Edited by John W. Campbell
180 pages
Published 1961
Read from January 25 to January 26
Rating: 1 out of 5 (which is more than it deserves)
It’s one thing to hear about the rightwing fanaticism of John W. Campbell, who helped bend the trajectory of 20th century science fiction in favor of manly white supermen solving the problems of lesser beings thanks to the power of prodigious brains, steely nerves, and the absence of sentimentality, with buxom blondes as the prize. It’s quite another to track down the pdf scan of this issue, drawn in by its proto-Dino-Riders cover art, and run face-first into an editorial: “ON THE SELECTIVE BREEDING OF HUMAN BEINGS,” which proposes that all the grand project of eugenics needs is a thousand generations, not the mere thousand year reich of “Herr Hitler.” Campbell further speculates (without any testable basis whatsoever) that modern humans (and you know exactly who he means by this) are the result of the instinctive eugenics of our ancestors.
Jesus Fucking Christ. And this is the era of sci-fi that our current self-appointed captains of industry yearn for with their whole breeding-fetish hearts, disdaining all the contemporary authors who actually have important things to say.
Right from the start I despise this issue, and this whole era of the magazine. But, on the other hand, I’ve put myself through some terrible fiction for the sake of dinosaurs. How bad will this one be? Let’s find out!
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“The Weakling” by Everett B. Cole. This could have been interesting. It weirdly prefigures Julian May’s The Many-Colored Land, with powerful flying psychics, a colonized prehistoric world, extinct beasts of burden, humanoid aliens, and a motif of gold jewelry and its effects on psionic powers. Sadly, as anyone could have foreseen, this is an insipid, overlong eye-roller built on a foundation of racial hierarchy. Those with psionic powers are considered “men,” those without are “pseudomen,” and in between them are half-powered “halfmen.” (Women are scarcely considered.) War with the “Fifth Planet” has left swirling, storm-like “nulls” on the Earth’s surface. Nulls negate psionic powers and upend the racial hierarchy, much to the annoyance of the ruling castes — particularly because men keep pseudomen as slaves, and those damn pseudomen keep escaping their masters to go live free in the nulls.
The “weakling” of the title is Leuwan, an uptight little martinet who needs a cap of heavy crystals to amplify his psionic power over his slaves, and gets defensive about it. The plot is a tiresome dick-measuring conflict, a rote pulp scenario in which Leuwan’s whiny insecurity is challenged by the commanding masculinity of Naran Makun, who arrives to investigate the disappearance of his brother’s sauropod caravan.
The best thing about this story is the artwork, both the cover art and the line art accompanying the text. I mean, look at this:
But that’s the extent of its redeeming features. The dinosaurs are mere set dressing. The prose reminds you that Analog’s target audience was literarily unsophisticated. There’s so much worldbuilding that goes nowhere, adding nothing to the story. (I wonder if there were prior stories in this setting; the Fifth Planet business means nothing otherwise.) Now if only we’d actually gotten a story about sauropod caravans striding out across the great open forests and plains. Sigh. F
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“The Plague” by Teddy Keller. The first of many military sci-fi slogs. Those dang Commies seem to have released a mystery pathogen that only seems to affect Americans. Specifically, authors, artists, and secretaries in small offices. No-nonsense Sergeant Andy McCloud finds himself the ranking member of the Pentagon’s anti-germ warfare office, but he still has the time to admire the trim figure of a female corporal beneath him in the chain of command. The story is supposed to be a medical puzzler, but the solution was silly. (It’s stamps. Licking the sticky stuff on stamps. That’s it.) There is literally nothing of interest here, besides maybe a stale old chestnut about how many envelopes poets send out to publications. F
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“Freedom” by Mack Reynolds. This time our ranking POV is one Colonel Ilya Simonov: field agent, “hatchetman,” an expert at dismantling anti-Soviet dissent. It is a time of rocket liners and floating cars. The Cold War is over; the grand Soviet experiment has succeeded, and the bloc has the highest standard of living in the world. Yet people are discontent. They gather in secret to discuss proscribed literature and counter-revolutionary ideas. Ilya is sent to Prague to investigate the automobile industry’s role in spreading subversion. The story is entirely propagandistic in intent, of course. But I was pleasantly surprised that some of its critiques of the Soviet system came from the perspective of (simplified, but sympathetic) Marxism. The Party and its authoritarian State directly contradict the statelessness of theoretical socialism. Secret policeman Ilya even muses that the Soviet system might be dubbed State-Capitalism. That unexpected even-handedness, plus a slightly higher standard of prose, makes this story a standout in the wastelands of this issue. Perhaps D+
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“The Outbreak of Peace” by H. B. Fyfe. We’re in space this time, on Pollux V, yet we cannot escape white men in uniform. Our POV this time is Space Marshal Wilbur Hennings, who never develops anything resembling a personality trait. This trifle is dry, dull, and thankfully brief, existing only to set up the PoliSci 101 observation that the real hostilities are waged by the politicians after the fighting stops. Once more, nothing of interest. F
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“The Ghost Fleet” by Christopher Anvil. Our stoic military man of the hour here is one Colonel William Beller. At least with Beller, we’re treated to a single morsel of characterization: he’s disliked in his service, and on the verge of court-martial, because he ordered a retreat at Little Orion. Don’t fret, dear midcentury reader: Beller made that choice to save his space fleet from destruction, so he’s still a paragon of honorable masculinity. To no one’s surprise, Beller is offered a suicide mission to atone for his “cowardice” — commanding a single antiquated ship, scrounged from a museum, to bluff an attack against the space enemy, his museum piece bolstered only by a simulated fleet. (Is his ship crewed with criminals? No — they’re geriatric janitors from the museum. Who apparently get thrown into suicide missions here in space?) It sounds like something from the Star Wars Expanded Universe, but without any of the genre trappings that made those books interesting. Still, this is the closest we’ve come to actual character-driven storytelling in this entire issue. Maybe D?
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“Occasion for Disaster” (part 4 of 4) by Mark Phillips. I thought about just skipping this one, the last installment of a serial novel, but reading out of context fragments of a serial is crucial to the full sci-fi magazine experience. Our hero this time is “FBI Agent extraordinary,” Kenneth J. Malone, who’s investigating a plot of psionic sabotage that feels like something straight out of a 1930s cinematic serial. (Which turns out to be dreary stuff without the help of MST3K.) Kenneth J. Malone is such a brilliant G-Man that he checks into his hotel as Kenneth J. Malone, perfectly ordinary businessman. The story has gangsters, assassinations, a psychic who thinks she’s Queen Elizabeth the First. Our hero Malone learns how to teleport himself around at will. Peyote is, briefly, a plot point. And yet it all manages to be deeply uninteresting, tremendously silly, and numbingly overlong. Turns out a well-known department of psychic research is a front for a secret network of telepaths who have infiltrated every nation and every level of society. They use their powers of suggestion to cause chaos and break down civil order. But then it turns out they did it to stop someone from launching nuclear Armageddon! I feel like that’s enough plot to fill maybe 15 pages, tops, even with the requisite romance subplot. Yet here we are. A full novel of Kenneth J. Malone spinning his wheels. Generously, perhaps F+
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And that's it for what is (so far) my oldest complete issue of a genre magazine. It won't be the earliest for long, not with all the pdf scans available. But damn, 1960s Analog was some rough stuff. Let’s hope that, say, early F&SF or Unknown won’t be quite so bad. (And yes, I know, Campbell edited Unknown as well.)
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