also notes that this is Byrne\u2019s last appearance in the magazine and that he \u201cwould soon be snared by television.\u201d)
\nHe covers Mackintosh & Stableford\u2019s Beyond Time\u2019s Aegis <\/em>in more detail, noting that it was \u201cpublished when Brian Stableford was seventeen or so, [and] is readable though irritating.\u201d He adds that each of the encounters is \u201cmore colorful and allegorical than the one before.\u201d Boston says that he suspects the story was influenced by John Brunner\u2019s Earth is But a Star<\/em>.
\nHe also thinks that Robert\u2019s cover painting is his \u201cmost attractive [. . .] yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham Hall (Vector #36<\/em>, November 1965, p. 12) opens with the comment, \u201cApart from, or perhaps because of, the inexplicable absence of Kyril Bonfiglioli, this is a well-balanced issue\u201d\u2014before later ending the review by saying that the issue is \u201ca feather in Bonfiglioli\u2019s cap.\u201d
\nIn between he doesn\u2019t do much more than label the stories (Aldiss, \u201cfantasy in in its purest and most lyrical sense;\u201d Saxton, \u201ca story of frustrated love with its own wild logic;\u201d Swann, \u201ca flowery, verbose novel,\u201d etc.). He does say that that Ernest Hill\u2019s The Saga of Sid<\/em> is \u201cbeautiful mixture of Norse legends and straight humour, expertly stirred,\u201d that Mackintosh & Stableford\u2019s Beyond Time\u2019s Aegis<\/em> \u201cintroduces a plethora of unforgettable characters\u201d during its \u201callegorical wandering,\u201d and that Johnny Byrne\u2019s Yesterday\u2019s Gardens<\/em> is \u201cfar more mature than any of [his] other tales.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. My previous scores for the stories were (current scores in brackets):
\nThe Day of the Doomed King<\/em> by Brian W. Aldiss \u2217<\/strong> (\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>)
\nThe Saga of Sid <\/em>by Ernest Hill \u2217<\/strong> (\u2217<\/strong>)
\nBeyond Time\u2019s Aegis<\/em> by Craig A. Mackintosh and Brian Stableford \u2217<\/strong> (\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+)
\nThe Wall<\/em> by Josephine Saxton \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+)
\nYesterdays\u2019 Gardens <\/em>by Johnny Byrne \u2217<\/strong> (\u2217<\/strong>)
\nThe Weirwoods<\/em> (Part 2 of 2) by Thomas Burnett Swann \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>)<\/p>\n

3. Aldiss\u2019s The Eyes of the Doomed King<\/em> had a sequel, The Eyes of the Blind King<\/em>, in SF Impulse<\/em> #9, November 1966 (were it not for the name change in four issues time, this issue would have been Science Fantasy<\/em> #90). Presumably these stories were the by-products of his travel book, Cities and Stones: A Traveller\u2019s Yugoslavia<\/em> (1966).<\/p>\n

4. According to his Wikipedia page<\/a>, Brian Stableford graduated with a degree in biology from the University of York in 1969, so I assume Beyond Time\u2019s Aegis<\/em> was written during his first year there.
\nA later novel, Firefly<\/em>, was, according to ISFDB<\/a>, \u201ca rewrite of Stableford\u2019s first, previously unpublished novel, a fix-up with his first published novelette, Beyond Time\u2019s Aegis<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

5. The Ace Books volume of the Swann\u2019s The Weirwoods<\/em> (1967) states, \u201cA slightly different version of this novel was serialized In Science Fantasy<\/em> #77, 78, and is copyright \u00a9, 1965, by Science Fantasy<\/em>.\u201d
\nI didn\u2019t look at the text in detail but there is a slight OCR word count difference in the different versions (the number in brackets is the word count difference in the book versus serial version): Chapter 1 (+25), 2 (+124), 3 (+120), 4 (+83), 5 (+71), 6 (+125), 7 (-23), 8 (-24), 9 (-3), 10 (-56).
\nAfter reading this novel I went through the ISFDB listings<\/a> for Swann\u2019s novels, and was struck by how many of his books (until some of the relatively recent Wildside Press editions) only had a single English printing.*
\nI also note that all of Swann\u2019s books bar one, Queens Walk in the Dusk<\/em>, were paperback originals, so it is perhaps no wonder his work is almost entirely forgotten (I\u2019d also add that I\u2019m surprised at his omission from the Gollancz Masterworks of Fantasy series\u2014especially his novel Wolfwinter<\/em>).
\n* Queens Walk in the Dusk<\/em> (1977), Lady of the Bees<\/em> (1976), The Goat Without Horns<\/em> (1971), Wolfwinter<\/em> (1972), How Are the Mighty Fallen<\/em> (1974), The Not-World<\/em> (1975), Will-O-the Wisp<\/em> (1976), The Minikins of Yam<\/em> (1976), The Tournament of Thorns<\/em> (1976), The Gods Abide<\/em> (1976), The Dolphin and the Deep<\/em> (collection, 1968), Where is the Bird of Fire<\/em> (collection, 1970).
\nA handful of the others only had one subsequent reprinting or omnibus edition, and only a couple were published in both the USA and the UK. There were a small number of foreign language editions.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: The quality of this issue is better than than usual (and more consistent). Although there is nothing particularly outstanding, Josephine Saxton\u2019s debut story, The Wall, is noteworthy. [ISFDB page] [Archive.org copy] Other reviews:1 John Boston and Damien Broderick: Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-67 (p. 268 of 365) Graham Hall, Vector #36, November 1965, […]<\/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":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fantasy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-3r0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13206","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=13206"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13220,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13206\/revisions\/13220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}