Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 44 — page 91: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

dyer f fal. Fy ew a tS ass | Cet ate ol : AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION side the field of science fiction would have believed that this intensely sane lunatic and honoured writer had ever had anything to do with science fiction. Now they'll know! This book should definitely be on your shelves—unless you already have Groff Conklin’s OMNIBUS OF SCIENCE FICTION, of which this anthology is a part. Two more titles come from the Science Fiction shelf of Weidenfeld and Nicholson (7 Cork Street, London, W.1). One is THE WEAPON MAKERS, by A. E. van Vogt, costing 9s. 6d. Once again, it ought to. have been 8s. 6d.—Hamiltons can do an equivalent length anthology for that price. Still, this is a good story. It is a kind of a sequel to THE WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER. There’s very little deep mater- ial in this story of a gallant immortal’s swashbuckling double-dealing between half a dozen opposed factions. But it moves fast, it has colourful backdrops and it is alive with gadgets—some of them rather questionably credible. Of course, there are BEMs too! You could not rightly call it space opera, nor could you say it is the opposite of that. VV has a happy way of wed- ding several science fiction SO forms into one story—and the marriage is fairly success- ful. We would say that this is certainly not VV at his best, though it comes very near to being that. It’s a very readable piece Of romantic space-busting. But at 9s. 6d.... The other W&N title is City, by Clifford Simak. This too is 9s. 6d., but we rather feel that the price is justified. You’ve probably never read anything quite like Ciry— which statement should make you all agog; so many books these days are painfully simi- lar. It is a series of stories that range in time from not too long after now to millions of years into the future; and in the book they are treated as all beingincredibly old, legends in fact. In the book the stories are linked by scholarly com- ments by a literary historian, who summarizes the reasons for and against the legends ever having held any truth. The interesting point about this is that the historian is— a dog. Yes, man’s best friend has taken the place of his master. Not, let us hasten to add, by force; dogs, as everyone knows, are pretty decent tykes. Really what happens is that man more or less gets fed up with things and disappears. A conmicloooks.comn