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Science / Space Race

[August 26, 1968] No time for a breath (Summer space round-up)

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by Gideon Marcus

There are some months where the space shots come so quickly that there's scarcely time to apprehend them all, much less report on them!  Every other day, it seems, the newspaper has got a headling about this launch or that discovery, and that's before you get to the announcements about the impending moon missions.

So, in rapid-fire style, let's see how many exciting new missions I can tell you about on a single exhale (while you stand on one leg, no less…that's a Jewish joke).

A Pair of Yankee Explorers

On August 8th, a Scout rocket took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base (the Western Test Range) in Southern California carrying the two latest NASA science satellites.  It was a virtual duplicate of the launch nearly four years ago of Explorers 24 and 25: a balloon for measuring air density in the upper atmosphere, and a more conventional satellite with an array of instruments for surveying the Earth's ionosphere.  Affectionately dubbed "Mutt and Jeff", these two craft were sent into polar orbit (hence the Pacific launch site).  If you're wondering why NASA is repeating itself, that's because the sun has a profound effect on the Earth's atmosphere.  It is important to measure its impact throughout the 11 year solar cycle, from minimum to maximum output, to better understand the relationship between the solar wind and the air's upper layers.

Not much can go wrong with a balloon, but Explorer 40, after deploying its spindly experiment arms, suffered a malfunction.  Its solar panels are not delivering as much power as they should.  NASA is confident, however, that this will not compromise the mission, which is planned to last more than a year.

Alphabet Soup

Time was, we gave proper names to our satellites.  Now it's all acronyms and arcane jumbles of letters and numbers.  That's all right.  I can decipher them for you!

Advanced Technology Satellite (ATS) 4

August 10 marked the launch of "Daddy Longlegs" ATS 4, the fourth of seven satellites in this series.

Some of you may remember ATS-1–you may recall that ATS-1 helped relay the first worldwide "Our World" broadcast last year. 

ATS-1 is actually still working, just like its two siblings.  ATS-2, launched April 5, 1967 was judged a failure since the second stage of its carrier rocket malfunctioned, stranding it in an eccentric orbit.  Still, the several science experiments onboard have returned information on cosmic rays and such in space.  ATS-3, which went up November 5, 1967, was the last to ride an Atlas Agena D rocket.  Armed with a panoply of experiments, including two transceivers, two cameras, and a host of radiation detectors, that satellite worked perfectly, returning the first color picture of the entire Earth!

ATS-4, unlike its predecessors, is a strictly practical spacecraft, carrying no science experiments, but makes up for it in engineering marvels.  One is a a day-night Image Orthicon Camera, a teevee transmitter that would provide continuous color coverage of the world from high up in geosynchronous orbit (i.e. orbiting at the same rate as the Earth turns, keeping it more or less stationary with respect to the ground).  Another is a microwave transmitter, turning ATS into a powerful communications satellite like its progenitor

ATS-4 also was to test out a gravity gradient stabilization system, basically using the subtle gradations of the Earth's pull on the satellite's arms to keep it oriented in orbit.  Finally, ATS-4 has an ion engine aboard.  These drives, perfect for space, work by shooting out Cesium electrons.  They are incredibly economical compared to conventional rockets, but their thrust is quite low, meaning they must be fired continuously to have an appreciable effect on velocity.

Sadly, as with ATS-2, ATS-4's Atlas Centaur failed on the second stage, stranding the satellite in a low, largely useless orbit.  Well, I guess that's why you launch lots of them!

ESSA 7

We haven't given the ESSA series of satellites much love, which I suppose is what happens when a technology stops being novel and instead becomes routine, even essential.  After all, who reports on every airplane that takes off anymore?

But it's worth talking about the latest satellite, ESSA 7, launched August 16, to summarize what the system has done for us over the last several years.

There were eleven satellites in the TIROS series of weather craft, the first launched in 1960.  In February 1966, with the launch of ESSA 1, the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA) took over the cartwheel satellites, making the series officially operational.

All of them have worked perfectly, launched into sun-synchronous polar orbits about 900 miles up that circle the Earth from north to south as the planet rotates eastward beneath.  So perfect is ESSA 7's orbit that it will cross the equator at virtually the same time every day, drifting from that time table by only four minutes every year.

ESSA satellites have returned 3000 warnings of hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones, reporting not just on the existence but the intensity of these dangerous storms.  As of May 27 of this year, ESSA satellites had taken a million photos of the Earth's weather–that's $42 per picture, since the total launch cost of an ESSA is $6 million.


An image of Tropical Storm Shirley taken August 19, 1968

Up in the Kosmos

If we had to cover the launch of every Kosmos (Cosmos) satellite out of the Soviet Union, we'd have to go to a daily schedule.  There's such a thing as too much of a good thing, right?

But the Russkies are putting them up on the average of one a week, so it's worth sampling them occasionally to keep tabs on all the stuff they're putting in orbit.  Especially since the Kosmos is a catch-all designator, even more broad than our Explorer series.  It includes military satellites, science satellites, weather satellites, even automatic tests of the Soyuz spacecraft.

Here's a brief outline of the launches this last month:

Kosmos 230

This is a typical Soviet launch press release:

The Soviet Union launched another Cosmos satellite today and the Sputnik was reported functioning normally, Tass, the official Soviet news agency, said.  The device, Cosmos 230, is sending information to a Soviet research center for evaluation.

We know it was launched July 5 into a 48.5 degree inclined orbit, that it soars between 181 and 362 miles above the Earth, and that it's still in orbit as we speak, circling the Earth every 92.8 minutes.

As for what it's for… well, your guess is as good as mine.  That said, it's probably not a spy satellite.  How do I know?  Read on, and I'll show you what a spy sat looks like so you can spot them yourself!

Kosmos 231

The Soviet Union has launched another satellite in its program of exploring outer space, the official Tass news agency said Thursday.  It said Cosmos 231 was launched Wednesday [July 10] and is functioning normally.  The latest Cosmos is orbiting the earth once every 89.7 minutes in a low orbit from 130 miles to 205 miles.  Its angle to the earth was 65 degrees.

Seems innocuous enough, right?  Doesn't tell you anything more than the other one.  Except…

First tip-off: the angle.  A zero degree angle would be along the equator, never leaving 0 degrees latitude.  A 90 degree angle is polar, heading due north and south.  The lower the angle, the narrower a band of the Earth a satellite covers.

A 65 degree angle is sufficient to cover a wide swathe…including all of the continental United States.

The altitude is quite low, too.  The closer, the better–if you want to look at something from orbit.

But the real kicker is this: the spacecraft reentered on July 18, just eight days after launch.  Normally, when you send a science satellite up, you want it to stay in orbit as long as possible to get more back for your buck…er…ruble.  You only deorbit a spacecraft (and make no mistake–Kosmos 231 had to have been deorbited; its orbit wasn't that low) when there's something onboard you want to get back.  Like a person…or film.

We know there wasn't anyone onboard Kosmos 231.  The Soviets would have told us.  By the way, I'm not the only one who thinks the Kosmos was a spy satellite, taking pictures in orbit and then landing the film for processing.  There's a blurb in the July 15th issue of Aviation Weekly and Space Report which says the same thing.  And they reached that conclusion before the craft even landed, just based on the orbit!

By the way, if you're wondering what the Soviet spy satellites look like, we actually have a better idea of theirs than ours!  We're pretty sure they're based on the Vostok space capsules used to carry cosmonauts.  In fact, it's an open question whether or not the spy sat was evolved from the Vostok or the other way around!

Kosmos 232

Launched July 16, its orbital parameters were as follows: 125 to 220 miles in altitude, 89.8 minute orbit, 65 degree inclination.  The newspaper article I read noted that the satellite's path was a common one, and predicted the satellite would be recovered in eight days.

Sure enough, it was on the ground again on July 24.

Sound familiar?

Kosmos 233

Here's another oddball: launched on the 18th, the Soviets didn't release news of its orbiting until at least the 20th.  It's in a near polar orbit, soaring up to 935 miles, grazing the Earth with a perigee of 124 miles.

That's no spy sat.  In fact, I'd guess this one might be a bonafide science satellite, exploring the Earth's Van Allen Belts.  But it could just as easily be the equivalent of our Transit navigational satellites or something.  We won't know until and unless the Communists publish scientific results.

Kosmos 234

Launched July 30, it soared from 130 to 183 miles up with a period of 89.5 minutes and an inclination of 51.8 degrees.  Low orbit?  Check.  Cryptic announcement describing its purpose as "the continued exploration of outer space"?  Check.  But the inclination's a bit low.  Better wait for more information.

Oh wait.  It landed August 5.  Pretty sure we know what this one was!

Kosmos 235

Up August 9, down August 17.  Orbit went from 126 to 176 miles, period was 89.3 minutes, and the inclination was exactly the same as before–51.8 degrees.

I'm not sure the significance of the different inclinations.  Maybe it's a matter of the rocket or the launch location.  Generally, the higher the inclination, the more expensive the shot in terms of fuel since the rocket doesn't get the extra boost of the Earth's rotation.

Operator?

It's been a while since we covered the Molniya communications satellites, one of the few Soviet series we do know something about.  July 5 marked the launch of the ninth comsat in the series, zooming up to a high, not quite geosynchronous, orbit, where it has a nice vantage of the whole of Asia.

This launch comes less than three months after the orbiting of Molniya H, the eighth in the series.  Whether Molniya I is replacing its predecessor, which may have been faulty, or whether the ninth Molniya is simply acting as a backup, is not certain.  The latter seems unlikely, though.  When Molniya G went up just three weeks after Molniya F, it was widely believed that the Russians had sent up two to make sure they could televise their annual November Moscow parade to the other Communist countries.

That's all folks!

That's the big news for this month.  The rest of the year is going to be really exciting, what with the upcoming launch of Apollo 7 and Zond 5.  We're about to enter a new phase of manned lunar exploration.  That said, we promise to keep covering the significant shots closer to home, too.  For us, all space missions are out of this world!


The prime crew for Apollo 7 (l-r) Astronauts Donn F. Eisele, Command Module Pilot; Walter Cunningham, Lunar Module Pilot; and Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Commander




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Science / Space Race

[June 28, 1967] Around the World in Two Seconds (Our World Global Satellite Broadcast)

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by Kaye Dee

I love how our world is drawing closer every day to some of the amazing futures that science fiction has spread before us. I’ve written before about the importance of satellite communications in connecting this divided planet. Just two days ago, 24 countries around the globe were linked together in the first world-spanning live satellite broadcast, titled – appropriately enough – Our World.

Our World's visual symbol incorporates a modernised version of da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man", with arms encircling the globe, and vertical and horizontal lines representing longitude and latitude

Down Under Comes Up Live – from a town with no television!
For us in Australia, being instantaneously connected to the rest of the world through phone and television is a major step in breaking the “tyranny of distance” that has shaped our national history. Our first Satellite Earth Station was opened just last October in Carnarvon, a remote township in Western Australia, whose only other connection to the rest of the world is a phone line. It’s no wonder NASA wanted to provide a satellite connection back to the United States for its tracking station located there, using the INTELSAT communications network. Just after the station opened, a mishap with the launch of the first INTELSAT II satellite (Blue Bird) on 26 October placed the satellite into the wrong orbit, providing an opportunity for the first satellite broadcast from Down Under.


SES Carnarvon's unusual antenna, one of only four that have been built for the INTELSAT network. Officially described a 42-foot aperture cassegrain-fed folded-horn antenna, you can see why it's nicknamed the “sugar scoop”

According to my friend at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), some hasty calculations revealed that short segments of television broadcast could be relayed to the United Kingdom via INTELSAT II in its unplanned elliptical orbit. So the ABC and the BBC quickly put together a plan for a live telecast, called Down Under Comes Up Live, from Carnarvon – a town which doesn’t even have a television service!

Connection was the theme, and ordinary people were the stars of the show. The program reunited three families of British immigrants living in Carnarvon, two of whom who happened to be employees of the NASA tracking station, with their relatives in the BBC studios in London. It also included some interviews with local residents talking abut life in their remote community. Introducing new babies to family is a universal ritual, and it's delightful to see that it was one that played out in both Down Under Comes Up Live and Our World.

Down Under Comes Up Live was a direct one-way broadcast (a return signal was not possible for technical reasons) that was a complex undertaking (and a good rehearsal for our involvement in Our World). Without a local television station in Carnarvon, ABC outside broadcast vans and their technical staff made a 560 mile trip from Perth to produce the program. The vision was sent live to London from the satellite station, but the audio to and from London was transmitted separately by cable.

On Friday 25 November 1966, more than twelve minutes of television was broadcast to London. Although the program was seen live in the UK, rather ironically, we couldn’t see it live in Australia because there are no television links between Carnarvon and Perth. We had to wait for a few days to see this history-making program, once a film copy of the UK broadcast was flown back to Australia.

Incoming – Australia Day at Expo 67
Apart from a few test transmissions, it was just three weeks ago that we saw the first satellite broadcast into Australia – a live telecast of Australia’s ‘special day’ at Expo 67 in Montreal. This time the transmission came via NASA’s Applications Technology Satellite (ATS)-1. To support this program, NASA has established a temporary satellite station at Cooby Creek dam, about 14 miles north of Toowoomba in Queensland.

The picturesque setting for NASA's Cooby Creek tracking station that brought both Australia Day at Expo 67 and Our World to Australia via ATS-1

Several hundred thousand people around the country, including my sister’s family and I, watched live through the early hours of 7 June our time, as Australia took centre stage in Canada. The program commenced with Prime Minister Harold Holt officially opening the Australian Pavilion at the Expo. Special events for “Australia Day” included boomerang throwing, sheep-dog trials, wood chopping contests and tennis matches with members of the Australian Davis Cup team. Celebrity was an important theme for the variety concert, "Pop Goes Australia", which showcased Australian talent, including the internationally-known Rolf Harris and The Seekers.

The clarity of the satellite picture from Montreal was surprisingly good: I’ve heard that hundreds of viewers rang the ABC in Sydney wanting to be assured that the vision really was being broadcast live from Canada! I just wish I could find some decent reproductions to show you or had thought to take a picture on the screen of our TV set. 

Our World – joining hands (almost) around the planet
So, with just two satellite broadcasts under its belt, from 4.50am Australian Eastern Time on 26 June, Australia participated in the Our World program, helping to string Puck's "girdle around the world". We joined 13 other nations in providing television content for the first live global television broadcast, which instantaneously linked 24 countries on six continents via four communications satellites, with the signals travelling around the world in just 2 seconds!

The brainchild of the BBC, though produced under the auspices of the European Broadcasting Union, the global telecast was controlled from the BBC in London, with America’s National Educational Television in New York City feeding items from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia and Japan to the British Control Centre. Literally thousands of technicians handled the outside broadcasts and studio operations around the world. Satellite ground stations in Australia (NASA's Cooby Creek facility again), Japan, Canada, the United States, Britain and France transmitted sound and vision to and from the satellites. As each of the contributing countries provided commentary in their own language, there was also the necessity of rapidly translating the various languages, so that everyone in the receiving countries could understand what was being said.

The technical complexity of Our World is evident from this diagram, which shows just part of the world-wide links between television stations and satellites necessary to make the global broadcast a reality

Given the incredible technical complexity of the television transmission, it’s quite amazing that the two-hour program was carried through with very few technical problems – especially when the entire broadcast was televised live, with no filmed insertions or other previously produced material apart from the opening montage. We saw everything as it happened.

Our World was intended as a major achievement for both space technology and international relations, a bridge between East and West in these troubled times of wars cold and hot. Unfortunately, at the last minute, politics reared its ugly head and the USSR and several Eastern European nations that were originally going to participate pulled out of the broadcast just a few days before, as a protest against the recent war in the Middle East. This was disappointing and made for some hurried re-arrangement of parts of the program, but it didn’t dampen the mostly aspirational tone of the broadcast as a celebration of human achievement and hope for a more peaceful future. There was also the irony that a US segment about the Glassboro, New Jersey conference between American president Lyndon Johnson and Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin was still included in the broadcast, although – since the Our World producers insisted that no politicians could be shown – only an external view of the house where the conference was being held was televised.

New Babies and their World
The broadcast crossed countries, seas and time zones, and was presented as fusing “yesterday”, “today” and “tomorrow” (by dint of the different time zones around the world) into a globe-encircling “now”. The birth of several babies across the world opened the program, which was presented in a sense as a “survey” of the world into which these newborns are entering.

A baby in Mexico, born live on television for all the world to see!

The babies are introduced to their new world through several themes: This Moment's World (what people were doing are doing at that moment around the world); the Hungry World (what scientists are doing to attempt to solve or alleviate the hunger problem); the Crowded World (looking at proposed solutions to the population explosion); Aspiration to Physical Excellence (the continual attempt to develop physical skill); Aspiration to Artistic Excellence (the drive to excel in the arts); and the World Beyond (focussed on astronomy and space travel. Within these themes, vignettes of life and activity from around the world formed the tapestry of the program. Even if some of the actual presentation was, quite frankly, dull and pedestrian (the excitement was, after all, the fact that we were seeing something live from another part of the globe), I thought the concept was an interesting way to approach telling the story of our planet. If an extra-terrestrial civilisation one day happens to intercept this program as its signals travel through space, they'll learn a lot more about the reality of the Earth and its people from Our World than they will get from episodes of I love Lucy.

Everyday Life

The theme This Moment's World presented a panorama of people and activities in various parts of the globe, moving through evening in Europe to afternoon in New York City, with a visit to Tunis along the way. I loved the views of old and new parts of the city. We saw Marshall McLuhan being interviewed in a Toronto television control room, people swimming at the beach at lunchtime in Vancouver, Canada (making us Aussies all envious on a cold winter's morning) and workmen digging a subway at 4am in Japan. Since the program took place between 5.00 am and 7.00 am Australian Eastern time, our first contribution commenced at 5:22 am local time, with a visit to the Hammer Street Tram Depot in Melbourne, where the first tram of the day was departing to service Monday morning commuters. 

This segment was the first cross to the Southern Hemisphere and came directly after the broadcast from Japan. The switch from Japan to Australia was apparently the most technically complicated of the program, as the Japanese and Australian satellite stations had to switch immediately from transmission to receiving mode and back again. The material coming into Australia also had to be converted from the 525-line system to our 625-line format for local broadcast, while the segment going out of Australia had to be converted from 625 to 525-line in order to be sent back to the US and then on to London!

Sweden gave us the first – and almost the only – female presenter in the program!

Global Concerns
Australia also featured in the Hungry World theme, which concentrated on food production and the issues of feeding an ever-growing world population. In addition to items from the United States and a shrimp farm in Takamatsu, Japan, we visited the Canberra phytotron, a laboratory run by the national scientific research agency, CSIRO. In the phytotron, plants can be grown under a wide range of closely controlled climatic conditions. It’s claimed to be one of the world's finest and most up-to-date facilities for plant research, and a number of international scientists work there alongside local researchers.

The CSIRO phytotron's Director, Dr. Lloyd Evans, at work in his plant laboratory. Apparently, he often starts his workday at 5am, so he didn't have to get up earlier than usual for the show!

A couple of segments that were of interest to me in The Crowded World theme were a visit to Cumbernauld (near my father’s home town of Glasgow, Scotland), which was the recipient of an international award for best planning in a new town, and a glimpse of Habitat, a new concept of living accommodation, on display at Expo '67.

Human Achievement
In Aspiration to Physical Excellence, there were contributions from Rome, Sweden, France (where a parachutist made a dizzying free fall with a camera strapped to him), and Winnipeg, Canada, where a 16-year-old Butterfly champion attempted to beat her own world indoor swimming record.


We get to watch live as actors rehearse the wedding scenes from Italian director Franco Zefferelli's next film, Romeo and Juliet
Aspiration to Artistic Excellence included a visit to the Maeght Foundation museum of modern art in France, with artists Marc Chagall and Joan Miro, Leonard Bernstein and pianist Van Cliburn rehearsing Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto. Opera singer Maria Callas, and painter Pablo Picasso also featured. In the context of this theme, it’s interesting to note that the Our World anthem, which accompanied the opening montage was composed by Frenchman Georges Delerue, whose musical score credits includes the recent Academy Award winning motion picture, A Man for All Seasons. He wrote the melody based on the rhythm established by the words “Our World”, sung in 22 different languages by the Vienna Boys’ Choir.

But the highlight of this theme has to be a ‘fly on the wall’ visit to a recording studio where the fabulous Beatles were recording their latest anthem “All You Need is Love”, which was specially written for the Our World broadcast! You can see them below, surrounded by their many friends in the music world, who came to the recording party and became informal backing singers. The black and white shot shows how we saw the FAB Four in the live broadcast, while the colour photo was taken just before the televised performance. 

 
Reaching for the Stars
The World Beyond theme took us to the heart of the Space Race, with a visit to Cape Kennedy to see a Saturn V Moon rocket on the pad being readied for its first flight. The telecast also came to a close on the theme of outer space, with a visit to Australia’s Parkes radio telescope – at 210 ft. the largest fully-steerable radio telescope in the world. Here we sat in on an observation of the most distant object currently known – a mysterious quasar only discovered last year by the Parkes telescope's director, Dr. John Bolton. It’s so far away that its light and radio signals take 13,000 million years to reach us!

An ABC cameraman, wearing a heavy jacket in the early morning winter cold, prepares for filming the Our World segment at the Parkes Radio Telescope.

So that was Our World. A fascinating mix of banality and creativity, made magical by the technology of the Space Age, and the knowledge that everyone watching was sharing the experience simultaneously with millions of others across our planet in a way that has never before been possible. With a worldwide audience estimated between 350 and 700 million, the broadcast was a potent demonstration of the potential reach of satellite television. I'm sure that before too long, satellite television from around the world will be a regular occurrence, bringing us news, sport, entertainment and major world events – and we here in Australia will have to get used to being up at all hours of the night to watch! But I wonder what will top this broadcast's incredible audience reach? The first manned landing on the Moon, perhaps?



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 20, 1966] Above and beyond (January 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction and a space roundup)

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[Today is the last day you can sign up at the reduced rate for next year's Worldcon.  Don't miss your chance to vote in next year's Hugos!]


by Gideon Marcus

Science Fact

In '57, Asimov stopped being a full-time science fiction writer to become a full-time science columnist, a change in vocation that has largely been a positive one.  Why did the creator of Nightfall, Foundation, and Susan Calvin make the leap?  Because, with the launch of Sputnik, science fiction had suddenly become reality, and the front page of the newspaper contained some of the most thrilling SF headlines going.

That trend has only accelerated.  This month, we entered the next stage of space travel, not with a flashy Gemini launch (though those are nifty!) or our first manned trip to the Moon, but with something called ATS.

NASA's "Advanced Technology Satellite" went up on December 7, 1966.  Some satellites, like TIROS, are weather satellites.  Some, like SYNCOM, relay communications.  ATS is the first to do both, and from geostationary orbit.  At its altitude of 36,000 km, it takes exactly 24 hours to circle the Earth.  Thus, from the ground, it appears to be standing still.  Equipped with a "spin-scan" camera, every 20 minutes, ATS sends back a full-globe image of the Earth with a resolution of just 3km.  For the first time, we have essentially real-time weather coverage of an entire hemisphere.

No less ambitious, but sadly less successful, was last week's three-day "Biosatellite" mission.  Biosat is the first in a series of spacecraft that will observe the long term effects of orbital life on a variety of organisms.  On board are a menagerie of bugs (including the ever popular fruit flies) as well as seeds and plants.  The plan was to launch the mission on the 14th and then bring it back on the 17th, observing the effects of weightlessness and radiation on the living cargo.  A retrorocket malfunction stranded the satellite in orbit, however.  I suspect the SPCA is filing a lawsuit as we speak…

NASA isn't the only American agency conducting science.  Last week, the Air Force launched two satellites at once in its low-cost "Orbiting Vehicle" series, OV1-9 and OV1-10.  Normally, these go into polar orbits, but the latest duo follow more conventional paths.  For the most part, these little guys investigate radiation, radio propagation, and other near-Earth conditions.  This is all of great interest to an organization that wants to put flyboys in a Manned Orbiting Laboratory next year, but there's also a valuable scientific yield for the rest of us.

Science Fiction (and Fantasy)

After all that exciting real-world news, could an SF magazine hope to provide the same thrills?  Turns out the first 1967 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction does!


by Gray Morrow

The Little People (Part 1 of 3), John Christopher

Bridget Chauncey is the heir to a most unusual estate in rural Ireland: a run-down country home built on the site of a ruined castle.  Enchanted with the place and its commercial opportunities, she essays a trial season running the place as a vacation lodge.  An odd assemblage of characters are introduced: a bickering middle-aged couple and their daughter on the edge of womanhood, a ruddy Wehrmacht veteran and his half-Jewish wife, Bridget's practical fianceé, Daniel, the estate handler's son, Mat, and the cook and maid. 

The Little People is slow to start, author Christopher allowing us to settle into the heads of each member of this queer group.  But when a two-inch sandaled footprint is discovered, and linked to the recent rash of minor thefts, the identity of the culprit(s) quickly is determined.

Fairies are real.

This is where we leave off this compelling chapter.  I look forward to the ramifications of "first contact" between giant and wee folk.  Four stars.

The Star Driver, J. W. Schutz

Less impressive is this tale of a man stranded on an asteroid with rapidly diminishing air reserves.  Rescue depends on propelling a beacon to orbital velocity.  This Analog-ish tale would have been better served had the ending not been spoiled from the start by editor Ferman (and to some degree, the title). 

On the other hand, I don't want to discourage F&SF from publishing, well, SF.  So, a low three stars.

Interplanetary Dust, Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas suggests that the flux of micrometeoroids around the Earth might be netted up and squashed into a planetoid to live on.  I don't think he's researched how thin that flux actually is.

Two stars.

The Disenchanted Symphony, James G. Huneker

Here's a reprint from the turn of the century!  A Russian composer, infatuated with the link between music and mathematics, creates a symphony that punches a hole through the fourth dimension, whisking his wife and his orchestra away from our plane of existence.  Can he get them back?

I was impressed with how modern this story felt.  Judith Merril expressed in her Books column this month that SF owes much of its present sparkle to works created more than fifty years ago.  She was talking about H.G. Wells.  This sentiment could easily be said of Mssr. Huneker as well.

Four stars.

Bait, Bob Leman

Sometimes what a door-to-door salesman is peddling isn't the product he has on display.  This is a deliciously subtle tale that gets better after a night's thought on it.

Four stars.

The Knight-Errant, the Dragon, and the Maiden, Gahan Wilson

Sometimes the dragon is a chaperone, not a jailer.

Cute.  Three stars.

Right Beneath Your Feet, by Isaac Asimov

We're back to lists and geographical tidbits from The Good Doctor this month, this time describing what places lie directly opposite others on the globe.  Well, at least I learned the etymology of the word "antipodes" (still don't know how to pronounce it, though…)

Three stars.

Kingdom Come, Inc., Robert F. Young

Last up, a Christmas story.  Robert F. Young has never found a myth he hasn't wanted to shoehorn into a science fictional story.  This time, he adapts a reliable well: Christianity.  On the Seventh Heaven pleasure satellite, an angelic fellow named Mike shows up looking for a job.  He and his six brothers (Gabe the trumpter, Raf, etc.) are out of work of late since no one has gotten into their particular establishment for many years. 

It's an obvious tale and a tedious one, opting for the easiest, least challenging conclusion.  Two stars.

Back to Earth

With the exception of the final tale (accepted more for its fortuitous length and timely theme, perhaps), this is a quite good issue.  And with the unusual inclusion of a serial, there's all the more reason to look forward to the February issue when it arrives early next month.

Happy New Year, indeed!


by Gahan Wilson

[Today is the last day you can sign up at the reduced rate for next year's Worldcon.  Don't miss your chance to vote in next year's Hugos!]



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