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AFTER SIX MONTHS OF wriggling around in the Reviewer's Chair, looking for a comfortable position, and after reading the truly impressive response to the request for readers' opinions published in the June issue, I have arrived at the following conclusions:

1)There is no comfort to be had in a seat of judgement.

2)For articulateness, interest, individualism, and diversity of firm opinions, I will back the readers of F&SF against any other publication in the country.

My third conclusion hardly merits a numbered listing, since it is neither quite mine, nor at all conclusive. It came out of the mailbox, with a note from Ed (the Ed.) saying, "We've had quite a response on the hook column. I think the enclosed pretty much sums up the whole thing." The enclosed was a letter from Charles Landis of Austin, Texas, from which the following excerpts are lifted:

. . . longer essays are wanted … the field needs that insight into itself which only the deeper analysis can provide ... But on the other hand, it would be nice to keep the short reviews. They are invaluable as "buying guides." In short, then, I think the experiment was itself the solution. Mix them up, give her a free hand, and do whatever is appropriate to the subject matter.

I am, of course, delighted to comply.

Ideally, I should be delighted to comply with all the requests that were made. Practically, three major factors make this unlikely: space, time, and publishers: space, because Ed (the Ed.) is reluctant to use half the magazine (and editorial budget) for reviews; time, because I simply do not read that fast; publishers, because the books actually received for review represent, at a guess, something less than 50% of the total of s-f book publishing.

Mrs. Irene Gitomer, Director of the Cherry Hill, N.J. Free Public Library, wrote perhaps the most eloquent plea for the wide-coverage "readers' guide" sort of column, including the interesting statistic that

. . . only about fifteen per cent of the books published annually ever get reviewed. For a special interest type of writing such as SF, I am sure the percentage is a good deal smaller.

Actually, I think it is much higher—even from a viewpoint as inclusive as mine about what constitutes s-f. I'd guess that we come close to covering half of the new releases.

I stressed new releases. One of the more interesting points made by several correspondents was emphasized in a letter from A. Wm. Harding, of Willowdale, Ontario:

. . Also we suggest that you include reviews of older books as well as new. We remind you that there is still business done in the second-hand stores and in the private and public libraries. The older books are cherished by many of us, as your pages have often shown…"

And Mrs. Frederick Avila of Denver, Colorado, followed a long and interesting letter to the Editor with a second one to the Reviewer, discussing (in connection with WHITE LOTUS) two other books she had read recently, which made me yearn to be able to redo the Hersey review in a more inclusive and discursive way.

I wish there were time and space here (This time, I can't blame anything on the publishers.) to quote more fully from the mail received. But it is more to the point to answer it, I think, by explaining some of the factors influencing the scope and type of review I can or cannot do here, and why.

For instance, the matter of "books received"—or not received. Because of this magazine's reputation for literary and intellectual quality (I assume) we receive a number of books (primarily nonfiction) of only the most peripheral interest to most s-f readers. I believe these should be, at least, mentioned: partly because we do have an unusual range of readers, some of whom will be interested, no matter how esoteric the field; and partly, I admit, to encourage the publishers of these volumes to keep sending books, because some of the others will be of wider interest.

On the other hand, there are still a fair number of "snob publishers" who will not allow themselves to believe that their books (especially when a Name Author is involved) have any connection with science fiction. Others, apparently, do not maintain specialty review lists for the genre. Of the thirty-seven books reviewed by me in my first six columns, two (Nathan and Golding, in April) were from the public library; two were supplied, only on request, by the publishers (Christopher, April; Burroughs, May); and three were purchased (Kennaway, April; Hersey, June; Clarke, July).

Now everyone knows that book reviewing, though notoriously underpaid, is attractive because of the basic fringe benefit—the books themselves. I am willing, on occasion, to forego this privilege, and to report on a book I have begged, borrowed, stolen, or even bought; but I feel it is only fair, before going to such extremes, to allow the publisher an opportunity to remedy his oversight. By the time I know about such books, however, and write to ask for them—

Well, look at it this way: the fastest time for publication of a review in this column is about three months from the time the book is in my hands. (Average time is closer to four.) And frankly, the reviews are better when they are slower; (I seem to have a mind like a centrifuge; if I just pour the stuff in, and let it spin around, it sorts itself out fairly reliably. My instant opinions are more likely to be simply scrambled. But aside from my mental idiosyncracies—)

Magazine reviewing is slow at best. It is simply not possible for a column like this to serve as a truly effective shopping guide for new books. And from my personal knowledge of s-f readers, I think Mr. Harding's point was well-taken: they do patronize secondhand stores and libraries; furthermore, they will go out and order books no longer in stock, and make special requests at libraries for books not on the shelves.

I can, however, make an effort to be more inclusive—and readers can help. If you notice hooks you'd like to see reviewed, let us know. Those not already on hand, we will make an effort to get. Anything worth reading will still be worth reading when the review finally appears. In addition—

We will, at regular intervals, if not in each column, publish the fullest possible listings of books published but not reviewed—whether new, reprinted, or reissued; and of such titles as you-all out there bring to our attention, if they are not otherwise discussed here.

As to the form of the reviews themselves, I know no more ahead of time than you do. I hope they will he "appropriate to the subject matter." They will, in any case, be written in full accord with the comment of another letter-writer, Ed Brenner, of Brooklyn, N.Y.:

. . . It is, after all, her opinions that are going down in print. Even in this age when we are not held accountable for our actions, we should be accountable for our opinions—especially our vocal ones.

And before I get down to the job for this month, let me thank (however anonymously and collectively) those of you who saw fit to be generous with your praise. I approached this job more timorously than may seem probable for a Seasoned Old Pro; it has been very gratifying to know that some of you are well pleased . . . as gratifying as it is to know that Ed (the Ed.) also supports such views as those expressed by correspondents Landis and Brenner.

I am rather pleased to report that nothing on this month's list excited me much. (Bad show, you know, for a critic to be uncritical, and I have been bouncing with enthusiasm, it seems to me, for months now.) Mostly standard fare, with three new novels providing an interesting contrast in terms of the number of ways a book can fall short of excellence and yet remain well-readable.

 

NOT WITH A BANG, Chapman Pincher; NAL-World, 1965, $4.95, 248 pp.

 

This is a first novel by a British zoologist-turned-journalist, who worked on weapons development for the army during World War Two, and is now, according to the book jacket, "noted especially for his political reporting. He has written seven books on subjects ranging from fish to animal breeding and evolution."

All this is, for once, very much pertinent. Writing about the effects of the discovery of a longevity drug, Pincher clearly demonstrates his knowledge, not only of laboratories, council halls, and city rooms, but of the individuals who inhabit them. Unhappily, his lack of background in fiction is just as much in evidence.

The book moves clumsily, but convincingly. The shift from recognizable authenticity of background to authoritatively extrapolated scenes and events is accomplished particularly effectively. The stream of events, affecting individuals and nations alike, has the feeling of reportage rather than invention.

The only thing the books lacks entirely is emotional involvement. The characters are perceptively visualized and meaningfully inter-related; but one never quite attains that sense of identification without which the best-constructed and most clearly drawn characters remain just that—characters, and not people. In this case, "subjects" might be the better word: the technique is more that of the case-history writer than the storyteller.

The book is well worth reading, and judging by the author's demonstrated keenness as an observer, and from the excellence of those aspects of technique with which he is familiar, I suspect this is the only amateurishly-written novel Mr. Pincher will publish. If there is another, it will probably be very good.

Meantime, a black mark against NAL-World for the common publishers' conceit that has done more to lower the level of s-f than any other cause: the smug assumption that style is superfluous in a "category" book. I cannot help but feel that a more demanding editor would have elicited a much better novel.

 

DARE, Philip Jose Farmer; Ballantine, 1965, 500, 159 pp.

 

This time I cannot blame the publisher. Farmer has demonstrated, on too few occasions, what he can do (cf, THE ALLEY MAN, F&SF, June 1959), when he elects to provide appropriate care and cultivation for his extraordinary inventiveness, intuition, and imagination. More often, as here, his work is so casual as to be embarrassing in its obviously unnecessary inadequacies. Yet I find that while I rail at the sloppiness on every page, I keep turning the pages—eagerly.

This time we have a plot out of Planet Stories by Charles Fort, which might be allright in its way, if it were not abruptly cut off in the middle (well, maybe two-thirds or three-quarters through), and hastily synopsized in the last few pages—peopled by colorful cardboards cut right out of the book club ads for historical novels. But we also have, in scene after scene, Farmer's uniquely sensory scene-setting: the vivid colors, pungent odors, sensations of sun and grass and wood and metal, awareness of food and drink and sex and pain. And more significantly, we have the Farmer symbols.

There are other writers with the kind of direct-line Phil Farmer seems to have to the collective unconscious—but few indeed who can disport themselves so mirthfully with the archetypal shapes. The major stream of symbolism this time has to do with a submerged race (literally, of course; they live underground) whose (literal) sexual superiority is demonstrated (to begin with) in their name, Horstels, from horsetails, from, of course, their (literal) tails. And that's only the beginning…

 

THE POSSESSORS, John Christopher; Simon & Schuster, 1964, $4.50, 252 pp.

 

The only thing missing here is meaning. Beautifully structured, artfully written, thoughtfully and successfully characterized, this still boils down to a story of devils-and-zombies decked out as aliens-and-victims. (One part of Who Goes There?, two parts of PUPPET MASTERS), with not enough freshness, scientific plausibility, or superstitious terror to make it work. Easy reading, for train trips and hammock afternoons.

 

GALACTIC DIPLOMAT, Keith Laumer; Doubleday, 1965, $3.95, 227 pp.

 

Nine of the "Retief" stories from If magazine: farce-toned tales of the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne of the space-expanding future. The C.D.T., as caricature, rings as wryly true as its counterparts in Lawrence Durrell's present-time fantasy-farce "Antrobus" series. I cannot even say that Durrell's touch is any more deft or delicate with the satiric strokes than (fellow-ex-diplomat) Laumer's: I find the brush a bit broad for my taste, increasingly, in both series.

Maybe what jars me most in the Retief yarns is Retief himself—such a fine figure of a fellow, full of moral and intellectual, as well as muscular and social virtues—that I never can quite believe he is still with the C.D.T. when the next story starts. Maybe merit does not necessarily imply rejection in the diplomatic employ, but this particular heroic figure has humor besides. If the Corps didn't cashier him, Retief would long since have cashed in his chips for himself.

And I can't help wishing that Laumer would take his own abilities more seriously. (See F&SF, March, on THE GREAT TIME MACHINE HOAX.) His rare excursions into non-farcical fiction—or even the misplaced hero, Retief —indicate the likelihood of a heroic writer under the gimcracks. Slapstick is great garnish for the hors d'oeuvres, or maybe even the dessert; but a well-done hero is still the meat-and-potatoes of literary fare—and there are simply not enough of them to go around, these anti-novel days.

 

NATIVES OF SPACE, Hal Clement; Ballantine, 1965, 500, 156 pp.

 

It is not easy to persuade a commercial publisher to bring out a collection of short stories—and only slightly less difficult to sell a trio or quartet of novelettes. I suppose it should not be surprising, then, that so many of the collections that do get published appear to have been selected by literary historians rather than working editors. The unreconstructed evidence of the quarter-century-ago pulp apprenticeship of a man who has since become a skillful writer has very little place in the general fiction market, and less, I should think, on the overcrowded paperback stacks.

(What really astonishes me is the willingness of the authors themselves to have their early magazine work presented without refinishing to the bookreading public.)

Don't get me wrong. Every one of these three stories ("Impediment," "Technical Error," "Assumption Unjustified," all from Astounding, 1942-43-46) contains the same inherent integrity (of puzzle, plot, character, theme, technical background) that has sustained Clement at the top of the field from the beginning. The difference is that on the way he also learned to write.

As it stands, the book is for solid s-f buffs only.

 

SLEEPING PLANET, William R. Burkett, Jr.; Doubleday, 1965, $4.95, 297 pp.

 

Goodish standard-brand Analog-type novel: a double-handful of unaffected Terrestrials beat off the sleeping-gas invasion of Earth by the Llralan Empire, countering overwhelming military force with yankee ingenuity, rebel stubbornness, bulldog courage, outback unpredictability, and a little bit o' luck for good measure (mostly in the form of the superstitious ancestor-worship prevalent among the cosmic invaders).

The odd thing is, as long as its at all competently done (and this one is), I keep right on enjoying this story.

 

CITY UNDER THE SEA, Paul W. Fairman; Pyramid, 1965, 500, 141 pp.

 

The "novelization" of ABC-TV's "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." I found both the smoothly professional style and the Chestertonian flavor of the material agreeable—but ill-suited to each other.

 

SUBSPACE EXPLORERS, Edward E. Smith; Canaveral Press, 1965, $4.95, 278 pp.

 

Grand Ole Space Opry. Not my dish of tea, but them as likes 'em loves 'em, when "Doc" Smith is at the controls.

 

TO WORLDS BEYOND, Robert Silverberg; Chilton, 1965, $3.95, 170 pp. (9 shorts) & intro by Isaac Asimov.

 

Good standard stuff. (See F&SF, March on REGAN'S PLANET.) I liked "The Overlord's Thumb" and "Ozymandias"; others —"The Old Man," "New Men for Mars," "Collecting Team," "Double Dare," "Certainty," "Mind for Business," "Misfit."

 

ANALOG 3, ED. John W. Campbell; Doubleday, 1965, $4.50, 269 pp. (8 novelettes), and intro.

 

Medium-to-excellent selections from Analog, 1963-65. "Hilifter," Gordon R. Dickson; "Not in the Literature," Christopher Anvil; "Sonny," Rick Raphael; "The Trouble with Telstar," John Berryman; "New Folks' Home," Clifford D. Simak; "Industrial Revolution," Winston P. Sanders; "A World by the Tale," Seaton McKettrig; "Thin Edge,'" Jonathan Blake MacKenzie. My favorites: Raphael, Simak, McKettrig.

 

EXILES OF TIME, Nelson Bond; Paperback Library, 1965, 500, 157 pp.

 

Resurrected, but unreconstructed (see comments on Clement, above) from 1940 magazine (Bluebook?) publication.

 

MEMOIRS OF ROBERT-HOUDIN, King of the Conjurors, translated from the French by Lascelles Wraxall, with an introduction and notes by Milbourne Christopher; Dover, 1964, $2.00; 304 pp. and introduction, appendix, notes, and index.

 

Diagrams, drawings, and photographs lend some liveliness to a Victorian-style autobiography.

 

HAWTHORNE'S FICTION: The Light and the Dark, Richard Harter Fogle; University of Oklahoma Press, 1964; $5.00; 234 pp. and index.

 

Scholarly analysis of Hawthorne's work.

 

—JUDITH MERRIL

 

CORRECTION: A missing line at the bottom of the second column on p. 78 of the July issue resulted in a major misquote from Kurt Vonnegut's book, GOD BLESS YOU, MR, ROSEWATER. The line, "God damn it, you've got to be kind," appears, as printed, to be the last line in the book. It's actually from the middle of the novel, and should have had a line saying so to precede it. My most sincere apologies. JM

 

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