Fashion, music, politics, sports

[July 4, 1969] When Joey goes over the top… (Avalon Hill's Anzio)

Leave a comment

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

It's kind of a funny thing.  There are two feelings about war these days.  On the one hand, you've got the war in Vietnam raging without end despite LBJ resigning and Nixon running ostensibly to end the thing.  Now National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger is pleading for patience from those who say peace is taking to long.  "Come back in a year," he says.  It's no surprise that, in addition to innumerable protests and chart-topping songs, we've even got a wargame devoted to dissent: Up Against the Wall Motherfucker.

But "war" also conjures up other, less controversial, memories.  The veterans of World War 2 are my age—affluent and nostalgic.  We recently celebrated the centennial of the Civil War, which while bloody, shaped these United States we know today.  It's no surprise that the bulk of commercial wargames have been set in these two eras…with WW2 the big favorite: Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, D-Day, Stalingrad, Guadalcanal, Battle of the Bulge, Afrika Korps, Midway.

Avalon Hill is currently the leading publisher of wargames, generally coming out with one or two new ones every year (along with a handful of "family" titles).  Their latest, just released in April, is Anzio, and it's something of a revolution.

In 1943, flush with victory after kicking the Nazis and Fascists out of Africa, and having conquered the island of Sicily, it was pretty obvious where the Western Allies (mostly the United States and the Commonwealth) would attack next.  After all, France was still well guarded as Festung Europa, so a cross-channel invasion was not yet in the cards.  And so, Operation Avalanche was born: an amphibious invasion of the southwest Italian city of Salerno. 


U.S. Army engineers haul a roll of wire mesh into position to make a beach roadway at Salerno, September 1943. USS LST-1 is in the center background (USA C-276).

In short order, southern Italy had been liberated, and the Germans had arrayed themselves along an unbreakable "Volturno Line". That's when the Allies tried to break the stalemate with a landing near Rome at Anzio beach.  That beachhead stalled for months until May 1944, when, accompanied by a big aerial push, the Allies managed to take the Italian capital.  That didn't end the war, though—the Germans just installed a puppet government in northern Italy and fought a delaying action until the Nazi surrender in May 1945.

As a result, the bloody Italian campaign is kind of an historical footnote.  Did it shorten the war by tying up troops?  Or was it just a meatgrinder for GI Joes and Tommies? 

Anzio doesn't answer these questions, but it does an excellent job of recreating the experience!

On the surface, it's just another WW2 wargame.  We've gotten strategic games covering the Eastern Front (Stalingrad) and the Western Front (D-Day) and the African Front (Afrika Korps), so it is only natural that the next one would cover the Italian Front.  Anzio even follows the Stalingrad pattern—using a key battle as the label for a multi-year, theater-wide conflict.  And if you just play the basic game rules, it's pretty much every other Avalon Hill wargame, with a hex grid for movement rather than the traditional squares, little chits representing military units, a combat results table, and dice for determining said results.

But it's in the advanced rules that the differences really come out.

The biggest is the new way in which combat is resolved.  In previous games, when units moved up next to each other, they had to fight.  You totaled up the combat strengths of the opposing sides, figured out the odds ratio, rolled a die, and determined the result using the Combat Results Table.  The result would be a retreat (one side or the other had to back away a certain number of spaces), or elimination of one or more units, or an exchange: smaller side destroyed, and an equal number of strength points removed from the larger side.

But now*, instead of a binary Alive/Dead situation, each unit has several diminished states.  Each adverse combat results in a "step-loss", where a unit loses some, but not all, of its strength.  This is much more realistic.  Reinforcement is done realistically, too, represented by actual raw troop units with no attack strength of their own, but which can be added to depleted units to restore strength.

*It has been pointed out that the step-loss system was actually introduced in Blitzkrieg, which I had forgotten, and also appears in last year's 1914, which I never played. But, in any wise, Anzio is the first game to really implement it in a meaningful way, I think.

This means that you get realistic situations—attackers rail against a line, slowly diminishing the defenders' strength, until they become too weak to hold, and then they must fall back to regroup.

Where Anzio isn't innovating, it's adopting the best features of its predecessors: from D-Day—the Allies get to choose from a number of invasion beaches, which keeps the Germans guessing; from Blitzkrieg (and Afrika Korps)—units can be moved en masse by sea from place to place; and of course, similar movement and combat rules to most of its ancestors so that picking up the basics of the game is a snap.

Indeed, I was surprised at just how easy it was to pick up this game, despite it having the longest rules set to date—even longer than Blitzkrieg's, I think.  There are some confusing bits, like it took us a while to realize that combatants suffer double losses when attacking defenders on favorable terrain, which makes attacks even more difficult.  But on the whole, despite the dizzying array of rules, it's not bad at all.

To be fair, we didn't play with the really gritty rules like Italian troops (who fight for both sides, natch) and really finicky stacking rules (every member of the Commonwealth seems to have a different size!) but they don't seem to change gameplay much.

Which leads us to the eternal question (paraphrasing the fellow from the Folger's Crystals commercial) "How does it play?!"


"Well, play it!"

Pretty well!  The Young Traveler and Trini played the Axis, conferring each turn on the best defensive strategy.  Trini noted that, of all the games she's played to date, this one felt the most immersive—that she was really a general taking all sorts of considerations into account.

Janice and I teamed up as the Allies, and it was rough.  There really is no quick way to do anything, and we had quite a lot of bad rolls at the beginning.  We weren't even able to take Naples in the many hours we played, which is the linchpin to success in southern Italy as it frees up forces to make another amphibious invasion.

Ultimately, it's a slow slog of a game.  The Allies must be patient, but also master the art of threatening multiple invasions at any given time.  As for the Axis, there are no daring Rommel or Manstein thrusts to undertake.  It's all about skillful retreats; if you're attacking, you're probably making a mistake…or the Allies have pulled quite the boner.

But it's definitely a beautiful game with a lot of fascinating new developments.  Certainly, there's nothing like it on the market, in style or subject.  If you've played out D-Day, and you've got a long weekend…or a string of short ones, this is a great game to take out for a spin.




No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 2, 1969] Merging streams (August 1969 Venture)

2 Comments


by David Levinson

Joining the mainstream

Every Sunday, the New York Times publishes a list of the best selling books of the last week. It tends to be a mix of high-brow, literary novels and potboilers—especially spy thrillers—along with the occasional gothic romance and a mystery once in a blue moon. But to the best of my knowledge, it’s never had a science fiction novel prior to this year. As of the latest list, it has not one but two, both of which have been reviewed here at the Journey. There’s even a third that could be said to have sfnal elements if you stand on your head and squint a bit.

In its tenth week on the list and slipping one spot to number six is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Of course, Vonnegut is none too happy about his work being labelled science fiction. Meanwhile, Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain hit the list for the first time in eighth place. The potential third novel is Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor, which seems to be set on an Earth exactly like ours with a slightly different history or on a counter-Earth on the other side of the sun. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much science fiction in the plot, so I’m not really inclined to include it.

Does this mean our beloved genre has finally hit the big time? Probably not. As I said, Vonnegut doesn’t want to associate with us, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Crichton thinks of his book as a thriller. (I could be wrong, but that’s how it’s being marketed.) 2001 did all right at the box office, but was panned by critics (including some SF critics). Star Trek has been canceled, leaving Land of the Giants—a show so bad it makes Lost in Space look smart—the closest thing to SF on television. But just maybe the boundaries are weakening, even if we wind up having to sneak in the back door with those who won’t acknowledge us.

Sophomore or sophomoric?

The second issue of Mercury Publishing’s second attempt at Venture SF is on the stands. How is it? Well, before we crack it open, let’s look at the outside.

More geometric shapes and color washes. Art by Bert Tanner

If the last issue could be mistaken for a horror magazine, this one could easily be taken for a mystery. That’s probably the eye. Dell used to use an eye looking through a keyhole as the logo for their mysteries (and maybe still do; it’s been a while since I bought one), and this is very reminiscent of that. The best thing about the outside of the magazine continues to be the title logo.

The League of Grey-eyed Women, by Julius Fast

Diagnosed with terminal cancer, a desperate Jack Freeman will grasp at any straw. A Canadian doctor has had some small success injecting rats with artificial DNA, but his studies are nowhere close to being ready for human experimentation, no matter how much Jack begs. His beautiful, pale-eyed assistant, however, is willing to bend the rules, since she and the many women with gray eyes she knows have their own agenda. The treatment may cure Jack’s cancer, but it may kill him in other ways. It will certainly change his life.

This confused mess makes sense if you’ve read the book. Art by Bert Tanner

If the name Julius Fast sounds familiar, you may have read one of his well-received mysteries or one of his non-fiction books such as the one on Human Sexual Response by Masters and Johnson or last year’s book about the Beatles. (That or you’re thinking of Howard Fast, who wrote Spartacus, among many other things.) He’s not a complete stranger to SF, so he doesn’t make a lot of the mistakes that many mainstream authors do when trying to write our stuff.

That said, there are parts that don’t hold up if you think about them too hard. Some of those may be better propped up by things that were cut from this condensed version; others make no sense at all. Still, the narrative pulls the reader along, even despite Jack being a fairly unpleasant person early on. There’s enough here to make it worth reading, but you might want to see if your local library has a copy rather than spending your own money.

A solid three stars. The complete novel may come in a little higher, but probably not enough for another star.

With Ah! Bright Wings, by Edward Wellan

Pollution seems to be in the news more every day. In the last two weeks alone, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire (and not for the first time) and a pesticide spill in the Rhine caused a state of emergency in West Germany and the Netherlands. What if there’s more behind it than just industrialization and a lack of concern by the government and the companies producing most of the pollution? It’s an old theme in SF, but Wellan has come up with a moderately new twist. Unfortunately, the telling is as dry and dusty as the two UN bureaucrats who are the story’s protagonists.

A high two stars.

Bradbury on Screen: A Saga Perseverance, by F.E. Edwards

It’s no secret that Ray Bradbury loves the movies. He’s written a few, and several of his stories have been adapted for the big screen, but many more have never made it into or out of production. Those that do have not served the source material well. This article follows the career of Bradbury and his work in Hollywood. Interesting but inconsequential.

Three stars.

Dragon in the Land, by Dean R, Koontz

Over the years, the focus of the military has shifted to biological warfare. A virus escaped from a Chinese lab and is so devastating it brought down the Communist government. The American doctor heading the Analysis and Immunization team that is part of the military intervention in the country must struggle with his own sense of inadequacy, which stems from growing up in the shadow of his Nobel laureate father.

Plumbing the depths of the bombed-out lab. Art uncredited

Imagine if The Andromeda Strain had ended badly and someone had to enter the ruins of the lab to find the original team’s notes; that’s the action of this story in a nutshell. I don’t think Koontz has cribbed from Crichton. The timing of the two stories makes that nearly impossible, but it implies that both men have done their homework.

I keep saying that Koontz is getting close to breaking through. This might be it. It’s certainly the best thing he’s written so far. If he can maintain this level of depth and quality, he’s going to be a big name.

Four stars.

Project Amnion, by Larry Eisenberg

A story in the style of a magazine article on efforts to teach children in the womb, it ignores countless aspects of human physiological development, not just in the brain, but the whole body. Eisenberg has apparently never met a baby. The nicest thing I can say bout this one is that at least it’s not an Emmett Duckworth story.

A low two stars.

Pithecanthropus Astralis, by Robert F. Young

A caveman questions the wisdom of the elders and breaks the rules. While this piece lacks the saccharine romantic elements that have often led me to complain about Young (who has been largely silent in the last few years), it also lacks the positive elements that his past stories have had.

Two stars.

Summing up

Elsewhere in the issue, there’s a weak Feghoot and a word scramble to see how well you know your -ologies. The condensed novel is decent, and there’s one other good story, but the rest is trivial to terrible. The cover is bad and not designed to sell the magazine, and there still isn’t much in the way of promotion over in F&SF. If things don’t turn around soon, this incarnation of Venture isn’t even going to last as long as the 10 issues of the first go-round. Let’s hope things improve in the fall.




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 30, 1969] Anywhere but here (July 1969 Analog)

5 Comments

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Scenes from abroad

And so, our longest Japan trip to date has wrapped up.  We're still developing the many rolls of film we took, but here are some highlights from our vacation that included the cities Fukuoka, Amagi, Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, and Tokyo:


Nanami and The Young Traveler zoom down a slide in an eastern suburb of Nagoya


Nanami and her husband perform at a Nagoya jazz club


This is Nanami's baby, Wataru, and her mother-in-law, Haruko!


Lorelei poses in front of Ultraman, one of Japan's newest superheros


Lorelei has become smitten with kimono and yukata.  We had to buy a new suitcase to fit them all (and the model trains Elijah bought)

The trouble back home

On the doorstep to my house was a big pile of mail that my neighbor has kept for me.  In addition to sundry bills, the latest FAPA packet, and a handful of independent 'zines (including the latest from the James Doohan International Fan Club), there was the latest issue of Analog.  Interest piqued by the lovely (as always) Freas cover, I tore into the mag before unpacking.  Sadly, it was all downhill from there…


by Kelly Freas

… And Comfort to the Enemy, by Stanley Schmidt

When an exploration ship lands on a seemingly uninhabited planet, its rapacious, by-the-book commander rubs his hands with glee at the prospect of colonizing plunder.  But it turns out there are intelligent natives—it's just that their "technology" is actually the fine control of all of their fellow creatures creating a sort of artificial Deathworld.  When the invaders refuse to leave, they take a hostage, who they use as a communications go-between.  And then they unleash a deadly plague which ravages first the explorer ship and then their entire race.  How the colonizers get out of the predicament is somewhat clever.


by Kelly Freas

This one starts a bit slowly, and the explorers are all too human, even though they're supposed to be aliens.  However, once it gets moving, it's pretty good, and you can sympathize with both the planet dwellers and the decimated invaders.

Three stars.

The Great Intellect Boom, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

A pharmaceutical company stumbles upon a brain-booster pill.  Unfortunately, it promotes eggheaded learning, but not application of this learning.  As a result, the nation's economy stumbles as more and more citizens would rather discuss than do.

This is a pretty thinly veiled attack on academia and the intelligentsia, which surely must have tickled editor Campbell's reactionary heart.

One star.

The Mind-Changer, by Verge Foray


by Kelly Freas

Boy this one was a disappointment.  We last saw Verge Foray in a nice little piece called Ingenuity, which featured a post-atomic world where humanity was divided into psionically adept but primitive and regressing "Novos" and scientific, but conservative, "Olsaperns."  Starn was the hero of that story—a Novo with a rare gift of insight and intuition who managed to get in good with the technical Olsaperns.

This sequel story involves Starn's attempts to develop technology that will augment psionic powers such that they can rival or exceed the technology of the Olsaperns.  Fine and well, but really, this is just one of Campbell's "scientific" articles on psionics with a fictional coating.  I already find psi to be a pseudoscientific bore, but to try to add a veneer of respectability to it by invoking scientific trappings is distasteful in the extreme.

It's also a really boring tale.  One star.

The Choice, by Keith Laumer


by Kelly Freas

A three-astronaut explorer team from Earth is abducted by mysterious aliens who offer each of them a choice of fates—all of them some form of execution.  The two military members of the crew meet their fate boldly; the third is a far out civilian cat who doesn't cotton to his own extinction.  As a result, the story has a happy ending.

There is serious Laumer and there is funny Laumer.  Funny Laumer is usually the more trivial, and this is trivial funny Laumer.

Two stars.

The Man from R.O.B.O.T., by Harry Harrison


by Peter Skirka

A couple of years back, Harrison brought out the droll The Man from P.I.G., about a secret agent who goes undercover as a pig farmer.  The twist was that the pigs weren't his livestock but his accomplices.  In a similar vein, here we have the story of an agent who goes undercover as a robot salesman, but the robots are his accomplices.  Of course, given that the robots are intelligent, and one of them is even designed to look like the agent, one wonders why there needs to be human involvement at all in this case.

Anyway, the agent is dispatched to a rancher planet whose women folk all seem to be locked up, and whose men folk are all paranoid violence freaks.  Is it genetic?  Or is it in the cattle?

I always get "funny" Harrison (frex "The Stainless Steel Rat") and "funny" Laumer (e.g. "Retief") mixed up.  And here they're back to back!  Now I'll never disentangle them.

Two stars.

The Empty Balloon, by Jack Wodhams


by Peter Skirka

Last up, a throwaway story about a diplomat who thwarts a telepathic interrogation machine.  There's no real explanation as to how he does it, really, and most of the story exists to set up the lame ending.

Two stars.

Wow.  What a wretched month for magazine fiction!  With the exception of the atypically superlative New Worlds (3.6 stars), everything else was mediocre at best.  IF managed to break the three star barrier, but just barely (3.1), same as Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Amazing scored 2.6—which is a good month for that mag, while Galaxy got the same score, which constituted a bad month. 

Indeed, all of the better-than-average fiction would fill just one decently sized digest.  Incidentally, we had exactly one (1) short story produced by a woman, and the one woman-penned nonfiction this month was a biography…of a man.

It just goes to show that all the good stuff seems to be happening overseas these days.  I hope the next month of mags reinforces my decision to come home!




5 Comments Leave A Comment
Uncategorized

[June 28, 1969] I Don’t Have Your Wagon (Review of “The Maltese Bippy”)

5 Comments


by Victoria Lucas

Full Disclosure

I’m going to have some fun with this, and I hope you do too. Some of you may remember that I pitched a TV show called “Laugh-In” on May 4, 1968. Although I initially experienced the show on FM radio, lacking a TV but having a local TV station with a frequency reachable on my FM dial, I have actually watched the show on the TVs of friends every chance I’ve had.  This movie was a treat for me.

"The Maltese Bippy"

Poster for “The Maltese Bippy”

This seems to be the only movie so far with “Maltese” in its title that is not an adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett detective novel, The Maltese Falcon. “The Maltese Bippy” is a movie starring Dan Rowan and Dick Martin clearly made in the hopes of taking advantage of the popularity of their comedy team in the TV weekly show “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.” “Bippy” is a catchphrase of that show that might refer to anything from something Dick Martin is “betting” to a Bippy Burger served at one of a chain of Laugh-In restaurants, or something offered in exchange by Sammy Davis, Jr. for his “wagon.”

It is called a horror-comedy, spoofing movies like “Blood of Dracula’s Castle,” and it portrays Dick Martin as a werewolf-in-training. It is also rated as a “mystery,” with the team splitting up, Rowan hoping to take monetary advantage of Martin’s expected transition to lycanthropy, as well as a woman among the neighbors whom Rowan hopes to sign as a performing werewolf herself, as Martin pursues the question of why their neighbors have masqueraded as werewolves and taken an interest in him and his home.


TV show title with typical curtain style

The movie is identifiable as having the “Laugh-In” style of rapid-fire delivery as well as the show’s way of mocking everything: the duo can’t even let the titles go by at the beginning without appearing beside them and making fun of them, and the last moments of the film are no less flippant than the first. But it proceeds Without (and this is a big W) the political commentary that we’ve grown used to on their shows.


Scene from "Once Upon a Horse"

This was not their 1st movie—the pair starred in “Once Upon a Horse” in 1958, 6 years after they began their comedy partnership as a nightclub act, and 9 years before the pilot of “Laugh-In.”


Dan Rowan on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In"

Daniel Hale Davis (“Dan Rowan”) became an orphan at 11 after traveling with his parents in a carnival. He was seen through high school by a foster family, then hitchhiked to Los Angeles, where he worked in the Paramount Studios mailroom. He next served as a fighter pilot in WWII, being awarded medals for his service. After the war, he returned to Los Angeles and got together with Dick Martin, with Martin starting out in the “straight man” role in their nightclub act, which worked better when they switched, allowing Martin to get the laughs.


Dick Martin on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In"

Thomas Richard Martin ("Dick Martin"), on the other hand, spent his ordinary childhood in Michigan, and survived an infection with tuberculosis that kept him out of the military. His first job in entertainment was as a writer for a radio sitcom that I remember listening to, “Duffy’s Tavern.” (It always began with an actor answering a phone with: “Duffy’s Tavern, where the elite meet to eat. Duffy ain’t here”—Duffy never does appear.) Martin was also in the movie "Glass Bottom Boat," a comic spy movie with Doris Day (1966). He was working on "The Lucy Show" (since 1962) when "Laugh-In" came along and proved itself to have legs, ending his appearance on that show in 1968.


Sammy Davis, Jr. as "da judge"

I was intrigued to remember that the original premise of the movie is based on the same story as a sketch in the March 17 “Laugh-in” show this year, performed by Rowan and Sammy Davis, Jr. (a regular guest known for prancing about chanting “Here come da judge” in a judge’s gown and antique wig, also in this show missing his "wagon"). In the TV sketch the two lament that their pornographic-film company is going bust and they will not be able to continue making movies without an injection of cash. In the movie, Rowan and Martin are ejected from their “studio” in an office building, in which they have been making soft pornography films, employing women who don’t know what they’re in for.


Martin's housekeeper played by Mildred Natwick, shown here in "The Trouble with Harry"

The pair move their office to Martin’s house, since he has been backing the enterprise with his money. The place has already been turned into a boardinghouse, to try to support the business and earn a living, and a beautiful young woman (Carol Lynley) is rooming there, as well as a suspicious young man (Leon Askin). After a murder occurs in the cemetery nearby some strange neighbors begin to come around. Martin’s housekeeper, played by Mildred Natwick, is justifiably suspicious of everybody, even Martin.

From Horror Movie to Mystery

Early on the movie appears to be rapidly developing into a horror movie with gags. But after a sufficiency of graveyard shots, a sequence intervenes that I would sit through the whole movie again just to watch: in a dream Martin sees himself in a bathroom mirror, turning into a werewolf before his eyes—a very good makeup job. As the wolf, he seeks help but only gets himself into more trouble, ending up in an old-time silent-movie-style chase being cranked too fast. Lynley comes to his aid and wakes him up, providing a transition from the horror comedy to a mystery story with now 2 murders to solve. Between this point and the end, a literal heap of murderers are dispatched and a man pretending to be a representative of the “Motion Picture Code” commands a policeman to arrest Rowan and Martin for “excessive violence on film.”

WARNING

This movie has 4 endings, no taste, and enough silliness for a truckload of stooges, but then that’s “Laugh-In,” isn’t it? And that’s why people like me (“Laugh-In” fans) go to see it. We want to see Dan Rowan and Dick Martin make fools of themselves and each other—and anyone else in range, such as their guest stars, who have so far included Tiny Tim, Garry Moore, Gina Lollabrigida, the Smothers Brothers, Mel Brooks, Hugh Hefner, Lena Horne, Rock Hudson, Jack Benny, Guy Lombardo, Liberace, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Johnny Carson, Marcel Marceau, Rod Serling, Jimmy Dean, Colonel Sanders, John Wayne, and Richard Nixon, to name a few.

If you are, like me, a fan of “Laugh-In,” by all means go and see it, and for you I would give the film 4 and a half stars out of 5. If you are not a fan, don’t bother, you will probably see it as maybe a 2 out of 5.




5 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 26, 1969] Five Years… New Worlds, July 1969

Leave a comment


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

As we are now into Summer here, the warmer weather leads to reflection, if not introspection, although I am quite excited about the next few months. Not only do we have the impending Apollo mission to land men on the Moon – and how exciting does that sound! – but as I mentioned last month we also have Star Trek starting on the BBC in July. Such news even reached the national newspapers here.

IMAGE From a newspaper with black and white photos of the Star Trek cast, saying that the series will be on national television in July.
The only annoying part of that last event is that I understand that the Beeb will not show all of them but a selection, chosen from all three seasons. I hope I’m wrong, but as the series is filling in time between July and new Doctor Who in the Autumn, it sounds likely.

More positively, though, and partly based on the comments from my colleagues here at Galactic Journey, I feel that seeing any Star Trek at all has to be good. I’m just pleased that we will have chance to see them here, albeit in black and white – no colour telly luxury for me, I’m afraid. Most British viewers do not have colour televisions.

Anyway, back to New Worlds, issue 192.
COVER IMAGE A black and white and red drawing of a large aeroplane being rode towards by a man on horseback with his back to the reader. Cover by Mal Dean

Another great cover by Mal Dean – that’s two in a row. This one is illustrating Norman Spinrad’s story, The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde.

Lead-In by The Publishers

It's not just me that's in a reflective mood this month – this Lead In points out that the magazine has been five years in its current format and brings us up to date with what’s been happening to the magazine over that time: financial worries, subscription issues, publisher issues and the refusal of certain shops to sell the magazine in public.

It’s a sobering read and yet in the end a positive one, celebrating  that the magazine has lasted five years in its current format and with its new agenda.

Coincidentally, this introduction also tells us that Norman Spinrad is now a resident here in Britain, which may or may not be in part due to the publication of Bug Jack Barron in this magazine.

The Garden of Delights by Langdon Jones

IMAGE: An oval-shaped photo of a women surrounded by foliage.Photo by Gabi Nasemann

This may be one of the best Langdon Jones stories I’ve read. It’s not for the easily shocked – as is de rigueur for New Worlds. It’s sexually graphic and basically deals with the story of an incestuous relationship between a boy and his mother. I liked the time travel aspect of the story, although it’s not a new science-fiction thing. 4 out of 5.

The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde by Norman Spinrad

IMAGE: A black-and-white drawing of three men. From left to right, the first man is jacketless and smoking a cigar, the second is a man in a suit looking at you and the third is sitting with a lit joint in his hand.Drawing by Mal Dean

Wherein Spinrad is the latest author to write about Mike Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius. (The last was Brian W. Aldiss in last month’s issue.) The Beatles, Russians, Mongolians, a facsimile of Las Vegas in China. Chaotic and satirical (what would you expect from the author of Bug Jack Barron? Not a bad effort, frankly. 4 out of 5.

Erogenous Zone by Graham Charnock

IMAGE: A black-and-white set of drawings showing a car tumbling and rolling over as it crashes. Drawing by Mal Dean

The fourth story based in Graham’s world, CRIM – the first was in New Worlds in November 1965, the third last month. It’s a strange world, where advertising is an essential part of society. It’s a two-act story, one where Craven Image (great name! – but also not-coincidentally ‘CR…IM’) is in a car accident and taken to the hospital afterwards, and another where a dying man is being watched by his daughter and her spouse. Not a story to make sense, but lots of vivid imagery and sex. The world is both odd and depressing, with talk of the Dresden bombings, amongst other things. I’m reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 a little, although not quite as ‘out there’ as that. 3 out of 5.

Article: The Shape of Further Things by Brian W. Aldiss

IMAGE: A black and white line drawing of a calliope, or pipe organ. Looks like a picture from an old magazine. Unknown source.

A non-fiction article from Mr. Aldiss, with the promise of more to follow at a later date. It is written more as a monologue, combining Aldiss’s own life with ruminations of life, technology and H. G. Wells. Odd, but engaging. 4 out of 5.

Surface If You Can by T. Champagne

IMAGE: A black-and-white drawing showing a young male and female looking towards you. Drawing by Mal Dean

According to the Lead In, Terry Champagne is a sculptor and an author. Her first story here in Britain is about a young couple who rent a fallout shelter as a home, only to find themselves sealed in when what appears to be nuclear bombs fall outside. A surprisingly straightforward story, with a twist at the end, given the New Worlds treatment by including lots of sex and even necrophilia. There’s also cockroaches. 4 out of 5.

Circularisation by Michael Butterworth

IMAGE: A picture of the page, showing pretty patterns of text in circles.
And here’s this issue’s attempt to break down traditional prose format by creating a number of ‘radial-planographic condensed word image structures’, rotated around a point. As these things go, I quite liked the concept of these, although I disliked the fact that the author felt he had to explain them for pages at the end. The actual content is symbolic nonsense, of course. 3 out of 5.

An Experiment in Genocide by Leo Zorin

IMAGE: Six black and white drawings in a storyboard sequence, showing key aspects of the story.Artist drawings are unlabelled, but possibly by Mal Dean

Leo Zorin’s odd snippets of prose seem to be well-liked by New Worlds readers (or is that editors?) I’m less impressed by most, although this one was more accessible. This one’s about a pervert (actually described as such in the text!) wandering a world of Ballardian car accidents and grotesque characters that feel like they’ve mutated from Moorcock’s world of Elric. More visual, mixed-up imagery as a result. 3 out of 5.

Perjoriative by Robert E. Toomey Jr.

A story that begins with a one-armed man and a dwarf on a bus and ends with a mushroom cloud. A typical New Worlds story of oddness, reminiscent of the rant-y elements of Bug Jack Barron. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews: Terrible Biological Haste by Kenneth Coutts-Smith
PHOTO: Image of The Repentance of Mrs… by Aubrey Beardsley (1894) Where Kenneth Coutts-Smith looks at the work of artist Aubrey Beardsley.

Book Reviews: Fourteen Shillings Worth of Grass by R. G. Meadley

R. G. Meadley reviews Gunter Grass’s Dog Years as well as a book of his poetry.

Book Reviews: Paperbag by Joyce Churchill

Joyce Churchill (also known as M. John Harrison) reviews some science fiction books, including Edmund Cooper’s “dated” Deadly Image, Anne McCaffrey’s Decision at Doona (from “the Enid Blyton of science fiction”), Michael Frayn’s satire The Tin Men, John Jakes’s The Planet Wizard, M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud and (unsurprisingly) saves the plaudits for Norman Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron, lastly taking a pop at the editor of Ace Books, Donald A. Wollheim, with a quote from his review of Bug Jack Barron;

Quote from the text.

Book Reviews: The Sexual Gothic Private Eye Caper by Charles Platt

Charles Platt reviews The Image of the Beast by Philip Jose Farmer very positively.

Book Reviews: The Quality of Justice by David Conway

Back to the non-genre stuff. David Conway reviews a philosophical book on the quality and justice of our social practices.

Summing up New Worlds

I was surprised and pleased to find that on balance I enjoyed this more than the last issue. Spinrad makes a decent stab of a Jerry Cornelius story, the Langdon Jones is acceptable (a fairly standard science fiction idea given the New Worlds treatment of sex and incest) and some good work from new writers as well. I even found the poetry less annoying than usual, although I readily accept that I was more interested in the process of creating rather than the content of the poetry.

What was most memorable however was the fighting talk given by the editors at end of the Lead In at the beginning of the issue. As shown here, New Worlds has not been without its difficulties over the past five years, but based on this it looks like it is determined to fight for its place in a literary market.
IMAGE: from the issue’s Lead In, showing text that explains New World’s current position.

Anyway, that’s it, until next time.

IMAGE: Advert from the issue, showing when the next issue will be published.



No comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 24, 1969] Checking in from Seattle: The Existential Stress of Progress (Galactic Pot Healer by Philip K. Dick)

Leave a comment


by Jason Sacks

Welcome to Seattle, and let me tell you, June 1969 is a busy month here in the often quiet Pacific Northwest. We have a baseball team! And we may be losing a relic of our past while fighting about the present and rocking our own giant music festival… well, at least, we will be rocking a field out in the suburbs!

And I also wandered into the ineffable mind of my favorite author, Philip K. Dick, and found I had journeyed to places I scarcely could have imagined.

The End of the Market?

We live in revolutionary times, times which are painfully uncertain and terrifying. In our era of political assassinations, cities on fire, images of Vietnam on TV every night, and endless sports expansion, many of us find ourselves craving the pleasures and traditions of the past in order to help us have some small ground under our feet, some small element of history to cling onto.

But that need for tradition runs solidly into the endless American drive for progress. And we are seeing that collision of progress with tradition even here in our often quiet city.

If you’ve ever visited Seattle, you’ve probably stopped to visit our Pike Place Market, a farmers market on the hilly edge of the Seattle waterfront. The Market has been around since the dawn of the 20th century, but it may not live to see the 21st century – or even most of the 1970s. See, commercial interests have come for the quaint old market and its prime real estate, aiming to convert that area into fancy hotels and expensive housing. This has triggered a pitched battle and a bit of existential turmoil.

Seattle export Jimi Hendrix jammin' at the Market

Like New York with that neighborhood-destroying Robert Moses, many Seattle residents find ourselves fighting to preserve our landmarks against the machinations of moneyed corporate interests. And like New York with city advocate Jane Jacobs, we have our own leader of the cause. Victor Steinbrueck is a 57-year-old Seattle architect and University of Washington faculty member who has led the charge against the change

As Steinbrueck discusses in a recent issue of Seattle weekly Helix:

600 residents will be relocated in places mostly incompatible to their way of life, producing problems for themselves and others. Approximately 1400 workers will have their jobs placed in jeopardy trough relocation and termination of businesses. 233 businesses will be relocated or forced to close because of the disruption of the low cost market… the massive disruption to benefit a few is neither wise nor morally right.

Steinbrueck proposes several ideas for changes to the Market, all of which are devoted to keeping its unique character for generations to come. More than 53,000 people have already signed a petition to support his organization, Friends of the Market.

This struggle is existential for many of us who have felt buffeted around by the winds of change these days. We are hoping some of our favorite places survive the relentless, unforgiving march of progress, and Pike Place is one of those favorite places.

We can only hope and pray that Steinbrueck’s efforts will bear the same fruits Ms. Jacobs achieved in New York. I love the Market for many reasons, and hope I can continue to stop there for fruit, fish and fresh meals whenever I possibly can.

Rocking the Suburbs

On a cheerier note, there’s been a lot of buzz around town discussing the upcoming Seattle Pop Festival, which will be held in the sleepy Eastside suburb of Woodinville. Many Seattle music fans will be driving over the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge to see such amazing bands as The Doors, Chuck Berry, Albert Collins, the Guess Who, Ike & Tina Turner and the much hyped “New Yardbirds”, Led Zeppelin. (there’s a nice mix of traditional and new acts!)

It’s going to be an expensive event at $6 per day or $15 for the whole three days, and there have been rumors that drug peddlers in the University District have been more aggressive than ever before selling their merchandise in order to afford tickets. It would be groovy if our event was like that upcoming Woodstock event in New York, but I predict that event will be a bit of a bomb. I just don't think there are enough people here who will be excited to see a boring band like The Doors.

Piloting into Disaster

Sadly, we’ve all been looking forward to a major civic event which has definitely become a bomb. After many years of dreaming and a mere few months of planning, the Seattle Pilots debuted this April as the latest team in the American League. They’re now our second Seattle pro sports team, after the SuperSonics of the NBA, and while Washington Huskies football will always be the big sport in Sea-town, and the hydros as number two, my friends and family and I all had high hopes for the expansion Pilots.

Unfortunately, everything about the Pilots has shown that the Emerald City isn’t like Oz. Our team’s ballpark is strictly minor league, the players are strictly second-stringers, and even their uniforms are an absurd joke.

First of all the ballpark: the Pilots home field is called Sicks’ Stadium, and seldom has a name been more appropriate. The field has been in use since before WWII hosting games of the Seattle Rainiers and Seattle Angels of the minor league Pacific Coast League, and the place feels like a minor league relic. The walls often feel like they’re falling down, the bleachers are rickety, and you probably heard the (completely true) story that the stadium was still under construction on Opening Day. Worse than that, the bathrooms often overflow during games, which is just nauseating. And on top of all that, we have higher ticket prices than the other expansion teams this year. No wonder we rarely have crowds which even approach 20,000 fans.

The boys in pastel blue are resolutely in last place in the new American League West, without much hope of avoiding the curse of 100 losses this year. Aside from a couple of decent players, like Yankee castoff Jim Bouton, this year’s team might be long-forgotten in a few years…

If not, that is, for the dreadful uniforms the players are forced to wear. Embracing the idea of a “pilot” way too far, the team’s owners created a cap like no other in baseball, with a captain’s stripe and “scrabmbled eggs” on the bill, which just looks hideous. But hey they are just as bad as the weird powdered-blue uniforms with four stripes on the sleeves, which just look odd.

Just three months into the season, there are already rumors the Pilots may be a one-year wonder, leaving my beloved city for parts unknown. That would be a shame on one hand, but a relief on another. If we’re going to sail into the big leagues, I would hope it would be when steered by a fine mariner instead of a minor-league pilot. Perhaps we will keep the team, and perhaps the Pilots will be able to move into a rumored domed stadium sometime by the middle of the next decade. And hey, they could start winning, right? Just wait’ll next year, as they say.

Now Wait for the Pot-Healer’s Year

If you’ve ready any of the writing I’ve done for this zine, you’re probably aware I’m perhaps the biggest fan of Philip K. Dick on this staff. I’ve raved about his Dr. Bloodmoney, enthused about his transcendent Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and – just last month – waxed poetic about his sublime Ubik.

Mr. Dick has been remarkably prolific over the last few years and has been on a magical roll, success following success. This month sees his latest paperback original hit in a B. Daltons or Woolworths near you. And while brilliant as ever, Galactic Pot Healer is a decidedly different book than the ones I just mentioned.

The lead character of Pot Healer is a miserable middle aged man with few job prospects living a blandly dystopian near-future – hmm, well, maybe this book not too different from other PKD novels. But stay with me for a minute because this book goes in unexpected directions.

Joe Fernwright is a brilliant artisan, a man with the unique skills to repair antiquities from the pre-WWIII era in such a way that they look as good as they did before the War. The term for such a man is pot-healer. Joe’s been a pot-healer all his life. In fact Joe follows in the footsteps of his father, who was a great pot-healer in his time.

The problem, in a future North American megalopolis, is that there’s no more pot-healing work for Joe. All the pots have been fixed and, in this post-apocalyptic world, there are no more porcelain pots being manufactured. In fact, there’s scarcely any work for anybody in this massive, overpopulated world. Instead, Joe shows up to work each day, sits at his desk, and calls up colleagues in Russia and England on his office phone not to work – there is no actual work for anyone in this future world  to do – but instead to play pointless but clever word games just to make the long day feel slightly less meaningless.

It's a crushing, desperately lonely experience, bereft of any redeeming elements which would make life worth living. Joe has no family and really no friends, despite – or maybe because of – the fact that the megalopolis is so overcrowded. Even Joe’s small savings of a handful of actual metal coins, which he hides in his toilet back, are not able to gain him more than a few moments satisfaction in his life.

Until, that is, Joe starts receiving strange messages, which he soon realizes come from a strange being from another planet. The Glimmung summons Joe and a slew of other artifact hunters from across the galaxy – all suicidal dead-enders, all desperate for a chance to find fulfillment in their lives – to a remote obscure place called Plowman’s Planet where they can possibly achieve something which justifies their continued existence.

And though Joe finds some kind of love with an alien girl named Mali, ultimately Joe is unable to find peace with himself, leading to one of the bleakest, most powerful and satirical endings in all of Dick.

A fan named Karla shared a photo of her ceramic creation which dwells on an important plot point of the novel.

Galactic Pot Healer is one of PKD’s most downbeat and philosophical works. While Ubik thrills due to its endless tumble of ideas, Pot Healer is mostly about one idea, an idea central to Dick’s fiction: the feeling of deep, existential doubt and lack of fulfillment. Joe Fernwright is on a quest to truly find the true center of his being. In an amazing sequence I’ll let you discover yourself, Joe actually does find himself but finds himself desiccated, like the raw husk of an insect. He’s a man stripped raw, a man whose encounter with himself and with God leaves him frozen in his own mind, like a spider who spun his web in a tin can and starves to death waiting for a fly to hit his web.

Joe is a loser, but really what choice does he have? How can he actually change his life when every possible opportunity to do so is stripped away from him? What happens when great skills are lost, self-delusion is stripped away, and the stark reality is that everything is as dust?

This is all very emotionally exhausting stuff, for Joe and for the reader.

Mr. Dick

And that’s the difference between Galactic Pot Healer and Dick’s other recent novels. Characters like Robert Childan in The Man in the High Castle or Rick Deckard in Do Androids Dream or Palmer Eldritch in the book that bears his name are men of action, men who at least try to change their lives. Even boys like Manfred Steiner in Martian Time-Slip  or the homonucleus in Dr Bloodmoney take actions to remake the world in their images.

But Joe Fernwright is the ultimate PKD character pushed to the edge, the ultimate man who is powerless before his own pathetic weakness.

Thus I found it hard to read about him, even while sympathizing with his pain and angst.

This is minor Dick, to be sure, but still an essential part of his catalog.

3.5 stars.

 




No comments Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[June 22, 1969] Game Over (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 8-10])

1 Comment


By Jessica Holmes

"The War Games" draws to a close, bringing us a thrilling conclusion, revelations of the Doctor’s origins, and some heartbreaking farewells.

The Doctor (right, foreground) meets with the War Chief (left, background.)
"If I join you, do I also have to grow the silly moustache?"

In Case You Missed It

You really missed out if you didn’t happen to catch it, because I really think "The War Games" is one of my favourite Doctor Who serials. And I’ve been thinking about the ending ever since.

But, first things first. A small clarification: I misinterpreted the dialogue last time, it turns out the War Lord is NOT a “Time Lord” (despite the name) but the War Chief is.

And so is the Doctor.

Up to now, I had mostly dismissed the War Chief as little more than a high-ranking lackey with a temper, but a new dimension within him emerges in the latter episodes of the serial. Sure, he still has a temper, but he’s no lackey. Unlike the Doctor, who left their homeworld in order to see the galaxy, the War Chief desires to rule it. And the Doctor can join him, if he wishes. He's not such a bad chap after all, so he claims. When the galaxy is conquered, there will finally be peace. Yes, War Chief, you’re a real humanitarian.

Jamie, Carstairs, Zoe, and Arturo Villa stand around a table in the chateau discussing strategy.

With no clear way to rescue the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe throw their efforts into carrying out his plan and recruiting the other Resistance groups. The leaders agree to assemble their armies in the American Civil War Zone. The forests will be a good place to hide, and then when a SIDRAT next turns up, they can take it over.

In preparation, they start taking out the control units in each zone, taking out their communications one by one, and drawing out the War Lord’s guards. By the time they’re done, there won’t be anyone left to defend central control.

With only one control unit left, the Security Chief has a pretty good idea of where the Resistance must be gathered, and wishes to wipe them all out with a neutron bomb. The War Lord however has a more subtle idea…

At the barn, Jamie, Zoe and the Resistance leaders are surprised to receive a call from the Doctor, who tells them that he has a plan to take over central control, and that he’s sending a SIDRAT to bring them to him. They meet the Doctor at the landing bay, where the War Lord’s guards promptly arrest them. It seems that the Doctor has betrayed them all.

The Doctor, centre, stands glaring at something offscreen, with the Security Chief and War Chief flanking him.

And if you believed that for a second, I have a bridge to sell you.

As the prisoners are taken away, the War Chief pulls the Doctor aside to discuss plans for the future with his new ally. The Doctor infers that it’s not really him the War Chief needs for his plans to work, but his TARDIS. The SIDRATs have more bells and whistles than the old TARDIS, but it comes at a cost: longevity. The SIDRATs are at the end of their lifespan, and before long the War Chief will have nothing more than a load of surprisingly spacious cupboards, and he'll be of no further use to the War Lord.

What was his plan if a fellow Time Lord hadn’t happened to land in the middle of his games?

To prove his newfound loyalty to the War Lord, the Doctor offers to improve the processing machines, using the prisoners as test subjects. It’s all Jamie can do to prevent the others from killing the Doctor on sight, but the Doctor eventually manages to persuade them that he’s really on their side, and to play along with his ruse.

The Security Chief looks on as a pair of guards manhandle the War Chief.

Unfortunately, things have all gone a bit pear-shaped. The Security Chief, suspicious of the Doctor and the War Chief, has been spying on their conversations. Having arrested the War Chief, the guards are now on their way to grab the Doctor.

The Resistance manage to overpower the guards, and the War Chief has another proposition for the Doctor. He can help them, and save his own skin into the bargain. The guards at the landing bay don’t know he’s been arrested. He could escort the Doctor and his allies there and steal them a SIDRAT. The Doctor accepts, on one condition: that they first go to the War Room and put an end to the games.

The Security Chief’s depleted forces quickly fall to the small band of Resistance fighters, with the Security Chief himself falling at the War Chief’s own spiteful hand. Unfortunately, he didn’t kill him fast enough to prevent him sounding the alarm. They can call an end to the games, but there’s not time for the Doctor to send everyone back to their proper time and place. Not without help, at least.

It’s time to call the Time Lords.

The War Lord stands in the foreground with his back to the War Chief, who is shouting at him as a pair of guards train their weapons on him.
There's only room for ONE ruler of the Galaxy with weird facial hair, and it ain't gonna be you, War Chief.

The War Chief tries to leave the others behind and make a break for it, but the War Lord catches up to him as he attempts to steal a SIDRAT. The War Lord has his would-be betrayer executed on the spot. The Resistance arrive at the landing bay and quickly overpower the War Lord’s guards, but leave the man himself for the Time Lords to deal with. Not the Doctor though, who plans on being far, far away by the time they arrive. See, Time Lords aren't meant to meddle in the affairs of other worlds, and the Doctor does little else. And they’re probably going to want their stolen TARDIS back. To tell the truth, I’m not even surprised that the TARDIS is stolen. Have you seen how he pilots that thing?

Doctor, you naughty boy.

With Jamie, Zoe, and Carstairs (who is just tagging along to look for Lady Jennifer), the Doctor hurries off back to the 1917 Zone. But not fast enough. The coming of the Time Lords is heralded by an eerie drone on the air. Ominously, the War Lord tells the Doctor’s allies that soon the Doctor will wish they’d killed him when they had the chance.

The Doctor, Zoe and Jamie sprint across the battlefield.
Can we please appreciate Troughton's funny little run?

As the group get in sight of the TARDIS, Carstairs suddenly vanishes, no doubt whisked away to his proper time. The closer the Doctor gets to the TARDIS, the slower time itself seems to become. With an immense struggle, he and his friends manage to get inside and leave the battlefield. But they aren’t free yet.

The Time Lords find them wherever they go, whether it be the depths of the ocean or the depths of space. There’s no resisting the nigh-omnipotence of the Time Lords.

After all his travels, the Doctor must finally come home.

The Time Lords bring the Doctor and his friends to their homeworld, where the War Lord’s trial is already underway. It’s a rare thing for the Time Lords to put anyone on trial, let alone someone from another planet.

The War Chief stands before three Time Lord judges.

Forget everything I said about the War Lord being impressively powerful in my last review. Before the Time Lords, he’s nothing more than a scared little man, though he tries not to show it. A handful of his surviving guards turn up in an attempt to rescue him, taking the Doctor hostage in the process, but they don’t get far.

The Doctor helps the Time Lords to recapture the War Lord, and the justice of the Time Lords proves to be swift and uncompromising. They quarantine the War Lord’s planet away from the rest of the universe, and erase the War Lord himself from reality. It will be as if he never existed.

Despite the Doctor aiding them in bringing justice to the War Lord, the Time Lords aren’t going to give him a pass on his own supposed misdeeds. There's a funny sort of symmetry to this serial; the Doctor's tribulations begin and end with a trial.

The Doctor alone
"In my defence, Your Honour… it seemed a good idea at the time."

At least unlike last time, the Doctor has actually committed the “crime” of which he’s being accused. The Time Lords have one rule about interfering with the wider universe: don’t. And the Doctor not only admits to flouting that rule, he’s proud of it. Time and again he’s helped to defeat the evils of the universe, all while the Time Lords have failed to lift a finger to prevent the injustices happening before their eyes.

It’s not him who should be guilty, it’s them.

Agreeing to at least consider his point, the Time Lord jury goes into recess to think it over, and Jamie and Zoe are allowed to make their farewells to the Doctor.

Not that they don’t try to escape, but it’s futile trying to evade the Time Lords. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Doctor so completely and utterly defeated. He’s beyond begging, beyond tears, just… tired. Resigned.

The Doctor and Jamie shake hands goodbye as a Time Lord watches them in the background.
To the Time Lords: I hope you're pleased with yourselves.

The goodbyes are brief, too brief really for all the three have been through together. Especially the Doctor and Jamie. Three series of instinctively reaching out to one another and clinging together in times of stress, and they part with a simple handshake.

Promising never to forget him, Jamie and Zoe turn their backs on the Doctor for the last time. But they don’t get a choice. Determined to erase every trace of the Doctor’s illegal travels from the universe, the Time Lords wipe Jamie and Zoe’s memories of their travels.

They’re allowed to keep their first meeting with the Doctor, but nothing more. To Zoe, he’s just that funny little bloke who turned up on the Wheel when the Cybermen invaded. And to Jamie, he’s just a man with a penchant for disguises, who helped his Jacobite comrades escape the English, and nothing more.

That’s… tragic. More than tragic, it’s cruel.

The Doctor and Zoe in front of the TARDIS. The Doctor gives Zoe a sad smile.

They’ve not just stolen memories, they’ve stolen something even more precious: friendship. Poor Zoe, lonely Zoe, whose colleagues thought of her as an inhuman machine because she saw the world differently to them. In the Doctor she finally had a true friend, a kindred spirit even, someone who understood the way she thinks and didn’t think less of her for it. And she’ll never know.

And dear Jamie. Oh, my poor, sweet Jamie. What’s he meant to do with himself now, alone in the Highlands, with everyone he knew dead or in exile? His relationship with the Doctor was closer than any other companion we’ve seen so far, except for Susan I suppose, but the dynamic feels different. I definitely wouldn’t call it paternal, at any rate.

At least they don’t know what they’ve lost, for what little comfort that is. The Doctor gets to live with the knowledge that he’ll never see his friends again. And his punishment has only just begun.

The Doctor, his back to the camera, stands before a pair of Time Lord judges.

Seeing as he’s put so much effort into keeping it safe, he will be exiled to the planet Earth. He can keep the TARDIS, but in a disabled state, with even his knowledge of how to work it purged from his mind. Until such a time the Time Lords deem fit, he’ll be confined to one time, one planet, that isn’t even his own. And he won’t even be allowed to keep his face.

Such is the power and the judgement of the Time Lords.

The Doctor appearing distressed as reflections of his own face surround him.

The Peerage System: Even In Space, It Stinks

If the Time Lords are all such sticks in the mud, I’m not surprised the Doctor left home.  Who died and made them "Lords" of Time? How terribly pompous.

It’s quite striking really, how much the Doctor has changed from when we first met him. In the early days, the Hartnell Doctor wasn’t such a far cry from the Time Lords, only really getting involved in local goings-on when he didn’t have any other choice. Look at him now, putting them in their place. I may or may not have cheered at the television set in support of the wee chappie.

That said, I don’t think he was ever as cold and detached as the rest of the Time Lords seem to be. His wanderlust and sense of curiosity was there from the start—something sorely lacking in the rest of his people.

The three Time Lord judges, in white robes with black mantles.

It’s unsettling, this dispassionate power. One gets the sense that the Time Lords are to us as we are to insects. And we would have just as much luck arguing with them as an ant does to a boot. Perhaps the wider universe is lucky that they don't want to get involved.

The Doctor may have returned to his planet of origin, but it wasn't much of a homecoming. That would require warmth. It didn’t even occur to the Time Lords at first that his human friends would want to say goodbye to the Doctor. What sort of society is that, where affection and attachment are strange concepts? I don’t think they went out of their way to be cruel, but I don’t think it occurred to them that they weren’t being kind.

Speaking of unkind: The War Lord’s people. It seems a bit extreme to essentially imprison an entire planet for the actions of a few of its leaders. Even if they were abhorrent. I still have questions about them. We didn’t even get a name for the species as a whole. That said, I do have a theory. It’s ironclad, trust me. I think they could be "Dals", at a point in their history before they turned into screaming pepperpots. I have two compelling pieces of evidence:

  • The Security Chief’s oddly Dalek-like cadence to his speech.
  • I enjoy the idea, and I am always right. Except when I'm not.

So, there.

The Doctor angrily addresses the War Chief, with Jamie and Zoe looking on behind him.

Final Thoughts

Wow. The end of a marathon serial, and the end of an era.

I’ll get my final thoughts on "The War Games" out of the way first. It was great! Genuinely one of my favourites in all of “Doctor Who”. It’s a creative romp through time, with the stakes for the Doctor and his friends higher than ever before. What’s not to like?

Well. If I must… I was a tad disappointed that the War Lord didn’t turn out to be quite as big a deal as I thought he was going to be. He makes such an impression upon first arriving, but then he’s barely involved in the goings-on thereafter.

However, the revelation of the War Chief’s ulterior motives almost makes up for the letdown. They have interesting chemistry, him and the Doctor. It’s ambiguous how well they knew one another prior to meeting here, but they definitely knew of one another. Both being runaway Time Lords, there’s a degree of understanding between the two, much as the Doctor would hate to admit it. Pity the War Chief had to die. He could have made quite the nemesis.

The ending for the captured humans is also a bit abrupt. They do at least get to have a climactic battle (well, more of a skirmish) for control of the War Room, but once the Time Lords get involved, poof! They all vanish. It does serve to establish the immense power the Time Lords possess, but it’s not entirely satisfying.

But this is me deliberately looking for fault. These quibbles are there, but to me they’re not a significant hamper on my enjoyment of the story. I just enjoy the good bits too much to let the less-good bits bother me.

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe on an outing together.

And now, it’s time to close out an entire era of Doctor Who. I’m more than a little heart-broken; I adored the current iteration of the TARDIS crew. They’re like a proper little family.

I’ve especially enjoyed the relationship between the Doctor and Jamie. They’re just so comfortable with each other, and the chemistry between Troughton and Hines has always been wonderful. I’ve always found it endearing how affectionate they are with each other, the banter, the absolute undying loyalty. It’s so sweet, and so sad to have their travels together brought to such an abrupt end.

The Doctor and Jamie clinging to one another.
They're adorable. Even if the Doctor did forget what Jamie looks like that one time.

And as for saying goodbye to the Second Doctor, well. It hurts. But I cannot stress enough how much I have loved Patrick Troughton’s take on the Doctor.

Really, it’s extraordinary. It’s an unenviable task, having to take over a beloved character from a great performer like William Hartnell. And yet..! He rose to the challenge, and performed admirably. Troughton's Doctor is very much his own, distinct from the first incarnation, yet still having the same soul. The curiosity is still there, the mischief, the sense of justice. He's a continuation, not an imitation. Just as it should be.

I loved that little man, his wit, his endearing clownishness, and the incredible warmth. How could I not? And then the flip side, the cunning, the moments where the clown mask slipped to reveal glimpses of the much more serious, contemplative, sometimes even melancholic man underneath it all. That’s where the magic is. That’s what makes the Troughton Doctor so compelling.

The Doctor, in his tall hat, leaning against a tree stump with a sad sort of smile.
Thank goodness he ditched that hat, though.

And what comes next? Or rather, “Who”? Well, I had been getting a little nervous at the lack of announcement thus far, but have no fear, because a few days ago the BBC finally made the announcement. Next time we see the Doctor, he’ll be played by Jon Pertwee.

There’s a pretty decent chance you’ve seen Pertwee in one thing or another. He’s been doing plenty of work for the BBC for the last couple of decades, and his film career is certainly nothing to sniff at. If you’ve seen the 1953 film “Will Any Gentlemen…?”, you’ve even seen him perform alongside William Hartnell. I choose to take that as an encouraging sign.

I’m sad to see Troughton go, but I have faith. If Doctor Who can pull off a change of Doctor once, it can do it again.

Thank you for being a wonderful Doctor, Patrick Troughton… and good luck, Jon Pertwee.

5 stars out of 5 for “The War Games”.




1 Comment Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 20, 1969] Where to? (July 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

4 Comments

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Nihon, banzai!

In just the last ten years of covering our trips to Japan as part of Galactic Journey, we have watched with amazement as Japan executed nothing short of a miracle.  As of this year, the country is now the third largest economy in the world, and "Made in Japan" is no longer a stamp of poor quality.  Datsuns are rolling off the assembly line by the thousands and ending up in American showrooms.  The sky is dark with industrial smog.  It's almost enough to eclipse the left-wing student protests that keep popping up around the nation.

Of course, Japan still has a ways to go, at least domestically.  Fully a fifth of its population still is minimally housed, squatting in one-room shacks and waiting for the government to make good on its five year plan to give everyone a decent home.

One family that has no such difficult is the Fujiis, our adoptive parents, who we last visited five years ago!  This trip was particularly exciting for reasons I shall detail shortly.

First, a picture of the flower shop on the way to their house.  The town is Amagi, an agricultural town that specializes in grapes and persimmons.

And now the estate.  It's laid out as a square with an internal garden.  What's significant is that it dates back to the 1840s—a time when Japan was still ruled by a Shogun.  The estate is essentially a relic, representative of a style that had not changed since Elizabethan times.  At a time when so many of these historic residences are being torn down or falling apart, this one stands as a living treasure.

Yuko, our adoptive mom, gave Lorelei a set of Japanese watercolors, which she employed to draw the garden as she saw it.

The architecture of the place, alone, is remarkable.  This is construction without nails, all of the timbers custom built and joined together.

What's inside is even more remarkable.  The back house used to house a pawn shop.  Even the boxes are more than a century old.

This dress was made by a princess.

And this kimono was hocked by a penniless samurai for a little cash.  Apparently, this happened a lot.

This is century-old paper, also sold by a samurai.  Among the sheets was a paper mock-up of a hakama, the armor the samurai wore.

This is in the house.  Yukio, Yuko's husband, was a Kyoto cop before he retired.  This relic, however, long pre-dates him—it's the kind of lantern used by police in the 19th Century!

I hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the past.  Now for a trip into the future…and regions fantastic!

Leiber of the party

Every summer, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction dedicates an issue to science fiction luminary.  For the July 1969 edition, that fellow is Fritz Leiber.  His name is rarely mentioned in the same breath as, say, Heinlein or Asimov, though he is their contemporary (more or less), but when he's good he's very good.  Does he make this issue stand out?  Let's see!


by Ed Emshwiller

Ship of Shadows, by Fritz Leiber

First up, a brand new piece by the man, himself.  It stars Spar and his talking cat, Kim.  No, this isn't a fantasy, but a highly personal adventure of an old man living in weightlessness aboard some sort of spaceship.  Most of the folks onboard have forgotten about Earth, and there now appear to be eldritch beings aboard—werewolves and vampires—making prey out of those who remain.

Things I liked: the setup is revealed slowly, and it's the first story I've read from the point of view of someone who desperately needs glasses…but doesn't know it.  And there is that characteristic Leiber poesy to the writing.

Things I didn't like: the story moves glacially, and I didn't feel like it told anything new.  I kept finding myself distracted every two or three pages.

So…three stars, I guess.

Fritz Leiber (profile), by Judith Merril

Famed writer and anthologist (and book reviewer) Judy Merril gushes over her hero, Fritz Leiber.  Half biography, half hagiography, half history of SF, it's a worthy piece, especially if you want to be introduced to his early work (and happen, like me, to own a complete set of Unknown).

Four stars.

Demons of the Upper Air, IIX, by Fritz Leiber

A pretty good poem about our first interstellar astronauts, told from the point of view of someone stuck on the ground.

Three stars.

Fritz Leiber: A Bibliography, by Al Lewis

As it says on the tin—no more, and no less.

(no rating)


by Gahan Wilson

To Aid and Dissent, by Con Pederson

It's easy to get in trouble out Mars or asteroids way.  To that end, a fleet of sherpas has been bred—literally.  These rescue ships, which sacrifice themselves upon landing to deposit air and victuals, comprise a row of linked simian brains inside a spacecraft shell.  Think the ape version of The Ship Who… series.  Sherpa Bravo one day decides he's sick of being aynyone's monkey and launches a one-primate civil rights revolution.

Clunkily written and nothing special.  Two stars.

The Place with No Name, by Harlan Ellison

Norman Mogart was an Entertainment Liaison Agent.  Pfui.  He was a pimp.  When he gets into trouble with the law there's no way out of, he makes a deal with…well…not quite the Devil…and finds himself hip-deep in two of the biggest martyr legends of history.

The first half is excellent and pure Ellison.  The second changes the tone so sharply, beware of whiplash.  It ends poignantly enough, but the two halves don't quite mesh.

As is usually the case—Ellison consistently produces what are, for me, three-and-a-quarter star stories…round to four stars?

Transgressor's Way, by Doris Pitkin Buck

A knight errant proves to be anything but a knight bachelor—his modus operandi is to shamelessly seduce young maids and then bunk them all in separate towers for him to enjoy at his leisure.  But what if they should discover each other?

This story is told in too confusing a shorthand, and it is too frivolous in substance, to earn more than two stars from me.

A Triptych, by Barry N. Malzberg

An interesting, behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in the minds of the three astronauts who get sent in the Apollo.  It's not bad, but Barry isn't very well in touch with the actual space program.  One telltale: he assumes that the spacemen have little to do between TV shots.  In fact, they are kept too busy—indeed, both the Apollo 7 and 10 commanders cut pages out of their assignments because the astronauts were overworked and making mistakes (as anyone who regularly watched coverage of either of these flights should know – Ed).

Three stars.

Two at a Time, by Isaac Asimov

In which the Good Doctor explains how we measure the mass of planets by observing their effect on each other (specifically, the common elliptical focus around which they both orbit).  Several pages that could be reduced to one or two lines of formulae, but he looks to be setting something up.

Three stars.

Litterbug, by Tony Morphett

Finally, a fun piece about a fellow named Rafferty who invents a teleporter.  Problem is, he can't control where things go, and he can't bring them back.  Solution: market the thing as a garbage can.

Problem 2: What happens when aliens at the destination get annoyed at all the litter on their planet?

Three stars.

Lifeless

At least for me, my real life excursion was more interesting than the flights of fancy I took while riding the trains.  With the exception of Merril's piece, the rest is pretty forgettable.  Well, I suppose you won't forget the Emshwiller cover anytime soon.  Anyway, next time I'll be reading F&SF, it'll be in the endotic locale of my home town.  May the contents of the August issue be just as different from July's as the Orient is to Southern California.




4 Comments Leave A Comment
Movies

[June 18, 1969] Sleazy Riders (The Sidehackers and Satan's Sadists)

Leave a comment


by Victoria Silverwolf

I've spoken before about my inexplicable interest in cheap, trashy movies about motorcycle gangs.  Two more films in this genre arrived this month.  Hop on the back of my chopper and let's take a ride into the wild world of weirdos on wheels.

The Sidehackers

The opening credits are odd.  The image is reduced to a tiny part of the screen, surrounded by black.


So is it The Sidehackers or The Side Hackers?

My sources in the movie biz tell me that this thing was originally called Five the Hard Way, which is also the name of the song we hear during the credits.  My guess is that they had to chop up the opening to squeeze in the new title.

Anyway, we soon meet a pair of young lovers as they frolic in the woods and fields.  Boy pushing girl in a swing, both of them running through flowers in slow motion, etc.  Corny stuff.


Diane McBain as Rita.  She was in The Mini-skirt Mob, too.


Ross Hagen as Rommell.  He was in The Hellcats AND The Mini-Skirt Mob!

We meet Rommell's married buddy, who tells him all about the wonders of matrimonial bliss.  This romantic domestic drama is interrupted by the arrival of a guy who makes a living by performing stunts on a motorcycle.  (We never actually see this.) He's accompanied by his girlfriend and his gang.


Claire Polan as Paisley and Michael Pataki as J. C.

Fans of Star Trek may recognize Pataki. (Hint: It should be hauled away AS garbage!)

Then we get some sidehacking.  Oh, you don't what that is?  Well, it's a sort of motorcycle racing in which a guy is hanging off the side of the bike on something like an open metal cage.  Don't worry, this has nothing at all to do with the plot, and we'll never see it again.


Sidehacking!

The plot gets going when the sadistic J. C. beats up Paisley, who then tries to seduce Rommell.  He's a one-woman kind of guy, so he rebuffs her.  In retaliation, she tears her clothes and tells J. C. that Rommell attacked her.

This sudden change in mood from romance and racing to violence is jarring.  Believe me, it gets worse.

J. C. and his goons beat Rommell savagely.  Much more shocking, they rape and kill Rita.  After some time goes by, Rommell assembles a crew and sets out for revenge.  Don't expect a happy ending.

Fans of action movies will be disappointed by how the film slows down to a crawl until we get to the final battle.  Pataki chews the scenery as the psychotic J. C., and everybody else is pretty bland.  (One of Rommell's army — that's probably why he's named for an infamous Nazi general, even though he's supposed to be, more or less, the good guy — is named Crapout.  He's our wildly inappropriate comedy relief, has a thick Southern accent, and is really annoying.)

One star for an odd combination of boredom and nastiness.  Cut out the most disturbing scenes and you might have something worth mocking with some buddies.

Satan's Sadists

This one jumps right into the vile stuff.  Before the opening credits, a motorcycle gang comes across a man and woman.  They rape the woman, then kill both of them.  This is just a hint of what's to follow.


The opening credits feature some interesting abstract animation, and may be the best thing in the film.

A married couple picks up a hitchhiker in the middle of nowhere.  He just got out of the Marine Corps after serving in Vietnam.  They wind up at a little restaurant/gas station in the desert.


From left to right, the waitress who is our heroine; the ex-Marine who is our hero; and the married couple.  Not shown is the owner of the place.

The motorcycle gang shows up and immediately starts making trouble.  The leader is a guy named Anchor.  His girlfriend (whom he abuses as much as J. C. did Paisley) is Gina. 

The other hoodlums each have some kind of gimmick.  One wears a hearing aid, one takes LSD all the time, one has only one eye, one is big and strong, and one is an Indian.  (The last is nicknamed Firewater, and is probably the least evil of the gang.  Naturally, he's played by a non-Indian, John "Bud" Cardos, a pretty well-known stuntman of Greek ancestry.)


Russ Tamblyn as Anchor.  You may remember him from lots of movies, such as West Side Story and The Haunting.

[Are you sure that's not Arte Johnson? He looks 'very interesting'. (Ed.)]


Regina Carrol as Gina.  She's married to Al Adamson, the director.  He also recently gave us Blood of Dracula's Castle.

The gang takes everybody prisoner.  All but two of them haul the married couple and the guy who owns the diner outside.  They rape the woman then kill all three of them.

Inside the place, the ex-Marine manages to overpower the two gang members left to guard them, killing both.  He and the waitress escape via dune buggy, but the vehicle soon breaks down.  It all leads up to a battle in the desert.

(As if this weren't horrible enough, the big chase scene is interrupted when the gang finds three young women on a geology field trip.  Of course, they torment, rape, and kill them.  This is when Firewater objects to the murders, proving that he's still got a tiny bit of decency hidden deep inside.  His disagreement with Anchor leads to a big fight scene, made more effective by the experience of stuntman Cardos.)

Boy, this is nasty stuff.  It definitely delivers all the shocks it promises, unlike the occasionally tepid The Sidehackers.  It's a lot more coherent than Blood of Dracula's Castle, or Blood of Ghastly Horror, another offering from Al Adamson.  For those reasons, I have to give it two stars.

After this double feature, it's time to take a long, hot shower.  Let's hope future motorcycle movies won't be quite so slimy.


Coming soon!  As the poster indicates, it's already been shown at the famous Cannes film festival.  Let's hope it's better than these two films.




No comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 16, 1969] The Voyage to Net a Dolphin (June 1969 Galactoscope)

2 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

Whodunit?

As far as I know, there aren't a lot of science fiction mystery novels out there. The most famous, of course, are Isaac Asimov's tales of police detective Elijah Bailey and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. The Caves of Steel (1953) and The Naked Sun (1956) are classics in this specific combination of genres.

A new book continues the tradition of a detective investigating a murder case in the far future. Will it be up to the level of the Good Doctor's predecessors? Let's find out.

Deathstar Voyage, by Ian Wallace


Cover art by Richard Powers

Murder On The Altair Express

The novel takes place aboard a luxury starship on its way from Earth to Altair. On board is police lieutenant/doctor of psychology Claudine St. Cyr. Her job is to make sure that the king of a planet orbiting Altair gets home safely. This seems like an easy assignment, as the king claims that everybody on his world loves him. It turns out this isn't quite true.

After foiling an assassination attempt on the king, things start to go very badly indeed. Somebody has sabotaged the gizmo that allows the starship to travel faster than light. This threatens to make the whole darn thing blow up, killing hundreds of passengers and crew.

As if that weren't enough, both the captain and the second in command die in mysterious ways. Can St. Cyr solve the crime and save the ship?

Suspects? We've got plenty of 'em. Just about everybody we meet has some kind of secret, from the king to a shopkeeper who sells St. Cyr a wristwatch with a second hand that runs backwards.

Notable among the possible killers are a wild-eyed religious fanatic and a guy with telekinetic powers. It takes a while for the plot to get going, but towards the end the author throws in a ton of twists and turns.

As a murder mystery, it generally plays fair with the reader. There are lots of clues scattered here and there, from a mysterious message left near the sabotaged gizmo to the aroma of a certain brand of cigar. My one quibble with the whodunit plot is that some of the twists depend on people concealing information from St. Cyr (and the reader) for pretty weak reasons.

As science fiction, well, that's a different matter. There's a long discussion of the way the starship gizmo works that is pure doubletalk. We also learn a lot about the way telekinetic powers work; more than I wanted to know, really. Despite the far future setting, it feels more like we're aboard the Queen Mary during the golden age of cruise ships.

A word about St. Cyr as a character. She's highly skilled as a detective and as a psychologist. She is also very beautiful, and just about every male character in the novel falls madly in love with her. She isn't afraid to use her feminine wiles to get information out of these besotted fellows, and this gets to be a bit much at times.

Overall, a light piece of entertainment that passes the time pleasantly, but will fade from memory as soon as you reach the last page.

Three stars.

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

The Nets of Space, by Emil Petaja

I've only recently discovered Petaja, a Finnish-extraction author with a fantastical sense imbued in his writing and a penchant for incorporating themes from various mythologies. He's sort of a rip-roaring version of Thomas Burnett Swann, and I always enjoy (though not necessarily love) his work. His latest is no exception.


Cover art by Paul Lehr

The opening is a grabber: Don Quick is a technician bounced from the Alpha Centauri expedition at the last minute. The first scene of the book is a dream sequence in which he is in an enormous cocktail glass with dozens of other naked humans, glazed in brine, and they are one-by-one pulled out and dipped in sauce before being eaten by giant alien crabs.

When he awakens, Don finds himself back on Earth and recalls that he has been a mental patient for months. Is his dream a kind of clairvoyance? Or merely a kind of shell shock from the time he inhaled hyperspatial gas during a pre-launch accident involving the Centaur III? And why, when he falls asleep, does the dream continue sequentially and seem to portend an extraterrestrial invasion of the Earth?

Cervantes' classic Don Quixote figures strongly in this book; it is the external influence Petaja has chosen for his latest adventure. The whole thing is lighthearted enough that you're never too worried about Earth's possible impending disaster. Indeed, The Nets of Space is essentially a comic book in literary form—never mind the science or consistency. But it reads quickly: I finished it on a single flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka.

3.5 stars


by Jason Sacks

The Day of the Dolphin, by Robert Merle

The Day of the Dolphin is a work of fiction of great contradictions: it’s lighthearted and downbeat, escapist and embedded in the world; engaged in technological innovation and driven by characters; and written in manners both straightforward and elliptical.

If there ever was a book to drive a reader crazy, it’s this one.

At the heart of Robert Merle’s new novel is a fascinating concept. We all know that dolphins are smart animals. As this book reminds us, the brain size and complexity of the average dolphin is roughly analogous to those of a human brain. So what if a wise researcher was able to talk to dolphins in their language and teach dolphins to talk to us in ours? How would those dolphins navigate their learning, how would their approaches to the world be different from those of humans, and what would make those majestic creatures truly happy?

When Merle explores those ideas, The Day of the Dolphin leaps ecstatically like a dolphin leaping out of the water to shoot a basketball through a hoop. There’s a thrilling element of discovery as a secret government laboratory of scientists patiently work with a young dolphin to teach him a few words of English. When he starts to learn English, the scientists provide that dolphin a mate. And the courtship and love affair between the dolphin couple is fascinating and sweet and surprisingly moving. My favorite parts of the novel were the sections in which Merle shows the creatures change each other, drive their relationships and truly build a bond between themselves and the scientists who care for them.

But if a scientific agency is driving this research, you know there has to be some geopolitics involved, and of course there is. In fact, one character notes in a clever bit of metafictional dialogue the moment when the plot takes on Bond or Flint elements. There are human romances inside the research group. But there is also espionage, and secret taping, and a “dolphin gap” argument with the Soviets, and it is to sigh.

Mr. Merle

Because to me, all those moments of connection to the real world take away the most intriguing aspects of the book. The book pivots at its midpoint. At that point. The book swiftly changes from an intellectually absorbing exploration of science into an often dull, often by-the-numbers tale of espionage and intrigue. I predicted around page 20 that the dolphins would be sent on the mission they go on towards the end of this novel, and the impact of those actions were equally as obvious.

Merle writes much of this book in a kaleidoscopical style, full of long paragraphs with stream-of-consciousness approaches which kind of wander and meander from first person to third person, from grounded reality to revelations of emotion and often to outright gibberish. At first this style is thrilling or at least intriguing, but when Merle breaks up that approach with excerpts from letters or interviews conducted by government agencies, that break often feels like a necessary breath of fresh air. I kept finding my mind drifting as the characters’ minds drifted, ungrounded in reality or in this story but instead of my own thoughts about dolphins or work or the Miami Dolphins of the NFL.

It sounds like I hated this book but in truth I enjoyed The Day of the Dolphin for its brazen oddness and for Merle’s obvious passion for both the way he presents his story and the story itself. The more I read about them in this book, the more I wanted to read about our aquatic friends. I now have a nice stack of library books on my desk about Cetaceans because I find that species so interesting. I just wish The Day of the Dolphin had a bit more dolphin and a bit less human in its pages.

3.5 stars



2 Comments Leave A Comment

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction