Magazine Review: Analog Science Fiction Science Fact June 1969 edited by John W. Campbell
The editorial for this issue of the venerable science fiction magazine talks about two “elegant solutions” to technical problems, the first one being a better spacesuit, and the other being a better microphone. Neither of these notions worked out in real life, but it’s fun to see innovative ideas get discussed.
“Artifact” by J.B. Clarke is the cover story. Eight-fingered aliens have left behind a mysterious device in the Sol system, containing what appears to be the secret of interstellar flight. But is this gift genuine, or a trap? A fair bit of loophole abuse ensues.
“Zozzl” by Jackson Burrows has a space courier landing on an alien world in an attempt to capture a zozzl, a creature with the ability to project mental illusions. It seeks out your hidden fears, desires, and shame and turns them into horrific nightmares to defend itself. The only way to endure this and bring the zozzl over to your side is to be fundamentally honest with yourself. Does Hammer have what it takes? Some nice horror sequences.
“Dramatic Mission” by Anne McCaffrey is part of her “The Ship Who Sang” series. Helva is one of the “shell people”, born physically disabled beyond even the ability of future medical technology to fix. Instead, her body and especially her perfectly normal brain were placed in a titanium shell, and she is basically a full-body cyborg with her “body” being the starship she commands. Helva is unusually interested in artistic expression for her peer group, including a fascination with music that got her the nickname “The Ship Who Sang.”
Just at the moment, Helva is between “brawn”, the normal-bodied partners who act as companions for the “brain” of the ship and perform functions that are difficult for her. But there’s a mission that she seems the best candidate for. It seems that humanity has made contact with an alien race. While very different from humans, and in some ways more technologically advanced, the Corviki are fascinated by the Terran concept of “drama” and are willing to trade some of their technology for being taught the performance of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
So Helva is converted into a passenger ship to carry a troupe of Shakespearean actors to the Corviki home world. Naturally, they bring drama on board with them. Prane Liston is the Solar, greatest actor of Duhr and surrounding star systems, but a bad reaction to a memory drug he’s overused has rendered him frail and needing the frequent attention of a medical professional (who is also an ingenue actor.) Ansra Colmer is a diva, who would very much like to be the next Solar. It’s not clear if she and Prane are exes or if it was only ever one-sided, but she’s definitely not over it and rabidly jealous of Kurla Ster’s closeness to the great actor.
To make matters even more interesting, the Corviki have developed a remote thought transfer device that will allow the actors to project themselves into synthetic bodies (since humans cannot survive their planet’s atmosphere and gravity) for their performances. These have to be kept on timers, as the process causes the thoughts of the projected person to become more and more those of the “envelope” they’re in. Even Helva gets to join the fun, the first time she’s ever had a “body” the same size and capabilities of others.
This is fascinating stuff, and my favorite story of the issue.
“The Nitrocellulose Doormat” by Christopher Anvil takes us to the planet Terex. The Terrans would very much like to have this relatively advanced planet join their group and contribute its resources. So they agreed to help the majority government put down a guerilla rebellion. Problem! The majority Terex culture is very religious, and the priests keep banning much of the Terran technology that would give their troops an edge over the rebels.
Plus there’s a local heretic group known as the Skaga who are basically the Mafia, considering crime a sacrament. They’ve been stealing the weapons the Terrans are allowed to use and selling them to the rebels. So the Terrans keep getting slaughtered. This is tanking the Terran reputation among the natives.
Until the Interstellar Patrol under the guise of Interstellar Investigations takes a hand. They take the low opinion of Terrans and the various local customs into account to create a trap for the greedy and irreligious. It’s not actually very much like the Vietnam War, but you can tell the author had Vietnam on his mind.
“High-G Stress” (uncredited) is a very short fact article about the gravitic stresses on transistors that caused frequent breakage.
“The Ghoul Squad” by Harry Harrison is set in the near future of 1999, around Christmas. Advances in medical science have made organ and tissue transplantation much more easy and common. But there’s always a shortage of transplantable tissue. Thus, it’s been made law that unless you specifically opt out with a special medallion to be worn at all times, you’re an organ donor.
And to make sure they can get those organs in as fresh a condition as possible, the medics of the Isoplastic Transplantation Bank are sent out to any report of accident or possible fatality to harvest what they can. But not everyone appreciates their work, thus their nickname of the Ghoul Squad. And in particular, one Georgia sheriff has a tragic bone to pick with them…
This one’s less about the ethics of organ harvesting and more about the clash of opinions on the subject.
“Jackal’s Meal” by Gordon R. Dickson opens with a Rudyard Kipling quote to justify the title. There’s a tense diplomatic meeting between the Terrans and one of the Morah Empires. Which would be bad enough–while the Terrans could maybe win against a single Morah Empire in a fair fight, if a war starts, all the Morah Empires will join forces against them. The situation becomes trickier when a badly wounded being escapes from the Morah Jhan’s ship and flees to the Terran military guards.
The Morah culture and technology allows them to reshape themselves in any manner they see fit, though this is more done to servants and the lower classes to suit them for their jobs or to entertain the upper classes. The refugee may be a Morah who’s been warped to look like a human being, or a Terran prisoner who’s been warped to look like a Morah. He or it is not coherent enough to give the Terrans any clues. And is also dying.
The Jhan demands the return of its property, and there’s some suspicion that it deliberately set this situation up to force the Terrans to make concessions they normally would have been able to deny.
Can the ambassador from the Terrans figure out a way to use this situation against the Morah Empire?
“The Reference Library” by P. Schuyler Miller is the book review column. He talks a bit about “quantitative thought” in the work of Hal Clement. Among the other books reviewed are two I’ve also reviewed here on my blog, “A Far Sunset” by Edmund Cooper, which Mr. Miller thinks more highly of than I do, and “The Jewels of Aptor” by Samuel R. Delany, where our opinions are closer together.
“Brass Tacks” is the letters to the editor column. The most interesting one is critiquing a James Blish story where the writer did the research on the physics, but not the biology, resulting in the heroine performing an operation on herself with a kitchen knife and no anesthetic that even skilled surgeons of the 1960s would find extremely difficult on a patient who was properly knocked out. Yowch.
My copy is a library discard with the checkout card holder still inside. Kind of neat.
The Anne McCaffery story is the highlight of the issue, but I believe all the Ship Who Sang stories have been collected in their own volumes. Otherwise, it’s a decent enough lineup with some nice art. Good luck to collectors!
