{"id":2029,"date":"2016-10-05T13:29:55","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T13:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2029"},"modified":"2016-10-05T13:29:55","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T13:29:55","slug":"the-magazine-of-fantasy-science-fiction-9-august-1951","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2029","title":{"rendered":"The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction #9, August 1951"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fsf195108x600\"<\/p>\n

Galactic Central link<\/a>
\nISFDB link<\/a><\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nSuperiority<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Arthur C. Clarke \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nProlog<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by John P. McKnight \u2665\u2665
\nWilfred Weem, Dreamer<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Robert Arthur \u2665\u2665
\nA Peculiar People<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Betsy Curtis
\nThe Punishing of Eddie Jungle-Spit<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Garrett Oppenheim \u2665\u2665
\nThe Embarrassing Dimension<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by H. Nearing, Jr.
\nSolitary Confinement<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Philip MacDonald \u2665
\nThe Man Who Could Smell Land<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by John Langdon \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nThe Daughter of the Tree<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Miriam Allen deFord \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nJohn Thomas\u2019s Cube<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by John Leimert \u2665
\nThe Collector<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Gerald Heard [as by H. F. Heard] \u2665\u2665
\nThe Rat That Could Speak<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Charles Dickens \u2665
\nCattivo<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Alan Nelson \u2665\u2665\u2665<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nSpaceship in Trouble With Meteor Swarm; Europa and Jupiter in the Background<\/strong> \u2022 cover by Chesley Bonestell
\nNext Issue<\/em><\/strong>
\nTitle Contest Announcement<\/em><\/strong>
\nLimerick<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Anthony Boucher [as by Herman Mudgett]
\nRecommended Reading<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by The Editors<\/p>\n

In this issue, unlike the last, the fantasy is probably better than the SF but, as some of it falls in the middle, I\u2019ll just go through the stories in the order they appear.
\nSuperiority<\/em><\/strong> by Arthur C. Clarke is a droll tale of an interstellar war and how one of the sides gets a new chief scientist called Norden. He suggests to a council of war that they should develop new inventions to decisively win the conflict, and that is what they do:<\/p>\n

Then two things happened. One of our battleships disappeared completely on a training flight, and an investigation showed that under certain conditions the ship\u2019s long-range radar could trigger the Sphere immediately it had been launched. The modification needed to overcome this defect was trivial, but it caused a delay of another month and was the source of much bad feeling between the naval staff and the scientists. We were ready for action again\u2014when Norden announced that the radius of effectiveness\u00a0of the sphere had now been increased by ten, thus multiplying by a thousand the chances of destroying an enemy ship.
\nSo the modifications started all over again, but everyone agreed that the delay would be worth it. Meanwhile, however, the enemy had been emboldened by the absence of further attacks and had made an unexpected onslaught. Our ships were short of torpedoes, since none had been coming from the factories, and were forced to retire. So we lost the systems of Kyrane and Floranus, and the planetary fortress of Rhamsandron.<\/em> p.5-6<\/p>\n

Prolog<\/em><\/strong> by John P. McKnight is an minor\u00a0story about a caveman, his mate and their baby, and a discovery they make.
\nWilfred Weem, Dreamer<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Arthur (Argosy<\/em>, 5th<\/sup> July 1941) is another of his \u2018Murchison Morks\u2019 stories. This one has an excellent hook:<\/p>\n

\u201cLast night I had the most remarkable dream,\u201d Nichols, who manufactures saxophones, was saying as Morks and I entered the club reading room.
\n\u201cI was in a rocket ship that had just landed on the moon, and a herd of beasts as big as elephants, but with wings, were flapping around, trying to break in and get at me. I knew it was just a dream, of course, but it was so real it frightened me into waking up.\u201d
\n\u201cI knew a man,\u201d Morks\u2014his full and unlikely name is Murchison Morks\u2014said in a thoughtful voice as we came up to the little group, \u201cwhose dreams were much more remarkable than that. And they were so real they frightened his wife.\u201d
\n\u201cInto waking up?\u201d Nichols asked, puzzled. Morks shook his head.
\n\u201cNo. Into running away and leaving him, gasping with terror. She was a very strong-minded and unscrupulous woman; very hard to frighten, too.\u201d
\nNichols got red in the face.
\n\u201cAs I was saying,\u201d he went on, tight-lipped, \u201cafter I got back to sleep, I dreamed that I had found Captain Kidd\u2019s treasure. The money was so real I could hear it chink when I dropped it, and\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cWhen my friend dreamed of money,\u201d Murchison Morks put in, in that soft voice which carried so remarkably, \u201cit was so real you could spend it.\u201d
\nNichols, crimson with anger, tried to ignore him.
\n\u201cI wish you could have seen the beautiful girl who came up then,\u201d he said. \u2018\u201cShe\u2014\u201d
\nBut Morks is a hard man to ignore.
\n\u201cWhen my friend dreamed of a beautiful girl,\u201d he murmured, a faraway expression on his long, sad face, \u201cyou could see her.\u201d
\n\u201cPerhaps I ought to explain, though,\u201d he said courteously. \u201cSo no one will think that I am exaggerating. About my friend\u2019s dream, I mean.\u201d<\/em> p.15<\/p>\n

Morks then tells the club members about a man who had dreams so vivid that other people could see them. Needless to say his avaricious wife and her shrink end up using this as a money making opportunity.
\nThis has a good idea which is well developed but unfortunately has a weak ending (spoiler: if he dreamt of a starving tiger why wouldn\u2019t it attack him?)
\nA Peculiar People<\/em><\/strong> by Betsy Curtis is about a Martian envoy to Earth who is actually a robot:<\/p>\n

In the momentary privacy of the gentlemen\u2019s room, Fedrik Spens loosened the neck cord of his heavy white toga and reached for the threadlike platinum chain of his tiny adjuster key. Pulling back the pale plastissue\u00a0skin from the almost invisible slit at the center of his chest, he inserted the key in the orifice of the olfactory intensificator and gave it two full turns. Three full turns for the food receptacle grinder. These official banquets could be murder. Removing the key, he retied the cord and approached the mirror, as the ambassador had insisted in last minute instructions to the several robots on the embassy staff.<\/em> p.28<\/p>\n

He becomes interested in an Earth girl and starts spending a lot of time with both her and her family. Eventually his boss warns him off as he doesn\u2019t want her father, who is the transport minister, upset. During their last meeting her parents come in and, after much speechifying, tell him (spoiler) that they are robots too!
\nDon\u2019t let the Sladekian quote above mislead you, this is an unconvincing tale, and clunky to boot. I don\u2019t really understand why Curtis\u2019s stories are published by F&SF<\/em>, they seem well below the quality of everything else.
\nThe Punishing of Eddie Jungle-Spit<\/em><\/strong> by Garrett Oppenheim (Liberty<\/em>, May 1950) concerns a family with a young boy called Eddie. He breaks one of his mother\u2019s vases and, rather than blame him, she blames an imaginary friend. From then on any trouble that occurs isn\u2019t the fault of \u2018Eddie the Arrow Man\u2019 but \u2018Eddie Jungle-Spit.\u2019 Unfortunately the trouble gets more and more serious until she has to do something harsh\u00a0with Eddie Jungle-Spit, and even that doesn\u2019t work.
\nThis is all quite well done until an\u00a0ending that\u00a0didn\u2019t work for me.
\nThere is some initial social observation of the woman\u2019s unhappy marriage that is noteworthy, and\u00a0the editors suggest in the introduction that this helps make it:<\/p>\n

\u2026a surprisingly bitter and tragic story to have appeared in a mass-circulation slick.<\/em> p.40<\/p>\n

The Embarrassing Dimension<\/em><\/strong> by H. Nearing, Jr. is another in his \u2018Ransom\u2019 series. This time Ransom the mathematician waffles on about a fifth dimension and the creation of a particular type of crystal. After this, various historical characters randomly appear. A weak effort, which is a pity as I enjoyed the last one.
\nSolitary Confinement<\/em><\/strong> by Philip MacDonald is a short tale about a man whom finds himself in a strange grey environment that he eventually realises is limbo. Then he comes to a man at a desk…. Another one where the ending didn\u2019t work for me.
\nThe Man Who Could Smell Land<\/em><\/strong> by John Langdon (Mast Magazine<\/em>, October 1947) is an enjoyable and original tale with a title that renders any further description by me superfluous.
\nThe Daughter of the Tree<\/em><\/strong> by Miriam Allen deFord is set in the 1890s and concerns a story narrated by an American Native to a young man after a girl comes to their camp and eats with them. Apparently she is the daughter of a tree. The ending of this one isn\u2019t as strong as the rest but it is an intriguing read nonetheless.
\nJohn Thomas\u2019s Cube<\/em><\/strong> by John Leimert (The Atlantic Monthly<\/em>, August 1945) is another story that largely describes itself. A young boy called Billy finds a cube under the apple tree in his back yard. After his parents find it cannot be moved and\u00a0is also hovering the usual circus of journalists, politicians, scientists and holy men turn up. At the end of the day Billy wishes it was gone, at which point it disappears.
\nLater, a psychiatrist finds (spoiler) that Billy:<\/p>\n

\u2026did have an unusually vivid imagination and was subject to hallucinations, auditory, visual, tactual. Further, through the operation of a kind of mass hypnosis, he had the rare faculty of making the creation of his imagination as real to others as to himself.<\/em> p.92<\/p>\n

This is a disappointing cop-out ending to a promising story.
\nThe Collector<\/em><\/strong> by Gerald Heard is the longest story in the magazine. This novelette tells of an expeditionary ship\u2019s ichthyologist who goes for a long walk on an island his team have been surveying. He sees a naked man with strange green skin and before long finds himself pulled down under\u00a0the waves by a huge decapod\u2014a squid-like creature\u2014 and kept in a network of air-filled underwater caves. This is, at times, quite interesting but my attention wandered on several occasions, probably a function of its aforementioned length.
\nThe Rat That Could Speak<\/em><\/strong> by Charles Dickens (All the Year Round<\/em>, September 8th<\/sup> 1860) is a short deal with the devil story that gets off to a promising start\u2014this includes a talking rat!\u2014but it is downhill from there.
\nCattivo<\/em><\/strong> by Alan Nelson is an original story about Cattivo\u2019s hands, which appear to have an independent and detached life of their own:<\/p>\n

And now I am going to tell you what seemed to happen:
\nFrom the edge of the table, I thought I saw a revolting tarantula-like insect of monstrous size and thick tentacles scrabble up on to the oilcloth and start waddling across the table toward me. It hesitated halfway. A thick bulb of a head peered at me from the crotch of two tentacles. It lumbered forward again, edged up to my glass of whisky. The ugly bulb-like head explored the rim of the glass. Then with irritation it kicked the glass off onto the floor and scampered back across the table and disappeared off the edge.
\nIt was only Dubini\u2019s hand, of course. His fingers were as thick as sausages and supple as snakes and he could make them into almost anything he wanted. It was like watching a puppet\u2014you look at it long enough and soon you begin to see it breathe.<\/em> p.121<\/p>\n

The narrator recruits Cattivo to become a small-time thief, but this is just preparation for a bigger job…<\/p>\n

The non-fiction this issue includes Chesley Bonstell\u2019s second cover for the magazine, called Spaceship in Trouble With Meteor Swarm; Europa and Jupiter in the Background<\/strong>. It is a rather jumbled looking composition and not as good as his first effort.
\nThe Title Contest Announcement<\/em><\/strong> gives the name of the winner of the $100 prize for naming Idris Seabirght\u2019s story in the April issue, but doesn\u2019t tell us what the title was!
\nLimerick<\/em><\/strong> is an OK five line effort\u00a0by Anthony Boucher.
\nRecommended Reading<\/em><\/strong> by The Editors suggests that the two best novels of the year so far are Prelude to Space<\/em> by Arthur C. Clarke, and The Day of the Triffids<\/em> by John Wyndham. They also have a good word for The Moon is Hell<\/em> by John W. Campbell, Jr.
\nI was a little surprised at this comment about Ray Bradbury\u2019s The Illustrated Man<\/em> as I thought the linking material effectively creepy:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been only one recent volume of science fiction short stories; but that one is a must: Ray Bradbury\u2019s THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (Doubleday). The attempt at a unifying frame-structure is, in contrast to THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, markedly unsuccessful; and a few of the eighteen stories seem less than wisely chosen to enhance the Bradbury reputation. But enough excellent ones remain to provide a feast for every devotee of the finest traditions in imaginative fiction.<\/em> p.84<\/p>\n

There is an amusing comment about Is Another World Watching?<\/em> by Gerald Heard:<\/p>\n

It starts off with a clear, well documented survey of the flying saucer situation to date, a badly needed corrective to the distorted and even flatly untrue \u201cexplanations\u201d in recent magazines and newspapers. Then gradually, by certain steps of decidedly eluctable logic, Mr. Heard reaches the conclusion (and expatiates on it as established fact) that the \u201csaucers\u201d are piloted by intelligent bees from Mars. Frankly, we aren\u2019t at all sure of the position of Mr. Heard\u2019s tongue relative to his cheek at this point.<\/em> p.84<\/p>\n

In conclusion, I would say that this issue is another mixed bag, but unlike previous volumes\u00a0there are no stories that make it worth getting hold of. It also illustrates one of F&SF\u2019<\/em>s developing traits, which is that there is too much froth and not enough substance. The Clarke, Arthur, Curtis, Nearing, Leimert and Dickens stories are all either humorous or \u2018light\u2019 pieces\u2014too many. I wish that they would cull some of these and the weaker short stories and replace them with a couple of substantial novelettes. I also wish they would cut down on the reprints, the number of which would seem to indicate a shortage of original material. The next issue contains a short novel (albeit a reprint piece) that occupies half the issue: we\u2019ll see if that improves matters.<\/p>\n

This magazine is still being published!<\/b> Subscribe: Kindle UK<\/a>, Kindle USA<\/a>\u00a0or physical copies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Galactic Central link ISFDB link Fiction: Superiority \u2022 short story by Arthur C. Clarke \u2665\u2665\u2665 Prolog \u2022 short story by John P. McKnight \u2665\u2665 Wilfred Weem, Dreamer \u2022 reprint short story by Robert Arthur \u2665\u2665 A Peculiar People \u2022 short story by Betsy Curtis The Punishing of Eddie Jungle-Spit \u2022 reprint short story by Garrett […]<\/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-2029","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-wJ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029","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=2029"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2040,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029\/revisions\/2040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}