Mon 13 Jan 2025
SF Diary Review: IF SCIENCE FICTION, September 1967.
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews , Magazines[4] Comments
IF SCIENCE FICTION – September 1967. Editor: Frederik Pohl. Cover artist: Gray Morrow. Overall rating: ***
C. C. MacAPP “The Fortunes of Peace.” Novelette. Forced to make a deal with Kyshan pirates, “Taintless” Wend manages to doublecross them while trapped in orbit about a dead dwarf star. (3)
ROBERT SILVERBERG “Bride Ninety-One.” A tale of interworld marriage, between a Terran and a Suvornese, with insight into marriage customs or mores. (5)
PERRY A. CHAPDELAINE “To Serve the Masters.” First story; novelette. The Masters have a sensory organ which allows them to feel emotions and thus has enabled them to dominate all other life forms in their part of the galaxy. Humans are bred for generation to give them specialized intelligence. Such a specialist in genetics is given the task of improving the Masters’ race, but his solution forces them to begin the path of evolution from the beginning again. The genetics goes over my head and tends to make the story drier than it should have been. (3)
J. G. BALLARD “Venus Smiles.” Novelette. A sonic metal statue begins to grow and has to be dismembered as scrap, with disastrous results. I resent Ballard’s references to “twanging sitars” and “hack classics.” (2)
PHILIP JOSE FARMER “A Bowl Bigger Than Earth.” Novelette. Farmer’s view of Hell: regimented life in brass houses in sexless bodies. Not to be confused with his Riverworld series, (2)
JAMES BLISH “Faust Aleph-Null.” Serial, part 2 of 3. To be reviewed when all three parts have been read.
HARL VINCENT “Invader.” Novelette. An engineer gets an impulse to help a strange girl in distress, and in actuality helps a princess’s mind trapped on Earth to return to Tau Ceti. Planet Stories brought up to date, almost. (2)
January 13th, 2025 at 11:15 pm
Typo (spell-correction gone weird?) in the Blish serial entry.
Harl Vincent! Lured back “in” by Pohl’s interest in adventure SF in his IF?
January 14th, 2025 at 1:37 am
That was some typo, all right. It’s fixed now, I hope, so if someone didn’t see it, they’ll never know.
As for Harl Vincent, you’re right. Here’s the first paragraph of his Wikipedia entry:
“Harl Vincent (October 19, 1893 – May 5, 1968) was the pen name of Harold Vincent Schoepflin, an American mechanical engineer and science fiction author. He was published regularly in science fiction pulp magazines.”
Most of his writing occurred between 1928 and 1942. Then a long gap between
“Voice from the Void”, Amazing Stories, June 1942.
and
“Invader”, If, September 1967.
which of course is the case at hand.
January 14th, 2025 at 7:59 am
IF won the Hugo for Best Professional Magazine that year. It probably should have won for Ugliest (or Cheapest Produced Professional Magazine; Pohl had a lot to overcome as editor.
Several of the authors — C.C. MacApp, Perry A. Chapdelaine — have faded into obscurity. Harl Vincent was already there. MacApp coulda been a contender had not his decade-long career been cut short by his death. Vincent had been a force to be reckoned with in the early days of SF, but as you noted, petered out in the early 40s.
What remains is a mixed bag. The Silverberg has often been reprinted (and was even included in four of his collections). Farmer’s story was reprinted (in English, any way) only in Farmer collections. Ballard’s tale originally appeared in SCIENCE FANTASY in 1957 and was reprinted in his first collection in 1962; it was retrofitted as a Vermillion Sands story for this appearance in IF.
As for “Faust Aleph-Null,” it was published in book form as BLACK EASTER, the first half of THE DEVIL’s DAY (which concluded in THE DAY AFTER JUDGMENT). THE DEVIL’S DAY itself was one-third of the thematic trilogy AFTER SUCH KNOWLEDGE, which included the non-genre DR. MIRABILIS and the classic A CASE OF CONSCIENCE. BLACK WASTER was nominated for a Nebula Award, which left me scratching my head because I found the book to be gratuitous and meaningless, one of the worst things that Blish ever wrote. I could be mistaken but half a century has not changed my opinion.
For this issue, the Silverberg and the Ballard are the clear winners.
January 14th, 2025 at 2:48 pm
I liked the Silverberg, but was only so-so on the Ballard. I wonder if I might like the latter more now than when I might have been too young to appreciate it.
I reviewed the Blish serial/novel later, but I do not remember anything about it. To me now I am willing to wager I didn’t care for it, but my younger self continues to surprise me.
Thanks, Jerry, for such a comprehensive overview of the authors and stories in this issue. Pohl may not have had much of a budget to work with, but he managed to put out better than decent magazines, issue after issue of each.