{"id":2319,"date":"2016-12-01T19:45:42","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T19:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2319"},"modified":"2016-12-01T23:08:57","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T23:08:57","slug":"galaxy-science-fiction-v03n03-december-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2319","title":{"rendered":"Galaxy Science Fiction v03n03, December 1951"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"galaxy195112x600a\"<\/p>\n

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

Other reviews:
\nL\u00e4hett\u00e4nyt\u00a0Tpi\u00a0Klo, Tpi\u2019s Reading Diary<\/a>
\nMathew Wuertz, Black Gate<\/a><\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nWorld Without Children<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Damon Knight \u2665
\nA Pail of Air<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Fritz Leiber \u2665\u2665\u2665+
\nWith These Hands<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by C. M. Kornbluth \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nWinner Lose All<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Jack Vance \u2665\u2665
\nNot a Creature Was Stirring<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Dean Evans \u2665
\nPillar to Post<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by John Wyndham \u2665<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nSeason\u2019s Greetings To Our Readers<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 cover by Ed Emshwiller
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Ed Emshwiller, Karl Rogers, Thorne, David Stone, Richard Powers
\nFore and Aft<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial by H. L. Gold
\nGalaxy’s 5 Star Shelf<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 book reviews by Groff Conklin and Robert A. Heinlein
\nNext Month’s Contents Page <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This issue of Galaxy was published several months after the last one I read (the April issue) and, on the face of it, looks promising. First of all it has a stellar line up of writers which includes only one name that I don\u2019t recognise (Dean Evans). Secondly, this self-contained issue of Galaxy<\/em> was published between Heinlein\u2019s serial The Puppet Masters<\/em> and Alfred Bester\u2019s The Demolished Man<\/em>. Finally, it is that rarest of things, an SF magazine with a Xmas cover.
\nI don\u2019t know if you have ever searched through Galactic Central or ISFDB for these covers but it may surprise you to find there are actually very few of them.1<\/sup> Why this is I am not sure\u2014it seems like an editorial no-brainer to slap a Xmas cover on your seasonal issue and include\u00a0a suitably festive (or unfestive) story.2<\/sup>
\nThis SF Xmas cover is the earliest example I could find. Season\u2019s Greetings To Our Readers<\/em><\/strong> was the first of eight that Emsh would do featuring a four-armed Santa, the start of a Galaxy<\/em> tradition that would persist through most of the fifties and early-sixties.<\/p>\n

The first story is World Without Children<\/em><\/strong> by Damon Knight, which was his fourth piece for Galaxy<\/em> that year. It is set in a future where humanity has a considerably extended life span but:<\/p>\n

The last recorded birth had been two hundred years ago.
\nThat child\u2014who had also been the last to wear a snowsuit, the last to cut his finger playing with knives, and the last to learn about women\u2014had now reached he physiological age of twenty-five years, and looked even younger owing to his excellent condition. His name was George Miller; he had been a great curiosity in his day and a good many people still referred to him as The Child.<\/em> p.6<\/p>\n

At a party he gets together with three others, one of whom tells them that the human race is now nine-tenths sterile and the situation is deteriorating. As the government’s prohibition against new births will take too long to overturn, the four agree to continue illegally and in secret.
\nThe rest of the story is a rather formulaic resistance vs. Government adventure although it does have some interesting touches: it is mostly set in Venice, and the sexual mores of this future society are quite permissive. These latter include mention of \u2018G-string parties\u2019 and the like, and there is also this when George and one of the other characters hide out in \u2018vice house\u2019:<\/p>\n

The suite was eminently comfortable: three bedrooms, two baths, living room, game room, and even a tiny gymnasium; but Art grumbled. \u201cDammit, George, I suppose I shouldn\u2019t complain when you\u2019ve just saved my neck, but I can\u2019t see your sense of humor. Anyway, what are these people going to think when I keep staying here but don\u2019t have any women up?\u201d
\n\u201cProbably think we\u2019re queer,\u201d George suggested. Then, as Art seemed about to explode, he added hastily. \u201cIt\u2019ll be good for you, Art\u2014teach you humility and not condemning your fellow man and so forth. Anyhow, you\u2019ve got to admit it\u2019s safe.\u201d<\/em> p.26<\/p>\n

Overall this would have probably been an OK effort if it wasn\u2019t fatally undermined by a deux ex machina<\/em> ending (albeit one with its roots planted at the start of the story in the character of Joe, a young man who supposedly has three hundred years\u2019 worth of amnesia).3<\/sup> An interesting result of this ending is that (spoiler) George finds out that an older woman he has had the hots for throughout the story is a mother, at which point his ardour cools to almost glacial levels\u2026.<\/p>\n

A Pail of Air<\/em><\/strong> by Fritz Leiber was a story that I vaguely remembered liking in The Best of Fritz Leiber<\/em> (Sphere, 1974) where I first read it in the late seventies, and it didn\u2019t disappoint.4<\/sup> It starts with this:<\/p>\n

Pa had sent me out to get an extra pail of air. I\u2019d just about scooped it full and most of the warmth had leaked from my fingers when I saw the thing.<\/em>
\nYou know, at first I thought it was a young lady. Yes, a beautiful young lady\u2019s face all glowing in the dark and looking at me from the fifth floor of the opposite apartment, which hereabouts is the floor just above the white blanket of frozen air. I\u2019d never seen a live young lady before, except in the old magazines\u2014Sis is just a kid and Ma is pretty sick and miserable\u2014and it gave me such a start that I dropped the pail. Who wouldn\u2019t, knowing everyone on Earth was dead except Pa and Ma and Sis and you?<\/em> p.57<\/p>\n

This science fictional tall tale goes on to tell about a family that have survived the capture of the Earth by a \u2018dark star\u2019 that has dragged the planet out of the solar system. Away from the sun the planet has frozen, including the atmosphere.
\nWhile their methods of survival\u00a0are scientifically unlikely, the combination of folksy recollection and catastrophic events works quite well, and it is definitely a different kind of story than that normally found in the SF magazines of the time.<\/p>\n

With These Hands<\/em><\/strong> by C. M. Kornbluth is about a sculptor called Halvorsen in a future where artists like him have been largely replaced by the Esthetikon, a machine that cheaply produces algorithmically adjusted sculptures out of plastic.
\nHalvorsen manages to make ends meet by obtaining the odd commission from rich sponsors and by running art classes. This is where a young woman called Lucy enters his life. During their initial conversation he collapses from malnutrition and she fetches a doctor, and later food. At a subsequent\u00a0art class she brings an astronaut called Malone to look at his work, and the rivalry and differing world views between the two men are laid bare:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s some art, Malone. My students\u2014a couple of them in the still-life class\u2014are quite good. There are more across the country. Art for occupational therapy, or a hobby, or something to do with the hands. There\u2019s trade in their work. They sell them to each other, they give them to their friends, they hang them on their walls. There are even some sculptors like that. Sculpture is prescribed by doctors. The occupational therapists say it\u2019s even better than drawing and painting, so some of these people work in plasticene and soft stone, and some of them get to be good.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cMaybe so. I\u2019m an engineer, Halvorsen. We glory in doing things the easy way. Doing things the easy way got me to Mars and Venus and it\u2019s going to get me to Ganymede. You\u2019re doing things the hard way, and your inefficiency has no place in this world. Look at you! You\u2019ve lost a fingertip\u2014 some accident, I suppose.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cI never noticed\u2014\u201d said Lucy, and then let out a faint, \u201cOh!\u201d
\nHalvorsen curled the middle finger of his left hand into the palm, where he usually carried it to hide the missing first joint.
\n\u201cYes,\u201d he said softly. \u201cAn accident.\u201d \u2018
\n\u201cAccidents are a sign of inadequate mastery of material and equipment,\u201d said Malone sententiously. \u201cWhile you stick to your methods and I stick to mine, you can’t compete with me.\u201d<\/em>
\nHis tone made it clear that he was talking about more than engineering.<\/em> p.84<\/p>\n

At this point I was expecting a relationship to start between Halvorsen and Lucy, but (spoiler) Kornbluth subverts this expectation with, as I commented in his story The Mindworm (Worlds Beyond<\/em>, December 1950), an apparent knowledge of relationships beyond his years:<\/p>\n

The farce was beginning again. But this time he dreaded it.<\/em>
\nIt would not be the first time that a lonesome, discontented girl chose to see him as a combination of romantic rebel and lost pup, with the consequences you\u2019d expect.
\nHe knew from books, experience and Labuerre\u2019s conversation in the old days that there was nothing novel about the comedy\u2014that there had even been artists, lots of them, who had counted on endless repetitions of it for their livelihood.
\nThe girl drops in with groceries and the artist is pleasantly surprised; the girl admires this little thing or that after payday and buys it and the artist is pleasantly surprised; the girl brings her friends to take lessons
\nor make little purchases and the artist is pleasantly surprised. The girl may be seduced by the artist or vice versa, which shortens the comedy, or they get married, which lengthens it somewhat.
\nIt had been three years since Halvorsen had last played out the farce with a manic-depressive divorcee from Elmira: three years during which he had crossed the mid-point between thirty and forty; three more years to get beaten down by being unwanted and working too much and eating too little.<\/em> p.86<\/p>\n

He rebuffs Lucy\u2019s help and instead enters a radiation zone in Copenhagen, risking his life to view a piece of sculpture. After this the story proceeds to a rather pat ending but is otherwise a convincing and rather well done story about the threat of artistic extinction in a world of ever more capable technology.
\nI note in passing that there was an extended section involving a potter at the start of Kornbluth\u2019s The Marching Morons<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Winner Lose All<\/em><\/strong> by Jack Vance is an account of a spaceship that arrives at an undiscovered planet at the same time as an alien life-form:<\/p>\n

The unigen was an intelligent organism, though its characteristics included neither form nor structure. Its components were mobile nodes of a luminous substance which was neither matter nor yet energy. There were millions of nodes and each was connected with every other node by tendrils similar to the lines of force in macroid space.
\nThe unigen might be compared to a great brain, the nodes corresponding to the gray cells, the lines of force to the nerve tissue. It might appear as a bright sphere, or it might disperse its nodes at light speed to all corners of the universe.<\/em> p.95<\/p>\n

The conflict between human and alien plays out to the point that (spoiler) both the humans and the visiting alien life-form concede and leave the planet. They leave behind another alien spieces that completes its life-cycle.
\nIt is hard to believe this flat (the human characters are two-dimensional at best) piece is by the same author who produced The Loom of Darkness<\/em> a.k.a. Liane the Wayfarer<\/em> in the previous year\u2019s Worlds Beyond<\/em> (December 1950).<\/p>\n

Not a Creature Was Stirring<\/em><\/strong> by Dean Evans is the first SF story of around a dozen that Evans (real name George Kull) would publish over the next couple of years.5<\/sup> It is a particularly bleak story that occurs shortly before Xmas, and concerns a miner in Nevada who comes up from an extended period underground. He goes into town where, unbeknownst to him, the Reds have used a secret weapon that has killed everyone in the town and probably the country. They are frozen in position but show no signs of decay since the attack three weeks previously. He variously proceeds to get drunk, play roulette with the dead guests, etc.
\nThis has a particularly clumsy info dump at the beginning and goes on for far too long, but one or two of the scenes involving the miner\u00a0interacting with the dead invoke a glimmer of interest and the last few paragraphs provide a cheeringly bleak and seasonal ending.<\/p>\n

The final story in this issue is the tedious Pillar to Post<\/em><\/strong> by John Wyndham. This involves a man called Terence Molton, who is a double foot\/leg amputee as a result of standing on a mine. After overdoing his painkilling \u2018dope\u2019 he finds himself in another person\u2019s body in the future. While he is there he is looked after by a woman called Clytassamine and is told that he will return to his own body once the original occupant, Hymorell, builds another transference machine in his time.
\nUntil that happens Molton is taught the language and he and Clytassamine talk. A lot. Unfortunately these endless conversations are that pretentious, cod-philosophical drivel you get in too many SF stories when people in the far future discuss the human race:<\/p>\n

There was so much I wanted to know. \u201cWhat happened to my world?\u201d I asked her later. \u201cIt seemed pretty well headed for disaster, as I saw it. I suppose it nearly wiped itself out in some vast and destructive global war?\u201d
\n\u201cIt just died, the same as all the early civilizations. Nothing spectacular.\u201d
\nI thought of my world, its intricacies and complexities, the mastery of distance and speed, the progress of science.
\n\u201cJust died?\u201d I repeated. \u201cIt can’t have. There must have been something that broke it up.\u201d
\n\u201cOh, no. The passion for order is a manifestation of the deep desire for security. The desire is natural, but the attainment is fatal. There was the means to produce a static world, which was achieved. When the need for adaptation arose, it found itself unable to adapt. It inertly died of discouragement. That happened to many primitive peoples before.\u201d <\/em>
\nShe had no reason to lie, but it was hard to believe.
\n\u201cWe hoped for so much,\u201d I protested. \u201cEverything was opening before us. We were learning. We were going to reach out to other planets and beyond.\u201d
\n\u201cIngenious you certainly were, but each new discovery was a toy. You never considered its true worth. And you were a greedy, childishly aggressive people. You developed science without developing philosophy. Philosophy without science is fruitless speculation, likely to degenerate into superstition and ignorant quibbling. But science without philosophy is equally fruitless research that leads to pedantry, stasis, dogma.\u201d<\/em> p.148<\/p>\n

The final section finds Molton back in his own body in front of a primitive version of the transference machine, and there follows\u00a0half a dozen pages or so where the story perks up as he and Hymorell engage in a duel of wits as they swap back and forth between each other\u2019s bodies.<\/p>\n

Emsh contributes the best of Interior artwork<\/em><\/strong> (and also contributes under the pseudonym Ed Alexander for the Leiber story) although David Stone runs him a close second.6<\/sup> Powers\u2019 work was surprisingly disappointing, looking a bit smudged to be honest.
\nHorace Gold\u2019s editorial, Fore and Aft<\/em><\/strong>, contains the news that Galaxy<\/em> is under new ownership and makes reassuring noises about profitability, standards only being changed in the direction of improvement, etc., before going on to tout Knight\u2019s novella, next issue\u2019s serial The Demolished Man<\/em> by Alfred Bester, and a new science column by Willy Ley.7<\/sup>\u00a0He then goes on to provide six months\u2019 worth of story ratings. If these are in order of preference Cyril Korntbluth\u2019s The Marching Morons<\/em> was the least liked story in the April issue, and Isaac Asimov\u2019s Tyrann<\/em> the least liked serial. (A better man than me would be able to restrain himself from saying, \u2018I told you so.\u2019) Gold also mentions that he was apprehensive about the response that Edgar Pangborn\u2019s Angel\u2019s Egg<\/em> and Wyman Guin\u2019s Beyond Bedlam<\/em> would receive, and concludes by boasting about the fact that 95% of the first year\u2019s contents will shortly be reprinted in hard covers.
\nGalaxy’s 5 Star Shelf<\/em><\/strong> is by Groff Conklin and Robert A. Heinlein this issue, the latter reviewing one of the three books covered, Space Medicine: The Human Factor in Flights Beyond the Earth<\/em> by John P. Marbarger.<\/p>\n

An OK issue, but not as good as I had been expecting.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Galactic Central put together a few pages of fiction magazine Xmas covers<\/a>. As you can see there are very few SF ones amongst them. There are a few more he could have added (my list includes Astounding<\/em>, January 1954, \u201955, \u201956, \u201958, \u201959 and \u201977; Galaxy<\/em>, December 1951, \u201953, 54, 59 and \u201960, January 1956, \u201957, and \u201958, and November\/December 1994; F&SF<\/em>, January 1960, \u201962, \u201981 and \u201991; Science Fiction Monthly<\/em>, November 1974, \u201975. There is also a Xmas cover on the news magazine SF Chronicle<\/em> 1998).<\/li>\n
  2. If an atheist like me can cope with this Christian\/mercantile festival I\u2019m sure others can.<\/li>\n
  3. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m being overly hard on Knight\u2019s story. It was only reprinted by Gold and also took some time to come out in one of the writer\u2019s own collections. Its publication history is on ISFDB<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  4. I remember reading somewhere that the cover for The Best of Fritz Leiber<\/em> was actually produced for The Best of A. E. van Vogt<\/em> (illustrating the story The Cataaaaa<\/em>) but that they were swapped. The Leiber<\/a> and van Vogt<\/a> books at ISFDB.<\/li>\n
  5. \u2018Dean Evans\u2019 ISFDB page<\/a>. George Kull is mentioned in the Chapter 20 footnotes (#8) of C.M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary<\/em> by Mark Rich. This is from Pohl\u2019s account (in an interview with Damon Knight) of the financial troubles he got into when running his agency (by paying writers for their work before selling it to a publisher): \u201cThere was as fellow named George Kull in California\u2026who wrote pretty good light mysteries, but he wrote them in enormous volume, and I couldn\u2019t sell them as fast as he wrote them. He was starving to death, and he was into me for like three thousand dollars when I wrote him off.\u201d p.408
    \nKull is identified as Evans just after this passage.<\/li>\n
  6. One of Emsh\u2019s illustrations for Damon Knight\u2019s\u00a0World Without Children<\/em>:\"galaxy195112emshx600\"David Stone\u2019s illustrations for Dean Evan\u2019s Not a\u00a0Creature Was Stirring:\"galaxy195112stone1x600\"\"galaxy195112stone2x600\"<\/li>\n
  7. The publisher had changed on the November issue contents page to Galaxy Publishing Corporation from World Editions Inc.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Galactic Central link ISFDB link Other reviews: L\u00e4hett\u00e4nyt\u00a0Tpi\u00a0Klo, Tpi\u2019s Reading Diary Mathew Wuertz, Black Gate Fiction: World Without Children \u2022 novella by Damon Knight \u2665 A Pail of Air \u2022 short story by Fritz Leiber \u2665\u2665\u2665+ With These Hands \u2022 novelette by C. M. Kornbluth \u2665\u2665\u2665 Winner Lose All \u2022 short story by Jack Vance […]<\/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":true,"_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":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-galaxy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-Bp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319","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=2319"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2335,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions\/2335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}