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Galactic Central link<\/a> Fiction: Non-fiction: The Xmas Cover<\/em><\/strong> for this issue was, I think, Science Fiction Monthly\u2019<\/em>s first use of\u00a0original artwork rather than a previously published one\u00a0from NEL\u2019s paperback line (although I\u2019d have to check #5 to be sure). I think that Ray Winder produced a cover that was not only seasonal but eye-catching as well.1<\/sup><\/p>\n The fiction, as per usual for the magazine, is the usual lacklustre selection, although the Olaf Stapledon\u2019s piece A World of Sound<\/em><\/strong> (Hotch Potch<\/em>, 1936) is of some interest. In this, one of his few short stories, a man finds himself quite literally in a world of sound. He describes the physicality of the world before he is attracted to the equivalent of a female, who he subsequently pursues.<\/p>\n A newcomer now approached from the silent distance to join my frolicking companions. This being was extremely attractive to me, and poignantly familiar. Her lithe figure, her lyrical yet faintly satirical movement, turned the jungle into Arcadia. To my delight I found that I was not unknown to her, and not wholly unpleasing. With a gay gesture she beckoned me into the game. Later, he is pursued by a \u2018wolf.\u2019 The Legend of GX-118<\/em><\/strong> by David S. Garnett starts with two men from Earth\u2019s department of Extraterrestrial Affairs visiting a planet that is inhabited by natives who have no interest in interacting with the humans. The boss of Galentic, the company that discovered the planet, shows them around. The Last Weapon<\/em><\/strong> by Douglas Fulthorpe is labelled as a satire, which is just as well as I\u2019m not sure I would have noticed. A man is treated by a psychotherapist and told the reason he has been unable to hold down a job is because he has been wearing shoes that have been two sizes too small all his life (his mother wanted him to be a ballet dancer). The room had been thoroughly searched before the meeting. Only the previous week an American spy had been discovered lashed to the underside of the table in this very room. The juicy sounds of his chomping on a wad of mentholated gum had proved his undoing. (He had taken the precaution of jamming the building\u2019s acoustic detectors, but had overlooked the natural hearing faculty of the board members.)<\/em> p.28<\/p>\n The non-fiction is as unexceptional as the fiction, although there are a few pieces that are quite good. When I went down to scout locations the oceanarium people showed me this tremendous tank full of sharks, barracuda, moray eels, even an octopus. They were fed by divers going into the tank and feeding them by hand. I looked into the tank and said, could you guys possibly screen off half the tank with a net and then take out the most dangerous fish so that I can shoot the creature inside it. I told them I not only had to get the creature in the tank but also my leading man and lady. I said if they took one look at those sharks in there I would never get them in. So they assured me they would but when I returned with the company and we got ready to shoot I saw there was no net. Where\u2019s the net, I asked. And they said, you don\u2019t need a net . . . those fish won\u2019t bother your actors . . . they\u2019re too well-fed. Modern Masters of Science Fiction: 5: Olaf Stapledon<\/em><\/strong> by Walter Gillings is an interesting article about Stapledon\u2019s work that left me wanting to read his Last and First Men<\/em>, and Star Maker<\/em> (the only one of his I\u2019ve read is Sirius<\/em>). The editorial, Future issues<\/em><\/strong>, looks forward to next year and volume two, and promises articles by Mike Ashley on Moorcock and Ellision, and more space devoted to TV and cinema, with pieces by John Bronsan on Star Trek and Dr Who (alas). They also promise more original fiction with the winners of the short story competition appearing from next issue. The attractiveness in the drawings is partially incidental and partially an attempt on my part to make people want to like them, so that I can introduce them to other ideas which I want them to like and which aren\u2019t just pretty pictures. My drawings are not about art at all, I am not interested in art, I am not interested in fantasy in the sense that your magazine is. Fanzines in Focus: Peter Weston and Speculation<\/em><\/strong> by Aune R. Butt is a short chatty article about Weston\u2019s fanzine, whereas Are You Alive (and Intelligent) Out There?<\/em><\/strong> by C. D. Renmore is a rather dull science essay about communication with aliens, which doesn\u2019t contain much that I haven\u2019t read before. In short, Mr Kirby is suggesting an academic discipline of applied science fiction. He proposes that a comprehensive content analysis of all science fiction be prepared to provide a computer bank of hypotheses which can be fed to scientists; he is encouraging scientific researchers to send their problems to sf writers who will solve them in fiction; and he also suggests that liaison committees be set up between scientists and writers to combine the actual with the possible. The Query Box<\/em><\/strong> by Walter Gillings answers a selection of questions, and Letters<\/em><\/strong> has an interesting\u00a0item of correspondence from C. R. Stanley of Southsea, Hampshire about SF music. An issue that isn\u2019t really worth digging out.<\/p>\n Galactic Central link ISFDB link Fiction: A World of Sound \u2022 reprint short story by Olaf Stapledon \u2665\u2665 The Legend of GX-118 \u2022 short story by David S. Garnett \u2665 The Last Weapon \u2022 short story by Douglas Fulthorpe \u2665 Non-fiction: Cover \u2022 Ray Winder Interior artwork \u2022 Martin Venning, Josh Kirby, Barry Robson, Chris […]<\/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":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction-monthly"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-Cd","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369","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=2369"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2383,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions\/2383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nISFDB link<\/a><\/p>\n
\nA World of Sound<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Olaf Stapledon \u2665\u2665
\nThe Legend of GX-118<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by David S. Garnett \u2665
\nThe Last Weapon<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Douglas Fulthorpe \u2665<\/p>\n
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Ray Winder
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Martin Venning, Josh Kirby, Barry Robson, Chris Bent, Bruce Pennington, Ray Feibush, Tim White, Malcolm Poynter, Cheryl Drower, Bob Layzell,
\nBack Issues<\/em><\/strong>
\nFuture issues<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial
\nJack Arnold SF Film Director Extraordinaire<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 interview by John Brosnan
\nThe Artist in Science Fiction: Roger Dean<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Julie Davis
\nModern Masters of Science Fiction: 5: Olaf Stapledon<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Walter Gillings
\nFanzines in Focus: Peter Weston and Speculation<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Aune R. Butt
\nAre You Alive (and Intelligent) Out There?<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 science essay by C. D. Renmore
\nReview: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Malcolm Edwards
\nNews<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Julie Davis
\nThe Query Box<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Walter Gillings [as by Thomas Sheridan]
\nLetters<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
\nFor the first time I not only changed the posture of my musical limbs but moved bodily, both in the dimension of pitch and the \u201clevel\u201d dimension. As soon as I approached, she slipped with laughter away from me. I followed her; but very soon she vanished into the jungle and into the remoteness of silence. Naturally I determined to pursue her. I could no longer live without her. And in the exquisite harmony of our two natures I imagined wonderful creative potentialities.<\/em> p.11<\/p>\n
\nThe last line of this made me smile somewhat: although this type of ending usually irritates it works quite well here and, for what it is worth, is set up at the start.<\/p>\n
\nThe two visitors notice that there are no children or old people and later realise that the natives must be immortal. The men (spoiler) are subsequently involved in a cover up and are killed, or appear to be killed, by company employees.
\nThe final part is rather perplexing as it involves one of the two men\u2014who had been shot after discovering the other\u2019s body\u2014arriving on the planet years later. By this point in time the natives have been wiped out and Galentic have made a fortune selling the planet\u2019s water\u2014the secret of the alien\u2019s immortality.
\nNone of this hangs together, not why one of the men has survived, nor why the water would work on humans as it does on the alien natives. I also didn\u2019t understand the point of the framing device, which is of a movie about the discovery of the alien\u2019s immortality being shown on his arrival on the planet. Perhaps I missed something.<\/p>\n
\nHe next turns up at a Ministry appointments board after smashing through a supposedly unbreakable exterior window and shows off a new weapon that changes peoples\u2019 temperament. This provides perhaps the only amusing paragraph in the story:<\/p>\n
\nJack Arnold SF Film Director Extraordinaire<\/em><\/strong> is an interesting interview by John Brosnan. The director of It Came from Outer Space<\/em>, Creature of the Black Lagoon<\/em>, etc., is a good subject and there are a number of interesting and or funny anecdotes. I\u2019ll limit myself to the one where he needed to do some shots of the creature underwater:<\/p>\n
\nSo I was in a fix. How was I going to get my actors to go in there? Now I had a crazy cameraman on that picture, he was nuts. He said to me that I\u2019d better go into the tank with him to demonstrate to the actors that it was safe. He talked me into it so I put on a mask and air tanks and jumped in. I closed my eyes at first. After a while I opened one eye and there was a damn shark, at least 12\u2019 long, his mouth open and\u00a0looking at me. And he was only about a yard away. I didn\u2019t know what to do. I didn\u2019t know whether to make any movement or to stay absolutely still . . . so I just shut my eyes again. It seemed the best thing to do. Then he brushed by me and I felt his skin . . . it was like sandpaper.
\nI shot to the surface then and said, come on in . . . nothing to it! But the amazing thing is that by the third day . . . after all our initial reluctance to go in the tank . . . all of us were so used to the sharks that we were actually kicking them out of the way. The only animal that gave us any trouble was a turtle. It developed a liking for the creature\u2019s costume and kept biting chunks out of it. Finally we had to assign a grip to stay underwater with the sole job of making sure that the turtle didn\u2019t bother our monster.<\/em> p.4<\/p>\n
\nMalcolm Edwards\u2019 Review: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin<\/em><\/strong> is a\u00a0detailed review of that book and made me resolve to reread it. It has been so long since I read it that I had forgotten what is was about.<\/p>\n
\nThe Artist in Science Fiction: Roger Dean<\/em><\/strong> is a short piece by Julie Davis about an\u00a0artist whose album covers and posters were part of my youth. Dean makes some interesting comments about the architectural point of his artwork:<\/p>\n
\nWhat I am interested in is putting ideas represented on the sleeves actually into practice. If some of those buildings and some of those sections of worlds appeal I don\u2019t want them to appeal only out of the pages of a book, I want people to be able to walk around them, climb the staircases, walk the corridors.<\/em> p.6-7<\/p>\n
\nNews<\/em><\/strong> by Julie Davis doesn\u2019t contain much news. Half of the four columns are made up of synopses of recent books. Of the remaining text, half is given over to a half-baked idea by Mensa\u2019s research officer and ideas chairman:<\/p>\n
\nHe rejects our passive role as objects in the universe, we are subjects and as such we should take the future in our own hands and define it into existence. Mr Kirby believes that the responsibility for this lies with the sf writers, he wants universities and research establishments to employ resident sf writers to stimulate new and worthwhile research. He even goes as far as to suggest that sf will no longer stand for science fiction but henceforth it will mean science fertiliser!
\nNeedless to say Mr Kirby\u2019s ideas were not received too favourably by the scientists present at the meeting.<\/em> p.26<\/p>\n
\nFinally, it will be no surprise that the Interior artwork<\/em><\/strong> in this issue is equally lacklustre, excepting Tim White\u2019s illustration for the David Garnett story and Josh Kirby\u2019s excellent two-page spread.2<\/sup> The centrefold is a diary for 1975 printed on top of an illustration by Ray Feibush.<\/p>\n\n
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\nThere is a double page spread of Josh Kirby’s cover for Ray Bradbury’s The October Country<\/em>:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/SFM197411kirbyx600.jpg?resize=625%2C449&ssl=1\")
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