A pretty bad issue with not so good stories.
And Silently Vanish Away • novelette by Glen M. Bever [as by Glen Bever]
A research faculty has been developing a serum for teleporting. Now they have apparently succeeded: At least there are rats winking out from one place and appearing at another. Unfortunately, they are not sure what the effective formula was. And Chinese and Russian agents want to get their hands on the invention. There is a LOT of scheming and planning, and that is the main point of the story. A pretty bad story which hasn’t hold its time, with a very implausible PSI invention with a bad overly long and boring story arch. ***-
Compulsion Worse Confounded • short story by Rob Chilson [as by Robert Chilson]
A company plans to market synthetic food. There is a computer that controls inventory and investments, and it is malfunctioning because wrong type of questions have been asked of it. A dull, unimpressive story that is extremely hard to remember even though I just read it a few days ago. **½
The Old Man of Ondine • novelette by Terrence MacKann
Ondine is a nice water planet with a comfortable climate. Immunization shots to prevent mental illnesses have been in use for years, but there appears to be a man with schizophrenia. Who is the man? Why is he sick? And a merchant spaceship captain has a cargo of dried fish powder that has toxic contaminants to deal with. The story has a lot of exposition (with a lot of parentheses) and pretty clunky writing. It's a fairly stupid and dull story. **+
Hierarchies (Part 2 of 2) • [Interstellar Security] • serial by John T. Phillifent
Continues an earlier story. Two men are transporting an invaluable artifact to be studied. They have a rare animal, and its caretaker with them as a smokescreen of sorts. The caretaker is a woman who is very beautiful, but she has a grating voice, so surely, she must be very stupid. After the first part, I was hoping that readers would have been misdirected, that the woman would turn out to be something extraordinary who would completely humiliate the men. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. After some contrived and stupid adventures, it turns out that the woman’s eidetic memory has been used for spying, but, yes, she is pretty simpleminded. But at least she gets some voice coaching at the end, and everything turns out fine; so she is someone worth pursuing, after all. It is just as stupid a story as it sounds. The first part, in which there was something to hope for, was better. **½
Holding Action • short story by Andrew M. Stephenson
A visitor from the past arrives. His questions are not answered, and he is detained as soon as possible. There have been several other visitors from the past, but none have returned. The time traveler is quickly imprisoned, and a force field that prevents his return is raised. Why such harsh treatment? Future is afraid that their timeline is contaminated by wars of the past. The story is not bad, but nothing is really surprising in the story. ***
The Nothing Venireman One • short story by W. Macfarlane
The story feels like part of a series, but at least according to the www.isfdb.org, it isn’t. There is a scant backstory. There were some sort of agents and apparently there were some trade negotiations, and some scheming and so on. And everything turns out all right after some adventures and witty remarks. The story felt very confusing, boring, hard to get into, and easy to forget. **-
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