{"id":14283,"date":"2022-04-09T12:57:52","date_gmt":"2022-04-09T12:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=14283"},"modified":"2022-04-09T12:57:52","modified_gmt":"2022-04-09T12:57:52","slug":"the-magazine-of-fantasy-and-science-fiction-314-july-1977","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=14283","title":{"rendered":"The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction #314, July 1977"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Summary: this is a special Harlan Ellison issue of F&SF<\/em>\u00a0but the best story here is the 1968 Cavalier<\/em> reprint from Eric Norden, The Primal Solution<\/em>, an intense tale about hypnotic regression and a Nazi-era Jewish survivor who lost his family in the Holocaust. Of the three Ellison stories the best is the nostalgic Jeffty is Five<\/em>, a multi award winning story but one which probably delivers most of its punch on first reading. Steven Utley also provides an atmospheric piece about Jack the Ripper, The Maw<\/em>.
\nThere are also a number of non-fiction pieces about Ellison, including a typical essay from the writer himself, a short and amusing biographical memoir from Robert Silverberg, and an appreciation and bibliography. Again, the best of the non-fiction isn\u2019t any of the Ellison material but Budrys multifaceted Books<\/em> column. The Letters<\/em> column is also worth a look.
\nA decidedly interesting issue if not a particularly good one.
\n[ISFDB link<\/a>]<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Edward L. Ferman; Assistant Editor, Anne W. Burke<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nJeffty Is Five <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 novelette by Harlan Ellison \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nAlive and Well and on a Friendless Voyage<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Harlan Ellison \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nWorking with the Little People<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Harlan Ellison \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nRansom <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Edward Wellen \u2217<\/strong>
\nVictor <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Bruce McAllister \u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Maw<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Steven Utley \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Maiden Made of Fire<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Jane Yolen \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Primal Solution<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint novelette by Eric Norden \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+<\/p>\n

Non-Fiction:
\nYou Don\u2019t Know Me, I Don\u2019t Know You<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Harlan Ellison
\nHarlan <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 essay by Robert Silverberg
\nHarlan Ellison: The Healing Art of Razorblade Fiction<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Richard Delap
\nHarlan Ellison: An F&SF Checklist<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Leslie Kay Swigart
\n.2001 \u2022<\/em><\/strong> film review by Baird Searles
\nBooks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Algis Budrys
\nCartoon<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Gahan Wilson
\nOf Ice and Men<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 science essay by Isaac Asimov
\nLetters<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

This issue is one of the \u201cspecial author\u201d editions that the magazine occasionally did from 1962 to 2015 and\u2014as you would expect from the size of the Harlan Ellison\u2019s ego\u2014contains more stories (three) and more non-fiction pieces than any of the previous ones (but not more pages\u2014that prize goes to James Blish with his long novella Midsummer Century<\/em>, I think).
\nThe first of Ellison\u2019s three stories is Jeffty is Five<\/em><\/strong>, which opens with a short \u201cthings aren\u2019t what they used to be\u201d passage about Clark Bars (a period confectionary) before going on to give a nostalgic account of the narrator Donny Horton\u2019s childhood years. During this, Horton talks about a young boy called Jeffty:<\/p>\n

When I was that age, five years old, I was sent away to my Aunt Patricia\u2019s home in Buffalo, New York for two years.
\n[. . .]
\nWhen I was seven, I came back home and went to find Jeffty, so we could play together.
\nI was seven. Jeffty was still five.
\nI didn\u2019t notice any difference. I didn\u2019t know: I was only seven.
\n[. . .]
\nWhen I was ten, my grandfather died of old age and I was \u201ca troublesome kid,\u201d and they sent me off to military school, so I could be \u201ctaken in hand.\u201d
\nI came back when I was fourteen. Jeffty was still five.
\n[. . .]
\nAt eighteen, I went to college.
\nJeffty was still five. I came back during the summers, to work at my Uncle Joe\u2019s jewelry store. Jeffty hadn\u2019t changed. Now I knew there was something different about him, something wrong, something weird. Jeffty was still five years old, not a day older.
\nAt twenty-two I came home for keeps. To open a Sony television franchise in town, the first one. I saw Jeffty from time to time. He was five.\u00a0 p. 9-10<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After Horton settles back into town he occasionally takes Jeffty out to the movies, etc., and recounts the awkward visits to his house afterwards, where the parents are obviously troubled by their strange son:<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what to do any more,\u201d Leona said. She began crying. \u201cThere\u2019s no change, not one day of peace.\u201d
\nHer husband managed to drag himself out of the old easy chair and went to her. He bent and tried to soothe her, but it was clear from the graceless way in which he touched her graying hair that the ability to be compassionate had been stunned in him. \u201cShhh, Leona, it\u2019s all right. Shhh.\u201d But she continued crying. Her hands scraped gently at the antimacassars on the arms of the chair.
\nThen she said, \u201cSometimes I wish he had been stillborn.\u201d
\nJohn looked up into the corners of the room. For the nameless shadows that were always watching him? Was it God he was seeking in those spaces? \u201cYou don\u2019t mean that,\u201d he said to her, softly, pathetically, urging her with body tension and trembling in his voice to recant before God took notice of the terrible thought. But she meant it; she meant it very much.\u00a0 p. 15<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story\u2019s major development occurs when Horton finds Jeffty in his den under the porch and sees what looks like a brand new\u00a0Captain Midnight<\/em>\u00a0Secret Decoder Badge (not made since 1956). Jeffty tells Horton that it arrived in the mail that day and, when pressed further, says that he ordered the ring so he could decode the message on the next Captain Midnight radio show (not transmitted after 1950). When Horton asks to listen to the show, Jeffty points out that it isn\u2019t on that night (it is the weekend), so Horton returns a few days later:<\/p>\n

He was listening to the American Broadcasting Company, 790 kilocycles, and he was hearing\u00a0Tennessee Jed<\/em>, one of my most favorite programs from the Forties, a western adventure I had not heard in twenty years, because it had not existed for twenty years.
\nI sat down on the top step of the stairs, there in the upstairs hall of the Kinzer home, and I listened to the show. It wasn\u2019t a rerun of an old program, because there were occasional references in the body of the drama to current cultural and technological developments, and phrases that had not existed in common usage in the Forties: aerosol spray cans, laseracing of tattoos, Tanzania, the word \u201cuptight.\u201d
\nI could not ignore the fact. Jeffty was listening to a new segment of\u00a0Tennessee Jed<\/em>. pp. 18-19<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When Horton checks his car radio he can\u2019t pick up the program, and realises that Jeffty is not only not aging, but seems to live in a world that is largely like his childhood one (with the minor contemporary changes mentioned above).
\nHorton spends the next part of the story experiencing life in Jeffty\u2019s world: he hears a number of radio programs from his youth,\u00a0Terry and the Pirates<\/em>,1<\/sup>\u00a0Superman<\/em>,\u00a0Tom Mix<\/em>, etc.; he goes to the movies to see Humphrey Bogart in\u00a0Slayground<\/em>\u00a0(a movie of a Donald Westlake novel that was never made); he eats and drinks the products of the time (Quaker Puffed Wheat Sparkies); and\u2014perhaps the only part of this world that particularly resonated with me\u2014he sees new issues of pulp SF magazines:<\/p>\n

Twice a month we went down to the newsstand and bought the current pulp issues of\u00a0The Shadow<\/em>,\u00a0Doc Savage<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Startling Stories<\/em>. Jeffty and I sat together and I read to him from the magazines. He particularly liked the new short novel by Henry Kuttner, \u201cThe Dreams of Achilles,\u201d and the new Stanley G. Weinbaum series of short stories set in the subatomic particle universe of Redurna. In September we enjoyed the first installment of the new Robert E. Howard Conan novel, ISLE OF THE BLACK ONES, in Weird Tales; and in August were only mildly disappointed by Edgar Rice Burroughs\u2019 fourth novella in the Jupiter series featuring John Carter of Barsoom\u2014\u201cCorsairs of Jupiter.\u201d But the editor of\u00a0Argosy All-Story Weekly<\/em>\u00a0promised there would be two more stories in the series, and it was such an unexpected revelation for Jeffty and me, that it dimmed our disappointment at the lessened quality of the current story.\u00a0 p. 21<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Robert E. Howard was already long dead by the 1950s, so I\u2019m not sure how he is still alive in Jeffty\u2019s world\u2014one of the inconsistencies of this piece, along with the anomalous intrusions of the present day.)
\nHorton (spoiler) experiences the best of both worlds for a while (he still lives in the \u201cnormal\u201d world while being able to savour Jeffty\u2019s) but, of course, this charmed existence eventually slips through his hands on the day they go to the cinema to see\u00a0The Demolished Man<\/em>. The pair detour via Horton\u2019s Sony store and find it so busy that Horton has to help out, and Jeffty is parked in front of thirty-three TVs showing modern shows. After some time Horton checks on Jeffty and sees that he looks unwell (\u201cI should have known better. I should have understood about the present and the way it kills the past\u201d). Horton gets him away from the TVs by telling Jeffty to go on to the cinema while Horton attends to a final customer. However, while Jeffty is queueing for the movie, he is beaten up by two youths after he borrows a radio and leaves it stuck in his world.
\nHorton takes the badly injured Jeffty home, and then, in an ending that is not as clear as it could be, Jeffty dies of his injuries.2<\/sup>
\nThis story won that year\u2019s Hugo and Nebula Awards, and I think I can see why: Ellison was, at that point in time, at the top of his game (in my opinion the period from the mid-60s to the mid-70s) and very popular; the story was from a special author issue of\u00a0F&SF<\/em>; and, finally, the subject matter would have been hugely appealing to those of a similar generation who were nostalgic for their lost pasts.3<\/sup>
\nPersonally, I liked the story well enough, but I wouldn\u2019t say it is the strongest of his tales for a number of reasons: while the gimmick is a neat one, the ending is weak and somewhat contrived (the TV set route would have been a better way to go); it could do with another draft (it is a little too long, and some of the sentences sound odd, e.g., \u201cthe ability to be compassionate had been stunned in him\u201d from the passage above just sounds clumsy);4<\/sup>\u00a0the couple\u2019s dislike of their own child is unconvincing (most parents seem to love their children regardless of their infirmities and shortcomings); and, finally, I am not a huge fan of nostalgia (insert your own \u201cit ain\u2019t what it used to be\u201d joke here).5<\/sup>
\nSo, overall, this classic is a good story, but not a great one (although it impressed me more on first reading).
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Good). 8,200 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Alive and Well and On a Friendless Voyage<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Harlan Ellison (F&SF<\/em>, July 1977) begins with a man called Moth coming out of his cabin on an exotic spaceship and into the lounge. There, he goes from table to table talking to different groups of people (\u201cthis ship of strangers\u201d) about various traumatic episodes from his life.
\nThe first of these sees Moth listen to a couple who tell him not to blame himself for letting his child die; then he talks to an abusive and unsympathetic young man about a younger partner who cuckolded him; in his next conversation he tells a woman about how he failed to intervene in a fire in an old folks home; and then he reveals to a fat man how he took a female employee away from her husband and child (and how she later committed suicide).
\nThere are a couple of more confessionals before he tells a woman that:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve come to realize we\u2019re all alone,\u201d he said.
\nShe did not reply. Merely stared at him.
\n\u201cNo matter how many people love us or care for us or want to ease our burden in this life,\u201d Moth said, \u201cwe are all, all of us, always alone. Something Aldous Huxley once said, I\u2019m not sure I know it exactly, I\u2019ve looked and looked and can\u2019t find the quote, but I remember part of it. He said: \u2018We are, each of us, an island universe in a sea of space.\u2019 I think that was it.\u00a0 p. 36<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the end of the voyage all the passengers disembark except Moth, who asks if anyone wants to take his place for the rest of the\u00a0metaphor<\/s>\u00a0voyage. No-one volunteers.
\nI\u2019m not a fan of existential mopery, but this is probably a reasonably well done example if you like that sort of thing. (At least the navel-gazing here is mostly about traumatic events and not the more usual\u2014for the current SF field\u2014 boyfriend, body, parental or petty political concerns.)
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u00a0(Average). 4,100 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Working With the Little People<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Harlan Ellison (F&SF<\/em>, July 1977) is an\u00a0Unknown<\/em>-type fantasy in which the highly successful author Noah Raymond finds he is unable to write. While Raymond worries about what he is going to do, he wakes up one night to hear his typewriter in action; when he goes through to his office he sees eleven tiny people (we later find out they are gremlins) jumping up and down on the keyboard.
\nTheir foreman explains to Raymond that they are there to write his stories for him (after some back and forth with the other cockney-sounding little people, a short explanation of gremlin history, and the fact they have been watching him ever since he wrote a story about gremlins).
\nLater on in the story Raymond also learns that human belief is what keeps the gremlins alive (the \u201ca god only exists if they have believers\u201d theme that features in other Ellison stories), and that, over time, they have changed their form to stay in human consciousness.
\nAt the end of the story (nineteen years later) the gremlins tell Raymond (spoiler) that they have run out of stories as they haven\u2019t been writing fiction but recounting their history. They also explain that, not only does human belief keep gremlins in existence, their belief in humans keeps humanity in existence\u2014and that without stories to write for humans, gremlin belief will wane. The tale ends with Raymond writing the history of the human world for the gremlins to read.
\nThis an okay piece of light humour with a final gimmick twist that shouldn\u2019t be examined too closely (it makes for a weak ending). The best of it is some of the publishing related snark at the beginning:<\/p>\n

[He] did not know what he would do with the remainder of his life.
\nHe contemplated going the Mark Twain route, cashing in on what he had already written with endless lecture tours. But he wasn\u2019t that good a speaker, and frankly he didn\u2019t like crowds of more than two people. He considered going the John Updike route, snagging himself a teaching sinecure at some tony Eastern college where the incipient junior editors of unsuspecting publishing houses were still in the larval stage as worshipful students. But he was sure he\u2019d end up in a mutually destructive relationship with a sexually liberated English literature major and come to a messy finish. He dandled the prospect of simply going the Salinger route, of retiring to a hidden cottage somewhere in Vermont or perhaps in Dorset, of leaking mysterious clues to a major novel forthcoming some decade soon, but he had heard that Pynchon and Salinger were both mad as a thousand battlefields, and he shivered at the prospect of becoming a hermit.\u00a0 p. 40<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u00a0(Average). 4,250 words<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The three Ellison stories are followed by a non-fiction section about the author (see comments below), and the other stories in the remainder of the magazine lead off with Ransom\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>by Edward Wellen (F&SF<\/em>, July 1977). This has a good hook:<\/p>\n

First the finger, then the ear, then the nose.
\nBut before them, the tape. The tape came in the mail that caught up with the traveling mansion of Peter Kifeson. The tape showed a trembling Junior Kifeson in a limbo shot\u2014no background visible, no furnishings. A two-shot, with the light on Junior and the masked man holding him at blaserpoint, and darkness all around them. You had the sense, however, that this scene took place in a small room.
\nOld Peter Kifeson watched, listened, and chuckled. Twenty-five million credits, indeed. But at least and at last Junior was thinking big, showing drive. About time. After all, Junior must be all of sixty.\u00a0 p. 92<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When Kifeson later receives a finger in the post he publicises the fact but refuses to pay the ransom (he still thinks his son is behind the extortion attempt). When an ear and then a nose arrive, Kifeson changes his mind about his son\u2019s involvement but continues to hold out.
\nThe police (spoiler) eventually find the blackmailer and a dead Junior. Kifeson decides to clone his son, and the last couple of paragraphs make an unclear point about parenthood and filial love.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u00a0(Mediocre). 1,500 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Victor\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>by Bruce McAllister (F&SF<\/em>, July 1977) opens with worm-like aliens landing on Earth; these initially appear to be indestructible, as when they absorb sufficient material or energy they grow and replicate. However, the professor who is the father of the narrator\u2019s girlfriend comes up with a solution\u2014a whistle that, when it is blown and the sound transmitted through loudspeakers, summons huge flocks of birds to eat the worms. The narrator and his girlfriend figure this out after the Professor falls into a coma, and the pair go on to save the world.
\nThese events would, in most SF stories, be the complete arc of the piece\u2014but in this one we are just half way through, and the rest of it telescopes through time and illustrates an anti-climactic domestic aftermath. First, the media attention on the couple fades; then the Professor gets old and dies; later, the narrator and his girlfriend have problems with their teenage kids and eventually separate, etc.
\nThis is an interesting idea but it isn\u2019t a particularly engrossing one.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u00a0(Average). 2,800 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Maw\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>by Steven Utley (F&SF<\/em>, July 1977) opens in Jack-the-Ripper territory:<\/p>\n

He came on the midnight air, a mist-man, a wraith stretched across the centuries, a shadow two hundred years removed from the flesh that cast it, a wisp of smoky gray nothingness drifting down out of the sky, settling to earth in the darkness of an alley between two decrepit houses. Behind him in the alley, an emaciated mongrel dog sensed his almost-presence and backed away, growling. He stared at it for a moment, his eyes twin patches of oily blackness floating on a face that was only a filmy blob, then pressed his hands against sooty bricks and dug very nearly insubstantial fingers into cracks in the mortar. Time let him go at last, surrendered its hold on him, gave him over completely to the moment that was 11:58.09 p.m., Thursday, November 8, 1888.\u00a0 p. 110<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The mist-man drifts about the city (we get bits of local colour and Jack-the-Ripper lore) until (spoiler) he arrives at the scene of the Ripper\u2019s last victim. There, the mist-man waits. When Jack and the victim arrive, and he is just about to kill her, the mist-man descends from the ceiling and enters him. The mist-man explains to Jack that he isn\u2019t killing the women for the reasons he thinks he is, but to feed a maw that stretches across people and time.
\nAfter Jack finishes butchering the woman (which is described in grisly detail) he leaves, and the last section has him remonstrate with the mist-man for revealing the true reason for his bloodlust. The mist-man says to him, in a biter-bit line, \u201cIt was terribly cruel of me, wasn\u2019t it, Jack?\u201d
\nThis piece is more of an atmospheric history lesson than a story, but it it\u2019s an absorbing piece nonetheless.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Good). 2,850 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Maiden Made of Fire<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Jane Yolen (F&SF<\/em>, July 1977) is a short squib (it\u2019s less than three pages long) that tells of a coal burner called Ash who spends a lot of time staring into the flames of his fires. One evening he sees a maiden (glowing \u201cred and gold\u201d) in a fire and pulls her out, burning his hands in the process.
\nAsh learns she is a fire maiden, calls her Brenna, and builds more fires so she can move around more freely (she can only move over fire and embers).
\nThe story resolves (spoiler) when the village elders turn up and complain that their supply of charcoal has ceased. When Ash points to Brenna the elders cannot see her, and Ash\u2019s sudden doubts about her reality causes her to fade. Ash looks at the villagers and then at Brenna, puts the doubt from his mind, and jumps into the fire to join her.
\nA pleasant but slight tale, even if there is some personal belief metaphor buried here.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u00a0(Average). 1,200 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The Primal Solution<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Eric Norden (Cavalier<\/em>, January 1968; reprinted\u00a0F&SF<\/em>, July 1977) begins with a long quote from\u00a0Mein Kampf<\/em>\u00a0about how Hitler changed from a \u201cweak-kneed cosmopolitan to an anti-Semite\u201d.
\nThe epistolary story that follows then opens with a diary entry by the story\u2019s narrator, Dr Karl Hirsch, at a psychiatric hospital in Tel Aviv in 1959. In these entries we learn that Hirsch\u2019s research project on psychological regression in is trouble, and that one of his colleagues is trying to get it shut down.
\nWe also learn that Hirsch is a holocaust survivor whose family was murdered during the war:<\/p>\n

[The psychological cases] who remained were the hopeless cases, the last souvenirs of the camps. They were the only ones with whom I identified, the last links with my own past. I cherished those human vegetables, for they froze time and linked me to Ruth and Rachel and David. They had survived, but I forgave them, for they never had the indecency to really live.\u00a0 p. 136<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After the \u201cnormalization\u201d in the midfifties I retreated more than ever into pure research. The healthy faces of this new generation, born away from barbed wire and the stench of Cyklon-B, were a constant reproach to me. In the streets of Haifa or Tel Aviv I was almost physically ill. Everywhere around me surged this stagnant sea of bustling, empty faces, rushing to the market, shopping, flirting, engrossed in the multitudinous trivialities of a normal life. With what loathing must the drowned-eyed ghosts spat into Europe\u2019s skies from a thousand chimneys view this blasphemous affirmation! What was acclaimed a \u201cmiracle\u201d was to me a betrayal. We had, all of us, broken our covenant with death.\u00a0 p. 135<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A new patient called Miriam comes into Hirsch\u2019s care, a seventeen-year-old girl from Yemen who was raped by her Uncle when she was aged nine and who has been in schizoid withdrawal ever since. Hirsch subsequently treats Miriam (who reminds him of his daughter Rachel), by sedating her and using hypno-therapy tapes to get her to mentally revisit the rape event. During a critical point in the experiment Miriam appears to die\u2014at which point Hirsch\u2019s angina makes him black out\u2014but when he recovers consciousness she is alive, and awake.
\nWhen Hirsch later checks her notes he notices that the uncle committed suicide shortly after the rape incident. Hirsch remembers differently\u2014the uncle went to jail\u2014but when he checks what he thinks are the facts of the case with two of his contacts, they cannot remember talking to him about the matter. Hirsch realises after talking to Miriam (\u201cI made him dead\u201d) that she must have projected her personality back in time and into the mind of the uncle\u2014and made him slit his own throat.
\nAfter this engaging first half, the next part of the story (spoiler) sees Hirsch plan to go back in time to save his family:<\/p>\n

I am determined to go ahead. If I succeed, these notes will in any case blink out of existence with me and my world. They will belong to Prime Time \u2014 dusty tombstones marking what-might-have-been. And I will be \u2014 where? Sitting somewhere in Germany with my grandchildren playing at my feet, David and Rachel\u2019s children, and Ruth in the kitchen simmering a schnitzel on the stove? Or, just as likely, dead years before, felled by disease or accident. It makes little difference. I have been dead for years, it is only the manner of death that matters. And whatever happens to Ruth or Rachel or David, they shall never have seen
\nAuschwitz.\u00a0 p. 144<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hirsch finds out as much as he can about the Adolf Hitler of 1913 (his intended target), and prepares his laboratory to make the trip\u2014against the ticking clock of the administrators trying to close down his project. Then, just before he goes into the laboratory to start the transfer, Hirsch has doubts:<\/p>\n

Suddenly, I feel sad. For the first time since the project began I experience something like regret. I look across the terrace at Zvi and his friends laughing under the lantern-laced trees, and I wonder if they know that they have just met their murderer. It is my duty to liquidate their world \u2014 to snuff it out like a candle. If I succeed, how many of them will see life \u2014 and where? What women will never meet their intended husbands; what children will never be born? Will I not be committing a genocide as real as Hitler\u2019s, and even more final? But I owe no debt to them, any of them. There is only Rachel, and David, and Ruth. To wipe the reality of Auschwitz from the blank slates of their futures is worth a thousand Zvis, and his country, his poor Israel, destined to die stillborn in the placid hearts of a generation that never looked through barbed wire, never heard the tramp of jackboots. And my personality will dissolve along with theirs \u2014 whatever path I follow after 1913, what is me today shall never exist. And yet, if I could only see Rachel and David in my mind. I remember their voices, even their touch, but their faces dissolve into mist whenever I attempt to capture them. They are all I have left of reality, and yet they are the substance of shadows. Am I extinguishing a world to remember the faces of my children? \u00a0pp. 147-148<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The final section is prefaced by a letter from a colleague of Hirsch\u2019s, and refers to a document from 1913 supposedly written by him. This fantastic account sees Hirsch tell of his arrival in Hitler\u2019s mind and how he seizes control of, and humiliates, the future Fuhrer (Hirsch makes Hitler crawl on all fours, pull out his hair, tear at his private parts and, when they go out into the Vienna streets, drink water from the gutters when other pedestrians pass by).
\nWhen Hirsch then tries to kill Hitler by making him jump off a bridge and drown, Hitler mentally counter-attacks and repels Hirsch. Thereafter Hirsch is a passive passenger in Hitler\u2019s mind (apart from some limited control when he is asleep). During this period Hitler realises that the invader in his head is Jewish, and rationalises that he will only be free of this malign force if he kills all Jews.
\nAt the end of the story Hirsch realises that his actions are responsible for Hitler\u2019s anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and the death of his family\u2014and that he is trapped in Hitler\u2019s mind, doomed to watch the terrible events of the future unfold.
\nThis is a cracking read, fast-paced and intense, and a piece where the Hirsch\u2019s sense of loss is palpable. It also has an inventive twist ending, albeit one that may prove highly problematic for some readers.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Very Good to Excellent). 10,300 words.<\/p>\n

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

As I mentioned above the special author issues of F&SF<\/em> always contain non-fiction articles about the featured writer (usually an appreciation and a bibliography),6<\/sup> but this issue leads off with an essay by Ellison himself, You Don\u2019t Know Me, I Don\u2019t Know You<\/em><\/strong>. This is a typically forthright piece (i.e. extended rant) where he covers all the usual bases: the essay begins with a list of all the stories that he has published in F&SF<\/em> and the fuss they have caused (controversy); why Ed Ferman keeps buying and publishing them\u2014\u201devery time I run one of your stories I have twice as many people sign on as I do cancel\u201d (self-aggrandizement); the labelling of his books as \u201csci-fi\u201d (chippyness); the fact that he knows he is always \u201cshooting off his big mouth about some fancied crime or other\u201d (pre-emptive defensiveness); a lengthy examination of an issue of Publishers Weekly and its relative lack of advertising or notices for SF writers (ignored and unvalued); and an encounter with an obnoxious fan at a convention (vile strangers and me).
\nAfter nine pages of this sort of thing he eventually moves on to discussing the stories:<\/p>\n

[Let] me tell you where the three new stories in this issue of F&SF<\/em> came from. In that way, at least, I\u2019ll save myself from having to endure the boring recitations in half-witted fanzines that purport to be knowledgeable analyses of what I really meant, analyses of the twisted psychosexual references that fill the stories. I\u2019ll free myself of having to bear that silliness, at least for these three stories. Which means all the rest are still fair game for the functional illiterates who do most of the fanzine critiques.\u00a0 p. 58<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We learn that Working with the Little People<\/em> was written in one sitting in the front window of a store in Charing Cross (Ellison does this stunt quite often, and you can usually tell which stories have started life that way) and:<\/p>\n

It is, I suppose, an open letter to a famous fantasy writer on whose wonderful stories I grew up. This writer is a person who has become a good friend, someone I love. And because of my respect and affection for this writer, and because of the germinal effect on my writing that the body of this writer\u2019s work had on me during my formative years, it is impossible for me to say to this writer, you stopped writing your best work over twenty years ago. It is impossible for me to take this writer aside and say, \u201cJust for a moment let\u2019s forget that we\u2019re both eminently successful, that we\u2019re canonized by fans and critics. They don\u2019t know. But we know. We know what each of us is writing, and we know when the time has come that we\u2019re only indulging ourselves because our fame is such that they\u2019ll buy whatever we write, no matter how ineffective or slapdash. For just a moment let\u2019s forget we\u2019re who we are, and just look at what you\u2019ve been doing for twenty years!\u201d No, it\u2019s not possible for me to tell this writer of classic stature that somehow the publicity and the fame and the totemization have gotten in the way of writing the stories that made the fame in the first place.\u00a0 p. 58<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later, after short discussion of fame, Ellison continues:<\/p>\n

Perhaps the writer will recognize what I\u2019m doing in \u201cWorking with the Little People.\u201d And perhaps I\u2019ll get a phone call and this writer, with whom I talk frequently, will say, \u201cI read your story. Did you mean me?\u201d And I\u2019ll say, fearfully, \u201cYeah.\u201d And perhaps the writer will say, \u201cLet\u2019s talk. I\u2019m not sure you know what the hell you\u2019re talking about, but at least you cared enough to say it and risk my wrath and the loss of my friendship; so at least let\u2019s sit down alone and thrash it out.\u201d\u00a0 p. 59<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, that\u2019s exactly what will happen! I\u2019d add that Ellison\u2019s point is not at all obvious from the story, so I hope the writer (identified by others I asked as Ray Bradbury) is a telepath.
\nEllison finishes by talking about Alive and Well on a Friendless Voyage<\/em>, written immediately after his third marriage ended (five months long, June to November 1976), and Jeffty is Five<\/em> (spawned from a word association game and about \u201closing so many wonderful things that meant so much to us and which we took so much for granted\u201d).
\nIt was interesting to read this essay again because it reminded me of why I stopped buying Ellison\u2019s books (and largely stopped reading his essays and letters) in the early 1980s: too shouty, too aggrieved, too hyperbolic. It became very, very wearing.
\nFollowing Ellison\u2019s essay is an entertaining biographical sketch by Robert Silverberg, Harlan<\/em><\/strong>, which starts with both writers in the same apartment block in 1950s New York and goes forward in time. There are several amusing anecdotes, including the time Silverberg saved Ellison\u2019s life:<\/p>\n

Why he was having so much trouble with the current that day, while I was making my way fairly easily in it, I don\u2019t understand. But he seemed to be at the end of his endurance. I looked toward shore and caught sight of Judith Merril and a few other workshoppers; I waved to them, trying to indicate we were in trouble, and they blithely waved back. (Perhaps they understood the message and were exercising the most effective form of literary criticism.) Since none of them budged toward the water, it was all up to me. So I swam toward Harlan, grabbed him somehow, and hauled him through the water until my feet were touching bottom. It was half an hour or so before he felt strong enough to leave the sand flat for the return journey. Later that day, some of the demigods soundly rebuked me for my heroism, but I have only occasionally regretted saving Harlan from drowning.\u00a0 p. 68<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Harlan Ellison: The Healing Art of Razorblade Fiction<\/em><\/strong> is an essay by Richard Delap that is as full of hyperbole as Ellison\u2019s essay:<\/p>\n

Even in the early 60s it was still fighting an uphill battle against a reputation for garish cover paintings of women in steel brassieres and tentacled monsters whose sole occupation seemed to be trying to get a peek at what was under those brassieres. Science fiction which seemed to sway toward any serious intention was hustled into the mainstream with due haste \u2014 witness 1984<\/em>, Brave New World<\/em>, Earth Abides<\/em>, etc. \u2014 where it was shielded by the literary lions who insisted that it was not sf because it was good literature.
\nThe wall was tentatively breeched as the decade marched into history, but it was not until 1967 that Harlan Ellison lined up the science fiction cannons, an anthology of all new stories by the best writers in the field, and blasted the wall all to hell. Dangerous Visions<\/em> did not meet with unanimous acclaim, either in the field of sf or out of it, but it created reverberations that have echoed and re-echoed continuously ever since. Thirty-two aggressive and intelligent writers came out shooting and the tentacled beasties were blasted to bits, the steel brassieres evaporated in an instant.\u00a0 p. 78<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Harlan Ellison: An F&SF Checklist<\/em><\/strong> by Leslie Kay Swigart is a comprehensive bibliography of Ellison\u2019s work. At the time of publication these were hugely useful (no ISFDB in those days).
\nThe final piece of special issue material is the Cover<\/em><\/strong> is by Kelly Freas, which features Ellison as the writer in Working with the Little People<\/em>. It\u2019s an effective piece by Freas, and atypical work.
\nThe rest of the non-fiction leads off with .2001 by<\/em><\/strong> Baird Searles, which is about the TV debut of 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em>, and how he refused to watch it in that format. Searles thought much more of the film than I did (dull, dull, dull, incomprehensible).
\nHe provides this interesting snippet about the original version:<\/p>\n

And I might also indulge myself further in this orgy of reminiscence by adding that I have seen twice, because of the screening and premiere viewings, the famous lost 19 minutes of 2001 which Kubrick, judiciously or injudiciously, cut from the film after about a week.\u00a0 p. 91\/p. 109<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Books<\/em><\/strong> by Algis Budrys opens with commentary on the publishing phenomenon that was The Sword of Shannara<\/em> by Terry Brooks:<\/p>\n

This very review at this time instead of next month, and in different terms, is the result Ballantine\u2019s supplying me \u2014 as well as scores of much more influential people \u2014 with an advance set of bound pageproofs whose production cost and handling charges might finance an outfit like Advent: Publishers or T-K Graphics for a year. Which is to say nothing about the additional sums involved in the special booklet for retailers, the floor display stands for the Ballantine edition, the store-window poster of the Hildebrandt illustrations, the special postcard mailing, or the national advertising budget.\u00a0 p. 103<\/p>\n

Is Sword<\/em> harbinging a forthcoming flourish of fiction derived from The Lord of the Rings<\/em> in the way that Campbellian SF derived from H.G. Wells\u2019s scientific romances? Is there in fact an entire generation of Frodo fans maturing into a cadre of artists who are about to flower in prose and its ancillary creations, so that the bounds of \u201cSF\u201d will expand markedly? Will this suck creativity away from older forms, such as newsstand science fiction? Will there be a Frodo Magazine? Will there be (many) (successful) competitors of it? Will the university of one\u2019s choice accept taxonomic studies of it as PhD credentials? Might one establish a teaching guide? How about a writers\u2019 conference? A TV series? A convention at which the series actors discourse on the nature of Reality, and plastic chainmail shirts are sold to ten-year-olds?\u00a0 p. 104<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Budrys eventually gets around to the book itself, and notes that it was written in two parts, the first half while the writer was in college, and the remainder years later. He says that the latter part is the stronger (less time spent on getting things in order), but mentions several quibbles (the use of \u201cdecimate\u201d, \u201cdwarf\/dwarves\u201d, \u201cwhom\u201d, \u201cholocaust\u201d, etc.). He concludes by saying that is not a great book but \u201csimply a good one of its kind.\u201d
\nThere are three SF novels reviewed Budrys. He doesn\u2019t have much to say about The Starcrossed<\/em> by Ben Bova (mildly amusing), but he takes some time to put Doorways in the Sand<\/em> by Roger Zelazny and Under Pressure<\/em> by Frank Herbert in perspective:<\/p>\n

Doorways<\/em>, which is only moderately cute, only average convoluted, and rather straightforwardly told, is one of the first hopeful signs from this author in some time. It has an ending which appears to have been paced into the scenario at some point earlier than the day it was typed, and it has a protagonist who is rather more than a collection of tics. It represents a return toward the power Zelazny once displayed, plus a maturation that runs deeper than witticism. It is not a reversion, though that would have been nice for us, but a progression, which is nice for Zelazny, as well as us. You cannot keep a good man down.
\nI have no idea what produced the slapdash, eccentric work of the past few years. I have some understanding of the external and internal pressures undergone by artists, and I assume they apply even more forcefully to someone of Zelazny\u2019s high stature. Therefore I sympathize. But a point had been reached at which it was time to shed a tear for the reader, as well.\u00a0 p. 108<\/p>\n

This is not the Frank Herbert of the Dune series, nor, thank God, of the half-dozen or so soporifics he turned out while trying to find what would work better. Eventually he found Dune World<\/em>, and OK, that\u2019s fine, but why he wanted to depart from the basic attack he employed in Under Pressure<\/em>, one would be hard put to understand.
\nIt is a book with a jargony, dull beginning, and a last paragraph which, mixed with lard, could frost a Ladies\u2019 Auxiliary cake. In between, it is one of the finest science fiction suspense novels ever written, not at all out-dated \u2014 in fact, enhanced in relevance \u2014 by the times and events that have followed its first publication.\u00a0 p. 109<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is also a brief mention of an essay (which Budrys highly recommends to writers) in a collection by Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder<\/em>.
\nThis is a cracking review column by Budrys, and one which has everything you might want as a reader: interesting reviews of the books in hand; how the books fit into the authors\u2019 wider careers; and several snippets of publishing news and analysis.
\nThe Cartoon<\/em><\/strong> by Gahan Wilson has spectators watching what looks like a military parade populated by skeletons and corpses: \u201cGee, I don\u2019t know; this is kind of depressing!\u201d say the spectators. Darkly amusing.
\nOf Ice and Men<\/em><\/strong> is an essay about ice ages and how they are linked to the Earth\u2019s orbit around the sun. Asimov begins with the tilt of the Earth and then goes on to describe our orbit around the Sun, but he lost me when he started talking about the foci of ellipses (less maths and more explanation of why the Sun is at one of the foci would have been helpful). All of this latter leads on to a description of the seasons and why they are different lengths in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
\nThe essay concludes with the statement that ice ages are caused by none of these factors, but by the perturbations of Earth\u2019s orbit (orbital variations caused by non-solar masses), which is next month\u2019s essay.
\nThere is quite a lively Letters <\/em><\/strong>column this issue, which leads off with an attack on John Clute\u2019s reviews by Barry Malzberg (he disagrees with a comment about Alfred Bester\u2019s They Don\u2019t Make Life Like They Used To<\/em>, and accuses Clute of being snide and cruel, saying the only way to get a kind word is to \u201chave published in New Worlds<\/em>\u201d). Clute gets the better of him in his reply, I think, but struggles later with a complaint from a Carl Glover:<\/p>\n

Why is it, then, that I am completely unable to extract a shred of sense or understanding from John Clute\u2019s book reviews? Do I possess a receptive aphasic blind spot of which I have been hitherto unaware? Or does Clute write in some obscure and esoteric literary idiom which only certain segments of the literati can understand? For me, trying to make sense of Clute\u2019s writing is like listening to the speech of a shrewd but floridly psychotic schizophrenic: it almost seems as if it should be logically understandable, but the meaning keeps slipping away at the crucial moment of comprehension.\u00a0 p. 157<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m glad it isn\u2019t just me.
\nThere is a letter raving about John Varley\u2019s In the Hall of the Martian Kings<\/em> from Linda Foster; a complaint about immorality from J. B. Post (someone steals a library book in Fritz Leiber\u2019s The Pale Brown Thing<\/em>); and a complaint from George Zebrowski about Budry\u2019s review of John W. Campbell\u2019s The Space Beyond<\/em>, which I didn\u2019t entirely follow but will probably come back to when I read Robert A. Heinlein\u2019s Sixth Column<\/em> (based on All<\/em>, one of the novelettes in the Campbell collection).<\/p>\n

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

Even though this is a special Harlan Ellison issue of F&SF<\/em>, and Jeffty is Five<\/em> won loads of awards, the best story here for me (both times around) is Eric Norden\u2019s The Primal Solution<\/em>. Of the three Ellison stories, the best is Jeffty is Five<\/em> (I can\u2019t recall much subsequent mention of the other two). I also liked Steven Utley\u2019s The Maw<\/em>, but the stories in this issue are a mixed bag.
\nBudrys\u2019 multifaceted Books<\/em> column is also a highlight, as are the Letters<\/em> at the end of the magazine.
\nA decidedly interesting issue if not a particularly good one.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1. You can find old\u00a0Terry and the Pirates<\/em>\u00a0radio programs on the\u00a0Internet Archive<\/a>. I wouldn\u2019t bother.<\/p>\n

2. According to\u00a0Wikipedia<\/a>\u00a0and other sources the mother drowns Jeffty in the bath at the end of the story\u2014that is not clear from the text (and goes to my comment about the piece needing another draft).<\/p>\n

3. Jeffty Is Five<\/em>\u2019s nostalgia for the past comes along with a distinct antipathy for the present:<\/p>\n

Today, I turn on my car radio and go from one end of the dial to the other and all I get is 100 strings orchestras, banal housewives and insipid truckers discussing their kinky sex lives with arrogant talk show hosts, country and western drivel and rock music so loud it hurts my ears.\u00a0 p. 10<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Things are better in a lot of ways. People don\u2019t die from some of the old diseases any more. Cars go faster and get you there more quickly on better roads. Shirts are softer and silkier. We have paperback books even though they cost as much as a good hardcover used to. When I\u2019m running short in the bank I can live off credit cards till things even out. But I still think we\u2019ve lost a lot of good stuff. Did you know you can\u2019t buy linoleum any more, only vinyl floor covering? There\u2019s no such thing as oilcloth any more; you\u2019ll never again smell that special, sweet smell from your grandmother\u2019s kitchen. Furniture isn\u2019t made to last thirty years or longer because they took a survey and found that young homemakers like to throw their furniture out and bring in all new color-coded borax every seven years. Records don\u2019t feel right; they\u2019re not thick and solid like the old ones, they\u2019re thin and you can bend them . . . that doesn\u2019t seem right to me. Restaurants don\u2019t serve cream in pitchers any more, just that artificial glop in little plastic tubs, and one is never enough to get coffee the right color. Everywhere you go, all the towns look the same with Burger Kings and MacDonald\u2019s and 7-Elevens and motels and shopping centers.
\nThings may be better, but why do I keep thinking about the past.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t think the narrator is nostalgic for the past, but for an idealised version of it\u2014cherry picking the things he likes and largely ignoring the things that were also of that time: racism, sexual discrimination, possible nuclear oblivion; the list is long.
\nI\u2019d also note that this reactionary nostalgia is a not uncommon trait in some SF fans. Although they spend a good chunk of their time reading about imagined futures, some have a pronounced dislike of modern technology: I\u2019ve lost count of the number I have come across who actively dislike ebooks, smartphones, etc.; who shun streaming services in favour of DVDs; use chequebooks rather than credit\/debit cards or Paypal, and so on.<\/p>\n

4. Further to my comments about Jeffty Is Five<\/em> needing another draft, the introduction states that the story arrived \u201cin [. . .] an impressive envelope from something called Federal Express Courier-Pak. It screams RUSH \/URGENT from every corner\u201d.
\nIt\u2019s also worth reading Joanna Russ\u2019s\u00a0review<\/a> about the writing in this story.<\/p>\n

5. My corrective for those suffering from too much nostalgia\u2014read Malcolm Jameson\u2019s\u00a0Blind Alley<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

6. As well as the special non-fiction articles there are also advertisements for books by Ellison, one of which includes this mention of The Prince of Sleep<\/em>, a never-completed novel version of the novella The Region Between<\/em> (Galaxy<\/em>, March 1970):<\/p>\n

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

Even more fascinating is that ISFDB<\/a> lists the novella version as part of a five author, five story \u201cAfterlife of Bailey\u201d series.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: this is a special Harlan Ellison issue of F&SF\u00a0but the best story here is the 1968 Cavalier reprint from Eric Norden, The Primal Solution, an intense tale about hypnotic regression and a Nazi-era Jewish survivor who lost his family in the Holocaust. Of the three Ellison stories the best is the nostalgic Jeffty is […]<\/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":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy-and-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-3In","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14283","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=14283"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14321,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14283\/revisions\/14321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}