{"id":2907,"date":"2017-05-15T11:49:23","date_gmt":"2017-05-15T11:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2907"},"modified":"2017-05-30T12:57:16","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T12:57:16","slug":"astounding-science-fiction-v51n04-june-1953","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=2907","title":{"rendered":"Astounding Science Fiction v51n04, June 1953"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

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

Fiction:
\n\u201c… And A Star to Steer Her By\u201d<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by G. Harry Stine [as by Lee Correy] \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nQuiz Game<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Frank M. Robinson \u2665
\nImpostor<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Philip K. Dick \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665
\nMission of Gravity<\/em><\/strong> (Part 3 of 4) \u2022 serial by Hal Clement \u2665\u2665\u2665+<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 photograph by Lee Correy
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by H. R. Van Dongen, J. Dreany, Pawelka
\nThe Villains of the Piece<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial by John W. Campbell, Jr.
\nThe Reference Library: \u201cModern Science Fiction\u201d <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 book reviews by P. Schuyler Miller
\nIn Case of Fire<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 science article by Wallace West
\nWhirligig World<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 science article by Hal Clement
\nBrass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 letters
\nThe Analytical Laboratory: March 1953<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c… And A Star to Steer Her By\u201d<\/em><\/strong> by G. Harry Stine was his second published story for Astounding<\/em> (and third in all),1<\/sup> and it is the kind of thing that would have appealed those readers of the magazine who felt the outward urge\u2014or as the first (and also last paragraph) puts it:<\/p>\n

In every age, in every time, there have been those who are not content to settle down. They miss the kick of the wheel, the wail of the wind in the rigging, the exotic sights and smells of a harbor half across the world, the roar of engines cutting through the slipstream, and the powerful, body-shaking thunder of the jets. It is to these restless men with the wanderlust that the human race owes a priceless debt as the wanderers push the horizons out to the stars\u2014<\/em> p. 47<\/p>\n

The story opens on Mars with a jetman called Garver talking about his new mechanical arm to the Captain of a spaceship he used to work on. He tells the captain that he will return to Earth as, after his accident, he has no future career in space. As he reflects later:<\/p>\n

He knew his power and jets, but a one-handed jetman was worse off than a one-handed piano player. Most skippers would rather have the Venusian Wet Rot.
\nHe might sign on a liner as a master-at-arms or a steward, but he did not have the decorum necessary for such a job. As a first mate, he\u2019d handled people differently. \u201cBesides, you fool,\u201d he told himself, \u201cyou know you\u2019d go nuts sitting midships while some other guy brought her down on her tail.\u201d<\/em> p. 9-10<\/p>\n

Garver eventually gets a job in a bar until he gets a lucky break and is employed by a ship that has lost their jetman during an emergency landing. Much of the remaining story is about the detail of the trip back to Earth, and the nuts and bolts of what spaceflight might entail (as least as viewed from the 1950s). Some of this is fairly mundane stuff but it has its moments, such as when the ship\u2019s cat plays with a ping-pong ball in zero gee, or the take-off for Earth after a lot of repair work:<\/p>\n

He nudged four switches, and the power room was filled with the incredible noise of the pumps. He checked back-pressures as the needles climbed out of the red segments of the dials.
\n\u201cForty-five seconds!\u201d The pumps were up to speed and the fuel pressure normal.
\n\u201cMinus-30 seconds!\u201d The flick of a switch dropped the magnetic clamps of the ground tackle. The <\/em>Fafnir was now free to lift.
\n\u201cSteady, now . . . steady,\u201d Garver soothed over the scream of the pumps.
\n\u201cMinus-20 . . . 19 . . . 18 . . . 17. . . 16\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cCome on, baby! We\u2019re going home!\u201d he whispered to the heart of the <\/em>Fafnir.<\/em>
\n\u201c10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . 7\u2014\u201d
\nHe didn\u2019t pray; it seemed useless against the radioactive fire below him.
\nThe ship was suddenly a straining entity of its own instead of a complacent fabrication of metal.
\n\u201cFive!\u201d He threw a switch. A relay whacked closed.
\n\u201cFour!\u201d Automatic controls, now out of Garver\u2019s jurisdiction, raised the firebox temperature.
\n\u201cThree!\u201d Another relay threw. The tank valves snapped open.
\n\u201cTwo!\u201d The pumps took up the load and shifted into main stage, \u201cOne!\u201d Lights winked solid green
\nacross his board.
\n\u201cUP SHIP!\u201d<\/em> p. 21<\/p>\n

This passage appealed to me considerably more than it probably should have . . . .
\nWhen the crew get back to Earth the skipper retires and Garver opens a restaurant. After a period of successfully building his business (spoiler) he decides to buy the skipper\u2019s ship and go back into space. We later discover, of course, that the skipper had deliberately not sold the ship as he knew that Garver would eventually want to buy it from him.
\nThis story is a little creaky but it\u2019s quite\u00a0good for the time,2<\/sup> and it is perhaps notable for its diverse crew: apart from Garver being partially disabled, they have a Dutch skipper, and their electronics man is a Muslim from Greater New York (who needs to regularly know where Earth is while they are in flight for his daily prayers).<\/p>\n

Quiz Game<\/em><\/strong> by Frank M. Robinson starts with a scientist at a family meal. His son asks him about the aliens who have just landed, as\u00a0the father is in charge of asking the questions that will be put to the aliens when their language is deciphered. The rest of the story is an extended (and fairly dreary) set-up about the questions that are going to be asked. When they find that the aliens are dying the list is winnowed down considerably. The weak ending (spoiler) is that the aliens spend all their remaining time asking us questions.
\nImpostor<\/em><\/strong> by Philip K. Dick is a very good early piece that, with its war-weariness and suspenseful paranoia, is perhaps an archetypal 1950\u2019s SF story.3<\/sup> Moreover, it deals with one of the recurrent themes that can be found in Dick\u2019s work: the reliability of memory and identity.
\nOlham, a research scientist on an Earth at war with the Alpha Centaurans, is abducted by a work colleague and security officer and taken beyond Earth\u2019s protec-bubble as they believe he is a robot-bomb. Oldham is convinced he is human. . . .<\/p>\n

In this issue\u2019s instalment of Mission of Gravity<\/em><\/strong> by Hal Clement, the crew are powerless before the tidal swell of a hurricane and end up beached miles inland. On their way back to the sea the glider-flying race\u00a0they encountered earlier encircle them, and demand to know who they are and what they are doing. The majority of the instalment is about this encounter. There is an amusing observation from one of the crew about the gliders when Barlennan considers acquiring one for his collection:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe day I climb onto one of those flying machines will be a calm winter morning with both suns in the sky.\u201d<\/em> p. 137<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why but this made me smile. Quite a good instalment.<\/p>\n

The Cover<\/em><\/strong> is a photograph is credited to \u2018Correy,\u2019 and looks like something that would be more at home on an astronomical or aviation publication: it is a bit dull for an SF magazine.
\nThe Interior artwork<\/em><\/strong> is by H. R. Van Dongen, J. Dreany, and Pawelka, with the best coming from, as usual, Van Dongen.4<\/sup>
\nThe Villains of the Piece<\/em><\/strong> by John W. Campbell, Jr. is an editorial that makes a couple of obvious points about the limitations of statistics. He then goes on to do some axe-grinding about telepathy, and how we should not write it off because the research statistics don\u2019t provide evidence to support the phenomenon.
\nThe Reference Library: \u201cModern Science Fiction\u201d <\/em><\/strong>by P. Schuyler Miller starts with a look at Modern Science Fiction<\/em>, edited by Reginald Bretnor. Miller discusses the essay by Philip Wylie, and quotes him at length:<\/p>\n

\u201cScience fiction potentially can abet human wisdom but . . . the bulk of its present production has the opposite effect,\u201d he states. We have created a psychologically invalid false mythology of stereotypes and cliches with about as much relation to reality as Conan\u2019s world has to the real past\u2014or to real myth. \u201cThe bulk, unlike the old legends, contains no germ of human truth whatsoever.\u201d
\nThese are bitter truths to face, if they are truths, and I do not intend to do more now than face you with them and leave you to think about them. Perhaps we can then come back to them and examine them with more leisure. But first I must let Mr. Wylie speak for himself a little further: \u201cIf science fiction plays any large part in leading the minds of men toward new goals, the goals toward which it has led most of its addicts to date are more evil than those of their less well-informed forebears . . . wild adventure, wanton genocide . . . gigantic destruction and a piddling phantasmagoria of impossible nonsense . . . . The fiction is of a perverse order in that it departs from what is scientifically known of man\u2019s nature.
\nThe science is most commonly employed either ignorantly or for sadistic melodrama . . . .
\n\u201c(Writers) are nearly all ignorant of one area of science as large as all the rest: psychology . . . Yet, without (this) science . . . what they write is irresponsible, in the sense that it pretends to be \u2018modern\u2019 whereas it is contemporary <\/em>in detail only\u2014and inevitably, <\/em>in meaning, archaic . . . . They but create a new and sinister folklore, in which the latest facts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are superimposed on a human insight hardly more developed than that of Bushmen.\u201d<\/em> p. 76-77<\/p>\n

In the review of The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1952<\/em> edited by Everett F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty , Miller states:<\/p>\n

The 1952 collection\u2014stories printed in 1951\u2014outdoes the three that have gone before, and the vast strides science fiction is taking are shown by the fact that for the first time none of the eighteen selections comes from ASF. Undoubtedly when the next edition of the \u201cYear\u2019s Best Science Fiction Novels\u201d appears, the omission will be remedied, for this magazine shines in its longer stories.<\/em> p. 77<\/p>\n

I found the lack of representation from Astounding<\/em> a little surprising.5<\/sup>
\nIn Case of Fire<\/em><\/strong> by Wallace West starts with this rather startling statement:<\/p>\n

Three-quarters of a billion dollars\u2019 worth of homes, factories and materials went up in smoke throughout the United States last year. That is a stiff levy on a country already saddled with huge foreign aid payments and Cold War costs, even if one discounts the eleven thousand or so lives lost and the additional thousands of persons who were maimed by fires.
\nThere are, however, two even more disturbing factors involved: the uninterrupted rise in the fire loss rate and the fact that it seems next to impossible to get people to do much about the situation.<\/em> p. 82<\/p>\n

There is another interesting quote at the end, but unfortunately the two are separated by a long and ultimately boring article about the history of fire brigades and various modern methods of firefighting.<\/p>\n

Skyscrapers are not \u201cfireproof.\u201d No man-made structure can be. But they are highly fire-resistant and liberally equipped with hand extinguishers, hose and plentiful supplies of water. Most of them have automatic sprinkler systems. The proof of their safety came when a B-25 bomber dived into the Empire State Building several years ago and drenched the interior with gasoline. There was a nasty fire, of course. It gutted most of the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth floors. But, because only the furnishings burned and because the New York Fire Department had drilled itself for years to meet just such an impossible situation, it brought the flames under control within nineteen minutes!<\/em> p. 1006<\/sup><\/p>\n

Whirligig World<\/em><\/strong> by Hal Clement is an interesting article about the research for his novel Mission of Gravity<\/em>. There are a number of interesting snippets, including the fact that Mesklin was inspired by the then current data about the object 61 Cygni C (subsequently shown to be spurious7<\/sup>). He also made a model of the planet Mesklin:<\/p>\n

The model I have of it is six inches in diameter and not quite two and a half thick; if I added the ring, it would consist of a paper disk about fourteen inches in diameter cut to fit rather closely around the plastic wood spheroid. (The model was made to furnish something to draw a map on; I like to be consistent. The map was drawn at random before the story was written; then I bound myself to stick to the geographic limitations it showed.) I was tempted, after looking at it for a while, to call the story \u201cPancake in the Sky,\u201d but Isaac Asimov threatened violence. Anyway, it looks rather more like a fried egg.<\/em> p. 110<\/p>\n

He finishes with this:<\/p>\n

The trouble was, I couldn\u2019t possibly think of [everything]\u00a0in advance; time and again a section of the story had to be rewritten because I suddenly realized things couldn\u2019t happen that way. I must have missed details, of course; that\u2019s where your chance to win the game comes in. I had an advantage; the months during which, in my spare hours, my imagination roamed over Mesklin\u2019s vast areas in search of inconsistencies. Now the advantage is yours; I can make no more moves in the game, and you have all the time you want to look for the things I\u2019ve said which reveal slips on the part of my imagination. <\/em>
\nWell, good luck\u2014and a good time, whether you beat me or not.<\/em> p. 114<\/p>\n

Brass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> is pretty dull as usual, or at least I can\u2019t remember anything about the letters and forgot to make notes. A couple of them are about February\u2019s stories (mostly about Null ABC<\/em> by H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire, although I note that both correspondents place Walter Miller Jr.\u2019s Crucifixus Etiam<\/em> in third place).
\nThe Analytical Laboratory: March 1953<\/em><\/strong> has Thou Good and Faithful<\/em> by John Loxmith (John Brunner) as the winner of the March issue.<\/p>\n

This is easily the most interesting\u00a0of the three 1953 issues of Astounding<\/em> I\u2019ve read so far; I suspect that will still be true after I’ve read the entire year.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n
      \n
    1. G. Harry Stine at ISFDB<\/a>.<\/li>\n
    2. SFE<\/a> states that, under his Lee Correy pseudonym, \u2018it is his best known tale.\u2019<\/li>\n
    3. Imposter<\/em>, as well as perhaps being an\u00a0archetypal 1950\u2019s SF story, was (it was pointed out to me) the only one that John W. Campbell Jr. bought from Philip K. Dick. The writer recalls his dealings with Campbell in the story notes for Oh, To Be A Blobel!<\/em> (The Minority Report<\/em>, Citadel Twilight, 1991):
      \nAt the beginning of my writing career in the early Fifties, <\/em>Galaxy was my economic mainstay. Horace Gold at <\/em>Galaxy liked my writing whereas John W. Campbell, Jr. at <\/em>Astounding considered my writing not only worthless but as he put it, \u201cNuts.\u201d By and large I liked reading <\/em>Galaxy because it had the broadest range of ideas, venturing into the soft sciences such as sociology and psychology, at a time when Campbell (as he once wrote me!) considered psionics a necessary premise for science fiction. Also, Campbell said, the psionic character in the story had to be in charge of what was going on. So <\/em>Galaxy provided a latitude which <\/em>Astounding did not. However, I was to get into an awful quarrel with Horace Gold; he had the habit of changing your stories without telling you: adding scenes, adding characters, removing downbeat endings in favor of upbeat endings. Many writers resented this. I did more than resent this; despite the fact that <\/em>Galaxy was my main source of income I told Gold that I would not sell to him unless he stopped altering my stories\u2014after which he bought nothing from me at all.<\/em> p. 379
      \n(Thanks to Fred on the Classic Science Fiction Yahoo Group for finding the quote.)<\/li>\n
    4. A double page spread from Van Dongen for \u201c… And A Star to Steer Her By\u201d<\/em>:\"\"
      \nAnd one from A Mission of Gravity<\/em>:\"\"<\/li>\n
    5. The contents lists for the two Bleiler & Dikty volumes for 1952 can be found on ISFDB: The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1952<\/a><\/em> and Year\u2019s Best Science Fiction Novels: 1952<\/a><\/em>. The latter collection, as Miller suggests, has contributions from Astounding<\/em>: three of its five stories are from the magazine. It is instructive to compare the contents lists of the two Bleiler & Dikty volumes with the later The Great SF Stories #13<\/a><\/em>, edited by Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg. There is only one story (!) that appears in both volumes. If I ever manage to read all (or the vast majority) of the stories from 1951\u00a0it should make for an interesting essay comparing the contents lists. Well, an interesting essay for about half a dozen people on the planet maybe . . . .<\/li>\n
    6. It is worth reading the Wikipedia<\/a> article about this horrific accident. One of the injured women was transported in a lift that had weakened cables and plummeted seventy five floors when they broke. She survived!<\/li>\n
    7. The section \u2018Claims of a Planetary System\u2019 in the 61 Cygni Wikipedia<\/a> article states that the idea of a massive third body was shown to be spurious in 1978.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      This magazine is now\u00a0being published as Analog Science Fiction and Fact!<\/em><\/b> Subscribe: Kindle UK<\/a>, Kindle USA<\/a>\u00a0or physical & digital copies<\/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: \u201c… And A Star to Steer Her By\u201d \u2022 novelette by G. Harry Stine [as by Lee Correy] \u2665\u2665\u2665 Quiz Game \u2022 short story by Frank M. Robinson \u2665 Impostor \u2022 short story by Philip K. Dick \u2665\u2665\u2665\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":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":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2907","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-KT","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907","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=2907"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2996,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2907\/revisions\/2996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}