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ISFDB link<\/a><\/p>\n Fiction: Non-fiction: I picked up this issue after reading The Fireman<\/em> in a recent Galaxy<\/em> as I discovered there were two other associational\u00a0Fahrenheit 451<\/em>\u00a0stories. One is The Pedestrian<\/em>, which I\u2019ll read\u00a0shortly as it was published in the February 1952 F&SF;<\/em> the other one is the first story in this special Ray Bradbury issue, Bright Phoenix<\/em><\/strong>. \u201c…a curiosity. I wrote it back in 1947-48 and it remained in my files over the years, going out only a few times to quality markets like Harper\u2019s Bazaar or The Atlantic Monthly, where it was dismissed. It lay in my files and collected about it many ideas. These ideas grew large and became … <\/em>Fahrenheit 451.\u201d<\/em> p.23<\/p>\n The story starts with Jonathan Barnes, the chief censor and book burner, arriving at the town library. Tom is the librarian who has to deal with him. After some verbal sparring between the pair Barnes\u2019 black uniformed men start throwing books out of the windows to be burnt outside. Tom the librarian leaves for his lunch and convinces Barnes to come across to the caf\u00e9 with him:<\/p>\n We crossed the green lawn where a huge portable Hell was drawn up hungrily, a fat black tar-daubed oven from which shot red-orange and gaseous blue flames into which men were shoveling the wild birds, the literary doves which soared crazily down to flop broken-winged, the precious flights poured from every window to thump the earth, to be kerosene-soaked and chucked in the gulping furnace.<\/em> p.25-26<\/p>\n Once the pair are in the cafe and seated there are some odd exchanges with the staff:<\/p>\n Walter, the proprietor, strolled over, with some dog-eared menus. Walter looked at me. I winked. Walter looked at Jonathan Barnes. Walter said: \u201c\u2018Come with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove.\u2019\u201d <\/em> After these and subsequent exchanges, both in the cafe and on the street, and along with his puzzlement about the lack of resistance to the book-burnings Barnes realises (spoiler) that the townspeople have memorised all the books he is trying to burn:<\/p>\n \u201cDo you think you can all fool me, me, me?\u201d <\/em> Barnes eventually stops the operation and leaves. \u201cRaleighs,\u201d said the old man. \u201cLucky Strikes.\u201d<\/em> After the old man is physically assaulted another man takes him home and hides him when the secret police call. He suggests to the old man that it would be better to address several people at a time in private rather than strangers in public. The rest of this issue\u2019s fiction highlights a couple of Avram Davidson\u2019s irritating editorial characteristics: one is\u00a0his overuse\u00a0of so-called \u2018humorous\u2019 stories, the other overlong story introductions. The first of the stories probably falls into the former category. Mrs. Pigafetta Swims Well<\/em><\/strong> by Reginald Bretnor (Peninsula Spectator<\/em>, Oct 23, 1959) is a too straightforward account of an Italian sailor who was formerly\u00a0a singer, and a mermaid who keeps him captive and wants to marry him. He promises to buy her a new hat but on the shopping trip escapes to America. Or has he\u2026? \u201cNewton!\u201d he shouted loudly into the darkness. <\/em> During the contest Mr Peaseblossom (spoiler) fluffs another spell and Newton nukes his father. Pendennis sighed. He was 45 and almost all fat. He sprawled before the solido set in his apartment near the rocket port. Every time a rocket fired off, the walls shook. Stinking fumes seeped under the door day and night. Still, Pendennis couldn\u2019t live anywhere else. The blue men of Mica II discriminated against Earthies, considered them inferior since the Micans had conquered the Earthies a hundred years ago. They said they had a funny smell, too.<\/em> p.66<\/p>\n He is required by his boss to improve the image of \u2018Earthies\u2019 by influencing the plot line of a popular Mican soap opera that portrays\u00a0Earthmen as villains. The story is about how he wangles an appointment with the Culture Minister, and the solido episode which results. It improves a little towards the end (or maybe by that time I had just got used to the dreadful style) but initially\u00a0reads like a 1950\u2019s Galaxy<\/em> reject. This story also illustrates Davidson\u2019s introduction problem: this one is so long (200-250 words) it needs a title as the story itself starts over the page.<\/p>\n Now Wakes the Sea<\/em><\/strong> by J. G. Ballard is a welcome change of tone. This fantasy is about a man who, after an illness, starts to wake up in the night and see the town he lives in flooded by an imaginary sea, even though he is hundreds of miles inland. He notices that the sea is getting closer to the house every night. Later, while exploring, he sees a woman with silver hair on the headland and tries over the course of the next few nights to make his way towards her…. Again at night Mason heard the sounds of the approaching sea, the muffled thunder of the long breakers rolling up the nearby streets. Roused from his sleep, he ran out into the moonlight, where the white-framed houses stood like sepulchres among the washed concrete courts. Two hundred yards away the waves plunged and boiled, sluicing in and out across the pavement. A million phosphorescent bubbles seethed through the picket fences, and the broken spray filled the air with the wine-sharp tang of brine.<\/em> p.76<\/p>\n After this one story respite there is Watch the Bug-Eyed Monster<\/em><\/strong> by Don White, of which Davidson says \u2018it is funny\u2019. This one tells of Zlat, an alien spaceship pilot who finds he can get drunk on water. He makes an unintended drunken arrival at a Sydney bar and gets talking to a female impersonator called Vernon\/Valerie who tells him about, perhaps notably for the period, his unreliable boyfriends:<\/p>\n Valerie went on with his life story: \u201c. . . and that was the end of Duncan, though I still wonder if he\u2019ll ever come back, if only for his bell-bottoms and his Japanese camera. But then . . . then I met Desmond,\u201d he sighed. \u201cBut, Zlat, he\u2019s just like all the others. He doesn\u2019t understand me. Why, I even have reason to believe that tonight,\u201d he broke down long enough to swallow a Pink Lady whole and scatter more water on the almost delirious-with-joy Zlat, \u201ctonight be may be out with a . . . a WOMAN!\u201d<\/em> p.88<\/p>\n Meanwhile Zlat spills the beans to Vernon about an upcoming alien invasion. The last story is Ni\u00f1a Sol<\/em><\/strong> by Felix Marti-Ibanez. This is a fantasy that takes place on the high altitude plateaus of Peru, where an artist meets an writer who is there for the yellow light. After several days of painting he recounts a tale to the writer about the golden girl he has met, a remnant from Inca times who appears to be a spirit of the sun. He eventually determines to follow her to her world.<\/p>\n \u201cAt first I thought she was a statue. My eyes were so blinded by the sun, which reverberated on the hill and on the house as on a mirror, that I barely saw her silhouette. But after a while, with my hands shading my eyes, I was able to see her quite clearly. She was almost a child, dressed in a sleeveless waist and a short skirt which glistened as if made of gold. At first I thought she was wearing a helmet on her head, but then I\u00a0realized that it was her blond hair on which the sun broke into myriad luminous sparks. But what left me spellbound was her skin. I cannot give you even a remote idea of the color of her arms, her bare legs, her face. They were of the same golden shade as the paradise that surrounded her, but with a gossamer quality, a transparency, an iridescence, that was not of this earth. It was as if she were standing on a blazing throne of gold and she herself was made of such fiery gold as mortal eyes are not meant to look at and retain their sight.\u201d<\/em> p.120<\/p>\n As previously mentioned this is a special Ray Bradbury issue, the second of a number of such issues that F&SF<\/em> would publish (the most recent David Gerrold one just appeared). As a consequence of this it\u00a0incorporates several articles apart from the fiction. The cover of Ray Bradbury himself is by Joe Mugnaini, and incorporates scenes from The Illustrated Man<\/em>, The Martian Chronicles<\/em>, Fahrenheit 451<\/em> and several short stories (Uncle Einar<\/em>, Skeleton<\/em>, A Season of Calm Weather<\/em>). There is a fulsome Introduction<\/em><\/strong> by Avram Davidson which is followed by an good article by William F. Nolan, Bradbury: Prose Poet in the Age of Space<\/em><\/strong>. This is full of quotable bits but I\u2019ll limit myself to one anecdote from when Bradbury was still trying to break into the professional magazines:<\/p>\n \u201cDuring this period I began haunting the doorsteps of the local professionals, many of whom belonged to the club,\u201d says Ray. \u201cI was desperate to learn the secrets of the pros, and would pop up with a new story nearly every week which I passed around for criticism and advice from Hank Kuttner to Leigh Brackett to Ed\u00a0Hamilton to Bob Heinlein to Ross Rocklynne to Jack Williamson to Henry Hasse, all of whom were incredibly kind and patient with me and with these dreadful early efforts. In fact, the above-named authors grew lean and rangy from countless flights through the rear exits of walk-up apartments when Bradbury would suddenly appear at the front door with a new manuscript in his teeth.\u201d<\/em> p.14<\/p>\n Bradbury Film Wins Academy Award Nomination <\/em><\/strong>is a short note about an Oscar nomination for Icarus Montgolfier Wright<\/em>, an 18 minute semi-animated film based on Bradbury\u2019s story and 200 tempera paintings by Joe Mugnaini, the cover artist. Bradbury co-wrote the screenplay with George Clayton Johnson.1<\/sup> I<\/em>f this book will bring young girls to read SF, hurray. But your middle-aged, fatherly editor, though he concedes the author\u2019s dexterity, is simply incapable of identifying with a space-kitten who uses expletives like \u201cDirty ears! Hangnails! Snel-frockey! <\/em>Spit! and <\/em>Dandruffl\u201d and what\u2019s more, he ain\u2019t going to try. Not any more than he has, anyway. Snel-frockey, indeed.<\/em> p.98<\/p>\n Just Mooning Around<\/em><\/strong> by Isaac Asimov is an interesting essay in which he works out the relative magnitude of the sun\u2019s gravitational attraction for the moons of the solar system\u2019s planets relative to their primary. He works out the distances of the zone where moons can exist (between the point where the sun wins the tug of war, and the Roche limit, where tidal forces would break the moon up). Our moon turns out to be the exception to his calculations, so he posits a boundary condition where a \u2018double planet\u2019 can be formed. The alchemists, gentlemen and scholars to a man (. . . well . . . almost to a man. There was the case of that cad, Dr. Dee. However, <\/em>de mortuis nil desperandum.)\u2014the alchemists referred to the Relation between the Moon and the Sun, as well as that between silver and gold, as The Fair White Maiden Wedded to the Ruddy Man. Isn’t that beautiful? I think that should possibly be \u2018faute de mieux\u2019: for want of a better alternative. A worthwhile issue for the Bradbury material, the J. G. Ballard story and Asimov\u2019s article but otherwise an irritating entry.<\/p>\n This magazine is still being published!<\/b> Subscribe: Kindle UK<\/a>, Kindle USA<\/a>\u00a0or physical copies<\/a>.<\/p>\n ISFDB link Fiction: Bright Phoenix \u2022 short story by Ray Bradbury \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665 To the Chicago Abyss \u2022 short story by Ray Bradbury \u2665\u2665 Mrs. Pigafetta Swims Well \u2022 short story by Reginald Bretnor \u2665\u2665 Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: LXII \u2022 short story by Reginald Bretnor [as by Grendel Briarton] Newton Said \u2022 […]<\/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-1838","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-tE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838","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=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12837,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions\/12837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBright Phoenix<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ray Bradbury \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665
\nTo the Chicago Abyss<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ray Bradbury \u2665\u2665
\nMrs. Pigafetta Swims Well<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Reginald Bretnor \u2665\u2665
\nThrough Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: LXII<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Reginald Bretnor [as by Grendel Briarton]
\nNewton Said<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Jack Thomas Leahy
\nUnderfollow<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by John Jakes \u2665
\nNow Wakes the Sea<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by J. G. Ballard \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nWatch the Bug-Eyed Monster<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Don White \u2665
\nTreaty in Tartessos<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Karen Anderson \u2665
\nNi\u00f1a Sol<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Felix Marti-Ibanez \u2665\u2665<\/p>\n
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Joe Mugnaini
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Emsh
\nIntroduction <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 essay by Avram Davidson
\nBradbury: Prose Poet in the Age of Space<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by William F. Nolan
\nBradbury Film Wins Academy Award Nomination <\/em><\/strong>
\nAn Index to Works of Ray Bradbury<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 bibliography by William F. Nolan
\nBooks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Avram Davidson
\nJust Mooning Around<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Isaac Asimov
\nAtomic Reaction<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 poem by Sharon Webb [as by Ron Webb]
\nNo Trading Voyage<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 poem by Doris Pitkin Buck<\/p>\n
\nRay Bradbury\u2019s introduction says it is:<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat?\u201d Jonathan Barnes blinked.<\/em>
\n\u201cCall me Ishmael,\u201d said Walter. <\/em>
\n\u201cIshmael,\u201d I said. \u2018We\u2019ll have coffee to start.\u2019<\/em>\u2019 p.26<\/p>\n
\nI did not answer. <\/em>
\n\u201cHow can you be sure,\u201d he said, \u201cI won\u2019t burn people, as well as books?\u201d<\/em> p.28<\/p>\n
\nThis story is an elegantly written and brilliantly economical story that neatly encapsulates the book burning\/censorship\/living books aspects of Fahrenheit 451<\/em>, and will be of interest to readers of both that book and The Fireman<\/em>. As Avram Davidson notes, it is far from being just \u2018a curiosity.\u2019
\nThe second Bradbury story, presumably written a decade and a half later isn\u2019t bad but it illustrates the difference in quality between his early and later work. To the Chicago Abyss<\/em><\/strong> tells of an old man in a future society that has experienced Annihilation Day. The old man approaches people and reminds them of things lost:<\/p>\n
\nThe young man stared at him. <\/em>
\n\u201cKent. Kools. Marlboro,\u2019\u2019 said the old man, not looking at him. \u201cThose were the names. White, red, amber packs grass-green, sky-blue, pure gold with the red slick small ribbon that ran around the top that you pulled to zip away the crinkly cellophane, and the blue government tax-stamp\u2014\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cShut up,\u2019\u2019 said the young man. <\/em>
\n\u201cBuy them in drug-stores, fountains, subways\u2014\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cShut up!\u201d<\/em> p.32<\/p>\n
\nI wasn\u2019t really convinced by the concept and the writing isn\u2019t as good as in the first story.<\/p>\n
\nFollowing hard on the heels of this is Mr Bretnor\u2019s other contribution to the issue, the punning Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: LXII<\/em><\/strong>.
\nThe next story is another light\/humourous piece. Newton Said<\/em><\/strong> by Jack Thomas Leahy concerns an unhappy elf called Mr Peaseblossom: his son Newton has become a chemist. After several pages of Mr Peaseblossom\u2019s spells going wrong he goes to a shrink and as a result decides to address matters with his son:<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m down in the lab, Dad,\u201d his son\u2019s voice came back to him. Mr. Peaseblossom hopped nimbly off the toadstool and made his way to Newton\u2019s laboratory. \u201cDad!\u201d Newton said. \u201cYou\u2019re an Elf again.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cIndeed,\u201d Mr. Peaseblossom said. \u201cI am an Elf again, full of magic and poetry. There are golden candlesticks on the moon.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cAw, dad,\u201d Newton said. \u201cNot that old stuff again.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cAll right! All right!\u201d Mr. Peaseblossom roared at him. \u201cYou\u2019re getting too big for your pants. The time has come to find out what\u2019s what.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cO.K.\u201d Newton said. \u201cWhat\u2019s what?\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cA test, that\u2019s what\u2019s what,\u201d Mr. Peaseblossom yelled. \u201cA test between you and me to find out who\u2019s boss around here.\u201d<\/em> p.63<\/p>\n
\nThe fourth entry in this laugh-riot is Underfollow<\/em><\/strong> by John Jakes. This one concerns a lobbyist on an alien planet:<\/p>\n
\nThe writing style of this one is as polished\u00a0as the first Bradbury story:<\/p>\n
\nI disliked this one to begin with but warmed to it a little on the way through. Part of the problem is that this is the fifth story with a light\/humorous style. None of them are particularly good at it, and most don\u2019t have other story skills (plot, style, etc.) to pull them through.
\nTreaty in Tartessos<\/em><\/strong> by Karen Anderson is a fantasy-historical\u00a0about a man and a centaur meeting to try to agree terms that will end a war between their peoples. Apart from a finish you can see coming from a mile off (about a continent that will\u00a0be given to the centaurs as a homeland) it doesn\u2019t help that the conversation is conducted in modern vernacular. On one page you can read \u201cThe boys found a couple of dead . . . uh, buffalo, after the battle, and we had a fine barbecue\u201d<\/em> and \u201cI got to admit you gave us a good fight today, for all you\u2019re such lightweights,\u201d the centaur said<\/em>. Or, \u201cWe could lick any two of them with our eyes shut.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n
\nWilliam F. Nolan\u2019s bibliography, An Index to Works of Ray Bradbury<\/em><\/strong>, would have been, as I have pointed out about this kind of thing before, a great boon back in the days before the internet. Even now, I found it quite an interesting read as it gives the story titles alongside their first magazine or book publication (to get this on ISFDB you have to click the story title, so looking at this kind of thing there would be quite tiresome).
\nWhat I noticed was that Bradbury wrote about twenty-two or so stories for Weird Tales<\/em> from 1942-48 and then he stops. However, he still sells to other pulps for next couple of years before transitioning to the slicks in the early fifties. In the previously mentioned period he sold eleven stories each to Planet Stories<\/em>\u00a0and Thrilling Wonder Stories,<\/em> and then sold them another three and seven respectively in the next couple of years. But nothing to Weird Tales<\/em>\u2026.
\nThere is a short Books<\/em><\/strong> column by Avram Davidson this issue. He admits to not finishing Robert Heinlein\u2019s Podkayne of Mars<\/em> and says:<\/p>\n
\nThis article won\u2019t be for everyone as it starts off with formulae and number crunching but, notwthstanding this, the essay could do without Davidsons\u2019 irrelevant and ultimately patronising introduction where he says:<\/p>\n
\nHowever, the alchemists don\u2019t seem to be writing like they used to, so, <\/em>faux de mieux, here is our very own Dr. A. once more, who does manage to bring up one or two interesting points, once you get past all those numbers.<\/em> p.1002<\/sup><\/p>\n
\nThere are two OK poems: Atomic Reaction<\/em><\/strong> by Sharon Webb, a limerick, and the two page long No Trading Voyage<\/em><\/strong> by Doris Pitkin Buck, which is about humans captured as slaves freeing themselves and returning to Earth via a planet inhabited by plants and insects. Finally there are a couple of pieces of internal art. One is an odd drawing of a fractured head at the bottom of p.85 by Emsh; the other on p.90 looks like a doodle and is uncredited.<\/p>\n\n
\nThere was no danger of that. Avram was a class-A writer, but he was a cantankerous individual I would never think of as \u201ckindly.\u201d<\/em> Isaac Asimov: I, Asimov: A Memoir<\/em>, Chapter 83.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n![\"rss\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/16x16\/rss.png?resize=16%2C16&ssl=1\" "\\"Subscribe")
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