Magazine Review: Worlds of If August 1973 edited by Ejier Jakobsson
This issue of the magazine also known as “If” opens with the “Hue and Cry” letter column. One reader was especially impressed with the negative review Lester del Rey gave of a book on cloning, which taught the reader something to look for in non-fiction books.
“Pearsall’s Return” by F.M. Busby has a starship land back on Earth after a long journey to make a near pass of potential colony worlds. Commander Elwood “Woody” Jay Pearsall is anxious to get home to his loving wife, and doesn’t pick up on a couple of oddities about how he’s treated by the official debriefing the crew. His wife Glenna has a new haircut, but he’s been away for months. More disturbing is the fact that she’s terrified of him. He can’t be Woody, because Woody is dead!
Another officer finds out his family doesn’t recognize him at all–instead of his birthdate, there was a stillbirth. And someone who was supposed to have shipped out on the Hawk Flight according to his wife, was never on the ship according to Woody’s memories of the man breaking his leg. So he’s vanished entirely! Others of the crew are in similar situations.
It’s eventually worked out that the experimental faster than light drive causes a slip into a parallel universe, with each additional skip taking you further from home. And there’s no way back. While some of the crew is finding the new Earth okay or manageable, others are driven into despair (one fellow finds out his counterpart was openly gay). And Woody and Glenna are having “marital” difficulties because neither of them is quite who the other person remembers.
Perhaps the saddest moment in the story is when Woody, who was first officer, discovers that in his crew of 22, he remembers nothing about supply clerk Crawford except his last name and job, after eight months together on a ship. And how have things changed for Crawford on this new Earth? “Pass.”
There’s a happy ending for Woody, at least.
“The Invaders” by Stephen Tall takes place on an alien world orbiting a star in the Cancer constellation. Possibly Beta Cancri. The intelligent life there has taken on a vaguely crab-like form. Red Spine, one of the bravest and wisest of the natives, becomes involved in two problems. First, the ever-hungry Eater, who the natives serve by constantly feeding it, has grown to such a size that the available supply of food will not be enough for both them and it. Second, weird bipedal aliens have landed on the planet from another world. They communicate by sound, while the natives communicate by telepathy, so the aliens’ intentions and goals are unknown.
Eventually, the two problems solve each other. There’s a coda by one of the human “invaders” that explains things more neatly if the story wasn’t clear enough.
“The Meaning of the Word” by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has another alien world being landed on by a human expedition. The archaeologist on board seems wasted on this barren world. Finally he has a chance to explore, and discovers that this planet once held intelligent life. But he does so under circumstances that doom him, and even with the aid of a translation machine, may not be able to decipher the message left before he perishes. It’s a sacrifice that maybe is worth it.
“Support Your Local Police” by David Magil has an odd mix of tones. It opens with a police officer investigating the rape and murder of a young woman. Except that when he tracks down her nearly identical sister, it turns out that the woman isn’t really dead. Nor are they sisters. Apparently they are from the future. And while no real harm has been done, the second woman declares that the attempted murderers must be rectified. She just needs ten million dollars to build a machine to do that.
So there’s a gritty crime drama cop trying to deal with wacky future girl shenanigans. The story doesn’t gel well.
“Reading Room” by Lester del Rey is the book review column, which primarily focuses on anthologies of classic science fiction short stories. He also reviews a couple of then current books, one of which he pans because the ending is just setting up the sequel, without any indication elsewhere in the book that this was supposed to be a series.
“Westwind” by Gene Wolfe takes place in a future in which society is run by “the Leader” who mentions each night in his speeches that he loves his people, but especially “Westwind, my eyes.” A scarred young man and a blind woman seek shelter for the night, but is one of them perhaps the mysterious Westwind? This is perhaps the best story in the issue, despite only raising more questions than it answers.
“Our Children’s Children” by Clifford D. Simak is the final fiction piece, being the conclusion of the novel. All over the world, people have started appearing in droves out of thin air, two billion of them. It turns out that they are refugees from five hundred years in the future. Carnivorous alien creatures with explosive population growth and nearly instantaneous adaptability have invaded, and since war was abolished, the humans had little way to fight back.
This quite naturally causes a refugee crisis in the present day of the 1970s. But the travelers have a plan. If they can build new time tunnels in the present day, they can go back to the Miocene Era, before the recorded history of humans, and be safe there without causing time paradox issues for the current humans.
But this will require the current humans to all work together to create the tunnels, something unlikely in that fractured era. And at least one of the monsters managed to find a tunnel and come through too.
Mostly this is just discussions of various related topics, with a side trip or two to the military trying to stop the monsters before Twentieth Century Earth is also overrun. There are interesting bits, like the evangelical preacher who’s incensed to learn that religion is something of a dead letter in the future, and the Russian ambassador who is required to advance his country’s interests even when he knows this isn’t something that will actually help in the crisis. Oh, and a newspaper photographer is key to understand what the monsters are up to.
The novel just kind of stops when a good stopping point is found. It’s one of Simak’s lesser works.
Overall, this is merely an okay issue with no real standouts. If there’s an author in here you really like, see if their story is reprinted elsewhere.
