Astounding Science Fiction

Frequenters of the local magazine racks have grown accustomed, I suppose, to seeing piles of little booklets devoted to the cult of science-fiction. Generally, these publications have the appeal of Western pulps, with space ships substituted for Faithful Ol' Pinto, ray-gun for the six-shooter, and a mobile-graced beany for the standard ten-gallon hat.

One of these science-fiction pieces, inappropriately named Astounding Science Fiction, is quite different however. It has space-ships of course, and planets, galaxies and stars with all sorts of exotic, Greek-type names, too, but this is a basic ingredient which no science fiction magazine can do without. The stories in ASF are, however, based on calculations and shrewd hypotheses thought up by bona fide scientists, and most of them have an authentic flavor. The writing is certainly competent, though there are too many traces of Nick Carter dialogue to suit my taste. The writers manage to generate tension by the usual device of the twist ending and by figuring out original and pleasantly complicated plots. Once you get by the first page or so of each story--during which you cannot imagine what the devil is going on--you find it quite exciting. And added to these stories are long and somewhat technical expositions on one feat or another of American scientists--in the May issue, the Brookhaven Atomic Plant is discussed.

Aside from the scientific nature of these stories--which incidentally contain little pseudo-scientific jargon--there is another ingredient which seems to be exclusive to ASF. The scientists who write for it must be a very gloomy lot, for they groan continually about current life, and predict the unhappiest of futures. In Blood's A Rover (the May issue's lead yarn), for instance, the captain of a Process Corps takes us by the hand and shows how awful the Earth's historical development has been, how ridiculously evangelistic we Earthlings really are, and what is in store for us in a few millenia if we do not get rid of all these thinking machines that have been developed. It seems that the inhabitants of a planet, Rerma by name, will be destroyed if they do not bring all the inhabitants of the Galaxy up to their cultural and economic and social standards. To save themselves, they must find some race willing to reshape the Universe, for they themselves are too specialized and well adjusted to the job. They find this race on Earth, and under the direction of vast think machines, the Earthlings embark on the job.

The historical critique comes when the captain of the Process Corps is raising the people of some idyllic Polynesian-like planet to the level of Europe during the era of Kings and princes. It is all very excruciating--happy people made unhappy, loved ones killed and so forth--and not even for a good purpose, unless you consider the directives of a think maching and the protection of a planet of well adjusted specialists a good purpose.

Suitably depressed by this, we go on to read in What Have I Done? about an invasion of Earth by a strange emotionless race from outer space. These visitors would much prefer to take over in the manner of Communists, craftily and without violence. They get the lowly manager of an unemployment agency to teach them how to make like Earthlings. This fellow teaches them compassion, and thus foils the plot. But alas, these poor visitors were never taught how deceitful we Earthlings really are, and they must "go down beneath the ravening fury of rending and destroying man always displays when he meets his ideal face to face." Thus we are robbed of a happy ending after all.

Because of this doom and gloom atmosphere the scientists produce whenever they apply pencil to paper, I would not suggest reading ASF in one concentrated dose. It becomes dull after a while when the veneer of scientific plausibility and shrewd story telling loses its novelty and only the tears remain. But for all that, ASF is produced for more than just the science-fiction devotees, and taken with restraint, is a welcome relief from the heavy tomes of reading period.