Book

[Dec. 8, 1960] Signs of Aging (Murray Leinster's The Wailing Asteroid)

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If anyone can claim the title of “Dean of Modern Science Fiction,” it is Murray Leinster.  For decades, the gentle old man of the genre has turned out exciting interstellar adventures leavened with humor and hard science. 

But old men are prone to losing their faculties, and I fear we're seeing the first signs of it.

I was sent an advance copy of Leinster's latest novel, The Wailing Asteroid, last month.  The premise is excellent: a few years from now, an object within the solar system suddenly begins broadcasting a repeating plaintive musical message.  The transmission is indecipherable, but clearly of artificial origin and of automatic nature.  A wunderkind engineer by name of Joe Burke realizes he's heard this music before, in a dream he's had since he was 11, when his father brought home a strange little black cube from a 20,000 year old archaeological site in France. 

The music isn't all Burke got from the dream; included in its details were the clues to build a hand-weapon of almost limitless power, one which he adapts for use as a space drive.  Burke, with the help of a yachting buddy and an introverted savant, as well as his fiancee and her sister, decides to build a craft that will take them to this mysterious wailing asteroid. 

Once there, the team finds an abandoned fortress filled with unfathomable weaponry.  There isn't a shred of written material, but it is clear that humans crewed this structure.  Who built this outpost, and against what was it built to defend?

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?  Except it is written in what I can only term “The New Leinster.” He writes in short sentences.  There are no long ones.  Why should he write that way?  I do not know.  I only know that they are repetitive.  They repeat.  Why should Leinster write short sentences that repeat?  I can't know.  It is annoying.  It is difficult to read.  There are no long sentences.

Pared down properly, the whole thing would be a novella, and it would be a nice addition to two issues of Analog.  But it's not, which makes it a slog, though you will want to find out what happens.

I applaud the active inclusion of two women among the book's stars.  It would have been nice if Leinster had given them more to do than stenotype, cooking, and pining after their fiancees (Burke's fiancee's sister falls for the yachting chap).  On the other hand, I suppose we still live in a world where men aren't allowed to take shorthand and home economics classes, and the story is set in the near future.  How progressive can Leinster be?  In any event, it's hard to get too upset about characters as thin as the ones Leinster has written.  Their dialogue is interchangeable and written in the same choppy format as the non-dialogue prose.  The science is flawed, too, particularly orbital mechanics, and the rest is zap-gun stuff as you might find in pulps from the 30s.

However, the few-page vignette devoted to the doomed cosmonaut who is dispatched before Burke begins his journey, is almost worth the price of the book.  And the story is interesting despite Leinster's efforts to the contrary.

2.5 stars.

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TV

[Dec. 5, 1960] Improved Batch (The Twilight Zone, Season 2, Eps: 5-8)

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We are now deep into the second year of Rod Serling's horror/fantasy anthology, The Twilight Zone.  I expressed my dissatisfaction with this sophomore season during my review of the first four episodes.  Has the show, justly nominated for a Hugo this year, gotten any better?

Well, you wouldn't know it from the season's fifth episode, The Howling Man.  My biggest beef with this show is the overused cliché of a man's slow descent into madness, usually punctuated by screaming in an episode's padded second act.  This episode begins with a madman, an “American” with a strong foreign accent, who narrates the encounter he had decades before with a mysterious religious order.  It seems they had imprisoned the Devil.  Of course, the narrator was tricked into freeing him.  He then spent the next twenty years recapturing him…only to lose Beezelbub again when the narrator's maid let him go.  It's an overwrought, tilt-cameraed mess of an episode.  One star.

The next one, Eye of the Beholder, fares a little better.  A hospitalized woman, head completely bandaged, awaits the results of a treatment that will make her appearance “normal.” She is, reportedly, hideous.  The twist is given away within the first few minutes as the cinematographer takes ludicrous pains never to show the faces of any of the medical staff.  What saves this episode is the unsubtle yet still resonant commentary on modern prejudice and over-conformity.  Two stars.

Nick of Time is the first episode that approaches the standard set by the premiere season.  A honeymooning pair of newlyweds break down in a rural Ohio town and lunch in a cafe.  There, a Devil-headed fortune machine dispenses eerily accurate predictions.  William Shatner, a handsome young actor, really steals the show.  Moreover, there is flow and development to the story—you find yourself caring about this couple beyond the gimmick.  The ending is a nice kicker, too.  Four stars.

But then we're back to form with episode four, The Lateness of the Hour, in which a young woman, shut in with her aging parents, rebels against the monotony of her life and the robotic, humanoid servants who enable it.  In the end, no surprise, it turns out she is a robot.  It stars Inger Stevens, who we saw last season in The Hitchhiker, and also in the great movie The World, The Flesh, and the Devil.  I like her, but this format was not kind to her.  The show has apparently switched to video-tape from film.  It may be cutting-edge and cheaper, but it looks tacky, and the whole thing runs like one-set dinner theater leaving no room for creative editing or cinematography.  Two stars.

This isn't the first time a show has fallen short second year out.  Now that its leads are joining the Army, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis is disappointing, too.  Well, what's worse: a long-lived mediocre program, or a show that burns brightly for a short time before petering out?

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Book

[Dec. 3, 1960] Correcting an Oversight (The Crossroads of Time, by Andre Norton)

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I didn't start Galactic Journey with the intention of spotlighting female writers and characters in science fiction.  It just happened organically.  A good many of my readers are women, and their interests may have influenced me.  Or perhaps I simply became bored with the status quo.  Woman authors tend to be more experimental or, at least, stylistically unique.  And good female characters are a rare surprise (though increasing in frequency).

For a column that emphasizes the literary contributions of the species' better half, there has been one curiously large omission.  Not once have I reviewed a work by Andre Norton.

Norton, despite the masculine pen name, is a woman, and she is one of the genre's most prolific writers.  I think she has escaped my ken because she tends to write juveniles and fantasy novels, so she doesn't appear in my magazine subscriptions.  I also attempted to start one of her books at a reader's suggestion (Star Gate), and I found it impenetrable.

But last month, I was caught up with current publications and an Ace Double from a few years back attracted my interest: The Crossroads of Time by Norton paired up with Mankind on the Run by Gordon Dickson.  I finished Norton's short novel over Thanksgiving weekend, and here's what I found:

Blake Walker is a man twice orphaned.  He was abandoned in infancy, and his adoptive policeman father died in Blake's teen years.  Now he is a 20-year old student, freshly arrived in New York.  His world is turned upside down when he crosses paths with the Time Wardens, agents from an alternate timeline where humans have figured out how to travel to parallel universes.  These agents are on the trail of the fugitive, Pranj, who plans to set up shop as a dictator in one of these worlds or “levels.”

Walker is, like most of Norton's characters, a resourceful loner.  In addition, he is possessed of a sense of premonition and a strong psychic shield, the latter of particular importance as the denizens of the Pranj's timeline all have strong psionic abilities.  It is Walker's premonition that enables him to save an agent from one of the fugitive's lackeys, which leads to Walker's recruitment by the agency.  On his first mission, he ends up a prisoner of Pranj, but he is able to make his escape on a level-traveler. 

This is where the book really began for me (some halfway through).  We are treated to a tour of several New Yorks, each one a challenge for survival: Ixanilia, a repressive aristocratic place founded by European refugees from an ascendant Mongol Empire; a nameless island where stone towers occupy our Manhattan, and North America's only inhabitants are far-ranging Pacific Islanders; a level where the Nazis took England and savaged America to collapse.

It is this last level that Pranj intends to rule.  Walker throws his lot in with a band of plucky survivors led by the capable leader and Buffalo Soldier called “The Sarge.” Walker manages to link up with a group of Wardens and assault Pranj's local headquarters, whose barriers to psychic beings prove less effective against Walker as he is a latent.  He is aided in his endeavor by a cute little kitten, who proves to be a tigress both in courage and in effect.  I shan't spoil the ending, but it is a happy one.

This new sideways-in-time genre is one of my favorites.  While, the first half of Crossroads is occasionally rough sledding, Norton gradually sheds the hoary pulpisms that suffuse the work, and things shift into higher gear once Walker begins his jaunt to the levels.  I was pleased by the appearance of both a Negro and a cat as pivotal, compelling characters.  In fact, even Blake is not White, (his ethnicity is a mystery, but it appears to be mixed) and his adoptive father was Black.  I found this degree of departure from the norm refreshing.  No female characters, though we do learn that women comprise a good number of Sarge's able team of soldiers.

Norton has written Crossroads with sequels in mind (she suggests as much in the final lines of the book.) The Time Wardens are akin to Poul Anderson's “Time Patrol” whose time-traveling agents ensure the sanctity of its history, and I could easily see a series developing. 

It's a solid 3.5 stars of entertainment to fill a weekend with.  So find a copy if you can, and hope for a sequel!. 

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Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[Nov. 30, 1960] Back and Forth (a p/review)

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November is done, and the first chill of winter is upon us (for the rest of you, that happened about a month ago—we San Diegans are a happy lot).  As we head into the Christmas shopping season, it's good to take a moment to reflect on where we've been and where we're going.  Then we can dive into 24 commercially hectic days.

November Review

After months of hard campaigning, we have a new president.  The mantle has been returned to the Democrats, who had it for so long before 1952 that Eisenhower seems like a small splice in the tape.  He was practically a compromise candidate anyway—perhaps the Republican party, as we know it, is dead.  Or maybe there's a new movement on the horizon, one that will surprise us. 

There was just one new book out this month, Store of Infinity by Robert Sheckley, and it was his best yet.  You definitely want to get yourself a copy.

On the magazine front, Analog took the prize for the first time since the July issue.  It garnered a solid 3.5 rating, a score it last secured in March.  Galaxy was in the middle of the pack, earning a decent 3 stars.  F&SF, made up of the turgid Rogue Moon and a mixed bag of vignettes barely merited 2.5 stars, a depth to which the normally fine magazine has never sunk (since I started charting it, anyway).  Well, there has to be a first time for anything.  Hopefully there won't be a second!

It was tough selecting a favorite story for this month; both R. A. Lafferty's Snuffles and Poul Anderson's The Long Voyage were quite good.  In the end, I gave the nod to the former, which came out in Galaxy because I felt it was more memorable and unusual.

Finally, out of 22 fiction pieces, only two were written by women.  9% is about par for the course.  Perhaps 1961 will be better.

December Preview

Coming soon, I'll be reviewing the next four episodes of The Twilight Zone–it's gotten better recently.  There are no new movies on the horizon but I did received an advance copy of a new book, Murray Leinster's The Wailing Asteroid, from the publisher in the mail this week.  I've been enjoying it thus far. 

Of course, there will be the Big Three: the January 1961 issues of F&SF, Analog, and IF (Galaxy and IF alternate months).  I'm sure there will also be some noteworthy space shots, too—the Mercury Redstone unmanned mission will likely be tried again, and there's one last Atlas Able moon shot planned.  Fingers and toes crossed!

Speaking of space shots, NASA got up another weather satellite, TIROS 2, on November 23.  I didn't mention it at the time for two reasons: 1) I couldn't figure out how to work it in, thematically, and 2) whether or not it had been a success wasn't known until the next day.  When the probe went up, it was initially pointed in the wrong direction, so all the Weather Bureau got was a lens full of blackness.  TIROS is now properly oriented, but it turns out there is some fuzz on the wide-angle camera blurring its pictures.  The other equipment, including a narrow-angle camera and sensors to measure Earth's heat budget (solar input vs. planetary heat radiation), seem to be working fine, however.  If this new satellite can last until TIROS 3 goes up next Summer, we'll have continuous weather pictures from outer space for the foreseeable future.  That'll be exciting!

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Magazine

[Nov. 28, 1960] Odds and Ends (the December 1960 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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Here's a math problem for you, kids!  If more than half of your magazine is taken up by a 2-star short novel, how likely is it that you'll still end up with a good issue?

Answer: not very.

I'm used to Fantasy & Science Fiction having a long table of contents page.  This one (the December 1960 issue) comprises just ten entries, and all save the Asimov article are vignettes.  I wonder if we'll be seeing a slew of larger stories now that Editor Mills has depleted his stock of tiny ones.

Anyway, it's quality, not quantity that counts.  So how was the quality?

Winona McClintic is a sporadic contributor to the magazine, and she offers up The Way Out of Town, in which an infestation of snakes blocks all of the vehicular arteries in and out of every city in the (unidentified) state.  They cause havoc, widespread and personal, as one might expect. 

That's about it; the story is over almost as it starts.  Mills says in the prologue, "Readers who like only those stories with beginnings and middles and ends, in which everything is clearly explained,may not be fully satisfied with the following."  He's right!  Two stars.

Up next is Rope's End, by Miriam Allen deFord.  The premise is excellent: a Terran accidentally kills an alien on the extraterrestrial's world.  His sentence is to wear a rope around his neck for twenty years–one that is constricted every year.  I like everything about it but the ending; and it's not even the ending that bothers me so much as the protagonist's inability to suspect how things would turn out given how much time he devoted to the problem.  Three stars.

Avram Davidson has a two-pager about sexually frustrated teens whose unfulfilled desires channel into a powerful psychokinetic talent.  Called Yo-ho, and Up, it is silly and rather difficult to read.  Two stars.

I don't usually go for poetry, but Rosser Reeves (who is, apparently, a businessman by day) has a nice piece on alternate worlds called Infinity.  I dug it.  Four stars.

Speaking of digging, The Beatnik Werewolf is (I believe) the first effort by Dan Lindsay.  What's a shaggy vegetarian hepcat…er…dog to do when he falls in love after two hundred years as a lone wolf?  Cute, if inconsequential.  Three stars.

Dr. Asimov's article is on dolphins and echo-location this month.  A could-be fascinating topic, particularly the bits about the ability to produce sound being used for navigation long before its purposing for communication.  But the good doctor seems rather scattered this time around.  Three stars.

The last piece is a reprint from a literary mag New World Writing #16 called The Listener by John Berry.  It's not really science fiction or fantasy, but I enjoyed it a lot, this tale of the meeting between an itinerant fiddler and an old, old lighthouser.  Four stars.

Using my trusty slide rule, this all adds up to about 2.5 stars.  A less than auspicious end of the year for what is normally my favorite science fiction magazine.  It's a good thing the competition was in excellent form this month.

See you at the end of the month for a review of November, a preview of December, and a space-based peeping tom whose presence we can all be thankful for.

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Book, Magazine

[Nov. 26, 1960] Damaged Goods (Algis Budry's Rogue Moon)

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Sometimes, I just don't get it.

The December 1960 Fantasy and Science Fiction is almost completely devoted to one short novel, Rogue Moon, by Algis Budrys.  I like Budrys, and F&SF is generally my favorite magazine, so I've been looking forward to this book since it was advertised last month.

To all accounts, it is a masterpiece (and by "to all accounts", I mean according to the buzz in the local science fiction circles).  The premise is certainly exciting: there is an alien structure on the moon, an amorphous multi-dimensional thing, that kills all who enter it.  To facilitate its exploration, the navy utilizes a matter transporter that disassembles one's molecules in one place and reconstructs them elsewhere.  Volunteers are sent from Earth to their certain death to push a few more feet into the deadly extraterrestrial maze.

Of course, the transporter doesn't actually send anyone anywhere; it destroys the original and creates a copy that thinks it is the original.  In fact, it's possible to make multiple copies of a person, and that is what is done: one copy goes to the moon to die, while the other stays on Earth to live on.  It turns out that the two copies have a limited degree of telepathic contact for a short time, so the Earthbound copy can report on what his moonbound copy experiences.

The project's main hurdle is that it takes a special kind of person to experience one's own death and not go insane.  How, indeed, to find such a person to unlock the riddles of the maze?

Sounds pretty intriguing, doesn't it?  Sadly, Budrys hardly wrote this story.  Instead, he gave us a florid, comically humorous soap opera with personalities as flat as the pages they are printed on.  Here's the dramatis personae:

Edward Hawks: The project's director.  A detached scientist, coldly resigned to his status as a murderer (both in terms of sending people to their death and the destruction of those who go through the transporter), desperate to understand how a person's existence can survive one's death.

Al Barton: A suicidal thrill-seeker. he's already lost a leg to his obsession for death-defying escapades–racing, mountain-climbing, parachuting.  Setting records isn't enough for him; he's got to risk his life doing something no one else has done before.  He spends most of his time attempting to prove his manliness to Hawks (in vain, as Hawks is too coldly impersonal to be impressed).

Vincent Connington: The project's director of personnel who introduces Hawks and Barton.  A fellow whose brash arrogance is really just a facade that hides his love for…

Claire Parks: Barton's gorgeous girlfriend: She spends her entire "screen time" attempting to seduce Hawks and Connington and enrage Barton; she's afraid of men, you see, so she is always trying to manipulate them so she can keep her interactions in a safe, nonthreatening place. 

Elizabeth Cummings: A wholesomely beautiful random stranger whom Hawks falls in love with.  Her primary story function is to listen to Hawks' morose reflections on life and occasionally offer pithy observations.

Virtually no time is devoted to the actual exploration of the moon structure, and when the reader finally does get to see the jaunt through the maze, Budrys manages to make it the dullest part of the book. 

Budrys does largely succeed at exploring the fascinating ramifications of "soul" duplication.  What happens when there are two of you, when a moment ago, there was just one?  And are the copies really you?  Are you more than the sum of your memories?  If not, is the communication of your memories to others, no matter how imperfectly, a kind of immortality (this is implied in the last line of the book, an admittedly powerful one.)

Which would have been great had it been less mawkishly presented, and the characters at all plausible.  Budrys set out to make an insightful character study in the Sturgeon vein, depicting a disparate brood all struggling to find "The Meaning of Life."  Instead, he ended up writing something more akin to Merril's The Tomorrow People: full of stilted dialogue, expository speeches, and precious little story.  Fully 30 pages go by before we even get into the plot, which is a lot of time to waste in a 90 page novella.

I'm not sure how to rate Rogue Moon.  Despite all the eye-rolling moments (quite literally), I did finish the short book in one sitting, which suggests there must have been something compelling about it.  There were thought-provoking ideas.  It was the execution which was disappointing, particularly for being by the normally excellent Budrys.  I think, in the end, the book's prime failure is the introduction of so many interesting elements which are completely subordinated to the inferior, implausible psychological drama that Budrys, for some reason, was so hot to present. 

Maybe the book, due to be released next month, will be better. 

Two stars.

Stay tuned for the rest of the magazine!

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Science / Space Race

[Nov. 23, 1960] Premature Ejection (Mercury-Redstone 1)

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The American manned space program is on a tight schedule if it wants to place an astronaut in orbit before the Soviets.  The Communists already have a striking lead.  They had it three years ago when they launched the first Sputnik, and they've maintained it with the recent Sputnik 5, which featured two Muttniks, who were returned safely to Earth after an orbital flight. 

It may well be that, as I write this, the Soviets will already have put a man in space.

NASA is moving at as brisk a pace as they can manage while doing their best to guarantee the safety of our spacemen.  I can only imagine the frustration and impatience of the seven Mercury Astronauts, who were picked a year and a half ago as they cool their heels watching the test program play out.

So far, we've seen several low altitude launches of the Mercury spacecraft (Little Joe).  There has been a test of the Atlas orbital booster (Big Joe).  But there had yet to be an all-up suborbital test of the Mercury-Redstone, mimicing the first few missions that will be flown.

Until the day-before-yesterday.

MR-1 has been on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral in Florida since late October.  No pilot was assigned to the Mercury capsule, not even a monkey or a dog.  The flight was just to ensure that all of the components would work properly during a 15-minute trip.  The mission was originally scheduled for November 7, but a sudden loss in fuel pressure during the countdown caused launch to be aborted.

A similar problem was caught and fixed on the launch pad the morning of November 21.  As the count went to zero, all systems were go.  The Redstone booster ignited at 9 a.m. 

And promptly shut off a second-and-a-half later.  The booster stack was just four inches off the ground, and it settled back onto its fins without tipping over.  But the true ignominy of the event happened at the top rather than the bottom of the stack.  The escape tower, designed to drag the Mercury capsule to safety in the event of a booster failure, took off like a scared rabbit but left the spacecraft behind.  Adding insult to injury, the main and reserve Mercury parachutes then popped out the top of the capsule.  You probably saw this comic event on the TV news.

Yesterday, some brave engineers went out to unplug the booster and figure out what went wrong.  It turns out that the culprit was a safety mechanism, a little two-prong plug designed to shut off the booster engine if there was too much of a time delay between the disconnection of the prongs as the rocket launched.  The plug has been designed for the stock Redstone missile; the Mercury-Redstone combination, being heavier, took longer to launch and thus set off the safety mechanism.

The booster is damaged but reusable.  We'll likely see it fly in December.  Still, it's a setback in the program, which still has a few more test flights to go until a person can be launched.  I'm guessing we won't see an American in space until next Spring or Summer.

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Comics, Movies, Science / Space Race

[Nov. 21, 1960] I aim at the Stars (but sometimes I hit London)

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If the United States is doing well in the Space Race, it is in no small thanks to a group of German expatriates who made their living causing terror and mayhem in the early half of the 1940s.  I, of course, refer to Wehrner von Braun and his team of rocket scientists, half of whom were rounded up by the Allies after the War, the other half of whom apparently gave similar service to the Soviets. 

I don't know if the Russian group is still affiliated with the Communist rocket program–I don't think so.  Last I heard, they had all been repatriated.  But bon Braun's group is still going strong.  Until last year, they worked under the auspices of the Army, but now they are employed in a civilian capacity by NASA.  Their giant Saturn project is the backbone of our nascent lunar program.

Of course, the fact that an ex-Nazi is playing such a pivotal role in our space program may not sit well with some.  Perhaps to address this concern, the rather hagiographic movie, I Aim at the Stars has been released.  Interestingly, it's not quite so sympathetic as it might have been.  Von Braun is played as a rather soulless figure, unconcerned with the political ramifications of his work.  He cares only about his rockets.

Or as a math student from the Bay Area has sung:

"Don't say that he's hypocritical.
Say instead that he's 'apolitical'.
'Once the rockets are up, who cares
where they come down. 
That's not my department,'
says Wehner von Braun."

A special comic book was made for the movie and handed out at some of the premieres.  I've gotten my hands on one of them, and having been given permission to reprint, my editor is reproducing it in its entirety for those of you who won't make it to the flicks to enjoy Curt Jurgens do a rather good job of not looking at all like Wehrner von Braun.

Enjoy!

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Magazine

[November 19, 1960] Saving the Best for Last (December 1960 Analog)

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As the year draws to a close, all of the science fiction magazines (that is to say, the six remaining–down from a 1953 peak of 45) scramble to publish their best fiction.  Their aim is two-fold: firstly, to end the year with a bang, and secondly, to maximize the chances that one of their stories will earn a prestigious award.

By which, of course, I refer to my Galactic Stars, bestowed in December.  There's also this thing called a Hugo, which some consider a Big Deal.

And that's probably why the December 1960 Astounding was actually a pretty good ish (for a change).  I'll gloss over Part 2 of Occasion for Disaster, co-written by Garrett and Janifer, and head straight into the stand-alone stuff.

First, you've got an editorial foreward with Campbell whinging about the Dean Drive again.  But this time, he promises never to talk about it again.  This ostensible reactionless drive has finally gotten a review from some government agency or another, which is all Campbell says he really wanted.  But even Campbell seems doubtful that Dean's work will be vindicated, probably on account that the thing is a fraud.

The first piece of actual fiction is Poul Anderson's novelette, The Longest Voyage.  It's an atmospheric gem featuring the first circumnavigation of a globe.  I say a globe because it becomes clear early on that this sailing vessel, even though it be crewed by men, and men who speak an archaic dialect of English, is not plying the oceans of Earth, but rather some colony world where technology has regressed only to rise again.  The Captain's destination, aside from his port of origin, is an island where (it is rumored) a spaceship crashed decades ago. 

There is a real richness to this tale, which borrows liberally from the argot Anderson showcased in his excellent The High Crusade.  And then there's the deep theme–if given a chance to leapfrog one's culture from the Renaissance to the Interstellar, skipping the centuries of investigation and discovery, would one, should one do it?  What's more important when solving a problem: The answer or the process?

Four stars.  It's what Garrett wishes he could have done with Despoiler of the Golden Empire.

Harry Harrison is back with The K-Factor.  Sociometry is perfected such that human cultures can be reduced to a set of variables, the most important being our K-Factor or propensity for war.  But what happens when someone deliberately stimulates a world's violence factor?  An interesting premise marred by being told largely through exposition.  Three stars.

The Untouchable, by Stephen A. Kallis, a fellow I've never heard of before, is a tiny thing that was probably included to fill a space rather than on its merit.  Oh, it's not bad, this story of an invention that makes objects intangible, but it feels like the beginning of something rather than a complete piece.  Three stars.

Campbell writes the science-fact article this issue: They do it with Mirrors.  Either Astounding's editor is too cheap to pay for outside help, or he thinks too much of himself to let anyone else write the column.  Perhaps both.  In any event, this one is on Project Echo, and Campbell spends a dozen pages writing what I managed to convey in two (in my article on Courier).  I did appreciate him pointing out, however, the the world's first communications satellite is as much a triumph of rocketry as it is ground-based computer signal processing.

Gun for Hire is another Mack Reynolds piece that features some element of violence in the title.  It's actually a lot of fun, this story of a hit man transported to the future by pacifists who want him to rub out a would-be dictator.  I was particularly impressed with the assassin's characterization.  Four stars.

Finally, we have Donald E. Westlake, another unknown author (though come to think of it, I might have seen his name in a table of contents of a lesser mag last year).  He gives us Man of Action, again a case where a 20th Century fellow is abducted by folks from the future.  In this instance, the man is not a thug but an effete interior decorator.  He is compelled by his robotic captors to play a sort of 20 Questions game to determine why the future has stagnated, and how to put some pep back into it.  The execution is very nice, though the solution is a bit pat.  Three stars.

Wowsville.  For the first time in memory, Analog has delivered an issue with no clunkers, and with some genuine sparklies to boot.  Well done, Mr. Campbell.  More of this, please.

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Science / Space Race

[November 16, 1960] Fully Fledged (a November Space Race update)

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The bird finally has wings!

By bird, I mean that lawn-dart of a rocket plane, NASA's X-15.  Until yesterday, that sleek black vehicle, designed to probe the edges of space from underneath, had been a work in progress.  The X-15 had already flown 25 times, zooming at faster than Mach 3 and climbing to a height of 40 kilometers.  But its engines, a pair of Reaction Motors XLR11s, were an old set of training wheels: virtually the same rockets that pushed Chuck Yeager's X-1 past the sound barrier in 1947. 

Together, these engines gave the plane a thrust of 32,000 lbf (pounds of force–or the force of Earth's gravity on one pound of matter).  That's nothing to sneeze at, but it was always an interim solution.  Yesterday, veteran test-pilot Scott Crossfield took the X-15 for a spin with the engine it was always meant to have: the Reaction Motors XLR99. 

Unlike the XLR11, the XLR99 can be throttled smoothly from 0-100% (as opposed to the XLR11, which had eight discrete speed settings depending on how many sub-engines were firing).  Moreover, just one XLR99 delivers 57,000 lbf, almost twice as much as two of its predecessors.

Now, Crossfield didn't really test the new engine to its limit, "only" taking the craft to Mach 2.97 and a height of 24 kilometers.  However, the XLR99 is going to make a whole new class of flights possible.  In a couple of years, expect to see the X-15 hitting Mach 6 and reaching the 100,000 kilometer mark. 

Who knows?  Someday, you might take off for orbit from your local airport instead of strapped to the top of a firecracker.

Speaking of which, the first full test of the suborbital Mercury-Redstone (NASA's Mercury one-man space capsule on top of a Redstone booster, the kind at the base of the Juno 1) is set for November 21.  There won't be anyone on board for the mission, but it is the next critical step in the flight-test schedule.

Finally, the Air Force has, at last, come clean regarding its Discoverer capsule-return program.  The newspaper coverage of the latest launch on November 12 and the subsequent recovery of the Discoverer reentry capsule on November 14 was surprisingly detailed.  Discoverer 17 did carry a camera (though, ostensibly, only for testing equipment to be carrried on the next-generation SAMOS satellite).  Moreover, the military even disclosed that they used an upraded Agena second stage on its Thor-Agena boosters.  This means they can lift heavier payloads to higher orbits–great news for the civilian program since NASA will be using Agenas in its upcoming Venus and Mars flights.  This is actually a case of decreased government redundancy since, until the Air Force revealed the Agena, NASA was going to develop its own version, called the Vega.  Now they don't have to.

Discoverer 17 actually did some science this time around, too.  Propitiously timed to launch during a solar flare, the satellite carried a bunch of human tissue samples and a silver bromide emulsion block.  Scientists will study the effects of heightened space radiation on these items, which should provide some useful information to the manned space program.

So smiles all around from all three corners of the American space industry.  1961 is going to be a fun year, methinks.

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction