Four days ago, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy's Pad 39A, destination: Moon. KGJ, our affiliated TV station, will be simulcasting CBS coverage of the landing and Moonwalk starting at noon, Pacific time, and going all day from then.
As excited as I am about this historic day, we must remember that today's scientific triumphs owe much to our science fictional musings. Let's crack open the latest issue of The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy and see what the good folks there have dreamed for us this month!
by Ronald Walotsky
An Adventure in the Yolla Bolly Middle Eel Wilderness, by Vance Aandahl
Well, things don't start too good.
Big Foot is a girl, and she's in heat. Lucky for her, an overtaxed young English teacher on sabbatical has just broken down in the backwoods near her lair.
My friend, Jean-Paul Garnier, who runs a science fiction bookstore out in Joshua Tree, describes the New Wave as:
Science fiction has always been concerned with technology and its repercussions. The New Wave, at its best, includes in its speculation, the technology of language, both thematically and in praxis.
Aandahl's story is what happens when you combine the worst logorrhea of the New Wave with a per-word payment incentive mixed in with the latest craze for inserting sex into everything. I think it's supposed to be satirical in its deadly earnest telling, or perhaps it just comes off as satirical because it's so ridiculous, its prose so contrived. Like Zelazny passed out drunk and wrote a novelette before he woke up.
Two stars.
Books (F&SF, August 1969), by Joanna Russ
I have no comment on this column as I feel commentary on commentary is a bit superfluous. I just note that Ms. Russ has graduated to full-time columnist, and that her views do not quite match up with mine (which is fine—no book reviewer's do, save for, in the main, P. Schuyler Miller and, of course, our own David Levinson).
The Shamblers of Misery, by Joseph Green
Alright, now we're talking. This piece, by Britisher Joseph Green, is an example of one of my favorite science fiction subgenres: the evaluation of an alien race to determine its sentience (establishment of such generally meaning that the planet is marked off limits for exploitation). The late H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy is a prime example.
The story: Allan Odegaard is a "Practical Philospher", one of a handful of humans qualified for the judge of alien sentience. He is dispatched to the hot, humid planet of Misery, home to a race of extraterrestrials with a puzzling life cycle. Their intelligence grows through childhood, but upon reaching puberty, their mental faculties slowly decay. Eventually, they all succumb to trembling seizures that increase in severity until the final, fatal one. Though capable of doing simple chores, like collection of a local and valuable spice, the adults fall short of true sapience.
The prime suspect for this malady is the addictive drug, made from the spice, that the human colonists give the alien workers. But is that the true culprit? Allan perseveres until he finds the truth.
This is a delightful story, straightforward and scientific, with a refreshing degree of sexual equality so often missing from modern science fiction. Indeed, had I not read the byline, I might have guessed the story had been written by Paul Ash (actually Pauline Ashwell), who wrote the terrific The Wings of a Bat.
The only thing that knocks the story from five stars is I felt the solution was not quite set up sufficiently to be deduced by the reader, though in hindsight, perhaps it was. But either way, it's a good, SFnal tale.
Four stars.
Next, by Gary Jennings
A tired, retired man, just turned 60, is driving along a one-lane road in the middle of Mexico when he has a terrible accident. Miraculously, he survives and goes on to enjoy a streak of improbably good fortune that exposes the drabness of his life hitherto in stark relief.
I liked this story quite a bit, and the only reason I give it a high three rather than a low four stars is the ending. Not that it's a bad one, but I recommend reading this piece and end at the bottom of page 61 (the penultimate page). I thought the story had ended there, and I really liked the abrupt vividness of it, almost Ellisonesque. The continuation on page 62 is superfluous.
by Gahan Wilson
Fraternity Brother, by Sterling E. Lanier
Brigadier Ffellowes is a character I'm always happy to see turn up. He's the ruddy-cheeked ex-officer who frequents pubs and can always be relied upon to recount outlandish, fantastic tales of his earlier years. This time, when asked which of the secret societies is the oldest, he responds with a story of his time in the Basque country during the Spanish Civil War.
What I love about the Brigadier is how unflappable he is, or at least the aplomb with which he imbues his former self (whether such is an accurate portrayal is, of course, a mystery). And the telling of these tales is always pleasant.
I'm not sure that I buy, as is asserted in the story, that the Basques can trace their ancestry all the way back, undiluted, to Cro-Magnon Man (my 1964 Collier's simply notes that the Euskara assert that they are pre-Celtic Iberians), but it is a pretty embellishment.
This ancient story was published in 1913, and it reads like something from the old copies of Weird Tales I've gotten my hands on. With the framing device of a fellow discussing the possibility of an ultraviolet lantern as a way to penetrate fog to avoid a second Titanic disaster, this story is the recounting of an attack by an invisible creature from the deep. The science-fictional element is the idea that a sea monster, transparent to visible light but apparent in UV, could evolve in the ocean depths.
Pleasant, if not outstanding, reading. Three stars.
On Throwing a Ball, by Isaac Asimov
Dr. A. offers up a derivation for the famous equation: f=ma (force equals mass times acceleration—provided you use metric units). I suppose it's nothing one couldn't find in any good physics textbook, but it's nicely conveyed.
Four stars.
The Money Builder, by Paul Thielen
Lastly, this trivial piece about a grifter with a wild story. Seems that he teamed up with an alien to build a gravity repulsor such that he could now tamper with any sports game. On his way to riches, his extraterrestrial partner was apprehended by his fellows, leaving him in the lurch when the big match went the wrong way. Now, said grifter needs just $5,000 to repair his gadget and once again rig his way to the pink.
I suppose how you rate the story is based on how you buy the grifter's tale: as science fiction, the piece is kaka. As the seductive pitch of a con man, it's not so bad. That said, I found the tale kind of dull and old-fashioned.
Two stars.
The Main Event
So, all in all, a reasonably palatable issue of F&SF, though nothing special. Certainly nothing to distract from the greatest spectacle the human race has every known: our first landing on another world. For the moment, revel in science fiction become fact. Save the fantasy for next week, and join us this afternoon!
Aside from the stray short story I have to admit I had not read any of John Jakes’s novels, of which there have been many as of late—so many, in fact, that we folks at the Journey have not been able to cover every new Jakes book. Just this year alone we’ve gotten three or four Jakes novels, with at least one more already in the can as I’m writing this. So consider this a bit of “catching up,” for the both of us. Jakes started a new science-fantasy series a couple years ago with When the Star Kings Die, and this year he has put out not one, but two more entries in this series. For the sake of not overwhelming the reader, though, let’s just keep it to the first two entries… for now.
Humanity has spread across the stars in what is called II Galaxy, with a planet-spanning league of aristocrats called the 'Lords of the Exchange' (the titular star kings) keeping things in check. The star kings are supposed to live for centuries, being near-immortal, but something has been leading these long-lived aristocrats to early deaths. Maxmillion Dragonard (a name I certainly did not pull out of a hat) is a Regulator, one of the enforcers for the star kings, who starts out imprisoned for a bout of intensely violent behavior but is soon freed on the condition that he investigates why the star kings are dying young. He soon travels to the planet Pentagon, a backwater home to little in the way of technology or civilization, but which seems to house the answer to the mystery; and there he gets involved with a group of rebels who go by the 'Heart Flag'. Dragonard’s sense of loyalty gets split between his allegiance to the star kings, personified by a mischievous spy named Kristin, whom Dragonard quickly falls in love with, and the leaders of the Heart Flag group, Jeremy and his sister Bel.
If you read certain passages out of context you might think you’re reading an adventure fantasy yarn in the Robert E. Howard mode, which Jakes is no stranger to, but overall this is much more evocative of Leigh Brackett’s planetary adventures—low on scientific plausibility but high on swashbuckling action. We have swords and daggers, but also blasters and “electroguns,” not to mention spaceships. Another thing carried over from both Howard and Brackett is this heightened sense of sexuality—or to put it less charitably, the fact that there are only two female characters of note in this novel, and both of them want to jump Dragonard’s bones. Jakes also can’t help himself when it comes to focusing on the women’s breasts, especially Kristin’s. In fairness, Dragonard is a man who has just been broken out of prison, and ultimately this is not a very serious novel. When the Star Kings Die was published in 1967, although the Journey didn’t cover it then; but if not for the publication date you might think it was printed in 1947, possibly as a “complete” novel in the likes of Startling Stories and other bygone pulps. It seems deliberately retrograde, but it’s unobtrusive so far as that goes.
This is a short novel, such that I’m actually surprised Ace didn’t bundle it with another short novel or novella. Even so, with just 160 pages Jakes is able to give us a future world, somewhat believable power dynamics among the parties, a few good villains, and a climactic battle that manages to take up a good chunk of the text. Kristin, despite being Dragonard’s main love interest, is absent for much of the novel, but to compensate his growing admiration for Jeremy and budding affection for Bel are given ample room to develop. The trio’s tenuous but promising relationship at the end of the novel is undermined, however, by the fact that when we did get a follow-up to When the Star Kings Die it was not a sequel, but instead a distant prequel.
This novel does a few things well, but not exceptionally well; and, let’s face it, we’ve been here before. It’s fine, but nothing special.
Jakes’s ode to the sword-and-spaceship adventures of yore continues with The Planet Wizard, published just this year, although given that it’s about the same length as When the Star Kings Die I’m still a bit surprised it was not released as one half of an Ace Double. The Planet Wizard has a more focused narrative, and more than its predecessor it heavily uses the fantasy elements of the pulp material it’s clearly taking cues from; but even so it feels less like a full novel (certainly now that we have behemoths like Dune and Stand on Zanzibar in the field) and more like a somewhat constipated novella. I very much enjoy novellas myself, but not so much when they look bloated and could use a laxative.
Say goodbye to all the characters from that first novel, since here we’re jumping back over a thousand years in time; conversely all the characters featured in The Planet Wizard will have been long and safely dead by the time we get to When the Star Kings Die. Some cataclysmic event has pushed civilization across planets almost back to medieval times, with the planet Pastora having only a semblance of civilized humanity, with its sister planet Lightmark faring even worse. Superstition has taken over the minds of the masses. Swords and daggers have replaced firearms. Instead of spaceships we have “skysleds.” Magus Blackclaw (another name I did not just pull out of a hat) is a middle-aged “wizard” who lives with his beautiful daughter Maya. The problem is that Magus isn’t really a wizard, for magic doesn’t really exist in this world. Whilst on the run the two cross paths with a tenacious swordsman named Robin Dragonard, who as you may guess is an ancestor of the Maxmillion Dragonard of the first novel. Magus gets captured and put on trial, as a fraud; but the High Governors, the pseudo-Christian religious leaders of Pastora, have a proposition for Magus: go to Lightmark and rediscover the fallen commercial house of Easkod, and maybe these charges will be dropped.
Not only does Magus have to deal with the “Brothers” of Easkod, a league of mutated and vicious humans who watch over Easkod City, but the job to exorcize Easkod of its “demons” quickly turns into a race. Philosopher Arko Lantzman wants his hands on Easkod as an alleged treasury of technology that got lost after the cataclysm, while William Catto, a descendant of one of Easkod’s higher-ups (so he claims), wishes to return the house to its former glory. Given that this is a prequel to When the Star Kings Die, and thus knowing the basic history of the star kings themselves, you can guess the broad trajectory of The Planet Wizard. Given also that Robin (who sadly lacks the charisma of his descendant) will contribute to a bloodline that persists over a thousand years later, it’s safe to guess as to his fate. What keeps the tension alive is that unlike some prequels, wherein we already know the fates of the cast (a kind of dramatic irony granted to the reader), we’re unsure if Magus and Maya will come out of this ordeal unscathed. While Robin is a flatter character than Maxmillion, Magus is a rather fun protagonist, being a middle-aged confidence man who nonetheless does care deeply for his daughter, and goes above and beyond to rescue her when she inevitably gets kidnapped.
In a sense The Planet Wizard complements its predecessor, and I’m not sure if Jakes intended one to be the other’s both opposite and equal. Not better, nor worse, but at least different enough to not feel like a repeat. I do recommend both—if you can find copies below the retail price.
Three stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
Initial Response
Two rip-roaring novels of space adventure fell into my hands recently, both by authors who use two initials instead of first and middle names. (Yes, I notice trivia like that.) Let's take a look.
Prolific British writer Edwin Charles Tubb (E. C. to you!) has been reviewed several times by Galactic Journeyers, including your not-so-humble servant. He usually earns three stars, once in a while a bit more. Will his latest novel earn him another C or C+ on his report card?
Wordiest cover I've ever seen. Pardon the lousy image.
I must have held the cameras at a bad angle.
A project to launch the first starship is under way, funded by the American government. What the boys and girls in Washington D. C. don't realize is that the folks behind the project believe that humanity is doomed to be wiped out by radioactivity. (There are hints that there have been a few limited nuclear wars, as well as a lot of atomic tests.) They plan to escape and find a world to colonize.
Meanwhile, a would-be dictator and his followers plan to stop the starship, by force if necessary. Don't worry about this subplot, because the vessel manages to leave Earth very early in the book, not without a lot of bloodshed.
(This brings up an odd thing about the book. The protagonists are just about as bloodthirsty as the antagonists. They're ready to destroy an entire community in order to launch the starship. Besides that, a lot of the folks aboard were literally kidnapped, forced to be colonists against their will.)
Pretty soon the escapees find a livable planet, which they name (with heavy irony) Eden. In addition to huge, deadly animals, the place has something in the atmosphere that ensures that any woman giving birth and her child will die.
The book has still barely started. A lot more goes on. There's an attempt at mutiny. There's the mysterious disappearance of the first probe to land on the planet, and its equally mysterious reappearance.
The author throws a lot at the reader, often at random. Some subplots don't lead anywhere. For example, we've got an attempt to activate the brain of a dead scientist in order to extract his knowledge. This is just dropped, and doesn't change anything. The whole thing reads as if it were written as quickly as possible, with a completely improvised plot.
American writer C. C. MacApp also has a fast hand at the typewriter, often showing up in If. He's been reviewed a lot here, generally getting three stars. Sometimes less, sometimes more. (Sounds a lot like Tubb, doesn't he?) Will his latest novel be below average, above average, or just plain average?
Cover art by John Berkey.
Wait a minute! I hear you cry. I thought we were talking about MacApp, not this Capps person!
Yep. C. C. MacApp is actually Carroll Mather Capps in real life. If you'll open the book, you'll see it's been copyrighted in the name of C. C. MacApp. Don't ask me why his real name is on the cover.
Anyway, our hero is an Earthman who caught an alien disease somewhere in space. Before killing him, it's going to make him blind. The good news is that some friendly, semi-humanoid aliens are willing to take him to a place where he can be cured, if he undertakes a mission for them. (The aliens recently arrived in the solar system and have the knowledge of faster-than-light travel, but haven't let humans in on the secret.)
His mission is to track down a renegade alien who kidnapped an alien scientist and stole a powerful piece of ancient technology from a species of extraterrestrials who vanished long ago. In order to do this, the aliens take him to a planet without a sun (hence the title) which is able to support life due to its internal heat.
His contact is a multi-tentacled space pirate with two snake-like heads. This roguish character takes him to a hospital, where a spider-like surgeon operates on his eyes.
Wouldn't you know it? There's a catch. The pirate blackmailed the surgeon into doing something to our hero's eyes so that he needs routine treatment with a certain chemical in order to keep his vision. As a side effect, the operation gave him the ability to see clearly in almost total darkness, even able to perceive radiation. This makes him a very useful tool of the pirate on this planet without natural illumination except starlight.
The guy goes along with the pirate, while also spying on him. Meanwhile, the local inhabitants of the planet spy on both him and the pirate. (There's a lot of spying in this book.) The renegade alien and the kidnapped victim show up, as well as other aliens intent on conquest.
I've only given you a synopsis of maybe half the novel. There are plenty of complications in store. The hero winds up on yet another planet, and finds out about the ancient vanished aliens.
The main difference between Tubb's book and this one is that McApp's is much more tightly plotted. There aren't any pointless subplots. As a bonus, the octopus-like pirate is an enjoyable character, usually several steps ahead of the hero. Not the most profound story ever told, but competent entertainment.
The Palace of Eternity is the first of Bob Shaw’s works that I’ve read. Shaw is a man of many talents, having worn a myriad of hats from taxi-driver to structural engineer and aircraft designer. He has added writing fiction to his repertoire with works such as The Two Timers, Night Walk, and his breakout short story, "Light of Other Days."
The Palace of Eternity is set in a distant and turbulent future where humanity has discovered FTL space travel, taken to the stars, and struggles to weather the onslaught of violent attacks from an alien species known as the Pythsyccans.
The protagonist, Mack Tavernor, is a battle-hardened former soldier who had been orphaned when the Pythsyccans devastated his childhood home. Naturally, Tavernor doesn’t view the Pythsyccans in a positive light but he also seems disillusioned enough with humanity to keep his own kind at arm’s length.
The Pythsyccans attack Mnemosyne, an idyllic, almost utopian world dubbed a haven for writers, artists, and other creators of varied talents. Tavernor, naturally, takes up arms against the invading enemy and dies in battle. This is where the story takes an interesting turn.
After shucking this mortal coil, Tavernor encounters the egons, a non-corporeal race of cosmic beings whose very existence is threatened by the proliferation of humanity’s FTL-ramjet technology, the Butterfly Ships. Tavernor, the newest egon, gets another lease on life, inhabiting the body of a newborn human child named Hal. The goal of his mission, to somehow interfere in the war between the humans and Pythsyccans in order to save the endangered egons.
The Palace of Eternity is a fantastic and eloquently written and fast-paced story that fires on all pistons where the things about science fiction that excite me are concerned. And yet…somehow, though, this book failed to move me. For all its eloquence and imaginativeness, I found myself unable to feel strongly about the characters and events of this story. It failed to fill me with a sense of wonder, even amidst the wondrous imagery. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on why.
It wasn’t just that much of the story felt glossed over—and probably should have been explored in greater detail. My main source of dissatisfaction was with the story’s main character’s development.
Mack Tavernor is admirable. He's truly a man's man in all the ways a man ought to be a man. Yet, I could not bring myself to either like or dislike him. At no point did I become emotionally invested in the things that happened to and around him. In short, as a protagonist, Mack falls flat. Lacking the kind of depth and complexity that makes fictional characters feel real in my mind, he is like soda pop that has lost its fizz.
Had Mr. Shaw given The Palace of Eternity the extent of thought and care it deserved, the book could have turned out to be a true phenomenon. It is, indeed, still an excellent and worthy read. Even so, I feel it's almost a tragic waste of the author's very clear intellect and truly wondrous imagination.
This is my first encounter with the fiction of the British cosmologist Fred Hoyle. A prominent astronomer with a long tenure at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, Hoyle is perhaps best known for a slew of rather controversial opinions. For instance, Dr. Hoyle has rejected the idea of the Big Bang, and for many years has promoted the idea that life on Earth began in the stars.
Yes, he is an eccentric, but Dr. Hoyle is quite a genius, really; a thoroughly unique figure and someone I would really enjoy meeting.
Dr. Hoyle is also a prominent science fiction writer. In collaboration with his son Geoffrey, he recently authored Rockets in Ursa Major, a thoroughly entertaining, if too brief, science fiction yarn reminiscent of the sort of thing which John W. Campbell might have published. If your kind of space fiction involves brilliant and fearless scientists battling bueaucracy and evil aliens, Rockets in Ursa Major is your kind of book.
I kind of giggled a bit when I realized the main characterof Ursa Major is a deeply accomplished and slightly eccentric scientist and that the book is told in first person – do you look in the mirror a bit too much, Dr. Hoyle? As the story begins, the genius Dr. Richard Warboys is at a very boring professional conference when surprising news pops up on the telly: a spaceship which has been lost for thirty years has suddenly reappeared, streaming towards Earth’s atmosphere.
Only a brilliant scientist can help the ship land! And only a brilliant scientist can help discover the ship's great secret of invading alien species! And only a brilliant scientist can fly a seeming suicide mission to battle those invaders! And only a brilliant scientist can figure out a complicated way to use solar flares to defeat those invaders! And, you guessed it, only a brilliant scientist can then fly towards the sun, release those solar flares and save our planet.
Are you shocked if I tell you that scientist's name is Dr. Dick Warboys?
So, yes, the plot of Rockets in Ursa Major is pure wish fulfillment: the 54-year-old Dr. Hoyle cast a genius scientist aged in his mid-30s as the man who basically singlehandedly saves Earth. And it’s all rather silly.
Dr. Hoyle
But Rockets is all tremendously fun, too, in that marvelously light-hearted way one might imagine Campbell publishing next to a Heinlein juvie or van Vogt brain-twister. I’m not sure if it’s the influence of the younger Mr. Hoyle the author, but this book moves at a kinetic speed, with almost too many twists and turns in its breathless style (I’m not sure why we needed a sequence in which Dr. Warboys breaks into the research college by stealing a boat and running through tunnels, for instance).
At the end of this book, the Hoyles hint at the possibility of a sequel. I would enjoy another thoroughly light-hearted and thoroughly indulgent visit with Dr. Warboys.
John Brunner is one of the most prolific science fiction authors of the latter half of this decade, to the extent that it sometimes feels hard to keep up with his work. I’ve always enjoyed Brunner’s work, which often manages to tread a fine line between smart concepts and exciting action. And I was a huge fan of his grand step into literary science fiction, the remarkable Stand on Zanzibar.
This month sees the release of a new Brunner, called Timescoop, but the zines are already reporting the autumn '69 release of another Brunner novel, called The Jagged Orbit [Actually, it's already been released—the Autumn release is a re-release (ed.)]. Based on the blurbs, Orbit sounds like another book of strong literary ambitions.
Timescoop, however, is not a novel of strong literary ambitions. It’s a goof, a novel in which Brunner played with some clever ideas and delivered a quick little satirical piece. Timescoop clears the palette between works of deep seriousness.
Our protagonist here is one Harold Freitas III, a self-obsessed inheritor of his family’s fortunes who is looking to live up to the legacy his father, recently deceased, has left to him.
Fortunately for Freitas, an amazing invention called the Timescoop has been invented, and he has control of it. The Timescoop can bring anything forward in time and allow it to live in the book’s present. Thus the Venus de Milo and Hermes of Praxiteles can exist – with their original arms – and so can people.
Imagine the Hermes – with arms – in a private house near you!
Looking to make a mark with publicity, Freitas brings forward nine of his ancestors in time and brings them to a family reunion broadcast throughout the galaxy. After all, men of the past were men of great virtue and character and the future world can learn from their insights. But… as one character states prophetically… “How much do we really know about these people? One always looks at the past through rose-colored –"
So Freitas brings forward nine of his ancestors – a steadfast medieval king and a medieval Crusader and a 17th century British merchant and a fire-and-brimstone preacher and a female cowboy, among others – and readies them to face the world and make Freitas famous.
But be careful what you wish for, and especially be careful what you create. Because these ancestors are not the good people Freitas wishes they could be. They are pederasts and nymphomaniacs, gluttons who are covered with filth and who have ancient racist attitudes. One even indulged in the slave trade.
Mr Brunner
Most of this is played for laughs, and it’s easy to imagine someone like Peter Sellers or Alec Guiness playing all the roles in a film adaptation, taking on silly voices while someone like Peter Cook keeps rolling his eyes at the chaos.
But there is also a small element of satire, a small joy at bringing down the rich and pompous and allowing their obsessions to blow up in their faces.
Timescoop is another quick little novel, and at a mere 156 pages it doesn’t wear out its welcome. But this is clearly Brunner relaxing and doing a small warmup for his next literary work.
In my first conversations with the Traveller, I was warned that some of the works I would cover here would be unpleasant. This is my first, and it does not even have the decency to be memorably terrible (Ole Doc Methuselah by L. Ron Hubbard), or bland yet competent (One Against Herculeum by Jerry Sohl). Light A Last Candle is knockoff Heinlein, wrapped in knockoff Doc Smith and shot through with attempts at imitating Bester.
Our main character is one of the few remaining humans on a planet. There’s “Mods” — modified humans — which our main character doesn’t like. Like a low-energy Gully Foyle, he doesn’t like anyone or anything very much. He doesn’t have a name, our main character, nor does “the girl”. She’s lucky, as all other female figures are called Breeders. The character our main character can stand the most is an old, fatherly figure simply referred to as Rutherford. They are the only two original humans, Free Men, left on the planet, which is mostly under the mind control of the Aliens, and their Mod slaves…or are they?
Social commentary is attempted, as are twists, and like in The Devil’s Own by Nora Lofts, the revelations provided to the reader are ultimately shallow. The more they appear, the more insignificant they are revealed to be. The Devil’s Own is in fact a rather poor comparison; since that is a fine book. In truth, the story Light A Last Candle most reminds me of is Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), with its clunky twists, bland characterization, pervasive male chauvinism, and failing to convey travel in a story that is ostensibly all about traveling. Distance is compressed like an accordion, details are skipped over, days pass offhandedly when we could be learning more about anything we are reading. This ultimately becomes a paucity of both showing and telling, which certainly is new to me. Like Star Man’s Son by Andre Norton, the book centers around bringing the reader to encounter different cultures in this alien future. Like The Weirdstone of Brisigamen by Alan Garner, that travel also takes place in tight, dangerous caves. In both of those books, however, distance and time were characters in themselves. You felt the pressure of travel, the hard work the characters put in, their sense of purpose.
The only talent that really appears throughout the work is a pervasive sense of disgust, of fleshy horror that I know William Hope Hodgeson in The Derelict and Arthur Machen in The Three Imposters did better sixty years ago. I think it's this author's first book, but his grouchiness is beyond his years.
I am writing this review as quickly as possible, because after finishing this book less than a half an hour ago, it is rapidly leaving my mind. I have filled this page with references to other works, so that the reader may enjoy books much better than this one.
I've talked about my inexplicable interest in movies about motorcycle gangs a couple of times before. Naturally, when I heard about a new biker film that's drawing a lot of attention, I had to take a look.
The fact that it won an award at the prestigious Cannes film festival gave me a hint that this wasn't going to be the usual trashy B movie about guys on choppers getting into fights.
Let's meet our two main characters. I hesitate to call them heroes, because the first thing we see them do is buy cocaine in Mexico, then sell it to a rich guy in a limousine. They hide the cash in a plastic tube inside the gas tank of one of the motorcycles.
Peter Fonda, who produced and co-wrote the film, plays Wyatt, often known as Captain America. He usually plays it cool, not saying much, keeping a calm demeanor most of the time.
Dennis Hopper, who directed and co-wrote the movie, plays Billy. He's much more emotional, often giggling and playing the clown, sometimes nervous and jumpy.
Once these two have their grub stake, they head out on a journey from Los Angeles to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Along the way they meet all kinds of people.
The first encounter is with a friendly rancher and his family. So far, everything seems just fine. You can almost forget that these two are drug dealers.
After riding through some really gorgeous scenery in the American West, often accompanied by groovy rock music, they pick up a hitchhiker. He's on his way to a hippie commune in the desert.
The place is full of young adults who have dropped out of society. There are also lots of little kids. To add to the chaos, there's also a troupe of mimes and other performers.
We see folks sow seeds of grain in what looks like bare ground. Billy predicts that the commune is doomed to fail, while Wyatt is more optimistic. After skinny dipping with a couple of young women, they move on.
In some little town they join a parade in progress, just for fun. That gets them in trouble with the cops. Thrown in jail for parading without a license, they meet the film's most memorable character.
Jack Nicholson plays the town lawyer, who's in the drunk tank. You may remember him as the masochistic dental patient in The Little Shop Of Horrors. He was hilarious in that low budget comedy, and he's as much of a hoot in this role. I predict he'll continue to steal every film in which he appears as a fine comic actor.
After Nicholson gets the two bikers out of jail, he joins them on their trip to the Big Easy. It seems he's heard about a fancy bordello in New Orleans and would like to visit the place. Along the way they try to get a bite to eat at a little diner in some other small town.
The young women present admire them. They dare each other to ask them for a ride on their bikes.
The men in the diner aren't so friendly. They openly insult the trio. Wisely, the three quickly head out the door, refusing to take the women along. Despite their caution, things don't work out well. Let's just say that Nicholson won't make it to New Orleans.
Wyatt and Billy wind up at the brothel, where they engage the services of two prostitutes. As far as I can tell, they don't actually have sex with them. Instead, they go outside to join the Mardi Gras celebration, then head out to the famous above ground cemetery of the Big Easy.
Among the tombs, the four share a dose of LSD Wyatt picked up from the hitchhiker. This leads to our mandatory acid trip sequence, making use of all kinds of special effects in an attempt to portray the psychedelic experience.
Those of you who are like me, and rush out to see movies about today's longhaired, drug-using nonconformists (hipsploitation?), may be reminded of The Trip from a couple of years ago. That one also starred Fonda and Hopper, and has a screenplay credited to Nicholson. Like Easy Rider, The Trip uses visual distortion to convey the experience of dropping acid. (Taking LSD, for you squares.)
The film ends in a melodramatic fashion. Suffice to say that trouble arrives in the form of two guys in a pickup truck.
I said that Fonda and Hopper wrote the film, along with Terry Southern (best known for his work on Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) but I doubt there was much of a script at all. Much of the action and dialogue seems improvised. The mood varies, seemingly at random, from peaceful to comic to tragic.
There's not a lot of plot. Much of the running time consists of the characters riding on their motorcycles with loud music on the soundtrack. (In particular, the rousing number Born to Be Wild is destined to be played at full volume by lots of people on fast bikes or in fast cars.)
The cinematography, whether it be of desert wilderness, small towns, or the Big Easy, is excellent. Some may consider Easy Rider to be shapeless, but I found it to be an intriguing portrait of the counterculture in opposition to the mainstream of society. (See the recent article by my esteemed colleague Kris Vyas-Myall for a more profound discussion of the theme.)
A few days ago, folks in the Soviet Union must have been surprised to see nudity on their television sets. Nude scenes from the controversial new play Oh, Calcutta! and photographs of sex magazines appeared on one of the Soviet Central Television networks.
The intent was not to titillate the audience (although that may have been an accidental side effect) but to point out the decadence of American culture.
The Soviet station's logo. You didn't expect me to show you the nudity, did you?
What does this have to do with the latest issue of Fantastic? Keep your hat (and other clothing) on and you'll find out.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
As usual, the cover is (ahem) borrowed from a German publication.
The original always looks better.
Editorial, by Ted White
The new editor introduces himself. He relates how he failed to produce a fancy, expensive magazine called STELLAR Stories of Imagination. Some of the stories intended for that stillborn publication will appear in Fantastic and Amazing. He also promises to provide what he calls different stories in the magazines. We'll see.
No rating.
What's Your Excuse, by Alexis Panshin
Here's a tale that was supposed to appear in STELLAR. A professor plays a trick on a graduate student who is in his late twenties, but who appears to be in his teens. The student has his own secret up his sleeve.
It's hard to say too much about this brief yarn, which depends entirely on its premise. Is it different? Yeah, I guess so. Is it good? Well, maybe not. A trivial oddity.
Two stars.
The Briefing, by Randall Garrett
Another very short story. The narrator is aboard a spaceship. He's about to be sent down to a planet in disguise, in order to shorten an impending Dark Ages.
Without giving away anything, let's just say that you may be able to predict the twist ending. Extra points for being a bit of a dangerous vision, at least.
Three stars.
Emphyrio (Part Two of Two), by Jack Vance
Taking up half the magazine is the conclusion to this new novel.
Illustrations by Bruce Jones (obviously.)
We first met our hero, Ghyl Tarvoke, with his head literally cut open. His brain controlled by those holding him prisoner, he was forced to tell the truth.
This led us into a long flashback, from Ghyl's childhood until he decided to run for mayor under the pseudonym of Emphyrio, the name of a semi-legendary hero.
Part Two begins with Ghyl losing the election, but coming in third. That's enough to draw the attention of the authorities. Ghyl's father was already in trouble with them, and the situation only gets worse.
After the death of his father, Ghyl agrees to join his friends in a plot to steal a starship from the Lords and Ladies who rule his world. He makes them promise not to do any killing or kidnapping or pillaging after this single crime. Don't expect any honor among thieves.
Ghyl winds up leading a group of Lords and Ladies through the wilderness of another planet. The place is full of dangerous animals and people.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
He is eventually captured (leading back to our opening scene of interrogation) and sentenced to exile. However, there are a lot more adventures ahead, as he discovers the truth about the Lords and Ladies, and about the real Emphyrio.
Last time I said that the novel was very good, but maybe a bit leisurely and episodic. It turns out that incidents I thought were of little importance have great significance. I underestimated the intricacy of the author's tightly woven plot. At least I acknowledged his ability to create complex, imaginative worlds and cultures.
Five stars.
On to the reprints! They all come from old issues of Fantastic. Apparently the new editor prefers to avoid taking things from Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, which may be a good thing.
Let's Do It For Love, by Robert Bloch
The November/December 1953 issue is the source of this farce.
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
A guy invents some stuff that makes folks love everybody. The narrator is a public relations agent who tries to promote the wonderful chemical. Too bad nobody wants universal siblinghood.
Anonymous illustration.
There's a touch of satire, of course, but this is mostly just a silly romp, full of wacky jokes and tomfoolery. If that's your thing, fine. The way the story deals with the inventor's shrewish wife may not please too many readers.
Two stars.
To Fit the Crime, by Richard Matheson
This ironic tale comes from the November/December 1952 issue.
Cover art by Barye Phillips.
A curmudgeonly poet insults his relations in creative ways as he lies dying. In the afterlife, he faces an appropriate fate.
Illustration by David Stone.
There's not much to this except for the poet's way with words. The unpleasant fellow's version of perdition may cause some amusement.
Two stars.
The Star Dummy, by Anthony Boucher
The Fall 1952 issue provides this lighthearted story.
Cover art by Leo Summers.
A ventriloquist imagines that his dummy talks to him. Oddly, that's not really what the story is about. It actually deals with a goofy-looking alien, newly arrived on Earth, looking for his vanished mate. The extraterrestrial and the ventriloquist wind up helping each other.
Illustration by Tom Beecham.
This is mostly a comedy, of a very gentle sort. One unusual aspect of the story is that it also deals with the ventriloquist's religious faith. There's some discussion of science fiction itself as well.
Slightly eccentric, moderately entertaining.
Three stars.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Ted White
Leiber discusses three new novels that add explicit sex to science fiction plots. (I told you I'd get to that!) For the record, the trio consists of The Image of the Beast by Philip Jose Farmer, The Endless Orgy by Richard E. Geis, and Season of the Witch by Hank Stine. Leiber gives them mixed reviews, but welcomes the new frankness with which they describe sexual behavior.
The editor offers a long, glowing review of Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny. I liked it, too.
No rating.
The Hungry, by Robert Sheckley
Back to reprints. This one comes from June 1954 issue.
Cover art by Ernest Schroeder.
A malevolent thing preys upon the negative emotions and physical suffering of a young married couple. Only the baby of the family and the pet cat can see it. The infant does what it can to help.
Illustration by Sanford Kossin.
Told from the viewpoint of the baby, this is an offbeat little story. Minor, but nicely done.
Three stars.
The Worth of a Man,by Henry Slesar
The June 1959 issue supplies this grim tale.
Cover art by Ed Valigursky.
A veteran of a future war has much of his body replaced with metal parts. He talks to a psychiatrist about his sense that somebody is out to hurt him.
Of course, his supposed paranoia is more than a delusion. What happens to him is disturbing, which is apparently the author's intent. I found it to be a powerful and all-too-plausible chiller.
Four stars.
Fantasy Fandom, by Ted White and Bill Meyers
I wasn't even going to discuss, let alone rate, this new column from the editor, in which he intends to reprint writings from fanzines. However, the first one knocked me out.
First published in Void, White's own fanzine, the essay by Meyers relates the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien to the author's childhood. It's a thoughtful, elegantly written piece, not so much about Tolkien as it is about the way that our early years influence how we react to literature.
I may be prejudiced in its favor, because Meyers grew up in the Chattanooga area, where I currently reside.
Five stars.
The Naked Truth
That was a very mixed bag of an issue. One excellent novel, one excellent essay, stories old and new ranging from below average to above average. You might want to skip some of the lesser pieces and go see a play instead.
The cast of Oh, Calcutta! You didn't expect me to show you the nudity, did you?
We are broadcasting LIVE coverage of the Apollo 11 mission (with a 55 year time slip), so mark your calendars. From now until the 24th, it's (nearly) daily coverage, with big swathes of coverage for launch, landing, moonwalk, and splashdown.
If you, like me, are a regular watcher of Rowan and Martin's Laugh In, you might be excused for having a rather simple view of the current situation in the Middle East. According to that humorous variety show, Israel devastated the armies of its Arab neighbors in June 1967, and (to quote another comedian, Tom Lehrer), "They've hardly bothered us since then."
It's true that the forces of the diminutive Jewish state took on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, like David against Goliath, smiting armies and air forces in just six days, ultimately ending up in occupation of lands that comprise more area than Israel itself.
But all has not been quiet…on any front. Hardly had the war ended that both Israelis and Arabs began trading significant shots. A commando raid here, a bombing mission there, a naval clash yonder—none of it rising to the level of a mass incursion, but nevertheless, a constant hail of explosives. Last summer, Egyptian President Nasser, eager to recover prestige he lost in the '67 debacle, declared a "War of Attrition". The fighting has escalated ever since.
Just the other day, the Egyptians and Israelis exchanged artillery fire across the Suez Canal—the current de facto border between the nations—for twelve hours. Two Israelis were wounded; the Egyptians are keeping mum about any of their losses. Last month, Israeli jets buzzed Nasser's house in Cairo, which Jerusalem claims is the reason for the recent sacking of the Egyptian air force chief and also Egypt's air defense commander.
Israeli mobile artillery shells Egyptian positions
The United Nations views this conflict with increasing concern, worried that it might expand, go hot, and possibly involve bigger powers. The Security Council this week is working on a resolution calling for an arms embargo against Israeli unless the state abandon its plans to formally annex East Jerusalem, taken from Jordan two years ago.
It seems unlikely that the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) or Prime Minister Golda Meir will buckle to foreign pressure, however. Nor can we expect that President Nasser, Jordan's King Hussein, or the coup-rattled government of Syria to be particularly tractable either. The beat goes on.
Same ol'
One generally looks to science fiction for a refreshing departure from the real world, but as the latest issue of Galaxy shows, sometimes you're better off just reading the funnies.
A while back, John Boston noted that Dominic Flandry, an Imperial Officer serving during the twilight of the intragalactic Polesotechnic League, has become a James Bond type, or maybe a Horatio Hornblower. Basically, he's Anderson's stock character when he wants some kind of adventure story set against the impending Dark Ages of his interstellar setting. The results are a mixed bag since the tales are less about Flandry and more about whatever nifty astronomical phenomenon Anderson wants to showcase this month.
This time, Flandry, who has just been promoted Lieutenant j.g. On the backwater planet of Irumclaw, a two-bit crime boss named Leon Ammon offers him a million if he'll go out of his way to survey a planet reputedly rich in heavy metals. Flandry takes the gig, and since Ammon insists on having one of his mooks accompany him, Flandry opts to have his chaperone be female. The trip is more fun that way, you see.
The journey takes us to the hostile world of Wayland, a tidally locked moon of a big gas giant. Airless, except for when the sun sublimes the methane and carbon dioxide ice that comprises Wayland's surface, it nevertheless (and surprisingly) teems with life. Flandry's scout, Jake, is waylaid by birds and forced to land. Now, Flandry and his companion, Djana, must trek across the frozen wastes of Wayland to reach an abandoned, sentient mining computer, which just might have the facilities needed to repair Flandry's vessel.
Along the way, we learn that the hostile "life forms" are really robots, and that the old computer just might be responsible for Wayland's unique "ecosystem"…
Unlike a lot of Anderson's work (and certainly the last Flandry story), this piece was pretty interesting. Sure, the characters are paper thin, but again, this story isn't meant to showcase character. If you want that kind of story in the same setting, try "A Tragedy of Errors" from last year.
Three stars.
Starhunger, by Jack Wodhams
by uncredited
Starships have been plying the local constellations for decades, but despite the investigation of 31 systems, nothing even vaguely Earthlike has been found. One last expedition goes out with nought but a forlorn hope. Even with three systems on the schedule, it is doubtful that the unlucky streak will end—especially since the scientists on board, who want to meticulously evaluate every inhospitable rock, are at odds with the star hungry Captain, who wants to find the next Earth.
This is not a great story, consisting mostly of repetition ad nauseum of the scientist/captain struggle. However, I did like a couple of things:
1) The notion that terrestrial planets are actually rare. That's not a common theme in science fiction, and I feel it more likely than the converse.
2) The conflict between a simple, focused mission and a balanced, scientific endeavor is something the Ranger Moon program suffered from, with Rangers 3-5 failing largely because they tried to do too much. Once NASA focused on just hitting the Moon with a camera, they had three out of four successes.
Speaking of ongoing characters, John Grimes, the spacefaring alter-ego of author (Australian Merchant Marine Captain) A. Bertram Chandler, gets another chapter of his life fleshed out in this tale. Well, sort of.
Lieutenant Grimes has gotten his first command: a Serpent class courier boat with a crew of six. On this particular mission, he has been tasked with transporting a VIP. Mr. Alberto is a strange person, an extremely talented chef, but also something of a cipher and very physically fit. After Alberto is delivered to the planet of Doncaster, his unusual nature is revealed.
There's not much to this story, and there's no SFnal content at all—at least none that isn't discardable. It could have taken place in the '60s as easily as the 3060's.
A high two stars.
When They Openly Walk, by Fritz Leiber
by Jack Gaughan
Ages ago, Fritz wrote a cat's-eye view story of Gummitch the suburban feline artist called Kreativity for Kats. In this long-awaited sequel, we follow Gummitch and his adopted little sibling, Psycho the kitten, as they interact with their family and a bonafide UFO.
It's an adorable piece, spotlighting the inner life of housecats (and demonstrating what I've known my whole life: that cats are clearly Earth's other sentient race). It reminds me a bit of an episode of Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro I caught in Japan last year, in which cats take over a village and are (properly) revered.
Four stars.
Life Matter, by Bruce McAllister
by Jack Gaughan
In the far future, mankind, mutated by hard radiation, has developed a sentient heart. Normally, there is an Operation for humans who reach the 21st year of life, the year that the heart begins communicating with the mind in earnest. The biological heart is replaced with a silent, artificial pump.
Some refuse to lose their heart, pursuing a life of coronary freedom. But is it really the romantic prospect literature would have us believe?
Like most of Bruce's work, it's a lyrical, metaphorical piece, but not quite as moving as he'd like it to be. Fans of Bradbury may be more impressed than I was.
This is a kind of mood piece reminiscent of James Blish's "Okie" stories. In a flurry of starflight, the cream and even the bulk of humanity has left its homeworld, leaving behind a wretched refuse of humans and robots. The folk left are essentially poor Appalachians. The people, as the robots call themselves, are the antiquated and damaged specimens. Crying is told from the point of view of one of the robots, a farmer, who is at once the lowest of the low, and also the highest.
Fine but incomplete. Three stars.
For Your Information (Galaxy Magazine, August 1969), by Willy Ley
Our German expat educator explains how ELDO (the European Space Agency) is planning a Jupiter mission. There are special considerations like how to power the probe so far from the Sun, and how massive the craft can be depending on the rocket.
Last time began the continuation of the story of Paul Atreides, now Paul Muad'dib, Mahdi of a galaxy-wide crusade against the old Imperial order. Paul, now thirty, sits unsteadily on the Arrakeen throne—endless factions are arrayed against him, and his favored Fremen consort has borne no heir, this the deliberate result of being unwittingly sterilized by Irulan, an Imperial princess, and Paul's other consort.
Foreseeing that a child of Irulan's will spell Paul's doom, he avoids consummating their marriage. On the other hand, this makes him vulnerable to the allures of his…sister. Yes, Alia, born a saint and fully sapient from being in the womb of her mother when she overdosed on the precognition-enabling spice "melange". She's 15, fights mechanical foes in the nude, and is excessively nubile. As it turns out, an incestuous coupling is exactly what Gaius Helen Moiham, Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit (the organization that is trying to dominate the galaxy through selective breeding) wants, as it foretells ultimate genetic victory.
Meanwhile, members of the Navigation Guild, whose members use spice to navigate hyperspace, want to break the Arrakeen monopoly on the stuff, so they're trying to sequester elements of the Dune planet's biology to start up their own production.
In a final twist, the resurrected form of Duncan Idaho, one of Paul's old sword-companions, begins an affair with Alia. But this ghoule, who goes by the name Hayt, says he is to be the intrument of Paul's destruction, so maybe this isn't a great development either.
It's all so glacial and pretentious and filled with things that rub me the wrong way: aristocracy, eugenics, fantasy masking as science fiction. (And it's printed in smaller type face to make it both less readable and more dense.) I really don't like this book. Frankly, I'd give it one star, but I guess I appreciate how hard Herbert is trying.
On the other hand, John Norman tries, too, and we don't even review his books anymore.
Two stars, but I'm guessing the work as a whole is going to get one when it's all over. Bleah.
A vignette about first contact in a time when humans and robots have become one and the same species.
Kind of pointless. Two stars.
The New New Frontier
Fred Pohl was editor of Galaxy for almost a decade, taking over from H. L. Gold when he got sick and couldn't do it anymore. Now he's out, and I'm still waiting for the shoe to drop: to see how different Galaxy gets under the new regime of Ejler Jakobsson. The biggest new thing is the Dune serial, but Pohl might have bought that anyway. It's not as if Herbert has been absent from the mag. I guess we'll see where things are in a year.
All I can say is I hope things get better. As with the war in the Levant, the status quo is getting us nowhere fast…
If the title for this article sounds familiar, it's because you've heard the (just released) single from John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "bed in". The Beatle and his new bride are living examples of Counter Culture. But just what is "Counter Culture"? Theodore Roszak has thoughts…and Kris has thoughts on those thoughts!
By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall
All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned…
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'
The Times They Are A-Changin', Bob Dylan
A spectre is haunting the campuses of the West, the spectre of the counter culture. All the powers of the Technocrats have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre.
Wait, you may well ask, I thought this was a contemporary review, not a poor pastiche of a 120-year-old piece of political economy? However, this is the central speculation of Theodor Roszak in his latest book: that these are the core oppositional forces of our time.
But what is the Technocratic Society and what is the Counter Culture?
Everything you think, do and say, is in the pill you took today
In the case of the former, Roszak sees Technocracy as the governing by experts from a certain class with the aim of a routinised control over human interaction. This can be observed in our democratic political system where the two main parties in most Western nations usually are not concerned with creating vastly different Utopian systems. More often, it is a competition of seeming the most competent to deliver state run social services, defence and economic growth. Even in the Soviet Union, there is not much talk these days of instituting a worldwide proletarian revolution, compared with speeches on improving the efficiency of grain harvests or increasing housing stocks.
Robert McNamara, Technocrat Extraordinaire
The technocrats themselves are rarely the presidents or prime ministers; they are merely the salesmen. Roszak sees them as the upper-level bureaucrats or the studious quiet men of the cabinets. Robert McNamara is a prime example of this tendency, moving between running Ford Motor Company, the World Bank and the US Defence Department and applying the same philosophy, one he outlined in his recent book, The Essence of Security:
…the real threat to democracy comes, not from overmanagement, but from undermanagement. To undermanage reality is not to keep it free. It is simply to let some other than reason shape reality…Vital decision making, particularly in policy matters. This is partly, though not completely, what the top is for.
You may well ask, what is the problem with this? Well, Roszak outlines the tecnocratic viewpoint thusly:
1. All problems are purely technical in nature, and, therefore, if it is not technical, it cannot be a problem. Depression -> More Pills. Rioting in the cities -> More police.
2. Their end is always the right end and any friction against this is a lack of communication. This can be solved by the Marketplace of Ideas.
3. However, the only people who can truly understand these principles and implement them are this technocratic elite. And, it just so happens, that a good sign that you are one of those qualified to understand these issues is that you are already a part of the governmental or corporate structure.
Want Sexual Promiscuity? Buy A Boat!
And he does not see New Authoritarianism as only occurring in government business but creeping into all aspects of life. Take the example of Playboy, which appears at first to be approving of sexual permissiveness; but, in reality, the articles and photos create an association between sex and wealth for men, whilst reducing women to men’s playthings: making half the population repress themselves whilst striving to reach these elite heights, whilst the other half become accepting of this attitude by the rich and powerful. This viewpoint can be seen again in the trial of Lady Chatterly’s Lover where the argument of the prosecution was:
Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?
In fact, Roszak goes further, to state there is a mystification that has happened in the technocracy. Where, in the best Orwellian manner, language is used to obfuscate reality. Where the bombing in Vietnam is referred to as an “escalation” or dictatorial communist regimes refer to themselves as “democratic republics”. If an individual challenges this, the technocrats will merely dismiss them as not understanding the complexity of the issue.
So, what is the solution for this? Well that comes in its opposition.
God is Alive, Magic is Afoot
Allen Ginsberg protesting to legalise marijuana
Counter Culture appears to be derived from the term “contraculture”, defined by Yinger in 1960 as:
wherever the normative system of a group contains, as a primary element, a theme of conflict with the values of the total society, where personality variables are directly involved in the development and maintenance of the group's values, and wherever its norms can be understood only by reference to the relationships of the group to a surrounding dominant culture.
This, though, is almost a decade older and could be seen as merely a standard part of society, like the Bright Young People of the Jazz Age. And the young have usually been the radicals. For example, in 17th Century England, many of the radical protests were led by the London Apprentice Boys, the militant student movement of the day. So what is the difference between the rebellions of yesteryear and the counter culture of today?
The difference is two-fold. First off, the traditional left-right axis does not really create an opposition to technocracy but a support of it. The communist, the fascist and the liberal all accept the need for rational efficiency and control of life by an elite, whether that be the bureaucrat, the camp commandant or the head of a Fortune 500 company. So even the most aggressive of demagogues are no longer opposing the technocracy, merely wishing to be a part of it.
The Disquieting Duckling by Asger Jorn
Secondly, the theories behind the opposition are not predominantly coming down from the elite but up from artists. Early examples include Situationists like Asger Jorn or Beat Poets like Allen Ginsberg, who themselves draw more from the tradition of Blake and Children’s Art than Joyce and Van Gogh. See for example Ginsberg’s Howl:
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Protest by Students For A Democratic Society
The reason, Roszak claims, this opposition is taking root within the youth movements is also a feature of the technocracy. As the bureaucracy of business has grown bigger and the need for rigid routine labour has diminished, intellectual thought is more valuable among workers. Therefore, experts like Dr. Spock have pushed parents away from regimented childcare towards exploration, and governments have moved children away from the factory floor to longer and longer periods of education. When this kind of student is suddenly ordered to cut his hair and put on a uniform to join the army or the corporation, he naturally rebels against it.
Whilst Roszak acknowledges there is no manifesto of the nebulous group but that what is required is:
…the subversion of the scientific world view, with its entrenched commitment to an egocentric and cerebral mode of consciousness. In its place, there must be a new culture in which the non-intellective capacities of the personalities – those capacities that take fire from visionary splendor and the experience of human communion – become the arbiters of the good, the true and the beautiful.
How will this be achieved? One area Roszack has little time for is the overuse of psychedelics. Whilst he acknowledges they may have use for skilled practitioners:
There is nothing whatever in common between a man of…experience and intellectual discipline sampling mescaline, and a fifteen-year-old tripper whiffing airplane glue.
In fact, he sees the current expansion of psychotropic drugs as having more in common with the technocracy, promising a quick granting of insight that is only superficial and built on a few getting rich whilst causing unhappiness to the many. No different to the barbiturates or alcoholic beverages marketed to the masses.
Protestors putting flowers in the guns of military police
Roszak goes through a number of different facets of the counter culture and their opposition to the technocratic rationality, from anti-schools to trying to levitate the Pentagon. I have to wonder sometimes if the free-wheeling rejection of rationality extends to his writing. I consider myself reasonably well-read and knowledgeable, but I found myself reaching for dictionaries and other reference material (or just plain scratching my head) trying to understand what he was talking about. He tends to work best in generalities, when he is (to steal a phrase for Kant) critiquing pure reason. When he goes into specifics, such as an entire chapter looking at how Marcuse and Brown attempt to reconcile Marx and Freud, Roszak moves away from insightful investigation to navel-gazing.
He spends some time comparing this movement to nascent Christianity and, by extension, suggesting how this movement over time could change the mode of Western thought. There is one problem I have with this, one he even acknowledges in passing: the fact that people enter and depart with ease and that there are a lot of tourists involved. This is not just the more egregious examples, like Burberry selling expensive imitations of Chinese Communist Army uniforms. Mick Jagger, an LSE drop-out with a public drug bust under his belt seems like the perfect candidate for the Counter Culture. But, whilst he may sing that “the time is right for violent revolution” or “my name is a number, a piece of plastic film”, the group is reportedly planning to tour the US with major venues and able to charge high ticket prices, and he seems just as at home among the accoutrements of wealth as any banker.
Overall, "The Making of a Counter Culture" is interesting as polemic and critique, for, as Roszak puts it:
What is of supreme importance is that each of us should become a person, a whole and integrated person in whom there is manifested a sense of human variety genuinely experienced, a sense of having come to terms with a reality that is awesomely vast.
But as prophecy? That is for the young to show us.
Every Sunday, the New York Times publishes a list of the best selling books of the last week. It tends to be a mix of high-brow, literary novels and potboilers—especially spy thrillers—along with the occasional gothic romance and a mystery once in a blue moon. But to the best of my knowledge, it’s never had a science fiction novel prior to this year. As of the latest list, it has not one but two, both of which have been reviewed here at the Journey. There’s even a third that could be said to have sfnal elements if you stand on your head and squint a bit.
In its tenth week on the list and slipping one spot to number six is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Of course, Vonnegut is none too happy about his work being labelled science fiction. Meanwhile, Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain hit the list for the first time in eighth place. The potential third novel is Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor, which seems to be set on an Earth exactly like ours with a slightly different history or on a counter-Earth on the other side of the sun. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much science fiction in the plot, so I’m not really inclined to include it.
Does this mean our beloved genre has finally hit the big time? Probably not. As I said, Vonnegut doesn’t want to associate with us, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Crichton thinks of his book as a thriller. (I could be wrong, but that’s how it’s being marketed.) 2001 did all right at the box office, but was panned by critics (including some SF critics). Star Trek has been canceled, leaving Land of the Giants—a show so bad it makes Lost in Space look smart—the closest thing to SF on television. But just maybe the boundaries are weakening, even if we wind up having to sneak in the back door with those who won’t acknowledge us.
Sophomore or sophomoric?
The second issue of Mercury Publishing’s second attempt at Venture SF is on the stands. How is it? Well, before we crack it open, let’s look at the outside.
More geometric shapes and color washes. Art by Bert Tanner
If the last issue could be mistaken for a horror magazine, this one could easily be taken for a mystery. That’s probably the eye. Dell used to use an eye looking through a keyhole as the logo for their mysteries (and maybe still do; it’s been a while since I bought one), and this is very reminiscent of that. The best thing about the outside of the magazine continues to be the title logo.
The League of Grey-eyed Women, by Julius Fast
Diagnosed with terminal cancer, a desperate Jack Freeman will grasp at any straw. A Canadian doctor has had some small success injecting rats with artificial DNA, but his studies are nowhere close to being ready for human experimentation, no matter how much Jack begs. His beautiful, pale-eyed assistant, however, is willing to bend the rules, since she and the many women with gray eyes she knows have their own agenda. The treatment may cure Jack’s cancer, but it may kill him in other ways. It will certainly change his life.
This confused mess makes sense if you’ve read the book. Art by Bert Tanner
If the name Julius Fast sounds familiar, you may have read one of his well-received mysteries or one of his non-fiction books such as the one on Human Sexual Response by Masters and Johnson or last year’s book about the Beatles. (That or you’re thinking of Howard Fast, who wrote Spartacus, among many other things.) He’s not a complete stranger to SF, so he doesn’t make a lot of the mistakes that many mainstream authors do when trying to write our stuff.
That said, there are parts that don’t hold up if you think about them too hard. Some of those may be better propped up by things that were cut from this condensed version; others make no sense at all. Still, the narrative pulls the reader along, even despite Jack being a fairly unpleasant person early on. There’s enough here to make it worth reading, but you might want to see if your local library has a copy rather than spending your own money.
A solid three stars. The complete novel may come in a little higher, but probably not enough for another star.
Pollution seems to be in the news more every day. In the last two weeks alone, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire (and not for the first time) and a pesticide spill in the Rhine caused a state of emergency in West Germany and the Netherlands. What if there’s more behind it than just industrialization and a lack of concern by the government and the companies producing most of the pollution? It’s an old theme in SF, but Wellan has come up with a moderately new twist. Unfortunately, the telling is as dry and dusty as the two UN bureaucrats who are the story’s protagonists.
A high two stars.
Bradbury on Screen: A Saga Perseverance, by F.E. Edwards
It’s no secret that Ray Bradbury loves the movies. He’s written a few, and several of his stories have been adapted for the big screen, but many more have never made it into or out of production. Those that do have not served the source material well. This article follows the career of Bradbury and his work in Hollywood. Interesting but inconsequential.
Three stars.
Dragon in the Land, by Dean R, Koontz
Over the years, the focus of the military has shifted to biological warfare. A virus escaped from a Chinese lab and is so devastating it brought down the Communist government. The American doctor heading the Analysis and Immunization team that is part of the military intervention in the country must struggle with his own sense of inadequacy, which stems from growing up in the shadow of his Nobel laureate father.
Plumbing the depths of the bombed-out lab. Art uncredited
Imagine if The Andromeda Strain had ended badly and someone had to enter the ruins of the lab to find the original team’s notes; that’s the action of this story in a nutshell. I don’t think Koontz has cribbed from Crichton. The timing of the two stories makes that nearly impossible, but it implies that both men have done their homework.
I keep saying that Koontz is getting close to breaking through. This might be it. It’s certainly the best thing he’s written so far. If he can maintain this level of depth and quality, he’s going to be a big name.
Four stars.
Project Amnion, by Larry Eisenberg
A story in the style of a magazine article on efforts to teach children in the womb, it ignores countless aspects of human physiological development, not just in the brain, but the whole body. Eisenberg has apparently never met a baby. The nicest thing I can say bout this one is that at least it’s not an Emmett Duckworth story.
A low two stars.
Pithecanthropus Astralis, by Robert F. Young
A caveman questions the wisdom of the elders and breaks the rules. While this piece lacks the saccharine romantic elements that have often led me to complain about Young (who has been largely silent in the last few years), it also lacks the positive elements that his past stories have had.
Two stars.
Summing up
Elsewhere in the issue, there’s a weak Feghoot and a word scramble to see how well you know your -ologies. The condensed novel is decent, and there’s one other good story, but the rest is trivial to terrible. The cover is bad and not designed to sell the magazine, and there still isn’t much in the way of promotion over in F&SF. If things don’t turn around soon, this incarnation of Venture isn’t even going to last as long as the 10 issues of the first go-round. Let’s hope things improve in the fall.
And so, our longest Japan trip to date has wrapped up. We're still developing the many rolls of film we took, but here are some highlights from our vacation that included the cities Fukuoka, Amagi, Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, and Tokyo:
Nanami and The Young Traveler zoom down a slide in an eastern suburb of Nagoya
Nanami and her husband perform at a Nagoya jazz club
This is Nanami's baby, Wataru, and her mother-in-law, Haruko!
Lorelei poses in front of Ultraman, one of Japan's newest superheros
Lorelei has become smitten with kimono and yukata. We had to buy a new suitcase to fit them all (and the model trains Elijah bought)
The trouble back home
On the doorstep to my house was a big pile of mail that my neighbor has kept for me. In addition to sundry bills, the latest FAPA packet, and a handful of independent 'zines (including the latest from the James Doohan International Fan Club), there was the latest issue of Analog. Interest piqued by the lovely (as always) Freas cover, I tore into the mag before unpacking. Sadly, it was all downhill from there…
by Kelly Freas
… And Comfort to the Enemy, by Stanley Schmidt
When an exploration ship lands on a seemingly uninhabited planet, its rapacious, by-the-book commander rubs his hands with glee at the prospect of colonizing plunder. But it turns out there are intelligent natives—it's just that their "technology" is actually the fine control of all of their fellow creatures creating a sort of artificial Deathworld. When the invaders refuse to leave, they take a hostage, who they use as a communications go-between. And then they unleash a deadly plague which ravages first the explorer ship and then their entire race. How the colonizers get out of the predicament is somewhat clever.
by Kelly Freas
This one starts a bit slowly, and the explorers are all too human, even though they're supposed to be aliens. However, once it gets moving, it's pretty good, and you can sympathize with both the planet dwellers and the decimated invaders.
A pharmaceutical company stumbles upon a brain-booster pill. Unfortunately, it promotes eggheaded learning, but not application of this learning. As a result, the nation's economy stumbles as more and more citizens would rather discuss than do.
This is a pretty thinly veiled attack on academia and the intelligentsia, which surely must have tickled editor Campbell's reactionary heart.
Boy this one was a disappointment. We last saw Verge Foray in a nice little piece called Ingenuity, which featured a post-atomic world where humanity was divided into psionically adept but primitive and regressing "Novos" and scientific, but conservative, "Olsaperns." Starn was the hero of that story—a Novo with a rare gift of insight and intuition who managed to get in good with the technical Olsaperns.
This sequel story involves Starn's attempts to develop technology that will augment psionic powers such that they can rival or exceed the technology of the Olsaperns. Fine and well, but really, this is just one of Campbell's "scientific" articles on psionics with a fictional coating. I already find psi to be a pseudoscientific bore, but to try to add a veneer of respectability to it by invoking scientific trappings is distasteful in the extreme.
It's also a really boring tale. One star.
The Choice, by Keith Laumer
by Kelly Freas
A three-astronaut explorer team from Earth is abducted by mysterious aliens who offer each of them a choice of fates—all of them some form of execution. The two military members of the crew meet their fate boldly; the third is a far out civilian cat who doesn't cotton to his own extinction. As a result, the story has a happy ending.
There is serious Laumer and there is funny Laumer. Funny Laumer is usually the more trivial, and this is trivial funny Laumer.
Two stars.
The Man from R.O.B.O.T., by Harry Harrison
by Peter Skirka
A couple of years back, Harrison brought out the droll The Man from P.I.G., about a secret agent who goes undercover as a pig farmer. The twist was that the pigs weren't his livestock but his accomplices. In a similar vein, here we have the story of an agent who goes undercover as a robot salesman, but the robots are his accomplices. Of course, given that the robots are intelligent, and one of them is even designed to look like the agent, one wonders why there needs to be human involvement at all in this case.
Anyway, the agent is dispatched to a rancher planet whose women folk all seem to be locked up, and whose men folk are all paranoid violence freaks. Is it genetic? Or is it in the cattle?
I always get "funny" Harrison (frex "The Stainless Steel Rat") and "funny" Laumer (e.g. "Retief") mixed up. And here they're back to back! Now I'll never disentangle them.
Two stars.
The Empty Balloon, by Jack Wodhams
by Peter Skirka
Last up, a throwaway story about a diplomat who thwarts a telepathic interrogation machine. There's no real explanation as to how he does it, really, and most of the story exists to set up the lame ending.
Two stars.
Wow. What a wretched month for magazine fiction! With the exception of the atypically superlative New Worlds (3.6 stars), everything else was mediocre at best. IF managed to break the three star barrier, but just barely (3.1), same as Fantasy and Science Fiction. Amazing scored 2.6—which is a good month for that mag, while Galaxy got the same score, which constituted a bad month.
Indeed, all of the better-than-average fiction would fill just one decently sized digest. Incidentally, we had exactly one (1) short story produced by a woman, and the one woman-penned nonfiction this month was a biography…of a man.
It just goes to show that all the good stuff seems to be happening overseas these days. I hope the next month of mags reinforces my decision to come home!
As we are now into Summer here, the warmer weather leads to reflection, if not introspection, although I am quite excited about the next few months. Not only do we have the impending Apollo mission to land men on the Moon – and how exciting does that sound! – but as I mentioned last month we also have Star Trek starting on the BBC in July. Such news even reached the national newspapers here.
The only annoying part of that last event is that I understand that the Beeb will not show all of them but a selection, chosen from all three seasons. I hope I’m wrong, but as the series is filling in time between July and new Doctor Who in the Autumn, it sounds likely.
More positively, though, and partly based on the comments from my colleagues here at Galactic Journey, I feel that seeing any Star Trek at all has to be good. I’m just pleased that we will have chance to see them here, albeit in black and white – no colour telly luxury for me, I’m afraid. Most British viewers do not have colour televisions.
Another great cover by Mal Dean – that’s two in a row. This one is illustrating Norman Spinrad’s story, The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde.
Lead-In by The Publishers
It's not just me that's in a reflective mood this month – this Lead In points out that the magazine has been five years in its current format and brings us up to date with what’s been happening to the magazine over that time: financial worries, subscription issues, publisher issues and the refusal of certain shops to sell the magazine in public.
It’s a sobering read and yet in the end a positive one, celebrating that the magazine has lasted five years in its current format and with its new agenda.
Coincidentally, this introduction also tells us that Norman Spinrad is now a resident here in Britain, which may or may not be in part due to the publication of Bug Jack Barron in this magazine.
This may be one of the best Langdon Jones stories I’ve read. It’s not for the easily shocked – as is de rigueur for New Worlds. It’s sexually graphic and basically deals with the story of an incestuous relationship between a boy and his mother. I liked the time travel aspect of the story, although it’s not a new science-fiction thing. 4 out of 5.
Wherein Spinrad is the latest author to write about Mike Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius. (The last was Brian W. Aldiss in last month’s issue.) The Beatles, Russians, Mongolians, a facsimile of Las Vegas in China. Chaotic and satirical (what would you expect from the author of Bug Jack Barron? Not a bad effort, frankly. 4 out of 5.
Erogenous Zone by Graham Charnock
Drawing by Mal Dean
The fourth story based in Graham’s world, CRIM – the first was in New Worlds in November 1965, the third last month. It’s a strange world, where advertising is an essential part of society. It’s a two-act story, one where Craven Image (great name! – but also not-coincidentally ‘CR…IM’) is in a car accident and taken to the hospital afterwards, and another where a dying man is being watched by his daughter and her spouse. Not a story to make sense, but lots of vivid imagery and sex. The world is both odd and depressing, with talk of the Dresden bombings, amongst other things. I’m reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 a little, although not quite as ‘out there’ as that. 3 out of 5.
A non-fiction article from Mr. Aldiss, with the promise of more to follow at a later date. It is written more as a monologue, combining Aldiss’s own life with ruminations of life, technology and H. G. Wells. Odd, but engaging. 4 out of 5.
Surface If You Can by T. Champagne
Drawing by Mal Dean
According to the Lead In, Terry Champagne is a sculptor and an author. Her first story here in Britain is about a young couple who rent a fallout shelter as a home, only to find themselves sealed in when what appears to be nuclear bombs fall outside. A surprisingly straightforward story, with a twist at the end, given the New Worlds treatment by including lots of sex and even necrophilia. There’s also cockroaches. 4 out of 5.
Circularisation by Michael Butterworth
And here’s this issue’s attempt to break down traditional prose format by creating a number of ‘radial-planographic condensed word image structures’, rotated around a point. As these things go, I quite liked the concept of these, although I disliked the fact that the author felt he had to explain them for pages at the end. The actual content is symbolic nonsense, of course. 3 out of 5.
An Experiment in Genocide by Leo Zorin
Artist drawings are unlabelled, but possibly by Mal Dean
Leo Zorin’s odd snippets of prose seem to be well-liked by New Worlds readers (or is that editors?) I’m less impressed by most, although this one was more accessible. This one’s about a pervert (actually described as such in the text!) wandering a world of Ballardian car accidents and grotesque characters that feel like they’ve mutated from Moorcock’s world of Elric. More visual, mixed-up imagery as a result. 3 out of 5.
Perjoriative by Robert E. Toomey Jr.
A story that begins with a one-armed man and a dwarf on a bus and ends with a mushroom cloud. A typical New Worlds story of oddness, reminiscent of the rant-y elements of Bug Jack Barron. 3 out of 5.
Book Reviews: Terrible Biological Haste by Kenneth Coutts-Smith Where Kenneth Coutts-Smith looks at the work of artist Aubrey Beardsley.
Book Reviews: Fourteen Shillings Worth of Grass by R. G. Meadley
R. G. Meadley reviews Gunter Grass’s Dog Years as well as a book of his poetry.
Book Reviews: Paperbag by Joyce Churchill
Joyce Churchill (also known as M. John Harrison) reviews some science fiction books, including Edmund Cooper’s “dated” Deadly Image, Anne McCaffrey’s Decision at Doona (from “the Enid Blyton of science fiction”), Michael Frayn’s satire The Tin Men, John Jakes’s The Planet Wizard, M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud and (unsurprisingly) saves the plaudits for Norman Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron, lastly taking a pop at the editor of Ace Books, Donald A. Wollheim, with a quote from his review of Bug Jack Barron;
Book Reviews: The Sexual Gothic Private Eye Caper by Charles Platt
Charles Platt reviews The Image of the Beast by Philip Jose Farmer very positively.
Book Reviews: The Quality of Justice by David Conway
Back to the non-genre stuff. David Conway reviews a philosophical book on the quality and justice of our social practices.
Summing up New Worlds
I was surprised and pleased to find that on balance I enjoyed this more than the last issue. Spinrad makes a decent stab of a Jerry Cornelius story, the Langdon Jones is acceptable (a fairly standard science fiction idea given the New Worlds treatment of sex and incest) and some good work from new writers as well. I even found the poetry less annoying than usual, although I readily accept that I was more interested in the process of creating rather than the content of the poetry.
What was most memorable however was the fighting talk given by the editors at end of the Lead In at the beginning of the issue. As shown here, New Worlds has not been without its difficulties over the past five years, but based on this it looks like it is determined to fight for its place in a literary market.
Welcome to Seattle, and let me tell you, June 1969 is a busy month here in the often quiet Pacific Northwest. We have a baseball team! And we may be losing a relic of our past while fighting about the present and rocking our own giant music festival… well, at least, we will be rocking a field out in the suburbs!
And I also wandered into the ineffable mind of my favorite author, Philip K. Dick, and found I had journeyed to places I scarcely could have imagined.
The End of the Market?
We live in revolutionary times, times which are painfully uncertain and terrifying. In our era of political assassinations, cities on fire, images of Vietnam on TV every night, and endless sports expansion, many of us find ourselves craving the pleasures and traditions of the past in order to help us have some small ground under our feet, some small element of history to cling onto.
But that need for tradition runs solidly into the endless American drive for progress. And we are seeing that collision of progress with tradition even here in our often quiet city.
If you’ve ever visited Seattle, you’ve probably stopped to visit our Pike Place Market, a farmers market on the hilly edge of the Seattle waterfront. The Market has been around since the dawn of the 20th century, but it may not live to see the 21st century – or even most of the 1970s. See, commercial interests have come for the quaint old market and its prime real estate, aiming to convert that area into fancy hotels and expensive housing. This has triggered a pitched battle and a bit of existential turmoil.
Seattle export Jimi Hendrix jammin' at the Market
Like New York with that neighborhood-destroying Robert Moses, many Seattle residents find ourselves fighting to preserve our landmarks against the machinations of moneyed corporate interests. And like New York with city advocate Jane Jacobs, we have our own leader of the cause. Victor Steinbrueck is a 57-year-old Seattle architect and University of Washington faculty member who has led the charge against the change
As Steinbrueck discusses in a recent issue of Seattle weekly Helix:
600 residents will be relocated in places mostly incompatible to their way of life, producing problems for themselves and others. Approximately 1400 workers will have their jobs placed in jeopardy trough relocation and termination of businesses. 233 businesses will be relocated or forced to close because of the disruption of the low cost market… the massive disruption to benefit a few is neither wise nor morally right.
Steinbrueck proposes several ideas for changes to the Market, all of which are devoted to keeping its unique character for generations to come. More than 53,000 people have already signed a petition to support his organization, Friends of the Market.
This struggle is existential for many of us who have felt buffeted around by the winds of change these days. We are hoping some of our favorite places survive the relentless, unforgiving march of progress, and Pike Place is one of those favorite places.
We can only hope and pray that Steinbrueck’s efforts will bear the same fruits Ms. Jacobs achieved in New York. I love the Market for many reasons, and hope I can continue to stop there for fruit, fish and fresh meals whenever I possibly can.
Rocking the Suburbs
On a cheerier note, there’s been a lot of buzz around town discussing the upcoming Seattle Pop Festival, which will be held in the sleepy Eastside suburb of Woodinville. Many Seattle music fans will be driving over the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge to see such amazing bands as The Doors, Chuck Berry, Albert Collins, the Guess Who, Ike & Tina Turner and the much hyped “New Yardbirds”, Led Zeppelin. (there’s a nice mix of traditional and new acts!)
It’s going to be an expensive event at $6 per day or $15 for the whole three days, and there have been rumors that drug peddlers in the University District have been more aggressive than ever before selling their merchandise in order to afford tickets. It would be groovy if our event was like that upcoming Woodstock event in New York, but I predict that event will be a bit of a bomb. I just don't think there are enough people here who will be excited to see a boring band like The Doors.
Piloting into Disaster
Sadly, we’ve all been looking forward to a major civic event which has definitely become a bomb. After many years of dreaming and a mere few months of planning, the Seattle Pilots debuted this April as the latest team in the American League. They’re now our second Seattle pro sports team, after the SuperSonics of the NBA, and while Washington Huskies football will always be the big sport in Sea-town, and the hydros as number two, my friends and family and I all had high hopes for the expansion Pilots.
Unfortunately, everything about the Pilots has shown that the Emerald City isn’t like Oz. Our team’s ballpark is strictly minor league, the players are strictly second-stringers, and even their uniforms are an absurd joke.
First of all the ballpark: the Pilots home field is called Sicks’ Stadium, and seldom has a name been more appropriate. The field has been in use since before WWII hosting games of the Seattle Rainiers and Seattle Angels of the minor league Pacific Coast League, and the place feels like a minor league relic. The walls often feel like they’re falling down, the bleachers are rickety, and you probably heard the (completely true) story that the stadium was still under construction on Opening Day. Worse than that, the bathrooms often overflow during games, which is just nauseating. And on top of all that, we have higher ticket prices than the other expansion teams this year. No wonder we rarely have crowds which even approach 20,000 fans.
The boys in pastel blue are resolutely in last place in the new American League West, without much hope of avoiding the curse of 100 losses this year. Aside from a couple of decent players, like Yankee castoff Jim Bouton, this year’s team might be long-forgotten in a few years…
If not, that is, for the dreadful uniforms the players are forced to wear. Embracing the idea of a “pilot” way too far, the team’s owners created a cap like no other in baseball, with a captain’s stripe and “scrabmbled eggs” on the bill, which just looks hideous. But hey they are just as bad as the weird powdered-blue uniforms with four stripes on the sleeves, which just look odd.
Just three months into the season, there are already rumors the Pilots may be a one-year wonder, leaving my beloved city for parts unknown. That would be a shame on one hand, but a relief on another. If we’re going to sail into the big leagues, I would hope it would be when steered by a fine mariner instead of a minor-league pilot. Perhaps we will keep the team, and perhaps the Pilots will be able to move into a rumored domed stadium sometime by the middle of the next decade. And hey, they could start winning, right? Just wait’ll next year, as they say.
Now Wait for the Pot-Healer’s Year
If you’ve ready any of the writing I’ve done for this zine, you’re probably aware I’m perhaps the biggest fan of Philip K. Dick on this staff. I’ve raved about his Dr. Bloodmoney, enthused about his transcendent Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and – just last month – waxed poetic about his sublime Ubik.
Mr. Dick has been remarkably prolific over the last few years and has been on a magical roll, success following success. This month sees his latest paperback original hit in a B. Daltons or Woolworths near you. And while brilliant as ever, Galactic Pot Healer is a decidedly different book than the ones I just mentioned.
The lead character of Pot Healer is a miserable middle aged man with few job prospects living a blandly dystopian near-future – hmm, well, maybe this book not too different from other PKD novels. But stay with me for a minute because this book goes in unexpected directions.
Joe Fernwright is a brilliant artisan, a man with the unique skills to repair antiquities from the pre-WWIII era in such a way that they look as good as they did before the War. The term for such a man is pot-healer. Joe’s been a pot-healer all his life. In fact Joe follows in the footsteps of his father, who was a great pot-healer in his time.
The problem, in a future North American megalopolis, is that there’s no more pot-healing work for Joe. All the pots have been fixed and, in this post-apocalyptic world, there are no more porcelain pots being manufactured. In fact, there’s scarcely any work for anybody in this massive, overpopulated world. Instead, Joe shows up to work each day, sits at his desk, and calls up colleagues in Russia and England on his office phone not to work – there is no actual work for anyone in this future world to do – but instead to play pointless but clever word games just to make the long day feel slightly less meaningless.
It's a crushing, desperately lonely experience, bereft of any redeeming elements which would make life worth living. Joe has no family and really no friends, despite – or maybe because of – the fact that the megalopolis is so overcrowded. Even Joe’s small savings of a handful of actual metal coins, which he hides in his toilet back, are not able to gain him more than a few moments satisfaction in his life.
Until, that is, Joe starts receiving strange messages, which he soon realizes come from a strange being from another planet. The Glimmung summons Joe and a slew of other artifact hunters from across the galaxy – all suicidal dead-enders, all desperate for a chance to find fulfillment in their lives – to a remote obscure place called Plowman’s Planet where they can possibly achieve something which justifies their continued existence.
And though Joe finds some kind of love with an alien girl named Mali, ultimately Joe is unable to find peace with himself, leading to one of the bleakest, most powerful and satirical endings in all of Dick.
A fan named Karla shared a photo of her ceramic creation which dwells on an important plot point of the novel.
Galactic Pot Healer is one of PKD’s most downbeat and philosophical works. While Ubik thrills due to its endless tumble of ideas, Pot Healer is mostly about one idea, an idea central to Dick’s fiction: the feeling of deep, existential doubt and lack of fulfillment. Joe Fernwright is on a quest to truly find the true center of his being. In an amazing sequence I’ll let you discover yourself, Joe actually does find himself but finds himself desiccated, like the raw husk of an insect. He’s a man stripped raw, a man whose encounter with himself and with God leaves him frozen in his own mind, like a spider who spun his web in a tin can and starves to death waiting for a fly to hit his web.
Joe is a loser, but really what choice does he have? How can he actually change his life when every possible opportunity to do so is stripped away from him? What happens when great skills are lost, self-delusion is stripped away, and the stark reality is that everything is as dust?
This is all very emotionally exhausting stuff, for Joe and for the reader.
Mr. Dick
And that’s the difference between Galactic Pot Healer and Dick’s other recent novels. Characters like Robert Childan in The Man in the High Castle or Rick Deckard in Do Androids Dream or Palmer Eldritch in the book that bears his name are men of action, men who at least try to change their lives. Even boys like Manfred Steiner in Martian Time-Slip or the homonucleus in Dr Bloodmoney take actions to remake the world in their images.
But Joe Fernwright is the ultimate PKD character pushed to the edge, the ultimate man who is powerless before his own pathetic weakness.
Thus I found it hard to read about him, even while sympathizing with his pain and angst.
This is minor Dick, to be sure, but still an essential part of his catalog.
![[July 20, 1969] Today's the day! (August 1969 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/690720guide.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[July 16, 1969] Not all Jake(s) (July 1969 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/690716covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[July 14, 1969] Odyssey On Two Wheels (<i>Easy Rider</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/TITLE.png?resize=672%2C372)
![[July 10, 1969] Sex! Now That I Have Your Attention . . . (August 1969 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/COVERSMALL.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[July 8, 1969] Nowhere fast (August 1969 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/690708galaxycover.jpg?resize=450%2C372)
![[July 6, 1969] Everybody's talking about Revolution, Evolution… (The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/CC1.jpg?resize=261%2C372)
![[July 2, 1969] Merging streams (August 1969 <i>Venture</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Venture-1969-08-Cover.jpg?resize=543%2C372)
More geometric shapes and color washes. Art by Bert Tanner
This confused mess makes sense if you’ve read the book. Art by Bert Tanner
Plumbing the depths of the bombed-out lab. Art uncredited![[June 30, 1969] Anywhere but here (July 1969 <i>Analog</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/690630analogcover.jpg?resize=656%2C372)
![[June 26, 1969] <i>Five Years… New Worlds</i>, July 1969](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/new-worlds-july-1969.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
Cover by Mal Dean
Photo by Gabi Nasemann 
Drawing by Mal Dean 
Drawing by Mal Dean 
Unknown source. 
Drawing by Mal Dean 
Artist drawings are unlabelled, but possibly by Mal Dean 
Where Kenneth Coutts-Smith looks at the work of artist Aubrey Beardsley.
