{"id":852,"date":"2016-02-13T12:42:53","date_gmt":"2016-02-13T12:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=852"},"modified":"2016-02-13T12:42:53","modified_gmt":"2016-02-13T12:42:53","slug":"new-writings-in-sf-23-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=852","title":{"rendered":"New Writings in SF #23, 1973"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NWISF23x600\"<\/p>\n

Other Reviews:
\nIan Watson: Foundation<\/em>\u00a0#6, May 1974
\nChris Morgan: Vector 69<\/em>, Summer 1975<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nThe Lake of Tuonela<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Keith Roberts \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nWagtail in the Morning<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Grahame Leman
\nMade to Be Broken<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by E. C. Tubb
\nThe Eternal Theme of Exile<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Brian W. Aldiss \u2665\u2665
\nThe Five Doors<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Michael Stall \u2665\u2665
\nSporting on Apteryx<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Charles Partington \u2665\u2665
\nRainbow<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by David Garnett \u2665\u2665
\nAccolade<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by E. C. Tubb [as by Charles Grey]
\nThe Seed of Evil<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Barrington J. Bayley \u2665\u2665\u2665\u2665<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nForeword<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial by Kenneth Bulmer<\/p>\n

New Writings in SF<\/em> wasn\u2019t a magazine but an anthology series1<\/sup> started by John Carnell in 1964 and continued by Kenneth Bulmer after the former\u2019s death just short of his sixtieth birthday in 1972. This wasn\u2019t the first volume of this series that Bulmer edited, but that one, New Writings in SF #22<\/em>, was a memorial to John Carnell so was more like the previous volumes that the later Bulmer-edited ones. So this is where I am starting.<\/p>\n

After the childish\u00a0comic book cover that mashes up images from a number of the stories, the volume starts off with Kenneth Bulmer\u2019s editorial which discusses traffic. From there he introduces canals and airships for freight transport, mentioning\u00a0Keith Roberts\u2019s story in particular before moving on to introduce the others. Each of the stories also has a short blurb before a title page. The blurbs are mostly forgettable, but the layout of these, blurb, blank page, title page\u2014always with the blurb and title page on the right hand side of the book\u2014is quite smart.<\/p>\n

The opening piece is The Lake of Tuonela<\/em><\/strong> by Keith Roberts, one of two \u2018Canal\u2019 stories set on the alien planet of Xerxes that Roberts published that year.2<\/sup> It begins with an Earthman called Mathis trying to get permission from the planetary administrators to take a canal boat up through the deserted canal system to the Hy-Antiel summit. The alien canals have fallen into disuse as a result of imported Earth technology (Ground Effect Machines) making the boatmen redundant. When refused permission by the bureaucrats he goes anyway, accompanied by Jack, a native of the planet.
\nThere isn\u2019t really much story to this one, and it is mostly a descriptive account of their languid journey along the canal:<\/p>\n

In the second cutting they were delayed again, this time by mud and weed. The weed, slimy strings of it twenty feet or more in length, wrapped itself persistently around the propeller, building a solid ball between blades and hull. As the obstructions formed the Boatman sliced them away patiently. Mathis poled dully, disinterested in time; later the machetes were once more brought into use. Finally the narrows were passed; the second cutting opened up ahead. The rock rose steeply, a hundred feet or more, clothed still for most of its height with living green. Through much of the day the far lip caught the sun; the feathery trees that lined it seemed to burn, haloed with pale gold. Later, clouds grew across the sky. The drizzle returned; and a thin mist, veiling the highest rock. In time the mist crept lower, rolling slowly, clinging in tongues to the water. <\/em>p.28<\/p>\n

They navigate their way over the aqueducts and into the long tunnels in the hills, one of which spills out into the huge underground Lake of Tuonela:<\/p>\n

He swung the big lamp left and right, discovering no sign of walls; the gloom ahead was likewise unrelieved. At last the abundance of summit water was explained; they had entered an underground lake, of unknown size. He wondered fleetingly if Bar-Ab and his engineers had known. Had they plotted the extent of the cavern, tunnelled to its brink; or had the miners burst into the void, startled and unsuspecting \u2026 <\/em>
\nOn impulse, he angled the light upward. Above, suspended it seemed from an infinite height, the Bar-Ko, dark red and dripping, marked the way. Beyond the great iron Sign hung another; and another, dimly seen.
\nHe nodded to himself. They had known.<\/em> p.33<\/p>\n

While I liked the unhurried pace and setting of this one, it is a little uneven (the dull meeting with the administrators at the start seems less real than the journey, although the former is perhaps truer to life). Also, the section at the inclined plane could have been better explained, and there is also a vision of a woman from Mathis\u2019s past at the end of the story which seemed somewhat tacked on.\u00a0 A worthwhile read for all that.<\/p>\n

The rest of the content from this story until the notable Barrington J. Bayley novelette at the end of the volume ranges from OK to awful so I\u2019ll talk about his\u00a0The Seed of Evil<\/em><\/strong> next. I had memories of this being one of the best stories that Bayley produced3<\/sup> and wondered how it would stand up to rereading all these years later. I was still impressed by it.
\nThe novelette consists of six chapters that generally telescope in time and length. The first is a short set-up describing an immortal being, Aeternus, who is part of space-time fabric and its desire for another immortal so it will not be alone.
\nAfter this (multiple spoilers) the story starts with an alien called Neverdie who, having fled from his pursuers, is given permission to settle on Earth. A surgeon, Julian Ferrg, who has adapted the alien for life on Earth, thinks it should have been forced to surrender the secrets of its immortality and FTL drive. The committee set up to oversee the alien\u2019s settlement disagrees and Neverdie takes up residence in an apartment in a\u00a0future bowl-shaped London.\u00a0The rest of the story follows Ferrg and his single-minded determination to discover the alien\u2019s secret. Several years later he kidnaps Neverdie, only to be caught on a\u00a0ship he has fitted with theatres and laboratories to dissect and examine the alien.
\nJulian subsequently gets out of prison after fifteen years. He tries once more to make Neverdie reveal his secrets in an interview but fails. Julian puts himself into suspended animation and sets the timer for 500 years. A hundred years later, Neverdie discovers Julian\u2019s location, breaks into the vault and disconnects the timer.
\nAll these events play out in the final chapter of the story. Neverdie watches the fall and extinction of man and the rise of lupus sapiens<\/em> millennia later. As these intelligent wolves are beginning to become a threat he decides to leave Earth and prepares his spaceship. Before he departs he travels to Ferrg\u2019s chamber and releases him from his long sleep. However, Neverdie\u2019s spaceship malfunctions on take-off and crashes. Julian finds him and takes him back to his chamber, dispatching two of the intelligent and hostile wolves en route.
\nAfter examining and dissecting Neverdie for some time he eventually finds a small sphere in a fold in the alien\u2019s brain and is told that it is the \u2018Seed of Evil\u2019, originally meant as a punishment for a major criminal so he would never forget his crime. Neverdie makes one final effort to persuade Julian to forgo immortality but fails. As Julian swallows the device he has a momentary vision of the space-time being from the first part of the story:<\/p>\n

That consciousness was calling him. Its call had caused the Seed to be made in the first place. Somehow, sometime, one of the beings enchained by the Seed would, in due course, be lifted out of the material realm to share Aeternus\u2019 state, life without any of the means of life; and without end. Aeternus\u2019 voice came to Julian; You are my only-begotten son, with whom I am well-pleased. And at that blasphemy he experienced a great fear that he was to be that eternal companion.<\/em> p.190<\/p>\n

This is an accomplished story in a number of ways. Not only does it manage to insert a sense of epic timescale into a relatively short story, and portray Ferrg as a convincing single-minded, amoral protagonist, but it manages to do so against a convincing backdrop. Recommended.<\/p>\n

Of the rest of the stories, everything bar the two stories by Ted Tubb and the Leman are average fare.
\nThe Eternal Theme of Exile<\/em><\/strong> by Brian W. Aldiss is the second of his \u2018Enigma\u2019 triptychs. These were a series of works that presented three short pieces together. I was going to quote the author\u2019s introduction from the first of these but I am not sure that provides any illumination as to what these are supposed to be.5<\/sup>
\nThe first of the three is The Eternal Theme of Exile<\/em><\/strong>, which has a man leaving for one of zodiacal planets as Anna Kavan thinks he is persecuting her. While he is there he experiences another personality.
\nAll Those Enduring Old Charms<\/em><\/strong> has a man leaving for the zeepees to avoid the attentions of Anna K\u2014. He\u00a0then finds his grandmother in suspended animation and decides to have her reanimated so he can fall in love with her:<\/p>\n

Daily, my master sent her one lemuroid after another, hoping to win her heart. One by one, the animals were returned, decapitated. My master sent her flowers, mathematical disputations, five-dimensional objects, sweetmeats, metaphors, plumes, plums, live jewels. All were returned. Grandmother was not to be moved. <\/em>
\n\u2018How vexatious,\u2019 said my master to the girls, \u2018that I should leave one planet to escape the attentions of a woman, only to find myself on another planet where another woman plainly wishes to escape my attentions!\u2019 He besought Vittoria to go to his grandmother and present his case personally. Vittoria was not returned<\/em>. p.87<\/p>\n

Finally, Nobody Spoke Or Waved Goodbye<\/em><\/strong> has Anna falling in love with a hired personality.
\nNone of these singly or jointly act as a conventional story or stories, and they are probably best thought of as partially related and ambiguous glimpses of a strange future. Aldiss can write well enough to avoid these falling flat but I\u2019m not sure they succeed either, certainly not in a conventional sense: you would probably have to be in the right mood to get the best out of them.
\nThe Five Doors<\/em><\/strong> by Michael Stall has a cylinder appear in England that contains what seems to be the first of a series of five translocational doors which\u00a0appear to be an alien test. Each of the worlds the doors\u00a0lead to have their own particular problems that need to be solved (the first world is highly radioactive and kills the first man who went through). This is fine for the most part but there are one or two scenes at the end (the discussion of matter transmission devices is one) that are not that clear.
\nSporting on Apteryx<\/em><\/strong> by Charles Partington tells of the people of Apteryx, who live beside a forest that has a cliff where there is a powerful wind. As the story opens one of their number, Mrogre, is being hunted by the tribe as he has developed a hump between his shoulders and is to be killed. His woman Minona is pregnant and later watches (spoiler) as Mrogre is burnt and wings spread from the\u00a0hump… Ok as far as it goes but rather inconclusive. I think a monthly magazine editor would have asked Partington to compete the rest of the novella this is the seed of.
\nRainbow<\/em><\/strong> by David Garnett is fine as long as you don\u2019t think about its premise too much. A portal that leads to an OAP colony of 9000 people on an alien planet stops functioning and a breakdown of order occurs. One of my reservations is that there are too many staff members involved in the fighting to keep track of and they are not particularly well drawn. Another is that the ending doesn\u2019t really flow logically from\u00a0the rest of the story That said, it all moves along at an engrossing pace.<\/p>\n

As to the ones I disliked, Wagtail in the Morning<\/em><\/strong> by Grahame Leman just lost me. A psychologist in the future gets a hand written letter to go and visit the Minister to discuss a way of controlling the \u2018liveware\u2019, e.g. the general population. There is a discussion with the Minister that I presume is meant to be satirical: when it is not there is not a lot of data dumping going on.
\nAs to the Tubb stories, they are both pretty bad. Accolade<\/em><\/strong> is published as being by Charles Grey, a pseudonym, and until I found out from ISFDB I thought it was a slush pile story that has accidentally made it into print. A generation starship crew explore their new environment while the captain broods. There is some discussion about the fact they were able to travel faster than light and then (spoiler) they notice a dark shadow approaching before they are swatted like an insect. A truly daft story.
\nMade to Be Broken<\/em><\/strong>, however, has a different set of problems. My foreboding started with the first line:<\/p>\n

Head aching slightly from the effects of the hypnotute Lieutenant Zac Karsov made his way through the ship to where the landing party waited before the main lock.<\/em> p.59<\/p>\n

Sure enough, this turns out to be a refugee from New Worlds<\/em> of the 1950s, and not a particularly good one either. This is about a planetary contact team headed up by a woman, and the Lieutenant mentioned in the first line turns out to be a patronising male underling who is\u00a0a know-it-all. Their first attempt to establish contact with the natives fails when they discover the captain is a woman.
\nLieutenant Karsov then goes undercover to research the natives. As he is in RT contact with the Captain he uses the opportunity to chat her up (this after patronising her about the failed attempt in front of their superiors):<\/p>\n

\u2018Remember to report everything and anything you see. I shall not be able to advise you without full data to work on.\u2019<\/em>
\n\u2018I\u2019ll remember. Captain,\u2019 he promised. \u2018And it\u2019s nice to know that you care.\u2019<\/em>
\n\u2018For the mission, Lieutenant,\u2019 the voice said coldly. \u2018There is nothing personal about this.\u2019<\/em>
\n\u2018A pity. With you I\u2019d like to get personal.\u2019<\/em>
\n\u2018Lieutenant!\u2019<\/em>
\n\u2018Sorry,\u2019 he said, smiling. \u2018A sub-vocal wish, Captain. You shouldn\u2019t have heard it. Not that it wasn\u2019t genuine. As I said you are a very attractive woman.\u2019<\/em> p.67-68<\/p>\n

On the second attempt the contact team appear at the village in force and convince the natives to parley.
\nIt also appears that Tubb has also placed a chip on his protagonist\u2019s shoulder about academic education:<\/p>\n

\u2018Thanks to you,\u2019 she said when he pointed it out. \u2018But how did you know what to do? At college they\u2014\u2019 <\/em>
\n\u2018Talk a load of guff,\u2019 he interrupted. \u2018Textbook theorising unbacked by actual experience.\u2019<\/em> p.78-79<\/p>\n

No doubt the gobby Lieutenant Karsov was voted \u2018Most likely to be shot in the back by his own men\u2019 during training.\u00a0Old-fashioned, sexist and patronising.<\/p>\n

To conclude, this volume was generally pretty much what I had remembered New Writings in SF<\/em> to be like, and perhaps a bit better than that. Normally you could count on one or two notable stories in every volume, a wedge of material that was OK and some that\u2026 wasn\u2019t. What it did have were British names that you wouldn\u2019t find elsewhere. In those pre-internet days if you wanted to send your story to markets in the States it was relatively costly to do: paper mss were expensive\u00a0to send to the USA, and you had to include a couple of IRCs6<\/sup> for the reply. I suspect this was enough hassle to have a group of part-time UK writers who would write and send work to a British market if there was one around at the time, but wouldn\u2019t bother if there wasn\u2019t (the late 1970s for instance).7<\/sup><\/p>\n

This volume is recommended for the Roberts and Bayley novelettes.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. As\u00a0a regular anthology series it has many of the characteristics of\u00a0magazines: regular-ish publication schedule, regular-ish stable of writers, editorials, story introductions, etc.<\/li>\n
  2. The other, and better, story was The Trustie Tree<\/em> in New Worlds <\/em>#5 (1973).<\/li>\n
  3. The other contender would be Bayley\u2019s The Ship of Disaster<\/em> (New Worlds<\/em> #151, June 1965).<\/li>\n
  4. By the way, this story contains this phrase \u2018He envied the myriad creatures whose lives were given meaning by the fact that those lives must end.\u2019<\/em>\u2014the same dubious\u00a0sentiment that the Michael Barrington story in New Worlds<\/em> #89<\/a> (December 1959) had.<\/li>\n
  5. If you don’t believe me here is\u00a0the introduction to the first Enigma triptych in\u00a0New Writings in SF<\/em> #22 (1973):
    \n\u2018Here are three of my Enigmas. Consider them as paintings, as Tiepolo\u2019s engravings crossed with de Chirico\u2019s canvases.
    \nI have written other Enigmas and shall write more. When I have written fifty, the best of them can be collected and published as a book.
    \nConsider that statement. Its author appears to operate securely within well-defined parameters; his chart of his known world plainly contains at least a portion of the future. One would not suspect from the statement that the world in which he operates is full of ambiguities, of alternatives that open and close like sliding doors.
    \nYet so it is. The author of the statement has chosen to make assumptions. He operates on the basis of those assumptions just as navigators of old operated on the assumption that the Pole Star was fixed. That assumption worked, although it was totally erroneous\u2014the Pole Star travels millions of miles a year on its ineluctable errands. Which was something the ancient navigators could never guess.
    \nSo with these other assumptions. They are probably incorrect in ways we cannot attempt to understand. And that is the assumption which underlies the Enigmas: that the world is a stage on which we, the players, have no adequate means of determining the nature of the drama in which we enact our bit parts\u2014despite various dogmatic assertions on the subject from Religion or Science.\u2019<\/em><\/em><\/li>\n
  6. IRC=International reply coupons, each was exchangeable world-wide for a surface postage stamp to reply to the sender. Two would be enough for an airmail stamp although, given they had probably sat on your story for nine months, I don\u2019t see what the hurry was for the rejection letter.<\/li>\n
  7. Have a look at Ritchie Smith and Thomas Penman on ISFDB<\/a> for instance: three stories in New Writings in SF<\/em> 26, 28 and 30, and then never heard from again. That said, a number of Australian names turned up in this series.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Other Reviews: Ian Watson: Foundation\u00a0#6, May 1974 Chris Morgan: Vector 69, Summer 1975 Fiction: The Lake of Tuonela \u2022 novelette by Keith Roberts \u2665\u2665\u2665 Wagtail in the Morning \u2022 short story by Grahame Leman Made to Be Broken \u2022 short story by E. C. Tubb The Eternal Theme of Exile \u2022 by Brian W. Aldiss […]<\/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":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-writings-in-sf"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-dK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","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=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":862,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}