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Magazine reviews:          -MINN-STF NEWSLETTER;; PAGE THREE
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ANALOG.  (60cents.) June, 1968.
        The big news in this ANALOG is still the Poul Anderson novel, "Satan's World".
   It isn't another "High Crusade", but it's fun.
        "The Royal Read" by Christopher Anvil is part of a series; for some reason I
   don't think I read the previous portions of the series. As a consequence, I found
   the beginning(an explanation of what had happened previously) interesting; it "nor-
   mally" would've bogged down the plot, I suppose. This is a mildly amusing piece,
   and interesting.
        The shorts are all mild. I think that's what makes the present-day ANALOG
   story not quite so good as even late-fifties or early sixties ASTOUNDINGs and ANALOGs:
   all the stories are "mild" any more. No matter how much violence they may have in
   them, few of them are full of ideas, or trying to do new things with SF. Campbell
   seems to be trying to change from the drastic story-quality slump that began after
   ANALOG returned to the digest sized. He was the man who started "the new thing" in
   science fiction; he ought to be able to continue to do it.

   MAGAZINE OF HORROR. (50cents.) May, 1968.

        The headliner in this issue is one of the "King Kull" stories by Robert E.
   ("Conan") Howard. (If you happen to have bought the Lancer _King Kull_ book, this
   stoy isn't in it.) Plenty of adventure here.
        Also, there's a two part serial, "The Psychical Invasion" by Algernon Black-
   wood. "...Rich and strange"; that's about the only way I can describe it.
        As was said earlier, this is mostly WEIRD TALES reprinted. There are illos
   in the magazine (some of them very nice) and one new short story. The stories are
   all pretty good un-UNKNOWN fantasy.

   FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION. (50cents.) July, 1968.

        Serials seem to be dominating the current group of magazines.
        In F&SF this month, the serial is Piers Anthony's SOS THE ROPE. (Not S.O.S.,
   as was previously reported, but "Sos". It's a name.) The first installment gives
   us some skullduggerous plotting to form an empire of some of the scattered tribes
   of people left on the Earth after nuclear holocast. There seems to be some conflict-
   to-be with "Crazies"; people who are evidently scientists, fighting to maintain
   and preserve some civilization.
        Isaac Asimov seems to have started writing fiction again; he had a short in
   ANALOG a month or so past, and there's a short-short by him in this F&SF. Funny...
   or then again, maybe it isn't...
        Another somewhat funny short-short is "The Sublimation World", by former
   Minnesotan, John T. Sladek. This is a wacky takeoff on the work of J. G. B******.
   (Mr. Ballard being somewhat wacked in the rear end, here.)
        There are two short-stories in this issue which somewhat concern Hippie-type
   peoples: One is "The Psychedelic Children" (by Dean R. Koontz) and the other is
   "Beyond Words" (by Hayden Howard).
        Both are saying things I think you might enjoy thinking about. Take it from
   there.