The end may be near for the nascent would-be-state of Biafra. For two years, the Nigerian breakaway has seen its land systematically (re)taken, and the eight million Biafrans, mostly Ibo people, have been crammed into ever small regions under Biafran control—just 3,000 out of an original 29,000 square miles.
Starvation rages, killing more than gunfire. Yet the Biafrans remain unbowed, converting diesel generators to run on crude petroleum, keeping churches open (at night, anyway), and getting food via threatened air strips.
But on the 22nd, the capital and last Biafran city, Umuahia, fell to Nigerian forces. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, President of Biafra, has vowed he will continue the struggle in guerrilla fashion. Only Gabon, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Zambia have recognized the secessionist state, although tacit assistance has been provided by such diverse states as France, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and Czechoslovakia.
At this point, it's hard to imagine the Biafran experiment succeeding. But surely there must be more that we can do apart from watch helplessly. I wish I knew what it was. Support the Red Cross, I suppose.
Impending mediocrity
I don't have a great segue from that bummer of a news item. All I have is the lastest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. While it's not entirely unworthy (the opening serial is pretty good), the rest offers little respite from the bleakness of the real world:
Back in the '50s, Poul had a great series that took place on a parallel Earth. Its history was not dissimilar to ours, but wizardry replaces technology in many regards. It's a bit like Garrett's Lord D'Arcy series, but a touch sillier. The stars of the series are a magical duo comprising a werewolf and a magic-using dragoon Captain. In the latest story (a decade ago!) the two had gotten married. In the latest installment, Ginny and Steve are the proud parents of a beautiful little girl.
Unfortunately, Valeria Victrix has been born into a difficult time. Adherents of St. John, whose outwardly clement brand of Christianity hides disturbing cultist elements, are waging a war against authority and the military-industrial complex—including the defense contractor that employs Steve. The Johnnites are essentially stand-ins for the current peace movements, albeit more sinister.
The conflict with the less-than-civil resisters recedes in importance, however, when on her third birthday, Valeria is abducted by no less than the demonic forces of Hell. It is now up to Steve and Ginny to rescue their little girl before she is incurably corrupted…and to determine if the Johnnites are at all responsible!
Anderson has three main modes: crunchy, compelling science fiction; crunchy, dull-as-dirt science fiction; and lightish fantasy. This short novel, despite the dark subject matter, promises to be the most fun romp since Three Hearts and Three Lions.
Four stars so far.
The Beast of Mouryessa, by William C. Abeel
A French sculptor is commissioned to create a replica of an obscene, demonic figure, unearthed recently in the Avignon region. The original stone creature has a history of causing catastrophe to those who behold it, but the lovely matron who wants the copy seems unperturbed. Of course, the sculptor has all sorts of ill feelings and second thoughts, but he does nothing about them. In the end, he is possessed by the spirit of the thing, and awful stuff ensues.
Aside from all the sex and frequent references to the statue's enormous dong, this story is pretty old hat. Lovecraft did this kind of thing better.
Two stars.
by Gahan Wilson
London Melancholy, by M. John Harrison
A host of eerie mutants roam post-apocalyptic London in this absolutely impenetrable, unreadably purple piece.
One star.
For the Sake of Grace, by Suzette Haden Elgin
Thousands of years from now, Earth and its solar colonies have organized into a patriarchal, caste-based system. The Kadilh ban-Harihn has much cause for joy: four sons who have all passed the stringent test to become 4th degree members of the Poet caste. But he also has a hidden pain; his sister was one of the rare women to dare entry into the coveted ranks of the Poets. Her fate for failing was that of all women who fail—eternal solitary confinement.
'Unfair!' you cry? Well, at least it keeps women from trying such a foolhardy endeavor. Which is why it hits the Kadilh all the harder when he learns his youngest child, his only daughter, also has decided to try to be a Poet, a task of which she is most certainly incapable…
This is a scathing piece, a refreshing attack on sexism. I'd give it higher marks if it had included even one poem, given the theme, but I still quite liked it.
Four stars.
The Power of Progression, by Isaac Asimov
The Good Doctor explains why our current rate of population growth cannot go on—even if we manage to get off planet, that just means the universe will be clogged with humanity within the millennium.
I appreciate the doomsaying sentiment, but there comes a point when exponents become specious, a masturbatory effort in mathematics.
Three stars.
Copstate, by Ron Goulart
I used to like the tales of Ben Jolson, lead agent of the shapechanging Chameleon Corps, but they've gotten pretty tired of late. This last entry is the least. Ben is tapped to infiltrate a tightly controlled security state to retrieve a revolutionary polemic.
Goulart is capable of writing funny, light, riproaring stuff, but this one is just a bust.
Two stars.
The Flower Kid Cashes In, by George Malko
Item two in the cavalcade of anti-utopian incomprehensibility. Per a conversation I recently had with David and Kris:
Me: Can anyone explain the last story in this month's F&SF to me?
David: Not really. Aging hippie survives after the Bomb falls and sort of commits suicide by staying true to his priniciples? I think it was too concerned with being literary to mean something or be about anything.
Kris: I am not even sure if it is trying to be literary so much as "with it". But either way it seems very hollow.
Your guess is as good as mine. At least it's short. Two stars.
The Body Count
Comparing the lastest F&SF to the Biafran tragedy is probably beyond the realm of good taste. I'll just note that 2.7 stars is an inauspicious sign. However, given that the first few issues of the year were significantly better, I don't think this lapse foretells a permanent downturn.
At least some things are salvageable. See you next month.
There are few expressions as irritating to me as the oxymoronic "Modern Classic"…but I have to admit that the shoe sometimes fits.
Mario Puzo's third novel, The Godfather, came out last month, and I can't put it down. It's not a small book—some 446 pages—but those pages turn like no one's business. It's the story of Vito Corleone, a Sicilian who arrives in the country around the turn of the Century and slowly, but inexorably, becomes crime boss of Manhattan.
The Mafia has had a particular allure of late. LIFE just had a long bit on the recent death of Vito Genovese and the current scramble to replace him as head of the Genovese family. For those who want a (seemingly accurate) introduction to the underworld of organized crime, The Godfather makes a terrific primer.
Bloody, pornographic, blunt, but also detailed and even, in its own way, scholarly, The Godfather is a book you can't put down.
Which is a problem when you're supposed to get through a stack of science fiction magazines every month. Indeed, how is a somewhat long-in-the-tooth, middle-of-the-road mag like Galaxy, especially this latest issue, supposed to compete?
by Vaughn Bodé
Little Blue Hawk, by Sydney J. Van Scyoc
Imagine an America generations from now, after eugenics has gone awry. After some initial promising results, a significant number of humans became dramatically mutated, with profound physical and mental variations accompanied by even more pronounced neuroses. Over time, these mutants have mingled with baseline humans, spreading their traits.
This is the story of Kert Tahn, a wingless hawk of a man, who bears a weighty set of obsessions and compulsions, as well as a dandy case of synesthesia: to him, words are crystalline, shattering into dust and leaving a pall over everything. An urban "Special Person", plucked as an infant from one of the rural Special Person-only communities, he harbors a strong urge to fly, which is why he takes up a job as a hover-disc pilot, ferrying customers out into the hinterlands now reserved for the genetically modified. "Little Blue Hawk" is a series of encounters with a variety of more-or-less insane individuals, and how each helps him on his road to self-discovery.
by Reese
There are elements I really liked in this story. Though the causes of neuroses are genetic, it is clear Van Scyoc is making a statement—and an aspirational prediction—as to how mental illnesses might be accommodated rather than simply cured…or its sufferers tucked away. All Special Persons have the constitutional right to have their compulsions respected, and they are listed on a prominent medallion each of them wears. Of course, this leads to a mixture of both care by and disdain from the "normal" population.
I also thought that a set of neurotic compulsions actually makes for a dandy thumbnail sketch of an alien race—a set of traits that make no sense but are nevertheless consistent,
The problem with this story is simply that it's kind of dull and doesn't do much. I found myself taking breaks every five pages or so. With the Puzo constantly emanating its bullet-drenched sirensong, it was slow going, indeed.
Two stars.
The Open Secrets, by Larry Eisenberg
A fellow accidentally enters into his timeshare terminal the password for the FBI's internal files. Now that he has access to all the country's secrets, he becomes both extremely powerful…and extremely marked.
Frivolous, but not terrible. Two stars.
Star Dream, by Terry Carr and Alexei Panshin
On the eve of the flight of the first starship Gaea, its builder finds out why he was fired just before its completion. The answer takes some of the sting from being ejected from the vessel's crew.
This old-fashioned tale is rather mawkish and probably would have served better as the backbone of a juvenile novel, but it's not poorly written.
Three stars.
Coloured Element, by William Carlson and Alice Laurance
A new measles vaccine is dumped willy-nilly into the water supply, not for its salutory benefits, but for a side effect—it turns everyone primary colors based on their blood type! Ham-handed social commentary is delivered in this rather slight piece.
Two stars.
Killerbot!, by Dean R. Koontz
The mindless, cybernetic monsters from Euro are on the rampage in Nortamer, and it's up to the local law enforcement to dispatch the latest killer. The new model has got a twist—human cunning. But when the monster is taken down, the revelation is enough to rock society.
What seems like a rather pointless exercise in violent adventure turns out to be (I think) a commentary on the recent rash of gun violence—from the murder of JFK to the Austin tower shootings. It's not a terrific piece, but I appreciate what it's trying to do.
Three stars.
For Your Information: Max Valier and the Rocket-Propelled Airplane, by Willy Ley
I was just giving a lecture on rocketry pioneers at the local university the other day, and Max Valier was one of the notables I mentioned. Of course, I assumed from the name that he was French. He was not. That fact, and many others, can be found in this fascinating piece by Willy Ley on a man most associated with the rocket car that killed him.
The last man on Earth is Edwards James McHenry—better known by his DJ monicker, Jabber McAbber. Well, he's not actually on Earth; right before the calamity that ripped the planet asunder, a Howard Hughes look-alike ensconced him in an orbital trailer with a broadcaster, a thousand gallons of bourbon, and a record collection. Unbenownst to him, Ed also has a mechanical sidekick called Marty, a computer with colloquial intelligence.
Thus, while Ed more-or-less drunkenly transmits an unending, lonely monologue to the universe, Marty provides a broadcast counterpoint, explaining the subtext and background to Ed's plight and thoughts.
It all reads like something Harlan Ellison might have put together, a little less dirtily, perhaps. Hip and readable. Four stars.
At last, we reach the action-packed conclusion of this three-part serial. All the pieces are in motion: both Loki and 'Thor, immortal soldiers in an ages-long intergalactic war, who have been at each other's throats for 1200 years, are trudging through the rain for the runaway broadcast power facility on the Northeastern American seaboard.
As the Army tries and fails to bring the powerplant under control, the hurricane in the Atlantic intensifies. Meanwhile, we learn what the other unauthorized power-tapper is: none other than Loki's autonomous spaceship, Xix, which is charging its own batteries pending the unhatching of a terrible scheme. The climax of the novel is suitably climactic.
Laumer writes in two modes: satirical and deadly serious. And Now They Wake is firmly in the second camp, grim to the extreme. But it is also very human, very immediate, and, even with the graphic violence depicted, very engrossing. This is the closest I've seen Laumer come to Ted White's style, really engaging the senses such that you inhabit the bodies of the characters, but without an offputting degree of detail (even the gory bits are imaginative and non-repetitive.)
It's not a novel for the ages, and the tie-in to Norse mythology is a bit pat, but this is probably the best Laumer I've ever read, and the one piece that actually made me forget about The Godfather…for a few minutes, anyway.
Four stars.
Back to (un)reality
The first half of this month's Galaxy was certainly a slog, but at least the latter half kept my interest—if only I hadn't started from the end first! That's a bad habit I may have to overcome. I just like seeing the number of pages I have to read dwindle, and that gets easier to mark if you read in reverse order!
Anyway, the bottom line is that Pohl's mag will win no awards on the strength of this month's ish, but Puzo's book may very well. Pick up The Godfather right now…and maybe the Laumer when it's put into book form!
Well, this is exciting! For the first time ever, two identical Mariner probes are on their way to an interstellar destination. On March 27, Mariner 7 blasted off for Mars, joining its sister, Mariner 6, which was launched last month.
Normally, twin probes are launched for redundancy, and it's a good thing. Venus-boundMariner 1 died when its booster exploded back in '62. Mars-bound Mariner 3 never hatched from its egg (the shroud of its Atlas-Agena rocket) back in 1964. Mariner 5, which went to Venus in 1967, was a solo mission (indeed, a spare Mariner of the 3/4 class).
But now we've got two Mariners winging their way to the Red Planet, which means we'll get twice the coverage and a redundant set of data, always a welcome occurrence for scientists! We'll have more on them when they pass by Mars in July.
Mack ho!
by Kelly Freas
Just as we have two Mariners dominating the head of this article, so we have science fictioneer Mack Reynolds dominating this latest issue of Analog science fiction. Under his own name, and under his pseudonym "Guy McCord", more than half of this issue is a Reynolds contribution. If you like the guy, you'll like the mag. If not…
We once again return to the Reynolds' late 20th Century, where America languishes under the stratified People's Capitalism. This novel is also the second adventure of one of the last private detectives, Rex Bader (whose first job was just a couple of months ago. As with that freshman outing, Bader is offered a job that seems too good to be true, and he refuses, but no one else buys that he did.
In this case, the job was offered by the head of one of the world's biggest corporations. He wants Bader to go to cross the Iron Curtain to contact other corporation buffs so as to help take down the Meritocracy—the powers that be that have entrenched themselves in the highest levels of society.
The mob also contacts Bader, wanting him to be their double agent. Then the Defense Department gets involved. Finally, a group of latter-day Technocrats make their pitch. Presumably, the "fifth way" will be Rex Bader's own.
This book is typical Reynolds: the setting has been well established over the years, all the way back to the Joe Mauser, Mercenary days. There are historical dissertations woven in at every opportunity, mostly on early 20th Century political theory. The writing is serviceable, somewhat wry—a more grounded Keith Laumer.
What makes this particular piece stand out are the new wrinkles Reynolds introduces. First, this is the first time we've learned how elections work in this world: it's based on income—one vote for every dollar earned (investment income does not impart voting rights). Thus, the masses on "Negative Income Tax" have no franchise.
Reynolds continues to invent plausible future technology, too. My favorite is the pocket TV/phone/credit card/identity all citizens carry. A handy device, but also vulnerable to surveillance—which is done by computers which listen for key words; if they hear any, they alert a government agent.
So on the one hand, as far as quality of writing and enjoyment is concerned, I'd give this piece three stars. But I admire Reynolds for doing stuff few others do, so I'm actually awarding four.
Hey But No Presto, by Jack Wodhams
by Leo Summers
Folks are being snatched out of psionic teleportation booths as they try to go to Earth. They get sent to this backwater planetary resort where they are charged outrageous rates to stay in mediocre lodgings. They stay because the cost to go home is set even higher. An interstellar cop is sent to investigate.
This one-note tale is so padded, it could replace a warehouse of pillows. One star.
They're Trying to Tell Us Something (Part 2 of 2), by Thomas R. McDonough
Last month, Tom McDonough talked about pulsars—those rapidly beeping star-type objects—and did his darndest to convince us that they are artificial beacons operated by Little Green Men (LGM).
This second part is more of the same, though he actually does mention other possibilities, including the most fashionable one that they are rotating neutron stars. My problem with this segment is it is heavy on the layman's lingo and light on the showing of work. It all feels a bit fluffy. Also, he talks about how pulsars emit light bursts at twice the frequency as their radio bursts, and he makes it seem like that's mysterious. If the pulsar is really a rotating neutron star, then it makes sense for any emissions to be linked. Why we only get radio signals from one side, I don't understand off the top of my head, but I suspect anyone with a Bachelors in Physics could tell me.
Three stars.
Cultural Interference, by Walter L. Kleine
by Leo Summers
A couple of scientists begin an experiment with broadcast power. Coincidentally, a couple of extraterrestrial spaceships accidentally intercept and soak up the power, causing them to crash. Chaos ensues.
Wireless power seems to be the rage these days, figuring prominently in Keith Laumer's serial, And Now They Wake. This particular tale is overpadded and pointless.
Two stars.
Opportunist, by Guy McCord
by Kelly Freas
This is the third tale of Caledonia, a backwards planet probably in the same universe as his United Planets tales in which every world has its own uniquely evolved political and social structure. Caledonians all hail from a single crashed colony ship, and their culture is a mix of Scots and indigenous American, based on the few books that survived planetfall (shades of Star Trek's "A Piece of the Action".
In this installment, Caledonia has been largely subjugated by mining concerns from Sidon, and the native Caledonians must resort to guerrila tactics. John of the Hawks, Chief Raid Cacique of the Loch Confederation is captured by the Sidonians and offered a job in their civilian government. After being told the virtues of civilization and capitalism, he decides to hang up his claidheamhor and war bonnet and sell out.
I din't like it. Two stars.
Oh ho!
Well now, here is a case of science fiction definitely being less compelling than science. With the exception of the serial, this was a drab ish, barely scoring 2.7. This puts Analog under Fantasy and Science Fiction (3), IF (3.1), Galaxy (3.5), and New Worlds (3.6). Campbell's mag only beat out the usual losers: Fantastic (2.5), Famous #8 (1.8), and Famous #9 (2).
From eight mags, you could barely fill two big ones with the good stories this month, although part of the reason for that is Famous being so awful. Women produced just 7% of the new fiction stories this month.
I guess the moral is: read your newspapers and your Pohl (and UK) mags first. Pick up Analog only if you've finished the rest. Or if you really like Mack Reynolds…
And now for the man to whom the news wouldn't be the news without the news… here's Gidi!
Dateline: 1969
Apparently, President Nixon and Soviet head of government Kosygin have agreed not to blow up nuclear bombs on the ocean floor, of which there have been somewhere between zero and not many. This is being hailed as a tremendous accomplishment in the field of disarmament. The next great achievement will be banning test explosions on the 32nd day of every month.
I think the two deserve a Flying Fickle Finger of Fate, or the "Penetrating Pinky" as the producer calls it.
Dateline: 1969
Britain is building a giant radio telescope to hear the beginning of the universe. Astronomers believe the cosmos apparently was once compressed into a tiny point, even smaller than Governor Reagan's brain, and when it expanded, the temperature of the stuff dropped, as it always does when you maintain the amount of matter but increase the volume of its container.
A temperature that was once immeasurably high has now gotten so low that it radiates at very low energy levels—detectable by super-sensitive antennas! I imagine the observatory will determine if this radio hiss is uniformly distributed or not. They're also looking for quasars, those objects that are super bright in the radio spectrum, but invisible to the naked eye, and which may be the most distant (and thus, the oldest) objects in the universe.
Of course, we all know the oldest thing you can get on the radio is Jack Benny…
Dateline: 1969
Two airliners were hijacked to Havana yesterday. That's the sixth time this year that there has been a "double-header" seizing. We must be running out of rebels and Communists by now—I would not be surprised to hear that the hijackers are just retirees looking for someplace cheaper than Miami.
Dateline: 1969
President Nixon is coming to San Diego tomorrow. This will lay to rest any dispute, at least while he's here, as to the biggest Dick in town.
What's the news inside this issue?
I've just come back from a little bubble of time inside the roiling chaos that is the real world. It was a little Los Angeles SF conclave called Escapade, filled with fans of all things fannish. Keeping me company on this trip was the lastest issue of F&SF. Although not quite such a rousing success as the con, the issue did have a couple of things to strongly recommend it. Read on, and you'll see what they were:
by Bert Tanner
Deeper Than the Darkness, by Gregory Benford
Greg Benford is a young man, part of an identical twin fannish duo, who I'm pretty sure lives right here in San Diego. He was catapulted into the ranks of the professionals when he won an F&SF writing contest a few years back, and he's written a couple of pieces since then.
His latest is a space adventure involving Captain Clark, a tramp ship skipper impressed into navy service when the mysterious Quarm begin impinging on Terran star colonies. Clark is one of the few men of caucasian ancestry left after the hot wars of the fraught centuries, and human civilization is now dominated by Asians and Polynesians. Society is changed, too, more of a communal affair knitted together by cooperative social activies. Prime among them is Sabal, also referred to as The Game, which is a sort of roleplaying exercise in which each participant offers up vignettes, epigrams, and other creative orations designed to complement rather than dispute the last speaker. When fully harmony is reached, the Game is over.
It is frequent usage of Sabal that keeps the novice crew together as it reaches Regeln, a colony recently ravaged by the Quarm. But Sabal is no defense against, and indeed, a exacerbator for, the particular malady spread by the aliens—a kind of extreme agrophobia that drives humans to literally burrow away from the light, from each other, from the universe.
This downbeat tale is readable, but its psychological and racial underpinnings are a little implausible and more than a little unsettling.
Three stars.
Some Very Odd Happenings at Kibblesham Manor House, by Michael Harrison
A WW2 veteran runs across a much aged and enervated war buddy. Over beers, it turns out that the afflicted soldier has had an unfortunate run-in with the Celtic cult of Cybele, the Earth Mother. Said sect, prominent two thousand years ago, demands great sacrifices of its adherents. The male priests must scourge themselves, ultimately sacrificing that which most distinguishes them as men.
And Kibblesham, built on an ancient temple, infects all who inhabit it with Cybele's compulsion…
This is one of many old-fashioned pieces in the book, almost Lovecraftian in tone. Not really to my taste.
Some 12,000 years ago, before the final Ice Age, great magical societies were the rule. One of the age's great sorcerers is a man simply known as Warlock. In his 200 years of life, he has seen his powers wane several times, each instance compelling him to move on to a new locale, where his mana has been restored. Upon investigation, Warlock determines a terrible truth, one which spells doom for his spell-based civilization.
In the meantime, a stupid swordsman named Hap, wielding the eldritch blade Glilendree (or is it the other way around?), shows up to challenge the wizard. The ensuing battle is noteworthy, indeed.
This is one of Niven's only fantasies, and it's superb. While "magic was common before the modern age" is a frequently mined lode, from Lord of the Rings to Conan to Norton's recent Operation: Time Search, Niven is the first, perhaps, to explain why the magic goes away.
Five stars.
Trouble on Kort, by William M. Lee
This is a police mystery set on the planet of Kort, on which a dozen outworlders have disappeared (kidnapped?) and a dozen natives have taken their own lives—all in the space of just a matter of weeks. Peace Corps officer Jan Pierson is sent in to investigate.
It's a rather unremarkable tale, oddly juvenile in tone and occasionally tedious, but it's not unenjoyable. I appreciated the love interest, the Kortian named "Marty", who did not get enough page time.
A low three.
The House, by P. M. Hubbard
A married couple, awarded a homestead plot in the bombed out fringes of London, tries to build a house amidst the rubble. But the tumulus they choose as a foundation may already be occupied…
This tale is atmospheric but rather trivial, another of the throwbacks. Two stars.
The Incredible Shrinking People, by Isaac Asimov
Last issue, the Good Doctor explained the pitfalls of neglecting physics when dealing with miniaturized or enlarged people. This time, Isaac explains how he accounted for same while writing the novelization of Fantastic Voyage.
Neat stuff. Four stars.
The Freak, by Pg Wyal
There are beggars and there are beggars. The most deformed, crippled, and otherwise unordinary ones band together to form a union of sorts. Tired of their low income, they go on strike, ensuring that the beautiful citizens of Gothopolis have no one to compare themselves to.
Soon, the "normal" Gothopolians go crazy, and their John Lindsay analog must come up with a drastic solution.
The build-up wasn't bad, but the message isn't as profound as Wyal (or editor Ferman) thought it was.
Two stars.
Say goodnight, Dick!
Just as the week's news was much of a muchness, so was this issue of F&SF more a marking of time than the making of a landmark. Still, I am grateful for the Asimov and particularly the Niven, and the rest was not so much unpleasant as forgettable.
Good enough for now. I look forward, as always, to next month's issue—and I hope you do, too!
The other shoe dropped on February 17: Star Trek is officially canceled. Moreover, ABC won't pick it up for its "Second Season" in January. Fan efforts are being directed at CBS, but I can't say the prospects are promising.
One has to wonder if the decision was made due to the spate of lousy episodes that have plagued the second half of the Third Season. On the other hand, the decision was probably made based on the reaction to the first half of the season, which was actually quite good, so maybe Trek was always destined for the block.
This makes the latest episode, what appears to be the penultimate (if, indeed, they even air the last episode sometime in May after eight weeks of reruns and substitutions), particularly bittersweet. "All Our Yesterdays" is possibly Trek's finest hour, even as the clock ticks the show's last minutes.
That the show is so good comes as no surprise; writer Jean Lisette Aroeste wrote the sublime "Is There in Truth No Beauty", and director Marvin Chomsky ran the excellent "Day of the Dove". It is also an unique episode in many ways, from the profusion of excellent sets, to the complete absence of the Enterprise from the show (a phenomenon I cannot recall occurring in any prior episode).
For those who missed it, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to the planet of Sarpedon, a civilized world doomed to be destroyed when its star, Beta Niobe, goes nova—in just a handful of hours. I guess they're there to pick up refugees (if so, there won't be very many…)
The Big Three find themselves in what looks like a post office or safety deposit box annex attended by an elderly Mr. Atoz. This fellow, assisted by several kindly replicas, is a "librarian" who has used his "Atavachron" (a great name for a time machine) to send all of the citizens of Sarpedon into the past, where they will be safe from the stellar explosion. Mr. Atoz assumes the three officers are Sarpedonites who are late to the party, and he gives them run of the archive to find eras to jaunt to.
"You've run up some considerable overdue book fines, young man!"
Well, through misadventure, Kirk ends up in Cromwellian England, where he is locked up under accusation of witchcraft, and McCoy and Spock end up in the planet's last Ice Age, risking frostbite and worse. Apparently, Sarpedon's past is identical to that of Earth, which would be egregious if we hadn't seen similar phenomena in "Miri" and "Bread and Circuses". Indeed, this is actually a welcome data point rather than risible.
"You're under arrest, guv'nor…for overdue book fines!"
"It's colder than a witch's left…" "Agreed, Doctor."
Luckily for Kirk, his judge is one of the refugees from the future, who helps him find the portal back to the library. Luckily for the other two, a lovely woman named Zarabeth, exiled from a time prior to the Enterprise's era, rescues them and gives them refuge in her cave. She quickly falls for Spock (who wouldn't?) and the half-Vulcan finds himself reverting to savagery as a result of his psychic bond with primordial Vulcans of five thousand years ago. Spock peeves at McCoy, moons at Zarabeth, and acts the least Spocklike we've seen him since "This Side of Paradise" in a very honest and affecting way.
Bones convinces Spock to go back to where they arrived in the Ice Age so as to find their way back to the library, which they manage with the help of Kirk. Returned to his time, Spock becomes himself again, but not without a touch of subdued regret at the loss of yet another opportunity at love.
The pacing for this episode is leisurely but consistent, really letting us soak in the environs, the characters, their emotions. The Act-end cliffhangers are unusual and sometimes not even danger points. All of the cast turn in masterful performances, and the guests do as well—standouts include Mr. Atoz (the actor last seen in "Bread and Circuses") and the magistrate who saves Kirk. Mariette Hartley (Zarabeth) is fine, and there is no question that she is lovely, but it's the pickpocket who Kirk rescues in his era, with her period speech and game manner, who is truly memorable. The optical effects are stunning, particularly the Atavachron portal effect.
"Just give the book back. No one will press charges."
Though something of a cul de sac in terms of development of the setting (time travel on Sarpedon only goes to Sarpedon, and the system blows itself up at the end of the episode), it is the opposite of a bottle show. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this episode, and so much that is right.
Five stars
Historically Inaccurate
by Erica Frank
In this episode, we see a mirror-image of the usual dynamic between Spock and Doctor McCoy. The doctor is the rational one, driven to find a solution that lets them get back to the Enterprise—while Spock is distracted by strange circumstances and a pretty lady, and he risks isolating them both because of his emotions.
He attacked McCoy over the epithet "pointy-eared Vulcan"… and although the insult was clear in McCoy's voice, it's also a simple fact: Spock is a Vulcan and his ears are pointy. McCoy has said more directly insulting things to him in the past, but this was apparently his breaking point.
You'd think if he wanted McCoy to shut up, he'd use the Vulcan neck pinch on him. Instead, he grabs him by the throat and brings him in close.
We are supposed to believe that tensions have come to a head because Spock is stuck in the past and atavistic patterns are controlling his behavior. That Spock reverts to savagery because the Vulcans of several thousand years ago were warlike barbarians who ate "animal flesh" and fought for dominance over petty insults.
The problem with that is…
Five thousand years ago on Earth, the Aegean Bronze Age was starting. Imhotep built the Step Pyramid of Djoser; around the same time, Stonehenge was built. Those were ancient human cultures, but they were not so alien from modern humans that a person transported to that time would find their entire nature changed. A modern human thrown back to that time — even with their cell structure and brain patterns adjusted to fit in — would act much like humans do today.
Our records show that human activities and motivations have been very similar throughout history, even as our technology and religions have changed. People complained about politicians, bemoaned their rebellious teenagers, and mourned the passing of beloved pets. Some fought over minor differences and more sensible people denounced those who could not get along with their neighbors. Some were involved in huge, elaborate projects that would not see completion in their lifetimes, and yet they found reason to participate and build on the work of those who had gone before.
Visitors at Stonehenge, perhaps considering what life might have been like 5,000 years ago on Earth.
"Stonehenge 1960s" photo by Annabel M, CC-BY 2.0
Are we to believe that Vulcans were violent barbarians much more recently than humans? That while humans were developing cuneiform and hieroglyphs, establishing the basics of accounting and medical texts, Vulcans were irrational and vicious—but have since surpassed humans in technology and developed powerful psychic abilities?
Something about this doesn't add up. I can more easily believe that Spock, badly disoriented by the trip through time and deeply worried about his friend's survival, latched onto the first viable way to cope: Accept that they are stuck here and focus on surviving in their new home.
Of course, this is only plausible if one believes that Spock would give up his friendship with Kirk for a life with McCoy and a woman he met an hour ago. That possibility raises even more questions.
Four stars. I can quibble over some of the "science," but the character dynamics were riveting.
Treasure from Trash
by Joe Reid
This week’s episode of Star Trek contained many interesting elements: a star about to go Nova, eliminating a solar system and the desperate race to find survivors. A man with duplicate copies of himself. A civilization with the power to travel in time. All interesting concepts that could fill volumes of science fiction. Sadly, these concepts were cheapened by the unnecessary common plot devices which ran rampant in this episode. From jumping to conclusions to failing to ask questions, there didn’t appear to be any characters in this episode unwilling to make critical mistakes that made situations worse than they already were.
Let’s start our examination on an individual level with Kirk and Atoz. Kirk and crew went to a doomed planet where everyone was gone, looking for people to save. Atoz, having saved everyone, was perplexed as to why these newcomers hadn’t escaped yet. This left us with a comedy of errors that shouldn’t have occurred. Had Kirk or Atoz not jumped to conclusions and taken a minute to fully introduce themselves and state their purposes, all parties would have been allowed to move on with their respective businesses without incident. Instead, we were forced to bear witness to two men fighting so hard to save each other they were willing to almost kill each other.
"Kirk, go to your room!"
The second cause of frustration in this episode revolved around the fact that questions were never asked during the times when people were the safest. Again, our two subjects are Atoz and Kirk, but mainly Kirk. Had Kirk asked before he leapt to aid the sound of a screaming woman, he might have saved himself some trouble. Even Spock and McCoy fell into the same situation, chasing after Kirk’s voice as he had the woman. Have none of them ever been taught that the time to ask questions is when you are still at the library, not after you’ve left? Eventually Kirk and crew were able to formulate questions after they found themselves in predicaments. They discovered the answers which led to their salvations. All completely avoidable.
At the end of the day, these mistakes lead to the exploration of fantastical places with many surprises. The journey to the frozen wastes, where Spock and McCoy find the lonely and beautiful prisoner, pushes Spock and McCoy to the brink both physically and emotionally. Kirk has to find unwilling allies in a strange past to save himself from his own prison, and after all that, has to fight to prevent re-imprisonment to save the lives of this crew. I found it amazing that this episode was able to push beyond the cheap narrative devices to deliver a worthy hour of TV. It ultimately rewarded the viewer’s patience for putting up with these forgivable follies to get to some good sci-fi at the end. All gripes aside, I enjoyed watching “All Our Yesterdays”.
It's a highly superior clutch of books this month around—plus a double review of the new Vonnegut…
by Victoria Silverwolf
Sophomore Efforts
By coincidence, the last two books I read were both the second novels to be published by their authors. Otherwise, they are as different as they could be.
Coleman's first book was something called Seeker From the Stars. I haven't read it, so I can't comment. In fact, I was completely unfamiliar with this author, so I asked my contacts in fandom and the publishing industry about him. I turned up a couple of interesting facts.
Firstly, he's one of the few Black science fiction writers. (The most notable is, of course, the great Samuel R. Delany.) That's a good thing for the field. The more variety of writers, the better the fiction.
Secondly, he's currently in jail for burglary. It seems that he's taken up writing while incarcerated. That seems like a decent path to rehabilitation, so let's wish him good luck while paying his debt to society.
But is the book any good? Let's find out.
At some time in the future, humanity has reached the far reaches of the solar system. However, a conglomeration of business interests known as the Five Companies has put a stop to further development of space science, unless they control it. They're so powerful that they have their own secret police. Not even the World Government or the Space Patrol can keep them from crippling research.
Our protagonist is Catherine Rogers. She is part of a private space research group that dares to defy the Five Companies. Trouble starts when a scientist shows up at their headquarters, shot by the secret police. Just before dying, he gives Catherine and her colleagues a book and a key to a hidden cache of highly advanced technology brought from another world.
We quickly find out that two aliens in the form of glowing spheres are on Earth. One of them is insanely evil. He kidnapped the other, who is essentially the queen bee of her species. He intends to mate with her against her will, forcing her to produce one hundred million offspring (!) who will be raised to be as wicked as himself.
He wants to feed off the life force of human beings, and teach his children to do the same, wiping out humanity. Complicating matters is the fact that the evil alien shares his mind with one of the leaders of the secret police, who wants to get his hands on the advanced technology.
This all happens very early in the book, and we've got a long way to go. Suffice to say that Catherine and her friends work with the good alien, who has enormous psychic powers, to defeat the bad one.
The author's writing style isn't very sophisticated, sad to say, nor is the plot. Much of the time I imagined this story as a comic book. On the good side, the pace keeps getting faster and faster. By the end, it makes Keith Laumer look like Henry James.
I also appreciate the fact that the heroes are of mixed races, and a large number of them are women. All in all, however, I have to confess that this is a disappointing work.
Randall's first novel was called Hedgerow. I haven't read that one either, but apparently it's a Gothic Romance without supernatural elements.
Unlike Coleman, I'm familiar with this author. She had two excellent stories published in Fantastic a few years ago.
Will she be as adept at a longer length? Let's take a look.
An automobile accident claims the lives of the parents of two sisters. Elizabeth (twenty-four years old) escapes without a scratch, but Gabrielle (nineteen) is severely injured. The two young women move into a house owned by the great-aunt of a doctor who cared for Gabrielle during her long and painful recovery.
The house is located on an island off the coast of New England, the perfect setting for a Gothic Romance. Elizabeth and the doctor fall in love, giving us the other mandatory element for this genre.
The first half of the book is narrated by Gabrielle. On the very first page she feels the presence of Alarice, a woman who lived in the house long ago. (She's the dead sister of the great-aunt. Throughout the book, there's a strong parallel between the two pairs of sisters, including a love triangle.)
It's obvious from the start that Gabrielle is mentally and emotionally unstable, after her traumatic experience, so it's not always clear what's real and what's not. The second half of the book is narrated by Elizabeth, who gives us a very different perspective on events, including the tragic accident.
I haven't mentioned a third narrator, who shows up only a few pages from the end, adding a genuinely chilling touch.
This is a beautifully written book, with great psychological insight into its characters. Besides gorgeous language that makes me want to read it out loud, it has a plot as intricately woven as a spider web. We witness the same things happen from different viewpoints, completely changing what we thought we knew.
Five stars.
by Brian Collins
This month's Ace Double is a very good one for both Fritz Leiber fans and readers in general. The quality packed into this Double is unsurprising, though, since it is all reprints. There's the short collection Night Monsters, which contains four stories that all run in the horror vein. Three of these stories were previously printed in Fantastic, and so Victoria covered them some years ago. The other half is The Green Millennium, one of Leiber's more overlooked novels, first published in 1953 and not having seen print in the U.S. in about fifteen years.
The longest story here is also the best, at least in terms of the sheer beauty of Leiber's prose. It's Southern California in the early '60s, and the narrator is recounting the strange ramblings of a friend of his who would disappear under mysterious circumstances. Said friend believes that not only is oil a corrupting force, but that oil might somehow be alive. The supernatural is never seen but is strongly alluded to, in passages so evocative, so oppressive, that they compare with Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The plot itself is rather structureless, but this doesn't matter because Leiber is so good at chronicling modern horrors such as industry and the urban landscape. I lived in California (in Pasadena) for a short time, and I'll be sure never to return.
Another contender for best in the collection is a more personal, more melancholy story. A middle-aged man, a chess-player, astronomer, and divorcee who reads somewhat like a stand-in for Leiber, sees a silhouetted figure behind him in the doubled mirrors he sees going up and down the stairs every night. Without giving away the ending, the apparition may be the ghost of a theatre actress he had met by chance who had committed suicide not long after their encounter. The man, in an attack of conscience, is confronted with a memory he had suppressed, of a person he had deeply wronged, though he didn't know it at the time. It's a ghost story, a striking portrait of guilt, and in a strange way, a love story.
As an unintended companion to the previous story, this one is interesting. It also features a ghostly woman who has been wronged, albeit the crime committed upon her is much worse. We're led to believe at first that this woman is simply a temptress, but while she may creep up on the unsuspecting male lead, she is not a totally malicious specter. "I'm Looking for 'Jeff'" is about a decade older than the other stories, and it certainly shows a restraint (given the horrific crime at the center) that Leiber would probably not show if he had written it today. My one real problem is the ending, which is an expositional monologue from a third party that explains the twist, rather than Leiber showing us what happened.
The last and shortest is also the most lighthearted; it's what you might call a horror-comedy. An actress is quite literally fading (her body is becoming more transparent) as her popularity is on the decline, so she resorts to a very old family ritual that might make her famous again—at a price. The satire is cute, although I think Leiber tackled something similar but better and more seriously in "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes." I'm also not sure about those rhyming couplets. It's fine, but ultimately minor.
Phil Gish is aimless and unemployed, but his life quickly gets turned upside down when he meets a green cat he takes an immediate liking to. He calls the cat Lucky, and like Lovecraft, who liked taking care of strays, he thinks of the animal as his own—only for Lucky to run off. Man gets cat, man loses cat, man goes looking for cat. This is the skeleton on which the book's plot is built, but it balloons into something much weirder and more convoluted.
The future America of The Green Millennium is dystopic, but not in ways we now take as obvious. Robots have become normalized, taking away much of human labor, and the people themselves are largely hedonists desperate for stimulation—not even for pleasure itself but more to fight off boredom. Despite being first published in 1953, it reads like something written in the past few years—in the wake of the New Wave and even something like Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Certainly it could not have been serialized in the magazines of the time, what with the explicit references to sex and drug use.
The plot, at its core, is simple, but Leiber introduces a colorful array of characters, all of whom want Lucky as much as Phil does. These characters include, but are not limited to, a husband-wife wrestling duo, an analyst who sounds like he himself could use an analyst, a woman with prosthetic legs that hide what seem to be hooves for feet, a pack of corporate higher-ups who may as well be mobsters, actual mobsters, and a few others I have not mentioned. The green cat might be an alien, or a mutant, or a weapon devised by the Soviets, I won't say which.
I might sound inebriated as I'm trying to explain all this, but let me assure you that I haven't smoked or ingested marijuana in five months!
Leiber is a mixed bag when it comes to comedy: he can be pretty funny, but he can also write The Wanderer. The Green Millennium is a madcap SF comedy that was written at a time (the early '50s) when Leiber could seemingly do no wrong, and it demonstrates his keen understanding of things that haunt the modern American. Most importantly, it's just a lot of fun.
On a routine flight from Stockholm to London, sixteen travellers (eight women and eight men) with no connection to each other, find themselves whisked to another world. Their new environs are suggestive of nothing so much as a zoo habitat designed to be reminiscent of home. To wit: a strip of highway flanked by a supermarket and a hotel, complete with electricity and running water. Two automobiles sans engines. A few workshops. A nightly replenished supply of booze, groceries, and tools.
Russell Graheme, M.P., quickly takes charge of the unwilling emigrants, organizing exploration parties. Soon, contact is made with a medievalist enclave, a Stone Age encampment…and what appear to be flocks of fairies.
What is this world? Who brought them there? And to what end? Those are the key riddles answered in this terrific little new book.
It's sort of a cross between Cooper's book Transit (in which five humans are transported to an extraterrestrial island) and Philip José Farmer's "Riverworld" series (in which everyone who ever lived is transported, along with his/her culture, to the banks of an extraterrestrial world-river) with a touch of the whimsy of L. Sprague de Camp (viz. The Incomplete Enchanter). It reads extremely quickly, and what with the short chapters and quick running time, you'll be done with the novel (novella?) before you know it.
What really engaged me, beyond the tight writing and fine characterization, was the central message of hope throughout the book. In "Riverworld", the various cultures who find themselves alongside each other in the hereafter almost immediately form belligerent statelets; war is the constant in Farmer's series. But in Seahorse, it's all about making peaceful contact, working together, having a productive goal. There's no Lord of the Flies to this story (though it is not unmitigatedly happy, either). Cooper clearly has a positive view of humanity, or at least wants to inspire us toward his idealistic vision. Count me in.
Five stars.
Contrast this upbeat book with the other one I read recently…
By page 100, Gideon determined that Slaughterhouse Five is not a book one enjoys, but rather experiences.
Two thirds of the way through the book, Gideon realized he'd been hoodwinked. Slaughterhouse Five is not science fiction at all, but rather the author's attempt to convey his experiences as a POW in Nazi Germany during the War, culminating in his presence at the firebombing of Dresden (now sited in East Germany). The SFnal wrapping, in which Billy Pilgrim is abducted by 4D aliens who unstick him in time and incarcerate him in an extraterrestrial zoo, seems there mostly to get eyes on the book. Or maybe to maintain a certain detachment from the material by changing the genre from "memoir."
For the same reason Billy Pilgrim, the eternal schlemiel, gets to be the closest thing the book has to a hero rather than the author, himself. The only way Vonnegut could work through his battle fatigue and War-derived ennui was to make the protagonist as hopeless and hapless as possible, to reflect the flannel-wrapped blinders through which the author now sees the world. To Vonnegut, Earth is a pathetic stage on which man inflicts indignity on himself and then on others. Then they die. So it goes.
On or about page 81, Gideon got a little tired of the fairy-tale language Vonnegut employs. It worked in Harrison Bergeron, but it's a bit of a one-trick pony.
Somewhere along the line, Gideon figured that the inclusion of the starlet, Miss Montana (who exists to provide someone besides the enormous Mrs. Pilgrim for Billy to stick his hefty wang into) was so that, in addition to appealing to SF fans, the book would appeal to horny SF fans. And horny readers in general. And because S.E.X. s.e.l.l.s.
Kilgore Trout, if he existed, would probably be reprinted these days in Amazing.
About a third of the way in, Gideon determined that he would write the review of Slaughterhouse Five in the style of Slaughterhouse Five.
Whatever the book is not, it is, at the very least, a memorable account of the author's feelings toward and memories of those dark last months of the war. It is a poignant counterpoint to all the jingoistic WW2 films that have come out this decade, and perhaps a more suitable epitaph for the millions who died in that conflict. So it goes.
Four stars.
by Cora Buhlert
War is hell: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Last month, thousands of people gathered in Dresden to remember the victims of the Allied bombings in the night from February 13 to 14, 1945, the night from Shrove Tuesday to Ash Wednesday and never was a day more aptly named. These memorial gatherings happen every year and while the number of East German officials and politicians attending and the degree of belligerence in their speeches waxes and wanes with the greater political situation (East German officials like using the Dresden bombings for propaganda purposes as an example of the infamy of the West), one thing that remains constant is the number of Dresdeners who come to remember the dead and the nigh total destruction of their city.
The burnt out ruin of the Church of Our Lady in Dresden, once a jewel of Baroque architecture.The Semper opera house in Dresden after the bombings. The exterior is still standing, but the once gorgeous interior is burned completely out.
I have never seen Dresden before 1945, though my grandmother who grew up in the area told me it was a beautiful city and how much she missed attending performances at the striking Semper opera house, which was largely destroyed by the bombings and is in the process of being rebuilt (The proposed completion date is 1985). However, I have visited the modern Dresden with its constant construction activity and incongruous mix of burned out ruins, historical buildings in various stages of reconstruction and newly constructed modernist office and apartment blocks and could keenly feel what was lost.
Views of the modern rebuilt Dresden in postcard form
I also know survivors of the Dresden bombings such as my university classmate Norbert who witnessed Dresden burning as teenager evacuated to the countryside and who – much like Kurt Vonnegut – was forced to help with the clean-up work and body recovery and wrote a harrowing account of his experiences for the university literary magazine.
Of course, Dresden was not the only German city bombed. Every bigger German city has its own Dresden, that night when entire neighbourhoods were wiped out and thousands of people, the vast majority of them civilians, were killed. For my hometown of Bremen, the night was the night of August 18, 1944, when Allied bombers destroyed the Walle neighbourhood next to Bremen harbour (while miraculously missing most of the harbour itself, similar to how the bombing of Dresden miraculously missed the industrial plants on the outskirts of the city). My grandfather, a retired sea captain, lived in the Walle neighbourhood. He was one of the lucky ones and survived, though his home in a housing estate for retired seafarers was destroyed. I remember sifting through the still smoking rubble of Grandpa's little house with my Mom the next day, looking for anything that might have survived the bombs and the firestorm and finding only two bronze buddha statues that Grandpa had brought back from Thailand. These two buddhas now stand guard in my living room, the war damage still visible. Meanwhile, the street where Grandpa once lived no longer exists on modern city maps at all.
An aerial view of Dresden's old slaughterhouse, where Kurt Vonnegut was imprisoned and survived the bombing of the city.
This is the perspective from which I read Kurt Vonnegut's latest novel Slaughterhouse Five, which uses science fiction as a vehicle for Vonnegut to describe his experiences as a prisoner of war who survived the bombing of Dresden and – like my classmate Norbert – never forgot what he saw that night and in the days that followed.
The result, much like the contemporary Dresden with the burned out ruin of the Church of Our Lady overlooking a parking lot and a hyper-modern restaurant and entertainment complex sitting directly opposite the newly restored Baroque Zwinger palace, is jarring and incongruous. Vonnegut's protagonist is Billy Pilgrim, an American everyman whose suburban postwar life is disrupted when he is abducted by aliens and becomes unstuck in time, forced to revisit the bombing of Dresden over and over and over again.
No, this photo of the burnt out ruin of the Church of Our Lady in winter was not taken in 1945, but in 1960. It still looks the same today.A banner advertises an exhibtion of contemporary Soviet art, while the ruins of Baroque Dresden loom in the background.The ultra-modern restaurant complex Am Zwinger, the largest in all of East Germany, opened only last year – directly opposite the newly restored Baroque Zwinger palace.Aerial view of the ultra-modern restaurant complex Am Zwinger, which includes a self-service restaurant, the Radeberger beer cellar and the Café Espresso, pictured here. Just don't expect the coffee on offer to actually taste like espresso.Tourists lounge in the terrace café of the restaurant complex Am Zwinger, overlooking the recently rebuilt Baroque Zwinger palace.
Slaughterhouse Five is not so much a novel, it is a metaphor for the trauma of war, a trauma that still hasn't subsided even twenty-four years later but that keep rearing its ugly head again and again. Many veterans report having flashbacks to particularly traumatic experiences during the war – any war. But while those flashbacks are purely psychological, poor Billy Pilgrim physically travels back in time to the worst night of his life over and over again.
Barely a blip on the radar
The bombings of World War II loom large in the collective memory of people in Germany and the rest of Europe, yet they are comparatively rarely addressed in contemporary German literature. Der Untergang (The End: Hamburg) by Hans Erich Nossack from 1948, Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben (A Time to Love and a Time to Die) by Erich Maria Remarque (who was not even in Germany, but sitting high and dry in Switzerland during WWII) from 1954 and Vergeltung (Retaliation) by Gert Ledig from 1956 are some of the very few examples. It's not as if World War II plays no role in German literature at all, because we have dozens of war novels. However, these are all tales about the experiences of soldiers on the frontline, not about the civilians getting bombed to smithereens back home. Most likely, this is because war novels focus on the experiences of men (and note that both Slaughterhouse Five and Remarque's A Time to Love and a Time to Die focus on soldiers experiencing bombings and air raids) and the experiences of men are deemed important. Meanwhile, the people who suffered and died during the bombing nights of World War II were mainly women, children, old people, sick people, prisoners of war, concentration camp prisoners and forced labourers and their experiences are not deemed nearly as relevant.
Considering how utterly destructive the bombing of Dresden was, it's notable that it is barely a blip on the radar of German literature in both East and West. Erich Kästner's memoir Als ich ein kleiner Junge war (When I was a little boy) touches on the bombing of Dresden, where Kästner grew up, though the book is not about the bombing itself, which Kästner did not experience first-hand, because he was living in Berlin at the time. And for the twentieth anniversary of the Dresden bombings, Ulrike Meinhof, one of the brightest lights of West German journalism, penned a scathing article for the leftwing magazine Konkret, condemning Winston Churchill and Royal Air Force commander Arthur Harris for ordering the attack on Dresden under false pretences. "Was Winston Churchill a war criminal?" the cover of the respective issue of Konkret asked, while quite a lot of readers wondered why this was even a question.
So should Slaughterhouse Five, a work by an American author, albeit one who witnessed the bombing of Dresden first-hand, become the definitive account of the destruction of Dresden and of the bombing nights of World War II in general? I hope not, because I want to read more accounts by German civilians about the bombings of World War II. Nonetheless, I'm glad that Slaughterhouse Five exists, as an account about the horrors of war by one who has seen them. I'm also glad that this novel was published in the US, because too many Americans still consider the bombings of cities and civilians during World War II justified. Maybe Slaughterhouse Five will make some of them reconsider, especially since – as I said above – it wasn't just Dresden that was destroyed by bombing. It was also Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Rotterdam, Coventry, Guernica, Hamburg and right now, it's Hanoi. And the next generation's Billy Pilgrim is currently locked up in a bamboo cage in the Vietnamese jungle somewhere, watching the flames over Hanoi turn the sky blood red.
Not a pleasant book at all, but an important one. Four and a half stars.
And now for something much more pleasant. For after a difficult book like Slaughterhouse Five, you need a palate cleanser. Luckily, I found the perfect palate cleanser in The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs, a young American writer currently living in Britain. The Face in the Frost is thirty-year-old Bellairs' third book and his first foray in the fantasy genre.
John Bellairs
The novel starts off with a prologue that informs us that this is a book about wizards – just in case readers of Bellairs' previous two books, collections of Catholic humour pieces, are confused – and then introduces us to the setting, two adjacent kingdoms known only as the North and the South Kingdom. Such prologues can be dry and boring, but Bellairs' whimsical humour, which is on display throughout the book, makes them fun to read.
Once the introductions are out of the way, we meet our protagonist, the wizard Prospero ("not the one you're probably thinking of", Bellairs helpfully informs us) or rather his home, "a huge, ridiculous, doodad-covered, trash-filled two-story horror of a house that stumbled, staggered, and dribbled right up to the edge of a great shadowy forest of elms and oaks and maples", which Prospero shares with a sarcastic talking mirror which can offer glimpses of faraway times and places, though mostly, it's just annoying and also has a terrible singing voice.
Prospero's house, as illustrated by Marilyn Fitschen
This first chapter very much sets the tone for the entire novel, humorous and whimsical – with moments of dread occasionally creeping in. For Prospero has been plagued by bad dreams of late, he has the feeling that a malicious presence is watching him and finds himself menaced by a fluttering cloak, while getting a mug of ale from his own cellar. To top off Prospero's very bad day, he finds himself attacked by a monstrous moth that "smells like a basement full of dusty newspapers".
Luckily, Prospero's friend and fellow wizard Roger Bacon – and note that this time around, Bellairs does not inform us, that this is not the one we're thinking of, so this likely is the famed medieval scholar and creator of a talking brazen head – chooses just this evening to drop by for a visit, after having been kicked out of England, when a spell went awry and instead of constructing a wall of brass around the island in order to keep out Viking raiders, Bacon instead raised a wall of glass with predictable results.
As the two old friends discuss the day's events, it quickly becomes clear that something or rather someone is after Prospero and all that this is linked to a mysterious book that Bacon tried to locate on Prospero's behalf. However, it's late at night, so the two wizards go to bed, only to awaken in the morning to find the house surrounded by sinister grey-cloaked figures, sent by a rival wizard. There's no way out – except via an underground river that the two wizards navigate aboard a model ship, after shrinking themselves down to toy size.
A Magical Mystery Tour
What follows is a marvellous, magical quest, as Prospero and Bacon attempt to figure out just who is after Prospero and once they do, how to stop that villainous sorcerer from casting a spell that will plunge the whole world into everlasting winter. On the way, the two wizards encounter such fascinating locations as the village of Five Dials, which turns out to be an illusion, a magical Potemkin village of hollow houses inhabited by hollow people. They also escape all sorts of horrors their opponent sends against them such as a magical puddle that will capture a person's reflection, should they happen to look into it, and of course the titular face that appears in a frost-encrusted window to mock and menace Prospero.
Fantasy is experiencing something of a boom right now, triggered by the paperback release of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and Lancer's reprints of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan the Cimmerian. But while Conan has inspired a veritable legion of other fantastic swordsmen and barbarian warriors from Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné to Lin Carter's Thongor, Lord of the Rings has inspired very few imitators. Until now.
This does not mean that The Face in the Frost is a carbon copy of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. Quite the contrary, it's very much its own story, even though the Tolkien inspiration is clear and was acknowledged by Bellairs. Furthermore, Bellairs' light and frothy tone makes The Face in the Frost a very different, if no less magical experience than Professor Tolkien's magnum opus.
The Face in the Frost is a delightful book, skilfully mixing humour and whimsy with horror and dread, and the illustrations by Marilyn Fitschen help bring the wonderful world of Prospero and Roger Bacon to life. The ending certainly leaves room for a sequel and I hope that we will get to read it sooner rather than later. At any rate, I can't wait to see what John Bellairs writes next.
A wondrous confection of whimsy, horror and pure joy. Five stars.
by Robin Rose Graves
Society Without Gender…
Another year, another Le Guin. For those tuning in for the first time, my introduction to Le Guin began two years ago, with her novel City of Illusions, which left me disappointed. Last year, I read A Wizard of Earthsea, where finally I saw Le Guin’s potential realized. When I saw she has another book coming out this year, I was interested, but reined in my expectations when I realized The Left Hand of Darkness would take place in the same universe as City of Illusions.
This is book four of the Hainish Cycle, but fortunately, you do not need to read these books in order to understand the story. In fact, I found little connection between this book and the previous one.
Genly Ai is an envoy sent to the snowy planet of Winter to convince the people to join the Ekumen (a sort of alliance between planets). Winter, or Gethen in their native language, is not as technologically advanced as the rest of the universe. They have yet to build airplanes, let alone a vehicle capable of space travel. Following an outsider’s perspective allows readers to learn about a new culture alongside the narrative main character.
As per my experience with her previous works, Le Guin excels at creating compelling and unique settings. Smaller, intermediate chapters offer folkloric stories from the planet of Winter to further enhance the reader’s understanding of Gethenian culture.
All the characters are human, though the Gethenians differ in one key way. They are completely androgynous except for once a month when they enter their reproductive cycle (known as “kemmer”) where they then shift into either male or female (as in they can either impregnate or become pregnant.) Which role a Gethenian will take on during kemmer is not predetermined and can change between cycles.
This confuses and occasionally disgusts Genly Ai, who regards all characters with he and him pronouns, perhaps because he is male and unable to empathize with or respect anyone who isn’t.
Without gender, Le Guin posits that there is no sexuality, no rape, no war. People who get pregnant are not treated as lesser. Children are raised by everyone, not just the person who gave birth to them. Jobs account for kemmer, giving time off for those experiencing their cycle, and special buildings are set aside for reproduction.
Contrasted with the world we live in today, this book subtly calls out the sexism of our own society, while also exemplifying how we may improve. I was pleasantly surprised by the feminist slant of this book.
Five stars.
Reflections in a Mirage, by Leonard Daventry
By Jason Sacks
Leonard Daventry is a British science fiction author whose work tends to follow standard pathways – until it doesn’t. As my fellow Galactic companion Gideon Marcus wrote about one of Mr. Daventry’s previous novels, Daventry likes to explore ideas of free love and complex relationships, using familiar set-ups with slightly surprising resolutions.
His latest book, Reflections in a Mirage, is an excellent demonstration of how Mr. Daventry takes on those challenges while delivering his own unique view of the world. Unfortunately, this novel is perhaps overly ambitious for its length. Mirage consequently falls short of the author’s clear goals.
We return to the lead character Daventry established back in 1965 in A Man of Double Deed: Claus Coman is a telepath, a so-called “keyman” who can create connections to minds of both humans and non-humans. Coman is enlisted to join a motley band of outcasts and criminals who journey to one of the many worlds which humanity has discovered among the vast stars: a forbidding but intriguing planet called Sacron. Coman at least has the comfort of traveling with longtime companion Jonl, a woman with whom he’s had a complex relationship.
But just as many British exiles to Australia rebelled against their crew, the group of 50 outcasts rebel against the crew of their space cruiser. A violent, vicious battle kills most of the men who can fly the cruiser, and terrible damage is visited upon the ship. They only have one choice: to land on the planet which is ironically called Paradise 1. Paradise 1 seems to be a desert world, nearly bereft of any life whatsoever, but there are hints the planet may be more complex than it initially seems.
In fact, we get an intriguing revelation towards the end of the book (with a few concepts which will be well understood by Star Trek fans), but I found myself hungering for more context of the deeper story. At a mere 191 paperback pages, I was constantly under the impression that Daventry had to cut out important elements to the story; its brevity leaves the conclusion feeling a bit unsatisfying.
Reflections in a Mirage is at its best when it explores the human relationships it depicts. Coman’s relationship with Jonl is at the center of the story and provides a happy connection where so many of the other connections are tenuous. Daventry spends some time showing Jonl’s relationship with other women on the colony ship – the men and women are partitioned away from each other – and alludes to furtive, loving relationships among the women. There are similar hints about some of the men's connections to each other, and a strong implication that this society accepts a full gamut of sexuality, from polygamy to homosexuality and even to asexuality.
All of that is very interesting, and places this novel firmly in a “new wave” mindset, but there’s just not enough of it to satisfy. Ultimately, Reflections in a Mirage has the potential to be great, but I felt Daventry needed at least 100 more pages to fully illuminate his story.
You’ll probably be more satisfied reading some of the other works in this column. (I do recommend the LeGuin and Vonnegut books.)
Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, is back from a tour of Europe. All of his visits made headlines, particularly when he went to the Vatican and a couple hundred students held signs that said, "Nixon go home!"
Hey now—we don't want him either!
The Dick met with the "Jesus of the Franks", General DeGaulle, for a high profile religious summit. Our President failed to return with the next Ten Commandments nor a commitment to allow Britain into the European Community (much less France's return to NATO).
Nixon is now back in the States. Apparently, Jack Benny managed to buy more than a gallon of gas at Texaco since he made it all the way to Andrews Air Force Base to amuse the President upon his return. Well, maybe the air fare was on the country's dime.
One of the places Nixon did not stop, but sent a staffer in his stead, was the funeral of Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. The Jewish leader's death was rather a surprise, and his interim replacement is something of a dark horse: 70 year old foreign minister Golda Meir. She is the first woman leader of the Jewish state, and one of the few female national leaders this century. It is possible she will step down in favor of her party confederate Yigal Allon when he stands for the next regular election against conservative rival General Moshe Dayan.
Into the wild Blue/Black yonder
As I type this, Apollo 9 is currently in orbit, its crew practicing a series of maneuvers that will be duplicated on this summer's trip to the Moon. It's sort of like a Gemini training mission (two of the astronauts, Scott and McDivitt, are Gemini veterans) but with Apollo hardware. It is fitting, therefore, that the latest issue of Galaxy deals with space in almost all of its stories:
Centuries after a nuclear apocalypse, the Earth's four billions reduced to just one hundred million, humanity lives in a patchwork of low-technology communities. There are the farmers, who make up the vast majority; the villagers who comprise a rude middle class; the Luddites, barbarians who plunder, mostly for fun; the arrogant Neo-Scientists, who enslave many so that a few may reconstruct the wisdom of the past; and the Empires—petty states whose influence extends no further than their capital regions.
And there are the witch-doctors, who use "magic" to heal and educate, and the pilgrims, who seek the truth. "Witch Hunt" is the tale of two such pilgrims, their tour of America's degraded communities, and a survey of their relative merits and lacks. Of course, the story reveals the truth they have been searching for.
There is more than a whiff of Silverberg's Nightwings serial here, and while the prose is not quite so beautiful, it is serviceable.
Hobie was a precocious child whose life was irrevocably influenced by Star Trek, though the TV show is never mentioned by name.
A successful teen and, later, frustrated serviceman, he can't shake the feeling that he is somehow separate from the human race. The story's conclusion bears much in common with that of "Witch Hunt". I wonder if putting thematically-similar stories together was deliberate or coincidental?
Something about this story reminds me a bit of the works in our Rediscovery anthologies, or perhaps a bit of the works in the fanzines. In particular, the focus on Trek and also the fact that the protagonist is a minor for much of the piece set it apart from many of the stories we encounter regularly. I had to check the byline to make sure it wasn't by Evelyn E. Smith, or Rosel George Brown, or Zenna Henderson, for example.
As a whole the story isn't bad, but unfortunately, Tiptree botches the end. Three stars.
How Like a God, Robert Bloch
by Reese
Pride goeth before a fall: Mok is an incorporeal being who refused to surrender his personality to the group; as a consequence, the divine Ser confines him to an alien, physical body and banishes him to a planet of primitives. There, Mok becomes a kind of Prometheus, elevating the aborigines' culture and technology. But is Mok a God…or a serpent in the garden?
Kind of a neat piece. I think it falls on the lower side of the three/four star divide.
Simak loves to write "pastoral science fiction" set in his stomping grounds of Minnesota, and so, "Buckets of Diamonds" reads a bit like The Andy Griffith Show meets The Twilight Zone. Drunk Uncle Charlie gets locked up in the pokey one day when he is found staggering down the street, an Old Master's canvas under one arm, and carrying a bucket of diamonds. Later, he disappears from jail and turns up driving a hovercar alongside a sour-faced alien…who presently encourages all of the citizenry to dispose of their technological gadgets!
All of this is much to the chagrin of Charlie's nephew-in-law, a local attorney who must sort the mess out.
Not much to this tale, which ultimately doesn't go anywhere, or when. Three stars.
Slave to Man, Sylvia Jacobs
Tony is an editor for one of those schlock-houses that produces "the sexies" (prurient pulps). One day, he notices he's getting a lot of torn off covers from returns that say "Help! Help! I am being held in bondage! I am only 15 years old!"
Who he finds when he seeks the poor soul out, and how said soul revolutionizes the sexies industry is both amusing and, perhaps, prescient.
The saga continues of two immortal aliens destined for a final confrontation somewhere in 21st Century America. Last time, we learned that Gralgrathor had self-exiled from his stellar Federation to go native amongst medieval Vikings. His confederate, Lokrien, murdered 'Thor's wife and child to incentivize his return to galactic civilization.
In this installment, Lokrien, now fully healed from vicious scars he carried for decades, is looking for 'Thor, who now goes by the name of Grayle. Grayle, as you recall from last time, escaped from the Caine Island maximum security prison, where he had been languishing for over a century. Both immortals have assistants: Lokrien's is a mercenary cabbie who is efficient with his fists; Grayle has picked up a lovely woman named Anne who insists on helping him despite not knowing the whole story.
Meanwhile, an enormous whirlpool is growing in the middle Atlantic, generating hurricane force winds across the hemisphere. It seems to be powered by the newly online broadcast power plant on the Eastern seaboard. Attempts to shut down the plant are all thwarted by some unknown force. You can bet that the aliens are somehow involved, however…
Still interesting stuff. Four stars.
For Your Information: The Drowned Civilization, Willy Ley
This month's article is a potpourri dedicated to three questions: 1) how easy would it be for a planet to capture a new moon, 2) how would the Earth's land contours change should the ice caps melt, and 3) what kind of creature is the biblical zaphan?
Three stars.
There and back again
Well, that was rather fun! Nothing spectacular, but all in all, a rapid, enjoyable read. Galaxy remains my favorite of the monthlies, and I can't wait to see how the Laumer turns out. I am also happy to see that we're getting at least one woman writer each month again. The magazine was at its best when that was the case back in the '50s, and Sylvia Jacobs turned in one of my favorites of the issue.
Until next time…keep up to date with Nixon on Laugh-In, and science fiction on the Journey!
Four years ago (has it been that long?) Mariner 4 became the first space probe to sail by Mars. This event instantly destroyed a thousand dreams. The 21 grainy, black and white pictures returned by the spacecraft's TV cameras showed a cratered, lunar-type surface. The Martian atmosphere was found to be less than 1% as dense at the surface as that of Earth. Gone was the romantic Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett.
These findings should not have come as such a surprise—the abundance of craters and the thin atmosphere had already been suspected before Mariner 4 ever got there. But the photographic evidence was the final nail in the coffin. Mars is dead.
Or is it?
Mariner 4 was a rather limited spacecraft. We only got 21 pictures, after all. And while 7 millibars may not seem like much, that's a veritable atmospheric blanket compared to the Moon or Mercury. We need more data.
This is why a second generation of spacecraft, Mariners 6 and 7, are being sent to Mars. These are heavier spacecraft with more sophisticated equipment: infrared and ultraviolet radiometers (measuring Martian energy output in those wavelengths), a better TV camera, and the ability to reprogram the spacecraft in flight, as needed.
Mariner 6 took off last week on the 24th, and Mariner 7 will blast off March 21st. We've yet to have both members of a Mariner pair make it to its destination (Mariner 1 and Mariner 3 both had mishaps), but hope springs eternal. Come this summer, perhaps around the same time a man sets foot on the Moon, we will unveil more mysteries of the fourth planet.
I have a private joke that every Chris Anvil story for Analog begins (Mad Lib style):
[Military Rank] [WASPy male name] of [military organization] [verbed] down the [corridor/hall/base] lightly touching his [weapon] clipped to his [clippable article of clothing].
"Trap" did nothing but reinforce this cliché, and I hunkered down for a slog of a novella.
Instead, I got a reasonably interesting, technical tale about peaceably dealing with implacable aliens, who possess an unbeatable weapon. In this case, the planet is a swampy wasteland, the aliens have the ability to teleport anywhere they've been before, and the humans and Centrans (in an alliance since the 1956 story, "Paradise Planet") must find a way to make peace before the aliens find a way to teleport onto every ship and planet in both empires.
It starts a bit slow, but I found myself compelled. Certainly better than the fare Anvil usually offers us in Analog. Three stars.
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, by R. E. Allen
How does Mannie supply all the movies and music producers with the top talent? Why, by dowsing over each of the actor's/musician's headshots with a divining rod, of course!
Not much of a story. Not much science fiction. Two stars.
They're Trying to Tell Us Something (part 1 of 2), by Thomas R. McDonough
This month's science article is on those enigmatic, recently discovered interstellar radio beacons known as pulsars. Beeping on the radio dial on the average of once a second (some are faster, some are slower), they are significant for their unwaveringly precise timing and for their enormous power output—some one billion times the power output of all of Earth's civilizations!
There is a lot of interesting information in this article, but what annoys me is that McDonough seems convinced that pulsars are the work of "Little Green Men" (LGM), and presents his article accordingly. Nowhere in the piece is the general accepted wisdom that the regularity of the signals and the fact that they seem to carry no information (not to mention their tremendous power) indicates that pulsars are rapidly rotating stars, and likely rapidly rotating, collapsed dead stars called "neutron stars".
This isn't esoteric knowledge I gleaned from The Astrophysical Journal—it's from the Sunday Supplement of Escondido's rag of a paper, The Times-Advocate. So, its exclusion from McDonough's piece must be conscious, and that makes his arguments suspect. Perhaps he'll discuss neutron stars in the next piece, but they really should have been front and center.
Three stars.
Minitalent, by Tak Hallus
by Leo Summers
Alice Culligan, third mate and computer officer on the space ship Iphigenia, witnessed a crime: gun runners had smuggled cruel "nervers" to a race of aborigines. They were caught, but the company they're working for looks to get away scott free. They will do anything to ensure that verdict—including silencing Miss Culligan forever.
But Alice has an ace up her sleeve: a minor talent for telekinetics. And in a computerized world, sometimes a little push is all that's needed…
Similarly premised as Larry Niven's sublime "The Organleggers", this tale (Tak Hallus' first) is not as deftly told. That said, it is pretty good, and I liked the heroine very much. It's clearly in the vein of, say, James H. Schmitz, so if you like him, you'll like this.
By the way, Tak Hallus is simply Arabic for "pseudonym", so who knows? Maybe it really is Schmitz!
An assassin named Jagen performs a job and, with the help of a teleportation system, escapes The Great Despot's justice. But is there any ultimate evasion the efficient robot machines of the Despot's police force?
The well-written piece is really a setup for the philosophical question posed at the end. The answer is surprising for such a libertarian mag as editor Campbell's.
And now, the conclusion of Wolfling. By Gordy Dickson.
Jim Weil, archaeologist and Ace of All Trades (the term "bannou" (万能) is even more appropriate), had infiltrated the High-Born empire he was sent to detachedly examine, becoming a general in its armies. Having discovered a plot to destroy the imperial warrior race of Starkiens, Jim quickly returned to the throne world to thwart a plot on the Emperor, himself. He is successful in defeating the pretender, the Emperor's cousin, but now he must return to Earth and face treason charges for possibly incurring the imperial wrath on humanity.
In a dramatic courtroom scene, Jim explains his actions, how they saved the Earth, and the true origin of humanity vis. a vis. the High-Born. Did we come from them, or did they come from us?
The answer is rather disappointing, more along the lines of something I'd expect written in the pulp era than modern times. In addition, all of the energy-saber dueling seemed unnecessary; when everyone can teleport at whim, how do you keep your foe in the same room long enough to dispatch him? Or keep your foe from materializing behind you?
But most of all, I had expected a statement against eugenics, but instead got something of a defense of it. If not for the skilled writing, I might rate it more poorly.
Three stars for the serial as a whole.
On to the numbers!
You know, it's been quite a month! With Analog clocking in at 3.4 stars, it's near the top of the heap rather than taking its usual place in the middle. Ahead of it were Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4) and IF (3.5). The good news is, the spread was pretty narrow: Galaxy scored 3.3, New Worlds 3.2, New Writings 14 3. Only Amazing scored below the three-line (2.7), and it was still better than usual.
In other vital statistics, women produced 11% of the new fictional content. The superior stuff this month would fill three full-sized magazines. Given that there were seven published this month, that's a good ratio.
Stay tuned for the end of next month when we find out how April's magazines do…and how Mariner 7 flies!
The Corrosive Threat of Antidisestablishmentarianism
by Amber Dubin
US-world relations have been growing increasingly concerning as we venture cautiously into the first couple of months of 1969. From never having quite gotten back on the right foot since last year's Tet offensive (and with this year's edition currently ongoing) to the aftermath of the Pueblo incident, to the newly renewed Moon Race, it sometimes feels like America is standing on the world stage with shaky legs. It is easy to react to these uncertain times by pining for a prelapsarian epoch in human history.
It’s rather apropos, then, that Star Trek writers have once again turned to the often-referenced biblical Garden of Eden. Here, however, I'd argue that “The Way to Eden” approaches this subject in an unique way by suggesting, as Spock does here, that all advanced societies “hunger for an Eden, where spring comes.”
What happens when you set transporter coordinates for Haight/Ashbury
The episode opens on a familiar scenario where the Enterprise is hotly pursuing a stolen vessel that is overheating its engines to alarming levels. They manage to beam over the occupants just before the fleeing vessel explodes, and the crew of the Enterprise is confronted by a motley crew of ragamuffins. Kirk greets the strangely dressed, wild, love-and-peace-preaching, anti-authoritarian naturalists by informing them that they were only spared consequences for stealing and destroying a Federation ship because the wayward son of a political figure is among them.
"Don't trust the Fuzz, man!"
They respond to Kirk’s mercy without gratitude, disrespectfully requesting that the Enterprise act as a ferry in their quest to reach a planetary Eden and relocating to sickbay with extreme reluctance.
Meanwhile, Ensign Chekov discovers that a lovely dark-haired Russian beauty from his Starfleet Academy days is among the band of miscreants. Irina Galiulian and Chekov lost touch when she dropped out of Starfleet to chase nebulous and flighty pursuits, a choice that Chekov deeply disapproves of. They have an angry, yet charged, discussion which resolves nothing before she returns to her more amiable family of choice.
Is Chekov going through captain's training? Because I thought it was Kirk's job to be so enamored of the pretty lady that he forgets to protect the ship.
Back in sickbay, the situation has descended into chaos. The group’s leader, ex-research engineer Dr. Sevrin, has been determined to be a carrier for a superbug that is both incurable and created by the advanced sterilization techniques used to sustain Federation environments. He is thus quarantined and isolated from his flock, an action against which the rest of the group protests heavily.
Acting as both the snake and the snake charmer, the now deemed insane Dr. Sevrin spurs on the rest of his group to break him out of isolation and seize control of the Enterprise, knowing their musical seductions and rapscallion ways will cause the crew to lower their defenses and underestimate any hidden, nefarious intentions.
Tonight on Hullabaloo!
Furthering this goal, Irina isolates Chekov and effortlessly steps into the role of femme-fatale, doing little else other than batting her lashes and breathing lightly on Chekov’s lips to get him to spill his guts about every single operating mechanism of the ship’s security and navigational systems. Next, the group minstrel, Adam, begins a pied piper act, strumming and singing his way through the whole ship. He even convinces Spock to display his instrumental talents in a seemingly impromptu concert that gets broadcast over the ship’s speakers, in a very effective misdirection campaign that covers for his comrades as they disable ship security and free their leader.
Now in control of the Enterprise, the group barrels into Romulan space towards a planet that ship’s scanners have defined as Eden, setting a trap to disable the crew and allow them time to escape. There is a brief pause where members of the group try and fail to dissuade the power-mad Dr. Sevrin from making this trap fatal for the Enterprise crew, but thankfully this is the one part of their plan that the crew is able to disrupt before succumbing to those permanent consequences.
Asleep on the job
The band briefly appears victorious in the acquisition of their fabled garden, but find the paradise hostile to humanoid life, and the bare-footed hippies literally get burned by the acid-coated plants growing in an Eden that was supposed to welcome them. Faced with the devastating failure of his quest, Dr. Sevrin willfully consumes the deadly fruit, very plainly demonstrating that the insanity brought on by his dual lust for anarchy and power was fatal.
The metaphorical apple (still much better than "The Apple")
I think boiling this episode down to “the one about beatniks in space” is both simplistic and disrespectful to the subtlety of the message it’s trying to convey. I see how, on its face, it could appear that the plot of this episode is a ham-fisted attempt to judge the reactions of the Enterprise crew when introduced to hippies from our time, but I’d argue their role here is to demonstrate the corrosive nature of antidisestablishmentarianism. I think the fact that such a small group of humanoids, with no greater powers of intelligence or manipulation than any other aliens we’ve met so far, was able to so swiftly and effortlessly take control of the ship, speaks to the power of hiding in plain sight.
Rather than the loudly chanting overtones that kindness can be fatal, the more subtle message here is that these intruders merely awakened seeds that were pre-sown into the mind of every being in known society. The unspoken fear that our zeitgeist whispers, is that every established system only functions as long as the seeds of hedonism, anarchy and sedition do not grow to destroy it. It is the reason power fears the rhetoric of communists, cultists and anarchists; why it tries to silence the rabble-rousers, quell the mobs, round up and isolate the dissenters, and burn the witches.
The wolf is efficiently hidden in sheep's clothing when love-drunk, starry-eyed hippies prove themselves not to be peaceniks –but weapons. Weapons so effective that, in a matter of hours, they reduce an advanced, peaceful, orderly, military vessel to the plaything of a handful of gleeful, half-naked, singing fools.
If only they let Bob Hope tour the Enterprise, the crew wouldn't be so starved for entertainment. Then again, they might…
This episode very effectively warns against the dangers of what can happen when a charismatic, silver-tongued leader sinks his fangs into the impressionable minds of restless sycophants. It demonstrates how powerful that sharp-witted leader can become when he knows how to wield such universally disarming weapons as pleasant music, a righteous and honorable cause, and the promise of affection and approval from smiling, scantily-clad, untamed youths.
Despite its disarming façade, this episode is not a light romp. It is a cautionary tale; and in my opinion a particularly well-woven yarn.
5 stars.
Space Hippies
by Erica Frank
We only see six of the Edenites, but they must be part of a larger movement: Spock knows their greeting and their philosophy, and "reaches" them well enough to be the ship's liaison with them. Either they are very numerous, or very influential, or both.
Clockwise from center: Dr. Sevrin, a brilliant engineer; Adam, a musician; Tong Rad, son of the Catullan ambassador, who plays drums; nameless blonde musician who plays the stringed wheel; nameless brunette woman; Irina Galliulin, Chekov's former girlfriend.
Spock respects their goals even when he recognizes that Sevrin is manipulative and deceitful. At least three of them are well-educated, talented, and lauded in their fields; we have no reason to suspect the others are random dropouts. These aren't people who have failed at mainstream society and are chasing myths to make up for their inadequacy–rather, they have judged the Federation and found it wanting in soul and harmony. As Spock says, "They regard themselves as aliens in their own worlds… a condition with which I am somewhat familiar."
They have lost their leader and their Eden, but four of them remain, and they need not give up their quest for a peaceful community, away from a technological, regimented society.
We've seen at least two places they could go: One where people can live a mellow and gentle life, but slowly lose their drive for creativity. And one where they could have fantastic adventures, but none of it would be real. Or they can keep searching for a tropical paradise planet that's not full of acid and poison, although any of those in Federation space are likely to be populated ("exploited," I'm sure they'd say) unless there's some reason not to go there.
…Maybe paradise planet is being used as a retirement facility now, and is too commercialized for the hippies. Maybe the Shore Leave planet is restricted – the aliens who run it don't want the Federation trying to figure out their technology. So perhaps they need to look for somewhere else. But on their quest, they can visit other planets and find people looking for a simpler, gentler life.
They'll need to find a new lead guitarist.
Five stars (but I'm probably very biased). I loved the music, and that the ending, although touched with tragedy, wasn't "it's all ruined." There's room for hope that someday, they will find their Eden.
Back to the Beginning
by Gideon Marcus
Remember first season Star Trek? When Kirk was a "a stack of books with legs", stiff and Hornblower-like? When Spock was cold on the outside, hot on the inside? When other members of the cast had lines? When the Enterprise halls were filled with crew members and guests? When music was a fundamental part of the show? (viz. Uhura singing in "Charlie X" and "The Conscience of the King")
There are many reasons to like "A Way to Eden", and they are well-represented in the above entries by my colleagues. But what I loved about the episode the most was that it felt like a return to the Trek I liked best. After so many episodes in which the characters acted contrary to their nature, when plots were half-baked, when technology was inconsistent, when our favorite vessel seemed sterile and incomplete—finally, the Enterprise feels alive again.
You can even see the relief in the crew. The fellow guarding the brig was mesmerized listening to that (quite excellent) jam between Spock and the exquisite and talented Deborah Downey. He must have been just parched for entertainment. No wonder they all were so susceptible to the influence of One.
I'd watch this episode of Jazz Casual any day…
Spock's heart-wrenching expression of support of the Edenites' quest, his solidarity with their feeling of alienation within utopia, was worth the price of admission all on its own. The space hippies weren't characterized as naive, pampered rich kids who didn't know what was good for them. They are the free spirits for whom middle class American values just don't wash. A key message of this episode: surely, the Federation must be big enough for them, too. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination, ¿qué no?
And finally, if Charles Napier and Deborah Downey ever release an album of their performances on this show (I can absolutely buy that Adam's space guitar provides perfect acoustics and amplification for his voice), I will be the first in line. Also, if anyone's started a Deborah Downey fan club, I want to be a charter member. Otherwise, I might have to make one myself…
Four stars.
[Come join us tonight (February 28th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]
This week, the regional news has been filled with the death of a local hero. Aquanaut Berry L. Cannon, a resident of Sealab III off the coast of La Jolla, died while diving 610 feet to repair a helium leak in his undersea home.
It wasn't a matter of foul play or (so far as is currently known) an accident. The 33 year old Cannon, subject to the rigors of a deep dive and 19 times the pressure out of water, simply succumbed to a cardiac arrest. He was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.
The three other divers who had gone with him had no physical troubles. The repair effort had come shortly after the habitat had been lowered to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean pending long-term habitation by eight aquanauts. Cannon was a veteran of the second Sealab experiment, back in 1965.
We talk a lot about the space program here on the Journey, but it's important to know that humanity is pushing at all the frontiers, from Antarctica to the sea bottom. And in all such dangerous endeavors, there are tragedies as well as triumphs. Sacrifice is part of the bargain we make for survival of the species, but it never goes down any easier. Especially for his wife, Mary Lou, and their three children…
Davy Jones has company
In less tragic news, the latest issue of F&SF is filled with the kind of madcap, surreal adventures you might expect to find on the (sadly cancelled) The Monkees, particularly the first tale:
by Ronald Walotsky, illustrating the title story
Calliope and Gherkin and the Yankee Doodle Thing, by Evelyn E. Smith
Like, far out—two Greenwich Village type 17 year-olds, the Jewish "Gherkin" and his Black girlfriend "Calliope" are set up to take the biggest trip of their life. Like, they don't trip out on acid or pot, but literally are snatched for a jaunt to the stars, where they hook up with some of the sexiest green-furred cats you ever did saw.
Was it all an illusion? Or were they really summoned beyond the stars for stud duty? The plot thickens when Calliope begins to show in a motherly way…
This is the first I've seen of Evelyn E. Smith since she was a frequent star of Galaxy in the early '50s. Her chatty, droll style translates pretty well into the modern day, with her madcap, satirical melange of race relations, drug culture, and extraterrestrial high jinks. It runs, perhaps, a bit overlong, and also overdense, but it's not unenjoyable. Welcome back!
Three stars.
Party Night, by Reginald Bretnor
Carce is a scheming woman-user, all veneer and bitterness. When his multi-year attempts to seduce the woman he wants from her husband fails, he goes on a driving jag that plunges him further and further into a night determined to karmically repay him. The pay-off is horrific, though appropriate.
Typical Twilight Zone or Hitchcock stuff, but nicely presented.
Four stars.
by Gahan Wilson
After Enfer, by Philip Latham
A milquetoast of a man, paralyzed by fear, decides (at the urging of his wife) to find a better job than the museum position he's been stuck in for 16 years. He is recruited to explore the Nth Dimensions with an eye toward opening up tesseractal space for colonization, the world being intensely overcrowded.
We never get no details of the trip; we just know that no one has ever managed to deal with the terror of 3D+ space before. Frankly, without that, the story is just sort of frivolous and a let down.
Two stars.
The Leftovers, by Sterling E. Lanier
The latest Brigadier Ffellowes shaggy-dog-story-told-in-a-pub-setting is the least of the three Lanier has written thus far. This time, it's about a Paleozoic race of sinister, intelligent bipeds that inhabit the southern coast of Arabia, and how the Brigadier and his Sudanese sidekick narrowly escape their pursuit.
Lovecraft was doing such stories better many decades ago. A low three stars.
An Affair with Genius, by Joseph Green
Valence is a gifted biologist, plodding and methodical. For twelve years, he has been estranged from Valerie, a volatile genius in the same field, with whom he had shared a brief but remarkable relationshop. Success tore them apart, as she got the credit for their landmark discovery, and then seemingly abandoned him for a senior professor.
So, when she reappears in his life on the desiccating planet of Tau Ceti 2 where Valence had been researching the colony life forms that eke out a bleak existence, he is shattered, even to the point of contemplating her death.
Fate intervenes in the form of a sudden sand storm, and Valence must save Valerie's life. In the ensuing moment he comes to the realization that without her, he was nothing–just a persistent technician, while Valerie had all the real talent.
But the truth is more complicated; sometimes, it takes yin and yang to make a complete unit…
This is a beautiful story. Perhaps I'm just the intended audience, but I loved it. Five stars.
Just Right, by Isaac Asimov
The Good Doctor offers up, this month, a piece on the square-cube law—explaining why it's not possible to simply shrink or grow the scale of an object and think it will be subject to the same physical laws. He lambasts the TV show Land of the Giants in the process, as is appropriate.
It's a good article, and the final sentence is hilarious. Four stars.
The Day the Wind Died, by Peter Tate
An old man squats on his roof, in a senile dream reliving his days as an ace in World War I, planning to soar on artificial wings he has just purchased. His son Charlie, a harried weatherman, drops a mirror while shaving. His son notices that the wind around their house has abruptly stopped, and he believes his father caused it. He tells his friends.
And the plainclothes agents for the Bureau for the Investigation of Weather Incidents takes notice, certain that Charlie has stilled the wind for nefarious purposes—to ensure his father falls to his death when he takes to the sky on his wings.
Is Charlie a wizard? Who are these agents? Is this our world at all?
A surreal, rather puzzling story. I give it three stars.
Maxwell, an English teacher, wakes from cold sleep two centuries hence only to find the world crammed with people and utterly lacking in color. But beauty exists as long as poetry is possible, and Maxwell makes sure that his multi-great grandson has the power of simile before the teacher is sent to the euthanasia chamber at age 70.
The story is written in a hopeful tone, but the subtext is entirely cynical. As usual, McAllister shows promise, but there is still a rawness that holds his work back from greatness.
Three stars.
Coming up for air
A good issue, this, and thankfully, no one had to risk perishing to explore these frontiers. Then again, perhaps it is prose daydreams like the ones in F&SF that drive men to explore onward. No coin is without two sides, I suppose.
Here's to future expeditions, both literary and actual, and safe travels to all who undertake them!
![[April 26, 1969] Downbeat (May 1969 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/690424coverfsf.jpg?resize=667%2C372)
![[April 8, 1969] Distractions (May 1969 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/690408cover.jpg?resize=428%2C372)
![[April 4, 1969] Hey, Mack! (April 1969 <i>Analog</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/690331cover.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[March 20, 1969] Going through the motions… (April 1969 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/690320cover.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[March 18, 1969] What a way to go! (<i>Star Trek</i>: "All Our Yesterdays")](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/690318title.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[March 14, 1969 ] (March 1969 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/690314covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[March 8, 1969] Around the Universe (April 1969 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/690308cover.jpg?resize=519%2C372)
![[March 1, 1969] Beyond this Horizon (March 1969 <i>Analog</i> and Mariner 6)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/690301cover.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[February 28, 1969] We Reach (<i>Star Trek</i>: "The Way to Eden")](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/690301title-1.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[February 22, 1969] Good and Bad Trips (March 1969 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/690222cover.jpg?resize=665%2C372)
