Tag Archives: computer war

[June 30, 1967] Bad trip (July 1967 Analog)


by Gideon Marcus

A time to laugh, a time to cry

It's been something of a rocky week.  A few days ago, Israel unilaterally announced that it was annexing all of Jerusalem, which had been de facto split after the 1948 war , and which de jure was supposed to be an international city.  The good news is, the government promised to integrate the Jewish and Arab halves peacefully, and so far, it looks like they are trying to do just that.  Still, the move is drawing condemnation from the world (strangely, I don't recall hearing aspersions cast against the Jordanians when they took half of the city…)

In sadder news, actress Jayne Mansfield was in a fatal car crash not far from New Orleans.  You may remember her from Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter and other films and TV shows.  She'd earned a reputation as a budget Marilyn Monroe, but from recent performances, it was clear her talent ran deeper than that.  The only bright spot is that her three children, also in the car, escaped with minor injuries.

And in the You-gotta-laugh-or-you'll-cry department, Beach Boy Carl Wilson was set free after being tried for draft evasion.  Seems being a conscientious objector works for some people, but not others.  Witness one Muhammad Ali.  Let me know if you can tell me what's different about the two cases.

All ahead, half speed


by John Schoenherr

Meanwhile, this month's Analog is not so much ups and downs, but a straight shot.  Sort of like Route 99 to Sacramento–easy going, but a dull drive.

The Man from P.I.G., by Harry Harrison


by John Schoenherr

First up is an unusual interstellar fixit story in the Retief or Chris Anvil mold.  Bron Wurber, pig herder, arrives on a remote world in the middle of a crisis.  Its governor had just sent out a distress call about the mysterious plateau just outside of town that not only appears to be haunted, but is fatal to any who explore it.  Bron seems the most unlikely of support…until he reveals he really is a government agent, and the pigs are of the one-ton, super-intelligent variety.  With the help of his porcine aides, Bron cracks the case and saves the day.

P.I.G. works as an action-adventure story, and if you can get past the "as you know" explanations of why pigs are better than dogs (and who can argue with that? But cats beat them both…) then you'll enjoy yourself.  The piece does not work as a whodunnit, though.  Harrison has to explain the characteristics of the culprit at the end of the tale rather than dropping clues throughout.  I have to wonder if I missed a setup story somewhere.  Alternatively, this may be the first in a series, and the next one will thus be better prepped.

Three stars.

Compound Interest, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

A couple of months back, we got a story about a troubleshooter who helps establish the sapience of an indigenous race of cat people, thus frustrating the commercial schemes of a settling corporation.

This tale rather unnecessarily retells the same story, but from the point of view of the commercial types.  Anvil adds a silver lining at the end of the story, depending, of course, on psionics (this being John Campbell's mag, after all).

The first story was decent.  This was is rather pointless.  Two stars.

Annual Report, by Listening Inc.

Instead of contracting a science writer this month, Campbell just borrowed a catalog from an outfit called Listening Inc.  They make all kinds of interesting sonar/listening gear, including stuff for talking to dolphins.

There's not a lot there, but it's interesting.  Three stars.

Aim for the Heel, by John T. Phillifent


by Kelly Freas

Accompanied by the most striking art of the issue, Heel is the story of an international agent whose job is to facilitate, but not directly cause, the assassination of otherwise unreachable criminals.  He does it by researching his targets, and then maneuvering them into a situation whereby they end up dead at their own hands.

It's somewhat gray, morally, rather like the season of Mission: Impossible we just watched.  It also delights a bit too much in what it does, to the point of being lurid.

But it is readable.  Three stars.

Something Important, by E. G. Von Wald


by Rudy Palais

I liked this one, about a disabled alien ship that sends out a distress call, and the communications team that cracks the code to effect a rescue.  There's not much to it, but the message (no pun intended) is nice.

Three stars.

Computer War (Part 2 of 2), by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

Last issue, we were introduced to the autocracy of Alphaland, which had just gone to war with its rival, Betastan, and run into difficulties.  The Betastani refuse to fight fair, retreating from their cities, only using subs for naval engagement, and using thousands of agents to create havoc within Alphaland.  As a result, Alphaland, despite computer predictions to the contrary, is on the verge of collapse.

Reynolds likes to cloak history lessons in the guise of fiction.  Sometimes he's successful at the task, and sometimes it feels like he's submitting a series of essays with a thin veneer of plot around them.  This latest effort is the latter.  The characters are cardboard, although the lessons have some applicability to our current quagmire in Vietnam.

A low three stars.

Bite, by Lawrence A. Perkins


by John Schoenherr

Lastly, an unpleasant tale of an unpleasant doctor who contracts rabies, and the unpleasant choice another doctor has of deciding whether it's worth treating him or not.

I didn't like it.  Two stars.

Traffic statistics

Not only did this month's Analog score a rather peaked 2.7, but there is a smug sameyness to every story, as if each one was pressed through the Campbell machine and laminated with a greasy coating.  The other mags this month, such as there were, weren't much better though.  Fantasy and Science Fiction and IF also scored 2.7, and only Fantastic (3.2) and New Worlds (3.5) were better, the first comprising mostly reprints, and the latter a half-size mag.

All told, you could take all the good fiction and fit it in one decent-sized digest.  Two of the 30 new fiction pieces were by women, both of them quite short.  I guess it's no surprise that the action is in SF novels these days.

Still, I like my magazines, and I hope they get their act together.  Otherwise, this is going to be one throughway most folks will want to turn off from.





[May 31, 1967] Phoning it in (June 1967 Analog)


by Gideon Marcus

Monopoly Bell

For nearly a century, the telephone lines crossing this great nation of ours have been the property of one big mother–specifically "Ma Bell", the colloquial name for American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T).  Practically an arm of the government, this entity employs a million people and (for the most part) has no competition. 


The Belles of Southwestern Bell

Now, I'm not saying that it's not a near miracle to be able to call anyone, any place in the country, now that direct dialing has replaced operator-assisted station-to-station calling (for the most part).  I'm not even complaining that I have to dial seven digits when I call a local friend instead of just four.

I will say that it seems like highway robbery to have to pay 50 cents for a three minute call to my brother in Los Angeles.  We've gotten to the point where we don't actually call to let the other know that we got home safe after a visit; we just ring the phone once–that's free.  And how about the whopping $12 to (try to) phone my Journey pals in the UK? 

Of course, we have the luxury of being fantastically rich–how else could we have a dedicated line and a telefax machine to transmit articles and images? 

But for the regular schmo on the street, long distance calling is expensive…and Ma Bell wants you to make it a habit.

Thankfully, their switch to multi-frequency (MF) circuits, where operator-switched connections have been replaced by tone-controlled automatics, has proven quite the blessing, making Ma Bell more efficient, which has in some cases translated to reduced rates.

And for some people, it's resulted in absolutely phree phone calling…

You see, the phone system is controlled by tones, and the tones are consistent–and meticulously cataloged by the phone company in easy-to-obtain manuals.  So if you can find some way of producing the tones yourself, you decide whether a call is going to cost money or not.  Particularly if you have some way of producing, at the beginning of your call, the 2600 hz tone that indicates to the automatic system that a line is not being used, and therefore should not incur a bill.

If only there was some cheap, easy to find item that would enable you to do that…

That would be MF-ing great!

Broken Monopoly

It used to be that Analog, back when it was called Astounding, was the one game in town if you wanted what we now call "hard science fiction", that crunchy stuff based on real science, and not Buck Rogers stuff.  Astounding editor John Campbell ushered in what folks are calling the Golden Age starting the end of the '30s. 

It's now thirty years later, and Campbell's still around, and so's his magazine.  Unlike the phone company, however, Campbell is content not to innovate, letting the latest trends in the field pass him by.  The latest issue is a particularly regressive example.


by John Schoenherr

Computer War (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

SF veteran and globetrotter Mack Reynolds has as one of his settings a future in which humanity has spread out to dozens, if not hundreds, of worlds, each free to develop its political institutions as it sees fit.  Reynolds has used this backdrop as a way to explore several different types of government taken to extremes.  For instance, most recently, he took us to a (seemingly) woman-dominated world in Amazon Planet, which turned out to be something of a paradise.  I liked that one.

This particular story features a world with two main nations: Alphaland and Betastan.  Between them are 21 neutral nations that don't count too much.  The head of Alphaland is contemplating a war on Betastan, which though it will be costly, has been deemed necessary by the computerized statisticians if he is to maintain his grip on the totalitarian country.  To get the populace behind the move, he concocts a "Crusade" againt the "Karlist Amish" minority that have corrupted Betastan and threaten to bring the whole world to heel.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Mixed in is a bit of political thriller involving a minister and his Betastani spy mistress.  But for the most part, it's lukewarm historical allegory.  Reynolds can be quite good at this kind of thing, but he's just going through the motions on this one.

Three stars so far, barely.

The Double-Edged Rope, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

East meets West in a Yugoslav greasy spoon as two agents swap stories of a rumored UFO invasion.  When the Eastern spy goes to make his report, he finds that the BEMs-in-human-form have already taken over, betrayed by their signature stiff pinky fingers.

Oh wait, that's The Invaders.  In this story, it's their really small ears.

Either way, it's a stupid story.  Two stars.

Political Science, by Douglas M. Dederer

Newcomer Douglas Dederer offers us a detailed and exciting (if one-sided and slightly incomplete) account of how Von Braun's Army team didn't and then did become the first to orbit an American satellite.  It's very pro-Nazi…er…Von Braun, and rather anti-Vanguard and Eisenhower, but I learned a lot.

Four stars.

Security Measure, by Joseph P. Martino


by Kelly Freas

A Russian-born American is inserted into the Soviet Union to survey any anti-revolutionary groups that might exist.  Once he finds one, he finds himself hip deep in a plot to seize a nuclear missile base and atomize army garrisons around the country as a prelude to a massive internal takeover.  Can Michael Antonov stop the plan before millions are vaporized?

Martino's written a lot of edge-of-the-future spy thriller stuff, generally exhibiting decent writing in otherwise trivial pieces.  I quite liked this one, however.  It feels quite grounded in reality, and the solution doesn't offend credulity or sensibility.  If anything, Security Measure feels like an episode of Secret Agent.

Four stars.

Project Lion, by Lawrence A. Perkins


by John Schoenherr

Back down we go with this short piece about visitors from Procyon.  The rulers of Earth are convinced that if they don't make first contact, they will be destroyed just like the Incans, the Neanderthals, and every other beaten culture of humanity that got off the second shot.  A scramble is made to select the optimum personnel for such a mission.

This story really doesn't make any sense, neither the "logic" involved in the puzzle nor the puzzle's solution.

Two stas.

The Dukes of Desire, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Several months ago, we followed the exploits of a three-man team trapped on a planet under the thumb of robot overlords in Strangers to Paradise.  They overcame their difficulties through the use of mind control through scents.

Well, now the team is back.  The planet has fallen further into anarchy, and the trio have to figure out a way to put things to rights.  A combination of scent application and false identity does the trick, making the planetary population believe that the two ships flown by the trio are actually flagships in an interstellar war.  The idea is that an external foe might unite the people of the planet.  Or something.

I didn't much like the last story, and I really didn't like this one, even if my nephew, David, sang its praises.

Two stars.

Tallying the Bill

At 2.8 stars, the latest Analog definitely ends up near the bottom of the pack this month, only beating out the perennially puny Amazing (2.2).  Scoring better were Fantasy and Science Fiction and If (3.2), with Galaxy sitting on top with 3.3 stars, mostly thanks to the new Niven novella. There was but one woman-penned piece the entire month, and that done under initials. 

We did get some bright news this month–apparently Galactic Journey has finally made the Hugo ballot after several years of dashed hopes.  So there's the possibility we may actually come home from Nycon with the big rocket ship.

And that would be something to phone about!  On Sunday, when the rates are cheaper…