Sol Cohen (1) (1903–1984)

A reprint magazine, with stories and articles mainly from "Amazing" (with one from "Fantastic Stories of Imagination"), spanning from 1954 to 1964. A few of them show their age badly - although for the most part even in the dated stories, the overall story kinda works.

Isaac Asimov: Genius in the Candy Store by Sam Moskowitz (originally in Amazing Stories, April 1962) opens the issue with a portrait of the multi-talented author. It contains spoilers if you had not read some of the stories and novels mentioned but they are needed to make the points the author is trying to make. I probably enjoyed this one (and the other essay in the magazine) more than any of the stories.

Goodbye, Atlantis! by Poul Anderson (originally in Fantastic Stories of Imagination, August 1961) is a cautionary tale about trying to meddle in things you do not understand. The title makes you think of a specific island - without it, the connection is not that clear in the text (although one can surmise it).

In Battleground by William Morrison (originally in Amazing Stories, November 1954), a doctor who is a bit too scalpel-happy ends up almost causing a catastrophe on a global scale - it may be a good idea not to cut people before you scan them - just in case they are not exactly people. The idea of the story is great but the execution is so dated (the nurse's submission and how she is treated) that it mares the story.

Hang Head, Vandal! by Mark Clifton (originally in Amazing Stories, April 1962) is another cautionary tale - this time about scientists who only see their own field (it curiously ties into the Big History lectures I finished listening to recently). Nothing more destructive than humanity among the stars (no surprises there considering what we are doing to our own planet).

The second article of the issue is a third in a series of articles about possible colonization of the Solar system. This one (The Alien Worlds by Ben Bova (originally in Amazing Stories, September 1964)) deals with everything that is not the Moon, Mars and Venus. It is 1964 science but except for some refinements in the numbers, it is still valid. Did you know that it is actually cheaper fuel-wise to have a round trip to Mercury than to Venus? (as far as I tell, this is still the case).

No Star Is Safe by P. F. Costello (originally in Amazing Stories, September 1954) annoyed me more than any other of the stories in the issue. A man survives calamity in space - or so everyone believes. Except that there was a bigger story which he decided to hide because he wanted to solve on his own. And then we have a heiress who sticks by our now permanently drunk hero, forgives him when he steals her ship (and even makes him coffee - more than once - the first time may have been ironic but...), professes not to understand anything about money and plays the clueless beauty on the hero's arm up to and including becoming the damsel in distress). There is a kernel of a nice storyline under all that but it gets drown under all that (and then the end is so cliched and predictable even for 1954 that it made me almost sorry that I read the story at all).

Question of Comfort by Les Collins aka Les Cole(originally in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, March 1959) is a clever play on the alien on Earth (it is obvious from very early on), complete with using the problems of translation (finding matching concepts is not very easy sometimes even on Earth; using that to one's advantage when the languages are not from the same planet is a clever way to deal with new environments). It does have dated elements (although it can be argued that as it is the alien telling the story, he may have picked these up from the media at the times). And the very end manages to surprise - being an alien is not really the big reveal (which is why it is so thinly hidden earlier).

The last story, the shortest of them all, Kimo by Al Sevcik (originally in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, August 1958) is also probably the best. A goat shepherd sees weird lights and get sick and because of that misses his trip to the nearby town for a few years. When he is sure he is dying, he decides to die among people and start looking for them - except they are all gone. Until he sees a light and tries to reach it. As we see the story as Kimo sees it, we don't get any explanations of what happened (and why) but it is not hard to figure out. I rarely like "Last man on Earth" stories but this one was very well done (even if it is just last man in the area - it does sound final).

I am really glad that SF had moved on from this type of writing is female characters (although admittedly the really bad stories are the earlier ones; the later ones are either clean or at least not obvious enough to distract). I won't comment much on the misspelling of the title of the last story both on the cover and on the contents page (it is properly named on the title page of the story and that is the character names so Kim does not even make sense) or what a mess the type-setters did with the Bova article (pages references not updated, two parts which belongs on different pages put on the same page but the reference for the next page left over and somewhere in all that fitting, a sentence was half-printed only). Such things happen I guess :)… (more)