ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact July 1972
July is late which just about guarantees that August will be last. Too many things going on and too many things to read. And, of course, silly as it sounds, I want to get my daily Kindle app reading streak going, and .PDF files don't count toward the daily reading goal.
The July issue of Analog will be reviewed as I read it and get back to this page. That means a lot of what you see hear will be from last month's review until at I get to the point where I've updated the entire thing.
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.
In this issue:
The Editorial: "The Mystic West". Fifty years ago, a war between science and poetry, technology and the arts. Silly but presented sensibly.
Novellette: "Collision Course", S. Kye Boult with an illustration by John Scoenherr, which is really difficult to make out. I can see a few figures, one standing away from the others, and a couple of structures, but I have no idea what is going on. The caption reads, If you were captian of a fifty-mile long chunk of granite sailing on molten magma and had just been rammed by a floating plateau ... what would you do?
Mental note: check the reviews of stories by S. Kye Boult because I've seen the name a lot in the past two years. But nothing is springing to mind.
Okay, so as far as visual go, this story has it. I can't recall ever reading or seeing a story about a mountain of rock with engines on it being steered like a battleship. (I may have missed the fifty mile long reference.) Even if Hollywood writers throw out everything else to make this "more accessible", this would rock. (Pun not intended at first, but intended after.)
The problem I had with it was it wasn't accessible with the aliens it created and the language and terminology to go with it. It got a little distracting. That said, it was better that this wasn't a bunch of humans mining minerals on a magma-flowing planet. When I finally got to the flat rock that was planning on ramming the mountain, I wasn't sure who or what was ramming or why. The reasons were liking there and I could've just zoned out and skimmed over them. The solution did lie in the dynamics of fluids and heating and cooling magma.
It was interesting enough that I didn't bail on it, but I did slough me my way to the finish.
Short Story: "Klysterman's Silent Violin", by Michael Rogers, with an illustration by John Schoenherr, showing a simple image of a man in the background playing an electronic violin while wearing a pair of headphones. There's the face of a man in the foreground who appears to be annoyed. I don't know if there's something on his forehead or if it's just a bad image of his hairline. The caption reads, "The path of scientific research sometimes takes unexpected turns -- and so does the path of evolution."
The story is told in the form of journal entries. I just scanned the text looking for the name of the writer, who is in charge. I figured that there might be dialogue in one of them. I didn't see it. Klysterman is a scientist who works on his violin in his spare time. There is a female scientist named Ludmila W., and there appears to be a love triangle. Except that it isn't. Klysterman seems interested in her, and she seems interested in him and his violin. The projet leader tries to separate them -- for her sake, of course, because he's a ne'er-do-well, or something -- going so far as to put her on his research project. It doesn't help.
The narrator becomes more erratic in his tale as it goes on and I thought it was going to be beause of the "silent" violin actually driving him mad. Nope. Doesn't happen and that's a missed opportunity.
Instead the plot resolves around augmented wheat rust, which is allowed to germinate so it could be studied. No, I didn't fully understand the reasons for this. Klysterman takes an interest in the project. It appears that the rust has psychedelic properties. And in the end, the rust's mutations expand so far as to cause a mutation of Klysterman and Lucinda W, which they undergo willingly.
This could be interesting visually but I don't know if it could be done cheaply enough such a short story. It could be the last (short) segment of an hourlong anthology show.
Science Fact: "Strong Poison 2", by arl A. Larson
It was long and I didn't read through much of it. It could have ideas to be used in writing, maybe. I don't recall Strong Poison 1, whenever that was published.
Novellette: "The Darkness to Come", by Robert B. Marcus, Jr., with an illustration by John Schoenherr, showing a large black bird-like creature with human-like arms and hands not attached to its wings. The caption reads, In a situation where fats are scarce, faith counts as much as logic. But when the faithful reach the wrong conclusion, they still cling to it stubbornly!
Jans Deriae is an old scientist. He takes pills (which appear to be illegal) to prolong his life. He has calculated that the world (Rangi) is cooling because it is moving away from the primary sun, which would be obviously if the clouds would get out of the way. The population of the world lives underground and most have never seen the sky through gaps in clouds.
Jans Deriae has realized that the world has traveled through the dark of space from one star to another but it has now passed that star. The world won't survive another trip through the darkness.
He's opposed in the scientific community, so none will listen to him, and they ridicule him. He finds a way into Chamber of the Gods, which is off-limits to all. He learns the truth that the "gods" were just men, from a planet called Earth, and they set in motion a plan to save Rangi. But the gods even acknowledged that their machine were fallible and left instructions on what to do if the planet did not enter orbit about the new star on its own. (Diagnostic says that the surface sensors froze.) Now it needs to be fixed before he can be stopped.
An enjoyable story, which could be made with a good budget or an austere one. (Not too austere, make sure they look like bird people, not people with beaks and a few feathers.)
Short Story: "Out, Wit!", by Howard L. Myers, (no initial illustration) The caption reads, As was pointed out long ago, "It ain't what you say, it's the way you that you say it!" that counts.
The story is told in the form of letters between D. R. Dayleman, Editor of the the North American Physical Journal in Virgina and Harmon McGregor, Chairman of the Department of Physics at Grandview University in Ohio. It concerns recommendations of a former student who goes on to make a presentation that includes a joke that is not well-received among his colleagues. He becomes an outcast and the two correspondents are all "woe is me" about it.
As time passes however, science marches on and breakthroughs are made. The chairman is unable to ascertain how he came upon a certain idea, as it doesn't appear in any scientific literature, and assumes that it was just germanating in the back of his mind for a long time. In the end (some ten years later), there's a note about the young man who never amounted to anything in life, going crazy, and they really dodged on, didn't they. Of course, it was the young man's initial idea.
Not only could it be filmed, but it's likely that something of this sort has been. Obviously, there would have to be more than random correspondece. And one would think that the replies to these letters would come much sooner.
I recognized the name, but I couldn't remember from where. The Analytical Library shows that he wrote "War in OUr Time" in March 1972, which I remember had a sequel story a month or two later.
Serial: "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!", by Harry Harrison, Part Three of Three.
I'll get to this soon, I hope.
The Reference Library , by P. Schuyler Miller. Reivews include The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin, A Choice of Gods by Clifford D. Simak, The Devil is Dead by R. A. Lafferty, Russian Science Fiction Literature and Criticism: A Biblioraphy" by Darko Suvin, and Orin by Piers Anthony.
Brass Tacks: Several letters about the illustration of a nude man extending a raised middle finger and the sex that appears in the pages of sci-fi as of later (ie, early 1970s).
I hope I read July's issue before July ends. I also want to read the Harrison serial. On top of this, I seem to have it in my head that I need to keep my daily Kindle reading streak going, and pdf files don't count toward that goal. So other books have to be sprinkled in, even if its only a dozen pages per day.
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