PIERS ANTHONY – Sos the Rope. Pyramid X-1890. Paperback original; 1st printing, October 1968. Cover art by Jack Gaughan. Serialized earlier in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July-Aug-Sept 1968, Collected in Battle Circle (Avon, paperback, 1978).

   A strange triangle formed between two men and a woman becomes the key to the future of a post-war semi-feudal society, There are the warriors whose problems are solved by the force of arms, by trial by combat. And there are the crazies, who supply the traditions of learning and the past.

   Any form of unifying leadership is discouraged by the secret underground manufacturers of all supplies, and it is Sos’ friend Sol who threatens to provide that leadership, with the help of Sos, which would upset the balance of this precarious society. Sola is the wife of Sol, who bears the daughter of Sos. And it is Sos who is sent to end Sol’s leadership, and who then becomes the one who must be destroyed, What he has built, he must also destroy.

   A dilemma, unresolved. To strive for the benefits of civilization again, or to maintain the present because with it civilization brings destruction? What to do with an empire that cannot withstand those who have the power and wish to keep it for themselves?

   Much much more than for Lin Carter’s “swords and sorcery.”

Rating: *****

STEVEN POPKES “The Ice.” Novella. First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, 2003. Reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: 21st Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois (St. Martin’s, trade paperback, July 2004).

   Phil Berger was a high school hockey player in the Boston area, and a pretty good one, when a local reporter files a story about him that changes his life forever.  As the story goes, he is the cloned son of Gordie Howe. [Sidebar here: Gordie Howe was the greatest hockey player of all time, playing for the pros from 1946 to 1971, one Wayne Gretsky notwithstanding. We could argue about that. I saw him play twice, once in Detroit and once here in Hartford. Gordie Howe, that is.]

   The circumstances are vague, but one does not argue with DNA testing. It is a lot of pressure on a young boy. He makes it to playing in college, but it doesn’t last long. It also turns out that he was not the only result of whatever experiments somebody was running. The other boy, Phil’s age, was not as successful.

   This is a long story, full of small highlights and lots of valleys. He moves to the American southwest, gets a job barkeeping, then a better one. He gets married, has a son, and lives his life the best he can. This is barely science fiction, until the end, when the story finally makes it rounds and comes around to the point, which is a significant one. But while it is being told, it is one you cannot put down, even if you are not a hockey fan.

   I have not read anything else by Steven Popkes, who seems to have made a living doing real jobs, not depending on writing SF for a living. He wrote a couple of novels in the late 1980s/early 90s, then a dozen or so more from 2016 to now. These appear to be mostly self-published.

   He did continue writing shorter work all through this period. This not an uncommon career path for many SF writers. Based on this sample of size one, though, he seems to have done fine, but in my opinion, he could have been a real contender.

KENNETH BULMER – The Star Venturers. Ace Double 22600; 1st printing, 1969. Published back-to-back with The Fall of the Dream Machine, by Dean R. Koontz [reviewed here]. Cover art by John Schoenherr.

   Thrown together by fate, Jarrett, Todd and Sue hunt for the abductor of a missing prince. Jarrett is forced on the venture by a two-bit princess. Todd becomes his friend and follows along, and Sue is the daughter of another adventurer who has not been heard from since being sent out on the same task as Jarrett.

   Probably the dullest story of galactic adventure I have read in some time. Kiddie stuff for adults. And since the girl’s father has not yet been found by story’s end, there’s gonna be more, unhappy day.

Rating: *

   
PostScript: Assuming I was correct in my assessment of this book, the good news is that there was not a sequel to it. At least, I don’t think so.

DEAN R. KOONTZ – The Fall of the Dream Machine. Ace Double 22600, paperback original; 1st printing, 1969. Published back-to-back with The Star Venturers, by Kenneth Bulmer (a review of which to be posted soon). Cover art by Jack Gaughan. Never reprinted in English.

   McLuhan’s theories are made real in a future where Show dominates, a few actors and actresses acting out their emotions for an audience who can feel them through electric wizardry. The domination of Show extends beyond mere communication, however, since the economy of the country is already under Show’s power, and it is not difficult to see that complete political control is next.

   This revolution of media, Show having taken over the function of television, which has disappeared, along with books and movies, is spawning another revolution, one dedicated to bringing back the past. Is that possible? The books ends with the victors watching a movie made by 20th Century Fox, symbolizing their attempt to do so. It may be possible.

   Revolution is often bloody, as Koontz vividly reminds us, and I have no quarrel with the violence what happens. The emphasis shocks, and one does not like it, but it may have to be this way. And in a participatory government, where the leaders actually lead, the idea occurs that violence which is then officially sanctioned is by golly going to be required.

   I am not personally convinced that the disappearance of books, in particular, is going to take place that fast, without more of a struggle, or indeed that this world Koontz envisions could actually exist. The problem with direct communication of thoughts and emotions in drama is that science fiction, with its concepts of the as-yet impossible, could not exist. And such ideas and concepts die hard.

   Naturally, I am a romanticist, as are the story’s new revolutionaries. See page 31: “… collecting old books which he could not read, old movies which he could nut view…” And romanticists will delight in this book.

   Mike’s doubts of his love (page 43) are effective; his search for the revolutionaries motives (page 47) is not. Show has existed for 200 years, and yet only now is Director Cockley’s power growing so dangerous. Nit. I did not read this very fast. Ideas were being awakened right and left.

Rating: ****½

ANALOG SF. December 1967. Editor: John W. Campbell. Cover artist: John Schoenherr. Overall rating: ***½.

ANNE McCAFFREY “Dragonrider.” Serial; part 1 of 2. See report following that for the January 1968 issue.

ALEXEI PANSHIN “The Destiny of Milton Gomrath.” Men find their own level in life. (3)

JACK WODHAMS “Whosawhatsa?” Novelette. Judge Forsett’s latest case and nightmare is a comedy of sex changes, complicated by various pregnancies. Still, imagination can provide even more legal complication. The point is valid. (4)

PIERS ANTHONY “Beak by Beak.” Contact, but with the wrong inhabitants of Earth, For bird lovers. (3)

CHRISTOPHER ANVIL “A Question of Attitude.” The testing routine for joining the Interstellar Patrol requires that one look at both sides of the problem. (1)

MACK REYNOLDS “Psi Assassin.” A killer sent out by Section G on behalf of United Planets must be stopped before he eliminates the wrong man. Even the lectures are not new. (1)

RANDALL GARRETT – Too Many Magicians. Lord Darcy #1. Doubleday, hardcover, 1967. Previously serialized in Analog SF, Aug-Nov 1966. Curtis, paperback, 1969. Ace, paperback, September 1979.

   Any number of writers have been successful at blending crime and science fiction, but no one has done it better than Randall Garrett in his Lord Darcy series. On the one hand, the Lord Darcy stories are meticulous science-fictional extrapolations — tales of an alternate-universe Earth in the 1960s in which the Plantagenets have maintained their sway, a king sits on the throne of the Western World, and not physics but thaurnaturgic science (magic, that is) is the guiding field of knowledge. On the other hand, they are pure formal mysteries of the locked-room and impossiblecrime variety, ingeniously constructed and playing completely fair with the reader.

   Too Many Magicians is the only Lord Darcy novel, and so delightful and baffling that a 1981 panel of experts voted it one of the fifteen all-time best locked-room mysteries. When Master Sir James Zwinge, chief forensic sorcerer for the city of London, is found stabbed to death in a hermetically sealed room at the Triennial Convention of Healers and Sorcerers, it seems no one could have committed the crime; indeed, there is no apparent way in which the crime could have been committed.

   Enter Lord Darcy, chief investigator for His Royal Highness, the duke of Normandy, and Darcy’s own forensic sorcerer, Master Sean O’Lochlainn. Using a combination of clue gathering, observation, ratiocination, and magic, Darcy and Master Sean sift through a labyrinth of hidden motives and intrigues and solve the case in grand fashion.

   This truly unique detective team also appears in eight novelettes, which can be found in two collections — Murder and Magic (1979) and Lord Darcy Investigates (1981). The former volume contains one of Anthony Boucher’s favorite stories, the wonderfully titled “Muddle of the Woad.”

   These, too, are clever crime puzzles; these, too, are rich in extrapolative history and the lore of magic; and these, too, are vivid and plausible portraits of a modem world that could exist if Richard the Lion-Hearted had died from his arrow wound in the year 1199- — a world that resonates to the clip-clop of horse-drawn hansoms and carriages (for of course automobiles were never invented) and through which the shade of Sherlock Holmes happily prowls.

———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Twentieth Century Fox, 1945. Fred MacMurray, Joan Leslie, June Haver, Gene Sheldon, Anthony Quinn. Director; Gregory Ratoff.

   A young man classified 4-F finds a magic lamp and wishes himself into uniform – in George Washington’s army at Valley Forge. He also ends up saving Christopher Columbus from mutineers and is suckered into buying Manhattan from the Indians.

   Fred MacMurray’s clumsy mannerisms are engaging but wear thin surprisingly quickly. As a singer, though, well, he makes a fine comedian. This ditsy approach to history is good for a laugh or two, but it’s also terminally silly.

DAMON KNIGHT, Editor – Orbit 3, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, June 1968. Cover art by by Paul Lehr, Berkley S1608, paperback, September 1968. Cover art also by Lehr.

   Damon Knight has gone off the deep end, I’m afraid, in his search for literary excellence in SF. Of these nine selections, two have straightforward stories to go with their messages, and of the other seven, only one has any message which seems important enough to be reading about. Maybe we should be grateful that most of these  others are the shorter ones. ***

RICHARD WILSON “Mother to the World.” Novelette. The story. combined with personal diaries, of the last couple in the world, with an added twist. It is well that Martin Rolfe has a basic love and understanding for animals, since Siss, while a normal woman in all other aspects, has the mentality of an eight-year-old. Consideration slowly becomes love, as we watch, hoping that nothing happens to spoil it, and a family is begun. A family that may have a future. (5)

RICHARD McKENNA “Bramble Bush.” Novelette. Knight was right the first time: that is, I did not understand a word either. It is remarkable that an author makes no concessions to the reader in the interpretations of his visions. Here is an example, however, with theories of the fourth dimension. (0)

JOANNA RUSS “The Barbarian.” Novelette. Alyz meets a fat man who may or may not be a time traveler, but who is someone who thinks he is the master of his machines, yet who in his foolishness is inferior to Alyx. Confusing story, but a message lurks somewhere. (4)

GENE WOLFE “The Changeling.” Knight doesn’t understand this, shall I argue? The [relatively] high rating is based not on the possibility there might be a meaning, but on the reminiscences of small town life. (2)

DORIS PITKIN BUCK “Why They Mobbed the White House.” Why indeed? I thought this story might explain. Something about computers and income tax. (1)

KATE WILHELM “The Planners.” A glimpse into the life of the head of a research project which is trying to stimulate the intelligence of monkeys. But a glimpse is all. (2)

PHILIP JOSE FARMER “Don’t Wash the Carats,” What does it mean if a “literary Rorschach test” is nothing but nonsense to you? (0)

JAMES SALLIS “Letter to a Young Poet.” Well, that’s what it is. What did you expect? (3)

JOHN JAKES “Here Is Thy Sting.” Novelette. A newspaperman discovers a scientific project probing the experience of death from a qualitative approach. Of the two essential parts, the sleep and the pain, which is it that mankind fears? And if the fear of the pain were to be eliminated, what would be the effect on the future of mankind? And why was this story described as funny? Or amusing? ****½

IF SCIENCE FICTION. November 1967. Editor: Frederik Pohl. Cover artist: Vaughn Bodé (his first published SF cover art). Overall rating: ***½.

FRED SABERHAGEN “Brother Berserker.” Novelette. A continuation of the adventures of Darron Odegard, last heard from in the August issue (reviewed here). This time the berserker’s attack is a double one; first, a man who disputes the current religious beliefs in astronomy, and perhaps the major target, a religious leader. Can a saint produce life in an android? (4)

C. C. MacAPP “Mail Drop.” Novelette. The problems of a galactic post office when a “package” is claimed by both of two races, Features a double-page illo by Bodé. (4)

PHILIP JOSE FARMER “The Shadow of Space.” Novelette. The concept of “universes within universes” carried to its extreme. No comment on the symbolism involved with the rocket entering the dead man’s mouth. (5)

JAMES STEVENS “Thus Spake Marco Polo.” Playing a game with a crooked computer, a game of life or death. (3)

GARY WRIGHT “Dreamhouse.” Novelette. How a dream machine can catch potential violence before it rises to the surface, Goes on too long. (2)

PIERS ANTHONY “in the Jaws of Danger,” Novelette. More adventures of the captured dentist, Dr. Dillingham, previously in Analog, Novembe 1967 (reviewed here). This time about cavities in the teeth of an intelligent fish-like monster. Bodé’s illustrations make the story. (3)

HAL CLEMENT “Ocean on Top.” Serial, part 2 of 3. See report after the upcoming December issue.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.” Novella. First published in Unknown Worlds, October 1942. Collected in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Gnome Press, hardcover, 1959). Reprinted in 6 x H (Pyramid G642, paperback original, 1961), among others.

   Jonathan Hoag hires the husband-and-wife team of Randall & Craig, Confidential Investigation to solve the mystery of the dirty fingernails. The nails are his. Under them is a dried brownish blood-like substance. The doctor who analyzes it throws him out of his office, and Hoag discovers that he does not know what he does all day.

   The solution, as he sees it, is to have himself shadowed.

   But this is no mere detective story, but a powerful fantasy that creates doubts as to the reality of the world around us. Unfortunately is might have been a better story as a mystery, except that the explanation dies have to transcend the limits of everyday detection.

   Still, it is too easy to throw away the beginning for the less restrictive.

Rating: ****