{"id":4546,"date":"2018-04-04T12:44:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T12:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=4546"},"modified":"2018-04-24T14:35:26","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T14:35:26","slug":"science-fantasy-66-july-august-1964","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=4546","title":{"rendered":"Science Fantasy #66, July-August 1964"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Other reviews: Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967<\/em>\u00a0by John Boston & Damien Broderick (Amazon<\/a>)<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Kyril Bonfiglioli<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nA Case of Identity<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Kenneth Bulmer \u2217<\/strong>
\nGod Killer<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by John T. Phillifent [as by John Rackham] \u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Poachers<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by James Parkhill-Rathbone [as by James Rathbone] \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nBuilding Blocks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by David Beech
\nDear Aunty<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Daphne Castell \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nA Dish of Devils<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by James Goddard \u2217<\/strong>
\nNo Moon To-night!<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Brian W. Aldiss [as by John Runciman]
\nUnto All Generations <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Paul Jents \u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Roger Harris
\nEditorial <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Kyril Bonfiglioli
\nOur Cover
\nAdvanced Intelligence <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 coming next issue
\nCompetition Notice
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Bonfiglioli\u2019s second issue starts off with yet another story that appears to have come from the deepest recesses of an author\u2019s trunk. Kenneth Bulmer\u2019s A Case of Identity<\/em><\/strong> starts with a police inspector investigating the murder of a young woman in the countryside. Apart from the murderer having vanished into thin air, there have been other odd occurrences: ravaged sheep, a line of holes in the ground made by an unknown machine, etc.
\nAfter his enquiries, a search of open country by the army, and a further assault on a patrolling farmer by a \u201cdark shape,\u201d etc., the climax of the story takes place at an isolated farmhouse. The Inspector sees a shining light in the (by then) burning house that looks like an open refrigerator: I presume the dark shape was an alien from another world\/dimension\/etc., but who would know?
\nGod Killer<\/em><\/strong> is by another established writer, John T. Phillifent (better known as John Rackham in the UK), and this talking heads story is probably another trunk piece. A vicar who has lost his belief in God is approached after a Sunday service by a man and his two flunkies. He tells the vicar he wants to mind-scan him to get his idea of God, and then combine it those of many others. Then the man can use his machine to generate the opposite image and eradicate the diety. It has a suitably pious ending.
\nThe Poachers<\/em><\/strong> by James Parkhill-Rathbone is a first sale that provides a breath of fresh air after the previous two stories\u2014although not literally, as it concerns undersea farmers in a future over-populated Earth. It starts with Jim Pollock, who comes across miners drilling next to the aquatic settlement\u2019s farm land and, in the process, blowing sediment over their weed farms. He asks the miners to desist, but they rudely refuse. He reports back to his colleague, and they set up blowers to do the same to the miners. They narrowly miss being caught by one of their magnetic grapples.
\nAfter the pair attends a council meeting at Triton (their undersea city) a number of ships go out to reconnect the blowers to the cables, which the miners have cut in the meantime. The situation escalates.
\nRunning parallel to this is the work that Jim\u2019s wife Freida\u00a0has been doing with fish, a basic form of mind-control device for fish shoals, as he learns at dinner:<\/p>\n

They ate in the glow from fish-lamps, hundreds of tiny luminescent organisms stimulated electronically from the centre of each bowl, casting a gentler radiance than the ordinary lighting. It was the normal light for love-making, but for them both at the moment it was more a symbol of their emotional unity, like the wedding-rings of the old days: there was no time to make love. Frieda suddenly began to steer the conversation, and Pollock watched her with ill-concealed amusement as she brought up the guidance of shoals, her pet subject. Torn between concern for her husband and the stage her work in the lab had reached, she was obviously working up to one of those triumphant statements of hers, in a deceptively calm tone of voice, as she tried to keep down her excitement. He gave her the opening she wanted, and she plunged in:
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve got it this time, darling\u2014a method of affecting the fish brain. We\u2019ve had a proper circus in the big tank. The trouble is, it only affects the more complex brains; it\u2019s no good on fry, either. With some of our equipment, you can be a proper fish-herd\u2014move your shoal where you like without any trouble.\u201d
\n\u201cSounds pretty good,\u201d agreed Pollock. \u201cBetter than what we\u2019ve got, anyhow. So this is what you\u2019ve been keeping a secret.\u201d
\n\u201cWell, look at it, darling. It sounds a bit unlikely as a project. We\u2019ve done it now, and nobody will be able to say it can\u2019t be done and wasn\u2019t worth our trying. Proper scientific spirit you need in my job . . . And an understanding husband.\u201d
\nPollock leaned over and kissed her. \u201cYou\u2019ve been acting a bit odd lately. So that\u2019s what it was about.\u201d
\nFrieda left with: \u201cThere\u2019s a carp named after you in that tank. I make it work harder than the others\u2014oh!\u201d
\nThe rest was lost in a tussle. p. 42-43<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As you can probably gather (spoiler) the device is used to end the conflict with the miners. This is a somewhat clunky deus ex machina ending, but it is mostly a well done and readable piece, and head and shoulders above the previous two. A pity that there weren\u2019t other later stories in the magazine from this writer.1<\/sup>
\nBuilding Blocks<\/em><\/strong> by David Beech starts with a discussion between a husband and wife about an undisclosed problem with newspapers and magazines that is affecting children: they resolve to keep their son Peter away from them. Needless to say he finds a pile of newspapers hidden in the house and, while reading one, a building block on legs appears and talks to him. He is led underneath the newspaper and finds that now he too has the body of a yellow building block. In this strange world there there are various colours and shapes of blocks\/people there, mostly organised into four Empires, and they either\u00a0fight\/defend themselves from each other, or build towers to reach the top of a wall that surrounds them on all sides.
\nThis allegorical interlude ends\u00a0when Peter\u2019s mother picks him up in our world, upset that he has been reading a newspaper. The last inexplicable paragraph has Peter go to the sideboard, light up a cigarette, and pour himself a whiskey. A twee shading to baffling piece.
\nDear Aunty<\/em><\/strong> by Daphne Castell2<\/sup> is another d\u00e9but, and a promising one. It starts with Henry, the editor of a small magazine, at a party. An exchange he has with one of his writers illustrates the tone of the story:<\/p>\n

Bouncing round, he saw Dick Hayman, correctly dressed for the occasion with a blonde and a bottle of Riesling.
\n\u201cHenry, you old devil, how\u2019s every little thing? Fatter than ever, eh, I can see that. No wonder, sitting around on your butt, while better men toil like galleyslaves for you.\u201d Dick was already a little drunk, and apparently bent on improving his condition.
\nHenry\u2019s good manners, hammered into him by a fond father at an early age, did not desert him. \u201cCould be worse, Dick,\u201d he replied, baring his teeth in a polite, if mirthless smile. \u201cHow\u2019s that article on bribery in local bowls matches coming along? It should be a fizzer\u2014aimed right at the great beating heart of the nation, eh?\u201d
\n\u201cHave to wait for it, chum. I\u2019m busy doing a spot of research on bribery and its effects on the motivations of sex.\u201d Dick prodded the blonde affectionately in a pneumatic section of her anatomy. She cooed at him, and batted both eyelids.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s roughly what you said a fortnight ago,\u201d complained Henry. \u201cGod knows I can\u2019t stand the bilge you produce, but I can\u2019t keep \u2018Gaiety\u2019 running with all its pages blank, just because my writers are feeling the urge of Nature. Last week we had to shove in a reprint of \u2018The Englishwoman: Is She Really Frigid?,\u2019 instead of Bart\u2019s new expose of the call-girl racket in civil service offices, because Bart had left for the Bermudas with one of the call-girls.\u201d
\n\u201cLucky Bart!\u201d murmured Dick. \u201cOh, well, I suppose \u2018Gaiety\u2019 has its place in the scheme of things.\u201d
\nHe told Henry what he thought that place was, and the blonde squealed, \u201cOoh, you!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Politically incorrect and dated perhaps, but lively.
\nHenry is looking for a woman to write an agony column for the magazine, and receives a suggestion from the hostess that he use a woman called Gala Dysico. He is later told by a number of people that \u201ceveryone knows Gala.\u201d In the following days, and when all other possibilities are exhausted, he ends up going to see her:<\/p>\n

Miss Dysico was perhaps 55 or 60, and well nourished. Her hair had been dyed a metallic green, and most of her visible teeth (a great many were visible in that welcoming smile) had been stopped with gold. She was hung with layers of mauve draperies, festooned with strings of clashing beads. Her fingernails were long and silvered, and she carried a long black cigarette holder. Her eyes, however, were wonderful, warm and violet and enormous. p. 74<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

During their conversation, Henry finds she has the answers to all his personal problems, or manages to make them seem irrelevant. He hires her and in the following months her columns are a huge success and Henry gets a raise. He uses the money to take a short holiday abroad, but trouble awaits him when he gets back:<\/p>\n

He returned from the delights of sunshine, sparkling blue seas, and beaches full of exotic and lightly-clad beauties, just in time to correct the galley-proofs of the latest issue of \u2018Gaiety.\u2019 He was, in fact, stretching out his hand for them, when the telephone rang.
\n\u201cAye, well, Mr. Persimmon, ye see, there\u2019s suthin\u2019 gey wrang wi\u2019 they galley-proofs,\u201d said a voice. It was Mr. Carfrae, the foreman of the printing-room. Henry blenched at these sinister words. \u201cThere is, is there?\u201d he muttered. \u201cExactly what, Mr. Carfrae?\u201d
\n\u201cAh wisna gaun tae tell yon chiel wi\u2019 the lang neb, ye ken, for he\u2019d jist haver on the way a body couldna tell whit he was gabbin\u2019 aboot.\u201d Carfrae and Merridew [the assistant editor] had a fierce, though largely unspoken contempt for one another. They communicated mainly by means of grunts and snorts. \u201cBut jist tak\u2019 a wee gleek at they letters o\u2019 yon wumman\u2014whit\u2019s this they ca\u2019 her, Aunty Galler?\u2014man, that\u2019s a fine wumman! Ay, she fair pits me in mind o\u2019 the days when Ah was nocht but a bit laddie, rinnin\u2019 aboot wi\u2019oot a bawbee ahint ma sporran\u2014\u201d Henry put the receiver gently down. Conversations with Mr. Carfrae always reminded him rather forcibly that modern languages had not been his strong point at school. He turned to Aunty Gala\u2019s Quiet Corner, and the relevant item leapt out and hit him in the eye.
\nIt was about two-thirds of the way down the last column, and it read as follows:
\nL\u2019tut, Orp. Hercules Cluster. This is a very unfortunate position for you, my dear, and I do not think that bripping the hixix would, as you suggest, solve the problem. You will simply have to confide in the local priest of your sub-clan. The recipe you mention has been known to Arcturans for several thousand years, but would not suit your particular life-form. If you will let me have a vibrafoil attuned to your personal wave-length, I will send details of a methane-based alternative. p. 78-79<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The resolution of the story is probably fairly obvious. Henry (spoiler) goes to her office and discovers she is also working for an interplanetary publication as well as his\u2014just before she and her niece arrive through a portal. There is a rather talky final scene where she explains everything, and that she cannot (as Henry suggests) use alien problems in her future Gaiety<\/em> columns. Earth cannot know of the existence of life on other planets, not because Earth isn\u2019t ready to join the various\u00a0peoples of the Galaxy, but because they aren\u2019t ready for Earth:<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, my dear Henry, the astounding advances that Earth has made in every branch of civilisation that relates to her own comfort and convenience\u2014well, quite frankly, they would be like gunpowder, let loose among the comparatively backward planets of the Federation. Take depilatories, for instance\u2014Trenna, imagine depilatories suddenly released wholesale to those creatures on the third moon of Jupiter!\u201d
\nTrenna shuddered eloquently, and Henry found it extremely difficult to take his eyes away from the resulting effect on her figure. \u201cI know a planet in the Bootes region,\u201d went on Gala, \u201cwhere sanitary devices are the prerogative of the chief priest, whose name could be roughly translated as \u2018The Divine Plumber.\u2019 They are given only as the highest rewards for extreme courage or devotion. p. 85<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is minor stuff, and dated, but I rather enjoyed it.
\nA Dish of Devils<\/em><\/strong> by James Goddard is a first contact story between Sirian visitors and a sixteenth-century peasant. In the last paragraph the encounter is revealed as\u00a0the inspiration for the nursery rhyme Hey, Diddle, Diddle<\/em>.
\nNo Moon To-night!<\/em><\/strong> by Brian W. Aldiss is another pseudonymous effort from the bottom of the writer\u2019s trunk. The setup of this one is that something in space is causing an area of darkness, blocking out starlight, and the phenomenon is spreading towards Earth. When it does, the main character, Roger Furnish, a civilian on an army base, experiences complete<\/em> darkness: no lights of any sort can be seen. He spends the first part of the story perilously driving home in the pitch black to get to his wife. On his arrival he is greeted not only by her but by a phone call from the colonel telling him to come back. He and his wife return.
\nAt the camp the colonel tells Furnish that he wants to take the base\u2019s secret amphibious tank out while it is completely dark, apparently to test it in secret. After they get going Furnish forces the colonel to reveal the real reason for the journey, which is to get to a scientist who lives in France. The colonel believes he will be able to explain the phenomenon they are experiencing.
\nAfter a journey along the bottom of the English Channel to Calais (spoiler), they go into the scientist\u2019s house, where they can see normally again. Fergusson, the scientist, explains how the device he has built to counteract the darkness works:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis little machine\u2019s pretty simple. As you may have observed, it\u2019s an old H\/3 army type electric generator, rigged up. The shields really are shields, arranged about the works to produce a \u2018dead\u2019 field\u2014the centre of the field coinciding with the centre of the armature, so that the whole contraption is virtually its own little watertight magnetic world, also its own North. The South Pole exists, of course, but over the border; that is, through the machine\u2014in another dimension I suppose you\u2019d call it, but whoever thinks up such terms is going to have to think up a better [one] when this spot of research gets published. I call it H-space, because it\u2019s space plus something else\u2014but we\u2019ll come back to that in a minute. p. 113<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

. . . no, I\u2019m fine thanks, don\u2019t bother.
\nThis lone-inventor lecture (a tired trope in the late 1930s) continues, and we find out about his discovery of H-space and various other related matters for the story\u2019s last few pages.
\nThis has little going for it, bar some sections of Fisher\u2019s blind journey to his wife. However, even the interest that these sections arouse is fatally undermined by their lack of credibility: driving a car a couple of miles while unable to see? I don\u2019t think so.
\nUnto All Generations <\/em><\/strong>by Paul Jents starts with a man and a woman, Cartwright and Mary, working on a nineteenth generation computer when the former recognises a circuit from a sixth generation model, a version that ran amok. Carwright reports it to his supervisor and then goes home for dinner. Here, he is served by computer controlled, lobotomised humans, similar to the ones that were assisting him in the lab.
\nThe supervisor, meanwhile, reports the problem to a fifteenth generation computer He is told that the design will be\u00a0modified\u00a0and to come back later. The computer secretly decides that the problem is Cartwright and arranges for his disposal.
\nThe rest of the story describes the (unsuccessful) trial of the completed nineteenth generation model:<\/p>\n

The nineteenth Generation was a beautiful thing. From where Mary was sitting, some distance away, it looked like a tree of crystal. Each of the \u2018leaves,\u2019 perfectly symmetrical although varying in size, represented a different electro-chemical system complete in itself\u2014in effect an individual, specialized brain. They fed back, in channels gradually growing larger and more closely integrated, via the \u2018branches\u2019 to the main control column, the trunk.
\nIn turn this sub-divided again and again, into an infinite number of rootlets, in direct communication with every other computer in the world.
\nA tree, Mary thought again. A tree of knowledge. Of good and evil. p. 123<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The creation of a twentieth generation begins after the failure of the nineteenth.
\nAt the end of the story the twentieth generation computer awakens with a transcendent knowledge of God, which is instantly transmitted to the rest of the computer network.
\nThere are the bones of a half decent story about computer totalitarianism here but, for the most part, it is buried under a lot of waffle.<\/p>\n

This issue\u2019s Cover<\/em><\/strong> is by Roger Harris, for David Beech\u2019s Building Blocks<\/em>. There is a short note at the end of the Rackham story crediting Harris for the cover, and stating next issue\u2019s \u201cwill be by Haro, well-known to the readers of the Observer and Mail.\u201d It wasn\u2019t; Harris would provide another two covers for the magazine, and Haro was never seen.
\nThe Editorial <\/em><\/strong>by Kyril Bonfiglioli has three parts. In the first he deals with circulation:<\/p>\n

My first editorial struck a base and mercenary note: I said that what sf needed most was half-crowns, in the form of circulation. I also said that if more copies were sold we could boost the rate paid for stories and perhaps, in the end, check the drain to America of riper writers.
\nWell, thanks to a handier format, a new distribution network, and Roger Harris\u2019 bold cover-design, we have broken a little ice. Latest indications suggest that around 15% more copies of the issue found good homes. NEW WORLDS, too, shows a similar healthy jump. Hoping that this is only the beginning of a sharp upward trend, I am sticking my neck out and raising the basic rate for this magazine by\u2014to be exact\u201419.047%. A start, anyway. p. 2<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the second part he mentions that there will little adverse response to last issue\u2019s editorial and his \u201cattack on \u201cfantasy\u201d of the \u201csword and sorcery\u201d vintage.\u201d He goes on to add:<\/p>\n

If sf has a future\u2014and I wouldn\u2019t be doing this if I didn\u2019t believe that it has\u2014it is not a future exhibiting all the signs of a decaying religion, with innumerable sects endlessly sub-splitting and high priests howling \u201cheretic\u201d at each other.
\nScience-fiction\u2019s task is to abolish itself. At present it inhabits a sort of quarantine ward where it leads a sheltered but unwholesome existence. We tend to think that much sf fails to be printed because it is sf. Mr. Southworth, of Queen\u2019s College, Cambridge, in a letter to me recently, posed the worrying question: \u2018how much would get printed, purely on its literary merits, if it were not science-fiction?\u2019 There\u2019s a dusty answer to that one. p. 2<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bonfiglioli goes on to predict that in ten years\u2019 time SF will have either abolished itself, be in the sick ward, or be extinct\u2014I\u2019d say don\u2019t give up the editor\u2019s job for one as a futurologist!
\nThe last section is one of those tedious passages about manuscript preparation that non-writers semi-regularly had to sit through in some of the publications of the time. It does have this, however:<\/p>\n

Most professionals use quarto paper and this is a great blessing: foolscap is the wrong size for most envelopes and files and is awkward to handle in hotel bars and other places where copy-reading takes place. The whole thing is stapled, clipped or pinned together and a stamped addressed envelope is always enclosed. (One doesn\u2019t like to be mean over tenpence but there are only a couple of dozen of them in a pound note). p. 20<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are a couple of other notes apart from the one about the cover. Advanced Intelligence<\/em><\/strong>, which is a plug for the next issue, includes a puff for the Rudyard Kipling story, along with mentions of material from John Rackham and Thom Keyes. Competition Notice<\/em><\/strong> is an update stating that engineers and doctors are eligible to enter.
\nFinally, the inner back cover generously plugs\u00a0New Worlds<\/em> (this compared with Science Fantasy<\/em>\u2019s measly third of a page in New Worlds<\/em>, with little more than a mention of its title and price):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a fairly poor issue, as I expected.3<\/sup> \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. James Parkhill-Rathbone would be the assistant editor to Kyril Bonfiglioli at Science Fantasy<\/em> for issues #70 to #80, before leaving to set up his own magazine called The Idler<\/em>. There is a short review of this publication (and the information that Josephine Saxton was a contributor) here<\/a>. When asked, they couldn\u2019t provide any more information about his having \u201csettled down to a life as a writer of pretty conventional science fiction.\u201d
\nI found only one birth and death record<\/a> for his (uncommon) name: the name of the wife, Alys, matches up with the one mentioned in \u201cBirth of a Son\u201d on p. 3 of Futurian War Digest #26<\/a>, Feb 1943. Talking of fanzines, he also published \u201cthe first fanzine to come from Scotland\u201d when he was a teenager, Macabre<\/a>.
\nJames Parkhill-Rathbone\u2019s\u00a0ISFDB<\/a> page.<\/p>\n

2. In the mid-sixties Daphne Castell published three stories apiece in both Science Fantasy<\/em> and New Worlds<\/em> (and would continue to appear in various places until her death in 1983\u2014her ISFDB page, listing twenty-three stories is here<\/a>). Initially she was best known for a notable interview with J. R. R. Tolkien which appeared in New Worlds<\/em> #168 (November 1966). There is an interesting article on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine<\/a> (backup screenshot<\/a> here) that describes the intersection between Castell, Tolkien, Moorcock and New Worlds<\/em>, as well as providing other bibliographic information (sadly, there is nothing at Science Fiction Encyclopedia<\/a>, probably a result of its bias towards book publication).
\nThere is a little more information in the afterword to her story Who\u2019s in There With Me?<\/em> on p. 123-124 of Judith Merril\u2019s anthology England Swings SF<\/em>, Doubleday, 1968:<\/p>\n

I am over twenty-one and under forty . . . have a brilliant engineering husband and three brilliant musical children . . . Born in Southport, Lancashire, where tripe is eaten. I went to six schools before I was eleven, and ended my education peacefully with an Oxfordshire vicar, three mornings a week. This liberal education in the humanities gained me a scholarship to Oxford (St. Anne\u2019s) and a sturdy Victorian prose style, leavened with heavy jocularity (I don\u2019t know where \u201cWho\u2019s in there with me?\u201d came from\u2014it\u2019s not typical). I did linguistic research under Professor Tolkien, who is a marvellously kind, helpful man . . . until I ran out of living money\u2014a thing I do fairly often. p. 123<\/p>\n

I became a qualified librarian, and worked with music and then with forestry literature until I had my second baby.
\nInterests? A lot. I used to try something different every year . . . chess, cricket, bell-ringing and music seem to stay, whatever else . . . I\u2019ve written, produced and acted in plays, run a madrigal society, given song-recitals, conducted a village choir . . . At the moment, I look after the house and children, act as chauffeur to the family, experiment with foreign cooking, belong to a local choir, ring bells at a local church, study electricity and Grade 3 piano, and run a class for adults in English language.
\n[She prefers American to British SF]\u2014though I would rather have written \u201cHothouse\u201d than anything I can lay claim to.
\nI feel we\u2019re all a bit besieged by the \u201cshort trot round a fevered mind\u201d effect. If I could be my ideal writer, I would be a combination of James Blish (for plots and people), Robert Sheckley (for dialogue and situation), and Hal Clement (for background and detail). p. 124<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Merril also mentions that Castell produced articles, interviews, reviews, etc. for The Guardian<\/em>, Good Housekeeping<\/em>, Christian Science Monitor<\/em>, as well as news programs for the BBC (who also broadcast several of her stories).
\nCastell strikes me as one of those writers who may have produced much more short fiction if the paperback Science Fantasy <\/em>and New Worlds<\/em> (or a similar British F&SF<\/em>-type publication) had continued publication through the late sixties, seventies and eighties.<\/p>\n

3. I appreciated the Castell story a lot more this second time around. My scores from the first time I read the magazine (in the early 1990s?) were (scores from this review in brackets): Bulmer 0 (1), Rackham 0 (1), Rathbone 3 (3), Beech 1 (0), Castell 1 (3), Goddard 0 (1), Runciman\/Aldiss 1 (0), Jents 0 (1). Consistent if nothing else, I guess. \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link Other reviews: Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967\u00a0by John Boston & Damien Broderick (Amazon) _____________________ Editor, Kyril Bonfiglioli Fiction: A Case of Identity \u2022 short story by Kenneth Bulmer \u2217 God Killer \u2022 short story by John T. Phillifent [as by John Rackham] \u2217 The Poachers \u2022 novelette by James Parkhill-Rathbone [as by […]<\/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-4546","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\/p6Pcj7-1bk","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546","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=4546"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4719,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546\/revisions\/4719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}