{"id":4329,"date":"2018-03-05T13:35:11","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T13:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=4329"},"modified":"2019-09-26T20:12:17","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T20:12:17","slug":"science-fantasy-65-june-july-1964","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=4329","title":{"rendered":"Science Fantasy #65, June-July 1964"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"4711\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?attachment_id=4711\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65x600.jpg?fit=366%2C600&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"366,600\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"SF65x600\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65x600.jpg?fit=122%2C200&amp;ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65x600.jpg?fit=366%2C600&amp;ssl=1\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4711 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65x600.jpg?resize=366%2C600&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"366\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65x600.jpg?w=366&amp;ssl=1 366w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65x600.jpg?resize=122%2C200&amp;ssl=1 122w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 366px) 100vw, 366px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>ISFDB <a href=\"http:\/\/www.isfdb.org\/cgi-bin\/pl.cgi?60227\">link<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Other reviews: <em>Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967<\/em>\u00a0by John Boston &amp; Damien Broderick (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Strange-Highways-Reading-Science-1950-1967-ebook\/dp\/B00B1TIUCO\/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1520171252&amp;sr=8-3\">Amazon<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">_____________________<\/p>\n<p>Editor, Kyril Bonfiglioli<\/p>\n<p>Fiction:<br \/>\n<strong><em>Pink Plastic Gods<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Brian W. Aldiss <strong>\u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><em>The Contraption<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Kenneth Bulmer<br \/>\n<strong><em>Blast Off<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Kyril Bonfiglioli [as by uncredited] <strong>\u2217<\/strong><strong>\u2217<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><em>Lazarus <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Brian W. Aldiss [as by Jael Cracken] <strong>\u2217<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><em>Unauthorised Persons<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Brian W. Aldiss [as by John Runciman]<br \/>\n<strong><em>Matchbox <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Peter Bradley <strong>\u2217<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><em>The Great Chan<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Archie Potts <strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Non-fiction:<br \/>\n<strong><em>Cover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Roger Harris<br \/>\n<strong><em>Editorial <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Kyril Bonfiglioli<br \/>\n<strong><em>\u201cScience Fantasy\u201d<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 poem by Peter Levi<br \/>\n<strong><em>Competition: For Professional Scientists Only<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">_____________________<\/p>\n<p>As I mentioned in my review of <em>New Worlds<\/em> #142 (<em>Science Fantasy<\/em>\u2019s sister magazine), Nova Publications were struggling with the poor circulations of both magazines during 1963, a situation which caused Nova\u2019s board of directors to close them down. When a new publisher was found at the last moment, a new editor was required as the previous one, John Carnell, had made other plans for the future. Both Michael Moorcock and Kyril Bonfiglioli were approached by (or had approached) David Warburton of Roberts &amp; Vinter (the new publisher) about the job. Warburton decided to split the positions: Moorcock expressed a preference for <em>New Worlds<\/em>, so Bonfiglioli became <em>Science Fantasy<\/em>\u2019s new editor.<br \/>\nKyril Bonfiglioli, unlike Moorcock, was a complete unknown in the SF field and so his appointment \u201ccame as a surprise to many.\u201d An Oxford art dealer friend of Brian W. Aldiss, he was \u201cthe director of two art galleries, a bookshop and an antique shop; and had at one time been a sabre champion.\u201d<sup>1, 2<\/sup> Apart from his swordsmanship skills, Bonfigliloi had no editorial qualifications.<\/p>\n<p>The issue opens with the new editor\u2019s <strong><em>Editorial<\/em><\/strong>, which is more in the \u2018house-keeping\u2019 rather than \u2018manifesto\u2019 tradition of inaugural addresses. After acknowledging the change of publisher and editor, the Editorial exhorts readers to buy rather than borrow the magazine as a small increase in circulation will make a big difference to the rates paid to writers (and the profits made by publishers, one presumes). His second exhortation to the readership is to start writing stories as, after having read a quarter of a million words of manuscript \u201cso bad it made me blush,\u201d he has concluded that no-one is writing the kind of material the readers want. Finally he denies that science fantasy exists but, before getting too far into his theological reasons why, wanders off into a list of the things he doesn\u2019t want to see in a story, concluding with:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What you really cannot do\u2014if you are writing for adults\u2014is have a Venusian princess materialise out of the air, offering to free your hero from the BEM\u2019s clutches if he will come to Krzk and kill the wicked High Priest of Zoz with the magic sword of Ugg. Ugh. My editorial watchword, then, is \u201cScience Fiction for Grown-Ups!\u201d I hope I shall be able to make it hold good. p. 3<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>After the editorial there is a poem titled <strong><em>\u201cScience Fantasy\u201d<\/em><\/strong>, \u201cspecially written\u201d by Peter Levi (there is a short note about it after the Aldiss story). The individual stanzas are okay but the first pair don\u2019t seem to have anything to do with the last.<br \/>\nThe first of the stories is <strong><em>Pink Plastic Gods<\/em><\/strong> by Brian W. Aldiss, one of <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">three<\/span> pieces by him in this issue.<sup>3<\/sup> It has an intriguing start:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Every day that hot August of 2111 I was in Long Barrow Field, getting on with the potato harvesting. The six neosimians I employed worked hard in their monkey way, the heat shimmering above their bent backs. They worked two hours on and a half hour off, scamping if I let them.<br \/>\n\u201cKeep up with us, Judy! Hey, Tess, that\u2019s Daisy\u2019s trench!\u201d<br \/>\nJudy was the laziest of the bunch, yet Judy was the one I liked best.<br \/>\nOur first shift began as Sol rose, and the last shift finished after he\u2019d gone and we were up to our knees in a mist as thick as rice pudding. Slowly we worked our way round the long pillow shape of Barrow Hill, day in, day out, from pearly light to purple. Neosimians have their drawbacks\u2014they\u2019re slow for one thing\u2014but they are vastly cheaper than machines; and unlike machines they never miss a potato\u2014if you keep watching them.<br \/>\nI kept watching them. Every potato meant a penny off the load of debt I had shouldered since manhood. But that still left me time to glance up to the top of Barrow Hill every so often, to regard the solitary figure up there surveying me. p. 5-6<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The figure is Smith\u2019s affluent neighbour, Aurel Derek Seyfert. One day Seyfert comes to speak to Smith and, after Smith\u2019s initial rebuff, convinces him to go to a party taking place at Seyfert\u2019s home. The party segment reveals a number of things: first, Smith leads a circumscribed life; second, he is an person who is blunt to the point of rudeness; third, Seyfert is as out of place at his own party as Smith is; fourth, Seyfert\u2019s son Monday is the inventor of the robots\u2014styled after famous sculptures\u2014that are serving at the party, the eponymous \u201cpink plastic gods\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I turned to Seyfert. Catching him looking at me in that same enigmatic way, I said angrily. \u201cWhy do you keep all these statues around?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYou mean our pink plastic gods!\u201d he exclaimed. Suddenly he became animated. \u201cThey\u2019re at once our slaves and our rulers! How do you like them, eh? Aren\u2019t they foul, aren\u2019t they vulgar? Aren\u2019t they the epitome of our stinking, decadent, useless, putrid civilization? Come on, Smith, I value your opinion as the first honest man I\u2019ve met in years. Aren\u2019t they just the goddammed end of everything?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cThey\u2019re beautiful,\u201d I said.<br \/>\n\u201cBeautiful! They\u2019re cheap and nasty! They\u2019re fakes. Famous sculptures brought to life. That was the Venus de Milo to greet us at the door. Michelangelo\u2019s David gave us our first drinks. This little beauty is one of Canova\u2019s marbles. The castle crawls with walking statues. \u2018Any masterpiece copied for your delight\u2019 is Monday\u2019s motto. I told you he manufactures them? Pink plastic outside, wheels and levers inside. p. 12<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The final section has Smith leaving the party and walking home, with Seyfert as unwelcome company. During the journey it looks like there will be a falling out over Smith\u2019s bankrupt father (Seyfert was one of the creditors). However, Seyfert tells Smith he is indebted to his father, as it was after the collapse of his company that Seyfert travelled to another planet and met and married an alien woman. He tells Smith of his life with her, but (spoiler) the account has a tragic end:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201c[In] twenty-seventy the Anti-Miscegenation Laws were passed with cheers from all the do-gooders in the universe. The net result was the establishing of strict segregation from which it\u2019ll take Uffitsi ages to recover. If you can picture a cross between the colour bar in the United States and the apartheid that ruled what was the South African Republic last century, you have an idea of what happened on that beautiful planet almost overnight.<br \/>\n\u201cSo I found myself outside the law, with my marriage declared null and void, and Adam officially proclaimed a Sport. According to biologists it was amazing we\u2019d had a living child at all. Yes, they caught up with us, the bastards. We could have gone on living peacefully in that valley for ever, Pampas and Adam and I, but the officials came with their cases full of forms and police support. Hardacre, I could have killed every mother\u2019s son of them\u2014yet they were nice polite men, personally very sorry for interfering, but orders were orders and the law was the law . . . You know the attitude. No law is so legal as a new law, and we couldn\u2019t escape it.<br \/>\n\u201cWe were all three hauled up for trial in a city a thousand miles away from our valley. We did the journey on the Uffitsian monorail, under government escort. On the way\u2014it must have been just the sorrow of it all\u2014poor little Adam died. He did it so easily, James, so easily, like falling into an after dinner doze, and never a word he spoke.\u201d<br \/>\nI did not know what to say. Dying has always seemed to me the hardest job a man can put his hand to. Of course, for all Seyfert said, his kid was a freak, no denying it. We walked in silence for some way while I mulled the matter over, until Seyfert wiped a hand across his eyes and spoke again. p. 19-20<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The different parts of this story don\u2019t really work together (the \u2018pink plastic gods\u2019 part in particular seems out of place) but I liked it nonetheless. The main characters are complex and fascinating characters, and I also liked the maturity\u00a0and the grimness of the piece. These elements foreshadows Aldiss\u2019s later, better work.<br \/>\n<strong><em>The Contraption<\/em><\/strong> by Kenneth Bulmer also gets off to a promising start with an attempt at defusing a booby trap on an unknown device in an alien ship:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>They all saw him die without a sound. On the closed-circuit screen, the silent flare of the explosion, utterly sudden, utterly deadly, momentarily blinded the watching men in the bunker.<br \/>\nBill Barrington was not the first man to gamble his life against the thing out there. He was, in fact, the fifth.<br \/>\nLike all the others, he had lost. Luke Rawson fought down the sick, helpless anger in him, the useless nerve-corroding rage. Bill Barrington had been a friend. Now he was only a memory. They wouldn\u2019t find enough of him decently to bury in a matchbox. p. 23<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Unfortunately it soon turns into a Royal Navy in space story, with a plot about the alien Brute ships (U-boats) decimating the Terran (Atlantic) convoys, and the humans (Brits) trying to discover the alien\u2019s (Nazi\u2019s) secret. The central character Rawson is dispatched to capture another ship. At the same time, a Terran Intelligence colonel waiting for a ride to a planet called Cudham I\u2014this is added into the mix so it can provide a solution to the problem at the end of the story. (Cudham I is surrounded by a 3-D version of Saturn\u2019s rings and, later, the colonel cannot penetrate the debris field. Sure enough, (spoiler) the booby-trapped device turns out to be a navigation device that enables the Earthmen to find a path to the surface of the planet.) However, before this finale the story plods on for what seems like forever.<br \/>\nAs with most of these stories it suffers from many failures of imagination (advanced spaceships with the guns of a battleship, a colonel who carries a briefcase and unrolls a paper star chart, bacon and egg sandwiches for breakfast, etc., etc.) A Carnell reject I suspect.<br \/>\n<strong><em>Blast Off<\/em><\/strong> is an anonymous piece\u00a0subtitled \u201cAstronaut\u2019s thoughts from the Finnish.\u201d When the story was later reprinted it emerged that Bonfigliloi was the author.<sup>4<\/sup> It is an interesting work that presages the New Wave with the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of an astronaut about to board a spaceship:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yes, well, there it stands, that\u2019s the thing you have to ride on, next stop the heavens ha ha and don\u2019t think you aren\u2019t scared don\u2019t let anyone think I\u2019m scared I mean I\u2019m don\u2019t anyone think I\u2019m not scared oh you know. But anyway there it stands and I suppose like the man says it has a kind of stark beauty and all\u2014long and slim and pointing up to the stars my destination and don\u2019t anyone think I\u2019m oh hell. p. 55<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I wonder what old-school readers of Carnell\u2019s <em>New Worlds<\/em> and <em>Science Fantasy<\/em> made of this.<br \/>\nThe second of the Aldiss stories, <strong><em>Lazarus<\/em><\/strong>, is published under his \u2018Jael Cracken\u2019 pseudonym, which (as with the John Runciman pseudonym for the next story) would be used once more in <em>Science Fantasy<\/em> and never again.<br \/>\nThe story starts with an ex-astronaut giving a speech at a school. He tells the boys the story of the space station project he was part of before the Third World War started. During this mission one of the three crew members died on the moon but, before they could recover him, the war started and the two remaining astronauts were brought back to Earth.<br \/>\nHe goes on to say that some years later the other surviving astronaut contacted him to say they had received a message from the station. When usable rockets were found on enemy soil shortly after this, he and the other astronaut organised a mission to the station. There (spoiler) they found the dead astronaut, apparently alive but host to an alien organism. The astronaut that contacted the narrator dies during this mission, and the latter takes both of the bodies back to Earth along with a religious message from the original dead crewman:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI am beyond medicine. But I am not dead, for up here I cannot die. No life can come into being except on earth. No death can come into being except on earth. This is all my message.\u201d p. 77<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A new cult\/religion starts, the war ends.<br \/>\nThe first half of this is an overly padded setup, and the second isn\u2019t convincing. That said, the scene on the space station where they meet the dead man has a certain momentum of its own.<br \/>\n<strong><em>Unauthorised Persons<\/em><\/strong> by Brian W. Aldiss is his third story in the issue and by far the worst. It starts with a bumptious colonial administrator called Pepkinson going to a planet where an archaeologist called Bullock has found a city from the First Galactic Empire buried in ice. The planet is part of an unusual binary star system, and its eccentric orbit has taken it a long way from the major sun. Consequently, the atmosphere has frozen and life has died out, except for some mutated vermin in the underground (or under-ice) city.<br \/>\nThey descend and start exploring, and discover a previously buried tunnel that leads to a building that, bizarrely, has a warning sign in English telling them to keep out. They ignore it and find a time machine inside which takes them back eight thousand years.<br \/>\nBack in the past the time machine guards take them to one of the city\u2019s leaders. Bullock is shown around while\u00a0the leader\u2019s daughter entertains\u00a0Pepkinson. Bullock is lectured about the peculiarities of the local star system, and told that a catastrophic ice-age is imminent. The city\u2019s occupants will use the time machine to escape the disaster.<br \/>\nThe last part of the story is a time travel escapade with various versions of Pepkinson, Bullock and the daughter running around in the future city.<br \/>\nThere is too much sfnal furniture in this overly gimmicky story, and it full of\u00a0cardboard characters. A poor piece.<br \/>\nThe last two stories are what would later be described in a reader\u2019s letter as \u201ctypical Bonfiglioli space-fillers\u201d. <strong><em>Matchbox <\/em><\/strong>by Peter Bradley (a one-shot writer) is about a reporter covering a Women\u2019s Institute meeting for a local newspaper. The winner of their competition to put the greatest number of objects in a matchbox appears to have one that is a tesseract (larger on the inside than the outside). The reporter and the women retire to her house to experiment with it. The ending (spoiler: it is used develop a space drive) is weak.<br \/>\nThe story is little more than a notion, but is\u00a0told in an entertaining enough style:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I left, having persuaded Mrs. O\u2019Neill to let me have the matchbox and its vital contents, and exchanged a not very subtle pleasantry with the milkman as I let myself into my lodgings. I awoke a couple of hours later feeling as fresh as if I\u2019d just had a couple of hours sleep, and made my way to the office.<br \/>\nHarvey, my news editor, glanced up at me as I entered. His glance evidently took in my all-night eyes and unshaven (no, if I must be scrupulously honest, even unwashed) features for, after looking at the Diary for the previous day, he started to warn me against the perils of being drawn into Women\u2019s Institute orgies.<br \/>\n\u201cYou mark my words, Sock,\u201d he said (Sock is short for Socrates. How I got this nickname is a long and not very interesting story.) \u201cI\u2019ve seen it happen too often. These harpies out in the county drag you into their midst, load you up with rhubarb wine, and before you know where you are you\u2019re passing round mystery parcels and taking part in other obscene rituals, and . . .<br \/>\nIt went on for several minutes more. Our Mr. Harvey was noted for his ingenious improvisations on original themes, and this morning he was in good voice. He concluded by asking me what I had got out of my night\u2019s work. p. 122<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong><em>The Great Chan<\/em><\/strong> by Archie Potts<sup>5<\/sup> is another story told to a third party.<sup>6<\/sup> This one concerns the last performance of the Great Chan, a magician, at a town music hall. The narrator is a newspaper reviewer who interviews Chan at the end of the show:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>He was seated in front of the mirror getting his greasepaint off, and waved me to a seat without stopping his work.<br \/>\n\u201cYou won\u2019t mind, I hope, if I carry on with this as we talk?\u201d<br \/>\nTo my surprise, his yellow complexion and almond eyes were disappearing under the cream as I watched, revealing unmistakably European features beneath the make-up. Seeing me stare, he laughed.<br \/>\n\u201cNo, the Chinese guise is just part of the act. People don\u2019t like an ordinary-looking man performing apparent miracles so in Europe I always make-up Chinese-style. When I tour the Far East, of course, I have to wear a top-hat and tails.\u201d p. 127<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The twist (spoiler) is that he claims, on departing the building, to be Alessandro Cagliostro, the eighteenth century magician and occultist. No, me neither.<\/p>\n<p>Roger Harris\u2019s abstract design for the <strong><em>Cover<\/em><\/strong> is strikingly different from anything seen on an SF magazine of the time or before, and presumably we have Bonfiglioli\u2019s art dealer eye to thank for it. I rather like it; the magazine looks rather smart, and <u>very<\/u> non-pulp. Harris would be the cover artist for the next three issues.<br \/>\nApart from the <em>Editorial<\/em> there is no other non-fiction, but there is a one page notice about a <strong><em>Competition: For Professional Scientists Only<\/em><\/strong>. I think that the quite substantial prize would have been better used in a general competition (if you adjust a 1964 \u00a350 for inflation, it is supposedly worth just short of a grand now<sup>7<\/sup>).<br \/>\nFinally, a few miscellaneous notes. First, the external physical appearance of this magazine is different from that of <em>New Worlds<\/em> #142 (which Roberts &amp; Vinter had published a month earlier). Rather than the flimsy, coated (shiny) cover #142 had, this issue has a slightly stiffer, matt finish one, presumably a cost-saving measure. I\u2019d also note that these magazines are probably the smallest A-format paperbacks I\u2019ve seen.<sup>8<\/sup><br \/>\nThe inner front cover carries an advert for the Science Fiction Book Club (just like <em>New Worlds<\/em> #142) but the inner rear cover has an advert for <em>New Worlds<\/em> #143, the July-August issue, out June 24<sup>th<\/sup>.<br \/>\nLast of all, the title page has a quirky \u201cAll terrestrial characters and places are fictitious\u201d disclaimer at the bottom:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65p003x1200.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"4335\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?attachment_id=4335\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65p003x600.jpg?fit=350%2C600&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"350,600\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"SF65p003x600\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65p003x600.jpg?fit=117%2C200&amp;ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65p003x600.jpg?fit=350%2C600&amp;ssl=1\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4335 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65p003x600.jpg?resize=350%2C600&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65p003x600.jpg?w=350&amp;ssl=1 350w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/SF65p003x600.jpg?resize=117%2C200&amp;ssl=1 117w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The cover, the first of the Aldiss, and the Bonfigliloli are fairly good quality, but the rest of the issue is quite poor. My recollection is that the next issue is much worse.\u00a0\u25cf<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">_____________________<\/p>\n<p>1. <em>Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines 1950-1970<\/em> by Mike Ashley, p. 237 (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Transformations-History-Magazine-1950-1970-Liverpool\/dp\/0853237794\/ref=sr_1_73?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1520256497&amp;sr=1-73&amp;refinements=p_27%3AMike+Ashley\">Amazon UK<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>2. There are a number of posts by Don Wells that recall Bonfiglioli\u2019s early military life on the blog <a href=\"https:\/\/bonfigliolirememberedbydonwells.blogspot.co.uk\/2013\/04\/the-bonfiglioli-abc-continued-aberdeen.html\">Bonfiglioli Remembered &#8211; and other stuff<\/a>.<br \/>\nThere is one striking passage where Wells mentions the death of Bonfiglioli&#8217;s first wife:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Only once in our time together did I see Bonfig in a vulnerable moment. I suppose the hurt was still fresh in his mind. He told me his first wife Elizabeth had died in her sleep; he woke to find her dead beside him. More than once \u2014 no, many times more than once \u2014 in my 45 years of marriage, I lay quiet in bed, listening for my wife\u2019s breathing.<br \/>\nFifty years after Bonfig\u2019s Elizabeth died, my first wife Margaret died beside me.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Bonfiglioli\u2019s Wikipedia page is <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kyril_Bonfiglioli\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>3. \u201c[Bonfiglioli] was feeling his way in the first few issues, relying heavily on bottom drawer material from Brian Aldiss.\u201d (<em>Ibid<\/em>. p. 243)<\/p>\n<p>4. I found out about Bonfiglioli\u2019s authorship of <em>Blast Off<\/em> from John Boston\u2019s review (link above).<\/p>\n<p>5. Potts was a two-shot writer: he previously had a story, <em>The Warriors<\/em>, in <em>New Worlds<\/em> #124, November 1962.<\/p>\n<p>6. I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that fiction told in the form of a stories related to a third party are probably using a chatty conversational mode to distract from the slightness of the tale.<\/p>\n<p>7. I used this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.in2013dollars.com\/1964-GBP-in-2017?amount=50\">website<\/a> for the inflation adjustment. I\u2019m not entirely convinced.<\/p>\n<p>8. <em>Science Fantasy<\/em> #65 is 109 x 178mm in size; <em>New Worlds<\/em> #142 is 107 x 180mm in size, very slightly narrower and taller (this size variation holds broadly true for the issues #66 &amp; #143 too), making me wonder if Rugby Advertiser Ltd. had two different presses. By comparison, my Corgi edition (1965 reprint) of <em>New Writings in SF 1<\/em> edited by John Carnell (to be reviewed here soon) is 111 x 180mm. These differences are minute, so maybe it is the thinness of the books (128 pp.) that give the impression that they are smaller. \u25cf<\/p>\n<p><em>Edited 8<sup>th<\/sup> March 2018 to add Wells passage in footnote 2.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"synved-social-container synved-social-container-follow\"><a class=\"synved-social-button synved-social-button-follow synved-social-size-16 synved-social-resolution-normal synved-social-provider-rss nolightbox\" data-provider=\"rss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Subscribe to our RSS Feed\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/SFMagazines\" style=\"font-size: 0px;width:16px;height:16px;margin:0;margin-bottom:5px\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"rss\" title=\"Subscribe to our RSS Feed\" class=\"synved-share-image synved-social-image synved-social-image-follow\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" style=\"display: inline;width:16px;height:16px;margin: 0;padding: 0;border: none;box-shadow: none\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/16x16\/rss.png?resize=16%2C16&#038;ssl=1\" \/><\/a><a class=\"synved-social-button synved-social-button-follow synved-social-size-16 synved-social-resolution-hidef synved-social-provider-rss nolightbox\" data-provider=\"rss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Subscribe to our RSS Feed\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/SFMagazines\" style=\"font-size: 0px;width:16px;height:16px;margin:0;margin-bottom:5px\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"rss\" title=\"Subscribe to our RSS Feed\" class=\"synved-share-image synved-social-image synved-social-image-follow\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" style=\"display: inline;width:16px;height:16px;margin: 0;padding: 0;border: none;box-shadow: none\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfmagazines.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/32x32\/rss.png?resize=16%2C16&#038;ssl=1\" \/><\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ISFDB link Other reviews: Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967\u00a0by John Boston &amp; Damien Broderick (Amazon) _____________________ Editor, Kyril Bonfiglioli Fiction: Pink Plastic Gods \u2022 short story by Brian W. Aldiss \u2217\u2217\u2217 The Contraption \u2022 novelette by Kenneth Bulmer Blast Off \u2022 short story by Kyril Bonfiglioli [as by uncredited] \u2217\u2217 Lazarus \u2022 short story [&hellip;]<\/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":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4329","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\/p6Pcj7-17P","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4329","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=4329"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11136,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4329\/revisions\/11136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}