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The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1970

Edited by Edward Ferman Mercury Press

In this issue the normal Book Review column is missing but Baird Searles reviews various films with an SF/fantasy connection. In his SCIENCE: But How? Piece, Isaac Asimov discusses the need, as he saw it, for birth control since the imperative to have children which obtained in history’s tribal societies no longer pertains in the modern age. As a result he mentions various non-harmful but also noon-child -producing sexual practices not normally to be found in the pages of a mid-twentieth century SF magazine.
There is also a cartoon by Gahan Wilson

In the fiction:-
The Mayday by Keith Roberts is one of his “Anita” stories. Here his perky witch is called through her crystal ball to rescue a young mermaid (she calls them Jennifers) captured by humans and kept in a cage. Roberts’s writing is always well executed with precise descriptions and well observed human behaviours.
Starting From Scratch by Robert Sheckley reminded me a little bit of Brian Aldiss’s Heresies of the Huge God except the premise is more or less reversed. A man is disturbed from his dream by a call for help from a creature whose world has been disturbed by a huge incursion from the sky.
Reading The Throne and the Usurper by Christopher Anvil it’s as if the New Wave of the 1960s never happened. The writing is perfunctory and heavy with exposition, the viewpoint character has it all too easy. The plot is about the megalomania of a telepath.
Where The Misfortune Cookie by Charles E Fritch is going to end up becomes obvious, if not from the title then from when the narrator’s first fortune cookie message comes true. The premise is followed logically but to modern readers the story usage (twice) of the word “coolie” jars more than a little.
With Time Dog by Richard A Lupoff, again the title gives the game away somewhat and again the narration is of its time. A sick child, Janet, blames a mysteriously appearing and disappearing dog she calls Soapy for taking her inhaler away. As her condition slowly worsens, Soapy brings her an advanced toy, another dog performs similar tricks and a obviously wrongly (to Janet’s father) dated comic book is left, plus an apparently identical inhaler.
In a reprint of The Venus of Ille by Prosper Mérimée, translated from the French by Francis B Shaffer, a traveller in southern France encounters a recently unearthed statue which may be of Roman origin. The statue it seems is capable of independent action. Unfortunately, the translation uses a number of US colloquialisms at odds with both the tone of the piece and its setting.
Alpha Bets by Sonya Dorman is one of the author’s stories featuring Roxy Rimidon of the Planet Patrol. The main focus is on a kind of future competitive Games with dangerous elements. Roxy organises the replacement of her brother’s injured team mate by a man from off-planet.

Pedant’s corner:- Lucas’ (Lucas’s,) Roberts’ (x 4 Roberts’s,) an unnecessarily italicised “Gafonel,” an opened parenthesis that is never closed, “social pressure were in favour” (either, ‘pressures’, or, ‘was in favour’,) sandas (sandals.)

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1962

Edited by Avram Davidson, British Edition, Atlas Publishing and Distribution by arrangement with Mercury Press, 112 p.

Note: the cover painting shown right is the one on my copy but the contents differ from those listed on the image which was for the US edition for April 1962. The British editions obviously did not match the US ones.

In those days the magazine had no Editorial column nor was the text of its stories – except the title page for Uncle Arly here – laid out in two columns as it would be in later years.

Isaac Asimov’s SCIENCE column was going strong. Here in Hot Stuffa he considers the highest* temperature possible in the universe (the interior of a star about to go supernova.)

Saturn Rising by Arthur C Clarke.1 A veteran of the first two trips to Saturn on a lecture tour is buttonholed by the hotel owner, an enthusiast for that planet, eager for commercial opportunity.

Brown Robert by Terry Carr2 is both SF and a horror story. Arthur Leacock assists young Robert Ernsohn, brown Robert, to make the first trip through time. This is one of the few SF stories to deal with the fact that time travel must also involve space travel.

My Dear Emily by Joanna Russ is a vampire story set in 1880s San Francisco. As well as the Emily of the title another of its characters is named Charlotte; two names obviously chosen to invoke thoughts of the Brontë sisters. Yet the overall effect is far from that template.

The Man Without a Planet by Kate Wilhelm.3 The titular man carried on with a space voyage despite that meaning the death of his companions. The sympathies of the story’s narrator are somewhat like the protagonist of Robert Silverberg’s To See the Invisible Man.

Darfgarth by Vance Aandahl. The titular character is a wandering minstrel whose mandolin has a magical effect on the locals he stops to serenade. Until he goes too far.

Stanley Toothbrush by Carl Brandon.4 One morning, while shaving, viewpoint character Herbert thinks the word ‘shelf’ is ridiculous and all his shelves disappear. Later his girtlfriend teases him about a (non-existent) new boyfriend and he turns up on her doorstep. The have great problems with him – till she imagines him away.

In Uncle Arly by Ron Goulart5 the uncle of an ex-girlfriend has begun to haunt Tim Barnum’s television set, every Tuesday evening for half an hour. He also pops up on the radio.

Subcommittee by Zenna Henderson.6 Talks to end the war between humans and the alien Linjeni are going nowhere. Serena’s husband Thorn is on the talks committee. Their son Splinter finds a way through the fence between the two communities and makes friends with Doovie, a Linjeni child. The rest of the story more or less writes itself but 60 years on it is striking how the cultural assumptions of the time were entrenched even in SF: the Linjeni females in this story are as bound to their families as human women were in those days. Of course it may not have been possible to get anything else past a male editor.

*as known then.

Pedant’s corner:- awave length (now is one word, wavelength.) Centigrade (that unit of temperature is now designated Celsius,) “56 hydrogen nuclei … are converted into 1 helium nuclei” (the nuclei is plural, so the ‘1’ is wrong. Context and the subsequent text suggests ‘14 helium nuclei’.) Later we have 19 helium nuclei where again 14 makes more sense.
1Ingalls’ (Ingalls’s,) “It took me awhile” (a while.) 2Mr Lewis’ assistant (x 2, Lewis’s.) 3zombi-like (zombie-like.) 4focussing (focusing,) “‘An what do you mean’” (And,) a miising full stop at the end of a sentence, a double quote mark at the beginning of a piece of direct speech when elsewhere there are only single ones. 5 “and pointing at the fat man on the set who was singing again. ‘And who’s this guy?’” (is missing a ‘said’ before ‘And who’s this guy?’) “before go to the bank” (before I go to the bank.) “Jean left them” (elsewhere she is Jeanne.) 6 “and felt of the knitting” (and felt the knitting.)

Reminiscences

Back when I was young I used to have an order for Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly.

Buchan had been a football player in the 1910s and 1920s – most notably with Sunderland. His career was interrupted of course by the Great War (in which he served and won the Military Medal.)

His eponymous monthly magazine (started in 1951) was the first dedicated to football.

One article I strongly remember (though I forget most of the details) was about the longest FA Cup tie ever played, which went to several replays before finally being resolved.

However the magazine stopped publishing in 1974. When my newsagent pointed this out to me I told him (being well into SF by that time) that I had in any case decided to transfer my order to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (aka to us aficionados as F&SF.)

I forget how many years I kept the order – probably till around the time I got married. I still have all those issues in a cupboard somewhere, though, despite several house moves since.

Though I was never much into the fantasy side of F&SF I did remember with some fondness stories written by Phyllis Eisenstein about one Alaric the minstrel who had been born with the ability to teleport merely by thinking. As a bit of nostalgia I have bought and am now reading a novel featuring Alaric (Born to Exile – see my sidebar for the moment.) I wonder how it will stand up.

If it does there’s a sequel titled In the Red Lord’s Reach which I may then purchase.

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