Yearly Archives: 2019

Comics

[March 7, 1964] Look both ways (Marvel and National Comics round-up)

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[While you're reading this article, why not tune in to KGJ, Radio Galactic Journey, playing all the current hits: pop, rock, soul, folk, jazz, country — it's the tops, pops…]


by Gideon Marcus

Overcoming prejudice

Once, I was a snob.

For the most part, I was raised on a steady diet of L. Frank Baum, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H.P. Lovecraft.  I devoured the complete canons of each.  I also enjoyed the superhero comics of the war years — who doesn't like watching Captain America slug Nazis?  But after the war, I was getting tired of the pulps, and comics were getting tired.  I wanted something new.

Then, 'round 1950, I discovered science fiction digests — grown-up mags like Galaxy and Fantasy and Science Fiction — and my snobbish attitude was firmly established.  It didn't help that comics had entered a real slump by the 1950s, with National Comics (DC to the hep kids) in a rut and Atlas running Westerns and half-bit anthologies.  With the demise of the American News Company, Atlas went the way of the dodo, along with most of the inferior digests.  Survival of the fittest, right?

So I certainly didn't expect that I would find myself getting into those very same comics I'd once turned my nose at.  I first took notice when Marvel Comics arose from the ashes of Atlas Comics and started publication of The Fantastic Four.  Not only did this mag showcase the talents of Jack Kirby, the fellow who invented Captain America, but it featured a more realistic team dynamic than I'd ever seen before.  Why, these folks hardly even liked each other sometimes.  I appreciated the dilemma of The Thing, a hideous rock monster who nevertheless wasn't keen on returning to his human form, lest he give up his evil-clobbering powers.

Then came The Amazing Spiderman and The X-Men, and I was hooked.  I sang Marvel's virtues and scoffed at the kiddie fare that DC was peddling.  Around that time, I picked up an adversary, a Mr. Jason Sacks who delighted in telling me how wrong-headed my tastes were.

Late last year, Jason and I decided, unlike Tareyton smokers, that we'd rather switch than fight.  You see, Jason had discovered the charm of the new line-up of Marvel superheroes, and I was taken with D.C.'s new X-men-like group, the Doom Patrol.  Instead of picking a side, why not enjoy the virtues of both?

State of the Union

Here in March 1964 (May on the comics I buy at the news stand), Marvel's line-up has fully flowered.  The newest member of the superhero pantheon is Matt Murdock, a blind attorney whose other senses have compensated to such a degree (sounds inspired by Galouye's Dark Universe doesn't it?) that he is able to fight crime as The Daredevil!  The debut issue of this hero, written by Stan Lee and drawn by Bill Everett, was a hoot, and I look forward to the next.

Sidebar: I'm impressed that both comics houses are exploring the idea of handicapped heroes: Daredevil is blind, Professor X and The Chief (leaders of the X-Men and the Doom Patrol) both use wheelchairs, Thor's human form requires a cane, The Thing, Doom Patrol's Automaton and Negative Man and X-Men's Angel all have obvious physical peculiarities that make them stand out.  This makes for more mature storylines, and those of us with some kind of disability find a measure of comfort in having these folks with whom to identify.

Spiderman, a Stan Lee/Steve Ditko effort, continues to entertain.  This month's issue, #8, features the return of Dr. Octopus and spotlights the problem of recidivism amongst supervillains.

Both Fantastic Four (Lee/Kirby) and Spiderman demonstrate Marvel's increasing reliance on multi-book story arcs.  It's funny to think that two stories per issue used to be the norm — now it might take several issues to wrap up a plotline.  Speaking of Fantastic Four, in issue #24, the Thing goes toe to toe with the Hulk in a match-up every bit as exciting as the recent Heavyweight Championship between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston. 

Avengers (Lee/Kirby) is a bi-monthly, like X-Men; in the last issue (#4), Captain America was thawed from the ice in which he's been frozen since World War 2.  I can't tell you how excited I am to have Cap back, and I urge you to check it out.

As for the "anthologies," these are increasingly becoming character books, and I have to wonder if they will just get renamed for the hero that stars in them.  For instance, Strange Tales has become the home of the mysterious Dr. Strange, although this issue also features a popular rivalry/team-up: the flaming Torch and the frozen Turd…er… Ice Man!

Journey into Mystery #103 is Thor's mag.

Tales of Suspense #52 stars Iron Man fighting the Black Widow, and an immortal alien called The Watcher.

I'm always happy to see the Wasp, and she got an outing with her beaux, Giant Man, in Tales to Astonish #54. 

And then there is the host of girls comics featuring the latest in fashion:

Let's not forget the western titles, which I don't bother with, but which still linger on.

For the WW2 buffs who don't get enough from DC's Sgt. Rock, this month's Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos is a riveting courtmartial drama.

Finally, I want to give recognition to the fellows who most often go unsung, the Letterers: Sol Rosen and Art Simek.  Without them, comics would be just a bunch of pictures.

Oh, and what do we have here?  Mr. Sacks is invoking the Fairness Doctrine and wants to tell us all about the state of National Comics.  Well, why not?

Better Read than Dead


by Jason Sacks

The big comic news for me in ‘64 is that the Doom Patrol have finally emerged into their own title. Moving out from an anthology slot in My Greatest Adventure, these oddball adventurers continue to delight. Thankfully National has identified the artist on this sterling series as Bruno Premiani, and the Italian master delivers fascinating tales of “The world’s strangest heroes.” For a change such a blurb is accurate, as the weird Negative Man, charmingly acerbic Robotman and enchanting Elasti-Girl continue working for the mysterious chief.  It’s similar to Marvel’s much duller X-Men — though the similarities are apparently an accident of timing, if you believe the fanzines — but more insightful and stranger.

Recently, Hawkman debuted his own solo comic after a series of showcase appearances in  Mystery In Space. National editor Julius Schwartz’s latest resurrection of a long-forgotten Golden Age character, the new Hawkman is an alien from the delightfully named Thanagar, working on Earth as a museum manager and in the stars as a great space policeman. The art, most likely by Murphy Anderson, is all National Comics smoothness and ease, making the winged wonder’s adventures a thorough delight.

With Hawkman moving out from Mystery in Space, that anthology series is now devoted to full-length tales featuring the hero of Rann, Adam Strange. With sleek, moderne art by Carmine Infantino, well known for his fabulous Flash, this thrilling series mixes astounding adventure with a smart space romance for a surprisingly heady mix that even adults can enjoy.

It’s not all greatness for National in ‘64, though. Editor Mort Weisinger continues his stultifyingly stale children’s stories in the Superman titles, while Metal Men is seldom as clever as it wants to be and Wonder Woman is so dull even my kid sister won’t pick it up. Worst of all are Batman and Detective Comics. A recent issue of Detective, issue #326, shows the nadir of this abysmal series with the pathetically stupid “Captives of the Alien Zoo,” a story so dumb and so contrived that it should result in the immediate firing of everyone responsible for its creation. Compared to that, even Archie Comics’ idiotic Adventures of The Fly seems like the work of a genius.

Overall DC is following some of the same trends Marvel has embraced recently. For one thing, a reader has to wonder if anthology series are on their way out. My Greatest Adventure disappeared while others, like Mystery in Space and House of Secrets (with the intriguing Eclipso), are going full action hero. In other ways National blazes their own trail. That company continues to have a wider diversity of titles than Marvel – hardly a surprise with the larger set of titles they deliver each month. Humor and romance still have their place with the likes of Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, Girls’ Love Stories and Secret Hearts. As usual with National all their titles demonstrate that traditional sheen of professionalism Marvel often lacks. Will kids go for smoothness over unpredictability in ‘64? Only time will tell.

[And that's our comics round-up for San Diego Comic Fest!  If I met any of you folk this weekend, please drop me a line.  I'd love to hear from you.]




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Book

[March 5, 1964] Brushwinged, I Soar (Hannah Green's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden)

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by Erica Frank

Deborah Blau lives in two worlds. One is the world of post-World War II America, where she faces anti-Semitism at school, and her family is fraught with guilt from relying on her grandfather's wealth instead of her father's limited wages. The other is the Kingdom of Yr: a world with vast open plains and the endless chasm of The Pit. Yr's residents include Anterrabae, the Falling God; Lactamaeon, second in command; and Idat the Dissembler, who is neither male nor female. "You are not of them," the Yri gods tell her, and they teach her to soar the skies in her eagle-self, and she sings with them in the secret language of the hidden realm. The Censor stands guard to prevent the words from mingling when she shifts between the Rising Calendar of Yr and the Heavy Calendar of Earth.

But I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is not a science fiction novel, and Deborah is neither a time-traveler nor a sorceress. She is a sixteen-year-old girl, and Yr is the delusional world of her mental illness.

Cover of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Yr is a compelling world; Yri is an intriguing language. We only see them in glimpses as Deborah struggles to explain her truths to Doctor Fried, whom she names Furii, Fire-Touch, in her secret language. Yr is Deborah's protection and way of explaining to herself the traumas of her life: the tumor removed when she was five, the racist girls at her summer camp, the endless tensions between her parents and grandfather. She is surrounded by lies, and Yr is the place where nobody lies to her.

Nobody in Yr tells her, "This will not hurt at all, and when you wake up, you will be all better." Nobody tells her, "None of these girls called you a stinking Jew." Nobody says, "You are smart and special and that means you will be successful in life." In Yr, the customary greeting is "suffer, victim," and the calendar rises in good times and falls in bad times, and Deborah flies as a bird or gallops as a horse, unfettered and free. The incantation that calls forth her freedom is beautiful:

“e, quio quio quaru ar Yr aedat
temoluqu' braown elepr kyryr…”
(Brushwinged, I soar above the canyons of your sleep singing…)

Of course she wants to stay there. Yr has been her solace and sanctuary since she was six years old; it will be very, very hard for her to acknowledge it might not be a real place. If she loses it, she believes life will be nothing but falsehoods and distortions and incomprehensible tasks assigned by others.

But Yr is turning dark. The Collect, the swarm of voices who shout instructions and insults at her, are growing louder, and she spends less time celebrating its beauty and more in regions of fear and pain. The gods who were delightful companions at first, distracting her from real-world tensions and abuses, now bring her messages of bitterness and horror. Even so, Deborah retreats into Yr more and more, losing entire days from memory and not knowing what she did or said in that time.

Deborah is committed to a mental institution, and it begins as a great relief to her. For the first time in years, nobody is pretending she is normal, that there is nothing wrong with her. Of course, what Deborah thinks is wrong with her, and what the doctors think is wrong with her, don't match–but fixing that can come later. First, she has to trust that they can recognize that she has real problems.

Deborah's doctor is much in demand; she wouldn't take the case if she didn't believe Deborah could get better. Dr. Fried is acclaimed, even famous, and she needs that cachet of status when convincing the parents to leave her there, especially after Deborah is committed to the "Disturbed" ward, with bars on the windows and ratty-haired women wearing pajamas all day. Her parents are dismayed at the idea of their "sensitive" little girl being in such a place, and they worry about the community finding out about her illness. The doctor needs to persuade them, and keep persuading them, that Deborah needs this.

And she does. She has to get worse before she can get better. She has to let go of the constraints of blending in, of being polite, of pretending that social interactions mean the same things to her that they do to others.

Deborah's journey is a hard battle, and a big part of it is how she relates to the other inmates. At first, they are all mysteries to her, just another set of talking obstacles she navigates around while she tries to sort out truth from fantasy. Slowly, she comes to realize that each of them has her own traumas, her own methods of coping, and to recognize the potential of future health in some of them–a terrifying thought for people who find hope a burden as much as a source of strength.

She learns the secret codes they use to sneak forbidden items past the nurses. She makes a friend, when she was never able to do so at school. She seeks out those who can teach her Latin and Greek, in fragments and amidst the fights that explode any time something changes in the ward. (Just hearing about someone who used to be here, but is now working in the real world, is enough strain to disrupt the place for days.) She learns that the staff thinks of her as cold and vicious, and that her intellect is weapon as much as tool. And she learns compassion, the baffling wonder of having the power to help someone else, when she had been convinced that her very essence was nothing but poison.

While the story is set in the late 40s and early 50s, it's timeless. The town and the institute are never named, nor do they need to be. While today's mental institutions won't have a regular influx of conscientious objectors serving as orderlies to avoid prison, there are always some staff who obviously don't want to be there. The patients recognize the ones who fear and hate them, and treat them differently. Some of the security practices seem almost barbaric, but Deborah shrugs them off; her trials are internal, and physical comforts are irrelevant to her.

Rose Garden is intense and fascinating. It gives a glimpse into both mental illness and how the stigma surrounding it can make it worse: Deborah's troubles are harder for having to pretend she is "normal." The world of Yr would make a delightful setting for a novel in its own right, and it is hard, as a science fiction fan, to favor the termination of such a place–but that is what Deborah needs, so that is what the reader comes to want as well.

5 stars; it doesn't get better than this.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Book, Magazine

[March 3, 1964] Out and about (March 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Braving My Shadow

Every year on February 2, a groundhog named Punxatawney Phil decides if it's worth vacating his winter hiding place before spring. 

For Galactic Gideon, on the other hand, the end of winter always happens in February.  The annual convention season wraps up around Thanksgiving with the little gathering of Los Angeles Science Fiction Fans called "Loscon."  There is a lull of events in December and January, but well before the vernal equinox, the Journey's dance card is full.  In fact, I've already been to two events in as many weeks, and I've got another one planned next weekend! 

My birthday weekend was spent at a small Los Angeles conclave called Escapade, where we discussed Johnson's tax cut, The Outer Limits vs. The Twilight Zone, and the more peculiar elements of the TV show, Burke's Law.  Unusually for sf-related gatherings, most of the attendees were women.

Last night, I presented at a local pub on the woman pioneers of space, the scientists, engineers, and computers I first wrote about a couple of years ago.  It was a tremendous event, and I am grateful to the folks who crowded the venue to bursting.

The Issue at Hand

In contrast to these past two events, the last magazine of the month is mostly stag.  Nevertheless, the March 1964 Analog is still a pretty good, if not outstanding, read:


Cover by Schoenherr, illustrating Spaceman

Clouds, Bubbles and Sparks, by Edward C. Walterscheid

There are three qualities by which I rate science fact articles: Are they fun to read, do I learn something, and are there bits where I feel compelled to joggle the elbow of the person next to me (usually my wife) and relate to them a neat bit of scientific trivia.

This latest piece, on the detection of subatomic particles, excels in all three.  If you ever wanted to know how a geiger counter works, or what a cloud chamber is for, or what those tubes in our scientific spacecraft do, this is the article for you. 

Five stars.

Spaceman (Part 1 of 2), by Murray Leinster

The dean of Golden Age science fiction returns with yet another entry in his well-developed galactic setting.  In the Leinster-verse, perhaps best represented in his Med Series stories, interstellar travel is a bit like ocean travel in the 19th Century — reliable but not instant.  Colonies are days or weeks apart, and what separates a thriving hub from a backwater is the existence of a magnetic landing grid on which cargo ships can land and trade.

Spaceman is the story of Braden, a ship's mate who seeks passage aboard the Rim Star.  This giant vessel is an experiment — it carries an entire, unassembled landing grid in its hold, and it also possesses the rockets to make a landing on a world without a grid.  Having one ship bring an entire landing grid for installation has never been tried before, but no one is certain that the ship can fulfill this purpose.  Moreover, there are all sorts of bad omens for Braden: he is waylaid by the ship's crew while on his way to his interview; the captain seems negligent to a criminal degree, and the obsequiousness of the ship's steward rings false.  In spite of these alarms, Braden takes the job anyway, feeling it his duty to see the ship through its special mission, and also to protect the six passengers the Rim Star has aboard.

The other shoe drops near the end of this first part of what's promised to be a two-part serial.  The crew is, in fact, up to no good, and the entire ship is imperiled.  Stay tuned.

It's not a bad yarn.  The plot is interesting and the characters reasonably developed.  Where it creaks is the writing.  Leinster has developed an odd sort of plodding and padded style of late, with endless sequences of short sentences and whole paragraphs that repeat information we already know.  Used sparingly, I suppose it's a style that could be effective.  Used excessively, it slows things down.

And then, there's this gem of a line (an internal musing of Braden's) on page 36:

When a man admits that a woman is a better man than he is, he may be honest, but he should be ashamed.

Three stars, barely.  We'll see what happens next month.

The Pie-Duddle Puddle, by Walt and Leigh Richmond

Recently, in Papa needs shorts, the Richmonds showed us how a four-year old child can save the day even with an imperfect understanding of the situation.  The husband-and-wife writing team try it again, this time from an even more exotic viewpoint (which you'll guess pretty quickly).  It's not nearly as effective or plausible a piece.  Two stars.

Outward Bound, by Norman Spinrad

I'm getting a little worried about new author, Norman Spinrad.  He hit it out of the park with his first story, and scored a double with his second.  The latest, about a decades-long relativistic chase across the galaxy in pursuit of the man who has the secret to superluminous travel, is barely a walk to first base.  It's not bad; there's just no mystery to the thing.  Three stars.

Third Alternative, by Robin Wilson

On the other hand, this first story by new author Robin Wilson is rather charming.  It's a time travel piece featuring a fellow who goes back from 2012 to 1904 with naught but what he can cram into his bodily orifices (inorganic matter doesn't transport).  You don't find out his purpose until the end, and it's an engaging, effective piece.  Another three-star story, but at the high end of the range.

Summing up

Reviewing the numbers, it seems like leaving the burrow was worth it.  Least mag of the bunch was Amazing at 2.3 stars and with no four star tales.  Next was IF at 2.4 stars, again with no exceptional pieces.  Fantastic clocked in at 2.7, but it had the excellent The Graveyard Heart by Zelazny; New Worlds, three stars, had Ballard's The Terminal Breach.  At the positive end of the scale were F&SF and Analog at 3.3 stars — their non-fiction articles were the real stand-outs.  Finally, Worlds of Tomorrow was mostly superior, definitely worth the 50 cent cover price.

Women had a banner month, producing 5.5 out of 39 new pieces (14.1%). 

Looks like we'll have a warm spring!

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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TV

[February 29, 1964] Think Twice — it's not all right (The Twilight Zone, Season 5, Episodes 17-20)

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by Natalie Devitt

The characters in the most recent month of The Twilight Zone certainly encountered plenty of doubt and hesitation when they asked for help or tried to express themselves. Such entries include the family of a young woman encouraging her to get a life-altering procedure against her wishes, a teenage girl’s alien boyfriend not receiving the help he needs when he tries to warn her that aliens plan to poison the water supply, an aging spinster struggling to get people to believe that she has been receiving a series of creepy calls, and a man who is so desperate he takes the advice of a computer to get one very special woman to acknowledge his existence.

Number 12 Looks Just Like You, by Charles Beaumont and John Tomerlin

Number 12 Looks Just Like You offers a glimpse of what the year 2000 might look like. In this futuristic society, "science has developed the means to give everyone the face and body he dreams of." A young woman by the name of Marilyn, played by Collin Wilcox of To Kill a Mockingbird, is approaching her 19th birthday. She is also being pressured by her loved ones to mark the occasion with a certain rite of passage, which includes selecting a new body out of a handful of options, like she’s ordering one from a catalog. Then, undergo a procedure to transform into her new self. She is told, "The transformation is the most marvelous thing that could happen to a person." Still, she has her concerns.

Several people in this society, while attractive, look identical and everyone wears name tags so nobody confuses any of the doppelgangers. I am sure it is no coincidence that Marilyn shares a name with one of the silver screen’s most iconic beauties. Her mother, portrayed by model Suzy Parker, asks, "What’s so terrible about being beautiful? After all, isn’t everybody?" Marilyn argues that that is exactly the problem: "Is that good, being like everybody? Isn’t that the same as being nobody?"

A family member refers to her reservations about the procedure as "radical ideas" and she is also described as being a "sick girl." To make matters worse, her beliefs echo things her father said shortly before taking his own life. Can Marilyn continue to resist the intense pressure to conform?

Number 12 Looks Just Like You is good, but not excellent. It kind of feels like a lesser version of a previous entry of The Twilight Zone, Eye of the Beholder. Collin Wilcox really becomes her character, who is significantly younger than she is in real life. Then there is the episode’s conclusion, which is incredibly frightening and is probably the episode’s greatest strength. Overall, I would say that Number 12 Looks Just Like You deserves a pretty solid three stars.

Black Leather Jackets, by Earl Hamner Jr.

In Black Leather Jackets, a biker gang rides into a sleepy town wearing, you guessed it, Black Leather Jackets. Despite some similarities, Black Leather Jackets is hardly The Wild One — the three men are not members of your ordinary biker gang. In fact, they are aliens with telekinetic powers. The aliens set up shop in a vacant house. Upon the gang’s arrival, the neighbors are hardly welcoming. One of them, Stu, portrayed by Western regular Denver Pyle, describes them as, "strange type for this neighborhood." Shelly Fabares of The Donna Reed Show plays his teenage daughter, Ellen, who Stu warns to steer clear of the gang.

It is not long after the bikers move in that the electricity in Stu’s house begins turning on and off, and Ellen’s radio picks up some strange voices. While trying to determine the cause, Stu notices a large antenna on the roof of the gang‘s house. He thinks he may have found the cause of his family‘s problems, and he decides to pay their house a visit.

As it turns out, the men are much more threatening than he ever could have imagined. They are spying on others and are receiving broadcasts of orders from their alien leader. Orders to release a deadly bacteria into the water supply in order to kill Earth’s population so they can colonize the planet. The bikers erase Stu’s memories of visiting their house and send him home in a trance. He describes the men as "three very nice boys" and no longer suspects them of being responsible for the family’s poor reception.

Shortly after, a member of the group, Scott, performed by Golden Globe Nominee Lee Kinsolving, becomes romantically involved with Ellen, much to the gang’s dismay. They are ordered by their boss to "continue without him," even though he is involved with a member of a "stupid race." Scott urges Ellen to leave town and he offers to take her to safety. He warns, "Everything alive is going to be dead," but not surprisingly, he does not exactly get the help he needs.

It is worth noting that Black Leather Jackets has a plot that is remarkably similar to Teenagers from Outer Space, but is not nearly as enjoyable as the movie. Despite looking slicker than Teenagers, Black Leather Jackets is only mildly entertaining, and often unintentionally funny. The actors did an adequate job, but it is a shame that they did not have very good source material. The screenplay is hardly Earl Hamner, Jr. at his best. I did, however, enjoy Nathan Van Cleave’s jazzy score for the episode. So, I would say that this episode deserves two and a half stars.

Night Call, by Richard Matheson

Gladys Cooper makes yet another memorable appearance on The Twilight Zone with Night Call. It has not even been a year since her last performance in the enjoyable Passage on the Lady Anne. Cooper plays Elva, a disabled and elderly woman, who lives alone. One rainy night during a storm, her phone rings. When she answers, all she hears is silence. Immediately after, she receives another call with even more silence.

Elva contacts the phone company, hoping to get to root of the problem. She is informed that during the storm, some wires had fallen. Elva is told that the unusual calls could have been the result of someone to reach her or someone else on her party line during the storm. Elva continues to receive calls, which grow increasingly strange, including calls with moaning and a man saying, "Hello." She tells her caretaker, Margaret, about the calls. Unfortunately, Margaret acts like she suspects Elva is going senile.

The phone company plans to send out a worker to check on the line as soon as the weather permits, but Elva fears that the company might think of her as a "nervous old biddy falling prey to my imagination." Until a worker can check on the line, she tries leaving the phone off of the hook. But as soon as she puts it back on the hook, it starts ringing again. Things continue to escalate and now the voice on the end of the line is asking, "Where are you? I want to talk with you."

Finally, the phone company contacts her tell her that the source of the problem is likely a "fallen wire on the edge of town." But they also add, "there is no way that anyone could have called from that location." So, who is contacting Elva and why? When calls are "routed directly through The Twilight Zone," anything is possible.

What’s not to like about Night Call? Sure, it does not hurt that it was written by Richard Matheson and directed by Jacques Tourneur, who is perhaps best known for his work with Val Lewton in pictures like 1942’s Cat People. Night Call is not flashy, but it is very effective. The suspense slowly builds. It is easily one of the high points of the season, perhaps of the series. Gladys Cooper is terrific, as usual. In addition, the episode’s score, while not specifically composed for the episode, helps to compliment the episode. This is especially true in the scene that reveals Elva’s caller. Night Call easily earns its four stars.

From Agnes with Love, by Bernard C. Schoenfeld

As From Agnes with Love opens with computer programmers struggling to repair Agnes, a very sophisticated and almost human computer, but sadly nobody can get her back in working. That is, until James, played my television actor Wally Cox, arrives. He is told, "She’s been out of her mind for a week." Luckily, as soon as the "master programmer" begins to work on then malfunctioning machine, she resumes normal activity.

James might excel at work, but he struggles in his love life. After working with Agnes for a while, she begins inquiring about his love life and coaching him. Leave It to Beaver’s Sue Randall plays Millie, Jame’s co-worker, who he has a pretty intense crush on. After rejecting James several times, Millie finally agrees to a dinner date.

Agnes sends James messages with dating advice, including "Agnes knows best." She lets him know that "reckless romantic approach required" in order to win over Millie. James is book smart, but often lacks common sense, so what he does not realize is that Agnes has actually set him up for failure. When things do not work out with Millie, Agnes tries to cheer him up him by sending him the message, "Millie is a square. Better girl loves you."

While From Agnes with Love is better than some other entries with a sense of humor, it still is pretty weak. So weak, in fact, that it really requires silly musical cues to remind the audience to laugh. The narrative is incredibly predictable, and the only person surprised by anything that happens is James. As much as I hate to admit it, two stars is all that I can give From Agnes with Love.

Some of characters this month were able to overcome people's doubts, others were not so lucky. The episodes this time around varied quite a bit in terms of quality. There were two very strong offerings. The remaining two were not so memorable. All in all, a hodgepodge of a month, but mostly worth the ride.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]



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Book, Magazine

[February 27, 1964] Beatles, Boredom and Ballard ( New Worlds, March 1964)

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

Things have been busy since last time we spoke. I have been watching with interest (and some good-natured amusement!) the return of The Beatles to your shores. You really have taken the Liverpudlian mop-tops to your hearts, as they have taken over here. I did try and warn you last month about the effect that their enthusiasm and energetic pop can have on impressionable teenagers, and from what news coverage I have seen here many of you seem to have capitulated to their collective charms, as we had before Christmas. 

Doctor Who is still continuing to enthrall and charm here. As fellow traveller Jessica has said already, the latest episode has been an odd one (to put it mildly!), but generally the family and I are still enjoying it a great deal. This is a rather different view to that given in this month’s New Worlds magazine, as you will see… 

To the magazine, then.

The issue at hand

As we approach the end of the magazine next month, it does appear that there is a general feeling of closure evident. But, perhaps knowing that the end is near, the magazine has some terrific fiction amongst the usual fare. 

We begin however with a typically controversial opinion. Whilst there is no guest editorial this month, in its place the issue has a summary of the state of sf in 1963 as editor Mr. Carnell sees it, entitled “A Dull Year".

Now that Mr. Carnell’s tenure as Editor is drawing to a close, it does seem that the gloves are off. His view comes across as rather grumpy. For example, describing Doctor Who as a programme “designed for teenagers and tottering oldsters" is a bit mean. Granted, it is not pushing the boundaries of sf too much, but the fact that we’re seeing any sf on British television I see as a strength. We are not as lucky as yourselves in the US – I still wish I could see The Twilight Zone here, but no sign yet.

Mr. Carnell is similarly disgruntled with sf fiction. There were over thirty hardback books published in Britain last year, but according to Mr. Carnell only three were of any merit. This may be a case of quantity over quality, although I found it interesting that a quick summary of the New Worlds Survey asked for last year (the first since 1958, don’t forget) may suggest another reason for Mr. Carnell’s umbrage – magazine sales are down but paperback sales are up.

After such a gloomy context, we begin the issue’s fiction with something a little more to Mr. Carnell’s taste, perhaps. 

the terminal beach, by Mr. J. G. Ballard

The Terminal Beach is the story of Traven (typically no first names here!), who, for reasons that become clear over the course of the story, has travelled to the island of Eniwetok, a site of atomic bomb tests. As is typical of Ballard, the emphasis is more on mood and less on plot, with many of the Ballard motifs from other stories repeated: physical and mental decay, dystopian featureless buildings, isolation, and deteriorating technology. It is bleak, enigmatic and unsettling, and inevitably concerned with the human condition, which frankly isn’t looking great from this perspective. I’m not entirely sure what all of it is about, or even if it has an overall meaning, but its pervasive mood is chillingly depressing.

It is also a prime example of how far the British New Wave has changed science fiction in the last decade or so. We are light years away from spaceships and monsters here. 4 out of 5.

the traps of time , by Mr. John Baxter

And now to more traditional fare, a time travel story where a killer from the 39th century escapes justice to hide in the nuclear wastes of the 48th. The idea of how minor changes in time travel have consequences is nicely done, but overall the story adds little to the genre. The story concludes with that now almost-traditional downbeat note that seems to be a British convention. 3 out of 5.

unfinished business , by Mr. Clifford C. Reed

Even compared with the rest of the issue, this story is an oddity. Unfinished Business is a story of a married couple, one of whom disappears when flying off to see a pregnant friend. The result is that the remaining partner takes on deliberately dangerous jobs on other planets, not caring if he dies or not. After seventeen years he returns to Earth, to find that the girl who was born at the time of his partner’s apparent death seems strangely familiar. I suspect that it is meant to be creepy, but in the end comes across as just strange. 3 out of 5.

the unremembered , by Mr. Edward Mackin

Have you ever been subject to one of those rants by an old person that “things are not as good as they used to be"? Mr. Mackin’s story begins like that, with an elderly couple complaining about a depressing future world of synthetic foods and euthanasia clinics. It’s not too surprising then that with the closure of ‘the Clinics’, our protagonist is determined to discover another way out and finds some sort of Cosmic message at the end. It’s a mixture of dystopian social commentary and cosmic revelation that didn’t fit together well for me, to the point where this becomes another story with a title that seems to be sadly appropriate. 2 out of 5.

jetway 75 , by Mr. William Spencer

Mr. Spencer was last here as Bill Spencer in the October 1963 issue with Project 13013. This is a one-trick pony kind of tale, showing a future where pedestrians play chicken with the endless stream of cars on the titular means of conveyance. The point of the story, if there is any, seems to be that both walker and vehicle driver need this deadly interaction to create excitement in their otherwise humdrum life. Rather Ballardian, but without the style and skill, something emphasized by having The Terminal Beach in the same issue. 3 out of 5.

open prison , by Mr. James White

Last month this story left us with the situation where a group of inmates with an innate duty to escape from the prison planet were planning to heist an orbiting spaceship. Much of this middle part is about the preparation for “E-Day" and the practical and political challenges facing the escapees. Admittedly, the story moves along and there’s a building of tension as the escape approaches, but it is scarcely original and clearly the middle part of a story. And there’s still that patronizing tone that vacillates between “What are we going to let the useless girls do?" and “Gosh, those women are jolly useful, aren’t they?" Not one of Mr White’s best, I feel. 3 out of 5.

Unusually, but again expectedly, there is a postmortem letters section this month, the first since the announcement that next month’s New Worlds may be the last. Surprisingly, this selection is not as full of outrage and regret as you might expect, instead reading as any normal letters section. Some readers take the opportunity to complain about stories (such as the recent Mr. Colin Kapp) or bemoan the fact that sf is for entertainment and not an artform, as recent editorials have tried to indicate. There’s also an impassioned cry from a long-time reader for a return to ‘sense-of-wonder’ stories, but I feel that we’ve moved long past that.

(Talking of the end of New Worlds, there are rumours, but I must emphasise at this stage only rumours, that a rescue package may be being looked at for the magazine. Hopefully we will know more by next month.)

Lastly, this month’s rather short set of Book Reviews. Mr. Leslie Flood looks at what sounds like an interesting hardback collecting together recent Russian Science Fiction, which he describes as toeing “the socialist line" but finds “entertaining". He also reviews Mr. Edmund Cooper’s Transit as a “better than average" book, albeit with a hoary plot. He is much more positive about Mr Clifford Simak’s Way Station, which you may remember our Traveller reviewing when it appeared in Galaxy Magazine in two parts last year. Mr. Flood summarises it as “the sort of nonsense I simply cannot resist, and Simak does it so well." I’ve recently read this myself and can only agree.

Lastly, Mr Flood mentions the print of a post-war classic, “for too long out of print", Messers Pohl and Kornbluth’s Gladiator-At-Law. Whilst lacking “the spurious charm" of The Space Merchants, it is “very compulsive reading".

Summing up

In summary, another diverse issue. Mr. Carnell’s tenure as Editor may be drawing to a close, but he seems determined to want to go with a bang, although I am sure that Mr. Ballard’s story will have many readers who hate it as much as others love it. You may not like everything here, and it hardly manages any degree of consistency, but it can’t be denied that in places this is a thought-provoking issue. 

Until next month.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Movies

[February 25, 1964] From the Sublime to the Ridiculous (Castle of Blood and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Now that February has much of the Northern Hemisphere in the grip of winter, it's a good time to escape the cold and seek out a different kind of chill.  Head out to your local movie theater or drive-in (bring a blanket) and watch a good horror movie.  Or at least a horror movie.  Not all of them are good.

Two that I recently sat through represent the apex and the nadir of the genre.  Well, that's a bit of exaggeration.  The good one isn't that good.  It's hardly in the same class as, say, last year's The Haunting, which is a modern classic.  But it's worth watching, so let's take a look.

Castle of Blood: Barbara Steele and the Italian Gothic Horror Film

The history of Italian fright films of the modern era begins with I Vampiri (1957).  It was not until the 1960 release of La maschera del demonio, known in the English-speaking world as Black Sunday, however, that anyone sat up and took notice.  The international success of this gruesome shocker launched the careers of director Mario Bava and star Barbara Steele.

Steele is a British actress of unusual beauty.  Her striking features can suggest innocence or evil.


Innocence


Evil!

After Black Sunday, Steele went on to haunt audiences in Roger Corman's Pit and the Pendulum.  She then returned to Italy, specializing in scary movies.  (But not always.  You may have caught her in Frederico Fellini's 8½.) These include The Horrible Dr. Hichcock and The Ghost.  Her latest terrifying feature is Castle of Blood.

Known in its native land as Danza Macabra, the film begins with an English journalist interviewing Edgar Allan Poe in a tavern.  (By the way, the ghastly anecdote our fictional Poe relates here is clearly based on his 1835 short story, Berenice.) The skeptical reporter denies that Poe's accounts are real.  An aristocrat bets that the journalist cannot spend a full night in his ancestral home on All Souls' Day.  The journalist accepts the wager, and the terror begins.


Poe tells his story

At first, things don't seem too bad.  Barbara Steele shows up as the aristocrat's lovely sister, and the two quickly become lovers.  Another woman living in the castle tries to come between them.  A man of science is also present.  He explains some of the weird things that happen, but they remain mysterious.  The journalist meets his fate in an ironic ending.


The hero and his new girlfriend


A particularly spooky scene

Although slow at times, the film is eerie and compelling.  The black-and-white cinematography is moody and atmospheric.

Four stars.

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies: The Weird World of Z Movies


Sometimes considered the ultimate example of the Z movie

The term Z movie has recently come into use, referring to films, generally of poor quality, with extremely low budgets.  Many of these are labors of love, made independently outside the usual Hollywood system.  A lot of them are science fiction and horror movies.  Examples abound, from Robot Monster (1953) to Teenagers from Outer Space (1959), previously reviewed by our host.

A relatively new name in this dubious field is Ray Dennis Steckler.  A couple of years ago, he directed Wild Guitar, one of a handful of films that Arch Hall Sr. produced as vehicles for his son, Arch Hall Jr.  Now Steckler has made a movie for himself, going so far as to star in it under the outrageous pseudonym Cash Flagg.


And he's married to second-billed Carolyn Brandt

So what do we get if we dare to watch this movie?  Well, not much.


Our director, producer, and star

Steckler (or Flagg) shows up at a carnival with some other folks.  He gets mixed up with a fortune teller who hypnotizes him and sends him out to kill people. 


"I see that you will all soon star in a very bad movie."

That's about it, although we do get some guys near the end of the film with faces scarred by acid.  I suppose these are the title characters.


"Hi.  I'm an incredibly strange creature . . . Oh, you know the rest."

We also get lots of dance sequences, starring Carolyn Brandt.


A little something for the leg men in the audience

Credit where credit is due.  The color cinematography is actually pretty good.  Somehow this makes the movie's failings stand out even more.  I'd suggest bringing a group of friends with you to make fun of it.

One star.

Until next time, see you at the movies!


Coming soon!

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Magazine

[February 23, 1964] Songs of Innocence and of Experience (March 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

I trust that the spirit of William Blake will forgive me for stealing the title of his 1794 collection of poems.  It seems appropriate, now that the Beatles have conquered America with a combination of sophisticated melodies and simple lyrics.  Maybe you were one of the millions who watched the Fab Four perform the Number One song in the USA on The Ed Sullivan Show a couple of weeks ago.

If not, don't worry about it.  You'll find plenty of innocence and experience in the pages of the latest issue of Fantastic.


Cover by Paula McLane

Iron, by Robert H. Rohrer, Jr.

The cover story takes place long after metallic aliens failed to conquer Earth.  One of the invaders escapes from an underground prison after one thousand years, finding a domed city inhabited by robots, but without people.  During a battle of wits between the alien and the robots, we learn what happened to the vanished humans.

This story has some interesting concepts, but presents them in an unsophisticated way.  The manner in which the alien and the leader of the robots deduce the truth about each other from a few vague clues strains credulity.  There are no surprises in the plot.

Two stars.

The Graveyard Heart, by Roger Zelazny

In the near future, a small number of the elite go into suspended animation, emerging for a day or so now and then.  They are all extremely wealthy, but money is not the only thing needed to join this exclusive set.  Their long slumbers alternate with brief periods of parties and other amusements.

The protagonist falls in love with a woman who belongs to the group.  He struggles to join the set, facing the arbitrary whim of an elderly woman who has the final say.  Complicating matters is a cynical, alcoholic poet.  A dramatic event brings the characters together, with unexpected results.

If the first story in this issue lacked style and elegance, this one has plenty — one would say it has too much!  There are elaborate metaphors and multiple allusions, some of which went over my head.  The tone is world-weary and decadent.  The hibernating hedonists remind me of the inhabitants of J. G. Ballard's Vermillion Sands.  Not all readers will care for the author's literary pretentions, but I appreciated them.

Four stars.

The Coming of the Little People, by Robert Spencer Carr

This month's Fantasy Classic comes from the November 1952 issue of Bluebook.  As the story begins, a feeling of optimism fills the world.  Simultaneously, strange lights appear on the most inaccessible peaks on Earth.  Although the possibility of spaceships or biological experiments comes up, it's clear from the start (and the title) what's really going on.  Mischievous but benign fairies arrive to aid humanity.  Not only do they end the Cold War, they help an army officer and his female sergeant admit their love for each other.

Readers with a low tolerance for sweetness and sentimentality had best stay away.  If Zelazny's tale was the epitome of Experience, this one is the exemplar of Innocence.  It feels cruel to blame the author for naivety, when he wears his heart on his sleeve so openly.

Two stars.

Training Talk, by David R. Bunch

We turn from pure light to complete darkness in the latest mordant fable from a controversial author.  A man makes his two young children bury dolls made from sausage and paper.  Six months later, they dig them up.  What happens next is very strange.

I'm not sure what the author is trying to say, but it has something to do with the man's broken marriage and a woman's death.  The frenzied narrative style makes for compelling, if confusing, reading.

Three stars.

Identity Mistaken, by Rick Raphael

An astronaut crashes on an inhabited planet.  Only his brain survives.  The local aliens rebuild his body, based on their monitoring of Earth's television broadcasts.  The whole thing is just a set-up for a joke about the popularity of Westerns.  You may get some slight amusement from the punchline.

Two stars.

Summing Up

Zelazny and Bunch represent one extreme of imaginative fiction.  They make use of avant-garde literary techniques, at the risk of alienating the audience.  The other authors demonstrate simpler, more traditional methods of telling a story.  They communicate with the reader clearly, but may seem stale and unoriginal.  It's impossible to say which approach is better.  Maybe writers of fantasy and science fiction can learn a lesson from the Beatles, and make use of both.

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Magazine

[February 21, 1964] For the fans (March 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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[Due to an oversight (clearly!), Galactic Journey was not included on Locus' Awards Ballot this year.  If you're a fan of the Journey, we be grateful if you'd fill us in under Fanzine!]


by Gideon Marcus

A New Leaf

Today's special birthday (mine!) edition of the Journey is for the fans.  It seems F&SF has been running a three-part series on current (as of 1964) fandom, and it occurred to me it might be fun to spend a little time on the authors who appear in this month's issue.  I also want to take the effort to show the context of each writer's work.  This is in response to the letter of one of our readers who made me realize I can be a bit harsh (even in jest) on a story.  The fact is that writing is hard, and even the worst stories that get printed are usually, though not always, better than most unpublished work. 

Which is not to say that anything like Garrett's Queen Bee will ever get a pass, but I'm going to try to be a bit nicer.  I will, however, never ask John Boston to change his style; when Amazing is bad, well, you'll know…

The Issue at Hand


This picture, by Mel Hunter, is almost worth 40 cents by itself

Automatic Tiger, by Kit Reed

Kit Reed is one of the writers featured on the Journey whom I am honored to call "friend."  She began publishing fiction in 1958, and she is (so far as I know) an F&SF exclusive — and what fortune that is for the magazine!  Her work is "soft" SF, where it is SF at all, but since her rough start, Ms. Reed has been a reliably above-average contributor.  In particular, her To Lift a Ship, almost a Zenna Henderson The People story, got my nomination for the Galactic Star one year.  Sadly, Kit has moved away and left no forwarding address, so our correspondence has come to an end. 

Nevertheless, I can still enjoy her fiction.  Tiger, the lead tale in this issue, is a vivid piece about Benjamin, a nebbishy fellow who acquires a mechanical tiger, which instantly bonds to his master.  Just the knowledge that he is the proud owner of such a creature fills the man with confidence, and he quickly rises in social stature and success.  His downfall is an expensive woman and hubris' inevitable companion, nemesis.

It's not SF at all, nor does it make a great deal of sense, but as a fairy tale, it's worthy reading.  I have only one significant issue with the story, but it's a central one: I was disappointed that Benjamin ends the story roughly the same as how he started, though now aware of what he's lost.  It's a bit like the short story, Flowers for Algernon, except without the inspiring finish.  A strong three stars for this flawed jewel.

Sacheverell, by Avram Davidson

More beard than man, Avram Davidson has been a big name in the field since the mid-50s, charming science fictioneers with his sometimes moody, sometimes effervescent short stories.  Right around 1962, when he took over the editorship of F&SF, his writing became a bit overwrought and self-indulgent.  It's gotten to the point that I generally approach his byline with trepidation (and his editorial blurbs that come before the stories in his mag have gotten bad again, too — thankfully, he's stopped bothering to preface Asimov, at least). 

Sacheverell does nothing to improve his reputation.  It's about a sapient circus monkey who has been kidnapped, rescued in the end by his carny companions.  The story left little impression on me while I read it and none after, such that I had to reread it to remember what it was about.

I suppose forgettable is better than awful?  Two stars.

Survival of the Fittest, by Jack Sharkey

I've been particularly harsh on Jack Sharkey.  No, not the boxer (who could pound me into hamburger), but the prolific author who has been around since 1959.  That's because, while he is capable of quite decent work, much of what he's turned out is pretty bad. 

Survival falls somewhere in-between, I guess.  It's a variation on the, "is my real life really the dream?" shtick mixed with a healthy dose of solipsism.  Not great, but I did remember the piece, at least.  On the low end of three stars.

The Prodigals, by Jean Bridge

The first poem of the issue is by newcomer Jean Bridge, and it suggests that after humanity has matured out of a need for interstellar wanderlust, Earth will be waiting, no matter how long it takes.

Unless the sun eats our planet first, of course, though we may be advanced enough by then to save our home out of nostalgia.  Nice sentiment, nicely framed.  Four stars.

Forget It!, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor probably needs no introduction, having been a titan of sf since his debut in 1938, and a deity of science fact from the 1950s.  However, I will note with pride that he is, like me, a Jewish Atheist of Russian extraction, and of very similar age (we're both the same vintage of 39), spectacle frame, height, and writing style.

This particular non-fiction piece, on the superfluous weights and measures we'd be better off chucking, kept me company while I watched my daughter compete (victoriously) at an inter-school academic competition.  It's an interesting article, noting that just as the English language has regularized itself almost to the point of sense, but with lingering spelling issues that confound any new learner, so have pecks and bushels and furlongs and fortnights overstayed their welcome.  It's time that they went the way of florins and chaldrons and ells.  Let's all adopt the metric system like sensible people!

Who can argue with that?  Four stars.

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is, of course, a fixture of the Victorian age whose wit still finds currency today.  This piece, which I read on a long walk one fine morning, is a pleasant tale about Lord Arthur, a young aristocrat with love, money, and not a care in the world — until a cheiromancer informs him he will commit a murder in the near future.  Convinced of his fate, the young Lord undertakes to perform the deed in as personally nondisruptive manner as possible. 

It reads well, but the ending is just a bit too pat and inconsequential.  And while I am appreciative of the opportunity to rediscover lost classics, I am not certain why Davidson chose to devote half an issue to one.  I should think that a modern magazine could do with less 1887 and more 1987.

Three stars.

Pure Water from Salt, by Theodore L. Thomas

Theodore Thomas oscillates between mildly engaging and somewhat dreary.  A lawyer by profession, he is best with fiction that explores interesting aspects of patent law.  This particular piece is about the value of adapting people to process salt water as opposed to pursuing desalination.  It feels like an incomplete story outline that Davidson bought to fill a vignette-sized hole.

Two stars — one for each page.

Incident in the IND, by Harry Harrison

After his debut novel-sized effort, the superlative Deathworld, Harrison seemed to be in a bit of a rut with none of his stuff cracking the three-star mark.  But Incident, about the evil that lurks in the shadows of the subway tunnels, is a nice piece, indeed.  It's got a sharp, atmospheric style that is a big shift from the author's usual Laumer-esque breeziness.  If I have any complaint, it's just that I wish it had been the fellow and not the lady who gets et in the end.

Four stars.

Humanoid Sacrifice, by J. T. McIntosh

Scotsman James Murdoch MacGregor, who goes by J. T. McIntosh, has been around since 1951.  He hit it out of the park early on with one of my favorites, Hallucination Orbit, and his One in Three Hundred series of stories was good, too.  He's another author who has been in kind of a slump lately, but I always hold out hope for his work, given his prior glories.

Humanoid Sacrifice is an engaging-enough tale with two parallel plot threads involving the same protagonist.  A human troubleshooter is employed by an advanced alien race to fix their rebelling weather control machine.  At the same time, the aliens inform the repairman that they have a human female in suspended animation, a specimen snatched from Earth for study back in 1850.  She is thawed and a written correspondence between the two humans ensues.

It's cute and readable and that's about all I can say.  Three stars.

The Shortest Science Fiction Love Story Ever Written, by Jeffrey Renner

I don't know Jeff Renner, but I think the magazine would have been better served filling these two inches with one of those little EMSH drawings they used to have.  One star.

The Conventional Approach, by Robert Bloch

Bob Bloch has been a pro author for a couple of decades now, creating enduring classics of horror and science fiction.  Like Wilson Tucker, he's also kept one foot firmly in the fan world that spawned him.  He took over Imagination's "Fandora's Box" column from Mari Wolf in '56 (I still miss her) for instance.  Now he has an excellent article on the history of Worldcon, which was so good and witty that I had to read it aloud to my wife on a walk this morning.

I suspect it will be as relevant amd rewarding 55 years from now as it is today.  Five stars.

The Lost Leonardo, by J. G. Ballard

Last up is a novelette by a UK author who has made a big splash on both sides of the Pond.  His Drowned World garnered a Galactic Star from us, and many of his stories have gotten four or more stars.  There's a somber, almost ethereal quality to his work that works or doesn't depending on your mood, I suppose.  I liked this one, in which a certain wanderer of Biblical fame becomes an art thief to do penance for his sins.

It's pretty neat, straightforward but well-executed.  Four stars.

Summing Up

Goodness, it feels good to be positive for a change!  It doesn't hurt that this has been one of the better issues of F&SF, a magazine that has been largely in the doldrums since Davidson took over.  Do tell me what you think of these stories and of the fine folk who wrote them!

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TV

[February 19th, 1964] The Edge Of Disappointment (Doctor Who: The Edge Of Destruction)

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By Jessica Holmes

Welcome back to your regularly scheduled ramblings on Doctor Who, folks. Let's get on with it, shall we?

Today I'm covering a shorter serial, a little two-parter set entirely aboard the TARDIS, where the ship has crashed with no apparent cause, and the crew must work out what happened to the ship and how to fix it before time runs out. With tensions running high, will the crew break apart before the ship does?

I'm making this sound much better than it turned out to be. You'll scream when you find out what the cause of all the problems is. Trust me.

THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION

In this episode, the TARDIS lands with a bump, knocking our entire crew out cold. As they come to, one by one, it becomes clear something is very wrong with our crew. Wandering about in a daze, they appear confused at their company, as if they've forgotten the last couple of adventures, their relationship to one another, and their personalities.

Shortly after they come to, they make a startling discovery: the TARDIS doors are opening and closing by themselves. Susan begins to fear that there's something aboard the TARDIS with them.

Upon approaching the console, Susan has the most dramatic faint ever put to film. Ian ever-so-gently gives her a fireman's lift and plonks her down on a bed that can't be at all comfortable if you like to sleep in any other position than on your back. I wouldn't get along very well aboard the TARDIS, even if it is wheelchair accessible.

Susan, it seems, still feels a wee bit poorly when she wakes up, given that when Ian comes near her she threatens to stab him with a pair of scissors.


Look, we’ve all had mornings like that, haven’t we?

Now, stabbing Ian would be a rubbish idea. We like Ian. He’s nice. Susan instead screams and cries and stabs the bed, I can only imagine as punishment for it being so dreadfully uncomfortable.

As a highly responsible adult, Ian confiscates the scissors, by which I mean he leaves them lying around for Susan to pick up again.

The Doctor, bastion of logic and reason, thinks it very illogical to consider the idea that someone or something is aboard the ship with them, even though he was unconscious for a good six minutes at the start of the episode (I checked), during which the TARDIS doors were open for an uncertain amount of time, and his companions were either unconscious or highly dazed.

I don't know what planet's logic he's following, because it certainly isn't ours. If I left my front door wide open for a few minutes, I’d almost certainly end up with somebody else’s cat.

Susan returns to her bed with the pilfered pair of scissors, and when Barbara tends to her, a struggle ensues for the potentially deadly implement. Susan is still suspicious that there is something aboard the TARDIS with them, perhaps even hiding within them.

The Doctor manages to get the scanner working, which comes as a surprise, as he and Susan have been unable to touch any part of the console without suffering terrible pain up to now.

When activated, the scanner displays a sequence of images:

First, an idyllic expanse of English countryside.

The doors begin to open, and an unearthly bellow roars outside. The doors close, and we get the next image, an alien world, one that Susan and the Doctor visited recently. I would rather see that adventure than this one.

Then we see a heavily cratered planet, followed by a solar system, followed by what appears to be a galactic belt, which vanishes in a flash of white.

Ian would like an explanation too, but when he asks, the Doctor throws the question right back at him, because while he reckons the idea of something having crept aboard the TARDIS is absurd, apparently the idea that Ian would sabotage the TARDIS of his own free will is not. Why would he sabotage the TARDIS? To blackmail the Doctor into taking him home, of course!

To blackmail. The Doctor. Into taking him home. In the TARDIS. The TARDIS he has supposedly sabotaged. That TARDIS.

I feel like I'm stating the painfully, horrendously, agonisingly obvious here, but this is an absolutely rubbish blackmail plot.

Barbara also points out that it would be wildly out of character for her or Ian to perform any sort of sabotage on the TARDIS of their own free will, and then it's her turn to clutch her head and scream dramatically, because something has happened to the clock.

I think it melted.


That, or the Doctor is a fan of Salvador Dali.

Susan has a bit of a meltdown, too, while Ian looks a bit confused and checks his watch, which, funnily enough, is exactly what I did at that moment.

Once everyone has turned in for the night, the Doctor goes around checking on everyone with his mischievous chuckle, only this time it's a lot more creepy than endearing, and as he bends over the console to do… I don't know, something, somebody grabs him.


Goodness gracious me, who could it possibly be.

And here ends the first part, with the mystery not any closer to being solved, no real action being taken, and everyone being downright useless.

THE BRINK OF DISASTER

A truer episode title has never been written.

So, it turns out it was Ian trying to seize the Doctor, but not to worry, he promptly keels over, so no harm done. Not to the Doctor, anyway. Ian, on the other hand, is in deep trouble.

The Doctor now reckons Ian and Barbara want to steal the TARDIS and fly back to Earth themselves, to which I say: Pardon?

Even if Ian and Barbara were planning to commandeer the TARDIS, how in the world could they? It's not contemporary Earth technology! They could no more pilot the TARDIS than I could nick an aeroplane from the nearest R.A.F. base and fly to France.

Still, it’s enough for the Doctor to make up his mind to throw Ian and Barbara off the TARDIS.

I am frustrated. I dearly and sincerely hope that this is coming through. Because I have already seen that this programme can be much, much better than this.

An alarm goes off, alerting the Doctor to a Thing. I'm calling it a Thing because I never did quite catch what they called it. Faulticator? Faulplicator? Hot Potater? And as it turns out, literally everything is wrong.

For fear of flogging a dead horse I will not be making the obvious joke.

The central column of the console flashes and begins to move by itself The Doctor calculates that they have around ten minutes to live based upon…something, and the crew work out that the machine has been trying to tell them, through the various strange happenings aboard the ship, what the problem is, because as it turns out this funny little big ship has started to think for itself, after a fashion.

The machine could really do with working on its communication skills.

Barbara figures the power at the heart of the machine has been trying to escape— but why? It's like a wounded animal lashing out at anyone who tries to access the controls…except for the scanner.

There's an entire bit of them unravelling the sequence of the scanner images, the long and short of it being that it's representative of their journey so far. Why is the TARDIS trying to take the Doctor for a trip down memory lane? What’s drawing the energy from the core of the TARDIS? What incredible catastrophe has brought this remarkable ship to the brink of destruction?

A stuck button.

The Doctor pressed the Fast Return switch to get back home at the end of the Dalek adventure, and it got stuck.


Are you pulling my leg?

There we have it, folks. Susan nearly stabbed Ian, the Doctor almost abandoned him and Barbara, everyone completely lost their heads and it was just because a little spring was broken and a button got stuck.

So, Ian and the Doctor prise it up, fix it, and Bob's your uncle, off we go.

Yes.

It's really that simple.

So, we're all friends again, having gotten over our inexplicably odd behaviour. The Doctor says he's proud of Susan even though she contributed absolutely nothing and, might I remind you, almost stabbed both of her teachers. Back in my day that was most certainly grounds for expulsion.

Then, having still not managed to arrive on Earth, everyone goes off to play in the snow because we've all forgotten what we're doing.

And behold! Someone with very big feet has been through here.


Looks like one of my eldest brother’s footprints.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Where to begin?

I did not particularly enjoy this story.

This wasn't terrible, though. Don’t get me wrong.

It was mediocre. That's all. Just mediocre.

And I think that might be worse.

Nothing happens. Threads of mystery are half-heartedly picked up, toyed with, and then cast aside in favour of the next idea to pop into whichever character’s head, as if the narrative was being played with by a bored cat. Everyone's having mood swings, and as soon as everyone gets back into character, it's over in a few minutes, because of course it would be!

Everyone in this story was acting very strange and as if they only had a vague grasp of their characters (and on reality itself), and there was no actual cause for it, in the end. Now, a red herring is a good tool in building a mystery, but the red herring does have to have its own explanation within the story. Otherwise, it’s just characters acting weird for the sake of acting weird, and that’s not good writing. I could, if I was feeling very generous, chalk it up to concussion, but it wasn’t consistent enough for concussion, and I’m not feeling generous, so I shan’t.

It's nowhere near as good as The Daleks which I think makes it seem worse by comparison. Thank the stars it was only two episodes and I only lost about fifty minutes or so of my life watching it, plus however long I ended up spending doing the write-up.

I am confident that you will miss nothing by skipping this one. I don't really think the companions come out of this any closer than they were at the end of The Daleks. They were pretty friendly at that point, took about ten steps backwards in their relationship, then in a flash they're all best chums again. It doesn't feel organic. There isn’t enough tension remaining within the group to make the infighting seem justified, and given how nasty it got at one point, how quickly they snap back into being friends makes the whole thing seem pointless. If someone threatened to stab me with a pair of scissors, or throw me out of their car based upon some imagined slight, it’d take me a little while to start trusting them again. I think I’d have preferred it if there really was an entity on board. That would have at least been exciting. Especially if it was controlling one of the crew.

I like to end on a positive note, so I will at least say this: the Doctor admitting how proud he is of Susan was really very sweet, and it was something I'd like to see more of. Hopefully we shall do next time, when with any luck we'll find ourselves an adventure worth the watching.

1.5 out of 5 stars.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 17, 1964] Breaking Taboos (April 1964 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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[Due to an oversight (clearly!), Galactic Journey was not included on Locus' Awards Ballot this year.  If you're a fan of the Journey, we be grateful if you'd fill us in under Fanzine!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

Until a decade or so ago, science fiction rarely dealt with erotic themes in an open way.  That began to change with Phillip José Farmer's famous story The Lovers (1952), which deals with a love affair between a man and a female humanoid.  Her alien reproductive system, described in detail, is the key to the plot.

Equally groundbreaking was The World Well Lost (1953) by Theodore Sturgeon.  This gentle, beautifully written story depicts homosexuality in a sympathetic way.

SF writers are now free to look inside the bedroom.  But are they ready to peer into the bathroom?  The lead novella in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow represents a first step inside.


Cover by Paul E. Wenzel

The Dark Light-Years, by Brian W. Aldiss

By sheer chance, humans and aliens arrive at almost the same time on an uninhabited world.  The aliens look like hippopotamuses with six limbs and two heads.  The humans kill most of the aliens at first sight, taking two prisoners.  (Right away, we know that the author is going to depict the human species as violent and xenophobic.) Not only are the aliens repulsive to human eyes, their behavior is offensive in the extreme.

(Sensitive readers may wish to skip the rest of this review.)

The aliens live in their own excrement, considering this the most important part of their culture and religion.  All attempts to communicate with the aliens fail, partly due to the disgust they elicit from their captors.

The plot is more complicated than I've made it sound, starting with a man who has lived on the aliens' home world for many years.  A long flashback describes the first encounter between the two species.

The point of view shifts to that of the aliens, and we learn their history.  The climax returns to the beginning, and ends in tragedy. 

This sounds like a very grim story, but it's also full of satire and dark humor.  The author offers a couple of scatological puns.  It would be easy to dismiss this as a schoolchild writing naughty words on a blackboard, but the intent is more serious than that.  Despite a jumpy narrative technique, the story powerfully portrays the impossibility of understanding between radically different beings.

Four stars.

Package Deal, by James Stamers

A married couple retire to another planet.  Their alien hosts provide what they need in the form of boxes that change into everything from booze to houses.  Things don't work out well.

That's all there is to the plot.  The absurd concept is played for laughs, and doesn't achieve any.  The two women in the story are a fat, nagging shrew and a teasing sexpot.

One star.

The Apprentice God, by Miriam Allen DeFord

In free verse, the author describes how a tentacled being accidentally damaged a tiny world while studying it.  The knowledge that it contained sentient creatures leads to profound remorse.  Although the outcome of the poem is inevitable, the style is elegant and stately.

Three stars.

The Urban Hell, by Tom Purdom

This article describes the ways in which large cities might exist in the future, and compares this to science fiction's visions of tomorrow's metropolises.  Giant residential skyscrapers surrounded by parks?  Horizontal cities designed for automobiles?  Downtowns consisting of low buildings, with a mixture of houses, shops, and factories?  All of these ideas are presented in an interesting and informative way.

Four stars.

Name of the Snake, by R. A. Lafferty

A Catholic priest journeys to a planet of aliens who claim to be without sin.  (I wonder if this is a response to James Blish's 1958 novel A Case of Conscience, which has the same theme.) He admits they lack human vices, but discovers they have new evils of their own.

The author manages to create a serious theological fable that is also full of wit.  The ending, in particular, makes use of a cliché from magazine cartoons in a new and meaningful way.

Four stars.

Under the Gaddyl, by C. C. MacApp

Alien invaders have ruled Earth for many years.  Most human beings are slaves.  A privileged few are free, allowed to struggle for survival in primitive conditions.  When escaped slaves steal an alien weapon, even free humans are in danger.  The hero and his family make a hazardous journey to escape the vengeful aliens.  Mutant humans show up at one point.  They play an important role in the story, but seemed forced into the plot.

This is a typical science fiction adventure story.  It is competently told and holds the reader's attention, but there is little new to be found here. 

Three stars.

Summing Up

Publishing a story that is certain to offend many readers shows boldness on the part of editor Frederik Pohl.  The other contents of the magazine are far less daring, although most of them are worth reading.

Those of you with sharp eyes will notice that Day of the Egg by Allen Kim Lang, announced on the front cover, does not appear.  That's not the only error.  My copy has many of the pages in the wrong order, making reading a chore.  I hope the habits of the aliens in the Aldiss piece didn't shock the designers and printers into forgetting how to do their jobs.




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