ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION, April 1967. Editor: John W. Campbell. Cover art by John Schoenherr. Overall rating: **½ stars.

JAMES BLISH & NORMAN L. KNIGHT “To Love Another.” #4 in the authors’ “A Torrent of Faces” series. [The four stories were expanded and combined as A Torrent Of Faces (Doubleday, 1967).] Novelette. A love story between a human woman and tectogenetically created Triton. Too extreme in its contrasts from the depths of the Pacific to the overcrowded city of Philadelphia. The unexpected result that their marriage would produce keeps the story from a lower rating. (2)

MACK REYNOLDS “Enemy Within.” A small child locks himself in a flying saucer. (1)

JOSEPH P. MARTINO “To Change Their Ways.” Novelette. Wilm Kirsten, Sector Supervisor, has to help convince settlers to use new grains to prevent famines. Analogous to problem of India, but one easier to solve. (3)

HARRY HARRISON “The Time-Machines Saga.” Serial; part 2 of 3. [Reprinted in book form as The Technicolor® Time Machine (Doubleday, 1967).] Review of full novel to be posted later.

COLIN KAPP “Ambassador to Verdammt.” The inhabitants of Verdammt, totally alien to alien minds, can control their environment at will. Somewhat the effects of LSD? (4)

Note: Reprinted in World’s Best Science Fiction: 1968, edited by Terry Carr & Donald Wollheim (Ace, paperback, 1968).

ANDRE NORTON – Year of the Unicorn. Witch World series. Ace F-357, paperback original, 1965. Cover and interior art by Jack Gaughan. Reprinted many times. Collected in The Gates to Witch World (Tor, hardcover, 2001).

   Gillan’s story begins in an abbey, where she has spent the last eight years. She is of unknown origin, having been captured from the Hounds of Alizon by a lord of High Halleck as he fought to free his homeland. Her past is of importance, however, for she has the ability of true-sight, to see the thing behind the thing.

   As she tells her story, of her marriage to a Were-Rider as part of the Great Bargain, of the evil magic which produces two Gillans, and of her desperate struggle to reach the false one before she fades to the world of her dreams, this ability grows more controllable and both aids her and brings about the troubles she faces.

   Evidently she has blood of the witches of Estcarp, stories of whom have been previously told but not read; still, this book stands well enough on its own. This is an interesting world, where magic can be performed by some and swordsmanship is a necessary art. But, as fantasy, there is too much a feeling that the author has too much power at her command, especially at the end as Gillan and Herrel fight for their lives.

   The book begins slowly, difficult reading, but as the story becomes clearer so does interest rise. Then long chapters drag on without dialogue as she struggles her way alone to the land of the Were-Riders. On the other hand, many scenes are quite effective, and the quality of the archaic, picturesque language Norton uses adds a great deal to the tale.

Rating: ****

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION – January 1954. Editor: John W. Campbell, Jr. Cover by H. R. Van Dongen [the magazine’s first specific Christmas cover]. Overall rating: ***

EVERETT B. COLE “Exile.” Short novel. A student of Archaeological Synthesis on an observational trip is stranded on a backward planet. Without means of transportation or communication, his attempts to get home must not disturb the local culture. Terribly muddy and often depending on glibness, the story would have improved tremendously if it had a point to be made. **

FRANK M. ROBINSON “The Lonely Man.” The death of a man living alne in a hotel room is investigated by a policeman who discovers he has blue blood. (3)

H. BEAM PIPER & JOHN J. McGUIRE “The Return.” Novelette. After the Bomb, a group of people with a strange religion is found. Abundant clues to the sacred Books make this a worthy addition to the Holmesian saga. (4)

ALGIS BUDRYS “A.I.D.” Anti-Interrogation Device. An organic servomechanism which satisfies the specification of both sides, but only Earth has it. The ending is a letdown, but is satisfactory upon reconsideration. (3)

RALPH WILLIAMS “Bertha.” Novelette. A somewhat unlikely premise: an undiscovered artificial satellite which welcomes Earth’s first astronauts. Exciting in spite of occasional lapses in scientific background. Hindsight. (4)

HENRY WILSON ALLEN – Genesis Five. William Morrow, hardcover, 1968. Pyramid T-2162, paperback, 1970.

   
   When I realized who Henry Wilson Allen was (and I’ll reveal that as this review progresses for anyone as ignorant as I was) I knew I had to read this 1968 near future Science Fiction/Horror Thriller somewhat in the Michael Crichton tradition, but with far deeper pulp roots.

   I’ll say this, for all its flaws as scientific speculation or true SF, it is delightful barn=burner of a novel full of enough sturm n drang for a dozen longer books, and oddly looks forward to the kind of not quite SF speculative thrillers that often top today’s bestseller lists from James Rollins, Clive Cussler, and Andy McDermott.

   It is well written, playful, and if closer to SF movies or the kind of “Monster” thriller from television thrillers by Nigel Kneale or episodes of Doctor Who, and Outer Limits, it is still for all that great fun. The “monster” here is a good one.

   It is not Helnlein or Asimov and John Campbell wouldn’t recognize it, but it is a slam bang thriller.

   As we are told the book is taken from The Suntar Papers found at the crash site of a Russian ship and recounts in the words of the papers author, Yuri Suntar, the events surrounding the The Siberian Center for Genetic Studies, known by its code name Genesis Five.

   Whether this controversial journal is authentic or the bizarre creation of some deranged hoaxer must remain the subject of another time.

   That rather Victorian disclaimer aside we plunge right in, and there is hardly time to catch a breath beyond that point.

   Yuri Suntar, our narrator, is the half Mongol son of an American spy and a Soviet citizen, a blonde blue eyed Mongol distrusted all his life and always in the shadow of his brother Yang, Olympic athlete, physical giant, and perfect specimen of Mongol manhood. As the novel opens the security services have shown up at Yuri’s doorstep and he is none too sure whether he is under arrest or being offered a job.

   Whisked off across country Yuri is soon introduced to the exotic and beautiful Chandra Maringa, the lilac-eyed daughter of a Chinese woman and a Masai scientist, and the granddaughter of the Soviet Union’s most famous scientist the pure Mandarin genius Dr. Ho Wu Chen.

   Entranced by Chandra (who has little use for him), frightened and impressed by Dr. Ho, and by no means certain of himself Yuri discovers that the doctor runs a vast underground scientific research station beneath Okatrai Island in the Arctic wastes where Yang, his brother, has been given the job of master of the savage wolves used for experiment at the facility. Yang asked for Yuri, and Yang gets what he wants.

   Arriving at the bizarre underground base Yuri soon encounters Yang and his wolves, and they are not the three little pig kind. What they are is what some Cockney in every British horror movie ever made inevitably calls “an ’orror, Guv’nor, It were an ’orror!”

   A hybrid of man and wolf with insect larva that allows Dr. Ho to bind them together they are strong, fast, smart, and murderous of fang claw and fatal stinger.

   In short, “It were an ’orror!”

   Yuri wants out of the madhouse naturally. And to that end he discovers Ho has secrets of his own including having stored Chandra’s father in hyper-sleep and telling her he is dead. With Joseph Maringa’s help, and few allies, and Chandra won over to his cause Yuri sets out to let the world know what Dr. Ho plans, but things don’t go smoothly…

   And thereby hangs a tale, as they used to say.

   
   Shades of Jules Verne.

   You will have noted by now it is a “Yellow Peril” novel in many ways, with Dr. Ho in the Fu Manchu mold, but canny enough to do so with mixed race hero and heroine and a cast of good and bad Chinese and Russians. The author also shows he did his research in his study of Mongol culture and Yuri is both believable and admirable, but then the author has a pretty good history of writing sympathetically about races other than his own with insight and significant research.

   I’ll tease a bit first, because readers of this blog know who Henry Wilson Allen is on multiple levels. First you know him because for ten years he worked at MGM animation studios as a gag man under the name of Hec Allen, and wrote almost all of the classic Tex Avery cartoons between 1944 and 1954 that have become the stuff of animation legend. He’s that Henry Wilson Allen.

   Still, that would not explain his gift for research and writing about other races. He earned those spurs literally writing under two other better known names as my favorite Western writer of all time, Will Henry and Clay Fisher.

   You know, McKenna’s Gold, Who Rides With Wyatt, Yellowstone Kelly, Pillars of the Sky, The Tall Men, Santa Fe Passage, I Tom Horn, From Where the Sun Now Stands, No Survivors, North Star, those Westerns, many of which were also movies.

   I won’t pretend Genesis Five is politically correct in any way, but it is entertaining and well written, and for its time closer to Richard Condon teasing old pulp traditions (the villains in Whisper of the Axe are the PRC sponsoring terrorism and the villain and hero both ethnic minorities) than the last legs of the Sax Rohmer style Yellow Peril threat to the Western White world plots of old.

   In 1968 Nixon had yet to go to China, and China was on the way to replacing the Soviets as the favorite villain of thriller fiction. Its no excuse, but you can see Allen trying to have it both ways, and almost getting away with it by making Yuri and Chandra attractive near superhuman heroes struggling against not just Ho’s madness, but a society and government who would employ him.

   Read in context he succeeded, though not so much from a more modern view.

   Knowing that, accepting its limitations, it makes for an interesting side light on the better known careers of Hec Allen, Will Henry, and Clay Fisher. There are stylistic touches, and moments when he gets in Yuri’s head that will remind you of some of his Western novels, and whatever else it is a rip roaring thriller.

MACK REYNOLDS – After Some Tomorrow. Belmont, paperback original, 1967.

   Two people, Michael Grant and Anne Enesco, are among those a strange foundation has given scholarships to Earl University on the condition they study para-psychology, Their psionic powers attract the attention of another foundation , which is interested in their ability to foresee the future for political gain.

   The sociopolitical systems of the world are about to fall, and knowledge of the prevailing forms of government could be of immense value. Hallucinogenic drugs play a part also and aid them in sending their original benefactor back to his own time.

   The major part of the book deals with their enforced study of political science, which gives Reynolds his usual chance for lecture. In addition, the story of narcotics and their relation to human culture is told. There is an underling story, however, and while it is not as thrilling as the cover would imply, it reads fairly well.

   Naturally, no clue can be given as to the social system that will eventually emerge from the welfare state that Reynolds quite pessimistically sees for the US, and the book ends without resolution on that level. The love interest proceeds beneath the lines, revealed mainly when Grant forbids Anna to wear a transparent blouse. A not too favorable view of Johnson’s role in Vietnam is given on page 67.

Rating: ***½

SIMON CLARK – Night of the Triffids. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1991. New English Library, UK, paperback, 2001. Cemetery Dance Publications, US, hardcover, 2015.

   
   So ends John Wyndham’s classic disaster novel The Day of the Triffids about an inadvertent invasion of predatory man killing plants that came to earth in a meteor shower and that become a threat to mankind when another meteor shower blinds most of the people on the planet. That story was told by Bill Masen, a sailor, who by chance was in hospital temporarily blinded when the meteor shower came and who awakens to find himself one of the few sighted people in a terrifying world.

   In Simon Clark’s sequel to Wyndham’s classic thirty years have passed and our narrator is David Masen, Bill’s son, one of the survivors from the original colony on the Isle of Wight where humanity is rebuilding and where David is a pilot who helps keep contact with the scattered outposts of survivors around around the world and keep track of the deadly triffids.

   It is not a safe world, and it becomes even more unsafe when the skies are plunged into darkness in a shocking turn that threatens the tenuous hold of humanity to their former place as masters of the world much less as survivors.

   That plunge into darkness will send David Masen on a quest to unite the small colonies of mankind that survive, especially to New York where he finds a semi fascistic state led by the father of the beautiful Kerris, and ends up joining a revolution against the slave state as he learns more disturbing facts about growing signs of intelligence among the deadly triffids and the intentions of the King of New York.

   John Wyndham was the rare Science Fiction writer who broke out of the relative ghetto of the genre to critical acclaim and popularity. It didn’t hurt that books like The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as Village of the Damned with George Sanders) were made into popular films or that his shorts stories like “Consider Her Ways” were adapted for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

   Wyndham came out of the British tradition of Social Science Fiction sometimes called Cozy or Gothic Science Fiction founded by H. G. Wells and popular in serials like the Strand Magazine’s Doom of London series, that was as much about what the disasters that befall mankind in its pages reveal about the social strata and man’s tenuous hold on civilization as about aliens, disasters, and invasions.

   Wyndham brought a breath of fresh air and modernity to the somewhat heavy-handed style of later Wells novels and inspired a new generation of writers that included not only suspense and SF writers like John Christopher, L. P. Davies, Christopher Priest, and Charles Eric Maine, but also more experimental writers like J. G. Ballard and to some extent Michael Moorcock. Wyndham’s novels, including The Kraken Wakes (Out of the Depths), Re-Birth, Chocky, and The Chrysalids, were often adapted on BBC Radio and received far more attention than most standard SF in the UK and here.

   Simon Clark, the author of several genre novels including Judas Tree, King Blood, and The Fall, is no Wyndham, and I know how many of you, and sometimes I, feel about sequels and continuances, but this one does a fine job of continuing the story, staying in the same general mode of the original and expanding logically from that work. My chief complaint is that the novel ends anticipating a sequel that was never published as far as I know, and I would have much preferred a one time follow up rather than an attempt to capitalize on Wyndhams creation.

   It is no easy task to follow a writer like Wyndham whose vision of somehow cozy and still frightening disasters was unique among his contemporaries. Like Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury he was as comfortable in the slicks as in the SF digests or pulps where he began. Clark mostly does a good job of it, managing to avoid too obvious modernization’s of Wyndham’s style or subject matter.

   And once in a while he hits a very Wyndham like note:

   You will have to forgive me but I’m still a sucker for this sort of thing.

LARRY NIVEN “All the Myriad Ways.” Short story. First published in Galaxy SF, October 1968. First reprinted in Worlds of Maybe, edited by Robert Silverberg (Thomas Nelson, hardcover, 1970). First collected as the title story in All the Myriad Ways (Ballantine, paperback original, 1971). Nominated for a Hugo, 1969.

   â€œThere were timelines branching and branching, a mega-universe of universes, millions more every minute. Billions? Trillions? Trimble didn’t understand the theory, though God knows he’d tried. The universe split every time someone made a decision. Split, so that every decision ever made could go both ways. Every choice made by every man, woman and child on Earth was reversed in the universe next door. It was enough to confuse any citizen, let alone Detective-Lieutenant Gene Trimble, who had other problems.”

   Thus begins one of SF writer Larry Niven’s better known short stories. One of Niven’s strong points as a writer has always been to take complicated scientific ideas and incorporate them into stories that make the commonplace and easy.

   (If you were to ask me what science is involved in the concept of parallel worlds such as outlined above, I’d have to shrug my shoulders and say, “Quantum physics? Maybe??”)

   No matter. The idea of alternate realities branching off from each other has been around for a long time and not only in SF stories. What makes this one kind of unique is that Niven places it in a world in which an epidemic of suicides is taking place. The latest of these is that of the head of Crosstime Corporation which has found a way to transverse these myriad worlds and bring back inventions in those worlds which haven’t yet come to fruition in his own, making him fabulously wealthy.

      [WARNING: Plot details ahead.]

   Niven postulates that faced with worlds in which every choice made in making a decision of any kind, mankind is beginning to feel that there is no point in making choices of any kind, and that suicide is the only solution.

   It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not so sure about that. Right now, in this world, we don’t have the option of traveling across time, but the likelihood of me, say, jumping off a tall building because I no longer feel as though any decision I make is moot, is awfully slim, to say the least. But as food for thought, “All the Myriad Ways” really has me thinking about it. It’s too bad that I’m not a SF writer to put some of these thoughts into words. But I’m working on it.

Rating: Five stars.

IF SCIENCE FICTION, March 1967. Editor: Frederik Pohl. “Special Hugo Winners Issue.” Cover: McKenna. Overall rating: ***

ISAAC ASIMOV “The Billiard Ball.” Novelette. A conflict between a theoretical physicist and a technician over the possibility of ant-gravity leads to the death of one. The Master has not lost his touch. (5)

HARLAN ELLISON “I Have No Mouth and I must Scream.” Four men and a woman, the last human survivors, are trapped within the underground vaults of a computer. (4)

ROGER ZELAZNY “The Mortal Mountain.” Novelette. A mountain forty miles high challenges the best climbing team in the business. Complications arise when “energy beings” threaten their ascent. Too much of an adventure story only, but is SF. Symbolism, climbing to stars? (3)

JOSEPH WESLEY “Moonshine.” A marine orderly on the moon brews his own. Story has been told many times before. (1)

LARRY NIVEN “Flatlander.” Novelette. Beowulf Schaeffer and perhaps the richest man on Earth look for adventure on the mysterious planet of a protosun. All the clues to its true nature are provided. Well done, except that the details of the previous series parts are beginning to bore. (4)

ROSCOE WRIGHT “The Sepia Springs Affair.” A strange bunch of aliens write letters to Pohl. I’d rather read the [real] letter column. (0)

ALGIS BUDRYS “The Iron Thorn.” Serial; part 3 of 4. See report following final installment.

BETSY CURTIS “Latter-Day Daniel.” A man with one arm feeds synthetic ones to lion. (1)

PAPER GIRLS. “Growing Pains.” Amazon Prime Video, 29, July 2022 (Season 1, Episode 1). Camryn Jones as Tiff Quilkin, an African American girl with a high intellect; Riley Lai Nelet as Erin Tieng, a Chinese American girl on her first day delivering newspapers; Sofia Rosinsky as Mac Coyle, a tomboy who lives in the outskirts of Stony Stream [a suburb of Cleveland]; Fina Strazza as KJ Brandman, a Jewish American girl whose family owns several businesses in Stony Stream. [Thanks to Wikipedia for the preceding descriptions.] Based on the comic book series of the same title written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Cliff Chiang (Image, 2015-19).

   The first episode of this SF-nal time-traveling series begins early on the morning of November 1, 1988, with four pre-teen girls working together on their respective newspaper delivery routes (on bicycle) as a means of protection from older boys who continually harass them.

   This night is different, though. The sky suddenly turns pink and no one is seen on the street. Have the Russians invaded?

   It’s actually worse than that. It takes them the whole episode to realize it, but somehow they’ve landed in the year 2019, where they meet the older version of one of them. They have also escaped from being caught in the crossfire war between two warring factions … of what, it is too early for them to tell, nor of course does the viewer have any idea where the series is going from here.

   It’s all very effectively done, and for a small group of four main leads, probably unknown to everyone watching, the acting and dialogue is as top notch as it could possibly be. I’ll probably bail out at this point, though. I tend to do that with recent SF on TV that I start and find myself entertained but with no desire to continue any farther. I suppose it’s me, and I’m not sure why. This is a series that seems to have become quite popular in its short run so far.

ROBERT E. HOWARD, L. SPRAGUE de CAMP & LIN CARTER – Conan. Lancer, paperback, 1967. Cover: Frank Frazetta. Chronologically the first in the series.

   My first exposure to the saga of Conan. I found him as exciting a character as his fans have been saying for years. The writing can be uneven, but Conan in combat is never dull. There were many points of similarity between story plots in this volume; Conan probably had his fill of kiling evil magicians. The quality of the pastiches is generally good – note that the highest rated story is by de Camp and Carter. It is also the shortest, however, which may imply something.    Overall rating: ****

“The Hyborean Age, Part I” – Howard. Originally published in The Fantagraph, Feb, Aug, Oct-Nov 1936. The fictional background for the series, telling of events up to the time of Conan (not rated).

“The Thing in the Crypt” – Carter & de Camp. Fifteen-year-old Conan discovers a sword guarded by one of the undying dead. Skillful blend of horror and swords and sorcery. (5)

“The Tower of the Elephant” – Howard. Originally published in Weird Tales, March 1933. Conan undertakes the theft of a well-guarded jewel in an evil priest’s tower and frees the captive alien from whom the priest received his powers. (4)

“The Hall of the Dead” – Howard & de Camp. Originally published in F&SF, February 1967. Conan and Nestor risk the unknown dangers of the ruined city of Larsha for the treasures rumored there, but their net gain is two gold coins. Nothing terribly remarkable this time. (3)

“The God in the Bowl” – Howard. Originally published in Space SF, September 1952. A museum owner is killed under strange circumstances, and Conan is accused, A bit slow at times, but it is made up for as Conan escapes and discovers the real murderer. (4)

“Rogues in the House” – Howard. Originally published in Weird Tales, January 1934. In return for help in escaping imprisonment, Conan helps a nobleman against an evil priest, then saves them both from an ape-man who has taken over the priest’s home. Fun. (4)

“The Hand of Nergal” – Howard & Carter. Conan, the sole survivor of a battle against Yaralet, is brought secretly to that city to destroy its ruler, who possesses a talisman giving him magical powers. The weakest story; Conan needs the counter-talisman to succeed. (3)

“The City of Skulls” – Carter & de Camp. Conan is captured and made a galley slave. When he escapes, a living stone god must be destroyed. Slow in the middle; ending saves story. (4)