Tag Archives: science fiction

Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 31, 1966] Respite from the horror (November 1966 Analog Science Fiction)

4 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Boo!

It's a scary world out there.  If ever there was an appropriate time to be reminded of it, it's today, Halloween.  These days, it's not the supernatural or the spooky that frightens the bejeezus out of us (though UFO sightings are at a record high).  No, it's real-world issues like the ongoing, escalating war in Vietnam.  Thousands of our boys have died over there, and there's no end in sight.  The other day, Stokely Carmichael, head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said he had no intention of fighting were he to be drafted.  He's currently living with the Sword of Damocles of his latest physical fitness exam — will he be judged fit for duty?  Is prison preferable to serving in an unjust war?

There are fears on the domestic front, too.  Grocery prices have spiraled to ridiculous levels, and an organized army of housewives has picketed the stores in at least 15 cities across America.  Can they effect change before basic foods get too expensive too afford?

I think all of this existential dread is why folks turn to fiction.  I've now had several fans of my Kitra series note their appreciation that, while they find Kitra's adventures riveting, they take comfort in knowing that she and her crew will come out safe in the end.  It's a reassurance they aren't finding in real life

I felt similarly reading the latest issue of Analog.  Sometimes science fiction paints grim futures, even seeming to relish in the despondence of the characters who inhabit them (q.v. Harrison's overpopulation nightmare, Make Room!  Make Room!).  Such works are important.  Cautionary tales are important.  They show us potentialities to avoid.  They challenge us to think.  But sometimes, you just want an interesting story where you know things will all work out.  Analog's editor John Campbell has given us two quite good ones this month (and some other stuff).


by Kelly Freas

Yay!

Quarantine World, by Murray Leinster


by Kelly Freas

Dr. Calhoun of the Med Service has reason to be suspicious.  The planet Lanke is ostensibly perfectly healthy, yet the government is going out of its way to hide something from him.  Moreover, Lanke's politicians are keenly interested in the public health specifically for its insuring the bottom line of their economy.  It is thus with appropriate shock to all concerned that a plague-infested person, obviously an off-worlder, crashes Calhoun's reception.  More shocking — the Lanke government insists Calhoun have nothing to do with the individual, who is shot by the authorities.  When he performs a cursory examination of the corpse, he is summarily ejected from the planet.

Whereupon he contracts the deadly disease, and his trusty tormal, the antibodies-producing cat/monkey called Murgatroyd, is unable to synthesize a cure!  Calhoun's only clue (and hope!) is the existence of a failed colony on the nearby planet of Delhi.  Perhaps there he can solve the mystery of his illness before he…and the population of Linke…succumbs to it.

Murray Leinster is often called the dean of science fiction.  He's been writing for decades, and sadly, the tape is starting to wear a little thin.  He pads out his work a lot, and his characters mostly sound alike.  There is a strange, juvenile character to his writing that feels out of place in Analog.  Honestly, it may be less a matter of literary senility, and more that of bilking an extra hundred bucks from Campbell for the extra verbiage; writers are paid by the word, after all.

But.

It's a good story, highlighting several interesting social issues (capitalism uber alles, the treatment of criminals and political dissidents, the role of medicine).  It's a great universe, one I've drawn inspiration from for my Kitra books.  And Murgatroyd is an absolute joy to read about. 

So, three stars. 

Facts to Fit the Theory, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

The human colony of Cyrene IV is about to be invaded by the rapacious Stath.  Yet the Cyrenicans refuse to join the Terran Federation, which would protect them under the auspices of a non-aggression pact with the Stath.  All attempts to coerce an application to the Federation are thwarted by increasingly improbable events, all of which point to some kind of religio-psychic interference on the part of the colonists.

Then the Stath arrive.  Their attemps to be mean and nasty are also countered by freak occurrences, up to and including a planetary hurricane.  They leave, tail between their legs.  The human military officers are admonished to write up a full report, but to explain the chronology without invoking ESP.

Could there be a more archetypical Chris Anvil Analog story? 

  • Tongue-in-cheek?  Check.
  • Humans come out ahead?  Check.
  • Prominent figuring of psionics?  Check.
  • Authorities are stupid for not acknowleding the existence of psionics?  Check.
  • The Traveler sick of stories like this?  Check and Check.

Two stars because it's readable, but please, no more.  I beg you.

Dimensions, Anyone?, by John D. Clark, Ph.D.

A fascinating if abstruse piece from Dr. Clark.  It's about the importance of a matching set of physical dimensions for rendering useful measurements.  Forget the "English" system, and even the metric system isn't truly universal.  Clark offers up one of his own, while describing the history of the ones we currently use. 

Much denser than Asimov's stuff, but it was in my wheelhouse.  Four stars.

Letter from a Higher Critic, by Stewart Robb


by Kelly Freas

In which folks in the 22nd Century, having lost most historical sources of the 19th and 20th Century, deem that World War 2 is too improbable to have occurred as recounted.  The primary objection is that the names of all of the major players, from Roosevelt to Churchill to Adolph Hitler to Stalin, are too on-the-nose to represent real people. 

Very slight stuff.  Blink and you'll miss it.  Read and you'll forget it.

Two stars.

Too Many Magicians (Part 4 of 4), by Randall Garrett


by John Schoenherr

And now we come to the end, both of the magazine, and of this most promising murder mystery serial from Randall Garrett.  Good luck putting it down — it is a rollercoaster from the opening sequence, in which Lord D'Arcy has just dived into the Thames to rescue a bewitched woman, to the final scene, in which Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy identifies the culprit from among nine suspects.

It's a well-drawn whodunnit, weakened only by its separation into four parts (which the assured novelization will fix).  The solution is plausible and (mostly) independently deducible.  The guilty party makes sense.  I appreciated the quantum mechanics element of the case, too; it is impossible to observe matters without affecting them.  It makes this particular Lord D'arcy case quite dynamic.  I also noted the homage to Twelve Angry Men in one scene.

Garrett has gotten much better at handling woman characters: Mary, Dowager Duchess of Cumberland, and Demoiselle Tia Einzig are nicely realized and pivotal players.  Hard to believe this is the same fellow who wrote Queen Bee.  For the same magazine!

So, five stars for this segment, four and a half for the story as a whole, and I won't be surprised if this gets a Hugo nod in New York next year!

Summing up: Two tricks and three treats

Setting aside the Anvil and the Robb, Analog really delivered the goods this month, providing a bubble of reassuring entertainment in a frightening era.  Clocking in at 3.4 stars, it surpasses or ties with the other magazines this month except for the exceptional Science-Fantasy/Impulse (3.7 stars). 

Technically, Fantastic (3.5 stars) was also better, but given that it was largely reprints, I don't know that it's a fair comparison.  Of the all-new material mags, the order goes Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4), New Worlds (3.1), IF (3), and Worlds of Tomorrow (2.3).

It was actually a great month for fiction.  One could fill three whole magazines with all the four and five star stuff.  Sadly, there was not a single woman-penned piece of fiction published in a pro mag with a November 1966 date. 

And with that, the unpleasant real world intrudes again.  Ah well.  I managed to avoid it for most of an article.  Maybe next month will bring happier news on this front.

[Actually, there's happier news right now!  Sirena, the second book in The Kitra Saga, has been a smash hit, and I think you'll dig it, too.  Buy a copy…you'll be supporting me and getting a great read at the same time!]



4 Comments Leave A Comment
TV

[October 26, 1966] Star Trek: "What are Little Girls Made of?")

6 Comments

Fun with Binary!


by Lorelei Marcus

I'm loving this new show called Star Trek.  From innovative effects to nuanced plots to interesting characters, Star Trek has often been raising the bar for television's best from week to week.  Sadly, I missed the past two episodes due to scheduling conflicts (catching up through our fanzine's weekly episode recap and review).  But this week, I ensured that my sacred viewing time would not be overtaken by any babysitting jobs or midterm study sessions.

I sat down in anticipation, the dark viewing room hushed despite the several people who had joined me to watch.  Excitement thrummed through me as the thrilling, other-worldly theme started to play…

And in the end, "What are Little Girls Made of?", the seventh episode of the new show Star Trek, was a complete DISASTER!

…but I liked it anyway.

If you happened to miss the broadcast, I will do my best to recount the episode's plot for you, even though it is already rapidly receding from my memory:

Opening on the bridge of the Enterprise, Captain Kirk and Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett), whom we first saw in Naked Time, stare worriedly at a blue planet.  We are informed that Dr. Roger Korby (Michael Strong), Chapel's fiancé, has been trapped on the planet for the past five years, presumed dead because the planet's surface has become too cold to sustain life (the system's sun is dying).

Shortly after this remark is made, Korby's voice comes over the radio, requesting that Captain Kirk beam down to the planet, alone, to witness an amazing discovery he's made!  Who could have foreseen this?


"Can Nurse Chapel come too?"  "Christine?  Oh sure.  She's a recurring character; that should be fine."

Kirk and Chapel are beamed down into an underground tunnel system where Korby has apparently been living.  Yet Korby is nowhere to be found, so Kirk orders down two security guards and heads off with Nurse Chapel to find her fiancé.


"Hey Matthews, you think anything bad will happen to us?"  "How could it?  My retirement's next week!"

Before long, they run into Korby's assistant, Dr. Brown, who decides that the most effective way of introducing himself is by standing in front of a giant stadium light.  This is one of the many instances of odd editing.  Brown turns off his giant headlight, Chapel recognizes him (now that she can see again) and Brown offers to take Kirk and Chapel to see Dr. Korby.  Oh, and Guard #1 (Matthews) mysteriously falls off a cliff in the hall and dies.  Who could have foreseen this?


Dr. Brown in front of the Bat Signal.

After a brief interlude where security guard #2 dies to a hulking alien creature (that looks like it just finished washing dishes at the Addam's house), we finally get to meet the man of the hour, Dr. Korby.  What proceeds is a grueling back and forth that consists of Korby rambling about how he must show and explain his discovery to Kirk, followed by continuous worried glances exchanged between Kirk and Nurse Chapel.

So what is Korby's amazing discovery that the whole episode has been building up to?

Completely lifelike androids!


Meet Andrea, one of Korby's androids, whose purpose is a complete mystery and not at all obvious.


For someone who has an important point he wants to explain, he sure takes a long time getting to it.

It turns out Korby's assistant has been an android all this time.  (Maybe he was standing in front of the headlight to recharge?) In a sudden scuffle with Kirk, he is shot by a phaser, exposing his circuits.

Korby doesn't seem too perturbed at the loss of his assistant, though.  He has Ruk instead (played by Ted Cassidy).  Ruk is an even more advanced android built by the old aliens who left the android-making machinery Korby's been studying and using for the past five years.  And not just to make sexy secretaries.  He can even entirely replicate a human being!  And he's going to show Captain Kirk how it's done.

Cut to Shatner lying completely naked strapped to a turntable.


"Good thing I wore my tear-off uniform today.  It made this transition much faster!"

If my summarization seems a bit disjointed or abrupt, it's because this is an absolutely faithful rendition of the pacing of the episode.  Anyway, Korby's experiment succeeds, creating an exact copy of Kirk, one that obeys Korby's orders.  Copy-Kirk beams up to the Enterprise to take control of the ship.

At this, you may gape.  What?  The kind, not-suspicious-at-all Korby had ill intentions all along?

The plot runs deeper.  Korby explains to Kirk that he has the technology not just to copy a person, but to transfer their soul into an immortal mechanized shell.  A shell that can be programmed and controlled to perfection, Kirk points out, refusing to help Korby with his plan.  Korby's plans rapidly fizzle out anyway.  When Kirk's mind was being transferred into copy-Kirk, he'd recited to himself a message he would never say: "Mind your own business, Mr. Spock — I'm tired of your half-breed interference, do you hear?"  It is delivered at the first encounter between copy-captain and First Officer.

Spock, a veteran of dealing with duplicate captains at this point, gets the message loud and clear and beams down to the planet's surface…with armed escort.


Ah, there's an evil duplicate of the captain on the ship?  It must be Tuesday."

Finally, we hit the climax.  After seemingly failing to win Andrea as an ally with a kiss, Kirk convinces Ruk to disobey his programming and attack Korby.  The doctor, without a second thought, zaps his thousand year old android with a phaser, poofing him from existence.  Then Andrea zaps copy-Kirk because he won't kiss her like real-Kirk did, and he disappears.  Then Kirk tries to wrestle the phaser from Korby and accidentally shoots Dr. Korby's hand, revealing him to be…an android all along!  Who could have foreseen this??!

Andrea walks in and kisses Korby.  The doctor, horrified that he has become more machine than man, and that Andrea has become more woman than machine, zaps both of them from existence. 

The end.

Well, that was an experience.  The editing, pacing, and writing for the episode were a complete mess.  Still, there were elements that I absolutely loved. The costuming and sets were gorgeous.  An expert combination of clever camera angles, colorful pink and purple lighting, and creatively designed walls really made you feel that the characters were in an otherworldly cave. 

Everyone on the planet's surface shared an interesting motif in their clothes, and Andrea's outfit was so daring, I wouldn't be surprised if they needed a censor on set while filming!  Still, my favorite costume was Ted Cassidy's — between his ominous makeup and his puffy sleeves and high collar, he really felt like something alien.

I also appreciated the acting, even if the actors didn't have much to work with.  All of the android characters had a slightly flat affect to their deliveries that made them seem not quite human.  Cassidy, as always, did a fantastic job.  Shatner was weaker without any of his crew members to play off of, but he still did well differentiating between real Kirk and android Kirk.

Finally, the special effects were topnotch as always.  We got the transporter effect and a few phaser beams, which never fail to amaze me, but we also got some incredibly effective split screens which actually made me forget the two Kirks were played by the same person!

So overall, I would say that this episode wasn't just bad, but hardly really felt like an episode at all.  The premise and logic were completely internally inconsistent, and the main plot points don't hang together at all.  However, I still enjoyed the show, because though the parts refused to fit together properly, they still had a lot of value on their own.

Three stars.

Wasted Potential


by Janice L. Newman

This episode was all over the place in terms of pacing. First, the mad scientist teases Kirk (and the audience) with some grand revelation, then the episode cuts directly to Kirk spinning naked on a giant turntable. Kirk’s message to Spock is cleverly done (and one of the best parts of the episode), but in the end, it makes no difference: Kirk convinces the androids with ‘logic’ and they mostly destroy each other after that point before Spock and his team can even arrive.

It’s a shame, because robot stories have a lot of potential. Between Asimov’s Robot stories, the recent deconstruction of same in Lester Del Rey’s A Code For Sam, and the use of robots in one of the current Space Patrol Orion episodes, metal men are a hot topic right now. Some of the nuanced takes from the early Star Trek episodes would have been interesting and welcome. For example, are the androids capable of independent thought and emotion? What are the moral implications of killing the androids, especially Ruk, who has been on the planet for centuries and is the last representative of a dead race? The androids’ plan to replace humans was obviously not desirable, but could the technology have been repurposed and used to better humankind?

Unfortunately, we didn’t get any thoughtful questions like these. Instead, we got a story in a traditional pulp mold with a newish villain: no bug-eyed aliens, but instead sinister machine-men. I can’t help but hope that the writers go back to storytelling that focuses on the gray areas instead of slam-bang black and white.

Two and a half stars.

Same ol', same ol'


by Gideon Marcus

I think my biggest problem with this episode is that we've seen so much of it before.  Eccentric scientist on a remote planet shacked up with an alien being who doesn't want to be found?  Check.  Two Kirks?  Check.  A bleak, frigid planet festooned with styrofoam rocks?  Check.  Even the score seemed largely recycled from previous episodes.  Added to that, the clunky pacing and the shallow treatment of potentially thought-provoking topics really dragged this episode into the lower tiers.  It's not offensive, it's just not very good.

Kudos where they are deserved: lovely costume design (though I kept expecting Hoss Allen to come out and host The Beat!!! what with the blue and green motif.

The split-screen effects were particularly good, especially with the slanted table.  Patty Duke could learn a thing or two (oh wait — she's been canceled). 

Ted Cassidy was quite effective as Ruk, easily the most interesting part of the episode.  Though I did keep expecting him to give his signature, "You raaang?" when he appeared. And I appreciated how quickly Spock deduced an imposter was on board.  Coming on the heels of "The Enemy Within", there really would be no excuse otherwise.

So, better than "Mudd's Women", which I would have rated two stars.  Let's call it two and a half, on par with "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

Distinguishing Features


by Erica Frank

In this episode, we see alien fashion disasters, two crewmember deaths, and a return of Shirtless Kirk. (Hurray!) We also get android love (or at least android emotions; it's all very confusing) and the continuation of the " barren landscape; underground dwelling with lumpy stone walls" motif for alien planets.


Let's make sure we cover the important parts of the episode.

My observations from this episode: Nurse Chapel seems like an open-minded, free-love kind of woman. Just a few episodes ago, she was declaring her deep and sincere love for Mr. Spock, and now we discover she's been engaged — and searching for her fiancé — this whole time! If Spock had been part of the landing party, she might've had some very interesting conversations with the both of them.

We did, however, get double shirtless Kirk. Double naked Kirk, in fact, when Doctor Korby throws him into the Carbon-Copy-o-Matic android machine and makes a copy of him, right down to his thoughts and memories.


Which one is the android? Spock will need to know; I'm not sure I care.

Other people have spoken about the plot, the characters, the pacing… which leaves me to mention the lighting, which was excellent, and the fashion choices, of which I have already provided the best in the show.

The lighting and scene direction was clear, showed faces well without obscuring the underground facilities, and made it very easy to follow what was happening. This is a nice change from episodes where it's either pulled back so far that you can't tell where the action is, or focused on two heads that might be anywhere, or dim and shadowed so you can't tell what's going on. The cinematography was excellent in this episode.

The costuming, though… Now I know why the crew members' uniforms change all the time. (Uhura's in red this week.) Obviously, the Terran government is trying to avoid whatever pitfalls destroyed the long-extinct alien races, and while they can't be certain that the aliens' taste in fashion was part of their destruction, they are taking no chances.


This, THIS, is supposed to be a representative of a race that conquered the very building blocks of matter and thought? They could create a whole society of whatever skills, talents, and physical abilities they needed, and this is how they chose to dress them?

Ruk's outfit isn't the only problematic one on the planet. Andrea-the-android was presumably clad to appeal to Dr. Korby. She wears a blue-and-black dress (if that's the word) that barely covers enough body parts to be legal to show on television. Really, this should've been the Enterprise crew's first clue that something was very wrong: unless they were sweltering in their uniforms, she should've been uncomfortable with that much skin showing.


Since it turned out the Korby we met was an android who cannot feel love or baser human urges, this must've been a remnant of the original Korby's interests.

Once we're all done reeling from the… interesting… clothing, we get to deal with the rest of the plot: they're all androids; Korby's gone mad and wants to take over the universe with more androids; Andrea's developing an unseemly level of emotions; Ruk is chasing Kirk through the caverns with intent to kill him, as he did with the two unsuspecting red-shirted crewmembers at the beginning of the episode.


Kirk hids from Ruk while holding a makeshift, err, weapon he's found in the caverns.

In the end, Kirk charms Andrea into turning on her associates; the power of Kirk Kisses is apparently stronger than android programming. Spock, of course, quickly identifies Robot Kirk and incapacitates him. By the end of the episode, all the androids are gone, and for reasons unknown, the Enterprise leaves with no mention of either acquiring or deliberately avoiding the amazing copy-android technology.

I would expect them to report the discovery to Earth to be studied by people less prone to become megalomaniacs. Even if the process cannot create a "soul," I would expect many people in similar circumstances to Korby — near death, badly injured or disabled — to have an interest in technology that could give extended life to their thoughts and memories. If nothing else, it would allow people to record their memoirs, complete their research projects, give messages to loved ones, and so on. I was surprised Kirk abandoned the machinery; I can imagine many good uses for such a device, and I expect that's exactly the kind of thing his "five-year mission" is intended to discover. Perhaps it was reported, and another crew, more scientifically oriented than set on exploration, will return to the planet to find out if it can be used without succumbing to the temptation to take over planets.

I agree with the comments above that say the episode was scattered. The action scenes were well-done, but the overall story and pacing jumped around too much. However, it was visually stunning, didn't involve evil mind-control, and brought up some interesting questions about the nature of humanity and the mind. Four stars: Three for the plot, characters, and direction, plus half a star for each naked Kirk.

(Join us tomorrow at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) for the next exciting episode of Star Trek!)

Here's the invitation!



6 Comments Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[Oct. 20, 1966] Crimes against Humanity (Star Trek: "Mudd's Women")

14 Comments

My kind of scoundrel


by Erica Frank

Let’s start at the beginning: the Enterprise is pursuing a smaller ship as it careens into an asteroid field. Captain Kirk orders his crew to protect the ship, burning out nearly all of their lithium crystals, and then beam the crew onboard. Mister Scott first beams over a man who initially introduces himself as "Leo Walsh". Then Mister Scott beams over three women — Eve, Ruth, and Magda — who pose elegantly on the transporter pad.

"Walsh" shows up wearing some kind of swashbuckler's outfit with a bejeweled earring just a little smaller than a golf ball. He says the three lovely women he's escorting are not his crew but his "cargo." He quickly explains: he's delivering them to their husbands-to-be on a mining colony.


Introducing: Leo Walsh, matchmaker from the stars

Right away, we can tell there's something sketchy about him. He smiles too widely, brushes aside questions, and tries to sneak away to talk with the women. They're all terrible liars, so it quickly comes out that his name is not "Leo Walsh" but Harry Mudd… in more ways than one.

Mudd's got a rap sheet: He's wanted for crimes like smuggling and counterfeiting, not for anything violent. He lies; he cheats; he steals; he runs away and does it again at the next port. He swindles people out of money, but he's not trying to ruin lives; he's just trying to enjoy his own.

Sure, he's trying to scam the potential husbands for the three ladies he's escorting (more on that shortly), but the women are planning to be good wives, to be partners and helpers to the men they marry, and they're willing to live in a very isolated place for that.


Eve, Ruth, and Magda, wearing the only clothes they own after being rescued

While Mudd and "his" women are involved in some kind of scam that the crew is trying to figure out, the ship itself is having problems. It's out of lithium crystals and can't travel faster than a slow crawl. Fortunately, there's a lithium mining planet with — as luck would have it — exactly three men, all single and desperate for wives. The three women immediately agree to abandon their former betrotheds (whom they'd never met) to latch on to these new, closer, wealthier strangers.

By the middle of the episode, we have a tangle of conflicting interests. Mudd wants to get paid (needs to get paid; his spaceship was destroyed) and would really like to stay out of prison. The three women would like husbands who can keep them in the type of luxury they'd enjoy. The Enterprise needs crystals or it's dead in space. Captain Kirk would like to know what the scam is so he can deal with his prisoner appropriately. The miners would like wives, and would be especially happy with beautiful, alluring wives. Doctor McCoy would like to know why every man on the ship (except Spock) acts like they're being enthralled. (This is difficult when he himself is subject to their charms.) The cops presumably would like Mudd behind bars for his past crimes.

I was worried this was yet another "mind control powers" episode, and was delighted to discover it was not. Mudd's been giving the women "the Venus Drug" which makes them beautiful and sexy. All three women are homely, unable to find husbands because they are so ugly. Their plan was to get married on a remote planet; by the time they ran out of the drugs, their husbands would be stuck with them and Mudd would be long gone.


As you can see, his name really is Mudd.

Kirk throws Mudd in the brig while he tries to figure out what's going on. However, in accordance with standard Enterprise security, the women are free to come and go as they please, visiting officers at work, breaking into Kirk's cabin, and coordinating to help Mudd. Mudd can't leave the brig, but they can not only visit him, they can bring him a communications device. He contacts the miners and arranges a deal for his own freedom.

The lithium miners must have a powerful union, almost as strong as the fashion industry: Mudd, not Earth (or starship command, or whomever Kirk reports to), tells Kirk that he's not only to be set free, but delivered safely to another planet after the women are settled. Presumably, Kirk verifies this with his superiors instead of just taking Mudd's word for it, but I'm never sure how much anyone on this ship pays attention to chain of command.


The crew beams down to the mining planet. Even when the plot is hokey, Star Trek's visual impact is breathtaking.

Eve has second thoughts about the whole thing. She runs off into a sandstorm, gets rescued by the head miner, and winds up telling him the whole truth. At first, he rejects her because she's ugly; eventually, after some shenanigans between Kirk and Mudd, both she and the miner realize that the drug isn't (entirely) what made her enticing — it may have removed a few wrinkles and added a bit of sparkle, but it's her own actions that made it effective: She was beautiful because she believed she was.

Kirk tells her: "There's only one kind of woman–" Mudd interrupts him to say, "–or man, for that matter," and Kirk finishes with, "you either believe in yourself, or don't."


Childress, the head of the mining colony, and Eve, the woman too ugly to find a husband on her home planet

They decide to make a go of it, and so do the other women, thus avoiding the likely violent reaction to the truth if the change had happened without giving them a choice. Hurray. The women get husbands who are willing to accept them as they are; the men get wives who are willing to put up with the isolation of a mining planet; the Enterprise gets the crystals it needs to function; and Harry Mudd gets a presumably fair trial.

Harcourt Fenton Mudd is obviously a conniving, selfish liar and con artist, but he's not trying to hurt anyone, and he's devoted to a life of leisure and flamboyance. That's hard to manage as the captain of a tiny ship drifting between the stars. It's not mentioned in the episode, but he must spend some of his time managing the ship and addressing its technical needs, and much of the rest looking out of viewports into the inky blackness of space.


Would you buy a used spaceship from this man?

Mudd's a ruffian, a scalawag, a scofflaw: a criminal to his bones… but he's relatable (we all know someone like him) and has managed to stay mentally sound, to be optimistic even, in a setting that could drive men mad. Humans are social creatures; we need each other to survive. Any sailor will say that ocean life is lonely; a starship is even more isolated — and yet Harry Mudd rejects companionship on his journeys.

It takes a strong will to maintain enough social skills to wheel and deal with those who are planetbound — and an even stronger one to be a maverick, obviously not following society's rules or moral standards, but in a way that says "I'm a rebel outlaw" rather than "I've been living alone for so long I've forgotten which fork is used for ice cream." 

I don't know that I'd like Harry Mudd in person, but I am certainly entertained by him at a distance. I admire his dedication to his chosen lifestyle, and the skills and mental strength he must have to pull it off.

Three and a half stars. It would be four, but there are no shirtless men in this episode.

The Message


by Robin Rose Graves

The introduction to "Mudd’s Women" is ripe with promise. Action and intrigue. How did these three otherworldly attractive women end up traveling with a space pirate like Mudd? And what makes them so irresistible that even a crew of professional men can’t help but gawk? These questions ensnared my initial interest, filled my head with theories. I was ultimately let down.

“Confidence is beauty” is the moral of the story upon the revelation that the pills did nothing to change the normal human girls’ appearances, but instead gave them confidence, leading to them being perceived as supernaturally beautiful. While I don’t disagree with the message, I was nonetheless disappointed. Confused, even, at how the show decided to depict the beauty of the women. Under the influence of the Venus pills, the girls have glamorous makeup and clothes. Once the pills wear off, the women are stripped of their make up and they, along with those around them, act as if they are appallingly homely looking. Otherwise, they appear the same as before, particularly to me, who still found the actresses chosen to play the parts to be attractive.


Disheveled, maybe… but ugly?

The overall message feels out of place in a science fiction world. It’s one that felt unchallenging compared to the better episodes we’ve seen thus far. The final act of the episode feels as if it could have happened in any mundane situation comedy program. I’m not opposed to science fiction tackling issues of our society (in fact science fiction at its strongest does) yet I felt this episode didn’t go far enough. Compare it to a favorite Twilight Zone episode “Eye of the Beholder” where the plot differs greatly, but the question answered remains the same – “What is beauty?”

“Eye of the Beholder” subverted expectations. The episode built you up to expect the main character to be as ugly as everyone around her treats her, only to reveal her face looks like ours but everyone around her has large noses, sunken in eyes, and puffy lips – what is considered attractive in their universe. Twilight Zone went to greater lengths than “Mudd’s Women” to challenge the beliefs of their viewers, and six years before Star Trek. I expected more from a show that has at its best moments challenged modern television programs, and the way the episode began promised more than what was delivered.

3 stars.

Clear as Mud


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

Many moments in "Mudd’s Women" beg us to ask: are Eve, Ruth, and Magda property or people?

The episode follows a fairly simple structure: a chase, passengers rescued at great cost to the Enterprise necessitating an emergency refueling using fuel which Captain Kirk can only attain by trading the passengers’ lives, which he does. Or does he trade valuable cargo to the lithium miners of Rigel 12, with the cargo's willing consent?

The women explain what drove them from their home planets: hardship, unequal treatment, and a lack of hope for a real future. But we are not getting the whole story:

We discover that Mudd is supplying them with “Venus drugs,” that seem to alter the women’s appearances and charisma for a short time. Or do they? Towards the end of the episode, Kirk gives Eve a placebo pill without her informed consent and it has the same effect as the real thing. We are left to wonder: were the women’s transformations like those in The Man Trap, where Nancy Crater’s face aged depending on point of view? Or were these women actually aliens with a natural talent for appearing, as Erica described it as we watched, to have undergone a four hour hair and make-up treatment within moments of downing a sparkling pill?

Setting aside for a moment these mixed-up metaphysics, Eve, Ruth, and Magda clearly believe they need the drugs that Mudd controls access to. There is a harrowing scene where he goofily searches for more pills as the women rot and wither around him, bodies wracked with discomfort and with physical changes they believe they are powerless to control. This desperation and enforced dependency must color every other statement we hear from them about their consenting to their impending futures.

On Rigel 12, Mudd offers to trade Eve, Ruth, and Magda for his own freedom and crystals to fuel the Enterprise. What follows are several deeply upsetting scenes where Captain Kirk first refuses, and then — without any on-screen consultation with Eve, Ruth, or Magda — agrees to Mudd and the miners’ demands. Kirk transports them down to the mining camp to become wives of the miners. On the surface, we see a party where Magda asks a man to dance and men fight over her; a man asks Eve to dance and she says no, after which he publicly shames her for not consenting. Furious and distraught, Eve shouts: “Why don't you run a raffle and the loser gets me?” before running into a deadly sandstorm, with men baying after her.

Seven hours later, the miner who tried to shame Eve has her in his cave, where she is cooking for him. They fight, and he lays hands on her, only to growl: “I didn't touch her” when Captain Kirk and Mudd materialize, looking for lithium crystals. Moments later, Kirk gives Eve the placebo. Then he lectures her on womanhood and the importance of self-confidence before leaving.


“I didn't touch her.”

The episode ends without us seeing what became of Magda or Ruth. But we do see Kirk abandon Eve on a remote mining post with a violent man, taking Harry Mudd along with him for trial.

If Eve, Ruth, and Magda are “cargo,” then there is nothing wrong with Captain Kirk, Harry Mudd, or the miners’ actions. You cannot bruise a sexy automoton. Its tears have no meaning. It has no will or sense of adventure or right to privacy. It cannot yearn for freedom. But if Eve, Ruth, and Magda are people, then Mudd was cruel to withhold medical care they believed they needed; Captain Kirk was cruel to trade their bodies and lives for fuel; and the writers are cruel for writing a narrative that expected us to go along with it.

All in all, the metaphysics and the intended humanity of the women in this episode were as clear as mud.

One star.

(Will the next episode be better? Join us tonight at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) to find out!!)

Here's the invitation!



14 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 16, 1966] Only the Lonely (November 1966 Fantastic)

4 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf
with apologies to Roy Orbison

Solitary Confinement

To be a citizen of a nation inside another nation must be a very lonely feeling. Italy contains two of these countries, the tiny nations of San Marino and Vatican City. A third member of that exclusive club came into existence on October 4, when the former British colony of Basutoland won full independence, changing its name to the Kingdom of Lesotho. Lesotho is completely surrounded by the nation of South Africa.


King Moshoehoe II, constitutional monarch of Lesotho.

A Song for the Sorrowful

You don't have to be living in any of those three countries to feel lonely, of course. People experiencing that painful emotion might obtain some solace from the current Number One song on the American popular music charts. The Four Tops have a smash hit with their powerful ballad Reach Out (I'll Be There), with lyrics that are clearly aimed at a lonesome listener.


They seem to be reaching out to the record buyer.

Fiction for the Forlorn

Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic is full of stories featuring characters who are literally, or metaphorically, isolated.


Cover art by Bob Hilbreth, stolen from the December 1946 issue of Amazing Stories.


The original, illustrating a story that was part of the infamous Shaver Mystery.

Broken Image, by Thomas N. Scortia


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

The only new story in this issue features a protagonist who feels himself estranged from those around him, human or not.

His name is Baldur, and he has been surgically altered to resemble one of the humanoid aliens inhabiting a planet for which Earthlings have plans. It seems that humanity has evolved beyond sectarianism and violence, and seeks to bring the blessings of peace to other worlds.

(If I sound a little sarcastic, that's because the story's view of humanity is somewhat ambiguous. Baldur is completely loyal to the idea of Man as a perfect being, but his vision of the species is, as we'll see, a little distorted.)

One group of aliens oppresses another, going so far as to execute rebels in a particularly gruesome way.


Such as this.

The plan is to have Baldur act as a messiah for the lower class. Highly advanced technology allows him to perform healings and other miracles.

(At this point, you've probably figured out that Baldur is intended as a Christ figure. The oppressors are kind of like the Romans, the lower class is sort of like the Judeans, and so on. Given that analogy, some of what happens won't surprise you. The character's name also suggests an allusion to myths about the Norse god Baldr, sometimes spelled Balder or — a ha! — Baldur.)

There's a human woman, also in disguise, to help Baldur in his role as the savior of the oppressed. However, it turns out that she's hiding something from him, and that the folks in the starship orbiting the planet have schemes of which he is not aware.

This is a pretty good story, which held my interest all the way through. The Christian metaphor might be too blatant, and there's a twist ending that made me scratch my head. It explains why Baldur thinks of humanity as superior to other species, but I'm not sure if it really works.

(One interesting thing is that Baldur is not only physically changed, but mentally as well. His memories seem to be slightly distorted. Since we see everything from his point of view, although the story is told in third person, he serves as what some literary critics are starting to call an unreliable narrator. This all goes along with the twist ending.)

Three stars.

You're All Alone, by Fritz Leiber


Illustrations by Henry Sharp.

There's a title that suggests loneliness, for sure.

Before I get into the story itself, let me go over the rather complex history of the text. It seems that Leiber intended it to appear in Unknown, the fantasy magazine edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. as a companion to Astounding. Unknown died before the story could be published.

Leiber expanded the work from about forty thousand words to approximately seventy-five thousand, hoping to have a book publisher accept it as part of their fantasy line. The company stopped publishing fantasy before it sold.

Back to the drawing board! Leiber next sent it to Fantastic Adventures, who agreed to buy it if — guess what? — it was cut back to forty thousand words. It finally appeared in the July 1950 issue. That's the version that's been reprinted in the current issue of Fantastic.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

We're not done yet! The seventy-five thousand word version wound up as one half of a double paperback, under the name The Sinful Ones. The publisher came up with the suggestive new title, altered the text slightly to make it racier, and added sexy chapter titles like The Strip Tease and Blonde Prostitute, trying to convince the reader that it was hot stuff.


Anonymous cover art. The companion novel, about a lady bullfighter, looks . . . interesting.

Back to the story itself. (At forty thousand words, it actually justifies, if just barely, its label by the magazine as a Complete Novel.)

Carr Mackay works at an employment agency in Chicago. A frightened young woman comes into his office, followed by a big blonde woman. The younger woman is obviously terrified of the blonde, but tries to ignore her. She talks to Carr, pretending to have a job interview, and asking him if he's one of them.


By the way, the blonde woman has a big, vicious, scary pet dog, but it's not anywhere near as large as shown in this illustration, or the cover of Fantastic Adventures!

Before leaving, she scribbles a note warning him to watch out for the blonde and her two male companions, and leaving a cryptic message to meet her at a certain location if he wants to learn more.

Of course, this all sounds like the paranoid ravings of a lunatic. Things get weirder when the blonde slaps the young woman across the face, and she forces herself not to react. Then a co-worker shows up, acting as if he's introducing Carr to somebody, but there's nobody there. Some kind of practical joke?

It's hard to deny that something strange is going on when Carr shows up at his girlfriend's place, and she goes through the motions of greeting and kissing him, but he's not where she apparently thinks he is. She ignores the real Carr, and continues to interact with an imaginary one.


She should really be smooching the empty air instead of a ghostly figure, but that's artistic license for you.

Although he's reluctant to accept the truth, Carr realizes that almost all humans are mindless automatons, just going through the motions like wind-up toys. Only a very few, like the young woman, the blonde and her companions, and himself, are conscious beings. He meets with the woman, leading to dangerous encounters with sinister folks and wild adventures in a world full of clockwork people and those who take advantage of the situation.


A moment of happiness in a public library after hours. I like the subtle hint that the light above their heads is an eye watching them.

The premise is a fascinating one, and the author conveys it in a convincing manner. There's some philosophical depth to the idea, too. Who among us hasn't felt like a cog in a big machine? It moves very quickly, almost like a Keith Laumer novel. (Maybe the longer version allows for more exploration of the concept.)

I could quibble that not everything about the plot is completely logical. Inanimate objects sometimes act as if they're part of the mindless mechanism of life, and sometimes don't. The conscious people are able to knock off the hats of the automatons, for example, and steal their drinks, but the keys of a piano move by themselves when the person supposed to be playing them isn't there.


The floating hands are more artistic license.

Despite this tiny flaw, and the fact that the ending seems rushed, it's an enjoyable short novel. As you'd expect from Leiber, it's well-written. As a bonus, it provides a vivid portrait of the city of Chicago, in all its bright and dark aspects.

Four stars.

Breakfast at Twilight, by Philip K. Dick


Cover art by Clarence Doore.

From the July 1954 issue of Amazing Stories comes this tale of a family isolated from their own time.


Anonymous illustration.

Mom, Dad, and three kids are enjoying a typical morning at home, although there's some kind of fog or smoke outside, and the radio isn't working. The lone boy heads off for school, but quickly comes back. There are soldiers everywhere blocking his way.

It turns out that their home is now seven years in the future. The Cold War has heated up, leading to a dystopian society. (Apparently a bomb caused the time travel effect.) The soldiers are stunned to see a woman and children out in the open, and are even more amazed at the food available in the house.

A political officer (another sign that the United States government has become authoritarian, along with the casually mentioned book burning) suggests that they wait for another bomb to send them back to their own time.

Although the plot is simple enough for an episode of Twilight Zone, this is a powerful story, sending a clear warning of the dangers of escalating world conflicts. (The theme seems even more relevant today, with the situation in Vietnam, than it did just after the Korean War.)

Four stars.

Scream at Sea, by Algis Budrys


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

The January-February 1954 issue of the magazine provides this example of extreme loneliness.


Illustrations by Ernie Barth.

A man survives an explosion that destroys his ship. He manages to hang on to a piece of the vessel that's got some canned ham and water, so it serves him as a sort of raft. The ship's cat happens to escape the disaster as well.


The only other character in the story.

The author manages to create a true sense of isolation and desperation. It's not a bad piece, but there isn't a trace of science fiction or fantasy at all! There's a twist in the tail that would have been more appropriate for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine than Fantastic.

(By the way, the editor's blurbs for the last two stories are backwards! I guess that's a sign of how little the publisher cares for these poorly funded magazines full of unpaid reprints.)

Three stars.

Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Artists Behind Him, by Anonymous

Serving as a coda is this portfolio of illustrations for stories by ERB that appeared in Amazing years ago.


For The Land That Time Forgot (1918, reprinted 1927), illustration by Frank R. Paul.


Same credits as above.


For The City of the Mummies (1941), illustration by J. Allen St. John.


For Black Pirates of Barsoom, same year, same artist.


For Goddess of Fire, same year, same artist.

I don't have much to say about these old-fashioned pictures. They're OK.

Three stars.

Some Solace For Solitude

If you're feeling lonesome, picking up a copy of this issue might provide some relief for a few hours. All the stories are worth reading, and a couple of them are better than average. If that doesn't raise your spirits sufficiently, visiting your neighbors might do the trick.


That astronaut won't be lonely. Cartoon by Frosty from the same issue as the Budrys story.




4 Comments Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 12, 1966] Inside Out (Star Trek's "The Enemy Within")

8 Comments

Two for the Price of One


by Janice L. Newman

Some stories become seminal. They are told and re-told, with additions and variations, but always at heart recognizable. The heartwarming tale of A Christmas Carol, the story of Frankenstein, the great, sweeping drama of Romeo and Juliet – elements of each of these have become embedded in our culture and our consciousness.

Tonight’s Star Trek episode drew from one such cultural touchstone: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You can already guess, just from knowing that much, what it’s about. But is it well done?

The episode begins with the transporter being used to ‘beam up’ one of the ubiquitous extras from a planet which, we are told, gets very cold at night. There’s some sort of malfunction with the transporter, and when Captain Kirk is beamed up next, he sways as though faint. Scotty escorts him to sick bay, leaving the transporter room empty when it activates again and beams in…another Captain Kirk?

It’s immediately apparent that something is off about the second Kirk. He rushes over to Sick Bay to demand alcohol from Doctor McCoy, yells at crewmates, and in a deeply disturbing scene, menaces and attacks Yeoman Rand. (Is it just me, or does it feel like Yeoman Rand’s only purpose aboard the ship is to be menaced and attacked? We’ve seen it happen in the past three episodes: Charlie in "Charlie X", a random infected crewperson in "The Naked Time", and now the captain himself.)

Fortunately, Rand manages to get away, and afterward the ‘good’ Captain Kirk insists that he didn’t attack her. Particularly interesting to me was Rand’s reactions as the captain and Mr. Spock talk to her about what happened. She is far more traumatized than in previous episodes, weeping and saying, “I didn’t know what to do…He is the captain.” When she says that she scratched her attacker and Kirk points out that he has no scratches, she begins to second-guess herself. “I was frightened…maybe…” In a particularly poignant moment, she adds, “I can understand. I don’t want to get you into trouble. I wouldn’t have even mentioned it.”

There is a wealth of meaning in those few lines. In the futuristic society of "Star Trek" women may have something closer to equality than we have now, but a crewmember is still afraid to tell her captain ‘no’, and even after an attempted rape, says that she wouldn’t have said anything about it to avoid getting him into trouble. It says a lot about their society, and also about our world here in 1966, that those lines feel shockingly real and believable.

The ‘bad’ Kirk is eventually caught, but something interesting happens to the ‘good’ Kirk. At first, he seemed mostly unaffected by the transporter incident, but as the episode goes on, we see him beginning to waver, distracted and nervous. He increasingly has difficulty making judgement calls, until it culminates in a moment where he begs, “Someone make the decision.”

It turns out that the two Kirks aren’t ‘bad’ Kirk and ‘good’ Kirk, so much as the one driven by passion, lust, and the baser emotions, versus one motivated by compassion and logic. Both sides are necessary for Kirk to function as a full person and an effective leader.

This was a really interesting take on the Jekyll and Hyde cliché. As with several of the episodes preceding it, there wasn’t a clear-cut ‘bad guy’. And the solution wasn’t to kill a monster but to heal one, to comfort the fears and soothe the rage of Kirk’s id until he agreed to rejoin with his other half, even at the risk of his life. For all that it’s a premise we’ve seen before, the story was fresh, interesting, and very well-told indeed.

Five stars.

The Flip Side


by Gideon Marcus

It's always nice to see Richard Matheson's credits on a show (well, except for The Twilight Zone's "Third from the Sun", where it was a disappointment.) "The Enemy Within" is a beautifully crafted exploration of humanity's noble and bestial qualities, well portrayed by William Shatner as Captain Kirk.

Indeed, while the episode mostly focused on "Good Kirk" and his mission to be reunited with his other self, I found myself increasingly interested in "Evil Kirk" as a character.  After all, he's as much "the real" Kirk as his other half.  We got to see Spock fall apart last episode, and here we get to delve into what makes Kirk tick.

In "The Naked Time", Kirk lamented that he could never get away from his command, "no beach to walk on…" The first time we see "Evil Kirk" after he steps off the transporter, he runs to the transporter, grinning with glee.  I think I understand what's going on in his mind — no more pesky conscience to restrain him.  He's utterly free for the first time in his life.  Of course he runs off to indulge in his basest desires: drunkennness, rape, violence. 

Here's a question: are these desires always tempting Kirk, just as Spock is always wrestling with his human side?  Or would any person with his superego removed develop the same urges?  Are there people for whom splitting in two would result in less dramatically altered personalities?

Obviously, it's not an experiment that can be ethically run, but it is fascinating.  And if I seem insensitive to what Kirk went through, understand, it's the way I am.

I will say that the assault on Janice was particularly difficult to watch.  The betrayal she must have felt, particularly by someone she trusted, admired, and possibly has (had?) a romantic interest in, cuts deep and resonates with a situation so many women deal with.  Spock's comment at the end, indicating he is aware of Rand's feelings for Kirk, and that she might have, deep down, enjoyed the assault was almost as painful as the assault itself, though perhaps it is consistent with his earlier insensitivity.  Perhaps they'll cut that bit in the summer reruns.  It really doesn't need to be there.

Four stars.

A Color Theory of Good and Evil


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

Like I did last week, I’d like to zoom in on one particular detail of The Enemy Within: the set design. Specifically, how the comparative dominance of blood red lighting or jade green uniforms give us hints as to which incarnation of Captain Kirk holds the upper hand in a given scene.

These colors are what Bauhaus artist Johannes Itten would call complementary, since they they appear on opposite sides of his 1961 color wheel:

Near the middle of the episode we see the lower decks where red lights glow through jade green filigree screens as the violent part of Captain Kirk hunts Spock and his jade-shirted other self. Contrast this with the touching final moment on the transporter pad, where the peaceful Captain Kirk holds his counterpart close, their green uniform shirts filling the medium shot, with only a hint of red in the ceiling lights just before they are recombined:

These complementary thematic colors add a layer to Commander Spock’s assessment of Captain Kirk:

“[W]hat is it that makes one man an exceptional leader? We see indications that it's his negative side which makes him strong, that his evil side, if you will, properly controlled and disciplined, is vital to his strength.”

Complementary colors, when combined with artistic discipline, are greater than the sum of their parts. There is a buzz to the places where they touch, a neon inner life. Pop art leaders like Miriam Laufer, Sister Corita Kent, Marisol Escobar, Evelyne Axell, Sturtevant, and the recently late Pauline Boty wield that intense, almost painful complementary contrast, to produce strong, commanding statements about the world as they see it.


Pauline Boty, Colour Her Gone (1962)

In this episode, the contrast between Captain Kirk’s two selves is also intense and painful, particularly to those who his violent side hurts or his peaceful side fails to protect. But for Kirk, his good and evil sides are complementary: they allow him to be greater than the sum of his parts.

Director of Photography Jerry Finnerman, Art Directors Roland M. Brooks and Walter M. Jefferies, Set Decorator Carl F. Biddiscombe, Costumer William Theiss, and their team members represented by the I.A.T.S.E. labor union must have worked together tirelessly to provide us this episode’s visual metaphor; I look forward to continuing to enjoy their teams’ skillful use of color theory to mirror and elevate the stories of these familiar, far-off characters.

Four stars.

In the picture


by Tam Phan (Secret Asian Man)

Spotlighting Shatner’s double-faced role in "The Enemy Within" was a bold move, especially after Nimoy’s "Naked Time" performance. Shatner's turn might have been less nuanced than Nimoy's; nevertheless, if the writing continues to be this good, this show might propel itself into the history books.

Contrasting "Charlie X" in pacing, this week’s episode moved when the scene was over. I was on the edge of my seat hoping for them to resolve the transporter issue so they could save Sulu and his crew of scientists. As for Takei, after last week’s exciting display, his role in "The Enemy Within" might have been small, but it was powerful.

As much as I appreciate proper pacing, ambience and music were the heroes of "The Enemy Within". Kirk’s sadness and despair are my own and the music confirms it. The soundscape transports me to the Enterprise: The soft beating of the monitor in Sick Bay, the beeping of the consoles on the bridge, and even the trill of the transporter are such distinct sounds that there’s no mistaking where I am. The whooshing of the sliding doors tells me I’m about to leave a room. The sounds and ambience make me feel like I’m part of the crew. The music draws me into the scene so seamlessly that at times, I don’t just hear it, but feel it. I can’t wait to familiarize myself with new parts of the ship. With what I’ve heard so far, it should be a delightful experience.

4 Stars

(You too can be in the picture: join us tomorrow night at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) for the next episode of Star Trek!)

Here's the invitation!



8 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 10, 1966] Let's Take A Trip (November 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow)

4 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

The Acid Test

I believe that certain young people — hippies is the term, I think — are using the word trip to refer to something other than hopping on a bus, train, or airplane. In particular, they often mean taking a dose of lysergic acid diethylamide, understandably shortened to LSD, and known informally as acid.


A poster for an event held in Vancouver earlier this year.
Note the name of the festival, and the psychedelic art.
I'll bet lots of attendees took a trip to Canada in order to take a trip elsewhere.

Until this month, this hallucinogenic drug was legal everywhere in the USA. On October 6, it became illegal in the state of California. In response to the new law, on the same day thousands of people showed up for a so-called Love Pageant Rally in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. They enjoyed music from local artists, and many took doses of LSD in defiance of the law.


Some guys calling themselves the Grateful Dead entertain the crowd. There was also a young blues singer from Texas named Janis Joplin.

Way, Way Out

Even if you live in California, you can enjoy a trip deep into your imagination in a perfectly legal manner, simply by opening the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow. Fittingly, almost all the fiction takes place in the far reaches of interstellar space.


Cover art by Sol Dember.

Crown of Stars, by Lin Carter


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

Here's a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek adventure yarn featuring an ultra-competent protagonist. The editor's blurb compares him to James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, but he reminds me more of Derek Flint.


Our hero and his pet dragon.

Mister Quicksilver is a professional, legal thief. (There's some nonsense about how crime is legal and legal activity is outlawed, but forget about that. This isn't the most logical story in the world.) He lives in a castle on an asteroid, hidden among other chunks of rock orbiting a distant star. This method of concealing his location — which doesn't seem to prevent folks from finding him — offers the opportunity for the reader to enjoy the first of several bits of doggerel that present Quicksilver's philosophy in poetic form.


Home Sweet Home.

Three people show up, one at a time, each wanting to hire Quicksilver to steal a jeweled crown, a relic of an ancient, extinct race of reptilian aliens. The prize is guarded by a sect of fanatical cultists. The three clients include a scholar who turns out to be an imposter, an aristocrat, and a government agent. The latter is a woman who is in love with him. For his part, Quicksilver prefers women who (unsuccessfully) resist his charms.

The quest involves a trip to a planet of criminals, to learn the current whereabouts of the only thief who escaped from the cultists with his life. A clue leads Quicksilver to Earth, where the fellow resides. Meanwhile, multiple assassins make attempts on our hero's life.

Eventually, with the help of the government agent, Quicksilver arrives on the planet of the cultists, where a surprise awaits him. Is there any doubt that Quicksilver will prevail, and that the woman will fall into his arms?


The reptilian aliens, who don't actually show up in the story.

The author revels in the clichés of space adventure, offering tons of odd names and exotic details. Although it's not an out-and-out comedy, there are silly jokes along the way. (There's a reference to various folk heroes from the local religion of far future Earth: Abe Lincoln, Mickey Mouse, Fidel Castro, and Joan Blondell.) These quips tend to take the reader out of the story, which is pretty hard to take seriously anyway.

Quicksilver is an arrogant son-of-a-gun, and the way he forces a kiss on the protesting heroine at the end isn't very pleasant. The whole thing is like a great big bowl of whipped cream; tasty at first, maybe, but you'll soon wish for something more substantial.

Two stars.

The 1991 Draftee, by Joseph Wesley

The author has written about the future of the military several times for the magazine. This latest article includes letters from a young guy serving in the army a quarter of a century from now. It's a pretty depressing picture.

The military secretly induces hypnotic suggestions into the minds of its recruits. There's also some discussion of small robotic weapons that crawl like spiders or fly like insects. Nonlethal but debilitating gases fill the battlefield, so the soldiers wear protective, air-conditioned suits.

It's all highly speculative, particularly the idea that young men of the future will want to shave their heads bald, so the army has to give them regulation haircuts by applying hair-growing treatments! (A wry comment on today's fad for long hair on male hippies?)

Two stars.

Frost Planet, by C. C. MacApp


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

With the permission of the bear-like aliens who inhabit the place, humans have set up mining facilities and a colony under the ice of a frozen world. A crisis threatens to upset the uneasy relationship between the two species when a man is found stabbed to death with an alien knife. A military officer investigates the crime.

Things get even worse when small atomic heating devices go missing. It turns out that several of them have been placed in the ice near the human outpost, intended to destroy the colony. Later, an alien is killed by a human rifle, leading to open conflict. Can our hero prevent disaster?


Firing at a mysterious enemy.

This is a pretty decent science fiction suspense story, which develops quite a bit of tension. You may be able to figure out the whodunit aspect of the plot. The aliens are intriguing, but not enough is done with them.


A duel to the death.

I had to wonder why people are here in the first place. The extreme cold (effectively conveyed, by the way) is hardly conducive to human habitation, and we never find out what the mines produce.

As in many SF stories, the assumption seems to be that future folks will inhabit lots and lots of alien worlds, even those with their own native population. In any case, it's a lot better than the author's seemingly endless Gree series.

Three stars.

Report on the Slow Freeze, by R. C. W. Ettinger

From fictional cold to (possibly) factual cold. The magazine has discussed the possibility of freezing people at the time of death and then reviving them in the future a couple of times before. In this current variation on the theme, the author offers a history of the idea, and speculates about why it has failed to catch on.

A lot of this is going over old ground. The most interesting aspect of the article may be that the author seems to believe that appealing to the emotions, rather than the intellect, is the most effective way to promote the technique.

Two stars.

To the War is Gone, by Richard C. Meredith


Illustrations by Burns. I have been unable to discover the artist's first name.

There's a war going on between ordinary humans and those who have become attached to alien symbiotes that give them a single group mind. After a space battle that destroyed both ships, a lone human survivor with a broken leg waits for death, stranded in a detached segment of the vessel. There's an intact lifeboat not too far away, but he has no way to get to it.


The man. That buzz is goofy.

The only living inhabitant of the enemy ship shows up, floating through the void in a spacesuit. She can reach the lifeboat, but can't operate it. The two can communicate through radio, but can they work together to survive? More importantly, can they trust each other?


The woman, apparently producing the buzz.

I was reminded both of Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Puppet Masters (1951) and Tom Godwin's story The Cold Equations (1954) when I read this piece. Unfortunately, although it was compelling at first, it collapsed into melodrama by the end.

One interesting aspect of the story is the fact that the protagonist is a musician, and the text includes excerpts from real folk songs, as well as fictional ones of the future. Less enjoyable was making the other character a member of a group of women noted for their erotic appeal. This makes the man's decision to help her a matter of sheer lust. (Many of his folk songs are pretty bawdy, too.)

Two stars.

Until Armageddon, by Dannie Plachta

As a break from all this deep space stuff, we have a tiny story set on good old Mother Earth. The Pope and the Premier of Israel (sounds like the start of a joke) meet to ask a super-computer how to achieve world peace. The response is unexpected.

I said a joke, and this thing ends with a punch line, but it's not intended to be funny, as far as I can tell. I don't really know what to think about the twist the author throws at me.

One star.

The Jew in Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

Starting with an analysis of the 1959 novel A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., the author delves into the way that science fiction has depicted the Chosen People. With a few exceptions, it's a depressing account of virulent antisemitism. The article includes a discussion of the many talented Jewish writers and editors in the field, noting that they have produced hardly any works relating to the topic.

This was much more interesting than the author's previous scholarly but lifeless articles. I suspect this is because he cares passionately for the subject. The conclusion serves as something as an indictment of the supposedly progressive genre of science fiction, which Moskowitz sees as less enlightened than mainstream fiction.

Three stars.

Seventy Light-Years From Sol, by Stephen Hall


Illustrations by Dan Adkins

Back to voyages to faraway worlds. A team of experts explore an Earth-like but very strange planet. The only form of life seems to be plants resembling lettuce covering the ground. While investigating holes in the dirt, they discover what appear to be millstones.

That's weird enough, but things really get odd when big cubes of various colors show up out of nowhere. (They're actually quite a bit larger than shown in the illustrations.)


The team's biologist, surrounded by cubes.

It seems that the cubes are alive, and are able to communicate, to some extent, with the humans telepathically. The millstones are predators of the cubes, spewing out a substance — which turns out to be aspirin! — that dissolves their prey so they can absorb them.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the planet's other continent is inhabited by gray, imperfect cubes, that threaten to invade the land of the perfect, colorful cubes.

As you can see, this is a really nutty plot, almost like something out of one of Lafferty's tall tales. What makes it work reasonably well is the fact that the human characters are a likable bunch, each with their own quirks. I particularly like the fact that the crew includes a painter, an eccentric older woman. She's a refreshing change from the scientists, officers, and technicians aboard the exploratory starship.

Three stars.

Down to Earth

Coming back home after this imaginary voyage to other star systems was something like returning from a disappointing LSD trip. Some of the pieces were moderately diverting, but nothing was outstanding. Maybe it's time to turn to some other form of entertainment.


A recent children's book. It might be a safer way to travel than acid.




4 Comments Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 6, 1966] One Trek, neat (The Naked Time)

8 Comments


by Erica Frank

We return to our weekly adventures aboard the Enterprise, in the first episode that does not feature the dangers of psychic powers gone mad. We're still dealing with madness, of a sort — "The Naked Time" features people who have lost their self-control and run wild throughout the ship, endangering everyone on board.

The episode began with a trip to a planet on the verge of destruction; the Enterprise planned to record the event, collecting rare scientific data while avoiding being caught in its implosion. When they arrived, they found the on-planet base crew dead of mysterious causes. One bright fellow – we'll call him "Ensign Stupid" – takes off his gloves to scratch his nose while poking around the base, and he gets a scratch.


Ensign Stupid in his very fashionable orange-and-silver safety gear, completely undermining whatever protection it offered.

He catches a mysterious alien disease that eventually kills him, but first he manages to share it with several other crew members. One of them, Riley, starts singing old Irish ballads, takes over the engineering department, and locks the captain out of both control and communications. This would be funny if the ship weren't on a deadline: if the ship doesn't leave orbit before the implosion, the Enterprise will become part of the rubble.

Oh, and while that's going on, the disease is spreading: we see wild swashbuckling from Sulu, a heartfelt confession of love from Nurse Chapel, a tearful breakdown from the normally stoic Spock, and various drunken-seeming shenanigans from random crewmembers.


Nurse Chapel declares her love for Spock while clutching his hands in hers.

By the time the Captain regains control of the ship, it's too late for a safe departure; Riley's turned the warp engines completely off and they need to warm up. Scotty, the chief engineer, warns him: "I can't change the laws of physics. We've got to have thirty minutes." (They have eight minutes.) But Kirk has an idea: maybe they can jump-start them using antimatter… but for that, they need Spock sober enough to run the calculations for them.

In the end, Dr. McCoy figures out the problem – something on the planet converts water to "a complex chain of molecules" that acts like alcohol; it's transmitted through sweat. He injects people with a cure in time for Spock to manage the math for the risky maneuver; somehow, Kirk is the only person whose shirt gets torn during the vaccination.


Is this how vaccines are normally administered in the future? Or does the Federation just issue Kirk shirts with tear-away sleeves?

By the end of the episode:

We all hated Riley and his singing.
We all cheered for shirtless Sulu, even if he was being disruptive.
We were all fascinated by Spock's emotional outburst.

As usual, some details needed a bit of hand-waving to accept, but I will forgive quite a bit of "instant alien disease" and "having to remind security not to use lethal force on their crewmate" if it means I get to see dashing young men leap around with swords and without shirts.

I may start keeping a tally. Shirtless men in this episode: 1.25 (counting Kirk's torn shirt).

Five stars: the story moved fast and kept me engaged. I only noticed flaws later as I was trying to write up notes about it.

A Shocking Scene


by Janice L. Newman

This week’s episode was a departure, not only from the kinds of episodes we’ve seen from Star Trek so far, but from the kind of science fiction we’ve seen on television in general. There was no monster to fight, no human with special powers bent on taking over, no alien menace. The enemy, such as it was, came from within. (Which, coincidentally enough, sounds like next week’s episode title.)

A lot of interesting and character-revealing things happened during the show, but one moment stands out in my memory with a sharp clarity: the moment when science officer Mr. Spock, under the influence of a virus, breaks down. Although we don’t know Mr. Spock very well as a character yet, the scene was incredibly powerful. When was the last time you saw a man cry in a movie or TV show? I’m not talking about camera-friendly ‘manly’ tears when a comrade dies in a war flick, or the sniveling of a villain. I’m talking about a main character sitting down and sobbing, all while desperately trying not to.

Mr. Spock, as we learned this episode, is a half-human, half-alien person who fits into neither culture and has had to spend his whole life suppressing his emotions. He speaks of how he couldn’t tell his mother that he loved her, of his shame at his inability to control his feelings.

And yet, is this so very alien? Men are not supposed to cry, after all. Which was why it was so shocking to see Leonard Nimoy sit down and bawl onscreen, made even more compelling by his obvious struggle for control. Everyone has had that moment when they’re fighting back tears. Ironically, the ‘half-alien’ felt the most relatable and human of everyone in the episode.

It looks like I have a new favorite character. I’m looking forward to seeing more of “Mr. Spock” in future episodes.

Four and a half stars.

The Crew Stripped Bare

by Robin Rose Graves

This episode was an emotional whirlwind. I couldn’t help but laugh as Sulu rampaged the halls, sword in hand (as fun to watch as I imagine the actor had while filming it), and be irritated by Mr. Riley’s incessant singing.

Yet these moments are juxtaposed with two exceptionally serious and jarring scenes. Lt. Tormolen, the first to contract the disease, has a breakdown in which he questions humanity’s presence in space – wondering if they are doing more bad than good – quickly spiraling into taking his own life. This scene is emotionally impactful, despite the audience’s lack of familiarity with this character (though it seems to be a common pattern, introducing a new character who dies that episode) and raises a question I wish the episode, or series overall, took time to explore:

I am in favor of scientific discovery and am thrilled by the space travel depicted in the show. Yet I can’t help but question the consequences of such a journey. While Tormolen focused mostly on its impact on humanity, I wonder about the effect on alien lifeforms. Could our common cold be potentially lethal to other species? What if we accidentally introduce an invasive species on an alien world, dramatically changing their climate and causing it to be uninhabitable for its native species? Beyond physical issues, there's the possibility of destroying an alien culture just by contacting it.

But I digress.

It’s Spock’s breakdown that stood out most about this episode and led to significant revelations about his character. He’s half-human! Up until this point, Spock’s character has been entirely defined by his alien biology. As exemplified in the episode, during a medical exam he assures the doctor that the bizarre readings are perfectly normal for his species (though you’d hope medical staff on a ship like this would be well versed in the alien biology of its occupants). While some answers are given, more questions arise. Are interspecies relationships common? And judging by Spock’s revealed shame about his mixed identity, is Spock a Vulcan outcast? That would explain how he is the only Vulcan (and alien, for that matter) among a crew of all humans.

Despite how much I enjoyed this episode I can’t help but think it came too early in the season. This episode has grand revelations for characters we are meeting for the first time (i.e. Sulu, Scott, Chapel…even Tormolen). The episode would have been more impactful had we had a chance to know these characters before their deep secrets were revealed. Spock’s breakdown would have been all the more moving had we had more than three episodes with his character beforehand.

This episode would have been the perfect season finale, rewarding long time viewers with new details about the characters they’ve come to love and setting up promising new plots to explore within the next season. Even the unexpected (to the crew and viewers alike) time jump suggested an ending. It left me with a sense of peace, the opportunity for much needed healing after a particularly trying adventure and emotions rubbed raw. I have to wonder if this episode was moved up in the schedule for some reason.

Four stars…though easily could have been five.

Questioning Boldly Going


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

I'd like to expand on an excellent point Robin brings up. Zoom in with me for a moment on just one line from this moving episode:

Lt. Tormolen: We bring pain and trouble with us, leave men and women stuck out on freezing planets until they die. What are we doing out here in space? Good? What good? We're polluting it, destroying it. We've got no business being out here. No business.

Lt. Tormolen’s monologue begs us to question the underpinnings of the Federation. We do not currently know if his nihilistic view of space exploration is accurate, though my optimistic heart hopes it is not. But his focus on the evils of expansionism felt particularly poignant to me today as I read of Botswana declaring independence. Last week, that hilly country joined 28 other nations who have declared themselves independent from the United Kingdom since the end of the Second World War. (Lest my friends across the pond complain that I am picking on them, below are the names of each imperial power, and the number of countries who have declared independence from them since September 2, 1945: France (26), Belgium (3), Japan (2), Italy (2), Spain (1), New Zealand (1), Malaysia (1), Saudi Arabia (1), and the Netherlands (1)).


Independence ceremony for Botswana

Were there people on Psi 2000 who could have declared independence from the Federation? Did they survive great wars too, before succumbing to frost and madness? Captain Kirk calls Psi 2000 “a wasteland” and perhaps the worlds in the universe of Star Trek are often barren of locally-evolved cultures.

I hope not. I loved watching Captain Kirk treat with the Thasians as equals in Charlie X and like other reviewers, was deeply affected by the half-Vulcan Commander Spock’s breakdown. The best moments of Star Trek so far have been when the crew strives to understand the vast diversity of the universe around them using what academics might call “cultural relativism” and I might call “voracious curiosity.”

Or, to quote Nigerian author Chinua Achebe’s powerful anti-colonial novel Things Fall Apart (1958):

“The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”

I hope that, in Star Trek the worlds will have no end, and we will continue to explore both the stars and our reasons for reaching for them.

Five stars.

Score One for Star Trek


by Gideon Marcus

The latest Star Trek adventure takes us where some men have been before — the crew has settled into a consistent ensemble (though the second pilot, "Where No Man has Gone Before", was shown last week and must have been bewildering to folks tuning in); the fine director of "The Man Trap", Marc Daniels, returned as well.

But we got to see new sides of many characters, particularly Spock and Sulu, to a lesser degree Kirk. We were introduced to Nurse Chapel, who has an implied depth to her history that suggests this is not her first filmed episode even if it is her first appearance.

There are pacing issues.  I felt the second half of the episode was more riveting than the first.  There were scientific issues, particularly the collapsing planet.  The casual introduction of time travel was shocking — is Star Trek about to become Time Tunnel?


"My chronometer…it's running…backward!"

A few things stood out to me as truly superlative, though.  Janice mentioned Nimoy's tour de force portraying Spock's breakdown (which Robin notes came a little too early in the season for full impact).  What thoroughly impressed me was the scoring for the episode: The Irish-tinged phrases for Riley.  The "disease theme", punctuated with snake rattles that indicated transmission.  The entire suite from when Kirk reenters the bridge at the end, all the way to the end of the episode.  I wish I'd taped it on reel-to-reel for later listening as I have with the music from Secret Agent.  I'll have to do that during the summer reruns.  Or perhaps they'll release a soundtrack album a la Victory at Sea.

I liked that all of the bridge crew were cross-trained.  Both Uhura and Rand took the important navigation and helm stations, reinforcing that women are not just auxiliary crew in the future, but full-braid officers.  I wonder if we'll see female ship captains in future episodes.

And it's a small thing, but I really appreciated the exchange between Kirk and Uhura when, tempers frayed, they snap at one another.  Kirk then apologizes, and Uhura smiles in forgiveness.  It was a very human, very professional interaction.

Four stars.

(P.S. Has anyone else noticed that one of the themes in this episode's soundtrack sounds a lot like a common refrain in Twelve O' Clock High? I think I heard it in "The Cage" as well.)

(Join us tonight at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) for the next episode of Star Trek!)

Here's the invitation!



8 Comments Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 4, 1966] The Real Treasure Was The Friends We Made Along The Way (Doctor Who: The Smugglers)

1 Comment

By Jessica Holmes

It’s been a long couple of months, but Doctor Who is back, and so am I! Did you miss me?

I had heard rumours that William Hartnell was thinking about hanging up the TARDIS keys, but with a new series I think we can safely say those rumours are a load of tosh. I for one am very pleased– both because I enjoy the show, and because I'd be out of a job!

Though I do appreciate them, a pure historical story is an odd choice to start off a new series. Let’s be honest. Kids are not watching Doctor Who for the often fairly dry historicals. They’re watching for the bug-eyed monsters. Still, this story by Brian Hayles has pirates in it, and what kind of kid doesn’t like pirates? What's more, for the first time ever we have a woman in the director's chair, Julia Smith. Well, the kids might not care much about that, but I do.

Last time we saw the Doctor, we said a rather abrupt goodbye to companion Dodo, and said hello to Ben (Michael Craze) and Polly (Anneke Wills). Let’s see how they got along on their first adventure: The Smugglers.

EPISODE ONE

For heaven’s sake, I thought to myself when sitting down to watch this episode. My first story back, and the flipping telly’s on the fritz. Again.

Following the Doctor’s discovery of his two stowaways (he has a bit of a temper tantrum) and the obligatory expositional rundown of what the TARDIS is, the Doctor and company arrive in a cave in Cornwall in the 17th century. The BBC has seen fit to allow the cast and crew some fresh air and sunlight, filming much of the serial on location on the Cornish coast.

Exiting the cave, the trio make their way up to a nearby church, where they meet the warden, a suspicious fellow by the name of Longfoot (Terence De Marney).  Longfoot is wary of the three. He's guarding a secret: the true location of Captain Henry Avery’s buried treasure. The Doctor soon earns his trust with a little free medical aid. With the tide coming in, the trio intend to find a nearby inn. Before they depart, Longfoot warns them to be on their guard. He then says something quite peculiar to the Doctor: “This is Dead Man’s secret key: Smallwood, Ringwood, Gurney.”

Unseen by anyone, a bald man watches them from the bushes. After the Doctor and friends depart, the man emerges and follows Longfoot into the church, taking out a large knife.

The Doctor and company get a room at the inn, finding that the patrons are as rough as Lightfoot warned them. For Polly’s own safety, she pretends to be a young man. I suppose there weren’t many opticians in the 17th century, as nobody calls her paper-thin disguise into question. Maybe men were just prettier back then.

Back at the church the bald bloke, Cherub (George A. Cooper), confronts Longfoot. He demands to know where Avery’s gold is hidden. Longfoot refuses to talk, and in anger Cherub buries a knife in his back. You’d think a pirate would know that dead men tell no tales. Nor do they give you tips on where to look for buried treasure.

Longfoot’s body is discovered some time later, and the innkeeper, Kewper (David Blake Kelly), sends for the local Squire to come and act as magistrate. Cherub then arrives at the inn with a bunch of ruffians and demands to speak to the Doctor, having witnessed him talking to Longfoot. Though Ben and Polly try to defend him, Cherub and his ruffians manage to knock the Doctor unconscious and cart him off (literally).

Cherub’s long gone by the time the Squire (Paul Whitsun-Jones) and his stupid wig arrive. With no other likely suspects around, and Ben and Polly refusing to tell him who they are, he has the pair arrested for the murder of Longfoot.

Meanwhile, Cherub brings the Doctor aboard a ship, where he makes the acquaintance of one Captain Samuel Pike (Michael Godfrey) — a real pirate! He's got a hook for a hand and everything.

So far, the story is a perfectly decent but by-the-numbers pirate story. I keep expecting Long John Silver to limp in at any moment.

EPISODE TWO

The Doctor’s gift of the gab gets him out of a pickle when Pike and Cherub threaten to torture the secret of Avery’s treasure out of him. Laying the flattery on thick, he bargains for a share of the treasure in return for information.

Meanwhile, Polly comes up with a plan to get out of jail, but Ben has to help because there’s a rat between her and the hay she needs for the plan, and she’s scared of rats. We can’t have the womenfolk appearing to be too competent, can we? They might start getting ideas. To be fair, there’s a non-zero chance that it might be carrying the plague, so maybe she’s just being smart.

Ben and Polly trick their guard Tom (Mike Lucas) into believing they’re apprentices of the powerful wizard, the Doctor. Unless he lets them go, they’ll use a magical effigy to do some rather unpleasant things to him. It’s a superstitious time, so he actually falls for it.

The pair return to the church, where they subdue an intruder emerging from a secret tunnel in the crypt. Thinking this is the true murderer, Polly runs off to inform the Squire. It turns out that this man, Blake (John Ringham, who also played Tlotoxl back in The Aztecs), is actually a revenue officer investigating the local smuggling ring.

Kewper gets himself captured by Pike while trying to make a business deal with him, which gives Pike an idea. Donning his best Captain Hook costume, he and Cherub go to meet with the Squire. Their intention is to learn all they can about the smuggling operation, and rob them for everything they've got.

However, Polly arrives at the Squire’s house and immediately identifies Cherub as the man who kidnapped the Doctor. The Squire doubts her story, blinded by the magnificence of Pike’s luscious wig.

Still, the revenue officer might pose a real problem. The men head off to the church, dragging Polly with them.

This episode was a rather dull affair, I’m sorry to say. I often found my concentration slipping, though I did get a good laugh out of Pike’s ridiculous outfit.

EPISODE THREE

The group arrive at the crypt only for Ben to also point out that these are the pirates who abducted the Doctor, but the Squire still won’t have it. He has Cherub release the revenue officer, and orders Blake to arrest Ben and Polly.

Blake complies, only to immediately release Ben and Polly once they’re away from the rogues. Unlike the Squire, Blake has two brain cells to rub together. He makes plans to summon a militia so that he can intercept and detain the smugglers.

Meanwhile on the ship, the Doctor and Kewper realise they have to escape and warn the village of the impending pirate raid. The Doctor comes up with a cunning plan. It involves deception, reading ominous fortunes in a pack of cards, and Kewper hitting their guard Jamaica on the back of the head when he’s not looking. It's not subtle, but if it works, it works.

I think it's worth mentioning that Jamaica, played by Elroy Josephs, is the first black actor to appear on Doctor Who in a speaking role. It’s not a big part, but perhaps it is a sign of progress given the programme’s previous habit of slathering white actors in dodgy makeup.

He’s not around for long though, as once Pike finds out the prisoners are gone, he slays Jamaica in a fit of rage.

The Squire shows his pirate friends a little surprise at the church: he has a cache of valuable goods hidden in one of the tombs. Why he chooses to show this to the pirates I don’t know, because he wants them to drop their goods down on the beach. Methinks this chap is too trusting for his own good.

Having made his way back to the shore, the Doctor reunites with his friends, with Kewper accompanying him. However, upon seeing Blake he thinks the Doctor has led him into a trap. He flees, heading to the Squire’s house, where he is finally able to convince him that his new associates are untrustworthy pirates. They also realise that the pirates are after Avery’s treasure. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for profit?

Though Ben wants to go back to the TARDIS, the Doctor decides to stay, having a sense of obligation to prevent the pirates raiding the village. The group head up to the graveyard, reasoning that the smugglers will be coming through there. Ben and Polly start examining the old graves. Hearing some of the odd names scattered throughout the graveyard, the Doctor has a sudden realisation: ‘Dead Man’s Secret’… the treasure must be somewhere in the crypt!

Before they can make much progress in finding the treasure, the Squire arrives with Kewper. Kewper threatens the lives of Ben and Polly in an effort to force the Doctor to help him. The Squire intervenes, aghast at the idea of cold-blooded murder. While they’re bickering, Cherub arrives unseen and flings a knife into Kewper’s back.

The schemes are really starting to pile up at this point, and the serial is finally getting fun to watch. Shame it’s almost over.

EPISODE FOUR

A shot rings out. The Squire falls back, clutching his shoulder, injured but not dead, and very much regretting his involvement in the treasure hunt. Holding Polly at gunpoint, Cherub orders the Doctor to tell him where the treasure is.

The Doctor repeats the riddle for him, but there’s a discrepancy. Rather than Smallwood, one of the names they need to find is actually Smallbeer. The riddle we heard in the first episode was actually flubbed. I am surprised that nobody apparently caught this mistake earlier on. Perhaps there was no time or budget for a reshoot or over-dubbing the line.

Cherub recognises the names, and informs the Doctor that there’s another name hidden in the riddle, Deadman. The names belonged to members of Avery’s crew, and are hidden around the crypt.

Pike arrives with his band of pirates and shows them the cache hidden in the tomb. I couldn't think of when else to mention this note of trivia, so I'll put it here: one of the pirates, the Spaniard, is played by Doctor Who's stuntman and fight coordinator, Derek Ware.

While the crew are plundering the cache, Pike goes to the church to find Cherub. Discovering him in the crypt with the others, Pike thinks Cherub means to double-cross him– and he’s right. Cherub attempts to shoot his captain, but misses, leading the pair to start fighting. Meanwhile, Blake and his militia hurry to the village. Everything’s kicking off now.

The Doctor urges Ben and Polly to make a break down the tunnel to the TARDIS. Pike wins his duel with Cherub, dealing him a slow and apparently very painful death. The deaths in this serial, of which there are a lot, do seem rather more drawn out than is typical for Doctor Who. I can’t imagine being run through tickles, but it’s a bit grim for teatime television.

The Doctor makes Pike a new offer. He’ll give up his share of the gold and tell him where to look for it, as long as Pike keeps his crew away from the village.

Ben and Polly run into some trouble as they head back to the TARDIS, with Ben knocking out one pirate and the two struggling to subdue another, until Blake arrives to shoot the blaggard dead.

Following the clues, the Doctor and Pike find the treasure! Shame Pike will never get a chance to enjoy it. Blake’s militia has arrived. They begin to clash with the pirates, the crash of steel echoing off the stone walls of the crypt.

Pike tries to escape, only to find his egress cut off by Blake and Ben. The Squire finds his backbone and grapples Pike, holding him in place long enough for Blake to finish him off.

The Doctor and Ben slip back to the TARDIS. There’s quite a lot of bodies to clean up, and who can be bothered with all that? With the group back together, they note that everyone who sought after the treasure is now dead. All except for the Squire, who renounced his greed for the gold. Perhaps there really was something to that curse after all… or perhaps it’s more of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The TARDIS departs, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be back in London any time soon. As the temperature begins to plummet, the Doctor checks his scanner. They’ve landed in the coldest place in the world! I assume he means Antarctica.

Final Thoughts

Though the final episode was actually rather good and exciting, this serial suffers from something I’ve noticed in a lot of Doctor Who serials: a rather dull second act. It happens again and again. There’s one interesting episode followed by a bunch of rather dull ones. These sluggish episodes do a fine job of setting up the final episode, but fail to offer entertaining television in their own right. As adults, we can push through, but four weeks is an eternity to a child. I don’t think serials like this are able to hold their attention for that long.

As suspected from the first episode, the plot is a perfectly serviceable pirate story. There’s nothing wrong with it, per se. But I think even those with only a passing knowledge of pirate-related literature will find it all too familiar. There's a distinctive whiff of Treasure Island hanging over the whole thing.

On the bright side, I have taken a bit of a shine to the Doctor’s new companions Ben and Polly. Polly’s bright and resourceful, and Ben seems sweet, if a little rough around the edges. The important thing is that he’s got a good, brave heart. I think I’ll enjoy having these two around.

3 out of 5 stars



1 Comment Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 30, 1966] Return to Base (October 1966 Analog)

6 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

The Comfort of Old Friends

One of the brilliant things about the new show, Star Trek, is that it combines the storytelling breadth of a science fiction anthology show (a la The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits with the anchoring of a returning ensemble cast.  This has never really been done before (at least in the United States — the UK has Doctor Who and the various marionette shows).  In addition to the exciting new situations that arise every week, we can also enjoy watching our favorite characters grow over time.

Many science fiction magazines are like the older anthology shows, offering a brand new cast of characters and new ideas with every montly set of stories.  Others, like Analog, and in particular this month's issue, are like Star Trek, bringing us back to familiar territory for further explorations of a known universe.

I think both are valid formats, particularly if the established properties are successful.  Analog did a pretty good job this month.  Let's dive in…

The Issue at Hand


by John Schoenherr

Strangers to Paradise, by Christopher Anvil

Chris Anvil is an author who has occasionally shown flashes of promise — but always in other magazines.  In Analog, he has dug himself a rut with an anvil-weighted plow and happily buried himself in it.


by John Schoenherr

Strangers is yet another story that takes place in his galactic trade universe.  This one involves a ship whose gravitor has broken down, and whose crew has made planetfall to seek repairs.  Unfortunately, though the Michelin guide said there was a Class II repair facility on the colony world, it was never actually built.  Instead, the colonists proved so unruly that the computer running the outpost established draconian control.  The technicians who could override the machine exiled themselves rather than deal with either the colonists or the computer!

To fix their ship, the traders need help from the city dwellers.  But to get the help, they need the technicians back.  How do they repair the impasse?

I thought this might be setting up a Deathworld scenario, where the immigrants are the key to restoring harmony.  But this is Chris Anvil in Campbell's mag.  Instead, they accidentally develop a psychic projector, able to instill any emotion into any human at any range.  Over the course of many pages, they manipulate the entire planetary population in a haphazard fashion, ultimately getting what they need.  In the end, they consider dismantling the device as an unethical abomination…but decide to keep it.  Just too useful to destroy, you know.

I found this story quite distasteful.  Less glib than Anvil's other tales, but callous in a way that suggests support rather than condemnation for the actions of the shipwrecked crew.

Two stars.

The Sons of Prometheus, by Alexei Panshin


by Leo Summers

Sons sees the return of a fine new author who you've not only seen before, but who has even written a guest article for the Journey!  (the line between fan and pro in the 'zines is a blurry one.) This new tale appears to be set in the compelling timeline set up in What Size are Giants? and the amazing Down to the Worlds of Men.

The premise: on the brink of atomic self-destruction, Earth sends out more than a hundred colonies.  Fifteen years later, Earth is a radiated wasteland.  The only humans left live either in struggling settlements or rather comfortably as crew and passengers on starships.  This sets up a haves and have-nots situation.  The planeteers are primitive, suspicious folks.  The ship dwellers have limited resources to assist.

This particular tale involves a fellow named Tansman, who embeds himself on a plague-infested colony to conduct anthropological research.  His ultimate dilemma: does he offer what limited medicine he can to save a few, revealing himself, putting his mission and possibly his person in danger?  Or does he watch as the colonists die in droves?

It's a vivid story, though I feel it doesn't do quite enough with the setup.  It also stacks the deck a bit toward a certain outcome.  I also could have done without the extremely graphic, drawn out scene in which Tansman puts a suffering colonist out of his misery (warning: it's in the last third of the tale).

So, three stars, but I wouldn't mind seeing more in this setting.

Challenge: The Insurgent vs. the Counterinsurgent (Part 2), by Joe Poyer

With the non-fiction column, we return to last month's topic — namely counterinsurgency.  Poyer notes the great strides that have been made in tracking insurgents, using infrared, electronic bugs, even scent.  He correlates this increase in counterinsurgency effectiveness with the decline in successful insurgencies since 1956.  He makes the hopeful prediction that the golden age of guerrilas may be at an end.

The problem, of course, is that better counterinsurgents only addresses one prong of the problem.  As even Poyer notes, until the populace's needs are addressed, insurgency will thrive.  Moreover, I was reading in the latest diplomatic journals that few expect the United States to be successful in Vietnam, our latest counterinsurgent operation.  That is because the issue is an Asian problem, and the US has limited ability to project force and influence in another continent.  Vietnam is not a colony.  It is a sovereign country riven with civil war.  One way or another, they're going to have to solve their own issues.  Our presence is an ephemeral condition, and it is arguable that it is making the situation any better.

Three stars for an interesting read and lots of pretty charts, but I doubt the author's conclusion.

Romp, by Mack Reynolds


by Leo Summers

Back to the world of Joe Mauser, where the Earth of the 1980s is divided into four camps: the free countries of Latin America and Africa, Common Europe, the somewhat democratic SovWorld, and the "People's Capitalism" of the West.  The United States has calcified into economic castes, and upward mobility is virtually impossible.

Enter Rosy Porras, born into the long-dead job of pretzel twister.  He has figured out how to live a life of crime in an ostensibly crimeless world.  When his latest "romp" goes sour, he has to make a run for the border.  Can he make it in time?

I find the Mauser setting fascinating if based on increasingly unlikely premises.  This story is a bit too pat, but it's a competent thriller.  Three stars.

Too Many Magicians (Part 3 of 4), by Randall Garrett


by John Schoenherr

And now we return to the world of Lord Darcy, a timeline in which magic has displaced science, the Angevin Empire is squared against the Polish Confederation, and a Holmes analog is tasked with solving two murders.  We learned in the last installment that both were secret agents in the employ of HRM, and that their deaths are connected with a super secret magical confusion ray.

What we don't know is how one succumbed in a locked room, how Demoiselle Tia Einzig (accused of dealing in the Black Arts) of a southern slavic state was involved, or how certain was the loyalty of the murdered agents.

This continues to be a fun novel, and the setting is positively lavish.  If there's just one thing that's mildly unconvincing, it's the development of modern-style military ranks, as well as English colloquialisms, in a timeline that diverged from ours nearly a millennium ago.

Also, it can be a little tough to keep track of an intricate mystery spread out over four months of reading.  Nevertheless, four stars for another fine installment, and high hopes for a satistfying ending in October!

Reading the Results

It's a shame about the Anvil, as it drags the issue down to a straight 3 stars.  The issue feels better than that because it improves as it goes along.  Ah well. 3 still puts Analog alongside Alien Worlds (3.0) and just below Galaxy (rounds to 3 but was slightly above).

This makes Campbell's mag better than New Writings #9 (2.9),
Amazing (2.5), and IF (2.5) this month, and not as good as Impulse (3.2), New Worlds (3.3), or Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.3).

Worthy stuff (four and five stars) could easily fill two magazine's worth, but women wrote just 7.5% of the new fiction this month.  So much for the renaissance I predicted last month.

That wraps up the October 1966 magazines.  In two days, the November crop comes in!



6 Comments Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 26, 1966] All that glitters: in praise of Cele Goldsmith Lalli

22 Comments


by John Boston

Gone but not Forgotten

SF editors come in highly assorted makes and models and evoke equally varied reactions. Some are revered as movers and shakers (though not always unanimously); a few are reviled as debasers of the field; some are barely noticed at all. A few have earned sympathetic respect for making something out of nothing, or close to it. Before World War II, Frederik Pohl edited several pulp magazines with a budget of zero, and he had to beg for stories from his friends. Robert Lowndes had little more than zero to work with, but managed to publish three at-least-readable magazines through the 1950s, occasionally coming up with something excellent. (And he’s at it again with Magazine of Horror.)

Another in this mode was Cele Goldsmith, later Lalli, who joined Ziff-Davis in 1955, straight out of Vassar. First, she was editorial assistant to Howard Browne, then to Paul Fairman when Browne left, with promotions along the way to associate editor and managing editor. At the time she was hired, she had read no SF beyond Verne and Wells. When Fairman left at the end of 1958, she inherited the editor’s mantle. During that time, the magazines were firmly, and intentionally, stuck in a rut of formulaic stories. Most of them were produced almost literally by the yard by a small number of regulars (among them Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett, Stephen Marlowe (nee Milton Lesser), and Howard Browne, joined in midflight by Harlan Ellison and Henry Slesar) under various pseudonyms and house names as well as their own names. Though more outright fantasy did appear in Fantastic than in Amazing, overall there was not much difference between their contents, and in fact the label Science Fiction appeared on Fantastic at times.

Things changed quickly under the new editor. (Hints of these changes were already apparent in the last months under Fairman, when Goldsmith was assuming progressively more responsibility). The contents pages gradually became more various, with respectable middle-grade writers from outside the regular crew appearing more and more frequently—some of whom, like Cordwainer Smith and Kate Wilhelm, became much more prominent later. Though some of the regulars—Silverberg, Garrett, Slesar, Ellison—continued to appear, the pseudonyms vanished.

Goldsmith’s most audacious coup in her first year as editor was the November 1959 Fantastic, which consisted entirely of five stories by Fritz Leiber. No SF magazine had previously devoted an entire issue to one author (though some issues of Amazing and Fantastic had probably come close, with authors’ identities obscured by pseudonyms.) Most notable among the stories was "Lean Times in Lankhmar," the first new entry in a number of years in Leiber’s sword-and-sorcery series featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, which signaled a revival of a style of fantasy that had fallen badly out of favor.

Fantastic November 1959

By 1960, the magazines had been reestablished as having some claim to merit, a welcome counter-trend to the rapid disappearance of other SF magazines. (No fewer than 15 magazines ceased publication from 1958 to mid-1960.) Amazing’s and Fantastic’s roster of contributors quickly became more impressive. Frank Herbert, James Blish, James E. Gunn, Damon Knight, and Clifford Simak all appeared during 1960, and Fritz Leiber made multiple contributions to both magazines. Other signs of an enterprising editor included the resumption in Fantastic of Sam Moskowitz’s articles on early figures in SF and fantasy, which had been running in Satellite when it folded; pieces on Lovecraft, Stapledon, Capek, M.P. Shiel and H.F.Heard, and Philip Wylie appeared in 1960. (The series was later continued in Amazing with more recent writers as subjects.) Amazing began a selection of reprints from its earliest days, selected and introduced by Moskowitz. Fantastic published a “round robin” story titled "The Covenant", with chapters by Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Robert Sheckley, Murray Leinster, and Robert Bloch, modelled on similar stories published in the 1930s. On the outside as well, the magazines improved, with the covers of Fantastic in particular becoming steadily less cheesy and more imaginative.

Goldsmith’s most often recognized achievement is the significant number of excellent writers whom she discovered and who went on to considerable success. The list speaks for itself: Keith Laumer, Neal Barrett, Jr., Roger Zelazny, Sonya Dorman, Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Phyllis Gotlieb, Piers Anthony. She also provided a home for David R. Bunch, who had been publishing in semi-professional and local markets throughout the ‘50s, but who became a regular in Amazing and Fantastic, albeit to decidedly mixed reception. Similarly, she was the first American editor to publish J.G. Ballard, who had made a substantial reputation in the British SF magazines but had not previously cracked the US magazines. Lalli’s lack of background in SF before she came to Ziff-Davis may have served her well by leaving her more open than other editors to departures from genre business as usual.

That’s the good news—the straw-into-gold part. But the magazines were not all gold by any means. Being at the bottom of the market in terms of pay rates meant that the stories Goldsmith received from the most prominent writers would be those that had been rejected everywhere else. She could (and had to) take a chance on new writers who might or might not pan out, and in some cases she had to take work that she probably would rather have avoided. Many of the serialized novels were quite weak. Jack Sharkey’s disastrous Amazing serial The Programmed People comes to mind. Overall, the bag was especially mixed in Amazing. Most issues of the magazine included some stories that were variously crude, inane, or otherwise barely readable. Reading Amazing month by month was a perpetual bait-and-switch game, with expectations raised by impressive issues and dashed the following month.

Nevertheless, by the end of the Ziff-Davis era, the Goldsmith/Lalli Amazing had put up an enviable score of memorable stories. There are too many to list here, but the highlights include Arthur C. Clarke’s Before Eden (June 1961); J.G. Ballard’s startling run including The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista (March 1962), Thirteen to Centaurus (April 1962), and The Encounter (June 1963); Mark Clifton’s scarifying Hang Head, Vandal! (April 1962); Roger Zelazny’s Moonless in Byzantium (December 1962); Keith Laumer’s It Could Be Anything (January 1963) and The Walls (1963); and Philip K. Dick’s The Days of Perky Pat (December 1963). The last half-dozen issues amounted to a crescendo towards oblivion, featuring Zelazny’s serial He Who Shapes (January-February 1965), Frank Herbert’s Greenslaves (March 1965), Clifford D. Simak’s brief and elegant Over the River and Through the Woods (May 1965), and Zelazny’s exuberantly shameless performance The Furies (June 1965). Fantastic offered among others Jack Vance's The Kragen (July 1964), Thomas M. Disch's chilly Descending (the same issue!), Ursula Le Guin's April in Paris (her first story!), and the renewed series of Gray Mouser/Fafhrd stories by Leiber.

It’s not clear whether Lalli had the option of staying with Amazing and Fantastic when they were sold, but if so, it’s just as well she didn’t take it. Life under the Sol Cohen almost-all-reprints, negligible-budget regime, shortly to be compounded by a boycott by the Science Fiction Writers of America when Cohen refused to pay for reprints, could scarcely have been anything but miserable. She wisely slipped sideways into Ziff-Davis’s Modern Bride, there to purvey a different sort of fantastic literature, while the Sol Cohen magazines’ editorials and letter columns rang with surly bad-mouthing of her time at the helm of Amazing and Fantastic. Something tells me that her decade’s foray into SF and fantasy will be well remembered long after her successor is forgotten.

Cele Goldsmith and the Sword and Sorcery Revival


by Cora Buhlert

When Cele Goldsmith took over editing duties at Amazing and Fantastic in 1958, sword and sorcery was not just dead – no, the type of historically flavoured adventure fantasy with a good dose of horror that was pioneered by writers like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner or Nictzin Dyalhis in the pages of Weird Tales some thirty years ago did not even have a name. A few stalwarts were holding up the flame in the fanzine Amra, but commercially the subgenre was dead and those who'd written it during its brief flourishing in the 1930s had either passed away (Howard, Kuttner, Dyalhis) or had retired from writing (Moore and Smith).

One of the few writers from the genre's heyday who was still around and still writing was Fritz Leiber, who had published several stories about a pair of adventurers called Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in Unknown and other magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. The last Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story "The Seven Black Priests" appeared in Other Worlds Science Stories in 1953. For all intents and purposes, the two rogues from the city Lankhmar, though dear to Leiber's heart, were permanently retired, as the market had moved away from the sort of swashbuckling fantasy that characterized their adventures.

Enter Cele Goldsmith and the Fritz Leiber Special Issue of Fantastic in November 1959. Of the five stories Leiber wrote for that issue, two were part of his Change War series (a novel in that series, The Big Time, had just won the 1959 Hugo Award for Best Novel), two were standalones and one, "Lean Times in Lankhmar", was the first new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story in six years.

Fantastic May 1961
The May 1961 issue of Fantastic, illustrating a memorable scene from Fritz Leiber's "Scylla's Daughter". There's also a reprint of a Robert E. Howard story.

 

"Lean Times in Lankhmar" is one of the best and definitely the funniest story in the entire series, a satire of organized religion that manages to be sharp but not offensive. The story must have struck a chord both with Cele Goldsmith and the readers of Fantastic, for over the next six years eight new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories appeared in Fantastic, more than had been published in Unknown, where the series originated in 1939.

Fantastic October 1962
Ed Emshwiller's striking cover illustration for Fritz Leiber's "The Unholy Grail".

In 1961, the still nameless genre that was about to undergo a revival finally got a name, when Fritz Leiber proposed "sword and sorcery" in an exchange with Michael Moorcock in the pages of the fanzines Amra and Ancalgon. The alliterative term stuck, so now there was finally a name for stories like the adventure of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Robert E. Howard's Conan.

Fantastic May 1964
Ed Emshwiller's portrait of Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, patron wizard of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, adorns the cover of the May 1964 issue of Fantastic, which reprinted Fritz Leiber's "Adept's Gambit".

Cele Goldsmith had only just been born during sword and sorcery's first heyday in the 1930s and certainly did not read Weird Tales in the crib, but she knew a rising genre when she saw one. So she began publishing more sword and sorcery stories by other authors.

Roger Zelazny is one of Cele Goldsmith's great discoveries. His first professional story "Horseman!", which appeared in the August 1962 issue of Fantastic, was a sword and sorcery story. It wasn't even the only sword and sorcery story in that issue. The title story "Sword of Flowers" by Larry M. Harris a.k.a. Laurence M. Janifer as well as "The Titan," a reprint of a 1934 story by P. Schuyler Miller, were sword and sorcery as well.

Fantastic August 1962
Roger Zelazny debuted in the August 1962 issue of Fantastic which also featured sword and sorcery by Laurence M. Janifer and P. Schuyler Henstrom. The cover is by Vernon Kramer.

Zelazny has since branched out, but he keeps returning to sword and sorcery once in a while, for example in the haunting Lord Dunsany-inspired stories of Dilvish the Damned, three of which have appeared in Fantastic to date.

Fantastic June 1965
Roger Zelazny's Dilvish the Damned story "Thelinde's Song" is the cover story of the June 1965 issue of Fantastic, which was also the last issue edited by Cele Goldsmith-Lalli.

Though only in his thirties, John Jakes is already a veteran writer who has been publishing across various genres since 1950. An admitted fan of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories from the 1930s, Jakes created his own Conan-like character in Brak the Barbarian, who has appeared in four stories in Fantastic between 1963 and 1965.

January 1965 Fantastic
Ed Emshwiller's iillsutration for "The Girl in the Gem" by John Jakes.
Fantastic March 1965
Gray Morrow's cover for the March 1965 issue of Fantastic illustrates "The Pillars of Cambalor" by John Jakes.

 

British writer and editor Michael Moorcock has been a prolific contributor to the fanzine Amra and also pushed the sword and the sorcery genre into new directions with the adventures of Elric of Melniboné, an albino elven warrior who depends on drugs to survive and fights evil with his cursed sword Stormbringer. The majority of Elric's adventures have appeared in the pages of Science Fantasy, but "Master of Chaos" appeared in the May 1964 issue of Fantastic alongside a reprint of Fritz Leiber's 1947 Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story "Adept's Gambit."

Since Amazing and Fantastic were sold to Sol Cohen and Cele Goldsmith Lalli left for the greener pastures of Modern Bride, the appearances of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Dilvish the Damned and Brak the Barbarian have become rare in the pages of Fantastic (and what stories there did appear were likely leftover from Goldsmith's tenure). However, the sword and sorcery revival is still in full swing and Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, which started it all back in 1932, are set to be reprinted later this year.

One day in the future, when the history of sword and sorcery is written, Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock and John Jakes will be remembered as pivotal figures in the revival of the genre in the sixties. However, I hope that any history of sword and sorcery will also make room for Cele Goldsmith, who championed the genre when it had neither a name nor a market and without whom the sword and sorcery revival may well have been strangled in the crib.

Modern Bride, December 1965
No more mighty muscles in Cele Goldsmith Lalli's new stomping grounds, though at least the gothic castles and maidens in white gowns remain.




22 Comments Leave A Comment