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[April 6, 1960] First Test (Wisconsin Primary results)


Provided by the Journal Sentinel

In an upset that no one saw coming (except every pollster in the nation), Massachusetts Senator Jack Kennedy defeated Michigan Senator Hubert Humphrey in a close Wisconsin primary, April 5.  It took most of the night for the final results to come in, but in the end, Kennedy took six out of the ten delegates the state had to offer.  This provides the handsome, boyish Senator the momentum he needs to compete in West Virginia and Nebraska, his next primaries.

Humphrey, however, seems completely unfazed.  In fact, when I heard him on the radio this morning, he sounded positively victorious.  He asserted that his managing to garner any delegates, given how much time and money Kennedy sank into the primary, made him the moral winner of the contest.  Perhaps Humphrey is just whistling in the dark.  Still, one can't help but like the guy.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a review of a brand new book!




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[April 5, 1960] 8th Wonder of the World (Wondercon, 1960)

No man is an island; but without conventions, the moat can be pretty broad.

Humans are social creatures.  Most of us have a natural desire to share our passions with others.  When we read (or watch) science fiction and fantasy, we are receiving a broadcast from an author, but the communication stops there.  If we want to discuss the experience, we need to find fellow fans.

There are many ways to do this.  You can take out an ad in the newspaper's personal columns.  You can join a local fan group, either public or privately sponsored.  These venues let you find nearby fans, and many clubs have become formidable associations. 

But if you want to meet fans from all over, or change your relationship with your favorite authors from a one-way experience into a face-to-face dialogue, there is no substitute for the convention.

The father of all science fiction conventions is the annual World Science Fiction Convention, at which the Hugo awards are announced.  This year, it will take place in Pittsburgh from September 3-5. 

There are lots of smaller conventions, however.  For instance, there recently was a small affair in Anaheim called "Wondercon" whose focus was comic books, science fiction, and animated films.  Anaheim is very close to my home town of San Diego, so we decided to make a family weekend it.

It was a jolly time.  Being a small convention, the folks were very energetic and creativity abounded.  My daughter hawked mimeographed copies of her home-grown comic book, which the professional writers at DC purchased with gusto.  My wife dressed as the Bat-Woman (of recent prominence in the Batman comics); she pulled it off quite well!  I perused fanzines, expanded awareness of this column, vigorously discussed the ramifications of copyright and trademark laws, and gawked at the well-crafted costumes.

Genre great Robert Heinlein was not in attendance, but a fan circle devoted to him was there leading a blood drive.  I also met up with the family of the late great Edgar Rice Burroughs, who fretted about the upcoming ACE paperback reprintings of the master's works.  Apparently, ACE will not be paying royalties (the original works having fallen out of copright).

Without further ado, here is my slew of photographs from the convention.  My apologies for the blurriness—it is my first time working with color film.

Attendees:

Rose Tyler

Peggy Carter

Amy Saunders (who is an excellent artist; contact her for some excellent comics-inspired and science fiction prints!)

As Anaheim is the home of Walt Disney's theme park, Disneyland, Disney costumes were popular:


Historical dress was also common:



Who doesn't like Captain America?


And, of course, Superman!

The Author, himself

By the way, the Wisconsin Democratic Primary is today.  My bet is on Hubert Humphrey.  After all, he is for all intents and purposes, the state's third Senator.  I can't imagine an East Coast upstart like Jack Kennedy winning more than four of the ten delegates, no matter what the over-enthusiastic polls are predicting.




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[April 2, 1960] Aeolus Chained (TIROS 1)

"Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."  Mark Twain

That sage 19th century observation may not hold much longer if NASA has anything to say about it.

Last year, Vanguard 2 was touted as the first weather satellite because it had a pair of photocells designed to measure the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth.  This way, scientists could quantify the sun's effects on our climate.  No useful data was obtained, however, since the probe quickly became a whirling dervish.  Explorer 7 has a sophisticated radiometer experiment, which is more successfully accomplishing the same mission.

But it was not until yesterday that humanity had an honest-to-goodness weather shutterbug in orbit snapping pictures of clouds from hundreds of miles above them. 

The spacecraft is called TIROS: Television InfraRed Observation Satellite.  Every 90 minutes, TIROS makes a complete circuit of the Earth, with most of the inhabited surface visible to its twin TV cameras.  TIROS' photos are facsimiled to NASA headquarters (normally—I understand that the very first photos were conveyed via helicopter from the tracking station at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey).  They can then be distributed to scientists, weathermen, reporters, the general public.


TIROS' first picture—compare it to the "photo" returned by Explorer 6!

TIROS is going to usher in a new era of meteorology.  Weathermen will make accurate predictions days in advance.  Hurricane courses will be mapped, saving lives and property.  The President won't be rained out on golfing days. 

Perhaps more importantly, TIROS proves once and for all the practical value of satellites.  This isn't some eggheaded application too esoteric for the public to understand.  Nor is it just jingoistic one-upsmanship.  When someone asks you why we bother sending craft into space, you can point to TIROS' picture, the likes of which will soon replace the crude line drawings we currently find in our newspapers.

On a side note, TIROS marks the first homegrown NASA probe.  All of the previous Pioneers and Explorers were made by outside contractors (like Space Technology Laboratories) or absorbed facilities (like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory).  TIROS was made by NASA's Goddard Space Center in Maryland, which first started operation in June 1959.  I'd say they've earned an "A" right out of the gate!

Speaking of reports, we're at a science fiction convention in Los Angeles this weekend.  I'll try to have a wrap-up soon after the photos are developed.  During the con's down-time, should there be any, I plan to finish Edmond Hamilton's recently released The Haunted Stars while lounging in a chair by the hotel pool.  It's anyone's guess whether the convention or the book will get an article first…




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[March 31, 1960] What goes up… (May 1960 Astounding)

Every science fiction digest has a flavor.  Part of it is due to the whimsy of the editor, part of it is the niche the magazine is trying to fill, and part of it is luck of the draw.

Astounding can be summed up in just a few words: psionic, smug, workmanlike, crackpot, inbred.

Not necessarily in that order.

You see, every editor has an agenda.  For F&SF's Tony Boucher, and his successor, Paul Mills, it's to have as literary a magazine as possible.  For Galaxy and IF's H. L. Gold, it's to present solid science fiction without resorting to hackneyed clichés of the pulp era.

For Astounding's John Campbell, the motivation might once have been to mentor young writers so that they could create the best science fiction of the day.  Certainly, Campbell's magazine pioneered the field in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s.  But these days, Campbell seems determined to be the strongest champion of psychic phenomena and other silliness. 

For instance: perpetual motion.  Campbell promises to fully educate us on the "Dean Drive" next month, a flop of a device (so I understand) that supposedly turns rotational energy into linear energy for propulsion purposes. 

For instance: psychic paper.  The "Heironymous Machine," a meaningless circuit that is just as effective (so its creator and defenders claim) whether it be made out of electronic components or simply drawn on a sheet.

For instance: virtually every story that appears in Astounding must feature psychic powers and/or some reference to one of Campbell's pet projects.

It reminds me of how Fantastic Universe catered to the UFO crowd during its sunset years, much good it did them. 

The result of this editorial policy, and the over-reliance on just a few of the field's less exceptional authors, is a magazine that usually ranks lowest of the Big Three (combining Galaxy and IF).  Last month was a striking exception to this rule.  This month, we may not be so lucky.

The May 1960 Astounding only has five pieces apart from the second part of the "Mark Phillips" serial, Out like a Light.  I won't review the serial until its completion next month.

Astounding perennial Randall Garrett contributes the lead novella, the promising but ultimately flawed Damned if you Don't.  In 1981, an enterprising scientist develops a perfect, tiny energy source that threatens to throw the entire planet's economy into chaos.  Everyone is out to stop him, from the power company to the government.  The first half is pleasant reading, with some reasonably good characterization and suspense as to who's actually after the powerful "Converter" machines.  There's another nod to Murray Leinster by name.  At one point, there is a description of a computer small enough to have been knocked over by a single person, which is an interesting extrapolation of miniaturization trends.

But then the story gets talky.  There is a meaningless aside describing a lukewarm Middle Eastern and European war in the late '60s that leads to a clamp down on private scientific investigations.  It is meaningless not only for its implausibility but also for the fact that it doesn't really have any bearing on the story.  Then there are pages of discussion on how release of the device will destroy the world as we know it.  These are capped off with the realization that the device has been stolen, and it's all a moot point.  So much for that story.

Then we have John Cory's three-pager Egocentric Orbit.  Twice before, astronauts have been launched into space and refused to come down.  In this story, following the third orbital astronaut, we find out why. 

Laurence Janifer, one half of the pair that is Mark Phillips (the other being Randall Garrett) has a decent story under the pseudonym "Larry M. Harris."  It's a period piece set in 1605 called Wizard, and it involves a brotherhood of telepaths attempting to thwart the inquisition, which threatens to wipe their breed from the Earth.

The final fiction entry is Mack Reynold's pedestrian Revolution, which entertains a number of ridiculous propositions.  Item: the Soviet Union will surpass the United States in production in just seven years.  Item: a revolution is easy to incite so long as you throw lots of money at the problem.  Item: if you think the USSR is productive now, wait until bright-eyed Syndicalist Technocrats take over!

Much like Garrett's opening story, the latter half is composed mostly of speeches justifying the plot line, and the ending features the revolution's catalyst, a western agent, suggesting that the revolution be aborted lest the USSR someday truly trounce the West.  Pretty bad stuff.

On the other hand, Dr. Asimov is back with a nice long piece (The March of the Phyla) on the various animal groups and the successive adaptations that allowed them to increasingly become masters of their environment rather passive creatures vulnerable to the caprice of Mother Nature.  It's a bit teleological in its presentation, but quite informative. 

I just have to wonder when Asimov will supplant Ley at Galaxy and monopolize all of the digests.  Nice racket if you can get it…

So, there you have it.  A magazine largely written by just two authors (Garrett and Janifer), suffused with smugness, even the non-fiction, featuring psionics and super-inventions, none of it terribly well-written.  Campbell's got to find some new blood, or Astounding is going to founder, I fear.  Perhaps Harry Harrison offers some hope—his Deathworld was the overwhelming favorite of the fans, per the Analytical Laboratory (the magazine's reader survey) for January and February.  More like that would help.

There's an exciting launch coming tomorrow.  If it's successful, I'll see you on the 2nd with an update on… TIROS.




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[March 28, 1960] Calling all Stars! (Project Ozma begins)

Imagine installing telephone service in your home for the first time only to have it ring almost immediately.  This is the hope of scientists working on the colorfully named "Project Ozma" at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.

Simultaneously with humanity's first steps into space, we are developing brand new methods of sensing the stars from the ground.  Radio astronomy is an exciting field that allows us to sweep wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation well beyond the range of the human eye, revealing heretofore unknown features of the universe. 

It also may allows us to eavesdrop on signals emanating from another star.  Project Ozma, named after the fairy princess ruler of L. Frank Baum's magical kingdom, Oz, operates on the assumption that alien races will be as gregarious as humans.  Dr. Frank Drake, Ozma's chief, is hoping that once a species gets the ability to send high power messages across the galaxy, it will (and already has).

Starting next week, Drake and his team will aim their 85 foot wide "ear" to scan nearby Sun-like stars.  Their first two targets are Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, a yellow and orange star (respectively) about the same age as our sun.  If you're wondering why the telescope isn't being directed at Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to ours, it's because that promising target is only visible from the Southern Hemisphere.

Now, there's a haystack worth of bandwidth that a needle of a broadcast could hide in.  We can't search all of it at once, so Drake has arbitrarily picked a narrow band of wavelengths—around 21 centimeters in size.  His is not an entirely uneducated guess.  The 21 centimeter band is a sort of cosmic yardstick, home to a background hiss emitted by galactic hydrogen, that any astronomically advanced species will know about.  Moreover, targeting this band allows Drake to do some "real" astronomical research and thus further justify his funding.

What will a message from the stars sound like?  It will have to be some kind of modulated, non-random pattern.  Perhaps a series of pulses spelling out a universal constant in binary?  A simple on-off code?  The possibility I find the most fun is the idea of an alien race picking up our radio broadcasts and beaming them back at us.  That would be the surest sign that our presence in the universe has been acknowledged.

On the other hand, I'm not sure Fibber McGee and Molly are the best ambassadors Earth has to offer…




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[March 26, 1960] Among the Best (April 1960 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction regularly beats out the other regular digests in terms of consistent quality.  This month's, April 1960, is no exception.

There's a lot to cover, so let's dive right in:

Daniel Keyes, who wrote the superb Flowers for Algernon, has returned with the issue's lead novelette, Crazy Maro.  Our viewpoint character is an attorney who has been contracted by unseen agents from the future to secure psychically adept (and invariably disadvantaged) children for work in a later time.  The fellow meets his match, however, when he is asked to recruit the titular Maro, a young black man with an uncanny talent for reading the emotions of others.  Much of the novelette is a mystery story, with the lawyer trying to puzzle out the root of Maro's power.  It's a powerful piece, assuredly, though the very end is unnecessarily melodramatic.

Another serious piece is The Hairy Thunderer by "Levi Crow" (Manly Wade Wellman in disguise).  The writing is deceptively simplistic, describing the arrival of a hairy pale foreigner to the lands of an American Indian tribe.  The European commences to ensnare the tribe with his boom stick and, more effectively and terribly, his firewater.  A young man of the tribe, Lone Arrow, is able to resist him with the magical assistance of a certain eight-legged class of arthropods.

The moral of the story, that one should be kind to spiders for they are misunderstood but fundamentally good creatures, is one that resonates strongly.  I'm always hoping that, when I die, the Spider Gods will look favorably upon me for the compassion and mercy I have shown Their Kind.

G.C. Edmondson's forgettable short story, Ringer features a fellow who is replaced by a robotic doppelganger.  The twist is that the viewpoint is always that character, whether in human or android form.

The incomparable Edgar Pangborn brings us The Wrens in Grampa's Bears, in which "Grampa," the narrator's Great Grandfather, hosts a brood of beneficient angels within his long beard.  Their existence is only hinted at, and the story is mostly a mood piece capturing the sunset of an old man's life in the Summer of '58, a man whose memories encompass both Gettysburg and satellites.  Yet, the theme of the tale is not how much things have changed, but how they stay essentially the same. 

A Certain Room, a short by Ken Kusenberg, translated from German by Therese Pol, is a silly, archaic piece.  What happens when you fiddle with the objects in a room that have a causal connection to bigger, worldwide events?  Not much good.

George Elliott has the issue's second novelette, the fantasy-less, science-fiction-less, but nevertheless compelling Among the Dangs.  It is a mock account of an anthropologist's sojourn amongst the fictional Dang tribe of Ecuador.  Enlisted for his talent for mimicry and his dark skin, the protagonist spends years living with the Dang, learning their customs and even taking a wife, so that he can become one of their high prophets.  His initial motivation is to compose a thesis for an advanced degree.  But so complete is his indoctrination that it is only through a titanic force of will that he breaks free, and the experience forever marks him. 

The piece originally appeared a couple of years back in Esquire, and it is a strange story to find within the covers of F&SF.  On the other hand, while the content is neither science fictional nor fantastic, there is a certain flavor to it that allows it to fit nicely in the middle of this issue.  I'm not complaining for its inclusion.

I'm not sure what to do with Rosel George Brown.  I really want to like her, but she has this tendency toward first-person pieces featuring scatterbrained housewives.  Their situations are tediously conventional and exhaustingly frenetic.  I have to wonder if the stories aren't semi-autobiographical.  A Little Human Contact continues in this vein, and while it's not horrible, it is still not the masterpiece I know Brown is capable of.  Of course, I may be looking in the wrong place–Amazing and Fantastic are still around, and I understand she's due to be published there soon. 

Isaac Asimov has an excellent non-fiction piece this month, It's About Time, describing the evolution and fundamental incompatibility of our various calendar systems.  The conclusion: trust the astronomers and go with Julian dating.

I won't spoil Joseph Whitehill's In the House, Another since it's a one-trick pony.  Cute, though.

Rounding out the issue is Gordy Dickson's latest novelette, The Game of Five.  It is strangely reminiscent of his earlier The Man in the Mailbag, but it's not as good.  Both stories involve a man infiltrating an alien culture to rescue a captured woman.  In both stories, it quickly turns out that the situations are more complex than they seem at first blush.  In both stories, the "captured" woman turns out to be an agent of some kind.

But though Five is competently written, the Hercule Poirot moment, that bit at the end where the hero explains the mystery, is not supported strongly enough by clues in the narrative.  The world is also not as interesting as the one depicted in Mailbag.  Unlike the former title, I don't this one will get nominated for any Hugos.  Not that it's bad, mind you—just not up to the bar Dickson has set for himself.

That's it for April 1960.  I have a whole new crop of magazines and books to review for next month.  I also have far more time to devote to the column now that I am between day jobs.  Cry not for me—it was a decision long coming and well worth it. 

In the meantime, before we get onto things fictional, I have some scientific news with exciting science fiction ramifications…

…but you'll just have to wait two days for it!




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[March 23, 1960] Sergeant goes AWOL! (Explorer S-46 fails)

So far this month, it's Air Force: 1, Army: 0.  The latest Explorer probe, launched today atop an Army contractor-made Juno II booster failed to orbit.  This is in contrast to Pioneer 5, launched March 11 on an Air Force contractor-built Thor Able, which is still beeping merrily away to the orbit of Venus.  Both launches were made under the auspices of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The failed probe was the 10.2 kilogram "S-46," and it was another University of Iowa special designed to further investigate those belts of charged particles girdling the Earth.  They're called "Van Allen" belts after the professor whose team first discovered them back in 1958, and which has produced many of NASA's satellite experiments to date. 

S-46 was sent toward the heavens by the Juno II, a modified version of the Jupiter missile now being based in Turkey and Italy.  At the Jupiter's top is the same cluster of Sergeant rockets that, mated with the smaller Redstone rocket, launched America's first space probe in January 1958.  S-46 was supposed to go into a high, eccentric orbit, similar to that of Explorer 6, to give all of the belts a thorough mapping.

To those wondering why anyone would bother to pull the same stunt twice, the answer is that the environment around the Earth is always changing.  There are terrestrial and solar factors, all of which increase and decrease the magnetic and particlular characteristics of orbital space.  The more data we can collect, the more continuously we can collect it, and the more vantages from which it can be collected, the more complete can by our understanding of geophysics.

Sadly, while the Jupiter first stage performed fine, it looks like one of the Sergeants misfired, which caused the whole second stage to go cock-eyed.  The ill-fated would be Explorer never made to orbit.

I feel badly for the folks at UoI, many of whom have become personal friends.  This Juno II was the last back-up left over from the Army's lunar Pioneer program (that launched Pioneers 3 and 4).  It looks unlikely that NASA will have another spare booster handy to launch another copy of S-46 for some time, if ever.

This doesn't mean we'll never have another Van Allen mapper in orbit.  It just means the fellow after whom they were named may not have first dibs on their next investigation.

Next up: this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction!




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[March 21, 1960] Conservation of Quality (April 1960 Astounding)

I believe I may have discovered a new physical law: The Conservation of Quality.

Last year, Galaxy editor Horace Gold decided to slash writer pay in half.  The effect was not immediately apparent, which makes sense since there was likely a backlog of quality stuff in the larder.  But the last issue of Galaxy was decidedly sub-par, and I fear Gold's policy may be bearing bitter fruit.

On the other hand, Astounding (soon to be Analog) editor John Campbell has been trying to reinvent his magazine, and this latest issue, dated April 1960, is better than I've seen in a long time.  To be sure, none of the stories are classics for the ages, but they are all readable and enjoyable.


by Kelly Freas

Randall Garrett still pens a good quarter of the magazine, and you know how I feel about him, but he's not bad this month.  For the lead serial, Out Like a Light, Garrett teams up again with Laurence Janifer under the pseuonym "Mark Phillips" in a sequel to That Sweet Little Old Lady.  FBI Agent Malone and Garrett look-a-like Agent Boyd investigate a series of Cadillac heists only to discover a ring of teleporting juvenile delinquents.  I had expected the story to drag, and it is occasionally too cute for its own good, but I found myself enjoying it.  We'll see if they can keep up the interest through two more installments.

Next up is the enjoyable short story, The Ambulance Made Two Trips by ultra-veteran Murray Leinster.  Mob shake-down artist meets his match when he tangles with a psionically gifted laundromat owner who can alter probability to make violence impossible—with highly destructive results!  It's a fun bit of wish fulfillment even if it (again) stars the Heironymous device, that silly psychic contraption made out of construction paper and elementary electronics.  I'm not sure whether Campbell inserts references to them after editing or if authors incorporate them to ensure publication.

Harry Harrison is back with another "Stainless Steel Rat" story featuring Slippery Jim diGriz (the first having appeared in the August 1957 Astounding).  My nephew, David, had rave reviews for The Misplaced Battleship, in which con man turned secret agent tracks down the construction and theft of the galaxy's biggest capital ship.  I liked it, too: stories with lots of interstellar travel get extra points from me, and Harrison is a good writer.  Not as compelling as Deathworld, but then, that was a tour de force.


by John SchoenHerr

Wedged in the middle of Harrison's tale, on the slick-paged portion of the magazine, rocketteer G. Harry Stine has an entertaining plug for model rocketry.  It is a hobby that has grown from a dangerous homebrew affair to a full-fledged pastime.  Safe miniature engines are now commonplace, and launches can be conducted in perfect safety—provided one observes all the rules.  Stine prophetically notes that the first person to walk the sands of Mars is already alive and in high school, and he (of course, he) probably cut his engineering teeth on model rockets.  Maybe so.

The story published under Randall Garrett's name is The Measure of a Man, and it's surprisingly decent.  The lone survivor in a wrecked Terran battleship must find a way to get the hulk back to Earth in time to warn humanity of an alien superweapon before it is used.  Again, I like stories with lots of planets and spaceships.  I also liked the direct reference to Leinster's The Aliens, a really great story.

Finally, we have Rick Raphael's sophomore effort, Make Mine Homogenized, a surprisingly good story about a tough old rancher, a cow that starts producing high octane milk, and hens that lay bomb-fuse eggs.  The first half is the superior one, in which the rancher discovers that her (yes her!) "milk" is highly combustible and that, when mixed with the fuse eggs, creates an explosion that puts Oppenheimer's work to shame.  The second half, when the AEC gets involved, is still good, but it digresses and becomes more detached.  I really enjoyed the intimacy of the beginning.  I'm a sucker for accurately detailed farm stories, having grown up on a farm. 


by Kelly Freas

So, there you have it.  A perfectly solid Astounding from cover to cover.  Who'da thunkit?

Happy Spring everyone!




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[March 18, 1960] A million miles from Earth! (Pioneer 5 update #1)

Who calls a press conference at 2:00 in the morning?

And what sort of fool journalist covers a 2 A.M. press conference?

NASA and me, respectively.

Dr. Keith Glennan, NASA's administrator, admitted that it was an unorthodox time to gather scientists and reporters together, but given the unprecedented nature of the event to be discussed, it's quite understandable.  After all, never before in the history of humanity has a message been received from an artificial probe 1,000,000 miles from Earth.

Pioneer 5, the interplanetary mission launched last week, is now four times as far from the Earth as the Moon, and its 5 watt transmitter is still being picked up loud and clear.  In a dramatic flourish, just after the conference started, Dr. Glennan ordered the tracking station in Hawaii to query the spacecraft.  The plucky probe responded in a jiffy (discounting the 5-second delay since radio signals travel at the speed of light) to the delight of the audience.

One of the great advancements of Pioneer 5 is its use of digital data.  Earlier probes used analog data, faithfully transcribing experimental results as a steadily varying voltage that would be transmitted, real-time, to Earth.  Not only can digital data be easily stored so complete results can be sent back to Earth at any time, it also requires no "translation" to a language ground-side computers can understand.  This means that data can be analyzed far more rapidly.

In fact, Pioneer 5's latest space weather report on the cosmic radiation, magnetic field, and micrometeorite situation a million miles out was reduced and presented during the course of the half-hour press conference.  How's that for instant service?

Pioneer also gave an account of its own health.  NASA's week-old baby is healthy and happy: its interior remains at a balmy 63 degrees Fahrenheit, its solar-powered batteries are charging nicely, and the transmitter is strong. 

In the weeks to come, Pioneer 5 will remain on the air out to an anticipated distance of 25,000,000 miles.  This flight will challenge NASA's ability to track and hear the probe to the limits of current technology. 

And, apparently, any notions that I might have a reasonable sleeping schedule!  Not that I'm complaining—it's an amazing time to be alive.




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[March 16, 1960] Four More! (Twilight Zone Wrap-up)

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call … The Twilight Zone.

It's a stirring intro, no doubt, and it never fails to put me in the mood for a half-hour of suspense and surreality.  Since its debut in October of last year, The Twilight Zone has consistently delivered a superior television experience (though even this fine show occasionally misfires: if I have any complaint, it is how frequently the protagonist degenerates into screaming madness about 15 minutes in.)

Continuing my tradition of recapitulating episodes in batches of four, here are episodes 20 through 24:

By far the weakest of the bunch, at least to me, is the first: Elegy.  A three man crew of a deep space mission crash land on an "asteroid" (you've got to love those entirely Earth-like asteroids on this show.) They appear to have traveled back in time some two centuries to mid-20th Century America—except that all of the inhabitants of the area seem to be frozen in time.  Rather than coming to the logical conclusion that the place is an exhibit in a museum, they instead become increasingly hysterical and spend much wasted time trying to get the dummies to respond to shouts.  It turns out that the asteroid is actually a cemetery with myriad themed plots for the wealthy deceased.  In the end, the crew are duped by the cemetery's caretaker into becoming permanent residents.  It's all rather silly.

Mirror Image, in which a sensible young woman discovers that there is another her attempting to take over her life, is better.  For one thing, it is one of the few episodes starring a woman.  For another, rather than going insane, she quite reasonably comes to the right conclusion as to what's happening.  Also, the obligatory helpful young man is far less creepy than the one we saw in The Hitchhiker.  The only flaw comes in the second act, when our heroine spends several minutes retelling the events that the audience has just seen happen to her: Twilight Zone often suffers from passing in the second act.  Disregarding that, it's an interesting premise, and the best stories are the ones that keep you pondering after they have finished.

There was a lot of buzz around the water cooler regarding the third episode, The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.  After a strange meteor causes a local power outage, the inhabitants of a suburban neighborhood quickly become suspicious of each other and soon degenerate into violent anarchy.  It's a pretty clear metaphor for The Red Scare.  I'd dismiss it as hackneyed, but McCarthyism is too recent a memory.  Mistrust is a cheap commodity, easily traded.

That brings us to last week's episode, A World of Difference, which I quite liked.  A corporate businessman sits down to make a call to his wife.  When the phone doesn't work, he hears a director call, "Cut!" and discovers that he's really on a soundstage, and everyone believes him to be an actor.  He is then confronted by an angry ex-wife and a much put-upon agent, who corroborate his new identity.  There is a fine ending that leaves one questioning which is the true reality?  And in the end, what does reality even mean? 

Coming up next, the April 1960 Astounding!

Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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