{"id":8881,"date":"2018-10-26T09:42:20","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T09:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=8881"},"modified":"2018-10-26T09:42:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T09:42:20","slug":"the-magazine-of-fantasy-and-science-fiction-199-december-1967","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=8881","title":{"rendered":"The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction #199, December 1967"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Edward L. Ferman; Associate Editor, Ted White<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nSundown<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by David Redd \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Saga of DMM<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Larry Eisenberg \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nBrain Wave<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Stuart Palmer and Jennifer Palmer \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nCerberus <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Algis Budrys \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nTo Behold the Sun<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Dean R. Koontz \u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Power of the Mandarin<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Gahan Wilson \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Chelmlins<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Leonard Tushnet \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by J. G. Ballard \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nThe Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 cover by Jack Gaughan
\nBooks <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Judith Merril
\nCartoon<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Gahan Wilson
\nComing Next Month<\/strong><\/em>
\nNoise <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 science essay by Theodore L. Thomas
\nThe First Metal<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 science essay by Isaac Asimov
\nIndex to Volume Thirty-Three – July-December 1967 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

This issue of F&SF<\/em> is from early on in Ed Ferman\u2019s editorship: I read it for a change of pace (it\u2019s a quick read compared with those huge bedsheet issues of Astounding<\/em>), and because of another project I\u2019m working on.1<\/sup>
\nThe issue opens with Sundown <\/em><\/strong>by new British\/Welsh writer David Redd, who had recently published a couple of short stories in Michael Moorcock\u2019s New Worlds<\/em> (the Compact Books incarnation). This was the first of four longer novelettes that he would publish in the US magazines around this time (two were published in F&SF<\/em>, and two in the pages of Worlds of If)<\/em>.2<\/sup>
\nThe story begins with a prologue about a travelling showman who displays a captive troll from the northern wastes:<\/p>\n

He was exhibited in the open air, at night. One morning after the people had departed, just before dawn, the troll was visited by a wandering poet.
\n\u201cThis is not your world,\u201d said the troll to the poet, as they watched a passing satellite and waited for the dawn.
\nThe poet replied: \u201cWe are here, therefore the world is ours.\u201d
\nThe troll: \u201cYou live in our lands without being part of them. You make your own lands around you, and you huddle together within them, refusing to face the natural world.\u201d
\nThe poet: \u201cWe fear the dark and the unknown.\u201d
\nThe troll: \u201cTo you, life is light and vision. On your home planet the creatures must dwell in continuous light. Here, we live only in darkness. When the sun sets, all the creatures of the rocks come alive and dance, that the sun shall not rise again. We were born in darkness, and the darkness shall return.\u201d
\nThe poet: \u201cThere are eyes in the deep forests, glimpsed by travellers. At night the goblins come out and light fires on the hillsides. Do they too pray for the end of day?\u201d
\nThe troll: \u201cAll creatures pray for the end of light. One evening the sun will go down into the mists forever.\u201d\u00a0 p. 5-6<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story then moves to a dryad called the White Lady, who is watching fur-sprites digging holes down through the frozen snow and ice to a deserted human settlement in search of metal. While the fur-sprites are doing this the twice-a-day wind blows and the White Lady senses a human coming towards them: he is on his way to mine a node of living rock. The White Lady and the sprites stop work and leave for Homeland to raise the alarm.
\nOnce they arrive there the creatures who live in Homeland discuss the matter and decide on their defence. The White Lady offers to go and probe the human for weaknesses, and an oreade, a mountain spirit, says he will go with her, as do two fur-sprites and a gnome:<\/p>\n

Travelling so closely together, they could not help overhearing stray thoughts from each other, despite their rigid mental control.
\nThe dryad gradually absorbed the basic personalities of her companions\u2014the unemotional maternalism of the oreade; the earnest passions of Jaerem and Moera, the two fur-sprites; and the comforting stolid strength of the gnome.
\nBefore an hour had passed she knew them as well as she knew her closest friends. This intimacy was a feature of all journeys made by a small number of people.\u00a0 p. 11<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It becomes apparent\u00a0through this passage and similar ones that, although the story is told in fantasy language, this is a science-fictional world, more or less (the powers the various creatures have are paranormal ones). This is most obvious when the White Lady, who has hidden in the middle of the valley, probes the man as he approaches:<\/p>\n

With a shock she realised that the monsters mind was almost empty of surface mental processes. Below the shallow layers of surface thought its mind was a dreadful thing. The finding of the living-rock was equated with the concepts of wealth, sexual achievements, social power and status. Ignorance rather than ambition had brought the human here. It did not understand the forces within it, and it believed that possession of the living-rock would satisfy its needs and somehow atone for the wasted years of its past life. Yet despite this lack of self-awareness, the human could react quickly when faced with a problem\u2014
\nThe dryad ceased her examination of the human\u2019s hidden thoughts before they distracted her further. She should not be wasting time. She should be testing the human\u2019s mental defences, not exploring its vile memories.\u00a0 p. 13<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite hiding herself with a camouflage \u2018spell\u2019, the human almost steps on her, and she launches an all-out mental attack, only to discover that it has no effect on him. While she escapes the two fur sprites distract the man by throwing snowballs at him, but they are shot and killed. The man recovers their bodies, and the White Lady senses that this is so he can eat them later: she and the others are horrified, and they follow him in order to recover their fallen comrades. When the man stops they distract him and retrieve the two dead sprites.
\nThe story concludes with the group returning to Homeland. En route they meet the troll from the prologue and, as they approach the seam of living rock (spoiler), the man arrives and the story comes to a bloody and brutal climax, one which is even more jarring given the almost fairytale feel of most of the rest of the story.
\nIt is interesting to compare this piece with Redd\u2019s first two appearances in New Worlds<\/em>. Whereas the first two could be identified as the work of a new writer, this one is considerably more polished.
\nThe Saga of DMM<\/em><\/strong> by Larry Eisenberg is the first of his \u2018Duckworth\u2019 stories. In this one the scientist invents a highly calorific substance called DMM. It is later found to be an\u00a0aphrodisiac, and also turns people into human bombs. This is all\u00a0a setup for an okay punchline.
\nBrain Wave<\/em><\/strong> by Stuart Palmer3<\/sup> and Jennifer Palmer has a college student telepathically contacted by aliens:<\/p>\n

His first impression was that of a flashlight being flicked across the ceiling by some joker, or maybe it\u00a0was the reflection of auto headlights from the street outside. But there it was, a little lost erratic light where no light should reasonably be. He could see it just as well with his eyes closed as open, which was odd. The apparition was faintly prismatic, in subdued technicolor. And it was somehow attractive, too\u2014just as a lure skipping the surface of a stream might be attractive to a fish down below.\u00a0 p. 36<\/p>\n

The message now seemed to come clearer and stronger. \u201cBrother Garyjones, do not be alarmed. We are (I am?) rejoicing at making first contact with any mind on your world. Praise God (Allah, Buddha, Osiris, Siva, Somebody Up There?) for this important breakthrough. All the best minds of our planet (world, earth?) are\u00a0linked in this effort, amplifying each other and helping to project thought\u201d
\n\u201cWho are you?\u201d Gary managed to whisper, still not believing.
\n\u201cWe are (I am?) speaking for the people (folk, denizens?) of our world, the second planet of our star. Will you, of your own free will, try to keep in mental communication with us, oh please?\u201d
\n\u201cWhy not? Only I\u2019m not sure I dig you.\u201d
\n\u201cPlease to understand that we can only send thoughts. You must translate them into language, using your own vocabulary. Perhaps this contact may be of great value to both peoples as we learn to think together. It may seem very new and strange to you, but please be patient.\u201d\u00a0 p. 37-38<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the piece is a light-hearted and inconsequential tale of what happens when he tries to talk about this visitation to his on\/off hippie girlfriend and, later, a college friend. He gets no help from either of them.
\nAfter further telepathic contacts, and when his unhappiness becomes obvious to the (humanoid) aliens, they offer him\u00a0the chance to translocate to a vacant body on their planet. The minor twist\u00a0(spoiler) is that he ends up in the body of an infant.
\nThis is lightly peppered with hippie neologisms, references to casual drug use, and mentions of the Vietnam war, etc., so the story sounds very much of its time.
\nCerberus <\/em><\/strong>by Algis Budrys is, as Ferman says in the introduction, neither fantasy nor SF, but it is an unusual and original piece of black humour that fits perfectly into the magazine. It starts at a party of advertising execs where Marty\u2019s wife is canoodling outside on the balcony with another man, something that apparently happens at all parties she attends (and with a different man each time). This makes the other party-goers uncomfortable but, whereas Marty appears oblivious to his wife\u2019s actions, he always senses the tension in the room and habitually tells shaggy dog stories to improve the atmosphere.
\nThe rest of the piece consists of three of Marty\u2019s tales: he tells the last one (spoiler) after an accidental confrontation with one of his wife\u2019s illicit partners, which leaves him lying on a broken coffee table with a shard of glass sticking through his chest. While the assembled group wait for an ambulance, they lean over Marty to hear his final story. . . .
\nAn impressive piece.
\nTo Behold the Sun<\/em><\/strong> by Dean R. Koontz has more than a whiff of Zelazny about it: the poem at the beginning; the tortured hero who is training to \u2018cybernetic\u2019 (mentally control) a spaceship going on a voyage to the sun; the beautiful ex-film star girlfriend who is ignored as he starts his preparation for the trip.
\nThere are other crew going on the mission along with the narrator, but their function is never convincingly explained:<\/p>\n

In the shadows stood the captain, without duties, trying to look like his job really mattered. We all knew that it didn\u2019t; he was an ornament, a leftover from the days when men sailed the seas and lower skies.\u00a0 p. 75<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In due course (spoiler) we find that their role is as cannon-fodder. Bad things start happening on the ship while Jessie\u2019s consciousness is out of his body and in the ship: an entity, something as \u201cbig as a robomech\u201d, with \u201ctwo gaping craters instead of eyes\u201d, terrorises the crew while muttering \u201cNot to the sun, my boy. Not to the sun, the sun.\u201d
\nThe stylistic and emotional froth of this piece doesn\u2019t conceal what is an unconvincing story\u00a0that doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense. One to put in the \u201cmad astronaut\u201d file, probably.
\nGahan Wilson not only has a cartoon in this issue but one of his rare short stories, The Power of the Mandarin<\/em><\/strong>. This starts with an alarming conversation:<\/p>\n

Aladar Rakas gave a wicked grin and raised his brandy glass.
\n\u201cTo the King Plotter of Evil. To the Prophet of our Doom. To the Mandarin.\u201d
\nI joined the toast willingly.
\n\u201cMay he never be totally defeated. May he and his vile minions ever threaten the civilized world.\u201d
\nWe drank contentedly, Rakas leaned back, struck a luxurious pose, and wafted forth a cloud of Havana\u2019s very best.
\n\u201cHow many have been killed this time?\u201d
\nRakas tapped an ash from his cigar and gazed thoughtfully upward. I could see his lips moving as he made the count.
\n\u201cFive,\u201d he said, and then, after a pause, \u201cNo. Six.\u201d
\nI looked at him with some surprise. \u201cThat\u2019s hardly up to the usual slaughter.\u201d
\nRakas chuckled and signaled the waiter for more brandy.
\n\u201cTrue enough,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, one particular murder of those six is enough to make up for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ordinary ones.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We soon find that Rakas is a popular writer who is talking to his editor about the Mandarin, the evil mastermind of his books, killing off the clean cut English hero. Rakas has committed this rather perverse act as he is a Hungarian \u00e9migr\u00e9 who has a chip on his shoulder from his time in Britain.
\nLater in the story Rakas uses a model of himself as the hero in his new book. He then finds that the reality of the book starts seeping into his life. . . .\u00a0At this point Rakas\u2019s editor (and narrator of the story) is involved, and discovers that Rakas is unable write a story that kills off the Mandarin.
\nThere are a couple of reasonable twists at the end of this, and it is competently done but, for whatever reason, I wasn\u2019t particularly enthralled. I either partook of the story too late at night, or there is a limit to the number of stories you can read where the writer ends up in, or is affected by, a world of his own creation.
\nThe Chelmlins<\/em><\/strong> by Leonard Tushnet is an example of a what I think is probably a distinct F&SF<\/em> sub-genre: fantasy stories based on Jewish folklore or culture. Avram Davidson published a few of these and Ed Ferman would continue that tradition throughout his editorship.4<\/sup>
\nThis piece is about the foolish people of a Polish village called Chelm, and how the Chelmlins, a form of Polish gremlin, protect them from their stupidity.
\nAfter WWII the survivors of Chelm move to the USA (given that only six survive the Holocaust out of a population of two thousand you may observe that they need more able Chelmlins) and eventually form a corporation like RAND to sell ideas and inventions:<\/p>\n

Edward Everett [had] the first idea. \u201cListen, brothers,\u201d he said, \u201cwhy don\u2019t we make big bubbles out of plastic to fit over the electric light bulbs so bugs won\u2019t come to them. Bugs are attracted by the light, everyone knows, so let us make black bubbles and the bugs won\u2019t see the light.\u201d
\n\u201cBrilliant! A genius! Another Edison!\u201d Acclaim was general. HEHE pooled the resources of its members, got a manufacturer to make thousands of the black plastic bubbles,\u2014and then discovered that no one wanted insect-free non-illumination. Here the chelmlins took over. A toy merchant bought the entire stock (at a profit for HEHE, it goes without saying), made eye holes in the bubbles, and marketed them as children\u2019s space pirate helmets.\u00a0 p. 109<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so it continues. Like the Palmer story, this is a pleasant enough piece, but there\u2019s just not much of a story here.
\nThe Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D<\/em><\/strong> by J. G. Ballard is one of his \u2018Vermilion Sands\u2019 stories and it gets off to a cracking start:<\/p>\n

All summer the colud-sculptors would come from Vermilion Sands and sail their painted gliders above the coral towers that rose like white pagodas beside the highway to Lagoon West. The tallest of the towers was Coral D, and here the rising air above the sandreefs was topped by swan-like clumps of fair-weather cumulus.
\nLifted on the shoulders of the air above the crown of Coral D, we would carve sea-horses and unicorns, the portraits of presidents and film-stars, lizards and exotic birds. As the crowd watched from their cars, a cool rain would fall on to the dusty roofs, weeping from the sculptured clouds as they sailed across the desert floor towards the sun. Of all the cloud-sculptures we were to carve, the strangest were the portraits of Leonora Chanel.
\nAs I look back to that afternoon last summer when she first came in her white limousine to watch the cloud-sculptors of Coral D, I know we barely realised how seriously this beautiful but insane woman regarded the sculptures floating above her in that calm sky. Later her portraits, carved in the whirlwind, were to weep their storm-rain upon the corpses of their sculptors.\u00a0 p. 113<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story then flashbacks three months to\u00a0Major Parker, the narrator, arriving at Vermillion Sands: he is a disabled pilot, and takes over a disused studio where he starts manufacturing kites and gliders. Later, while he is flying them and a sudden gale starts, two men appear and help him recover his fleet. They are a malformed dwarf called Petit Manuel, and another man called Nolan. Manuel suggests using the larger glider the narrator is building, along with silver iodide, to \u201ccarve clouds\u201d:<\/p>\n

So were formed the cloud-sculptors of Coral D. Although I considered myself one of them, I never flew the gliders, but I taught Nolan and little Manuel to fly, and later, when he joined us, Charles Van Eyck. Nolan had found this blond-haired pirate of the cafe terraces in Vermilion Sands, a laconic teuton with droll eyes and a weak mouth, and brought him out to Coral D when the season ended and the well-to-do tourists and\u00a0their nubile daughters returned to Red Beach. \u201cMajor Parker\u2014Charles Van Eyck. He\u2019s a head-hunter,\u201d Nolan commented with cold humour, \u201c\u2014maidenheads.\u201d
\nDespite their uneasy rivalry I realised that Van Eyck would give our group a useful dimension of glamour.
\nFrom the first I suspected that the studio in the desert was Nolan\u2019s, and that we were all serving some private whim of this dark-haired solitary. At the time, however, I was more concerned with teaching them to fly\u2014first on cable, mastering the updraughts that swept the stunted turret of Coral A, smallest of the towers, then the steeper slopes of B and C, and finally the powerful currents of Coral D. Late one afternoon, when I began to wind them in, Nolan cut away his line. The glider plummeted onto its back, diving down\u00a0to impale itself on the rock spires. I flung myself to the ground as the cable whipped across my car, shattering the windshield. When I looked up, Nolan was soaring high in the tinted air above Coral D.
\nThe wind, guardian of the coral towers, carried him through the islands of cumulus that veiled the evening light.
\nAs I ran to the winch, the second cable went, and little Manuel swerved away to join Nolan. Ugly crab on the ground, in the air the hunchback became a bird with immense wings, outflying both Nolan and Van Eyck. I watched them as they circled the coral towers, and then swept down together over the desert floor, stirring the sand-rays into soot-like clouds. Petit Manuel was jubilant. He strutted around me like a pocket Napoleon, contemptuous of my broken leg, scooping up handfuls of broken glass and tossing them over his\u00a0head like bouquets to the air.\u00a0 p. 114-115<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The three of them start displaying their cloud-sculpting skills to spectators who arrive in their cars:<\/p>\n

Nolan turned from the cloud, his wings slipping as if unveiling his handiwork. Illuminated by the afternoon sun was the serene face of a three-year old child. Its wide cheeks framed a placid mouth and plump chin. As one or two people clapped, Nolan sailed over the cloud and rippled the roof into ribbons and curls.
\nHowever, I knew that the real climax was yet to come. Cursed by some malignant virus, Nolan seemed unable to accept his own handiwork, always destroying it with the same cold humour. Petit Manuel had thrown away his cigarette, and even Van Eyck had turned his attention from the women in the cars.
\nNolan soared above the child\u2019s face, following like a matador waiting for the moment of the kill. There was silence for a minute as he worked away at the cloud, and then someone slammed a car door in disgust.
\nHanging above us was the white image of a skull.
\nThe child\u2019s face, converted by a few strokes, had vanished, but in the notched teeth and gaping orbits, large enough to hold a car, we could still see an echo of its infant features. The spectre moved past us, the spectators frowning at this weeping skull whose rain fell upon their faces.\u00a0 p. 116-117<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After this Leonora Chanel\u2019s secretary hire them to\u00a0perform at Lagoon West, with the condition that they are only allowed to create images of their employer, a famous movie star.
\nThe remainder of the story has a number of threads: there is the initial show put on for Leonara and her guests; she and Nolan (apparently an old lover) later fall out; Van Eyck, sensing an opportunity for another conquest, moves in. The climax comes when (spoiler) the storm clouds make the final performance too dangerous, but Leonora goads Petit Manuel into trying anyway. His glider disintegrates and he dies, whereupon Nolan takes to the air and guides a nearby tornado over the villa. Leonara and Van Eyck are later found dead the wreckage.
\nThere is some amazing imagery in this extraordinarily imaginative story but towards the end it becomes a rather too straightforward story of jealousy and revenge\u2014I never thought I\u2019d ever complain about a story of Ballard\u2019s being a little too mechanistic. I\u2019m quibbling here though: it is a striking piece and one I would expect to see if the \u2018Year\u2019s Bests\u2019 anthologies.<\/p>\n

The convincingly Daliesque Cover<\/em><\/strong> is for Ballard\u2019s story (which mentions that artist) and is, I think, one of Jack Gaughan\u2019s better works.
\nBooks<\/em><\/strong>, by Judith Merril, is largely taken up by a long and interesting review of Dangerous Visions<\/em> by Harlan Ellison, and it starts by noting that Ellison\u2019s \u2018New Thing\u2019 is not the same as hers or Moorcock\u2019s, and is \u201ccharacterized by pyrotechnic style and shock content\u201d. She then mentions the anthology\u2019s original raison d\u2019etre of publishing \u201ctaboo\u201d stories and mentions an\u00a0earlier attempt of her own some years before, and how nearly every story in that collection was later published anyway. From this Merril learned there was probably no such thing as a (good) unpublishable story:<\/p>\n

Presumably, Ellison made the same discovery I did, because the emphasis in his introduction to the completed anthology is much more on his concept of The New Thing than on the Dangerous Visions idea.
\nAnd certainly the large majority of the inclusions would seem quite in place, for instance, in the pages of this magazine.\u00a0 p. 28-29<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She then notes that there are only half-a-dozen stories out of the thirty-three that might have had to go outside the American SF magazines for publication (\u201cthe Emshwiller, Bunch, and Sladek stories; possibly Delany\u2019s,\u00a0Ballard\u2019s, and Spinrad\u2019s.\u201d)
\nShe then goes on to observe that the anthology does contain dangerous visions and that:<\/p>\n

The Dangerous Vision has become a commonplace of our society; the forecasting of such visions is one of the chief roles science fiction has played in the past twenty or thirty years. Yet this book, which began as a direct request to presumably stifled authors to voice their most terrifying, shocking, or extreme viewpoints, is (with two\u2014well, perhaps three\u2014exceptions) most effective in those stories which concentrate on literary values and technical excellence, rather than idea content.\u00a0 p. 29<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She then mentions her dislike of the introductions (and how she ignored them until she finished the fiction):<\/p>\n

Even more than the editorial selections, the extensive and often painfully personal and detailed introductions confirm the evidence of Ellison\u2019s earlier collections of his own work: as writer and editor, he is a man of vision, boldness, determination, generous loyalty, intense sensitivity, strong beliefs, unbelievable egocentricity, and very nearly complete lack of taste.
\nWith any reasonable exercise of editorial judgement, one standard length anthology could have been selected from this giant, to match and perhaps surpass any previous collections of imaginative fiction.
\nAs it stands, the total wordage breaks down into four roughly equivalent portions: one quarter is composed of twelve titles ranging from good to superb; one quarter consists of four stories of remarkable, but flawed, quality\u2014each or any of which should have been susceptible to marked improvement with discerning criticism; one quarter are fair-to-good stories, which would neither grace nor quite disgrace an average-good issue of F&SF;<\/em> and one quarter (almost exactly by length) is composed of commentary by Ellison or about him (including Asimov\u2019s forewards and the personal material on Ellison contained in some authors\u2019 comments)\u2014comprising one of the least pleasant autobiographies I have ever been unable to stop reading.\u00a0 p. 30-31<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Merril identifies Delany\u2019s Aye, and Gomorrah<\/em> as the standout story and, after listing the rest of the best, she provides detailed commentary on Philip Jos\u00e9 Farmer\u2019s Riders of the Purple Wage<\/em>:<\/p>\n

[This] is perhaps the one story in the book that would not have been published anywhere else\u2014in its present form. It is certainly one of the most entertaining\u2014and least \u201cdangerous\u201d\u2014selections, and it suffers only from the fact that it is not quite good enough to sustain its highly specialized humor for more than 30,000 words. It is a cheerful, careening combination of neo-Joycean word-gaming and science-fiction imagery, homespun philosophy, homeloomed psychiatry, and witty comment on the contemporary scene\u2014particularly in the arts and academia. But so much of the humor is (Joycean or s-f) in-group, that I suspect there is a relatively small audience eager for such a large dose. I myself laughed delightedly for 10,000 words, grew quieter for another ten, and then put it down to finish\u2014as a duty\u2014later on. (Turned out the only plot point was a lovely pun on Finnegan\u2019s Wake<\/em>.)
\nSome incisive editing might have done a great deal, also, for the stories by Robert Silverberg and Frederik Pohl: both of these seemed to me to be written with an emotional involvement, and on a level of prose, right at the (rarely touched) top of both writers considerable powers\u2014and both concluded with endings that seemed so feeble by comparison as to be virtually unrelated to the body of the story.\u00a0 p. 32<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She continues by commenting on Sturgeon\u2019s story, and its weak ending, before finishing with this:<\/p>\n

Summing up, then\u2014I am afraid Ellison\u2019s New Thing resembles to a great degree the same New Thing Anthony Boucher and J. F. McComas brought into s-f in 1949: the not-so-radical-really notion that literary standards could and should be applied to science fiction. A good thing, but\u2014
\nBut, among other things, it needs an outstanding editor to use that principle as the main line of guidance\u2014an editor with taste.\u00a0 p. 32-33<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An interesting\u2014an obviously opinionated\u2014review, but one worth reading in its entirety.
\nThere are short reviews of a couple of other books at the end of the column, plus this about Day of the Minotaur<\/em> by Thomas Burnett Swann:<\/p>\n

Classical mythology has cluttered up the pages of so many recent ponderous-philosophical s-f novels, and magical trappings have become routine accessories for so many shabby medievalist-heroic romances (flourishing for some reason under the \u201cscience-fiction\u201d label), that Thomas Burnett Swann\u2019s Day of the Minotaur<\/em> (Ace, 40\u023c) came as a complete surprise. Imaginative, entertaining, and original, it sometimes approaches a Mary Renault level of sophistication in prose and concept, and conveys throughout a color and charm reminiscent of the first-viewing impact of Disney\u2019s Fantasia<\/em>.\u00a0 p. 34<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gahan Wilson\u2019s Cartoons<\/em><\/strong> are usually hit or miss for me\u2014usually, and in this case, the latter.
\nComing Next Month<\/strong><\/em> has news about a significant event:<\/p>\n

Next month will mark our 200th issue, a milestone which we think is certainly deserving of some small celebration. A proposal to fly staff and subscribers to Acapulco for a weekend has been temporarily shelved.\u00a0(We are told that the weather is uncertain.)\u00a0 p. 95<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stories by Richard McKenna, Robert Sheckley & Harlan Ellison,\u00a0Harry Harrison, Fritz Leiber and Lloyd Biggie, Jr., and Sonya Dorman are promised.
\nNoise <\/em><\/strong>is an interesting short-short science essay by Theodore L. Thomas:<\/p>\n

By checking the hearing of the Meban tribe in Africa, a quiet-living bunch if there ever was one, the scientists have about established that people\u2019s hearing does not get worse simply because they grow older. The din of modern living does it.
\nWhat we need, then, are tunable ear plugs. Our skills at microminiaturization could develop an ear plug that would pass only those sounds we choose to hear. The ear plugs could be set for conversation or music, or whatever. Truck and traffic noise could be reduced to a susurrus. There would be no more shouting and yelling because no one would hear it. The shriek of jet aircraft and the sonic boom would no longer be with us. At night the white noise would put everyone to sleep who wanted to sleep. People\u2019s dispositions around the world couldn\u2019t help but improve.\u00a0 p. 68<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The First Metal<\/em><\/strong> by Isaac Asimov is a science essay about the metals that were known to the ancients. Although these essays are often dull, there is usually an interesting fact or two to be found:<\/p>\n

The Latin word for \u201clead\u201d is \u201cplumbum,\u201d and now you can see what a \u201cplumb line\u201d must be. Since you would attach a piece of lead to a line you wanted to throw into the ocean and have sink as far as possible, you see what \u201cto plumb the depths\u201d means.
\nAgain, since the ancients believed that the heavier an object the faster it fell, it seemed to them that a lead weight would fall faster than the same-sized weight made of other less dense materials. So you see what \u201cto plummet downward\u201d means.
\nFinally, since a lead weight makes a line completely vertical, there grew to be a tie-in between lead and completeness, so that now you see why, in a Western movie, the old rancher says to the young schoolmarm, \u201cBy dogies, Ah\u2019m shore plumb tuckered out, missie.\u201d (At least you know why he says it if you know what the other words mean.)\u00a0 p. 104<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Index to Volume Thirty-Three \u2014 July-December 1967 <\/em><\/strong>is another of F&SF\u2019<\/em>s very useful indexes (or at least they were before the likes of ISFDB and other internet resources). A quick skim shows that Ferman was friendlier to British writers than most US editors: in this six month period he published stories by Hilary Bailey, J. G. Ballard (x2), John Brunner, George Collyn (a Moorcock New Worlds<\/em> regular), J. T. McIntosh, David Redd, & Josephine Saxton.<\/p>\n

Not a bad issue.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. I\u2019m just finishing an interview with David Redd, and it will appear here sometime next month.<\/p>\n

2. David Redd\u2019s first two sales were to Micheal Moorcock at New Worlds<\/em>, Prisoners of Paradise<\/em> (New Worlds<\/em> #167, October 1966) and The Way to London Town<\/em> (New Worlds<\/em> #164, July 1966): they appeared in reverse order of purchase (this information was provided in an answer for the upcoming interview). The other three novelettes subsequently sold to the American magazine market were: Sunbeam Caress<\/em> (If<\/em>, March 1968), A Quiet Kind of Madness<\/em> (F&SF<\/em>, May 1968), and The Frozen Summer<\/em> (If<\/em>, March, 1969). Redd\u2019s ISFDB page is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3. Stuart Palmer appeared in the first issue of F&SF<\/em> with A Bride for the Devil<\/em>. His ISFDB page is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

4. It was Avram Davidson who published Tushnet\u2019s first story in F&SF<\/em>. Most of the rest of his stories were published there too\u00a0but he also appeared in Vertex <\/em>magazine and New Dimensions<\/em> #1. His ISFDB page is here<\/a>. I note in passing that the very first issue of F&SF<\/em> I bought, the July 1976 issue, contained another story about Jewish folklore, Mel Gilden\u2019s The Golem\u00a0<\/em>(reviewed here<\/a>). His daughter (or granddaughter), Rebecca Tushnet, has kindly provided copies of his stories on her website<\/a>.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link _____________________ Editor, Edward L. Ferman; Associate Editor, Ted White Fiction: Sundown \u2022 novelette by David Redd \u2217\u2217\u2217 The Saga of DMM \u2022 short story by Larry Eisenberg \u2217\u2217 Brain Wave \u2022 novelette by Stuart Palmer and Jennifer Palmer \u2217\u2217 Cerberus \u2022 short story by Algis Budrys \u2217\u2217\u2217+ To Behold the Sun \u2022 short […]<\/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":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy-and-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-2jf","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8881","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=8881"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8895,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8881\/revisions\/8895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}