Yearly Archives: 2019

Movies

[February 15, 1964] Flaws in the seventh facet (Seven Days in May)

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by Janice L. Newman

Seven Days in May premiered three nights ago!  My husband and I made sure to get to the theater early, as we wanted to claim good seats for this star-studded and much anticipated political drama.  Given the amount of talent assembled both in front of and behind the camera, there was no way the film would be a disaster.  At the same time, Seven Days in May wasn’t quite an unmitigated success.  The film is a flawed jewel, the minor imperfections standing out all the more so against the clarity and glitter of an otherwise perfect gem.

The Plot

The movie opens with a fight between protestors, some of whom support the US President and others who oppose him.  The scene is filled with powerful imagery, but doesn’t do much more than set the tone for the story.  I suspect the director chose to start the movie this way to give stragglers a chance to find a seat without missing any of the meat of the story.

Once the riot is over, we’re introduced to the President himself, “Jordan Lyman,” played by Fredric March (you may remember him from his performance in Inherit the Wind as Matthew Harrison Brady).  We quickly learn that the President has signed a disarmament treaty with the Russians, and this has angered the general populace.  The newspaper headlines blare the fact that only 29% of the public support him.  It’s hard to imagine any US President having such a low popularity rating as that outside of an event like the Great Depression, especially one who supports peace.  But the public are convinced that the Commies are only playing along and will stab us in the back at the earliest opportunity.

One of the many people who oppose the President’s actions is US Air Force General James Mattoon Scott, played by Burt Lancaster.  We are introduced to him as he makes a compelling case before Congress, insisting that trusting the Russians, who have ‘broken every single treaty’, will spell the doom of the United States.  Looking on as he makes his case in a beautifully framed shot is the handsome Kirk Douglas as USMC Colonel Martin “Jiggs” Casey.

From there the story follows Jiggs, who encounters a number of strange things that don’t seem to fit together: a newly constructed base he’s sure he’s never heard of, a top secret betting pool whose members comprise most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Senator who seems to know more about upcoming military maneuvers than he should, and other odds and ends that add up to a deeply troubling picture.  Jiggs must choose whether to turn a blind eye or take his suspicions to the President despite the circumstantial nature of his evidence.  If he’s wrong, his career will certainly be ruined.  But if he’s right, the scale of the plot and its ultimate target are staggering: it’s no less than a plan to kidnap the President and take over the United States government.  In the end, Jiggs follows his conscience, and the consequences of his choice drive the rest of the movie.

Unapologetically Liberal

Though based on the 1962 novel by Charles W. Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel, the screenplay is by Rod Serling – and it shows.  Mr. Serling’s work on Twilight Zone has earned him much acclaim (with good reason) but he’s never been shy about stuffing his character’s mouths with his own political views.  Since I tend to share Serling's views, I’m more inclined to be impatient with his lack of subtlety than enraged by his wrongheadedness.  Your own reaction may vary, of course.

The politics of the film are unapologetically liberal, with the villains having no hesitation in castigating ‘bleeding-hearts’ and ‘intellectuals’.  At the same time, the villains are not portrayed cartoonishly, which I appreciated.  Scott in particular is charismatic and convincing.  You can understand why the public likes him and trusts him.  He is passionate and sincere in his belief that what he is doing is both right and necessary.

Of course we, the enlightened audience, know that for all his sincerity he is wrong.  Continuing to build a larger and larger stockpile of nuclear weapons, we are told, can lead to only one outcome: the eventual destruction of the human race.  I don’t disagree with this attitude, but it did come across as a rather glib – as one might expect of Serling.

Nevertheless, for the most part, Serling's screenplay works – in no small part thanks to the excellence of the actors performing it. Douglas adds a subtlety to his role that transcends his (mostly good) lines. March's tears at the death of a good friend are all too believable. And the work of co-stars Balsam and Edmond O'Brien, President Lyman's right and left hand men, are excellent in outsized proportion to their screen time.

Fantastic Framing and Marvelous Music

The best part of the movie was the cinematography.  The indoor shots are thoughtfully framed, with one particularly memorable discussion with Scott presented against a background of model missiles and Jiggs with the American flag behind him.  When written out like that it sounds, like the rest of the movie, as though it might be a bit too ‘on point,’ but it was so beautifully done that I couldn’t help but appreciate it.  In addition to this we are treated with some impressive outdoor shots, from the desert surrounding the secret base, to a character being ferried to an aircraft carrier across the ocean, to scenes on the aircraft carrier itself.

There are also convincing notes that place the movie in the future: two-way video phones, for example, and prominently placed digital time and date displays.

The music was also extremely good, with lots of driving military march drums contrasting sharply with discordant notes.  There was no music during most of the talking scenes, but the scoring during action scenes created an unsettling, nervous atmosphere that was highly effective.

Out of Joint

My husband noted that the story felt somewhat disjointed, and I agreed.  The point of view jumps around from character to character as the plot dictates.  Personally, I almost would have preferred seeing everything through Kirk Douglas’s eyes.

The most jarring note was the inclusion of Ava Gardner’s character, Scott’s former mistress, Eleanor Holbrook.  I’m not sure why she was even there, as in the end her performance, as good as it is, doesn’t add much to the story.  There’s a bit of sex appeal and a bit of tragedy to her, but overall her role is to give Jiggs some potentially incriminating evidence that he hesitates to use, thus reminding us that he is a ‘good guy’. 

Of course, Eleanor is a woman in a man’s world, with men filling every important position in government, the military, the press, and pretty much everything else.  Since the story is set only ten years in the future, I suppose that view of the world isn’t unrealistic.  I can’t help but hope, though, that we’ll eventually see women in roles other than “spurned lover” and “oversexed waitress” in stories about the future, if not in the future itself.  At the very least, it would be nice to see a few more movies where women speak to each other.

But in the end, Two Hours Well-Spent

Despite its flaws, Seven Days in May is still two hours well-spent.  What the movie does well, it does masterfully.  The acting is great, especially Douglas, whose understated performance is more convincing than either of the pontificating leads.  The cinematography is top-notch, and the music is compelling.  If it weren’t for Serling’s insistence on driving his points home with a sledgehammer and the disjointed feel caused in part by the need for the story to jump from character to character, I would have given them film five stars without question.  Parts of the movie deserve that rating all on their own.  It’s worth a watch.

Four stars.




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Book, Magazine

[February 13, 1964] Deafening (the March 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston


Cover by EMSH

The March 1964 Amazing fairly shouts mediocrity, or worse, before one reads a word of the fiction.  The cover, illustrating Robert F. Young’s story Arena of Decisions, portrays a guy working some sort of keyboard in front of video screens displaying . . . a young woman, a lady as some would have it, and a tiger.  Can it be that Young, having rehashed the Old Testament and moved on to Jack and the Beanstalk, is now recapitulating that silly old Frank Stockton story, The Lady or the Tiger, which so many of us were forced to read in junior high?  And just for lagniappe, the editorial says in passing, “For the female of the sf species who may not be quite sure of her facts, billiards is played with balls and a cue on a flat rectangular table with pockets in each corner and at the middle of the two longer sides.” Always glad to help you ignorant . . . ladies . . . out!

Arena of Decisions, by Robert F. Young

That leads us to page 7, where the Young story begins, and yep, the blurb cops to the Frank Stockton replay right up front.  For anyone who hasn’t read or been told the original story, it involves a criminal justice system (if that’s the right word) in which those accused of serious crimes are forced to choose one of two doors to open.  Behind one of them is a hungry tiger; behind the other, a woman whom the no-longer-accused is required to marry.  The story ends just before the fatal choice, with an element of possible skulduggery added. 

Young does not entirely recapitulate Stockton’s plot, but the gimmick is the same, with extra chicanery added, set on a cartoonish colony planet, all told in a style of arch jocularity that mainly conveys the message “I know I’m wasting your time with this facile and vacant crap—let’s see how long I can keep you going.”

I’m about as tired of slagging Young month after month as I am of reading him.  I didn’t think he was always this bad, so I reread a couple of his early stories in anthologies: Jungle Doctor from Startling Stories in 1955 and The Garden in the Forest from Astounding in 1953.  He wasn’t this bad.  These are not great stories—his weaknesses for cliche and sentimentality are evident—but they are reasonably intelligent and capable, if less polished than his current output, with some interesting substance to them rather than the cynical vacuity of Arena of Decisions and its ilk.  I would never have called Young mighty, but . . . how the respectable have fallen.  One star.

Now Is Forever, by Dobbin Thorpe

Like a breath of fresh breeze in a fetid dungeon, or a slug of Pepto-Bismol to the dyspeptic stomach, comes Now Is Forever by Dobbin Thorpe, reliably reported to be Thomas M. Disch.  Intentionally or not, Forever is a rejoinder to Ralph Williams’s clever but facile Business as Usual, During Alterations, which appeared in Astounding in 1958.  In Williams’s story, portable matter duplicators suddenly appear on Earth, planted no doubt by aliens bent on conquest by destroying our economy, and the heroic store manager instantly sorts out the new economy: starting now, everything is done on credit, but everybody can have credit.  Nothing up my sleeve!  Everybody wins!

Disch starts with the same notion but is of course less sanguine.  He asks what people will live for when the getting-and-spending basis of their lives is suddenly yanked from under them.  The answer is the old and established will cling fiercely and futilely to their old habits, and young people will seek thrills—including death, which is no big deal as long as you duplicate yourself beforehand.  This sharply written and well visualized story just misses excellence by being a little too long and rambling for its point.  Three stars.

Jam for Christmas, Vance Simonds

It’s back downhill with Vance Simonds’s Jam for Christmas, the second story about Everett O’Toole, the “telempathist,” who with the aid of a mutant mongoose and a worldwide psionic network of other humans and animals, can scan the world to see how people are feeling about things.  In this case the world is the Moon, where the now-amalgamated capitalist nations are about to broadcast to Earth the equivalent of a USO show, and the now-amalgamated commies want to jam this display of the vitality of capitalism.  (The commies haven’t quite got the know-how to do their own broadcasts.)

Like its predecessor Telempathy, from last June’s issue, the story is swaddled in layers of satirical performance, much of it focusing on O’Toole’s excessive weight and alcohol consumption, the physical attributes of the show’s star, this year’s Miss Heavenly Body, and other cheap targets.  Some of it is actually pretty funny—while the telempathists are scanning their own area for communist spies, they come upon a covert fascist whose attitude is concisely lampooned—but it mainly serves to pad out what is ultimately a pretty thin and humdrum story.  Two stars.

Sunburst (Part 1 of 3), by Phyllis Gotlieb

That’s all the fiction that is complete in this issue.  The longest item is the first installment of Sunburst, a serial by Phyllis Gotlieb, who has had a handful of stories in these Ziff-Davis magazines and in If.  I usually hold off on serials until all the parts are in, but in my weary quest for something more to redeem this lackluster issue, I read this installment.  The set-up is interesting: in a small midwestern town, a nuclear reactor explosion has resulted in the birth of a cohort of psi-talented mutants, who come into their powers as children and wreck a good part of the town and its police force.  These uncontrollably dangerous tykes are isolated in the “Dump” behind a psi-impervious field whipped up by a handy Nobelist in physics.  Now it’s a decade later; what to do with them? 

It’s a bit amateurish; Gotlieb doesn’t do much to sketch in the background of what living in this now-quarantined town is like or how the quarantine works, and the dialogue and interactions among the characters are pretty unconvincing.  But it gives the sense that she’s getting at something of interest, however clumsily, so I look forward to the rest of it.  No rating, though, until the end.

The Time of Great Dying

Ben Bova departs from his usual cosmological beat for The Time of Great Dying, canvassing the various theories purporting to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs and the ascendancy of mammals at the end of the Mesozoic, including such winners as “racial senescence,” though Bova doesn’t give that one much respect.  He puts his money, or at least his mouth, on the growing prevalence of grasses, for which dinosaurs’ teeth were poorly adapted, though it’s a little unclear why they didn’t evolve more useful teeth over the same time period that the mammals did.  The subject is a little more interesting than usual, but overall it’s about as dull as usual.  Two stars.

The Spectroscope

Book reviewer S.E. Cotts has been replaced by Lester del Rey, to no great effect: there are virtues to having a professional writer as a reviewer, but he contributes no profound insights and is more verbose about it than Cotts.

Loud and Clear

So, overall, the promised mediocrity is delivered, with Mr. Disch again showing flashes of something better, and Gotlieb’s serial extending some hope.  Beyond those two, the wasteland beckons, or fails to.




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TV

[February 11, 1964] To Gain Ascendancy (The Outer Limits, Season One, Episodes 17-20)

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by Natalie Devitt

This past month of The Outer Limits presented more than its fair share of stories filled with aliens, insects and humans that all attempt to dominate those around them: an alien from another dimension that holds captives all in an attempt to bargain for more power to achieve his goals, a queen bee that tries to mate with a human in hopes of strengthening her species so that she can rule the world, a secret society that uses creatures to possess the bodies of government officials so that they can rise to power, and a tale about a woman’s desperate attempt to kill an alien and steal his magic shield in a quest for fame and status.

Don’t Open Till Doomsday, by Joseph Stefano

The Outer Limits goes back in time to the year 1929. Following a busy wedding day, newlyweds Mary and Harvey find themselves in their suite with all of their unopened wedding gifts. David Frankham, who was featured in The Outer Limits episode Nightmare, plays Harvey, who is drawn towards one gift in particular. Its card reads, “Don’t Open Till Doomsday.“ Curious, Harvey removes the wrapping paper to reveal a box with a hole on one side that flashes a light. He peeks inside the hole, only to suddenly vanish into thin air.

In the present day, newlyweds Viva and Gard decide to rent the same bridal suite where Harvey disappeared. Mary, played by Trouble in Paradise’s Miriam Hopkins, now owns the property which houses the bridal suite. Having grown old without Harvey, she tells the pair about him before saying that she has finally stopped expecting her “groom to return.” When the couple sets foot in the suite, they see that aside from dust and cobwebs that the room has not been touched in decades.

In fact, the wedding gifts are exactly as they were the night Mary’s groom vanished. The presents include the very box that caused Harvey‘s disappearance, which as it turns out has the ability to transport people into another dimension. This dimension is controlled by a creature from outer space that still has Harvey. Luckily for Mary, she thinks that Viva and Gard might hold the key to helping her free him.

Don’t Open Till Doomsday does not always make much sense, but that does not really matter. From howling winds to film noir lighting, the episode is all about atmosphere. As usual, Conrad Hall’s cinematography helped to make a pretty good episode all the more impressive. In addition, the episode has plenty of great performers, but it is Miriam Hopkins who really steals the show as Mary. She is almost unrecognizable, looking like a cross between Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond character in Sunset Boulevard and Bette Davis as the title character in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

With all this episode has a lot going for it, I must confess that the conclusion is a little disappointing and that the alien, while ugly, is not nearly as frightening as I would have liked. Despite some flaws, Don’t Open Till Doomsday is highly enjoyable, which is why it receives three and half stars.

ZZZZZ, by Meyer Dolinsky

In ZZZZZ, America, America’s Joanna Frank portrays a mysterious young woman by the name of Regina, who is hired as a lab assistant for an entomologist named Ben. In the role of Ben is Philip Abbott, returning to The Outer Limits after an appearance in The Borderland. Shortly after the “enchanting” brunette is hired, she is invited to stay in her employer‘s home with him and his wife, Francesca, played by Pride and Prejudice’s Marsha Hunt.

What Ben does not realize is that Regina is much more knowledgeable about bees than he is. After spending some time with the new hire, Francesca notices that something seems a little off about her. Francesca’s suspicions are confirmed when she looks out the window one day to see Regina hugging trees and licking flowers, then transforming back into her original bee form. As it turns out, Regina is actually a queen bee. Also, she is intent on mating with Ben in order to improve her species and conquer the world. But before she can do that, Regina needs to eliminate any competition she has for Ben‘s affection.

While far from a masterpiece, ZZZZZ is enjoyable. This entry in the series has an almost magical quality to it due in large part to Conrad Hall’s cinematography, which also makes the already attractive Joanna Frank even more seductive. The most striking scene is perhaps the scene where Francesca observes Regina in the garden going around from plant to plant before eventually turning into a bee. But even with all that the episode has going for it visually, the plot is fairly weak, which is interesting because the screenwriter is none other than Meyer Dolinsky, who also penned the scripts for outstanding episodes like The Architects of Fear and O.B.I.T. After taking everything into consideration, ZZZZZ earns three stars.

The Invisibles, by Joseph Stefano

The Invisibles follows a group of men, who have, as the narrator states, “never joined or been invited to join society.” But it is for that very reason that they have been recruited by an organization called the Society of Invisibles. The men are told that they are being given an opportunity to make something of their lives by being trusted “with a mission of incalculable importance.“

The Society of Invisibles plans to send them out to use their anonymity as an advantage in order to gain the access to prominent members of society, such as those found in “government and industry.” Once a potential victim’s guard is down, a member of the Society of Invisibles can use furry crab-shaped creatures that attach themselves to the unsuspecting victim‘s spine in order to control the body. With each new host, they move one step closer to their goal of world domination.

The men attend “indoctrination classes.” They are told, “You will work alone. Each man in a different city.” The men are also warned, “if you contact anyone for any reason whatsoever, you will be murdered.” What the organization does not know yet is that one of their men, Luis Spain, portrayed by Don Gordon, a recent actor on Twilight Zone’s The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross, is a government agent.

The Invisibles is a pretty strong episode. What could be yet another story about alien possession or aliens trying to take over the world is executed extremely well. The acting is superb. Also, the screenplay leaves you never knowing which characters are trustworthy. The story keeps the pace going right until the very end, which is why I give it three and a half stars.

The Bellero Shield, by Joseph Stefano

The Bellero Shield tells the story of a young man named Richard, a scientist conducting experiments with laser beams. Richard is eager to become the successor to his family’s company, but Richard’s father has his doubts, since the company is phasing out lasers. Martin Landau returns to The Outer Limits after The Man Who Was Never Born and assumes the role of Richard. Relative newcomer, Sally Kellerman, makes her second appearance on the series and plays Richard’s wife, Judith.

One night after experimenting with his lasers, Richard steps out of his lab. What he does not know is that his lasers have attracted the attention of a alien or, as it calls himself, a “traveler.” When Judith attempts to shoot the being, he immediately puts up a shield. He insists on keeping his shield up, expecting to “remain shielded” until as he says, he knows more about weapons on Earth. Desperate to keep the family business and compelled by her own desire for fame, Judith distracts Richard, then waits for an opportunity to take a shot at the being when he is without his shield. Once she shoots the creature, she is eager to use his shield for her own gain.

The influence of Macbeth on The Bellero Shield is hard to miss, but even though this episode's screenplay does not try to hide its influences, it still stands as a great work on its own. The script is solid with a fantastic conclusion. The cast does not have a weak actor. All of these add up to The Bellero Shield deserving four stars.

An unwavering quest for power has been at the heart of all of the episodes this past month on The Outer Limits, but another thing that has been pretty consistent this month is the quality of the episodes. Most were at least good, if not excellent. I can only hope that this becomes the rule for the series rather than the exception.



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Book, Magazine

[February 9, 1964] Bargain Basement (March 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

Value Shopping

The price of science fiction digests has steadily gone up over the years.  In the early 50s, the standard cost was 35 cents.  I think the last hold-out at that price point was Fantastic.  Now Galaxy and Analog cost four bits, and the cheapest mags go for 40 cents.  Still, that latter price is a steal when the fiction is all good. 

IF is one of the lower rent mags, but whether or not the March 1964 IF gives you value for your money…well, you'll have to read on to find out:

The Issue at Hand


Cover by Norman Nodel

In Saturn's Rings, by Robert F. Young

Every author has their own quality curve.  Some, like Daniel Keyes, explode onto the scene with a masterpiece and then spend the rest of their career trying to live up to it.  Others start off-key but only improve over time (perhaps Rosel George Brown fits this category, though I've not read her very earliest stories.  Randy Garrett and Bob Silverberg might fit, too.) Still others oscillate between greatness and crap (viz. Poul Anderson). 

Robert F. Young is yet another kind of author.  He started decent, rose to stunning heights with pieces like To Fell a Tree, and then descended into mediocrity, mostly recycling fairy tales and myths. 

Take Rings, for example.  A old man named Matthew North comes back from a far planet, his hold full of the waters of the fountain of youth.  His employer, Zeus Christopolous IX, has built an Attic Greek themed Elysium on the Saturnian moon, Hyperion, populated by robots who look like Alexander the Great, Pindar, Helen of Troy, etc.  Zeus is absent when North returns, but his wife, Hera, demands receipt of the cargo.  She undertakes to threaten, cajole, and seduce the elixir out of Matthew.  She almost succeeds, but then Matthew finds that Hera has done away with her husband, Clytemnestra-style, and he calls the cops instead.


Nice illo by Lawrence, though

It's all very moody and metaphorical, but I never got much out of it — and there are few folks who dig the classics like I do.  Two stars, and a chorus of "Woe!  Woe!  Woe!"

Guardian, by Jerome Bixby

This short story is depicted by this month's striking cover.  In brief, an archaeologist and his assistant land on Mars and discover the robotic guardian that defeated the armies of two invading worlds.  If I didn't know better, I'd say this was a deliberate send-up of pulp style and themes, up to and including a Mars with a breathable atmosphere and degenerate post-civilized natives, a "Planet X" that exploded into the Asteroid Belt, and even the use of the word "cyclopean" (although Bixby uses it to mean "one-eyed" rather than "really big"). 

Send-up or not, it doesn't really belong in the pages of a modern magazine.  Two stars.

Almost Eden, by Jo Friday

This month's new author wrote about a planet whose dominant life form has been pressured by evolution to live as four different creatures simultaneously.  Each is specialized for a particular purpose — hunting, digestion, food storage, and…well, you'll figure it out soon enough. 

It's good, though a little rough around the edges, and I can't shake the feeling I've seen this gimmick before.  Help me out?

Three stars.

The City That Grew in the Sea, by Keith Laumer


Some typically Gaughan work — looks like something out of Clarke's The Sea People

I find myself no longer looking forward to Laumer's stories of Retief, the super-spy who works for the ineffectual Terran Confederation.  This one's not bad, really, about a couple of acquisitive agents and their plan to commit genocide on a water-dwelling race to get access to their gold.  And I appreciated that the adversary race, the Groaci, are not universally bad guys.  But I'm just getting tired of the schtick.  I feel like Retief now hamstrings Laumer as opposed to enabling him.

Three stars.

What Crooch Did, by Jesse Friedlander

Crooch was a promoter who revived the increasingly staged art of "professional" wrestling and evolved (devolved?) it into gladiatorial combat.  This is his story.  All four pages' worth.

Two stars.

Miracle on Michigan and How to Have a Hiroshima, by Theodore Sturgeon

There's nary a peep from editor Fred Pohl this bi-month.  He's probably passed out from having to edit Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow as well as this mag.  Instead, we've got a pair of short observations from Ted Sturgeon.  The first is a paean to the twin Marina Towers in Chicago, perhaps a preview of the arcologies of the future. 

The second is a prediction that the next big scientific breakthrough that will revolutionize the world will come in the field of psychology, maybe something to do with hypnotism.

Your guess is as good as his.  Three stars.

Three Worlds to Conquer (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson


McKenna's stuff is serviceable, if not exciting

Finally, we get the second half of Anderson's latest book.  There are two parallel threads that run through it.  Firstly, we have a renegade Naval fleet that has seized control of the Jovian system of moons.  At the same time, down on the surface of Jupiter, the evil Ulunt-Khuzul people have besieged the territory of the peaceful Nyarrans.  Each beleaguered group has its champion: the Ganymedans have a middle-aged man named Fraser; the Nyarrans have a plucky resister called Theor.  And, thanks to the neutrino radio link between them, they are the key to each other's success.

Part 2 was better than Part 1, which was turgid and unreadable.  I still found the depiction of Jovian life both unrealistic as well as overly conventional.  Fraser's story is interesting, but the interactions between him and his partner, the turncoat (but not really!) Lorraine, are hackneyed in the extreme.  This was really brought home to me when my daughter, the Young Traveler, showed me a story she'd just written.  Her characters were better drawn than Fraser and Lorraine — and she's only 14!

Anderson can do better, has done much better.  That's what makes churned out stuff like this so disappointing.

Two stars for this installment, one and a half for the whole thing.

Summing up

Was this month's IF worth 40 cents?  I mean, you get what you pay for, right?  I suppose I'm happy for the introduction to Jo Friday, and I'm glad the Anderson didn't end terribly.  But Fred Pohl really needs to start saving the good stuff for the neglected sister of his trio…

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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[February 7, 1964] Journalism and Me (a young woman tries the newspaper biz in the late '50s)

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by Victoria Lucas

We both were into journalism, for awhile.

Last month I wrote about John F. Kennedy's brief tour as a journalist and how I feel that affected his politics, his style, and his treatment of other people.  I hinted at my own foray into journalism and explained how there were a couple of things that connected me to him, in a small way.  The first was that photograph taken of me with him autographing a program in 1958 that began the column.  The second was the fact that we both had a fling with journalism, which is the subject of this column.  And what it was like to be a girl in a man's world.

Getting started on my short career in journalism

Kennedy's father helped Kennedy get his start in journalism, but then he steered him into politics.  By the same token, at first my dad supported my ambitions in journalism, encouraging me to write a column for a TV guide he published for Tucson, Arizona, called Scan Magazine. 

By then I had already started to write for my high-school newspaper, beginning with my sophomore year in 1955, so my dad knew I liked to write.  My column for Scan was called “Scanteen,” and I found interviews exciting. Perhaps you can see from the page reproduced below that I thought that, as a teenager (15 in late 1956), I had to be breathless about everything.  Because my dad and I shared a love of Pogo, the cartoon character, and his pals, I called myself “Miz Hepzibah.” (In a probably copyright-busting move — what did I know?)

My career as a columnist was, however, cut short both by my parents’ divorce, limiting my contact with my dad, and by his ceasing to publish the guide.  I took up publishing a church newsletter, which I did almost singlehandedly, drawing and typing on mimeograph stencils, running the machine, stapling the product, and then distributing it.  I stopped work on The Epistle when I threw myself into my job as a reporter for my high-school paper, making my schooldays into 12-hour affairs.

Tucson High had moved to a 12-hour schedule to accommodate the fact that we were now four different high schools.  Three new schools were under construction to take the pressure off our single public high school with a combined graduating class of 1,000.  Rincon might be in the morning, Catalina midday, and Pueblo in the afternoon, with Tucson High continuing students–well, it was complicated.  News, of course, happened all day, and I needed to be there for all of it.

So my mother dropped me off on her way to work in the morning, and picked me up after her work ended at night.  Sometimes she worked overtime, and I’d wait at school, often in the Chronicle office, until she called to let me know she was on her way.  (I answered the telephone anyway.) Dick Wisdom, who took the photo of Kennedy autographing my program featured in my last column, called me “loco luki” because, I suppose, I talked fast and was always rushing around.  (Despite my frenzied activities, I had few friends and only one date in my entire time at high-school.)

The newspaper office became my substitute home, away from the storms of divorce and accompanying emotions and my own court date.  I would always rather have been in the newspaper office than at home in those days.  Hence my inept drawing of the office on an album page for a forlorn Christmas, with its file cabinet and a fictional mantelpiece with stocking and mouse, but without some photo that has since come loose and been lost.

Meanwhile, in the summers of 1956 and 1957 I became a “student reporter” at the downtown evening newspaper.  This meant that I followed a reporter on his (note the gender) beat, then wrote the same story he did, and then had the story edited by the reporter and the assistant publisher (the publisher’s son) Bill Small, Jr.  If my stories were good enough, they were published.  This unpaid “job” came about because I participated in my high school newspaper staff’s overnight work in May of 1956 at the Arizona Daily Star, during which we “put the newspaper to bed” (released the pages to the printing presses).

Stepping up the beat

The first reporter I followed was John Riddick, as I remember, on the federal beat.  We walked to the federal courthouse from the downtown building on Stone Avenue that the Citizen shared with the Star, with the linotype machines on the top floor, the papers’ newsrooms on two different floors, and the presses in the basement.  We covered law enforcement, courts, and anything else the federal government did.  I can’t remember a single story I wrote.

The next summer was more memorable.  I had already noticed Fritz Kessinger, whom I would follow in the summer of 1957, in the newsroom, because one day he had come storming in with a bloody nose and headed for a restroom.  When I asked another reporter what had happened, he laughed and said something like, “Oh, he just put his nose in where someone else thought it didn’t belong.” It was from Fritz that I would learn what life as a reporter in a middle-sized American town would be like, and from Fritz that I learned to write stories that were actually published. 

In the fall in between we students had a newspaper page of our own, the “School News” page, and this continued until we high schoolers had our own section.  On the page below Fritz and I stand on either side of a student as he points out something in a story she is typing, and I have a byline on a story that won a contest, with a piece about the story beside it.

For those of you who have never spent time in a newsroom, that same page would have looked like the image below before photos and ads were placed and a slug added under “School News” to give the date and page number.  Each story was typed on 8-1/2 x 5-1/2" pieces of newsprint and, once given a pass by an editor, sent to the linotypists, returning as a galley that was then further edited for placement on the page.  Its last trip was being sent back to the linotype floor for corrections. Headlines were written and typecast separately.  The stories were mocked up like this on the page so we editors could see the final result before the photos and an ad at bottom right were placed.  After we and our staff supervisor were satisfied, the completed page in linotyped lead was sent for placement of the metal-clad wood blocks representing photos and ads, and thence to the presses.  Note that one ad at the bottom.  It was probably a desire for more ad space and the realization that a baby boom was supplying teenaged consumers that drove the next stage of my career in journalism.

A section of our own

By the spring of 1958, the last semester of my senior year, the Citizen had blown the “School News” up into the “Teen Citizen,” a full section of the newspaper.  This meant not just putting together a story or two for a Saturday morning to spend in the newsroom but spending much of each week gathering news for an entire Saturday of editing, blocking, and bringing in negatives to fill what eventually became 8 half-size pages of print, photographs, and ads.  With my continuing work on the school newspaper, my life was entirely taken up with journalism and schoolwork.  (Fortunately work on the school newspaper gave me academic credit in English.)

During that time of intense journalistic activity I had a chance to go into the “women’s” department and talk with the woman who was the editor of that page.  Her story did not encourage me.  Every day was a well-trodden path of weddings, births, ads for women’s products, engagements, fashion, and any other topics considered worthy of a woman’s attention (but not a man’s–the sports and editorial pages were elsewhere).  This editor was bored and unenthusiastic.  She still tried to get stories for the other pages of the newspaper, but she was not assigned anything but “women’s” stories and had to beg from men.  Inevitably they gave her the stories they didn’t want–ones that required a lot of time and driving, say, to Davis-Monthan Air Base, around 10 miles from downtown, for a story that probably was worth a couple of column inches at most.  She couldn’t get a byline, couldn’t get any attention for her work no matter how good it was.  She was stuck on the “women’s page.”

There had been only one other woman in the Citizen newsroom (not the women's department), even though all of us school editors were women.  Micheline Keating was a drama critic and could swear with the best of them.  "Mike," as she was called, was something of a "tomboy," with a "page-boy" haircut and a no-nonsense attitude.  She was one of the boys.  I didn't find Mike to be a good role model for me, because I valued my femininity.

By the time I was a sophomore in college Fritz was gone from the Citizen, having moved his wife and kids to DC, to take part in the feeding frenzy that is the start of any new administration, when the largesse of federal jobs whose previous holders have resigned becomes available to people with different politics.  I had had time, though, to absorb Fritz’s cynicism about county government and small-time journalism, and to listen to his story that one day he was sitting at his typewriter pounding out a story when he thought to himself, "Wait, I've already written this one!"  But after some checking he discovered he hadn't.  It was just that he had written a hundred stories like it and they had all begun to blend together.

Abandoning journalism

I graduated in the spring of 1958 and immediately went to work for the University of Arizona (U of A), because otherwise I had practically no money for college.  Starting there as a freshman in the fall, naturally I signed up for a journalism course.

And immediately hit a snag in my career.  All newsrooms have style guides, just like publishers and academic institutions.  I don't remember which one the Citizen used, but the U of A used the Yale University one.  When I asked about it, I think I was told it was a better standard.  But . . . but I had just spent the better part of two years working at a downtown newspaper, a real newspaper, as a student reporter and then school editor helping to put out an entire newspaper section.  And now I found myself in a situation where there was no cooperation, no affiliation between it and the university in the same town?  Where all my training would be lost and disregarded, and I would have to begin all over again?

Apparently that was the case.  I was back to writing stories for a school newspaper, meaning that I was writing the same high-school stories over and over again–proms, parades, student union doings, football games and …  I felt as if I was going backward, not forward, by taking journalism courses at the U of A.  As an editor I had written "heads" (headlines), stories, doled out bylines, assigned photographers and reporters to stories, laying out the pages as they came from the ad department and proofing the galleys.  (Once I even took a correction all the way up to the typists in the linotype shop on the top floor of the building–hot, sweaty, noisy, one of the worst jobs in the world.)

And now I was reduced to writing about the next freshman prom or faculty promotion.  I threw in the towel.  I wanted a college education but not one that I had just gotten–more thoroughly–as a high-school student.  It was as though the dirty, sweaty, shoe-leather-grinding business of working on a real grown-up newspaper had to be somehow glorified and academicized, invalidating all I had learned about writing and about life. 

And, yes, it had something to do with being a woman.  Newsrooms are male turf, with most women relegated to “Women’s Pages.” If the women’s department was all I had to look forward to after writing the same stories over and over for four years, well …

I decided to go back to my childhood plan of becoming a teacher.  So my career in journalism ended with my sophomore year in college, at about age 18.  I took no more courses and sought no more jobs at newspapers. 

Theatre now, that might be interesting, but nothing I could make a living at … At least I didn’t go into politics.


My role in “Jack” was production supervisor




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Science / Space Race

[February 5, 1964] That was the Month that Was (January's Space Roundup)

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by Gideon Marcus

Another Lunar Black Eye

NASA's Project Ranger, which is basically a projectile aimed at the moon, has logged failure after failure since it started back in 1961.  The first ones in the series, Rangers 1 and 2, were just Earth-orbiting satellites designed to test the engineering and return scientific data.  Both of their missions were busts due to fault Agena second stages on their Atlas-Agena boosters.

Rangers 3 to 5 were bona-fide moon missions with giant pimples on their noses to do a bit of lunar geology (or selenology).  None of them completed their missions: Ranger 3 missed its target and was pointed the wrong way to boot, Ranger 4 hit the moon but was brain-dead from orbit onward, and Ranger 5 both missed and stopped working long before it got near the moon.

With five cracked eggs' experience to draw from, NASA tried again in January 30, 1964, with the first of the TV-armed Rangers, #6.  Aside from an odd voltage spike early on, Ranger 6 seemed to be working fine.  The spacecraft made a textbook-perfect flight all the way to its target, Mare Tranquillitas, impacting on schedule. 

But its TV camera never turned on.

I've been told that the fellow who announced the flight in real-time to the press has resigned from this duty, unable to go through such a harrowing experience again.  Who can blame him?  This is the sixth Ranger and the tenth failed (counting Pioneer Atlas Able) moon mission in a row.  On the other hand, and this is probably weak comfort at best, Ranger 6 did perform perfectly all the way until the end.  I'm sure Our American Cousin was a fine play, too.

There are three more third edition Rangers left to launch.  Let's hope at least one of them will be successful.  Right now, this program is making Project Vanguard look like an unalloyed success.

Stillborn Quintuplets

Speaking of Vanguard, on January 24, 1964, the Air Force launched another of its multi-satellite missions, attempting to orbit an unprecedented five spacecraft at once.  "Composite 1" comprised LOFTI 2, which was to study the ionosphere, Secor and Surcal, which would have helped the Army and Navy (respectively) calibrate their tracking radars, and Injun 2, a radiation satellite made by the University of Iowa (the same folks who discovered the Van Allen Belts.

Composite 1 also included SOLRAD (Solar Radiation) 4, and this is the Vanguard tie-in.  You see, the spottily successful Vanguard, which was America's first space project, was originally designed to study the sun's output of X-rays and ultraviolet light.  Unfortunately, the last of the Vanguards, number 3, was swamped with radiation from the Van Allen Belts, and its sun-pointed experiments were made useless.  End of story, right?

Well, SOLRAD 1, launched in 1960, was essentially Vanguard 4.  It was made by the same folks (the Naval Research Laboratory), used the same design, and carried the same experiments as Vanguard 3.  The only difference was purpose: the Navy wanted to know if there was a relation between solar flares and radio fade-outs (turns out yes). 

SOLRAD 2 was a dud thanks to a bad rocket, but SOLRAD 3 and Injun 1 returned good data.  The failure of SOLRAD 4 gives the program a .500 average — still pretty good to my mind.  I understand the Air Force will be trying again in a few months.

Five for five

How about some good news for a change?  For the fifth time in three years, the world's largest rocket took to the skies above Florida, January 29, 1964.  The Saturn I rocket, a precursor to the Saturn V behemoth that will take humans to Moon before this decade is out, has completed its run of test flights with a 100% success rate. 

I want that to sink in.  As far as I know, no rocket program has ever been 100% successful.  One would think that a booster as big as the Saturn should be more accident-prone than any other.  And yet, the trim cylindrical stack lifted off from Cape Kennedy, with both stages fueled for the first time, and placed its entire top half into orbit.  This gave Americans another first: world's largest satellite, weighing nearly ten tons!

The timing could not be better.  Apollo's future has been threatened a bit lately, with many in Congress seeking to reduce NASA's funding.  Some question whether there is even value in winning the race to the moon.  The outstanding success of the Saturn I will hopefully be a shot in the program's arm — and maybe for the related Project Ranger.

Now that testing of the rocket is complete, the Saturn I will go on to operational missions, flying full-scale examples of the Apollo spacecraft.  This will be the closest this first Saturn ever gets to the moon, however.  Huge as it is, it is not strong enough to launch Apollo to Earth's nearest neighbor.  It's not even strong enough to loft a fully-fueled Apollo!  But it's bigger brother, the Saturn IB, will be.  Expect its first flights in 1966 or so.

Can you hear me?

Last year, COMSAT corporation started selling publicly traded shares.  COMSAT was President Kennedy's compromise between a public and private satellite communications entity.  COMSAT has not yet developed any comsats, but that hasn't other entities are continuing to build experimental satellites toward the day when COMSAT birds begin to fly.

Relay 2

On January 21, 1964, the RCA-built Relay 2 joined its sister Relay 1, Ma-Bell-made Telstar 2, and the fixed-in-the-sky Syncom 2 in orbit.  With four active comsats in orbit (the kind that can retransmit broadcasts), we'll likely soon see transmissions bounce all over the globe.  The most exciting programming on the schedule?  This summer's Olympic games, live from Tokyo, Japan!

Echo 2

Just four days after the launch of Relay 2, NASA shot up Echo 2, a balloon-type passive reflector satellite — essentially a big mirror in space for bouncing signals.  It's larger than Echo 1, which is still in orbit, and should be visible from the ground when it zooms overhead.  I'm not sure why NASA bothered with this satellite given the sophistication of the active-repeater comsats.  I suspect there won't be many more.

Gavarit pa Ruskii?

Meanwhile, our Communist friends have not been entirely idle.  In addition to their increasing constellation of little Kosmos satellites, which may or may not be civilian in nature (probably not), the Soviets have created the twin "Elektron" orbiting laboratories.  The first two were launched on January 30 into separate orbits, their mission to explore the Van Allen Belts from both below and above!

It's the first time the Soviets have launched multiple satellites on a single rocket (we've been doing it since SOLRAD 1) and the first time since Sputnik 3 that a Russian mission has been verifiably civilian in nature. 

It's about time!

Space for Two

I'll wrap things up with a couple of pieces of news on the Gemini two-seat spacecraft, sort of a bridge between Projects Mercury and Apollo.  Firstly, it looks like the first uncrewed flight will happen as early as March, testing both the capsule and the Titan II rocket.  If this goes well, the first crewed flights may blast off as early as the end of this year.

Fingers crossed!

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TV

[February 3rd, 1964] And Into The Fire (Doctor Who: The Daleks | Episodes 5-7)

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By Jessica Holmes

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, in whatever time and place you happen to be. Ready for some more Doctor Who? I certainly am.

So, a super speedy recap before we get into things: the Doctor went and got himself and his companions stuck on an alien planet, and then everyone got captured and almost died of radiation poisoning. They escaped, barely, but then realised they couldn't leave because they'd left part of the TARDIS behind. So now they're going to have to go back to their captors. Well done, Doctor.

Oh, and there are some very cross pepperpots who dabble in plumbing.

THE EXPEDITION

In this episode, the companions must convince the Thals to help them reclaim a vital part of the TARDIS.

However, the Thals are so deeply opposed to violence that they won't take any aggressive action against the Daleks. What's more, the companions themselves can't agree on whether it's right to enlist the Thals in a conflict that has nothing to do with them, even if it could buy them their lives. After some shenanigans and a cruel but effective trick from Ian, Alydon manages to rally a few Thals to assist Ian and Barbara in their expedition to recover the part.

There are two big moral questions in this serial, and this episode is where they’re thrust into the spotlight: when, if ever, is it right to fight? And is it right to enlist someone else to fight your battles?

Entering the episode, the Thals have a firm answer to the first question: never.

"We will not fight. There will be no more wars. Look at our planet. This was once a great world, full of ideas and art and invention. In one day it was destroyed. And you will never find one good reason why we should ever begin destroying everything again."
Alydon

The Doctor, however, isn't having any of it. The Thals are going to fight and he's going to lead them into battle. Won’t that be something, indeed.

This leads us right into the second question: is it right to enlist someone else to fight your battles? Even if your troubles have nothing to do with them?

The Doctor, for the record, couldn't care less if it's right or wrong. It's a matter of survival. If making the Thals fight will make them more likely to survive, then morality doesn’t come into the equation. Now, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Doctor would take this stance, but what about Barbara? Yes, of all people, Barbara takes his side. She never really struck me as a moral pragmatist before, but then again, it would surprise most people just how flexible morality can be when your life's on the line.

However, Ian thinks otherwise. Though eager earlier to get the Thals to fight, Ian has come to believe it would be wrong to force them to go against their nature, when this isn't even their battle. If the Thals are going to fight, it has to be for their own reasons.

How do you make a Thal fight? Threaten his loved ones, of course. When Ian threatens to take one of the Thals to the Daleks in exchange for the fluid link (one who is very special to Alydon, if you catch my meaning), it takes Alydon all of three seconds to send him flying.


For a man who’s never fought anyone in his life, Alydon can throw a heck of a punch.

Now, consider this: while all this debate has been raging, the Daleks have synthesised the Thals' anti-radiation drug with unexpected results: the drug is toxic to them. Why? Because it stops them absorbing radiation. This leads the Daleks to realise they need a radioactive environment to survive. If they're ever going to leave the city, they'll have to flood the planet with radiation. The Thals don't know it yet, but they're living on borrowed time.

Alydon comes to an important realisation while wrestling with his guilt over punching Ian. There may well be a just cause for fighting: in defence of another. If they don't help the companions, knowing that only their help can save them, they might as well just kill them themselves. It’s an interesting notion, and one that I find myself agreeing with. After all, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

What's more, Alydon has himself come to the conclusion that the Daleks represent an ongoing threat to the Thals. They have all the food, and before long, the Thals are going to starve. The Thals are afraid, but that's okay. They're right to be afraid. But as Alydon puts it:

"There is no indignity in being afraid to die. But there is a terrible shame in being afraid to live."

In the end, a few Thals agree to go with Ian and Barbara, and they set out to infiltrate the city. However, it doesn't take long before they run into trouble.

This might be one of my favourite episodes of the serial. I really enjoyed the moral quandaries the characters found themselves in.


We have to have a bog monster in a bog, even if it doesn’t do anything. It’s the rules.

THE ORDEAL

This episode isn't as good as the ones sandwiching it. I'll say that before anything else. There's not really any of the moral philosophy, major character development (other than one rather nice Thal whose name I can't remember), or excitement of the other episodes, so I'll keep it brief.

In this episode, all of our players are getting into place for the final act. Ian and Barbara are leading an expedition of Thals to infiltrate the city from behind, and the Doctor and Susan are with the main group, plotting their own assault on the city. Meanwhile, the Daleks accelerate their plans to make the planet more suitable to their needs.

There are some rather nice, borderline flirty moments of banter between Barbara and one of the Thals travelling with her. It's a sweet little human thing that goes a long way towards endearing him to me. I just wonder how he ever learned of the Earth concept of 'ladies first'. Is that something that regularly comes up in conversation?

I also enjoyed the Doctor and Susan acting like a pair of gleeful schoolchildren as they sabotaged the Daleks' surveillance equipment—especially when the Doctor got so carried away with his own cleverness he forgot the most important part of any bit of mischief: run away afterwards.


You have to wonder how he’s survived as long as he has, really.

Towards the end of the episode, though, there's a scene which is a bit frustrating to watch, as once again, we run up against the budget limitations. It's rather hard to even see what's going on, harder still to believe that our heroes are clinging to the walls of a perilous ravine. Even an establishing shot of a matte painting would have gone a long way towards building my suspension of disbelief.

THE RESCUE

Here we are, at the grand finale. There's a lot going on in this episode, so let’s take a deep breath, and away we go!

Ian and Barbara make it to the city of the Daleks, as Susan and the Doctor find themselves once again at the mercy of the plunger-brandishing fiends. The Daleks kindly explain their whole evil plan, because that’s what baddies do. I’m sure there’s a Handy Guide To Being Evil out there somewhere that every villain ever written has read. Explaining your entire plan is rule number two. The first rule is to never just kill the hero when you have him at your mercy. That wouldn’t be any fun, now, would it?

By deliberately overloading their nuclear reactors, The Daleks will be able to release enough radioactive material to irradiate the atmosphere and terraform the planet to their needs. Or should that be skaroform?

As Alydon rallies his men to assault the city, the Doctor pleads with the Daleks to see reason. When he finds no sense of morality in them to appeal to, he even tries bargaining, but to no avail. Time is running out for the Doctor, and for the planet, when Ian and Barbara's party meets up with Alydon's group, and together, they make their assault on the Dalek command.

I can only really describe what happens as a… kerfuffle. Though the Daleks are deadly at a distance, in close quarters, they're no match for the strength and mobility of their attackers, who push them about as if they were shopping trolleys. It’s a bit funnier than I think was intended.

The Thals prevail, freeing the Doctor to put a stop to the Daleks' plan. However, the salvation of the Thals is achieved at the fatal expense of the Daleks. The reactors are fast draining of power entirely. When they're fully powered down, the Daleks will be starved for radiation. One Dalek, dying, begs for the Doctor to undo what he's done. But he can't. And even if he could, he wouldn't. The Dalek dies, and with it, it seems, the Dalek race itself.


Susan even got a snazzy new cloak.

So much for just being a wanderer throughout the universe, Doctor. You just single-handedly eradicated a sapient species. Neither he, nor any of the other characters for that matter, seem to appreciate that fact, and the episode breezes on to the dénouement, where lessons are learned, goodbyes are said, and cliffhangers for the next serial are set up. Oh, and Barbara and her Thal friend share a very special farewell.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Right, so when it comes down to it, what did I think of The Daleks?

We’re just two serials in, and The Doctor is already affecting events on a planetary scale! If he carries on the way he does, there'll be a Doctor-shaped trail of destruction across the universe before long.

The serial did start to meander a little bit in the middle with having to go back to the city. Particularly The Ordeal, which does set up the finale, but not much else. It's a tricky thing because I can't just point at a scene and say 'cut that'. It would require a surgeon’s finesse.

As for the Thals, I admit I did categorise them in my head as 'Alydon' and 'Not Alydon', which should give you an idea as to how invested I was in the Thals who weren't Alydon. I have forgotten all of their names. They're more of an ensemble cast than distinct individuals, so I didn't really blink when any of them died.

I'm a bit unsure about killing off all the Daleks. It seems a shame to get rid of an interesting villain, one so inhuman, for whom morals aren't a consideration when it comes to survival. An interesting foil for the Doctor, wouldn't you agree? Also, though the Daleks we saw were unquestionably evil and sowed the seeds of their own destruction, was that the case for all of them?

Then again, we never see anything to suggest a concept of individualism amongst the Daleks, so it could be argued that they all harboured the same genocidal ambitions, making peaceful coexistence with the Thals an impossibility. Still, there's no way of knowing either way, which is why I'd have liked to have seen some consideration of their fate.

I wonder if, as the Thals have basically bred into themselves the instinct for pacifism, the Daleks bred themselves to be the opposite. It would fit with all of their actions. When faced with a fight or flight situation, the Thals would always choose flight, and the Daleks would fight. I wonder how the Daleks kept on as long as they did without wiping themselves out. They think nothing of experimenting on or even killing their own kind, if it would further the ends of their leaders.

We do get one line from the Thals that could be interpreted as regretful, though that was probably more for the Thal losses than for the eradication of all Daleks. For that matter, for a bunch of people who had a complete taboo against violence, they did seem to take to it quite well in the end. You'd think the Thals might actually mourn the Daleks. That would have been quite curious to see from our perspective, but I think it would have made sense for a people who up to recently had been so dedicated to living in peace and harmony. Hopefully they won't end up regaining their ancient taste for war.

Still, a very exciting and enjoyable serial all the same. I know it's less educational, but then again, it did explore some moral philosophy on when it's right to fight, if ever, and I love that sort of thing. I also think it came to a responsible conclusion: avoid fighting, except in the defence of yourself or others. I can get behind that. The only time I ever got in a scrap as a child was when a boy was picking on my little brother. I didn't do much for fear of really hurting the bully, but he did back off. I would like to see a bit more that's less cut and dried, perhaps with factions that can’t be simply described as ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Because the real world is messy like that, and I do think that in itself is an important thing to teach.

I’ll be back very shortly for our next outing. Our companions made it safely back to the TARDIS, but it seems the TARDIS might not be the safest place to be after all…

4 out of 5 stars




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Book, Magazine, Movies

[February 1, 1964] The Vast Wasteland (February 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Every Silver Lining has a Cloud

What an exciting month January was!  From President Johnson's declaration of war on poverty to the launching of the Ranger 6 moon mission, not to mention this week's premiere of the amazing satire/horror, Dr. Strangelove, this year is shaping up to be a good one.

But while real life and the silver screen may offer superlative pleasures, this month's written sf , at least on this side of the Pond, has been rather lackluster.  This month's Analog is no exception.  In fact, it rests near the bottom of the pack.  That said, it's not a complete loss — so long as you know what you're getting into:

The Issue at Hand

Secondary Meterorites (Part 2 of 2), by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Dr. Hall returns to tell us more about the hypothesis that the majority of meteors that hit our planet are actually pieces of other planets knocked off when they were hit by meteorites.  It is, if anything, less comprehensible than the last article.  And that's coming from a fellow who studied astrophysics in college and reads journal articles for fun.

One star.

The Permanent Implosion, by Dean McLaughlin

When a bunch of Colorado eggheads blow a hole in the fabric of the universe, all of Earth's air starts whistling to nowhere like water draining from a bathtub.  Mick Candido, an oilman with a talent for capping blown and burning wells, is called in to plug the hole.

This is a smartly written tale whose obvious solution is obscured by deft authorial misdirection.  It's not a story for the ages, but it's solid Analog fare.  Three stars.

Crackpots, Inc., by Richard L. Davis

On the other hand, Crackpots is uniquely Analog fare.  A rural hayseed has purportedly invented perpetual motion, but his feat cannot be duplicated by scientists.  Turns out, it's because the machine is powered by the hick's psychic energies.  The only way this piece could have been more to Campbell's taste is if it included dowsing.

One star.

Dune World (Part 3 of 3), by Frank Herbert

I'm going to spare some inches for this one since I know this has been a popular serial.  In the far future, humanity has spread out among the stars.  Civilization is a strange mix of the advanced and the primitive. There are faster-than-light ships, electro-magnetic shields, and laser guns, On the other hand, computers are outlawed, with savant "Mentats" filling the role.  Society runs along feudal lines, its politics Machiavellian to the extreme.  To wit:

Baron Harkonnen, lord of the desert planet, Arrakis, is ordered by the Padishah Emperor to give his fief to Duke Leto Atreides.  On the face of things, this is a boon.  Arrakis is the only source of the anti-geriatic spice melange, control of which makes one very rich.  However, the transfer is a baited trap.  Not only is a legion of the Emperor's troops poised to seize the fief should Leto stumble, but one of Leto's lieutenants is a traitor in the pay of Harkonnen.

Added to the mix: Leto's mistress, Lady Jessica, member of the female-only Bene Gesserit order, who has keen perception and the ability to control others with her voice.  Her son, Paul, who may be the satisfaction of a prophecy that predicts a male possessor of Bene Gesserit powers.  The "Fremen" natives of Arrakis appear to be primitives yet there is evidence that suggests they possess a great technology.  Finally, we have Kynes, an Imperial surveyor who seems to know the secrets of Arrakis but refuses to play his hand openly.

Not much happens in Dune World.  There are lots of conversations where people reveal the history of Arrakis.  There is an attempt on Paul's life.  Leto saves some spice miners from a sandworm.  There is a feast in the Atreides stronghold with more exposition.  The traitor's plan comes to fruition, with the Duke put in mortal peril and his family forced into exile.  There is no real resolution; I suspect Herbert plans a sequel.

Author Herbert has an intricate grand plan, and he's certainly not stinted on world building.  The various cultures are richly detailed.  There is a refreshing abundance of foreign language and concepts, particularly from Arabic.  What keeps Dune World from being a masterpiece, or even especially enjoyable, is that Herbert's writing chops just aren't up to turning this byzantine mess of a plot into a story.  There are more swaths of italicized text than in the footnotes of a legal contract, and the viewpoint shifts constantly, often every other sentence.  A typical example from page 49:


"Now I know you remain loyal to my Duke," she said.  "Therefore I'm prepared to forgive your affront to me."

"Is there something to forgive? he asked.

Jessica scowled, wondering, Shall I play my trump?  Shall I tell him of the Duke's daughter I've carried within me these two weeks?  No, Leto himself doesn't know and this would only complicate his life, divert him when he must concentrate on our survival.  There is yet time to use this.

And Hawat thought: She's even beautiful when she's angry.  An extremely difficult adversary.

The traitor is revealed early on; the mystery is why he's betrayed Duke Leto.  That said, the identity of the betrayer could have been handled as a double mystery, which would have been more interesting. 

At serial's end, Paul has a soothsaying dream and learns several secrets of Arrakis and spice.  It's all very arbitrary and unsatisfying. 

Herbert has created something like a well researched but dry encyclopedia article on a fascinating topic.  I wanted to know more about Arrakis and Paul's prophecy, but getting through the (half) novel was often a slog. 

Maybe a good editor will help Herbert polish this up before its inevitable publication as a book.

Three stars for this installment and for the book as a whole.

Rx for Chaos, by Christopher Anvil

Another entry in the "Unintended Consequences of Science" department: Hangover-killing "De-tox" pills become bestsellers, but they also inhibit creativity and give rise to a fascist, anti-intellectual movement.  It's typical Analog Anvil, written with tongue firmly lodged in cheek.  It rates three stars, barely.

Names for Space Plants, by John Becker

Lots of words in these three short pages, but I've no idea what Becker is actually trying to say.  One star.

The Analytic Laboratory

Add it all up, and Analog scores a limp 2.1 stars, only beaten for badness by this month's Amazing (2 stars even).  F&SF is barely better at 2.2; Fantastic gets 2.6 but at least it's got a good Dick in it.  Galaxy's 3 stars is also, in part, thanks to its Dick story.  The only unalloyed triumph is the February New Worlds, which garnered 3.6 stars.

Women made up just two of the 38 authors who wrote fiction for magazines this month. 

As for books, again, it was the British stuff that stood out.  Brian Aldiss' new fix-up got four stars, per Jason Sacks, whereas neither this month's Ace Double nor Laurence Janifer's second effort stunned.

Next month is my birthday month, though, and I'm certain the writers in my favorite genre wouldn't let me down on my 39th birthday.

Right?

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Movies

[January 30, 1964] Satire or Documentary?  (Stanley Kubrik's Dr. Strangelove)

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by Rosemary Benton

The Thin Line between Comedy and Terror

The newest movie by maverick filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, known for Spartacus (1960) and Lolita (1962), has hit theaters to the delight of film critics and the apprehensive joy of moviegoers. Behold the masterpiece which is Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and be amazed. Never before has a movie been so utterly terrifying, and yet so funny. It was a film that had the audience sitting on the edge of their seats, giddily laughing with nervous energy. For a film with so few action sequences, the story is absolutely riveting. I was completely captivated, and based on the reactions I witnessed from my fellow movie goers they too felt the simultaneous deep unease and dark humor just as intensely.

The plot of Dr. Strangelove is loosely based on the 1958 thriller novel by Peter George, Red Alert. Both the book and the film describe a situation that could be considered as far from comical as possible: the initiation of a nuclear attack on the Soviets by a rogue United States Air Force general. In Kubrick's film the logic of this loose cannon, named Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (played by Sterling Hayden), is that Communists have made the “bodily fluids" of Americans impure by fluoridation. By his reasoning this has already counted as a preemptive strike: fluoridation has rendered politicians including President Merkin Muffley (played by Peter Sellers), impotent and incapable of proper leadership.

Meanwhile in the War Room of the Pentagon the situation continues to escalate as President Muffley consults with his military counsel General Buck Turgidson (played by George C. Scott), and the Soviet Ambassador Alexei de Sadeski (played by Peter Bull). Eventually it is concluded that the Soviet Premier, Dimitri Kissov, must be informed of the situation and given the deployed bomber squadron's flight path. The situation couldn't be more dire — until the Ambassador then imparts to the room that the Premier has just made him aware of a doomsday device that has been built in secret and was to be unveiled within the week. If the American bombs are not stopped in time, a network of interlinked Soviet bombs enhanced with “cobalt-thorium G" will trigger and the Earth will be shrouded in a “Doomsday shroud," killing all human and animal life. Worse yet, there is no way to deactivate the doomsday device without triggering it. A precaution that was taken to avoid human error.

After managing to secure the recall code from General Ripper all bombers but one are recalled. Due to damage to the plane's radio and fuel tanks sustained when the Soviets launched a surface-to-air missile to intercept the B-52 Stratofortress carrying the payload, the pilot and crew are unable to communicate with the American forces, nor are they able to fly back. At the order of the bomber's commander and pilot, Major T. J. "King" Kong (played by Slim Pickens), the crew decides to fly onward to a nearer target knowing that it will be a one way flight. In perhaps the most memorable scene on the film, Major Kong jumps on the back of the bomb and rides it down to a Soviet ICBM site whereupon it explodes.

Back in the War Room the attendants have begun to consider how they will survive the coming 93 years of darkness. Dr. Strangelove (also played by Peter Sellers), the wheelchair bound, ex-Nazi, nuclear war expert in the employ of President Muffley advises that a small population of several thousand should take up residence in deep mine shafts so as to repopulate the Earth. To that end there should be a 10:1 ratio of women to men. Comically, despite the reality of planning for the end of the world, General Turgidson is very concerned that the Soviets will think of the same thing and warns against a “mine shaft" gap. As the arguing and planning escalates in volume the Soviet Ambassador slips a discreet shot of the War Room with a hidden camera and slinks away. The movie ends to the dulcet serenade of “We'll Meet Again" as nuclear blasts go off one by one.

Too Close to Home

These last two decades, indeed the last three years, have brought the continued struggle between the USSR and America, between Capitalist and Communists, Democracy and Dictatorship, to the average American's door on a daily basis in the news, in magazine articles, and through social organizations such as the local Civil Defense officers conducting surveys of urban preparedness. The fear has been stoked that the international war of ideology, trade and survival could come to us civilians very literally in the form of a coordinated nuclear attack.

The Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950, initially designed to guide civilian preparedness in a series of committees from the federal level all the way down to the community level, found little traction with the general public in its day. Recently, however, given the Soviet military buildup in Cuba, the use of fallout shelters has come back into the public's eye. But science has far surpassed the weapons of over ten years ago, and one must wonder how useful the leftover pamphlets on nuclear survival from 1951 will be to the American citizen today.

In a general sense any nation's international policy making has consistently been about the division of land and wealth, with the extraction of natural resources and the mobilization of man power either resulting in economic success or failure. On top of the core responsibility of leaders to ensure their country's economic success are layers and layers of rhetoric to justify the means to this end. But only recently has that rhetoric reached a dangerous pinnacle on which both sides consider the virtual hostage taking of millions of civilian lives to be a worthy deterrent to foreign challenges that could come from halfway across the globe.

Being in a competition of military prowess has unfortunately resulted in inflammatory saber rattling in a long line of US presidents. From President Truman's 30 November, 1950 refusal to rule out the use of nuclear weapons to halt Communist advances after Chinese troops crossed the Yalu River to aid North Korea, to President Kennedy's repeated call to close the missile gap during his 1960 election campaign. Ultimately the natural escalation of “anything your bomb can do, mine can do better" has seemed to end in a standoff. Hence the development of unsettling strategic theories such as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). 

The Satire Bites Deep

The writing, cinematography and special effects of Dr. Strangelove are ingenious, but more than anything I have to comment that this is a profoundly dark satirical film. Not only does the plot highlight the precarious position that current world leaders and their military advisors have found themselves in since the fracturing of the Allied forces after 1945, but it highlights the very real and very frightening attitudes that have come to encompass the policy making of modern superpowers at home and abroad.

Co-writers Stanley Kubrick, Peter George and Terry Southern really understood this last point, and put it front and center within Dr. Strangelove's satire. General Turgidson's excitement at the destructive capabilities of the B-52 Stratofortress borders on buffoonish megalomania. His enthusiasm and envy when he says that he wishes the US too had a doomsday device like the one the Soviets have concocted is astounding given the situation. It is horrific that General Turgidson considers the launching of an all out attack an acceptable plan of action considering the “modest and acceptable" civilian casualties of 10-20 million lives “depending on the breaks". Most importantly, the film masterfully picks apart the lunacy of having to have a post-apocalyptic plan in the first place.

Indeed, everything about Dr. Strangelove’s indignant rebuke to the Russian ambassador feels as if it were lifted from an exchange between Herman Kahn, the RAND corporation’s renowned military strategist, and a chastened government official. “The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost, if you keep it a secret. Why didn't you tell the world, eh?!" Ambassador Sadeski replies, “It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises."

In the skillful hands of such an intrepid writing team the catalyst of the whole nuclear attack comes into question: is such a scenario so far off? Yes, Brigadier General Ripper is clearly insane to believe that Communists would plan an attack on “bodily fluids" by putting fluoride in the drinking water, but if the military personnel who hold the power to initiate a nuclear attack were unstable but methodical, would such a cascade of fail safes work against us as they did in the film? And if worse came to worst, would our leaders be able to accept the figurative and literal fallout with the same calm equanimity as the assembly in the war room did? If mine shafts would make such excellent hibernation holdouts for humanity, as Dr. Strangelove hypothesized, would the public even be made aware for fear of a mine shaft shortage?

For the answer to such questions I would highly recommend that everyone see this film, watch the evening news for a week, and come to their own conclusions. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is an exceptionally cutting and cheeky movie, and I happily give it five stars.




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Book, Magazine

[January 28, 1964] Beatles, Prisons and Doctors ( New Worlds, February 1964)

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by Mark Yon

London Calling

Hello again!

The Winter rolls on here in Britain. I must admit that last month’s news about New Worlds has left me here in a bit of a blue mood. I’ve realised that with the loss of the two remaining British magazines there’s not a lot of opportunities for British s-f left. As much as I enjoy reading your American issues, even the ones fellow travellers don’t like (when I can get them), I do feel that we’re missing a trick here. The loss of such a laudable attempt to reinvent the genre means that we are lesser for it. Even when I don’t like all the attempts to push the envelope. 

In this month’s “Beatle-Watch”, the mop-tops have continued their reign of madness and world domination. They are now playing concerts outside Britain, most recently in Paris.  I understand that they may well be heading back to your fair shores by the end of February, so keep an eye out if you want an idea of what their fans here are going mad about.

Since we last spoke, I did get chance to go with the family to see The Sword in the Stone over the holiday season. It was fun, but there’s not too much of Mr. T. H. White’s original novel left beyond the basic outline. The youngsters in the cinema seemed to enjoy it, though, especially with the added musical numbers. 

I’m very pleased that Doctor Who has continued to go from strength to strength. As fellow traveller Jessica has said, the latest serial, The Daleks, is a real triumph. It is scary and exciting. I can’t wait to see what happens next. 

The Issue at Hand

To the magazine, then – the February 1964 New Worlds:

I’ll not say much about the cover this month, other than it is orange.

possible worlds of the mind, by Mr. L. H. Barnes

Intriguingly, but perhaps expectedly, this is heralded as “the last in our series”. Mr. Barnes examines the role of s-f in today’s society. After suggesting a number of possibilities – escapism, the continuity of myth, for an insight into the possible extensions of technology – Mr. Barnes concludes with the idea that the mainstreaming of s-f contributes to modern man coping with a world-in-flux. It is an effective summary of editor Mr. John Carnell’s aims as you could expect.

Onto the stories!

open prison, by Mr. James White

I guess that this could be the last serial to be published in New Worlds, but as is usually the case with Mr. White’s work, it’s an interesting tale, though very different to Mr. White’s Sector General stories. This one tells of a planet that is used as a prisoner-of-war camp and the prisoners upon it. What makes it interesting is that we have tension created between those prisoners who have given up and decided to make the best of their new lives and those who feel that it is their duty to escape. It seems to be really a comment on social class and the order and discipline of the military life. Well told, if hardly original. Even the tagline suggests that this is an old-fashioned war story transmuted into a future prison escape story.  4 out of 5.

counter-feat and one-way strait, by Mr. Brian W. Aldiss

Next, we have two short stories back-to-back from the redoubtable Mr. Aldiss. They are simply short logic puzzles in a science-fictional setting. Goofy fun, typical Aldiss, but relatively minor work from this well-loved author. 3 out of 5.

the unexpected martyr, by Mr. R. W. Mackelworth

This story looks at a revolution through the eyes of an anarchist recordkeeper in a future surveillance society. Could they be thinking of a future Russia, perhaps? I liked this one – a nice tone with a pleasing style in the manner of Orwell’s 1984 – in that it shows how important the minor characters are in moulding and changing society, though it seems to suggest that trusting your female descendants is not advisable. 4 out of 5.

the time dweller, by Mr. Michael Moorcock

Mr. Moorcock’s latest is, like his story Flux in the July 1963 issue, a story that deals with time. Set in a far future wilderness, the story tells of the journey made by a warrior, The Scar-faced Brooder. Whilst travelling this barren wasteland the Brooder discovers that he can travel through time, in the timestreams, based on his own will. It repeats an idea proposed by Mr. Moorcock before, that the notion of Time is a state of mind and will change depending upon context. Echoing both Mr. Jack Vance and Mr. Edgar Rice Burroughs, I found this tale to be vividly imaginative, very similar to Mr. Moorcock’s Elric tales. It is also a salutary lesson in the dangers of obsessing about keeping to time. 4 out of 5.

die and grow rich, by Mr. John Rackham

Like Mr. Mackelworth’s story, Mr. Rackham’s tale is another piece utilizing computerization this month. die and grow rich is a story for anyone fed up with filling out insurance applications, set in a future where insurance policies are computerized. When the computer seems to malfunction, one of Mr. Rackham’s ‘X-persons’ is brought in to help sort it out. It becomes, basically, an insurance scam in a very unusual manner. This seems to be an extreme method to obtain money for research, even when the research involves bringing dead people back to life. More worryingly, it is another story whose underlying message seems to be “Don’t trust women”. 3 out of 5.

Lastly, this month’s Book Reviews.  Mr. Leslie Flood looks at the books this time around. It is a very positive set of reviews this month. Mr Brian Aldiss’s The Dark Light Years shows an author reaching his “literary maturity” and is thoroughly recommended. The story collection Spectrum III edited by Messers. Amis and Conquest is ”a splendid collection” and Mr. Flood cannot praise too highly Mr. Damon Knight’s ambitious project A Century of Science Fiction, a useful summary for the aficionado and “a masterly and knowledgeable introduction to science fiction for the new convert.“

The Upshot

In summary, there’s a couple of strong stories here that I really liked and Mr. White’s serial has potential. New Worlds may be going, but it is clearly determined not to go without a fight. 

Until next month.




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