Thu 30 Sep 2021
Diary Review: IF SCIENCE FICTION January 1967.
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy[9] Comments
IF SCIENCE FICTION. January 1967. Cover by Gray Morrow [as by Morrow]. Edited by Frederik Pohl. Overall rating: 3 stars.
ALGIS BUDRYS “The Iron Thorn.†Serial, part 1 of 4. See review to be posted later.
J. F. BONE “A Hair Perhaps.†A radar technician in a captured station defeats aliens by introducing hair into their ventilation system. (2)
D. M. MELTON “The Scared Starship.†Novelette. A Mars exploration team discovers a starship cowering in a cavern and must sneak up on it to discover its secrets. (3)
ROBERT SILVERBERG “By the Seawall.†Mysterious story of man’s flight to a sea full of strange monsters. Ballardesque. (4)
ROBERT MASON “On the Shallow Seas.†Novelette. Convicts are sentenced to a prison planet and released only when they find a golden “oyster.†Amateurish. (1)
C. C. MacAPP “The Impersonators.†An inspector hunts for a criminal on a planet whose inhabitants can take on any shape. (2)
J. T. McINTOSH “Snow White and the Giants.†Serial, part four of four. See review of the complete novel soon.
October 1st, 2021 at 10:03 am
One thing this review reminds me of is how much I’ve always hated serials in fiction mags, and this particular issue has two of them!
October 1st, 2021 at 10:38 am
The description of “By the Seawall” as Ballard-like, makes me want to read it. I love Ballard. But have never read Silverberg in any quantity.
An impression, maybe false: Novels published in book form, tend to be more complete than versions serialized in fiction magazines. This makes it advisable to wait for the actual book.
October 1st, 2021 at 10:52 am
I suspect you might like Silverberg’s later stories, starting in the mid 60s, a lot more than his earlier work, Mike. His early stories were generally straightforward space opera on an apprentice level, so to speak. There are lots of collections of his short stories you might sample, and they’re usually easily found.
October 1st, 2021 at 2:23 pm
Who the hell is C. C. MacAPP, author of “The Impersonators.†Seems a likely pseudonym. Any idea?
October 1st, 2021 at 2:58 pm
I sure do. C C MacApp was the pen name of Carroll Mather Capps, and he had two or three dozen stories in GALAXY and WORLDS OF TOMORROW as well as IF all through the 60s. Maybe six or seven novels, none particularly notable.
October 1st, 2021 at 3:36 pm
Steve, I like your reviews of magazines and hope you continue them. I’ve never thought of Silverberg as being influenced by Ballard but your comment made me dig out the issue and read the story and I agree it is “ballardesque”.
My note in the issue has my 1967 comments on Budrys’ The Iron Thorn. I like it except I found the last part of the serial to be disappointing.
October 1st, 2021 at 6:51 pm
Walker, There are plenty more magazine reviews like this one. I have at least three notebooks filled with my reviews at the time (1967 on), and I’m only halfway through the first one.
More to come, in other words!
October 1st, 2021 at 8:37 pm
For anyone interested an almost entire run of IF is available to read of download from Internet Archive’s Pulp Archive Collection. Quite a bit of Galaxy and many other pulps and digests are there too.
Gray Morrow had pretty much left comic books other than some work at Warren for a while at this point doing digest and paperback covers. Somewhere after Perry Rhodan he came back with a vengeance.
November 28th, 2021 at 6:41 pm
Though Harlan Ellison or his heirs have successfully had his stories excised from those issues on Archive.org, and perhaps a few others have as well. (And, of course, they ain’t pulps.)
MacApp (a pseud that might get him more grins these years) did hang around a fair bit. Robert Mason (not my father, who had the same name, and was an sf reader) was a soldier in those years, and a fairly young one, who would later write the military memoir CHICKENHAWK (not a title that has aged gracefully) and the novels SOLO and WEAPON…he also signed the “hawk” petition about the Vietnam War in F&SF and the GALAXY group of magazines in ’68. https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2012/02/1968-judith-merril-and-kate-wilhelm-put.html