Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967. Damien Broderick

culture story; Francis G. Rayer’s “Traders’ Planet,” another one about the insufferable Mactavish and Kennedy; “One in Every Port” by Richard Lawrence (pseudonym of Lawrence Edward Bartle) about the domestic travails of a space captain with families at both ends of the journey. And J(onathan) F. Burke’s “Time To Go Home,” about Earth types on a far planet, too uninteresting to finish.

      In this issue, there is no Guest Editorial but an actual Host Editorial by Carnell himself—his first, called “Evolutionary Expansion,” which explains that New Worlds is about to shrink vertically, expand front to back, add 10,000 words, cost less, and stay bi-monthly. Science-Fantasy will go to the same format, but nothing is said about schedule. Carnell confesses some resentment and says he’d rather pay the authors more, but maybe this way their circulation will increase and they’ll be able to do that later. The Nova SF Novels, a brief and troubled series of paperback reprints, are announced.

      One interesting thing about this issue is that advertising has fallen to almost nothing. The only outside ad (as opposed to house ads for New Worlds and the Nova Novels) is half the back cover for the BRE Astounding and Thrilling Wonder. By contrast, the second issue has a half back cover for the BRE Astounding, the full inside back cover for the Fantasy Book Centre, half a page of small ads, and half the inside front cover for another bookseller, Postal Preview. How much this loss of revenue amounted to and what if any impact it had for the magazine’s operations is lost to history.

14. See these covers at http://www.sfcovers.net/mainnav.htm or http://www.philsp.com/mags/sciencefantasy.html.

15. This is a case where Broderick disagrees with Boston, finding the image moderately okay, given the sort of thing it is.

      3: SCIENCE FANTASY, VOLUME 3 (ISSUES 7-9)

Big news: the hyphen is gone from the magazine’s title. As promised, the format is now 7½ x 5½ inches, the page count is 128, the price 1/6. Also, the Assistant is Leslie Flood, though that line is gone in issue 8 and the only editorial name is Carnell’s. The colophon of 7 now bravely asserts “Published Quarterly.” On the other hand, the masthead merely says “1954,” no season indicated. But things are looking up. 8, 9, and 10 proclaim “Published Bi-Monthly” and have unobtrusive publication dates (5/54, 7/54, 9/54) hiding in the lower right corner. The covers of 7-9 are all by Quinn, agreeably composed and colorful but a bit crude in detail—though how much of this is the artist and how much the constraints in reproduction, I don’t know.16 Interior illustrations continue competently but without distinction from the usual suspects.

      7 is fronted by Quinn’s portrayal of Martian ruins. This illustrates Francis G. Rayer’s lead novelette “Seek Earthmen No More,” a quietly nonsensical story in which the protagonist, a space buff, suddenly speaks out against Mars exploration, sways the audience and ruins his employer, who fires him. He decides to go to Mars himself to atone—not bothering to explain to anyone that his “let’s stay home” speech was actually telepathically dictated by an alien entity. And that’s not because he thinks no one will believe him. It just doesn’t seem to occur to him. Of course he gets to Mars and comes up with the completely uninteresting solution to the mystery; colonization will resume.

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      The lead novelette in 9, “This Precious Stone” by H. J. Murdoch (pseudonym of J. T. McIntosh), is of similar ilk to Rayer’s story. This one had been announced for publication in New Worlds, but was diverted to Science Fantasy after New Worlds’s long hiatus in publication. (See volume 2 of our companion survey of that magazine, Building New Worlds, chapter 4.) Martians and Earthfolk are fighting a war on Mars for water. The Earth types need water to fuel their spaceship, so they can go back to Earth and find out why nobody has showed up from there and brought them more water in quite a long time. A fighter pilot engages in a dogfight with Martian who turns out to be female, they nearly kill each other but manage to get to the citadel of the Healers, who offer a deal: we’ll save you if you go on a mission to destroy the propulsion unit of the Earth space ship. They take the deal (it beats dying), and plot mechanics work themselves out mechanically. The big revelation from the old and wise Healers is that sooner or later the spaceship propulsion unit will start a chain reaction that wipes out all life, and that is why no one has heard from Earth recently.

      Both of these stories amount to denatured Planet Stories, going through the pulp adventure motions without conviction. In general that’s the problem with these early issues of Science Fantasy: there’s almost no fantasy, just mostly dilute, derivative, and/or poorly rationalized SF.

      “Dilute” is not a word that fits the lead story in 8, E. C. Tubb’s “Tomorrow,” as over-the-top a piece of noir as has ever appeared in an SF magazine, or maybe anywhere. It’s after the Blowup, not described in any detail but seemingly a limited nuclear war (“He glowered at me [over the videophone], his flickering image streaked and marred with the trails of radioactive particles blown from the mainland, and I twitched with unconscious reflex action to the mind-disturbing radiation from the wind-blown debris.”). Destruction is uneven: there are a lot of ruins but there is still electricity (and videophones), and still diners (though sometimes staffed by mutants), and Carter’s building still has a doorman. Also there are still private detectives, of which Carter is one.

      And here’s the theme: “This was a free world, had been since the Blowup, and a man did what he wanted, when he wanted, and how he wanted. That was freedom, and I was free.” The tone is set in the first three pages, in which Carter objects to his neighbor’s loud music and the neighbor takes exception when he complains (“The room behind him was full of smoke and stank of stale liquor and the heady scent of marijuana.”) What to do? “I shot him three times in the body.” Official reaction: the doorman says, “Next time do your killing outside the building, it saves a lot of work.”

      Carter has an assignment: to track down some papers stolen from Atomic Power Inc., perhaps by agents of the dread “Antis” (anti-what is not much explained). With a brief pause to kill the three vengeful friends of the noisy guy he had already killed, and for appropriate medical care (“The surgeon clucked like an old woman as he saw my arm.”), he throws himself into his work, taking up en route with Lorna, the mottled-skinned mutant waitress from his local café, whom he takes on a date to the fights. (“The bout was between a middle-aged man and a lithe young girl. They fought naked with knives and the man was outclassed from the start...the girl slashed him to ribbons within five minutes... I glanced at Lorna from time to time, and when it seemed that she was about to vomit, I decided that it was time to go.”)

      He receives the obligatory blow on the head about halfway through (“Then the pavement opened beneath me and I was falling, falling, falling. Falling into a black eternity.”) The story continues in this vein as we learn that everyone is double-dealing, and Lorna of course is dead by the end. The moral: “‘Yeah,’ I said, and didn’t recognize the sound of my own voice. ‘Freedom—it’s wonderful.’ Softly I kissed the dead lips.”

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      The short fiction in these three issues, overall, is a bit better than in the earlier ones, with fewer of the clumsy botches of the earlier issues—though also with little that is memorable. Those of greater interest include “Stranger from Space” by Gene Lees (7), about the emotional travails of a spaceman’s wife who has come to hate him because of his long absences. It’s quite well done up until the end, where it turns conventionally sentimental and O.Henry-esque. The blurb says “Miss Lees, a Canadian, captures the feminine angle in a manner no masculine author can hope to emulate.” Gene Lees did not appear again, but one Eugene Lees contributed an article, “Utopias—A Few Years Later,” to Science Fantasy 33 (February 1959). The blurb for that article acknowledges the earlier story by “Canadian journalist Gene Lees,” and adds: “Now working for an American newspaper, he has been on a European tour for his employer and is currently working from Paris” (emphasis supplied). Nothing is said about the earlier gender mis-assignment, so it’s unclear if Lees was engaged in a masquerade at