Tag Archives: 1963

Science / Space Race

[August 29, 1963] Why we fly (August Space Round-up)

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by Gideon Marcus

We've become a bit spoiled of late, what with space spectaculars occurring on a fairly regular basis.  So, I was not too surprised when a friend buttonholed me the other day and exclaimed, "When is the Space Race gonna get interesting again?"  After all, it's been a whole two months since the Vostok missions, three since the last Mercury mission, and even satellite launches have been few lately.

Oh ye of little faith.  The real work doesn't happen when the rockets go up, but after their payloads are aloft.  A lot happened in the arena of space this month — you just have to dig a little to learn about it.  Here are the exciting tidbits I gleaned (and the journos missed) in NASA's recent bulletins and broadcasts:

Bridging the Continents

Communication satellites continue to make our world a smaller place.  Syncom, built by Hughes and launched by NASA late last month, is the first comsat to have a 24-hour orbit.  From our perspective on the Earth's surface, it appears to do figure eights around one spot in the sky rather than circling the Earth.  This means Syncom can be a permanent relay station between the hemispheres.

It's already being used.  On August 4 the satellite allowed Nigerian journalists and folks from two U.S. services to exchange news stories as well as pictures of President Kennedy and Nigerian Governor General Dr. Nnamdi Zikiwe.  Five days later, voice and teletype was exchanged between Paso Robles, California and Lagos, Nigeria.  This 7,700 mile conversation represents the longest range real-time communication ever made.

And, on the 23rd, Syncom carried its first live telephone conversation — between President Kennedy and Nigerian Prime Minister Sir Abubaker Tafawa Balewa, as well as several other official conversations.  One has to wonder if the whole scheme wasn't hatched just so Jack could expand his pen pal list to West Africa…

More comsat news: RCA's Relay 1 is still alive and kicking, having been used in 930 wideband experiments, 409 narrowband transmissions, and 95 demos of TV and narrowband broadcasts.  And in a stunning imitation of Lazarus, AT&T's Telstar 2 came back on-line after having been silent since July 16.  I understand there will be an unprecedented experiment next month: NASA is going to use Relay and Syncom to bounce a message from Brazil to Africa.  Expect that kind of satellite ping-pong to become common in the future.

Finally, NASA's passive comsat, Echo 1, continues to be used for tests.  Come winter, it will be joined by Echo 2.  Because if there's anything space needs, it's more balloons.


First pass of Echo 1 satellite over the Goldstone

Predicting the Weather

Mariner 2, the Venus probe that encountered the Planet of Love last December, went silent early this year.  Yet its reams of data are still yielding discoveries.  During the spacecraft's long flight toward the sun, it took continuous measurements of the solar wind — that endless stream of charged particles cast off from the roiling fusion reactor of our nearest star.  These measurements were then compared to readings made on Earth and in orbit.  Scientists have now determined that the sun's radioactive breeze blows in gusts from 500 to 1350 kilometers per second, the bursts correlated with expansions in the solar corona.  When a particularly strong stream of electrons and protons, sizzling at a temperature of 500,000 degrees F., slams into the Earth's magnetic field, it causes disruptions in broadcasts and communications.

Closer to home, Explorer 12 soared far from Earth in its highly eccentric orbit, charting long-lived solar plasma streams in interplanetary space.  The satellite determined that these gouts of plasma caused geophysical disturbances more than twenty days after their creation.

One can imagine a constellation of satellites being deployed to provide solar system-wide space weather reports.  Not only would they help keep astronauts safe as they journeyed from planet to planet, but they'd also let radio operators on Earth know when to expect static in their broadcasts.

And speaking of weather forecasts, Tiros 6 and 7 continue to be our eyes in the sky, tirelessly shooting TV of Earth's weather.  They've already tracked the first hurricane of the season, Arlene.  Who knows how many lives and dollars they will save with their early warnings?

Previews of Coming Attractions

The ill-starred lunar probe, Ranger, has failed in all five of its missions.  In fact, NASA is 0 for 8 when it comes to moon shots since 1959.  Perhaps Ranger 6, set for launch around Thanksgiving, will break this losing streak.  It will be the first of the Block 3 Rangers, lacking the sky science experiments that flew on Rangers 1 and 2, and the big seismic impactors carried on Rangers 3-5.  The new Rangers will just shoot TV pictures of potential Apollo landing sites.  This sacrifice of science in deference to the human mission has not gone without protest, but given the dismal track record of the program, the labcoat crowd will have to take what they can get.

A full year after Ranger (hopefully) reaches the Moon, a pair of Mariners will set sail for Mars.  Unlike last year's Mariner 2, Mariners 3 and 4 will carry cameras to provide our first close-up view of the Red Planet.  Let's just hope neither of these upcoming probes meet the same fate as Russia's Mars 1, which died last March.

At some point in the mid-60s, even bigger Mariners will fly to the planets, carried by the big liquid oxygen "Centaur" second-stage.  The first successful test fire took place on August 17 just down the way from my house — at General Dynamics/Astronautics San Diego

And finally, another 271 space candidates applied to NASA this year.  They have been screened to 30, and out of them, 10-15 will be selected in late October to comprise the third group of astronauts.  None of them are women yet, but perhaps there will be some in time for Group Four.


Pilots Jerrie Cobb and Jane Hart testify before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, July 1962.  That's an Atlas Centaur model next to them.

Who knows?  Maybe you'll be one of them!

[Want to talk to the Journey crew and fellow fans in real-time?  Come join us at Portal 55! (Ed.)]

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Magazine

[August 27, 1963] Ups and Downs #2 New Worlds, September 1963

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by Mark Yon

The hot summer (well, hot for England!) of 1963 now seems to be turning to things autumnal, all too soon. I have, since we last spoke, had a wonderful summer break from work, being able to rest a bit and catch up with some much-delayed reading. For the record, I have read and enjoyed Something Wicked This Way Comes by Mr. Ray Bradbury, which only came out here in Britain this year. It had a brilliantly scary evocation of evil in Mr. Dark, and will make a great Hallowe’en read. I’m usually more a fan of Mr. Bradbury’s short stories than his longer work, but I really liked this one.

On a different level of complexity, I also spent some time last week trying to decipher Mr. Anthony Burgess’ made-up polyglot language in A Clockwork Orange. Not an easy read! It’s a book that is undoubtedly clever, but seems to parade it's intelligence rather than actually focus on telling a story. I preferred the more-subtle literary tones of Mr. J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World last year, which was easier to read, more nuanced and just as effective in my opinion.

As I type this, we’re on the way to a Worldcon, which, as ever, is something I look forward to. So, let’s have a go at some predictions. Personally, I would like Mr. Arthur C. Clarke’s to win myself, but I guess for regular readers of Galactic Journey that will not be a surprise. I haven’t read it myself, but Mr. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle seems to be well regarded, so I expect that to be a popular choice. I’d also like to see Mr. Jack Vance’s The Dragon Masters get an award – it was one of my favourites last year.

If I were a gambling person (and I’m not, usually) I would bet that the Award for Dramatic Presentation will go to The Twilight Zone, even though we’ve not seen any episodes over here in Britain. (Mind you, some of my fellow travelers have said that the latest season has been a little bit ‘hit and miss’, so you never know.)

Expect to see me with egg on my face next month when we will know how right (or wrong!) my predictions were. And now – to this month’s New Worlds.

If you remember, last month saw a number of changes to the magazine, not all of which I felt were successful. This month we have continued with the ‘generic Luna’ background, in a not so fetching shade of brown. But at least the cover font is now readable, if only to make obvious a price rise, from two-shillings and sixpence to three shillings. Either this is a sign of trying to increase income due to the increased difficulties of the magazine, or, trying to remain positive, possibly an attempt to generate more income to spend on better stories.

the ragnarok theme, by Mr. I.F. Clarke

This month’s Guest Editorial is one from an author known in British fan circles but perhaps less elsewhere. Often confused with Arthur (no relation), Mr. I.F. Clarke has been around the British s-f scene a while. His editorial is adapted from a longer version, due for publication.

Mr. Clarke looks at the current general interest in apocalyptic ‘end-of-the-world’ stories through The Ragnarok Theme. He proposes that the interest is because the idea deals with the universal myths of death and destruction in both general literature and science fiction. As Editorials go, I quite liked this one. It is different in tone from those of late, uses lots of examples to explain itself and made its main point (that a rise in interest in such themes is often related to the anxiety of the time we live in) effectively, without becoming rhetoric or rant.

Onward the stories! (and please notice, all the titles are still annoyingly written in lower case.)

lack of experience , by Mr. John Garfield

It is tempting fate, surely, to begin this month’s list with a story titled lack of experience. But, actually, this one is OK. It is, after all, a story of a bored librarian. Or rather, a bored robotic librarian, who has the intelligence to want to get out of its rut and takes a journey of discovery to find itself. This tale of frustration and loneliness could become a little mawkish, but it is made livelier with added sex. It’s not without humour, either. I did like the line one of the librarian’s colleagues gave: ”I may not have imagination….but I have flashing coloured lights.” 4 out of 5.

not by mind alone , by Mr. Michael Moorcock

This story feels like it should start with the old adage, “So, this man went to the doctors….” not by mind alone is the latest story by Mr. Michael Moorcock, who since the demise of Science Fiction Adventures seems to be spending a lot of time here in New Worlds. This time it’s the story of a physician who, when asked to examine a patient, discovers new worlds through different experiences of time, with the idea that differences in perception and understanding occur because of where a person is in his/her own space-time continuum as well as the one we all share. Much of the story is about the results of this discovery. It’s an ‘interesting idea’ sort of story, a developed thought-experiment, but ultimately seems to be little more than a not-so-disguised allegory for a drug culture. The ending is rather weak. 3 out of 5.

deep freeze , by Mr. John Rackham

Looking just at the title, I thought that this month’s story by Mr. Rackham was going to be about cryogenics. Of course, being British, I should have realised that deep freeze is actually a story about that most central of British social concerns, climate change. It is also the latest story in Mr. Rackham’s ongoing ‘X-people’ series. I’ve not been greatly enamoured with this series so far about human computers, and this one is very silly. It is the first time that I’ve ever read – or will read – a story of how modelling clay could lead to global destruction. I’m sure Mr. Ian Fleming could use this in his next James Bond novel!

Allowing for the silliness of the initial problem, the point about how easily the Gulf Stream Drift affects climate is a good one and gives this story a slightly more down-to-earth element. Allowing for my grumpiness, in the end, deep freeze is fun, if you don’t take it seriously in any way.  3 out of 5.

the rotten borough , by Mr. R.W. Mackelworth

Here’s another author returning to New Worlds. As the strapline suggests Mr. Mackelworth’s stories so far have looked at the ideas of justice and freedom. In this latest story he looks at a future British Parliament where voting is taking place to bring subliminal messaging to all. The idea that such messaging could be misused is an intriguing one, and there’s an appropriately Orwellian take on how the media can be manipulated, but the idea of having just one objector in opposition, and him because fewer people in Cornwall watch television, felt false. Another story that falls apart at the end, based on a dodgy premise to begin with. 2 out of 5.

the game , by Mr. James Inglish

As much as we readers love reading about outer space, it has been pointed out by a number of writers, such as Mr. Arthur C. Clarke, that there is much to discover on our own planet as well. the game is an interesting story in the near-future where dolphins have been trained by humans to take part in warfare, albeit explained to the dolphins as a game. The story is mainly from the perspective of Cetus, the leader of a pod of dolphins who realises that the humans may have an ulterior motive to this promised bit of fun. It’s a little let down by suggesting that dolphins can empathise to such an extent that they can experience things through other animals – in this case, an angel fish and a shark – which was a step too far for me. Nevertheless, there’s a nice moral in conclusion, if a tad dour: humans are not to be trusted. My favourite story of the issue.  4 out of 5.

to conquer chaos (Part 2 of 3) , by Mr. John Brunner

And so to the second part of our serial, which started well last month. Part Two of the story begins where we left it, in this medieval-esque environment, although there are increasing hints that the cause of the barrenland may be science-fictional. We discover more about Jervis Yanderman’s travels in the barrenlands and the consequences of the locals realising that they can communicate with outsiders. Yanderman teams up with local yokel ‘Idle Conrad’, and together they travel further towards the interior, Yanderman to determine what exists there and Conrad to seek the source of his mysterious visions (I suspect the two things are connected.) Generally it’s engaging and well written, with some nice characterisation developing beyond the clichés. One of the strongest serials of late, and I’m looking forward to next month’s final part.  4 out of 5.

trieste film festival report , by Mr John Carnell

After my barbed comments last month, Mr. Carnell has clearly been stirred to write a report on this festival. Covering a mere two pages, it’s not much, to be frank. Entitled the mystery of the ‘mare trieste’Mr. Carnell’s report is more about what didn’t happen than did. He bemoans the lack of presence of many of the guests – for example, Mr. Ray Bradbury, Mr. Frederik Pohl, Mr. Sprague de Camp and film star Mr. Ray Milland – with the British film entries being so terrible that many of the judges escaped to watch King Kong being shown in a nearby local cinema instead!  Mr. Carnell lets us faithful readers know that, despite this, the British maintained a presence at the festival with himself, Mr. Harry Harrison and Mr. Brian Aldiss all doing their bit. The rest seems hardly worth reporting on.

So – another month of hits and misses in the seemingly ever-variable New Worlds. Continuing the shipping analogy, generally the good ship S.S. New Worlds seems to have stayed afloat, but only just, limping its way towards harbour once again. The good news is that this issue did seem a little more consistent, and a tad more readable, though Mr. Brunner’s serial is carrying the rest somewhat.

Until next month.




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[August 25, 1963] Hope Springs Eternal (September 1963 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all – — Emily Dickinson

There are reasons to be hopeful this month. 

The United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water.  The ceremony took place on August 5 at the Kremlin.  Representing the United States was Secretary of State Dean Rusk.  Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko signed for the Soviet Union, and Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home for the United Kingdom.  The treaty doesn't ban underground testing, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.


United States Senators William Fulbright and Hubert Humphrey, United Nations Secretary General U Thant, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschchev join in the celebration

James Meredith, whose enrollment at the University of Mississippi led to a violent riot, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science on August 18.  The ceremony took place without incident.  Perhaps this is a sign that the attitude of some segregationists is changing.


James Meredith receives his diploma from Chancellor John Davis Williams

Proof that hope can triumph over adversity appears at the top of the American popular music charts this month.  The number one position is held by Fingertips Pt. 2 by the musical prodigy Little Stevie Wonder.  Blind since infancy, this talented young man does not allow his handicap to interfere with his art.

Recorded more than a year ago at the Regal Theater in Chicago, this is the first live, non-studio recording to reach Number One since Johnny Standley's comic monologue It's in the Book held that position in 1952.

Appropriately, the lead story in the latest issue of Fantastic deals with hope lost and found.

The cover illustration marks the debut of artist Paula McLane.  It manages to be macabre and peaceful at the same time.  I particularly like the use of color in this dream-like painting.  I hope to see more of her work soon.

The House That Time Forgot, by Robert F. Young

An elderly woman sits in her decaying house.  She hears the flapping of wings, and welcomes it as a sign of her approaching death.  After this eerie opening scene, the author provides a long history of the house and the woman's ancestors.  As a girl, she was shy, withdrawing into the world of books and poetry.  (The character's name is Elizabeth Dickenson [sic], and her personality resembles that of poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson.) Her only chance at romance vanishes when she discovers the man she loves in a compromising position.  She stays alone in her house for many years, ignoring the outside world.  (So much time goes by that the story becomes science fiction, set in the twenty-first century, when both men and women dye their hair unnatural colors.) Although she has abandoned all hope for a happy life, strange changes in time and reality provide a second chance.

This romantic fantasy appeals much more to the heart than the head.  The author provides a penetrating look into a lonely soul.  What happens to her may not be very logical, but is emotionally powerful.  The reader must be patient during the lengthy detailing of the protagonist's forebears, as this proves to be relevant to the plot.  Four stars.

The Sudden Afternoon, by J. G. Ballard

A man has vivid memories of a life that is not his own.  He remembers being a boy in India, although he has never been there.  He recalls being a physician, although he is actually a chemist.  Soon his false memories become more real to him than his true life.  The explanation for this strange experience quickly becomes clear to the reader, but the story has a final sting in its tail.

Besides the twist ending, in the style of The Twilight Zone, the plot is straightforward.  The author writes very well, and the story is vivid and interesting.  Three stars.

The Singing Sands of Prester John, by H. Benford-Jones

This month's reprint comes from the pen of a prolific writer of pulp fiction.  First published in Blue Book in February of 1939, it is one of a series of tales involving a device which allows one to see and hear the past.  (It even translates speech and writing into English!) In this story, it provides a vision of the twelfth century.  A European soldier seeks Prester John, the legendary Christian ruler of an Asian kingdom.  The man finds love, danger, and a strange phenomenon that proves to have a rational explanation.

The science fiction gimmick is merely an excuse for a work of adventure fiction set many centuries ago.  The setting is depicted in a convincing way, although I doubt it's an entirely accurate portrait of history.  Two stars.

Vanity, Thy Name Is, by Ron Goulart

This is the third in a series of stories about a man from the 1960's who is brought to the 1890's by an occult detective.  While he waits to return to his own time, he does most of the work for the investigator.  In this tale, the mismatched pair face a triple threat.  A fighter vanishes during an illegal boxing match.  A ghost seems to be responsible for a series of robberies.  A poltergeist smashes objects and throws them at people.  The events turn out to be related, and justice is served.

This is a very light comedy.  The mystery is solved quickly, and there is little suspense.  The main appeal comes from humorous remarks made by the characters.  Three stars.

The Demon of the North, by C. C. MacApp

This story takes place in the remote past.  The Ice Age is ending.  Mammoths roam the land.  Contradicting all that we know about prehistory, the people of this time are able to work bronze and iron, make bows and arrows, and use mammoths as beasts of burden.  A particularly advanced nation has magnetic compasses.  An envoy from this land joins a party assembled by a king to seek out and destroy a strange being.  The expedition includes warriors from Africa and the far eastern reaches of Asia.  After a long and difficult journey, they discover the truth about the so-called demon.

The author creates an unusual setting in striking detail.  The explanation for the change in the Earth's climate, and the exact nature of the entity responsible for it, are confusing.  Three stars.

Adjustment, by Wilton G. Beggs

Aliens very similar to human beings conquer the Earth.  The survivors of the invasion live in squalor.  The aliens kidnap attractive young women for their harems and brothels.  Some men who are willing to co-operate with the aliens live in luxury with them.  They have their youth and health restored.  One such man returns to Earth to visit his two daughters.  Although he appears to be very young, the women are old hags.  His haughty alien lover, disdainful of the daughters and all other humans who have not joined her kind, accompanies him.  The two women have a surprise for the proud pair.

This is a gruesome horror story.  Despite the science fiction elements, it reads more like a dark tale of fantasy.  It's clear as soon as the two visitors arrive that they are in for a bad fate.  The only suspense created is wondering what form it will take.  Two stars.

Until next time, just remember what Frank Sinatra and little Eddie Hodges told us in the 1959 movie A Hole in the Head, and have High Hopes.

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Movies

[August 23, 1963] Laughing Mushrooms (Ishirō Honda's Matango)

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by Rosemary Benton

August has been a good but bizarre month. Early on there were great strides made towards the curtailing worldwide nuclear testing when the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States congregated in Moscow to sign the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water. Then, like something straight out of a western, a train heading from Glasgow to London was robbed and ₤2.6 million were stolen. And that was all within the first week of August! In short it has felt like a world tipped suddenly and momentarily on its head.

In my own world, that sense of odd juxtaposition managed to permeate my recent trip to Japan with my Aunt Mika and Uncle Ed. Knowing my interest in Japanese art, an invitation was extended to me to travel with them to Mika's home town in Hiroshima Prefecture. While there, we would sight-see and witness the opening of Sanyo Women's College, a junior women's college that my cousin would be attending.

After a six hour flight to Honolulu, another eight hour flight to Tokyo, and finally, a two hour domestic flight to the new Hiroshima airport, we were on our way to Mika's family home. Twenty-four hours beyond that the grand opening of the school had concluded and a small group of us, including my aunt, were all going into a theater for the evening to watch the new Ishirō Honda's survival horror movie Matango at the behest of the Western guests – my uncle and myself. Like the month of August, my trip was about to go from a celebration of civility and education to a chilling and eye-opening clash of film and culture.

The plot of Matango I can truthfully only retell in broad terms. With my limited understanding of Japanese, I relied on the short synopses and key dialogue that Mika and Ed were generous enough to translate for me. As it was explained to me, a group of five wealthy upper class nouveau riche and their two crew members are shipwrecked when their yacht is caught in a storm. As their dilapidated ship floats further and further off course, tempers begin to wear thin, until they come into sight of a mist shrouded tropical island.

However, they soon realize that things haven't improved for them. After consulting the logs of a beached oceanography vessel they conclude that their situation is dire. The island was previously unknown, although it was being investigated by an international team of scientists studying the effects of radiation. Strangely, members of the crew began disappearing, and while the reason is not clear, our protagonists believe that it could be traced to the abundant mushrooms that cover the humid island. Mushrooms, it is cryptically noted in the logs, that have “neurological effects.”

As time passes and they work to make the yacht sea worthy, we see tensions begin to flare. This eventually culminates in a split between the survivors. After a failed attempt to gain control of the group and force them to consume some of the fungus, two of the people are banished into the jungle. Eventually the need for food drives all but one of the men and one of the women into the depths of the jungle. Inevitably, the woman too falls to the need for food and begins eating the mushrooms. Running after her, the sole survivor finds his companion eating the fungus along with the rest of their group, all of whom are in various stages of transformation into walking piles of mushrooms. The movie concludes with the survivor admitting that he too, adrift at sea and at a breaking point devoid of all hope, succumbed to hunger and ate some of the mushrooms. He dramatically turns and we see the beginning stages of fungus enveloping his face.

Matango is, in all aspects, a well made film. Its story is well balanced in terms of pacing, and while I was not privy to the nitty gritty lines of dialogue, I was still able to tell the basic personality traits and motives for the cast of characters based nearly entirely on the body language of the actors. The special effects should also be noted for their grotesque look and very visceral texture. They not only look horrifying, but wet, painful, and as if they would possess a stomach wrenching smell. It wasn't surprising to hear the audience gasp at the first sight of a partially transformed mushroom-person, but it was telling that by the end of the movie the rest of the theater seemed to be in a state of gripped morbid fascination. I had been informed on our way to the theater that the film had nearly been banned for the special effects' close resemblance to radiation burns, but only after seeing the film myself and then witnessing the audience's reaction could I really begin to appreciate that. 

As can be expected from Ishirō Honda, the focus of Matango is not on the actual final transformation of humans into mushrooms, but the tragic fall and eventual apathy of individuals desperate to survive. The actual “horror” of this horror movie is very characteristically Japanese. By this I mean that the monster of the story, in this case the fungus, is not doing anything intentionally malicious. It simply exists and has motives for survival that are contrary to the survival of humanity. It's the monster's/fungus' very existence and ability to control and destroy humanity that is terrifying.

Other Japanese films we've seen this theme: In Godzilla the titular giant lizard was disturbed and forced out of its natural habitat by underwater hydrogen bomb testing. Rodan likewise featured a beast disturbed by nuclear testing which forced it out of its home. The “Snowman” in Half Human was a yeti-like creature defending himself against pursuing humans.

Where we see Ishirō Honda's real skill as a science fiction/horror screenwriter is his ability to take this monster-by-necessity motivation and tie it in with an even greater enemy – apathetic acceptance. In the films I mention above the protagonists eventually triumph by fighting harder and smarter than the monster. But in Matango the time spent humanizing each of the seven passengers is all the more tragic as they all succumb to an age old enemy that can't be beaten: hunger. This leads to a horror greater than the human to mushroom transformation – the calm willingness of the human characters to join the mushrooms once they have given up and stopped fighting their need for food.

As our group was walking home after the movie we were all abuzz with thoughts. The general consensus was that the movie had been very disturbing both visually and in terms of atmosphere. It wasn't the feel-good, uplifting, fun kind of Ishirō Honda film that we had been expecting, Honda, of course, being the director of the original Godzilla and the recent Godzilla vs. King Kong. Indeed it seemed that the majority of the group found it to be too dark and not what they had really been in the mood for. With other concurrent films like Bushido, Samurai Saga and Alone Across the Pacific still resonating with action, Japanese pride and intense messages of determination, seeing a film so solidly nihilistic felt off kilter. Personally I couldn't help enjoying it, being a fan of horror and science fiction, but I could definitely appreciate the hesitancy of my hosts to embrace such a film.

The rest of the trip passed too quickly. But although it was a memorable and successful trip with family, there will always be that kink in the unparalleled adventure; that event that strangely juxtaposed with the rest of my time in Japan. My “great train robbery” if you will; that very odd, fascinating, well executed but strangely timed release, Matango.




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[August 21, 1963] Forgettable (September 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

This weekend, floating on air with the news of the publication of my first piece of fiction (the lead in an anthology of Sidewise in Time stories — do please pick up a copy!) I took a trip to San Jose with my wife.  This was strictly a vacation, you see, a last restful spell before taking on the school year and redoubling our writing efforts.  There was no other reason for visiting this peaceful city south of the Bay.

After all, Worldcon isn't for another two weeks.

The trip wasn't entirely science fiction free.  I took a recent Ace Double with me, particularly exciting because one half of it, Captives of the Flame, is one of the rare novels written by a Black person (Sam Delany, a newcomer to the scene). 

I also finished the September 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction — a less exciting experience.

I knew even before cracking the covers that it'd be something of a lost cause.  Robert Heinlein's latest serial, Glory Road, concludes in this issue, and I'd already given up on the book in its second installment.  Thus, a huge chunk of the magazine is so much ballast.  The rest is varying shades of acceptable.  Were Nat King Cole to write a song about them, well, it'd be a sharp contrast to his 1951 hit…

There Is Another Shore, You Know, Upon the Other Side, by Joanna Russ

A wisp of a girl, British by extraction, flutters at the edge of Roman nightlife.  Irresistibly beautiful, she remains frustratingly out of reach of all but the most persistent of would-be lovers.  When Giovanni does manage to catch the butterfly, she crumbles to dust in his arms.  Some things are better left alone.

Joanna Russ appears to have finished graduate school and is turning her pen to writing full-time.  This is her third story in F&SF, and her appearances are always welcome.  That said, this is the least of the works from this "young and nice" possessor of "very blue eyes."  It's vividly written, but it goes on twice as long as it needs to, and the ending is obvious from the beginning.  I also found Giovanni maddening in his pushiness.  Three stars, but with a hopeful suspicion that this is the author's lowest ebb.

Glory Road (Part 3 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein

I know I'm not alone in my disappointment with this serial.  That said, I am already seeing fans salute each other with calls of "Are you a coward?" (a reference to the ad that starts the story's adventure) so I imagine this book will sell reasonably well.  You're welcome to tell me how it ends and what you thought.

The Man Who Feared Robots, by Herbert W. Franke

F&SF has been at the vanguard in its offering of foreign science fiction, with stories from French, German, Czech, and even Japanese authors.  This month, we get our first taste of SF from an Austrian pen, about a fellow undergoing psychotherapy to treat his irrational(?) fear that everyone he knows is actually a robot.  An interesting theme with not particularly noteworthy presentation.  I'd love to see a book on this topic some time.  Three stars.

Collector's Item, by Jack Sharkey

Readers of this column know that Jack Sharkey is my favorite authorial whipping boy.  He just comes out with so much drek so often.  That said, he has written stories I have enjoyed, particularly the ones involving the scout service fellow who swaps minds with extraterrestrial fauna.  Item features a fellow who delights in subverting hoary similes with physical objects.  For instance, he owns loose drums, lazy bees, dirty pins, and so on.

In fact, the so on goes on for a long time, the list of items in the protagonist's collection being nearly as long as the catalog of ships from the Iliad.  All to set up a final pair of puns that I found worth my time.  It made me smile.  Three stars — four if you're a big fan of Feghoot.

Who's Out There?, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor fairly gushes over The Young Doctor, a Dr. Carl Sagan who, at just 27, has already made a big name for himself in planetary science.  I understand that this article is the expurgated version, and that the original one was even more praising of the astronomer. 

In any wise, this particular piece, inspired by a conversation with Sagan, is on the likely number of extraterrestrial civilizations currently extant in the galaxy.  It's an unusually tedious and tentative piece, not up to Doctor A's normal capabilities.  Maybe Avram is crimping his style.  Three stars.

Unholy Hybrid, by William Bankier

A renowned horticulturalist finds a way to grow a champion squash and do away with an unwanted house guest at the same time.  However, he soon finds that the seed of his evil act bears revenge-seeking fruit. 

If the anti-woman sentiment doesn't give you pause, the staleness of the subject matter will.  And yet, there are moments of crystalline writing here that save the piece from oblivion.  Three stars verging on two (or vice versa).

Attrition, by Walter H. Kerr

A poem on the near-immortals who Walk Among Us, their youthful faces just beginning to fray.  Worth a read.  Three stars.

237 Talking Statues, Etc., by Fritz Leiber

And, at last, a screenplay about a young man and his conversation with his satyric dead father, the latter narcissistically preserved in several hundred paintings and statues.  A cute diversion, right in the middle of the great Leiber's range of production.  Three stars.

I was once told that my star rating system was flawed because it didn't account for story length.  I explained that, in fact, it does.  So I shall now pull the curtain back and show you how I calculate my magazine ratings:

There were eight pieces in this issue, seven of which scored 3 stars, and one of which scored 1.  The average is, thus, 2.875.

However, if one weights for page length, Glory Road takes up most of the magazine and drags things down.  That said, I don't have a direct ratio of pages to impact.  In other words, a piece that takes up two thirds of an issue doesn't comprise two thirds of the ultimate rating.  Here's my scale:

1-8 pages: 1 length point
9-19 pages: 2 length points
20-40 pages: 3 length points
41-70 pages: 4 length points
71+ pages: 5 length points

Arbitrary, but it keeps the calculations simple.  It also means I somewhat equalize the credit between a brilliant vignette and a brilliant novella. 

Using this method, this issue gets just 2.286 stars.

I then further flatten things out by averaging the two and rounding the result.  Thus, I get a final score 2.6 stars. 

In short, my system is about 3/4 based on the quality of pieces and 1/4 based on the length.  Agree or disagree, that's the system I've used for years so I now have to stick with it for consistency's sake.

And we all know what foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of…

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Book

[August 18, 1963] The Grass is Redder in the Future (Yefremov's Andromeda: A Space Age Tale)

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[The Journey always delights at the opportunity to broaden its coverage of current science fiction.  So you can imagine how blessed we felt when we discovered a stunning new talent fresh from the city of Leningrad.  We are certain you will enjoy what we hope will be the first of many articles from 'Rita…]


by Margarita Mospanova

A journey of a thousand books begins with a single page, a single sentence, a single word. And happy is the reader that can travel more than one language in his lifetime. Often, your journey happens without you taking a single step, but sometimes it can lead you halfway around the world, a single suitcase and a loudly hammering heart in tow.

The Iron Curtain may not be a physical thing but it is a perfectly tangible one nevertheless. Especially when you’ve lived your whole life on the Soviet soil and the thin trickle of Western literature could hardly slake your bookish thirst for science fiction and fantasy.

So, dear readers, you can imagine my joy when I first stepped off the ship in an American harbor and felt my literal literary horizon expanding before my eyes. A friend of a friend of a friend, that so courteously provided me with lodgings while I tried to get my wits around me and carve myself a piece of Western life, had only been too happy to encourage me.

I have to confess that in beginning I practically devoured the bookshops, without much care to what I read as long as it was halfway interesting. But that initial fever has long since faded and, several new favorite books richer, I can now take a breath and approach the shelves at a more sedate pace.

And in a corner of a small bookshop of which I have a particular fondness, I encountered several copies of this very magazine that you’re holding in your hands right now. Delighted, I read them almost in one sitting and wrote to the editor to express my appreciation. A short and exciting exchange later, I was asked to share my thoughts on the state of Soviet science fiction.

Oh my, I thought. That would be easy, I thought. There are so many to choose from, I thought.

Well, dear readers, I’m very unhappy so say that reality does so like to burn and salt the bridge before you can even step on it. Because while Soviet science fiction and fantasy books are indeed many, the number of them translated into English is… far from desirable.

Still, Lady Fortuna was on my side. The same friend that welcomed me to America has managed to procure a translated edition of Andromeda: A Space Age Tale by Ivan Yefremov, a book I finished reading just before my rather unplanned one way journey to the west.

Almost a year ago, the Journey covered a collection of short stories by Soviet authors, featuring The Heart of the Serpent also by Ivan Yefremov. Both stories belong to the same universe, and while the timing is a bit tricky, Andromeda seems to be set slightly earlier. The novel was first published in 1957 and later translated into English in 1959 by George Hanna and printed by Moscow’s Foreign Language Publishing House. And despite my expectations, the translation itself is done fairly close to the original text, retaining its slightly cumbersome style.

The story, while not quite action driven, still has a few tense moments that might have you gripping the pages in excitement. But overall the author focuses more on the social and cultural sides of his characters’ lives, preferring to use the future Communist utopia as a background for various social and philosophical issues.

It has been several millennia since our time and the world has changed. Earth has joined the Great Circle, a collection of sentient races capable of space travel and communication, but more often than not, not yet advanced enough to meet their neighbours face to face. The spaceship travel takes centuries and faster than light speeds are still out of the scientists’ grasp.

One of the plot lines follows the crew of a spaceship sent to investigate another planet after it goes into complete and sudden radio silence. On the way back home they run out of fuel and have to make an emergency landing on a planet shrouded in heavy darkness.

I will refrain from spoiling their struggle for survival, but will say that for me that part of the novel is easily the most engaging. But that is most likely my fascination with horror stories rearing its misshapen head.

The second plot line is centered around the Director of the Outer Stations of the Great Circle (a mouthful, that’s for sure) and his life after he leaves the post to his successor and struggles to find a new job for himself. His deep and enduring love for space makes the search much more difficult than it might seem at the first glance.

The cast of principle characters also includes a historian that is also an archaeologist, a psychiatrist, a scientist, and a biologist.


In the preface the author warns the reader that the novel is full to the brim with science terms, ideas, and details. And, boy, he wasn’t kidding. If anything, he understated the technical aspects of the book. The characters spend almost half of the book going on various science-themed tangents or engaging in discussions of philosophy, sociology, or how the grass was definitely not greener back in our times.

Still, the world Yefremov built is wonderfully bright and optimistic. Despite my… differences with the regime of my home, Andromeda’s future is one I would be happy to live in.

The novel’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness, in my opinion, is its extreme attention to details. It is easy to get buried under all the little things Yefremov includes to paint the future, but the same small brush strokes eventually form a rich and fascinating world, that I, for one, would grab a chance to explore.

And I advise you to do the same. Andromeda is a book that might leave you with mixed feelings, but it will not let you remain unaffected. It challenges you to think and evaluate the world we live in today, draw your own conclusions, and imagine what your own utopian future might look like.

I give Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale four iron stars out of five.

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Magazine

[August 16, 1963] Time and Time Again (October 1963 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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[Did you meet the Traveler at WorldCon?  Please drop him a line!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

I believe that time, even more than space, is the great theme of science fiction.  Not only time travel, but also the ways in which the passage of time changes people and the way they live.  Most SF stories take place in the future, and offer visions of the years, centuries, and millennia to come. Some feature precognition.  Others deal with distortions in time, such as the slowing of time associated with velocities approaching the speed of light.

It's not surprising, then, that many of the stories in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow feature characters struggling with the mysteries and challenges of time.

The Night of the Trolls, by Keith Laumer

The narrator of this novella is thrust out of his own time and into another.  He is placed in suspended animation for a routine test, which is only supposed to last a few days.  He awakens to discover that nearly a century has passed.  The secret government installation where he works is in ruins.  The compound is still guarded by a gigantic, heavily armed, automated tank called a Bolo.  (Such a device first appeared in Combat Unit, from the November 1960 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  That story takes place many centuries after this one, so no knowledge of it is needed to appreciate the new tale.)

Getting past the mechanical guardian is the narrator's first task.  Later he discovers that an apocalyptic event left most survivors barely able to stay alive.  Feudal lords leading lives of luxury rule over them.  The narrator infiltrates the fortress of one such dictator.  He encounters a figure from his past, and becomes involved in a scheme to activate another Bolo. 

This is a fast-paced, vividly written adventure story.  The narrator is one of the author's super-competent heroes.  His ability to fight and bluff his way into the lord's stronghold strains credibility.  The antagonist is a two-dimensional character of pure villainy.  However, these are minor quibbles.  The action-filled plot always holds the reader's attention, and there are moments of powerful emotional impact.  Four stars.

The Hermit of Mars, by Stephen Bartholomew

The protagonist of this story also journeys alone through the years, but by his own choice.  An archeologist, he was part of an exploration team sent to the red planet.  A minor heart problem made it risky for him to return to Earth when the mission ended.  He gladly volunteered to remain behind, because unhappy relationships with women made him a misanthropic loner.  Unmanned spaceships send him supplies.  For thirty-five years he lives alone, studying the incredibly ancient artifacts left behind by the extinct Martians.  Two men arrive after all this time.  It soon becomes clear that they are up to no good.  They tolerate the hermit as a harmless old fool, but he proves to have a trick up his sleeve.

There is nothing particularly noteworthy, for good or bad, about this story.  The author's style is serviceable, but undistinguished.  There are no surprises in the plot.  The resolution is something of a deus ex machina.  There's an enjoyable bit of irony at the very end.  Three stars.

The Good Friends, by Cordwainer Smith

An astronaut returns to Earth after an emergency.  While recovering in a hospital, he inquires about the other members of the crew.  The doctor caring for him tells him the frightening truth.  Like other stories in this issue, a long period of time is involved.

This is a brief story with the flavor of an episode of The Twilight Zone.  It will disappoint fans of the author's beautiful and mysterious myths of the far future.  The style is simple and direct, without the intricate wordplay and imaginative images found in tales of the Instrumentality of Mankind.  It's not a bad story, but it pales into insignificance compared to masterpieces like Alpha Ralpha Boulevard and The Ballad of Lost C'Mell.  Three stars.

Orphans of Science, by Stephen Barr

This is an informal article about small mysteries.  Why does light reflecting off metal create small white highlights?  What, exactly, is white light?  Why does a mirror reverse things from left to right, but not top to bottom?  (The magazine's editorial explains the author's confusion on this point.) The rest of the article discusses a few more minor puzzles.  These trivial ponderings are mildly interesting.  Two stars.

All We Marsmen (Part 2 of 3) , by Philip K. Dick

This section of the novel concentrates on three characters.  At the heart of the story is a boy who is severely autistic, one who has never spoken.  The wealthy and powerful head of the Martian water workers union believes the child is able to foresee the future.  He plans to have a skilled handyman, who suffers from episodes of schizophrenia, build a device that will allow the boy to communicate.  The theory behind this is that the child perceives time moving at a very fast rate.  This allows him to look beyond the present, but also prevents him from talking.  An important subplot involves the handyman's father, who has a scheme to make a large profit by buying seemingly worthless Martian land.  The boy draws a picture that provides hints about the future of this project.

So far, the narrative style is realistic.  This changes drastically when bizarre images of death and decay fill the page.  These are associated with the nonsense word gubbish.  If I understand the author's intent correctly, this neologism appears in the boy's mind to describe the inevitable disintegration of all material things with time.  As if this were not disconcerting enough, a meeting between the handyman and the union leader is described multiple times before it actually occurs.  These descriptions repeat certain words and events, but have important differences.  Surreal images of a disturbing nature fill the repetitions.  Whether these are hallucinations, symbolic visions of the future, or indications that the child is somehow able to manipulate time, the effect is frightening.

I suspect that some readers will give up on the novel at this point.  Before this section, the multiple plotlines were complex, but comprehensible.  The sudden change to inexplicable images and strange distortions of reality make the plot difficult to follow.  It's impossible to predict where the author will take me next, but so far the journey has been fascinating, and I'm eager to find out what our destination will be.  Four stars.

The Lonely, by Judith Merril

This story takes the form of a transcription of a message intercepted from space.  An eel-like alien lectures other aliens about human beings.  It seems that very few sentient species reproduce sexually.  Of those that do, humanity is almost unique in having only two sexes.  A statue of a woman holding a rocket, created by unicellular aliens after humans visited their world, is involved.  Eventually humans return to that world and find the statue.

This is a very strange story.  I credit the author for coming up with aliens that do not resemble people at all.  Other than that, the story's intent is unclear.  It seems to be saying something about art and symbolism, as well as the way in which men and women view each other.  Two stars.

To Save Earth, by Edward W. Ludwig

Earth's sun is going to explode in a little over twelve years.  Six astronauts spend six years journeying to a distant planet, looking for a place where humanity can survive.  The length of the trip causes mental disturbances.  One becomes an alcoholic, one a kleptomaniac, one an amnesiac, one a paranoiac, one a schizophrenic, and one feels compelled to break things.  The latter destroys their communication equipment.  Unable to contact Earth, they face the horrifying challenge of making the long journey back, just in time to begin the exodus of its population.  The new planet is inhabited by friendly aliens, who invite them to stay.  The aliens offer them delicious food and drink, beautiful alien women as lovers, and a life free from all care.  They must decide whether to turn their backs on Earth or endure the voyage home.

In sharp contrast to the previous story, these aliens are just slightly different from people.  The familiar plot device of telepathy allows them to speak to their human visitors.  As you can see from the synopsis above, the story has many other implausible events.  Two stars.

The Masked World, by Jack Williamson

Six survey ships are lost without a trace after visiting a distant planet.  The captain of the seventh ship discovers the skeleton of his wife, the pilot of the sixth ship.  Near her remains is a strange plant, unlike anything else on the planet.  Its DNA structure turns out to be the key to solving the mystery.

This is a very short story with a unique concept.  I had to wonder why anyone would keep sending survey ships to a place where they always disappear.  Three stars.

I see by the old clock on the wall that our time is up for today.  See you next time!

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Science / Space Race

[Aug. 14, 1963] Engineers at Play (Spacewars!, hacking, and the PDP-1)

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[Want to talk to the Journey crew and fellow fans?  Come join us at Portal 55! (Ed.)]


by Ida Moya

A War in Space, in the Computer

Last month the traveler reviewed the August 1963 issue of Galaxy magazine. His assessment of this issue was that it contained standout stories by lesser authors, and lesser stories by standout authors. But one thing our intrepid traveler did not mention was Frederik Pohl’s editorial about his visit to M.I.T.’s computer section to play a game called Spacewar! on one of their computers.

Why is that a big deal?  Because Spacewar! is one of the very first "computer games," and possibly the very first not based on an existing game (Tic-Tac-Toe, Chess, Tennis, etc.)


Editor Frederik Pohl’s editorial about Spacewar. Note too the ubiquitous advertisement for the Rosicrucians. I wonder what that is all about?

Pohl waxes poetic, imagining himself to be the Fenachrone while his opponent is Dick Seaton. He used a simple handheld control to fly spaceships programmed in the computer to accelerate, steer, and shoot torpedoes at one another across a cathode-screen readout. I had to look it up – those characters are from the Skylark of Space series, a work by Edward E. Smith, Ph.D., originally serialized in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories in the 1930s.

Pohl doesn’t tell us what kind of computer he saw Spacewar being played on, nor does he name the people responsible for programming the computer to play such an active and compelling game. But I can take a guess from what I have seen about computing – it is a PDP-1, a Programmed Data Processor-1, made by Digital Equipment Corporation.

A new way to use the Computer

These young men at M.I.T. are a different generation from the buttoned-down physicists and computer scientists I work with here at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. The computer users here in the Theoretical Physics or “T” division tend to be very serious about their computing, and there is no time for frivolous use of these expensive machines. The IBM 7090 and other equipment we have is carefully guarded, and has no time for games.


The TX-0 computer at M.I.T. (Image courtesy Computer History Museum)

From what I hear, these fellows at M.I.T. are a bunch of unwashed boys who emerged from the model railroad club to play with this spare computer called a TX-0. This TX-0 is a transistorized version of another one-off military computer called Whirlwind, also developed at M.I.T. These young men are not doing anything like serious physics or science, but are rather doing these useless but extremely clever things like making programs that convert Arabic numerals to Roman numerals in as few steps as possible. These kids could only get time on the TX-0 in the middle of the night, when other people aren’t using the valuable computer time, so they have very undisciplined habits and working hours. I hear that they call what they are doing “hacking.”


Brochure for Friden Flexowriter (Image courtesy Living Computers: Museum + Labs)

One interesting thing about this “hacking” and the computers they use is that, instead of using punched cards, like the batch processing we do on our IBM Stretch, they use a Friden Flexowriter, an unwieldy sort of teletypewriter, to make punched paper tapes of programs that they then directly feed into the computer. The hackers have direct access to the computer, and can fix programs themselves, rather than having to give their card deck to an operator, and hope that the results come out. That is what Pohl is talking about in his article when he says “…add another tape.”


The PDP-1 at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

A couple of year ago, in 1961, one of the designers of the TX-0, Ken Olsen, founded a company he calls Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). DEC donated PDP-1 serial number 1 to M.I.T’s Research Lab for Electronics, and these hackers have been playing with it ever since. One of these young men, with the unlikely moniker “Slug” Russell, is a big fan of science fiction, including the swashbuckling works of E.E. Smith. He and his friends designed this “computer game,” presented on the 19-inch DEC Type 30 display. The game includes a lot of realistic physics in the movement of the spaceships, and a background star field based on a real star map. They must have a lot of time on their hands.

The leader of “T” division here at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Roger Lazarus, is suspicious of these small “time-sharing” computers like the PDP-1. He would rather invest in larger computers where all the power is used for calculating our nuclear tests, rather than sharing the power across a number of users. So we have not gotten our own PDP-1 at LASL. However, our sister institution, the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (once the University of California radiation Laboratory at Livermore), received a PDP-1 in 1961.

Cecilia Larsen and the PDP-1


Cecilia Larsen, center, working on the PDP-1 at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

Cecilia Larsen, my colleague at LRL, has told me all about working with this PDP-1.

Cecilia has an interesting story of how she got into computing. She is a native of Livermore, California, where her Portugese immigrant parents owned a small general store. She received her B.A. from Dominican College in San Rafael with a full scholarship, and then went on to UC Berkeley where she achieved an MA in history, a general secondary teaching certificate, and a Technical Writing certificate. She also got a certificate in Music from the University of San Francisco. Cecilia’s husband died in 1943, so she held many jobs to support her 2 children and widowed mother.

A dozen years ago, in 1951, Cecilia saw an advertisement for a “Girl Friday” at what turned out to be the start up of Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. She works with Ernest Lawrence himself, as well as lab manager Sid Fernbach and that wicked Edward Teller. Did you know that Dr. Teller made Oppie, J. Robert Oppenheimer, lose his security clearance? Over what, some crazy accusation that this great man was a communist? What a terrible thing. At any rate, this California laboratory was set up to provide competition to the nuclear weapon design we are doing at Los Alamos, and sometimes we have strong feelings about what they are doing out there.

Cecilia and asked for more training to become oriented toward the work of the lab, so she was placed in an internship at the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. There she learned about the organization by working in several departments, including the Tool and Machine Shop. She later also helped set up the Laboratory’s Technical Information Department, a library of all of the classified documents that Dr. Teller and his team needed to use. Sounds so like what Charlotte Serber did at Los Alamos library!


Univac computer, showing various peripherals including a Unityper.(Image courtesy Computer History Museum)

Cecilia also got to travel to Philadelphia with the engineers to learn how to use their very first computer, the Univac LARC. The LARC came out before the IBM Stretch, but after the IBM 7090. Back at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Cecilia led the team of women that created the magnetic data tapes for the Univac on this cumbersome machine called a Unityper. Since your typing directly went onto magnetic tape, the work absolutely had to be correct, or you would have to start over. They would have two tapes made by different gals, and then compare them to see if they were the same. And they better be the same, or else. What a crazy system.

When the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Livermore got their PDP-1 it probably came with Spacewar! in memory. I hear that the engineers from Digital Equipment Corporation do that to test whether the computer was working once it is turned on at its new location. Since the Laboratory is a secure site, used to model nuclear tests, they aren’t too likely to have a lot of computer game play going on, or a lot of outright “hackers” like university computer sites are breeding.

All the young engineers depend on Cecilia at the Laboratory. She always remembers everything, she knows where everything is, and she is unflappable. She never loses her temper, and that is very important to all of the young guys who don’t know what they are doing there. Cecilia tells me that she didn’t see much play when she works during the day, but perhaps the younger and more audacious computer users pull out the paper tapes in the evenings when the administrators go home.

In any event, it makes sense, corresponding with all the other upheavals in our society today, that there is a new generation of computer experts coming of age who are very different from the buttoned-down white-shirt-and-tie fellows we see from IBM.  Who knows what they'll come up with next!


Spacewar! in action

(By the way, though there are currently few places you can play the world's first computer game, given my contacts, I think I can help you sneak in for a session or two.  Just head over here.  Tell them Ida sent you…)




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Magazine

[August 12, 1963] WET BLANKET (the September 1963 Amazing)

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by John Boston

[Want to talk to the Journey crew and fellow fans?  Come join us at Portal 55! (Ed.)]

Just as I feared, the September 1963 Amazing marks the return, after too short an absence, of Robert F. Young, who in Boarding Party moves on from his twee recapitulations of the Old Testament to, I kid you not, Jack and the [REDACTED] Beanstalk.  Alien space traveler needs to enrich the soil in the on-ship farm, finds an out-of-bounds planet with the right kind of dirt, and lowers a big tube to suck it up; but one of the natives (those protected by the out-of-bounds designation) climbs the tube, and makes off with a “Uterium 5 Snirk Bird, a Toy Friddle-fork, and Two Containers of Yellow Trading Disks,” it says here.  The aliens all have names of four syllables separated by hyphens, and you can fill in the blanks for this one.  One guttering star—a tiny red dwarf at best.

But the issue opens with Poul Anderson’s Homo Aquaticus, illustrated on the cover by a swimmer with a menacing look and a more menacing trident, next to a nicely-rendered fish, in one of artist Lloyd Birmingham’s better moments.  This is one of Anderson’s atmospheric stories, its mood dominated by Anglo-Saxon monosyllables.  No, not those—I mean fate, guilt, doom, that sort of thing.  The story’s tone is set in the first paragraph, in which the protagonist “thought he heard the distant blowing of a horn.  It would begin low, with a pulse that quickened as the notes waxed, until the snarl broke in a brazen scream and sank sobbing away.”

This is rationalized as the wind in the cliffs, but we know better.  The good (space)ship Golden Flyer and its crew have been sentenced to roam the galactic hinterlands after some of their number betrayed other ships of the Kith, a starfaring culture separated from planetary cultures by relativistic time dilation.  Right now they’re looking at what used to be a colony planet, but all they see is ruins, until their encounter with the colony’s descendants, as given away by the title.  In the end, doom and fate are tempered with rationality and mercy.  Three stars, but towards the top of Anderson’s middling range.

After these two short stories, there is only one other piece of fiction in the issue, A. Bertram Chandler’s long novella The Winds of If, an entry in what now seems to be a series about goings-on on the Rim (of the galaxy), with a couple of magazine stories and a novel, The Rim of Space, already published.  The plot: tramp space freighter is about ready for the knackers, or breakers, or whatever, but the crew gets hired by a Commodore Grimes to take an experimental ship on a long flight—a lightjammer, propelled by the pressure of light against large sails. 

Two women, a journalist and an engineer, are added to the crew, which already includes one woman.  Soap opera ensues, and one of the women decides to present her inamorata with a really special gift—genuine faster-than-light travel.  The lightjammer is by now at 0.9 per cent of light speed, so a little push should put it over, right?  Like a bucket of gunpowder detonated at the stern?

I’m really not the one to judge—hey, I’m still a couple of years away from high school physics—but hasn’t Chandler stumbled into a sort of relativistic Fool’s Mate here?  There’s an obvious arithmetical problem; wouldn’t you need a lot more 9s after that decimal point to get close enough to c for such a little push to put you over?  But more importantly, doesn’t matter get more massive the closer you get to c, meaning a corresponding increase in inertia would defeat any attempt to sneak over the line with a little added acceleration?  Where’s Julio Gomez when you need him?

Anyway, in the story it works, and it precipitates the characters into a series of strange experiences which I won’t detail, save to say that the soap opera intensifies and permutates, and we get a good dose of low-level male-chauvinism as the women prove slaves to their emotions.  Aside from that, it’s smoothly written and perfectly readable if you don’t have anything better to do, but that and the cartoon science get it two stars.  Also, the characters smoke cigarettes.  A lot.  On board an enclosed vessel that has only the air it can bring with it or manufacture in flight.  How likely is it that smoking would be tolerated on a long-haul spaceship?  Inquiring minds think that’s about as silly as the gunpowder-bucket FTL drive.

This month’s non-fiction piece is Ben Bova’s article Neutrino Astronomy—reasonably informative but dull, and briefly worse than dull as he unveils the Useless Simile of the Month.  One section of the article is headed The Stellar Pituitary Gland, and it says here: “Neutrinos might well control the aging process in the Sun, much as the pituitary gland is suspected to regulate aging in human beings.” P’tooey!  Two stars.

So, once again, Amazing brightened up for a month, with several excellent stories last month, but now as usual the wet blanket of mediocrity has descended again. 




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Book

[August 10, 1963] The Future in a Divided Land, Part 3 (An Overview of Science Fiction in East and West Germany)

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by Cora Buhlert

In the last two entries in this series, I gave you an extensive overview of West German science fiction. Now let's take a look across the iron curtain at what is going on in East Germany. For while the inner German border may be nigh insurmountable for human beings, mail does pass through. A lot of us have family in the East, including myself, and are in regular contact with them via letters and parcels. Parcels from West to East Germany usually contain coffee, nylons, soap, canned pineapple and all sorts of other consumer goods that are hard to come by in Communist East Germany.

Unfortunately, we cannot send books and magazines, cause they will probably be seized at the border for fear of "dangerous" ideas spreading. East Germans, on the other hand, are free to send books and magazines to relatives and friends in the West. And since my love for reading in general and for "space books" in particular is well known to my aunts in East Germany, the occasional science fiction novel from beyond the iron curtain has found its way into my hands.

The collaborations of authors Lothar Weise and Kurt Herwarth Ball mostly seem to be fairly straightforward science fiction adventures aimed at a younger audience. Eberhardt del'Antonio's 1959 novel Titanus is set in a utopian Socialist future where humanity is united and war has been abolished. A spaceship with a multinational crew, commanded by a Russian, of course, leaves for a distant planet, only to realise that the aliens are in the middle of preparing for a devastating attack against their neighbours.

Our heroic space travellers proceed to warn the intended targets only to learn that the aliens have a defence system in place that will destroy the attackers, for war is bad. I certainly can't argue with that sentiment, though the novel itself is rather wooden and unimaginative.

Als die Götter starben (When the gods died) by Günther Krupkat, which only appeared this year, is a variation on the ancient astronaut concept. An alien spaceship is found on the moon and records indicate that the aliens first landed on Earth in Mesopotamia millennia ago. It's not exactly an original idea, but it is certainly well told.

The ancient astronaut idea certainly seems to be popular in East Germany, for another science fiction novel published this year, Der Blaue Planet (The Blue Planet) by Brazilian born author Carlos Rasch, used the same concept. Two years ago, Carlos Rasch also published Asteroidenjäger (Asteroid hunters), an enjoyable romp featuring a spaceship with a multinational crew that is supposed to clear the asteroid belt, when the ship receives mysterious signals that might be evidence of alien life or might be something else.

What makes Asteroidenjäger remarkable is that there is an interracial romance on board between a white German doctor and a black African mathematician. Somehow, I don't see something like this happening in American science fiction anytime soon.  

However, the most exciting of those voice from beyond the iron curtain is not German at all, but a Polish writer, Stanislaw Lem, whose work I encountered via East German translations. I particularly enjoy Lem's humorous stories about the adventures of a space traveller named Ijon Tichy, which have been collected as Die Sterntagebücher des Raumfahrers Ijon Tichy (The Star Diaries of the Spaceman Ijon Tichy).

Lem's more serious works include the novels Eden with its fascinating portrayal of a truly alien society, Planet des Todes (Planet of Death), which was even filmed in 1960, and the generation ship story Gast im Weltraum (Guest in Space), which is currently being filmed in Czechoslovakia.

When comparing East and West German science fiction, the most striking thing is that in spite of all the superficial differences, the underlying themes and concerns are remarkably similar. Of course, West German science fiction tends to be set in capitalist futures, which somehow have managed to abolish all the negative side effects of unfettered capitalism, while East German and East European science fiction tends to be set in utopian Socialist futures, which have somehow managed to abolish all the negative side effects of real existing Communism.

However, it is notable that both East and West German science fiction tends to feature spaceships with multinational and multiracial crews, that it is set in futures where the world and humanity are united as one, where war and strife are but a distant memory. Whether it is Perry Rhodan single-handedly ending the Cold War and uniting humanity or Stanislaw Lem's and Eberhard del'Antonio's space travellers horrified by the relics of past wars they encounter in outer space, German (and Polish) science fiction clearly expresses the desire for peace and unity, a desire that is only too understandable in our divided country.

And that's it for now. In a future article, I will take a look at science fiction film in East and West Germany, where we are currently seeing some very exciting developments.

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