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galacticjourneyI really enjoy the broadness of Galaxy's 196-page format. It allows for novellas and novelets, which is a story size I've come to prefer. F&SF has lots of stories per issue, too, but they tend to be very short. Astounding likes serials, which can be fine if they're good, but dreary if they're not. I mentioned last time that this month's issue was looking to be a star all through. Let's see if that prediction held true.
All pictures by Dick Francis
Wilson Tucker's King of the Planet certainly did not disappoint. You may remember that Tucker wrote the excellent Galaxy novel, The City in the Sea. His writing skills are on full display in the instant story, about a old old man who has outlasted all of his comrades. and now lives a solitary existence in a mausoleum, the one remaining survivor of a colony of humans. Every so often, he is visited by other humans from faraway stars. They question him, conduct surveys, and then they leave, puzzled at the self-styled king's longevity and solitude. King is the story of one such visit. There is an interesting, religious twist at the end; what is your take? Let me know, would you?
Silence, by Englishman John Brunner, is also fine reading. Abdul Hesketh has been the captive of the inhuman Charnogs, with whom humanity has been at war with for decades, for 28 years. When he is at last rescued, his mind has been thoroughly damaged by the ordeal, and his treatment at the hands of his saviors, which amounts to near-torture as they attempt to pry useful intelligence from him, is anything but therapeutic. A little let down by the ending, but a fascinating psychological exploration.
Sadly, the last two stories are not up to the standard set by the rest of the magazine. Elizabeth Mann Borgese, polymath daughter of the famed German philosopher, Thoman Mann, has never written anything I really liked, and True Self is no exception. It is a story of plastic surgery and feminine beautification taken to an absurd level. A worthy topic of satire, but not a very engaging piece.
Lastly, "Charles Satterfield" (co-editor Fred Pohl, presumably working for peanuts) has a rather mediocre novelette (Way Up Younder) set on a future colony world with a decidedly Ante-bellum Southern culture with robots standing in for Black slaves. It’s not bad; it just sort of lies there.
Where does that leave us with the star tally?
Sadly, the last two stories dropped the issue from 4 to 3.5 stars. A pity, really. What’s better? A tight, good issue, or a less-good longer issue?
(Confused? Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)
All pictures by Dick Francis
Wilson Tucker's King of the Planet certainly did not disappoint. You may remember that Tucker wrote the excellent Galaxy novel, The City in the Sea. His writing skills are on full display in the instant story, about a old old man who has outlasted all of his comrades. and now lives a solitary existence in a mausoleum, the one remaining survivor of a colony of humans. Every so often, he is visited by other humans from faraway stars. They question him, conduct surveys, and then they leave, puzzled at the self-styled king's longevity and solitude. King is the story of one such visit. There is an interesting, religious twist at the end; what is your take? Let me know, would you?
Silence, by Englishman John Brunner, is also fine reading. Abdul Hesketh has been the captive of the inhuman Charnogs, with whom humanity has been at war with for decades, for 28 years. When he is at last rescued, his mind has been thoroughly damaged by the ordeal, and his treatment at the hands of his saviors, which amounts to near-torture as they attempt to pry useful intelligence from him, is anything but therapeutic. A little let down by the ending, but a fascinating psychological exploration.
Sadly, the last two stories are not up to the standard set by the rest of the magazine. Elizabeth Mann Borgese, polymath daughter of the famed German philosopher, Thoman Mann, has never written anything I really liked, and True Self is no exception. It is a story of plastic surgery and feminine beautification taken to an absurd level. A worthy topic of satire, but not a very engaging piece.
Lastly, "Charles Satterfield" (co-editor Fred Pohl, presumably working for peanuts) has a rather mediocre novelette (Way Up Younder) set on a future colony world with a decidedly Ante-bellum Southern culture with robots standing in for Black slaves. It’s not bad; it just sort of lies there.
Where does that leave us with the star tally?
Sadly, the last two stories dropped the issue from 4 to 3.5 stars. A pity, really. What’s better? A tight, good issue, or a less-good longer issue?
(Confused? Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)
"King of the Planet"
Date: 2014-08-16 10:59 pm (UTC)Thinking about it a bit more, it seems that the author could stir up a bit of controversy with the idea that the rest of the king's people died off because they accepted "peace" (which, of course, has a very specific theological meaning in this story.)
Four stars out of five.
The science fiction aspects of the story were also fine. I liked the way the translation machine worked, and the hints we had of this future (or humanoid alien?) society with its numbers instead of names. I was taken aback a bit when the "girl" showed up, but once I figured out that she really was a girl, and not an adult woman (at least in terms of how the people of her society view things), I was able to accept the term. (I may be a bit paranoid after reading all those SF stories that use the word loosely. I can even remember one story, title and author forgotten, which stated that "The girl was older than the man.")
"Silence"
Date: 2014-08-17 11:24 pm (UTC)The psychological effect of being a prisoner of war, particularly for such a long time, was quite believable. I wonder if the author was thinking of rumors of so-called "brainwashing" during the recent tragedy in Korea.
I also appreciated the fact that the author made use of a wide variety of names to indicate that this was truly an international cast of characters. (I might quibble that this appears to be an all-male crew -- unlike the crew in "King of the Planet" -- but this is a military vessel in the heat of battle, and readers might not accept women in the front lines, even in the far future. Of course, Soviet women did serve as combat pilots and snipers during the Second World War, but the situation is different if one's homeland is invaded by the enemy.)
(Hmmmm. Given that the USSR seems to currently be ahead in the "space race," I wonder if the first person to travel into space will be a Soviet woman? It could serve as fine Cold War propaganda!)
Four out of five stars.
Re: "Silence"
Date: 2014-08-18 01:52 pm (UTC)They may beat us to the first woman in space, however.
Two more stories
Date: 2014-08-19 03:15 am (UTC)Two stars out of five.
"Way Up Yonder" was mostly silly. The whole "antebellum South in space" theme was ridiculous without having any satiric edge to it. (Let's see the author use robots to comment on the current racial situation in the USA!) The thing about the slave robots having their own sort of voodoo rituals in their dances was rather offensive, I thought, and only reinforces stereotypes. And the space war/spy subplot was as blah as the love story.
One and one-half stars out of five.
Re: Two more stories
Date: 2014-08-19 01:33 pm (UTC)My apologies for not writing yesterday. I am still plodding through Astounding.