ALEXEI PANSHIN – Star Well. Anthony Villiers #1. Ace G-756; paperback original; 1st printing, October 1968. Cover by Kelly Freas. Reprinted by Ace, paperback, August 1978. Cover by Vincent Di Fate.

   An Anthony Villiers adventure, a costume piece of the 15th Century, common reckoning, or the year 3418 AD. Villiers himself remains an unknown quantity, but he has that something about him that causes events and crises.

   In this instance, a smuggling operation working out of Star Well, a planetoid in the Flammarion Rift, is broken up by the coincidental visit of Villiers; an Inspector General; and a group of girls being chaperones to Miss McBurney’s Finishing School.

   Emphasis on customs and costumes; clothes make the man, custom eliminates decision-making. Which will become more and more difficult as pressures of society grow and grow.

   A conversational style of writing is used. Here and there, it reminded me Lafferty , and also of Delany. The story, not told precisely in chronological order, but never mind, is slight, and the effort may not hold up over an entire series.

Rating: ****

         The Anthony Villiers series –

1. Star Well (1968)
2. The Thurb Revolution (1968)
3. Masque World (1969)

   A fourth book in the series. The Universal Panthograph, was announced but never published and perhaps never finished.

JAMES BLISH – Faust Aleph-Null. Serialized in If Science Fiction, August-October 1967. Reprinted as Black Easter or Faust Aleph-Null (Doubleday, hardcover, 1968; Dell, paperback, 1969). Also reprinted as The Devil’s Day, paired with the novel The Day After Judgment (Baen, paperback, 1990).

   Outwardly fantasy, this story is actually a treatise on theology, leading up to the no longer startling conclusion that “God is dead.”

   Some time in the past, God is presumed to have made a compromise with the demons of Evil, in the form of the Covenant, which also allows the practice of Magic. The monastery at Monte Albano, the center of white magic, discovers that the black magician Theron Ware is about to perform a potentially disastrous task for a munitions manufacturer, and so the move to stop it, but without actually interfering.

   The Task? To allow the major demons of Hell freedom on Earth for 24 hours, purely as an experiment. This does not speak wll of munitions manufacturers, of course, but as a class, who else could Blish reasonably pick on? Not acceptable, even given the existence of such demons.

   Naturally the experiment goes out of control, with God’s absence from the scene the factor allowing the demons to stay free, breaking the vows that gave then freedom. End of story.

   More work is needed to make this tale credible as a story; as theology, it may be great stuff.

Rating: ***½

IF SCIENCE FICTION. October 1967. Editor: Frederik Pohl. Cover artist: Hector Castellon. Overall rating: **½.

HAL CLEMENT “Ocean on Top.” Serial, part 1 of 3. Review to appear after my reading of the full story.

LARRY EISENBERG “Conqueror.” A short but terribly important story of how sex can humiliate the proudest conqueror. (5)

A. E. van VOGT “Enemy of the Silies.” Novelette. More incomprehensible adventures of the Silkies, attacked this time by the Nijjians. Cemp’s only weapon if his Logic of Levels, whatever that might be. You gotta admire van Vogt, if he understands this stuff. (0)

C. C. MacAPP “Winter of the Llangs.” Novelette. An intelligent cattle-like people trapped by the weather are harassed by creatures which might be wolves. Solid alien characterization. (3)

DONALD J. WALSH “Mu Panther,” First story. A hunting party goes after a mutant panther which has more than size going for it, (2)

JAMES BLISH “Faust Aleph-Null.” Serial, part 3 of 3. To be reviewed separately soon.

CHARLES L. HARNESS -The Ring of Ritornel. Berkley X1630, paperback original; 1st printing, November 1968.

   The twelve galaxies surrounding the Node, now at peace, bring [the planet] Terror/Terra to trial in prelude to its destruction. Terror/Terra, having been the cause of the Horror, nuclear warfare which threatened life everywhere, is not felt to deserve mercy.

   But is life a cycle, a Ring so to say, predestined to return to its original form, and then to continue again and again? So say the followers of the god Ritornel, and the postponement of Terra’s destruction may be the key to the Ring’s fulfillment. But Alea, the goddess of chance, has her own followers, who believe that the Ring can be broken, and new life can be formed.

   James Andrek us caught between the two. Seeking the reason for his brother’s disappearance, he id marked for death by the Magister of the Home Galaxy. But then escaping, he returns to put into effect one of the two destinies of the universe.

   A generous sense of wonder is evident throughout, but if the simple matter of statistical mechanics on page 99 is faulty, how much trust can be put into the grander theories of cosmology that follow? Plus a style which is both poetical and heavy reading and the book does not satisfy completely. Yet it is not a book to be missed.

Rating: ****½

IVAN T. ROSS – Old Students Never Die. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1962. Detective Book Club, hardcover, 3-in-1 edition.

   School teacher Ben Gordon accepts a weekend vacation at a former student’s country hideaway. The student is Jackie Meadows, now a successful comedian, and one who is now negotiating for his own TV show, which explains the additional presence of the many typical show business types on hand.

   The unexpected return of one of Jackie’s old girl friends upsets things, and leads top her death. The change in Jackie since high school days leads Ben to accuse him of the murder. Admission, attempted suicide, death.

   So far, so good, but the story still has 20 pages to go. Obviously a twist in the tale is yet to come, but for some reason, it is not as satisfactory as it should have been.

   Analogies drawn to high school days are uniformly fine. And they would naturally lead one to conclude that Ivan T. Ross has done a considerable amount pf high school teaching.

   But Jackie Meadow’s jokes are really not very funny.

Rating: ***½

LEE THAYER – And One Cried Murder. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1961. Detective Book Club, hardcover, 3-in-1 edition.

   The stiff manners of Peter Clancy’s English butler Wiggar carry over to the stilted language and dialogue of nearly everybody else. For example, how does “So that’s where the unfortunate fellow got it!” (page 128) really sound? For my first introduction to San Francisco detective Clancy, this story is really a failure.

   The death of a rich aunt by carbon monoxide poisoning leads to suspicion of two brothers and a sister, with a mysterious suitor sneaking around in the background. It suddenly turns out that he works for the FBI, and it is [REDACTED], who is the killer. Strictly from nowhere, for the most part. and slow, but interesting in spots.

Rating: **½

FRANK GRUBER – Brothers of Silence. E.P.Dutton, hardcover, 1962. Detective Book Club, hardcover, 3-in-1 edition. Bantam F2903, paperback,1965. Belmont, paperback, 1973.

   After a confusing opening, Gruber settles down with a tale about Attila’s hidden treasure, buried somewhere in eastern Europe. Author Charles Tancred, an expert on Caesar and the Roman Empire, knows the approximate location, but there are others who know he knows, and do it goes.

   What makes the beginning confusing is a tendency to fill in background so very gradually, which is not only disconcerting to the reader, but makes the motives of the characters even more unclear. In spite of a strong suspicion that all this mysteriousness was needed only for any mystery at all, once the story finally gets going, it manages to keep a fairly even level.

   The love interest comes on suddenly and strong, however, and it generally manages to foul up the story’s credibility. Every foreigner is quickly characterized with difficulty and English idioms. Carry-overs from Gruber’s pulp days?

Rating: ***

WHODUNIT MYSTERY MAGAZINE – September-October 1967. Editor: Douglas Stapleton. [This was the only issue to be published.] Overall rating: **

BURT MacDOUGALL “The Hostage.” A bank robber uses a fake little old lady as a hostage. Good ending; indifferent writing. (3)

MARY LYNN ROBY “The Practical Way.” A woman is pressured by he daughter-in-law to go modern. Done better by others. (2)

PHELPS GOODHUE “Assassin!” Plot to assassinate Lincoln fails, as does this story. (1)

DOUGLAS & DOROTHY STAPLETON “Ransom for a Rogue.” Novella. Three crises occur for protagonist Douglas Stapleton, each one of which is crucial to the life of a kidnapped boy. The reader shares these crises and has the chance to make his own decisions. Alternate story passages follow, scattered throughout the magazine. I got all three correctly, but they were not difficult, and the story is rather contrived to fit them in, Clever, but otherwise not much. **½

CAROL ARCHER STURMOND “Cheat the Devil.” Willie thinks he has the devil trapped within his pentagram but makes a bad bargain anyway. Usual bit. (2)

EMMANUEL BROZ “It’s the Details That Count,” Bank robber poses as policeman sent to stop robbery. Ending from thin air. (1)

K. S. L. STEELE “The Final War!” Sneaky story about the beginning of World War I. (3)

MICHAEL BRETT “The Seeds of Destruction.” After getting beaten up three times by bully, kid gets revenge. (2)

MARY LYNN ROBY “Pest Control.” Scientist must decide between wife or pet cat. Poor guy. (1)

THOMAS BRADLEY “Love Me, Mama!” Kid falls from tree but doesn’t know he’s dead. (2)

ROSS MACDONALD – Blue City. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1947, published under the author’s real name, Kenneth Millar. A shortened version was serialized in the August and September 1950 issues of Esquire. Dell #363, paperback, 1949? Reprint paperback editions are plentiful, most often published by Bantam under the pen name Ross Macdonald. Film: Paramount Pictures, 1986, with Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy. (See comment #4.)

   Another tale of a son seeking revenge for his father’s death. Johnny Weather returns to an unnamed Midwestern city after the war to discover that his father, one of the town’s crooked bosses, had been shot and killed two years earlier.

   It is the idealism of war versus the realities of city life, with its political corruption sanctioned by anti-union big business, that drives Johnny against the powers that have covered up the murder. His activities soon stir up a great deal of reaction, including a couple of particularly bloody murders, before he finds how far ambition can drive a man to guilt.

   A mayor running on a campaign of reform has found that ends often are confused with means, and convinces himself that murder, or rather assassination, can be justified.

   Weather comes on strong, though he did not really acre for his father, and it is this over-aggressiveness that is a bit too much to absorb. In the background, life is described as it went on after the war, in one of MacDonald’s earlier stories.

Rating: ****½

PIERS ANTHONY & ROBERT E. MARGROFF – The Ring. Ace A-19, paperback original; 1st printing, 1968. Published as part of the Ace SF Special series. Cover art by Diane Dillon and Leo Dillon. Tor, paperback, 1986.

   A flawed Utopia, with a machine acting as conscience and punishment for wrong-doers; crime is rampant on Earth, although need is theoretically abolished – indeed crime is licensed through Vicinc, and inflation takes its usual toll from the average man. High-minded theory vs. ugly reality.

   This is the world Jeff returns to from the stars, with dreams of revenge against his father’s former business partner who was the cause if his father’s exile from Earth. But Jeff is caught before he can carry out his plans, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be ringed.

   The ring is an instrument of the Ultra Conscience, painfully enforcing firm ethical standards, But there are degrees if honesty, and the ring can be bio substitute fir human judgment: the concept of self-defense is not recognized, making the ringer the target for universal criminal attack. How can a truly ethical system be formalized as law? Is the ring the only answer? The ring can be effective with the proper programming. But who does the programming?

   Meanwhile, Jeff struggles within the restrictions of the ring to avenge his father, but he discovers he does not know the whole truth. Exciting, suspenseful writing. With imagination providing for a future society which is easily extrapolated from our own. Since the characters are easily translated to those of Tennyson, it is no wonder they interest the reader so deeply.

Rating: *****