{"id":2570,"date":"2017-02-15T14:26:01","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T14:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2570"},"modified":"2020-08-27T20:45:11","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T20:45:11","slug":"science-fantasy-73-june-1965","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2570","title":{"rendered":"Science Fantasy #73, June 1965"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

Other reviews:
\nJohn Boston and Damien Broderick: Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-67<\/em> (p. 247 of 365) (Amazon UK<\/a>)<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Kyril Bonfilioli; Associate Editor, J. Parkhill-Rathbone<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nThe Impossible Smile<\/em><\/strong> (Part 2 of 2) \u2022 novella serial by Brian W. Aldiss [as by Jael Cracken] –
\nGreat & Small<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by G. L. Lack \u2217\u2217<\/strong>+
\nPloop<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ron Pritchett –
\nPeace on Earth<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Paul Jents –
\nDeterrent<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Keith Roberts [as by Alistair Bevan] \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nA Pleasure Shared<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Brian W. Aldiss \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nPrisoner<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Patricia Hocknell
\nIn Reason\u2019s Ear<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Hilary Bailey [as by Pippin Graham] \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nXenophilia<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Thom Keyes \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Keith Roberts
\nEditorial<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Kyril Bonfiglioli<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

The fiction in this issue of the magazine makes reading it a game of two halves: most of the fiction in the first half is fairly poor but the material at the back isn\u2019t bad.
\nThe Impossible Smile<\/em><\/strong> by Brian W. Aldiss completes in this issue. Wyvern is taken to Bureau-X, where he sees Parrodyce and warns him telepathically that Colonel H knows he is a telepath. Parrodyce flees. Wyvern later wakes up to find he is plugged into Bert the computer.
\nThe rest of the story involves Wyvern and Parrodyce each going through several capture\/escape narrative loops. Wyvern is dematerialised by Bert the computer at one point to escape being shot. At the very end of the story Wyvern learns to do this on his own, and transports himself to the rebels in the Yank zone of the Moon where he meets fellow telepath Eileen. She has cured Parrodyce of his mental ills and he ends up becoming a zither player in a Turkish band. All ends well.
\nAlthough this part is told in the same readable manner\u00a0as the first, I became less resistant to its awfulness about half way through.
\nGreat & Small<\/em><\/strong> by G. L. Lack is not bad and, with a couple of minor revisions, could have been quite good. This mood piece has a man waking up from radiotherapy treatment to hear a fly buzzing above him. When he recalls that they have all been wiped out, he wakes completely and finds that not only is everyone in the hospital dead but a similar situation pertains outside the building as well. The rest of the story details his last man on Earth wanderings. He is accompanied by the fly, which he makes some effort to keep as a companion.
\nThe first of its two flaws is that there is a statement that seemingly contradicts the existence of the fly (and subsequently undermines the story\u2019s quite good last line):<\/p>\n

Flies were extinct\u2014they had all been destroyed in World Pesticide Year when he was nine years old. p. 45<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second is a clunky and ill-explained rationale for the extinction of humanity:<\/p>\n

He sat up looking through the open door at the sky. As a boy he had known all the constellations but this knowledge had faded with the accumulation of technical facts in adolescence. Now the patterns stood out prominently but he could not put a name to them. Why had he not seen them clearly for so long? Sleep was overtaking him again when the answer came\u2014he had been unable to see the constellations for so long because there had been too many bodies between, confusing and masking the heavens.
\nNow the radiation brooms had gone. The clusters of satellites whose job it was to absorb the particles which bombarded the atmosphere from the radioactive belts were no longer there. Had the hundred billion to one chance occurred\u2014that the sweepers had been drawn off into space in one direction only, thus enveloping the Earth on their journey? It accounted for the mass death and for the fact that all was apparently safe now. Was he on a planet free at last of man\u2019s ambition and folly?\u00a0 p. 51<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ploop<\/em><\/strong> by Ron Pritchett is about a human spaceship landing on an unexplored (I assume) planet and finding a dog there. The crew don\u2019t seem to think it that unusual when they\u00a0find the animal\u00a0but pay more attention to it when it sets off their radiation alarms. The story is as ridiculous as its title.
\nPeace on Earth<\/em><\/strong> by Paul Jents is about soldiers travelling in rockets to the moon (during which they are sedated part of the time because of\u00a0the gravitational effects). They land on the dark side of the moon and make a \u2018surprise\u2019 discovery.
\nThe space travel detail is dated and the ending is lame.
\nThe next few stories are all quite good, save for Prisoner<\/em><\/strong> by Patricia Hocknell, so I\u2019ll deal with it now. This one describes a man suffering what would appear to be an awful, painful imprisonment . . . but it turns out that he is (spoiler) a baby in a crib. I think this is a representative of the kind of stories that would later be uncharitably but accurately described as \u201ctypical Bonfiglioli space-fillers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyway, on to the good stuff.\u00a0Deterrent<\/em><\/strong> by Keith Roberts has an opening that reminded me a little of a later story of his, The God House<\/em>:1<\/sup><\/p>\n

Spears were sacred to the Valley Folk. The spears of their warriors kept danger at bay, and the great palisades of spikes with which they ringed their villages gave them security at night. The sun woke their crops with hot spears, so the weapon had become a symbol of fertility. And when storms flickered in the surrounding hills the people were glad because the Gods were striking evildoers with their own bright weapons.\u00a0 p. 65<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is about a tribe that are under threat from marauding Raiders. Their seer tells of a great spear in the ground that will help defend them. After searching for some time the tribe\u2019s warriors find exactly that, and they learn how to work the metal from the spear\u00a0into weapons. The great spear is (spoiler) an abandoned ICBM.
\nThis is a fairly good if minor piece.
\nA Pleasure Shared<\/em><\/strong> by Brian W. Aldiss (Rogue<\/em>, December 1962) is probably the best story in the issue even if it is (a) a reprint and (b) not SF. A serial killer shares a house with two other people and, against his will, ends up getting involved with both of them. It has a great hook at the start:<\/p>\n

At seven thirty I rose and went over to the window and drew back the curtains. Outside lay another wintry London day\u2014not nice.
\nMiss Colgrave was still in the chair where I had left her. I pulled her skirt down. Female flesh looks very unappetising before breakfast. I went through into the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea and poached an egg on the gas ring. While I did so I smoked a cigarette. I always enjoy a cigarette first thing in the morning.
\nI ate my breakfast in the bedroom, watching Miss Colgrave closely as I did so. At one point I rose to adjust the scarf round her neck, which looked unsightly. Miss Colgrave had not been a very respectable woman; she had paid the price of sin. But it would be a nuisance disposing of her.\u00a0 p. 73<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is hard to believe that this is the same writer that produced The Impossible Smile<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The most interesting story in this issue is a longish novelette by Hilary Bailey2<\/sup> called In Reason\u2019s Ear<\/em><\/strong>, which concerns the events that befall\u00a0John Wetherall, an overseas civil servant who has just returned\u00a0to London. During the ride home in a taxi he dozes but suddenly wakes up:<\/p>\n

An unquiet thought crept in\u2014he sat up suddenly. Good Lord, he thought, what\u2019s going on round here?
\nWith the speed of a man who has spent five years leaping out of bed at night to kill snakes and chase off pilferers, he jumped up and shot the window down. At once he noticed the drab, battered facades of Oxford Street, peeling like the Grand Hotel, Budapest, ten years after World War II. The crowd surging and shouting on the pavements beside the cab looked like a combination of existentialist Paris after dark and closing time at the circus. About his stationary cab washed the traffic-battered cars, scraped red buses and decrepit lorries, coming from all directions at once, coughing, wheezing and halting, hooting and squealing with no regard for traffic regulations or, indeed, the virtues of give and take and tolerance on the roads.
\nAnd beside his own cab, standing by a garishly candy-striped 1964 E-type Jaguar was a motley of young people, none a day over 18, arguing with the driver. Their spokesman was a tall girl, her blonde hair apparently hacked off by a vindictive army barber, her dress long and dun-coloured. She stood, lithe and menacing, with a small knife in her hand. Backing her up was another girl, dark and ugly, wearing the same orphanage dress and two longhaired boys, one in bright red and the other all in blue.\u00a0 p. 90-91<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The much changed and deteriorating social fabric of the country (due to its mass youth unemployment) is the subject of further description and comment throughout the piece: this isn\u2019t written like genre SF but rather like a conventional novel of the time (what I think may be called the \u2018English social novel\u2019\u2014if I ever read one I\u2019ll let you know for sure).
\nThe rest of the story is mostly concerned about Wetherall\u2019s encounters with a man called Bob Pardoe. The latter had approached Wetherall while he was still overseas looking for money and a false passport to get out of the country. Wetherall obliged and they subsequently travelled home on the same ship. During the voyage Pardoe had appeared detached and listless.
\nWhen Wetherall is later debriefed in London it becomes apparent that his boss (or rather the government) is interested in the fact that he had travelled home with Pardoe. Later, when Wetherall visits his parents, he finds that Pardoe had been the third man on the moon and crash landed in Africa on return\u2014this occurred when Wetherall was in the hospital for several months with a fever. The authorities reported that Pardoe had died.
\nWhen Wetherall\u00a0meets his boss for a drink that evening he finds out that two Eastern Bloc Moon astronauts have also been behaving strangely. On returning to his parents he finds them with the Pardoes, their neighbours, along with their missing son.
\nThe final section has Wetherall talking to Pardoe about his trip to the moon. The latter relates how it has changed him, and that he does not want to talk to the authorities about his trip as he fears the damage that could be done by mans\u2019 outward urge, the exploitation and militarisation of the moon, etc. Wetherall tries to convince him to engage in the exploration process, to give the directionless young of the day something to strive towards. The ending, where Pardoe and one of the Russian astronauts are picked up by the authorities, is left open.
\nThere are a number of other things that are interesting in\u00a0this piece as well. One example is the detail about how Wetherall came to be divorced from his wife:<\/p>\n

John had stared down his long nose at the red-handed, red-headed strange fruit lying in its crib at the clinic\u2014and wondered.
\n\u201cJust like his father,\u201d Margot\u2019s mother had exclaimed.
\nA light dawned in John\u2019s eyes. \u201cHe most certainly is,\u201d he exclaimed emphatically, turned, left the room and never saw Margot again.\u00a0 p. 95-96<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is followed up by Wetherall\u2019s reaction when his boss suggests visiting his ex-wife Margot after the pub:<\/p>\n

He produced an invitation. \u201cMargot wanted me to give you this. She\u2019s been ringing up to ask after you occasionally during the past year. Do you want to go?\u201d
\n\u201cAre you going?\u201d
\n\u201cI will if you will,\u201d said Plunkett. \u201cI doubt if I\u2019ll stay, though. You\u2019ve no objections to seeing her?\u201d
\n\u201cNot really,\u201d said [Wetherall]. \u201cI\u2019m not so sure about that redheaded bastard, though.\u201d
\n\u201cCameron? Surely he can\u2019t still be on the scene?\u201d
\n\u201cI meant it literally. The tiny tot who fraudulently bears my name.\u201d
\nPlunkett looked at him sympathetically. \u201cI believe he lives with his grannie in Cornwall.\u201d\u00a0 p. 113<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not the kind of thing you would have found when John Carnell was editing Science Fantasy<\/em>.
\nThis isn\u2019t a totally successful work\u00a0(the meeting of Pardoe and one of the Russian astronauts at the end is an unlikely contrivance for instance, and the space travel aspects are dated and unconvincing) but it is an almost endlessly interesting one and well worth a look.<\/p>\n

Whereas Carnell would have been able to bowdlerise Bailey\u2019s story and run it, I strongly suspect Xenophilia<\/em><\/strong> by Thom Keyes would have been considered beyond the sexual pale. This story is supposedly set on a starboat but, initially at least, it is a thinly veiled copy of a Mississippi paddleboat casino story until the protagonist approaches a non-human extra-terrestrial:<\/p>\n

Twister straightened his tie and polished his shoes under the machine, then he went back into the Saloon and looked around for the Tarpan. The tables were full, but she was big. She should stand out. Then he saw her settling down beside a roulette table. He moved next to her. \u201cMay I take this seat?\u201d he asked, and indicated the empty place.
\n\u201cBy all means,\u201d she replied. Thank God she spoke Galactic.
\nHe even introduced himself as Twister, in the earth form, of course, and they got on well. Twister was confident in his appearance of naive sensuousness. He exaggerated it in his quiet conversation. He was smooth and strong. The woman could never recognize what he was; a gigolo, a professional lover. In the simulated evening, after many drinks, he confessed his affection for her. They moved away from the observation rail and walked down the corridors to her cabin. Twister scored on his mark.\u00a0 p. 125<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They are together for the rest of the voyage and then, as the ship prepares for the final jump, he starts to work his way around to dumping her so he can rejoin his partner Kittia, who works as a conventional prostitute on the ship. There then follows an ending that is a little predictable but one (as with his previous appearance in Science Fantasy<\/em> with A Period of Gestation<\/em>) that gives a visceral thrill nonetheless.
\nThis is another noteworthy taboo-busting story by Keyes (the gigolo theme, some description of human-alien sex acts, and probably the first sexual use of the word \u201cfrottage\u201d in SF).3<\/sup><\/p>\n

As for the non-fiction, the Cover<\/em><\/strong> is once again by Keith Roberts. The second by him of a run of four, it is one of his weaker efforts. The back cover lists three stories, only one of which actually appears in this issue.4<\/sup>
\nIn his Editorial<\/em><\/strong> Kyril Bonfiglioli discusses the difference between well-written and readable books. He provides a useful example:<\/p>\n

The front page of the Daily Mirror is usually full of eminently readable, well-told stories\u2014one would have to be blase indeed to be actively bored by it\u2014but I am sure that even the editor would not claim that it is well-written. . .\u00a0 p. 2<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a subsequent comment about the James Bond novels:<\/p>\n

The enormous success of the late Ian Fleming\u2019s James Bond series might tempt one to describe them as \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cwell-written\u201d books. They are, of course, nothing of the kind. They describe with implicit approval the base actions of an amoral thug engaged in an unsavoury trade; they are implausible in content, undistinguished in style, palpably deleterious in their effect upon the young and clearly written within the terms of a cynically-devised formula intended to appeal to the most despicable elements in our characters. I read them avidly and so (statistically speaking) do you: cruelty, lechery, gluttony and snobbery are a group of indoor sports peculiar to what we laughingly call homo sapiens.\u00a0 p. 3<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interesting piece: a pity he would soon tire of writing them.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, a worthwhile issue or, perhaps more accurately, half of one.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. I briefly discussed The God House<\/em> in my review<\/a> of New Worlds Quarterly<\/em> #1 (1971).<\/p>\n

2. Why Bailey\u2019s story was published under the \u2018Pippin Graham\u2019 pseudonym, I have no idea. Her previous story, The Fall of Frenchy Steiner<\/em> in New Worlds<\/em> #143 (July-August 1964), reviewed by me here<\/a>, was published under her own name and so was all her subsequent short work.<\/p>\n

3. The OED gives two meanings for the word \u201cfrottage.\u201d The first is \u201cthe technique or process of taking a rubbing from an uneven surface to form the basis of a work of art;\u201d the second is \u201cthe practice of touching or rubbing against the clothed body of another person in a crowd as a means of obtaining sexual gratification.\u201d Who knew?<\/p>\n

4. The Aldiss\/Cracken story listed below appeared in this issue. The Wordley story appeared in #77, and the Roberts in #75 (presumably that is why Deterrent<\/em> appeared under the Bevan pseudonym in this issue):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Edited 27th August 2020: Formatting changes.<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link Other reviews: John Boston and Damien Broderick: Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-67 (p. 247 of 365) (Amazon UK) _____________________ Editor, Kyril Bonfilioli; Associate Editor, J. Parkhill-Rathbone Fiction: The Impossible Smile (Part 2 of 2) \u2022 novella serial by Brian W. Aldiss [as by Jael Cracken] – Great & Small \u2022 short story […]<\/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":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fantasy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-Fs","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2570","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=2570"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13181,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2570\/revisions\/13181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}