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[August 4, 1968] Changing Tastes (The Year of the Sex Olympics)

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by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Last Summer I complained about the growth of “flower music” onto the charts in the UK. Almost as quickly as it appeared, it seems to have vanished again, apparently being a phenomenon over here only as long as it was 1967. In fact, there is barely anything that could be described as psychedelic in the top 40 singles or albums.

Arthur Brown in makeup with lighted horns
Not the usual hippy scene

The only notable exception is “Fire” by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, which is very different from the sounds coming out of California last year.

Chicken Shack and Rolling Stones Covers

So, what has been replacing it? Well, firstly there has been a revival in the heavier blues sound, in both established acts such as The Rolling Stones and John Mayall, or new acts like Fleetwood Mac and Chicken Shack. Others seem to moving towards a pop sounding rock ‘n’ roll with heavy degrees of satire, the kind pioneered by The Kinks, we are now seeing on acts from The Beatles to Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich.

Andy Williams and Don Partridge covers

There are two genres that were also popular in 1967 that continue to be so. The first is the kind of Easy Listening music which predominates on BBC Radio 2, with figures such as Engelbert Humperdinck and Val Doonican. The other is folk music, which has much more variety in the charts, from the poppier sounds of Esther & Abi Ofarim, the more traditional route of Don Partridge or the curious experiments of The Incredible String Band.

Supremes and O.C. Smith covers

But probably the biggest musical genre in Britain at the moment is soul music. Not just the continued success of American greats like The Supremes, The Four Tops or Ray Charles. But also newer acts such as P. P. Arnold, O. C. Smith and the orchestral sounds of Love Affair, along with established British Acts like Dusty Springfield, Lulu or The Mindbenders.

If anything, this goes to show how quickly musical tastes change nowadays. What was popular in the summer of ’67, ’66 or ’65 sounded decidedly old fashioned the next year. Where will tastes be in 1969? Only time will tell.

Whilst I was pondering this, a stunning new teleplay came on to Theatre 625 and gave us a glimpse into the entertainment of the future.

The Year of the Sex Olympics

Promotional image for The Road
Nigel Kneale: Last seen by The Road

It has been a while for Nigel Kneale as a TV writer, working on films such as The Witches or First Men on The Moon instead. His last teleplay was half a decade ago with the excellent clever ghost story, The Road.

His teleplays have been known to be shocking and to provoke debate, sometimes even in parliament, and this is certain to carry on in this tradition.

Opening Logo for Year of the Sex Olympics

In a future clearly inspired by Huxley, the world now exists at peace and without want. Society is now divided into two groups:

There are a small group of “high drives” who we observe work in broadcasting and control the TV programs we see. Most people, however, are “low drives”. These people do not work, instead live in automated controlled environments. These do not have any interest in working and are kept pacified by the television programs the high drives produce.

High-Drive controllers watching a couple having Sex in qualifiers for The Olympics
High-Drive controllers watching the “Sport”

This society seems to be set up in this way for two reasons. Firstly, it keeps people pacified with the regular mantra, “Watch not do.” Sex television was designed to stop population explosion and wars, people numbed to doing anything by just seeing it all the time.

Secondly this acts as a form of eugenics to promote more high drives. With the sexual impulse of the low drives suppressed they are less likely to reproduce and most end up dying by the age of 35. Further tests are also done to determine if any high drive children are low drives and they are cast out into the audience.

Chessboard in a glassbox with a machine labelled "auto-chess"
Why bother playing chess when a computer can do it for you?

We are shown two problems with this situation. Firstly, some of the controllers are getting disenchanted with this society. Most notable is Kin Hodder, a set dresser, who is trying to introduce his real art into the broadcasts against the will of the controllers. The other is that the computers say they need to add more humour into the broadcasts, a concept none of the audience seems to be able to understand. For example, getting groups of clowns throwing custard pies only generates boredom.

Both problems are solved at the same time when the artist falls from a rope and dies in a gruesome manner, resulting in huge laughs from the audience. Thus is born a new concept: a show where people live on a remote island without any modern conveniences and are constantly filmed. Viewers get the thrill of never knowing if the participants will live or die. Two controllers, Nat and Deanie, volunteer for the pilot of the Live-Life show and bring along Deanie's daughter Keten.

Life is going to be much harder than they thought and, unbeknowst to the contestants, it turns out that the island is already inhabited. However, it will make for excellent ratings!

Naked woman lying down holding a veil with the word "Artsex" imposed over the top
Fancy something a bit more high-brow? Try Artsex!

The dangers of television becoming more shocking for the sake of it seems to be a subject en vogue right now, for example Kate Wilhelm’s Baby You Were Great or the film Smashing Time’s You Can’t Help Laughing. However, having it on screen in this way is much more immediate and shocking.

The message is hammered home very hard throughout. Not just with the imagery but with the language as well, where we hear phrases such as:

“A censor stopped things from going too far. We stop when things don’t go far enough.”

This could seem as too didactic or curmudgeonly but it is a testament to Kneale’s skill that he manages to pull it off.

I have to wonder if some of this is also grumpiness at his own experiences of television. It is notable that “audience testing” is a big part of this future. Continuous calibration made to audience reactions and even the winners of competitions are based on this.

Two people throwing food at each other.
Other entertainments include “The Hungry Angry Show”.

One of the odder choices is to give many of the (all British) cast American accents, something it does not appear they had much training on. This combined with the use of futuristic slang did make it hard to follow at times.

One person thankfully not trying to do one of these accents is Leonard Rossiter, a character actor probably well known to SFnal fans for his recent turns in The Witches and 2001: A Space Odyssey. He is an excellent choice for Coordinator Ugo, as he is able to come across as very unpleasant at the start whilst selling the disgust he feels at what is happening by the end.

Nat holding an axe whilst seeing a native of the island
The Live-Life Show. I think the title could do with some work

We do have to talk about the ending, as it is worth the price of admission alone. However, if you would rather wait for a possible repeat showing, stop reading now.

So, on the island Keten catches a disease that would be curable in the city, however, with no help available she dies. After the funeral Deanie is then brutally murdered by another inhabitant of the island who is then killed by Nat in revenge. This delivers the effect the controllers were hoping for as we see the audiences in raucous laughter over the horrific deaths and Nat’s grief.

This is disturbing enough but Nigel Kneale adds one final twist of the knife. Throughout we hear little jingles, very much in the style of pirate radio. Rather than having dramatic music playing over the ending, we just have a continual repetition of “The Year of the Sex Olympics Jingle”. Forcing us to ask, are we the same as them? Did we learn anything from what we saw or are we just as much passive participants?

If you missed it and are in the UK, write letters to the BBC asking for a repeat. If you are outside, see if you can convince a local station to import it.

Five Stars




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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 26, 1964] Yesterday's Tomorrows (First Men in the Moon and Other Steam Science Fiction Movies)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Monsieur Verne and Mister Wells at the Movies

A decade ago, Walt Disney Productions had a big hit on their hands with their cinematic adaptation of the famous Jules Verne novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was popular with both audiences and critics, winning Academy Awards for Art Direction and Special Effects. It was a lovely film, full of charming details combining futuristic technology with aesthetics of the past.

The super-submarine Nautilus; a thing of beauty.

The success of this nostalgic science fiction adventure led to a number of Verne adaptations. Most notable was Around the World in 80 Days, a lush, big budget production notable for the number of Hollywood stars who made cameo appearances.

Old Blue Eyes in a tiny role as a piano player.

Since then we've had enjoyable films taken from the French author of Extraordinary Voyages, including Journey to the Center of the Earth, Master of the World, and Mysterious Island, all reviewed here at Galactic Journey.  A couple of lesser Verne adaptations, namely Valley of the Dragons and Five Weeks in a Balloon, did not escape the acid pen of our local critics.  There was also From the Earth to the Moon, which somehow managed to slip under the radar of our Galactic Journeyers.  This was a handsomely filmed, if rather dull, account of an American munitions manufacturer (Joseph Cotton) using a powerful explosive to send a spaceship to the Moon just after the Civil War.


Blast off!

Not to be outdone, H. G. Wells, the British master of Scientific Romances, came to the big screen not too long ago in the George Pal production of The War of the Worlds, another Oscar winner for Best Special Effects.

A Martian war machine on the prowl for Earthlings.

Although this version of the story updated the setting to modern times, Pal returned to the Nineteenth Century with an even more highly regarded Wells adaptation, The Time Machine, which won kudos from our host.

With the exception of The War of the Worlds, what these films have in common is the fact that they take place in the Victorian Era. For lack of a better term, we might refer to this sub-genre of fantastic cinema as Steam Science Fiction. I was recently able to attend a secret sneak preview of the latest offering of this kind, already released in the United Kingdom, and due to appear in American theaters later this year. Watch for the trailer the next time you're at your local cinema.

Fly Me to the Moon; Or, A Trip to the Moon on Gossamer Wings


In Dynamation and LunaColor, no less.

First Men in the Moon is directed by Nathan Juran, a veteran of science fiction films, both good (20 Million Miles to Earth) and not so good (The Brain from Planet Arous.) The screenplay for this British production comes from the combined pens of Nigel Kneale (best known to SF fans across the pond for his television serials The Quatermass Experiment and Quatermass II) and Jan Read, who contributed to the delightful fantasy film Jason and the Argonauts.


Don't forget, it's in, not on.

We begin in the near future, as an international team of astronauts land on the Moon.  They find a Union Jack and a note claiming the satellite in the name of Queen Victoria.


A mystery!

The note happens to be written on the back of a legal contract mentioning the name Katherine Callender.  Investigation leads to the discovery of Arnold Bedford, the man Miss Callender married long ago, now nearly a century old.  He tells his incredible story, and we go into a long flashback, firmly in the land of Steam Science Fiction.


Martha Hyer and Edward Judd as the two Victorian lovebirds.

In 1899, our happy couple encounter Joseph Cavor, an eccentric scientist who creates a substance that deflects gravity. Having a healthy ego, he names the stuff Cavorite.   As if that were not enough, he plans to use it to launch a spaceship on a lunar voyage.


Lionel Jeffries as the inventor.

Arnold agrees to go to the Moon with Cavor, which seems like a rash decision for a man about to be married.  Through a series of unforeseen circumstances, Katherine winds up accidentally accompanying them; you know how much trouble women are!  The unlikely trio winds up on the surface of Earth's satellite after a particularly rough landing.


The charming little spaceship approaches its target.

Katherine is left behind, no doubt to prepare tea and crumpets, while the two men don diving suits and set out to explore this strange new world.

Things really get interesting when our heroes fall down a shaft and wind up inside the Moon, justifying the title.  It seems that the interior is inhabited by insect-like, sentient beings, whom Cavor dubs Selenites.  The plot, mostly played for light comedy up to this point, takes a more serious turn when Arnold, panicking at the sight of the aliens, attacks and kills several of them.  The two men escape back to the surface, only to discover that the Selenites have dragged their spaceship, and the woman inside it, underground.


A Selenite, brought to life through the magic of Dynamation.

What follows is a fast-moving adventure, as the intrepid pair explore the city of the Selenites in search of Katherine, battle a huge, caterpillar-like monster, and encounter the Grand Lunar, ruler of the Selenites.   An interesting aspect of the story is the contrast between Cavor, the man of science, who wants to exchange knowledge with the Selenites, and Arnold, the man of action, who believes they pose a threat to humanity.


What good is a science fiction thriller without a huge monster?


The Grand Lunar, not at all happy about human aggressiveness.

An ironic ending brings us back to the near future, as we find out what happened to the three explorers and the Selenites.

Adding greatly to the film's appeal is the outstanding stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen.  The eerie and imaginative world inside the Moon excites the viewer's sense of wonder, and the Victorian design of Cavor's spaceship provides a great deal of charm.  You might have to be a little bit patient with the relaxed pace of the opening scenes, but the result is well worth the wait.

Four stars.

As we enter a new era of space exploration, with the very real possibility that a human being will stand on the surface of the Moon within a decade, it's fitting that we look back on those who imagined the future and wrote about it.  I hope that more Steam Science Fiction movies appear in theaters in the days to come, and that we never forget the dreamers of yesteryear.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Book

[June 16, 1962] Picking Up Charles Finney (The Circus of Dr. Lao)

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by Victoria Lucas

I am so honored to be taking up space here!  The Traveler thought enough of my letters to the editor that he asked me to become a regular contributor.  In my letters I mentioned how I've just graduated from Stanford and am going back to my old job in the Drama Department at the University of Arizona, and my mother's home, where I'm typing on an old portable Smith-Corona that has seen far too many papers, dissertations, theses, and so on as I've struggled to work my way through college. 

Last fall I tacked up on my bulletin board (unfortunately in the sun) a short column of news about somebody with whom I sometimes work in Tucson little theatre–Bob Hammond, a French professor at the University of Arizona who once won a Fulbright to Paris and never recovered.  He writes his plays in French and English and translates from each language into the other.  The blurb introduced Hammond as one of four playwrights who formed a producing group for their work.  One of the other playwrights was a fellow by the name of Charles Finney who was supposed to produce a play of his this year. 

The article reminded me that I may have met Finney as I house-managed and assistant-directed Bob's plays.  Or I might have seen him in his workplace, the newspaper building downtown, where he has been editor of the Arizona Daily Star for 32 years (I spent my Saturdays at the Tucson Daily Citizen my senior year in high school helping to put out the "Teen Citizen," a section of the paper.) So when I ran across The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories I picked it up.  It's edited by Ray Bradbury and published by Bantam Books, first out 1956.

In the very first sentence of his introduction to this book of short and long stories, Bradbury asserts that the works in this book "are fantasies, not science-fiction." He goes on to list some adjectives and statements that contrast science fiction and fantasy as genres (or at least his idea of the genres).  Then, in two short, strident paragraphs, like trochees in a poem, he argues:

"Science-fiction balances you on the cliff.

Fantasy shoves you off."

This book of short stories (and one long one) conforms to that opinion.  At least the shoving-off-cliffs part.

Charles Finney's novella The Circus of Dr. Lao is on the cover and first in the book.  Finney uses figures of mythical people and animals to produce what seems like an almost metaphorical story of Abalone, Arizona, which apparently is what Charles Finney calls Tucson.  He began the story while he was in the US Army in China in 1929, and it has seen numerous editions since it was first in print in 1935. 

Lao Tzu (or Laozi, or Lao Tse or …) is a mythical/historical figure who is said to be the author of the Tao Te Ching, a book of philosophy, and the founder of Taoism (Daoism), variously a religion and a philosophy.  The presence of this part man part myth as the owner of a circus is better understood when you see who and what the circus animals and people are: a medusa, a sea serpent, Apollonius of Tyana (15 to 100 AD, a Christ-like figure who incongruously wears and uses a cross), a satyr, a Roc chick, Sphinx, Chimera, and so on.  The real venerable philosopher (Dr.) Lao did not preach withdrawal from the world but discernment and enjoyment of what is in it, apparently here containing the inventions of the human imagination that might include himself (does that tangle your nervous system?)

These animals and humanlike entities do not mix well, and they look strange marching through the town of Abalone as circuses used to do.  They are so bizarre that the people of Abalone do not know what to make of them, and they argue incessantly about whether one of the circus figures is a bear, a "Russian," or a man.  Finney doesn't even settle the matter in his ending "Catalogue" of characters, questions, and other matters at the end.

I cannot recommend this story enough.  Although Bradbury calls it fantasy, it fits in no genre, has no particular moral, steps in no one else's shoes.  I am only familiar with one other book of Finney's, The Unholy City, which seems to me again to be without identifiable genre, one that calls out human foibles but does not condemn them.  Both books are funny but not laugh-out-loud funny.  Their humor emanates quietly from human (and mythic) limitations and self-aggrandizement.

What I find most amusing is the way the good (or not-so-good) doctor can change in an instant back and forth from a stereotype of an ignorant and hysterical "heathen Chinee," misplaced letters "L" and all, to a calm, philosophical global traveller speaking perfect English. 

In one scene, he "came dashing up, 'Whatsah mattah Glod damn college punks come this place?' …'You no savvee nothing here.  Glet to hell out!  This my show, by Glod!'" Eventually he "glets" them out by shouting, "Hey, Lube!  (instead of the circus/carnival rallying cry, "Hey, Rube!").

A little later he expounds on his Hound of the Hedges (supposedly a living dog made out of vegetable matter).  He begins with "Epitomizing the fragrance of grassplots, lawns, and hedgy, thickset places, this behemoth of hounds stands unique in the mysterious lexicon of life."  Elsewhere he maintains his innocence of fraud by saying "You see: I no fool you.  This place no catchum fake." 

(In my experience, some clever people conceived in foreign lands or looking still foreign in this one use this ability to believably imitate their stereotypes in order to maintain their privacy and ward off unwelcome demands.)

As the show goes on, there are casualties, mainly from the Medusa's ability to turn people to stone, but Dr. Lao is almost killed himself.  He survives, though, and just as he came to town by no visible means (not by truck or train), he leaves with his menagerie the same way.

"I am a calm, intelligent girl." Miss Agnes Birdsong reassures herself.  "I am a calm, intelligent girl, and I have not seen Pan on Main Street." Circus of Dr. Lao

"When I let go of who I am, I become what I might be." Lao Tzu

The rest of the book consists of short stories of varying length.  The first, Nigel Kneale's story The Pond, seems to me to have congealed around a particular idea the way the white of a boiled egg encircles the yolk.  Anything I say about it will probably spoil the ending of this extremely short story, so I will just state that it is of frogs and men.

The Hour of Letdown by E. B. White pits men against an artificial brain.  One that likes to get drunk after a hard job well done.

So far humans aren't doing very well.  Let's see how things go with Roald Dahl's The Wish.  Hmmm.  Imagination 3, human beings 0. 

And "The Summer People"?  Well, I know Shirley Jackson's work, and her imagination tends to the … let's just say she's well known for The Haunting of Hill House, a ghost story.  A couple lucky enough to have a summer home decide to stay there after Labor Day, something they've never done before.  Be prepared for unending suspense.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of the next story, is taught in school as one of America's first, most celebrated authors.  He is probably best known for his book The Scarlet Letter (1850), about fictional events 200 years earlier in Puritan Boston, where an adulteress is forced to wear a red letter "A" on her dress.  This story, Earth's Holocaust, dates from 1844 and is strongly reminiscent of Jonathan Swift, whose work Hawthorne probably would have read.  Its moral: beware of reforms, because evil will spring forth anew.

Loren Eiseley is an anthropologist, not a writer of fiction, but this story (essay?) was published in 1948 in Harper's Magazine, when he was head of the Anthropology Department at the University of Pennsylvania.  "Bone hunters," he writes, "are listeners.  They have to be."  He hears about Buzby's Petrified Woman (the story title) while hunting for fossils, and he has to find out if it's "a bone."  Because it's in this collection I would think it's fantasy.  Because it's Eiseley I'm inclined to believe it's a memory.  You judge.

Oliver La Farge is also an anthropologist, but he wrote recognized fiction.  This story, The Resting Place, also became part of his collection A Pause in the Desert (1957) (Oh, I wish they hadn't misspelled "Chinle"–with an extra "e."  It's one of my favorite spots.) So I do understand "the old man's" obsession with Navajo country.  Its beauty is formidable, its mystery eternal.  This story does not challenge that view.

Threshold is by Henry Kuttner – an author with more pseudonyms than anyone else I know.  His most frequent one was Lewis Padgett, a name he used when he wrote with his wife C. L. Moore, but apparently Kuttner attributed this story to himself.  Kuttner is notable for his correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft, the inventor of the world of Cthulu.  If you have read or read about Lovecraft's work, you can guess the atmosphere and maybe one of the few characters in this story, which has been described elsewhere as "horror."  Apparently the husband-and-wife team of Kuttner and Moore did not have two egotists on it, because Kuttner writes here, "egotists cannot live together."  Beware: this is the second time a devil has appeared in this book.  Third time's a charm.

In James H. Schmitz's Greenface a barking dog begins to "churn up the night" as the owner of a fishing camp tries to decide how to deal with a green horror that has driven away his campers–and his girlfriend. 

The Limits of Walter Horton features this quote by author John Seymour Sharnik: "Even if one accepted Horton's rare talent as the purest sort of inspiration, that didn't explain what was happening." 

What if, while you are woolgathering, you are really not all there?  What if part of you is truly in the place and time you are thinking about, and the you in the present has somehow diminished?  Maybe this story, The Man Who Vanished by Robert M. Coates, would be the result.

For me, the stories in this book are uneven in quality and interest, but however you can get it, I absolutely recommend The Circus of Dr. Lao.  If you like Galactic Journey, you'll like Finney.

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