{"id":2537,"date":"2017-02-06T15:20:07","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T15:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2537"},"modified":"2018-03-07T22:07:24","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T22:07:24","slug":"the-magazine-of-fantasy-and-science-fiction-11-december-1951","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2537","title":{"rendered":"The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction #11, December 1951"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

ISFDB link<\/a>
\nGalactic Central link<\/a><\/p>\n

Other reviews:
\nJohn Loyd: There ain\u2019t no such thing as a free lunch<\/a><\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nWhen the Last Gods Die<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Fritz Leiber ♥♥
\nThe Haunted Ticker<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Percival Wilde ♥♥♥
\nO Ugly Bird!<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Manly Wade Wellman ♥♥♥
\nThe Rats<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Arthur Porges ♥♥♥+
\nBuilt Down Logically<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Howard Schoenfeld ♥
\nThe Earlier Service<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Margaret Irwin ♥♥♥
\nThe Universe Broke Down<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Robert Arthur ♥♥
\nCome On, Wagon!<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Zenna Henderson ♥♥
\nThe House in Arbor Lane<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by James S. Hart ♥
\nSkiametric Morphology and Behaviorism of Ganymedeus Sapiens: a Summary of Neoteric Hypotheses<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Kenneth R. Deardorf ♥♥
\nThe Hyperspherical Basketball<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by H. Nearing, Jr. ♥<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by George Salter and Dirone Photography
\nReport from the Editors<\/em><\/strong>
\nRecommended Reading<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by The Editors
\nIndex to Volume Two\u2014February 1951-December 1951<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Editors:<\/em><\/strong> Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas<\/p>\n

I mentioned in a previous review that there were signs that F&SF<\/em> was changing into the magazine it would become in the early and mid-50s: this issue marks a significant step in that direction. Not only do we have the first appearances of\u00a0Fritz Leiber, Zenna Henderson and Arthur Porges, but we also have the first of the \u2018John the Balladeer\u2019 stories from a previous contributor, Manly Wade Wellman.<\/p>\n

Fritz Leiber would contribute and number of significant stories for F&SF<\/em> over the years including a handful of award winners.1<\/sup> When the Last Gods Die<\/em><\/strong> is described in the introduction as \u2018a short mood piece,\u2019 which is a fair description. It tells of a machine travelling to meet the remnants of humanity, who now appear to be gods:<\/p>\n

Then the Machine (for such it was) spoke: \u201cFor a last time we implore you to reconsider your decision.\u201d
\nOne of the men, gray as Time himself, lifted his chin from his chest and answered. And since I can no more render his actual name than I can reproduce his language or more than hint at the breadth of his thought, and since he and his companions\u2014with the Bacchic suggestion of their hoofs and hides\u2014were faintly akin to some sculptured portraiture of the Greek and Roman Gods, I will call him Saturn.
\nSaturn answered, \u201cYour plea is futile. We made our decision when we made you.\u201d
\nThe buried tendrils of the Machine wormed a little closer, pleadingly. \u201cBut we are your children, the children of your brains.\u201d
\nSaturn shook his head slightly and, selecting across the eons the same ancient metaphor I have used, replied, \u201cMinerva sprang full-grown from the brain of Jove. Does that mean her father must live forever?\u201d
\n\u201cBut when man made the machine,\u201d the Machine responded, \u201cwhen he made the spear, the sail, the spaceship, he never dreamed it would end this way.\u201d
\n\u201cPerhaps not,\u201d Saturn told him. \u201cDreams don\u2019t foretell everything. The sun is sinking.\u201d<\/em> p. 4<\/p>\n

I suspect that this theatrical piece is a stylistic break from Leiber\u2019s previous writing, but I am not knowledgeable\u00a0enough to say so authoritatively.
\nI also know very little about Arthur Porges\u2019 work other than he was the writer of a story called The Ruum<\/em> in a later issue of the magazine (and am aware of another called The Fly<\/em>).2<\/sup> The Rats<\/em><\/strong> (Man\u2019s World<\/em>, February 1951) is a tale about a man who is living in a restricted and abandoned area beside a atomic bomb testing facility. The reason why is brilliantly obvious:<\/p>\n

In this region, wasteland to begin with, and now forbidden by law, a man would be safe. What enemy, he reasoned, cared to waste a gram of fissionable material on such a locality? Further, when the bombs fell, an eventuality he believed imminent, there would be no panicky mobs to pillage his supplies, menace his life blindly, and, in short, ruin his slender chance for survival.<\/em> p.45<\/p>\n

The only problem he has\u2014apart from imminent nuclear war\u2014is that the rats have had their food supply cut off with the closing of the facility and they are now eating his rations. So begins the story of his attempts to eradicate them, something that proves harder than expected given their unusual intelligence.
\nThis is a pretty good piece and I suspect it has everything that you would want in a mens\u2019 magazine story of the time: grisly and inhumane ways of killing rats, a cat and mouse (!) battle between the two, and a neat last scene.
\nZenna Henderson won\u2019t need any introduction if you have read previous reviews of F&SF<\/em> here: she was, among other things, the author of the popular and well-regarded \u2018The People\u2019 stories which\u00a0appeared in the magazine throughout the following decades. Come On, Wagon!<\/em><\/strong> was her first published adult fiction3<\/sup> (according to the introduction, there had been poetry and a juvenile book previously) and is about a man who has a strange nephew called Thaddeus:<\/p>\n

I was out by the barn waiting for Dad. Mom was making him change his pants before he demonstrated his new tractor for me. I saw Thaddeus loading rocks into his little red wagon. Beyond the rock pile, I could see that he had started a play house or ranch of some kind, laying the rocks out to make rooms or corrals or whatever. He finished loading the wagon and picked up another rock that took both arms to carry, then he looked down at the wagon.
\n\u201cCome on, Wagon.\u201d And he walked over to his play-place.
\n<\/em>And the wagon went with him, trundling along over the uneven ground, following at his heels like a puppy.
\nI blinked and inventoried rapidly the Christmas Cheer I had imbibed. It wasn\u2019t enough for an explanation. I felt a kind of cold grue creep over me.<\/em> p. 80-81<\/p>\n

Later, as the uncle is recuperating abroad from war injuries, he learns from a letter that there may have been a similar incident where Thaddeus exhibited his psychokinetic powers, although they weren\u2019t recognised as such by the family.
\nThe story sets up an ending (spoiler) that is fairly predictable (a tractor accident that pins one of the family underneath the machine). However, the resolution is not what I expected or would have preferred, and it is quite atypically downbeat for the period. Readers will fall into two camps about this one: some will find it appropriate; others, like me (and Horace Gold, probably), would have preferred something more upbeat.4<\/sup>
\nO Ugly Bird!<\/em><\/strong> by Manly Wade Wellman, as mentioned above, is the first of the \u2018John the Balladeer\u2019 stories, another popular F&SF<\/em> series.5<\/sup> These\u00a0tell of a wanderer called John who plays a guitar with silver strings. In this story\u00a0he wanders into a small settlement and sees a man called Mr Onslem extorting one of the settlers who lives there. Later, after Mr Onslem has left and John is talking to the man, a strange vulture-like creature lands and takes a sack of meal, lifting it with claws that look very similar to Mr Onslem\u2019s hands . . . .
\nThe rest of the story is fairly straightforward but its strength is in its modern American folk-fantasy setting. By the time I started reading F&SF<\/em> in the mid-1970s, it had a long tradition of printing stories that involved American folklore. Wellman, and this series in particular, was perhaps the forerunner.<\/p>\n

As to the rest of the fiction there are a couple of good reprint novelettes but the rest is pretty much a mixed bag. The first reprint novelette is The Haunted Ticker<\/em><\/strong> by Percival Wilde (The Popular Magazine<\/em>, May 20th<\/sup>, 1923). This is about a mean old man who makes a financial killing when he develops a system for predicting the rise and fall of the 1920\u2019s stock market. When he falls ill and has to remain at home, he installs his nephew in a stockbroker\u2019s office and starts communicating to him using coded telephone messages. Although the uncle promises to instruct the nephew in his system he dies before he can do so\u2014but then the codes start coming over the tickertape . . . .
\nI enjoyed this gentleman\u2019s club tale, but it is mostly about the goings-on in a stockbroker\u2019s office so it won\u2019t be for everyone. The ending is somewhat predictable, too.
\nThe other reprint of note is The Earlier Service<\/em><\/strong> by Margaret Irwin (Madame Fears the Dark<\/em>, 1935). This concerns the sixteen year old daughter of a vicar who is disturbed by something she senses in a corner of her father\u2019s church. This develops with the later sighting of a figure, and also carvings discovered by a visitor that indicate one of the previous medieval priests may have been a Satanist.
\nAt the end of the story (spoiler) the daughter observes a service involving strange cowled figures, and the final scene involves a temporal displacement\/time-warp element that is unnecessarily telegraphed in the introduction by the editors.
\nThis is a pretty good story, I thought, by a writer whose descriptive powers convincingly conjure up the mid-1930\u2019s church family setting. I\u2019d be interested to read more by this writer.<\/p>\n

Built Down Logically<\/em><\/strong> by Howard Schoenfeld is presumably a sequel of sorts to last year\u2019s Build Up Logically<\/em>. It is an inconsequential piece where logical daisy-chaining once again makes things happen\u2014in this case a very smart two year old disappears.
\nThe Universe Broke Down<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Arthur (Argosy<\/em>, 1941) is a story about a madcap scientist\/inventor and his space-portal invention. Narrated by his friend, this is a pleasant story if a light-weight one, but\u00a0it does have a good explanation of the machine\u2019s effect:<\/p>\n

Suppose two ants are on a sheet of paper\u2014a two-dimensional world. Suppose they\u2019re on opposite sides of the paper, and want to join each other. One of them will have to crawl clear across the sheet, over the edge, and clear back on the other side. That\u2019s equivalent to traveling distance, or through space, in our three-dimensional world.
\n\u201cBut suppose one of the ants invents an apparatus for drilling a hole in the paper, through which it can crawl in an instant to join the other. That would be equivalent to my Spatial By-pass apparatus, which utilizes a pseudofourth dimension of its own creation to make it possible to move from one spot to another without traversing the intervening distance.<\/em> p.72-73<\/p>\n

The House in Arbor Lane<\/em><\/strong> by James S. Hart is a story about a young man and woman who are on trial for murder. During the trial we discover that the young man is an artist who had painted a picture of a house where the murder was committed several months previously. As he finished the picture he had a vivid dream about being in a room where an elderly woman stabs a young one. He testifies that it\u00a0felt like he was there but he could not move. The story unfolds of how he later meets the young woman on the bus and ends up in the exact same room.
\nThis is all rather contrived and unbelievable, and not helped by some corny writing, such as this after the revelation of a jury discussion twist in the tail:<\/p>\n

A small cloud slid across the face of the sun and the room darkened. There was a hush that lasted for a full minute.<\/em> p. 108<\/p>\n

Skiametric Morphology and Behaviorism of Ganymedeus Sapiens: a Summary of Neoteric Hypotheses<\/em><\/strong> by Kenneth R. Deardorf is a short, clever and slight \u2018non-fact\u2019 article about hyper-dimensional beings. They appear to humans as single lines, and the story is illustrated with appropriate sketches.6<\/sup>
\nFinally, The Hyperspherical Basketball<\/em><\/strong> by H. Nearing, Jr. is the fourth of the \u2018C. P. Ransom\u2019 stories. This one has an almost unintelligible beginning where the mathematician Ransom explains making a circle out of a line, a sphere out of a circle and a hypersphere out of a sphere. This is not clearly explained.
\nThe second part of the story provides some enjoyment in its story of a game of college basketball between the sports and academic masters using Ransom\u2019s hypersphere\u2014a basketball that not only changes size but sometimes appears in unexpected places. The game is refereed by Ransom\u2019s long-suffering colleague MacTate.<\/p>\n

As for the non-fiction, I think that this month\u2019s Cover<\/em><\/strong> is my favourite Salter so far: certainly an eye catching piece that would attract readers at the newsstand.
\nReport from the Editors<\/em><\/strong> is a short half-page note about stories from F&SF<\/em> that have been selected for the year\u2019s best and other anthologies.
\nIn Recommended Reading<\/em><\/strong> the editors review three Willy Ley books and, from the rest, recommend Rogue Queen<\/em> by L. Sprague de Camp, The Weapon Shops of Isher<\/em> by A. E. van Vogt, and The Innocence of Pastor M\u00fcller<\/em> by Carlo Beuf .
\nThere is also a useful\u00a0Index to Volume Two\u2014February 1951-December 1951<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

An interesting and significant issue.7<\/sup><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Fritz Leiber had a number of award winning stories in F&SF<\/em> (Ship of Shadows, Ill Met in Lanhkmar, Catch That Zeppelin!, Our Lady of Darkness\/The Pale Brown Thing,<\/em> etc. More details on ISFDB<\/a>.)<\/li>\n
  2. Arthur Porges\u2019 The Ruum<\/em> (F&SF<\/em>, October 1953) was one of those early SF anthology stories that\u00a0seared itself into my brain. I think I probably dreamed about being pursued by the ruum for months afterwards.<\/li>\n
  3. Annette Peltz McComas\u2019s book The Eureka Years: Boucher and McComas\u2019s Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction 1949-1954<\/em> includes some of the correspondence between the editors and Ms Henderson about this story (p. 91-92):<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    3 December 1950<\/em>
    \nDear Miss Henderson:<\/em>
    \nWe were deeply impressed with your story, COME ON WAGON! It\u2019s fine fantasy, written in a neat terse style that we like a lot.<\/em>
    \nHowever, we don\u2019t think you have fully developed your situation. We\u2019d like to offer the following suggestions for revision, with the hope you\u2019ll see fit to work on them and let us see what happens. If you can do a satisfactory rewrite, we\u2019ll want the story.<\/em>
    \nThere should be one more episode illustrating Thaddeus\u2019 curious powers. It would be effective, I think; if this were written to the narrator, while he\u2019s in the hospital, by his Dad. It should be written so that Dad is not fully aware of just what Thaddeus can do, or just how strange is the happening he relates, but the narrator is.<\/em>
    \nThen, leave the story as is until the tractor accident occurs, right up to the advent of Thaddeus. But, in your rewrite, have Thad refuse to help.<\/em>
    \nThat makes for a stronger situation, stresses the gulf between children and adults, ends your story on a horrible question. Make sure that the reader understands that Thaddeus won\u2019t help because he can\u2019t.<\/em>
    \nHoping to see a rewrite on this.<\/em>
    \nSincerely,<\/em>
    \n Francis McComas<\/em><\/p>\n

    9 February 1951<\/em>
    \nDear Mrs. Henderson:<\/em>
    \nPlease forgive the extremely long silence on COME ON, WAGON\u2014a complex matter of editorial illnesses and absences.<\/em>
    \nThe rewrite\u2019s a very attractive job, which we certainly want to use.<\/em>
    \nHas good luck been befalling you in the meanwhile, or is this your first sale? Purely selfishly, we hope that all your other stories have not sold (but will immediately after this); we like the smug satisfaction of being able to claim, years later, \u201cLook, we discovered her.\u201d<\/em>
    \nCordially,<\/em>
    \nAnthony Boucher<\/em><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. I\u2019d have liked a more upbeat ending to Henderson\u2019s story but mutedly so. After a modified last scene:
      \nWe came close to losing Clyde in that accident. He was in the hospital for several months, and walked with a pronounced limp for the rest of his life. Something else was lost though: I never again saw the light that had appeared in Thaddeus\u2019s eyes when he said, \u2018Come on, Tractor,\u2019 and the huge machine rolled off of Clyde\u2019s leg.<\/em>
      \nYes, I know: I can\u2019t write my way out of a paper bag. Why do you think I spend my time doing this?<\/li>\n
    2. Annette Peltz McComas\u2019s book also includes correspondence between the editors and Mr Wellman about O Ugly Bird!<\/em> (p. 147-149):<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Labor Day, 1949<\/em>
      \nDear Antonio\u2014<\/em>
      \nIt is with considerable interest I read what Benet\u2019s <\/em>Phoenix Nest says about you and your projected <\/em>Magazine of Fantasy. More power to this effort to jack up the reputation and quality of the genre. My unsolicited opinion is that it will be tougher to do than Fred Dannay\u2019s similar detective-story labor, for there isn\u2019t quite the public for it, in spite of all the essays to that effect by Wolheim, Pratt, de Camp, et al.<\/em>
      \nStill, I\u2019m somewhat of a laborer in the fantasy lodge myself. I\u2019d rather write supernatural than science, and haven\u2019t done so because of the limited and underpaid market. Tell me, if you care to, what about <\/em>Magazine of Fantasy? Preferred lengths, taboos, special needs? Also, in a sordid vein, what are you paying? I doubt if these frontier and rustic latitudes will have your publication on the stands\u2014how about sending me a copy?<\/em>
      \nLet me say at once that I am not writing this letter with anything in the way of a rejected dud to send you. I have absolutely nothing on the stocks at present in the fantasy bracket. But, erroneously or not, I think that once and again I\u2019ve thrown away some terribly effective writing on such pulps as WEIRD TALES, where nobody would know good writing from bad with a fifty-power microscope.<\/em>
      \nBest of luck with the magazine, from<\/em>
      \nManly Wade Wellman<\/em><\/p>\n

      12 September <\/em>1950\u00a0<\/em>
      \nDear Manly:<\/em>
      \nOnce again you have written on hell of a story! [O UGLY BIRD!]<\/em>
      \nThree small points:<\/em>
      \nA) Are silver strings practical and feasible on a guitar? If you\u2019re positive, we\u2019ll take your word; if you have any doubts, we\u2019d like to consult Ted Sturgeon, who knows all about guitars.<\/em>
      \nB) We\u2019d like to go back to the original ugly bird; the overlap between Jesse Stuart\u2019s public and ours is negligible.<\/em>
      \nC) (And the only really serious one) . . . the story bogs down pretty badly in a mess of explanations like a badly constructed whodunit. Can\u2019t you reconstruct\u2014planting a little of this earlier, paring the rest down to a minimum\u2014 so that there\u2019s only a few hundred words between the destruction of Onselm and the curtain?<\/em>
      \nAB<\/em><\/p>\n

      19 September 1950<\/em>
      \nDear Tony:<\/em>
      \nYour letter on how to do the yam over arrived late Saturday, and I just bowed my neck and did the thing over. New title, as you see, O UGLY BIRD! I did it all except three of the early pages, and tried to fix those explanations at the end.<\/em>
      \nAnswering your question about the silver strings, I went into that before ever I wrote. Silver strings were used before steel strings became good enough. Silver makes a good harmonious jangle, a la silver horns, etc. I checked again before I wrote, in Deems Taylor\u2019s MUSIC LOVER\u2019S ENCYCLOPEDIA, which has this to say under \u201cStringed Instruments\u201d: Guitar strings today are sometimes silver wound on a steel or silk core. And under \u201cSilver trumpet\u201d, it says that silver is used for strings on many instruments.<\/em>
      \nTo switch things around and plant ahead, I took up slack here and there to allow new inserts; but the story comes out just about as long as it was when you saw it last.<\/em>
      \nGood luck to you, and I really want to hear that this magazine makes the grade. It\u2019s badly needed!<\/em>
      \nBest,<\/em>
      \nManly<\/em><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. An example of the illustrations for the Kenneth R. Deardorf story: \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/li>\n
      2. I mentioned in my review<\/a> of F&SF<\/em>, Winter-Spring 1950, that Annette McComas selected three stories from that issue for her anthology. She selected three from\u00a0this one too (the Henderson, Wellman and Deardorf).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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

        ISFDB link Galactic Central link Other reviews: John Loyd: There ain\u2019t no such thing as a free lunch Fiction: When the Last Gods Die \u2022 short story by Fritz Leiber ♥♥ The Haunted Ticker \u2022 reprint short story by Percival Wilde ♥♥♥ O Ugly Bird! \u2022 short story by Manly Wade Wellman ♥♥♥ The Rats […]<\/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":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2537","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-EV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537","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=2537"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4351,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537\/revisions\/4351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}