[October 14, 1969] News Bulletin/No Separate Beds (Review of "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice")


by Victoria Lucas

Good news!

Remember when last year (December 12, 1968) I reported that the submersible Alvin had sunk at around 5,000 feet in the Atlantic Ocean, with bad weather curtailing the search for it?

The Alvin

With money provided by the US Navy, whose vehicle the Alvin is, and who expected to learn whether and how such retrievals might be done, Alvin's caretakers sailed out armed with imaging tools and images, along with equipment and engineers to find and raise the submersible. They succeeded on their Labor Day cruise!

Fortunately for its seekers, the Alvin had landed on the ocean floor right side up, gaping open, so a special tool was lowered into it and remotely sprung open to hold it while it was slowly raised and then towed close to the surface back to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Great care was taken not to disturb the ocean life that had inhabited it, and that was removed and taken to labs for observation, etc.

There was one funny incident: an engineer who had been on the Alvin's host ship on the last trip before its loss and was also on its Labor Day tow ship came back (like most crew) hungry. He accepted a seafood sandwich from the welcoming spouse of a crew member, and while he was eating it a picture was snapped of him with the sandwich. Coincidentally the lunchbox left behind when the Alvin had slipped into the ocean was in the picture.

And someone interpreted that to mean that the engineer was eating the sandwich that had been in the lunchbox (along with an apple) while the submersible was beneath the waves for 9 months. Immediately there sprang up a certainty that the ocean had hitherto unknown powers of preservation. The last I knew someone was talking government grants.

Now for the main event!

No Separate Beds (Review of "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice")


Poster showing Gould, Wood, Culp & Cannon as the eponymous characters

Well, I'll be! Someone up and wrote a film script about upper middle-class couples behaving like unsupervised teenagers. (I would have said "well-to-do couples," but that's a bit old-fashioned of me.)

If you've seen the latest Mad Magazine (and I know some of you have) you've essentially seen the above poster for "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice"–Robert Culp of "I Spy" resting apparently naked against the headboard of a bed with Dyan Cannon, Elliott Gould, and Natalie Wood, all covered by strategic bits of bedding. (The same artist did both the parody and the original poster.)


The MAD version of the movie poster

At the beginning of the movie, there are Bob & Carol in his sports car driving through beautiful countryside to an expensive retreat they call "The Institute" (a stand-in for Esalen, a school at the vanguard of the "Human Potential Movement"). After a dramatic group therapy "marathon" session we see them and their friends Ted and Alice, back home eating out at a fancy restaurant, living in beautiful masonry shelters (no doubt in nice neighborhoods), consulting an expensive psychoanalyst (the writer/director/producer's real psychoanalyst by all accounts), and experiencing great angst.

Is the angst political, about how many resources they're using up and how they should be giving back? Is the angst medical, cares about health, death and life? No. It's highly personal and laced with guilt. Guilt about political or family matters? No–politics are never discussed, and each couple has one child who is not the center or even (it seems) an important focus of their lives. Like them, each child is privileged and loved and free, even if spending many evenings and weekends with Spanish-speaking help rather than their parents, "extended" families such as grandparents (who probably live far away), or other children.

So why the angst? The joy in the opening music (Handel's "Hallalujah Chorus") comes in anticipation of received wisdom, which appears to them in group therapy to be the practice of honesty, and in some of those honest moments they realize that . . .

They aren't having enough sex.

But I shouldn't make fun of them. They just want what every teenager wants: the privacy and the time to explore–him- or herself as a psychological being, and him- or herself as a sexual being.

Perhaps I should be asking why it took them so long. I think we all know the answer to that: because they weren't allowed to explore when they were teenagers (although a minority of this generation did manage to be either secretive or untruthful enough to get away with it). Think of the kids you know who got married while in high school–or were you one of those youngsters yourself?

I think these wealthy adults (all four starring actors in their 30s, fitting the characters they play) were waiting for the sexual revolution now in progress. They were waiting for permission. Now they have it.


Just in case the movie isn't enough for you

So we have gone from Ricky and Lucy Ricardo sleeping in separate beds while a married couple, never showing Doris Day in bed with anyone but a voice on a telephone, and generally strict rules about how sexual behavior is suggested in non-pornographic films, to: wham! two couples in bed together—albeit just sitting there after a brief bout of playing hide and tickle.

In their innocence they call their foursome an "orgy." I wonder what the scriptwriters, Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker would have done with the group hosting weekly orgies whose members I'm now interviewing for my book. Probably discarded us as an extreme manifestation of the sexual revolution and gone back to using improvisation (by writers only) as a tool for generating dialog (a rumored way of writing the scene with Ted and Alice in which he is horny but she is not).

The film ends with the Burt Bacharach song "What the World Needs Now." As it plays, a crowd of people practice a tool for freedom they can exercise while fully clothed, whatever they mean by it, "love." But wait! There's still the book!

This is a comedy without very much laughing out loud. If you are not offended by the very premise of it, I think it might amuse you. I give it a 4 out of 5 mainly for excellent comedic acting and witty writing.






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[October 12, 1969] My country, right or… (November 1969 Galaxy)

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Justice delayed

The new Supreme Court, whose prime continuity to the old one is the preservation of the name "Warren" in its Chief Justice, is now in session—minus one Justice…for now.

Warren Burger has taken over from Earl Warren, and one can already feel the rightward lurch of our nation's highest judiciary.  Now, President Richard Milhouse Nixon plans to careen the Supreme Court in an even more conservative direction.

Tricky Dick's nomination to fill the seat left when LBJ's nominee, Abe Fortas, didn't get the job, is Clement F. Haynsworth.  Haynsworth is currently a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Atlantic coast of the Upper South), a position he has held since being appointed their by Ike in 1957.  The Senate Judiciary Committee on October 9th approved 10-7 the consideration of Justice Haynsworth.

The road ahead is far from clement for Haynsworth, however.  For one, he bought 1000 shares of Brunswick (the bowling company) just before publishing a ruling he helped make on said company.  After the heightened scrutiny on ethics that accompanied the Fortas nomination, Haynsworth is under an intense microscope.  Labor groups maintained that he should have recused himself from a case involving a textile mill; he owned shares of a company that did business with the mill.

Critics of the storm say this is just tit for tat after the Fortas fight, rather than for any substantive reason.  What's really at stake is Haynsworth is a reactionary.  He affirmed the decision by local authorities to close the Prince Edward County schools to avoid integration, he upheld the constitutionality of school voucher programs used to fund segregated private schools, and he supported the management of the Darlington Manufacturing Company in South Carolina when it closed down to avoid its employees unionizing.

Will Haynsworth make it on the bench?  It's hard to imagine he will.  If a Republican minority was sufficient to deny Fortas a seat, then a Democratic majority will surely roadblock Haynsworth.  If and when this happens, the question is whether Nixon will double down or conciliate.  At stake this season are decisions on the tax exempt status of churches, the death penalty, punitive drafting of war protesters, and the rights of Black Americans.

Stay tuned…

Entertainment delayed

Just as we're playing the waiting game to see the direction jurisprudence goes in America, so the latest issue of Galaxy science fiction makes it clear that the future of SF, particularly in the pages of the former queen of the genre, is as yet uncertain.


by Jack Gaughan (as are, presumably, all of the other illustrations in this magazine)

Downward to the Earth (Part 1 of 4), by Robert Silverberg

The amazingly prolific Silverbob begins a serial that has elements of Delany (the incorporation of music and the choppy presentation…which may be a printing error knowing Galaxy) and Zelazny (the wild, decadent planet and weary protagonist).

Edmund Gunderson used to run Holman's World, a jungle planet with two sentient races—philosophical elephants and brutish apes—in order to collect the serpent worm venom that is a fundamental catalyst of tissue regeneration.

Ten years later, Holman's World is now Belzegor, reverted to the ownership of the pachyderm nildoror.  The human infrastructure is rapidly succumbing to tropical rot, and who knows how long humanity will keep contact with the world?

Amid this backdrop of decay, Gunderson returns to the planet he ruled…purpose unknown.  All we know is that his mission lies somewhere in the backwoods, and he requires nildoror permission to go there.  We find out Gunderson is a bigot who cannot quite abide the idea that the nildoror are sentient beings rather than animals, but he does seem to be trying to break free of his bigotry.  We also learn that the nildoror are now closely associating with the primate sulidor and even employing them as servants.  Finally, it is revealed that drinking raw serpent venom causes the brief transfer of souls between alien and human.  Whether this is imaginary or real is not yet known.

Silverberg has set up a lot of pieces, but not much has happened yet.  The writing is competent, though not gripping.  As with the Haynsworth decision, the jury is still out on this one.

Three stars.

Pennies, Off a Dead Man's Eyes, by Harlan Ellison

Old man Jedediah Parkman is dead at the age of 82, and all of the people he's helped over the years are coming to his funeral to pay respects.  This includes an alien with the power of camouflage and lethal envelopment, who is passing for human for his survival.  At the funeral, he witnesses a beautiful white woman (most out of place given the part of town and the race of Parkman and the other attendees) who takes the silver coins from atop Parkman's eyes.

What is her motivation?  Why is she there?  And just what connection does our storyteller have to Parkman?

This is one of the few Ellison stories that harnesses the writer's great talent to say something beyond what's on Harlan's mind/heart at the moment.  It's also real SF, unlike so much of his work.

Five stars.

The Dirty Old Men of Maxsec, by Phyllis Gotlieb

Outside: the City.  Cramped, stagnant, spartan.  Its only compensation: the citizens are immortal, thanks to "the J."

Inside: MaxSec.  A maximum security community populated by criminals whose only punishment is to be deprived of immortality.

The paradox: the people of MaxSec are reportedly happier, freer, and more innovative than the people of the City.

The story: Fenthree is a somewhat cynical citydweller, blackmailed into infiltrating MaxSec to find its secrets.  He is quickly found out and imprisoned, to be an unwitting vessel for MaxSec's revenge on the outside world.

From there, the perspective of the story grows, now including Corrigan, strongman of MaxSec who is the architect of the retribution plan.  To Linnaeus Ganzer, nearly 400 years old, developing the creeping death for Corrigan's plan.  To Luz, the last lovely woman in MaxSec, catalyst to plans within plans.

A meandering, occasionally flippant, occasionally opaque piece, Gotlieb's is an interesting counterpoint to last month's "The Rock", covering the concept of a coordinated prison exile a la Australia of a couple centuries ago.  That it also manages to make some interesting comments on the effects of immortality on society at the same time is impressive, although the two speculative threads do not interweave perfectly.

Three stars.

How to Kidnap a Moon, by Robert S. Richardson

Richardson is an astronomer whom we normally find in the pages of Analog.  This article details the energy concerns for bringing the two moons of Mars into orbit around the Earth for easier access.

There isn't much discussion of how one might practically arrange such things—it's all just orbital mechanics and erg tabulations.  It is also unclear how it would be easier to bring the rocks here for investigation rather than exploring them in situ.  On the other hand, if we're ever to mine Phobos and Deimos (or by extension, any of the asteroids), I suppose there might be merit to bringing the planetoids home.  If anything, they could be hollowed out and turned into natural space stations.

Anyway, three stars.

Broke and Hungry, No Place to Go, by Ron Goulart

A man whose job is to tell the computer which unnecessary mouths on the dole to eliminate (in the pursuit of efficiency) finds that he is now on the chopping block.

This is the kind of minor tale we might have found in one of the minor magazines last decade.  Ron is phoning it in.

Two stars.

For Your Information (Galaxy Magazine, November 1969), by Willy Ley

In this posthumous piece, Willy Ley discusses the suggestion that the death of the dinosaurs was caused by an excess of radiation—from the periodic flipping of the magnetic poles or the explosion of a nearby supernova.  He seems unconvinced, and he even goes so far as to say that the extinctions might not even have been that sudden.

Three stars.

Dead End, by Norman Spinrad

Another bleak man-on-the-dole story.  This time, a fellow who is dissatisfied with having nothing meaningful to do, decides to go to the last natural preserve in the country.  It is a 10 mile by 10 mile stretch of wilderness with none of the comforts of home.  When he decides he isn't enjoying being cold and hungry any more than he was enjoying being bored and fed, he tries to summon a recovery robot.  But his call bracelet doesn't work…may never have been designed to work.  A trap to weed out malcontents?

Mack Reynolds has extrapolated this kind of world with far more success, and Bob Sheckley has written satires like this with far more wit and barb.  Spinrad can be great, but this is lesser Spinrad.

Two stars.

Dune Messiah (Part 5 of 5), by Frank Herbert

Last up, a very short final installment of the third (or second, depending on how you count them) Dune book.  The plotters against Paul Atreides offer him a ghola (resurrected clone) of the newly dead Chani, Paul's true love.  Knowing this will make Muad'Dib a thrall to the shadowy interests of a myriad of anti-Imperial organizations, Paul refuses.  Then he goes out into the desert to die, as is the fitting end for blind Fremen.  The Emperor leaves behind a newborn pair of twins, one male and one female, both fully sapient in the same manner that Paul's sister was conceived, Alia's mother having been high on the spice melange at the time.

In the end, this is very much a bridge book.  All of its bits could have been condensed to a five-page faux encyclopedia article included at the beginning of the next book, with very little action and not a whole lot of interest, save the mildly engaging Duncan Idaho/Hayt bits in the last installment.

So, two stars for this bit and two stars overall.  Just read the summarizing precis (almost as long as this last installment!) and the few pages of the story in this issue, and you'll be fine.

A Cautious Look to the Future

It's even harder to read the tea leaves when it comes to the future of Galaxy.  On the one hand, by the numbers, this issue didn't crack three stars.  On the other, the Silverberg could become a knockout, the Herbert is (blessedly) over, the Gottlieb was interesting, if not stellar (and the first woman-penned piece in how long?), and the Ellison was unusually excellent.  Ley is dead, and that is a blow, but perhaps Richardson will replace him.  His article certainly seems like an audition, though it wasn't as good as other pieces by him I've read in, say, Analog.

So, for news on Haynsworth and news on Galaxy… I guess we're playing the waiting game!

See you then.






[October 10, 1969] Everybody's Talkin' At Me: Midnight Cowboy and Urban Tragedy

Science Fiction Theater Episode #7

Tonight (Oct. 10), tune in at 7pm (Pacific) to see what terrific, sciencefictional goodie the Traveler has got in store for you. A hint: it was made by a real Pal…

 



by Jason Sacks

My friends know I'm a big fan of the emerging "New Hollywood" films which has been mushrooming over the last few years. The new film Midnight Cowboy is an outstanding exemplar of that movement, and I'd like to tell you why this film is so great — and why this film movement is so exciting.

"New Hollywood" has emerged as a term over the last few years for a specific type of film. Coming out of the dual filmic earthquakes of the end of the hated Hays Code and the crumbling of the studio system, New Hollywood films are differentated from their more traditional studio counterparts for a few reasons: New Hollywood films tend to prpesent a narrative focus on the lives of ordinary people, tend to use location shooting to heighten their reality, and tend to present an anti-establishment view of the world.

You might remeber the article from late 1967 by influential Time critic Steven Kanfer which praised that year's Bonnie and Clyde as "a watershed picture, the kind that signals a new style, a new trend."  Kanfer continued, "The most important fact about the screen in 1967 is that Hollywood has at long last become part of what the French film journal Cahiers du Cinema calls 'the furious springtime of world cinema."" That "new trend" has evolved into the New Hollywood movement.

Bonnie and Clyde was the cover story in Time in late 1967, with an accompanying article which described a new cinema which was evolving quickly.

In fact, Bonnie and Clyde was a kind of  siren song of this movement — though other bold new films preceded it (notably the work of John Cassavettes and Robert Downey), this was the first sophisticated feature film which really broke through and really embraced youth culture (to be sure, the films of Roger Corman, among others, embraced youthful rebellion but never with the panache or breakthrough success of Bonnie and Clyde). It also helps that Clyde is also a damn good – and very funny – film.

Since '67, we've seen a plethora of remarkable new films which fall into this new trend, including The GraduateTargetsHead, the outrageous Putney Swope and the terrifying Night of the Living Dead. Last year's Rosemary's Baby can be called a New Hollywood film. And of course, the most ubiquitous film of 1969 is Easy Rider, a film which seems to be on the lips of everybody under the age of 25. Each of those movies seems to represent a new approach to filmmaking and even to narrative. Head is shockingly surreal. Easy Rider uses innovative editing techniques. Rosemary's Baby explicity satirizes the patriarchy. And Targets literalizes the generation gap between traditional and modern entertainment – and finds terror on both sides.

This new filmic philosophy is an explicit rejection of the dictates of the Hays Code and of the overtly conformist morality of the 1950s. The newer generation of filmmakers feel the freedom to delve into subjects which previously would have been explicitly off-limits. And that makes the film-goers’ life thrilling as we move into a new decade.

Now we get Midnight Cowboy, a film which elevates the New American school, throwing down a new gauntlet for realism, for tragedy and comedy, and for character. I went into this film with high expectations due to strong reviews from critics I appreciate. But it's funny—  Midnight Cowboy both was a lot like what I was expecting and a profoundly different experience.

I was expecting a sad, smart, outsiderly story of two desperate and pathetic souls living on the edge of gay hustler culture in a version of New York that seems teetering on the edge of malaise but hasn't quite tipped over the edge. I was expecting great performances from leads Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, a deep portrayal of what it means to be an outsider in a world that just doesn't care about you, and to see an interesting portrait of a New York suspended between outsider culture and Nixon's silent majority, desperate to flee an urban wasteland.

I got all that, and Midnight Cowboy was poweful as expected; moving and thoughtful and crazily weird at times and often plotless seeming and a particularly intense movie experience.

But I also got a lot of stuff I didn't expect. The first maybe half hour of the film lingers on Voight playing Joe Buck as Buck slowly ambles out of his small Texas town to begin the journey to New York City. That segment of the film takes its time, with long, languid but suffocating shots which make the town feel claustrophobic. His old home town is poised on the edge of an all-encompassing landscape but the human space in that landscape is proscribed.

And yet, and yet: people are friendly; they smile and greet each other and seem to welcome the company of others. The Southwest might be desolate, but the human capacity there seems strong.

So Buck leaves town, but we see elliptical, dreamlike flashbacks which reveal Joe's past life, his obsessions, and his deep sadness. Some of those dreams are representational, some are allusional, but they all take the film to a different level, an unexpected level which sets Midnight Cowboy clearly in that same milieu of modern angst as Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch and Easy Rider.

Buck isn't just leaving Texas because the big city is beckoning him. He has a traumatic secret connected to his old home town, something which truly tortures him emotionally and pushes him to jump on a Greyhound for the long, lonely journey to the big city.

All the while, the film's now-ubiquitous (in the film and on our radios) theme song keeps playing, illustrating Buck's inner life. True freedom, Nilsson is singing is inside our own heads:

Everybody's talking at me
I don't hear a word they're saying
Only the echoes of my mind

Buck lands in New York, and as you can see from that evocative still posted above, he literally towers above all the people around him. Joe Buck is a big man, with big dreams.

In a more traditional movie, Buck would aspire to be an actor, or strike it rich on Wall Street, or hobnob with the rich and famous. But those dreams would be unrealistic for a man of Joe Buck's means.

Instead. those big dreams lead him to a life where he tries to make some cash by hustling, offering sexual favors to older women who find his cowboy personality a massive turn-on. Joe seems to like the life for a while, as he tries it on, but he has no idea how to actually live such a life, and he ends up living on or near the streets. Desperate for cash, Buck falls in with a loose amalgamation of hookers, hustlers and runaways who inhabit the alleyways and avenues of a fading New York City.

it is in this world that Midnight Cowboy confronts its most surprising element and the aspect of the film which moves it away most from the era of 1950s morality. The Hays Code explicitly forbade even a glancing mention of homosexuality (which didn’t prevent clever filmmakers from depicting homosexual characters onscreen, albeit using winks and nods to the audience). But here gay culture is explicitly shown onscreen, with even a touch of respect and affection for the kinds of struggles Buck has to go through. In the wake of July’s riots around New York’s Stonewall Tavern, this depiction of homosexuality couldn’t feel more contemporary.

Director John Schlesinger tells Buck’s story with angst and grace, but also with a remarkable amount of humor which keeps the proceedings from getting too heavy.

While hustling men and women, Joe Buck meets Hoffman, who plays the unforgettable Ratso Rizzo, a man of pure id and ansgt, a TB-ridden conman who takes Buck under his broken wing and shares an apartment in an abandoned, desolate tenement which seems like it's been waiting for a Robert Moses wrecking ball for decades.

Dustin Hoffman is absolutely astonishing as the motormouthed, self-delusional Rizzo, a man who both seems unique in film history and utterly familiar. Rizzo is every New Yorker who talks nonstop, with an accent and an attitude which embodies his city. But Rizzo has a beguiling tenderness and prickliness, a sort of personal pride and complex inner life that causes the character to pop off the screen.

Rizzo couldn't be further away from Hoffman's character in The Graduate, Ben Braddock. But just as Hoffman seemed to embody our generation of aimless, privileged young men in the earlier film, here he embodies an aimless man utterly without privilege or power, a man swallowed up by the desolate New York streets and his own disease. And where Ben Braddock is driven by a sex drive stuck on his odd relationship with Mrs Robinson, here Hoffman’s Rizzo seems completely uninterested in sex, even bemused by Buck’s bizarre life which centers around sex.

That odd state of bemusement gives a lot of energy to this film. The fast-talking Ratso can’t help but babble in and on about how strange Buck’s life is. It’s as if Rizzo  simply doesn’t understand why people need to have sex and why they make decisions based in that sex drive. And yet, he grows a deep fraternal love for Buck.

it’s often hilarious, often heartbreaking how tight the bond is between these two men who are so very different from each other.

At the heart of the film is the deep friendship between Buck and Rizzo, a frankly shocking level of intimacy these men develop for each other. This relationship inspires empathy in viewers, too, so that when this movie reaches its inevitable ending, we are left adrift like the movie's characters are.

So yeah, Midnight Cowboy is kind of a tragedy, and the ending left people in my theatre sobbing, and it earns its X rating with its story of hustlers and unsensationalized view of sex and its general feeling of grime.

But still: this movie is not a bummer. It's not a bad acid trip. There are many moments which illuminated life with empathy and intelligence and humor. Heck, in fact, the acid trip in this film (at a place similar to Andy Warhol's famous Factory) is a lot of fun as well as a brilliant conceptual counterweight to the rest of the story: some hustlers were able to find kinship and a sense of family with freaks like themselves. And for others a glimpse into that life helps deliver a small sense of grace.

Brit John Schlesinger came over to America to direct this film, and it's easy to sense his comfort in every scene. Best known for his 1965 film Darling, which introduced Julie Christie to worldwide audiences as a headstrong girl in swinging London, Schlesinger seems to be attracted to stories about people who can't quite find their footing in society but remain resolutely themselves: Bathsheba Everdene in Far from the Madding Crowd and Billy in Billy Liar are rebels without a clue.

But Schlesinger has never helmed a film like Midnight Cowboy, which seems to reject the very concept of a middle-class life, which seems devoted to its New York-in-decline setting and that city’s bottomless underclass of weirdos, drug addicts and hustlers. Adam Holender's cinematography adds to the beautiful despair, a lovely widescreen tragedy of urban decay.

Ultimately, Midnight Cowboy is suffused with the dream of freedom, which comes into conflict with the deep ennui of our late '60s reality.  We're living in the shadows of the tragedies of '68 and the dimming of the post-War consensus. Yeah, director Schlesinger seems to say, you can be free, you can live outside the law, but the gravity of middle-class normative Americana will always pull you either into death or into conformance no matter how hard you try to resist.  The deeply moving ending of this film reinforces that sense that it’s unbelievably hard to stay an outsider in our modern world, that the lessons of ‘68 show the optimism of ‘67 has given way to a massive societal bummer.

Midnight Cowboy is a remarkable film which represents the great promise of the New Hollywood movement: John Schlesinger’s film is explicitly in dialog with our current era. Yeah, everybody’s talkin’ at us, but we don’t hear a word they’re saying’.

5 stars.

 






[October 8, 1969] Suddenly . . . (November 1969 Amazing))


by John Boston

. . . Amazing has become a normal science fiction magazine. (Stop snickering.) It’s been moving in that direction, but this November issue’s editorial says: “Beginning this issue, our old policy of reprints has been thrown out the window. . . . We will be publishing one, and only one classic story in each issue, and it will be a bonus to the fully new contents of the magazine.” Or, as the cover blurb puts it, “ALL NEW STORIES plus a Famous Classic.”


by Johnny Bruck

That phrase may seem oxymoronic, but here’s how editor White figures it: the magazine, with its new, smaller typefaces allowing more wordage, now contains about 70,000 words of new material, plus another 15,000 words, making a total per issue greater than any of the other SF magazines and allowing him to call the remaining reprints bonuses. Thus the booster’s reach exceeds the mathematician’s grasp, but I’m not complaining.

Promotion aside, congratulations to White for finally prying publisher Sol Cohen loose from his prolonged insistence on filling as much as half the magazine with reprints of (euphemistically) uneven quality. White says he “cannot truly say it was a result of my actions alone”—presumably meaning Cohen had been softened up by the complaints of his predecessors—but good for him for finally getting it done.

So what we have here are one quite long serial installment, a novelet, and two short stories, plus a reprinted short story from 1942, all new, as well as the usual complement of features. As promised last month, there is a science article by Greg Benford and David Book, and as then implied, Dr. Leon E. Stover is conspicuous by his absence, and not missed.

A book review column, shorter than usual but just as vehement, features editor White’s praise of Lee Hoffman’s The Caves of Karst and a new reviewer, Richard Delap, whaling on Bug Jack Barron: “Science fiction’s answer to Valley of the Dolls has now made the scene with all the pseudo-values of its mainstream counterpart unrevised and intact in a transposition to pseudo-sf.” Delap also doesn’t care much for the new collection of old stories The Far-Out Worlds of A.E. van Vogt, but this disappointment is expressed more in sorrow than in gusto. These two reviews are reprinted from a fanzine, but Delap will be contributing regularly to this column going forward.

The fanzine reviews and letter column fill out the issue. In the letter column, White notes that James Blish has moved to England and his book reviews will be less frequent. Other highlights of the letter column include Joe L. Hensley complaining in kind about the misspelling of his name on last issue’s cover, Bob Tucker reviving his 36-year-old beef about staples, to White’s consternation, and both White and John D. Berry, the fanzine reviewer, weighing in on the purpose of that column in response to a complaining reader. White takes issue with a reader who thinks the use of “sci-fi” is only a minor problem, and announces to another reader that he has dropped the movie reviews for the present. He also notes that he continues to write stories but his agent insists on sending them to Playboy—where, I note, nothing by White seems yet to have appeared.

Oh, the cover. I almost forgot. It’s the good cover by Johnny Bruck that we’ve been waiting for—not especially attractive, but very interesting. Foregrounded is an African-looking face peering out from what at first looks like the fur-lined hood of one of the Inuit or other far-North American peoples, but on closer examination is a collage of partial images of pieces of equipment and (I think) living things. It’s a surreal picture that, unusually, doesn’t look like imitation Richard Powers. Provenance is the German Perry Rhodan #250, from 1966.

On the contents page, Greg Benford’s story Sons of Man is listed as “The story behind the cover.” White said last issue that he doesn’t have control over the covers, but he’s been able to commission stories, including Benford’s, to be written around the pre-purchased covers. So I guess Sons of Man is actually the story in front of the cover. Inside, the story is illustrated by none other than editor White—his first professionally published art. It’s adequate, but he shouldn’t quit his day job. In other interior illustration news, Mike Hinge has done small illustrations for the headings of the editorial, book reviews, and other departments.

A. Lincoln, Simulacrum (Part 1 of 2), by Philip K. Dick

The biggest news in this issue is Philip K. Dick’s serial, A. Lincoln, Simulacrum. Per my practice, I won’t read and rate this until both installments are available, but there’s plenty of talk about the novel here. White’s editorial says without elaboration that it is totally uncut—in fact, it’s “slightly revised and expanded” for its appearance here.


by Mike Hinge

White does leave us with a bizarre anecdote. Several years ago, he showed Dick a photo of himself looking rather like Dick (both with full beards and dark-rimmed glasses). Dick asked for a copy, since his agent was after him to provide a photo for a British edition of The Man in the High Castle. So Dick sent the photo of White—and it appeared on the book. White says: “So here’s a chance to say, ‘Thanks, Phil,’ for the chance to associate myself, albeit deceitfully, with one of his best books.”

About the novel, White says:

“. . . Phil told me, ‘I put a lot of myself into this one—I really sweated into it.’ It’s more of a novel of character than any previous Philip K. Dick novel, and in writing and scene construction it approaches the so-called ‘mainstream’ novel. It is also something of a ‘root’ novel, planting as it does in 1981 many of the themes and constructs which pop up in later books of his loose-limned future history. And it is the first and only Philip K. Dick novel to be told in first person by its protagonist.”

Sons of Man, by Greg Benford


by Ted White

Greg Benford’s Sons of Man is a well crafted story using the familiar device of telling two unrelated stories in parallel, gradually revealing that they are not so unrelated after all. In one, Livingstone, who has moved to the northwestern wilderness to get away from civilization, finds a man named King collapsed in the snow near his cabin with severe burn injuries of no obvious origin, then sees a face peering into his window, and later, bare footprints two feet long. King’s been Sasquatch hunting and they seem to be hunting him back.

Meanwhile, on the Moon, Terry Wilk is trying to make sense of the records of an ancient spacecraft that crashed after visiting Earth early in human prehistory. Members of the New Sons of God cult are looking over his shoulder to make sure he doesn’t find out anything heretical. The story reads like it might develop into a series but stands on its own. The style seems a little awkward at the beginning, as if it’s something Benford started earlier in his career and came back to later, but overall, it’s very readable, cleverly assembled, and generally enjoyable. Four stars.

A Sense of Direction, by Alexei Panshin

Alexei Panshin’s short story A Sense of Direction is set in the same universe of “the Ships” as his Nebula-winning Rite of Passage. The interstellar Ships lord it over the people of the colonies that they established. Arpad, whose father married into a planetary culture and left (was left by) his Ship, was reclaimed for the Ship when his father died. He’s miserable in its unfamiliar culture, and makes a break for it during a landing on another planet. But the folkways there are so bizarre and repellent that he quickly changes his mind and sneaks back. So, like most of Panshin’s work, it’s Heinleinian: The (Young) Man Who Learned Better, capably done but just a bit too schematic and pat. Three stars.

A Whole New Ballgame, by Ray Russell

Ray Russell contributes A Whole New Ballgame, a compressed soliloquy on a theme previously aired by Larry Niven (in The Jigsaw Man), with a first-person semi-literate narrator. It’s just about perfect in its small compass and inexorable logic. Four miniature stars.

Sarker’s Joke Box, by Raymond Z. Gallun

The “Famous Classic” this month is Sarker’s Joke Box, by Raymond Z. Gallun, from the March 1942 Amazing. It’s yet another testament to the corrupting effects of Ray Palmer’s editorship. It begins: “Clay Sarker had me covered with his ugly heat-pistol. Kotah, the little Venusian scientist he’d held captive for so long, crouched helplessly chained, there, in one corner of Sarker’s cavernous mountain hideout. My life wasn’t worth the cinders in a discarded rocket-tube.” “Gimme bang-bang” wins out again! Pull out your copy of the June 1938 Astounding Science-Fiction, or the anthology Adventures in Time and Space, and compare Gallun’s much classier Seeds of the Dusk to this one.


by Robert Fuqua

But the story is not a total loss. The narrator is a cop, and he and his buddies have rousted Sarker out of his last stronghold in the Asteroid Belt. Now he’s trapped in a cave on Earth while the other cops are closing in. But Sarker—“that black-souled demon of space”—turns his heat-pistol on Kotah and then on his own apparatus that fills the cave, which blows up quite satisfactorily, then enters a metal cylinder and closes and seals it behind him. When the main body of cops arrive, they try to penetrate it, but—it’s neutronium! They can’t scratch it. And to compound matters, Sarker’s lawyer appears and announces that since they’ve declared Sarker to be in custody, they’ve got to try him within 60 days or he goes free. So the cops redouble their efforts to get through the neutronium. At this point, the story turns into a scientific puzzle without (much) further resort to hokey melodrama. It’s perfectly readable and commendably short. Three stars.

The Columbus Problem, by Greg Benford and David Book

Greg Benford’s second appearance in the issue is the first “Science in Science Fiction” article, done with David Book. It’s called The Columbus Problem and it starts out with a quotation from a Poul Anderson novel about a spaceship arriving at a new star system: “The instruments peered and murmured, and clicked forth a picture of the system. Eight worlds were detected.” Benford and Book then explain just how difficult and time-consuming it would actually be to detect the planets of an unfamiliar star system upon arrival at it, with our present technology or likely enhancements of it. They do a fine job of plain English explanation without becoming tedious. It beats hell out of Frank Tinsley’s earlier science articles for Amazing and edges Ben Bova’s. Four stars.

Summing Up

So, deferring judgment on the serial, here’s a lively issue of which much is quite good and nothing is a chore to read. Amazing!



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




[October 6, 1969] The Rule of a Mediocracy (Vision of Tomorrow #3)


By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

The Times is running a series of articles where major thinkers elucidate on what they believe life will be like in 1980. The series started with Arthur Koestler (philosopher most known for his Orwellian novel, Darkness at Noon) who predicts that, in the Britain of 1980, Mediocracy will be the order of the day.

Drawing of Arthur Koestler at a table pointing to a diagram of the human circulatory system
Arthur Koestler by David Levine

By this he means that instead of having a meritocratic system, defined by IQ plus effort, the main ingredients of life will be common sense plus inertia. Institutions will continue in modified forms without revolutionary change. Politicians are more likely to be dentists than demagogues. The family structure will continue but divorce and extramarital relationships will be commonplace. Housewives will have “bugs”, small time-saving robots, to do their household tasks, but they will breakdown so frequently the repairman will be a regular guest.

On a more positive note, he foresees the removal of private cars from cities, to be replaced by automated electric vehicles for hire. Office work will be done from home, with tactile simulators introduced to ensure people do not feel deprived of physical contact. Education will begin shortly after birth and young people will be encouraged to engage in more out-there behaviour before settling into mediocre adulthood.

We will have to wait another decade to see if his predictions come true. But, if the latest Vision of Tomorrow is any sign of things to come, mediocrity is certainly on the horizon.

Vision of Tomorrow #3

Vision of Tomorrow #3 Cover with a drawing of two spaceships over a futuristic city
Cover art by Eddie Jones

Yes, I am also still waiting for issue #2. I am assuming there was some hiccough at the printers.

In his editorial, Harbottle continues to outline his vision for the magazine. Firstly, stories must be “entertaining”, secondly, they should not contain sex. New Worlds this is not!

Let’s see how this translates into prose.

Shapers of Men by Kenneth Bulmer

Drawing of a man in a ruined spaceship that has crashed into the top of a tree
Illustrated by Eddie Jones

Once again, Mr. Bulmer opens the magazine with an adventure tale. This one, we are told, marks the start of a new series. Fletcher Cullen, “galactic bum”, travels across the stars wherever the loot and action take him. In this opening installment, Cullen’s flier is shot down over Sitasz and he finds himself in the middle of a conflict between the humans and the natives.

Man with a gun facing towards us with two alien beings behind him
Illustrated by Eddie Jones

This is a rather old-fashioned kind of interplanetary tale with some attempts at modern touches. Cullen is an untrustworthy rogue, miles away from Flash Godon or Clark Kent, the Sitazans are a well-constructed alien race and there are attempts to bring in modern frames of reference like LSD.

However, it is really boring to read. Generally each chapter will spend most of the time in overwrought descriptions and dull exposition, then a quick escape, followed by a capture by someone else. Even Bulmer’s amusing similes are like fish and guests, starting to smell off after the third time.

A low two stars

Number 7 by Eric C. Williams

Frederick Hasty, technical overseer of demolitions in London, is called to Number 7, Good Peace Road, in New Cross. Its destruction is a necessary part of the rationalization of London currently taking place. Unfortunately, the property is surrounded by an impregnable invisible barrier.

A reasonable little mystery but one that does not amount to very much.

A low three stars

Science Fiction in Germany by Franz Rottensteiner

A one-page summary of the SF scene in both Germanies, covering Perry Rhodan, Utopia Zukunftsromane, translations, fanzines and conventions.

It does the job it intends to but it is not as good as Cora’s coverage.

Three stars

People Like You by David Rome

Drawing of a jeep driving up a mountainous roadside, overlooking a river valley
Illustrated by B. M. Finch

Gail and Gordon Coulton, and their daughter Dorinda, are staying in a holiday home overlooking Cody Canyon when they notice some of their property has been taken. They suspect it is their neighbour, George Abbot. But what could he want with these items?

I was reminded of The People stories, but Rome is no Henderson. It is enjoyable enough, with a nice twist in the tail, but nothing special.

Three Stars

The Impatient Dreamers Part 3: Shadow of the Master by Walter Gillings

With us still waiting for the intervening issue, we skip to the third of Gillings articles, looking here at the emergence of British SF writers and publications in the 1930s, along with his efforts to establish more SF fan clubs.

This continues to be a brilliant series casting a spotlight on an area of SF development I rarely see discussed.

Five Stars

Pioneers of Science Fantasy

Two colour magazine covers:
Pearson's: illustrating Winged terror with a giant caterpillar like creature terrorising an Edwardian city
Chums: Illustrating Beyond The Aurora showing a plane flying in space with wings filled with rocket boosters

Some special colour reprints and short looks at big names in the history of the genre. A kind of supplement to the prior article.

Fantasy Review

Ken Slater reviews the latest E. C. Tubb interstellar adventure, Escape Into Space. Apparently, it is a disappointment, lacking character and convincing explanations.

Lucifer! by E. C. Tubb

Drawing of a suave man wearing a ring whilst a woman with goat horns looks on behind him
Illustrated by Gerard Alfo Quinn

Speaking of Tubb, this tale tells of Frank Weston, a morgue attendant who manages to get his hands on a ring of The Special People. These rings are a kind of portable time machine, allowing him to reverse time over a short period. Frank uses it to get rich and powerful, but can it really give him everything he desires?

A pretty standard tale of this type, well told. Once again Ted lands straight in the middle.

Three Stars

The Adapters by Philip E. High

Drawing of giant translucent monk like figures standing in the rain with heads bowed
Illustrated by Gerard Alfo Quinn

Roger Pryor is a fugitive from The Invaders. Five years ago, people started falling down totally incapacitated when touched by them. They are huge beings invisible except in very specific temperatures and lighting. They continually tell him they are here to help and rescue him, but what can their real agenda be?

A tense and evocative piece. Not the most original but enjoyable enough to bump it above the general chatter.

A low four stars

The Nixhill Monsters by Brian Waters

Whilst travelling across the Australian outback Alice and Graham swerve to avoid a strange creature, like a glowing transparent humanoid. Stopping in the nearby town they are curious to know more, the townspeople however are determined to kill the monster.

This feels to me like a middle-of-the-road episode of The Twilight Zone, overly simple moral and all. Whilst fairly competently constructed it feels strange that everyone here quickly accepts the existence of an alien, but also wants to murder her simply because she looks weird.

Two stars

World to Conquer by Sydney J. Bounds

A Woman being lifted high into the sky by two creatures who resemble a cross between a human and a pterodactyl.
Illustrated by BM Finch

With the Earth devastated by radiation poisoning, humanity is desperately searching for a new habitable planet to live on. When they finally find the world of Asylum, it is already occupied by the intelligent Fliers. Leo Crane is sent to meet the inhabitants, to discover how easily they can be exterminated.

Whilst some parts of this are very old-fashioned (Marie’s “I’m a woman” speech is particularly excruciating), I found the scientific concepts involved interesting and the question raised about how humanity treats the worlds it finds worth pondering. By the end you want to ask if we would really have the right to survive?

Evens out at a high Three Stars

Prisoner in the Ice by Brian Stableford

Drawing illustrating two men looking on as another man attempts to pick a frozen Saber-toothed tiger out of an ice sheet.
Illustrated by BM Finch

After centuries of battling the encroaching ice, the Earth is finally starting to warm up. On one of these ice sheets three men discover a saber-toothed tiger, frozen in mid-leap.

A much more philosophical story than I was expecting from these pages. The tiger and ice melt are really just metaphors, the main thrust of this piece is a discussion about what people become when they fight to survive. Do they become the winners or merely leftovers?

Interesting to compare and contrast with the previous story.

Four Stars

A Dentist’s Waiting Room

A Woman crawling towards a man who is seated on the floor
An unusual final image from Dick Howett previewing issue #4

So perhaps common sense and inertia are the tools behind Visions of Tomorrow. I feel like little here would be out of place ten years ago, but it is generally competent. Only the Bulmer I found to have any structural flaws.

Whether this middle of the road approach will work in the long run remains to be seen. Being unobjectionable but unremarkable is not necessarily going to get people to drop their 5 shillings for the next issue. As the architect of the NHS Aneurin Bevan said:

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over!






[October 4, 1969] New kid in town (Strategy and Tactic's wargame, Crete)

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

For the last decade or so, the term "wargame" has been virtually synonymous with Avalon Hill.  That Maryland game company has come out with one or two new titles every year in this exciting genre (along with a handful of other, more general releases).  But now, there's a new player in town.

Strategy & Tactics was, up to last month, one of many wargame fanzines.  Most such 'zines are devoted to supporting Play-by-Mail games of Diplomacy, but S&T has been more catholic in its coverage, reviewing many games and providing articles of general interest to wargame-lovers.  The magazine even included the occasional wargame, mostly rules for miniatures wargames (a related but different beast from board wargames).


Volume 1, Issue 7 of S&T including rules for the miniatures wargame of modern soldiering, Patrol


Janice and me playing Patrol with toy soldiers

With the latest issue, Volume 3, Issue 2 (#18 total), there is a new editor at the helm: Jim Dunnigan.  Dunnigan's name may be familiar to you as the fellow who developed 1914 and Jutland for Avalon Hill… and also a self-published game on last year's takeover of Columbia University.  He has elected to apply his wargame-creation talents toward designing a brand new board wargame for S&TCrete.


Cover of the latest issue of S&T


Table of contents of the latest issue of S&T

This fascinating game is a full-fledged simulation, incorporating a number of neat innovations.  It is also a Do-It-Yourself-er: the map and counters (and rules) are just printed in the magazine, which means you either need to cut them out and affix them to pasteboard, or make your own copies from scratch.  Since I have access to a Xerox machine, I was able to have the best of both worlds, photocopying the pieces and playboard, the former on colored construction paper, and the latter tinted with colored pencils.

Lorelei provided the box cover art!

So how does it play?  Read on!

Vital Statistics

Crete is a two-player simulation of the German airborne invasion of the island of the same name in May 1941.  If you remember your history, the Nazis had pushed the Greeks and Commonwealth allies off the mainland the month before.  The subsequent assault on Crete represented the Goering's last parachutist assault on a target, and it was a very near thing.

Rather than portray the entire island, Crete instead has three separate mapboards, each representing the area around each of the airfields critical to German success in the invasion.  Until an airfield is captured, no reinforcements can arrive to aid the Luftwaffe airborne troops.


Three maps (one complete, two partial)

This game seats two players and takes about two hours to finish. The German player has to land 13 battalions of paratroopers to take on the 43 weaker British, Australian, New Zealander and Greek battalions. If the Germans dislodge the Allies from an airfield, they can unload a brigade of mountain troops each turn from the captured runways greatly enhancing the German forces. The German player also has seven invincible airplane units with infinite movement which add a bit of strength to attacks, improving the odds.

The goal of the game: points are scored for the destruction of each unit (one per strength point) and 5 points are awarded for the occupation of airfields, 10 for occupying the city of Suda Bay, at the end of the game. Whoever has more points wins—the bigger the margin, the bigger the victory.

The Rules

Those familiar with Avalon Hill games will recognize most of the concepts—and some of the stock language for beginners.  For instance, "unlike chess and checkers, you may move all of your units in a turn," and, "henceforth, all hexagons shall be called 'squares.'" The rules are very simple. Germans deploy, move and fight. British move and fight. Repeat for ten turns.


Drake (Trini's brother), playing the Germans, contemplating his first move

Each counter has a combat strength and movement rate. British unit strength values range from 1 to 6, 4s being the majority.  They are slow–average movement rate of 4.  The German mountain troops have a strength of 6, as do most of the paratroops, and 4 of the battalions have a whopping strength of 8!  The mountain troops move 6 and the paratroopers move 5, so the Germans have a mobility edge, as well.

Terrain effects are minimal: defense doubled in rough terrain or towns, roads triple movement. Travel between the boards is possible at specific road exit points at the map edges.

There are several novel aspects which make this game interesting.  The Germans employ a kind of hidden set-up, choosing on which board(s) to drop 7-13 paratroop battalions.  Leaving some paratroop units in reserve means the Allied forces never know where or when the next German troops will appear out of the sky.  This essentially freezes the defenders in place until all of the parachutists land.


Example of a secret setup allocation (and the victory point balance at the end of that game)

The airborne units may scatter upon landing, and they can't move or fight on the first turn unless they land on some hapless British unit.  Woe be to the Fallschirmjäger who drifts out into the sea and drowns… (this eventuality is not explicitly covered in the rules, which are not as rigorously laid out as Avalon Hill's, but it makes sense, and it's how we play).

There are two odds-based Combat Result Tables—one for "limited assault" and one for "all out attack", the attacker choosing which one is preferred (and it is an important choice).  There is no "defender/attacker retreats" option, as one finds in most other games.  Instead, a common combat result is "counter-attack"—the defender may retreat or choose to fight back…but you get to choose which stack you counter-attack.  In practice, that means a 3-1 on first attack can turn into a 1-1 or even 2-1 in the counter attack. Fights can seesaw back and forth for quite some time in an exciting fashion.

Gameplay

The game quickly becomes a pitched battle for one or more airfields. If the Germans can't secure one within a few turns, it's all over.  The Allied units are pathetic compared to the Germans, which they need to spend most of their time picking strategic defense points, only attacking on the rare occasion that they can pounce on an isolated German unit (which usually happens during the initial drop phase). The Germans need to be daring in their drop, landing amidst the Allied formations to cause a maximum of confusion.

Generally, only two of the boards will see action at any one time.  The Germans simply don't have the forces to hit all three at once.  Once the battle is won on two of the boards, it's a lost cause for the third, most likely.


Me, ebullient after a local victory

After Action Report

This game provided a surprisingly fun afternoon of play.  There are lots of decisions to make, and it can be a real nail-biter.  Not only does the game present an interesting puzzle, it is one of the shortest wargames out there.  The shortest Avalon Hill game, Afrika Korps, still takes a few hours to get through.  On the other hand, after a few games, the optimum Allied strategy presents itself, even with the Germans having several options for attack strategies.  Still, the game is good for several plays, is a great introduction to the hobby…and it's worth every penny you spend on it (i.e. virtually nothing).

Dunnigan has promised that each bimonthly issue of S&T will contain a brand new wargame (or two!) so this column promises to get a lot busier soon.  That's what I call a good problem to have!

(This report brought to you by the proud members of the Galactic Journey Wargaming Society!)






[October 2, 1969] Darkness, Darkness (November 1969 IF)


by David Levinson

An unexpected, expected coup

To the surprise of almost no one, September 1st saw a military coup in Libya. King Idris has grown increasingly unpopular ever since the United Kingdom of Libya was proclaimed in 1951. His government was initially seen as weak, due to the federal structure of the kingdom, sharing power between the three main regions of the country: Cyrenaica in the east, Tripolitania in the northwest, and Fezzan in the southwest. After Idris dissolved the federal system in 1963, he was seen more as an autocrat. Always more a religious leader than secular, he was viewed by more progressive elements in the country as a hindrance to making Libya a modern nation. His government has also been widely seen as corrupt. Once one of the poorest countries in the world, Libya has grown rich in the last decade since the discovery of oil, but little of that wealth has gone beyond the king and his advisers.

So when Idris traveled to Turkey for medical treatment, everyone was expecting a coup. The king himself had offered to abdicate a few weeks earlier while he was on vacation in Greece. The blow was expected to come from Abdul Aziz Shahli, Chief of Staff of the Libyan Army, and his brother Omar, the royal councilor. The two are the sons of Idris’ longtime chief advisor, who had been murdered by a nephew of the queen.

King Idris from a couple of years ago.

But they were beaten to the punch by a group calling themselves the Free Officers Movement, no doubt inspired by Nasser’s Egyptian Free Officers who toppled King Farouk. The coup was swift, seemingly bloodless, and has been accepted in the country with no resistance and a fair amount of enthusiasm. The Revolutionary Command Council which heads the FOM quickly informed foreign diplomats that treaties and agreements would be respected and that foreign lives and property would be protected. Recognition of the new government followed almost immediately, including from the United States on the 6th.

Since then, a cabinet of eight ministers has been appointed to implement the policies of the Revolutionary Command Council. Six of ministers, including Prime Minister Soliman Al Maghreby, are civilians, and the two military men are not members of the RCC. The new government has announced that Libya will not be renewing the leases on British and American air bases as they come due over the next two years. That means Wheelus Air Base will be closing down next year, but the base’s importance has declined over the last few years, and there had already been discussions with the previous government about the U.S. withdrawing from Libya.

Libya’s new Prime Minister, Soliman Al Maghreby.

A deep but dazzling darkness

We’re all still wondering what direction Ejler Jakobsson is going to take the magazines he helms. Based on this month’s IF along with the story Survival in last month’s issue, I’d say he likes stories with a darker tone, because, boy, is this issue full of dark stories.

This month’s cover depicts nothing in particular. Art by Gaughan

Happiness Is a Warm Spaceship, by James Tiptree, Jr.

Fresh out of command school, Lieutenant Quent expects a plum assignment. After all, he finished high in his class and his father is an admiral. Instead, he’s assigned to a mere patrol boat, one of the first with an integrated crew of humans and aliens. The lieutenant doesn’t—quite—share his father’s extreme prejudices, but he’s going to have to make a lot of adjustments.

Deathly ill, the captain has some advice for his first officer. Art uncredited

This was really good, right up until the last two or three pages. The ending felt a bit confused, and the story seems to be saying integration isn’t a good thing. It’s not really clear on the point, because the very end seems to contradict that. Nevertheless, Tiptree continues to improve. I may not necessarily like what I read, but it always seems to hold my interest.

A high three stars.

To Kill a World, by Irwin Ross

When his wife died, Colonel Ward crawled into a bottle. Now he’s desk-bound and in command of an air force base, while the arrival of his commanding general signals that his career is over. But the landing of an alien spaceship changes the trajectory of his life.

An alien invader, or is it? Art uncredited

Here’s our first dark story. Once the action gets going, it seems fairly obvious how things will turn out. But Ross takes his tale in a different, more poignant direction, and it is much the better for it.

Four stars.

Genemaster, by Barry Alan Weissman

Far, far in the future, Earth is forgotten, and humanity has been messing with its genes so long that nobody looks what we would call human. When proof is found that humans came from a single world, an aristocrat with a zoo hires the protagonist to provide him with an Original human.

If the previous story went somewhere unexpected, this one goes exactly where you think it will. It also gets to the punchline far too easily. The only thing this story has going for it is the narration, which is brisk and engaging. I’d call it Zelaznyesque if the first-person narrator were more sarcastic. That’s just enough to pull it over the three-star line for me; you might think otherwise.

Barely three stars.

For Sacred San Francisco, by Alfred Coppel

A century or so after World War III, men are a scarce resource that the women of the city-states of the shattered United States go to war for. Jere is a fighter pilot for San Francisco. She survives being shot down and encounters a wild man.

A San Franciscan gunner, not our protagonist. Art uncredited

Back to darkness, though I can’t say much about it without giving away the ending. The story stands on its own, but would probably work better as part of a novel. Many aspects of the world Coppel has created go unexamined, and the consequences of the conclusion could be far-reaching.

Three stars.

The Story of Our Earth: The Conquest of the Land, by Willy Ley

Having taken us through the formation of the Earth and the emergence of life, Ley shows us the Devonian period, when life first crawled onto land. Unfortunately, the fossil record for this period is scarce (most creatures were soft-bodied and didn’t fossilize well), so he spends most of the article talking about trilobites. I think a few lines may be missing at the end, because it is very abrupt, but what we have is interesting and engaging.

Three stars.

By Civilized Standards, by Neal Barrett, Jr.

Barrett offers us a first contact story in which humans and aliens struggle to find a point of commonality. Eventually, they think they found one, but how well do the humans really understand? And once again a very dark story that’s also well-written.

A high three stars.

The Seeds of Gonyl (Part 2 of 3), by Keith Laumer

In Part 1, Jeff Mallory woke to find that three months had passed, his town in the thrall of alien invaders, and his daughter Lori missing and forgotten. He escaped, joined up with Lori’s best friend Sally, and wound up drafted by Colonel Strang, who believes it is the Chinese who have conquered his town.

As the story picks up, he discovers Lori in Strang’s camp, but she is a true believer in the colonel’s vision. He and Sally attempt to kidnap her and things go wrong. Sally is shot and Jeff must flee on his own. Guided by memories that don’t seem to be his own, he comes to a large house, where he meets a very old man named Gonyl. The old man claims to be an alien and explains what’s going on. As the story ends, Jeff expresses disbelief and demands the truth. To be concluded.

Gonyl is not in good shape. Art uncredited

This is all fairly typical for Laumer in adventure mode. There are a lot of elements he’s used before: two aliens who have lived on Earth for centuries, an imminent threat they were originally sent to stop, a hero plagued by strange memories who may be connected to the aliens. Much of this feels like he’s just going through the motions, and a lot of the action has been episodic, not really advancing the plot (though he may wind up bringing it all together in the end). Right now, it’s average at best.

A low three stars.

Appropriate Punishment, by Theresa M. Treadway

This month’s new author tells the story of an old man facing judgment on the last night of his misspent life. It’s extremely well-written, but rather trite. Worse, the ending could be read as supporting a racist stereotype; that’s probably not intended, but it’s there.

Three stars.

Judgment night. Art uncredited but clearly signed by Gaughan

I’ve been wondering if Jakobsson would carry on with the IF first program. The issues under his leadership have all had a new author, but there was no acknowledgment of the fact. This time, there’s a note at the top of the first page of the story announcing “an IF first,” and the author bio makes its return (though somewhat insultingly never referring to Miss Treadway by name; I’ll put that down to poor editing for now).

Summing up

With this issue, IF begins to at least feel different from the Pohl years. Not significantly better or worse, but different in tone. It’s a gloomy issue, though looking at each story individually it’s not quite as dark as the overall impression I initially came away with. I don’t mind too much; the best story in the issue is also the darkest. But let’s not overdo it either.

Right now, my biggest complaint is that the art is all uncredited. It all appears to be by Jack Gaughan, who was on the masthead last month (there isn’t one this month) as Associate Art Director. Maybe that’s a fancy way of saying he’s doing all the interior art now. I hope not. I like Gaughan’s work, but I also like a bit of variety.

Looks like another of Dickson’s military stories. Those are often quite good.






[Sep. 30, 1969] Decisions, decision (October 1969 Analog)

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Options in Space

Just two months ago, men set foot on the Moon.  It was the culmination of 12 years of American progress in space, nine years of manned flights.

And yet, it is also just the beginning.  This nation has built the infrastructure to begin a new era of space exploration and exploitation.  As of this moment, the National Air and Space Administration (NASA) has no formal plans for human spaceflight beyond the flight of Apollo 20 sometime in 1973, and a somewhat inchoate, 3-man space station project—this latter to utilize a converted Saturn rocket upper stage. 

In order to turn further dreams into reality, President Nixon has created a "Space Task Group", headed by Vice President Agnew and comprising luminaries like NASA chief Thomas Paine and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, to map what the next decade in outer space will look like.  They submitted their report, "The post-Apollo space program: directions for the future", on September 15.

The 29-page report outlines an ambitious set of proposals, even the most modest of which still sets lofty goals.  In short, the options are:

  1. Land a man on Mars by 1980; orbit a multi-person lunar station; orbit a 50-person space station in Earth orbit; develop a reusable spacecraft to shuttle personnel and supplies to and from these stations;
  2. The same, but with a deferred Mars landing; and,
  3. The same, but with no Mars landing.

With regard to the station, it appears that it won't be a all-of-a-piece spinning wheel as seen in 2001 or the old Collier's articles from the early '50s.  Instead, NASA will mass-produce station modules, which can be put together like Tinkertoys.

There are three options presented for military spaceflight, as well, but these are not fleshed out proposals, merely budget amount suggestions based on how hot or cool international tensions are over the next decade.

Only time will tell which of these options, or which portions of these plans will be implemented and when.  It is one thing for the Vice President to boost space (a consistent tradition since 1961!) It remains to be seen if Dick Nixon will commit this nation to a grand, interplanetary goal, in the vein of his erstwhile opponent, Jack Kennedy.

Options in Print

As the STG offers up a number of options for the future of human spaceflight, so Analog editor Campbell offers up a number of possible futures set further beyond in the latest issue of Analog.


by Kelly Freas

The Yngling (Part 1 of 2), by John Dalmas

It is the 29th Century, and the world is recovering from a disaster that killed off the overwhelming majority of its population.  Earth has reverted to the Dark Ages, at least in Europe.  In fact, the setting of the book strongly resembles the 9th Century, with food pressure impelling the Scandinavians to raid and settle the warmer climes to the south.  Meanwhile, an Oriental despot is plotting the takeover of Europe from his advance base in the Balkans.

The main difference between the future and our past is the existence of psi powers, specifically telepathy and precognition.  Though not widespread, it is common enough that possessors of these powers are recognized and valued.


by Kelly Freas

One such possessor is Nils Järnhand, a Svear from the frigid land of Svea.  Banished from his lands for an accidental manslaughter, he travels to many places, becoming perhaps Europe's greatest warrior.  He also develops his psi powers, using his telepathy to aid his interactions and his premonitory power to stay one step ahead of assailants.  His ultimate goal seems to be a date with destiny with the evil Kazi, the would-be dictator of all lands west of the Urals.

John Dalmas seems to be a new author, and his Nils is a character in the Conan mold—a superman who can be placed in a number of adventure scenarios.  His defining traits, asside from his martial puissance, is his adaptibility and his complete lack of an internal monologue.  He simply senses, processes, and acts, with no consideration or doubts.  This should make for a dull character, but somehow, Dalmas keeps things going, lively and interesting.  There are a couple of rough transitions where it seems thousands of words got pared for length considerations; perhaps they will be restored in the book version.

Anyway, I give it three stars for now, but it's possible the second part will raise my estimation.  I'm certainly enjoying it, at least.

A Relic of War, by Keith Laumer


by Vincent Difate

Three generations after the cataclysmic human/alien war, a battered sentient tank has become adopted by the citizens of a small town.  When a government man comes along intending to euthanize the old machine, the mayor is the first to defend their mascot.  But when Bobby the tank suddenly charges off, weapons armed, there is cause for all to reconsider their positions.

This is the Simakiest of Laumer's Bolo stories, pastoral and sensitive.  What I find so interesting about these tales is that so many take place long after the conflict for which the mammoth tanks were built.  Others would prefer to tell war stories, but not Laumer.

Four stories.

The Big Rock, by Robert Chilson


by Kelly Freas

A future-day Australia is set up on an airless world, importing criminals from six worlds whose citizens would rather offload the malcontents than pay the taxes for things like prisons and rehabilitation.  It's all part of a grand experiment: can a den of thieves become a self-sustaining population?

Chilson tells the story from the point of view of the intellectual (and much bullied) prisoner, Hargraves.  His tale is punctuated by scenes of a conversation in which one government official explains the experiment to another politician.

The setup is interesting—sort of a precursor to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress—and Chilson tells an interesting story…but the piece just ends.  Even the dialogue between the two bureaucrats doesn't tie things up.  We never find out how the experiment ends, or even if it can end successfully.

Three stars.

Proton to Proton, by R. Dean Wilson

Wilson proposes a mechanism for the abstruse but universal conversion of sunlight into the molecule ATP, which is fundamental to most biological processes.

I must confess, it's all beyond me, but then I've never taken a chemistry course in my life.

Three stars.

Test Ultimate, by Christopher Anvil


by Vincent Difate

Here is another tale of Anvil's "Space Patrol".  This time, a recruit is facing the final challenge before induction, one of courage.  He has to wade through a pool of giant piranha and then climb a 25-foot sheer facing.  Accompanying him on is a chipper guide, who exhorts him cheerfully to plunge on through, heedless of the danger.

Naturally, this is all simulated, so if said recruit gets eaten on the way, he'll only feel his death, not experience it.  Nevertheless, our hero smells something fishy (beyond what's in the pond), and responds accordingly.

It's cute, perhaps a trifle long.  Three stars.

Jump, by William Earls


by Vincent Difate

99 out of 100 Spacers have no trouble with Jump, that moment of transition between normal and hyper-space.  But Lacey is in that unlucky 1%, and despite a luminary career in the scout services, he finds he just can't take the experience anymore.  So he musters out at Titan base and tries to make a go of it as a civilian.  In the end, he determines space is in his blood, fear of the void between voids be damned.

There's not a lot to this tale, which could just as easily have been written about the Navy, with seasickness or fear of typhoons standing in for Jump aversion.  Plus, I was a bit turned off when the author had Titan be a Moon of Jupiter.  Titan orbits around Saturn!

Two stars.

Compassion, by J. R. Pierce

by Leo Summers

In the near future, New York becomes a protected enclave for Black Americans, not unlike the reservations for Native Americans (as Indians are beginning to be called).  The parallel is not specious—it is made in the story!

The heroine of the tale is Sari, a 20-year old tourguide from the Big Apple, whisked away by a handsome, middle-aged man as dark as she is, but representative of the mainstream world, progressing right along.  He introduces her to the modern era, gauges her considerable talents, and then sends her back to New York to be a leader of her society, someone who can bring promising souls into the wider world.

I'm not sure I like or buy the premise, but it is a nicely written piece, with enough consideration given both to the world (like something Mack Reynolds might spin) and to Sari's emotions and inner thoughts, to feel fleshed out.  Not much happens, but I enjoyed the story.

Three stars.

Doing the math

All in all, not a bad issue, really.  Unlike a lot of the rest of the slog this month, I never found myself dreading the next page of Analog.  Of course, a three-star average is hardly anything to brag about, but it does beat all the other collections of short SF this month, with the exception of Galaxy (3.2).

Lesser entries for October include:

You could take all the four and five star stuff and squeeze it into one overlarge magazine, and though women contributed 6.5% of the newly published material this month, you have to regard Orbit as a magazine, even though it's printed in paperback format.

We're definitely at a nadir for short SF these days.  Let's hope this is the bottom rather than a height compared to what's coming!






[September 28, 1969] Apollo’s New Muses (Women Behind the Scenes in the Apollo Programme)

Seven years ago, the Journey published an article on the Women Pioneers of Space Science.  At long last, Kaye offers a much-needed update, this time focusing on the women who helped make Apollo 11's trip to the Moon possible…


by Kaye Dee

Classical literature tells us that the god Apollo was associated with the Nine Muses, the goddesses who inspired the arts, literature and science.

Our modern Apollo program also has its Muses – trailblazing women working behind the scenes in critical areas of the programme. They deserve to be better known, not just for their own impressive careers to date, but also as role models, inspiring girls and young women who might be interested in science, technology, engineering, mathematics or medicine, but are diverted away from them by the prevailing view that careers in these areas are for men, not women.

The famous ‘Dance of Apollo and the Muses’ by the Italian architect and painter, Baldassare Tommaso Peruzzi

As someone who has had to contend with these stereotypes myself, trying to establish a career in the space sector in Australia, I thought it might be interesting this month to delve into the stories of four of the women working behind the scenes in the Apollo programme: modern-day daughters of Urania, the Muse of Astronomy, Mathematics and the “exact sciences”.

The “Return to Earth” Specialist: Frances “Poppy” Northcutt

Every aspect of a lunar voyage involves moving objects – the Apollo spacecraft, the Earth and the Moon. Calculating the trajectories required for an Apollo mission to meet and go into orbit around the Moon at a particular date and time, is a mind-bending feat. But getting astronauts safely home from the Moon is even more important!

NASA’s specialist in the incredibly complex and precise calculations required to determine the optimal trajectories for the return to Earth from the Moon, minimising fuel and flight time, is Miss Frances Northcutt, who goes by the nickname “Poppy”. She is, perhaps, the only one of these ladies that you might have heard of (at least those of you in the United States), as she was such a “curiosity” during the press and television coverage of the Apollo-8 mission that she has been interviewed many times (and more on this below).

Born in 1943, Miss Northcutt earned a mathematics degree from the University of Texas, then commenced working at TRW in 1965 as a “computress”! Yes, that was her actual job title, although in Australia we’d have just called her a "computer" (a term applied here and in Britain to both men and women doing this kind of intensive calculating work). Miss Northcutt was placed at NASA’s Langley Research Centre, calculating spacecraft trajectories for the Gemini missions. She proved to be so talented in this area that within just six months TRW promoted her to engineering work with its Return to Earth task force, helping to design the computer programmes and flight trajectories to return an Apollo spacecraft from lunar orbit to Earth.

A simplified version of the Apollo lunar free return flight trajectories

Poppy Northcutt became the first woman to work in this type of role and was soon undertaking the intricate calculations involved in enabling the Apollo astronauts to travel around the Moon and come safely home. The Moon’s lower gravity changes parameters such as fuel usage, as well as the timing of manoeuvres, so the calculations are particularly tricky. Poppy identified mistakes in NASA’s original trajectory plan, performing calculations that reduced the amount of fuel used to swing around the Moon.

When NASA decided that Apollo-8 would become a lunar orbiting mission, the task force team, including Miss Northcutt, moved to Mission Control to instruct the flight controllers on the trajectory calculations and be available to make real-time calculations and course corrections in the event of unexpected incidents during the flight. Assigned to Mission Control's Mission Planning and Analysis room, Miss Northcutt and her team have been an integral part of Apollo-8, 10 and 11 and are now preparing for Apollo-12. She is the only female engineer in the teams that work in the backrooms of Mission Control in Houston, providing support to the flight controllers.

Poppy Northcutt working in the Mission Control support room during Apollo-8

Working Like a Man (but not being paid like one!)

“Computresses” in Miss Northcutt’s original position are classed as “hourly workers”, with their wages capped at working 54 hours per week (in other words, five nine-hour days). Their male counterparts were not only paid more (as we all know, female workers are generally paid between about half and two-thirds of the wages for a man doing the same job), they were also on salaries and paid overtime.

As an ambitious young woman, Miss Northcutt quickly realised that to earn the respect of her male colleagues and be considered a peer, she would have to work the same long hours they did – even if this meant that she was essentially working 10 or more hours a week for no pay!

A NASA promotional photo of Miss Northcutt at work in March this year. She presents herself as a diligent professional

Her talent and diligence paid off with her promotion to engineer, but, ironically, even though she was still being paid less than her male colleagues, Miss Northcutt tells the story that there was no normal mechanism to approve the pay rise she received with this jump from Computress! Her manager had to keep scheduling the highest possible raise as frequently as he could to bring her up to the full female rate of her new salary. 

During Apollo missions, when shifts last around 12 to 13 hours a day in Mission Control, Miss Northcutt usually commences her duty shifts for each mission around the time that the Apollo spacecraft, coasting towards the Moon, prepares to enter the lunar sphere of gravitational influence. During lunar orbit insertion she stands by to assist with new calculations, in the event of an emergency abort, and she reports for duty at Mission Control every day of the lunar phase of the mission and until the astronauts have returned safely to the Earth's sphere of influence. No one can say Poppy Northcutt isn’t pulling her weight, just like a man!

Sexism, Celebrity and Activism

As the only female engineer in Mission Control during the Apollo-8 mission, Miss Northcutt was such a “curiosity” that she received a lot of attention from journalists. While much of this coverage was not seen in Australia, from what I have heard from friends in America, I understand that many of the questions that she received were quite sexist – and even silly.

Miss Northcutt is a very pretty woman and dresses fashionably, so apparently ABC reporter Jules Bergman thought it was more important to ask about her potential to distract her male colleagues from the mission, than to ask about her crucial role: “How much attention do men in Mission Control pay to a pretty girl wearing miniskirts?” Would they have asked a male flight controller if the suit he was wearing turned the heads of the typing pool?! I gather that she gave him a polite brush off response.

A friend in the US took this photo from her television screen, giving me a glimpse of Mr. Bergman's interview with Miss Northcutt

It is bad enough when reporters focus on her appearance and ask her such inane questions, while she operates at the level of her male colleagues, for far less monetary reward. But Miss Northcutt has also reported an instance in which she discovered that the other flight engineers were covertly watching her on a video feed, from a camera trained on her while she was conducting equipment flight tests.

As a result of her personal experiences with sexism, Miss Northcutt has become a strong advocate for women’s rights, and has joined the feminist National Organisation for Women. Even in her early days at TRW, she worked to improve the company’s affirmative action and pregnancy leave policies. “As the first and only woman in Mission Control, the attention I have received has increased my awareness of how limited women’s opportunities are”, she has said. “I’m aware of the issues that are emerging. Working in this environment I can see the discrimination against women.”

TRW is happy to use Miss Northcutt's minor celebrity to promote itself, but not happy enough to pay her the same salary as her male colleagues!

However, while she is not pleased that much of the attention she has received has been focussed on her appearance, or treating her as a rare exception to the male-dominated world of spaceflight, Miss Northcutt has said that she recognises that being a woman visibly occupying a critical position in the space programme does send a very positive message to women and girls: a career in science and technology is possible if you want it – and are prepared to work for it!

Miss Northcutt has received letters and fan mail from around the world (including several marriage proposals, it seems!) She has said that she is motivated to continue to advocate for women’s rights in the workplace by the letters she has received from young women, who have said how much she has inspired them. 

Whoever Heard of a “Software Engineer”? Margaret Hamilton

The Apollo missions not only need precise trajectories for their lunar voyages – they also need software for their onboard flight computers, which control so many aspects of the flight. If you’re not familiar with this term, “software” describes the mathematical programmes that tell a computer how to carry out its tasks, and a “software engineer” applies the engineering design process to develop software for those different tasks.

The Director of Apollo Flight Computer Programming is Mrs. Margaret Hamilton Lickly, who prefers to be known professionally as Margaret Hamilton.I've heard that women in the United States who prefer not to be categorised by their marital status, are now starting to use the designation "Ms.". I don't know if Margaret Hamilton is using this new honorific, but it seems to me appropriate to apply it to her in this article. 

33-year-old Ms. Hamilton is another woman playing a crucial role in NASA’s lunar program. Not only is she a pioneer in software engineering, she even coined the term!


Like Miss Northcutt, Ms. Hamilton is also a mathematician, having studied at the University of Michigan and Earlham College. Shortly after graduating in 1958, she married her first husband, James Hamilton, and taught high school mathematics and French, before taking a job in the Meteorology Department at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) in 1959, a few months before the birth of her daughter.

Ms. Hamilton developed software for predicting weather, and in 1961 she moved to MIT’s Lincoln Lab for the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Project, adapting weather prediction software into a programme used by the U.S. Air Force to search for potential enemy aircraft. At the Lab, she was the first person to get a particularly difficult programme, which no-one had been able to get to run, to actually work! While working on SAGE, Ms. Hamilton began to take an interest in software reliability, which would pay dividends during Apollo-11’s lunar landing.

A Calculated Move

When Margaret Hamilton learned about the Apollo project in 1965, she wanted to become involved in the lunar programme, and moved to the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which was developing the Apollo Guidance Computer. She was the first programmer hired for the Apollo work project at MIT and has led the team responsible for creating the on-board flight software for both the Apollo Command and Lunar Modules. She also serves as Director of the Software Engineering Division at the Instrumentation Laboratory.

The Apollo Guidance Computer was installed on both the Command and Service Modules. Astronauts communicated with it using a numeric display and keyboard

While working on the Apollo software, Ms. Hamilton felt that it was necessary to give software development the same legitimacy as other engineering disciplines. In 1966, she therefore coined the term “software engineering” to distinguish software development from other areas of engineering. She believes that this encourages respect for the new field, as well as respect for its practitioners.

A page from the software for the Apollo Guidance Computer

On one occasion when her young daughter was visiting the lab, the little girl pushed a simulator button that made the system crash. Ms. Hamilton realised immediately that the mistake was one that an astronaut could make. While Ms. Hamilton has said that she works in a relationship of "mutual respect" with her colleagues, when she recommended adjusting the software to address the issue, she was told: “Astronauts are trained never to make a mistake.” Yet during Apollo-8, astronaut Jim Lovell made the exact same error that her young daughter had!

While Ms. Hamilton’s team was able to rapidly correct the problem, for future Apollo missions protection was built into the software to prevent a recurrence. With her interest in software reliability, Margaret Hamilton insisted that the Apollo system should be error-proof. To achieve this goal, she developed a programme referred to as Priority Displays, that recognises error messages and forces the computer to prioritise the most important tasks, also alerting the astronauts to the situation.

In Part 2 of my series of Apollo-11 articles, we saw how, during the descent to the Moon’s surface, the Lunar Module’s computer began flashing error messages, which could have resulted in Mission Control aborting the landing. However, the Priority Displays programme gave Guidance Officer Bales and his support team confidence that the computer would perform as it should despite the data input overloads that it was experiencing, and that the landing could proceed.

Ms. Hamilton with this year's printout of the entire Apollo Guidance Computer software

Ms. Hamilton and her 100-strong team continue to work on developing and refining the Apollo flight software, and I’m sure that they will contribute to whatever future spaceflight projects NASA develops, stemming from Vice-president Agnew’s recently-delivered Space Task Group report to President Nixon.

“I’ve Got Rocket Fuel in my Blood”: JoAnn Morgan

Mission safety and reliability are, of course, critical, but Apollo-11 could not even have made the historic lunar landing if the mission had been unable to launch in the first place! When Apollo-11 lifted off, there was one lone woman in the launch firing team at Kennedy Space Centre’s (KSC) Launch Control Centre, who helped to ensure that would happen – Instrumentation Controller JoAnn Morgan.

JoAnn Morgan watching the lift-off of Apollo-11 from her station in Launch Control

Mrs. Morgan, who was born in December 1940, has described herself as a “precocious little kid” who loved mathematics, science and music, and wanted to become a piano teacher. However, after her family moved to Florida from Alabama, she was inspired by the launch of the first American satellite, Explorer-1, in January 1958, and its significant discovery of the Van Allen Radiation Belts. It was the “opportunity for new knowledge” that space exploration represented that filled the teenager with a desire to be part of the new space programme.

Young JoAnn with one of her favourite books. As a child she loved to read and play with her chemistry set

Soon after, JoAnn saw an advertisement for two (US) Summer student internship positions, as Engineer’s Aides with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Cape Canaveral. As we know, job openings are often advertised separately for males and females, but this ad only referred to “students” (not “boys”), so she took the chance, decided to apply, and was successful thanks to her strong marks in science and mathematics.

So, at just 17, JoAnn Hardin, as she was then, began working as a University of Florida trainee for the Army at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. “I graduated from high school on the weekend and went to work for the Army on Monday. I worked on my first launch on Friday night” is how Mrs. Morgan describes the beginning of her NASA career. The Army programme she was working with became part of NASA when it was established in October 1958.

Supportive Male Mentors

While undertaking her degree in mathematics at Jacksonville State University, Mrs. Morgan continued her Summer internships with the NASA team launching rockets at Cape Canaveral. The young student’s potential did not go unnoticed, and she acknowledges that she received significant support in furthering her career from several senior NASA personnel, including Dr. Wernher von Braun, the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket, Dr. Kurt Debus, the first director of Kennedy Space Centre and Mr. Rocco Petrone, Director of Launch Operations at KSC.

Mentors Kurt Debus, left, and Rocco Petrone, right, during the Apollo 7 flight readiness test in the blockhouse at Complex 34

Dr. Debus provided Mrs. Morgan with a pathway to becoming an engineer, and she gained certification as a Measurement and Instrumentation Engineer and a Data Systems Engineer, which enabled her to be employed as a Junior Engineer on the launch team. “It was just meant to be for me to be in the launching business,” she says. “I’ve got rocket fuel in my blood.”

As a young woman joining an all-male group, Mrs. Morgan was fortunate that (unbeknownst to her at the time) her immediate supervisor, Mr. Jim White, insisted that the men on the launch team address her professionally, not be “familiar”, and reportedly told them that “You don’t ask an engineer to make the coffee”! (Which, of course, is often a task that falls to the women in any office).

Professional Disrespect

Despite Mr. White’s efforts to create an environment of respect for his first female engineer, Mrs. Morgan has still described experiencing sexism and harassment, treatment similar to the experiences of Miss Northcutt. With no female restrooms in the launch blockhouses at Cape Canaveral, when she needs to use the restroom, she has to ask a security guard to clear out the men’s room so that she can enter. She has reported receiving obscene phone calls at her station (which disappointingly could only have come from colleagues).

However, like Miss Northcutt, while she has said that she sometimes feels a sense of loneliness as the only woman in the team, Mrs. Morgan “wants to do the best job she can” and works the same long hours as her male colleagues. In 1967, as the Apollo programme was ramping up, her dedication to her work had tragic consequences. The stress and long hours of her job contributed to her miscarrying and losing her first child.

The crowded interior of the blockhouse at Launch Complex 34, where Mrs. Morgan has often worked

Perhaps the most shocking example of professional disrespect and harassment (which could be considered an assault) that Mrs. Morgan has experienced was during a test being conducted at the blockhouse for Pad 34, where the first Apollo missions were set to be launched. When preparing to acquire some test results, she was actually struck on the back by a test supervisor, who aggressively told her that “We don’t have women in here!” She had to appeal to her own supervisor, Mr. Karl Sendler (who developed the launch processing systems for the Apollo programme) to confirm that she could remain. He told her to disregard the test supervisor and continue with her work (though it’s not clear if any action was taken against the offending supervisor).

On Console for Apollo-11

The unpleasant incident with the test supervisor prompted many of Mrs. Morgan’s colleagues and senior managers to come forward in expressing acceptance and respect for her as part of the team. Nevertheless, even though she has worked launches for Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, received an achievement award for her work during the activation of Apollo Launch Complex 39, and been promoted to a senior engineer, Mrs. Morgan has frequently found herself rostered for the inconvenient evening shifts. Since her husband is a school teacher and band-leader, this hasn’t always allowed them a lot of time to be together.

Until Apollo-11, Mrs. Morgan was also not selected to be part of the firing room personnel for a launch, usually being stationed at a telemetry facility, a display room or a tracking site for launch. She found this very disappointing, as she always wanted to feel the vibrations from a launch that her colleagues described.

But her desire to experience the incredible shockwave vibrations of a Saturn-V lift-off was finally achieved with the launch of Apollo-11. Recognising that Mrs. Morgan is his best communicator, Mr. Sendler quietly obtained permission from Dr. Debus for her to be the Instrumentation Controller on the console in the firing room for Apollo 11! (This achievement also had the bonus of working day shifts, so that she has been able to spend more time with her husband).

Can you spot the lone woman in a sea of men? In this picture of the Launch Control firing room during Apollo-11, Mrs. Morgan is in the third row, just to the left of centre.

A successful launch is critical to each mission and Mrs. Morgan believes that her prime role in the launch of the historic mission will help to further her career within NASA. Although she has not received the same level of press and television attention as Miss Northcutt, she does hope that even the photos of her in Launch Control – a lone woman in a sea of men – will help to inspire young women to aspire to careers in the space programme, so that, at some time in the future, photos like the ones she is in now “won’t exist anymore.”

Making Packed Lunches for Astronauts: Rita Rapp

You could say that the astronauts are the most fragile component of each Apollo mission. Nutrition is important in keeping crews healthy and functioning during a flight, so space food has to be as appetising as possible, within the constraints of spaceflight and the weightless environment – especially as missions to the Moon, and future space stations and lunar bases will keep astronauts in space for longer and longer periods. 

Physiologist Miss Rita Rapp, head of the Apollo Food Systems team, has been looking after the astronauts' bodies – and stomachs – since she joined NASA in 1960. For the Apollo programme, she has developed the space food and food stowage system designed to keep the astronauts supplied with the right mix of calories, vitamins, and nutrients to enable them to function well in space. One of her goals has been to ensure that crews have something worth eating during their spaceflights.

Rita Rapp with some of her space food innovations that have greatly improved the space food menu for Apollo astronauts

Born in 1928, Miss Rapp studied science at the University of Dayton and then took a Master’s in anatomy at the St. Louis University Graduate School of Medicine. She was one of the first women to enrol in this school. Graduating in 1953, she took a position in the Aeromedical laboratories at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where she began assessing the effects of high g-forces on the human body, especially the blood and renal systems, using centrifuge systems.

In 1960 Miss Rapp joined NASA’s Space Task Group preparing for the Mercury manned spaceflight programme, later transferring to the Manned Spacecraft Centre in Houston. For the Mercury program, she continued her work on centrifugal effects on the human body. She also designed the first elastic exercisers for Mercury and Gemini missions, devised biological experiments for the astronauts to conduct in-flight, and developed the Gemini medical kit.

The first Gemini biological experiment, designed by Miss Rapp

From Aeromedicine to Space Food

In 1966, as the Apollo programme was ramping up, Miss Rapp joined the Apollo Food Systems team. Although she has continued to work on space health and hygiene projects, in her new role her primary focus became looking at systems for storing food onboard the Apollo spacecraft. Working with dieticians, and commercial companies, she has investigated the ways space food could be packaged and prepared, and become the main interface between NASA’s Food Lab and the astronauts.

Although she tries to use as much commercially available food as possible, Miss Rapp and her team are also continually experimenting with new recipes in the food lab, gradually replacing the earlier “tubes and cubes” style of space food used in Mercury and Gemini with meals that are closer to an everyday eating experience.

She has developed improved means of food preservation, such as dehydration, thermostabilisation, irradiation and moisture control, which allows for a wider range of foods to be suitable for spaceflight, and I have no doubt these useful technologies will find their way into commercial food preparation and onto our supermarket shelves in the not-too-distant future. 


Working with the Whirlpool Corporation, Miss Rapp has developed new forms of food packaging for Apollo, such as the spoon bowls, “wet packs” and cans for thermostabilised food. These containers enable astronauts to eat with more conventional utensils, instead of sucking food out of a tube or plastic bag. Creating a more natural, homelike eating experience is good for the astronauts’ morale and psychological health during missions. You can discover more about Miss Rapp's space food developments in my articles on the various Apollo missions. 

Miss Rapp takes great pride in providing the Apollo crews with the flavours and comforts of home. “I like to feed them what they like, because I want them healthy and happy,” she says. She takes note of their individual food preferences, often devises new recipes and prepares the individual meals of each Apollo astronaut separately. Her home-made sugar cookies, that she bakes herself, are a special favourite of Apollo crews, and additional supplies are included as snacks in the onboard food pantries of the Command and Lunar Modules. She also likes to provide the crews with special food “surprises”, such as the turkey dinner enjoyed by the Apollo-8 crew in lunar orbit on Christmas Eve last year.


Just the Beginning

The women of Apollo who I’ve discussed in this article are trailblazers for women’s participation in mathematics, engineering, and other technical aspects of spaceflight.  While they are not the only women in professional roles in the space sector, female participation in space careers, and in science, engineering, and technology more generally, is still very low.

I hope that by highlighting the exciting Apollo-related careers of the four women above, it will plant a seed in the minds of young girls reading the Journey that they, too, can aspire to careers in scientific and technological fields that are generally thought of only as careers for men. I also hope that growing levels of female participation in the workforce, together with feminist activism, will eventually consign the sexism, discrimination and harassment that women working in all careers experience at present, to the history books—though I won’t hold my breath on it happening any time soon.






[September 26, 1969] Poetry in motion — the Japanese Tanka


by Yo Aoyama

It's been a while!  This is Yo Aoyama with an article from hot Japan, where we are still experiencing a truly Endless Summer.

This may seem a bit out of the blue, but have you heard of tanka? Tanka is a traditional Japanese form of poetry first committed to writing in the Manyoshu collection of the Nara period. This 1200 year form uses a fixed 31-syllable (mora) format of 5-7-5-7-7.
 
I started making my own tanka a few years ago while composing lyrics and music, and it's something I study to this day. Nevetherless, I am still no expert, so please forgive me if my analysis is not 100% accurate. And bear with me—while the connection to science fiction and fantasy may not be immediately obvious, there is a revolution underway in the form that suggests a more fantastic future may be arriving soon…
 
In the modern era, tanka has focused on realism and been dominated by compositions about everyday life. Up to the 1950s, Tanka poems universally had a strong personal quality. That is, they have been considered as first-person literature, and the author has been considered as the main character in the poem, and the contents of the poems have often been based on reality. But since the 1950s, an "avant-garde Tanka movement" has emerged that seeks new forms of expression. Avant-garde Tanka is characterized by the use of symbols and metaphors, as well as the use of fiction. This has opened up the possibilities of Tanka poems.

The exciting potential of the new tanka can readily be seen in the following three recent works (rendered in Japanese first to demonstrate the rhythm, then translated into English).


1. 革命歌作詞家に凭りかかられてすこしづつ液化してゆくピアノ(塚本邦雄『水葬物語』,1951)

Kakumei ka sakushi-ka ni yorikakararete sukoshi dzutsu ekika shite yuku piano.

A piano that gradually liquefies, leaned upon by a revolutionary songwriter

Kunio Tsukamoto is representative of avant-garde tanka. The image of the liquefying piano is reminiscent of surrealist works such as Dali's "The Persistence of Memory". A revolutionary songwriter can be said to be someone who uses music as a political tool rather than as art. The sight of the piano liquefying under the influence of the songwriter can be thought of as representing the danger of art being absorbed into the political or practical world. Perhaps he had in mind the fact that the art form of tanka itself was in danger of disappearing due to its association with the nation and the Emperor System during World War II.


Kunio Tsukamoto, 1951

"Water Burial Story" is the opening poem of his first collection of tanka poems, Water Burial Story, and can be considered one of his masterpieces. His latest collection of tanka poems, "Kangenraku," was released on September 9 this year, and is also attracting attention.


Water Burial Story, by Kunio Tsukamoto, 1951


2. 晩夏光おとろへし夕 酢は立てり一本の瓶の中にて(葛原妙子『葡萄木立』,1963)

Bankakou o toro e shi yū; su wa tateri ip-pon no bin no naka nite

Late summer light fades in the evening; vinegar stands up in a single bottle

This next work, by Taeko Kuzuhara, caused Kunio Tsukamoto to dub her the "Queen of Visions." This is a poem (from the collection Budoukidachi) with a rather unique rhyme scheme and no third line. It is a casual poem about an evening in late summer when the strong sunlight has weakened, and vinegar stands up in a bottle, but readers will find it strange that she says that the vinegar stands up instead of saying that the bottle of vinegar stands up. Combined with the absence of a third line, a tranquil yet dignified atmosphere flows throughout the poem.

In this way, Kuzuhara's poems reinterpret reality by injecting a touch of fantasy into daily life.


Taeko Kuzuhara


Budoukidachi, by Taeko Kuzuhara, 1963


3. かくれんぼの鬼とかれざるまま老いて誰をさがしにくる村祭(寺山修司『田園に死す』,1965)

Kakurenbo no oni tokarezaru mama oite dare o sagashi ni kuru mura-sai

The village festival where the hide-and-seek demon, grown old, has come looking for someone

This last tanka is from the latest collection of poems, Dies in the Countryside, by Shuji Terayama, who is active in a wide range of fields, including as a poet, playwright, and scriptwriter. What distinguishes this tanka is the oblique subject. Who is the "someone" who will be the victim of the aged demon? Why is it there? The creepiness, like the plot of a horror movie, is amplified by the lack of a subject, which obscures the faces of the characters, and the magical atmosphere of the village festival, which has been fixed in reality.


Dies in the Countryside, by Shuji Terayama, 1965

Terayama is skilled at creating fiction, and his skills are fully demonstrated in his tanka. The anthology "Die in the Countryside," from which this poem is taken, has some autobiographical aspects, but also includes songs about a fictitious younger brother and his late mother (Terayama's actual mother is still alive), and shows a deliberate attempt to exclude or shift the personal.


Shuji Terayama


What did you think? Poets continue to write poems that attempt to capture profound thoughts, unforgettable scenes, and compelling stories in the very short 31-syllable form of poetry. Thanks to the modern revolutionaries, tanka is now open to infinite possibilities. Perhaps in the future we will see the birth of science fiction and fantasy tanka with even more narrative qualities. The ever-evolving trends of tanka will be something to keep an eye on—especially for those on this Galactic Journey!






55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction