Concluding my readings of two stories per issue, from...
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1971
October 1971
The Autumn Land - Clifford D. Simak
A few years ago I read this and was unsure how much I liked it, deciding I could be convinced it was either great or rather muddled. Upon a reread I've decided it is very good, though perhaps not great. A man travelling across country starts to see a 'thinness' in the landscape, before seeing a scene from the future of post-atomic decay. Startled by this he turns his car around to head for the town where he grew up, only to find that it is an 'autumn land' - never changing, and lost in a mythical past. The story is a clear allegory, suggesting that if we run from a future that frightens us, we'll only stand still, and that while we see the past through rose-tinted glasses, it is ultimately unreal. It's quite a compelling science fantasy, written well, and is very 'Simakian'.
The Smell of Death - Dennis Etchison
This starts with a lot of promise, but it ultimately takes us a little less far and to less interesting places than one might have hoped. The protagonist - who owns a service station and coffee house in the middle of nowhere - is an ex-astronaut who can smell death. He 'helps' folk who come through on the highway, but is riddled with guilt for his past actions. It's well done, with a good sense of psychological depth to it. I'm not that familiar with Etchison, as I read very little horror (which is his métier), but he's well regarded in that genre, with Stephen King calling him "one hell of a fiction writer" and Karl Edward Wagner proclaimed him "the finest writer of psychological horror this genre has ever produced."
November 1971
Only Who Can Make a Tree - Philip José Farmer
I don't come across many Farmer short stories (not once did he publish in
Astounding/
Analog, for instance) so I was interested to read this, given how much I've appreciated his novels. However, it is dreadful, so don't make my mistake and pick it up. Supposedly a ribald comedy, it is neither funny, nor engaging, but seems to have been written simply to annoy the reader. This was perhaps very 'new wave', but it hasn't aged well. I couldn't even really tell you what it was about, as I had to struggle though it in a daze and just flicked through the last few pages.
The Price of Pain Ease - Fritz Leiber
This is one of Leiber's
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. These chronicle the long-running adventures of the titular 'sword and sorcery' heroes in tales Lieber wrote between 1939 and 1988. This particular story is collected in the second volume of the series,
Swords and Death. While these stories are very popular, this didn't work for me especially. Unless fantasy is overtly written as comedy (such as in
Discworld or
Xanth), it needs to take itself seriously so the reader can immerse himself in the fantasy world. Sly winks to the reader (in the use of place names for instance) unhinges the world-building and lets the story down. Here we have the 'City of Ghouls', the 'Sea of Monsters' and the 'Parched Mountains' all referenced in one sentence, making the world seem like a parody. With too much going on that's just plain silly (without being comedy), and a title that's grammatically sinful, this failed for me.
December 1971
World Abounding - R. A. Lafferty
It's been said before (by me among others), but no-one writes like Lafferty. It's important to go into a Lafferty story with your mind on an even keel, as his writing will tilt it by about 30 degrees, and one doesn't want to topple over. This novelette is no exception in its surreal plot and unique style and ideas. A planetary exploration team travel to a planet called 'World Abounding', where every exploratory trip in the past has resulted in the visitors returning with the words 'You'd never believe it", and saying nothing else. It transpires the planet is a Gaia world, which induces pregnancy (with a 5 day gestation period) and rapid development of the resulting offspring. Further weirdness eventuates, as one might expect. I wish I understood everything Lafferty meant in his tales, but they always remain to some extent opaque. One can say here that he explores the value of experience, and the necessity of having an ambition to experience more, in providing value to our lives.
Causation - Barry N. Malzberg
Is very short, rather bleak, and not very good. An individual discusses with 'Network' the need to be more explicit in showing sex on TV, to assist the sexually-repressed during wartime. Or something like that. It's message is muddled, it goes out of its way to avoid clarity, and Malzberg throws in the odd homophobic and misogynistic jibe just to keep us on our toes. Avoid. It's a shame the read-through ended on a low, but not to worry; my rule of picking two stories per issue more or less randomly will throw up some forgotten gems, and some other tales best left forgotten; but the not knowing going in is part of the fun.
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Overall
F&SF for 1971 was great fun to read through, with some stellar stories to discover. Some stories were dreadful, representing some of the least appealing features of the era's 'new wave' as well as homophobic and misogynistic traits, but these were in the minority. It probably did confirm for me that I'm more of an
Astounding/
Analog man than I am a
F&SF fan, however.