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

“True, science is catching up with us all the time, but what of it? Science fiction is a form of prophecy and we should be the last to grumble because of the increasing demand for accuracy.” Even fantasy must follow its inner logic.

      Tubb cautions: “Don’t misunderstand me here, I am the last to advocate sex or sadism as the means to liven up the stories. Science fiction has so-far remained clean, let’s keep it that way. There is nothing clever or desirable in taking advantage of the freedom of the field to exploit our own wish-fulfillments, erotic dreams, and frustrations.” (J. G. Ballard’s first publication, “Prima Belladonna” in Science Fantasy 20, is about eighteen months away—the beginning of the end, in Tubb’s terms.)

      In 15, we find “Dear Editor” by “The Readers,” which comprises one long and one very long tirade against Jonathan Burke’s editorial. The introductory note indicates that Burke’s editorial “touched off some spirited replies” and it’s only fair to let the readers have a say. The very long tirade is by none other than Helen M. Urban of Hollywood, California, author of “Pass the Salt” in 13, the militantly cute one about the man who married a witch. Here, however, she takes up the cudgels of scientific accuracy, taking a passing side-swipe at the reference in a John Kippax story to the “dark side” of the moon and energetically explaining to Burke that spectrographic analysis is quite sufficient to demonstrate that you would need a space suit on Mars. And further: “Burke! Part of the fun of writing s-f is thinking about the details which you denounce.”

      Burke’s other assailant is Ed Luksus of Gary, Indiana, who says: “I’ve read enough of this ‘take the science out of science fiction’ to gain an ill temper. Messrs. Crossen and Tenn have been answered on this side of the Atlantic by the question ‘What science?’ I choose to query Mr. Burke in the same manner. The last story with any science in it was Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement which was serialised in Astounding Science Fiction two years ago.”

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

23. Broderick finds it far more interesting than that, one of Quinn’s best covers.

24. Reference is to the much-anthologized story of that title by Henry Kuttner.

25. Campbell wrote in response to a reader’s letter in the September 1948 Astounding Science Fiction: “We have specified to our authors that the ‘atomic doom’ stories are not wanted, for precisely the reasons you give.” Reader W. N. McBain had complained: “People are getting atomic warfare thrown at them from all angles these days. I for one am heartily sick of it. You are no longer a prophet crying in the wilderness. I’ve been reading enough of this type of story to have a reasonable idea of what ravening energies lie in the heart of the atom, and I want a bit of pure escapism.”

      6: SCIENCE FANTASY, VOLUME 6 (ISSUES 16-18)

      Science Fantasy continues along in the groove the magazine reached in the previous several issues, with uneven but interesting lead stories, a reliable contingent of capably done short stories (original and reprint), and an equally reliable contingent of the bloody awful in each issue.

      Interior illustrations continue nondescript. Guest editorials have disappeared and there is no other nonfiction. Advertising has completely disappeared except for house ads. The price stays at 2/-, publishing remains at Derwent House and printing at Rugby Advertiser Ltd., and the schedule remains aspirational. It says “Published Bi-Monthly,” but the dates appearing unobtrusively in the lower right of the contents page say 11/55, 2/56, and 5/56, respectively. Another constant is the proofreading. There doesn’t seem to be much. In one story, for example, a character is “Deidre” or “Deirdre” depending on what page you’re looking at.

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Issue 16 starts out with another pretty striking Quinn cover depicting a couple of walls decorated with trophy human (and alien) heads.26 This illustrates the lead novelette, E. C. Tubb’s “The Wager,” an engagingly barbaric yawp about some decadent aliens dropped on Earth for a spot of urban sport hunting. Bad luck, they’ve picked the city where Gort, a member of the equally alien Guardians, is vacationing among the primitive Earthfolk. The viewpoint shifts among Gort, the bad guys, and the local police, and things move along quickly and bloodily in capable pulp fashion.

      However, the outstanding items in the issue are two US reprints, C. M. Kornbluth’s “The Mindworm” and Jerome Bixby’s “It’s a Good Life.” Interestingly, the former is credited as coming from Kornbluth’s UK collection The Mindworm and Other Stories (Michael Joseph 1955) and not from his previous Ballantine collection The Explorers (1954). Its original appearance in Worlds Beyond in December 1950 is not mentioned. The blurb to “It’s a Good Life” (first published a couple of years previously in Frederik Pohl’s anthology Star Science Fiction Stories 2 [Ballantine 1953]) hints that it’s a reprint but isn’t explicit.

      In addition, there are three pretty good original fantasy stories. John Brunner’s “Death Do Us Part” is a clever and amusing Unknownish story about a ghost who wants a divorce. Equally lightweight and almost as clever is Duncan Lamont’s “The Editor Regrets...” in which a magazine editor receives a ms. titled “The Perfect Story,” which changes according to who’s reading it, and which always comes true.

      “Heart’s Desire” by Niall Wilde (pseudonym of Eric Frank Russell) is about a nasty and unattractive Irishman who makes a deal with the Devil—excuse me, the Divvil—to make him irresistible to women. As usual in deal-with-the-Devil stories, he wasn’t careful enough about what he wished for. (This is the same story later published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1960, modestly revised, as “A Divvil with the Women.”) I am surprised to see that Russell was capable of controlling his own mannerisms long enough to bring off this pretty smooth stage Irish performance.

      Bringing up the rear are John Kippax’s “Hounded Down,” another piece of tiresome whimsy and Runyon pastiche about Dimple, the Martian dachshund (“Cor stone me through an airlock I say,” etc.), and William F. Temple’s labored and tedious “Uncle Buno,” about a kid who has a Martian math tutor who also develops into the solar system’s greatest painter. The story bounces back and forth among nostalgia, moralism, irony and outright bitterness until it batters itself to death. But on the whole, I imagine the readers of 1955 thought they were getting their money’s worth from this issue.

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Issue 17 starts with one of Quinn’s worst covers, crude and stiff-looking, illustrating Brian W. Aldiss’s “Non-Stop.” 27 Aldiss didn’t think much of it either: he referred to “a cover illustration by Gerald Quinn, a cover to my mind as unconvincing as his enigmatic cover of orange shapes had been convincing” in Bury My Heart At W. H. Smith’s (Hodder & Stoughton 1990), chapter 8. (I can’t figure out what this “enigmatic cover of orange shapes” refers to.)

      “Non-Stop” is of course the first cut at what became Aldiss’s first novel. It is much shorter—thirty-seven digest-size pages—and it’s quite interesting, in the sense of “may you live in interesting times.” Frankly, it grated on me like fingernails on a blackboard. You know the story: primitive people obviously living in a generation-spaceship. The protagonist and company rebel, leave their community, and find out they’ve actually been in Earth orbit for generations. Their culture is dominated by the “Teaching,” a quasi-religion based on the idea that people are despicable. (“You know what the litany teaches us, father. We are the sons of cowards and our days are passed in fear,” says the protagonist to the priest who is trying to persuade him to leave. So the priest tells him that it’s really cowardly to run away, and then he’s game to go.)

      The