{"id":2736,"date":"2017-04-09T14:04:08","date_gmt":"2017-04-09T14:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2736"},"modified":"2017-04-10T10:22:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T10:22:05","slug":"astounding-science-fiction-v51n03-may-1953","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2736","title":{"rendered":"Astounding Science Fiction v51n03, May 1953"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

Editor: John Campbell; Assistant Editor: Kay Tarrant<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nMedicine Show<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Robert Moore Williams \u2665\u2665
\nMultifarious<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Algis Budrys \u2665\u2665
\nLady with a Past<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Irving E. Cox, Jr.
\nOperating Instructions<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Robert Sheckley \u2665
\nMission of Gravity<\/em><\/strong> (Part 2 of 4) \u2022 serial by Hal Clement \u2665\u2665\u2665<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Austin R. Baer
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by J. Dreany, Pawelka, Paul Orban, Schecterson, H. R. Van Dongen
\nThinking Machine<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
\nSpace, Time and Education<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by John E. Arnold
\nThe Analytical Laboratory: February 1953<\/em><\/strong>
\nPi Equals Anything But 3.14159 . . .<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 science essay
\nThe Reference Library: First Reader<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 book reviews by P. Schuyler Miller
\nBrass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 letters<\/p>\n

This issue leads off with Medicine Show<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Moore Williams, which is about a small town doctor and a medicine show that rolls into town. When the doctor finishes his rounds he goes to visit and is taken by one of the men to be examined by a strange machine. He is then given two pieces of metal, one to put in each pocket, to cure his hay fever.
\nThe rest of the story is very predictable\u2014another of the town\u2019s doctors is hostile to the show and gets the sheriff to arrest the men. Meanwhile, a young girl develops a life-threatening infection. It\u2019s considerably more accessible, readable and convincing than the other stories in the issue, and has the occasional\u00a0piece of quite effective writing, such as when the young girl has a fever:<\/p>\n

In the corner, the puppy whimpered. On the bed, the little girl moaned and twisted. She was not in contact with this world but with some other world in which strange shapes came and went like ghosts across a wasteland. In this other world were sights that frightened her. <\/em>p. 39<\/p>\n

. . . although you could probably get rid of one of those repeated \u2018worlds.\u2019<\/p>\n

Multifarious<\/em><\/strong> by Algis Budrys is about an alien arriving on Earth. He quickly meets a human, and there follows a game of cat and mouse. The alien wants to get as much information as possible from the Earthman, including details\u00a0of the helmet he wears\u2014which among other things provides shelter and food\u2014before he kills him. It materialises (spoiler) that the humans have discovered the secret of matter transmission, and they are happy to provide the technology to the aliens to help them overcome their competitive culture.
\nThis is generally an OK piece, and the avoidance of an ending where the Earthman kills or otherwise bests the alien makes a change.
\nLady with a Past<\/em><\/strong> by Irving E. Cox, Jr. is set several hundred years after the Suicide War, and starts with the narrator seeing a rocket or asteroid plunging into the forest he is monitoring. He goes to the crash site and finds a woman there. After much running around we find out (spoiler) she is part of an offworld colony that was set up after the war, and has come back to set up \u2018receptors\u2019 that will enable her colleagues to take over Earth. How this is supposed to happen isn\u2019t explained convincingly as the story is more interested in the minutiae of the logical and well-adjusted post-war society that has developed. This is an unconvincing piece that verges on the ludicrous at times (the scene concerning the operation of the receptors, for example).
\nOperating Instructions<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Sheckley is about a psi being taken on a (normally) three man spaceship to assist the engines on a trip to Mars.1<\/sup> The story makes much of these rules in handling the unreliable psi:<\/p>\n

\u201cOperationally, the psi may be considered a unit of tricky, delicate, powerful machinery. Like all machines, certain maintenance and operating rules must be observed. To function, any machine must be:
\n1. Well-seated.
\n2. Fueled.
\n3. Oiled.
\n4. Regulated.
\nTaking these in order we find:
\n<\/em>1. In order to function at all, a psi must feel at home, secure, wanted.
\n2. Praise must be afforded the psi at frequent intervals. Since the psi is unstable, his ego must be periodically boosted.
\n3. Understanding and sympathy must be used at all times when dealing with the psi.
\n4. The psi must be allowed to run at his own pace. Excess pressure will break him.\u201d
\nPowell looked up and smiled. \u201cThat\u2019s all there is to it.\u201d<\/em> p. 78<\/em><\/p>\n

Except that, of course, it isn\u2019t: the psi pushes much harder than expected and the spaceship ends up beyond the orbit of Saturn. The rest of the story is mostly about the histrionics of the psi when he discovers he can\u2019t \u2018push\u2019 any more, and the captain\u2019s attempts to get him working again. The very weak resolution is (spoiler) that the captain eventually treats him like any other piece of equipment, i.e. orders him to push. I\u2019m sure this went down a storm with Campbell, given\u00a0its \u2018men-as-reliable-as-machines (if only we can get them sorted)\u2019 theme.
\nMission of Gravity<\/em><\/strong> by Hal Clement has a weaker second part, but I still enjoyed it. The expedition encounters a strange bowl-shaped city with tunnels. The natives, after a spot of trading, try to roll rocks down onto the crew, who are all forced to confront their fear of heights and jump on the tank to save themselves. This section struck me as rather contrived encounter.
\nBetter is the episode where they encounter a sixty foot cliff-edge just before the river, and with no way around. The raft has to be dismantled, winched down\u2014with the crew!\u2014and Lackland and his tank are left behind. Finally, Barlennan and his crew meet another set of natives, who again cause the crew problems.<\/p>\n

The artist for this Cover <\/em><\/strong>is Austin R. Baer, a student at MIT2<\/sup>\u00a0and one-time contributor to both Astounding<\/em> and the SF field.\u00a0I\u2019m not sure what happened to Astounding\u2019<\/em>s covers in 1953 but they were of a very variable standard.3<\/sup>
\nA number of artists contribute Interior artwork<\/em><\/strong> this issue, and the best of it comes from long time contributors Paul Orban and H. R. Van Dongen.4<\/sup>
\nThe editorial, Thinking Machine<\/em><\/strong>, by John W. Campbell, Jr. suggests these components for an ideal thinking machine:<\/p>\n

Suppose we have the following components to start with:
\n1. An infinite data-storage device.
\n2. A set of perceptic devices, specifically including a device capable of searching the data-storage system and perceiving the data there stored.
\n3. A logic computer, working on binary digital mechanisms.
\n4. A GG unit (explained below).
\n5. A set of actuator units.
\nI propose that such a device, started with bad data, having faulty actuators, and faulty perceptors\u2014save the internal data search mechanism\u2014will, given time, be able to solve all the problems of the total Universe.<\/em> p. 6<\/p>\n

This ends up being one of those exhaustingly reasoned and unconvincingly contrived Campbell editorials. A GG unit is a \u2018good guesser\u2019 unit by the way, or \u2018magic box\u2019 to you and me.
\nSpace, Time and Education<\/em><\/strong> by John E. Arnold is an interesting article about a course MIT has started to teach creative thinking to engineering students. Part of the course gets them to build vehicles for aliens on a planet different from ours. There are a number of eye-catching passages, including the following:<\/p>\n

No man today can defend the democracy that Washington and Jefferson established, because America has developed, has learned greater wisdom and invented new social ideas, the \u201cheritage\u201d of Washington and Jefferson is forever gone!
\nFor example, in their day, their concept of democracy held that no man who owned less than five thousand dollars worth of property had a right to vote. Their concept of democracy has long since been changed; they would never have accepted the idea of woman voters. <\/em>
\nThe very fact that men are idealists, and will fight for their ideals, makes social inventions extremely difficult under our present-day understanding of what actually constitutes \u201cour heritage.\u201d The more strongly and deeply idealistic a man is, the more genuinely and sincerely he holds his honest beliefs, the more valiantly he will defend these \u201ctruths\u201d that are, to him, self-evident.
\nSocial inventions are most desperately needed today\u2014 and are hardest of all to make, because each man, within himself, has limited his own creative thinking. By failing to find the fundamental core of his ideals, he may sacrifice everything in a pointless defense of a nonessential.<\/em>
\nFifty years ago, the engineering student was considered something of a second-class citizen of the college campus; only the Liberal Arts student was considered a true student. A social invention was making its way, however. Where major corporations and businesses were uniformly directed by lawyers and Liberal Arts students only one generation ago\u2014today the technical man is taking a bigger and bigger part in executive control.
\nEducational methods, more than any other single factor, will determine what our world is like in another half century. Of all possible forms of education, it seems to me that the most critical is education to understand, use, and evaluate creative thinking. <\/em>p. 9-10<\/p>\n

The Analytical Laboratory: February 1953<\/em><\/strong> not only gives the results for the previous issue but suggests a more intelligent, if more complicated, scoring system for stories:<\/p>\n

In the March Brass Tacks we published a letter from Charles Leedham suggesting a new system of rating stories; several of the readers who voted for their choices in the March issue used that system, scoring stories on an all-time basis, rather than on a relative-to-this-issue basis.
\nI\u2019m in full agreement that we do need a scoring system which would be based on a long-time relative basis, rather than the this-issue basis; the problem is to get enough of the readers to agree on it. Temporarily, at least, I\u2019ll have to continue to use the simple system of voting for relative standing of best, next best, etcetera, in the current issues\u2014but I \u2018d very much like to have those of you who will take the trouble to do so, rate stories also on the long-term basis, where rating a story 10 means you feel it\u2019s an all-time, long-term classic, 9 means an exceptionally fine story, and so on down to 0, meaning it should never have been published. On this basis, a story rating 8 should mean \u201ca good story, and worthy of first place in any ordinary good issue of the magazine.\u201d Then in some exceptional issue, a story might rate 8, and still not be first, because of some 10-point classic.
\nIf this were Heaven, of course, I\u2019d print issues full of nothing but 10-point stories, and all authors would always write classics. Since it isn\u2019t, an 8-point story deserves a bonus; when reader letters indicate that the situation of a 10 point classic and an 8-point bonus-worthy story both appear in one issue\u2014both stories will get a bonus.<\/em> p. 47<\/p>\n

Pi Equals Anything But 3.14159 . . .<\/em><\/strong> is a half-page filler that looks at the value of pi for non-uniformly curved surfaces.
\nThe Reference Library: First Reader<\/em><\/strong> by P. Schuyler Miller starts off with a long review of a book about space medicine, Physics and Medicine of the Upper Atmosphere<\/em> by Otis Benson and Clayton S. White, before covering a number of others, including one by Schuyler himself and, more puzzlingly, Asimov\u2019s The Currents of Space<\/em>, which the magazine had just finished serialising four months earlier.
\nBrass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> has a couple of letters that have interesting snippets in them. John Gilson of Minneapolis, MN finishes his letter with this:<\/p>\n

Your articles are the first thing I read when I get the magazine\u2014right after I read the editorial and Brass Tacks. The editorials, together with your fine articles, form almost a pocket education.
\nYour editorial on \u201cThe Laws of Speculation\u201d will probably start a lot of speculation so why not start a department of\u2014or for\u2014the practice and advancement of speculation? Call it the Spec Dept.\u2014John Gilson<\/em>
\nThe Spec Dept. is called \u201cAstounding Science Fiction.\u201d [Campbell] p. 154<\/p>\n

There is also a long letter from new reader Herbert Taylor from Duluth (also MN) which has, amongst other things:<\/p>\n

During the last two weeks, while invalided with a broken leg, I have read fourteen back numbers of ASF from cover to cover. It was my maiden experience with your magazine, or any like it, although I have read a quantity of hard-cover stf previously. Like Mr. Keats perusing Chapman\u2019s Homer, I felt like \u201csome watcher of the skys when a new planet (in this case, several dozen planets) swims into his ken.\u201d
\n[. . .]<\/em>
\nFiction: The best to be found between soft covers. But I am in consistent disagreement with the Analytical Lab. For me, the short stories pack the biggest punch, say most with least verbiage, are more thought-provoking than the longer pieces. I think the readership often votes for quantity instead of quality. I think your format is well-balanced, however, and I enjoy the novelettes and serials; I am merely stating a preference.<\/em> p. 157-8<\/p>\n

He finishes with a pitch for verse in Astounding, which Campbell appears open to, and he asks for reader feedback.<\/p>\n

A mediocre issue saved from being even worse by only the serial and some decent internal artwork.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Sheckley would use to the idea of humans as \u2018pushers\u2019 much more fruitfully in one of his best stories, Specialist<\/em>, which was published in Galaxy<\/em> in the same month.<\/li>\n
  2. A Requiem for Astounding<\/em>, Alva Rogers, p. 202<\/li>\n
  3. The illustrations from Paul Orban:\"\" \"\"
    \nAnd from H. R. Van Dongen:\"\" \"\" \"\"<\/li>\n
  4. Lest you think I am being harsh, the only short fiction from this issue that has been reprinted is the Sheckley, and not in one of his own collections. See ISFDB<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Galactic Central link ISFDB link Editor: John Campbell; Assistant Editor: Kay Tarrant Fiction: Medicine Show \u2022 novelette by Robert Moore Williams \u2665\u2665 Multifarious \u2022 short story by Algis Budrys \u2665\u2665 Lady with a Past \u2022 short story by Irving E. Cox, Jr. Operating Instructions \u2022 short story by Robert Sheckley \u2665 Mission of Gravity (Part […]<\/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":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astounding"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-I8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2736","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=2736"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2761,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2736\/revisions\/2761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

  5. You can see all of Astounding<\/em>\u2019s 1953\u2019s covers at ISFDB<\/a>. A motley crew apart from the four Van Dongen contributions and the classic October contribution from Frank Kelly Freas (and maybe the two from Miller). The March cover from Pawelka must be in the running for the worst Astounding<\/em> cover ever.
    \nThis varying quality was probably due to the retirement of artist Hubert Rogers from the field in 1952. He had been a mainstay of the magazine, contributing seven covers in     1951<\/a>.
    \nAlso, note the three changes in typeface for the magazine title. This issue\u2019s design seems to have won, although I personally prefer the typography on the March and April issues.<\/li>\n