The departments of this issue of Amazing are pretty lively. Editor Ted White devotes his editorial to complaining about the 1976 World Science Fiction Convention, held in Kansas City, a city Ted considers quite overrated. The centerpiece of his litany of gripes is the speech by Guest of Honor Robert A. Heinlein. It seems Heinlein was ostentatiously unprepared, and delivered an oration that, in addition to featuring content that offended White's left wing sensibilities, was disjointed and rambling. White suggests Heinlein may be senile, and that his wife has been a malign influence on him.
Ted's complaints do not end with this subpar performance from the inaugural SFWA Grand Master--far from it! The play ("Sails of Moonlight, Eyes of Dusk") was bad. One of the five belly dancers was an incompetent amateur. The panels had too many participants, six or even eight, when the latest developments in panel organizing indicate that a good panel can include as few as two people. And there was no celebration at the Convention of the fact that 1976 was Amazing's 50th anniversary!
In the letters column a guy from Chicago writes in to attack the September 1976 issue and to complain that there is too much homosexuality in SF (or "stf," as everybody writing in Amazing styles it.) A radio technician serving in the Army writes in to point out errors in Gregory Benford's column in that Sept. '76 issue. But a British correspondent heaps praise on Amazing, telling Ted to ignore such critics, as Ted is doing everything right and Amazing shows unique "courage, freshness of approach, and, above all, imagination"!
The column on fanzines by Rich Brown (I think Susan Wood's name on the heading is a printing error) turned me on to fanzines I'd never heard of, like British fanzine Maya (at the link find Maya 12&13, in which Christopher Priest ferociously attacks David Kyle's Pictorial History of Science Fiction (a book I recently purchased) asserts that 1930s SF illustration is garbage (gotta disagree here) and expresses his detestation of the middle classes (again, I object!)) and Nickelodeon, the first issue of which had a Richard Corben cover and apparently included a nude centerfold (I couldn't find any scans of this zine, just the cover, but Nickelodeon's predecessor, Trumpet, some issues of which are available online, certainly features its share of topless men and women.) Darrell Schweitzer's interview of Hal Clement has interesting things in it: Clement admits he doesn't put much work into the characters of his stories, focusing instead on the science; describes his relationship with John W. Campbell, Jr.; and reveals that he has sold astronomical paintings under the pen name George Richard.
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| Here's a George Richard I found online, Roche Limit |
Alright, so the non-fiction sections of this copy of Amazing were a really profitable and entertaining read. I can also recommend the issue's ads for wargames, both of Stephen Fabian's illustrations, and one of Tony Gleeson's.
"Shibboleth" by Barry N. Malzberg
This is what dun brought us here, a Malzberg available to the faithful in no other venue!
"Shibboleth" has a bit in common with 1974's "Closing the Deal," which, when I read it, I found to be a better than average Malzberg, more clear and with more identifiable, more "normal" characters. (Malzberg's characters tend to be insane.) In "Closing the Deal," a man with a daughter who has psychic abilities negotiates with an agent, trying to get the girl a job for which she can use her mental powers. Here in "Shibboleth," a man with a telepathic son negotiates with a show biz agent, trying to get him to manage his son. In the universe of the 1974 story, psychic powers are relatively common, and the little girl is sort of a third-string talent, but here in "Shibboleth" the mind-reading boy is a one-of-a-kind freak. The boy's powers stir up trouble in school, and Dad is desperate for help, but doesn't want to sonny boy to a medical professional because he is sure the kid will then end up in the hands of the government and be weaponized for use in the cold war. Dad thinks being in show biz will somehow help protect the kid, that everybody will assume evidence of his powers is a trick. But Dad has made a mistake--the entertainment agent immediately calls the Feds, who collect father and son. Father frets that "the enemy" will soon learn of the existence of the boy and launch a "first strike" and this will start a nuclear war and destroy the world.
This is an acceptable story, but not as good, not as nuanced or surprising or sophisticated, as "Closing the Deal."
"Our Vanishing Triceratops" by Joe Pumilia and Steven Utley
We read a collaboration between Pumilia and Utley back in 2016, "Hung Like an Elephant," the tale of a man who wakes up one morning to find his penis has been replaced by a small elephant's head. The same year we read a solo story by Utley in which a gynecologist looks between a woman's legs and finds a portal to outer space, "Womb With a View." In 2017 we read a solo Pumilia tale, "The Porter of Hell-Gate," a mediocre production about evil energy creatures invading from another universe.
"Our Vanishing Triceratops" has never been printed again, which is not a good sign, but I love dinosaurs, so maybe I'll like it?
Dow, Daniel, and Jhiminex are from the future, when pollution has killed off most species and radically lowered human life expectancy. D, D & J have been sent back in time to collect specimens for the purpose of cloning and repopulating the Earth. Dow is a big good-looking responsible guy. Daniel is sort of a nerd, imaginative, maybe rebellious. Daniel envies Dow because his wife left him for Dow (well, not exactly; as in a lot of SF, people of the future of "Our Vanishing Triceratops" engage each other in short term contractual sexual relationships it is more fair to say she cancelled her contract Danny boy early and started a new contract with hunky Dow.) Jhiminex is a slug-like fetus creature, a clone of Daniel extensively modified so it can control the esoteric energies that power the time machine (in a sense, he is the time machine) and communicate telepathically with D & D. Daniel and Dow fly around the Paleoscene with their jet packs, scraping samples off trees and whatever to carry back to the barren Earth of the future.
All that stuff I just told you above we learn in fits and starts in a different order as the story proceeds.
The plot of the story concerns how they find dinosaur tracks--a small number of Triceratops must have survived into the early Paleoscene--and Daniel becomes obsessed with tracking the ceratopsian down to collect a sample from it. Dow and Jhiminex tell him there is no time, they can only stay in this period of history for a certain number of minutes before surplus time energy residue or whatever accumulates and they will have to leave. Because the same person can't go back to the same time period a second time, Daniel won't be able to search for dinosaurs again, and insists on searching for the triceratops in a concealing woods. (Time travel stories often have rules that feel arbitrary and seem to have been tailored to facilitate the drama the author wants to create--not all SF authors prioritize the science the way Hal Clement does.) When Dow tries to stop Daniel, Daniel stabs him. Dow hurries back to the time machine to staunch his wound. Jhiminex can't hold back the time machine any longer and he and Dow leave without Daniel, who has found the triceratops; the beast is old, cancerous, the last of its kind, and it dies seconds after Daniel sees it. Daniel, it is implied, commits suicide next to the giant reptile's corpse.
OK, but no big deal.
"The Bentfin Boomer Girl Comes Thru" by Richard A. Lupoff
'Nifykin look outha porole sreely pretty, sreely pretty, lookna Port Upatoi swinging roun thole mudball, thole goodole place, it's maybe not the prettiest place na whole universe but nobody ever said it was, it was home though m that counted frole lot that swat Leander Laptip saw outha portole:
Oy.
I have the exact same praise and criticism for "The Bentfin Boomer Girl Comes Thru" that I had five years ago for "With the Bentfin Boomer Boys on Little Old New Alabama." While I attacked Sandworld and Crack in the Sky for being shoddy and rushed and lazy, Lupoff obviously put a lot of effort into these Space War Blues stories, carefully crafting all the puns and phonetic spellings and novel forms of punctuation that make up the dialect of N'Alabama. Of course, it takes a lot of effort to read this idiosyncratic text, and the question is whether the reward is worthy of that effort. Well, on the red side of the ledger, many of the jokes are obvious and many of the scenes feel long and slow, being overly detailed (it takes half a page for somebody to undress, for example.) But in the black column are some of the SF elements, like the space station and the medical technology and the rehab regime the characters go through, which are good; as for the plot and themes, they are OK, though the characters' goals and the obstacles they face get less interesting as the story proceeds instead of more interesting.
The plot: We've got three chapters. In the first, a man, Leander Laptip, and a woman, Mizzy Lizzy Cadbell, both service members of the space navy of the redneck planet of New Alabama, arrive at a space station orbiting N'Alabama, severely injured in the war with the blacks of planet New Haiti (whom we don't actually see in this story, unlike in "With the Bentfin Boomer Boys on Little Old New Alabama," which was like 90 pages long and featured numerous chapters set on N'Haiti.) They glimpse each other's broken bodies briefly, and then are separated as they go through the lengthy process of rehabilitation, therapy, and installation of protheses for many lost body parts. In the second chapter, all healed up, Leander and Mizzy Lizzy formally meet and become friends. They are mustered out of the service and given a hero's welcome on the surface. They look for work, but for some reason all their job offers involve being prostitutes or actors in porn films (strip clubs, pornography, and prostitution play a large role in these Space War Blues stories, or at least the two I have read.) In chapter three Leander and Mizzy Lizzy begin work as porn actors, and become a worldwide sensation and get rich. But their sex life is not exactly satisfying, as their genitals are artificial and require conscious effort to operate--for example, Leander doesn't spontaneously get an erection when he sees Mizzy Lizzy disrobe, he has to will an erection to occur. Maybe this story is in part about how technology ruins our relationships, separates us from the natural world, including from our own bodies!
Like its predecessor, "The Bentfin Boomer Girl Comes Thru" is a borderline case, admirable but not necessarily enjoyable, a product of ambition and industry that perhaps lacks appeal.
"The Recruiter" by Glen Cook
Our narrator was born on Earth, joined the space marines to get off the planet-sized slum, and was killed while serving, but his brain was intact and he was reborn in a robot body. In that armed and armored metal shell he acts as a one-man press gang among the crumbling ruins of Earth cities, stunning people and bringing them to HQ to be drafted into a space navy...or cut to pieces, their brains used as computer components, their organs as spare parts for more productive people! When the narrator has brought in enough "recruits" he will be rewarded by having his brain installed into a fresh beautiful human body being grown in a vat! Then he can go to some frontier world and live a peaceful independent life.
The background above is basically the whole story; the plot concerns the narrator capturing some kids and then having an attack of conscience, but, reminded that he only has to catch one or two more recruits before he gets that fresh new healthy body, silencing his qualms about consigning poor people to being carved up for use as spare parts.
I like it. Cook is a capable writer of this kind of material. In the period before this blog escaped from the laboratory to roam the countryside and express its bitterness, I read Cook's ten grim dark Black Company books and, though they got less interesting as I made my way through them, on the whole I enjoyed them and can recommend the first four. (I actually wrote a little about the Black Company series in the early days of this blog when I opined about a list somebody put together of the top 100 SF books.)
"The Recruiter" would be reprinted in 2012 in the Cook collection Winter's Dreams.
"Two of a Kind" by Richard W. Brown
This is a pornographic story about racist violence in the grim dark future. America has suffered "the Breakup," whatever that is, and rural people are resorting to cannibalism during a race war in which "Feds" scour the countryside, exterminating black people.
Our narrator is out hunting when he is captured by two Feds--he is technically poaching so the Feds can summarily execute him, but he convinces them that he knows where a black couple and their children are hiding out, and they spare him--for now!--so he can lead them to their shack. The Feds plan to rape the woman before killing her, and discuss all kinds of crazy sexual abuse they have committed in the past and will commit on this woman, like making her eat their excrement, raping her while her husband watches, etc. When they get to the shack, Brown describes in detail how they use their laser pistols, set on low, to torture her, compel her to service the narrator with her mouth, and much much more. To rape her they have to turn off their force fields, and, as we readers have been expecting, the narrator is revealed to be the woman's husband, and once the Feds' energy screens are down he kills them. As the story ends the narrator looks forward to eating the Feds.
This is real exploitation stuff, and I am a little surprised to see it in Amazing, though I cannot deny that "Two of a Kind" is a competently-crafted action story.
Unsurprisingly, "Two of a Kind" has never been reprinted. Richard W. Brown, who apparently preferred to be known as "rich brown" with small initials, has 13 short fiction credits at isfdb and was apparently a very active contributor to fanzines (he wrote the Amazing column on fanzines in this issue and two others.)
"Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear" by Jack C. Haldeman II
Jack is the brother of the Joe Haldeman who wrote the famous Forever War and the three Worlds novels I read in 2020. In 2016 I read Jack's "Sand Castles" and wrote of it "This story is a pointless waste of time, and it is 17 pages long!" In 2018 I read his "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" and wrote of it, "I think we can see 'What I Did on My Summer Vacation' as an example of literary or New Wave SF that fails utterly, abandoning plot but not replacing plot with human feeling or adept writing or good images, just self indulgent rambling."
"Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear" is a gimmicky story that doesn't really work. An archaeologist gives us a little autobiography, starting with how as a kid he became fascinated with Indian artifacts and then with old coins. In grad school he learns the impossible truth--there is no physical evidence of ancient and prehistoric times, all those Indian arrowheads and dinosaur bones are fakes made in the 20th century by scientists, who then bury them to preserve their own jobs finding them.
Barely acceptable. Nobody saw fit to print this one again.
"An Animal Crime of Passion" by Vol Haldeman
Vol is Jack's wife. She has four credits at isfdb, including a collaboration with her husband and Andrew Offut on the eleventh volume of the Spaceways series of erotic space adventure novels. "An Animal Crime of Passion" has never been reprinted.
"An Animal Crime of Passion" is a light-hearted detective story about a planet in an interstellar civilization upon which live a variety of peaceful herbivorous intelligent species, among whom there is almost zero violent crime. "An Animal Crime of Passion" is also a joke story about rape. Wow, this issue of Amazing is really something.
Stuck on the planet is a cop of a carnivorous race, and he is enlisted to help the investigation when one of the native quadrupeds is assaulted and raped. Because the people who live on this planet are all pacific, the local cops have no experience investigating violent crime and need the help. The victim can't give much of a description of her attacker, as she was so fixated on his huge penis she noticed little else about him.
There is a bunch of detective stuff, you know, looking for clues and questioning witnesses and all that, and then finally the culprit is brought in. It is a human, and he raped the quadruped native thinking she was not a person, but merely an animal, namely a dog. The joke, I guess, is that back home on Earth this guy fucks dogs on the regular.
The writing style of this story is smooth and jaunty, and up to the last page I expected to give "An Animal Crime of Passion" a passing grade, but the ending is so lame I think I have to give it a thumbs down. Missed it by that much!
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Wow, these are some pessimistic stories! The Earth is a total wreck! The authorities are corrupt and abusive! Everywhere you look there are violent perverts! Circumstances drive people to degrade themselves and violate others! Damn! Well, our next blog post will be about a 1950s SF novel, and maybe it will bring us out of this Seventies malaise.
I feel that Amazing had it's best run in the 60's under the editorship of Cele Goldsmith. By the mid 70's it was not up to the quality of F&SF or Asimov's.
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