This was not my best week ever. I caught a bit of con crud at TopCon and never really got myself going. That’s one reason why every one of my weekly posts happened today. Sorry about that.
I don’t get con crud often, and this time was kind of odd because the con had very little traffic. I sold enough, I suppose, but only because it was close enough for me to stay at home.
However, I’m glad I went because I got to hang out several friends, including James L. Young and Christopher Woods. In fact, Young helped me add a new event, the Great Plains Renaissance Festival in Wichita next weekend. If you’re in Wichita, come on by, I’ll be in the Author’s Pavilion.
Anyway, I didn’t get much written or done, which is annoying. My big accomplishment was making sure my sweetie got fed. That’s about it, though it’s important.
Today, I’m watching football and catching up with stuff, including my update. One thing I’m doing now is trying some new social media things. You’ll see me using hashtags much more often. Here are some you’ll see from now on.
#RobInterviewsCreators: My weekly interviews
#RobsReviews: Primarily for my magazine reviews, but I’ll tag anything I review on this blog
#RobsUpdate: These reviews.
#Shijuren: Anything related to me or Shijuren
I’ve also added the ability for you to share my posts at the bottom of each entry. If you like what I’m doing, please don’t hesitate to share.
It’s Cowboys v. Seattle, so I’m going to pay attention to that and write later. Have a great day.
Current Playlist Song
Since I’m watching the Cowboys game right now, I’m going to chat about my listening habits of late. Thanks to a buddy’s suggestion, I’ve been listening to Rush in album order. I keep forgetting just how good some songs I don’t listen to often actually are, especially in the context of the album. Clockwork Angels continues to amaze. It really is the best album of all time.
Quote of the Week
Friday (when I was supposed to my update) was the release of The Hobbit in 1937, so this one was easy.
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort
– J.R.R. Tolkien
This week’s spotlight is on Mel Todd, and it’s one of the more fun interviews I’ve had. You can find it here: https://robhowell.org/blog/?p=1401.
Today’s Weight: 384.2
Updated Word Count: 1057
Shijuren Wiki: 874 entries
Four Horsemen Wiki: 417 entries
Let me know if you have any suggestions on the website, this email, or cool story ideas at rob@robhowell.org. Especially let me know of suggestions you have for the Spotlight section.
Sorry I’m a bit late with this. I caught a bit of con crud at TopCon and was not terribly energetic earlier in the week. Anyway, this week I’ll look at Galaxy, Vol. 20, No. 6 (August, 1962). It’s got quite a few interesting names on the front like Jack Vance and Frederik Pohl and an armored knight charging into battle on odd insect-looking dragons. Right up my alley.
This issue starts with an editorial attempting to define progress. It is, not surprisingly, a moving target, and the conclusion is that we need science fiction so we can look at ourselves from the outside. I agree that we need to look at ourselves from the outside, but I’m not sure we needed a 750-word or so editorial to tell us that.
Ah, well. Deadlines make for hurried editorials, as well I remember from my newspaper days way back when.
First is Jack Vance’s novel The Dragon Masterswhich won the Hugo in 1963 for Best Short Fiction. This is a story consisting of four main foes. Joaz, the protagonist of the story and leader of one faction of humans on Aerlith. Elvis, the leader of the other humans. Then there are the sacerdotes, who view themselves as overmen. Finally there are the Basics, a race of intelligent lizard/insects who live on a different planet that only visit Aerlith when their stars approach each other.
It is from genetically adapted Basic captured in a previous visit that the humans on Aerlith develop a variety of dragons. These dragons are armed with maces on the end of tails and axes on arms. These weapons all go along with the normal spikes, horns, and claws. In return, the Basic developed their own army from genetically altered humans. The sacerdotes have genetically altered themselves and set themselves to a regimen of contemplation and learning.
Humanity as a species is nearly extinct, yet none of the human groups are willing to work with Joaz, though he seeks their help. His desire for assistance is pushed by the approach of the Basic planet. In the end Joaz wins, after a chaotic four-way fight.
One moment that struck me is when a character interacts with a sacerdote. It reminded me of the Readers in my world of Shijuren. People who gather knowledge but stay out of the fray. I did not get the idea from Vance, rather the Readers are a combination of Asimov’s Foundation, Gandalf, and a few other tidbits here and there. It’s fun to see other authors have similar ideas.
However, I did not particularly like this story. Maybe it was the artwork, which was sharp, and odd as you can see from the cover. Jack Gaughan did the artwork and he drew just about every kind of creature involved. The image on the cover was fun and creepy, but by the end of the story had a wrongness.
And that mirrors my view of the story. It was long, almost 90 pages, and I never really got caught up in it. I can see why it won the Hugo, as there are a lot of elements that I suspect many other readers will like, but for me it was a slog. It was perhaps too complex in some ways yet too simplistic in others. I don’t know. In any case, while I normally like Vance, this story didn’t suit me.
Next was Handyman by Frank Banta. I don’t know much about Banta but I liked this story. Unlike The Dragon Masters, Handyman was very short, only three pages. However, that worked for the story. Our hero, James, is constantly chopping up wooden doors so he can burn them for heat. The building’s carpenter cheerily comes to replace it every time. James keeps asking to help with the heating plant, as the carpenter doesn’t have the skills to fix it. However, James is a prisoner and prisoners aren’t allowed to work on things.
Throughout the story, James tries to find solutions to his various problems, but certain things aren’t proper, like him working on the plant. He tries to dig a tunnel, but the foundations of the prison go too deep. He can’t even call for help because he and the carpenter were left behind when all other humans left Earth.
And the carpenter is a robot.
Next comes a science article by Willy Ley. This particular article discusses the odd nautical phenomena of big, bright pinwheels. He goes through all the logged entries of this phenomena, maps them, and then goes through a few ideas of what might cause them.
Humorously, the ISFDB page on our next author, Jack Sharkey, only lists his Danish Wikipedia page. The only Jack Sharkey in the English Wikipedia is a boxer from the 1920s, and he’s an interesting guy too being the only person to fight both Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis.
But I digress. Shocking I know. Anyway, his story is A Matter of Protocol. The story is about making first contact. Humans have developed a system to allow alien zoologists to meld with the minds of creatures on a planet. in this case, the planet is a green jungle where it turns out there are only a few species. These species work in a close symbiotic relationship. Unfortunately, simply landing on the planet ending up damaging some of the trees, and in two months the planet is a lifeless ball.
I have mixed feeling about this story. On the one hand, it’s got a couple of plot holes that I don’t like. The planet only has a few species, and and find that difficult to accept. Two, I grew up in Kansas, where the Flint Hills are routinely control burned because the prairie grass evolved to get hit by lightning and then burn, uncontrolled, so it can refresh itself. I find it challenging to think that the creatures on this planet are so simple to destroy when crazy, accidental stuff is just going to happen.
On the other hand, the story is well-written, innovative, and talks about the tough question of first contact. I’m glad I read it, and I’d like to read more of Sharkey, but this story fought me.
Before I get to the next story, I have to mention the ad on page after Sharkey’s story. For $2.00, you can order a copy of The Complete Guide to Orbiting Satellites. It’s actually loose-leaf, and promises consistent updates. I don’t actually know how many satellites were in orbit in 1962, but it goes over the communication, weather, navigation, and reconnaissance satellites at the time. Even in 1962, I’d have paid $2.00 for that.
Frederik Pohl is next with a story called Three Portraits and a Prayer. Pohl was actually the editor of this issue, but of course he was a fantastic writer. I loved the Heechee series.
But this isn’t his best story. Basically, a dying genius physicist gives an evil billionaire enough knowledge to become dictator, but eventually manages to kill him. This story could have been great, because Pohl’s prose is excellent, but there are two problems. One, it’s message fiction. Knowledge should be free, among other things. Message fiction is not necessarily bad, but the story has to be better, in my opinion. Unfortunately, all the action happens off screen. Our narrator is the genius’s doctor and all we see is what he sees and much of the story is his opinion. I want to see the action, not what someone else knows and thinks of the action.
And I liked this story too, though it’s a bit confusing. A crew mutinies and maroons its captain on a planet occupied by Quronos. These are androids developed by someone in the past. They will “geoplanct” and “xenogut” every day on a schedule. The tagline is, “You too can be a Qurono. All you need do is geoplanct. All you need know is when to stop!” The captain emulates the Qurono and they revere him as a master, but then he continues and they realize he’s not actually anything special and they send him into space.
The crew that mutinied had tried to escape, but the Qurono forced them back and they rescue the captain. Then he imposes a new regimen on the crew, forcing them to geoplanct. Reluctantly, the crew obeys.
My confusion is that I simply don’t know what geoplanct or xenogut exactly mean, nor can find them any definition. I suspect Harmon hid some extra punch in those words, but I just don’t know. Still, Harmon is clearly a skilled writer as you are following intently what is going on.
So we move on to the essay The Luck of Magnitudes by George O. Smith. It discusses just how lucky we are that Earth is at the convenient place that it is, not simply for life but also for humanity’s ability to look at space around them, especially the moon. It’s a neat article, more interesting than I expected when I started it, because it involves how ancient astronomers looked at the sky.
The last story in this issue is One Race Show by John Jakes. John Jakes? Yep, the same guy known for historical fiction. I had no idea he wrote SF/F and now I see a lot of stuff I want to read like the Brak the Barbarian series.
Anyway, this is perhaps the perfect story for this issue. It’s about the owner of a gallery jealous because another gallery got amazing pictures from an unknown artist. They discover that the artist is so powerful because he draws what he sees in people’s heads.
It’s the perfect story for this issue because it’s well-written but not enjoyable. At least to me. Other people may find this issue really good, but I’ve found much better.
There’s not many ads in this issue, so other than the ad I mentioned earlier, there’s not much to talk about.
If you have any comments or would like to request I keep my eyes open for a specific issue or month, feel free to comment here or send an email to me at: rob@robhowell.org.
I suspect we often forget just how much stuff we have to hang on the walls. I know I didn’t actually realize just how much I’ve got. SCA awards and memories, sports memorabilia, family and friends, maps, ships and aircraft, and, of course, Rush posters and memories. Oh, and fantasy art. Plus other random stuff.
Sheesh.
And that doesn’t count the stuff my sweetie has. At least we’ve started the process but man there’s a lot.
After I finish this email, I’m headed off to TopCon in Topeka. I’ve generally done a poor job of publicizing myself in the region, and this is another opportunity to fix that. I’m making progress, but I should have done better previously.
The Magazine Reviews have helped with that. I often don’t get to go to the Kansas City SF/F fan group meetings because of conflicts. September’s is scheduled for tomorrow, for example. However, I’ve been able to interact with some of those writers and fans a bit by chatting about the reviews. This week’s review, by the way, is the Analog of September, 1968.
In general, I’ve been very pleased with the response on those reviews. It’s especially gratifying because I enjoy doing the reviews and I can see them already improving my writing. Lots of win to go around.
This week, I didn’t write a ton, but what I did is good. Damn good. I’m making progress and stories are starting to flow on their own. I probably won’t finish The Feeding of Sorrows by the end of September, but I will have finished another project that will be announced in due time.
And now, time to get to Topeka and make ready for the weekend.
Current Playlist Song
Today Brewbaker’s Pandora is set to disco and motown. I have to admit, I enjoy a goodly amount of disco and motown, even though I’m more of a metal and hard rock guy. Seriously, you can’t go wrong with Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.
Quote of the Week
Today’s quote is sort of by me and sort of by Dante Alighieri. I’ll be at a con this weekend, which means I’ll be signing books, which then means I’ll be having customers roll on my Wandering Signature Chart. This is one of my favorites…
Let me know if you have any suggestions on the website, this email, or cool story ideas at rob@robhowell.org. Especially let me know of suggestions you have for the Spotlight section.
This week I am reading Analog, Vol. LXXXII, No.1 (September, 1968). This, and others in this time period interest me, because I was a month or two old when it hit the stands.
This has been my favorite cover so far. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show well online, as the colors are fairly dark. However, it has giant otters and one’s carrying a trumpet. How cool is that?
Now, one would expect that if a serial was turned into a full-length novel, it was probably a pretty good story. And one would be correct, at least in the case of Tuvela. I really enjoyed the first part, am looking forward to finding the second part, and may just skip ahead and read The Demon Breed instead.
The story involves a race called the Parahuans, who had attacked humanity previously and been defeated. How the humans won puzzled them, as in their world view they were the most superior creatures in existence. However, they hypothesize that humanity is controlled by a greater version of humans called the Guardians or the Tuvela. They choose to test this hypothesis out on a water planet called Nandy-Cline.
This hypothesis is crap, of course, but it gives our heroes a chance to bluff the Parahuans into not attacking again. Schmitz does a fantastic job of giving us active prose when much of it is solving a puzzle.
As part of this story, our heroes are aided by otters that have quickly evolved on Nandy-Cline to be intelligent at some level. At this point, we don’t really know just how smart they are, but we can guess they are very smart indeed. I suspect there’s a twist coming related to them in the final part of the story. I look forward to reading it.
The next story is by Harry Harrison and is called The Powers of Observation. Obviously, Harrison is remembered most by the Stainless Steel Rat, which I read a long time ago and clearly need to read again.
This story, however, is actually set in a Cold War Yugoslavia. As such this lets me do one of my favorite tricks when it comes to reading books now, and that’s looking at the satellite imagery of places that are mentioned. The Powers of Observation gives me a cool one by mentioning the Maslenica Bridge. Why is this cool? Well, that bridge has its own story to tell. It was destroyed in the war, a new one was built in 1997 near it, and then a new version of the old one was built later on. I find that sort of thing fun, call me crazy, and in any case I was able to follow the chase in the story from the sky.
Chase? Oh, yeah, the story itself, I should talk about that. It’s a very Bond kind of story where the hero spots a man sinking too deep into the sand at a beach. Some kind of superman, dense bone structure or something. Anyway, the hero has to chase him down, which he eventually does and they get into a fight. He shoots the bad guy but bullets bounce off of him, and we discover he’s a robot.
Our hero manages to defeat him, and then tears him apart to get pictures of his engineering. He takes a bunch of pictures with his chest camera. Chest camera? Oh, our hero was a robot too, and Harrison lets him sneer at the difference between Russian and American design philosophies at the end. I was so caught up in the chase that I didn’t see the hints until until I went back later.
Wallace West is next with Steamer Time. I’d not heard of West prior to this. He wrote quite a few stories in the 50s and before. This particular one is an essay on the possibility of replacing internal combustion engines with steam engines in cars. I was kind of bemused by the idea, but there are advantages to steam power.
One that West focuses on is emissions, based on the Air Quality Act of 1967 in response to the smog in California at the time. There are a number of other technical topics I’m not smart enough to grasp, but it’s an interesting topic. I’ve no clue if this is practical now or not, but there were steam-powered cars built in the 1960s so there’s probably a way to do that engineering now.
The next section is John Campbell’s column on what’s coming next. The following issue includes a Poul Anderson story about the effects of a fairly close supernova’s radiation effects on Earth. Also here are the tallied ratings for the June, 1968 issue in which Poul Anderson’s Satan’s World took first place.
Back to this issue, we move on to Peter Abresch’sHi Diddle Diddle. Abresch is mostly a mystery writer, with only a couple of SF short stories to his credit. After this, I’m definitely looking up his mysteries.
The story begins when Paul Lama, an Air Force reservist, tasked with tracking down UFO reports is thrust into a press conference with hostile press trying to trick him into admitting there are aliens. So he does. He says the aliens exist but they’re actually animals that evolved to live in space. Spacecows.
Lama expects the press to double-check, in which case they find out it’s baloney. The press, of course, does not, and everyone who hears about this gets sent into a tizzy, including Senators and the like wondering why they’re hearing classified info on TV. Spacecows everywhere. I can only imagine what that would be like in today’s media.
And it’s hilarious. The President hears about it from his dog-walker (p. 107). One senator feels, “…like he had just found out the Statue of Liberty was an unwed mother” (p. 107). Russian spies find out from their doorman. “When Isvestia says we know everything, it means we know nothing, and when the Air Force says they know nothing, it means they know something” (p. 124).
Later on, there’s this hilarious sequence where Lama gets tracked down first by the reporter who’s staking his career on the actual existence of spacecows, then Russian spies come in and say, “You Lama?” to which he replies. “Me Lama, you Jane?” This gets repeated when the FBI barge in. Then we get an Air Force captain that later comes on stage and says, “You Lama?” “Me Lama, you Jane?” “Yeah, Melvin Jayne, how’d you know?”
In the chaos, Lama’s secretary Jimmi manages to help him escape, but it turns out that Lama was just about right and Jimmi is one of the spacecows. His guess has forced her species to leave one of the best pastures in the galaxy and ruined her student grant project.
Great story.
The next story is Stanley Schmidt’s first story ever, called A Flash of Darkness. This story is about a Mars Rover who sees in darkness by, essentially, lidar. However, he discovers another light source that is blinding him with too much light. The robot discovers the problem and navigates to find solar cells.
This story seems incomplete. It’s the kind of thing James P. Hogan had a blast with in the Giants series, but Schmidt doesn’t go far enough. The Rover discovers something that requires intelligence to craft on Mars. Who made it? We don’t know. I wanna know.
Parasike by Michael Chandler is next. I had not heard of Chandler before and can’t find him on the internet. I don’t think he’s the Old West gunfighter reenactor writing westerns, at least.
Anyway, this story is about a new investigator for a federal Fraud agency. He’s tasked with finding fortunetellers and the like who are trying to bilk customers. What he’s actually looking for are people who have a paranormal skill. These often use such jobs as fortuneteller or magician to hide their abilities. The twist is that our hero can tell when people are telling the truth, so not only does he discover one parasike, he discovers he is one too.
The next section is the review section by P. Schuyler Miller. He starts with a discussion of a number of fun series out there including Doc Savage and Conan. He then reviews a number of books. The review I found most interesting was his review of Philip K. Dick’sDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. He sums it up by saying it might take a couple of reads to really understand what Dick was saying, but that we should “Try it” (p. 171). I agree.
Then we’re to the Brass Tacks section, which are the letters to the editors. This set of letters has a theme. Apparently Campbell asked in the April, 1968 what “widdershins” meant and what word is the reverse. Campbell got a flood of responses, all interesting to an etymology geek like me.
Overall, this was a great issue. It’s only drawback was its lack of striking advertisements. Inside the back cover is one that says we should “Discover America, it’s 3000 smiles wide.” I kind of like that.
However, that’s clearly a minor thing when you look at the great stories here.
Next week, we’ll look at the Galaxy of August, 1962. It inlcudes Frederik Pohl, Jack Vance, and Willy Ley. It’s full table of contents is here: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?58677. See you then.
If you have any comments, feel free to comment here or send an email to me at: rob@robhowell.org.
So, I announce a new schedule where I’m aiming to put the interviews up on Monday, so of course I immediately don’t get this one out until Wednesday. Sheesh. Some weeks.
Anyway, this week I’m interviewing Bethany Loughlin-Frost, who I’ve enjoyed chatting with on panels at a couple of conventions now.
Interview – Bethany Loughlin-Frost
What is your quest?
I’m hoping to create a really great series based on the wiccan culture. There is so much negativity around witchcraft, and I’m hoping to change that with my novels. While they’re paranormal romances, I wont people to see that witchcraft isn’t scary or some kind of devil worship. One of my favorite authors is Larissa Ione. She creates a world where demons are not really evil, and I think that it’s really inspirational. As for other kinds of creators, I love art! Mostafa Moussa is a great artist that does really fun takes on cartoons and other kinds of characters. I love his steampunk princess! There are just so many artists I really enjoy… it’s hard to narrow it down.
Bethany Loughlin-Frost
What is your favorite color?
I love to put a lot of purple in my stuff. Purple is my favorite color. It’s a really calming color for me, so I keep my office purple, or if I’m somewhere I have something purple with me. Water is also very calming for me, so I like a lot of blue. If I’m having a rough day, I usually go outside and look at the sky and take in the colors. I also color code things. When I do write I color code based on importance. I have my own kind of color code, but color coding in general really helps me prioritize.
What is the average flying speed of an unladen paint brush?
I get writers block a lot, and it frustrates me mostly because it comes in the middle of writing. I’ll know how a story is going to start and end, but the middle is always a struggle. I’ve also learned not to rely on others for a lot of help. If I need help with something small, I usually don’t have a problem with getting help, but if I need long term help (like a PA to help with websites, or someone to help with publicity) people seem to run scarce and not be willing to led a hand. Or they will start helping me, then disappear, so I tend to get really dejected and not get things finished.
What are the powers of your personal Holy Hand Grenade?
I’m really good at character development. Mostly because I want to know all I can about a character in order to personify them in my writing. They have birthdays, favorite foods, favorite colors, etc. I’m also really proud of finishing my first novel, The Witch’s Savior, because it took me almost 2 years to write, and I didn’t have much help doing it as I lived in Germany at the start of writing it. I worked really hard, and edited it myself. I think the story line is great, and it is what inspired me to make a series instead of just the one novel.
Lightning Round
Favorite Muppet? Oscar
Crunchy or Creamy? Creamy
Favorite Sports Team? Syracuse Orangemen
Cake or Pie? Cake
Lime or Lemon? Lemon
Favorite Chip Dip? Bacon Horseradish by Hellavagood
Wet or Dry? Dry
Favorite Musical Performer We’ve Never Heard Of? Magic Goat (it’s my friends Ska band from when I was in college. They disbanded about 10 years ago, but they were really great!)
Whisky or Whiskey? Whiskey
Favorite Superhero? Thor
Steak Temperature? Medium
Favorite 1970s TV show? I Love Lucy (is that 70’s?)
Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall? Fall
Favorite Pet? Dogs
Best Game Ever? Never Have I Ever
Coffee or Tea? Tea
Sci-Fi or Fantasy? Fantasy
What question(s) would you like to ask me?
What prompted you to start writing? What have some of your struggles been with writing, and how did you over come them?
My Answer: I got into writing in part to save myself. I was going through a hard time. Too educated to get most jobs, not educated enough to get others. Just went through a divorce. Really down place where I did very little. It’s a good thing to have days every now and then where you don’t actually do anything. It’s a very soul-stealing thing if you do that for weeks on end.
So I needed to do something. Writing was a way out. At the end of the day, I’d at least have a number of words on the page. As I got more and more professional about things, it began to be work, which though I’m generally a lazy person I like to have work to do.
I don’t know what thing in this job I haven’t struggled with, to be honest. Right now, what I’m struggling with is a tendency to sabotage myself. I’m making progress as a writer and I’m in the middle of a couple of projects that I think will push me to the next level, but I have to fight through my imposter syndrome to convince myself I’m worthy of making that step.
How do I solve that? Baby steps, really. I do a little on a project and then a little more. Then, all of the sudden things start rolling and I’m stop struggling to start the project and begin struggling to stay on top of the wave. A little bit here, a little bit there, and then at some point you’ve got something that’s precious to you and that you want to finish.
Tell me again where we can find your stuff? (All the web presence you’d like me to link to)
I love meeting people and getting their input on my stories. If there is something you don’t like, I want to know. If you loved it, I want to know. I write my stories for myself, because I love them, but if something isn’t working for my audience, I need to know so I can tweak it. I’m also looking for more signing opportunities, so if there is a signing near me (Kansas City), and the price isn’t crazy, let me know!
Final question for you: What should I have asked but did not?
You should have ask what I wish was different about the industry. I wish that authors really wanted honesty. I recently wrote a review for a fellow author about their book. I didn’t like the book because of the content, but I did not let that affect my review. I also did not like the book because of how it was written and some of the issues with plot, storyline, grammar and events. I included all this in my review and was very polite, but very honest. It has been up for less than a day and I’ve already had people attacking me because I didn’t give it 5 stars.
I also wish that people (readers) would review more. I know that there have been quite a few people that have read my novels, but many have not reviewed. I don’t know if they don’t want to write a bad review or what, but I would rather have 30 (1 star) reviews, then no reviews at all. I can’t make my writing better if I don’t know what to fix.
You should have also asked what is the hardest part about meeting people. I love meeting people, but I have no idea how to “sell” myself so that people will want to read my books. I can make friends no problem, but I have no idea how to talk them into buying, reading and reviewing my stuff. I guess I’ll never be a good salesperson…
Thanks to Bethany Loughlin-Frost for taking the time to answer my questions.
If you have any suggestions or comments about this interview format, let me know so I can keep tweaking it.
Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in any of the other interviews I’ve done, you can find them all here: https://robhowell.org/blog/?cat=326.
If you are a creator, especially an independent creator, and you want to be spotlighted in a future interview, email me at rob@robhowell.org.
Also, if you want to join my mailing list, where I’ll announce every interview, as well as what’s going on in my life, go to www.robhowell.org and fill out the form (Name and Email Address) or drop me an email and I’ll add you.
I’m at Brewbaker’s watching the Mississippi State game. Sure, the people in Kansas are calling it the Kansas State game, but my parents both went to MSU and both of my dad’s parents taught there.
So. More Cowbell!!!
Actually, tomorrow is one of my national holidays, the real opening day of the NFL season. A buddy of mine who is a Carolina fan and I will probably find a place to give each other hell while the Cowboys and Panthers play. I’m so ready for this year.
One quick programming note before I get into the work I’ve done this week. I’ve decided that I will move my update back to Friday and I’ll start doing my interviews on Monday. Right now, I’ve got my three regular blog entries back-to-back-to-back. Yes, I’m still late this week, but I think it will work better spreading that out.
Anyway, it was a week of getting small things done for me, mostly around the house. I’m in that stage where I’m fighting to corral a bunch of ideas in The Feeding of Sorrows, which often means I procrasticlean. Since we’re still not completely unpacked, I have plenty to do. I made progress on all of the major remaining unpacking areas.
I also did a bunch of writing, but it’s all in the way of a scene here and random tossing words at the page. In books where I have a number of different threads, like Brief Is My Flame, I’m discovering that I tend to write each thread separately and then fit it all together. I’m only up to about 15,000 or so, but momentum is building.
I also started another short story that another anthology has requested. I’d been struggling with the idea for a while but an idea popped into my head last night and I did a bunch of research this morning. I only wrote about 500 words so far, but the story is basically written in my head. I love it when that happens.
Current Playlist Song
The NFL films song is playing on an ad. I’m so ready for this season. Did I mention that?
Quote of the Week
Speaking of football, on this day 130 years ago, twelve teams played their first matches in the Football League. These teams included Accrington, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Derby County, Everton, Notts County, Preston North End, Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers.
The idea was the brainchild of William McGregor and today’s quote is from his letter to the managers of those teams.
“I beg to tender the following suggestion as a means of getting over the difficulty: that ten or twelve of the most prominent clubs in England combine to arrange home-and-away fixtures each season, the said fixtures to be arranged at a friendly conference about the same time as the International Conference.”
– William McGregor
One side note, the Football League was by no means the first professional league in England. The earliest we know of was a cricket league in the early 1600s. But that’s something for a different day.
News and Works in Progress
RTM (496)
The Feeding of Sorrows (approx. 15,000)
CB (8,418)
AFS (2,556)
Recent Blog Posts and Wiki Additions
Interview (Cameron S. Currie): https://robhowell.org/blog/?p=1370
Let me know if you have any suggestions on the website, this email, or cool story ideas at rob@robhowell.org. Especially let me know of suggestions you have for the Spotlight section.
Unlike last week, there’s not a single author in this one that I have much familiarity with. Even the ones I recognize like Jack Vance and Algis Budrys are authors I don’t know well.
Vance has the first story, Meet Miss Universe. At a grand expo, they invite a number of aliens to submit their candidate for the most attractive woman in all the universe. Now, with all these species having different ways to judge beauty, they also ask them to submit their qualifications. The winner gets whatever they want.
The winner is, to human eyes, the most loathsome. The twist is that it’s not really a story about the women, but rather a story about an employee getting back at a lazy boss. She falls in love with an employee who, despite hating them, dutifully smokes the boss’s favorite cigars. As her reward, she tries to take him back, but the employee manipulates the situation so she realizes the boss is the one with the heavenly smell.
Overall, a cute story, but not necessarily among the best.
Next is Just For Tonight by Russ Winterbotham. I’m disappointed I’ve never at least heard of him, either under his own name or as J. Harvey Bond, previously as he’s from Salina, Kansas, which is a place I’m very familiar with.
I’d also like to read more of his stuff. The story was story, but I enjoyed the twist. It’s about two explorers examining a new world and it starts with the hero getting shot out of nowhere. He responds by destroying the area where the trouble came from with his beam gun.
He and his partner then decide to return to the ship and declare the world hostile, but the world isn’t having any of that. It warps time and space, making them walk in a circle sending them backwards. The hero sees a figure breaking a branch, then realizes what has happened, but not in time to stop his spooked partner from shooting at the figure. Who, of course, blows them both away.
I didn’t catch the twist, in part because the story is so short and tight there’s hardly any time to wonder. There’s also a great line I’ve got to remember. After the initial shot, the hero says, “No trouble at all… Just a light workout with one of Caesar’s legions” (Fantastic Universe, Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 23).
Moving on we get to Thing by Ivan Janvier, actually a pen name of Algis Budrys. This story made me think of LibertyCon, because in the opening we see them disassembling the Statue of Liberty because it is too irradiated from what we discover later is a nuclear war. In that war, an ordinary man survives a bomb, but somehow the bomb seems to have made him hyperintelligent.
But, as might be guessed by the title, it’s actually a ‘Thing’ that provides the man with his superhuman abilities. The man in question actually doesn’t really enjoy the abilities and he wants to pass them on. The Thing also wants to move on, because he’s lived on Earth for a while and likes it here when no one’s tossing nukes around, so they agree to find someone new for the Thing to work with.
The twist is that the Thing moves not to one person, but to three, none of whom knows the others have it as well. To be honest, this is a great leadup to a novel, but we’re left wondering with this short story. Which, I must say, is what short stories should do.
Next is Action-Reaction by F.B. Bryning. He was an Australian who did more editing than writing. It’s too bad, because Action-Reaction is a good story. The short bio I saw of him mentioned he was good with hard SF, and it shows here. It’s set on a space station researching whether certain forms of life can survive space, allowing it to travel and then procreate.
That’s interesting enough, but the action here is two people have an accident and are loose from the space station. One is a normal resident of the station, the other a beautiful doctor sent up to operate on one of the others on the station. She asks for a spacewalk, and things happen. How do they survive? Basically the astronaut is prepared to sacrifice himself by throwing the doctor at the station. Fortunately, both survive because of the intelligence and quick thinking of the doctor.
Jack the Giant Killer by Bryce Walton is the next entry. He’s another author I’d never heard of. This is a creepy story about a world that has done everything it can to eliminate dreams and other “mushy” things. A person standing by themselves for over ten minutes can get picked up and have their brain wiped.
The main protagonist is nine, and struggling with memories of his mother telling him stories like Jack and the Beanstalk. However, he’s overcome that to become a Junior Investigator, and he is sent after the old man who ran the Omega Calculator which ran the society with perfect rationality and who had gotten dreamy.
He does all of this and manages to brain wipe the old scientist. Then, however, he succumbs to dreams of his mother, at which point a girl of seven traps him and wipes his brain. Overall a creepy story that’s pretty well written, but I didn’t enjoy the topic.
Coming up next is The Big Jump by E.E Smith. Not him, but Evelyn E. Smith. She’s most known for the Miss Melville Mysteries, but she had quite a few credits to her name in SF. She was also a crossword puzzle, and I hope I find BAXBR/DAXBR, which involves Martian crossword puzzles.
This is an interesting story about the challenges of time travel. Like many others, it involves a time-traveling cop, but the results are much different than might be expected. The target’s name is Leinwand, and basically he manipulates the flow of time so that he and his family play with the cop and they end up in charge. A quirky story. Overall pretty good, but not great.
We have Brave New Strain by Lee Priestley. I didn’t know him before and I don’t know that I know anything now. I found a Lee Shore Priestley who was born in Iola, Kansas in 1904. As a side note, right next to Iola on US-54 is Gas, Kansas, which put on the back of their welcome signs “Now Passing Gas.” Fun as that fact might be, I have no clue if it’s the same guy. What I can say is that Priestley didn’t write much, with only eight published works from 1953 to 1959.
Anyway, this story is about creating a strain of algae that will grow fast enough in starships to help feed crews, but what it’s really about is the difference in men and women based upon the idea that men are logical and women are filled with intuition. It doesn’t take much logic or intuition to guess at the ending, which in this case is told by the female character. It is her intuition that develops a new strain. Really, a bland story, much like the thought of eating algae.
Next is The Sixth Season by Jacques Jean Ferrat, which is a pseudonym of Sam Merwin, Jr. I didn’t recognize either of his names, but he wrote the Amy Brewster mysteries which I dimly recall and will now have to check out some time.
I rather enjoyed this one, though it’s fairly straightforward. It’s about a Broadway play, “The Sixth Season,” which was condemned by reviewers but still getting sold out shows. One of the actresses, Maralyn, is trying to convince another, Lora, she should date a guy named Bobby, but she wants nothing to do with a long life in the theater.
Then, they have a visitor who is from the future. It turns out Lora and Bobby start a renaissance of the theater and end up getting married. It’s not terribly tricky, as the only twist is that Maralyn discovers she’s going to marry the guy that’s about to ask her out on their first date.
Now we have another entry by Algis Budrys, this time under his own name. As a side note, he would have another story the following month under a different pseudonym.
Assassin is another good story. Basically, an “organization” finds a way to allow someone’s soul to live after death in such a way as to kill other souls. That leaves bodies alone, but they become essentially mindless. The assassin they choose then kills all the world’s leaders at their behest.
The interesting twist is that the organization is trying to create a *peaceful* world. The assassin was aimed at those who are belligerent, which they then replaced with people who were in the organization.
But the assassin they chose was too much of an assassin. He did the job because he was good at it and didn’t have any moral scruples. In fact, he intimidates the leader of the organization into starting a new war because he “…likes the thought of people dying because of something I’ve done” (p. 101). Good twist. I think I’ll be looking for Budrys and his pseudonyms in other magazines.
They Are the Possessed by Irving E. Cox, Jr. is next. I’d seen his name in other magazines, but don’t recall if I’ve read anything by him. This story is convoluted and involves a symbiotic virus living inside humans shaping their reality.
In my reality I didn’t like this story much. It didn’t flow, though the idea is interesting. Maybe I’m not smart enough to get the complexities, but I was jarred out of the story by confusion a number of times. It’s a shame, because I think there’s a good kernel in there, but it was lost on me.
Next is Exiles of Tomorrow by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I’ve not read much of Bradley before, and it’s hard to separate out the story from what I understand of her life.
This story is about punishments in the future. Those who have committed crimes are not executed but sent back in time to an era where they fit it. It’s an interesting concept, and includes, again, the idea of time police. This time, the main character kills his target, who has learned enough that he threatens the entire fabric of time. A decent story, but hard for me to enjoy.
Last is James Blish. The only thing of his that I’ve read are the Star Trek novelizations, to be honest, so I was exited to find a story by him in this book called Translation.
Translation is about the frustrations of a Vegan archaeologist studying the lifeless planet Sol III. They find a few artifacts, but after the nuclear war killed everyone, there wasn’t much left. What’s interesting is that they discover one relic in particular that they cannot interpret. All it does it hammer at them with sound.
Fantastic Universe (March, 1955) Back Cover
Thus the last surviving score of Beethoven’s Fifth is reviewed by a tone-deaf listener. Good ending, and I enjoyed the frustration of the archaeologist.
One of my favorite parts of reviewing these magazines has been looking at the ads. I suppose it’s funny to say, but this had a disappointingly small number of ads.
This week’s interview is with Cameron S. Currie, who I met at Ad Astra a couple of years ago. We were on a couple of panels, and did a reading together and that was a lot of fun, so here’s his interview.
Interview: Cameron S. Currie
What is your quest?
To seek the Grail? Seriously, though, I think the fabled ‘meaning of life’ is hidden in the Hero’s Journey… most of our big problems, and their solutions are represented there. I try to show that to people, preferably in a way they haven’t seen before, and I hope it hooks them into that. So yes, the Grail. Also, books are cool.
Cameron S. Currie
What is your favorite color?
Anything dark, preferably with humour (excuse the Canadian spelling) to throw it into sharp relief. I like my heroes deeply flawed, and my villains deeply villainous. There are very few bits in the real world that are 100% shiny and pretty, and anyway conflict is the basis of all that is interesting. Soooo… black. No, blue.
What is the average flying speed of an unladen paint brush?
Editing is the nastiest trial to face, because you never get everything. There’s always some tiny error that slips through to the final, printed product. My advice here is that whenever you think you have nabbed every issue, put it all aside for a week or two and then DO IT AGAIN. It still won’t be enough, but it will be better.
What are the powers of your personal Holy Hand Grenade?
My HHG powers are probably creating interesting characters. Typically, I’ll go over each character’s dialogue and actions and ask myself if it sounds like the character in question. One character was particularly laconic, so I went over his dialogue and removed as many words as possible. Villains I tend to make worse with each pass until they disturb me (if they can’t disturb me, how can they do so to the reader?).
Lightning Round
Favorite Muppet? The guy with the boomerang fish. Lew, I believe. I always thought the fish should explode, though. In a perfect world…
Crunchy or Creamy? Crunchiness is next to godliness.
Favorite Sports Team? Errrrrrr… the Bad News Bears…?
Cake or Pie? PIE. But in general, I do not have much of a sweet-tooth.
Lime or Lemon? Lemon. Sour is good. When life hands you lemons…
Favorite Chip Dip? Dill Pickle. Sour is good. My publishing imprint logo has three jars of dill pickles in it.
Wet or Dry? Any way I answered this question would come out more suggestive than I intended. MOIST.
Favorite Musical Performer We’ve Never Heard Of? Possibly Jackyl… the lead singer plays the chainsaw once or twice an album. Especially good in a live performance.
Whisky or Whiskey? Obviously Scotch, but I can never remember which is which. It’s wasted on me anyway.
Favorite Superhero? This merits more discussion than we have room for here. I tend to go for ‘realism’ over infinite power- more impressed with imaginative uses of minor powers, but there aren’t many common examples of that. It’s not the hero, it’s the way they’re portrayed. Sooo… Deadpool…?
Steak Temperature? Medium. I want to like rare, but was raised on well-done. This is as far as I’m willing to go.
Favorite 1970s TV show? Twilight Zone (I think they made these at that time… so many remakes and reboots… ugh. They were at least on in reruns).
Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall? In Canada, there is only Winter and Construction, and I am not a fan of snow.
Favorite Pet? I have two rescued cats with PTSD I inherited from my father. I don’t like them, they don’t really like me, but I clean up their puke and they don’t suffocate me in my sleep.
Best Game Ever? Video Game: The really old DOS version of Space Hulk you could get on 3.5 floppy. Super tense… scariest application of Genestealers I ever saw, and lots of boltguns.
Coffee or Tea? Coffee, except when… nope. No exceptions. Coffee is better, and when you run out of coffee, JUST FIND MORE.
Sci-Fi or Fantasy? Yes.
What question(s) would you like to ask me?
I dunno questions… I am kinda jealous of your education in history, I’m mostly self-taught, which leaves gaping smart-holes… The questions I probably should ask are somewhere in the smart-holes where I can’t articulate them. But I know the general grey area that I would come to you with if I got a question sorted out, you know, what with that edumacationism and stuff.
Rob’s Answer: Uh, I’m not educated enough to answer that properly 😀
I’m posting e-books back on Amazon over the course of the autumn, so stay tuned for that!
And where can we find you?
I’m currently not scheduled for much, but you can always find me at Ad Astra in Toronto every year. I expand this whenever I can, but usually at the last minute. You can also find me on Facebook or Goodreads.
Do you have a creator biography?
Cameron S. Currie lurks in the deepest, darkest jungle of Ontario, where he spends time raising his two autistic children and publishing science fiction & fantasy books. His works include A Human Number, My Name’s Not ‘Girl’, and Depends on the Strength of the Yes. He has no real spare time, but when he gets some he plans to either overthrow the earth or make coffee.
Final question for you: What should I have asked but did not?
You should have asked about my current WIPs, which would be A Map of the Inner Skull (the fourth book in my fantasy series) and The Starship Rumplestiltskin (which is taking way, way longer than I intended ‘cuz Sci-Fi research takes FOREVER). AMotIS will be out this spring, hopefully TSR will also be out sometime in 2019.
My fantasy series (currently untitled, but I’m thinking ‘The Book of the World’ for the second editions) is thrumming along pretty well. I’m very proud of them, they’re fairly genre-busting and full of awesome characters that show up in every book. I keep them coming out regularly enough that there’s no ‘Game of Thrones’ style multi-year gaps.
I have two volumes of Extremely Large Showcase (so far) which contain excerpts from each of my books, lots of short fiction, and art and are a great deal at $3 Canadian for 50+ pages of content.
Thanks to Cameron for taking the time to answer my questions.
If you have any suggestions or comments about this interview format, let me know so I can keep tweaking it.
Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in any of the other interviews I’ve done, you can find them all here: https://robhowell.org/blog/?cat=326.
If you are a creator, especially an independent creator, and you want to be spotlighted in a future interview, email me at rob@robhowell.org.
Also, if you want to join my mailing list, where I’ll announce every interview, as well as what’s going on in my life, go to www.robhowell.org and fill out the form (Name and Email Address) or drop me an email and I’ll add you.
So, I thought I had posted this on Thursday, but I apparently got distracted. Sorry this is a few days late. Ted Williams’ birthday is actually the day I wrote this, 30 August, not today.
Anyway, it was a relaxing week here in Robland. I actually took a complete day off, the first one in longer than I remember. I didn’t intend to, but I apparently needed it.
I still got a goodly amount of work done this week, and am close to finishing one of the short stories I’ve been working at thanks to help from some of my Alpha Readers.
I also started on The Feeding of Sorrows. The bad news is that I thought I had more written of it from scraps here and there, but some of that total was duplicated and part was rendered invalid by some of what happened in A Sword for Striking, the short story that was accepted for the Lyon’s Den anthologies, but I’m still aiming to be done with it by the end of September. Going to be a long haul, but I think I can do it.
I’m starting to get a bunch of irons in the fire, writing-wise. I kind of like that. I have a bunch of stories bubbling to the top and I am excited to get them on the page.
Current Playlist Song
I’m listening to the song of my people, Dallas Cowboys football. Yeah, it’s still the preseason, and yeah, it’s mostly players who will never make the team, but we are only a week away from the season. I’m so ready.
Quote of the Week
Today is the birthday of the best hitter ever, Ted Williams. He’s a fascinating guy, in part because even though his career stats were amazing, he lost 4.5 years of his prime because he was flying fighters in World War II and Korea. In Korea, one of his wingmen was John Glenn. Glenn’s wife called Williams, “the most profane man she ever met.”
“Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.”
Let me know if you have any suggestions on the website, this email, or cool story ideas at rob@robhowell.org. Especially let me know of suggestions you have for the Spotlight section.
This week I’m going to review Astounding, Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (April, 1941). You can find its complete table of contents here: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?57379.
Unlike last week, where the Spaceway had few recognizable names, this issue is filled with them. John W. Campbell was the editor and if you ever wondered how much Campbell actually did, take a look at his full ISFDB page: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?14. Wow. He starts this issue off with a short essay pointing out the importance of sea-water sources in the future.
Robert Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, and Isaac Asimov in 1944
Before even reading the story, though, I had my nose rubbed in one of my weaknesses: taglines. “The Stolen Dormouse: Part One of a new serial concerning a stolen semi-corpse – an engineer in suspended animation touches off a war in a later-day feudalism!” (Astounding, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, p. 9).
You had me at “stolen semi-corpse.”
I really enjoyed the story, especially the way de Camp interwove 1940s business terminology with feudalism. As an SCA ceremonial geek, I found the passage where the hero, Horace Juniper-Hallett is elevated to the rank of businessman delightful. “I hereby present to you the gold-inlaid fountain pen and the brief case that are the insignia of your new status. Guard them with your life” (p. 12).
Getting to wallow in the history of science fiction and fantasy is one of the prime joys of this exercise, but The Stolen Dormouse highlights the greatest drawback. This is Part One of the story. I have no idea when, or even if, I’ll grab the volume with Part Two. At this point, the story ends with, “A snore answered her” (p. 32).
At least I have Reason by Isaac Asimov to console me. This story is a robot story, but before the Three Laws of Robotics, which were originally published in the story Runaround first publish in the Astounding of March, 1942. It involves a robot who refuses to believe that humans invented it or, in fact, that anything exists outside of its mile-diameter solar energy generation station, completely dismissing Gregory Donovan and Mike Powell’s protestations. Despite, QT’s religious obsession with the “Master,” the robot continues to perform his duties at a level far surpassing human abilities. In other words, even though his “reasoning” is based on false assumptions, he retains his ability to do the job so they leave him in place and in fact plan to program all future models in the same way.
What’s fun, of course, is that it’s clear that Asimov is working his way up to the Three Laws. In Runaround Donovan and Powell return, this time with the explicit use of the laws. But that’s another issue, which might be on the shelves behind. I don’t rightly now, though I will do September, 1941 one of these days, which includes Nightfall.
Anyway, next we move on to Theodore Sturgeon’sMicrocosmic God. I love this sentence, “He never opened his mouth without grabbing a stickful of question marks.” (p. 47). The character he’s talking about is a bio-chemist named Kidder who creates a microcosmic race called the Neoterics who are fantastically intelligent. Their life cycle is much faster than humans, meaning that problems that take scientists generations to solve are solved much quicker, as their generations are that much shorter.
Kidder is oblivious of power and money, except when that allows him to expand his laboratory. Of course, not everyone is oblivious and his banker finally decides to kill the golden goose. In the end, the Neoterics create an impenetrable shield for Kidder, another scientist named Johansen, and the Neoterics to live out their lives in peace.
It’s a fantastic story and is included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964. Let’s see, three stories in and we have a fun serial, a prequel to the Three Laws of Robotics, and one of the best short stories in science fiction history. Talk about the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Next is Campbell’s column about what’s to come in the May, 1941 issue. The column talks about a story by Anson MacDonald called Solution Unsatisfactory. The story is about what happens if there’s a superweapon and what happens after that. In the story, all the solutions are unsatisfactory, but MacDonald goes through a number of them. “And MacDonald suggests that the weapon will come – and come in about three years. Personally, I’m most desperately afraid he’s absolutely correct. Now, remember this is April, 1941. Missed the prediction by a little more than a year, but is a fascinating question to someone who grew up during the Cold War.
Oh, and Anson MacDonald is one of Heinlein’s pseudonyms.
Anyway, we move on The Scrambler by Harry Walton. This story starts something like Moby Dick, in that a ship is trying to capture a living creature in space to help a man named Storm, who is searching for intelligent alien life. They succeed, though the captain is convinced it happened too easily. However, neither Storm nor the captain believe this could be the one until suddenly they find their personalities scrambled from man to man. They try to do roll call, but the personalities keep switching. Finally, they realize that Storm has actually had his personality switched with Comet the ship cat. The creature was testing the crew, and if they could realize Storm was in Comet’s body, learn from Storm that it was the creature’s doing while he was still a cat, they would all return to their rightful bodies.
So Storm has to endure the entire thing trying to get everyone to listen to him while as a cat. Oh, and it turns out that Comet had had a big night with a cat at the Martian fuel depot and was pregnant. A fun story, not a classic, but well worth reading.
Slacker’s Paradise by Malcolm Jameson is next. Another officer in the US Navy, he was forced out by cancer despite helping improve late World War II-era naval ordinance. He died in 1945 at the age of 53. It’s a damn shame, too, because Slacker’s Paradise is a great story.
Jameson uses his experience in the Navy and his knowledge of naval history to create something that would make a fantastic series of novels. This particular one draws on the surrender of the Austro-Hungarian battleships SMS Zrinyi and SMS Radetsky in 1918. The story is reminiscent of the Lieutenant Leary novels by David Drake. The only problem with Slacker’s Paradise is that it needs to be longer to draw out the tension.
Next is Not the First by A.E. van Vogt. In this story humans first break the light speed barrier, discovering that it shifts their perception of the universe they exist in. In so doing, it propels the ship at many thousands of times the speed of light. As it flies through the universe, their luck runs out and they find themselves sailing directly at a star so they try anything that comes to mind. In the end, they find a way to reverse time and send them back to where they were.
Right when the situation started with no change in the factors and for the “multi-billionth” time, the process begins again. Creepy. I like it.
Astronomer R.S. Richardson gives us our next article, Trepidation. While this is an excellent name for a short story, this is actually an article on trepidation in the astronomical sense. I found this article confusing because the only theory of trepidation in an astronomical sense has been obsolete for centuries. This trepidation has to do with the speeding up and slowing down of astronomical bodies, as discovered by E.W. Brown. That led to questions of measuring time, including the difference between Universal Time and Terrestrial Time, and fluctuations of mass.
Back to fiction, we get Bird Walk by P. Schuyler Miller. This was an odd story to me. Basically, the birds of Venus include one that can tell when someone is lying, and the hero manipulates the thief of one of the, essentially, Crown Jewels of Venus into being within range.
But the story didn’t work for me. It could have, but I think it might have tried to do too much. The red herrings were too easy and the hints at strange powers by other Venusian animals not dealt with well enough. It could be a good story but much of what was in there was extraneous and the mystery too easily solved.
Next is another odd essay, The Homemade Gun of Jamrud by Willy Ley. It’s only one page about 2.75 inch hand-crafted gun made by a blacksmith in Jamrud. It was apparently more accurate than the official British Army ones. And that’s all there is to this.
Old Mr. Boston Apricot Nectar
The next short story is Mutineers by Karl van Rachen, which is actually a pseudonym of L. Ron Hubbard. This was a frustrating story for me, maybe because I was tired when I read it. It’s got a lot of moving parts and there’s too much exposition at the start. I got into it some when we got past the exposition into the action, but by that point I had lost my enthusiasm.
Doc Savage
And it could have been a good story. Multiple mutinies and various different players are right up my alley. The hero wins by good tactics, awareness, and flat out bluffing. There’s a bit of a forced happy ending, which I hate, but it’s not awful. However, I just didn’t get into it.
Another possible reason are the great ads throughout this story. It’s at the end of the issue, so there are more ads and some are just wonderful from my perspective. Old Mr. Boston 70 proof Apricot Nectar as shown above from page 135? Maybe, but you might have me with the Wild Cherry version. There was also this Doc Savage ad on page 147.
But the piece de resistance was this wonderful Harley-Davidson ad. “See the 1941 models with their airplane styling, zooming power, rugged dependability and important mechanical improvements” (p. 145).
The most common advertisements in this issue, by the way, were ads to train you as a radio operator.
Anyway, at the end of Mutineers was an interesting postscript that I assume was written by Hubbard, as it doesn’t have any other name attributed to it. It’s a very short essay entitled Two Plus Two Equals 100. Obviously, it explains the binomial number system and points out that it is useful for “electrical calculating machines.” (p. 154) As someone writing on a fairly up-to-date computer and looking at my cell phone, I enjoyed this quote: “The resultant machine is bulky, but simple and positive in action” (p. 154). You don’t say?
Now we’ve gotten down to Brass Tacks, the letter’s to the editor section of Astounding. Several of this issue’s letters discussed a new rating system put into place by Campbell. In these Slan by Van Vogt gets a lot of approval. There’s also an announcement for the formation of the Minneapolis Fantasy Society, whose monthly meetings were held at the home of Clifford D. Simak, its director.
Another laments that Campbell could not come to the Chicago SF Convention because, “I’d hoped to see you and Doc Smith exchange diverse comment as of yore – remember the days of your glorious feud over the alleged – who did win those battles? – chemical vagaries in ‘Skylark of Space'” (p. 159). That would have indeed been fun to watch.
Then there’s a section of letters relating to hard science. The first discussed some new, higher resolution images from Mars showing conclusively the canals. The next one starts, “From the results the R.A.F. have been obtaining with their electrical enemy-airplane detectors, it looks as though spaceships when, as and if, won’t have to worry about developing meteor-detecting devices” (p. 163-4). Then it goes on to explain in some detail how radar works and how it blunted the Luftwaffe’s attacks in the Battle of Britain. Nothing new to us, but fantastic to see it from someone to whom it was new.
Well, I think that’s it from this issue. Clearly since I’m only two issues in, it’s a little silly to say this was my favorite issue. I’m sure I’ll find others, like perhaps the Astounding with Nightfall when I get to it. However, this was a brilliant example of the SF magazine concept. Great stories, writers who would become legendary, good scientific discussions, and good artwork.
Speaking of which, I suppose I should talk more about the art, but I got too much into the stories. Maybe next time. Speaking of which, I grabbed Fantastic Universe Vol. 3, No. 2 from March 1955. It’s table of contents is here: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?89712.
If you have any comments, feel free to comment here or send an email to me at: rob@robhowell.org.
