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: ****

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. November 1967. Overall rating: ***

HARRY KEMELMAN “Man on a Ladder.” Novelette. Professor Nicky Welt solves the murder of a scholar [committed to academic work.] I may be in the minority, but I found this story wordy and flat, and if I may, stagey, The chess analogy is good, but isn’t it clear? (2)

JACOB HAY “The Belkamp Apparatus.” A sales representative for a Grand Rapids firm is mistaken for a master spy. It is humorous. (4)

COLIN WATSON “The Infallible Clock.” If a wife disappears and a large clock stops working, what would you suspect? (2)

WILLIAM BRITTAIN “Mr. Strang Finds the Answers,” The key to Mr. Strang’s chemistry exam is stolen, but the mystery is outweighed by the human factors involved. (4)

RICHARD CURTIS “Odds Bodkins and the £1000 Wager.” The odds on breaking out of prison? Only in England. (3)

G. R. SPENCER “The Polite Mrs. Payne.” First story. A holdup man’s politeness is his downfall. (3)

JOYCE CARY “The Sheep.” Published earlier in Texas Quarterly Winter 1958. Tomlin is a sheep, helpless to speak out for himself; excellent characterization that collapses into nothingness. (3)

RON GOULART “Rink.” Parody. 1001st Precinct mystery. Funny. (3)

ELLERY QUEEN “Uncle from Australia.” First appeared in The Diners Club Magazine, June 1965. The Cockney aitch strikes again. Easy puzzle. (2)

THOMAS WALSH “Poor Little Rich Kid.” First appeared in Collier’s, 18 April 1936, as “The Boy on the Train.” A boy with an inheritance, and a weak father, befriends a couple of rodeo cowboys. Good story, but over-plotted. (3)

JAMES CROSS “The Man Who Called Himself James Cross.” Sebastian Nonesuch. A sequel to “The hkzmp gsv bzmp Case,” published in the November 1966 issue of EQMM (reviewed here). The revealed details of the exploits of  US agent Sebastian Nonesuch must be stopped. Often hilarious. (4)

MICHAEL HARRISON “The Fires in the Rue St. Honore.” Another “unpublished” story of C. Auguste Dupin. It seems to be better than the rest, but it turns out to be hopeless for the attentive reader. (2)

ARTHUR PORGES “The Nose of a Beagle.”That the detective is Charles Darwin is obvious from the title. (2)

CHRISTIANNA BRAND “Here Lies…” How to drown a wife who is a swimming champion, and how to build an atmosphere of suspense most effectively. (5)

DEAN R. KOONTZ – Star Quest. Ace Double H-70; paperback original; 1st printing, 1968. Cover art by Gray Morrow. Published back-to-back with Doom of the Green Planet by Emil Petaja. Apparently never reprinted.

   The universe has been the scene of a centuries-long war between the Romaghians and the Setessins. On a restricted primitive planet Tohm is forcibly separated from his love Tarnilee by invading Romaghians. His search for her leads him to the slave planet Basa II, where he joins a group of hunted Muties, mutants caused by the effects of nuclear warfare,

   The latter have learned the power of shifting between divided universes, and have successfully rid their universe of warring worlds.

   Shallow on first reading, but Dean says there are allegorical points. The warring enemies are descendants of the radical right and the radical left; the mutants are “soulbrothers” – the victims of the attempted cleansing of guilt – who have succeeded in ending war, But who are the mutants with white eyes, tangible lust creatures, who periodically appear and disappear?

   This will probably not rate well with others, sorry to say. Dean does have a good picturesque style.

Rating: ***

JOHN D. MacDONALD – The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper. Travis McGee #10. Gold Medal T2023; paperback original, 1st printing, 1968. Cover artist: Ron Lesser. Reprinted many times.

   It takes about 60 pages of slow going, through a very familiar story of a woman dying of the Big C, before the story begins. But before it’s done, the dirty inside secrets of another pretty-on-the-outside Florida town are exposed by the actions of the ever adventuresome Travis McGee.

   The lady’s request that McGee stop her daughter’s suicide attempts brings him to Fort Courtney, and he stays when the nurse who picks him up in a bar is murdered. It isn’t suicide he still has to stop, but a carefully planned murder, by a man who can’t believe anything will stand in his way.

   McGee is a bit too late, and the daughter becomes the first girl in a plain brown wrapper. The second is more obvious, and yet more subtle.

   Emphasis, or detail, is added to McGee’s sexual appetite. What indeed does make man an man, and a woman a woman? And any resplendence to an abortive scene from The Graduate is purely intentional.

Rating: ****½

JOHN BRUNNER – Into the Slave Nebula. Lancer 73-797, paperback. 1968. Cover art by Kelley Freas. Expanded and/or revamped edition of Slavers of Space (Ace Double D-421. paperback original, 1960).

   An earlier version was Slavers of Space, which I remember reading, not that any of the details came back right away, but the ending was familiar almost from the beginning of this one. It wasn’t difficult. Do you remember those old cowboy movies, where the outlaws have the hero in their power, and instead of shooting him on the spot, someone says, “No. Wait. I have a better idea,” which proves to be the beginning of their downfall?

   Derry Horn of Earth is tracing the path of murdered Lars Talibrand back through space, and the the same time learning the truth about the androids being shipped to Earth, when he is captured by one of ringleaders of the kidnapping gang. For the androids are really humans, dyed blue. Horn is turned blue, too, but allowed to suffer. and so he can reveal the gang’s secret to the first friend he meets. The same is up!

   The picture of Earth (domesticated to the point of perversion) and the stars (still havens for adventurers, rougher and tougher as one progresses from Earth) is quite good. It must have been these details that were added. The story itself seems to have been unchanged.

Rating: ***

ANALOG SF – November 1967. Editor: John W. Campbell Cover art: Kelly Freas. Overall rating: **

GUY McCORD “Coup.” Novelette. [Guy McCord is a pen name of Mack Reynolds.] A planet originally settled by colonists from Scotland is rediscovered by the crew of an explorer ship. Their ignorance of local customs, developed by necessity, enables the natives to count coup on them A coup is a telling blow inflicted by an unarmed warrior upon one who is armed. Standard but interesting, yet unsatisfying. (3)

PIERS ANTHONY “Prostho Plus.” Dr. Dillingham #2. Dr. Dillingham’s dentist’s office is taken over by two aliens, one of whom has a problem with his teeth. The story ends just as it’s beginning. (1)

MARTIN LORAN “The Case of the Perjured Planet.” The Librarian #2. Novelette. [Martin Loran is a joint pen name of John Baxter and Ron Smith.] Librarian Stephen Quist uses hard-boiled private eye techniques to discover the secret of planet Napoleon 6. An unlikely premise that fails miserably, though the story is barely tolerable. (1)

JACK WODHAMS“The Cure-All Merchant.” To the consternation of an inspector representing the drug industry, Dr. Malmy practices medicine without the use of drugs, relying on human resources for his cures. Too long. (2)

JOE POYER “Mission: Red Plague.” A super-high-altitude reconnaissance pilot observing warfare in Asia is exposed to a Chinese bacteriological attack and comes down with … the flu. A story hidden in technical junk. (2)

ROBERT L. FISH – Always Kill a Stranger. Captain Jose Da Silva #6. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1967. Berkley X1511, paperback, February 1968. Foul Play Press, paperback, 1998.

   Captain Jose Da Silva of the Brazilian police and his friend Wilson, US assignee to Interpol in Brazil, combine to thwart the planned assassination of a diplomat attending a conference of the OAS.

   The relationship between the two men, friendly, humorous, and occasionally antagonistic, is the most satisfying part of the book. Most pertinent, perhaps, is their agreement to disagree on the merits of the CIA, and American efforts on foreign policy in general. As a member of the US Embassy in Brazil, however, Wilson has the opportunity of meeting and recognizing various types of ugly American. Indeed, what Brazil needs from the US is more Wilson.

   The surprise ending is dependent on the previously unknown [WARNING; Plot Alert.] of a brother who looks very much like the intended victim. Deducible, I suppose. [End Plot Alert.] The incompetence of several members of the Brazilian police, though probably realistic, on at least two occasions allows the assassination plot to head on to a climax undisturbed.

Rating: ***½

KENNETH ROBESON – The Other World. Doc Savage #83. Bantam F3877, paperback, October 1968. Previously published in the January 1940 issue of Doc Savage Magaine.

   The struggle between two fur dealers over strange and beautiful furs leads Doc Savage and his crew to an underground world, the entrance to which is hidden somewhere in the Arctic wilderness. This world still lives in prehistoric times, with the usual assortment of dinosaurs and other menacing creatures.

   The villains are vicious – to stop a letter from getting to Doc Savage, they simply smash the mailbox open with a sledgehammer – and in spite of being short on science, scenes in the other world (especially the one illustrated on the [paperback] cover) are exciting, But the idea is not new, rather third – or fourth-rate by this time

Rating: **

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION. October 1967. Seventeenth anniversary issue. Editor: Frederik Pohl. Cover artist: Gray Morrow. Overall rating: ****

ROGER ZELAZNY “Damnation Alley.” Novelette. Previously reviewed here. (*****)

POUL ANDERSON “Poulfinch’s Mythology.” Non-fact article. A look from the future at twelve gods of contemporary America. This did not interest me enough to make me want to see if I agree with Anderson or not. (1)

H. L. GOLD “The Transmogrification of Wamba’s Revenge.” Novelette. A secret formula of the Pygmies, capable of shrinking all living beings to a tenth of their former size, is used on mankind. This means the end of all warfare under the benevolent rulership of the Pygmies, on whom the formula does not work. Pretty obvious when you think about it. (3)

GEORGE O. SMITH “Understanding.” A fifteen year old boy, Terry Lincoln, without Understanding, is given a secret message to Earth that he cannot understand. To obtain the message from him, the Xanabarians must see to it that he obtains Understanding. Which is impossible to explain to he who has it and unnecessary to mention to he who has it, but it is a sort of refined premonition or intuition, necessary for all interstellar traveling cultures, ready to take on responsibility. So why not a better story to go with it? (3)