The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1970
Posted in Fantasy, Science Fiction at 15:00 on 16 March 2023
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.)