ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact September 1971

ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, September 1971

The ninth issue in my Analog Deep Dive. One Year is now in sight -- I didn't think I would keep it up this long! For anyone finding these reviews, my purpose is two-fold: enjoying some "classic" sci-fi, and looking for stories that I think could be adapted for TV broadcast since so much of what shows up on anthology shows is rough to awful. Additional Note: I do NOT work in television. I just watch it.

Overall, a good issue, with some good stories.

In this issue:

The Editorial: "Ecological Notes", by John. W. Campbell. John talks about Instant Experts with Immediate and Simple Answers that MUST be put into place Right Now despite the problems that the solutions might cause. Some things never change. Ralph Nader gets called out.

Among the issues mentioned were air bags that were installed before the technology was ready, which caused damage to the drive shafts; phospates in laundry detergent that were said to cause algae bloom even though no study was done (and the replacement additive caused cancer); and lead in gasoline (and the replacement additive caused cancer); and nuclear power.

Reading the stuff about lead was interesting. I remember when leaded and unleaded gas was an issue many years ago. The lead could lead to lead poisoning, which is treatable (as opposed to cancer, which is less treatable). Cars have improved a bit in 50 years, but the cancer is still there. As for the nuclear power, I found the comparision of coal piles as filled with TNT and granite mountains as giant Uranium bombs quite amusing.

Novelette: "Wheels Within Wheels" by F. Paul Wilosn, with an illustration by John Schoenherr, showing a man sitting with something in his hand and a bunch of rocks on the ground. The background in white but pans over to reveal the side view of a front porch and a person standing there. It could be raining or just dark. The caption reads, A man doesn't have to have a title, or even be widely known, to be the absolute ruler of a planet. But it makes him very hard to find and stop when he isn't labeled! (Note: this is also the cover story, with that illustration showing a blue alien holding a cracked bowl in one hand and pulling a dagger from beneath a cloak with the other. There is a shorter, balding man in the background.)

I didn't take note of F. Paul Wilson's name when I first started reading, except to think that I'd seen it before recently. Once there was talking about a Federation, I thought about the "Rat Man" story from last month, and then mention of the "Restructurists" told me that this was set in that universe. And then there was a mention of a guy with a space rat on his shoulder. Nice callback. (How did they get stories published in consecutive months like that?)

Peter J. Paxton, aka Old Pete, was one of the founders of Intersellar Business Advisers (IBA). He visits the new office to speak with Josephine Finch, granddaughter of Joe, Old Pete's partner. He's worried about Restructurists and someone named Elson deBloise, who's more of a crafty plotter than a starry-eyed dreamer. He's secretly paying a physicist named Denver Haas for some reason. Pete thinks they need to look into the matter privately first before approaching the Fed or else all the evidence will just disappear. And it likely ties into the death of Jo's father, Joe Finch, Jr., who wanted to take time off to do something for himself before taking over his father's business.

Jo brings in a detective Larry Easly to go to the planet Jebinose to look into the matter and ask questions. He speaks to some of the locals there, including some of the Vanek, an alien species who call people "bendreth" and like to say "wheels within wheels" as an answer to everything. He finds that Finch was a great friend to the Vanek, as told in a lengthy flashback. Also, the Vanek killed him. They were blamed for his death and they don't deny it. But there's more to the story.

Late in the story, a character of Cando Proska is introduced, a person who can scare daBloise. He's a psi. Introducing a pis late in the game seems a little bit of a cheat, but roll with it. Easly gets attacked while making a video call to Jo, who goes immediately to Jebinose. Then the killer is caught.

This could make an interesting story for TV, filling up an hour time slot. The alien world could be set in British Columbia easily enough. It has a handful of speaking parts with a diverse cast and an interesting alien. And the resolution works is satisfactory.

Science Fact: "Strong Poison 1" by Carl A. Larson. Image shows a bottle of poison. "Dr. Larson is a specialist in Medical Genetics -- and it is the work of geneticists that has demonstrated not only the truth but the underlying cause of the long-observed phenomenon that "One man's meat is another's poison!" When we go to other planets, that wild variable is apt to be critically important -- and useful."

A lot of talk about what could be slowly poisonous to humans (as quick poisons would be readily discovered) and tons of speculative talk about Martian mushrooms. It's fifty years out of date, as we are now getting real data about Mars. THat's not to say that some of the issues raised won't be concerns should humans ever reach out into the stars. My eyes glazed over after a while and I skimmed the last few pages.

Serial: "The Lion Game" by James H. Schmitz, with an illustration by Kelly Freas, showing two women through an open, unshuttered winodw, walking about what looks like the inside of a labyrinth, with an open doorway behind them. In the foregorun is another woman with a lionine face (I thought snake at first, but it's The Lion Game) holding a space pistol and wearing a large dagger on her belt. The caption reads, Conclusion. THere are times when not even a telepath can be sure who she could trust -- and Telzey was trapped in a maze of high-power professional double-dealers. Fourtunately, Telzey was a first class liar herself. . .

This is my problem with serials: I don't remember what is going on when I get back to them. And in this case, the Synopsis was OVER TWO PAGES LONG, and it didn't help all that much. One of the characters that showed up told the end of Part 1 gets dispatched early in Part 2, which signals to me that this wasn't written to be broken up in this manner. Que sera.

I wouldn't say that I didn't like this Telzey story, but its the first one I didn't enjoy. It just went on for too long. Granted, she had a way out, but she also had a mission that she had to complete, so she stayed. After a while, it seemed like an old dungeon crawl, and I couldn't picture all these rooms the portals were taking her to. There's a big battle in the end, which allows Telzey to gain a hold she needs to make an exit.

There's too much going on for a summary. Maybe if I read a compilation book sometime. I recently learned that one exists.

This wouldn't make a good TV anthology episode. This plays out like an entire season of shows. It would need to budget of multiple episodes for all the sets in the maze and well as the lion-like aliens, who are also giants.

Short Story: "The Fine Print" by John T. Phillifient, with an illustration by Vincent Di Fate, showing two figures on a catwalk or gangplank. One is a woman in a bikini, wearing a collar with a length of chain attached to it. It appears to have pbroken from a chain attached to a rail. The other figure appears to be a humanoid alien, observing the broken chain. In the foreground is the barrel of some kind of rifle. The caption reads "Some things any man can understand at a glance. And some things are perfectly obvious -- as obvious as the pool of water on the road ahead on a summer day..."

Rear Adrmiral Braid is the C-in-C of the Interstellar Trade Base on Mars. He's getting old (60), but retiring and going back to Earth would be Hell. He has a cat named Ming that is apparently intelligent, but the story isn't that far into the future (the current one). Lt. Sutton brings him for an inspection parade and mentions that there's a new ship, a privately-owned Haddag ship. Braid realizes at this point that no one seems to be aware of the regulations that prevent face-to-face interactions with anyone aboard Haddag ships. He has Sutton here there.

Once there, they discover a woman chained to a rail on the gangway. Several men from a nearby ship move in, and Braid tries to head them off. To these men, this woman needs to be saved. To the Admiral, there is more than meets the eye. The woman lets out a scream, manages to snap the chain and attacks. Braid pulls a gun and fires, killing her.

Unfortunately, this incident was recorded, so keeping it quiet seems to be a problem. There's going to be an inquiry, and Braid has no problem being the fall guy. Judge Advocate Hudson, however, is more than determined to see that doesn't happen without jeopardizing Haddag trade, which includes a lot of medicines.

At the heart of the matter is that the Haddag, who are saurian genetically, do not keep Earth humans as pets. However, there are wild "animals" on their planet known as akkan. They are very similar to humans, but they are not. They can be much stronger and the genders generally do not associate except during mating cycles. Otherwise, a female could react violently, as shown earlier. Braid knows this because he was shot down on the Haddag homeworld many years ago and attacked by a group of them. After he recovered, he was part of the treaty process that came of it. How knew how it would look to others, and he knew how any interaction might turn out. This is why face-to-face meetings are prohibited. The problem occured because this was a private ship, not a trade vessel, and it landed for emergency supplies. The owner was just as ignorant of restrictions as most of the people on the base who weren't aware of that particular subsection.

This could make a good story, even without the "nekkid ladies". (They don't have to be naked. People, and aliens, can dress their pets.) There's a good fundamental question underlying the story. It could even take a little bit of updating without going full-overboard-whackadoo (except that too many current writers are fully-bloomed whackadoos). There's a fair sized cast and the locations can be kept to a minumum. And it ends with a court scene, which make for a lot of popular television.

Short Story: "To Make a New Neanderthal" by W. MacFarlane. No image, except for a column of text set an angle, which was difficult to read on a kindle. The caption reads, "Or this proposition I can only say that recent studies have shown that pasture grass grows best when there's adequate sulfur dioxide in the air. So ..."

Guert Maury is the kind of guy who puts "BAN CARS" bumper stickers on random cars. He finds David Langley, a brilliant young man who wants to have a normal life along with a young woman named Lunetta Drogen, who'd turned away from a life in a fourteen-room home with a domed swimming pool. Maury tells them about pollution and "The People" and something called "phlogiston". Pollution is deliberate and The People who are the pollutors are doing it deliberately to force evolution. Human brain capacity has grown from 400 to 1500 cc, unparalleled by any species. Out of nowhere, Maury's car takes off, and takes the pair to a faraway plaent, not catalogued by astronomers, with plenty of fresh air and no phlogiston. There are others like this pair on the planet, and they should go seek them out and make a better world.

I had to keep in mind that in 1971, pollution was definitely a Big Deal. A quick check shows it was after the Clean Air Act but before the Clean Water Act. Also, I'm guessing that this is an Atlas Shrugged type story. Does this make Guert Maury into John Galt? Never read that, but I saw two movies (the third part of which wasn't produced, to my knowledge). This reminds me of something that could appear on that Dust series. Short and a little weird. That said, it's definitely filmable. You only need two men, a woman, a beach, a ship, a field to deposit them in, and some stock footage.

Short Story: "Knight Arrant" by Jack Wodhams, with an illustration by Kelly Freas, showing a bearded man in a horned helmet, chainmail, leather pants and boots binding the wrists of a scantily-clad woman on the ground. In the background is the enlarged face of some kind of barbarian or pirate, wearing an eyepagtch.The caption reads, "One of the fundamental facts of realty is one people ardently wish to deny -- the Universe is always full of risk!"

I recognize the name. I should double check what else he's done because I don't remember offhand.

I was a little lost with this one at first, and then I thought, it seems like the set-up for a Star Trek episode before the Enterprise shows up. There's a colony called New Eden with three cities on it. They live in peace and have no army. So when Mongoll shows up, who appears to be a stereotypical Mongol, there isn't much they can do to fight back. Mongoll is looking for something called the Tricourt Link, which he believes is hidden there somewhere. The residents have no knowledge of it and believe that it doesn't exist, and that it is only a legend. What is it? I have no idea, other than a MacGuffin.

Mongoll works the people, tearing apart the city and then looting it, while making them sleep in the parks and not giving them anything to eat. Then he decides that the only thing of value is the women because new colonies always need women. This drags on for several pages until there is a sign that the SOC (whatever that stands for) is responding. Mongoll and his horde retreat with whatever they have. The New Edenites can't be sure that it's truly over.

A Commander from the SOC meets with the Chancellor of New Eden, who is unhappy at the response. The SOC is limited and space is vast. Breaking up a squad wouldn't be practical, and one or two ships would be overwhelmed anyway. They suggest that New Eden form their own security forces, and are willing to provide equipment and literature. This isn't the New Eden way, but maybe it is time to make it their way.

Spoiler: this is all a ruse, and Mongoll is part of making this happen. And the women will be rescued. I'd have to go back and double check that no one was actually killed, just beaten and threatened with worse.

As mentioned, this fits into the Planet of Hats trope of Star Trek, so it could fit into an anthology series where nothing else has to matter after the episode ends.

Extra: "On the Nature of Angles" There is no author listed, and there is no entry in the Table of Contents, even though the word "I" is used in the text. Science humor. I had to Google what the International Theophysical Year was, but it was a thing.

Angels, devils, and human souls behave as electromagnetic radiations in four-dimesional space. And with appropriate boundary conditions, their properties obey the Schroedinger Wave Equation, ih0 = H0. Each solution represents a different kind of spirit, characterized by a unique eignevalue correlating to the corresponding wave function with Biblical data:

7.3206 = Archangels; 3.7684 = Seraphim; 1.0097 = Cherubim; -0.1121 = Demons; -2.9175 = Gremlins; -6.4302 = Poltergeists; which "good" or "free" spirits being positive and "evil" or "bound" spirits being negative. Those are eternal spirits. Human souls with finite lifetimes have complex eigenvalues, a+ib, where each "a" is constant but the "b" is continuously variable for each human, reflecting the state of grace because b = sin(t).

The story opens with an introduction to a strange planet called Paradox. It's massive (subjovian) and should've been a gas giant but a lot of the H atoms were blown off so it never ignited. It didn't generate a lot of interest so scientists and explorers left, and they left whatever they didn't want to drag home.

The reference to the Soviet Journal of Physics for May 1917 was amusing.

It concludes with an unrelated image from the Department of Diverse Data: the Vrill or "Fire Spider" from Gamma Andromeda. A parasite of pure energy feeding on the electrial potential of brains and nervous systems. That has the name D. Pattee attached to it.

The Reference Library , by P. Schuyler Miller.
Introduction discusses Soviet anthologies and authors. Reivews include The Prince in Waiting by John CHristopher; Crime Prevention in the 30th Century edited by Hans Stefan Santesson; Beastchild by Dean R. Koontz; and Mechasm by John T. Sladek.

Brass Tacks: There's a letter about an editorial about immature students on college campuses acting like young children. Campbell responds by wondering how they will raise their children. Fifty years later, we have some idea. There's a note about "authentic" Shepherd golf balls from the Moon for future collectors. A lengthy response/correction to the Alpha-wave Conditioning article from June (2 pages, ugh). And a complement to Gordon Dickson for The Tactics of Mistake.

On to June, and whatever else is in the TBR stacks in Kindle, iBooks, and the physical nightstand.