Movies

[May 14, 1966] Seeing Double (The She Beast and The Embalmer)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Two For The Price Of One

The tradition of double features in American movie houses goes back at least as far as the early 1930's. Under the old system, theaters were forced to purchase a lower budget movie (the B film) in order to be allowed to purchase a higher budget movie (the A film.) Often, there would also be cartoons, newsreels, short subjects, and so forth.


A typical double feature from 1934.

That began to change with the court case United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948.) The United States Supreme Court decided that the practice of studios owning their own theaters, and having full power over what films a theater could show, violated antitrust laws.

As a result, major studios no longer had an incentive to produce B movies. Audiences still wanted double features, so smaller studios supplied low budget films that could be shown with A movies from the big companies. Eventually, theaters started showing two B movies together.


A typical double feature from 1955.

Doubled And Redoubled

Once I saw the trailer for a double feature of horror movies that opened early this month, I knew I had to rush out and see it. It turned out that each film was, itself, something of a double. I'll explain what I mean when I discuss them in turn.


Do you prefer Horror or Terror?

Nerves Of Steele

I've spoken elsewhere about the striking British actress Barbara Steele, who has appeared in a number of horror films, particularly in Italy. Her latest starring role is in The She Beast, a British/Italian co-production, filmed in Italy and Yugoslavia.


The Italian title, which even I can translate.

We begin with pretty simple opening titles, accompanied by the usual scary music.


Simple, but at least you know you're watching the right movie.

The words Transylvania — Today pop up, setting the stage. This helps, because the first thing we see is a nifty bright yellow motor car that looks like it rolled right out of the 1920's. Add to that the fact that the driver, an older, professorial type, with gray hair and beard, is wearing the kind of shortened trousers that I believe are known as plus fours, and which I associate with golfers of the same era.

This fellow drives up to a cave and enters, where he picks up a very old book and starts reading. (It turns out that this is the man's home, complete with a skull here and there to add the proper mood.) This conveniently gives us our back story in the form of a flashback.

Cut to the late 18th century. Some folks are at an open-coffin funeral, when a young boy rushes in to say that she has taken his brother. Everybody seems to know exactly who she is; the local witch, who looks more like a monster than a human being.


Jay Riley as the She Beast. Yes, she's played by a man, under very heavy makeup.

Depending on who's talking about her, the witch's name is either Vardella or Bardella; it's hard to tell. Anyway, a typical mob of villagers, carrying torches and pitchforks and such, grab the witch and strap her into the seat of a wooden thing that kind of looks like a catapult. After driving a long metal spike through her body, which you might think would be enough punishment, they dunk her into the adjoining lake several times.


A couple of guys watch the fun going on below.

Cut to 1966. A couple of young folks are driving around in a black Volkswagen. They're newlyweds, who have decided to spend their honeymoon in Transylvania. (Obviously, they've never seen a horror movie.) They discover that a highway to Bucharest shown on the map doesn't actually exist, so they're stuck here for the night.


Barbara Steele as Veronica and Ian Ogilvy as Philip.

A local fellow directs them to the only hotel in the vicinity. It's run by a creepy guy who gives them tea with garlic bulbs in it.

That bit of goofiness gives me the opportunity to explain what I mean by this movie having a double nature. It constantly makes wild changes in mood from deadly serious to silly, as if it can't make up its mind if it's a spoof or not. This goes far beyond the occasional touches of comedy relief often seen in this kind of film, and is rather disconcerting.


Mel Welles as Ladislav Groper, the innkeeper. Hey! He was in The Little Shop of Horrors, too!

The fellow we saw at the start of the film shows up and starts chatting to them. It turns out that he's Count Von Helsing, the scion of a local family of aristocratic exorcists. Veronica jokingly asks if he knows the Draculas, and he replies that his ancestors exorcised them. We'll find out later that he lives in a cave because the Communist government took away his ancestral castle.


John Karlsen as Count Von Helsing. Hey! He was in Crack in the World, too!

Mister Groper — the surname seems to be a deliberate reference to his lechery — gets his kicks by peeking at the newlyweds during a moment of intimacy.


What the butler — I mean, the hotelier — saw.

Philip beats the guy up badly — we even see a big blood stain on the wall after he bashes the voyeur's head against it — and the couple decides to leave early the next day. Apparently, Groper fiddled with their Volkswagen, because it doesn't start at first. Once they get it running again, it turns out that the steering wheel doesn't work. They nearly run into a truck, and wind up crashing into the lake where the witch was killed.

Von Helsing rescues Philip, but Veronica appears to be drowned. Dredging up what they expect to be her body, it turns out to be the witch instead. Barbara Steele fans, among whom I count myself, will be disappointed to find out that she disappears from the film until the very end. Rumor has it that she only worked on the movie for one grueling eighteen hour day.

If I was able to follow the plot correctly, it seems that the only way to bring Veronica back is to revive the dead witch, then exorcise her and drive her back into the lake, where the body exchange can take place again. Von Helsing brings the witch back to life, but she attacks him and escapes.

The witch starts killing people. In particular, she slices up Groper with a sickle. (We've just seen him attempt to rape his niece — see what I mean about changes in mood? — so you won't feel too sorry for him.) In the movie's most outrageous joke, the sickle falls to the floor, right on top of a hammer, forming a perfect image of the famous symbol of Communism.


Comrade!

Philip and Von Helsing drug the witch into a coma, then stick her in a refrigerator. The local cops find her, so it's up to our heroes to steal her back, while also absconding with a police van. The cops have to use Von Helsing's yellow roadster. At this point, the movie becomes pure farce, with the police acting as the Kommie Keystone Kops.


Our heroes in the police van.


The cops in the roadster. Note that the same guy on a motorcycle passes them both.

After this slapstick interval, Philip and Von Helsing dump the witch in the lake and Veronica returns, apparently without any knowledge about what happened, and surprised to find herself soaking wet. Then the movie concludes with one of those Is it really over? kind of endings.

Besides failing to decide if it's a comedy or a thriller, this movie suffers from a lack of Barbara Steele. Despite having top billing, she has less screen time than any of the other main characters. I just hope that the thousand bucks she reportedly earned for a hard day's work makes up for what this mixed-up little film might do for her reputation.

Canals of Carnage

Our second feature is The Embalmer, an Italian film from last year, just now making its way to the New World.


The original Italian title, which is also easy to translate.

After a brief introductory scene showing our title character at work, we get the opening titles.


Nice blood-dripping effect.

The movie establishes the basic premise right away. Some kook, disguised in a monk's robe and skull mask, kidnaps young women and drags them to his underground lair, where he embalms them with a secret formula in order to preserve their beauty. (We learn all this because the lunatic constantly talks to himself.)


One tube of embalming fluid, coming right up!

Because the setting is Venice, the way he does this is by swimming around in the canals while wearing a scuba diving outfit and pulling his victim into the water.


What the well-dressed maniac wears, when not scuba diving.

Lucky for him, there are plenty of young women walking along the canals all alone late at night.


She should have taken a taxi — I mean a gondola.

Even though more than one woman disappears this way, the police think they just fell into the canal. Only our protagonist, the usual heroic newspaper reporter, thinks there's a killer at loose. Meanwhile, the embalmer adds to his collection.


What the well-dressed victim wears, after embalming.

After all this scary stuff, the movie slows down for quite a while, as we introduce more characters. Besides the reporter, we've got his boss, the cops, a couple of comedy relief canal workers, and a few others. A group of young female tourists shows up. The reporter starts smooching on the very slightly less young chaperone of the group pretty quickly. There's also an older woman and her nephew, who is interested in antiquities.


In one of many time-wasting scenes, aunt and nephew do the Twist.

Along the way, we'll get a hotel worker who uses a one-way mirror to spy on one of the tourists while she's undressing, and an Elvis-like singer who starts his act by coming out of a coffin. The main reason we have so many minor characters is that somebody has to turn out to be the murderer.

That reminds me of why this movie also has a double aspect. The premise of a mysterious figure in disguise, who will later be revealed as somebody we've met before, is very similar to the sort of thing that comes up in the German krimi films adapted from the works of Edgar Wallace. (My esteemed colleague Cora Buhlert has discussed these movies a couple of times.)

On the other hand, the emphasis on horror rather than mystery suggests a new kind of Italian thriller, best exemplified by the recent shocker Blood and Black Lace. Although this is a very recent subgenre of horror, some folks are calling such movies giallo films. (The word just means yellow in Italian, and comes from the fact that mystery and suspense novels often have yellow covers in Italy.)

The Embalmer has aspects of both krimi and giallo, I think, and maybe it points the way to future combinations of the two.

Back to the movie at hand. In parallel plots, both the reporter, via the canal, and the chaperone, via a secret panel, make their way to the embalmer's lair. (I forgot to mention that the nephew also found it, but paid for the discovery with his life. Oops! I gave away the fact that he wasn't the killer. Sorry about that.)


The comedy relief guys help the reporter find the embalmer's hideout. At the risk of ruining the suspense, neither one of them is the killer either.

Near the end, the movie moves along at a rapid pace, as the chaperone finds herself trapped with the embalmer, and the reporter desperately tries to save her. After a surprisingly downbeat ending, the identity of the killer is revealed.


The chaperone with one of the embalmer's companions.

There's quite a bit of padding in the film, because the plot is very simple. There's some nice black-and-white cinematography, and the climax is exciting, if you have the patience to wait for it.

Coming Attractions

Although this wasn't the greatest double feature I've ever seen, I'm sure that I'll slap down my dollar (movie ticket prices are getting out of hand!) the next time a similar one comes around. Maybe it'll even be a new color film paired with an older black-and-white import, just like this time.


Coming soon!


I understand that this two-year-old German black-and-white film will show up on a double bill with the one above it.

After your trip to the movies, tune in to KGJ, our radio station! Nothing but the newest hits!




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 12, 1966] Equal & Opposite Reaction (The Symmetrians)

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by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The Pushback

We have been living in a more permissive society over the last few years, with less censorship and more flexible norms, particularly as displayed in our media. However, this kind of change is always going to bring a reaction. And this has come in the form the National Viewers and Listeners Associations (NVLA) led by campaigner Mary Whitehouse.

Mary Whitehouse (r) during the Clean-Up TV campaign, the forerunner to the NVLA
Whitehouse (r) during the Clean-Up TV campaign, the forerunner to the NVLA

A former art teacher, she has declared the director general of the BBC to be “the devil incarnate” and that they are putting out “the propaganda of disbelief, doubt and dirt… promiscuity, infidelity and drinking” when they should be trying to “encourage and sustain faith in God and bring Him back to the heart of our family and national life.”

Since being founded last year, the NVLA has been growing, with over 100,000 member and around 600 churches being associated. As they hold their annual conference at the start of next month, it might be worth looking at what they are objecting to.

The Kinks
The Kinks, dangerous to Britain’s moral health?

Speaking at the conference, Rev. E. L. Taylor took aim at popular rock musicians, declaring that Christian songwriters were needed to “out-compose Tin Pan Alley” and Christian singers should appear on television to out-sing The Animals and The Kinks, comparing the latter to “savages” from Africa.

War Journalist
Television coverage of war, too pacifistic?

Factual programming has also come under fire. Whitehouse herself has objected to a documentary episode on the concentration camps in Belsen as “filth”, the production of The War Game for it prejudicing “the effectiveness of our Civil Defence Services, or the ability of the British people to re-act with courage, initiative and control in a crisis”, and to the coverage of warfare in the world as too pacifistic.

Up The Junction
Up The Junction, not promoting clean living?

However, BBC Drama seems to draw the most ire from the group. In her speech to the conference, she declared that in the name of the word “reality” viewers were asked to accept a tiny part of human experience as the reality of the world we live in. For example, objecting to Neil Dunn’s play Up The Junction for not demonstrating that all abortion is wrong and that it could be prevented through “clean living”.

Whether the more liberating or conservative forces will win out over British media remains to be seen, but where could this kind of reactionary and totemic obsession with morality lead? That is one element that is discussed in the latest book from Compact, The Symmetrians.

The Symmetrians by Kenneth Harker

The Symmetrians Cover

Starting with the situation, the book is set after a great disaster (strongly hinted at being a nuclear war from the start), people in Britain now living in a feudal society where symmetry is worshiped as a religion and any deviation from this is punished. Those with non-symmetrical faces are sent to work camps. We follow the young DavaD RaiMMiaR as he begins to question the society he lives in.

The Chrysalids

For British readers, they will probably find John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids (apparently published as Re-Birth in the US) brought to mind. In Wyndham’s text, a fundamentalist society in a post-nuclear Canada obsesses about normality and considers that any deviation from the norm should be killed; but David and some other telepathic children begin to dream of a society outside.

Whilst I don’t agree with the curmudgeons of SF that think every book needs to have a new idea central to it (even though they seem to be happy using the same situations over and over again), it would be easy to see Compact trying to cash in on Wyndham’s current success with a pale imitation. After all, they did it with Bradbury\Moorcock’s turgid Kane of Mars novels. However, though there are a number of obvious similarities, I think Harker manages to make it his own skillful piece of fiction.

First of all is the extent of world he has built. The Symmetrian religion has grown to a point that it encompasses so many facets of life. Mirrored surfaces are banned, fields have to be ploughed symmetrically with the emblem of symmetry in them, and all names have to be symmetrical. By which we don’t just mean palindromes, but they have to be symmetrical in three dimensions. There is an in-depth explanation on this in the book which I don’t want to repeat in this section, but it makes sense and really shows the effort gone into this.

Secondly is the real-world critique of religious reactionism and eugenics. As I cited above, the conservative religious pushback is emerging to the current liberalism of British culture. Seen as people sticking to rigid codes of what is pure and good and enforcing this belief on the rest of the population, there is a large degree of overlap between the Symmetrian authorities and the aims of the NVLA. At the same time the field of eugenics was a big part of the cultural discourse until the last war. Even today we see still see an idolization of the symmetrical face as a symbol of beauty and physical health. And there are still far too many people who still believe in pseudo-scientific justifications of racism (just read one of the many editorials John W. Campbell has written on the subject). The horrible truth is that these beliefs will probably not die off in our lifetime and it is all too reasonable to see a catastrophe resulting in this kind of prejudice returning to the mainstream.

Beyond these points, The Symmetrians is a really great adventure and coming of age story. The journey DavaD goes through is relatable in the tragedies he goes through and the realization that he does not have to blindly accept the teaching of his elders, reflecting the real-life experiences of so many of us. Whilst there is much that will still appeal to the adults, it is an excellent story to give to a teenager who reads Catcher in the Rye or A Clockwork Orange.

Kenneth Harker has stated this book was just created to entertain rather than convey a message. On the strength of this and his great recent short story in New Worlds The Cog, I cannot wait to see what happens when he tries to produce something even more spectacular.

A very high four stars; eagerly expecting a fifth in his next novel.

If you want to hear some great current music, then tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest hits!




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Magazine

[May 10, 1966] Rocky Jaunts (June 1966 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Real-life Adventures

Out in the southeast corner of California is a hidden treasure, a beautiful national park known as Joshua Tree, named for the surreal plants that characterize the region.  And in the heart of a tiny, unincorporated community there, resides the place called Space Cowboy Books.

Jean-Paul Garnier, the Space Cowboy, invited us out to see the spring bloom in the wilderness.  We were able to take him up on his offer too late to see the flowers, but we did see some amazing petroglyphs and water/wind eroded facades.  Even better was the absolute quiet of the place, the aural equivalent of a dark sky (which they also have there).

Of course, it was a several hour trip up Highway 395, over Highway 60 to Interstate 10, and then up Highway 62, which terminates at Joshua Tree. 

But we had beautiful scenery, each other for conversation, and a brand new 8-track player in the car for music.

I also had the newest issue of Galaxy, which I was able to read while the Young Traveler drove.  Ah, the luxury of having children!

And so, a tour of the trips I went on while on a trip:

Fictional Adventures


by Gray Morrow

Heisenberg's Eyes (Part 1 of 2), by Frank Herbert


by Dan Adkins

Frank Herbert is back.  Hooray.

Actually, the setup's not too bad: It's the far future, and humanity has complete control of its genetic destiny.  Society is divided between the dronish "Sterries" (sterile humans), the occasional persons who can have potentially viable offspring, and the immortal (but also sterile) Optimen, who run everything, a triumverate's administration lasting a century.

Children cannot be borne the natural way; for an embryo to make it to maturity, a doctor's intervention is required.  So begins Eyes, on the eve of a "cutting" that will turn the artificially united progeny of a Mr. and Mrs. Durant into a human being — perhaps even an Optiman.

But before the horrified gaze of the assigned surgeon, some external force modifies the fertilized ovum, making the modification to immortal perfection impossible.  An expert is called in, who salvages the embryo, but in the process causes it to become that rarest of beasts: a nascent human that can reproduce on its own.  Such a thing is strictly forbidden, yet the expert and his accomplice nurse take pains to ensure that the contraband embryo's nature is hidden from the world.  Or so they think.

This takes up about half of this installment, and so a quarter of the book.  I have to give credit to Herbert's ability to spew a half dozen pages of medical jargon and keep it interesting. 

Things slow down in the second half, when we meet the ruling trio and discover that the plot has wheels within wheels.  It also involves an underground race of Cyborgs, who have been biding their time for tens of thousands of years to regain ascendancy over the planet, though they are as clueless about how the modification of the Durant's child occurred as everyone else.  Part 1 ends with the first shots being fired in a renewed war between the Optimen culture and the Cyborgs.

A couple of issues: Eyes is written in typical Herbertian style, which is to say in this weird third person omniscient viewpoint that switches characters every sentence and overuses italicized depiction of internal monologues.  Perhaps, as one of the oligarchs states in Eyes, "Efficiency is the opposite of Craftsmanship," but I still think the story could have been a lot better at half the length in the hands of someone else.  Like Dune.  Also, no society remains static for tens of thousands of years — not Egypt and not the weird world of Eyes.  And then, of course, there's the pseudo-telepathy the Durants enjoy that involves a code of finger presses.  It reminds me of shows where a paragraph of Morse code can be deduced from four dots and a dash.

Anyway, three stars for now.  Herbert's done worse, and I've yet to see him do much better.

Priceless Possession, by Arthur Porges

In the depths of space, the 23rd Century equivalent of the ambergris-bearing whale is the anenome-like "Star Sailor" or "S-2."  Its micron thin sail, produced over thousands of years, is the most valuable commodity in the universe.  On board a particular merchant ship, an Ensign and a Lieutenant find their cupiditous designs hindered by a captain who believes he is in telepathic communication with the current prey.

It's not a happy story, but it's pretty good.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Brownian Motion, Loschmidt's Number and the Laws of Utter Chaos, by Willy Ley

Beginning with an explanation of the word 'gas' (which is as deliberately coined as 'radar' or 'Kleenex'), Ley goes on a whirlwind trip through the history of fluid dynamics.  It's one of Ley's better pieces, though a little rushed and occasionally following the pattern of the Brownian Motion he ultimately explains.

But then, that's history for you.  Four stars.

The Eskimo Invasion, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Out in the wilds of Canada, an anthropologist has made a terrible discovery: a tribe of "Eskimos" are really something else, the female of their species infinitely appealing…and able to have children every month.  And they worship the Great Bear, a Cthulhu-esque entity that will devour/conquer/lead the world.  Can Dr. West make it back in civilization to warn humanity?

This is a well-written tale, but the premise is so dumb that I found myself irritated with it after a night's contemplation.  Two stars.

Galactic Consumer Report No. 2: Automatic Twin-Tube Wishing Machines, by John Brunner

The second in Brunner's Consumer Report series (the last dealing with budget time machines), this piece offers recommendations for and cautions against various models of "Wishing Machines," which are supposed to be able manufacture anything.  Not as amusing as the last one, but diverting enough.

Three stars.

This piece is followed by Algis Budrys' books column, which I am increasingly enjoying.  I read this latest one, describing Sheckley's Tenth Victim, Wilhelm and Thomas' The Clone, and Brunner's The Squares of the City for its humorous commentary and the illustration of the signs of good and bad editing and publishing.

When I Was Miss Dow, by Sonya Dorman

On a planet of amorphous proteans, a young, sexless being destined to become Warden of its people, takes on a human female form in order to more easily interact with the Terran mission to the planet.  As Miss Martha Dow, said creature falls fake head over custom-built heels with an elderly biologist — and ultimately, the feelings are reciprocated.

I found myself really enjoying this unrestrainedly emotional piece, intertwining human and alien feelings in a vivid manner.  This is the first published piece by Dorman using her full first name (previously, she had simply been "S"), and I'm delighted that she finally feels comfortable enough to use it.  I know I always look forward to her byline!

Four stars.

Open the Sky, by Robert Silverberg


by Gray Morrow

At long last, we come to (what I believe to be) the conclusion of Silverberg's Blue Fire series.  It's been a long trip, with five entries spanning more than a half-century of history.  We've seen the Vorster religion arise, a spiritualist cult of the atom worshiping the blue flame of a cobalt reactor.  We've watched as the cult schismed and the green-robed Harmonists made their sect more overtly religious and converted the colonists of toxic Venus.  Last installment, the Harmonist martyr, Lazarus, was ressurected by Vorst for purposes unknown.

Now we know why: on Venus, the genetically modified human espers have developed faster than light teleportation.  Vorst wants to use them to power the first interstellar starship.  To do this, he needs to reunite the religions — and Lazarus owes him a favor.  Luckily, Vorster knows this will all work out: he is a precog, after all…

The writing of this final installment is as good as ever, and it's nice to see all of the pieces fall into place.  However, the story as a whole suffers from the common failing of all stories involving precognition.  When you know how a story will, nay, must end, the tension is gone.  All that's left is the exposition.

By itself, Open the Sky will be confusing and unengaging to the new reader.  As the capstone to an epic, it serves its purpose adequately but not stunningly. Thus, I award three stars for the section, and four stars for the work as a whole, treating it as the serialization of a novel whose publication is as inevitable as Vorster's trip to the stars.

Journeys' End

All in all, it's been a good weekend, both in the real world and within the world of fiction.  While Pohl's magazine could not quite consistently offer the spectacle that Jean-Paul of Joshua Tree treated us to, nevertheless, it did end up on the positive end of the ledger.

In any event, two trips for the price of one is a good deal!  Why don't you take the June Galaxy along with you on your next jaunt and enjoy the same experience?

And while you're on your journey, tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest hits!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 8, 1966] A Respite (June 1966 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Hope Springs Eternal

. . . but, as Groucho Marx might put it, hope springs can get rusty, too.

The June Amazing on its face presents bad news and good news.  In the first category is the beginning of a new two-part serial by Murray Leinster, generically titled Stopover in Space.  One can only hope (that word again!) that there is more to it than the empty blather of Killer Ship from last year. 


by James B. Settles

All the shorter stories are reprints.  But two of them are by very reputable authors, Arthur C. Clarke and Henry Kuttner, taken from the magazine’s ambitious false spring of 1953-54 (the Renascence), and two others are from the immediately post-Ray Palmer times (the Liminal Period), by writers who later made pretty good names for themselves, Walter M. Miller, Jr., and Kris Neville.  The fifth is the last published story by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, who commendably learned to write after the fiascoes of The Man from the Atom and its sequel.

Of course the Clarke and Kuttner stories are not exactly rediscoveries.  Clarke’s Encounter in the Dawn, retitled Expedition to Earth, was the title story of the first collection of his stories, published by Ballantine in 1953 and pretty widely known.  Kuttner’s Or Else was the lead story in his collection Ahead of Time, also from Ballantine in 1953.  It was anthologized in the UK in Edmund Crispin’s first Best SF volume, and reprinted again in last year’s The Best of Kuttner from the UK’s Mayflower Books.  These stories will probably be familiar to those well read in SF.

The rest of the package is as usual: another inanely self-serving editorial by editor Ross and a few letters mostly praising the reprint policy, though one of the correspondents also says don’t overdo it with the reprints, it’s time for more Robert F. Young and Ensign De Ruyter.  He appears to be serious.  The cover, simultaneously dull and busy, is reprinted from the back cover of the July 1942 Amazing.  It’s called Satellite Space Ship Station, and artist James B. Settles provides a rather pedestrian view of space travel. 

Stopover in Space (Part 1 of 2), by Murray Leinster


by Gray Morrow

As is my habit, I will hold off reading or commenting on the serial until I have both installments.  I am struggling to reserve judgment, but can’t fail to notice that the same egregious padding that so distinguished, or extinguished, last year’s Killer Ship shows up in the first paragraph here: “Scott ran into the situation on a supposedly almost-routine tour of duty on Checkpoint Lambda.  It was to be his first actual independent command as a Space Patrol commissioned officer.  Otherwise the affairs of the galaxy seemed to be proceeding in a completely ordinary fashion.  On a large scale, suns burned in emptiness, novas flamed, and comets went bumbling around their highly elliptical orbits just as usual.”

If This Be Utopia, by Kris Neville

First after the serial is Kris Neville’s If This Be Utopia, from the May 1950 issue, a slightly heavy-handed satire about a regimented future in which everyone is assigned to a job and pressured mercilessly to perform, and those who don’t measure up—or are made examples of by their superiors—get demoted to worse fates.  Our hero is a middle manager who is cracking under the stress and taking it out on his underlings until his superiors take it out on him.  It’s a bit too obvious, but still decently done.  Three stars.

Encounter in the Dawn, by Arthur C. Clarke

Encounter in the Dawn, from the June-July 1953 issue, is fairly typical for Clarke, a sort of lecture-demonstration of the stuff of SF and his understanding of the cosmos, without too much in the way of plot.  But that’s OK.  Clarke’s writing skill and his restrained sentimentality about the vastness of the universe and the depths of time carry the reader along.  He’s the antithesis of Ray Palmer’s policy of “Gimme bang-bang.”

This one begins: “It was in the last days of the Empire,” which is threatened by an unspecified “shadow that lay across civilization.” Three regular guys of the Galactic Survey, continuing their quest for knowledge despite the doom overhanging their homes, arrive at a new solar system and land on what is obviously Earth.  They take a look around and befriend Yaan, a primitive human or proto-human, with gifts of game killed by their robot.  They get the call to come home for the Empire’s last stand, leave Yaan a few high-tech gifts like a flashlight, and take off.  Tragedy looms over them, but life and intelligence will go on.  Three stars.

Or Else, by Henry Kuttner

Kuttner’s Or Else (August-September 1953 issue) is well done also, as one would expect, but there’s not much to it.  A couple of Mexican subsistence farmers are shooting at each other, contesting the ownership of the only source of water in their valley.  An alien drops in by flying saucer, demonstrates various superpowers, says his race has appointed themselves peacekeepers of the solar system, and Miguel and Fernandez have to stop trying to kill each other because violence is wrong.  They agree and shake hands, the alien buzzes off, and they start shooting again because there’s still only one water hole in the valley.


by Dick Francis

Profound, huh?  While SF may occasionally contribute to the global dialogue on war and peace, this one is best described as chewing less than it purports to bite off.  It also relies on cartoony ethnic stereotyping—but then everything in the story is pretty cartoony, and Kuttner at least lends the viewpoint character, Miguel, some shrewdness.  Thinking the alien is really a norteamericano, he says, “First you will bring peace, and then you will take our oil and precious minerals.” Two stars for execution, not much for substance.

Secret of the Death Dome, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s first published SF story, Secret of the Death Dome (January 1951 issue), is another kettle of sweat altogether, the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a magazine whose cover depicts a hairy-chested guy wrestling with a crocodile. 

The Martians have landed, and how: they have plunked down a large and impervious dome in the desert (actually, a couple of feet above it), where they engage in cryptic communication, and snatch anyone who comes too near and vivisect them.  One guy came back without his legs.  The newly wed Barney came back without his genitals, falling off his horse and dying on arrival.  (The Martians are surveilled by the military on horseback.)


by B. Edmund Swiatek

This makes Jerry mad.  Barney was his best friend and Barney’s new wife was Jerry’s old flame.  So Jerry, who can’t sleep, saddles up and heads out, to do . . . what?  He has no idea.  The Martians scare his horse away, and he hears from base that when it came back riderless, Betty—the widowed Mrs. Barney—took it and is on her way.  So he heads toward the dome and crawls under it looking for a way in. 

You can guess the rest.  He’s captured, gets control of the situation through brains and guts, rescues the by then-captured Betty, sowing death and destruction among the Martians all the way, learns why they are here (the secret of the title, including what the Martians wanted with Barney's genitalia), and drives them away forever.  Whew!  The details don’t matter.  At the end, the just-bereaved Betty tells Jerry not to contact her—“. . . for a couple of months, anyway,” the back of her neck flushing as she turns away.

The style is consistent with the content, cynical tough-guy-isms all the way down.  For example, when the colonel gets the call that Barney has returned, he sends Jerry to check things out.  “Jerry was just a sergeant, but there wasn’t any need for brass.  Death is for privates.” And so on.  Two stars for this testosterone-soaked epic.

Elaine’s Tomb, by G. Peyton Wertenbaker

G. Peyton Wertenbaker’s Elaine’s Tomb, from the Winter 1931 Amazing Stories Quarterly, is, in its quaint way, the best of this issue’s short fiction, and a vast improvement over his earlier work.  Alan, the narrator, teaches at a small college and falls in love with Elaine, one of his students.  Of course he doesn’t do anything about it, and hares off to Egypt with his colleague Weber who has a line on some ancient temples hardly anybody else knows about.  He confesses his romantic situation to Weber en route.  In a temple, there’s a preserved ancient Egyptian king, and a carved curse against anybody who molests him.  Alan touches the recumbent body, and shortly comes down with a fever that shows no sign of abating.  But Weber has found the secret of suspended animation, and promises to put Alan under at the moment of death, and revive him when he finds the secret of life, which must be around the temple somewhere, and unite him with Elaine.


by Leo Morey

Alan awakens, and it’s the far future, Wellsian variant, populated by people who have forgotten most of the know-how of civilization; the machines take care of them, and when one breaks down, they just put another one in its place.  They live pleasant lives and some of them even write books.  In one of these, Alan learns of Elaine’s Tomb, up north near what used to be called Chicago, in the frozen barbarian-populated wastes.  Turns out Weber couldn’t revive him, but he could suspend Elaine to wait for him.  Further adventures and reunion (or union, in this case) follow.

The story is archaic in attitude but modern in its plain style, well imagined and visualized without wasted verbiage, with enough plot to sustain its 40-page length, and altogether a pleasure to read.  Am I really going to give this antique four stars, as I did with another of Wertenbaker’s late stories, The Chamber of Life?  Guess so. 

Summing Up

So, hope fulfilled—admittedly, to expectations lowered by experience.  That's because editor Ross this time selected modern stories, plus an older one that is written in a modern style and not centered around the cranky crotchets of bygone decades, unlike some earlier selections I would prefer not to name.  The result is mostly pretty readable, with a couple of stories better than that, and nothing bloody awful.  But the specter of the Leinster serial still looms over the next issue.  We shall proceed with trepidation.

If you want to hear some great modern tunes, then tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest hits!




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Comics, Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 6, 1966] Blaise-ing Wreckage (Modesty Blaise)

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by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Eye Spies
Modesty Blaise Poster

Spies are everywhere these days. James Bond is now just one of many secret agents dominating cinema.

John Steed & John Drake
Steed or Drake? Choose your favourite John!

On TV you are spoilt for choice, whether you prefer John Steed, John Drake, Richard Cadell, Napoleon Solo or even Amos Burke.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Funeral In Berlin, Somewhere In The Night
Just a few of the spy books that dominate UK bookshelves

You can go to any bookshop and pick up the latest thriller from people like John Le Carre, Len Deighton or even by Michael Moorcock (under one of his many aliases).

George Victor Spencer
The late George Victor Spencer, alleged spy

But also, in real life news. A 92-page document was made public in Vancouver yesterday, detailing the allegation that George Victor Spencer, recently deceased, had been assigned to look into farms near the US border in order to find a suitable property to set up a site that could possibly have been a base for Soviet intelligence operations.

Mr. Spencer had denied these allegations and called for a public enquiry before his death. I imagine the debate about whether he was really a Russian agent or just a falsely accused man will continue for some time.

With all this intrigue happening around us, it is perhaps unsurprising that the first ever British comic book adaptation is another spy tale: Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise.

An Unlucrative Medium

Garth
Garth, deserving of a Republic serial?

Comic books have not been ones for adaptation in Britain. We did not have the 30s/40s film serials like the United States, so we did not get a Garth Conquers The Universe or The Return of Buck Ryan.

Dan Dare
Would Belvision fancy having a go at Dan Dare?

Nor is there a strong enough animation field to produce The Adventures of Dan Dare or The Rupert The Bear Show.

Roy of the Rovers
Maybe a Roy of Rovers sports film would sell better?

Whilst comics remain popular the idea that we would ever get a Roy of the Rovers or Bash Street Kids film would seem beyond remote. But Modesty Blaise has changed that.

A Pop Culture Icon

Modesty Blaise Novelization
Peter O’Donnell’s “novelization” of the film script

The first strip of Modesty Blaise was only released 3 years ago, but she has already become a massive success. So before talking about the new movie I think it is important to talk about the original strip.

Romeo Brown Strip
A Romeo Brown story in which he gets hit with a golf ball and loses his memory

At the same time as working on the beloved adventure strip Garth, the Daily Mirror further employed Peter O'Donnell to takeover Romeo Brown, their comedy comic strip about a bumbling detective, usually involved in silly situations with various young women. The quality of the strip is not that memorable, but it is there he began collaborating with Jim Holdaway.

Modesty Blaise's Beginnings
Modesty Blaise's Beginnings

After Romeo Brown finished, Peter O’Donnell decided to create a more serious strip where a woman would be a capable hero rather than simply an object of desire or a damsel for the man to rescue. Apparently inspired by an orphan girl he met when stationed in Persia during the war, he teamed up once again with Holdaway to create Modesty Blaise.

Modesty & Marjorie
Modesty reassures Willie’s girlfriend Marjorie that she has no romantic feelings for him.

Starting in 1963, Blaise feels like a totally new type of hero. Both Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin (her loyal sidekick) are both former criminals neither from privileged backgrounds. Modesty grew up in refugee camps in Persia and other Middle Eastern countries, whilst Willie is very much a working-class character. There is also no suggestion that she has any romantic interaction with Willie, instead they are loyal professional colleagues.

Modesty Blaise Action
An excellent action sequence where Willie rams a lorry into Gabriel’s mansion

It is not just the initial concept that is fresh, the quality of the strip feels ahead of anything else I could easily pick up. O’Donnell’s plots feel fresh and complex, varying significantly from story to story. One week she will be investigating drug running in the Vietnam war, the next dealing with psychic espionage. These are combined with characters that feel deep and real. O’Donnell’s writing and Holdaway’s art also come together to give a really cinematic presentation with a real eye for direction.

James Bond
The Daily Express’ James Bond strip: A more old fashioned kind of spy story

Whilst it can often feel like comic books lag behind literature (most science fiction strips seem to be barely coming to grips with the Golden Age), Modesty Blaise often feels like it is closer to the new wave of British espionage literature. Rather than the old-fashioned heroics of James Bond, Blaise owes something to the George Smiley tales or The IPCRESS File, with a certain level of cynicism about intelligence operations.

Modesty comforts Weng after he shoots his sister
Modesty comforts Weng after he shoots his sister

The prospects for the film seemed good at first. Peter O’Donell wrote the initial story for the film, although it was changed significantly for the screen (his novelization is based on his script rather than the finished product) with the main writer and director representing a reunion of Joseph Losey and Evan Jones, the team behind the brilliant Hammer Film The Damned.

So, I went in to see it on the first day of release quietly confident…

An Outrageous Mess

Modesty Blaise Titles
Modesty Blaise Titles

…and I am honestly not sure what I got. It is almost like every scene was made by a different director, none of whom talked to each other, and all footage edited together in five minutes at midnight.

It is quite an experience to watch and hard to believe it was ever released. Is the intention meant to be satirical? Artistic? Serious? I cannot see it particularly working with any reading.

Modesty Blaise Fashions
Just a few of the numerous outfits on display (along with her magical color changing hair)

If I were to praise anything about it, it is the look. The design work in it is beautiful, taking full advantage of being in colour to showcase bright locations and fashions. But even that gets wearying quickly. I believe Modesty changes outfit in almost every scene, only briefly wearing her iconic comic outfit for the sake of a cheap joke about how to change out of it. At times it feels less like they consider Blaise to be a spy than a model for Marissa Martelli’s designs.

Rather than the serious tone of the newspaper strip, Losey’s film has a large dose of comedy inserted into it. Some is absurdly silly, some is satiric, some is very dark. None of it really landed for me.

Modesty Blaise Comic Fights
Modesty Blaise Film Fight

One of the core points of Modesty's character is how skilled a fighter she is. Here the only evidence we see of that is a really poorly choreographed fight scene. For much of the film she is reduced to being a damsel in distress. This is a common problem in British media, I am aware, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing to see here.

Modesty and Willie
Modesty and Willie discuss their romantic feelings through the medium of song.

Willie now seems to have transformed into some Alfie-like lothario in a modish bachelor pad rather than an ex-criminal who runs a pub. They also break one of the most interesting elements of the original strip by involving them in a romance. Inexplicably told through musical numbers taking place in between or during action scenes.

Gabriel Comic Strip
Gabriel Film

Gabriel was previously a Moriarty style figure with an enlarged forehead and walked with a limp. Much like Lex Luthor is to Superman, he seems designed to be the brain to match Modesty and Willie’s brawn. Yet in the film he just appears to be an eccentric, upset about any snag in his plans whilst launching rocket missiles that shoot lasers.

MB23
MB24

The movie also uses scenes from the original comic but without any real explanation or context. The opening scene appears to be taken from The Gabriel Set-Up but whilst there it is a key plot-point about a device to extract people’s secrets, in the film it appears to be an advanced printer which, in another attempt at humor, is unable to give information she requires and has no relation to the rest of the story.

At the start of this section, I said trying to get a read on what this film is trying to do is tough. As an adaptation it has barely any faithfulness. As a silly comedy the jokes are not directed well enough to land.

If it is a satire I am not sure what of? Imperialism? It is more imperialist than anything. Spy films and TV? The meta-fictional jokes don’t really make sense for that. I never thought a problem with all the espionage thrillers coming out is that they have obvious continuity errors, break out into musical numbers at random or even that they take themselves too seriously. The awful carry-on films do a better job at mockery of popular media than this.

I have heard it is trying to be artful but, honestly, I am not convinced by that either. I am fan of the cut-up approach of Burroughs, Ballard and their ilk but they do this to tell a story as a whole in an interesting way, not to make something non-sensical. Whilst we can debate the true value of Duchamp’s Fountain, I can see the point he was making. The only point here seems to be it is a plainly bad film.

The End…Thankfully

Modesty Blaise End
As the Sheikh’s troops advance on Gabriel’s stronghold, Willie and Modesty sing once again.

I do not even know if you can truly rank this on a star system. I cannot even be sure what I just watched was actually a film. The only evidence seems to be I paid money to see it in a cinema. The whole thing, whatever it is, is almost worth seeing in order to appreciate how bizarre an experience it is.

However, I come down on the side of staying at home instead. There you can spend your time reading O’Donnell and Holdaway’s wonderful comic strip in comfort. Find out if a newspaper anywhere near you is syndicating it, I hear that it has been picked up all over the world and it is one of the true greats.

Unlike the shambles Losey served up.

One Star



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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[May 4, 1966] Pushing the Envelope (The State of Music: 1964-66)

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by Gideon Marcus

It's been three years since our last survey of the American music scene. When last we took the pulse of Top 40, music was in a weird in-between stage with a dozen different genres and influences competing for ascendance. What we didn't see back then was the great tidal wave of musical influence that was about to crash on our shores from across the Pond. I think it's safe to say that 1964 was a watershed year, and the pop scene at least can be divided into the eras BBI and ABI…

The British Invasion

The tip of the spear was, of course, The Beatles. The right combination of talent, variety, and infectious tunes, all in a slick gray-suited, mop-topped package, the Fab Four were a hit in the U.S. from the moment they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in February '64.

What made The Beatles so compelling was that they had so much to offer. From their surprisingly diverse debut album, to their rocking second album, and on through their movie soundtracks, A Hard Day's Night and Help!, the British quartet had three score songs to enjoy, almost all of them hit-worthy.

And shoulder to shoulder with the boys from Liverpool was a host of other bands: The Dave Clark Five with their hard-hitting Glad All Over and Bits and Pieces, the delightfully varied and somewhat cynical The Kinks with hits ranging from All Day and All of the Night to the wistful Sunny Afternoon, the bluesy The Who with their anthemic My Generation, and The Rolling Stones, who certainly provide Satisfaction, Eric Burdom's soulful The Animals, the unusual The Zombies. More recently, The Hollies have impressed with I'm Alive and especially Look through any Window.


I enjoyed the sardonic A Well Respected Man quite a lot.


There are many Animals songs to choose from, but We Gotta Get Out of This Place is relentless!


Look Through Any Window blew us away!

Plus all the lighter Merseybeat gang, from Gerry and the Pacemakers to the goofy Freddy and the Dreamers, Peter and Gordon to Chad and Jeremy. The utterly gormless yet inexplicably popular Herman's Hermits. Not to mention the more musical theater-type stars like Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, and Lulu.


Downtown is both upbeat and melancholy at the same time.

All in all, it's been a musical smorgasbord, so delightful that you almost don't mind how many former musical greats got cut off midcareer: who listens to Neil Sedaka or Rick Nelson anymore? And Elvis is barely hanging on.

Domestic Resistance

Nevertheless, the Yanks have both resisted and embraced the invasion. The Beach Boys have kept on plugging away since their 1962 debut with album after album, and they don't seem at all fazed by the foreign influx.

Motown remains King (Queen?) too: Acts like The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, The Four Tops, The Impressions, Dionne Warwick, etc. fill the Top 10 as often as any English band.


Stop in the Name of Love — we got Tony Randall, too!.


Sadly, Martha and the Vandellas were shortchanged to promote The Supremes — their Nowhere to Run To is a modern classic.


Walk on By is one of the loveliest songs ever recorded.

If there's anything that marks this era of music, it's how quickly it's changed. As doors open, they also close. 1964 saw the acme and crash of the surf guitar craze. Acts like The Ventures still steadily produce albums, but the rest of the scene has evaporated, again evolving into garage-y endeavors. The Chiffons, The Shirelles, The Ronettes, and many other girl bands have mostly dropped off the radar, Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" being supplanted by the new raw aesthetic.

Folk to Folk Rock

Since the last wrap-up, folk music swelled to a crescendo and spawned a hybrid child with rock. In 1963, Bob Dylan hit it out of the park with his magnum opus, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Though he continued in acoustic vein through 1964, by last year he had picked up an electric guitar, rasped his voice a bit more (yes, it was possible), and completely changed his sound. From Like a Rolling Stone to widely covered It's All Over Now Baby Blue, Dylan's harmonica-fused electrica has transformed the radio (whether you like it or not.)

Sure, there are still straight folk acts out there, including Joan Baez, Judy Collins, the superlative Donovan, and the recent Gordon Lightfoot, but rocking folk is where it's at.

To wit, The Byrds released two of the more exciting records last year, featuring the hits Mr. Tamborine Man and Turn, Turn, Turn. Those are good songs, although they have lots of others that I like as well or better. For instance: It's No Use, I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better, and It Won't be Wrong. The group's jangle and close harmony are really appealing, though their Dylan covers tend to be limp.

Then there's the appropriately named We Five whose You Were on My Mind was everywhere (and deservedly so).


We saw a great performance of it on Hollywood Palace last year!

Simon and Garfunkel released an acoustic folk album at the end of 1964 that was pretty good but went nowhere. Lorelei and I liked the song, The Sound of Silence, so much that we played it at coffee shops and gigs for a while. Apparently others shared our taste because the song got air play on a lot of college stations, and a Byrds-ified version came out in September, dominating the charts. The duo, which apparently had broken up, got back together to release a new album: The Sounds of Silence (natch). It's quite good, though a bit downbeat, and more than half the songs incorporate electric guitar.

And in the same realm are The Mamas and the Papas and the closely associated Barry McGuire, evolved from the purely folkishy New Christy Minstrels. The M & Ps' California Dreamin' is destined to be an anthem for the decade, and McGuire's controversal Eve of Destruction and his even more goose-bump inducing This Precious Time mark two of the absolute highlights for 1965.


And we got to see BOTH of them on Hullabaloo late last year!

Given the success of the folk-rock genre, one can expect that the remaining "pure" folk acts may go in a rockish direction. But not necessarily…

Psychedelic

There's a new kind of music surfacing, filled with unusual effects, exotic instruments, and the impact of recreational drug use. For want of a better word, and because this is what several outlets and bands are calling it, the genre is "Psychedelic Rock."

Of all the bands I listen to regularly, probably the one that emblemizes this new style is the London-based The Yardbirds. Originally an uninteresting blues band, with the departure of guitarist Eric Clapton (who left because they stopped playing blues — don't let the door hit you in the a…mplifier on the way out) the band became something really far out. For Your Love, Heart Full of Soul, Still I'm Sad, and especially the latest single, Shapes of Things, are filled with atypical movements, eerie vocals, and just plain weirdness (but good weirdness) that indicates music has long since departed Kansas.

Other bands have begun experimenting with psychedelica, for instance, the formerly folk-rockish The Byrds with their brand new single, Eight Miles High. The frenetic, almost unfocused guitar work, the Indian inspired riffs, and the haunting vocals spell a huge departure from last year's output. The Beatles haven't whole-hog embraced the new style (yet), but the use of sitar on their last album, particularly on Norwegian Wood, is definitely part and parcel with it. I understand even The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones are flirting with psychelica.

Next you'll tell me these bands are actually partaking! Le gasp!

Where to?

I don't think it's as hard to guess where things will be in 1968 or 1969 compared to how incomprehensible 1966 would have been to 1963 me. I'm guessing music will get weirder and heavier on one side, along a concurrent thread of smoother, poppish stuff. We might see two different radio formats arise by the end of the decade: one devoted to the experimental rock sound and one emphasizing smooth crooning and harmonies.

I sometimes marvel at how much I'm enjoying all of these new sounds. Many folks of my generation still cling to their jazz or even their classical albums and look at the new music as so much junk.

But to my ears, this is what I've been waiting for my whole life. Bring it on!

If you want to hear all of this great music, then tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest hits!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 2, 1966] By Any Other Name (June 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

That which we call a purge

Successful revolutions often seem to devolve into vicious internal fighting as various factions turn on each other. Many of us are old enough to remember Stalin’s purges in 1937, and I’m sure we all remember learning about the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution when we were in school. Now it looks as though China may be gearing up for some purges of its own.

The five year plan of 1958, dubbed the Great Leap Forward, proved to be a disaster. The plan’s policies produced three years of famine, killing an untold number of people. As a result, Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung stepped back and left the day-to-day running of the country to Liu Shao-ch’i and Teng Hsiao-ping. But Mao may be attempting to seize the reins of power once again.

Last November, an opera by a playwright named Wu Han was attacked as being subversive and critical of Mao’s leadership. On April 10th, the Communist Party issued a directive that condemned almost all literature written since the end of the revolution as “anti-party and anti-socialist.” Every author and poet is now considered suspect. Six days later, poet and journalist Teng T’o was chastised as counterrevolutionary in the official government newspaper. On the 18th, the new movement was given a name in the army’s daily newspaper: the Great Socialist Cultural Revolution. Now, President Liu Shao-ch’i, Mao’s chosen successor, has been publicly criticized as a capitalist and insufficiently supportive of Mao. I’d say the purges are about to begin. It remains to be seen just how bad they will be.


Chairman Mao Tse-tung (r.) and President Liu Shao-ch’i (l.) meet last year with Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia (in the dark jacket).

Smells, sweet and otherwise

This month’s IF offers a mixed bouquet. Overall, it’s visually disappointing, and a couple of the blossoms really could have used a different name.


This allegedly illustrates “The Weapons That Walked”. It doesn’t. Art by McKenna

Mandroid, by Piers Anthony, Robert E. Margroff and Andrew J. Offutt

In the forests of Oregon, the last two humans left alive, Bill Jackson and Tony Baker, finish killing the last android. The androids were created as servants, but were made to be stronger, faster and maybe smarter. Eventually, a war of extinction broke out when the androids asked for equality. Suddenly, the narrative is interrupted by a click, and strange voices which speak in the present/past/future ponder their failure in getting Man and Android to mate. And the story begins again from a little earlier. And so it goes, each time getting a little closer to success, but ending in failure. Finally, one of the strange voices concocts a dangerous plan. If it fails the fabric of TimeSpace will be/is/was ripped beyond repair.


Bill and Tony are observed from outside of time and space. Art by Gaughan

Mandroid sounds like a B-movie from a decade ago. And with three authors, you wouldn’t be at all surprised by something that schlocky. While Margroff only has the sub-par “Monster Tracks” to his credit, and I’ve not read either of the stories credited to Andy Offutt, Anthony (a Cele Lalli discovery) has produced some good work. Maybe it’s his hand that keeps all these cooks from spoiling the broth. This is a good story with a couple of flaws that keep it from reaching four stars. The first is the heavy-handed Biblical allusions at the end; the second, unless I’m reading something that isn’t there, is the veiled hints at Bill’s sexuality that promote some unpleasant stereotypes.

Three stars.

Fandom U. S. A., by Lin Carter

This month, Our Man in Fandom takes a look at fan clubs. Carter takes a quick look at some of the better known clubs on the east and west coasts and in the mid-west, and then talks about what happens at meetings, whether they be formal or informal. It’s a handy resource that could help a lot of people in the States to find a club near them and maybe encourage others to start a club. Plus, Carter finally has a handle on his voice.

Three stars.

The Weapons That Walked, by D. M. Melton

Explorer Joe Hanley’s landing craft fails on the way down to Kast III, and he’s forced to bail out. Unfortunately for Joe, the scouting group on Kast IV is in even worse shape, and the main ship has to go to their aid first. Joe is going to have to make do on his own for several days. Fortunately for Joe, he grew up among the redwoods of northern California and he’s one of the few nature-lovers left. He’s got a plan and this planet might be just what he’s looking for. But then the animals in the area start acting as though they’re being directed by some greater intelligence.


Joe encounters a local predator. Art by Adkins

From the title, you’d expect something from 1926, illustrated by Frank R. Paul, that Joe Ross would think twice about before reprinting it in Amazing. It’s better than that. This is Melton’s second story, following “The Fur People”. Like that story, it’s fairly unobjectionable and shows promise. Better, the female character actually has a name. Showing promise is all well and good, but Melton needs to improve if he wants to stick around.

A low three stars.

The Dream Machine, by Carol Easton

Harry Carver invents a machine that allows users to have extraordinarily real dreams of the things they want. There are consequences.

Easton is this month’s first-time author. I’m not impressed. There are one or two decently written passages, but that’s it. There aren’t really any characters, there’s no actual story (just a recounting of events) and it’s painfully obvious where things are going.

Two stars.

Sweet Reason, by Christopher Anvil

Dr. Garvin, a human psychologist, has come to observe the work of Centran military psychologist Major Poffis. The Centrans have astonishingly high success rates, achieved quickly. Garvin observes the Major treating a patient and the two discuss the theory and practice of psychology. Are human and Centran approaches compatible?


The Centran patient, prior to his treatment. Art by Nodel

Why wasn’t this in Analog? I’m sure I’ve read most of the criticisms of psychology as a science in Campbell’s editorial rants, and the quality is about what Campbell usually gets out of Anvil. A couple more stories like this and we can officially say that Campbell has ruined Anvil as a writer.

Two stars.

Earthblood (Part 3 of 4), by Keith Laumer and Rosel G. Brown

When last we left our hero, Roan’s ship had been disabled by a Niss warship, he had shot his mentor and now had to leave behind his only friend, Iron Robert, who can’t fit into a lifeboat. Under Roan’s leadership, the crew is able to board the Niss ship, only to find it uninhabited. It was the automatic defenses that destroyed Henry Dread’s ship. Fortunately, there is another Terran ship aboard for Roan and his crew to commandeer.

Roan’s first stop is his homeworld. He learns of his mother’s death, but is able to track down his family’s Yill servant. He makes his way to the shop where his parents bought his embryo and learns he was the only viable embryo out of several. He also finds out he came from an ITN experimental station on Alpha Centauri. That means a very long run through backwater territory to find out where he came from.

Nearly a decade later, he and his crew reach his destination. Roan would like to go on alone, but his three most loyal crewmen insist on accompanying him. Eventually, they reach naval headquarters on Nyurth. It turns out that the Imperial Terran Navy has grown decadent and is riven by factions. Most notably, Captain Trishinist believes Roan to be part of a large conspiracy to assassinate Admiral Starbird and seize control of the navy. The Admiral has grown old in service, but still has a plan and a hidden fleet to retake Earth. Time and politics have kept him from ever carrying it out. Now he places it all in Roan’s hands. That evening, Commodore Quex tries to arrest Roan, but Roan and his crew escape easily. To be concluded.


Roan leads with his left. I picked this one as representative of how bad the art is. Art by Wood

Well, this is a big improvement over the last two installments. It’s not without its flaws. When Roan learns that the family servant was originally part of the group sent to acquire his embryo, he fails to ask who hired them. There is also some confusion about time. The run to Alpha Centauri is nearly ten years, but Roan says it’s been four years since Dread’s death. In addition, there are inconsistencies in the relationships and communications between Naval HQ at the end and Rim HQ, which Dread worked for. Hopefully, those things will be cleared up by an editor before book publication.

Despite those flaws, this is a very good installment and gives me hope for the story as a whole. Laumer is much more present this time, in the various military plans and action sequences. But what makes it better is all Rosel Brown. Roan is greatly matured here, more introspective, and the story is improved for it.

Four stars.

By Mind Alone, by Larry Niven

In 1972, a group of UCLA students who have learned the mental power of teleportation and the professor who taught them are having a weekend party in Lake Arrowhead, up in the San Bernardino mountains. When the cigarettes run out, they can’t get more, because it’s Sunday and the stores are all closed, so their hostess teleports back to her parent’s home in Hermosa Beach. But when she arrives, she is stricken by an almost fatally high fever, which quickly diminishes. The professor puts a halt on all teleportation until they can figure out what happened. Have they violated some heretofore unknown law of the universe, or are they being punished for hubris?

Niven has given us a decent little problem story. He’s clearly inspired by Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination and, not to give too much away, if he’s right, then Gully Foyle would be nothing more than some soot and a thin smear of organic matter after his first jaunt. I think the “magic” method of teleportation weakens the story somewhat, but it’s still a fun read. I’d like to see how someone using a more scientific approach would solve the problem revealed here.

Three stars.

Summing Up

A rose, Shakespeare says, by any other name would smell as sweet. But if it were called a dungflower, might those who stopped to smell it find the scent sweeter, because of low expectations, or maybe not as sweet, since something with that name can’t possibly smell good? I find myself wondering how much my opinions of the first two stories are influenced by their B-movie and Gernsbackian titles. What we call a thing can make a difference, and boy do those stories need to be called something else.

On the art front, Galaxy Publishing needs some new blood. The sub-par comic book stylings of Wally Wood and Dan Adkins are a waste of space and ink. Jack Gaughan’s abstract elements and heavy blocks of black are often oppressive and rarely fit the mood of the story they illustrate. When Norman Nodel produces the best illustrations in your magazine, it’s time for a change.


Been a while since we’ve seen something from Blish.




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Magazine

[April 30, 1966] Ormazd and Ahriman (May 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Good News and Bad News

The ancient Persians believed in two roughly co-equal deities: Ormazd, the God of Creation and Light, and Ahriman, the God of Destruction and Darkness.  Unlike, say, the dual concept of the Chinese Yin and Yang, one was decidedly good and the other bad.  Indeed, these twin deities may have inspired the near parity of the Christian God and Satan.

Apparently, these forces hold sway even today.  This month's Analog started off so well, it bid fair to be a contender for best magazine of the month.  Then about half way, the influence of Ahriman took ascendance, and the issue faded away to a truly dreadful ending.  Ah well.  I come not to bury John Campbell but to review him.  At least we start with the good stuff…

Mixed Bag


by John Schoenherr

The Wings of a Bat, by Paul Ash

Anyone who's anyone knows that Paul Ash is really Pauline Ashwell, one of 1958's Hugo nominated Best New Writers — and boy, she's still just great.

Her latest tale stars a middle-aged doctor cum veterinarian stationed at Indication One on the shores of Lake Possible.  Cycads and dinosaurs dominate the landscape, and with good reason: Indication One is based sometime in the Cretaceous!  Against all of his instincts and inclinations, said doctor is tasked with raising a baby pteranadon named Fiona. 

Part country vet story, part mining camp adventure, this tale is by turns and sometimes simultaneously witty and exciting.  I loved it so much, I immediately read it a gain, this time aloud to the family as their bedtime story on two consecutive nights.

If this doesn't get nominated for the Hugo and/or the new SFWA Nebula awards, there's something wrong with the universe.  Five stars!

Call Him Lord, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Kelly Freas

Centuries from now, when Earth is just one of many hundreds of human planets, the crown prince of the Empire is dispatched to humanity's cradle for a tour.  One man is tasked to be his bodyguard, escorting the arrogant man-child as he rides, wenches, and bullies his way across the countryside.  But is this a mere sight-seeing tour…or a test?

While the story is slightly overdrenched in testerone and stoic manliness, Dickson is an excellent writer and his tale compels.  I dug it.  Four stars.

The Meteorite Miners , by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Earth has been the site of countless meteor impacts, many of them secondary strikes of ejecta loosed from prior events.  What we learn from the mineral concentrations at these craters can tell us a lot about the primordial history of our planet…and even the universe.

It's a fascinating topic, and it should have gripped me, but the presentation was a bit too abstruse and disjointed to hold my attention.  It took me several sessions to finish.

Three stars.

Titanium – The Wonder Metal (uncredited, but probably John W. Campbell, jr.

The piece is followed by another non-fiction article, this time a more lay-oriented essay on titanium, what makes it great, and what made it so hard to use economically. 

It's fine.  Three stars.

Two-Way Communication, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

When an inventor develops a universal receiver that allows the owner to transmit right into an announcer's microphone, chaos ensues.  Is it the ultimate democracy or a recipe for anarchy?

In this cute story, Anvil argues the former.  With constant and immediate input (and censure) the vast wastelands of radio and television are made verdant with quality programming.  The author forgets two important factors: 1) most TV and much radio isn't live these days, so interruptions at the source wouldn't have as much effect as depicted — this isn't 1951 after all; 2) people are jerks — interruptions would be constant and annoying.

Still, it was not unpleasant reading.  Call it a low 3 stars.  Ormazd and Ahriman are wrestling, but neither has ascendance.  Yet.

Under the Wide and Starry Sky…, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

In this edge-of-the-future story (indeed, the depicted Gemini 9 mission is scheduled to occur less than three weeks from now), one astronaut is lost during an extravehicular jaunt.  His partner must use all of his wits to rescue him before their oxygen and fuel run out.

Joe Poyer has written a couple of other stories for Analog, both of which showed a fair ability when it came to depicting technology but little talent for characterization or detailed plot.  Starry Sky plays to the author's strengths, presenting a nice little Marooned-esque tale in a vivid fashion.  It ends quickly enough that you don't mind where it's undeveloped.

Three stars.  There are stars of light among the black sky.

The Alchemist, by Charles L. Harness


by Kelly Freas

Ah, here's where it all goes to Hell.  This long, flip, utterly unengaging tale manages to combine alchemy, psionics, making the Russians look stupid, and making scientists look stupid, all in one sure-to-please-the-editor package. 

This is truly an example of Ahrimanic possession as the last story by the author was one I liked very much.  But The Alchemist?  One star.  Feh.

Doing the math


Geraldine "Gerry" Myers, mathematician at the Mission Planning and Analysis Division at the Manned Space Craft Center in Houston

As might be expected from such a violent collision of positive and negative forces, the whole thing ends up about a wash: 3.1 stars.  This puts it above IF and New Worlds (3 stars) as well as Worlds of Tomorrow (2.6)

The May 1966 Analog finishes below Impulse (3.2), Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5), and the astonishing, but mostly reprints, Fantastic (4).  Thus, Analog is the dead median for this month!

Nevertheless, it has contributed two stories to one of the best months for 4 and 5 star material since the Journey began.  You could fill three big magazines with nothing but excellent stuff.

Women did so-so in April, only writing ~6% of new material, though Judy Merril had a good reprint in Impulse.

And so, the battle between good and bad (quality) continues.  Will Ormazd be ascendant next month?  Or will Ahriman have the final laugh?  Stay tuned…

[Don't miss the next (and FINAL) episode of The Journey Show:

1966 and the Law — smut, marriage, voting rights, justice, and more. With Erica Frank and Ethan Marcus! With special musical guest, Nanami!

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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[April 29, 1966] Young and Bold: Photographer David Bailey

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by Gwyn Conaway


David Bailey's Box of Pin-Ups was released in 1964 in the United Kingdom but never made its way (officially) across the pond.

Today has gifted me with a much-desired treat: a suite of photographs by the infamous David Bailey titled Box of Pin-Ups. This is a defining collection of photography, and I’m saddened by its lack of accessibility here in the United States. It has taken all year to find such a treasure! Let’s delve, dear readers, into the work of the defining fashion photographer of our time.


From left to right: Reggie, Charlie, and Ronnie Kray. Why is Box of Pin-Ups not available in the United States, you ask? Why, none other than Lord Snowden, of course. He bemoaned the fact that the Kray brothers (above) are subjects of Bailey’s lens. True, the twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray are crime lords in the East End, but history proves time and time again that one’s virtue is not necessarily the trait that defines an era, nor one’s importance in capturing it. History finds both the hero and the villain equally fascinating.

David Bailey is an intriguing example of the working class artist rocketing to fame in the Swinging London scene. Suffering from both dyslexia and dyspraxia, a young Bailey had to seek out creative outlets as he completely and utterly abandoned his schooling. In fact, he left school when he was only fifteen years old, bounced around from job to job, and served in Singapore in the Royal Air Force. It was during this time that he bought his first camera, a Rolleiflex.


The Rolleiflex 2.8E is what I suspect his first camera to have been, released in 1956.

In 1960, a mere year into his career as a photographer, he began working with British Vogue, but it wasn’t until 1962 that he caught my eye. Vogue was beginning to promote younger fashions with a more modern feel, you see, and that work was to be done with a Rolleiflex. The camera is known for capturing movement and spontaneity, a must-have when photographing guerilla-style on the busy, gritty streets of Manhattan. So David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton, the Face of the 60’s herself, were tasked with a bare bones production. No hair or makeup artists. No lighted sets. Just the two of them, the photographer and the model, capturing what Bailey coined “Young Idea Goes West.”


Note the spontaneity of the images and how the fashions from Jaeger and Susan Small are caught in the flurry of New York life. British Vogue’s Lady Clare Rendlesham was reticent to feature this sort of realism in her magazine, which up until this point had focused on the aristocratic high polish of the 1950s.

I was so impressed with the journey of the series, seeing a young woman explore the wiles and wonders of the Big Apple. Truly, New York City is a chaotic and bustling town that is difficult to capture without having been there, walking down the streets at a clip. Bailey’s attention to this chaos is evident in the series, showcasing his mastery of the lens and celebrating his youth and boldness.


Bailey uses reflections in glass display windows and street poles to frame Shrimpton in the chaos of the city, while also capturing the candid reactions of local pedestrians as a way of framing Shrimpton’s role in this journey: a young woman full of wonder and wanderlust that can’t help but gain the attention of those around her.

Box of Pin-Ups is similarly youthful and bold. In fact, I’d venture to say that this is a seminal collection of photographs for more than one reason.

Firstly, a collection of photographs has never been sold in this manner before. It proves to me without a doubt that photographers of our times are cultural flames just like the models, fashion designers, and musicians they capture. I suspect we will see other photographers follow suit in the years and decades to come.

Secondly, the figures captured are not just the stars and starlets of our youth revolution. The collection includes such artists as Cecil Beaton, the famed war photographer, Rudolph Nureyev, the exceptional ballet danseur, and David Puttnam, an advertising executive. Bailey’s Box of Pin Ups captures the provocateurs of our times, the Swinging 60s, regardless of whether they’re already in the spotlight. His collection of movers and shakers is a look inward at the people inspiring our changing times.


From left to right: Cecil Beaton, David Puttnam, and Rudolph Nureyev.

However, the most interesting thing about the collection is actually distilled in the commentary of Francis Wyndham, who has included notes in the collection for each photograph. Wyndham astutely claims that “in the age of Mick Jagger, it is the boys who are the pin-ups.” This statement couldn’t hit the mark any more clearly than in Bailey’s collection. Only four of the subjects, out of thirty-six, are women.

This prompted me to look at the collection with even more sophistication. Bailey states it baldly in the title Box of Pin-Ups and in looking at his figures from that point of view, it’s clear that the male subjects are displaying their fashion choices – ergo their identities – with pride and vigor. This attention to vanity, as it’s often coined, is usually reserved for women’s modeling, fashion, and advertisement.


From left to right: The Beatles member John Lennon and record producer Andrew Oldham. Notice the unapologetic celebration of men's beauty here, in the delicate fanning on John Lennon's eyelashes and the bishop sleeve of Oldham's blouse.

Which invites the question: Has the arrival of sensations such as The Beatles, The Kinks, and Mick Jagger broken open a new era of male complexity? Since the early nineteenth century, men have been relegated to a very narrow range of roles. In fact, there was a concerted effort after the French Revolution to separate our material and social culture by gender: textiles, foods, furniture, colors, patterns, occupations, hobbies, education… And while women have been fighting these conventions for time immemorial, men have been conditioned to endure. Great minds, from Paul Gaugin to Oscar Wilde, have challenged these limitations, no doubt, but they have never been seen as the mainstream. Now, however, I see the potential for these defiant men to change our future. This fever our youth is currently experiencing… I hope it becomes much more than just a passing flu.

Thank you, David Bailey, for framing his answer to my question in the outlines of a beautiful box!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 26, 1966] Inner Space, Romance and Religion Impulse and New Worlds, May 1966

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

Never let it be said that Science Fiction is always lightweight stuff. Both magazines are tackling big issues this month.

We’re back to fuzzy covers in this month's Impulse – don’t forget, “The NEW Science Fantasy”. It’s OK but not the best. It’s another Keith Roberts, more of which in a minute.

The Editorial this month has the Editor Kyril still meditating over the genre. Readers still like stories about other humans, he suggests – it is rare for humans to like stories that are truly alien – presumably a response to the Merril story started last month and concluding in this. (More later.)

To this month’s actual stories.

Seventh Moon , by John Rankine

A debut author, I think. When spaceship Interstellar Two-Nine goes missing on its approach to the ‘polite’ planet of Bromius, Dag Fletcher of the Inter-Galactic Organisation goes to investigate. With such a set-up, I suspect that this will become an ongoing series of some sort. It’s typical Space Opera and paradoxically remarkably mundane, even down to the repeated descriptions of how gorgeous all the women are, with the exception of the lead female character, who is deliberately annoying. 3 out of 5.

Pavane: Brother John, by Keith Roberts

In this third story from Roberts’ alternate History, where Elizabeth I was assassinated in 1588, we are given the chance to see the effect of religion upon this alternate life. As this is a world dominated by the Roman Catholic faith, it is an interesting perspective on what we have read so far.

Brother John is an Adhelmian monk who is given the task of recording, for the benefit of Rome, all stages in the proceedings of The Court of Father Hieronymous, Witchfinder in General to Pope John. He begins to dare to question the practices of the Church during a version of the Inquisition, and is so affected by what he sees that he begins to lead a revolt against the Church. The ending is rather enigmatic, in that in a crowd of acolytes Brother John experiences a vision showing an alternate future, a more positive one than that experienced by the masses. Leaving on a boat to Rome, the boat capsizes with no one to be found. This development of this series continues to impress.

Well, it’s taken a bit longer than it has in our world, but it seems that some sort of religious reformation is beginning. It’ll be interesting to see where this social upheaval leads, and I’ll read the next story to see if this idea evolves further. 4 out of 5.

The Pace That Kills by Alistair Bevan

From an alternative past to an alternate future, though from the same writer, because Alistair is actually Keith Roberts, who we have just read!

The two stories however couldn’t be more different. The Pace That Kills is evidently inspired by the newly introduced 70-miles-per-hour speed limit on Britain’s motorways. It is a world where this obsession with speed is taken to its limit. The government have politicized speed limits and uses black boxes in the vehicles to control speed in most people’s vehicles, but rebellious types adapt their vehicles, deliberately race each other and flagrantly ignore the limits.

Johnny Morris and his friend Tinker are witness to a seemingly fatal accident. They rescue a girl and meet the officious Masterwarden of Sector Twelve in West London, Horace J. Bigge. Afterwards, we discover that they work for Peter Hanssen, the leader of the Driver Party, for there is an ongoing political war between the Motorists, known as Drivers, and the Pedestrians, called Peds.

The survivor of the accident, Moira Alice Kelly, is taken to hospital, interrogated by Bigge and sentenced to torture and death. Despite Nanssen’s wishes, Morris and Tinker decide to attempt a rescue. It doesn’t go well, but Moira is released. Bigge is also captured and there follows a bizarre interrogation after which Bigge is set free, but dies by being run down on the road. Moira enthusiastically explains how she became a motor addict to Nanssen. They begin a relationship, only to find that Kelly is an undercover Warden. The story finished unconvincingly.

This is a really mixed-up story. Part adventure, part satire, in the end it is not a good example of either. It is generally uneven in pace and plot, veering between unsubtle satire and making a serious point. There’s a huge clumsy dollop of ‘telling’ the reader things in the middle as well.

Generally, things are usually ramped up to excess throughout this overlong story, which diminishes it overall. Difficult to believe that these two stories are from the same writer, which may be the point of the pseudonym. 2 out of 5.

The Run by Chris Priest

Something to freshen the palate a little now. This is a debut story in Impulse from someone who has made quite a name for himself through his critical comments in recent months – it was Chris that Kyril wrote an open letter response to in his editorial of Science Fantasy back in January. He is also currently a regular critic in the British Science Fiction Association’s in-house magazine, Vector.

With this in mind, it is interesting to read some of Chris’s fiction rather than his critical work. It is OK but nothing special. Senator Robbins, driving in his car, is summoned back to his base in an emergency. As he gets closer to the headquarters the journey becomes increasingly fraught as the road is surrounded by angry jeering teenagers known as Juvies.

Clearly tapping into the feeling of unease that many older people have about teenagers of today, the gist of the story is that the Juvies are going to take over the world, incite rioting and basically destroy law and order, and that this is the start of the revolution. There’s some nice touches, but the ending is annoyingly enigmatic. This is clearly a beginner’s work, but I’d be interested to see more of this from Chris. 3 out of 5.

Cry Martian, by Peter L Cave

A story of little Timmy who tells his mother that he has found a Martian camp whilst playing out in the woods. The twist in this brief story is that he is on Mars. Short but fairly effective, if forgettable.
3 out of 5.

Homecalling (Part 2 of 2) by Judith Merril

Back to the second and final part of Judith Merril’s story. Last time we found nine-year old Dee and her younger brother Petey stranded on a planet and taken in by the insect-like Lady Daydanda.

In this second part we read of further attempts to communicate and understand each other. Dee learns to translate the thoughts Daydanda is telepathically putting in her head. In return, Daydanda learns more about the humans. When Dee and Petey return to their rocket, Dee allows one of Daydanda’s sons to enter the burned-out spaceship with them, and through the son Daydanda can communicate further. She discovers what ‘machines’ are, that the place they are in is ‘a spaceship’ and that it can travel to places beyond their world.

Daydanda’s concern for the children and willingness to care for them is made more difficult by Dee’s seemingly illogical desire to be with her Mother. The aliens eventually are allowed access to the cockpit where both of her parents are dead, and much of the last part of the story shows us Daydanda’s logical, if erroneous, reasoning for why Dee does not want to see her Mother dead in the Spaceship. Intriguingly, the ending feels rather creepy, although I suspect the idea is meant to be a happy one, where Petey and Dee are willingly left in the presence of the Mother – for now.

As I said last month, even though there are issues of this being a reprint, it is a great story. Merril’s description of the aliens, and the thought processes they go through to make their decisions and choices is wonderful – but, of course, really it is the humans who are the aliens. 4 out of 5.

Summing up Impulse

Mainly novellas again this month. The Merril finishes well, and may be the best thing in the magazine, although I am still annoyed about it being a reprint. I continued to enjoy the Pavane series, although I know that it is not for everyone and this latest installment will not change that view, I’m afraid. It’s intriguing to read Chris Priest’s fiction as opposed to his letter-writing. But then we have what even Kyril referred to last month as “typically Bonfiglioni space-fillers”.

I’m almost tempted to add the Rankine here as one, though that may be uncharitable. It’s OK, if just… boring. The Cave story Cry Martian tells us an old trope in a new way – but nothing new, there. However, The Pace that Kills is just awful. I suspect it has been there a while waiting to be used as “space-filler”.

So: a mixture of good and bad this month, leading to a lower-than-average, certainly of late, issue. With the dominance of new Associate Editor Keith Roberts this month, this may be a little worrying.

Onto this month’s New Worlds

The Second Issue At Hand

In contrast to Impulse, Mike Moorcock has opted for shorter stories with more variety this month. He’s also promised to tackle that perennial (and most touchy!) topic of religion.

In the Editorial, Moorcock warms up by tackling the topic of the supernatural. He refers to a new book about it, quoting its point that the supernatural may be connected to the natural, or normal, in a person’s mind, and that Ballard and Philip K. Dick write about this in different ways. The final paragraphs suggest we should see more sf incorporating drugs to explore this new territory.

My issue with this is that you may need to take drugs to understand such stories. As I don’t partake – beyond the odd cup of tea! – such stories tend to leave me cold.

And talking of stories, to the stories!

Illustration by James Cawthorn

Pilot Plant by Bob Shaw

Here’s the welcome return of Bob Shaw, last seen in these pages back in October 1965 with …And Isles Where Good Men Lie.

Whilst involved in an aeroplane test flight accident, aerospace engineer Tony Garnett hears a voice say, “Get me out of here Xoanon.” When he is recovering in hospital, he tries to work out who Xoanon is and where the voice came from. He contacts his deputy Ian Dermott to cancel the firm’s current project, a flying wing for civil aviation. Four months later, Garnett is back to work but finds that, despite his wishes, work has been continued in secret. His attempt to meet a worker involved in the project is unsuccessful – the man faints – but Garnett finds that the poor unconscious worker has recently been sent away on a special training course.

He takes his nurse Janice Vickers away on a weekend but really goes to find the place in Harlech, Wales, where this training course has been held. As Garnett gets near he realises he has been there before but has strangely forgotten about it. The date with Janice doesn’t go well, and Garnett ends up in Janice’s chalet whilst she ends up in his. This is a fatal mistake, as during the night there is an explosion in Garnett’s chalet where he would have been sleeping and Janice dies. The last words she mumbles to Tony are also about Xoanon.

Things now get stranger. Garnett is told by the police that the explosion was caused by a meteorite strike. After being interrogated by the police Garnett returns to the factory where he is told that a wing is being built for a customer by the name of Xoanon, who is one of a group of extraterrestrials. They wish to use the wing to collect something lost off the coast of Wales.

Dermott tells Tony that he has been manipulated by Xoanon from the start, but the accident meant that a metal plate was put in his skull which broke the contact between him and Xoanon. Garnett is shot by Dermott. Surviving this, Tony captures a test plane about to take off and attempts to rendezvous with Xoanon’s spaceship hidden in the upper atmosphere.

Tony meets Xoanon, who in Bond-villain fashion explains all to Garnett. Garnett also meets Janice again, because – surprise, surprise! – she wasn’t killed, but is now in the body of an alien. Tony decides not to return to Earth.

It’s good to see Bob back, but this is relatively mediocre stuff. The setting’s good, the prose too, but the plot got wilder and wilder until it lost credibility for me. The ending is particularly weak, as there are elements seemingly key to the plot that are not explained – do the aliens retrieve their device? – and the abrupt end of the story means that we do not find what happens next.

I think Bob’s trying to write a contemporary thriller with a science-fictional element, but it didn’t quite work. 3 out of 5.

The Ultimate Artist, by Richard A. Gordon

We’ve met Gordon before with his story A Question of Culture back in Science Fantasy in December 1965. We’re treading similar ideas here, as this story is about what happens when an Artist named Zacharias decides to retire. The story is told by a narrator who has spent much of their life following Zacharias as he travels across the galaxy. When Zacharias performs for the last time, there are consequences for the narrator.

There’s some nice descriptions of what it is like to be enraptured by a performance. It is about the joy of the experience and fan-worship. Rather like seeing The Beatles or The Rolling Stones as they retire, I guess. 3 out of 5.

Rumpelstiltskin, by Daphne Castell

Daphne has been popping up with some regularity in New Worlds of late. This time she retells the old fairytale of a princess locked away in a tower from the perspective of Rumpelstiltskin. Well written but not really memorable. 3 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

Unification Day, by George Collyn

George Collyn was last seen in last month’s issue waxing lyrical over the work of Kurt Vonnegut. Here we’re seeing his fiction. I quite liked the set-up of this one, in an alternate history where Britain has been unified with France. This is emphasised by the point that although the story is set in Scotland, there’s lots of wine, pastries and Camembert around!

The narrator tells us of what happens when he and his wife go to stay with his posher brother-in-law for the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Unification Day. As the narrator is an advovate of English Home Rule and the brother-in-law is a Francophile, as you might expect it doesn’t go well. Much of the story here shows us how the British are treated as underdogs and lesser citizens, how the language is down-graded in society and British culture is derided. The consequence of this is the story-teller is determined to continue his fight in the future. An interesting version of the traditional Scottish – English independence debate, which makes valid points, but then doesn’t seem to go anywhere. 3 out of 5.

Secret Weapon by E. C. Tubb

The return of an old-school regular. Students from different planets begin at an Earth academy. Armitage is an unpleasant student who finds it difficult to fit in, and reacts violently to what he sees. He graduates – eventually. However, the reason for his behaviour is revealed at the end of the story.

This is a story with an almost Heinlein-like tone, which may wrongfoot the reader. It doesn’t show humans in a good light, though. Nicely written, even if it is a one-trick kind of tale. 3 out of 5.

Fountaineer, by David Newton

This month’s lyrical story, about a fountain in a village in Italy and its creator. Lots of lush prose which otherwise has little point. 3 out of 5.


Illustration by Douthwaite

Fifth Person Singular, by Peter Tate

A story of awareness from different perspectives. An alien shows us his perception of his world. When he meets Ahn, he then discovers that there is more than one way of looking at things. Appropriately inner space, this one. A romance that takes navel-gazing to another dimension. 3 out of 5.

A Man Like Prometheus, by Bob Parkinson

A more typical romance story now. A space pioneer returns from “Out There” to meet Rosamund, his Earthbound love, after their careers and a genetic disorder have kept them apart. I like what the writer is trying to do here – romance in a SCIENCE FICTION magazine?! The problem is that it’s not that well done and comes across as somewhat mawkish and maudlin. 3 out of 5.


Illustration by Douthwaite

Girl, by Michael Butterworth

A person visits an old barn filled with ancient and decaying artifacts. Lots of descriptions of things in a dream-like state. The twist in the tale is that this story is after some sort of an apocalypse which they have caused. Lots of lyrical allegory which tries to mean more than it does. 3 out of 5.

Clean Slate, by Ralph Nicholas

Stranded, John Sumpter attempts to fix a broken-down spaceship without help or spare parts. It seems impossible. Expecting the end, Sumpter and his friend Orlando swap tales about their pasts. They experience some kind of cosmic event, which allows them to fix their ship and go home. Unconvincing. 3 out of 5.

A Different Kick – Or How to Get High Without Going into Orbit, by John Brunner

After last month’s strange serial, here’s John Brunner in non-fiction mode. This is an abridged transcript of an address given by Brunner at the London Worldcon last year. It was mentioned by both editors after the event as a landmark speech and caused a bit of a stir at the Worldcon, I gather. I assume for that reason it is given here.

Reading it, I can see why. Brunner examines what sf readers like and don’t like about non-sf novels, and how non-sf writers have managed to be successful in the genre. It’s well thought out and makes valid points using lots of references to different author’s work. At the end Brunner echoes Moorcock’s ideas that sf needs to move away from its pulp origins and be something new and different if it is to inspire and succeed in the future. A “Look forward, not back” kinda thing. It is well done, but is nothing new to regular readers.

Letters and Book Reviews

Assistant Editor Langdon Jones tackles one book in depth this month – Dreams and Dreaming by Norman MacKenzie. The reason given for this is that it gives the reader an insight into Fantasy writing by explaining the workings of the inner mind. Really though it seems to be a justification for all those stories we are currently reading about visions and dream-states – there’s some in this month’s issue, for example.

James Colvin (aka Mike Moorcock, don’t forget!) covers a number of story collections in some detail. The Best from Fantasy & SF Volumes 11 and 13 come out of this dissection pretty well, although Colvin feels that Volume 11 is better than Volume 13. By contrast, Lloyd Biggle’s All the Colours of Darkness is “a weary book”. Walter M Miller’s Conditionally Human collects three “above average” novellas from the fifties. Daniel F Galouye’s latest, The Lost Perception, is “unsuccessful”.

After being absent for a while, the Letters pages this month are very entertaining, as Moorcock answers criticism of his "attack" on religion in his Editorial of Issue 158 (January 1966). Too long to quote, but the responses on both sides are fulsome and interesting.

Summing up New Worlds

Once again Moorcock has gone for breadth rather than depth here this month. This means that there’s more to like and the range of material is good, but overall the issue feels a little underwhelming. The much-vaunted Bob Shaw story disappointed, for example. There’s nothing here that is not entertaining, but at the same time there’s not a lot here worth remembering.

Summing up overall

Once again, we have the two magazines showing different aspects of the genre. Whereas Impulse has gone for less stories and more depth, New Worlds impresses with its range.

This makes the choice difficult in that we are rather comparing oranges with apples. It also doesn’t help that neither magazine truly impresses this month. They are not bad, it is just that we’ve had better from both editors. Each issue has its own disappointment.

In the end I’ve opted for Impulse as the better, although I could easily see other readers opt for New Worlds, for the reasons I have given above.

With all this talk of religion, I see the title of John Baxter's novel in next month's New Worlds with a certain degree of irony…

Should be interesting! Until the next…



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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction