Magazine, Serial

[October 18, 1965] Turn, Turn, Turn (November 1965 Fantasy & Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Winds of Change

History is divided into eras: The Stone Age, The Middle Ages, The Renaissance.  There are Golden Ages and Dark Ages.  The Jazz Age.  The Gilded Age.  One is never quite sure of a period's exact delineations, the precise moments of its beginning or end, until the next one is well on its way.  It is possible to tell when one is in an age, however, and also to feel keenly the wistful uncertain sense one gets in the doldrums between epochs.  Who can't have felt that way in the year succeeding President Kennedy's assassination, when his civil rights program, American involvement in Indochina, even the character of government in general hung in the balance.  And who can doubt that, for better or worse, the Johnson era has clearly begun?

I've lived through two sea changes in music.  The first was in 1954, when the overripe swing and schmaltz on the radio was overrun with a wave of rock and roll, particularly if you tuned into the Black stations (luckily, a radio tuner cannot easily be segregated).  By 1963, the winds of change had become muddled.  With folk, pop, motown, surf, and country vying for our eardrums, it was quite impossible to know then where the next two years would take us.  Then the Beatles spearheaded the biggest British invasion since 1812, and a new age was upon us.

Science fiction has its ages, too.  When I got into SF in a big way, the genre was clearly plumb in the middle of one.  It was 1954, four years after Galaxy's editor, Horace Gold, had thrown the gauntlet down at the feet of puerile pulp SF, five years after the new Fantasy and Science Fiction established a literary benchmark for the genre that has yet to be exceeded.  Science fiction primarily came in digest sized magazines, and the market was aflood with them.  Quality ranged from the penny-a-word mags which were little above the pulps that preceded them to stellar new fiction that burst beyond our solar system and ranged deep into our pysches.

As the 60s dawned, the genre had become anemic.  Almost all of the monthly digests had gone out of print.  The old stalwart, Astounding, had changed its name to Analog, but is fiction remained stolidly fixed in an older mode.  Gold retired from Galaxy and Fred Pohl struggled to keep it and its sister mags fresh as its reliable stable of authors left for greener (as in the color of money) pastures.  F&SF's helm passed on to Avram Davidson, whose whimsical style did the magazine few favors.

But the genre seems to have found its feet and is stomping off in a new direction.  Propelled by a "New Wave," again largely based in Britain, the science fiction I've been reading these days no longer feels like retreads of familiar stories.  They have the stamp of a modern era, an indisputable sense of 1960s.  And no single issue of a single magazine has represented this renaissance in SF better than the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

A Fresh Breeze


by Gray Morrow (illustrating the many perils of … And Call Me Conrad (Part 2 of 2)

Come to Venus Melancholy, by Thomas M. Disch

Disch is one of the flagbearers of the new era.  In just three years, this new author has produced more than 20 stories, some of them quite brilliant.  In this one (set on an obviously pre-Mariner Venus), a lonely cyborg staffer of a trading post literally holds you captive while she tells the sad story of how she lost her love.

By turns horrifying and heartbreaking, it's a moving piece.  Four stars.

The Peacock King, by Larry McCombs and Ted White

Less effective though more experimental is this piece on the first successful hyperdrive jaunt.  After four failures, it is determined that the transition to hyperspace bears similarities to drug-induced schizophrenia.  One couple, so in love as to practically share a consciousness, is fed a regimen of psychoactives to prepare them for the trip.

Somewhat roughly written, and perhaps too short, it is nevertheless a fascinatingly "now" story delving into new territory.

Three stars.

Insect Attractant, by Theodore L. Thomas

This usually disappointing column of sf-story ideas masquerading as short science articles starts promisingly, discussing how insect pests could be eradicated through synthesis of female sex pheromones, which could then be sprayed to disrupt their breeding cycles.  A fine alternative to DDT.

But then he goes on to suggest that human females have similar pheromones, and that distillation and application of same could be used by marriage counselors, as if love is purely a matter of chemical compatibility. Perhaps the author has never been in love, let alone gotten married.  Of course, Mr. Thomas may have meant the piece in jest, though I also resented its casually sexist overtones.  Either way, it's not worth the page it occupies.

Two stars — and let's please 86 this column, Mr. Ferman?

… And Call Me Conrad (Part 2 of 2), by Roger Zelazny

When last we left Konstantin Karaghiosis, Minister for Cultural Sites on an atomics-devastated Earth, he was giving a tour of Greece to a blue-skinned Vegan, name of Cort Vishtigo, and his human entourage.  Ostensibly, the alien was on Earth to write a travelogue.  His true purpose is unknown, but the members of the Radpol movement believe Vishtigo's trip is a real estate survey, prelude to the Vegans buying up the planet to plunder.  An assassination attempt is in the offing, and Karaghiosis (virtually immortal and currently going by the name of Conrad) believes that the alien's bodyguard, Hassan, is the likely killer. 

That's the context, but the tale Zelazny weaves reads like a modern interpretation of mythology, with Conrad's party encountering a host of radiation mutated beasts, humans, and everything in-between.  Conrad is a tale of survival, of derring do, of proving worth.  It's also a pretty good mystery with a satisfying, if a touch too pat, ending.

At first, I was leery of Zelazny's style, a first person macho that threatens to become precious.  But there's enough self-deprecatory humor to make it work, and I found the pages flying.  There's enough action to keep it moving, enough depth to keep you thinking.

Four stars for this segment, and the novel as a whole is elevated to this rank as well.

El Numero Uno, by Sasha Gilien

It used to be that Death attended to matters personally.  Now, the business has boomed, and he requires field agents armed with legal contracts instead of scythes.  This particular case involves a harried operative on the sports beat and a particularly recalcitrant matador scheduled for expiration.

Good stuff in the style of Ron Goulart.  Four stars.

Squ-u-u-ush!, by Isaac Asimov

Having previously discussed the shortest measure of time, the largest measures of dimension, the hottest heat, and the coldest cold, the Good Doctor now explores the densest densities, starting with ordinary matter and proceeding the greatest crushes in the universe: the interior of giant stars.

Cutting edge stuff, and it's the first time I learned of neutronium, a state of matter even more compressed than that found inside a white dwarf.

Four stars.

A Few Kindred Spirits, by John Christopher

Last up, the much heralded author of No Blade of Grass offers up a tale combining a queer (in both senses of the word) group of dogs, the concept of reincarnation, and the pursuit of literary laurels.  A character study cum literal shaggy dog story, it's perhaps the most conventional piece of the issue — save for the rather daring (and refreshingly uncondemned) discussion of alternate sexual preferences.

Four stars.

The Sound of Shoes Dropping

It is clear that, after a long many-tacked jaunt in trackless seas, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has set a bold new course.  I have high hopes and more than a little suspicion that this New Wave era has many more exciting years left to it.

After quite a few lean years, I'm finally getting my dessert again!




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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[October 16th, 1965] The World According to Bonnie Cashin

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by Gwyn Conaway

I have recently fallen back in love with the ever personal, exhaustively practical designs of the worldly Bonnie Cashin.  From ballet costumes to uniforms for servicewomen during World War II to Coach, there’s no doubt she has had a far-reaching influence on our culture.

Bonnie Cashin wearing a wool zebra-striped tunic, early 1960s.

A staple of American design, Cashin is most known for pioneering the sportswear culture we now thoroughly enjoy. But her work has been far more diverse than one is led to believe. She lends a worldly view to American design, and explores other cultures through silhouette and textile alike. Let’s explore her inspirations and creations.

In 1960, Bonnie Cashin visited South Korea. Here she dons a gat, a black horsehair wide-brimmed steeple hat which is traditionally worn by noblemen and scholars during the Joseon period. Perhaps this foreshadows her interest in symbols of status and power.

I would be remiss to not first introduce Cashin’s most recent invention, the Blanket Coat, an evermore popular trend that will most assuredly be in style for a decade or more. While at first, the Blanket Coat seems to follow the boxy trapeze cuts ubiquitous in fashion, it does so from a long-informed fascination with the shapes and details of other cultures. This style, derived from her recent interest in the Japanese kimono, departs from the expected silks and linens and turns instead to delicate, fuzzy mohair wool which softens the look. Bold colors and patterns, though not directly derived from kimono, are inspired by Eastern color schemes, which at first glance create discord to the eye but settle into a harmonious and energetic palette.

Blanket Coat, 1965. While the bright yellow and pink palette of this coat may be jarring at first, it's worth noting that this is the color palette of a young unmarried Korean woman's hanbok.

Her interest in kimono doesn’t stop there. Recently, she released experimental suits of tweed wool. These curious pieces portray Cashin’s devotion to character and story. Note the kimono displayed traditionally on a wooden pole, in comparison to the angular shoulders of Cashin’s design. I was floored by Cashin’s clever jab: that women are often the dressings of the room. This silhouette lends the woman’s tapestry its own agency, thereby freeing the woman from conventional expectations.

This particular silhouette rose in Cashin's fall/winter 1964-1965 season. The kimono pictured right is made of rinzu silk, circa 1800-1840.

Beyond silhouette, textiles also play a bold role in Cashin’s creative expressions. Cashin looks to symbols of power and translates them into womenswear. Born in 1908, before women’s suffrage (embarrassingly, we’ve only had the right to vote for forty-five years) and witness to the bravery of women at war, I can’t help but surmise that Cashin’s designs are for women with strength of character. (On the ethicality of appropriating symbols of power from other cultures, I tend to believe it’s best to leave them in the hands of their successors. However, after centuries of Western fashion committing the same fashionable faux pas, I doubt there will be an end to this design philosophy anytime soon.)

A perfect example of this is the wool coat below. Closely resembling Kente cloth, a woven textile worn by powerful men and women in many African nations, the coat takes on more meaning. These types of cloth have many different meanings and patterns, depending on the culture of origin. Here we see Cashin calling to what might be termed a “Primitive” pattern today, but what in reality is the cloth of kings and queens. I appreciate the poetry of a misrepresented textile being used in womenswear, as women are so often misrepresented and underestimated.

Left, Cashin's tweed wool and suede car coat. Center and right are images of Prestige Kente and Ewe Kente cloth from Ghana. Kente cloth is also utilized in countries like Nigeria, and printed onto Dutch wax cloth, the textile used to create their elaborate headwraps. Cloths like these were traditionally reserved for the most powerful people in the community.

Perhaps one of her riskiest forays into cultural design is her dive into Native American and Pakistani design. While she commonly uses suede in her styles, she takes her “Indian” inspirations much further in the design below. She is clearly inspired by Pakistani Ikat, or perhaps Swat (a type of wedding dress), silhouettes that share the trapeze torso and dolman sleeves so popular in the West now. She also pushes suede to new heights in this series, incorporating fringe and cosmic designs akin to the origin stories of Native tribes in the American plains.

Cashin's designs, labeled Indian Summer and Indian Territory (left to right). Note the fine suede leather and fringe, indicative of the American native nations, which wore deerskin and suede rather than cloth due to tall grass. Meanwhile, the shape of the top's design (pictured right) is reminiscent of Indian ikat or swat dresses. Cashin combined both "Indian" inspirations to make this look.

A Pakistani Swat dress of the 19th century. Swat are traditional wedding dresses in the Bengal region. Cashin's inspiration may also have come from an ikat-style tunic, dress, or coat. These are sometimes referred to as ikat kurta, and can be found across Uzbekistan, Nepal, Pakistan, and northern India. Note how the underarm is round, thanks to a gusset. This detail, among others, is emulated in Cashin's design above.

In short, Cashin’s worldly aesthetic lends power to the American woman. It’s well-known that she designs with the modern woman in mind: mobility and urbanity above all others. Despite her lightning-quick career and successes, she doesn’t allow herself to stick her nose in the fashion industry and keep her head down. Rather, she looks up at the world around her in search of true character and strength.

It's no wonder that the modern woman, so eager to explore the world and carve out her place within it, is entranced by Cashin's designs. 

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Science / Space Race

[October 14, 1965] Taking a Deep Dive (the SEALAB project)

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by Kaye Dee


The SEALAB II habitat on the dockside ready for its official launching ceremony

In my article at the end of August about the Gemini 5 mission, I mentioned the unique phone call that Gemini 5 commander Gordon Coper made from space to his fellow Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, who was working aboard the SEALAB II experimental underwater habitat. Carpenter is the first astronaut to also serve as an aquanaut, and the two roles are clearly related, since they both involve operations in dangerous, barely explored environments, isolated in small, confined craft. Since the third (and last) crew in SEALAB II has just completed their undersea mission, I thought it would be interesting to look at the SEALAB programme this month.

Getting Saturated

The SEALABs have been developed by the United States Navy to research the technique of saturated diving and enable a better understanding of the psychological and physiological stresses that affect people living in confined isolation for extended periods of time. This research into long-duration isolation is obviously relevant to space exploration as well as undersea activities.

Saturation diving is a technique that reduces the risk of decompression sickness (“the bends”) for divers working at great depths. If a diver breathes inert gasses, while in an environment pressurised to match the intended depth of a dive, the body will become saturated with the gasses, reaching a state of equilibrium once the blood and body tissues have absorbed all they can. Once this occurs, a diver’s decompression time will be the same whether he stays underwater for hours, days, weeks, or even months. This means that if a diver lives in a suitably pressurised habitat, he can work underwater for long periods and only have to undergo decompression once, at the end of his assignment.

The Genesis of SEALAB

SEALAB has its origins in a research programme by Captain George F. Bond, a US Navy physician. In 1957, Dr. Bond began Project Genesis at the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory in Connecticut with the aim of demonstrating that divers could withstand prolonged exposure to different breathing gases at multi-atmosphere pressures. The first two phases of Project Genesis were carried out in 1957 and '58. This involved exposing animals, including rats, goats and monkeys to saturation using a variety of breathing gasses. Dr. Bond happened to meet Jacques Cousteau, the famous French oceanographer, when he gave a talk about the concept of saturation diving in 1957 and the two men became good friends. They co-operated on their diving research, and Cousteau even contributed some ideas to SEALAB II.


"Papa Topside", Dr. George F. Bond, (left) on the SEALAB I support ship with Argus Island in the background

NASA Keeps the Research Going

Despite his promising results, the Navy was not interested in funding the human trials that Dr. Bond needed to progress his research. Then, in 1962, NASA stepped in and funded the human research programme because it was interested in using a mixed -gas spacecraft atmosphere (either nitrogen-oxygen or helium-oxygen) for the Apollo programme – although it has now decided to use a simpler low-pressure oxygen atmosphere for the Apollo spacecraft, despite its potential fire danger.

Between 1962 and 1963, Capt. Bond, with the help of three volunteer divers, experimented with varying gas mixtures of oxygen, nitrogen and helium. One volunteer, Chief Quartermaster Robert A. (“Bob”) Barth took part in all these experiments and went on to become a member of the crews of SEALAB I and II.

"Papa Topside" and SEALAB I

By 1963, Capt. Bond’s team had collected enough data for the Navy to initiate its “Man in the Sea” programme, which would include an experimental habitat, dubbed SEALAB. Dr. Bond serves as the Senior Medical Officer and principal investigator of the SEALAB programme. The SEALAB I crew nicknamed him “Papa Topside”, for being always available on the support ship that kept station above the undersea habitat.

SEALAB I was a cigar-shaped chamber, 40 feet long and 10 feet in diameter. It was constructed from two converted steel floats and held in place with axles from railway cars. The lab had two portholes on each side and two open manholes in the bottom, but water didn’t enter because the pressure inside the chamber was the same as the surrounding water. SEALAB I used a helium-oxygen atmosphere that caused its crew to develop funny, squeaky voices that made them sound like a garbled Alvin the Chipmunk! The habitat was linked to its surface support ship by a Submersible Decompression Chamber, that served as a lift (elevator) between the two. Cables carried electricity, compressed gas, fresh water, communications, and atmosphere sampling lines between SEALAB and the support ship.


The quarters were pretty cramped and uncomfortable on board SEALAB I

First tested in the waters off Panama City, Florida, SEALAB I was lowered to 193ft into the Gulf of Mexico. It was then moved 26 miles southwest of Bermuda and lowered to a depth of 192ft, beside a US Navy research tower named “Argus Island”.

SEALAB I was both a habitability study and an experiment in developing safe decompression procedures for saturation diving. It had a crew of four aquanauts, including former experimental subject Bob Barth. They began their submerged sojourn on 20 July 1964, which was intended to last three weeks. The team investigated the effects of nitrogen narcosis on cognition, tried out the characteristics of the new “Neoprene” foam wet suit and performed many other performed physical and biological experiments. These included using ultrasonic beacons, current meters, and an anti-shark cage, as well as attempting to grow plants in the helium atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the SEALAB I mission had to be aborted after 11 days, due to an approaching hurricane. The support ship attempted to lift the habitat by crane from the ocean floor while slowly decompressing the divers (rising 1 foot every 20 minutes), but the churning sea caused the habitat to sway dangerously back and forth. As a result, the crew were transferred from the habitat to a small emergency decompression chamber and brought to the surface within minutes. 


An amazing underwater shot of the emergency decompression chamber coming to the rescue of the SEALAB I crew

Despite being cut short, SEALAB I was a major success, testing and proving the concept of saturation diving. Many lessons learned from SEALAB I would be applied in the development of its successor-SEALAB II. This included better solutions for raising and lowering the habitat (after two early attempts that dropped it!), lower humidity, improved umbilicals, and a reduction in the gear the divers needed to wear and store in the habitat. A helium voice unscrambler was also developed to improve communications with the aquanauts, because the changes that the gas made in their voices made them almost unintelligible.


The crew of SEALAB I with Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, who had originally planned to join their team. (left to right) Gunner's Mate First Class Lester E. Anderson; Lieutenant Robert E. Thompson; Astronaut M. Scott Carpenter, Chief Hospital Corpsman Sanders W. Manning; Chief Quartermaster Robert A. Barth

SEALAB II

SEALAB II is a big advance on its predecessor. Constructed in a naval dockyard in California, it is 57 feet long and 12 feet in diameter, with a small “conning tower”: I’ve heard someone describe it as looking like a “railway tank car, without the wheels”. It has eleven viewing ports and two exits. SEALAB II is also much better equipped, with hot showers, a built-in toilet (I wonder what they used on SEALAB I?), laboratory equipment and a fridge. The gas mixture used onboard is 77-78%helium, 18% nitrogen, and 3-5% oxygen at a pressure of 103 psi, which is seven times that of Earth's atmosphere! SEALAB I found that helium chilled the habitat uncomfortably, so SEALAB II has been fitted with heating coils in the deck to combat the cold. Air conditioning has also been included in this habitat, to reduces the humidity.

A new support ship was provided for SEALAB II, equipped with a Deck Decompression Chamber and a Pressurised Transfer Capsule, used to transport the aquanauts from the surface to the habitat. And, of course, Papa Topside was there, presiding over the experiment.


Inside the Tiltin' Hilton. This team photo of the first SEALAB II crew pokes fun at the habitat's slight tilt. Team leader Scott Carpenter is in the centre of the photo.

In August 1965, the habitat was placed at a depth of 205 feet in the La Jolla Canyon off the coast of California. The location has earned it the nickname of the "Tiltin' Hilton" because it was placed on a sloped part of the ocean floor, giving it a six-degree tilt and a slight cant to port. The first SEALAB II crew, consisting of 10 divers, swam down to the habitat to take up residence on August 28. One of those divers was Mercury astronaut M. Scott Carpenter, who has joined the SEALAB program on leave from NASA.

Astronaut Aquanaut

Carpenter became interested in the SEALAB program after meeting Jacques Cousteau in 1963. He originally planned to be a member of the SEALAB I crew, but was injured in a motorcycle accident during training and so was unable to participate in that experiment. But he became the commander of the first two teams to use SEALAB II, spending 30 days living on the ocean floor. SEALAB II has hosted three crews of ten men, each of 15 days duration. Altogether 28 divers occupied SEALAB II between August 28 and October 10, with Carpenter and Bob Barth both part of two crews.


Originally a Naval aviator, then an astronaut, now Scott Carpenter has added to his resume as the team leader of the first two SEALAB II crews

The SEALAB programme seems to have been a bit jinxed for Carpenter: his right index finger was wounded by the toxic spines of a scorpion fish. In addition to his conversation with Gemini 5, soon after his arrival on SEALAB II, during his time in decompression at the end of his mission, Carpenter also took part in another special telephone call, this time from President Lyndon Johnson. Since Carpenter was calling from a decompression chamber with a helium-oxygen atmosphere, his "chipmunk voice" was almost unintelligible as a helium voice unscrambler was not available! 

The cold water off the Californian coast has been a real test for the aquanauts, along with poor underwater visibility. Even with its heating coils and air conditioning, SEALAB II still experienced high humidity and cold, with the temperature having to be raised to 86°F to ward off the chill. Nevertheless, the aquanauts conducted many physiological experiments and tasks, including testing new tools, methods of salvage and trying out an experimental electrically heated drysuit.

Dolphin Delivery

The Navy Marine Mammal Program also supported SEALAB II, assigning one of its bottlenose dolphins, named Tuffy, to assist the SEALAB crews. Tuffy’s Navy trainers attempted to teach the dolphin useful skills, such as delivering supplies from the surface to SEALAB, or carrying items from one aquanaut to another. Tuffy was apparently not up to the standard of that famous TV dolphin, Flipper, but I’ve heard that he will also be assigned to the SEALAB III mission when that takes place, so the Navy must have been happy enough with his performance.


Tuffy the Navy dolphin, at work during the SEALAB II programme. Wonder if he'll get a TV series of his own some day?

Third time continues the charm?

The third, and last, crew to serve on SEALAB II departed the habitat on October 10, marking the conclusion of a very successful experimental programme. SEALAB I and II have been a resounding success and the knowledge gained from these expeditions will certainly help to improve the techniques of saturation diving and, consequently, the safety of deep-sea diving and rescue. I’ll be watching the future SEALAB III mission, when it arrives, with interest!




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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[October 12, 1965] Gaming Across the Pond (Wargaming in Britain)

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The Journey lettercol continues to be active.  Last month, we received a piece so interesting that we felt it deserved an article slot on its own.  So let us present Mr. Geoff Kemp with his delightful survey of virtual conflicts in the UK…


Geoff Kemp

Two Roads Diverged…

Although primarily built on the foundations of two similar companies on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, board gaming has taken divergent paths over the course of the last 130 years. In America, Parker Brothers were formed in 1883 by George S. Parker. His gaming philosophy was to move away from the then current board games published to promote moral and social values, such as The Mansion of Happiness or which emphasized how hard work and manners would make you happy/wealthy, like Office Boy, to games that are fun to play. In contrast, in the United kingdom, John Waddington of Leeds founded a company which originally produced packs of cards and other paper products before moving over to initially card games and then board games primarily produced, like Parkers, for families to enjoy.

There was a great deal of crossover and communication between the two companies, with Parker Brothers producing ‘Monopoly’ in the USA before licensing Waddingtons to produce an English version: a London board rather than the original Atlantic City board used in the states. Later Cluedo was invented by Anthony E. Pratt of Birmingham, England and manufactured by Waddingtons before American rights were sold to Parker Brothers for production there. These were the two main players in producing board games for many years on both sides of the Atlantic, often licensing their games to each other. Thus gaming was seen as primarily seen as a family pastime and this continued with the arrival of companies such as Ariel Productions and H.P. Gibsons.

Things started to change for us in 1962, with the arrival firstly of 3M games (also known as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company) closely followed by The Avalon Hill Games Company (known as TAHGC) in the USA. They produced games which started to move away from ‘family’ games and towards board games geared for traditional wargaming as played on tabletops, featuring wooden/metal and occasional plastic models, as well as more financial based games or strategic games. From 3M came Twixt ('63), Stocks And Bonds ('64) and Acquire ('65) whilst Avalon Hill produced Stalingrad ('62), Afrika Korps ('64), Midway ('64), and Battle of the Bulge ('65). Combined with games such as Diplomacy (Games Research – 1954) and Risk, which was published by both Waddingtons and Parker brothers, there has been a suite of games diverging from the family games genre. Possibly the biggest recent innovation, however, was Avalon Hill’s. They began producing a magazine devoted to their games, in the form of ‘The General’ which saw the first edition dated 1st May 1964 with articles on game tactics, history and industry (almost exclusively AH related).

This is where gamers on this side of the pond have turned a shade of green in envy as even the magazine (much less the games it describes) can take weeks to get to us here, although at least we now have more of an idea of what is happening in the States. Besides home grown products such as the games from Waddingtons, Gibsons, Ariel, and a few others, it is not easy to get hold of a lot of American games; even the exceptions such as Acquire or Diplomacy are only found in some of the bigger department stores, unfortunately.

Another area where boardgames have diverged is in the area of sports related games, although this is more likely down to the popularity of different sports in each country. Again you have various Avalon Hill games such as Football Strategy ('60), Baseball Strategy ('62), and Le Mans ('61) whilst in the UK we have Subbuteo Football ('47), Subbuteo Cricket ('49), Wembley ('52), Stirling Moss Rally ('65) and Formula One ('65).  Baseball being primarily an American sport and Cricket a British sport explains why each has gotten a game in their respective countries.

Possibly the biggest confusion is over ‘Football’ simulations as the game has different names on each side on the Atlantic. I believe in America, the Football Strategy game by Avalon Hill relates to what is known in the UK as ‘American Football’, whilst Subbuteo Football and Wembley are games reproducing Association Football which I understand to be known as ‘Soccer’ in the USA. Is this correct?

But racing is universal in appeal. Formula One is an excellent British game, easily the best British attempt to date to reproduce the excitement of Motor Racing. Unfortunately, although I have heard good reports of Le Mans, I have yet to see a copy so cannot really comment there. Stirling Moss Rally is based on Rallying (stage as opposed to circuit racing), which has been popular in Europe since 1895 and has many famous Races. The most well known is probably the Monte Carlo Rally which was first raced in 1911.

I have said that it is not easy for us here to be able to get hold of American Games, but is it the same for you in getting hold of some British games. I realise that in some cases certain games are available in both countries, such as Monopoly (published by both Waddingtons & Parkers) or Cluedo (Waddingtons), also I believe known as Clue (Parkers), but am unsure how many other games that applies to.

So what are you playing at the moment? Here I am enjoying a mixture of British and (when I can get them) American games. Current Favourites are in no particular order, Acquire (3M), Midway (Avalon Hill), Dog Fight and Square Mile (Milton Bradley), Astron, Risk, Railroader, Formula One and Mine A Million (Waddingtons), Wildlife (Spears), Wembley (Ariel) and Subbuteo Football. 

They say that war arises between two parties over scarcity of resources. It is clear, however, that there need be no resumption of hostilities between Britain and the United States in the near future thanks to the abundance of games produced and shared by our two nations.

Now, if only my copy of The General would arrive in the post!




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 10, 1965] Doctor Where? (Doctor Who: Mission To The Unknown)

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By Jessica Holmes

Probably weren’t expecting me to be back so soon, eh? We’ve got a very, very unusual story this week, courtesy of Terry Nation. Why is it so unusual? Let’s find out.

MISSION TO THE UNKNOWN

We see the man from last week’s preview waking up in the middle of the forest, and saying he must kill. Kill who? Well, that doesn’t really matter. The killing is the important part. Don’t get too attached to him.

Nearby two men, Cory and Lowery, are trying to repair their spaceship. They are apparently with the UN Deep Space Force. I don’t know what that is but it certainly sounds cool. They’re starting to wonder where Garvey, the other bloke who woke up with a craving for murder, has vanished to. He shows up before long, and corners Lowery alone outside the ship. However, before he can kill him, Cory pops out and shoots him dead.

Rather than reacting with gratitude, Lowery is very upset with Cory for shooting his friend without giving him a chance. Cory makes a reasoned and sensitive response to his protest, introducing Lowery’s cheek to the palm of his hand.

He then shows Lowery the thorn behind Garvey’s ear. It’s a Varga thorn, he says, and this is what drove him into a murderous state.

The pair go inside the ship, and outside, Garvey’s hand starts to move, the flesh beginning to mutate into something else…

Inside the ship, Cory fills Lowery in on information he probably ought to have been given in the first place, but then again, if he already knew it then there wouldn’t be an opportunity to do an exposition dump. Cory is an agent with the Space Security Service: licence to kill, naturally. About a thousand years have passed since the last Dalek invasion of Earth, but they’ve been rebuilding their power in the meantime, and just last week a Dalek ship was spotted in local space.

As Cory explains all this, a now-transformed Garvey rises from the dead. He is more plant than human now.

Cory goes on to explain that he’s investigating this planet because, as the most hostile planet in known space, it could be a hidden base for the Daleks. Bringing up the thorn again, he tells Lowery that it’s a Varga thorn, and the Varga plant only grows naturally on the Dalek homeworld of Skaro. Logically, if there are Varga here, the Daleks must be too. Well, thinking about it, they could have been here, done some gardening, and then left, but he doesn't seem to consider that.

Sure enough, in the next scene we see a few Daleks. They’re expecting to receive emissaries from seven planets soon. Before they can hold their meeting, however, they’ll be needing to do something about the alien spaceship they’ve found. They’re going to destroy it, and any occupants. Big shocker, there.

The human astronauts are in big trouble as they set up their rescue beacon outside the ship. They’re surrounded by Varga, and the Daleks are closing in on their position.

Spotting a huge rocket ship flying overhead, Cory surmises that something very big is going on here, and if the Daleks are involved then the whole galaxy is in danger. They need to record a message and send the rescue beacon as soon as possible.

Before they can send it however, they hear the approaching Daleks, and grabbing the rocket they head for the cover of the jungle.

The Daleks find the human ship and set out to search for the crew, but not before blowing their vessel to smithereens.

As the pair move through the jungle, disaster strikes when Lowery brushes against a Varga, and it pricks his hand. Frightened, he conceals it from the other man. Have you watched no horror flicks ever, man? Everyone knows that nothing good ever comes of concealing the fact that you're about to turn into a bug-eyed monster/zombie/shrubbery with legs.

Meanwhile, an assortment of strange alien envoys are meeting with the Daleks. However, the meeting can’t begin as one of the aliens knows of a hostile influence on the planet, but the Daleks assure them that the humans are in the process of being hunted down and destroyed.

The assembled aliens agree to an alliance with the Daleks in a historic first which is very bad news for the rest of the galaxy. They represent the greatest invasion force ever assembled, and where are they planning to begin? Earth, of course.

It’s a very nice planet but why are aliens always so obsessed with it?

It’s interesting to me at any rate to see Daleks making alliances with other powers in space. They always seemed like loners to me, but I suppose pragmatism wins out in the end. I'll be curious to see how this all turns out. I wouldn't be surprised if the Daleks turn on their allies as soon as they outlive their usefulness.

Things go from bad to worse for the humans, as Lowery is quickly succumbing to the Varga’s poison. Cory returns from scouting to report having found a Dalek city hidden in the jungle, and he heard an announcement that the invasion of the galaxy is about to begin.

However, the Varga venom has consumed Lowery, leaving Cory with no choice but to shoot him dead as he reaches for his gun. Alone and with the Daleks fast catching up to him, he hurriedly records a message to warn the rest of the galaxy.

And then the worst-case scenario happens.

As he tries to attach the message to the beacon, the Daleks surround him. With a cry of ‘Exterminate!’ they blast him with everything they’ve got. Moments later, Cory lies dead, and his message will never be sent.

The galaxy won't know what hit it.

Final Thoughts

No, really. That’s it. That’s the whole story. This is the first Doctor Who story to be a single episode long. Not only that, it’s the first one in which neither the Doctor nor his companions make an appearance. I suppose he got his day off after all!

And to top it all off, this is the only episode so far in which the baddies win.

It is surprisingly dark. Doctor Who has never really shied away from character death, but it’s normally just the bad guys and one or two goodies at most that end up kicking the bucket. If this is setting the tone for the upcoming behemoth of a serial, which will also be by Terry Nation and featuring the Daleks, then we might have some grim television ahead of us.

Don’t get me wrong, though— I like it. It does admittedly feel more like a prequel to a bigger story than an actual standalone story of its own, but it’s tightly paced, they’ve managed to squeeze in a little characterisation which is pretty commendable given the very short runtime, and the Daleks are back to feeling like a real threat again, plus a tease of a number of other potentially interesting enemies.

It looks like our pal the Doctor is going to have his work cut out for him. We’ll have to wait and see how he gets on…

And for one final thing, I hear that this is Verity Lambert’s final episode as a producer on Doctor Who. I think we all owe her a big thank you for her role in bringing the show to life in the first place, and as a woman I thank and commend her for being the BBC’s first woman producer, paving the way for the many talented women who will follow in her footsteps. Thank you, Verity, and we all wish you the very best of luck for the future.

4 out of 5 stars




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Movies

[October 8, 1965] Handle with Care (Forbidden Planet)

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by Gideon Marcus

High Hopes

In preparation for the last episode of The Journey Show, in which we discussed the movies of the last fifteen years, the Young Traveler and I cast about for every SF movie we could find that we'd missed the first time through.  That's how we came across the "They came from 1951" double feature that Lorelei wrote so engagingly about.

And it's how we ended up in a dingy second-run theater at the edge of town for a viewing of the 1956 hit, Forbidden Planet.  I'd heard a lot about the film, that it was the first big budget rendition of classic space opera, that it was absolutely gorgeous, and that I was somehow remiss as a reviewer of science fiction for not having seen it. 

So don't let it be said that my upcoming savaging of the film is the result of any predisposition to be negative.  Indeed, I had every expectation that Forbidden Planet was going to be something special.

And, in some very negative ways, it is…

The Reality

Things start encouragingly enough, opening on a shot of the United Planets cruiser "C-57D" zooming through space.  All of the space ships of the 1950s (with the exception of the novel manta-ray looking ships from War of the Worlds) fall into two categories: V-2 rocketships and flying saucers, and the C-57D is a classic example of the second type. 

The vessel, skippered by Commander John J. Adams (Leslie Nielsen), has traveled more than a year to the real-life white star, Altair, to check up on the Bellerophon, a ship last heard from two decades before.  C-57D is apparently traveling at superluminal speeds, and in a nice bit, all of the crew head into cylindrical stasis chambers for the transition to normal space. 

Eight minutes into the movie, Lorelei and I were hooked.  This picture was absolutely beautiful and unlike anything we'd seen before.  We licked our lips in anticipation.

And then the disappointments began.

After making orbit around the green-tinged Altair IV (orbiting a strangely orange Altair) the C-57D gets a call from the surface.  Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) of the Bellerophon is the sole survivor of the prior expedition, and he tells Commander Adams in no uncertain terms that he needs no assistance and, in fact, the relief ship will be in danger if it lands.  Rather than asking why he shouldn't proceed, Commander Adams instead cuts off Dr. Morbius in mid-admonition!


"This program is boring – let's tune to Jack Benny!"

Nevertheless, the movie soon seduces us again with the following amazing shot and a vibrant set of electronic sound effects.

Upon landing, they are met by "Robby the Robot," a character the filmmakers were so proud of that they gave him his own title card.  It's true that he moves with all the grace of a man in a lumpy suit, and I have the disadvantage of having seen him reused in at least one episode of The Twilight Zone, but a robot that doesn't look like a person is a pleasant surprise.

Despite Dr. Morbius' earlier protestations, Robby has been sent to invite the Commander over for tea.  Adams and two of his men (the crew of the C-57D is entirely male, natch), Lieutenant Jerry Farman (Jack Kelly) and "Doc" Ostrow (the TV ubiquitous Warren Stevens) head over.  It turns out that Dr. Morbius has made quite a nest for himself.


Dr. Morbius in a typically declamatory pose

Dr. Morbius is affable enough, but he has a somber tale, which he delivers in a rather toneless monologue, as if telling a bedtime story.  Shortly after landing, the crew of the Bellerophon suffered gruesome death after death at the hands of some unseen beast.  Only the doctor and his wife were spared, because they loved the planet rather than fearing it, the doctor believes.

Sadly, his wife died soon after the incident due to natural causes.  Nevertheless, Dr. Morbius has not been alone the whole time.  For one, there's Robby: his home-built robot is the ultimate servant, able to produce any item from its belly…and it also does dishes!

And then, there is Altaira.

This fetching thing (Anne Francis, currently Honey West) is, of course, the daughter of Dr. Morbius and his wife, the latter having died in childbirth.  She is excited at meeting men, particularly the Lieutenant and the Commander (no accounting for taste – Doc Ostrow is the most likeable of the characters even if he's the first one to throw out a sexist comment, that Robby will be the bane of housewives everywhere).

Lieutenant Freeman wastes no time with the coquettish Altaira, first denigrating his Commander in a way that would be mutinous if Adams knew, and then explaining that kissing is beneficial to Altaira's health and they should indulge in it right quick.  It's a scene with all the charm of Walter Breen describing his virtues to your son. 

Altaira does not derive any pleasure from the event, and thankfully, Commander Adams shows up then to break things up.  But don't breathe a sigh of relief too quickly.  He's just there to tell Altaira that it's all her fault he assaulted her, and that she needs to put some damned clothes on, for goodness' sake.  After all, who is he to impose a modicum of discipline and respectfulness over his crew?  The skipper?

It gets worse, as he browbeats her for being flirtatious, clearly resentful that he wasn't the first target of her attentions.  Finally, he sends her off, all but threatening to spank her.

(It's in this scene, by the way, that we learn that the ship's complement of the C-57D is 18.  There is absolutely no way that 18 men were on this tiny saucer for more than a year.)

That night, something invisible sneaks past the sentries and destroys vital components of the spaceship.  The vessel is marooned unless repairs can be made.  Despite knowing that there is an invisible terror on the planet, Commander Adams is furious with his guards, roaring at them and meting out severe punishment.  At this point, we were wondering if the movie was deliberately showing that Commander Adams was both incompetent and a jerk in a subversion of the hero type.  Of course, we were giving the film too much credit. 

This painful vignette is followed by a truly groanworthy stretch of dialogue between Adams and Chief Engineer Quinn:

Quinn: Half of this gear we can replace and the rest we can patch up somehow…except this special Klystron frequency modulator.  With every facility of the ship, I think I might be able to rebuild it…but frankly, the book says no.  It came packed in liquid boron in a suspended grav…

Adams: All right, so it's impossible.  How long will it take?

Quinn: Well, if I don't stop for breakfast…

Adams: Get on it, Quinn.

Quinn: Thank you, sir.

This bothered me.  If the thing is fixable, give an accurate estimate, don't be coy to burnish your credentials as a miracle worker.  Frankly, this also made me think less of the Commander, who let him go without a actual timetable.

Note: I tend to be particularly sensitive to problematic portrayals of people in charge.  As a person who has run companies and other entities for years, the leader types are the ones I most identify with, and they have the job I have most familiarity with doing.  When I see it done wrong, especially when we're supposed to admire the leader character, it drives me nuts.

On with the show.

Commander Adams, having sated his sadism quota for the day, heads out with Ostrow back to Dr. Morbius' pad to get more information about the phantom beasts of Altair IV.  There, they espy Altaira bathing in the nude, after which she comes out of the water and puts on a new dress that covers everything, per Adams' prior orders.  You see, when Adams chastised her for being a floozy, she really liked it.  And in short order, this is happening:

At this point, Lorelei asked me why I was such a horrible father subjecting her to this dreck.  She clearly has a poor memory – subjecting her to dreck is a tradition that goes back almost seven years now.  In this case, though, my pain was easily as acute as hers.  And before you rejoinder my objection with, "Well, she's clearly enjoying herself, so what's the problem?" I'll point out that Altaira isn't a person.  She's a fictional character with no agency of her own portraying what is obviously wish fulfillment on the part of the writer; she bears no resemblance to an actual human being in this situation.  That's why it's so painful to watch – she's treated horribly and then reacts unnaturally.

The smooching between Altaira and Adams enrages the girl's pet tiger, and Adams zaps the kitty into nonexistence.  Which just underlines another ridiculous part of this movie.  At every possible juncture, Adams whips out his gun.  He's already done it (I think) three times before this point in the movie.  It's a miracle the tiger is the first casualty of his itchy trigger finger.

When Dr. Morbius is not immediately forthcoming, Adams and Ostrow break into his private office and start reviewing the doctor's papers.  Morbius catches them in the act and is rightfully upset.

However, he calms down quickly enough and embarks on another monologue about how Altair IV used to be inhabited by a poweful species called the Krell, how the race had built these giant machines powered by the heat of the planet itself, and how, one day, they all murdered each other.

While the delivery is again unremarkable, the subject matter is interesting, and the scenes from the guided tour of the alien equipment is breathtaking, visually and aurally.

It turns out that the doctor is something special, too.  Upon finding the alien ruins, he had hooked himself up to an alien machine, a sort of mental waldo.  The same device had killed the Bellerophon's captain when he tried it out, but Morbius survived (barely).  Per his report (in yet another stultifying monologue), it doubled his intelligence, allowing him to create Robby and the other marvels of his Altairan residence.

While this tour is going on, the invisible monster slips aboard the C-57D again past increased defenses, for what sinister purpose, we don't yet know.  Back at the doctor's ranch, Adams is trying to get Morbius to give up the secrets of the Krell to humanity, but Morbius doesn't feel the human race is ready.  The conversation gets heated.  Adams and Ostrow return empty handed only to find that the unseen Altairan has killed a member of the cruiser's crew.  It left behind this remarkable footprint, which Ostrow recreated in plaster.

Amazingly, Adams does not throw anyone in the brig for dereliction of duty this time.  Instead, he holds a funeral for the lost crewman.


Again, there's no way 18 men were cooped up in that thing for a year.

That night, the beast comes back with a vengeance.  The ship's energy barriers and combined weaponry are almost useless against it and more crew die.

Right after the attack, we are shown this scene.  If you haven't figured out what's causing the attacks by this point, you may need to stay after class for extra assignments.

Adams and Ostrow rush back to the Morbius estate, where their passage is blocked by Robby.  They whip out their guns (of course) but those are quickly neutralized.  Altaira intercedes to let them in.  Shortly thereafter, Ostrow shows up with three burns on his forehead – he has used the mind waldo, which has given him tremendous mental powers.  They are too much for him, however, and he soon succumbs, but not before revealing that the monster is indeed a manifestation of Dr. Morbius' subconscious mind created by his link with the Krell's machines!


The tenderest scene in the movie

Adams confronts Morbius with the knowledge, explaining that Morbius unconsciously killed the crew of the Bellerophon when they wanted to leave the planet.  He started killing the crew of the U-57D when they threatened to take Altaira away from him.

The beast of Morbius' id now manifests even when the doctor is awake, coming after Adams even in the strongest of Krell sanctums. Adams, of course, whips out his gun, threatening to kill Dr. Morbius to stop the monster (even though we saw Robbie deactivate the blaster just minutes before).

Dr. Morbius throws himself in front of the door, castigating and disowning the id monster's existence.  The beast subsides, but Morbius is now dying (for some unknown reason).  With his last wish, he commands Adams to activate the Krell city's self-destruct mechanism.

This gives Adams enough time to take Altaira and Robby onto the U-57D, which is all fixed now despite "the book" saying a repair couldn't be done.  Hugging on the bridge in front of the 14 of his remaining sex-starved, uncontrollable crew, they watch as Altair IV explodes. 


The secrets of the ages?  Ah, who needs 'em.

Roll credits.

After Action Report

I didn't like this move.  We didn't like this movie.  The characters are all wretched (including the drunken cook whose subplot involving the plying of Robbie for manufactured booze wasn't worth discussing).  Commander Adams, if he turns in an unvarnished report, should be up for court martial several times over.  Walter Pidgeon has one setting, and he's left on it for too much of the movie.  Despite the film's not overlong running time, it often dragged.

Most disturbing is the anti-feminism, egregious even for these less-than-enlightened times.  As fellow traveler Erica Frank notes, "It's especially worth a sharp look when the story is science fiction, where the underlying message includes "so much of society has changed — these are the parts that were worth keeping."

So is there anything to like about this movie?  Well…

The touters are correct.  It is beautiful, from its set design to its special effects to its wide wide Cinemascope aspect ratio.  Cinematorapher George J. Folsey, whose credits go back to 1920 did a fine job.

The soundtrack, in particular, by avante garde electronic musicians Bebe and Louis Barron is just incredible.  I've only heard its like in the theme of Dr. Who and the music and effects of the British marionette show, Space Patrol.  It makes me want to break out some transformers and build some modulating circuits for my own experimental purposes.

The background of the Krell and the Freudian id monster weren't bad as far as science fiction goes.  One could easily find such devices in a story from any of the SF mags of the era or before. 

In short, we liked everything about the movie but the movie.  I'm almost tempted to re-record the dialogue with an entirely new script, preserving the spectacular visuals and sound.

Perhaps I don't have to.  I understand that the new SF anthology show, Star Trek, has such lush production values that it will essentially look like Forbidden Planet on television.  As long as it doesn't hew too close to its predecessor.

As for rating Forbidden Planet. call it five stars for production values, three for the setup, and one for the execution…

Don't miss this weekend's episode of The Journey Show, taking you on a whirlwind tour of the exciting new field of Japanese animation!




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Movies

[October 6, 1965] Go, baby, go! (Faster Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill!)

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by Natalie Devitt

From the moment the Russ Meyer’s new film (screenplay by Jack Moran), Faster, Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill! opens with a voice-over announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence!”, it is made perfectly clear that this film may not be everyone’s cup of tea.  The voice-over warns the audience of a “rapacious new breed” of woman that “prowls both alone and in packs.” When the viewer is introduced to the movie’s three leading ladies, they are hard at work at their place of employment, a go-go club.

Out of the club, the group’s leader, Varla, is heard letting out an evil laugh while speeding off in her Porsche.  She leads the other two women, each at the wheel of their very own sports car, out for some fun in the desert.  Faster, Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill! establishes early on that Varla, played by burlesque dancer-turned-actress Tura Satana (1963’s Irma La Douce), rules her group by intimidation.

Varla orders everyone around and can become pretty abusive, to both men and women.  Her wardrobe for the better part of the film reflects her personality.  She is usually dressed all in black, shirt with a plunging neckline, pants, and gloves.  She also has long dark hair with blunt bangs.  Others describe her as a “beautiful animal”, “cold one” and even “a real Jekyll and Hyde.” Her main love interest, another woman and brunette named Rosie, can be seen lighting cigarettes for her.  Rosie is played by Canadian actress Haji, who can also be seen in another Russ Meyer film this year, Motorpsycho.  Rounding out the trio is blonde beauty Lori Williams of Viva Las Vegas (1964) in the role of Billie.

While taking a break from driving, a couple in another vehicle pulls up beside Varla’s group.  Tommy, “an all-American boy” and “champion” of his car club, hopes the ladies do not mind if he and his girlfriend try running some timing trials next to them.  Tommy explains that he picked the location because it is “about the best measured strip around.” Varla gives them the go-ahead.  Timing Tommy’s driving is his girlfriend, the incredibly sweet and innocent Linda.  She is played by Susan Bernard (General Hospital), daughter of pin-up photographer Bruno Bernard.

Less than impressed with Tommy’s trials, Varla challenges him with, “I don’t beat clocks, just people.  You want to try me?” The other members of her group hop into their cars and start racing.  Shortly after, he and Varla wind up in a physical altercation. Varla strikes him repeatedly, then breaks his neck, killing him instantly.  Linda faints.  Worried that Linda could be a witness, the women kidnap her.

After fleeing the scene of the crime, Varla and the gang stop at a gas station.  A muscular but not terribly bright young man, a character known only as “the Vegetable” according to the film’s credits, catches Billie’s eye.  The gas station attendant informs Billie that the Vegetable is “kind of a nut” and his disabled father, who he lives with, is a real “sick character.” The attendant goes on to explain that the man’s dad was injured in a railroad accident.  His father received a hefty settlement and rumor has is that the money is hidden somewhere on the property.  With their curiosity piqued and Linda gagged and bound, the ladies set out in search of the money, but as the film’s introduction warns, “Violence devours all that it touches.”

The film wastes no time establishing the tone of the movie.  In fact, the film wastes no time at all, due in no small part to Meyer’s incredibly fast-paced editing.  I cannot help but think how much Meyer’s time spent filming combat footage during World War II, combined with photographing pin-ups early in his career, clearly shaped his very unique brand of filmmaking.

A large part of what makes me like Faster, Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill! is its sense of humor.  The surprisingly witty banter between the characters really prevents this motion picture about violence from becoming dark and depressing.  Another aspect of the film that helps to create a one of a kind movie-going experience is the music, including an excellent theme song provided by The Bostweeds.  What’s not to love about a song with lyrics like, “If you think that you can tame her, well, just you try!”

The cast, while not terribly experienced as actors, aside from bit parts here and there, or appearances in other Russ Meyer films, like Mudhoney (also 1965), are actually quite good together.  Varla, in particular, is fascinating and unlike any character I have ever seen in a movie.

She, along with her partners in crime, are usually photographed with the camera looking up at them or they appear in the foreground of a number of shots.  Sure, Walter Schenk’s photography helps to draw attention to their voluptuous figures, but the camera angles he utilizes also make the women appear larger than life and even more powerful, especially when they are posed with their hands on their hips or have a leg up on the bumper of a car.  Everything and everyone in Faster, Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill! is very over the top.  The film also incorporates a number of surprisingly creative shots, including a particularly memorable one from underneath Varla’s steering wheel during a racing scene.

Even though I hear that it is not performing very well at the box office, Faster, Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill! is essential viewing for the more adventurous moviegoer.  It is totally original and unlike anything you will see all year.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 4, 1965] Galaxy Bore (Doctor Who: Galaxy 4)

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By Jessica Holmes

Hello, dear readers! Summer’s passed, there’s a cold snap in the air, and Doctor Who is back on our television sets, which means that I get to waffle on to you about it at great length. Did you miss me?

We’re kicking things off with a strange new world and a new writer. I don’t believe we’ve had William Emms pen an episode before, so shall we see how he got on?

FOUR HUNDRED DAWNS

The TARDIS materialises in a rather barren landscape, with a great big load of nothing as far as the eye can see. Well, as far as I can see, anyway, as my television set is malfunctioning. I managed to hear the audio just fine, but I did end up losing the picture quite often, so please do bear that in mind.

Aboard the TARDIS, Vicki’s giving Steven a haircut as the Doctor surveys the outside environment. He notices that the conditions are perfectly conducive to life, but there don’t seem to be any signs of it outside.

Not at first, anyway. Before long, a strange little thing scoots along. It looks a bit like a beehive on wheels, and it’s feeling its way around the TARDIS.

Leave it to Vicki to call it cute and nickname it a ‘Chumbley’.

It doesn’t stick around for long, enabling them to emerge from the TARDIS and spot the three suns in the sky. However, another arrives, this time toting what appears to be a gun. After witnessing it set a bush on fire with a single blast, the group allow the Chumbley to escort them off.

Two women watch as the Chumbley leads them away from the TARDIS. As it comes close to them, they throw a metal mesh over it, deactivating the device.

The explorers are glad of the rescue, and Steven in particular is pleased to see it comes in so fair a form. The women introduce themselves as Drahvins, sent by their leader to rescue the newcomers. They say that the Chumblies are under the control of the ‘Rills’, who sound jolly unpleasant. However, they don’t explain why their leader took an interest in them in the first place, and Vicki doesn’t trust that they have good intentions. Steven, however, is all too happy to trust a pretty face. For his part, the Doctor isn’t sure either way, and opts to be compliant, but cautious.

More Chumbleys arrive, and the group have to flee. The Drahvin women escort the travellers to their ship, a beat-up old rustbucket that isn’t flying anywhere any time soon.

I can’t help but roll my eyes as the men seem rather giggly as the women order them to be silent for the arrival of their leader, Maaga. Fellas, they might be women, pretty ones at that, but they have guns and look like they mean business.

Maaga arrives on the scene, and after debriefing her troops, informs the travellers that the Drahvins are at a state of war with the Rills, with total obliteration of the other side being the only possible outcome. They themselves may end up obliterated.

Why are they at war? The planet will explode in two weeks’ time according to the Rills, who have the only working spaceship.

Maaga doesn’t seem the type to try asking nicely.

As for why the planet’s about to explode, your guess is as good as mine. I’m no physicist, but I’d imagine the three suns exert enormous tidal forces on the planet, so perhaps it’s more accurate to say that it’s about to be torn apart.

The reason they’re on this doomed world in the first place is that their planet is overpopulated, and they were looking for suitable planets for colonisation. Steven asks if the population of Drahvin are all women, prompting another eye-roll from me. I can’t imagine he’d ask the same of an all-male crew, would he?

For the record, there are indeed men on Drahvin– just the few they need to breed the next generation. The rest are killed for being a waste of resources.

It’s an interesting society for sure, made even more so by the revelation that Maaga’s soldiers were grown in test tubes for the purpose of fighting and killing. She insists they aren’t real people, and they certainly act more like robots than sentient creatures, but that in my opinion could be more a matter of conditioning than anything else, which makes their poor treatment far more sinister.

Maaga finishes off the dump of exposition by telling the Doctor that the Drahvins and Rills shot one another down, the Rills having opened fire first, and then the Rills murdered one of her soldiers shortly after crash-landing.

A Chumbley approaches and attempts to send a message, but Maaga opens fire on it before it can, scaring it away.

It’s at this point the Doctor raises a pertinent question: why did the Rills tell the Drahvins that the planet was going to explode?

Maaga’s assumption is that they were trying to get the Drahvin to come aboard their ship so they can kill them.

Well, if that’s what she thinks, then who’s to say if the planet is actually in any danger at all?

Lucky for them that the Doctor is a scientist. He can find out one way or the other.

Vicki volunteers to stay behind while the men go back to the ship, ostensibly to make sure that the whole crew aren’t putting themselves in danger, but everyone including the audience knows that in actuality she’s a hostage.

The Doctor and Steven find a Chumbley trying to break into the TARDIS when they get back, but it gives up before long, and they get inside and the Doctor gets to work. He soon learns to his horror that the planet is indeed going to be destroyed– but the timing is way off! This planet doesn’t have fourteen dawns left… it has two.

Tomorrow is the last day this planet will ever see.

TRAP OF STEEL

Talking of things going BOOM, the fellas had better watch out for the Chumbley outside the TARDIS. It’s got a bomb!

The blast knocks the pair off their feet, but the ship itself is unharmed, surviving a second blast unscathed. The Chumbley leaves in defeat, and the men leg it before it can come back with an even bigger bomb.

On arriving back at the Drahvin ship, the Doctor tells Maaga that the planet is indeed going to explode, but he doesn’t share his knowledge of how little time they truly have left.

If the Drahvins are going to escape, they’ll need the Doctor’s help. Rather than ask for something reasonable, like a lift in the TARDIS, Maaga insists that the travellers help to capture the Rills’ ship. The Doctor refuses, as he’s not in the business of killing people, and he’s not about to start now.

The gang are starting to get suspicious of her version of the story and her insistence that they can’t possibly work together with the Rills, and it seems they’re right, as when asking nicely doesn’t work, Maaga threatens them with a gun. Steven tries to subdue her, but he’s no match for all her soldiers.

Left with no choice, the Doctor reluctantly agrees to help. However, his initial hesitance has made Maaga suspicious of him, and she threatens to kill Vicki unless he admits what he’s not telling her. He tells her how little time they really have, and she orders the men to go out immediately to capture the ship, intending to hold Vicki hostage. However, Steven insists on taking her place, and the Doctor and Vicki set off alone to try and capture a spaceship.

It doesn’t make sense to me. Surely it’d be better if they had the soldiers with them? There must be somewhere that Maaga could safely hold a hostage.

How about the air lock?

While awaiting the return of the others, Steven gets chatting to one of the soldiers, pointing out that it doesn’t seem very fair that Maaga gets better food and weapons than them, despite them being on the front lines and taking all the actual risks. He suggests to her that if she were to give him her gun, and she took Maaga’s, they could go out together and kill Chumbleys, and Maaga would be pleased with her. The soldier, being both naive and not terribly bright, which is presumably by design, is very nearly taken in, before Maaga shows up and puts an end to Steven’s short-lived escape attempt.

Maaga suggests to Steven that he could leave in the TARDIS and take her and her soldiers with him.

Why didn’t you ask that in the first place?!

Steven echoes my sentiments, and Maaga more or less tells him to shut up.

Charming. It’s a bit late now, though. Without the Doctor, Steven couldn’t take them off the planet even if he were so inclined.

Near the Rills’ base of operations, Vicki and the Doctor observe the movements of the Chumbleys, and Vicki realises that aside from being blind, the Chumbleys can’t detect sounds directly behind them. A suspiciously convenient design flaw, if you ask me. By exploiting this they manage to tail a Chumbley all the way to the Rills’ base, where they find a drill rig, and some sort of air purifier.

In summarising this, I am editing out the many, many pauses in the action in which a Chumbley rolls past agonisingly slowly, making a deeply irritating noise, while the Doctor and Vicki wait for it to pass. The pacing of this episode, and indeed the whole serial, would be a lot tighter without all these lulls, though I suspect it might end up a whole episode shorter.

Oh, and we finally get a glimpse of the Rills, observing them through a viewport inside their ship. I was half-expecting the Rills to turn out to be ordinary men, as it seemed to me that as Maaga was likely stretching the truth about their villainy, she might also be fibbing about them being monsters. Plus with her distaste for men to the point of absurdity, it would have been funny.

To give her credit, she was telling the truth– to a certain extent.

See, there’s one thing we can confirm about the Rills: they are most certainly NOT men. Not even close, appearing less like a person and more like a rotting whale carcass with lamprey mouths for eyes.

But are they as scary as they look?

AIR LOCK

A Chumbley arrives on scene, and the pair make a run for it. However, Vicki isn’t quite fast enough, and ends up trapped inside the Rills’ base. The Doctor quickly comes up with a plan to flush the Rills out of hiding, which will hopefully force them to open the doors, by messing with their air converter. However, it’ll take time, so he counsels Vicki to be brave and try to stay out of trouble, and go with the Chumbley.

Back at the Drahvin ship, Maaga’s finding that lab-grown soldiers with hardly any minds of their own make for poor conversation partners, as she tries to get through to them that the situation has changed, so no, they can’t go out on patrol. The soldiers are confused by the loyalty Steven shows to his friends, and Maaga, too, finds it confusing. She knows on an intellectual level that such creatures exist, but it would appear that Drahvin culture doesn’t share this concept with our own. Perhaps it’s her society, or just how she’s wired.

Still, inspirational speeches seem pretty universal, as Maaga gives her soldiers a lovely pep talk about stealing the Rills’ ship, and looking back on the exploding planet and imagining the horrible deaths the Rills are experiencing.

Nice lady.

As for the Rills, well, it turns out they’re rather polite. Using a Chumbley to translate his thoughts into speech that Vicki can understand, the Rill at the porthole apologises to her for separating her from the Doctor, and asks her who she is and what she’s doing here. When she explains that the Drahvins are forcing her to help steal the Rills’ ship, the Rill within is quite perplexed, as they had offered to take the Drahvins with them.

This Rill’s side of the story is that they encountered the Drahvins in space, and had halted their flight for fear of provoking an attack. He claims that the Drahvins fired first, so the Rills retaliated. Interesting.

Unable to breathe the local atmosphere, they nevertheless set out to help the Drahvins, finding one badly injured. However, before they could help her, Maaga intervened and drove them off, and as they left they witnessed her kill the injured soldier.

Curious, Vicki wants to properly know what the Rill looks like. However, he can’t come outside, as he can’t breathe oxygen at all.

That seems inconsistent with them having attempted to help an injured Drahvin, but it’s not terribly important.

Vicki realises with horror that the Doctor’s plan to flush them out will actually kill them.

Meanwhile, a dozy Drahvin provides Steven with another opportunity to escape, as he manages to sneakily subdue her and take her gun. However, on reaching the airlock, he finds himself stuck. On one side is Maaga, demanding he come back in. On the other is a Chumbley, which as far as he knows is unfriendly. He’s trapped.

Vicki manages to stop the Doctor from accidentally killing the Rills, and the Rill at the porthole explains to the Doctor that they’re drilling for oil to refuel their ship. The Doctor warns them that they don’t have as much time as they think. However, he can help.

Before he can elaborate much further, a Chumbley gets a message, and the group learn that Steven is trapped in the Drahvin airlock.

It’s worse than that, though. Tired of Steven’s misbehaviour, Maaga gives him three options: he can come inside and surrender, he can go out and face death by Chumbley, or she can depressurise the airlock with him inside.

Realising that Steven is in big trouble, the others rush off to help, taking a couple of Chumbleys for backup.

Struggling to breathe as the airlock depressurises, Steven decides to try his luck with the Chumbley. However, now that it’s depressurised, the outer door doesn’t work any more. His three options are down to two: surrender or suffocate.

THE EXPLODING PLANET

Arriving in the nick of time, one of the Chumbleys accompanying the Doctor and Vicki manages to blast the airlock open, and Steven staggers out gasping for breath. As the other two help him recover, a smoke bomb sends the Drahvins coughing and spluttering out of their ship. However, they find themselves outgunned by Chumbleys. As the travellers retreat with a Chumbley in tow, the Rills tell the Drahvins that though they’ve tried to be friendly, they won’t tolerate their new friends being attacked. They order the Drahvins to go back into their ship and stay there.

Maaga and her soldiers retreat and regroup, but they certainly don’t intend to stay put. With only one night remaining to capture the Rills’ ship, Maaga comes up with a plan to sneak out and destroy the Rills’ air converter.

The Doctor meanwhile offers the Rills a jump-start, heading off to hook up his ship to the Rills’ ship. Steven stays behind alone with the Rills, and it’s a bit awkward at first, made even more so when he asks if the Rills will actually let them go if they can’t power the ship in time. However, the Rills are not the Drahvins. If time runs out, so be it. Having seen the code the Doctor lives by, it would be a terrible waste if he were to die here for no reason.

Steven sheepishly apologises for mistrusting them, and tells them that the Drahvins will still be planning to steal their ship, and he gets to work on fixing the power cable.

Vicki and the Doctor arrive back at the TARDIS and connect the power line. It’s not very important, but there is a pretty line of dialogue in response to Vicki’s musings about this all soon exploding into nothingness. Not nothingness, the Doctor corrects her, but hydrogen gas spreading out among the stars like molten silver. It interests me how the Doctor finds the beauty even in destruction.

The first foreshocks of the planet’s destruction hit the Drahvin ship, and they begin to panic. Maaga may be about to reap what she’s sown, but I feel bad for her soldiers, because they don’t really understand their situation or how they’ve been manipulated. One of the Drahvins sneaks out of the ship and manages to smash the sentry chumbley with a pipe, enabling the others to escape.

The Rills usher the travellers to shelter inside their ship, which doesn’t sound very safe. I’m pretty sure ammonia and humans don’t mix. A Chumbley paralyses the first Drahvin to attempt entry into the Rills’ base, and more emerge to confront the Drahvins outside.

Finally coming face to face, the travellers, though initially a little taken aback by the Rills’ appearance, reckon that they probably look just as strange from the Rills’ perspective, so why treat them any different? It’s not the most subtle delivery of the moral of the story, as I’d have thought even a child could have gathered the ‘don’t judge people by how they look’ message, but there you go.

They can’t stay inside for long, as the ammonia starts to make Vicki feel ill, and the ship is almost fully powered. The Doctor insists that they don’t hang around to make sure that the travellers get back to the TARDIS safely, and they prepare to take off.

The Drahvins notice the sudden absence of Chumbleys, and see the Rill ship leaving. Their only hope now is the TARDIS, and they chase after the travellers. However, they aren’t fast enough, and the gang slam the doors shut and dematerialise as fast as they can, abandoning the Drahvins to their fate.

Maaga and her soldiers watch in terror as they realise they have no means of escape, and moments later the planet explodes in a flash of blinding light. Maaga may have made her own bed, but I’m not sure how I feel about abandoning her soldiers, as they really didn’t seem to have the capacity to go against Maaga. They might have had a limited degree of free will, but they could still feel pain and fear.

Safely away, the Doctor remarks that just once, he would like to land somewhere where he isn’t immediately surrounded by danger. They spot a likely planet, and we get to see a vibrant jungle, where a man sits with his gun, chanting under his breath ‘I must kill’. So it doesn’t look like the Doctor’s getting a break any time soon.

Final Thoughts

Honestly, there’s not that much to say about Galaxy 4. It doesn’t feel like anything particularly new, given we’ve had multiple stories in which the travellers find themselves in the midst of a conflict between two races on some other planet, one side being the baddies and the other the goodies.

As for tension, there’s really not much. The Chumbleys were too cute to be a threat in the first place, and as we learn they weren’t actually a threat at all. The Drahvins are just too incompentant to feel threatening, and the Rills immediately turn out to be nice. The whole thing has quite a plodding pace that doesn’t make me feel the urgency of the situation.

As a minor note, I feel like there was a point being made with the Drahvins, but I’m not sure what that point was. It could be taken as pro- or anti- feminist, depending on your outlook. On the one hand it’s a female-led society and a bunch of powerful warrior women. On the other, the society is misandrist to the point of absurdity, only one of the Drahvins actually has a name, the others being portrayed and described in-story as woman-shaped objects, Maaga’s leadership is deeply questionable and founded in manipulation, and the warrior women can’t even defend themselves from an unarmed teenage girl, as happens in one moment in the story where Vicki disarms a lone Drahvin.

If the intention was pro-feminist, the writer severely undermined his own message. And if it wasn’t, that doesn’t surprise me. Other than that it’s just not a terribly interesting serial to me. It’s not terrible or anything, but you’re not missing much.

Next time we’re going on a very brief trip, so hopefully there will be plenty of action packed into the next adventure.

Until next time!

2 out of 5 stars




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 2, 1965] Gimmickry (November 1965 IF)

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by David Levinson

When I was a boy, a gimmick was either much the same thing as a gadget or the sort of device a crooked casino owner would use to make sure the roulette wheel comes up 22. These days, of course, it means an ingenious new angle or a trick to draw attention in advertising. It can also be the sort of thing that makes a story work or at least that the author hopes will make the story interesting.

America’s Pastime

Baseball is no stranger to gimmicks. From sending midgets up to bat to exploding scoreboards, owners and general managers will do anything to get fans to come out to the park. After starting the season by losing 21 of their first 26 games, the Kansas City Athletics have been mired in the cellar all season. Desperate to get people into the stands as the season winds down, owner Charlie Finley came up with a couple of gimmicks in the last month. September 8th, was Campy Camp Night and regular shortstop Bert “Campy” Campaneris played all nine positions in a single game. Up against the Los Angeles Angels (or I guess California by that time, speaking of gimmicks), Campy started at shortstop and moved from position to position each inning. In the eighth, he took the mound and even switch pitched, throwing right-handed to right-handed batters and left-handed to left-handed batters. Alas, while catching in the ninth, Campy was injured in collision at the plate and had to sit out a few games.

On the 25th, Finley invited several old player from the Negro Leagues to be present when Satchel Paige took the mound against the Boston Red Sox. At 59, he’s the oldest person ever to play in the big leagues (and at 34 Athletics’ manager Haywood Sullivan is the youngest manager). Satch sat in a rocking chair in the bullpen between innings, being served coffee by a “nurse”. He pitched three innings, giving up only one hit. He came out to the mound to start the fourth, but as planned he was removed. The lights were dimmed, and the crowd held up lighters and lit matches and sang “The Old Gray Mare” as Paige walked off.


Left: Bert Campaneris. Right: Satchel Paige, with “nurse”

Baseball also saw a couple of milestones. On September 9th, Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitched a perfect game against the Chicago Cubs. (For non-baseball fans, that means Koufax and the Dodgers did not allow a single opposing player to get on base through any means.) Pity Cubs pitcher Bob Hendley, who gave up only one hit in the game. Four days later, on the 13th, San Francisco Giants player Willie Mays became the fifth player and first Black player to hit 500 career home runs. Congratulations to both men, whose teams, at the time of writing, are still vying to see which will make it to the World Series. Good luck to both (though I’m rooting for the Dodgers).


Left: Sandy Koufax. Right: Willie Mays

Gimmicks good and bad

This month’s IF is not without its gimmicks. Let’s get to it.


In orbit around a collapsed star. Art by Morrow

Tiger Green, by Gordon R. Dickson

Exploration Team Five-Twenty-Nine has run into more than they can handle on the second planet of Star 83476. There are communication problems with the natives, the jungle is trying to digest their ship and eight of the twelve men in the team have gone violently insane. Navigator Jerry McWhin can feel a berserk rage building in him. As tempers flare among the remaining crew, Jerry locks the others in sick bay and heads for the native village in a bid to resolve the situation.


Jerry and the natives attempt to cure his madness. Their ideas of what either of those terms means may differ. Art by Adkins

Despite its flaws, this is a pretty solid story. There was probably room for some cuts in the first third or so to improve the pacing, and the need for several pages of expository dialog to explain what happened is a real weakness. All of which have cost the story a fourth star. Nevertheless, Dickson seems to have matured into a very good writer. He does still need to work on his female characters (of whom there are none in this story), but otherwise I look forward to a lot more from him. Three stars.

Time of War, by Mack Reynolds

Atomic war has devastated the Earth. Handfuls of civilians struggle to survive in the few areas where the radiation isn’t lethal. Alex remotely operates a “beetle” from a base on the Moon, hunting and killing civilians who may or may not be from the other side. The enemy, the Comics, do the same, flying their manned buzz-fighters from a super-sputnik in orbit.

A rather bleak tale. I rather wonder if the two sides really would attempt to utterly wipe out enemy civilians, eventually not caring if their victims were on the other side or not. I also question if it would be possible to remotely operate an aerial vehicle on Earth from the Moon, let alone engage in dogfights. The time delay of over a second each way ought to make that virtually impossible. In any case, the gimmick here lies solely on the nature of the Comics. It’s clear what Reynolds was trying to do, but that’s not enough for this piece. It either needs a lot more plot or a lot fewer words. A high two stars.

Masque of the Red Shift, by Fred Saberhagen

Seven years after the Battle of Stone Place, Felipe Nogara, the ruler of Esteel and arguably the most powerful man in the galaxy, has brought his flagship Nirvana outside the galaxy to examine a collapsed star (sometimes called a black hole). The body of his half-brother Johann Karlsen, the hero of Stone Place, who recently put down a rebellion on Flammland has arrived in cryogenic suspension. Most believe Karlsen the victim of a plague, but Nogara has had him frozen, because he feared his brother’s growing popularity.

Meanwhile, a second courier – carrying Janda, the leader of the rebellion, brain-damaged by his treatment since his arrest, and his sister Lucinda – is captured by a new form of Berserker. The Berserkers will use Janda’s body to sneak a killing machine aboard the Nirvana to make sure that Karlsen is dead.


”We willingly bring in the semblance of the terror outside!” Art by Gaughan

Saberhagen continues to impress. The Berserkers could easily have become a simple gimmick for stories about space battles. Instead, he uses them as a backdrop to write stories about people. Another author might also have paralleled the Poe story which inspired this much more closely. It’s quite good, though not quite enough for four stars; a very high three stars.

Retief’s War (Part 2 of 3), by Keith Laumer

We left Retief crashed in the jungle and threatened with becoming dinner. Naturally, he manages to talk his way out of that and instead begins uniting diverse tribes of Quoppina to fight the Voion. An emissary sent out to parlay with “Tief-Tief” proves to be Groaci General Hish, disguised, like Retief, as a native. Upon learning that the human women who also crashed in the jungle have been captured, Retief allows himself to be taken prisoner. It turns out the women have escaped, so he does as well and trails them through the wilderness, making new allies along the way. He finally catches up with them, but the mysterious Fifi has left to try and reach the army forming to fight the Voion. To be concluded.


Retief makes a friend. Art by Gaughan

There’s really not much to this installment, just Retief bantering with various natives and General Hish. There’s a hint of humor in his escape, but it could have been a lot funnier. A low three stars.

The Lonely Hours, by W. I. McLaughlin

George Rock is fleeing through space from a creature that lives in the dark between galaxies. He has a plan to set a psychic trap for it using the corpse of a creature composed of ion sheets. This somehow involves visions of Ahab and burning witches.

McLaughlin is this month’s new writer. Fred must be desperate for stories from unpublished writers, because this is awful. None of it makes any sense, and the protagonist is unpleasant. One star.

The Doomsday Men, by Kenneth Bulmer

Robin Carver is a member of ridforce. If his team can get to the body of someone who died violently within 3 minutes of death, he can explore that person’s memories to find out how they died. He was once an agent of the Americas, but was declared unstable when his wife abandoned him and their infant daughter. While investigating the death of a “gaiety girl”, he thinks he sees his now teenage daughter at a wild party in the victim’s memory.

Carol Bursham is a scientist working for Whitcliffe, the man who invented the process that allows the investigation of the minds of the recently dead. They are trying to come up with a way of recording those minds, so that there will be less pressure on the few people who can handle immersing themselves in someone else’s mind. She and Carver discover a plot which threatens the Shield which seals the Americas off from the threat of atomic attack and the rest of the world. A plot which reaches into the upper echelons of society.


Carver makes a disturbing discovery in the mind of a murder victim. Art by Morrow

Line by line, the writing is sound and there are some interesting pieces here, but they fit together poorly. The ending also involves both a rather abrupt shift in attitudes that isn’t earned and an implication that doesn’t make much sense. Points for having a couple of female characters who actually do things and aren’t there just to be rescued. On the other hand, the way Carol thinks about men is very clearly written by a man. Still, it’s a reasonably decent read. Three stars.

Summing Up

Another issue that just sort of meanders around, deviating for the most part only slightly from average. The real problem here is the story from the first-timer. The IF First program is a seemingly good idea, but it could very easily turn into just a gimmick if the editors start sacrificing quality just to run a story from a new author. There’ve been some good stories to come out of the policy, but so far I think the only real success has been Larry Niven. Well, while there’s life, there’s hope.




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Magazine, Serial

[September 30, 1965] Big and Little Bangs (October 1965 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Big One

Billions of years ago, the entire universe was smaller than the head of a pin.  For an endless eternity, or perhaps just an instant, it remained in this state – and then it exploded outward with the force of creation, ultimately becoming all that we see today.

Until this year, this "Big Bang" theory was as yet unconfirmed.  It had stiff competition in the "Steady State" hypothesis, which postulated that the universe is indeed expanding, but because of matter being constantly created.  This was fundamental to the plot of Pohl and Williamson's recent novels set in the reefs of space at the edges of our solar system.

But last year, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey noticed an excess of radio noise in the receiver they were building, an excess that closely resembled the Cosmic Microwave Background predicted by physicists Ralph Alpherin, Robert Herman, and George Gamow.  This extremely low level but pervasive energy is what's left of the heat of the primeval explosion, reduced to microwaves by the expansion of the universe.


The Murray Hill facility where the echoes of the Big Bang were discovered

Smaller Ones

Here on Earth, it seems our planet is anxious to imitate the violence of the universe at large.  On September 28, the Taan Volcano off the coast of the Philippine island of Luzon exploded, killing hundreds of Filipinos.

And less of a bang and more of a blaaat, we've just finished ringing in the Jewish new year with the traditional blowing of a ram's horn.

The Littlest One

Meanwhile, editor John W. Campbell, Jr. seems content to not rock the boat, providing a mixed bag of diverting fare and stale garbage in the latest issue of Analog, a combination that is unlikely to knock anyone off their feet.


by John Schoenherr

Overproof, by Johnathan Blake MacKenzie

On a planet two hundred light years from home, a husband and wife pair of anthropologists come across a horrifying discovery.  The native Darotha, an amphibian race resembling across between a cat and an octopus, are eating humans.  At least, it seems that way – the Yahoos, apelike herd animals on their planet, bear a striking resemblance to homo sapiens.  Are the Darothans really mass murderers?  Or are looks deceiving?


by John Schoenherr

This is an interesting piece that Randall Garrett (under a pseudonym) has offered up.  Unusually for an Analog story, the Darothans are a well-drawn alien race and not played for inferiority – indeed, they are treated with sensitivity not only by the author but by the Terran colonists on the planet, who see them as exciting as potential partners and as an example of non-human society.  In the end, the story is essentially an inverse of Piper's Fuzzy stories, where the question is not whether the humanoid Yahoos possess the spark of humanity, but whether they don't.

It's not a perfect story.  The conclusion is pretty obvious from the beginning, it meanders and repeats a bit, but it's more subtle than what I usually see in Analog, and it kept me interested.

Three stars.

The Veteran, by Robert Conquest

Humans from the future, who have forgotten the art of war, summon someone from the past to lead them in a war against alien nasties.  Unfortunately for them, the person they've found is a devout pacifist.  But luckily, the fellow discovers the battle lust within that he needs to fulfill his role.

Rather offensive, simplistic, and for some reason, the aliens conquer our solar system in reverse order of distance from the Sun even though it's unlikely that they'd all be lined up so obligingly.

Two stars.

Snakebite!, by Alexander W. Hulett, M.D. and William Hulett

For some reason, Campbell saw fit to include this high school science project discussing the use of snake venom to produce antivenom blood serum in rodents.  As an actual article, it might have been mildly interesting, but in its current form, it's pretty pointless.

Two stars.

The Mischief Maker, by Richard Olin


by John Schoenherr

A story told in epistolary, Maker describes how a crackpot professor with a grudge stumbles across the great power of the Law of Analogy, which he uses to destroy the leaders of America through various bits of voodoo and witchcraft.  Truth be told, my eyes glazed over when the author mentioned the Hieronymous Machine, that psychic amplifier requiring no power source that editor Campbell is so enamored of.

Two stars.

Space Pioneer (Part 2 of 3), by Mack Reynolds


by John Schoenherr

Last but not least, we have the continuation of Reynolds' serial that began last month.  When last we'd seen the assassin impersonating Rog Bock, shareholder in the colonial venture on New Arizona, his masquerade had been discovered by at least one other shareholder.

Part 2 begins with the colony ship Titov landing on its virgin planet destination, so closely resembling Earth as to be a near twin.  The rapaciousness of the shareholders' goal becomes clear as the 2000 colonists find they have virtually no rights, that the shareholders plan to sell the valuable resource rights to outside entities almost immediately, and that the crew of the ship largely comprise ex-military personnel to make them a ready police force to keep the settlers in line.

Unrest threatens to boil over as the colony teeters on the brink of collapse, reeling from colonist indolence and sabotage by unknown persons – but by the end of this installment, they all have bigger concerns to worry about…

Again, Pioneer has only the barest trappings of science fiction.  Nevertheless, this is one of Reynolds' more deft tales, and I'm enjoying it a lot.

Four stars for this bit.

Seismographic Data

Where does this leave us for the month?  Well, Analog clocks in at just 2.7 stars, below Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4), Science Fantasy (3.3), New Worlds (2.8), and Worlds of Tomorrow (2.8); it is just tied with the lackluster Galaxy.

It did manage to beat out the disappointing Amazing (2.6), IF (2.3), and the truly awful Gamma (1.5), however.

There were just two and a half pieces written by women (one was co-written) out of 58: 4.3%.  Surprisingly, the women-penned tales were all in the UK mags, which are usually all stag.  No women authors were included in either of the "All Star" Galaxy and F&SF issues this month, which is a real shame.  Where are Evelyn Smith and Margaret St. Clair?

Perhaps they are planning to return with a bang.  I certainly expect to herald their next stories with fireworks!

Looking for good science fiction by women?  Look no further than Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), the bestseller containing 14 of our favorite stories of the Journey era!




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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction