{"id":14976,"date":"2026-02-15T18:28:47","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T18:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=14976"},"modified":"2026-02-15T18:28:47","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T18:28:47","slug":"fantastic-stories-v25n04-august-1976","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=14976","title":{"rendered":"Fantastic Stories v25n04, August 1976"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> Summary: A better than usual issue of Fantastic. <\/em>This one leads off with Bloody Man<\/em>, a very good fantasy novella by Avram Davidson set in a picturesque British Hidalgo and featuring series character Jack Limekiller.
Good stories are provided by Keith Taylor (another installment in his \u2018Felmid the Bard\u2019 sword and sorcery series) and Lin Carter (who completes a entertaining if perhaps over-the-top horror piece from Clark Ashton Smith).
There is also a short horror piece by Grania Davis. L. Sprague de Camp, Richard Lupoff and (a very early) Steven Utley bring up the rear (the de Camp story is one of his \u2019Willy Newbury\u2018 stories, and Lupoff’s is part of his \u2019Ova Hamlet\u2018 pastiche series).
[ISFDB<\/a>] [Archive.org<\/a>]<\/p>\r\n

Other reviews:
Todd Mason, Socialistjazz. blogspot.com<\/a>
Various,\u00a0Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\r\n

_____________________<\/p>\r\n

Editor, Ted White; Assistant Editors, Lou Stathis, Terry Hughes<\/p>\r\n

Fiction:
Bloody Man \u2022<\/strong><\/em> novella by Avram Davidson \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
God of the Naked Unicorn<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Richard A. Lupoff [as by Ova Hamlet] \u2217<\/strong>
New-Way-Groovers Stew<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Grania Davis \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
Algy<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by L. Sprague de Camp \u2217<\/strong>
The Stairs in the Crypt<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Lin Carter and Clark Ashton Smith \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
The Atheling’s Wife<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Keith Taylor [as by Dennis More] \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
Ocean<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Steven Utley –<\/p>\r\n

Non-fiction:
Editorial \u2022 <\/strong><\/em>by Ted White
Fantasy Books<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 book reviews by Fritz Leiber
According to You<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 letters<\/p>\r\n

_____________________<\/p>\r\n

Some time ago I mentioned, at the start of a review of the February 1976 issue of Fantastic<\/em>, that I planned to read through all four issues for that year. Given that was written in 2016, I think I had better speed up . . . .<\/p>\r\n

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This issue contains one of the highlights of 1976, Bloody Man<\/strong><\/em> by Avram Davidson, one of his \u2018Jack Limekiller\u2019 series, which features Jack, a Canadian ex-pat who lives in British Hidalgo (previously the British Honduras). This one opens with him asking Archbishop Le Beau, who is the middle of scaling fish, for work:<\/p>\r\n

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\u201cThey tell me . . . \u201d Limekiller hesitated, briefly. Was it My Lord? Your Lordship?<\/em> Or was it . . . it was, wasn\u2019t it . . . Your Grace?<\/em>
Some saints levitate. Some are telepathic. It was widely said and widely believed that William Constance Christian Le Beau was a saint.
\u201cJust \u2018Archbishop\u2019 will do, Mr. Limekiller,\u201d the old man said, without looking up. Scrip . . . scrop . . . scrip. . .<\/em> Jack found himself looking covertly around. Perhaps for loaves.
\u201cAh . . . thank you, sir . . . Archbishop. . . . they tell me that I might be able to pick up a charter for my boat. Moving building supplies, I understand. Down to Curasow Cove? For a bungalow you want built?\u201d
Flop<\/em> went the fish into the basket. \u00a0p. 6<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

After receiving the Archbishop\u2019s agreement and a letter of introduction, Limekiller sets about obtaining the materials he requires. He soon finds out, however, that there aren\u2019t any supplies in sleepy Point Pleasaunce, so his travels take around the town and beyond, which provides the reader with a number of delightful picture-postcard descriptions of the places he visits and the people he meets:<\/p>\r\n

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Well, there was<\/em> the Royal Telegraphy. Her Majesty’s Government did not exactly go to much effort to advertise the fact that there was, but Limekiller had somehow found the fact out. The service was located in two bare rooms upstairs off an alley near the old Rice Mill Wharf, where an elderly gentleman wrote down incoming messages in a truly beautiful Spencerian hand. . . . or maybe it was Copperplate. . . . or Chancery. . . . or Volapiik. What the Hell. It was beautiful. It was, in fact, so beautiful that it seemed cavalier to complain that the elderly gentleman was exceedingly deaf, and that, perhaps in consequence, his messages did not always make the most perfect sense.
Gambling that the same conditions did not obtain at the Royal Telegraphy Office in Port Caroline, Limekiller sent off several wires, advising the Carolinian entrepreneurs what he wanted to buy, and that he was coming in person to buy it.
\u201cHow soon will these go off?\u201d he asked the aged telegrapher.
\u201cYes, that is what I heard myself, sir. They say the estate is settle, sir. After ahl these years.\u201d And he shook his head and he smiled a gentle smile of wonder. \u00a0p. 11<\/p>\r\n

Stepping out into the pre-dawn was like stepping into a clean, cool pool. Already, at that hour, people were about . . . grave, silent, polite. . . . the baker setting the fires, the fisherman already returning with their small catch. The sun climbed, very tentatively, to the edge of the horizon. For a moment, it hesitated. Then, all at once, two things happened. The national radio system, which had gone off the air at ten the night before, suddenly awoke into Sound. Radios were either dead silent or at full-shout. In one instant, every radio in Port Caroline, and in the greater Port Caroline Area, roared into life. And at the same moment, the sun, suddenly aware that there was nothing to oppose it, shot up from the sea and smote the land with a blast of heat.\u00a0 p. 17<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Most of the first part of the story is travelogue like the above, but Limekiller eventually starts hearing mentions and rumours of a ghostly mystery, the \u201cBloody Man\u201d of the tale:<\/p>\r\n

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\u201cAn\u2019 one day, me<\/em> see some-teeng, mon, me <\/em>see some-teeng hawreed. Me di see<\/em> eet, mon. Me di see<\/em> di bloody mon\u2014\u201d
\u201cHush up you mout\u2019,\u201d said Piggott. But the other, a much older fellow, did not hear, perhaps, or did not care, perhaps. \u201cMe di see di blooddee mon. Me di see he, ah White-MON, ahl cot een pieces ahn ahl blood-dee. Wahn, two, t\u2019ree, de pieces ahv heem dey ahl come toged<\/em>dah. De mon stahn op befah me, mon. He stahn ahp befah me. Ahl bot wahn piece, mon. He no hahv wahn piece een he side, mon. He side gape<\/em>, mon, gape open. Eet bleed<\/em>, mon. Eet BLEED!”
And now other faces than the proprietor\u2019s were turned to the narrator.
\u201cHush up you mout\u2019<\/em>, mon!\u201d other voices said, gruff.
Brown man, glass of brown rum in his brown hand. Sweat on his face. Voice rising. \u201cAhn so me di know<\/em>, mon. Me di know who<\/em> eet ees, mon. Eet ees de blood-dee Cop-tain. Eet ees Cop-tain Blood!<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 p. 15<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

This supernatural thread slowly develops through Limekiller\u2019s subsequent trip down to Curasow Cove with his shipment\u2014he witnesses a fishing grounds dispute between the locals and Arawak tribesmen from the south, displaced because of sightings of the apparition\u2014and then Limekiller himself sees the Bloody Man when his boat enters a supernatural mist. Then (spoiler) after talking to Harlow, one of the locals who provides information about who the apparition might be (there is talk of Blackbeard and the Flying Dutchman<\/em>, etc.), Limekiller asks the Archbishop for help in laying the ghost to rest.
In the climactic scene, and after fighting off the Fallen (who summon waterspouts and sharks), the Archbishop administers the sacrament to the Bloody Man and he disappears.
There is an interesting historical postscript where the ghost is revealed as Captain Cook (who met his death in Hawaii, thousand of miles away), and whose ghost has supposedly returned to the area because of a light-hearted oath made by Cook before his death.
I really enjoyed the wonderful description and colourful detail of this story (it is probably my favourite of the \u2018Limekiller\u2019 series1<\/sup>) but I suspect the average genre reader\u2019s enjoyment will depend on whether they take to the sprawling travelogue that occurs before the fantasy elements come to the fore.
**** (Very Good). 19,250 words. Story link<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

\u2022<\/p>\r\n

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

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God of the Naked Unicorn<\/em><\/strong> by Richard Lupoff [as by Ova Hamlet2<\/sup>] (Fantastic<\/em>, August 1976) is one of a series of author parodies\u2014although this one doesn\u2019t concentrate one writer but mashes up Dr Watson and various pulp action heroes.
The story begins with Watson, after another failed marriage, returning to Baker Street in search of accommodation only to find that Sherlock Holmes no longer lives there (he has apparently retired to keep bees). Watson rents a flat in a down-and-out area and is almost immediately visited by \u2018The Woman.\u2019 After learning of Holmes\u2019 retirement she reveals the purpose of her visit:<\/p>\r\n

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\u201cThe God of the Naked Unicorn has been stolen.\u201d
\u201cThe God of the Naked Unicorn!\u201d I exclaimed.
\u201cThe God of the Naked Unicom!\u201d
\u201cNo!\u201d I blurted incredulously.
\u201cYes!\u201d she replied coolly. \u201cThe God of the Naked Unicorn!\u201d
\u201cBut\u2014but how can that be? The greatest national art treasure of the nation of\u2014\u201d
\u201cShh!\u201d She silenced me with a sound and a look and a renewed pressure of fingertips to wrist. \u201cPlease!
Even in more familiar and secure quarters than these it would be unwise to mention the name of my adoptive motherland.\u201d p. 44<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

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Watson and The Woman then take a train and an autogyro flight to a building in the Arctic called The Fortress. Here, The Woman introduces him to Doc Savage, and leaves after saying the theft is part of a greater plot. Savage takes Watson to meet a number of other men:<\/p>\r\n

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\u201cRichard Benson\u2014the Avenger,\u201d said the man in gray.
\u201cKent Allard\u2014the Shadow,\u201d the hawk-nosed man chuckled grimly.
\u201cGordon, Yale \u201934\u2014my friends call me Flash.\u201d
\u201cCurtis Newton, sir, sometimes known as Captain Future.\u201d
\u201cJohn Carter, former captain, confederate cavalry.\u201d
\u201cDavid Innes of Connecticut and the Empire of Pellucidar.\u201d
\u201cRichard Wentworth,\u201d said the second of the black-clad men, \u201cknown to some as the Spider.\u201d Even as he shook my hand I detected a look of suspicion and jealousy pass between himself and the man who had identified himself as the Shadow.
And finally, the man in the green clergy suit. \u201cOm,\u201d he intoned making an Oriental sign with his hands before extending one to me in western fashion. \u201cJethro Dumont of Park Avenue, New York. Also known as Dr. Charles Pali and\u2014the Green Lama. p. 53<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

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We later learn that Holmes and Tarzan were kidnapped at the same time as the theft of the God of the Naked Unicorn. Savage explains:<\/p>\r\n

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\u201cThe fiend had apparently developed a superscientific device of some sort which reduced the stature of his victims to that of pygmies, and he strode away with poor Holmes under one arm and Greystoke under the other.\u201d
\u201cYes,\u201d I said encouragingly, \u201cpray continue.\u201d
\u201cWell, Dr. Watson,\u201d Savage resumed, \u201cas the fiend left the Exposition of European Progress he seemed to be mumbling something to himself. I could barely make out what it was he was saying. But it seemed to be something like Angkor Wat, Angkor Wat<\/em>. But what could that possibly mean, Watson?\u201d p. 58<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

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Savage and Watson then take another autogyro flight to search for the evil genius, first to Angor Wat then to a number of other locations before ending up back at Baker Street. There (spoiler), they find the man they seek\u2014a writer sat in front of a typewriter apparently writing the tale of which they are part. Watson shoots the man: pulp flakes come out of the bullet wound.
If you like the pulp pastiche and superhero references then you\u2019ll probably appreciate this more than I did, but it\u2019s an overlong piece that is mostly description and motion. And the ending is on the same level as \u201cand then I woke up and found it was all a dream.\u201d
(Mediocre). 12,000 words. Story Link<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

\u2022<\/p>\r\n

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\"\"<\/a> New-Way-Groovers Stew<\/em><\/strong> by Grania Davis opens with the lesbian narrator\u2019s description of the 1960\u2019s Haight-Ashbury scene\u2014which includes, atypically for the time of publication, a frank description of her elderly gay friend:<\/p>\r\n

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He\u2019s always so funny, and admittedly, more swishy when he has a new lover. Not that any of them appreciate his wit, his charm, his intelligence. The old fairy usually manages to dig up some tight-assed sailor from the Tenderloin, or a motorcycle freak from one of the leather bars. He buys them new clothes, prepares lavish and tender gourmet meals, and gazes at them with sad, baggy basset-hound eyes, waiting for some small sign that some of the feeling has been appreciated, perhaps even returned. That maybe (but this is really too much to hope for) something might develop. Something permanent, a real relationship with warmth, love. But it never does.
When Jule excused himself for a brief visit to the john, his latest Chuck (or Stud) started eyeballing the prettiest girl in the room, boasting loudly, \u201cI hate faggots, and I hate this nancy food, and the only reason I\u2019m hanging around with that old auntie, Jule, is cause I\u2019m temporarily short of bread. Soon as I get me a bankroll, I\u2019m getting a big red steak, and some pretty blonde pussy. And all you queers can shove it up your ass!\u201d\u00a0 p. 62<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

There is some more about the narrator\u2019s and Jule\u2019s friendship before the story turns to the Flower Children who are beginning to converge on Haight Ashbury. We learn about the latter\u2019s communitarian lifestyle, and how they initially coalesce around the New-Way-Groovers Free Store, an establishment which freecycles goods and also provides a daily stew, made from various scavenged foodstuffs, to all-comers.
The narrator and Jules occasionally visit with the people at the store, and Jules later gets involved in a long argument with a man called Tony, during which, among other things, they discuss morality (Tony states at one point, \u201cThe highest morality is to take care of yourself\u201d). This idea later manifests (spoiler) when the narrator gets a note from Jules saying he has gone away, and to send all his money to his sister in Detroit. When the narrator asks Tony where Jules has gone, she is given a bowl of stew that is much richer than normal and which has chunks of meat in it. Tony tells her that they stole some meat, got themselves a \u201cfat old pig\u201d.
This piece contains quite a good portrait of alternative life in 1960\u2019s Haight-Ashbury but, even after the morality argument, the cannibalism ending is silly and a bit over the top. So this is a game of two halves as a horror story\u2014but perhaps notable as an early example of one with lesbian\/gay characters.
** (Average). 3,950 words.\u00a0Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

\u2022<\/p>\r\n

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

Algy<\/em><\/strong> by L. Sprague de Camp\u00a0is a \u2018Willy Newbury\u2019 story,3<\/sup>\u00a0and one which sees Willy and his new wife Denise arriving at his aunt\u2019s vacation camp at Lake Algonquin to rumours of a sea monster. An old friend who works there fills them in:<\/p>\r\n

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Mike scratched his crisp gray curls. \u201cThey do be saying that, on dark nights, something comes up in the lake and shticks its head out to look around. But nobody\u2019s after getting a good look at it. There\u2019s newspaper fellies, and a whole gang of Scotchmen are watching for it, out on Indian Point.\u201d
\u201cYou mean we have a home-grown version of the Loch Ness monster?\u201d
\u201cI do that.\u201d
\u201cHow come the Scots came over here? I thought they had their own lake monster. Casing the competition, maybe?\u201d
\u201cIt could be that, Mr, Newbury. They\u2019re members of some society that tracks down the shtories of sea serpents and all them things.\u201d\u00a0 p. 72<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

The rest of the story revolves around the aunt\u2019s daughter Linda and two men who are keen on her: one is George Vreeland, an unreliable local character, and the other is Ian Selkirk, one of the Scots who is there to investigate the sightings. Matters develop at a ball where Selkirk cuts in on Vreeland and Linda\u2014to the displeasure of the former\u2014and then, when Selkirk and Linda are later canoodling in a canoe, matters come to a climax when the monster surfaces besides them. Selkirk jumps out of the canoe and swims to shore, not because he is fleeing the monster but because he has spotted that it is a fake and that Vreeland has been operating it from the pump house on the edge of the lake. It later materialises that Vreeland\u2019s boss (another camp site owner) hired him to set up the hoax to attract tourists to the area. Vreeland was only supposed to surface the fake monster at night but, jealous of Selkirk, he used it to try and scare him away.
Finally (spoiler), when Willy and Lord Kintyre (Selkirk\u2019s boss) go out on the lake to examine the fake, something drags it under the water and rips it to shreds.
I suppose this is well enough executed, but the story mostly involves cardboard characters going through the motions of a mainstream plot\u2014with a brief supernatural twist tacked on the end.
* (Mediocre). 4,750 words.\u00a0Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

\u2022<\/p>\r\n

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The Stairs in the Crypt<\/em><\/strong> by Clark Ashton Smith & Lin Carter opens with the death (\u201cthe inexorable termination of his earthly existence\u201d) of the necromancer Avalzaunt, and his subsequent entombment:<\/p>\r\n

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If the pupils of Avalzaunt assumed that they had taken their last farewells of their master, however, it eventuated that in this assumption they were seriously mistaken. For, after some years of repose within the sepulchre, vigor seeped back again into the brittle limbs of the mummified enchanter and sentience gleamed anew in his jellied and sunken eyes. At first the partially-revived lich lay somnolent and unmoving in a numb and mindless stupor, with no conception of its present charnel abode. It knew, in fine, neither what nor where it was, nor aught of the peculiar circumstances of its untimely and unprecedented resurrection. On this question the philosophers remain divided. One school holds to the theorem that it was the unseemly brevity of the burial rites which prevented the release of the spirit of Avalzaunt from its clay, thus initiating the unnatural revitalization of the cadaver. Others postulate that it was the necromantic powers inherent in Avalzaunt himself which were the sole causative agent in his return to life.
After all, they argue, and with some cogence, one who is steeped in the power to effect the resurrection of another should certainly retain, even in death, a residue of that power sufficient to perform a comparable revivification upon oneself. These, however, are queries for a philosophical debate for which the present chronicler lacks both the leisure and the learning to pursue to an unequivocal conclusion.\u00a0 p. 83<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

I guess you\u2019ll either like this mannered, discursive, and droll stuff (as I did) or you won\u2019t. If you are in the former group then the rest of the story will treat you of an account of how Avalzaunt waits for a ghoul pack to break into his tomb to release him, swears them into thraldom, and then seeks out the sustenance his post-life body now requires\u2014human blood and gore. During these depredations Avalzaunt becomes more and more swollen as, apparently, the undead can neither digest nor excrete \u201cthe foul and loathly sustenance whereon they feed\u201d.
Eventually, after working his way through several of his former apprentices, and preying on the fat monks of Cambora, he is (spoiler) finally stopped by the silver knife-wielding abbot in an Grand Guignol ending that sees everything Avalzaunt has consumed spew out of his body (think of a bloodier and messier version of\u00a0Monty Python<\/em>\u2019s Mr Cresote sketch).
I suspect many will find this an overwritten and ridiculous story, but I thought it was an entertaining pastiche of Smith\u2019s work.4<\/sup>
*** Good. 3,600 words.\u00a0Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

\u2022<\/p>\r\n

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The Atheling\u2019s Wife<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Keith Taylor5<\/sup> [as by Dennis More] is the second story in the writer\u2019s \u2018Bard\u2019 series, which is set in sixth century Celtic Britain, and begins with Felimid mac Fal arriving at the hall of King Cedric, looking for passage across the sea and away from the island:<\/p>\r\n

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The walls were gigantic timbers adzed and fitted together like the ribs of a ship. The corner-posts were carved like frowning gods, and it would have taken three men to stretch their arms around one. The roof was tiled with scales a foot across, from a sea-dragon the king had hunted down. They glittered like beaten metal, green shading into grey at the edges. Felimid could have ridden through the doors without ducking the lintel, and a comrade could have gone either side of him without scraping the posts. The doors themselves were sheathed in bronze, with silvered iron hinges marvellously wrought. Hinges long as he was tall, nearly.
The double portal, huge as it was, was framed in the naked white skull and jaws of the sea-dragon whose scales covered the roof. Teeth half as long as a man\u2019s arm shone like white salt. Bereft sockets under blunt bone ridges were caves of deep shadow. They seemed to glare with menace yet. The notion of riding under them did not enchant Felimid even as an image.\u00a0 p. 92<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

After the guard tells Felimid that the jaws will snap shut if he intends any misdeeds, Felimid passes through into the interior, and later finds himself sitting at a lowly place at the king\u2019s table. At the top are King Cedric, his wife Vivayn, and the king\u2019s brother Cynric.
Felimid realises that he will have to be careful as he is fleeing from Cedric\u2019s father, King Oisc of Kent,6<\/sup> but it does not stop him intervening when a number of the men start tormenting a dwarf called Glinthi, who they then try to throw into the hearth. Felimid intervenes, efficiently seeing off the other men and rescuing Glinthi, and bringing himself to the notice of King Cedric. Felimid briefly speaks to the king and then performs for him, flattering him shamelessly with the songs he sings. Then, after his performance is over, Felimid sleeps with Eldrid, one of Vivayn\u2019s ladies in waiting.
Felimid\u2019s smooth progress is subsequently interrupted when one of the reasons he wants to leave the island\u2014Tosti, a shapeshifter\/werewolf from King Oisc\u2019s court\u2014turns up at the camp. After a confrontation between the two they appear before the king, but Tosti unexpectedly refuses to fight Felimid (Felimid has a silver inlaid sword, and Tosti is more likely to lose any duel in his human form). Then, later that evening, Vivayn, wearing a glamour to make her look like Eldrid, comes to his bed. Felimid sees through the disguise but sleeps with her anyway.
The story comes to a climax (spoiler) when Tosti ambushes Vivayn\/Eldrid when she leaves Felimid\u2019s bed the next morning. He tells Felimid to lay down his silver sword, and the bard complies as he doesn\u2019t want Vivayn killed, her glamour to disappear, and everyone to see that he has slept with the king\u2019s wife. Fortunately, the bard is saved when Glinthi intervenes. Tosti initially fights but then flees, and we see one of his henchmen killed by the dragon\u2019s jaws when he rushes to the hall to summon help, lying about what has actually happened.
Felimid subsequently tells Cedric that Tosti is a shapeshifter and, realising the complex situation he is in (the two women who share their lovers, Glinthi\u2019s earlier treasonous comments), departs the camp to pursue Tosti.
This is a well enough plotted piece of Sword & Sorcery but it could have done with another draft as it is a little rough in places. Also, some of the point of view changes are also a little odd\u2014the first story was told in the first-person and you can see the author is still getting to grips with the third-person transistion7<\/sup>. That said, the protagonist\u2019s occupation and the story\u2019s convincing setting are strengths.
*** (Good). 9,200 words.\u00a0Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

\u2022<\/p>\r\n

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Ocean\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>by Steven Utley\u00a0opens with the female narrator, who has \u201cflippers and gills now\u201d, poisoned by the spines of a sea urchin\u2014but she escapes its effects by surfacing and becoming a flying creature.
The next section describes an ongoing struggle she is having with a man who is either (a) interfering with her (possibly prosthetic) body, or (b) operating her controls (she may be a spaceship), or (c) she is a personality living in a ship\u2019s computer. Later we learn (spoiler) that it is the latter, and that she is on a generation ship where everyone died apart from her. When she got old she uploaded into the ship\u2019s memory, and at that point sensed a malevolent entity. The story ends with some sort of reckoning.
Trying to work out what was going on while reading this story was like wading through mud.
\u2013 (Awful). 2,700 words.\u00a0Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

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

The atmospheric Cover<\/strong><\/em> for this issue is by Stephen Fabian for Bloody Man<\/em>. He also contributes good black and white work for that story, and for Keith Taylor\u2018s The Atheling\u2018s Wife<\/em>. The other Interior Art<\/strong><\/em> consists of good pieces by Richard Olsen and Joe Staton, and two by Dan Steffan and Tony Gleason. These latter two are, whatever one thinks of their technical qualities, dull images (the Steffan piece looks like a random pane from a comic book). \"\"<\/a> The non-fiction in the issue leads off with a long Editorial<\/em><\/strong> by Ted White. This starts with the editor quoting two long letters about the John Norman Gor<\/em> fantasy\/S&M novels (which were the subject of a negative editorial a couple of issues ago) before he veers off into a long discussion\u00a0 about what he actually said in his editorial, free speech, and the evolution of modern pornography to date (this was around the time of a so-called \u2019snuff\u2018 movie). The final result resembles one of those long internet threads where, by the time you get to the end of it, you can barely remember what was first said.
After this there is mention of the recent change of schedule to quarterly:8<\/sup><\/p>\r\n

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You\u2019ve probably noticed, if you\u2019re a regular reader of this magazine, that we\u2019ve been skipping issues recently. That is, the February issue was followed not by an April issue but rather by the May issue. And there was no July issue; this issue is dated August.
The sad fact is that sales fell dramatically with the introduction of our $1.00 cover price, and although it\u2019s too soon to know whether that was just a one-time situation or not, we were forced to change from a bimonthly publication schedule to a quarterly schedule. For that reason the next issue will be dated November.
Frankly, I\u2019m very unhappy about this turn of events, as is the Publisher. I feel that in the last year we\u2019ve published an unusually wide variety of fantasy and that the actual quality of our fiction has been steadily improving. I feel that the issues of the last year have been issues any editor might justifiably take pride in. And I\u2019m saddened that this has not been reflected by sales. p. 130<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

White concludes with the wish that the magazine soon returns to bimonthly, a hope that was not to be realised.<\/p>\r\n

\u2022<\/p>\r\n

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

Fantasy Books <\/strong><\/em>by Fritz Leiber leads off with some of his personal history with Harlan Ellison before he tackles that writer\u2018s collection Deathbird Stories<\/em>:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

But he worked ten years on the cycle of stories in this book. They show it, being heavily ornamented, almost chryselephantine, gold and ivory now joined to the silver and marble\u2014in twenty years he\u2019s learned a lot about words and here he scatters them lavishly yet precisely, almost as if they were brilliantly plumed darts he were ceaselessly throwing at his story a-building, bright-ribboned banderillas for the plunging toro <\/em>of his tale\u2014each landscape vast but with a single focal point from which the lines of perspective radiate to infinity.
[. . .]
[But] basically the stories are fantasies, often of the wild Weird Tales <\/em>variety (cf. <\/em>Bloch\u2019s science and the way Spinrad mixes cryogenics and blood-of-a-virgin witchcraft in Bug Jack Barron)<\/em>\u2014\u201dAdrift\u201d mixes werewolfry with the search for the locus of the soul with <\/em>sub-particle physics in a reprise of Fantastic Voyage <\/em>in which the pancreas becomes a vast, man-killing desert with skulls scattered about.
In short, each story is a whopping big picture, or rather three-dimensional (or maybe four or five) sculptured form. Now there are two consequences of this to be noted. One: Each story is surely \u201ca construct built in a void, with every joint and seam and nail exposed\u201d (one of Ursula Le Guin\u2019s characterizations of fantasy in From Elfland to Poughkeepsie) <\/em>and this construct may be, but is not always, a monstrous, maze-like, plastic futurian city or wasteland, like one of Silverberg\u2019s, with one <\/em>man wandering in it (Ellison\u2019s man raves, suffers, and rages; Silverberg\u2019s retrospects). One can get the impression from this that the author is egotistical to the point of solipsism and wish he would or could get interested in getting more quietly inside the skin and mind of one or preferably several other <\/em>characters\u2014 none of whom are completely stripped of mystery\u2014write that sort of novel. p. 112-113<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

There are further interesting comments about Ellison\u2019s work before Leiber moves on to cover a handful of other books. There\u2019s a Lord Dunsany collection (\u201cperhaps the finest fantasy book bargain of all time\u201d); an August Derleth SF collection (\u201cclearly a product of Derleth\u2019s afternoon mind\u201d); a Carl Jacobi collection; and, finally, a booklet\/essay by L. Sprague de Camp about Robert E. Howard, The Miscast Barbarian<\/em> (first in his \u2018Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerors\u2019 series, several of which appeared in Fantastic<\/em>).
Interesting column.<\/p>\r\n

\u2022<\/p>\r\n

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

The long (and, like the editorial, sometimes rambling) letters column, . . . According to You<\/em>,<\/strong> cover several subjects: the stories in the February issue, the role of women in S&S; fringe beliefs; and yet more on the Gor<\/em> novels. One of the latter letters from E. K. Hardt (from Dallas) gives a description that, if I recall correctly, nods towards (my perhaps less enthusiastic) thoughts about the first few novels when I read them in the mid-seventies (I gave up after the fifth one):<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Let\u2019s get off Norman\u2019s sex fantasy for the moment and onto the quality of his fiction, which on the whole is very good. The two best of the ten novels have been Nomads <\/em>and the latest one, Maruders, <\/em>with the Tarn-race sequence in Assassin <\/em>probably the best cohesive passage in the series. In each case the sexual element, while present, has been softpedaled to tell a good rousing story and it has been done very well. p. 126<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

I wonder what I would think of them now.<\/p>\r\n

Overall, a pretty good issue, and one worth getting for the Avram Davidson novella. \u25cf<\/p>\r\n

_____________________<\/p>\r\n

Footnotes:<\/p>\r\n

1. The \u2018Jack Limekiller\u2019 series of stories (which were later collected into a book) at\u00a0ISFDB<\/a>. Book purchase link UK<\/a>\/USA<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

2. The Ova Hamlet stories were collected, first in The Ova Hamlet Papers<\/em><\/a> (1979) and then in the expanded The Compleat Ova Hamlet<\/em><\/a> (2009).<\/p>\r\n

3. The \u2018Willy Newbury\u2019 series at ISFDB<\/a>. The stories were collected in The Purple Pterodactyls<\/em> (1980).<\/p>\r\n

4. I suspect the whole (or most of the) Smith \/Carter collaboration is probably Carter\u2019s apart from the plot idea. Ted White\u2019s introduction states:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Lin Carter, working from Clark Ashton Smith\u2019s extensive legacy of notes, outlines, lists of titles and story-fragments, has collaborated posthumously with Smith (who died in 1961), creating new stories\u2014two of which appeared in the briefly-revived\u00a0Weird Tales<\/em>, and the third, \u201cThe Scroll of Morloc\u201d, here (October, 1975). Here is the fourth.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

5. Keith Taylor first published these stories under the pseudonym Dennis More. ISFDB lists this series as two separate ones, Bard<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Felimid<\/a>, but they are the same sequence.<\/p>\r\n

6. The events that cause Felimid\u2019s problems with King Oisc are detailed in the first story of the series.<\/p>\r\n

7. Ted White\u2019s introduction to Taylor\u2019s piece says this:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

This story is a direct sequel to the author\u2019s\u00a0Fugitives in Winter<\/em>\u00a0(October, 1975), but unlike that story this one is told third-person. As More explains it, \u201cTo write in the first-person about a sixth-century Celtic bard, even a fantasized one, is something I just couldn\u2019t keep up. And it\u2019s easier to juggle a number of characters this way.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

8. One of the casualties of the frequency change was the serialisation of a Thomas Burnett novel (most likely Cry Silver Bells<\/em>. I think). More on this in the review of the November 1976 issue (which will be appearing in 2036 at this rate). \u25cf<\/p>\r\n

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Summary: A better than usual issue of Fantastic. This one leads off with Bloody Man, a very good fantasy novella by Avram Davidson set in a picturesque British Hidalgo and featuring series character Jack Limekiller. Good stories are provided by Keith Taylor (another installment in his \u2018Felmid the Bard\u2019 sword and sorcery series) and Lin […]<\/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":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantastic"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-3Ty","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14976","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=14976"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15047,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14976\/revisions\/15047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}