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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 22, 1968] (Two Things Only the People Anxiously Desire, Star Trek: "Bread and Circuses")

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Strange New Worlds?


by Janice L. Newman

In the first season of Star Trek, we saw the crew visit plenty of “strange new worlds”. From the rocky planet where they met The Man Trap to the caves of The Devil in the Dark to the green and deceptively-pleasant planet This Side of Paradise, they took us to places we’d never been and introduced us to thoughtful, interesting ideas. Even when sets were more familiar locales (Miri, Tomorrow is Yesterday, and The City on the Edge of Forever come to mind) the stories were usually fresh and interesting.

In the second half of the second season, we’ve been seeing a new trend, perhaps based on ideas first introduced in “Miri”: planets which have, for one reason or another, evolved to look almost exactly like Earth at some point in history. A Piece of the Action took us to Prohibition-era Chicago. Patterns of Force brought the crew to Nazi Germany. And this week’s episode took us to a ‘modernized’ version of ancient Rome.


The story opens with the Enterprise seeking out the survivors from a ship that was hit by a meteorite six years ago. They track the trajectory of the debris back to a planet and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to seek out any survivors. They immediately encounter a group of escaped slaves, members of a sun-worshiping cult, who agree to help them. Before they manage to get near the city, though, they are captured and imprisoned. They’re greeted by Merik, the captain of the lost vessel and now “First Citizen”, and Proconsul Claudius Marcus, who knows much more than he should about who they are and why they’re there.

Claudius tries to force Captain Kirk to call down the crew of his ship. When Kirk refuses, Claudius orders Spock and McCoy thrown into the ‘arena’ for a televised battle. The set is a fun merging of modern culture and ancient Roman aesthetics. As Kirk watches with helpless frustration, Spock unwillingly fights against the gladiator assigned to him while McCoy is fortunately assigned Flavius, a “Brother of the Sun” who tries to refuse violence, even as he is “encouraged” to fight by a guard wielding a whip. The “Amok Time” fight theme is well-integrated here, and it makes for an exciting scene. In the end Spock defeats his opponent and rescues McCoy by giving Flavius a Vulcan neck pinch to knock him out.

Spock and McCoy are returned to their cell, where Spock visibly agonizes over their separation, repeatedly trying the bars and looking for a way out. McCoy sheepishly tries to thank Spock for saving his life, which Spock responds to with replies clearly meant to needle and annoy the good doctor. It’s nice to see their roles reversed for once, with Spock doing the deliberate antagonizing. McCoy responds by getting in Spock’s face and hissing out a pointed jab at Spock’s vulnerabilities. Spock’s quiet response, which manages to combine acknowledgement and defiance in two words and a lifted eyebrow, is a work of art. This is my favorite scene in the episode, and one of my favorite scenes in all of Star Trek so far. All of the ‘old married couple’ arguing and mutual antagonism we’ve seen in prior episodes between the ‘heart’ and ‘mind’ of the Enterprise come together to shape this moment of intense intimacy.

Meanwhile, Kirk is brought to a luxurious bedchamber and offered the use of an eager female slave. He doesn’t refuse.


Ah, there's Roddenberry's influence

Claudius returns to Kirk a few hours later in a rather nice transition and tells him he is to be executed on national television. Scotty, who has not been idle on the Enterprise, delivers a careful blow to the city’s electrical system, blacking everything just long enough for Kirk to get away and return to the prison (where he tells his two officers that their captors ‘threw him a few curves’, haha). Merick redeems himself by tossing Kirk a communicator, and the three men beam back to the Enterprise in the nick of time, leaving the Roman planet behind.


Credit where it's due–the escape scene is masterful

And so it’s all over but the shouting, or rather, the final pun: the sun worshippers don’t worship the sun, they worship the son – as in, the son of god. Cue smiles from some of the Christians in the audience and an eyeroll or two from the Jewish and non-religious viewers.

Did I like this episode? There were many things to like, starting with the scene between McCoy and Spock, which is a five if taken by itself. There were definitely some things to dislike, such as the ‘sun/son’ setup and Kirk’s unhesitating willingness to take advantage of the attractive female slave offered to him. Overall, though, the cinematography, use of library music, and use of sets and props was a cut above the usual. The episode was well-paced and exciting, and Shatner’s acting was more understated than usual. Despite a couple of things dragging it down, I give it four stars.

The Unbroken Planet


by Joe Reid

We tend to think of heroes as powerful people who use their powers to right the wrongs of the world.  Star Trek has provided us with heroes that always right wrongs.  When Jim Kirk gets to a new world and finds something amiss, he will do everything possible to make sure that baddies are struck down and peace is restored.  This has been especially true when the cause of the disturbance on a planet was a human, or even worse… a Klingon!  This season we had two examples of Starfleet people purposefully taking control of native populations for their own benefit.  In “Patterns of Force”, John Gill literally turned the inhabitants of one planet into Nazis in order to “help” them.  Then, in “The Omega Glory”, we had Ron Tracey ruling over one faction of humans to eradicate another in order to gain immortality.  Both stories took place on Earth-like planets which boasted histories divergent from our own.  Each story ended with Captain Kirk dealing with the corrupting influence and setting the cultures back on course. 

This week’s “Bread and Circuses” started off much the same as the mentioned episodes.  Some Starfleet person was stuck on a very Earth-like planet with a divergent history.  The crew had a similar obligation as before; to get the space people off the planet before they ruin the people of that world and pervert their development.  Here is where the similarities end.  “Bread and Circuses” turns that recurrent theme on its ear.  Instead of the inhabitants of a planet having to contend with a strong and smart human dominating them, this time it was the weak human, Captain Merik of the SS Beagle, who was dominated by the strong and intelligent Proconsul Marcus.  Marcus overpowered Merik’s mind and will, causing him to sacrifice most of his crew to gladiatorial games in order to save himself.


Puppet and master

Previous episodes on this theme had Kirk seeking to find an alien titan like himself and remove them from power.  This world already had a home-grown titan, who corrupted and broke the man Kirk was looking for.  There was nothing for Kirk to set right on this world.  The humans were the victims, not the victimizers this time.  Kirk found himself outmatched by Proconsul Marcus.  He was captured, threatened, and made powerless by Marcus, just like Merik was before, although Kirk put up more of a fight than Merik did, earning some degree of respect from Marcus.  Marcus was eventually going to break him, as well, given enough time.  The mission ended with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy fleeing for their lives and Merik dying from a knife to his back after a last-minute act of failed heroism. 

This was the one time where the captain of the Enterprise could not fix the problem on a world.  It’s mainly because there was no problem to fix, at least none that he was legally allowed to fix. The society on the planet was progressing down its natural evolutionary path.  Human intervention didn't topple the wagon.  Humans ended up run over by the wagon, which carried on unabated.  “Bread and Circuses” had a subversive twist on what had preceded it in the other episodes.  It felt original, even though some themes started off appearing reused before the twist came about.  In total, the costumes, acting, sets, camera work, and story were all done well.  It was pretty good. 

4 stars

Don't throw back the throwback


by Gideon Marcus

David Levinson, who tends to write letters in after the fact rather than contribute directly to our Trek coverage, noted recently that he was starting not to care if the show got renewed for a third season. We had run into a pretty dire patch of episodes, after all. But between last week and this week, his faith is somewhat restored.

Mine, too.  I observed early on that "Bread and Circuses" felt more like a first-season episode than any of its second-season brethren.  Perhaps it was the copious use of outdoor settings, or Shatner's return to first season form.  Maybe it was Ralph Senensky's crisp direction (he may well supplant Marc Daniels as my favorite on the show).  Maybe it was the collaboration of the two Genes, Roddenberry and Coon, who reeled in each other's excesses rather than adding to them.

I also absolutely adored the fusion of gladiatorial games and modern television.  It was subtle satire in the Sheckley or even Pohl/Kornbluth vein.


Not much different from a boxing match or football game

The one missed opportunity was setting the planet on a near-Earth rather than an exact duplicate, a la "Miri."  I've always liked Lorelei's idea that the galaxy is largely populated by Earth-clones (for some unknown reason) and that's why we get these close parallel history episodes.  Having a completely different planet evolve humans, let alone 20th Century Romans, beggared the imagination.

On the other hand, as our newcomer, Blue Cathey-Thiele explains, maybe it's not so implausible after all…

Four stars on my end.  There are some hiccoughs in the episode, but they're lumped early on, and you've forgotten them by the conclusion.

Bread, Circuses, and Laurel Leaves


By Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

In "Bread and Circuses", McCoy comments that the Romans had no sun worshippers. He may need to brush up on his history – or even just ship logs! Earlier this season in "Who Mourns For Adonais", the crew met Apollo on Pollux IV, and while many Roman deities shared traits but not names with their Greek counterparts, the god of music and the sun was known as Apollo to both cultures.

And this raises an interesting question: could the wayward god have stopped over at this planet on his way to Pollux IV? It would go a long way in explaining its many similarities to both modern and ancient Earth. Whether he visited alone or with the rest of his pantheon, his powers would have been enough to leave a lasting impression. A world built to suit the needs of a deity who thrived in Greece and Rome close to two millennia ago, by the time the Enterprise shows up. In fact, a better question might be, why would Apollo ever leave?

Perhaps it was not him, but one of his cohort. He was the last of his kind, and while he said that gods do not die the way mortals do, they fade. Per his account, one of the goddesses spread herself thinner and thinner until she was gone. Could some part of her have found this world and influenced its development? Remained there as things like the industrial revolution came along, the invention of television, while her diminished presence ensured that the Roman Empire kept a firm grip on society?


The ex-senator explains why he no longer worships Apollo

The inhabitants even spoke English! Having a lingual origin of Latin would greatly increase the chances of a language developing with even a slight similarity to the form of English currently spoken. Who better to serve as a source of this language than someone who was there when the people around him used it on a daily basis? Apollo (or his shadowy companion) would be a living dictionary.

We can even guess about the stirrings of the "Son (not sun) of God". Apollo stayed long enough on Earth for belief to fade in him and his fellow gods of Olympus. He would have been around to hear of an emerging belief system, particularly one that was in competition to his own status. Apollo was hardly shy about sharing his own history, and if he mentioned this Earth faith, someone, somewhere would take interest.

To this viewer, a powerful visitor leaving a lasting influence on the planet seems far more likely than running across yet another example of "Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development" in such a short span of time.

4 stars.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 20, 1968] Missed opportunities (April 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

A week is a long time in politics

The British Prime Minister Harold Wilson is fond of noting that a lot can change in just seven days.  In American politics, the last seven days have witnessed a lifetime of tumult.

It was just last year that President Johnson was polling in the 70s.  When Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, stand-offish, brainy, tepid in his commitment, took to the field last November, few took his insurgent, Anti-Vietnam-War campaign seriously.  Least of all, President Johnson, who did not even apply to be on the ballot in New Hampshire's primary, scheduled for March 12.

Then the Tet Offensive happened, giving lie to the idea of slow but steady progress in Southeast Asia.  The Credibility Gap between the populace and the President became a canyon, and when the dust had settled, Senator McCarthy had garnered just 230 votes less than LBJ in the year's first Democratic primary.

Just a few days latter, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who had last year demurred from running, referring anti-war supplicants in McCarthy's direction, decided to throw his hat in the ring.  The Democratic insurgency has become a full-on party civil war.

Johnson's complacence reminds me of Georges Ernest Boulanger, who in January 1889 was elected deputy for Paris and seemed on the verge of leading a personal coup against the Third Republic.  But on the fateful day of January 27, when the crowds roamed the streets and chanted his name, the would-be despot was nowhere to be found.  Turned out he had missed his moment, lost in the arms of his mistress rather than under arms with his supporters.

Who knows where all this is headed?  It just goes to show that even the most promising candidate can fail for lack of sufficient focus on the goal.  And this leads me into discussion of this month's issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.


by Bert Tanner

Burned batch

Have you ever been careless in the kitchen, not so much as to ruin dinner, but to render it far less palatable than it could have been?  All of the stories this month are missing something.  Their imperfection lies in missing some quality, or in some cases, an overcooking of sorts.  The result is a handful of ideas that could have been good in others' hands, or perhaps with more expert editing, or more time and care in production.

Flight of Fancy, by Daniel F. Galouye

After a long hiatus, the author of the brilliant Dark Universe returns to the pages of science fiction with this, probably the best piece of the issue.

Frank Proctor is an ad man, miserable in his career and his life, shackled to a beautiful woman who insists on tormenting him with affair after affair.  But he stubbornly refuses to divorce her, knowing it means financial ruin.  His only solace is his recurrent dreams in which he has the ability to fly.  He knows it is a stress reaction, but at least it is a moment's surcease.

A greater balm arises: at a company beach party, Frank falls asleep by the shore and immediately begins to soar in his dream.  While apparently still in slumber, he meets a lovely young lady, who also possesses the ability to fly.  Happily, she is still there when he wakes, and he assumes he must have been sleeping with his eyes open for her to infiltrate his sleep.

Of course, romance is inevitable.  But what of his Frank's scheming wife, and will the pictures she took of him and his new love put him over a barrel?  The ending is ultimately a happy one, if a bit pat.

This is a well-crafted and vivid story.  My only real issue is it feels a bit like wish-fulfillment, and I have to wonder if Galouye just went through a messy divorce.

Four stars.

Dead to Rights, by R. C. FitzPatrick

Crime boss Angelo Amadeo is rubbed out by his second.  When the instrument of Angelo's death turns stoolie, the second's devotees enlist a surgeon to recall Angelo to life, reasoning that if Angelo is not dead anymore, then he never could have been murdered.

The problem is, Angelo's body is brought back to life, but the soul inside is most definitely not his.  Instead, the reborn inhabitant preaches love of fellow man and everlasting life in the adoration of God.

You can see where this is going.

Too much effort is made to make this a "funny" piece, and the conclusion is obvious from the start.  Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Without a Doubt Dream, by Bruce McAllister

Antonio and his lovely wife, Alba, wake up one day to find their pine-ensconced villa suddenly surrounded by endless desert.  Worse, the insinuating sands are slowly creeping in, destroying all that they touch.  Antonio reasons that only his psychic ability is shielding them, but his doubt in the same talent is causing him to lose the battle.

McAllister describes this all in an earnest, somber tone, and he successfully captures the feeling of a pair of foreign protagonists.  However, the piece ends rather abruptly, and without a great deal of evolution of the story.  Moreover, the tone is a bit too one-dimensional.

Thus, for this third piece by this promising, 19-year old author, I give three stars.

Demon, by Larry Brody

Pinchok, a simple blue-collar worker who happens to be the denizen of another plane, is summoned to Earth in a pentagram by a would-be three-wisher.  When Pinchok turns out to be rather useless as a genie, the summoner decides maybe Pinchok should devote his talents to crime…for the benefit of the human, of course.

The concept of demons just being aliens in another dimension, and the art of demonology more a kind of kidnapping (with the implication that it might work the other direction, too, with humans becoming the demons) is an intriguing premise.

This tale, while pleasant enough, just doesn't do enough with it, however.  Three stars.

The Superior Sex, by Miriam Allen deFord

William, an astronaut, finds himself the newest member of an all-male harem, subject to an imperious and beautiful mistress.  He cannot recall how he got there, but he can recall being from a world dedicated to the principle (if not the assiduous practice) of equality between the sexes.  Thus, he rankles at his new role, and in an interview with his mistress, exclaims that he would rather die than live subjugated.

Of course, the truth of his situation is more complex than it first seems.

This is almost a great story.  DeFord, an ardent women's libber before the phrase was coined, has a promising message in this piece that is then muddled by its ending.  Too bad.

Three stars.

The Time of His Life, by Larry Eisenberg

One of science fiction's few writer/scientists offers up this tale of a middle-aged scientist resentful of forever being in the shadow of his Nobel-winning father, who covets his son's wastrel youth.  Said elder has now invented a kind of time travel, but it ages or youthens the traveler rather than sending him elsewhen.  In the end, both father and son get what they want.

A decent Twilight Zone-esque piece.  Three stars.

The Dance of the Sun, by Isaac Asimov

This month, the good Doctor discusses the phases of the inner planets with respect to the Earth.  He also notes that Dr. Richardson had done a similar piece for Analog a few months back.  Frankly, I was more impressed with Richardson's; I found Asimov's dry and difficult to follow.  And astronomy was my major!

Two stars.

Muscadine, by Ron Goulart

Mr. Muscadine is an android programmed to produce great books.  The secret to his success is the idiosyncrasies fundamentally coded into his electronic brain.  But as his eccentricities spin out of control, his agent finds himself conspiring with the android's programmer toward a drastic solution.

Goulart can write well, and he can also write funny.  He does neither here.  Two stars.

Final War, by K. M. O'Donnell

Finally, an anti-war piece in the vein of Heller's Catch 22.  It features a Private Hastings, a war-addled First Sergeant, and an indecisive Captain, whose unit spends three days a week capturing a forest, three days a week being driven from the forest, and Mondays resting.  What follows is the usual silliness of war, including friendly fire, endless red tape, and general insanity.

Harrison did it MUCH better in his Starsloggers.  This one meanders for way too long in a singular vein.  Two stars.

Expected results

With a limp offering like this, it's no surprise that this issue ends up on the wrong side of three stars.  It's a shame.  Joe/Ed Ferman's mag is often one of the frontrunners in the field.  But with a month like this, I suspect Mercury Publishing is going to have an upset when compared against its competitors for April 1968.

Luckily, science fiction is an endless primary, and a month is a very very long time.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 14, 1968] Bugs in the machine (Star Trek: "The Ultimate Computer")

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The MT Soul


by Joe Reid

Brothers and sisters, I am quite simply over the moon.  I feel rewarded and fulfilled due to what I just witnessed.  Above all else, I feel something that I haven’t felt in a while as a lover of Star Trek.  I feel respected.  As I enjoy the last few sips of my cocktail, I take pleasure in divulging my thoughts on “The Ultimate Computer”.  It was very good!  The end.


Liquor infused levity aside, I suppose I am obligated to expand on my thoughts.  The episode got off to a roaring start, with the Enterprise arriving at a space station with a visibly upset Kirk having been summoned to that station sans explanation.  When Kirk asked for an explanation, he was told that his explanation would be beamed aboard.  Commodore Wesley beamed in, someone who both Kirk and Spock appeared acquainted with.  Wesley told them that they were to participate in war games to test a new computer that would be installed on the Enterprise, replacing most of the crew.  Twenty crew members would be left aboard.

After the new M5 multitronic unit was installed, shrinking the crew, we met the tall and off-putting Dr. Richard Daystrom, creator of the M5.  He was a man lacking several human pleasantries, in that he was dismissive of people but very focused on and protective of the M5.  The two most human members of the crew, Bones and Scotty, caught Daystrom’s ire in the subsequent exchanges, demonstrating his preference for machines over men.


The new sheriff in town.

As the new M5 equipped Enterprise started its tour, it made a trip to a planet.  M5 took extra initiative, navigating the ship into its orbit and even picking assignments for an away team. It excluded Kirk and Bones, who it deemed to be unnecessary for the mission.  This bothered Kirk, who was already feeling put upon, having a computer taking on more of this job than he surmised.  The M5 also started turning off parts of the ship that were absent of crew members for some unknown reason.

Leaving the planet, the ship found itself under a sneak attack as a part of the war games Wesley had planned.  The M5 took complete control of the Enterprise, dispatching the attackers swiftly with weapons at 1% power as the exercise demanded.  This earned the M5 a success report from Wesley and Kirk a (perhaps joking) slight from the commodore, when Wesley called Kirk Captain “Dunsel”; dunsel referring to a part on a ship that serves no purpose.


"Good job, Captain Useless!"

Things were looking good for the M5 and Daystrom was very pleased with the outcomes, while Kirk flirted with depression at the thought of the day’s events.  It was at this time that the M5 took a bad turn, starting by its destroying (unprovoked) an automated ore freighter.  The crew quickly became adversarial toward the M5, which now had completely taken control of the ship.  All efforts to get control back from the rogue computer failed, even costing an engineer (not Scotty, thank heaven) his life.


Posthumous hazard pay is in order.

Daystrom was undeterred in his defense of his creation, not wanting to disconnect the M5, a sentiment which didn't change even as the real war games started when M5, using weapons at 100%, utterly defeated a group of starships and killed everyone on the Excalibur.  Daystrom didn’t even try to stop his creation until the M5 was threatened with destruction by the other ships.


Here comes the Piper.

In the end, it took Kirk, using his ironclad logic against the M5, which contained Daystrom’s embedded fears but also his morality, to prevail.  He prevented an attack not using the wizardry of technology, but by trusting in the intelligence, will, and heart of men.  Proving that spaceships still need men at the helm.

I loved this episode.  It had great acting, fantastic camera direction, an intelligent original story, and best of all, there was little to no exposition to explain what was happening to the audience.  We had to infer what everything meant based on the story elements provided.  Again, it was very good.

5 stars.

Homo ex machina


by Gideon Marcus

Star Trek, like much science fiction, often tries to convey messages in its stories.  Sometimes, it does so hamfistedly, other times contradictorily.  In "The Ultimate Computer", the show presented not one, but two themes simultaneously, and did so with subtlety and cleverness. Bravo.

Firstly, "Computer" addresses the specter of automation.  The episode does not endorse Luddism.  It is clear that someday at least some of the 430 jobs on the Enterprise will be performed by computer–indeed, halfway through the episode, the ship comes across a completely robot-controlled DY-500.  In other words, M-5's revolution is not the automation of spaceships, but the next development in their automation.

The dialogue between Bones and Kirk on the captain's impending obsolescence, as well as the undercurrent of tension between the captain and Commodore Wesley (who puts on a blustery front, but probably is no happier about M-5's ramifications than Kirk), are some of the best parts of the episode.

It should also be noted, that whenever computers have gone amok, it is not their fault: in "The Changeling", Nomad's functioning got cross-contaminated with Tan Ru's.  In "Court Martial", the ship's computer is deliberately tampered with by Ben Finney.  Even Landru in "Return of the Archons" only did what it was programmed to do.  In other words, computers are useful, inevitable, and desirable tools.

But this is not just a story of steam replacing sail, or iron horses replacing ponies.  It's about what happens when too much reliance is placed on automation without sufficient involvement of humans.  It's a cautionary tale in the same vein as Failsafe (the book or the movie).  No matter how sophisticated computers get, or what shortcuts their developers take to leapfrog their development, in the end, humans are necessary–to guide them, to control them, to maximize the utility of them.


The missing link–sane oversight.

One can quibble over details; this story was told in a dramatic way so as to get its point across in 50 minutes, and in doing so, there are some inconsistencies and some let-downs (the final confrontation between Kirk and the M5 is about two exchanges too short).  But for me, "The Ultimate Computer" feels like a return to form, one of the rare episodes of the second season that recaptured the essence of the first in feel, in technical proficiency, and coherence.

Four and a half stars.

Annoyingly Predictable


by Erica Frank

The M-5 is supposed to be able to run a ship normally crewed by four hundred with just 20 people. Of course, that turns out to be a lie, not because it can't, but because it doesn't bother with little details like, oh, following regulations, obeying the captain, and not killing people.

How the hell did this computer get approved for take-control-of-a-starship testing? And when Daystrom started to make excuses for it ("You don't shut off a child when it makes a mistake!"), why didn't Kirk immediately reply with, "You don't give a child command of a starship, either. And if a child grabs control of the family car and rams into another car – you don't let the child keep control. Shut this off NOW, or we'll start shooting our phasers into its circuit banks."

("But that would leave us floating dead in space!" he might answer. And Kirk could respond, "I'm sure someone will be along shortly to pick us up.")

Instead, Kirk lets it keep control long enough to kill over 60 people before getting Daystrom out of the way. Then he manages to use third-grade logic to get it to shut itself down: "What is the penalty for murder?" "Death." (Except we know otherwise – the only crime in the Federation with a death penalty was visiting Talos IV.) Unable to cope with the awareness that it violated its internal morality, it collapses.

…Where was that logic when it was shooting at the other ships? Why didn't the super-computer recognize the "laws of God and man" before it had broken them? Why didn't Kirk insist Daystrom talk it out of shooting before it had killed anyone? Shouldn't its logic work faster and more efficiently than a human's?

But we wouldn't get much story if the M5 had immediately recognized it was stuck between "defend myself" and "kill humans, whose protection is my purpose." So it couldn't notice that until the damage was done, its creator was unconscious, and Kirk was earnestly explaining exactly what it had done wrong.

As Snoopy might say: Bleah.

Just as dull as all the "psychic powers create sadistic manipulators" stories.

The acting was good. The story pacing was good. The explanations of the technology were good. Yet another "I liked everything but the plot" episode. Two stars.

Hey McCoy – got another Finagle's Folly lying around? I could use a drink.


"Here's to Erica, at least."



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 8, 1968] Inglorious (Star Trek: "The Omega Glory")

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by Gideon Marcus

Last year, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry won science fiction's highest award, the Hugo, for writing the two-part episode "The Menagerie".  It was a deserved laurel.  After all, he not only had written the excellent pilot that formed the germ of the double-show, but also made a reasonably interesting extension to fit the new format.

Unfortunately, Roddenberry has yet to reach that high water mark again.  Despite having plenty of screenwriting experience, he seems to only have had that one good story in him.  First, there was his disappointing adaptation of "A Private Little War", originally by Jud Crucis (that's got to be a kind of Cordwainer Bird).  And now, we have his worst outing yet–"The Omega Glory":

The setup should be interesting.  Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the red-shirted Lieutenant GAWLway beam aboard the abandoned but undamaged starship Exeter in orbit around an uncharted planet.  Everyone onboard has been reduced to crystals–sort of a reverse "Man Trap" phenomenon.  This seems shocking to Kirk and co. despite having seen a very similar phenomenon just last episode.  Obeying the exhortations of a tape by the mortally ill Exec of the Exteter (who, like Spock, is apparently a double-duty officer), they beam down to the planet.


"Save yourselves!  Go down to the planet!  I dunno why we don't, but you go ahead!"

There, they meet Captain Ron Tracey, the second active-duty Starfleet captain we've seen other than Kirk (we met four others in "Court Martial", at least one of whom had graduated to Starbase running).  According to Tracey, the planet confers immunity to the disease that killed his entire crew when the rest of the landing party beamed back aboard.  Also, the planet somehow makes all the inhabitants live life spans measured in millennia.

In the six months since Tracey beamed down, he teamed up with the 'Coms', "yellow" city-dwellers under siege by the savage "white" people.  Flagrantly violating the Prime Directive, more explicitly spelled out here than in any episode prior, he exhausted his hand phaser defending the village.


"We drained four of our phasers, and they still came. We killed thousands and they still came."

Now that Kirk is here, Tracey wants to go into the immortality bottling business, distilling the essence of the anti-disease and anti-aging qualities of the planet.

Except, as Bones soon figures out, there is no such thing.  The immunity is a natural (and permanent) phenomenon, and the natives live a long time because of freak genetics resulting from the near-total bacteriological catastrophe that wiped out civilization centuries before.

That's one thread of the episode.  The other involves finding out that this is a parallel Earth, like "Miri", and the 'Yangs' are the descendants of Americans (white ones, of course), adopting the ways of the Indians in order to survive, but carrying a corrupted tradition of Founding Father document worship.  Thus, they mangle the Pledge of Allegiance and the Constitution's preamble without understanding.  Luckily, Kirk is an avid historian, and he explains what these holy words really mean.  He also insists that the Coms (what's left of them–it appears the Yangs have killed nearly all of them by the end) are people too, and they need to be treated with the dignity and equality prescribed by our nation's most central document.


"This document is absolutely perfect as is.  It's a good thing you never made any changes to it."

And then they beam back to the Enterprise.  Happy endings for everyone.

Except the audience, of course.

So much about this show doesn't make sense, from the lack of children, to the paucity of population centers, to the way genetics and natural immunity works on the planet.  I won't even touch the racial aspects of the episode, which my colleagues are champing at the bit to address.

I will say that I am utterly confused by Captain Tracey's actions.  We've been led to believe that Starship captains are a breed apart.  Sure, Commodore Decker had his issues, but they were understandable given his situation.  But Tracey?  As soon as his crew fell ill and he didn't, you'd think he'd have beamed at least some of his people down.  And certainly he'd hold sacred the highest of orders (though not the one that violation incurs the death penalty.  That's number four.) Instead, he lets his crew die, doesn't warn Star Fleet of his situation, and becomes a little dictator.


"Crew?  What crew?"

The only thing that could possibly explain the situation is that "Ron Tracey" is actually Dr. Simon van Gelder, escaped from Tantalus without being cured, somehow assuming Captain Tracey's guise and stealing the "Exeter".  Outlandish?  Sure, but no more than this episode.


"I'm the real Captain Tracey!"

Two stars.  Why two?  Because I actually kind of dug how the show went back to the parallel Earth thing and didn't just abandon it for one episode.  Of course, they didn't do very much good with it…

When Worse Comes to Worst


by Janice L. Newman

We’ve had the best of episodes, we’ve had the worst of episodes. But never have I watched an episode so infuriating as “The Omega Glory”.

Like last week’s By Any Other Name, the story starts out promising. We’re swept up in the mystery and the danger to the senior officers we’ve come to know and love. And like “By Any Other Name”, it seems that “The Omega Glory” is prepared to play against expectations. On the planet Omega, the white people are violent and savage, while the non-white people (in this case apparently of Asian extraction) are peaceful and good. What a switch!

Just kidding! It turns out that the white people are the good guys after all. They’ll be setting up a democratic government any day now, and they’ll even let those no-good commies in…as long as the commies are okay with living under their system.


"I am Cloud McCarthy, and this is Wise Dicknixon.  We promise equality and fairness for the Coms."

I described Patterns of Force as “subtle as a brick”, but this episode went beyond that. The pro-democracy message was as direct and painful as a bludgeon to the face. It was all the more insulting in the way the white “yangs” (“Yankees”, GET IT?) started out as savage, violent, unwilling to parley or compromise, yet were still painted as the triumphant good guys in the end, for no other reason than that they were descendents of a Christian nation with an American democratic system (despite literally having no understanding of the very documents and principles they revered).

One grudging star, only because I can’t give it zero.

Losers Keepers


by Joe Reid

I recently saw a preview at the theater for the upcoming Planet of the Apes movie (based on the book) starring Charlton Heston. It's a flick about a world where cavemen-like humans in rags are dumb beasts and mistreated by the intelligent thinking and talking apes. 

Much like this week's episode, which featured wild men dressed in rags that appeared to be unable to speak and behaved like beasts.  A couple of months back we had the “Gamesters of Triskelion", which featured a Master Thrall Galt who shared the look of Ming the Merciless from “Flash Gordon”.  In fact it was that same episode that had me complaining about the amount of borrowing or sometimes outright theft that Star Trek employs in its stories.

If imitation is the best form of flattery, Star Trek is the Casanova of Burbank, California!  The number of its paramours have surely become legion.  Much like the erstwhile lover of legend, Star Trek is never able to focus on attaching to one thing at a time.  Episodes must borrow from multiple sources.  Even from other episodes of Star Trek.  For example, just last week we saw an episode where the powerful Kelvans turned members of the crew into white minerals.  This week a disease did it.  Two weeks ago the Nazis from Earth history showed up on another planet.  This week the US flag and constitution showed up, for no reason other than to attempt to throw a twist at the audience.  Both of these last two examples make me feel as if I am watching an episode of the Twilight Zone instead of Star Trek.  So many episodes of that show introduce elements into settings where they should not exist.  When it happened in the Twilight Zone it was thought provoking.  When it keeps happening in Star Trek, it lacks the same effect and is starting to leave me pining for repeats of the episodes that have more original stories.


"A man…can't just…turntosalt!"  "Captain, need I remind you what happened just last episode?"

I’d love for new episodes to stop with the borrowed elements and stick to bold new content, not plucked from the theaters, or the current newspaper headlines, or popular Earth characters like Jack the Ripper. 

Although the recent “Patterns of Force” was not an episode that I loved, I do love the fact that it was original and not an obvious rip-off from something else.  “The Omega Glory” could have been more glorious had its elements not been entirely borrowed.  That's only one of its sins, of course, but it'd be a start.

1 star

Beyond the Pale


by Amber Dubin

I want to preface myself by saying I am whole-heartedly enraptured with Star Trek. It is my first and only love, the only fictional universe I'd gladly abandon my own life to walk one day in its storyline, and I'd defend the continuation of this show to the death and beyond. I feel the need to profess my undying loyalty as a fan of this series, because I am about to unleash a diatribe that could only be wrought by the betrayal of an immeasurable love. This episode made me apoplectic. I've had my hackles raised from some insulting implications about the nature of women or certain races, but so far most of my reactions have been to subtleties. Subtle this episode was not.

The least subtle attack on my sensibilities was the racism. The Yangs are introduced as inhuman savages that cannot be reasoned with when they are first encountered. However, it turns out that they are not feral, merely driven wild by religious fervor. The supertext is that the Yangs' nature is that of Native Americans (what we have ignorantly called, for centuries, 'Indians'). I cannot begin to describe how offensive this concept is. Gene Roddenberry is saying here that Native Americans as a race are naturally a savage subspecies of whites, but they, like the fictional Vulcans, have trained to control their natures through a spirituality reverential governmental system. The fundamental insult lies in the implication that the government of whites partially tamed their savage nature (only partially, because the whole time sacred ceremonies take place, the majority of the tribe is outside yipping and howling at the moon). I hate that I have to explain this, but in reality, Native Americans have had democratic systems in place before most white societies that the white founding fathers actually drew from when they were drafting their governmental systems. In addition, the role of spirituality in most ancient Native American tribes was not a controlling cult-like obsession as could be argued is displayed by many modern organized religions, and was instead a much subtler, reverential guiding force that soothed the more offensive natural human instincts like a balm rather than a set of shackles.


"What do you mean 'they're too white?'  What do you think this is?  High Chapparal?"

Unfortunately the racial attacks in this episode are not only leveled at the Native American peoples. When it comes to the Comms, although it is implied that their genetics/immunological resistance is superior to humans, they are also implied to be inferior to the white race. This is apparent in the way that they immediately recognize Ron Tracey as their leader, after "getting over the shock of [his] white skin." This is offensive not only in the way it implies innate white supremacy, but also in the way they imply that it is natural for "asiatic races" to choose innately flawed governmental systems (godless totalitarianism and communism – for shame!) over the morally upright white, democratic Republicans. They even managed to throw in fetishization of female Asians just because this steaming pile of an episode needed a little sexism for spice.

And the science! My God, the poor, poor science! I'm too angry to even go into how terribly this episode mangled the concepts of genetic and cultural evolution. It didn't even have the most basic understanding of immunology and epidemiology! The fact that any of the plot of this episode made it off the cutting room floor goes beyond the pale of my tolerance and understanding. To say I am deeply disappointed in Gene Roddenberry is an understatement of the highest degree.

I wish I could give it less than one star, but I, like the actors in these scenes, am contractually bound by the system in which I work.

One star

Speaking of Star Trek, it's on tomorrow!  And it seems to presage a civil war…

Here's the invitation! Come join us.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 6, 1968] Trend-setter (April 1968 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Back in the saddle again

It's been a long time since the halcyon days of the early '50s, when Galaxy was setting the standard to beat, ushering in the Silver Age of Science Fiction (along with the more avante garde F&SF).  But now that editor Fred Pohl has collapsed his empire to just two mags, it seems he can afford to be more picky.  Indeed, IF is unusually good this month, and the April 1968 issue of Galaxy is by far the best I've read in a long time, and a strong contender for best magazine of March.


by Gray Morrow

Brave new worlds

Goblin Reservation (Part 1 of 2), by Clifford D. Simak

Simak is back with a odd brew of a story, perhaps in the same universe as Here Gather the Stars, as reference is made to a Wisconsin transit station.  Eschewing (for the most part) his usual pastoral motif, instead we get the first installment of the book-length adventure of Peter Maxwell, professor at the Time University in North America.  At least he was.  It seems that, while on the way to do fieldwork on the planet of Coonskin, Maxwell was duplicated.  One of him went on to his intended task.  The other ended up on a crystalline, roofed-over planet.  This world is some 50 billion years old, its inhabitants little more than ghosts, and they possess the knowledge of two universes since they lived through the last cosmological crunch and survived the most recent "Big Bang".

This latter Maxwell is the one we follow, since the other one died in a traffic accident upon arriving home.  Now, Maxwell is officially dead, out of work, and at loose ends.  Add to that there seems to be conspiracies, both human and alien, to get the secrets of the crystal planet from him, and things get very hot indeed.

That would be a twisty enough tale in and of itself.  Throw in the existence of fairies and ghosts (they've been around all along, but now they're acknowledged creatures who live on reservations) as well as working time travel (one of the main characters is Alley Oop, a brilliant Neanderthal), and things are complicated to the extreme!


by Gray Morrow

And yet, somehow Simak makes it all work.  It's an unusually humorous story, though the Morrow illustrations are perhaps too comic, and I tore through the half novel in short order.

I am looking forward to seeing where this all goes.  Four stars.

The Riches of Embarrassment, by H. L. Gold

Why does Miss McGiveney always seem to happen upon her neighbors at the most embarrassing moments?  It may just be her superpower.

This slight tale in particular feels like vintage Galaxy, perhaps because it's written by the magazine's first editor.  I hope Fred Pohl edited the story savagely…what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Three stars.

Brain Drain, by Joseph P. Martino


by Dan Adkins

Tom Harrison, a field agent of Intelligence Imports Incorporated, is in Thailand searching for a particular kind of student, and he thinks he has his target in high school graduate Manob Suravit.  It turns out that Triple-I is on the hunt for brilliant PhD candidates, and apparently there aren't enough in America (and/or perhaps there is value in recruiting from beyond our shores).

At first, I thought it would turn out Harrison was looking for folks with psi powers–I was glad to find the object of his search was more mundane.  Most of the story is excellent, redolent with such authentic color that I have to think Martino has spent time in Thailand.

The problem is the ending, where Harrison convinces the local schoolmaster to be happy about the loss of promising students.  Not so much the reasoning, but the near-polemic way the reasoning is delivered.  What could be a thoughtful piece, with shades of gray woven in (as the story appeared to promise earlier on) becomes something more suited for Analog.  Along the lines of "Hey, sure we take your smart kids, but you weren't using them, and you've still got plenty."

A missed opportunity.  Three stars.

Sword Game, by H. H. Hollis

A bored middle-aged topologist and a grubby would-be Gypsy team up with their tessaract-based circus show.  Said mathematician shoves his partner into a cylinder of fuzzy time and space and stabs her vividly, but harmlessly, with a sword while the audience marvels.

But said topologist bores of this, too, and the result is truly macabre (though ultimately happy).

Three stars, but I could see someone going to four.

For Your Information: The Devil's Apples, by Willy Ley

Willy Ley offers up a short, but interesting piece on potatoes.  Not much to say, really.  Three stars.

Touch of the Moon, by Ross Rocklynne


by Dan Adkins

What an odd piece this is, about a romance broken when one of the partners goes to the moon.  Gravity has an irrevocable effect not only on the body, but also the psyche.  But happily, loosing one's ties to Earth is ultimately good for the species if it ever wants to claim the stars.

This could have been a good story, but it's written far too amateurishly and with too implausible a premise.  The former is surprising given that Rocklynne dates back to the Golden Age.  On the other hand, I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since I began reading SF regularly (1954), so perhaps he's out of practice.

Two stars.

The Deceivers, by Larry Niven


by Jack Gaughan

Our old pal Lucas Garner is back, this time with a shaggy dog story about the first fully automated restaurant that opened in 2025.

Niven has a real knack for creating whole worlds with a few strokes.  He also joins multiple time periods with ease: Lucas Garner was born in 1939, so he is our contemporary.  He lives in the 2100s, and he reminisces about the 2000s.  Thus, his stories have touches of the futuristic as well as the familiar.

Four stars.

Galaxy Bookshelf, by Algis Budrys

I don't often comment on Algis Budrys' column, but this time, he has some important things to say…and a friend named Brian Collins (who has his own commendable 'zine) did an excellent job of summing it up while adding his own observations:

Algis Budrys dedicates the whole review column to Dangerous Visions, giving us a review I'd say is about 1,500 to 2,000 words long. Budrys has shown us before that he's one of the more "literate" people in the field, but he has a unique challenge with Dangerous Visions, a book he both highly recommends but is highly mixed on as far as its content goes.

He argues pretty well as to why this is a major work in the field and why you should get yourself a copy, despite a lot of the stories therein not holding up to scrutiny. It helps that he and I mostly agree on what works and what doesn't (I'm admittedly one of the few people who liked the Farmer), and it pleases me in a morbid way to find that I'm not the only one who was incredibly disappointed by the Sturgeon. But Budrys notes that while the bloated pseudo-lecture from Sturgeon is a failure, and far under Sturgeon's caliber, it works as a sort of counter-piece to the Emshwiller, which, as Budrys says, feels more like a classic Sturgeon story than the Sturgeon we got. Taken together, these two contribute immensely to a narrative that Harlan Ellison is trying to put forth with the book.

Will Dangerous Visions kick off a new movement in SF? No. We had already seen stuff published in F&SF and New Worlds that would have made fine contributions to Dangerous Visions. This book does not present a brave new world like Ellison claims, but rather as Budrys argues it serves as an essential reminder that change is inevitable and that the field has been changing and will continue to change. No doubt 50 years from now Dangerous Visions will be remembered for the best stories between its covers, but also as a historical artifact—a portrait of a genre in the midst of change, and change is often violent and unpretty.

The World and Thorinn, by Damon Knight


by Jack Gaughan

Finally, Damon Knight begins what looks like the first part of serial in all but name.  Thorinn is a human raised by trolls in a primitive, Scandinavianesque, not-quite-fantasy world.  When calamity befalls his family, they throw him down a well to appease the god Snorri.  Thus begins the first of Thorinn's subterranean adventures.

The first few pages are a bit slow, particularly when scenes are repeated from two different viewpoints (I really dislike that style), but the rest makes for an excellent puzzle story, written in a fine, almost Vancean style.

Four stars, and the anticipated book may rate higher.

The Other Show

Between the Simak and the Knight (both fantasy-tinged pieces), we have a couple of open promises.  We also have something of a new style: there's a lot more sex in this issue than I've seen recently in Galaxy.  Is Pohl taking a page from F&SF's book?  Or has the New Wave simply caught up to the Guinn publishing enterprise?

Either way, I like it.  More, please!

Don't miss the news — a new episode of KGJ's weekly round-up is being broadcast right now!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 26, 1968] Stormy Weather (March 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

There's no sun up in the sky

Out in the vastness of space, a constellation of man-made moons keeps watch on the Earth below.  Unlike their brethren, the military sentinels that look out for rocket plumes and atomic blasts, these benign probes monitor the planet's weather with a vantage and a vigilance that would make a 19th Century meteorologist green with envy.

In addition to the wealth of daily data we get from TIROS, ESSA, and Nimbus, the West is now getting aid from an unlikely, but no less welcome, source: behind the Iron Curtain.

Two years ago, the Soviets rebuffed the idea of exchanging weather satellite imagery.  "No need," was what they said; "no sats," was probably the real story.  For in August of 1966, all of a sudden, the USSR activated the "Cold Line" link between Moscow and Washington for the exchange of meteorological data.  This action coincided with the recent launch of Cosmos 122, revealed to be a weather satellite.

This constituted a late start in the weather race–after all, TIROS had been broadcasting since 1960.  Nevertheless, better late than never.  Unfortunately, the Soviets first sent only basic weather charts with limited cloud analysis.  Not much good without the raw picture data.  When we finally got the pictures, starting September 11, 1966, the quality was lousy–the communications link is just too long and lossy.  Our ESSA photos probably didn't look any better to them.

By March 1967, however, the lines had been improved, and Kosmos 122 was returning photos with excellent clarity.

We also got infrared data.  The resolution was much worse, but the Soviets maintained they did first discover a pair of typhoons bearing down on Japan.

Since then, the USSR has orbited at least two more weather satellites, Kosmos 144 and Kosmos 184, both returning the same useful data, often from different orbital perspectives than we can easily reach.  For instance, the Soviet pictures offer particularly good views of the poles and northern Eurasia.

It's a little thing, perhaps, this trading of weather data between the superpowers.  But anything that promotes peaceful exchange and keeps the connections between East and West ready and friendly is something to appreciate.  Sometimes the Space Race is more of a torch relay!

Raining all the time


by Kelly Freas

In sharp contrast, Analog remains an island unto itself, and like all inbred families, often produces challenged offspring.  Such is the case with the March 1968 issue, which ranges from middlin' to awful.

The Alien Rulers, by Piers Anthony


by Kelly Freas

We start with the awful.

Fifteen years ago, the blue-skinned Kaozo engaged our space fleet, destroyed it utterly, and became the benevolent masters of Earth.  They created a working socialist society, implementing tremendous public works projects, and humanity proved remarkably complacent under their rule.  Nevertheless, a revolution of sorts has been hatched, and Richard Henrys is tasked with the stickiest assignment–assassinate the Kazo leader, Bitool.

Henrys is quickly captured, but instead of facing execution, Bitool offers him a deal: protect Seren, the first female Kazo on Earth, during the next three days of the revolution, and he can go free.

Sounds like a decent setup.  It's actually a terrible story.  For one thing, the author of Chthon has all of his off-putting tics on display.  Seren is a straw woman, whose vocabulary is largely limited to "Yes, Richard," and "No, Richard."  The social attitudes of this far future world seem rooted in the Victorian times, with passages like this:

"You'll pose as my wife.  Hang on to my arm and–"

"Pose?" she inquired.  "I do not comprehend this, Richard."

Damn the forthright Kazo manner!  He had five minutes to explain human ethics, or lack of them, to a person who had been born to another manner.  Pretense was not a concept in the alien repertoire, it seemed.

He chose another approach.  "For the time being, you are my wife, then.  Call it a marriage of convenience."  She began to speak, but he cut her off.  "My companion, my female.  On Earth we pair off two by two.  This means you must defer to my wishes, expressed and implied, and avoid bringing shame upon me.  Only in this manner are you permitted to accompany me in public places.  Is this clear?"

And this one:

"I promised to explain why this subterfuge was necessary.  I didn't mean to place you in a compromising situation, but–"

"Compromising, Richard?"

"Ordinarily a man and a woman do not share a room unless they are married."

And then, there's the scene where the feminine disguise Richard puts together for Seren falls apart because her body lacks mammalian contours.  Why doesn't he then dress her in male clothes?  And when her stockings start to fall off her legs, I couldn't help wondering how they'd somehow uninvented Panty Hose in the 21st Century.

But then, I'm not sure if Piers Anthony has actually ever talked to a woman, much less seen her in her underthings.

On top of that, the final revelation that the Earth fleet was never destroyed, but instead went on to conquer Kazo, and the two planets have swapped overlords (both governments populated only by the very best technocrats) is so ridiculous as to beggar belief.  That Henrys is invited to become one of the ruling class largely for his novel ideas on how to cut a cake fairly, well, takes the cake.

One star.

Uplift the Savage, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Members of an interstellar agency learn that the best way to increase the technological sophistication of a primitive race is not to give them expertise, but allow them to steal it.  The two-page point is hammered in using fourteen pages of digs at women, higher education, and educated women.

One star.

The Inevitable Weapon, by Poul Anderson


by Harry Bennett

A scientist discovers teleportation.  Useless for interstellar travel, at least for a while, it's great for beaming in concentrated starlight–as a weapon at first, but potentially, to provide energy.

This would be a decent, one-page Theodore L. Thomas piece in F&SF.  Instead, it's fourteen pages of bog-standard detective/secret agent thriller.

Two stars.

Birth of a Salesman, by James Tiptree, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

Jim Tiptee's freshman story is an Anvilesque tale of breakneck pace and nonstop patter.  T. Benedict of the Xeno-Cultural Gestalt Clearance (XCGC) has got a tough job: making sure the trade goods of the galaxy not only take into account the taboos or allergies of alien customers, but also the transhipment longshorebeings. 

Tedium sets in by page two, which, coincidentally, is how many stars I rate it.

The Horse Barbarians (Part 2 of 3), by Harry Harrison


by Kelly Freas

A lot and very little happen in this installment of Jason dinAlt's latest adventure.  Last time on Deathworld III, Jason offered up his fellow Pyrrans as mercenaries to wipe out the horse barbarians on the planet Felicity.  It's fair play, after all, since these barbarians (absolutely not the Mongols, because they have red hair!) slaughtered the last attempt at a mining camp on their frozen plateau.

So, Jason accompanies "Temuchin", the warlord, on an expedition down a cliffside to the technologically advanced civilization on the plains below.  There, they steal some gunpowder, kill a lot of innocent people, and come back–in time to link up with the rest of the Pyrrans for a raid on the Weasel clan.  More slaughter ensues.

Jason feels kind of bad about his part in the killing, but it's all a part of a master plan to someday, eventually, pacify the warriors with by opening up a trade route with the south (as opposed to setting up off-world trade, since the barbarians hate off-worlders).  So whaddaya gonna do?

Well, personally?  Pick a different career path.  Even if the nomads are the biggest savages since the Whimsies, Growleywogs, and Phantasms, what right do the Pyrrans have to kill…anyone? 

Setting aside the moral concerns, Harrison is still an effective writer.  I wasn't bored, just a bit disgusted.

Three stars.

Practice!, by Verge Foray


by Kelly Freas

A shabby little private school for problem children is suddenly the subject of a set of accreditation inspectors.  There's nothing wrong with the kids or the staff–the problem is that the snoops might discover it's really a training ground for junior ESPers!  Luckily, the tykes are on the side of management, and the inspectors are snowed.

I went back and forth on whether this very Analogian tale deserved two or three stars.  On the one hand, I'm getting a little tired of psi stories (the headmaster in the story even says there's no such thing as something for nothing–and that's what psi is), and I resented the smug digs at public school.

But what swayed me toward the positive end of the ledger (aside from the unique and lovely art) was the bit at the end whereby it's suggested that the reason for the school, and the reason psi is so unreliable, is because, like music or language, it's something that needs to be practiced from an early age.  It's a new angle, and pretty neat.

So, three stars.

Can't go on…

Wow.  2.1 stars is bottom-of-Amazing territory, and it easily makes this month's Analog the worst magazine of the month.  Compare it to Fantastic (2.2), IF (3), New Worlds (3.3), and the excellent Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.6), and the contrast is even stronger.

Because of the paucity of magazines, you could fit all the really good stuff into, say, one issue of Galaxy.  On the other hand, women wrote 12% of new fiction this month, which is decent for the times (not to mention the episodes of Star Trek D. C. Fontana has been penning).

It's 1968, an election year.  Maybe this is the year Campbell hands the reins over to someone else.  It certainly couldn't hurt the tarnished old mag.

And then, maybe the sun will come out again!

Speaking of election news, there's plenty of it and more on today's KGJ Weekly report.  You give us four minutes, and we'll give you the world:



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TV

[February 22, 1968] Reich or Wrong? (Star Trek: "Patterns of Force")

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Cowboys and Indians and Nazis


by Lorelei Marcus

Thrice recently we have been cautioned of the importance of the Prime Directive, and the consequences if it is not followed properly. While it seemed almost nonexistent as a concept up until halfway through season two, the prime directive now stands as one of the most popular story devices in our recent crop of episodes. "Patterns of Force" is no exception; it can almost entirely be summarized as a less elegant, Nazi flavored clone of "A Piece of the Action", another episode that featured the prime directive prominently.

The Enterprise arrives at planet Ekos in search of John Gill, a cultural scientist sent to observe the planet's primitive culture and development. His recent disappearance sparks the Federation to investigate, and what they find is a planet far beyond what its technological level should be, a society modeled exactly on Nazi Germany, and John Gill as "Führer".


Not since Martin Landau as Martin Bormann have we seen such an effective portrayal of a Nazi.

Like the gangster world in "A Piece of the Action", the Ekosian society's emulation of Earth history is no coincidence, but the result of direct tampering from outside forces. However the tampering of Ekos' evolution began not with the Federation, but their more advanced sister planet, Zeon, which led to Ekos accessing nuclear warheads and a space fleet. Still, even after fifty years relations between the two planets remained peaceful, and only in the past six years did Ekos begin to model a fascist regime. The only explanation is further manipulation from Gill himself.


Filmed at the Reich Building in Beautiful Downtown Burbank!

Kirk and Spock beam down to the planet to try to find Gill and get an explanation. Despite their clever civilian disguises, they are quickly identified as aliens by SS guards. Much judo chop, neck pinch, and uniform stealing high jinks later, they try to infiltrate Nazi headquarters, and are once again discovered thanks to Spock's ears. One obligatory whipping scene later, with some good special-effects for Spock's green blood, and our leads find themselves in prison alongside a Zeon rebel. We learn that the Ekosians plan to wipe out all Zeons both on their own planet and the Zeon home world, their "final solution" as Isak the rebel puts it.


Sweeps week

Horrified, Kirk and Spock fashion a quick escape by using the transponders embedded in their arms for a purpose they were absolutely not intended (turning them into primitive phasers? I'm sure we'll never see this highly useful technology again). With Isak's help, Kirk and Spock join forces with the underground resistance. They plan to infiltrate an elite banquet that night where the Führer is to make an appearance.


Berets and ascots–that's how you know they're resistance

A string of good luck and hidden allies sees them into the banquet, and subsequently the sound booth where Gill gives a speech to the nation initiating the final solution operation. After the speech, they discover that Gill has been drugged, likely by his second in command, who has been the real force pushing for Zeon extermination. Spock performs a Vulcan mind meld to discover why Gill chose to instate a Nazi regime in the first place.

Gill explains that he was only trying to unite a fractured world under an efficient state. He never foresaw such consequences to his actions. Luckily, he is able to give a speech to the people before he dies, and the Holocaust is ultimately called off.


"You won't have John Gill to kick around anymore…"

This story, like "A Piece of the Action", relies on imitative aliens who build their societies around the books and words of outsiders. The sociopolitical situation of two already communicating planets seems too complicated a situation for Gill to have been able to come into and impose an entirely new social structure. I will admit I am a little tired of how Star Trek treats its aliens as if they are children who simply play the Cowboys and Indians they see on TV, rather than think and build for themselves, no matter how primitive the society. For "A Piece of the Action" it worked, particularly because there was a 100 year lead time and a naturally curious and imitative civilization that was infected. This episode was less effective, especially with two pre-existing aliens complicating the mix.

That said, along with its many flaws, there was much to like about the episode. I'll let my co-writers cover the details, but I will say that while the episode was fun to watch, it left me feeling a bit hollow and unconvinced, as if its true purpose for existing was to just put Kirk and Spock in (and occasionally out of) SS uniforms.

Three stars.

Out of Time


by Joe Reid

Having traveled a bit in my time I have come across people who I felt held beliefs and a way of life that held them back from being all that they might be.  Without naming places I can clearly remember times when I thought, “if I could only do something to change how these folks live, they might all be able to make something of themselves.” Faced with places where people lived in poverty, violence was not far.  Never once did I think that struggling people would be better off if we could just make them all Nazis.  This week’s episode failed to adequately answer how a learned historian like John Gill could have come to that conclusion.  I feel like the episode lacked the time needed to explain how that could have come to pass.

It would have been one thing to have taken elements of mid twentieth century German Nazi culture and apply parts of it to make a society better.  After all, I have always been told that under Hitler the trains ran on time (a fallacy to be precise).  It was a total other thing to copy the Nazis whole hog: symbols, behaviors, and uniforms.  The members of the crew that saw what Fuhrer Gill had created all knew how bad the Nazis of history were and were perplexed that it would be repeated.  The brief half-comatose explanation from Gill that Nazis were efficient fell a little shy of the mark.  If we had been given time with a lucid Gill who could have explained why he felt no better options existed, it would have added more credibility to the events as they played out.


"Didn't you see Judgment at Nuremberg?  How about The Brothers Karamozov?"

My next quarrel with the episode is in regard to how quickly it ended.  Within a minute of Gill receiving a fatal shot from his captor, three things happened: The Zeon representatives decided that all of their problems were over and they could take care of things going forward. Kirk considered the planet for admission to Star Fleet, and the ship left the planet.  This leads us to the conclusion that Gill wasn’t wrong at all.  The people were doing great and always would have done great as Nazis as long as no bad people took charge.  That torture, oppression and fear are great tools if you do it without being evil.

Lastly, the motivations of the villain of the episode (Deputy Fuhrer Melakon) went completely unexplained.  He drugged Gill, assumed command, and fought a campaign of oppression against a people for no other reason than, he’s just a bad guy.  If we had only learned that he had a bad history with the Zeons, or that he was one himself and hated it–anything as a motivation–it would have been a good use of time to further the plot.

As it stood, “Patterns of Force” fell too far from believability to be considered a good use of my time.  The leaps that I was asked to make were too far.  Given more time and explanation, perhaps we could have come to a better story.

Two stars.

Springtime for Hitler?


by Janice L. Newman

My feelings on “Patterns of Force” are mixed. There was much to like about the episode. There were two ‘volte-face’ moments that were excellently done. The first caught me by surprise, yet was completely plausible: of course the rebels would want to make certain that the people they were allowing into the heart of their base weren’t secretly Nazi spies. The second moment was cleverly set up, so that it was less of a surprise yet very satisfying. It wasn’t even implausible that there would be Ekosians and Ekosian supporters at high levels of government. After all, Gill would have surrounded himself with good, like-minded people during his rise to power, people like Eneg and Daras’ father. [And don't forget the recent example of Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy who made it to the #3 position in Syria before being caught and executed. (ed.)]

Yet there were elements of the episode that bothered me. For one, other than the aforementioned curveballs, the plot was subtle as a brick, to the point where it threw me out of the episode. Gee, do you think the ‘Ekosians’ might be an especially imitative people (‘echoing’ the culture of others)? Gosh, with names that sound like “Issac” and “Abraham”, how could the people of “Zion” — sorry, I meant “Zeon” — be anything but Jewish?


Funny–they don't look Jewish…

More frustrating than the heavy-handed writing was an important assertion that the story left unchallenged. Even today, there are people who glorify the Nazis and buy into their propaganda. Gill states that Hitler’s regime was the “most efficient state Earth ever knew,” and Spock, the voice of reason, supports and reinforces him! “That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated, rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.” However, this argument is fundamentally flawed. Just as “Space Seed” fails to challenge the idea that eugenics could work at all, “Patterns of Force” leaves out the fact that Hitler’s success was built on theft, lies, and broken promises long before Germany went to war.

But in the end, my issue with this episode is more emotional than logical. A Piece of the Action does a wonderful job of showing how a culture could be ‘infected’ by another culture. But the Mafioso characters are deliberately cartoonish in their portrayals, fun and larger-than-life and slightly ‘off’. It doesn’t work as well with Nazis. Watching stormtroopers beat and kick and scream at innocent people in the street, seeing them whipping characters I care about, seeing characters I like dressed like Nazis–these things made me uncomfortable. Yes, watching Nazis repeatedly getting knocked out, neck-pinched, shot, and led around by the nose was fun. And yes, I appreciate the message that “Nazis are bad”, even if it was a bit simplistic and unsubtle. But for me, I’d just as soon not see Nazis infect my futuristic science fiction, especially accompanied by mostly unchallenged assertions that they were ever “efficient” or successful.

In quality this was a four-star episode, but my discomfort takes my personal rating down to three stars.

Lord Acton was right


by Gideon Marcus

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."  It was explicitly referenced in this episode, and it explains a lot.  After watching "Patterns of Force", one of the biggest objections of my fellow watchers to the episode's premise was that resurrecting the Nazis was a bridge too far–too obvious, too ridiculous for a serious historian to consider.


"Hogaaaan!"

But is it really so unbelievable that John Gill, elevated to Godhood to the Ekosians by his knowledge of history and technology long before he became "The Fuhrer", would choose that model?  You and I know (especially if we've read Shirer's Rise and Decline of the Third Reich) that the Hitler regime was anything but "the most efficient the world had ever seen", but would Gill?

We're less than a quarter century from the passing of the most evil government on Earth, yet just last year, the American Nazi party leader was assassinated by one of his henchmen for not being fascist enough. Kids who push counters around on maps in games like Blitzkrieg and Afrika Korps call their clubs "4th SS Panzer", "The Gauleiter Club", "Panzer Lehr Division", and like that.  I have no doubt that, two hundred years from now, there will be historians who miss the point, seduced by dazzling military conquests, Leni Riefenstahl films, and Hugo Boss uniforms.

So, I actually find "Patterns of Force" all too plausible.

I also found it (he said a little sheepishly) quite enjoyable.  With the exception of one clumsy scene edit (the one that ends with Yitzhak saying, "This is more our fight than yours") it's a well put together episode.  Shatner reins in his Shatnerisms, delivering a compelling performance.  Nimoy has the charm one expects of a real ubermensch among people playing at being ubermenschen.  Kelley has a truncated role, but he is at his very best.


"What in blazes is going on here?"

The scoring is an effective mix of library and new music.  The guest stars are quite excellent, actually (though the dubbed "actors" in the first scene on Ekos are some of the worst).

And the showrunners clearly know that women make a big part of their audience.  Why else would the two leads be half-naked for half the episode?


"Very interesting!"

Four stars.

"There's a new episode of Star Trek tomorrow!" "I'll drink to that."

Come join us–here's the invitation!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 20, 1968] 1-2-3 What are we fighting for? (March 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Sock it to me

In the middle of this month's issue of F&SF is this ad:

In short, 68 members of the science fiction community (most of them authors, but some I only know of from fandom) have paid lucre to support staying the course in Vietnam.  Some of the names on the list surprised me: Biggle, Buck, De Vet, Galouye… I should have thought they'd be less belligerent.  And, of course, Bradley's name just makes me sick.

But, as David pointed out, the language is "weasel-worded. It's perfectly possible to be opposed to the war, but feel that the US has an obligation to South Vietnam."

I'll also note that, for this ad to have come out in this issue, it must have been prepped last year.  This is before the recent offensive, when it could be said with a straight face (albeit with decreasing credibility) that we were slowly but surely "winning" in Vietnam.

I was rather surprised to find this ad in F&SF, to be sure.  It's the most liberal of the SF mags–this felt like it would be more at home in Analog.  But then, flipping to the back of the issue, I found this:

That's right–half again as many authors and fans are against staying in Vietnam (they use the older spelling, "Viet Nam").  One wonders which ad came first, and did the two campaigns know about each other?

Does this kind of political posturing belong in our science fiction magazines?  I was already seeing buzz about this in the fanzines even before the ad was printed (I somehow ended up out of the loop, but San Diego is a bit of a fandom backwater).  One fan opined that fans had no business politicizing our sacred pages.

I just think it's a mark of how polarizing and important this debate is that it now has spilled over into our sanctum sanctorum, the monthly escapist literature.  I can only imagine the war of ads will become more bitter now that the actual fight has escalated.

Doo-whackadoo


by Gahan Wilson

Aside from the shots traded in the dueling ads, the rest of the issue is actually surprisingly pleasant, if not entirely placid.  A number of these stories could have been played for horror, but instead, deliberately eschew it.  Intentional?  Or just a happy coincidence?  (I prefer my stories with happy endings.)

The Egg of the Glak, by Harvey Jacobs

Harold North is an unprepossessing campus cop, whose life is irrevocably changed when he meets and befriends the eccentric Professor Hickhoff.  In addition to being obssessed with the monopthongization of the English language (as well as with Harold North), the rotund professor also has a secret of the zoological kind.  Upon his untimely passing, his dying request is that North procure the egg of the last Glak, a Labradorian avian, from a local pet store owner.  After hatching it, North must release it in its home wilds.

Thus ensues a lusty, mildly hazardous, and rather droll journey in which North procures the egg and keeps it from the clutches of Nagle, an anthropologist who would make his reputation on the discovery.  Along the way, North finds romance, of a sort, but mostly haplesses his way through the endeavor.

What makes this tale is the telling.  It threads the line between light and serious, literary and earthy, bawdy and chaste.  It's something Goulart or Lafferty might have come up with on one of their better days.

Interestingly, Harvey Jacobs has only appeared on Galactic Journey twice before, and both were unfavorable outings.  This one, on the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed.

Five stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Ajeri Diary, by Miriam Allen deFord

DeFord, on the other hand, is a name that needs no introduction; she's as grizzled (in her ladylike fashion) as they come.  This tale is of an anthropologist who visites the rigidly segregated planet of Ajeri.  divided along sexual lines into "eskons" and "orgs", the researcher gradually learns that those terms do not precisely align with male and female.

Knowing deFord's penchant for horrific stings in the tail, I was on tenter hooks for much of the piece, especially when the anthropologists finds himself having more and more in common with the neuter "eskons".  But in the end, what we really have is a thoroughly logical state of societal affairs–indeed, something of an utopia…

For some values of utopia, in any event!

Four stars, and the Anti-Queen Bee Award for the month.

Whose Short Happy Life?, by Sterling Lanier

Two hundred years after the Atomic Apocalypse, a hunting party invades the Reserve in search of the most deadly game–the preserved tribes of The Enemy.  About halfway through, you'll figure out that something is amiss, but it's worth the ride to the end to figure out what it is.

Four stars.

Dinosaurs in Today's World, by L. Sprague de Camp

Unusually, we have two science fact articles this issue.  This is the weaker of the two, a piece on whether dinosaurs could yet live somewhere on the globe.  It's sort of a poor man's version of a Ley piece I'm sure I read several years ago.

Three stars.

Budget Planet, by Robert Sheckley

Here is an excerpt from an upcoming book, Dimension of Miracles, that (sort of) stands on its own.  It's the account of a planet builder who cuts corners every chance he gets, and his personal reminiscence of his contract with a certain Jehovah.

It's a lot of fluff, but kind of fun.  Three stars.

The Shapes, by J. H. Rosny aîné

This piece is a contender for the "oldest reprint" award.  A Damon Knight translation from the French (he's quite good at those), it is the story of an extraterrestrial invasion in a pre-Sumerian (but more advanced) Mesopotamia.

Not bad, though the "scientific account" portion in the middle both drags and feels strongly out of flavor with the beginning and end.

Three stars.

The Seventh Planet, by Isaac Asimov

This is a good, but somehow hollow account of the discovery and nature of the planet Mercury, one of the harder planets to observe as it never is very far from the Sun (I had little difficulty finding it when I lived in the desert — the horizons are very low there).

Four stars, I suppose.

That High-Up Blue Day That Saw the Black Sky-Train Come Spinning, by David R. Bunch

Finally, the most forgettable story is this piece of frivolity about two drunks who concoct an alien menace as a prank–but was one of them actually serious?

Two stars.

Who cares? I don't give damn!

However one may feel about the expanding war in Southeast Asia, I think we must remain united on this one matter: the March 1968 issue of F&SF is pretty darned good.  And if we be not united, well, I'd like to hear where you agree or disagree.

You won't even have to pay me to take out an ad…



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 16, 1968] In their words (Star Trek: "Return to Tomorrow")

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This week's review is a little bit different–for the first time, we've gotten the characters themselves to comment on the episode!  We think you'll find their thoughts most illuminating…

Sargon

Would that I could return us back to that yesterday those hundreds of eons ago.  Back when I possessed the hubris to decide that the best, brightest, and most wealthy of our people were worthy of surviving the calamity that had destroyed our people and our planet.  Mercifully, entropy mostly corrected my error in judgment and took the majority of those I sought to preserve.  All that remained were Henoch, a brilliant and driven member of the ruling class, Thalassa, a woman of unparalleled talent who was my wife, and me, the man who created the means for us to outlive all we have ever known.  My name was Sargon.

Although our people excelled in power, reaching the pinnacles of science, technology, body, mind, and spirit, we were unable to save our planet.  Some of us sent out space vessels to seed other worlds.  The rest of us remained behind to fight our world’s demise.  We failed.  So, we few transferred our consciousness to receptacles; our lives and days as living breathing beings came to an end.  In our haste to preserve ourselves, we failed again, storing our consciousnesses successfully, but lacking any physical means to return us to any likeness of our yesterday.  Nevertheless, the years have given me and the others all nature of powers as we’ve continued to develop our minds without bodies.


What was left of us.

The day of our hope came when my mind, able to reach far out into the cosmos, touched them, touched him.  Humans.  Scientists.  Explorers.  So much like us that I suspect them to be kin to us.  From their minds I deduced a way to call them to us.  I knew they would help us willingly given the right motivation.  Whether that motivation was the safety of their vessel, the desire for new knowledge, or the will to avoid enslavement, they would help us.  Their leader, Kirk, a brave and solid man, would help us. 


The object of my call–suspicious, but not so obstreperous as he had been to other beings who had seized his ship.

The problem I faced was first that these people would never knowingly help me end the lives of myself and my companions.  Also, that Thalassa and Henoch had not yet come to the same conclusion that I had.  That our continued existence would bring about ruin to these new worlds of people.  Returning to the mistakes we made in our yesterday would pervert and eventually destroy the tomorrow that these beings should live.  So in order to end the continued existence of my people and preserve the future of Kirk’s people I developed a plan to motivate my people and Kirk’s.  For me and mine, what would be more motivating than returning to living bodies?  For Kirk’s people, the promise of our technology in exchange for temporary use of their bodies. 


The android forms I knew would be unpalatable to my companions.

When I inhabited Kirk’s body, he would come to know my good intent for him and his people, but not my every thought.  This was important since I would not be able to remain in it for long periods of time.  For Thalassa I found a suitable woman, so much like she was in our yesterday.  I feared for Henoch’s intentions. 

Knowing that he might not come to see the danger that we posed to these beings, for him we would hide the truth of his mind from the humans.  The Vulcan among them would serve as a vessel that should contain Henoch long enough for my plan to work.  Preventing Henoch interfering while hopefully allowing Thalassa to come to understand my way.

This endeavor would reveal temptations, even for me.  Knowing it would be good to feel again, even for a short while.  But, like Kirk, I would not divert from the path that I have chosen.  I would prevent the resurrection of yesterday and the troubles we would cause.  I would return these humans to the tomorrow that should exist for them.  And with that as my final thought, I sent a Priority One Distress Call to the humans.

If it be not hubris, I give four stars for this episode of our unlife.

Thalassa

We spent 500,000 years asleep, waiting to be awoken and to return to our lives. I remember asking my husband why we simply didn’t cross the vastness of space as we had before, gathering material to build new bodies for ourselves. He told me that it was too late. I did not understand what that meant.

Encountering the humans was like looking into the distant past. I was reminded of what it was to be able to laugh when Sargon awoke me to observe the engineer and the doctor exchanging pithy and sarcastic observations. Dr. McCoy in particular had many amusing things to say.

With all of our power, of course we could have built androids that could feel. According to the ship’s records, even the human Dr. Roger Korby succeeded in doing so, using far more primitive tools than we could craft. But Sargon insisted that we must not give in to temptation, and the only way to prevent it was the path he outlined: a cold and sterile one. It was not until I found myself torturing the earnest Dr. McCoy that I realized Sargon was right.


A return to monstrous ways.

For we would have used our powers to make ourselves gods. Not kind or benevolent gods, but capricious and cruel ones. And so the last hope was gone. We failed Sargon’s test, and the price was our lives. It was the right choice to make. Three stars left behind in the cosmos, for Enoch, Sargon, and myself.

Henoch

I have to say, it was a bit of a bummer to spend half a million years trapped in a ball, only to be tricked out of a life of Godhood.  Of course, one wonders why I ever consented to be archived in the first place, given how incorrigible I was.  Certainly, I didn't change my ways after an eon of reflection, nor after my entire planet was destroyed by hubris.  Actually, the reason is simple: once I got into that superb Vulcan physique, surrounded by beautiful (and competent) women, well, how could I resist?


"Well, hello."

The best practical joke I got to play in my brief time of freedom was contorting poor Mr. Spock's face into great displays of emotion.  Sure, he's betrayed emotion before, under the effects of spores and long-chain molecules, but never has he been so casually flirtatious, so smugly sardonic, so deliciously satanic.  I must pat myself on the back.  Or, at least, I would…if I still had a back.

The flood of senses I so briefly enjoyed seemed to lend cinematography and even soundtrack to my every nefarious move.  I was reminded of the rare but innovative angles employed by the 20th Century TV director Ralph Senensky, and the artful strains produced by composer George Duning.  The clever quips that were wholly my own creation were as good as anything TV writer John T. Dugan could have come up with.  (If you're wondering how I am so conversant with ancient broadcast personalities, remember I briefly shared a soul with the walking encyclopedia that is Spock).

Really, I don't regret too much about this episode of my life–except for that damned goody-goody Sargon and that lightweight of a captain whose body he took over.  Kirk must have been so thrilled at the prospect of surrendering his slab of a figure–you could. tell. by. the. way. he. paused. after. every. word.  And then the way Sargon felt up his purloined pectorals…and they call me obscene!


I mean, really…

Finally, while I might respect the skills of the Enterprise's chief engineer, who picked up my technical expertise much faster than I'd thought a primitive could, I still couldn't stand talking to him for any length of time.  His voice reminded me too much of Sargon's.


Fortunately, he was more interested in our littler Tinker-toys than Thalassa.

Oh, I need to rate this bit of my life as well as talk about it?  Fine.  Three and a half stars.  It'd be four if it weren't for weird ol' Captain Kirk.

I know Shatner is proud of his turn in Judgment at Nuremberg, but this may be going a bit too far the other way…

Join us tonight at 8pm Eastern (or Pacific!)



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 14, 1968] Triple John (February 1968 Galactoscope)

4 Comments


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson

Drugs seem to be everywhere these days in science fiction. From Aldiss’ Acid War stories in New Worlds, through Dick’s Faith of Our Fathers in Dangerous Visions, to Brunner’s Productions of Time in Fantasy & Science Fiction. Some days I wonder if I am the only person in fandom that isn’t getting high and floating up among The Stars That Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice.

As such, it was only a matter of time before we got a real hip novel that fully blurs the boundary between fantastic and the psychedelic. Anderson is the one to give it to us.

One Pill Makes You Larger

So, what is this book about? On a basic plot level it is about Chester and Mike (fictionalised versions of the author and his sometimes co-writer) who seem to be sort of hippies living in 1977. They discover people affected by a mysterious new drug called Reality Pills, which cause psychedelic hallucinations to physically appear, such as a kid able to create butterflies and another person with their own halo. They set about tracking down the source of this, which, as the cover gives away, turns out to be extra-terrestrial.

As you can imagine, this gets very surreal quickly. Here is a sample conversation:

“Excuse me,” said another tall blue lobster, making its way to the john.
“One of yours?” I wondered. “I thought it was one yours.”
“I don’t like blue lobsters.”

Your willingness to just go with these kinds of sections without any prelude will likely dictate your enjoyment of the novel.

One Pill Makes You Small

But that, for me, isn’t what the book is really about. Rather, it gives us a window on to a subculture, the lives of dropouts and experimental rock groups in Greenwich Village right now. As I have not been there myself, I cannot speak to the reliability of Anderson’s vision but it is a vivid one imbued with a feeling of time and place, just as clear as if someone was talking to me about Middle Earth Club in London.

That is not to say I understood it all, and New Yorkers may well be able to “dig” more of it than I do, but it feels real and lived in, in a way so much science fiction does not.

And The Ones Your Mother Gives You, Don’t Do Anything At All

There are certain parts that do not work as well for me. It is filled with a lot of references to New York life and pop culture, some of which I understood (e.g. use of an obscure Tolkien simile) but other meanings were totally lost on me.

Perhaps more importantly, I am not certain if it is really “about” anything much. With its style and boundary pushing content, it is clearly aiming more for the literary than Campbell-esque end of the market. But Last Exit To Brooklyn this is not, whilst the current trial for that book’s UK publication hinges on its merits as a great work of literature, I cannot help but feel that argument could not be made in this case. Scenes like the Goddess Fellatia attempting to rape a police officer feel added more for the sake of shock value than any complex point being made.

Remember What The Dormouse Said, “Feed Your Head!”

Having said all that, I believe it still passes Sturgeon’s Law and is better than 90% of science fiction on the market. It is not perfect by any stretch and falls down in a number of areas. But it is still quite a groovy trip to take.

Four Stars

Here are some damning short takes from Kris and Jason–and both involve Lin Carter and Belmont Books!

The Thief of Thoth, by Lin Carter, and …And Others Shall Be Born, by Frank Belknap Long

"Belmont Double? Don't Bother. Dead Boring, Better-off Dreaming!"

Tower at the Edge of Time, by Lin Carter

"Ugh I just can’t get into this stupid barbarian book. Lin Carter’s writing is so full of stereotypes and clichés. I’ve tried a few times to get through it and can’t. I’m tagging out for this month."


by Gideon Marcus

Ace Double H-40

Here's another shortish take, simply because this Double doesn't merit more:

C.O.D. Mars, by E. C. Tubb


Art by Jack Gaughan

The first interstellar journey results in horror: of the five crew, only three remain alive. The other two are carriers of an extraterrestrial disease, or perhaps worse–unwitting vessels of an alien invasion.

Someday, someone might write a superb book or series of books about a private investigator who jaunts through the asteroid belt, trying to thwart a Martian plot to weaponize alien technology (in the guise of infected humans) to gain an upper hand against Earth. This one isn't it.

It's not bad, but it's back to the humdrum potboiling that's associated with Tubb (sad, because we know he, and Ace, can do better–viz. The Winds of Gath). Part of the issue is the length; this is really a long novella, and the ending is rushed and pat–probably as a result.

Three and a half stars.

Alien Sea, by John Rackham


Art by George Zei

A ruined ship crewed by extra-terrestrials, the last survivor of a devastating planetary conflict, makes a close approach to their alien sun. As its hull chars and the crew and passengers succumb one by one to the heat, their only hope is that their cometary orbit will swing it quickly back for a rendezvous with their doomed world. But when they reach home, they find the doomsday weapons have sunk the two warring continents. All that is left is waves…and survivors on an enemy satellite. Together, they must build a new society, one free from strife.

Great premise! I was certainly hooked. Sadly, that's just the first chapter.

Then there's a jump of two millennia, and the focus is on a human conflict. Earthers have arrived on this alien world, unaware of the planet's history or inhabitants, intending to establish a fueling station. But rivals from Venus, peopled by intellectual exiles from Earth, have made contact with the indigenes. They are putting together an alien/Venusian invasion force to take Earth for their own.

The main body of the text, involving a telepathic sensitive who records experiences for television audiences at home, as well as the panoply of beautiful and topless (but at least capable) women he encounters, reads like a tepid planetary adventure from the '50s, complete with two-page digressions to lovingly describe some new piece of technology.

Two and a half stars.


by Fiona Moore

Chocky, by John Wyndham

John Wyndham’s latest novel, Chocky, an expansion of a novelette of the same name published in Amazing Stories in 1963, will be something of a disappointment to fans of the blend of cutting social commentary and dystopian science fiction which has characterised most of his novels to date. It’s much more in the mode of Wyndham’s earlier short fiction, but stretched out to the point where the conceit fails to hold the reader’s attention.

Plotwise, not an awful lot happens. A young boy, Matthew Gore, develops what his father, our point-of-view character, takes to be an imaginary friend, Chocky. It’s fairly apparent to the reader, though not so much to his family and teachers, that Chocky is an alien scout who is investigating the Earth through a telepathic rapport with Matthew. Chocky asks a lot of questions about things like geography, internal combustion engines, and gender; in return Chocky teaches Matthew sophisticated mathematical concepts like binary systems, and is sometimes able to take him over and impart abilities he doesn’t naturally possess. After a couple of incidents where Chocky, working through Matthew, does something which winds up in the national press, the family comes to wider, and possibly more sinister, attention.

And… well, that’s it. The action never gets exciting enough to be a thriller. Matthew and his family are never well-developed enough for this to become a poignant character piece. Details like the fact that Matthew is adopted are introduced but never achieve wider relevance. Matthew’s collection of busybody relatives lurk in the wings as a threat to Chocky’s privacy, but that’s all they remain: a minor complication. There’s very little sense of peril or threat from Chocky as there was from the children in The Midwich Cuckoos; the alien is just here to observe, not to take over. The setup, with a cosy suburban family, suggests that Chocky will upend that cosiness and force their prejudies and banalities into the open, but we’re disappointed on that score too. Wyndham does have some of his usual fun with the foibles of middle-class British society, but he never really twists the knife.

It’s frustrating because this could have been a much more exciting and relevant book. A story in which a little boy’s life is torn apart by scientists and politicians desperate to make first contact with aliens could have been heartrending; a story in which a lonely child’s isolation is used for sinister ends by a non-human being likewise. The first part of the book focuses so heavily on the social pressure Matthew’s parents felt to have children that one thinks this will be one of the themes of the story, however, this isn’t paid off either.

But there’s not much point in speculating about what Chocky could have been. It is what it is—an overextended novelette that promises much but delivers little, and is a disappointment compared to the works which made Wyndham famous. Two out of five stars.



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