A real turkey (October 1959 Astounding; 8-27-1959)

[galacticjourney]

When last we left off with the September 1959 Astounding, things were looking awfully bleak. The star-o-meter stood at a limp 2 stars, and I had poor hopes of raising the needle.

I am happy to report that things got better. Well, "happy" is too strong a word. I can honestly say that the quality improved, but I wouldn't have bought the magazine on the strength of its latter half.

Algis Budrys has the best story of the issue, no surprise there. His The Sound of Breaking Glass is the post-apocalyptic tale of a woman who has been holed up in a well-defended service station for twenty years as the world has slid into anarchy due to the widespread use and abuse of the drug, Lobotimol. Said medication makes the imbiber wholly vulnerable to suggestion--not the prescription for a healthy society. Originally a therapeutic pharmaceutical, it became a weapon that was cheap and ubiquitous.

Well-written and chilling, like most of Budrys' work.

The short-short article by Lt. James W. Owen, Fiction? Reality! is about the realization of arctic exploration gear that was posited as science fiction in a previous Chris Anvil story (Sellers' Market). Brief, but decent.

Amazingly, Randall Garrett's other story (under the pen-name of David Gordon), ...or your money back! is not terrible. It's actually pretty good, even though it is yet another story with the Heironymous Machine as its gimmick. In this tale, though, it is used to enhance psychokinetic powers to cheat at gambling. The sheer implausibility of the device is used as a legal defense by the perpetrator. A cute twist.



Finally, On handling the data, by newcomer M.I. Mayfield, is a depiction of one side of a correspondence exchange in which a graduate student makes an exciting discovery and then subverts it to gain his doctorate. I'm not quite sure I got the point, so I'm hoping my smarter readers can enlighten me.

All told, the latter half raised this issue into 2.5 star territory, which is as low as Astounding has gone this past year (it's never broken the 3 star mark, sadly). Read it at your peril.

In two days--the September 1959 IF! And then on to the new stuff... October!

(Confused? Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

Comments

"On Handling the Data"

[victoria_silverwolf]

Thanks for the warning about a particularly poor issue of ASF. I didn't bother wasting thirty-five cents picking one up at the local drug store. I was intrigued by your description of "On Handling the Data," however, so I sneaked a peak at it while enjoying a thick milk shake. (I was careful not to get any ice cream on the issue, and I left a ten-cent tip, but perhaps that was still very wicked of me.)

In any case, "On Handling the Data" is a very strange story. It's hardly fiction at all, really, but more of a philosophical treatise. Looking past all the biological jargon, which seems accurate but irrelevant, the basic premise seems to be that human minds somehow create consensus reality by observing it, and then comparing what they observe with what has previously been observed.

The author seems to have played up to one of the editor's hobby horses (telekenesis) while simultaneously dismissing it as an explanation for the postulated phenomenon. Nicely played!

The story seems almost mystical, in a very un-ASF way. It also seems anti-ASF in that, if we accept the premise, our minds are pre-programmed to create reality in a certain way which is controlled by previous observers. Such a vision of the universe hardly allows for the super-individualistic "competent man" (usually with a "wild talent" or two to control reality) so often seen in ASF!

Re: "On Handling the Data"

[galacticjourney]

"the basic premise seems to be that human minds somehow create consensus reality by observing it, and then comparing what they observe with what has previously been observed."

I got that part. So is the idea that the author decided to observe reality per the consensus to get his PhD?

Also, the idea that we are preconditioned to view the universe in ways set by previous observers seems counter to history (viz. Phlogiston vs. oxygen theory; I think Thomas Kuhn calls it his "paradigm theory").

Re: "On Handling the Data"

[victoria_silverwolf]

"So is the idea that the author decided to observe reality per the consensus to get his PhD?"

Although that is certainly one plausible reading, I tend to think that the protagonist (like everyone else in the world, it seems) has no choice but to go along with consensus reality as outside influences lead him to unconsciously accept it. (This is why "young" and "inexperienced" proto-scientists made "mistakes" as they observed their experiments, then got the "correct" results when "wiser" minds show them their "errors.")

One could also read the story as an allegory for going along with the crowd in any way, which we all do to some extent or other.

You make a good point. The premise of the story offers no good explanation for why Newtonian physics was refined (not overturned) by Einsteinian physics. Of course, one could postulate that certain minds are manipulating reality more than others, but then we wind up with another "wild talent" story . . .

Re: "On Handling the Data"

[galacticjourney]

We all know that PhD means Psionic (head-based) Director...

[laurose8]

Hope you don't mind, I decided the data one was - no, definitely not.

May I ask about the Reynolds? He's written a couple of deplorable ones about Native Americans. On the other hand, sometimes he seems to be the token Marxist.

[galacticjourney]

The data one was... what?

Reynolds didn't have any stories in this issue. He had the one in June about timelooping aliens and Oktoberfest. I haven't seen anything dealing with Native Americans (Randy Garrett, on the other hand...)

OOC If you check the tags, you can see all the things Mack Reynolds has done that I have reviewed. I love that feature.

[laurose8]

Thank you. I apologise for missing the bracketed 'June'.

Looking forward with the rest to October. Hope it makes up for this.