OCTOBER- 1963 50c MED SHIP MAN by ON THE GEM PLANET MURRAY LEINSTER by CORDWAINER SMITH by mipm TENN 1 ! ' 1. ALL STORIES NEW YOURS! eaLAxy THE NEXT 17 magazine BIG ISSUES OF OCTOBER, 1963 • VOL. 22, NO. 1 IF FREDERIK POHL CONTENTS Editor FOR ONLY $4.95 - SAVING YOU - $1 85 COMPLETE SHORT NOVEL WILLY LEY IF YOU ACCEPT THIS SPECIAL OFFER Science Editor the men in the walls 8 If you wonder what happened to the “wonder” In your William Tenn science-fietion by stories — it’s in IF! Every issue packed SOL COHEN With new, fast taies of tomorrow and space! Publisher NOVELEHES DAVIO PERTON THE KIND OF PLANET 92 SCIENCE FICTION ON THE GEM Production Manager THAT YOU'VE MISSED FOR YEARS by Cordwainer Smith ROSEMARIE BIANCHINI IF brings you new stories by old masters, plus the best of 124 today's new writers-challenging A DAY ON DEATH HIGHWAY Art Director ideas combined with skillful writing and all the adventure and thrills of interstellar space by Chandler Elliott DAVE GELLER ASSOC. 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All material submitted Name EDITOR’S PAGE 4 must be accompanied by self- addressed stamped envelopes. Address by Frederik Pohl The publisher assumes no re- sponsibility for unsolicited ma- stories printed In City terial. All FORECAST 83 this magazine are fiction, and any similarity between charac- Use coupon or order by letter if you wish ters and actual persons Is GALAXY’S FIVE STAR SHELF 119 coincidental. by Floyd C. Gale Printed in the U. S. A. By The Guinn Co., Inc. N. Y. Cover by DEMBER Title Reg. U. S. Pat. Oft. outcome is unquestionably con- good obsidian knife, or he gave trollable, in practice the human up. Modern man, or so we like mind is not capable of memo- to think, has pretty well caught rizing all of the possible moves the hang of the “chess” approach and their consequences, so that to solving his problems. He is the expert player falls back on still playing a game. But it is a con- what is called “position evalua- larger game, in a different tion.” The strategy of a Botvinnik text. or a Capablanca is not aimed di- When we say that the jM'Ogress rectly toward winning. It is aimed of scientific knowledge is meas- toward securing a board position ured by the enlargement of con- and a favorable balance of forces texts, we are saying that we ad- such that winning then becomes vance by learning truths which inevitable. That may sound at are more general than the truths first blush like a distinction with- we knew before. We frame em- out a difference; but in fact it is pirical “laws” — the law of Con- the difference between, say, the servation of Energy — and some- WHAT’S single combat of medieval knights body draws from them still other THE SCORE? and modern war. laws (as did Carnot and the rest It doesn’t much matter whether of the great mechanist-minded A N EASY card game for very outcome of the game can be until other con- you play chess poorly or well; if scientists) . some young children is “Slapjack”. trolled completely — that chance you try to play it at all, you are person, trying to understand why It is played with a 5 2 -card deck, has no part in it, and that all of a long way from Slapjack. these laws should be so, frames a but it doesn’t have much in com- its strategies can be learned and still more general law (as did Ein- mon with contract bridge or simply expressed — is also about he history of man’s at- stein) and we find, by gosh, that poker. You take a deck of cards, the age at which he learns that Ttempt to control his environ- our first law isn’t really a law at divide it more or less in half and he need not always consider the ment — by which we can include all. Energy can so be created — turn the cards up one at ordinances a time. of Mommy and Daddy everything from pulling a branch by transformation from matter; Every time a jack turns up, the to be Divine Law. over himself in a rainstorm to and it can be destroyed by trans- players try to slap it. First player Slightly later, and considerably the framing of the law of con- formation in the other direction. to get his palm over it wins that more challenging, checkers gets servation of parity — passes This does not mean that the round. added to the list. In the Games through an evolution rather like previous laws are false, thus de- Tic-Tac-Toe represents a sec- Theory view of checkers it can be the development of an indivi- stroying the deductions made ond stage in complexity. As a considered as a zero-sum game dual’s mastery of games. Paleo- from them: Carnot’s model of a game for young children it has with finite choices. That is, when lithic man was in the Slapjack heat engine still works perfectly. several merits, both as a way of one player wins, the other loses; period: If any feature of his en- The laws are still true, in terms passing a rainy day and as a sort and the number of possible re- vironment gave him trouble, he of the contexts then existing; but of rough-hewn test of intelligence spK>nses to any is move rather whanged at it until one of two now they are only special cases or of maturity, since the age at easily calculated. Chess is still things happened. Either he sud- within larger laws. which the player learns that the more complex, for, although the denly discovered he had a pretty You can, if you like, compare 4 GALAXY WHAT'S THE SCORE? 5 this enlargement of contexts with Euclidean geometry, the Oppo- a mastery of increasingly sophisti- nent won’t let you trisect an an- cated games. Slapjack to Tic-Tac- gle. If you want to do that you Toe: from the planless fumbling must switch to the game called of primitive man to the learned- algebra, where you can trisect all by-rote “medicine”, say, of Hippo- the angles you like with a simple crates. Tic-Tac-Toe to checkers: cubic equation. And behold! that from the Hippocratic empirical which was impossible, and which remedies to the experimentation everybody knew to be impossible, and theorizing of Galen. Checkers and which was proved to be im- to chess: from Galen’s dissection possible ... is no longer impossi- of corpses to antibiotics and the ble at all. analysis of DNA. All you have to do is change All this is analogy and perhaps the game. a little strained, for nothing is It is this point that is so hard more deadly than to force conclu- to get across to the sort of closed sions from an analogy. But per- mind that says, “We know that haps it is not just an analogy; for ESP is impossible” or “We have science is itself a sort of game. proved that no material object can be accelerated past the ve- rpHINK OF science as a game locity of light in a vacuum.” In board, and think of a very fact, we do not know anything large, very complex computer of the kind. We only know that across the board from us as our the rules of the games we’re play- are some things that cannot organization) an age-old brotherhood Opponent. THERE ing today say so; but we do not be generally tolA — things you ought to of learning, have preserved this secret The Opponent never cheats. know, and can only with difficulty know. Great truths are dangerous to wisdom in their archives for centu- some — but factors for personal power ries. They now invite you to share the He plays according to our rules. imagine, the rules of the games and accomplishment in the hands of practical helpfulness of their teachings. He plays the games we teach him. we may play tomorrow. those who understand them. Behind Write today for a free copy of the tales of the miracles and mysteries book, "The Mastery of Life.” Within If we are playing the game called That, of course, is the thing, the of the ancients, lie centuries of their its pages may lie a new life of oppor- Chemistry, he will go pokerfaced or one of the things, that science secret probing into nature’s laws — tunity for you. Address: Scribe H.W.K.