Science / Space Race

Earthbound Pioneer (Explorer VI; 8-08-1959)

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We are now in the second phase of the Space Race.

Decades from now, people will debate over the exact date of the turning point.  Some will argue that it started when countries started sending rockets to the moon, leaving the shackles of Earth's orbit.  Others will say that spaceflight didn't leave its infancy until humans had been sent into space.

But, I contend that a whole new ballgame opened up yesterday with the launching of Explorer VI.

This latest satellite is, in some ways, just an evolutionary step.  Its payload of experiments is little different from the slew of instruments carried by its predecessors, the Air Force Pioneers.  It's got geiger tubes and scintillators for measuring cosmic rays, magnetometers for mapping Earth's magnetic fields, a micrometeroid detector, and a crude TV camera–all devices that went up on the ill-fated Pioneer II.

But, the probe also has an impressive array of solar cells affixed to four paddle wheels that make Explorer look like a little windmill.  Moreover, the satellite is equipped with two communications systems.  One of them is analog, like those employed by all previous satellites, in which information is communicated by modulating the amplitude and/or frequency of transmissions, like your AM or newfangled FM radio.  The other is digital using nothing but streams of ones and zeroes.  This method is far less prone to error and noise, and it uses bandwidth more efficienctly, requiring less power.

A digital system is above and beyond the needs of an orbital probe, so why bother including it?  Because Explorer VI is a test-bed.  A spacecraft very much like it will be launched to Venus some time in the near future, and it will need a digital system to communicate from that vast 25 million mile distance.

Until Explorer VI, we were launching little experiment packages.  Now, we have a bonafide orbital scientific and engineering laboratory in space, the results of which will revolutionize where spaceflight goes from here.

A natural extension of this is that I don't have this satellite's results for you yet.  Unlike my other columns, where I've been able to sum up a mission and its findings generally in one article, Explorer VI is going to collect mountains of data, and it will take time to sort it out. 

So stay tuned! 

P.S. The October 1959 issue of Galaxy has come out.  I'm half-way through and will be telling you all about it next week.  Come join me in my journey (but try not to send me letters about it until I publish the articles).

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Magazine

East meets West (September 1959 Fantasy and Science Fiction, second half; 8-04-1959)

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A thousand pardons for my lateness.  It is partly to blame on mundane matters taking precedence, and partly to blame on my magazines showing up late this month.  Perhaps laziness is also a factor.  It's languidly warm this Summer.

We left off half-way through this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Fifth in the line-up is Will Stanton's Who will cut the Barber's Hair? It is the very definition of a two-star story; I've had to go back several times to remember what it was even about.  In brief, a human from the far future, when creativity has disappeared, takes over a hayseed's body to experience a bizarre cocktail party and feel the full gamut of human emotions.  Utterly forgettable.

On the other hand, newcomer Joanna Russ' Nor Custom Stale stayed with me far longer than it ought to have given the silliness and simplicity of the premise.  A husband and wife shut themselves into a near-immortal house with the ability to generate Air and Food in limitless quantities.  They discover that adhering to an extremely regular schedule every day contributes to longevity.  In fact, the couple end up sleep-walking through thousands, if not millions, of years until the ultimate end of the Earth in a fashion recalling Leiber's A Pail of Air.  I don't know why I liked it so much, but I did, and I look forward to more by Ms. Russ.

Robert Graves' Interview with a Dead Man is a cute reprint from 1950 about an embalmed fellow who still finds time to write.  It's over almost as quickly as it begins, and it seems mortar for bricks, but I enjoyed it.

The Makers of Destiny, by Edward S. Aarons, is a direct sequel to his The Communicators, although it is so different in tone and content that I'd forgotten until recently, when I looked through my catalog of stories.  The world is rather fascinating–the Ten Day War erupts between East and West when an American bomber inadvertently bombs Moscow near the end of the century.  The United States and the Soviet Union are reduced to barbarism for decades, and the rest of the world shuns the erstwhile superpowers as pariahs.  Slowly, painfully, the United States reforms as a loose confederation with the aid of a group of psionically adept "Communicators." 

In the instant story, Private Mugrath is a soldier of the Northern Union fighting in the last battles of the 15-year Civil War, which has waged since 2050.  But he is more than that–he is an esper under the control of the Communicators.  Their goal is to alter the course of history through the creation of squad of psychic superhumans–but there is resistance, and whether that resistance is some fundamental property of the universe or a traitor in the organization, is unknown.

I liked it a lot.  Evocative, dramatic.

Last up is Leslie Bonnett's Game with a Goddess, a delightfully lusty (though oblique) tale of the ravishing of a comely acolyte by the Goddess of Love.  There aren't many stories dealing with the mythology of the Orient, and this story does a great job of conjuring the setting and style. 

Apropos of nothing, have you read Robert van Gulik's Chinese Detective novel, The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee?  It is excellent and lots of fun, a recreation of Ching dynasty mysteries set in the Tang dynasty. 

That's that for this issue.  A unremarkable but not unpleasant 3-star issue.  See you in two days.  I'm sure I'll have something for you!

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Magazine

Dreams of Summer (September 1959 Fantasy and Science Fiction, first half; 7-28-1959)

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Hello, all.  I’d meant to report on the newest issue of IF, but the fershlugginer thing hasn’t arrived yet.  My Fantasy and Science Fiction is in my hot little hands, however, and it is off to a strong start.  Fasten your seatbelts!

The cover is quite lovely, and in fact, it is available for purchase if you are so inclined.  It features the next-generation upper stage being designed as we speak to turn the Thor and Atlas missiles into powerful orbital boosters.  The rocket is called “Vega.” I have heard rumblings, however, that the thing may not actually make it to fruition as the Air Force has a very similar booster in the works, and what’s the point of inventing the wheel twice, simultaneously?

Heading the issue is Edgar Pangborn’s The Red Hills of Summer.  Mr. Pangborn has not written very much—looking through my records, I see he did a whimsical story for Galaxy called Angel’s Egg way back in 1951.  Summer is almost excellent, the story of a generation ship arriving at an inhabitable planet after a 15-year journey.  The stakes are high—Earth has become bombed-out and nigh unlivable.  Four members of the crew, evenly divided by gender, must conduct a preliminary survey to ensure that the destination, called Demeter, will support the 300 colonists.

The ecology is a little too undeveloped to be plausible, and also a bit too terrestrial.  But the writing is sound, the situations tense and interesting.  It doesn’t quite hit 5 stars as it trails off more than ends.  Perhaps Pangborn will turn this into the opening section of a novel, which would be quite readable.

Asimov’s article is on infinity, and the many different types of infinite counting.  Engaging, but dry.

The next piece is called Quintet and is a bit of an experiment.  There are five pieces, two poetry and three prose, one of which was penned by a pre-teen, and the rest by four distinguished authors.  We’re supposed to guess who wrote what.  All of the prose pieces have substantial spelling and grammatical errors of a patently unbelievable nature.  This is, I suppose, an attempt to portray the writings of a juvenile.  They go too far, though, to be fair, correspondence written by my current employer look quite similar.  The conceit makes the pieces well-nigh unreadable.  I’m going to guess that the youngster penned one of the pieces of poetry (I’m guessing it’s the first of two).  We’ll see if I’m right next month.

Finally, for today, we have The Devil’s Garden, a “Murchison Morks” story by Robert Arthur, the same fellow who brought us Don’t be a Goose (and of similar vintage).  It is a light-hearted but creepy story of telepathic transference of pain as a form of punishment.  The resolution is satisfying and a little (but not very) surprising.  I enjoyed it.

In two days, I’ll have the rest for you.  Thus far, we’re in 3-star territory.

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Science / Space Race

Loveliest of Bodies (Venus, 7-25-1959)

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from Timothy Gleason

Ishtar, Aphrodite, Venus—whatever you call it, the brightest of star-like objects in the sky has mesmerized humans for the entirety of recorded history, and likely beyond.  It was among the first subjects of telescopic study, and you can bet it will be the first planetary target for space probes.

It is astonishing that, given all of the interest the Planet of Love has engendered, we know so little about our nearest planetary neighbor.  The 2nd planet from the sun, Venus is an orb of mystery–she has been most reluctant to divulge her secrets. 

Galileo saw that Venus went through phases, like the moon, and deduced that Venus was bright with reflected sunlight.  Through transits of the sun (which happen twice a century—I hope I live to see the next ones in 2004 and 2012), we have learned that Venus has a thick atmosphere.  More recently, it has been determined that Venus’ atmosphere contains several hundred times the concentration of carbon dioxide as ours.  Measuring the Doppler shift of the planet’s edges, it appears that the planet rotates very very slowly, perhaps taking months to complete a rotation. 

From the planet’s period and effect on other planets, we know that its mass is actually quite close to that of the Earth, just a touch smaller.  It almost certainly has a rocky surface.  For these reasons, many have called Venus “Earth’s twin.”

Being closer to the sun, it is likely that Venus is much hotter than the Earth, but it is difficult to say how much hotter.  It used to be thought that the surface of Venus might be a global, steaming ocean, but it is more widely believed now that there is no liquid water to be found, and perhaps precious little in the atmosphere.


From Exploring the Planets (c) 1958


From Exploring the Planets (c) 1958

But that’s all we know!  The clouds are too thick to see through, so we can’t see the surface as we can with Mars.  Perhaps in the near future, microwave and radio astronomy will be keys to mapping Venus, but for now, it’s just a silvery pearl.

Now, every year or so, when the alignment of planets is right, we have an opportunity to send a probe to Venus on a low-energy orbit that accommodates the largest payload for any given booster.  The next one will be in November.  Sadly, though NASA did have plans to launch a Venus mission this year, it has been pushed back due to development teething troubles.  A test satellite with prototype equipment will be sent into orbit next month; if it does well, it bodes well for a Venus probe, though such won’t launch until the latter half of next year.

It may well be that the Soviets beat us to the punch.  Look for a launch later this year (but note that their opportunities are slightly different from ours as they launch from a different part of the globe).

Next up—a review of the latest IF!

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Science / Space Race

Exploring the ground (7-22-1959)

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Just a quick stop-press today while I wait for the new magazines to come in.  Apparently, NASA tried another satellite launch last week on the 16th.  A Juno II rocket, which is a modified Jupiter Intermediate Ranged Ballistic Missile, had the latest in the Explorer series installed at its tip.  Weighing 42 kilograms (that’s 92.4 pounds for the metrically uninitiated), it looked a bit like a bigger Pioneer 1–two truncated cones welded together at their base. 

As might be expected from the choice of booster, it’s a product of Von Braun’s Alabama Army-sponsored team (which, rumor has it, may well be folded into NASA proper soon).

Its instrument complement was pretty standard stuff: geiger counters, x-ray detectors, micrometeoroid plates, thermometers.  What makes this craft special are the solar power elements built into the design; the probe was built to provide long-term measurements of cosmic radiation and the Earth’s heat balance. 

Sadly, the rocket lost power to its guidance system immediately after launch, and the thing started to spin in a wide, dangerous ark.  A range controller detonated the booster just 5 and a half seconds into the flight.  Too late for the Fourth of July, and I doubt the scientists were pleased.

I understand that the next flight of the package is scheduled for October.  My fingers are crossed, but I understand NASA is planning an Air Force-contracted shot next month, and that probe, made by my friends at Space Technology Laboratories, may well include all of the same instruments and more.

Thus, the Space Race continues domestically as well as abroad.  Nothing like good ol’ fashioned American competition to keep the satellite makers on their toes! 
See you soon!

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Magazine

Flawed jewel(s) (August 1959 Astounding, last part; 7-21-1959)

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Before I finish my review of the August 1959 Astounding, let’s look at the issue’s “Analytical Laboratory” and what the readers thought of the May 1959 ish (and compare it to my findings).

Interestingly enough, no story got higher than a 3.00, which means the readers had trouble picking a favorite.  That indicates a good issue or a bad one.  Garrett’s mediocre Cum Grano Salis got top ratings followed by the first installment of Dorsai!, then the charming Hex and Project Haystack.  I suppose that’s as good an order as any.  One might as well throw a dart at the wall.

The August issue, on the other hand, has clear strong and weak points.  Newcomer Anne Walker’s A Matter of Proportion is one of the strong points.  Her tale about a super-competent commando, who was once a paraplegic is gripping.  Anyone who can write about the ascent of a flight of stairs with the same tension and excitement of a daring assault on an enemy base has done an excellent job.  An interesting, sensitive story.

The following tale, Familiar Pattern, is so obviously a Chandler piece under a pseudonym (George Whitely), that one wonders why the ruse was even attempted.  To wit, it involves an Australian coast guard ship (Chandler is a former Australian naval officer), and one of the characters shares a name with a character in The Outsiders, which came out in the same issue!

Now, I like Chandler, but this story is only decent.  Aliens come to Earth to set up a trading mission, manufacture a diplomatic incident, and use said event as a pretext to invade.  It’s a metaphor for what the Europeans did to the Polynesians; I appreciate the sentiment, and I am amazed it could appear in the xenophobic pages of Astounding, but the allegory is a bit too precise and heavy-handed to be effective. 

Lastly, there is Theodore L. Thomas, whose Day of Succession is, as Orwell might say, rather un-good.  Aliens land on Earth, and their ships are dispatched with cold-blooded efficiency by an American general.  The officer is recalled to Washington and chastised for his bloodthirstiness, but is soon proven right when more aliens appear and wreak havoc (I wonder why they would be hostile after such a warm welcome!) The general advises a nuclear strike on the entire Eastern seaboard to defeat the incursion.  When the President and Vice President disagree, the general shoots them and requests that the Speaker of the House adopt the officer’s plan.
I didn’t really understand it either. 

The book finishes off with P. Schuyler Miller (a self-professed Conservative from North-Eastern United States) lamenting the death of science fiction, again.  We’ll see.  This seems to happen every five years.

So where does this issue end up in the ratings?  Well, I’d had high hopes.  Aliens was a five-star story, and Outsiders and Proportion were both quite good.  But Pattern was average fare, Succession was sub-par, and the Garrett was soporific.  The non-fiction “article” was also pretty bad.

All told, the issue clocks in at a “3,” which is actually admirable for Astounding.  Read it for the good stories, eschew the rest, and you won’t be disappointed!

In two days, the Explorer that wasn’t.

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Magazine

Bad History Repeats (August 1959 Astounding, second part; 7-18-1959)

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All right, all right.  There is no putting off at least an initial review of this month’s Astounding.  Actually, I’m more than half done, but I covered The Aliens earlier, so there was much reading to do to have anything of substance to report.

Randall Garrett’s Dead Giveaway literally put me to sleep several times before I was able to finish it.  The premise isn’t so bad, though it is quite hoary: humanity finds a long lost alien civilization whose technologies seem to dovetail perfectly with our own.  A bunch of eggheads (male, white, of course) determine that the abandoned city is actually a gift designed to give us a leg up.  It is also a test—do we have the ability, as a species, to accept the help?

This is discussed in one of the more ludicrous paragraphs ever written by Randy (and there is much competition):

Scholar Duckworth said: "It takes a great deal of humility—a real feeling of honest humility—to admit that one is actually inferior to someone—or something—else. Most people don't have it—they rebel because they can't admit their inferiority."

"Like the examples of the North American Amerindian tribes." Turnbull said. "They hadn't reached the state of civilization that the Aztecs or Incas had. They were incapable of allowing themselves to be beaten and enslaved—they refused to allow themselves to learn. They fought the white man to the last ditch—and look where they ended up."

"Precisely," said Duckworth. "While the Mexicans and Peruvians today are a functioning part of civilization—because they could and did learn."

"I'd just as soon the human race didn't go the way of the Amerindians," Turnbull said.

I’m reasonably certain that this is not how history went in the Americas.  If I’m not mistaken, the native Mexicans and Peruvians were devastated and supplanted by an imported European aristocracy.  Sure, they didn’t end up on reservations, but it is also disingenuous to suggest that they gratefully accepted European wisdom and, as a result, are better off than their impoverished North American counterparts (who had the temerity to, you know, fight for their lives).

I was going to give this story two stars, but upon reflection, I think it belongs at the bottom of the ash heap.  Which is too bad, because it is sandwiched between two quite good tales.

Which brings us to The Outsiders, the second of the Rim stories by A. Bertram Chandler.  It is a direct sequel to To Run The Rim, about the adventures of a pack of oddball space traders on the edge of the galaxy.  And it’s well worth reading.  In the last tale, Calvert and his band of misfits saved an interstellar liner and secured a tidy reward.  In The Outsiders, the crew buys its own ship and attempts operation as an independent concern.  I was happy to see that the ship’s complement is half-female by the end, all of them competent, hardened spacers.

Of course, for Calvert the dreamer, a hardscrabble life of tramp spacing isn’t enough.  Instead, he wants to chase legends of alien ghost ships floating Outside in the vast emptiness of intergalactic space.  Following a hot lead, he and his crew ultimately find what they’re looking for…

But we won’t know the resolution of this tale until the next story.  Or perhaps the one after that.  I strongly suspect there will be a book compilation of these stories when all is said and done, and it will be worth buying.  A strong, four-star story.  It only misses five stars for being so clearly a bridging piece.

Next time: the rest of the magazine and a review of the Analytical Laboratory!



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Movies

They sure make kids old these days… (Teenagers from Outer Space; 7-16-1959)

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I know I promised the dope on the latest Astounding, but it took me several sittings to get through the Garrett.  Like children at a Passover, I kept falling asleep.  Had I known there would be another Chandler Rim story after the Garrett, I might have persevered more strenuously.  Ah well.

Instead, I took my daughter to the flicks yesterday to watch the newest science fiction film.  Well, if there are "B" movies, this one was a "C" movie.

In brief, aliens land in the suburbs of Los Angeles planning to use our planet as pasturage for the ferocious but edible Gargons.  The youngest of the crew, "Derek," discovers that the planet is inhabited when he stumbles upon the disintegrated corpse of a dog, reduced to a skeleton by the bloodthirsty crewman, Thor.  As the boney puppy had a collar, it was clear it had been owned by a sentient being.  Derek rebels at the thought of condemning an innocent race to death at the hands of the Gargons and flees.  The alien ship leaves to summon a fleet of hundreds.


And already my daughter has decided this is the worst of the recent films.  Dog-killing doesn't sit with her.


Derek is horrified.  I think.  This is his only expression throughout the film.

Derek arrives in town to find a room to rent being let by the quite beautiful (if worryingly thin) Betty and her doddering grandfather.  Romance flares, but is quickly interrupted.  There ensues a wild chase with Thor pursues Derek and Betty, a trail of skeletal corpses lining his path.  Thor is wounded in a shootout at City Hall, but he coerces a doctor into saving him.  Luckily, Thor is incapacitated in a car accident (he is not the most skilled of drivers), but the Gargon left behind in a cave kills a man and breaks loose.


A wag in the audience says, "Must be from one of those parochial schools…"


"Zap!"


"It's 2:30!  I should be out on the golf course," I said, joining in the fun.

Derek frees Thor from a hospital and brings him back to the site of the first landing.  There, he convinces all that he has seen the error of his ways and asks to have the honor of guiding the alien fleet to a safe landing.  Predictably, he instead orders them to home in on his ship and accelerate.  Derek and the invaders are destroyed in a fiery blast, to the horror of the onlooking Betty.


Obligatory young love.


"Everyone gets to be a hostage in this film," comments another.


"I'm a lobster!  I like hugs!" says my daughter.


"You are clear for landing!"


"Ewww.  There's tiny bits of Derek everywhere!" says one of the attendees.

The end.

I think this movie would have been completely intolerable had not several of the attendees begun making pointed commentary throughout the film.  I usually hate it when people do that, but in this case, they added tremendously.  I caught up with them afterward and thanked them.  Their names were Joel, Tom, and… Crow, I think it was.  Anyway, I hope we'll meet again in the not too distant future.

To be fair, if I think of the movie as a college student's project, which it very much feels like, there is much to commend.  The acting is generally terrible, the plot silly, and the special effects quite bad (though the ray gun effect is clever in its simplicity), but there is a plot, and the editing is actually quite inspired.  The movie never drags.  It's just ludicrous.  But I could see Tom Graeffe (writer, director, and producer) helming a decent movie some day.  Maybe.

See you in two.  Promise.



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Science / Space Race

Space Dogs and opportunity costs (7-14-1959)

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It’s another flight for Otvazhnaya, the daring Space Dog, in another zoological journey.  This time Otvazhnaya was joined by a different dog from last time (named “Pearl,” or the Russian equivalent thereof) as well as a bunny, whose name I do not yet know.  The flight, which took place on July 10, appears to have been a duplicate of the July 2 flight.

According to TASS, the Soviet news agency, the purpose of the flight was to collect more data on the effects of radiation on living creatures.  Per the agency, the space environment is not overly dangerous to space travelers.  I imagine the flight was also to make sure that the spacecraft parachutes worked properly, since rapid impact with the ground is overly dangerous for space travelers.  The rocket also contained a number of scientific instruments, too, for measuring the nearer regions of space.

All very exciting stuff, and it points to a level of progress very similar to our own.  One wonders how much the Soviets must allocate to their space program to match our systems.  While the Soviet Union looks big on a map, and it looms large in our headlines, there is no doubt that their economy is much weaker than ours.  That they can afford to have regular launches means other fields (say apartment construction, food production, automobile manufacturing) must be suffering.

You won't hear about that from TASS, of course…

In two days, this month's Astounding!



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Magazine

Kookie Aliens (August 1959 Astounding, first part)

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I’m a bit of an etymology nut, so when I recently heard the hit song, “Kookie, Kookie (Lend me your Comb),” I became intrigued by the provenance of the final lyric, “Baby, you’re the ginchiest.”

Turning to my Dictionary of American Slang, I found that ginch was 30s slang for a woman, a rather unflattering depersonalizing word.  It is akin to, and possibly related to “wench.”  Some people have taken “ginchiest” to mean “tops” or “the best,” but seeing how the male singer is a self-absorbed, beat-spouting jerk, and the girl (from his viewpoint) keeps pestering him, I think he really means, “Man… you’re such an annoying chick!”

Maybe I think too hard on trivial matters.

I’m happy to announce that this month’s Astounding starts with a bang, but first, I want to detour to the issue’s non-fiction article.  It’s the second of its kind that I’ve seen recently, an overdramatic, underrational speculation into the effects of weightlessness and space on the human psyche.  The author opines that, in the absence of normal sensory input or gravity, a person trapped in a tin can for any length of time will go nuts.

Well, people have survived on submarines for 50 years just fine (save for the occasional unfortunate build-up of carbon dioxide).  I suspect our future astronauts will remain sane.  It’s not as if we’re sending them into space inside of sensory deprivation tanks.

Now the fiction.  Murray Leinster has a really excellent story in this ish that I hate to spoil with too much description.  It’s a story of first contact, of an encounter between spaceships, of the interplay between crews, alien and familiar.  And it features a female bridge officer!  Leinster’s penchant for repetitive sentences, like he’s orally reciting an Homeric ode, is a little off-putting, but not cripplingly so.

I give it 5 stars.  How about you?

P.S. I’d planned to write more, but the next story in the book is a Randall Garrett, and I fell asleep five pages in.  I shall try again tonight.  Until next time, dear readers…



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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction