YOU PROBABLY CAN'T BUY A copy. I found it in a stack of remainders at one of the Marboro Bookstores in New York, and maybe they still have some. Your public library ought to have it.
It was published in 1965, and I remember thinking, when I read the lukewarm reviews, that it was a book I ought to have a look at. But no one else I've shown it to seems even to have seen any reviews, so I suspect the ones I saw were in England.
All of which is sad indeed, because Hortense Calisher's JOURNAL FROM ELLIPSIA ( Little Brown) was undoubtedly the best science fiction novel of 1965, and a strong contender for that matter against some of the first-rate books that have appeared since (FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON, THE CRYSTAL WORLD, GILES GOAT-BOY, THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION, for instance), whether you judge by literary virtue or solid science fiction content.
This is the story of a visitor to Earth from Ellipsia (where ellipsoid creatures inhabit an ellipsoid planet in perfect equilibrium and timeless stability—where there are no pronouns but We and Ours—where One and One always make One). Eli—the name the One adopts on Earth—has come to Earth as part of an intergalactic conspiracy of exchange-visits, and the story is primarily concerned with (his?) education by and of an Earthwoman preparing to go to Ellipsia. (He?), like a few other misfits from elliptical society, is endlessly fascinated by the variety, variability, mutability, of earth's biology and culture, and by the phenomenon of sequential time: just as Janice, (his?) opposite number, is lured by Oneness and simultaneity, serenity, smoothness.
The story is told in alternate sections from the viewpoint of Janice's former lover, Jack Lin-house, a British-American academic, and as the direct narrative of Eli, delivered at Janice's "memorial" service.
It is funny, serious, suspenseful, poignant, philosophical, and lots more: it even builds to a climax, and then sustains it. (I mean, something happens at the end.)
Ask your library. Or maybe some bright paperback publisher will do something about it.
* * *
On, on, on, and on, on; and on, and on, on. The paradox about distance is that quite as much philosophy adheres to a short piece of it as to a long. A being capable of setting theoretical limits to its universe has already been caught in the act of extending it. The merest cherub in the streets here, provided he has a thumbnail—and he usually has ten—does this every day. He may grow up to be one of their fuzzicists, able to conceive that space is curved, but essentially—that is, elliptically—he does nothing about it. He lives on, in his rare, rectilinear world of north-south gardens, east-west religions, up-and-down monuments and explosions, plus a blindly variable sort of shifting about which he claims to have perfected through his centuries, thinks very highly of, and is rather pretty in its way and even its name: free wall—a kind of generalized travel-bureaudom of "across." It follows that most of his troubles are those of a partially yet imperfectly curved being who is still trying to keep to the straight-and-narrow—and most of his fantasies also. His highest aspiration is, quite naturally, "to get a-Round"; his newest, to get Out.
—JOURNAL FROM ELLIPSIA
* * *
Meantime, Inside S-f, the Big Waking-Up Day seems to be arriving: that is, the science-fiction infield has begun to discover that something stranger than rockets is going on—that there's a revolution going on Out There.
Of course as soon as I say that, I have to rush to modify it in two different ways. Phil Dick has known about it all along; so have Phil Farmer, Fritz Leiber, Ted Sturgeon, and a few others. But with the exception of such peripheral writers as Kit Reed, Carol Emshwiller, David Bunch, etc.—who have worked the vein mostly in short stories—American genre writers have kept whatever thoughts they were having on the Revolutions (Youth, Sexual, Black, Psychedelic, et al.) pretty much to themselves—even to the extent of being noisily impressed by the "inventiveness" of Phil Dick's novels.
The second modification suggests some possible reasons for the first, and perhaps accounts for the scant use such otherwise with-it young writers as Disch, Zelazny, and Delany have made of The Scene: the publishers have clearly been convinced that Hip is flip and Stef is Stef, and never the twain. But the category gap is closing: one of the four crossover novels on hand today was published by Pyramid as part of their regular s-f line. Berkley has made at least a half-way move with an (hot, boy! translated from the French) item called SEXUALIS '95, about "a world totally engaged in the pleasures of eroticism"; and even DANGEROUS VISIONS, which I reviewed here before seeing a copy of the finished book, has come out with a near-illegible "psychedelic" lettered jacket. And there are rumors all around of more to come. Meanwhile—
The main features for today represent a complete range from commercial category s-f, to a privately published mimeographed novel out of San Francisco.
In the middle are Grove's latest William Burroughs book, THE SOFT MACHINE ($5.00), and Dial's LOGAN'S RUN ($3.50), by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. LOGAN'S RUN is going to surprise a lot of people: although it carries no special label to that effect, the whole book (size, jacket-art, paper, type-face) has the somehow-look of that special sub-sub category, the Teenage Science Fiction Novel. And indeed it is just that, in all respects but one: it is set in the not-too-far-future, with a cast entirely composed of teen-agers, a Secret Agent hero, lots of fast action/adventure/chase stuff, and some solid gobs of what seems to be reliable science talk. The difference is just that in this one (from the flap copy), "Multi-level chrome and glass cities provide their residents with neighborhood LSD parlors. Sex is unlimited and marriage is nonexistent. . . . No one is allowed to live past the age of 21."
* * *
It was one of the big brutes, a Mark J. Surgeon. Suspended over the flat bed was a glittering tangle of probes and pincers and scalpels, springs, clamps and needles . . . A Table such as this could lengthen bone and change dental patterns. It could broaden shoulders, put on or take off weight. It could alter germ plasm or blood groupings. . . . It was as precise and unemotional as a vending slot.
Logan didn't want to get on the Table. It could carve and change him, make him into another man. Holly 13 fastened down his ankles and wrists, then attached the sensers. . . . "I like dark hair," said Holly, leaning close to him. The blue spark danced in the depths of her eyes. "Have him give you dark hair."
—LOGAN'S RUN
* * *
So he imports this special breed of scorpions and feeds them on metal meal and the scorpions -turned a phosphorescent blue color and sort of hummed. "Now we must find a worthy vessel," he said—So we flush out this old goof ball artist and put the scorpion to him and he turned sort of blue and you could see he was fixed right to the metal—These scorpions could travel on a radar beam and service the clients after Doc copped for the bread—It was a good thing while it lasted and the heat couldn't touch us—However all these scorpion junkies began to glow in the dark and if they didn't score on the hour metamorphosed into scorpions straight away—So there was a spot of bother and we had to move on disguised as young junkies on the way to Lexington
The war between the sexes split the planet into armed camps right down the middle line divides one thing from the other—And I have seen them all: the Lesbian colonels in tight green uniforms, the young aides and directives regarding the Sex Enemy from proliferating departments.
On the line is the Baby and Semen Market where the sexes meet to exchange the basic commodity which is known as "property"—Unborn properties are shown with a time projector . . . Biological parents in most cases are not owners of the property . . .
—THE SOFT MACHINE
* * *
Interestingly enough, LOGAN'S RUN and THE SOFT MACHINE make use of almost identical elements—gimmicks, images, thematic content—to achieve radically different effects. In both books, you will find every variety of colorful-familiar s-f menace being manipulated in complex spy-intrigue conspiracy situations; both are concerned with an essentially irresponsible, machine-governed society; sex, drugs, death, violence are the main preoccupations of the characters in both books, and the central character of both is in flight from the law most of the time, covering incredible areas of space in, effectively, non-time.
Yet where LOGAN contrives to present all this hash seriously, and even compellingly (for the duration of the reading), piling the incredible on the grotesque so swiftly and smoothly that the ugliness goes almost unnoticed, and only the immediate danger facing the hero is significant on any page—it is a totally forgettable book the next morning. Burroughs on the other hand disports his BEMS and metal monsters with a sort of terrible gayety, clearly conscious of their character as clichés, and handling them lightly to achieve maximum impact from their familiarity; indeed, he turns his own most original and terrifying images into clichés-of-a-sort in the course of the book, by repeating scenes and fragments of scenes, sentences and fragments of sentences, in changing juxtapositions, continually. It is not a single-sitting book; I tended to read only short pieces at any one time, and even then, to jump around in the book. But behind the perfervid activity there is meaning, and the images do not fade easily.
Chester Anderson's THE BUTTERFLY KID (Pyramid, 60¢) and Willard Bain's INFORMED SOURCES (DAY EAST RECEIVED), again, have a number of vital elements in common, but the contrast between the two books is even sharper. Both deal with a takeover-plot using psychedelic drugs; both make extensive use of the author's own familiarity with "underground" and Hippy circles. But—
* * *
There are problems associated with marching an orchestra in full throat through lower Manhattan after midnight that the average man can't possibly imagine, and I envy him. The police were no problem—not after the leader produced, on irate demand, an appallingly official city permit to hold a parade through those streets at that hour playing music—but the people who lived in the buildings we passed were difficult to cope with. They threw some of the strangest things, and I couldn't see just how they were being coped with. I was starting to develop some faith in the Reality Pill, though. It seemed to give good service.
Mike's acquaintances continued to worry me. "Michael," I inquired as we columned right onto Broadway, "your—friends—look very interesting." ... "Ah, what are they?"
"Gods, of course. A whole pantheon. It's a little pantheon, I'll grant you, but it has a certain fey charm of its own."
—THE BUTTERFLY KID
* * *
IS4CX (AMS IN) BULLETIN
CHICAGO, NOW (IS)—INFORMED SOURCES ANNOUNCED TODAY "PERFECTLY HEALTHY" SUSPICIONS THAT ROBIN THE COCK, FAMED CAPTAIN OF THE SO-CALLED PERIPHERAL UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT (CAPS P,U,M) IS DEAD. JC1143ACS
IA APC GREEN DREAMS SOONEST FK DP742PAS
CX YR COCK DEATH IS4CX, KNOW WHO KILT'M PLS?
NY (GENERAL DESK) PR1137PES
LA GREEN DREAMS DETAINED SK. ASSUME YULE HANDLE
FK DP610PAS
IS11SA URGENT
SAN ANTONIO, NOW (IS)—A COMMUNIST BEATNIK DOPE FIEND KILLED AND MUTILATED A 12-YEAR-OLD BOY TODAY AS THE LADBUST THIS
BUST THIS
IS11SK BULLETIN
BERKELEY, NOW (IS)—A PLAN TO BLOW UP GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE IN HONOR OF ROBIN THE COCK, WHOSE ALLEGED LIFE REPORTEDLY HAS ENDED IN RUMORED DEATH, WAS ABANDONED TODAY.
VC807PPS
CX YR IS1OCX UNANSWERS OUR 1137PES. NEED SUSPECT.
MEMBER PRESSING. NY (GENERAL DESK) PR1105PES
IS12 THE NATION'S WEATHER BY INFORMED SOURCES
UNUSUAL HIGHS AND LOWS WERE REPORTED OVER THE WEEKEND. TEMPERATURES SOARED TO FEVERISH LEVELS IN SOME AREAS WHILE READINGS DIPPED TO RECORD DEPTHS IN OTHERS. SEVERAL THREATENING SQUALLS HAVE BEGUN TO DISSIPATE, BUT A HIGH PRESSURE FRONT IS MOVING ACROSS THE SCENE. THERE HAVE BEEN OCCASIONAL DISTURBANCES NOTED AND SMALL CRAFT WARNINGS HAVE BEEN HOISTED IN SOME REMOTE SECTIONS. IT WILL BE COOL WITH A CHANCE OF SCATTERED CHAOS. PR1101PES
—INFORMED SOURCES (DAY EAST RECEIVED)
* * *
BUTTERFLY is clever, glib, sometimes funny. A pop Group foils the Invading Blue Lobsters, and prevents them from loading New York's water supply with the dread Reality Pills (producers of public hallucinations"—whatever your subconscious wants it will objectify, whether it's butterflies, a halo, an orchestra, or a personal bodyguard of gods and goddesses). The setting is Greenwich Village, twenty years from now—and mostly the West Village at that, which every reader of the New York Times Magazine knows by now is strictly tourist country, Teenybopper Land; and the book reads like a tourist job, a fast and facile 10-day-wonder, ground out fast when the author realized that if The Scene was acceptable to Times readers, it might be all right for science fiction too.
This impression is confirmed, by the way, by the photograph and bio lines on the back cover, which show a vastly bearded and mirror-shaded young man, stove pipes (a la pad) in the background, (pot?) pipe in hand, with the information that he "writes for most Underground newspapers, has made an Underground film, runs a singing group, and commutes between the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco and Middle Earth."
Like, too much!
The physical appearance, makeup, construction, and structure, of INFORMED SOURCES (DAY EAST RECEIVED) put me off just as much as the back cover of BUTTERFLY: it is as self-consciously noncommercial-underground as the other book is over-commercial-hip.
IS is gimmicky, written in newswire cablese, with what few explanations and explications are offered filtered into the text so slowly that most of the opening is sheer bewilderment. It is published under the coy colophon of "The Communication Company"—if indeed "published" is an appropriate word to describe a mimeo job presumably done on a basement machine under dim light; sloppiness of reproduction is altogether unforgiveable in a book which relies on typographical effects and makes use of unfamiliar language and abbreviations to the extent this one does.
And besides, it is angry-autobiographical, and at this point I think the News Biz is probably as over-exposed as Mad Ave. All in all, I approached it with considerable resistance, and did not really expect to get through the first 30 pages. Certainly I did not expect to stay up reading till 2 am, once I got through that first 30.
What it's got going for it, I think, is that the self-conscious Hashbury air is in this case absolutely genuine—and the author is a well-informed source, not only about wire services (he worked for three years in the San Francisco AP office), but also about the P(eripheral) U (nderground ) M(ovement) which provides the background for the Great Green Dreams Conspiracy.
"Day East Received" (I found out somewhere inside the book) is the label under which the San Francisco office of the AP files each 24 hours of teletype messages from the East Coast. This book gives 24 hours worth of wire messages on the (presumptive) death of a legendary character named Robin the Cock. Conflicting "eyewitness" stories, elaborations, interpretations, opinion roundups, interviews, and you-name-it, flood the wires between New York, San Francisco, Dayton, Portland, Honolulu, Dubuque, Milwaukee, Miami, Boston, Baltimore, and points elsewhere. Between Flashes and Bulletins, the IS (Informed Sources) attempts to conduct the routine business of its distinctive service: including the over-tricky bit of reviews of the novel itself, and sonic hilarious send-ups on standard news services (the weather report, the Top Tunes listing, etc.). Through all this, a conspiracy is being conducted, almost-but-not-quite off-wire by members of the P.U.M., and—
And that's enough. I won't give it all away.
Everyone with sentimental attachment to the mimeographed publication—whether fanzine or underground or just old-hat avantgarde—will probably want a copy of this; anyone else who takes the trouble to order a copy will probably be at least amused. I was that, and much more. (Copies from the author, 3 Taylor Lane, Corte Madera, Calif., 94925; $3.00)
—JUDITH MERRIL
READER REACTION: In hopes of encouraging a public exchange of ideas on the science fiction and fantasy field, we plan to experiment with a Letters to the Book Editor Column. This column will be open to: 1) reactions to the reviews and general observations of the Book column, and 2) comments on books that may not have been mentioned in the usual space allotted for "Books." Comments should be limited to 250 words. There are no other restrictions. The column will be open to all: interested readers and professionals alike. A certain amount of aggressive advocacy or dissent is encouraged, so long as it is based on honest ideas or judgments and that "plugs" or abuse of a personal nature are omitted. Address comments to: Letters, Fantasy and Science Fiction, 347 East 53 St., New York, N. Y. 10022.
BOOKS RECEIVED
FICTION
THE RULE OF THE DOOR AND OTHER FANCIFUL REGULATIONS, Lloyd Biggle, Jr., Doubleday 1967, 206 pp., $3.95
A TORRENT OF FACES, James Blish and Norman L. Knight, Doubleday 1967, 270 pp., $4.95
QUICKSAND, John Brunner, Doubleday 1967, 240 pp., $4.50
TOO MANY MAGICIANS, Randall Garrett, Doubleday 1967, 260 pp., $4.95
SF: THE BEST OF THE BEST, Judith Merril, ed., Delacorte 1967, 438 pp., $6.50
STRANGE GATEWAYS, E. Hoffmann Price, Arkham House 1967, 208 pp., $4.00
GENERAL
THE SEARCH FOR THE ROBOTS, Alfred J. Cote, Jr., Basic Books 1967, 243 pp., $5.95
SCIENCE IN UTOPIA, Nell Eurich, Harvard University Press 1967, 332 pp., $7.95
JAMES BRANCH CABELL, THE DREAM AND THE REALITY, Desmond Tarrant, University of Oklahoma Press 1967, 292 pp., $5.95 PAPERBACKS
THE BUTTERFLY KID, Chester Anderson, Pyramid .1967, 60¢
WHAT WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT FLYING SAUCERS, Otto Binder, Fawcett Gold Medal 1967, 75¢
ALL FOOLS DAY, Edmund Cooper, Berkley 1967, 60¢
GARBAGE WORLD, Charles Platt, Berkley 1967, 60¢
LOST IN SPACE, Dave Van Arnam and Ron Archer, Pyramid 1967, 60¢