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TV

[January 16, 1964] Man’s Dark and Troubled History (The Outer Limits, Season 1, Episodes 13-16)

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by Natalie Devitt

This past month on The Outer Limits has been a meditation on man’s past actions and his darker qualities. Over the course of the month, I watched men motivated by greed, aliens target Earth specifically because of their negative perception of people, scientists treat their fellow men like nothing more than laboratory animals, and Martians try to figure out what motivates human beings to kill one another.

Tourist Attraction, by Dean Riesner

While aboard his yacht in South America, millionaire and United States citizen John Dexter, portrayed by Kiss Me Deadly’s Ralph Meeker, captures a fish that is larger than your average fish. In addition to its massive size, one of the men aboard his yacht observes that it “has hands and feet.” Dexter soon finds out that the animal’s extremities are not the only thing special about the creature and that the locals have legends about it.

The fish is frozen and taken to a local university for research, where it thaws out and almost escapes. Hungry for fame, Dexter makes arrangements to bring the being with him when he returns to the states. The only thing that stands in his way is General Juan Mercurio, the dictator of the country. Mercurio is played by Ocean 11’s Henry Silva, and he plans to make the fish part of an exhibit at the World’s Fair, in hopes of boosting the country’s dwindling tourism industry.

One thing that sets Tourist Attraction apart from previous entries in the series is its frequent use of narration. The average episode of The Outer Limits only uses a narrator for the opening and closing monologue, but Tourist Attraction uses it off and on throughout the story, which is frustrating because it does not seem to add much. If anything, the narrator can be a bit distracting, especially since he disappears for a while, just to start again suddenly.

One other downside to the episode is that it is hard to watch Tourist Attraction and not think that it may be a little too heavily influenced by Creature from the Black Lagoon and the two sequels that followed. Even with all the things counting against this episode, for some reason I found myself entertained. It is not nearly as sophisticated or as artistically ambitious as something like last month's Nightmare, but it is enjoyable, and would probably not be out of place as the B movie in a double feature. Tourist Attraction earns three stars from me.

The Zanti Misfits, by Joseph Stefano

The Zanti Misfits takes place in a ghost town in California. Professor Steven Graves, a “historian of interplanetary events”, performed by television actor Michael Tolan, goes to observe a penal ship from the planet of Zanti land in what is supposed to be a “non-hostile sequence.”

The Zanti have an agreement with the United States government, where the government allows the aliens to land their spacecraft in the deserted town and use it as “a place of exile for their criminals and misfits.” If the government does not properly secure the area and maintain their privacy, the extraterrestrials vow “total destruction.”

As luck would have it, the aliens are in the process of landing their spaceship when the Zanti spot a couple, played by Bruce Dern and Olive Deering. The couple are fleeing the scene of a crime and have driven into the restricted area. Thinking their privacy was been invaded, the Zanti are determined to make sure there were no witnesses to their landing, and later reveal a surprising reason for picking Earth for their colony, which is that they view humans as “practiced executioners.”

This episode's creatures are certainly memorable, with their ant-like bodies and faces that look all too human. As interesting as the Zantis look, the episode’s greatest strength aside from the story, is probably its use of stop-motion animation, which is best captured in a sequence where the Zanti chase after Olive Deering’s character, Lisa. The entire thing is shot in broad daylight, but the stop motion combined with buzzing sounds of the Zanti make it enough to give anyone nightmares. All in all, this episode is the standout of the month, which is why it earns four stars.

The Mice, by Bill S. Ballinger and Joseph Stefano

Henry Silva returns for a second trip to The Outer Limits this month. In The Mice, he plays a convict named Chino Rivera, who volunteers to be a test subject in an experiment. In the experiment, Rivera will teleported to the planet of Chromo. In exchange, Chromo will send one of their beings. When Chromo transmits one of their inhabitants, the scientists encounter a being infinitely more dangerous than Rivera.

Tourist Attraction did not do much to showcase Silva’s talent as an actor, but The Mice certainly does. Silva makes a convicted murder the most likable character in the whole story, even when the other characters do not treat him with the respect he deserves and he has to remind them that he is person, just like them.

What would The Outer Limits be without the crazy monsters and aliens? The Mice certainly delivers one of the strangest monsters I have seen yet, one that resembles a glob of mucus. Also, like most episodes of the series, it does not hurt that the episode is beautifully filmed. The Mice receives three and a half stars from me.

Controlled Experiment, by Leslie Stevens

Carrol O'Connor and Barry Morse star as two Martians in Controlled Experiment. Barry Morse, who most Twilight Zone fans will recognize from A Piano in the House plays Phobos One, an alien who enlists the help of television actor Carrol O'Connor's character, Deimos, to understand the "process of Earth creatures destroying each other." Shortly before a murder in committed, their fellow Martians inform them of the time and location. Once they receive the information, Phobos One and Deimos bring a machine that helps them manipulate time and rush to a local hotel lobby, where they wait for the murder to take place.

As the Martians play with their devise and change time, a number of special effects are utilized. There are times that the images on screen resemble film negatives. Other times, images come into and out of focus. The men from Mars freeze time and replay events that have already occurred. When events are replayed, sometimes they are in slow motion, while other times things are sped up. Controlled Experiment is similar to the previous episode Borderlands, because it does not have the strongest story but it often looks fantastic.

The whole thing felt a bit long to stretch out for a full hour, especially since the Martians replay the same event over and over. It works for a while, but then starts to wear thin. One thing worth noting is that this episode marks the show’s first foray into comedy, even if it is making light of a serious issue. Due to its visual achievements, it is better than The Twilight Zone's attempts at humor, but it is far from the most memorable entry of The Outer Limits. I can only give Controlled Experiment two and a half stars, which are primarily for its special effects and cinematography.

As dark as The Outer Limits has been recently, it has been mostly rewarding to watch and it has expressed hope for a brighter future. To wit: the closing monologue to The Mice, which states, “Wouldn’t it seem that the misery known and understood by all men would lead Man not to deception and murder, but to faith, and hope and love?”

(Did you read about all the ways the Journey expanded last year? Catch up and see what you missed!)



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[January 15, 1964] That was the Year that Was (1963 at Galactic Journey)

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We've got High Hopes

First things first.  Thank you for being on the Journey with us.  We love you!

It's Hugo nomination season, and that means folks are going through their files, figuring out what stuff is worth their signature on the selecting ballot.  We at the Journey were so honored to have been a finalist for Best Fanzine last year, and we think our output has only improved since then.

Check out some of the nifty things that we did in 1963:

Expanded Foreign Coverage

Science fiction is hardly a monopoly of the United States.  To that end, we brought on a slew of new associates. 

For instance, Jessica Holmes is now covering Doctor Who and other things UK.

Cora Buhlert has provided a wealth of information on German (West and East!) science fiction, in print and on the screen.  She has also brought her keen insight to English-language SF.

Then there's Margarita Mospanova, who hails from Leningrad and covers Soviet science fiction!  We are pleased as punch to have added her unique perspective.

And let's not discount the sterling continued work of Ashley Pollard and Mark Yon, who have been covering British movies, television and magazines for several years now.

We Read Everything…so You Don't Have to Read the Bad Stuff

Despite the incessant predictions that SFF is a dying genre, there is more and more stuff to read every year.  Wading through all of that to find the gems (and there are plenty) can be a slog.  We feel for you.  That's why each year, the Journey awards the Galactic Stars, providing our readers a cream of the crop report:

Spotlighting the Unsung

We've said it before: Women write 10% of what gets published, but 25% of what's worth reading.  And now there is a cadre of other marginalized voices also finally making their way into print.  The Journey has made it a mission to feature those who might otherwise be overlooked, now and in the future. 

Behind the Digital Scene

Thanks to the arrival of Los Alamos staffer Ida Moya into our ranks, the Journey's science coverage grew to include the fascinating world of computers, as well as the often hidden role of women engineers and programmers. 

Wrapping up the First Lap of the Space Race

Project Mercury wrapped up this year with the impressive 24-hour flight of Gordo Cooper.  Of course, the Soviets then had to one-up us with the (likely) conclusion of their Vostok program — a stunning two-person flight involving the first woman astronaut, Valentina Tereshkova.  The Journey has kept you up to date on all the latest crewed and automatic space shots, distilling reams of scientific data into clear, accessible prose.

Not to mention mini-biographies of the woman engineers and scientists who have made space travel possible.

To the Outer Limits

Also added to our team was the inimitable Natalie Devitt, a film expert whose reviews of Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits are often even better than the episodes themselves.

Comprehensive Coverage

And let's not forget the work of our veterans:

Gideon Marcus, the Journey's founder, who reviews Analog, Galaxy, IF, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and much more,

Victoria Silverwolf, who lyrically covers Fantastic, Worlds of Tomorrow, and the news of the day,

John Boston, covering Amazing in his delightfully candid fashion,

Rosemary Benton, our first associate and expert on the Cold War and movies,

Erica Frank, the Journey's Curator and reporter on the Weird,

Gwyn Conaway, whose fashion articles are as lovely as the clothes and models they discuss,

Vicki Lucas, our resident highbrow (who would be quite at home as one of the faces on the back of F&SF),

Jason Sacks, whose preference for DC is mitigated by his unparalleled knowledge of the comics field,

and of course, the Young Traveler, who despite her age, writes better pieces than those of many adults.

A Balanced View

Science fiction has generally been seen as the province of the white and the male since its inception.  The Journey has striven to maintain a staff representative of the genre's future rather than its past.  To that end, we (including the non-writing but essential Janice L. Newman, our Editor, and Tammy Bozich, our Archivist) are a diverse bunch in terms of age, background, and circumstance.  We feel this is one of the main reasons the quality of our work has been so consistently high.

The Request

Galactic Journey is a labor of love.  Lord knows we don't do it for the money (What money?  The Journey doesn't charge or ask for donations, and we certainly don't carry ads.)

But we do love recognition.  A lot of people have said really nice things about us over the years.  When Rod Serling's foundation gave us the Serling, we were blown away.  And when y'all made us finalists for the Best Fanzine Hugo, well, you made it all worthwhile.

You out there with World Con memberships, if you liked us enough to nominate us last year, we'd love it if you could do it again.  And if you're new to the Journey and/or to World Con, welcome, and please consider helping us get on the ballot!

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, and here's looking forward to a bright 1964!




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TV

[January 14, 1964] Out Of The Frying Pan (Dr. Who: The Daleks | Episodes 1-4)

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By Jessica Holmes

Hello, hello, hello, ladies and gents. We've got a lot of serial to cover today, and we'll still have some left over. Shall we get started?

We last left the Doctor and his companions as they set out to explore an alien world, unsuspecting of the danger they're in, as the radiation meter creeps towards the danger zone.

Here begins the first part of writer Terry Nation's serial. Here is…

THE DEAD PLANET

The first we see, after the requisite replay of the last moments of the previous serial, is a panning shot across the forest outside the T.A.R.D.I.S. There's quite an interesting visual effect applied to the image that gives it a surreal, eerie quality.


Or it could just be that my television set needs adjusting.

The ever-analytically-minded Doctor stoops to examine the dirt at their feet, and notices it to be ash. Yet they're surrounded by dense forest. Or are they? The woods are utterly still. Too still.

In fact, the trees have turned to stone. It's a petrified jungle.

The Doctor and Susan are fascinated by the discovery, and rightly so. Petrified wood is a rare thing to come across, given that organic tissue usually decomposes long before it can be fossilised. To my knowledge, fossilised wood tends to be found in volcanic areas, where trees were buried long ago in a deluge of volcanic ash, and completely deprived of oxygen. The process of minerals seeping in to replace the organic remains takes millions of years, but the end result is rather stunning.

The teachers don’t appreciate the geological wonder around them, and only wish to go home. After all, the Doctor did promise a return to their own time. It's impossible to say if he managed that, but the right point in space? I think we can assume he missed a bit.

Barbara reveals a little bit of spite when she wishes the Doctor would have something bad happen to him as some sort of cosmic punishment for repeatedly landing them in danger. I can't say I blame her.

Meanwhile Susan is off picking flowers, finding joy in the smallest of things. It's very sweet. The moment is short-lived, and the flower even shorter, when the group spots this hideous thing:


Looks almost as good as me in the mornings.

Who doesn't like a bug-eyed monster? And it's made of metal, no less! It's long, long dead, sadly, but the Doctor speculates that its metal outer skin was held together and manipulated by a magnetic field. It sounds unlikely to me, but it's such a wonderfully creative concept of life that I don't care.

Riding high, the Doctor and Susan continue to explore, while Ian and Barbara continue to whine about wanting to go home. Yes, fair enough, you're so far away from home you don't even know where you are, and yes you might be in a teensy bit of mortal peril, but come on, it's exciting, isn't it? Then again that's very easy for me to say, sitting on my comfortable couch and making notes while a guinea pig attempts to abscond with my notebook.

Here we find out why the teachers haven't made it back home. It's perfectly possible to return the T.A.R.D.I.S. to a previous location, but the Doctor has a tendency to forget the various functions of his ship. If there's such a thing as a T.A.R.D.I.S. licence, I think he ought to go and re-take the test.

As they continue exploring, they notice something peculiar. Other than the one flower Susan picked earlier, the planet is devoid of life. Whatever happened here, it doesn't seem that there were any survivors.

The companions reach the edge of the forest and find a glimmer of hope. In the distance, there's a massive city. The Doctor of course wishes to investigate further, but reluctantly agrees at the behest of his companions to start heading back.

As Susan stops to pick another of the incredibly rare flowers in the forest (really, there's a reason every nature guide I've ever read tells you not to do that precise thing!), something makes a grab at her, frightening her out of her wits. Everyone hurries back to the T.A.R.D.I.S., where the Doctor asks Barbara to talk to his granddaughter. He wants to comfort her, but is aware that there's a vast gulf of maturity between them, and doesn't know how to approach the problem. Bless.

Sadly, Susan has trouble convincing the men of the group, who have made up their minds that there can't be anything out there in the forest, that someone touched her shoulder. I think a lot of young viewers out there will relate to her genuine fear being dismissed as being silly or paranoid. I know I do.

Getting rather hungry, the companions try out the T.A.R.D.I.S.' 'kitchen'. Rather, a machine that makes what appear to be cereal bars which taste like full meals. I think I'd rather have a plate of real bacon and eggs, but the bars do look better than the little tubes of paste our real space-travellers have to put up with.

The Doctor finally agrees to take the T.A.R.D.I.S. home, but as the familiar wheezing of the engines starts up, he bends down, and sneakily removes something from the central console. He straightens up again, and the T.A.R.D.I.S. grinds to a halt. Oh, Doctor, you cheeky man. Of course, the fluid link is 'missing', so of course the only thing for it is to go to the city. Just as he wanted to.

As the companions make ready to leave, the Doctor gives his mischievous little chuckle, and I can't even be cross at him for being so conniving. He may be a lousy guide, selfish, and have a superiority complex bigger than Big Ben (by which I of course mean the bell), but he's so fun to watch.

Outside the T.A.R.D.I.S., the companions find a box on the floor. Ian investigates it with the foolproof method of covering his face while he pokes it with a stick. When it doesn't blow up, he picks it up to discover a number of vials of unidentified liquid. Suspicious of the package, the companions leave it behind and head to the city, where the Doctor takes ill shortly after arriving.

The group splits up to explore, and we follow Barbara through tightly winding corridors, and past a few walls which are rather unconvincingly painted to look like corridors.


Whatever happened to the perspective, here? Did M.C. Escher design this building?

The soundtrack turns eerie as Barbara moves through identical doorway after identical doorway, soon becoming completely lost. The scene is very tense and claustrophobic, and we know something's coming. Something that most likely doesn't appreciate her intrusion.

Something that apparently has a toilet plunger stuck to it.


Attack of the plumbers!

I'm teasing a little, as the scare chord and non-revelation of what's stalking Barbara is an effective scare, but as a threatening appendage, a toilet plunger is perhaps not the scariest choice. Still, from Barbara's horrified screams, we can guess one thing: whatever's advancing on her, it's not human.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and was on tenterhooks all week waiting to see how the story would continue. Some very ambitious world design was on display here, and though at some moments the lack of budget did get in the way, for the most part the production team succeeded in creating a very eerie, otherworldly atmosphere.

Now we move on to…

THE SURVIVORS

The rest of the group don't take long to notice Barbara is missing, and they immediately set out to look for her. As they search, they hear a quiet ticking noise. I thought it sounded like a Geiger counter, and was rather pleased with myself when I turned out to be correct. It was indeed a Geiger counter, which the group discovers in a room filled with all sorts of advanced scientific equipment. Whoever built this city, they were highly technologically capable.

However, all that technology couldn't save them. The group realises that the entire planet is soaked in radiation, likely the fallout from some sort of atomic weapon…and they've just been walking around, unprotected. Now we know why they don't feel well. Acute radiation sickness is setting in.

Uh-oh.

Realising how much danger he's put everyone in, the Doctor has the decency to admit to his deception. Ian, furious, takes the fluid link from the Doctor and refuses to hand it back until they've rescued Barbara. Either they all go back to the T.A.R.D.I.S. together, or none of them do.

I really like Ian. He might look like an ordinary teacher, but he's got the spirit of a hero.

Before they can make any progress, however, the things with the plungers arrive.

And they're rather more menacing than a bit of bathroom equipment.

These, as we'll learn before long, are the Daleks. Every word from their… I would say mouths, but they don't seem to have any. None that I can see, anyway. Every word from whatever it is that they use to talk is a clipped, distorted scream. No emotion, just constant yelling. These are possibly the strangest thing I've seen yet. At least the bug-eyed monster was recognisable as an animal. These Daleks, however, are a bit of a mystery, for now at least. Are they robots? Miniature tanks? A bio-mechanical creature? We'll have to be patient if we want to find out.

Whatever they are, the Daleks aren't friendly. As Ian attempts to make a break for it, I give a horrified gasp as the Daleks gun him down. Mercifully, he isn't killed, but the dastardly Daleks have completely paralysed his legs.

With Ian incapacitated, the Daleks herd the group into a cell, where the companions are at last all together again, but trapped.

Want to hear the really good news?

The radiation poisoning is getting worse. If they don't get treatment soon, they're all going to die, and it's not going to be a pleasant end. For now, the group are experiencing a feeling of wooziness, the Doctor the most severely affected. The Daleks haul him off to be interrogated anyway.

The Daleks think that the companions are part of a group of people called the 'Thals', who can apparently resist the radiation through their drugs. This accusation leads the Doctor to realise that the phials left outside the T.A.R.D.I.S. in the night may be the anti-radiation drug in question. He makes a deal for one of the group to go fetch it while the others stay behind as collateral.

Time for a little explanation, at long last. I've been dying to know what's going on here.

The Daleks explain to the Doctor that 500 years ago there were two people on this world: themselves, and another race called the Thals. They went to war, an atomic war, that devastated the planet. As the ashes settled, the Dalek forefathers retreated into the city, protected by their machines, and the Thals were almost driven to extinction, left to wander the wilderness. The Daleks think it likely that centuries of exposure to radiation has left the Thals disgustingly mutated.

Still, even if they are mutants, we can gather one thing: they probably left the drugs for them. A gift, perhaps? Maybe there are some friendly people on this planet.

I’m going to nitpick for a moment now. If, as the Daleks say, the war was 500 years ago, and assuming that the petrified forest was buried as a result of this war, not nearly enough time has passed for the trees to become fossilised.

Ian, beginning to recover the use of his legs, immediately volunteers for the mission. Susan decides to go with him, as the Doctor is now too sick to do anything at all, leaving her as the only person who can unlock the T.A.R.D.I.S.. However, when it comes time to go, Ian's strength fails him, leaving Susan with no choice but to venture out alone. She's absolutely terrified, but she goes anyway; that's what I call bravery.

However, it seems Susan's bravery may all be for naught. The Daleks are spying on our heroes in secret. They have no intention whatsoever of allowing the companions to use the life-saving drug. They just want Susan to bring it back so that they can analyse and replicate it for their own use.

Tensions rise in the cell as Ian vents his frustration at the Doctor, and tension climbs in the forest as Susan runs through the densely clustered trees. She's petrified, but keeps on running, and the guinea pig and I are cheering her on.

It would be a more effective scene if not for the fact that I'm almost certain Susan traverses the exact same patch of forest at least three times.

Susan finally arrives at the T.A.R.D.I.S. as the adults begin to suffer from the next stage of radiation poisoning: a high fever. If Susan tarries, it'll be too late, and the Daleks certainly won't lift a finger, or rather, plunger, to help.

A very exciting episode. Terry Nation is doing a good job so far. Let's hope he keeps it up!

THE ESCAPE

For Susan, braving the forest to reach the safety of the T.A.R.D.I.S. was one thing. Leaving the ship and going right back into the lion's den? That's even harder, but she plucks up the courage and steps outside, where she finds a stranger awaiting her. This is Alydon, the man who left the drugs for the group, and he is one of the Thal race.


A hideous mutant, indeed.

Alydon is surprised to learn that the Daleks still live in the city, and is suspicious of their motives in allowing Susan to retrieve the drugs. To be safe, he gives her a second box, and sends her on her way with his cloak to keep warm.

It's growing increasingly likely that there are people inside the pepper-pot shells. Now we have a big question. If the Daleks think of the Thals as horrific mutations, what must they be like, inside their metal shells?

Susan safely makes it back to the city, where the Daleks confiscate one box of the drugs, but thankfully allow her to keep the other box. Within a few minutes of administering the treatment, the Doctor regains consciousness, and the group start to feel well enough to attempt to get back to the T.A.R.D.I.S.. However, Susan isn't ready to leave. The Thals helped them; they should help the Thals in return.

It turns out that after the atomic war, the Thals were able to cultivate small plots of land, but to do so they rely on a rainfall that only comes every few years. Said rainfall is two years overdue, the crops have failed, and the people are starving. They've had no choice but to leave their land in search of food, but now they're encroaching onto the Daleks' territory. If they're going to survive, they need to arrange some sort of treaty with the Daleks, and Susan wants to help.

In a twist which will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody, the Daleks are listening in on the conversation and hatch a plot to double cross the Thals. They offer the prisoners food and sustenance, leading to the slightly amusing image of a Dalek carrying a tea-tray.

How do Daleks even prepare food? They don't have hands. They seem to use the toilet plunger to interact with their environment, but I don't see how a rubber cup can provide the manual dexterity to make as much as a coronation chicken sandwich. With the companions fed and rested, the Daleks say that they will help the Thals, in truth planning to use Susan to lure the Thals to the city, where they'll be at the mercy of the Daleks. What will happen then isn't certain, but knowing the Daleks, it probably won't be good.

"SHE WILL BE RETURNED. WE ARE GOING TO HELP THE THALS WHICH IS WHAT YOU WANT US TO DO."
Not at all suspicious. Nope. Not one bit.

We now cut to a group of the Thals as they wait by the T.A.R.D.I.S., and learn a little more about them, and about the Daleks. The Thals apparently were once a warrior race, and the Daleks teachers and philosophers. Now the Thals have turned to a simple life of farming, shunning violence in favour of diplomacy, whereas the Daleks have directed their intelligence away from academic pursuits and towards war, violence, and survival.


I just wish I were better at telling them apart.

The Thals are excited to make friends with the Daleks. Bless.

Oh, and they're bizarrely sexist. One of the group berates Alydon for giving the drugs to a girl, instead of a man. I don't see how it makes the slightest bit of difference, but there you go. The only possible reason for her resenting his interaction with Susan is simple jealousy. Jealousy. Of a fifteen year old girl. Okay, then.

Meanwhile, this incredibly threatening fifteen year-old is helping the Daleks to draft a treaty based on mutual aid, which seems all well and good but I wouldn't trust the Daleks as far as I could throw them.


Peace in our time?

While Susan is with the Daleks, she learns that they've been listening in on the group's conversations, and so on her return to the cell, Ian and the Doctor stage a mock fight. In the 'tussle', the device the Daleks were using to spy on them is broken, buying them a few minutes of privacy. However, the Daleks immediately realise what they've done, so they don't have long.

The gang gets to brainstorming. They need to get out before they outlive their usefulness. They hatch a plan based on their observations of the Daleks, and when a Dalek comes to give them food, Barbara blinds it with a bit of mud scraped from her shoes, and the Doctor and Ian manage to wrangle it onto Alydon's cloak, which insulates it from the floor, disabling the creature.

Time to see what's inside!


Or not.

But the look the Doctor and Ian exchange as they look inside says everything. They scoop out the creature with the cloak. It's small, whatever it is. Sometimes what you don't see is more interesting than what you do see.

With the organic component of the Dalek removed, Ian climbs into the shell. Can the Daleks even survive out of their shells? Have Ian and the Doctor effectively murdered this creature? That's a bit of a grim thought. Horrid as the Daleks are, they’re still people. At least I think they are.

Still, I did laugh when Ian spoke from within the shell with the voice of a Dalek. The guinea pig was less amused. She doesn't like strange noises.

The companions depart, but hold on, what's this? Beneath the crumpled cloak, something stirs.

A clawed hand reaches out to the light.

And that's all we see.

THE AMBUSH

Now the companions make their escape, with Ian disguised as a Dalek, which comes in handy when they encounter another Dalek, whose help they enlist when Susan puts her talent for screaming to good use. The Dalek helps them along, and soon realises its mistake when they seal the door behind them.

The Dalek summons reinforcements, who begin cutting their way through the door.

Unfortunately, on the other side of the door, the companions are having trouble getting Ian out of his shell. To make matters even worse, the Daleks have magnetised the floor, so Ian can't even carry on pretending to be a Dalek. He tells the rest of the group to go on without him.

We cut back and forth between the escaping group, Ian trapped in the Dalek, and the Daleks cutting through the door. The rest of the group manage to take the lift to the top level of the building, but it doesn't look like Ian's making any progress. It seems for a moment that Ian has come to a sudden and violent end when the Daleks make it through the door and obliterate Ian's Dalek shell, but moments later, it's revealed that the shell is empty! Ian Chesterton: teacher, action hero, modern day Houdini.

The group reunite and are free to make a break for it. However, the Thals have arrived, and little do they know, they're walking into a trap.

The Daleks finally drop all pretence of decency and issue the order to 'exterminate' any companions they come across. I think we can guess what they're planning to do to the Thals.

While the Doctor gets the door to freedom unlocked, the rest of the group hurl a statue made of 'stone' down the lift shaft, where it wrecks the ascending lift, buying time for the companions. I have to put 'stone' in quotes because it is very, very obvious that it's polystyrene and probably weighs less than my teacup.

Here come the Thals, who bring with them an interesting debate. Our friend Alydon is deeply suspicious of the Daleks and their motives. After all, they did once go to nuclear war. The leader of the Thals, however, is willing to trust them, and eager to offer an olive branch. We of course know that Alydon is right to be suspicious, but let's look at it from the perspective of the Thals for a moment. The war was 500 years ago. It would be rather like me holding a grudge against the French for the Hundred Years' War.

The leader does raise a good point about the possible motivations of the Daleks, however. Perhaps the Daleks, hidden away in their metal shells in their metal city, have become so detached from the outside world that anything that isn't like them is frightening to them. They're like children lashing out in fright. The fact is, that fear has long since crystallised into pure hatred. The Thals have a choice: to pay heed to their misgivings about the Daleks, or to reject fear and take a chance of breaking the cycle. Now, if I knew nothing about the Daleks, I'd be inclined to agree with the leader, but I do know better, so of course I can't. It does rather undermine the point.

Susan wants to warn the Thals of the Daleks' treachery, but the Doctor wants to escape. Barbara takes Susan's side, but Ian agrees with the Doctor for once, deciding that there's little sense in jeopardising their own safety, and tells the others to make a break for it while he warns the Thals. Best of both worlds.

I wish my school teachers had been this cool.

Unfortunately for the Thal leader, Ian is too late to save him from 'extermination', but the rest manage to make their escape, and as they do, Ian meets up with Alydon, who is wounded.

Back at the T.A.R.D.I.S., the companions have made it back in one piece, and the Doctor is taking the opportunity to learn all that he can from the Thals. Through examining their records, he's able to glean more information about this dead planet: Skaro.

The people of Skaro were excellent astronomers who had not only mapped their own system, but planets of other star systems. Exoplanets are indeed theorised to exist beyond the realms of science fiction. These maps of the stars are a testament to the advancement of pre-war society on Skaro.

Ian urges the Thals to stand up to the Daleks, because although pacifism is a noble cause, some things are worth fighting against. All the same, the Thals refuse. It's not that they're afraid of the Daleks. It's deeper than that. They don't just hold pacifism up as an ideal; it's a compulsion.

We also learn that the Daleks used to be called Dals, and it seems that they once were much like the Thals. They weren't entirely wrong however, when they said that the Thals were mutants. The Thals did indeed mutate after the war, then adapted and stabilised to what they are now.

It seems there's nothing to do now but leave, and hope that the Thals can sort things out for themselves.

Of course we're only four episodes into a seven episode serial.

Did you really think it was going to be that easy?

Remember the fluid link?

It's still with the Daleks in the city.

Wrapping Up

This serial has been a lot more plot-dense than The Firemakers, which I imagine you can tell from the sheer length of this article. I have to say that I am thoroughly enjoying it so far, and must congratulate the writer of this serial, Terry Nation, on the exciting plot and interesting world and history he's created for this story. The production staff also deserve a round of applause for delivering a truly alien and eerie atmosphere despite what must have been a limited budget. I poked fun at a few points where the limitations showed, but they really did do a good job.

I'll be back soon to finish off the serial, so until next time, I bid you adieu.




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Magazine

[January 12, 1964] SINKING OUT OF SIGHT (the February 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Uh-oh.

The blurb for the lead story in the February 1964 Amazing says: “Once every few years a science fiction story comes along which poses—and probes—philosophical questions: for instance: What is life that Man must live it?  In a novel rich in incident, fascinating of character, John Brunner questions the essential meaning of life and death and purpose.”

That’s the pitch for Brunner’s 74-page “complete novel” The Bridge to Azrael.  The last time we saw such an editorial panegyric, the mountain labored and brought forth—well, not a mouse.  A capybara, maybe.  Anyway, a modestly capable pulp-inflected novella, Daniel F. Galouye’s Recovery Area, not exactly the promised philosophical masterpiece for the ages.  Sort of the same here, but worse: the mountain has labored and brought forth a mess.

But let’s back up.  John Brunner has for years been a mainstay of the British SF magazines, with occasional appearances in the US magazines, growing more frequent in the past couple of years.  His most notable contribution has been a series of solid and unpretentious novellas in the UK’s Science Fantasy, some of which have made their way across the Atlantic to become better-than-usual Ace Doubles, like The 100th Millennium and (my favorite) Echo in the Skull—the top of the line at the bottom of the market.  So news that Brunner had a novella appearing in Amazing was cause for optimism. 

The Bridge to Azrael, by John Brunner

Unfortunately it trips over its pretenses and falls flat.  It is proposed that Earthfolk have gone out to the stars in ships and colonized dozens of planets, with which Earth has since lost touch and which have developed over centuries in wildly varying ways.  Now, however, Earth has FTL travel via a technology called the Bridge, upon which, if the equipment is properly aligned, one can walk across the light-years.  Earth is reopening contact with the the scattered fragments of humanity and trying to bring everyone together by connecting them to the Bridge system.  They’re up to 40 worlds.

This process is presided over by Director Jorgen Thorkild, and we are given to understand that he works very hard at his big and (it says here) “fantastically responsible” job.  However, when he meets with representatives of one of the next two candidates for Bridging, he realizes that one of them isn’t buying it at all, and he starts to go to pieces.  Doesn’t stop, either, and checks into the hospital, overwhelmed with the futility of it all.

Meanwhile, we are introduced to the “programmers.” These are the people charged with scouting and assessing the cultures of the planets to be Bridged, and they are impossibly superior intellectual supermen (if there are women in this clubhouse, they aren’t mentioned).  So completely absorbed in their work are they that they can’t stay interested in anything else, like comely members of the opposite sex who adore them, as we learn from the viewpoint of one of the latter.  But these hyper-competent intellectual powerhouses are ridden with a paralyzing fear of being wrong.  Exactly what will happen if they are wrong is not explained—do they lose their minds?  Commit suicide?  But the very prospect can impair their judgment and lead them into danger (for one of them, a knife in the chest).  Some supermen!

There are plots and subplots here, some of which might be interesting in another context, though the resolution of the reluctant planet problem is irredeemably facile all on its own.  But the two whopping implausibilities just recounted make it difficult to take anything here seriously, and undermine any attempt at grand philosophical argument, if there were one of any coherence.  So Brunner, whose more modest work sometimes transcends its lack of pretense, has tried something pretentious and fallen on his face.  One hopes he takes the lesson.  Two stars, generously.

Beside the Golden Door, by Henry Slesar

There is little succor to be found in the short stories.  The best of them is Henry Slesar’s Beside the Golden Door, a slightly rambling but reasonably agreeable story about extraterrestrials finding a far-future Earth on which humans have gone extinct, leaving artifacts like the one depicted on the cover (one suspects the story was written around the cover) and records that the aliens are able to decipher quickly.  These reveal another story about an earlier wave of aliens who had arrived on Earth seeking refuge after a disaster and were ultimately treated the way humans frequently treat those different from themselves, and there’s an unsurprising revelation at the end that pulls the stories together.  Fine conventional sentiments, adequate if slightly hackneyed execution, three stars.

I Bring Fresh Flowers, by Robert F. Young

From here, it’s downhill.  Next is I Bring Fresh Flowers, marking the return of Robert F. Young, like a recurring influenza epidemic, though this outbreak is at least milder than some.  It’s short, and less of Young is always more.  Rosemary Brooks, a beautiful young woman firmly dedicated to God and the United States, becomes an astronaut (or, as Young of course has it, Astronette), and she accomplishes her mission to orientate (sic!) the satellite that will bring genuine weather control to Earth. 

But something happens during re-entry.  “All that is known is that Rosemary became a falling star.” But not in vain—the weather becomes really fine, all because of her work.  “She is the sun coming up in the morning and the sun going down at night.  She is the gentle rain against your face in spring.” Et cetera, at some length.  In other words, Rosemary has been reincarnated as the pathetic fallacy.  Could be worse.  Has been, in fact.  Two stars.

Heavy, Heavy, by F.A. Javor

Bringing up the rear, or letting it down, is F.A. Javor’s Heavy, Heavy, the tale of a tough guy down on his luck, not as badly written as you might expect, but ending with the revelation of a supposed scientific gimmick so ridiculous as to erase any prior glimmer of merit.  One star.

SF Profile: L. Sprague de Camp: Sword and Sorcery, by Sam Moskowitz

Sam Moskowitz coasts through another SF Profile, L. Sprague de Camp: Sword and Sorcery, as usual with better coverage of his pre-World War II material than his later work, omitting to mention his last several SF novels: The Tower of Zanid (1958), its predecessor The Hand of Zei (1950), and The Glory That Was (1960, magazine 1952), plus two out of three of his major 1950s short stories, A Gun for Dinosaur and Aristotle and the Gun.  (He does mention the other one, Judgment Day.) The commentary is generally superficial and obvious.  Two stars.

Coroner's Report

The cover of this issue, which portrays a deteriorated and morose-looking Statue of Liberty buried up to its armpits, cogently sums up the issue, and, it appears, the state of the magazine generally: sinking out of sight.

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Book

[January 10, 1964] Journey to the Stars, Journey into the Self (Starswarm, by Brian Aldiss)

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by Jason Sacks

From many, one

Few things are more of a mixed blessing to a science fiction fan than a themed collection.

In the right hands – as with the epochal Foundation, The City and Martian Chronicles – the single-author themed collection tells a fascinating story in three dimensions, providing heft to an impact that even a full novel can’t always attain. Brian Aldiss’s new offering Starswarm doesn’t quite reach the levels of Asimov, Simak, or Bradbury but it is nevertheless an intriguing collection well worth reading.

With Starswarm, Aldiss delivers a different type of anthology than the above authors delivered. He explores inner landscapes as much as he does the alien worlds his characters inhabit. While each of these stories seems widely diverse in terms of exploring the complexity of the Starswarm, they nevertheless explore common themes of the dream of freedom, the need to break away from family, and the joy of exploration. In doing so, he makes the alien familiar. No matter how odd these characters may seem on the outside, Aldiss seems to be saying, they nevertheless share very human characteristics. This book helps bolster the assertion that Aldiss has grown into one of the foremost science fiction authors of ideas.

In Aldiss’s imagining, the Starswarm is a confederation of “two hundred and fifteen thousand planets” (as he says) and has lasted for eternities — long enough, in fact, for societies to have evolved in unique and unpredictable ways. This imaginative back-story promises a myriad of intriguing setups for readers, such as the complexities of managing such a diverse collection of planets and the unique biological imperatives of each one.

A look inside

“A Kind of Artistry” is written in a dense, ornate style which aims to approximate its alien argot. I often found the tale tough wading due to the large number of obscure words, but I responded to its powerful themes. This story tells the tale of Derek Ende, who hopes to stay with his Mistress (later shown to also be his mother) in his ancestral home but who is forced to explore the sentient planet the Cliff. In one key moment, the Cliff metaphorically takes Derek into its womb. In his emergence, Derek experiences a metaphorical rebirth made manifest in the story’s haunting final lines. The story can thus be read as a parable about the breakaway to adulthood as much as a tale of space exploration.

“Hearts and Engines” is a story of military conquering, as a brutal invading military force gives its soldiers drugs which turn them into a kind of berserker force abe to fight until their hearts burst. The other twist to this tale is that, as Aldiss writes, “they allow no weapon that cannot be carried by one man.” These warriors transform into other beings, but in doing so they brutalize their planet, their enemy and themselves. This is a thrilling tale which kept me on the edge of my seat as it went along, straight to its tragic ending.

“The Underprivileged” seemed the most clichéd story in the collection to me, a tale whose twist I figured out long before Aldiss turned the metaphorical tiger’s tale. Yet despite that, I found this story powerful. Tinged with disappointment yet with an odd level of sweetness and naïveté, this tale had an oddly intriguing resonance in light of our current post-colonial era in Africa.

“The Game of God” inverts the classic story of an explorer who has gone native with the story of “Daddy” Dangerfield, a man whose rocket ship crashes onto a primitive planet and who has been portrayed in popular fiction of the era as a kind of Tarzan-style adventurer. But Dangerfield is far from the hero people want him to be. This interesting story adroitly contrasts the myths of the heroic adventurer with the reality of a scared, scrawny man who refuses to learn anything about the planet he chooses to inhabit. A reader has to wonder if Aldiss is playing with the cliché of the great explorer, attempting to show that Western man is not fated to be the savior of every culture which seems inferior — a powerful and subtle statement. Aldiss also does an excellent job in this tale of creating a complex alien culture which feels very different from anything most readers can imagine — exactly what science fiction is great at.

“Shards” is easily the most dissonant and difficult story in this collection, a deliberately obscure and off-putting tale with a tiger’s tale ending that aims to redeem it. Though the story didn’t work for me, I admired Aldiss’s commitment to his narrative and the experimental way he explores the nature of human freedom in a world where genetic engineering transforms people into beings God could never have created.

“Legends of Smith’s Burst” is an odyssey of sorts, almost heroic fantasy, encompassing hidden castles, dogged heroes and endless wandering. Interestingly there is no female character at the center of this tale begging to be saved from the arch-villain, but the hero’s drive to succeed permeates everything. There are echoes of Tolkien and Lieber in this tale, though with an interesting science fiction twist.

“A Moon of my Delight” also highlights the selfishness of its protagonists, a ragged band of landholders and traders on a barren moon who are much more concerned with their sexual fulfillment than more spiritual ends. Though not at all sexually explicit, this is a story about adults — how they use and discard each other, how they ignore the things that don’t help them, and how they reluctantly find themselves forced into unwanted heroism. There’s a shocking death near the end of this story which took my breath away with its casual unfeeling style — a powerful moment in a subtly powerful story.

This collection wraps up with “Old Hundredth”, a meditative tale of mentors and mentees, end of lives and the power of music. It’s metaphorical and oddly powerful despite its sometimes obscure style.

Greater than the sum of its parts?

Several years ago my fellow writer Gideon Marcus wrote on this site about Brian Aldiss’s prior themed collection, Galaxies like Grains of Sand. He declared that “the style is inconsistent” and the book “[not] a complete success.” Several GJ commentators wrote in response to Mr. Marcus’s review, “there’s just something missing for me” and “I want to like this collection, and Brian Aldiss as a writer, more than I actually do.”

Perhaps this slim new volume, weak in physical coherence but strong in thematic power, will change the minds of some of my companions on this Galactic Journey. Aldiss takes us on a different journey than Simak, Asimov or Bradbury followed. I found my trip to the Starswarm to be fascinating.

4 stars.




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Book, Magazine

[January 8, 1964] A Taste of Homely (February 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Lost that Zing

It's tough to get out of a rut.  After all, you went through all the trouble of digging the trench in the first place — why expend extra effort getting out of it?

But the fact is, the house that H.L. Gold built in 1950, the superlative Galaxy Science Fiction digest, has gotten pretty stale lately.  Sure, the authors are still household names, but the works aren't their best.  Maybe Editor Pohl, who succeeded Gold a couple of years ago, is starved for material given that he maintains an industry record of three simultanteous mags.  Or perhaps Galaxy just doesn't have the cachet (or the budget to pay authors) of F&SF or Fantastic.

Maybe it's just a slow patch.  Anyway, take a gander at the February 1964 Galaxy and see what I mean:

The Issue at Hand

Grandmother Earth, by J. T. McIntosh

It was just a couple of months ago, in Poul Anderson's Conversation in Arcady, that we last saw the a decadent, paradisical Earth visited by more vigorous colonists.  McIntosh's variation on the theme features a less happy homeworld, one on which humans have given up for lack of challenge, and the sum population of Earth is reduced to a few tens of thousands stretched along France's idyllic Mediterranean coast.  When the last efforts at changing the status quo from within founder, it us up to a pair of extraterrestrial Terrans to come up with a solution.


(I have to wonder if this picture is the main reason the story was accepted…

McIntosh is a pretty good writer, though his best days seem far behind him.  The pacing and execution are engaging even if the plot is hackneyed.  What really tips the balance from four to three stars is the utterly unnecessary exposition at the end.

Hence: Three stars.

A Bad Day for Vermin, by Keith Laumer

A wormlike alien lands in a small Arkansan town, but before it can open discussions with the citizens, a ramshackle exterminator shoots it dead.  A trial ensues to determine whether or not the extraterrestrial counts as a person such that the killer can be tried with murder.  Ultimately, the alien is classified as a person and the exterminator, excluded from the definition, is labeled vermin — and exterminated.

Summarized like that, it sounds like a pretty good story.  It's not.  Unpleasant and preposterous, Laumer must have dashed this one off for a quick buck.  Two stars (if that).

Shamar's War, by Kris Neville

When the completely humanoid inhabitants of a another planet refuse Earth's entreaties to formally ally, humanity sends a spy to foment rebellion and install a more friendly government.  The aliens are under a dictatorship, you see, and Earth deems them ripe for a bit of Democracy.  When efforts to install a formal voting system fail, the aliens come up with a more brute force option: selective boycotting of goods nonessential to life but essential to the economy.

It's hard to believe this piece was written by a veteran author, one who has produced several excellent stories over a career lasting more than a decade.  This piece is filled with short, unncompelling sentences; the characterization is nonexistent; and the exposition is endless.  The aliens aren't at all, and the solution to the story's puzzle is laughably simplistic.  I have to wonder if this wasn't an early piece of work that Neville had stuffed in a desk somewhere and which Pohl accepted out of desperation.

In any event, two stars.

The Early Days of the Metric System, by Willy Ley

Our favorite German rocket scientist had been going through a lackluster period, but this non-fiction article on the origin of standard weights and measures, though in some ways overlapping an old F&SF article by Dr. Asimov, is entertaining and informative.  This is the Willy that compelled me to start my subscription to Galaxy umpteen years ago.  5 stars.

Oh, to Be a Blobel!, by Philip K. Dick

Here's another human-sent-to-spy-on-aliens story, except this one takes place after the espionage.  It features a young man whose physical form was altered to match that of the invading amorphous Blobels.  Though promised to be reconditioned back to human physiognomy, the fellow finds himself reverting to Blobel form half the day, making his life thoroughly miserable.

Luckily for him, the other side had spies, too, and some of them are having similar readjustment trouble.  Our hero marries a young female Blobel spy, and all is well…for a while.  But feelings of inadequacy (she is smarter and more successful than he) and the hybrid nature of their children cause rifts.  Ultimately, the couple must choose between love and individual fortune.

This is a story that shouldn't work, ludicrous as it is in its premise.  But it's Dick, and it does. 

Four stars.

The Awakening, by Jack Sharkey

Imagine being one of hundreds preserved in suspended animation against a global catastrophe, only to wake up countless ages after the planned date.  Your machines are rusted, your elders rotted, and the world you knew has drastically changed.  How would you feel?  What would you do?

This story belongs in the "Color Me Surprised" department.  While the plot of the story is not particularly innovative, the execution is perfect — a sharp increase in quality from Jack Sharkey's usual output.

Four stars.

The Star King, by Jack Vance

In the last installment of The Star King, a fellow named Gersen was tracking down the "Demon Prince," Grendel, one of the Galaxy's most notorious crime bosses.  The trail had led Gersen to a university on the civilized world of Alphanor in search of the patron who had commissioned a survey of an Eden-like world far Beyond the edge of civilization.  For Gersen had every reason to believe that this patron was Grendel, especially after he killed his surveyor for refusing to reveal the location of the planet.

Part 2 opens Gersen facing several obstacles.  Foremost is that Grendel could be any of three professors at the school, all of whom profess ignorance of the murdered surveyor.  Then there are Grendel's three lieutenants, all of whom are deadly assassins who want Gersen out of the way.  Finally, there is the issue of Pallis Atwrode, an employee of the university who is the first to touch Gersen's heart after a life of nothing but revenge-seeking.

The conclusion to this novel ties all the threads together, throwing all of the characters onto one ship where Gersen can declaim the solution to the mystery, Poirot-style.

The Star King's problem isn't the plot, it's the execution.  After a rather gripping first half of the first half, the novel becomes a plodding bore, particularly with the unnecessary encyclopedic inserts every few pages.  Vance did such a good job of building a fresh new world in The Dragon Masters (also a Galaxy novel), but he rather flubs it here.  Moreover, Vance completely missed his opportunity to give us a real surprise ending, instead deciding on Grendel's identity almost at random, it seems.

Two stars, two and a half for the whole thing.

Summing Up

When I transfer the story data to punch card and run it through my Star-o-Vac, I get a roll of tape with the computation: 3 stars.  That doesn't sound so bad, right?  Thoroughly adequate compared to some of the other mags we've suffered through lately.  But it's the cavalcade of blandness that saps the will over time.  It's like a steady diet of matzah.  Sure, it gets you out of Egypt, but where's the milk and honey, man? 

Cordwainer Smith's in the next issue.  Maybe we'll make it to the Holy Land in March…

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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[January 6, 1964] JFK & me

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by Victoria Lucas

I found it!

I know the title must seem very arrogant of me.  It’s meant to be self-deprecating–my New Year’s Resolution for 1964 is not to take myself so seriously.  It doesn’t mean I don’t take seriously the career and presidency of a man who, like Lincoln, is already said to “belong to the ages.” It’s not like I ever met Kennedy in any formal sense. 

But (like how many other millions of Americans?) I felt an affinity to him, and in the hours and weeks since his life was so tragically cut short I found myself remembering I did have one small contact with him once.  And, clinging to it, I started thinking about my own (even shorter) life’s trajectory and how it may have had some small likeness to his.  So I searched through my memorabilia and at last found documentation of that contact. 

The date was February 23, 1958.  Then a Democratic senator from Massachusetts on the Foreign Relations Committee and mentioned as a possible presidential candidate for 1960, Kennedy was making a short trip to to Tucson, Arizona to give a speech to the Tucson Democratic Party at a dinner on the 22nd and to speak at the Sunday Evening Forum on this evening at the University of Arizona. 

It was my senior year in high school, and I had racked my brains to find an excuse to talk to him.  All I could think of was to have him autograph my program (which I can’t find).  Even though I worked (without pay) for the Cactus Chronicle, the student newspaper of Tucson High School, and for the Tucson Daily Citizen, the afternoon newspaper of Tucson, I had no credentials to ask him questions.  I was not there on any assignment; paid reporters would be covering this one.  I was too shy to even think of asking him something just as a citizen who couldn’t yet vote (I was still 16).

Nevertheless, I was thrilled to be near Kennedy, whatever the excuse.  The program would have looked like the one below, with my scribbling all over it and Kennedy’s (then) upcoming appearance circled.

On the other hand, the photo was by a photographer who had been asked to be there, or who at least knew that he could sell his product.  Dick Wisdom was someone who, unlike me, knew what he wanted to do for a living, and was already doing it, and doing it well, in high school.

Unlike me, Dick had come to cover Kennedy, who was big news, and so he showed up at the stage door too.  I had no idea he was going to snap Kennedy and me together until I saw the flash and heard the pop.  I wasn’t news, and Dick needed Kennedy alone or with someone of importance, so this photograph has never before seen publication.

Despite his success, that night Kennedy demonstrated the fact that he still had not learned how to give a good speech by looking up frequently from his lectern and making enough eye contact with his audience.  I was shy too; but even I knew how to give a speech from my high-school course in public speaking.  The more I read about Kennedy, the more it was clear to me that politics was not his first choice of career.  In fact, I learned that, after he left the Navy in 1944, he had gone to work as a foreign correspondent for Hearst's Chicago Herald-American and New York Journal-American. 

Kennedy-watching

In the few short years that I watched and listened, Kennedy’s speechmaking got better and better.  He grew more comfortable “pressing the flesh” (as people call shaking hands), kissing babies, answering questions from large audiences and on television.  His speech that night was not just a demonstration of his shyness but of his prowess at speech writing.  I speculate that it was because his speeches, like those of old-time politicians, were grounded in the written word rather than in spoken, colloquial English, that he had such a hard time making the transition from reading a speech to really delivering one to an audience in a personal way.  I was impressed that he had gotten so far and yet was such a shy person at bottom.  (There was hope for me!)

Kennedy’s first commercial success at writing began as his Harvard senior thesis on the unreadiness for war he found in England when his father Joseph took him along to the US ambassadorial residence he occupied there in 1938.  Based on his personal experience and historical research, it was eventually published as the book Why England Slept in 1940, the title a take off on Churchill’s While England Slept.

His actual career as a journalist was short-lived because his father switched his pressure to become president from his eldest brother Joe Jr. to him when Joe died in WWII, as JFK almost had himself.  Everybody knows of the film released last year about Kennedy’s near-death experience on a Navy motor-torpedo boat named PT 109, and probably about the book of the same name written by Robert J. Donovan that prompted the making of the film.

I didn’t see the movie and didn’t read the book, perhaps because Kennedy didn’t write the book or appear in the movie, and he doesn’t have much to say about the whole incident when asked.  I did, however, read Profiles in Courage, which some say was ghostwritten.  (I wouldn’t know.) I liked his ideas.  I saw him as intelligent and articulate, and as someone who cared about people.

Kennedy’s interview style, by the way, was also, it seems to me, influenced by his own experience doing interviews as a reporter.  He answered questions thoughtfully and did not evade them.  He never attacked or used reporters the way other presidents–Teddy Roosevelt, for instance–did. 

And pretty clearly writing about historic events such as the Potsdam Conference gave him a historical perspective that he never lost.  I managed to get hold of the speech he gave the day before I saw him in Tucson.  He addressed members of the Tucson Democratic Party at a dinner on the 22nd, playing in part on the fact that it was Washington’s Birthday:

“Think back, if you will, to February 22, 1796. For 13 years, the Birthday of President Washington had been honored in the new nation. …But in 1796 no bells were rung or bonfires lit. The cannons which were to be fired were spiked by angry citizens. Washington, said one newspaper, was "The American Caesar. . . the stepfather of his country.” …The cause for this change in the public's affection was principally President Washington's approval of the Jay Treaty with Great Britain. Popular opinion which favored the French in their war with the British resented the concessions we had made and the grievances the British had failed to meet. But President Washington preferred an unjust treaty to a war which his young and still weak country could not survive. He longed to retire at the close of his second term with the reverence of a united country. But he chose instead to endure popular abuse rather than endanger the existence of those who were attacking him. It may well have been his finest hour.

We urgently need today to remember this example of Washington's courage and devotion. The popular path is not always the best one, even in a democracy.”

As usual, Kennedy focused on displaying courage and finding precedents in history, not on attacking others.  He attacked what a “Republican friend” had said in Phoenix, but declined to name him and only disagreed with his words.  I attribute this too to his brush with journalism–one may attack the other paper in town, but a reporter usually leaves such attacks to newspaper editors and owners, because no reporter ever knows for whom he or she will work tomorrow.

Abandoning journalism

Perhaps Kennedy learned and grew from his experiences as a foreign correspondent.  Perhaps he still missed those days, even well into his political career.

I, on the other hand, do not miss my stint as a journalist.  Like Kennedy's my tenure as a reporter was short-lived, but the reasons for that aborted trajectory are quite different.  It's an experience that highlights a few things about newspaper practices, journalism education, and (you’ve seen this before in these columns) sexism.

It's worthy of an article all its own.  Next month.




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Book

[January 4, 1964] Something borrowed, something blue (Ace Double F-253)

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by Gideon Marcus

Every good New Year's begins with a resolution.  Mine is to have the Journey review every single new SFF book that comes out in 1964 (that we can get our hands on, anyway).  I figure there's only about 30-40, and this way, we can make truly informed Galactic Stars recommendations.

All journeys begin with a single step, and as luck would have it, the first novel of the new year to hit the book stands was an Ace Double, two-for-one deals that often feel like less of a value than a single novel. 

This was one of those times…

The Twisted Men, by A.E. Van Vogt

Sometimes an Ace Double is an original piece (like One of our Asteroids — see below).  Sometimes it's a reprint like Isaac Asimov's Foundation (in his unfortunate case, chopped up into The 1,000 Year Plan).  I've also seen expansions of novellas (e.g. Brunner's Listen! The Stars! and Anderson's Let the Astronauts Beware!) and fix-up novels (for instance, Leigh Brackett's Alpha Centauri or Die!— a fusion of two separately published stories).)

The Twisted Men is yet another kind of Ace book: a compilation of unrelated pieces with no attempt to bind them.

I suspect the main motivation for these reprints was price.  None of these stories are younger than 12 years old, and they are not among author Van Vogt's better works.  They appear to be unaltered versions of what came out in the magazines, so what you're getting are original pieces from the end of the Pulp Era. 

The Twisted Men

The sun is about to go nova, and Averill Hewitt is the lone scientist convinced of the fact.  His only solace after being labeled a fool and ostracized is the commissioning of an interstellar colony ship, The Hope of Man.  Relief turns to consternation when the ship returns after just six years — far too soon for the trip to have been successful.  Worse yet, when he forces his way aboard the ship, he finds the crew virtually frozen in time, their bodies foreshortened with Lorentz contraction of the variety encountered at close to light speeds.

It's a thrilling set-up, but it's not how physics works.  Some efforts are made to blame the effect on unusual zones of space a la Anderson's Brain wave, but they're feeble, indeed.  For the most part, it's a science mystery with bad science crossed with a vapid thwart-the-spacejacking tale.

Two stars.

The Star-Saint

On a newly colonized world, engineer Leonard Hanley faces two problems: rampaging sentient boulders and a half-alien hunk assigned to the colony to deal with them.  Hanley tries to counter the stony threat himself, and fails.  The womenfolk coo over (and fraternize with) the hunk.  Ultimately, said hunk placates the rock beings and ships out, possibly leaving behind a brood of quarter-breeds.

It's readable enough, but it doesn't make much sense nor does it do women any favors with its characterizations.

Two stars.

The Earth Killers

This one was actually passable.  During the test flight of a Mach 9 "rockjet," Captain Kane Field encounters an ICBM bound for Chicago, part of an overwhelming attack on the United States.  Not only is he unable to stop the missile, but upon landing, he is court-martialed for his inability to identify the rocket's country of origin, insisting that the warhead came from directly overhead.

Kane breaks out of his imprisonment and hijacks his plane, taking it around the nation in an attempt to find the real culprits.  I guessed the answer; you might, too.

Parts of the story feel grounded and realistic (Killers takes place in 1964, and the rockjet is close kin to the real-life X-15).  Others, including the bit where Kane gasses up his ride as easily as one fills up a Studebaker, strain credulity.  Nevertheless, it's a fun read and the best piece of the Double.

Three stars.

One of our Asteroids is Missing, by Calvin M. Knox

The "blue" half of the double (because it's the title with the blue-shaded background on the spine, natch) takes place in the far-future year of 2019.  John Storm is a youth with a yen to make it rich in the asteroid belt.  Apparently, in 55 years, driving spaceships will be about as easy as driving mules was for the '49ers.  At least, that's what I got from the quick travel times and comparative ease of operation. 

Anyway, Storm, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Viking of a young man, finds an eight mile wide hunk of precious metals after two years of prospecting.  With visions of dollar signs dancing in his head, he stakes a claim on Mars and then heads home to his fiancee in New York.  But there, he finds that his papers were never properly processed — in fact, not only does his claim not exist, but per the nation's records, neither does he! 

Storm's suspicion that something underhanded is afoot is reinforced when a set of goons makes an attempt on his life.  This compels the miner to head back to the Belt to check up on his claim, brushing aside the objections of his bride-to-be ("Space is a lousy place for a woman," he says.  "I wouldn't want the responsibility of your safety up there.")

Sure enough, Storm discovers a fleet of Universal Mining Cartel spaceships preparing to make off with his prize.  This is a bold and unusual move.  Sure, the asteroid is a valuable one, but it's penny-ante to a big conglomerate like UMC.  Why risk law suits, bad publicity, and attempted murder charges?

The answer to this question is pretty obvious, but I'll let you figure it out.  A hint: this plotline is well-trodden ground, including appearances in Raymond Jones' The Alien and Murray Leinster's The Wailing Asteroid (and that's just books I've covered). 

Of course, you may give up before you get to the revelation.  One of our Asteroids is not great fiction, with lots of literary shortcuts and pretty uninspiring writing.  Also, for the most part, you could transfer the entire story with hardly an alteration to a Western setting.  This is probably why the author insisted on using a pseudonym so as to not tarnish his good name (said writer being none other than the not-at-all blond and blue-eyed, Robert Silverberg.)

2.5 stars.

***

Next up: The President and the traveler — see the intersection of JFK and the Journey…

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[January 2, 1964] All's well that ends well (January 1964 Analog science fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Auld Lang Syne

Greetings from 1964!  Given the challenges we faced in the latter part of last year, it was proper and cathartic to wrap up 1963 with a bang.  Here are some snapshots from our gala (and weren't we lucky to find a film developer willing to work on New Year's Day?)

Speaking of wrapping up, the last magazine of the old year, though dated January 1964, was the January 1964 Analog.  This is usually among the lesser science fiction magazines I read, but this time around, I was pleasantly surprised.  Come take a look!

Ending Well

Secondary Meteorites (Part 1 of 2), by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Could that black chunk of meteorite actually be from Mars?  There is an increasing body of evidence that the meteorites that hit the Earth were, themselves, bits of other planets blasted away by their own meteor strikes.  The subject matter is fascinating, but Dr. Hall manages to make it nigh incomprehensible.  It's too technical and presented all out of order (even Dr. Asimov learned early in his career that you have to define your terms first).  And this is only PART ONE!

Two stars.

The Eyes Have It, by Randall Garrett

My disdain for Mr. Garrett has been a constant of the Journey, ever since the offensive and just plain bad Queen Bee.  Over time, he has occasionally written decent stuff, and when he teams up with others, his rough edges get smoothed a bit.  Still, his name in the Table of Contents has always made me less eager to read a magazine.

Well, never let it be said that I can't keep an open mind.  Garrett's latest work is a tour de force.  If Asimov perfected the science fiction mystery with The Caves of Steel, Garrett has created the genre of magical mystery with The Eyes Have It.

The year is 1963, the place, France.  But this is no France we know.  Instead, it appears to be in a timeline that diverged nine centuries prior, one in which the Angevin Empire remained ascendant…and in which the use of magic developed. 

Lord D'Arcy is Chief Criminal Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, summoned to investigate the murder of the fantastically lecherous Count D'Evraux.  With the aid of his assistants, Sorcerer Sean O Lachlainn and chirurgeon Dr. Pately, he must find out how and at whose hand the Count met his untimely demise, and he has just twenty four hours to do it.

The attention to detail, the world-building, the characterization, the writing — all are top notch.  This is the sort of work I'd expect from Poul Anderson (and only when at the top of his game).  For Garrett to pull this off is nothing short of miraculous.

Dammit, Randy.  It's going to be hard to keep hating you.

Five stars.

Poppa Needs Shorts, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

The last piece by the Richmonds was an utterly unreadable book-length serial.  This one, on the other hand, is a cute vignette convincingly told from the view of a 4-year old child who just wants to know about "shorts."  Leigh and Walt have a pretty good idea how kids learn, I think.

Three stars.

Subjectivity, by Norman Spinrad

The pages of our scientific journals offer a wealth of ideas that can be turned into SF stories.  New author Norman Spinrad seizes on Dr. Timothy Leary's paean to LSD in technical clothing, Psychedelic Review as inspiration for his second story:

Though humanity has invented an engine that will propel spaceships at half the speed of light, the heavens remain out of reach.  It's not the endurance of the ships that's the problem — it is that of the crew.  No matter how well-adjusted they are, all of them go crazy in less than half the time it takes to get to Alpha Centauri.  After twelve failed attempts, the powers that be assemble a crew of misfits with a twenty-year supply of hallucinogenics to keep them sane (if potted) and open up the stars.

Mission #13 succeeds…but not in a way anyone could have predicted.  A fun, slightly acid (no pun intended) little piece.  Four stars.

See What I Mean!, by John Brunner

In this disappointing outing from Brunner, a deadlock in negotiations between East and West is resolved when the four foreign ministers involved are psychoanalyzed, and it turns out the British and Russian officials have more in common with each other than with their ideological partners (from the U.S. and China, respectively).

Not much here.  Two stars.

Dune World (Part 2 of 3), by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert's epic in the desert, a kind of Lawrence of Arabia in space, continues.  After the assassination attempt on his son, and with warnings that he has a traitor in his midst, Duke Leto of the House of Atreides attempts to shore up his position on Arrakis, sole source of life-extending "spice".  The planetology and culture bits are pretty interesting, particularly the depiction of the forbidding dune world of Arrakis and the spice-mining operations thereon.  I continue to get the impression, though, that Herbert is still too raw for this project.  The viewpoint jumps from line to line, much is conveyed through exposition, and the incessant use of italics is really trying to read.

Three stars again.

Crunching the numbers

So how did the first batch of magazines dated with the new year fare?  There are definitely some surprises.

  • Analog, came in first with a respectable 3.4 star rating.  Moreover, Randall Garrett of all people had the best story.  These must be the end times.
  • Fantastic came in a close second at 3.3.  New World tread water at 3.  IF got 2.8.  F&SF scored a disappointing 2.5.  Amazing dragged through the muck at a miserable 1.9.
  • All in all, there were nearly 200 pages of good-to-excellent stories.  Not a bad haul.
  • Women only wrote one and a half of the 31 fiction pieces this month, and theirs were short ones.  No surprises there.

Next up: the first book of the new year!

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