Black Gate

These issues are significant in that they include the serialization of a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser novella — but not just any novella: this includes the first and nearly only contribution to the series from Leiber’s original collaborator, and supposed model for the Mouser, Harry Fischer.

Each cover is by Ed Emshwiller, and they both illustrate the serial. The interiors in January are by Emsh, Lutjens (first name perhaps Peter?), Dan Adkins, Lee Brown Coye, and Virgil Finlay. In February they are from the same folks except for Coye.

The editorials concern, in January, Harry Fischer’s role in the creation of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and in February, serious research in both the US and the Soviet Union into telepathy. There is a brief book review column in January, by S. E. Cotts, in which she praises Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial very highly, and is somewhat more reserved on R. DeWitt Miller’s Stranger Than Life, one of those books about “unexplainable events.” The February issue includes a lettercol, According to You, with letters from Bill Wolfenbarger (praise for Schomburg, and for the more horrific side of fantasy), E. E. Evers (much disdain for the November 1961 issue, even for the Le Guin story), and Norman Masters (hated Sharkey’s “The Aftertime,” likes Le Guin).

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The cover to this issue is by Robert Adragna. Interiors are by Adragna and George Schelling. The editorial concerns Sam Moskowitz’ series of Profiles of SF writers, and signals a change to essays by Moskowitz addressing SF’s treatment of certain themes, beginning in this issue with a discussion of Philip Jose Farmer and — you guessed it! — sex and SF.

The article — a fairly long one — begins with a review of some of the SF stories that occasioned controversy by brushing up against sexual issues, and continues with a detailed look at Farmer’s career to date (1964), including of course the controversy surrounding “The Lovers,” but also mentioning I Owe For the Flesh, the first version of To Your Scattered Bodies Go, which had been written for a contest in the early ’50s, and won, and was lost (I understand) after the contest sponsor (Shasta) ran out of money. On the whole, it’s an interesting and worthwhile piece, one of the better things I’ve seen from Moskowitz.

Robert Silverberg’s book review column covers Alfred Bester’s collection The Dark Side of the Earth, Fritz Leiber’s novel The Wanderer, and The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology, edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. Silverberg approves of all three books, and reserves especial praise for The Wanderer — a book which, I would suggest, has not retained much of a reputation (I myself have not got through it on two tries, though it has been a long time, and I suppose I should give it another chance.)

The stories are:

Short Novel

“The Further Sky,” by Keith Laumer (20,000 words)

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This was the last issue edited by Cele Goldsmith — with the next issue she became Cele Lalli, after her marriage.

Ed Emshwiller contributes the cover this time, to my taste not one of his best. Interiors are by Virgil Finlay, George Schelling, and a couple I don’t recognized, identified in the magazine only by their last names: McLane and Blair. Norman Lobsenz’ editorial discusses the effects of space and alien environments on humans, and goes on to wonder how we can justify terraforming planets on which other species live. Ben Bova’s science article, “Operation Shirtsleeve,” then discusses exactly that — how to terraform other planets so that humans can live comfortably there (in “shirtsleeves”).

Robert Silverberg’s book review column, The Spectroscope, first takes on Edgar Rice Burroughs, both on his own (The Cave Girl) and via a slavish imitator (Otis Adelbert Kline, with Prince of Peril). Silverberg’s verdict: “unmitigated trash, subliterate claptrap barely worth the time of children.”

(My verdict, based on a very limited sample (ERB’s first novel, A Princess of Mars aka “Under the Moons of Mars“) is a bit more forgiving — claptrap and trash it may be, but it’s definitely mitigated — at least early in his career Burroughs offered an energetic glee that made him worth reading despite the silliness.)

Next he reviews a couple of collections by major writers — one is an SFWA Grand Master, the other died too young to be named a Grand Master but would certainly have been one eventually, and one of the very best. So: Silverberg finds James Gunn’s Future Imperfect somewhat disappointing next to the best of Gunn’s work; but he finds Sturgeon in Orbit surprisingly better: even though it features uncollected early ’50s stories it manages to surprise with some good stuff, particularly “The Incubi of Parallel X,” a wild piece full of cliches from Planet Stories in 1951 that Sturgeon redeemed with his panache. (I read that story in the Planet Stories issue it appeared in (not in 1951 though!) and I completely agree!)

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Back to Cele Goldsmith’s era at Amazing. This issue has a couple of middling stories by two of the strangest and most original of SF writers. The cover is by Lloyd Birmingham, illustrating Cordwainer Smith’s “Drunkboat.” Interiors are by Birmingham, George Schelling, and Frank R. Paul (who had just died). Indeed, Norman Lobsenz’ editorial opens by mentioning Paul’s death (Paul, of course, famously painted the cover for the very first issue of Amazing); and goes on somewhat randomly to mention a National Spelling Bee winner who credited reading SF for his vocabulary (though reading Amazing could hardly have helped his spelling, given the standard of proofreading displayed this issue!); and then mentions Groff Conklin’s latest anthology, Great Science Fiction About Doctors (which in fact made a point of including a number of stories BY doctors, though none by the Good Doctor*).

(*Of course, Isaac Asimov was not a medical doctor, though he was a professor at a medical school.)

“Or So You Say …,” the letter column, features letters by Kathryn Avila (complaining about the low quality of the July issue), Norman M. Davis (praising Robert Young’s “Redemption,” one of the stories Avila had complained about), and Paul Scaramazza, theorizing that the then low (he says) status of fantasy literature is the fault of readers without imagination.

In The Spectroscope, S. E. Cotts reviews a now quite obscure book, The Fools of Time, by William E. Barrett, and an anthology from Sam Moskowitz, The Coming of the Robots. (She [as I now assume Cotts was] didn’t like the first, did like the second.) Moskowitz himself contributes a Profile of Edmond Hamilton.

The stories are:

Novelets

“Drunkboat,” by Cordwainer Smith (11,200 words)
“The Prince of Liars,” by L. Taylor Hansen (17,300 words)

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The cover for this issue is by Leo Summers. Interior illustrations are by Dan Adkins (who also contributes the back cover) and Walker. The editorial recounts two recent cases of apparently fantastical occurrences in real life — with, in both cases, pretty straightforward mundane explanations. The letter column features letters from Leo A. Brodeur (a professor of French Literature at Laurentian University), discussing SF writers as “the poets of science”; and R. Martinkivi, praising the magazine.

The stories are:

Novelets

“A Bit of the Dark World,” by Fritz Leiber (12,500 words)
“A Silence of Wings,” by Daniel F. Galouye (10,500 words)

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An issue of Galaxy from fairly late in Fred Pohl’s tenure. There’s one fairly notable story here, and a couple more good ones, but to me the most interesting feature was Algis Budrys’ book review column.

But let’s begin at the beginning. The cover is by Douglas Chaffee. Interiors are by Jack Gaughan, Joe Wehrle, Jr., Dan Adkins, Virgil Finlay, Larry S. Todd illustrating his own piece (not surprising, as Todd, then just 20, became fairly well-known later for his comics work), and two artists whose full names I didn’t know: Brand and Safrani. Buddy Lortie identified them for me: Brand was Roger Brand, a fan artist who became a pro, and did comics work as well; and Safrani was Shehbaz Safrani, who seems to still do fine art. I should note that the magazine was very thick in this era — 196 pages (including covers). My copy has staples: I don’t know offhand if that was normal.

The features include Willy Ley’s long-running science column, “For Your Information,” discussing Explorer-1. Fred Pohl contributes an editorial, discussing the upcoming Presidential election (the one in which Nixon beat Humphrey and Wallace), and speculating about computerized voting from one’s home (even on laws, declaration of war, etc. — i.e. direct democracy). There is a Bio feature, Galaxy’s Stars, giving tidbits about a few of the authors. One piece, “The Warbots,” by Larry S. Todd, is designated a “Non-Fact Article,” and it discusses the history of tanks, basically, far into the future.

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Cover by George Barr	Cover by Emsh

Another pair of Cele Goldsmith-edited issues of Fantastic, featuring a Poul Anderson serial. And an interesting letter on the subject of Mervyn Peake by Michael Moorcock.

The editorials, by Norman Lobsenz, consider a Russian project to increase silk production by selecting for male silkworms, and a theory that the physical constants may not be constant. The covers are by George Barr (quite good) and Ed Emshwiller (not his best). Interiors are by Leo Summers, Dan Adkins, Emshwiller, and George Schelling.

The letter column was quite irregular in Fantastic, but it’s present in the July issue, for something of a special occasion, perhaps. Michael Moorcock, then a very young writer (his first story, in collaboration with Barrington Bayley, appeared in New Worlds in 1959, and his first solo work in 1961 in Science Fantasy), had read comments about Mervyn Peake and his Gormenghast books in Fantastic earlier that year, and he wrote to mention that Peake (whom he knew well) was seriously ill and unlikely to write another Titus Groan book.

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This is an earlyish Cele Goldsmith issue. Unusually, it has only three stories.

The editorial is given over to a reprint of part of an interview with an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics from New York University, Richard Courant, that had been published in Challenge. Courant is presented as something of a skeptic about computers, though as presented his skepticism seems sensible enough. The only other feature is a pretty short book review column (it was cut, and the lettercol eliminated, to make room for the complete novel in one issue). The books reviewed were Level 7, by Mordecai Roshwald, a once famous post-apocalyptic novel, now little-known, which S. E. Cotts praises highly in terms that make it sound absolutely dreadful; and The Synthetic Man, by Theodore Sturgeon, a novel better known as The Dreaming Jewels, which Cotts also likes. The cover is by Alex Schomburg, and the interiors are by Virgil Finlay and Dan Adkins.

A word about S. E. Cotts, the book reviewer for Amazing throughout most of Cele Goldsmith’s tenure. I have long wondered who Cotts was, and also whether Cotts might have been a woman. In recent correspondence, Robert Silverberg, who succeeded Cotts as Amazing’s book reviewer (after a one column appearance by Lester Del Rey), said that he thought (but was not sure) that S. E. Cotts was actually Cele Goldsmith’s sister. I have never heard that before, and it’s pretty intriguing. (We might note that Floyd C. Gale, book reviewer for Galaxy in the 1950s, was editor H. L. Gold’s brother.)

The cover story is a novelet, “Meteor Strike!”, by Donald E. Westlake (12,500 words). Westlake, who was born in 1933 and died in 2008, was one of the great crime fiction writers of our time. I am particularly fond of his comic capers featuring the thief John Dortmunder. Others plump for his darker novels about a criminal named Parker, written as by Richard Stark. Early in his career, Westlake published a fair amount of Science Fiction, before bidding a bitter farewell to the field in a rant published in the great fanzine Xero. Westlake complained about SF’s conservatism, and particularly about John Campbell. Alas, I feel his argument — which had some merit — loses some force simply because, truth be told, Westlake was a pretty mediocre SF writer.

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Here we come to the very last two issues of Amazing edited by Cele Lalli.

The editorials, as ever by Norman Lobsenz, consider the difficulty of accurate and precise time measurements, and a very brief discussion of David Bunch, the writer readers of Amazing and Fantastic loved to hate. Lobsenz quotes Bunch (“I’m not in this business… to entertain. I’m here to make the reader think… chastise him for the terrible… world we allow… The reader I want is the one who wants the anguish… All space must look askance at us.”)

This last Lalli issue was the last issue Bunch would appear in (not surprisingly) for over three years — he didn’t return to Amazing until late 1968, under editor Barry N. Malzberg — and the only one for which he had the cover story. (One suspects the June cover was partly Lalli and Lobsenz saying, “Heck, we don’t care anymore, we’re going to promote what WE like!”) The covers are each by Gray Morrow. There are only two interior illustrations, both in May, by Morrow and by Virgil Finlay.

The letter column is gone, again perhaps in view of the upcoming sale of the magazines. Robert Silverberg conducts the book review column, The Spectroscope, sharply and indeed acerbically, to good effect. In May he reviews an Avalon Books reprint of George Allen England’s Darkness and Dawn, a somewhat famous piece of proto-SF. Silverberg calls it “a cruel resurrection,” and indeed it does seem awful (and shockingly racist) as described. He also covers Walter Cole’s Checklist of Science Fiction Anthologies (with much praise) and The Worlds of Robert F. Young (“I am not fond of the writing of Robert F. Young” – given that Young was a Goldsmith/Lalli regular, this is a perhaps brave statement – and a sensible one!)

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