Galayx PLUS 50: Galaxy Magazine, January-February 1972

Galaxy PLUS 50: Galaxy Magazine, January-February 1972

Starting Something New!

I'll admit that this expansion was spurred by the idea of proposing a column to Tor.com. I figured that just reading one magazine (Analog) wouldn't be enough. I checked, and there were four science fiction/fantasy magazines of note published in 1972: Analog, Galaxy, Amazing, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Of those four, Galaxy and Amazing were published bi-monthly, so I'd only have 3 per month to read. Unfortuantely, neither Amazing nor F&SF are available online. I have to search for a source for these. Should I propose a column to Tor.com, and should they agree to it, I would consider purchasing them online, since the reviews would pay for them. In the meantime, I've added Galaxy to the mix.

Overall, I appreciated the hard science stories but I thought the two novelettes dragged on too long. The serial, on the other hand, while not exactly speeding by, moved along nicely.

In this issue:

Editor's Page: The editor is Ejler Jakobsson. The page is devoted to Algis Budrys (aka "Ajay") who used to write the Galaxy Bookshelf column. Starting with this issue, the task is taken over by Theodore Sturgeon.

Serial: "Dark Inferno" by James White (Part One) with an illustration by (unknown) of a man in uniform (there's insignia on his shoulder) floating another man into a cot (shadowing shows that he's floating). The caption reads, A handful of men, women, and children -- foced to survive in the realm of pure physics...

I broke my rule about reading serials in parts by accident. The story was enjoyable, so I kept going, even though it'll be two months before I get to the conclusion. (At least, I hoped it will conclude then!) It's hard sci-fi, but it doesn't drag. A lot of what is presented could be useful for me later on writing about space ships and flights.

The POV is Dr. Mercer who takes the position as the medic on the Eurydice, which is somewhere between spaceplane and cruise ship. The flight will last days, but the passengers have to go through training exercises and emergency drills. Since medics don't have much to do on these flights -- there are health screenings before you can board -- the drills are Mercer's responsibility. He's new to the crew and he isn't sure if that's why the rest of the officers are cold to him.

These runs are routine and nothing could go wrong. So, of course, something goes wrong. After a long setup, acclimating the passengers to weightlessness and space flight, the captain and the engineer go outside to check a problem where there shouldn't be one. The captain's suit is punctured and starts to depressurize. Also the suit is contaminated with radiation. Mercer doesn't have the equipment he'd need to save the captain's life.

This part ends with the decision that the ship needs to turn about and return to a space station.

This story unfolds like a movie. The problem is that what's been shown so far has been done already. Maybe not to this degree, but enough to get a sense of the adjustments that need to be made. Likewise, filming something where the actors remain weighless a lot presents challanges. As for diversity in the cast, remove any obsolete notions of stewardesses and make one or more of the officers female. (There are only three or four of them.) The passengers represent a bunch of extra.

Novelette: "Rorqual Maru" by T. J. Bass with an illustration (split over two pages) by (unknown) of what appears to be a mechanical whale on the water with a man standing on its head. Also, there appear to be trees on its back. (At first, I thought there was an island behind it.) The caption reads, Under the Nebishes, earth had been dying. Now it was making a comeback!

This one went on a little too long for me, especially after reading that serial. A little google search was interesting. First "Rorqual" is a type of whale. "Maru", I thought, was going to translate into something to do with the sea, but I could only find that Maru is a prefix for Japanese ship names. That doesn't seem to fit, but maybe that's exactly what it is. Searching on the entire thing, tells me that there were a series of books about The Godwhale, and Rorqual Maru is the name of Hive #2.

The story opens up with the titular whale ship having been beach for as long as it took Uranus to make thirty orbits, which would be about 2500 years, but this would be much father in the future than that. The sea was dying and most of her sisters had sunk but she rested on a beach so that she could be salvaged. Elsewhere on the Earth, there are the Nebishes, short people who live underground in The Hive and subsist on whatever protein they can scrounge, and the Benthics, marine hominids (of normal height) like mermen or sirens who live in areas abandoned by the Hive.

Drum is a retired Nebbish who finds that he's about to be put to sleep for a year because he didn't get enough votes. The Hive is low on resources. Ode is another one. They discover that they can stay awake if they take a job in "wet works" gathering protein in the sewers. When they are out in the beach, they discover the Rorqual Maru, which has started moving again. Also, marine biota has started to replenish. It's possible that that a landlocked pool contained life and that it has filtered out into the sea where it has started to thrive.

The Rorqual Maru collects krill through screens in its mouth, operating like a whale might if the sea creature was actually a mechanical leviathan. The Nebbishes, including Ode and Drum, go to set sail. They haul up a dead Benthic, which they assume thawed from an iceberg. Actually, it had been alive but being brought to the surface killed it with a case of the bends (or the "pops" in this story). A living Benthic then comes up and kills everyone except Drum. (Ode is dead.)

Now the tecks and mecks of the Hive construct their own human from archival DNA. There's a lot of techno-jargon that is likely scientifically accurate but was basically babble to me. They name is ARNOLD because they grew an augmented Alpha Renal Nucleus of Larry Dever (that would be the original owner of the DNA). It grows to six feet in 10 years, which is about the height of the Benthics. It is made to be subservient through its diet -- it requires amino acids that it cannot make for it, and must be provided in bread delivered by the Hive. Should it ever run away, it would die. Should they ever stop feeding it, it would die. ARNOLD is raised with having programs run into his brain, which is the best way I can describe the "leptosoul" videos where he is an animal attacking and copulating with other animals. (This part was difficult to read in the ebook, and would've read better as a PDF.)

Eventually, at the age of 11, ARNOLD (always capitalized) is ready to take command of the Rorqual Maru. Drum, its father figure, is getting close to death. (He's really old now.) The Benthics, on the other hand, want the whale so they can control the seas. They attack and ARNOLD defends and Big Opal escapes with injuries. A female Benthic tries to kill ARNOLD, but he training kicks in, and instead of killing her, he copulates. She swims away. ARNOLD shuts down Maru's communication.

The Hive tries to contact ARNOLD and explain his situation. Then they have Drum talk to the ship itself. It doesn't do any good, and Drum wonders how much protein is in the krill the ship harvests.

Thoughts: nice world-building but this was too long. The amino acid deficiency reminded me of the raptors in Jurassic Park, except that this was nearly two decades earlier. And I can't read ARNOLD without thinking "Ah-nold", and wondering if it had anything to do with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was Mr. Olympia for several years, starting in 1970. If so, I doubt the author could imagine what would become of that Schwarzenegger fellow.

This could be a dystopian movie or a series of movies, but I'm not sure if it's something people would want. We've had dystopian films that were disasters. And this one would probably be "streamlined" so much as to be unrecognizable. Still, if it could be turned into an environmental "message" film, it could be doable.

Short Story: "Esmeralda" by Michael G. Coney with an illustration by (unknown) of a bird, wings spread, in the foreground, and a ship (possibly?) of some kind towering in the background. The caption reads, The univited guest at every birthday party is time -- the time of your life!

Esmeralda is the name of the seagull, and the machine in the picture is a Brontomech, a large automated machine that harvests but senses humans and leaves them alone. This takes place in a dystopian future where oil slicks on the beaches are a common thing. The story opens ahead of Agatha and Becky's birthday (they're twins) and just after a visit from the mediman (doctor?). The POV seems to shift, unless I was losing interest more than I thought, but it was about these two old ladies -- who it turned out were about to 65 -- just living in this world with a seagull they rescued. The seagull is set free and flies into the jaw of the brontomech and is no more. A metaphor for the futility of life? I don't know. The bird has nothing else to do with the story.

After this, it just seems like dementia is setting in before their 65th birthday party, which is just the two of them making a cake and blowing out candles. They start forgeting things and try to remember why the mediman gave them both shots when only one suffers from any medical condition.

And now the SPOILER because it wasn't much of a story: the mediman gave them post-hynoptic suggestions to kill themselves as soon as they turned 65 because that's the law. Everyone dies at 65. One sister kills the other, and then tries to save herself for a half hour (because she's a half hour younger) but in the end runs off into the jaws of the mech.

A depressing little tale that probably wouldn't be entertaining on TV. If made now, peopl would just assume it was some message against Big Oil and for cleaning the environment so we could feed everyone without killing off the old people. This is the kind of thing that gets made today with a message overwhelming any interestng story.

Interesting tidbit: they that Flymart, which is shopping delivered to your door by drone. But it's expensive so you need to make a reasonable sized order.

Short Story: "Stormseeker" by Bob Shaw, with no illustration. The caption reads, Some flee the lightning. Some boldly challenge it. Some foretell it -- and capture it, if they can!

Taking place sometime after World War Three point Three repeating, the narrator (I don't know the name, and originally was surprised to learn it was a male -- I guess after the last story, my mind was in female mode) can "skry" lightning, and takes trips up into the sky to help Archbold get electricity for his lab. Selena, the narrator's girlfriend comes along (as she has before).

The entire story is overloaded with sexually imagery, from the swollen clouds (and the synonyms used to state it) to the penetration of the leader by the telescopic steel mast driven by explosives, spearing the sky. After all this, Selena tells him that she won't give him children because he has no instinct for life. But he continues with the storm season even if diverting lightning has some effect on the biosphere.

Sex sells, so this could be an interesting short short. Expensive, given the CGI required, but there would be few sets involved, and only three people. (The third isn't even seen in the story.) But it would have to be played for laughs, with the audience in on the joke. Because otherwise, it would be too stupid. Maybe this was groundbreaking 50 years ago, or maybe it was just as juvenile back then but it met with the editor's fancy.

Novlette: "The Answer" by James Gunn, with an illustration of a bird's head in a helmet, and stylized shadow people in the revolt, taking up arms. The caption reads, Man at last had his message from the stars. What would be the price of reply?

I hoenstly don't know what was in the author's head with this one. Scientists in Puerto Rico finally received a message from space. It's starts by repeating some of our own broadcasts from 90 years earlier and then there's a computer printout of a message they sent. Un-cryptography, trying to establish language. It's a bunch of dots that can be arrayed into a semblance of a picture. One radical has a copy and made a stylized version of it, but the scientists can't be sure.

For whatever reason, rather than reply President White wants to shut down the program. President White keeps drawing analogies between himself and Teddy Roosevelt, and it's stated a few times that he's black, but not necessarily the first black president. However, there is one point where his aide, who is also his son, tells him that they let him be president because the job doesn't matter any more.

In the end, many, many pages away, a message does get sent, even though the next reply isn't expected for nearly a century. I never understood things like this in sci-fi -- it supposes that those on the other end of the conversation will have nothing else to say in the meantime. Whatever.

This could be filmed, but most of it would have to be tossed. I would think getting a message from space, particularly one that could be picked up by many listening posts around the world, or just one international outpost that would likely spread the message, would be cause for speculation, and one man wouldn't be able to stop it although he might be able to influence the message itself.

Short Story: "Gambler" by Tad Crawford, with an illustration of a bird's head in a helmet, and stylized shadow people in the revolt, taking up arms. The caption reads, Man at last had his message from the stars. What would be the price of reply?

Marlowe, who is owned by sub-Ultimate A41, uses the hypnocord to attach to the computer and gamble his 300 credits. This seems to be a bit of money because each time he wins, we learn how much he could control with his earnings -- from a small island to a moon or planet somewhere. He would have more autonomy even though he'd still be own by his computer overlords. Eventually, he wins enough to request freedom for mankind. We then learn that the computer might've thrown the game as it had taken over mankind to save it from itself but now it needed someone to free mankind to save it.

This could be a good short film. It doesn't require much in the way of sets or people and could rely a bit on stock footage for the gambling.

Short Story: "Joey" by F. A. Davis, with an illustration of a robot holding a bundle. (The top of the robot seems remniscent of that Brontomech earlier in the issue, but that's likely my imagination.) The caption reads, Finally they had a baby -- for a while!

Okay, that caption could mean a lot, such as the tragic loss of the baby, or the sudden growth and maturation (also tragic?) of the baby.

The narratior is married to Big Joe, who is a research physicist at the ion-research station in Houston. The two were married for only five years when they were granted permission to have Joey, who was the most beautiful baby she'd ever seen. They raise him for five years until he's school age. Joey finds out that he's not like the other kids. Big Joe talks about having a real baby, and his wife tells him that Joey is REAL. Except that he's not. He's a practice baby, a training model, who self-destructs on its sixth birthday.

As far as little vignettes with twist endings go, this is moderately Twilight Zonish. Small cast, quick payoff. It could be squeezed into any anthology series.