Galaxy, May 1970

[Stephen]

Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine, May 1970

As I mentioned in the “Plan Your Reads here” thread, I recently picked up a copy of this old magazine, for personal reasons. This issue was one of the first science fiction magazines I bought, when I was 13 years old, and I wanted to revisit the stories and see what I think of them all these years later, at 68 years of age.

At this point in time Galaxy was being edited by Ejler Jakobsson, who had succeeded Frederik Pohl the previous year. Under Pohl’s editorship Galaxy and its sister magazine “Worlds of If” were highly successful for most of the 60s. Pohl is still listed on the masthead of this issue as “Editor Emeritus”. I have read that Pohl had left a sizeable inventory of already purchased stories when he departed, so I guess it’s possible that some of the stories in this issue were acquired by Pohl.

[Stephen]

Front cover is a striking painting by Jack Gaughan, “suggested by The Tower of Glass”, the Silverberg serial. Gaughan is also credited as Associate Art Director.

The inside front cover is an ad for “Famous Writers School”, with a promotional spiel by Rod Serling, who is pictured. Opposite this is the Table of Contents and masthead.

Page 2 is the Editor’s Page, literally a one-page editorial signed by editor Jakobsson. It is entitled “The DDTs”. Jakobsson says the large scale use of the pesticide DDT has brought significant benefits to humankind. “…it’s at least arguable that the total human environment has been improved in this instance.” The human impact on the environment has been enormous anyway and we wouldn’t want to forgo the comforts of industrial civilization.

As we know DDT was in fact banned. His larger point, “…that for right now and the foreseeable future we’ve become our own environment” [last 5 words italicized] is hard to argue with given the pervasiveness of the human impact on the world. I’m not too hopeful myself but my sympathies are to a large extent with the environmentalists and the editorial strikes me as unpleasantly fatalistic.

Page 3 is an ad urging readers to subscribe to Galaxy and If.

Pages 4-5 are the title pages for the novelette A Style in Treason by James Blish, with a Gaughan illustration and the line, “Realistically, all things on earth are for sale and those who will not sell or cannot sell find themselves poor!”

[Oleksandr]

With DDT IIRC scientists disagree with activists, esp. after Silent Spring (1962) re negative direct effect on human health. I'll check Archive.org for the issue

[Oleksandr]

The scan plus OCRed pdf is here https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v3...

I may join a bit later, after finishing monthly reads

[Stephen]

I see Gideon Marcus has reviewed this issue of Galaxy a few weeks ago at the Galactic Journey site. I’ll refrain from reading the review until after I’ve read the issue myself.

https://galacticjourney.org/april-10-...

[Stephen]

“A Style in Treason” is very good, imo. Elegantly written, inventive and allusive. A professional “traitor” operates undercover on the peculiar but wealthy planet of Boadicea, on behalf of High Earth (“which was not necessarily Old Earth but not necessarily was not, either”) against the alien Green Exarch. There is a thousand-year-old Traitors’ Guild, and elegance and “style” in the performance of betrayals are highly valued.

This was over my head when I was a kid. I puzzled over it a bit but didn’t really get it.

[Stephen]

The next piece, text starting on page 48, is the novelette “The God Machine” by David Gerrold. I haven’t read much by Gerrold. He has had a long career since this relatively early work and I believe is still publishing new fiction. I’m pretty sure The God Machine is a chunk of what became the fix-up novel When HARLIE Was One, which was a finalist for the Nebula in 1972 and the Hugo in 1973. I’ve never read the novel.

The story is almost all dialogue, largely between the main character, a researcher named David Auberson, and Harlie, a self-aware, intelligent computer. (I don’t think the H.A.R.L.I.E. acronym is explained here.) The corporation for which Auberson works is demanding that he justify the expense of the H.A.R.L.I.E. project. He spars with them over whether Harlie can be considered human. Meanwhile he discusses big philosophical questions with the computer, and tries to help guide its “psychological” development. It is treated as the equivalent of an extremely bright but naive young person. There is also a developing romance between Auberson and an intelligent woman in her thirties who also works for the company.

As I noted, the story is almost all dialogue. Fortunately it is engaging, well written dialogue. I enjoyed the story more than I expected to. Another good one.

I believe I read this when young but I remember little if anything of what I thought. I’d say it would have been reasonably accessible to me.

[Stephen]

“Neutron Tide” by Arthur C. Clarke is a very short humorous piece culminating in a terrible pun.

[Stephen]

Pages 88-98 and 135-158 are taken up by Part II of the serial Tower of Glass by Robert Silverberg, which was a finalist for the Best Novel Nebula for 1970 and the Hugo in 1971. I have a kindle copy of the novel and I intend to read it one of these days. I don’t think reading the second part of the serialization would enhance my enjoyment of the full novel when I get around to it, so I’m going to skip it. I do remember that I didn’t get very far with it when I was young, whether I was confused by starting in mid-story or found it difficult for some other reason.

[Stephen]

“Timeserver”, a short story by Avram Davidson, is clever and witty but slight. I’m sure it would have made very little sense to 13 year old me.

[Stephen]

“Whatever Became of the McGowans” by Michael G. Coney is the third of the magazine’s three novelettes. I remember reading and understanding it as a kid. The storytelling is conventional but effective. A couple and their baby living on an isolated farm on a beautiful colony planet with no animal life begin to experience odd things. Not a bad story. I see at isfdb that Terry Carr and Donald A. Wollheim included it in their best-of-the-year anthology.

[Stephen]

Pages 126-129 of the magazine are given to a comic strip called “Sunpot”, by Vaughn Bode. Bode had a quite individual style and as I recall was pretty popular for a while, before dying young in awful, embarrassing circumstances. I was never much interested in comic strips after a preteen liking for DC superheroes ended.

Next we get an editorial by Pohl addressing a statistical correlation between increased radioactive fallout from bomb testing, and “an otherwise inexplicable halt of the steady decline in infant mortality.”

In the Galaxy Bookshelf section Algis Budrys gives a strongly negative review of Silverberg’s Up the Line. I read it fairly recently and liked it better than Budrys.

Finally a half page “Galaxy Stars” column provides a brief bio of Silverberg.

[Stephen]

Besides the serial instalment there are five pieces of short fiction in the magazine: the three novelettes, the jokey flash fiction by Clarke, and the Davidson short story. In my opinion, all five are good. I know I enjoyed “Whatever Became of the McGowans” as a kid, and I think I read and got something from “The God Machine”. “A Style in Treason” and “Timeserver” would certainly have been beyond me. I do remember being disappointed in the Blish, because I had read the quite different “Cities in Flight”. I know I got the pun in the Clarke short.

This has been a fun exercise. I’m glad to have read the Blish story and appreciated it, and i think I can say I enjoyed everything in the magazine. I’ll try to get to Tower of Glass this year as well.

[Oleksandr]

Stephen wrote: "Next we get an editorial by Pohl pointing out a statistical correlation between increased radioactive fallout from bomb testing, and “an otherwise inexplicable halt of the steady decline in infant mortality.”."

A nice example of correlation doesn't imply causation

[Oleksandr]

Thanks for reviews, Stephen, I'll try to catch up with you on short stories at least later this month

[Stephen]

Reading the Gideon Marcus review of the magazine (linked in an earlier comment) I see he comments that Clarke’s brief Neutron Tide “takes the piss out of Niven’s ‘Neutron Star’”, an aspect of the story that I missed.