From Weirdbook No. 34:
Liam Hogan explores the less attractive side effects of a transformative medicine in “Beauty Treatment.” Things end kinda ugly, unless of course you like that sort of thing.
From International Science Fiction No. 2 (June 1968):
The U.S.S.R. grabs the spotlight with “The Island of the Crabs” by A. Dneprov, an issue highlight. Isolated on a tropical island, an engineer conducts a Darwinian experiment with self-replicating, evolving robotic crabs.
Cookling squatted down and began to chortle.
“Will you stop grimacing like an idiot!” I shouted. “Where did the second crab come from?”
“It was born! It was born during the night!”
Theoretically, the crab’s military potential could be unlimited, but the engineer soon learns that playing Mother Nature is not for the ill equipped.
Anatoly Dneprov (1919–1975) was a distinguished physicist who worked at an institute of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. His best known story is “The Maxwell Equations,” published in English in 1963. His short story “Formula for Immortality” was included in the New Soviet Science Fiction anthology (1979), edited by Theodore Sturgeon.
From International Science Fiction No. 2 (June 1968):
From France, “Notes From a Cyclical Housewife’s Diary” by Juliette Raabe, is translated by Damon Knight. Told entirely in diary entries, only backwards, in an opposite universe.
We’re going to sit down at the table. I lay out the dirty plates and silverware that were piled in the sink. Roger brings in the full garbage can.
A clever, sometimes confusing story, that remains curious and entertaining because the author, rightly, kept it short—to five pages. She obviously had fun writing it. One entry reads: “I like fish better than a cat; I don’t know why, cats give me willies.” Oppositely, Juliette Raabe (b. 1929) created a massive anthology celebrating the little beasties: The Illustrated Library of the Cat, in 1977. Prior to that she wrote two books, Brain Teasers (1967) and The Game of the Awélé (1972).
From Weirdbook No. 34:
In “Bum Fights and Blood Feuds” by Scott Harper, a trio of low-life punks cross paths with the wrong derelict. The gang perturbs him into a bum-fight at the bidding of their smartphone director, Branch. But this is one vagrant far more scrappy than he looks.
From International Science Fiction No. 2 (June 1968):
Perhaps a last minute filler, absent from the contents page, “Der Heisse Kosmonaut” by Gust Gils, of The Netherlands, is a two-page romp about an astronaut conditioned to tolerate the heat of the Sun.
Eventually he was able to take a liquid steel shower.
The Kosmonaut completes his mission to land on the Sun, but the heat goes to his head and he refuses to conduct any research, let alone return to Earth.
Gust Gils (1924–2002) was a poet, artist and writer. He was one of the founders of the avant-garde magazine Gard Sivik in 1955. “Der Heisse Kosmonaut” is the only story I found by him in the FictionMags Index.
From International Science Fiction No. 2 (June 1968):
“The Coming of Age of Soviet Science Fiction,” an essay by John R. Isaac, credits Ivan Yefremov’s Andromeda with his article’s premise.
In this single book, Yefremov has developed a Weltanschauung into a detailed future society and has thrown out enough ideas for a hundred stories, a service that should prove as beneficial for the Soviets as Well’s work has for the English-speaking world.
The article details key aspects of Andromeda’s utopian future society where happiness is derived from one’s work, followed by an overview of the novel’s plot. If it sounds like the Andromeda’s world is communist propaganda, it is. “For the dreamers of the world, whether Russian or American, Occidental or Oriential, the vision of Andromeda is a tempting one.”
From Weirdbook No. 34:
“Blood of God” by D.J. Tyrer takes place on an Anglo-Russian survey platform off Russia’s arctic coast. When the survey team discovers an extra-heavy oil deposit things turn dire. Tyrer’s frigid, isolated setting conjures memories of The Thing. As the crew opens a sample deposit it transforms their mission from research to survival in this tension-packed monster meddler.
From International Science Fiction No. 2 (June 1968):
We head back to the U.S.S.R. for the opening story in ISF #2, “The Last Door” by E. Parnov and M. Yemtsew, translated by Mirra Ginsburg. The story’s pace begins slowly, with plenty of detail to transport the reader into a fictive future where Sashok Yegorov visits his friend and colleague Vasily Nechiporenko in Musikovla.
Nechiporenko has recently returned from an expedition to Mars. He describes the surface of the planet as fairly level. The Martian’s giant cities are concealed deep underground.
“Dead cities. Not a single Martian is left; we found only billions of strange dry shells. Perhaps the chitin coating of insects, or some sort of clothing.
“The only interesting conclusion we obtained is that the Martians were preparing to leave for Aiya. But what is Aiya? And how were two billion Martians transported there?”
In addition to the larger mystery of the Martian’s fate, a smaller mystery develops when several deaths are revealed during and after the expedition. When an Official appears at the house to make an arrest, something alien brings his investigation and the story to a satisfying conclusion.
The second part of Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse saga appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction (July 1961).
Contents
Kingsley Amis “Something Strange”
Will Worthington “Package Deal”
Nicholas Breckenridge “The Cat Lover”
Grendel Briarton “Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: XLI”
Otis Kidwell Burger “The Zookeeper”
Kris Neville “Closing Time”
Poul Anderson “Night Piece”
Isaac Asimov: Science: Recipe for a Planet
Brian W. Aldiss “Undergrowth” (Hothouse No. 3)
Cover by Ed Emshwiller
Contents from Galactic Central
An excerpt from Joe Wehrle, Jr.’s review of the Hothouse series, from The Digest Enthusiast book six:
“In “Undergrowth” (July 1961), we find that the morel has bisected itself to access the minds of both Poyly and Gren. Under its direction, they capture a girl named Yattmur in order to learn the whereabouts of her tribe. If mankind, like H.G. Wells’ Eloi, has lost its initiative through the passage of time, the morel acts as a prod, driving his hosts to achieve its own ambitious aims.”
From Weirdbook No. 34:
“The Singing Tree” by Lawrence Buentello is a wonder-filled, satisfying fable about a beauty doomed to sorrow till she journeys to a magical tree and learns the secret of its cryptic song.