[Mar. 18, 1969] What a way to go! (Star Trek: "All Our Yesterdays")


by Gideon Marcus

The other shoe dropped on February 17: Star Trek is officially canceled. Moreover, ABC won't pick it up for its "Second Season" in January. Fan efforts are being directed at CBS, but I can't say the prospects are promising.

One has to wonder if the decision was made due to the spate of lousy episodes that have plagued the second half of the Third Season. On the other hand, the decision was probably made based on the reaction to the first half of the season, which was actually quite good, so maybe Trek was always destined for the block.

This makes the latest episode, what appears to be the penultimate (if, indeed, they even air the last episode sometime in May after eight weeks of reruns and substitutions), particularly bittersweet. "All Our Yesterdays" is possibly Trek's finest hour, even as the clock ticks the show's last minutes.

title card "All Our Yesterdays" in front of Enterprise orbiting an Earth-like blue and green planet

That the show is so good comes as no surprise; writer Jean Lisette Aroeste wrote the sublime "Is There in Truth No Beauty", and director Marvin Chomsky ran the excellent "Day of the Dove". It is also an unique episode in many ways, from the profusion of excellent sets, to the complete absence of the Enterprise from the show (a phenomenon I cannot recall occurring in any prior episode).

For those who missed it, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to the planet of Sarpedon, a civilized world doomed to be destroyed when its star, Beta Niobe, goes nova—in just a handful of hours. I guess they're there to pick up refugees (if so, there won't be very many…)

The Big Three find themselves in what looks like a post office or safety deposit box annex attended by an elderly Mr. Atoz. This fellow, assisted by several kindly replicas, is a "librarian" who has used his "Atavachron" (a great name for a time machine) to send all of the citizens of Sarpedon into the past, where they will be safe from the stellar explosion. Mr. Atoz assumes the three officers are Sarpedonites who are late to the party, and he gives them run of the archive to find eras to jaunt to.

Spock and McCoy stand behind Kirk, who is looking down at Mr. Atoz, a balding, white-haired man in a black gown, sitting at a table with some kind of viewer and mirror-surfaced disks
"You've run up some considerable overdue book fines, young man!"

Well, through misadventure, Kirk ends up in Cromwellian England, where he is locked up under accusation of witchcraft, and McCoy and Spock end up in the planet's last Ice Age, risking frostbite and worse. Apparently, Sarpedon's past is identical to that of Earth, which would be egregious if we hadn't seen similar phenomena in "Miri" and "Bread and Circuses". Indeed, this is actually a welcome data point rather than risible.

two men in 17th century clothing accost Kirk in a brick alley
"You're under arrest, guv'nor…for overdue book fines!"

Spock and McCoy are shivering against an ice wall
"It's colder than a witch's left…" "Agreed, Doctor."

Luckily for Kirk, his judge is one of the refugees from the future, who helps him find the portal back to the library. Luckily for the other two, a lovely woman named Zarabeth, exiled from a time prior to the Enterprise's era, rescues them and gives them refuge in her cave. She quickly falls for Spock (who wouldn't?) and the half-Vulcan finds himself reverting to savagery as a result of his psychic bond with primordial Vulcans of five thousand years ago. Spock peeves at McCoy, moons at Zarabeth, and acts the least Spocklike we've seen him since "This Side of Paradise" in a very honest and affecting way.

A seated McCoy talks to Zarabeth, viewed from behind, wearing a fur bikini, a Spock looks at him with folded arms, in a red-lit cave

Bones convinces Spock to go back to where they arrived in the Ice Age so as to find their way back to the library, which they manage with the help of Kirk. Returned to his time, Spock becomes himself again, but not without a touch of subdued regret at the loss of yet another opportunity at love.

The pacing for this episode is leisurely but consistent, really letting us soak in the environs, the characters, their emotions. The Act-end cliffhangers are unusual and sometimes not even danger points. All of the cast turn in masterful performances, and the guests do as well—standouts include Mr. Atoz (the actor last seen in "Bread and Circuses") and the magistrate who saves Kirk. Mariette Hartley (Zarabeth) is fine, and there is no question that she is lovely, but it's the pickpocket who Kirk rescues in his era, with her period speech and game manner, who is truly memorable. The optical effects are stunning, particularly the Atavachron portal effect.

A florid, long-blond-haired, older man in a black hat and robe visits Kirk in jail
"Just give the book back. No one will press charges."

Though something of a cul de sac in terms of development of the setting (time travel on Sarpedon only goes to Sarpedon, and the system blows itself up at the end of the episode), it is the opposite of a bottle show. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this episode, and so much that is right.

Five stars


Historically Inaccurate

by Erica Frank

In this episode, we see a mirror-image of the usual dynamic between Spock and Doctor McCoy. The doctor is the rational one, driven to find a solution that lets them get back to the Enterprise—while Spock is distracted by strange circumstances and a pretty lady, and he risks isolating them both because of his emotions.

He attacked McCoy over the epithet "pointy-eared Vulcan"… and although the insult was clear in McCoy's voice, it's also a simple fact: Spock is a Vulcan and his ears are pointy. McCoy has said more directly insulting things to him in the past, but this was apparently his breaking point.

Spock has his palm wrapped around McCoy's neck, the doctor pressed against the cave wall
You'd think if he wanted McCoy to shut up, he'd use the Vulcan neck pinch on him. Instead, he grabs him by the throat and brings him in close.

We are supposed to believe that tensions have come to a head because Spock is stuck in the past and atavistic patterns are controlling his behavior. That Spock reverts to savagery because the Vulcans of several thousand years ago were warlike barbarians who ate "animal flesh" and fought for dominance over petty insults.

The problem with that is…

Five thousand years ago on Earth, the Aegean Bronze Age was starting. Imhotep built the Step Pyramid of Djoser; around the same time, Stonehenge was built. Those were ancient human cultures, but they were not so alien from modern humans that a person transported to that time would find their entire nature changed. A modern human thrown back to that time — even with their cell structure and brain patterns adjusted to fit in — would act much like humans do today.

Our records show that human activities and motivations have been very similar throughout history, even as our technology and religions have changed. People complained about politicians, bemoaned their rebellious teenagers, and mourned the passing of beloved pets. Some fought over minor differences and more sensible people denounced those who could not get along with their neighbors. Some were involved in huge, elaborate projects that would not see completion in their lifetimes, and yet they found reason to participate and build on the work of those who had gone before.

Black and white photo of the large, rectangular bloks that comprise Stonehenge with visitors in front of them
Visitors at Stonehenge, perhaps considering what life might have been like 5,000 years ago on Earth.
"Stonehenge 1960s" photo by Annabel M, CC-BY 2.0

Are we to believe that Vulcans were violent barbarians much more recently than humans? That while humans were developing cuneiform and hieroglyphs, establishing the basics of accounting and medical texts, Vulcans were irrational and vicious—but have since surpassed humans in technology and developed powerful psychic abilities?

Something about this doesn't add up. I can more easily believe that Spock, badly disoriented by the trip through time and deeply worried about his friend's survival, latched onto the first viable way to cope: Accept that they are stuck here and focus on surviving in their new home.

Of course, this is only plausible if one believes that Spock would give up his friendship with Kirk for a life with McCoy and a woman he met an hour ago. That possibility raises even more questions.

Four stars. I can quibble over some of the "science," but the character dynamics were riveting.


Treasure from Trash


by Joe Reid

This week’s episode of Star Trek contained many interesting elements: a star about to go Nova, eliminating a solar system and the desperate race to find survivors. A man with duplicate copies of himself. A civilization with the power to travel in time. All interesting concepts that could fill volumes of science fiction. Sadly, these concepts were cheapened by the unnecessary common plot devices which ran rampant in this episode. From jumping to conclusions to failing to ask questions, there didn’t appear to be any characters in this episode unwilling to make critical mistakes that made situations worse than they already were.

Let’s start our examination on an individual level with Kirk and Atoz. Kirk and crew went to a doomed planet where everyone was gone, looking for people to save. Atoz, having saved everyone, was perplexed as to why these newcomers hadn’t escaped yet. This left us with a comedy of errors that shouldn’t have occurred. Had Kirk or Atoz not jumped to conclusions and taken a minute to fully introduce themselves and state their purposes, all parties would have been allowed to move on with their respective businesses without incident. Instead, we were forced to bear witness to two men fighting so hard to save each other they were willing to almost kill each other.

Mr. Atoz tries to push Kirk through the trapezoidal portal of the Atavachron, whose activation is indicated by a bright yellow light
"Kirk, go to your room!"

The second cause of frustration in this episode revolved around the fact that questions were never asked during the times when people were the safest. Again, our two subjects are Atoz and Kirk, but mainly Kirk. Had Kirk asked before he leapt to aid the sound of a screaming woman, he might have saved himself some trouble. Even Spock and McCoy fell into the same situation, chasing after Kirk’s voice as he had the woman. Have none of them ever been taught that the time to ask questions is when you are still at the library, not after you’ve left? Eventually Kirk and crew were able to formulate questions after they found themselves in predicaments. They discovered the answers which led to their salvations. All completely avoidable.

At the end of the day, these mistakes lead to the exploration of fantastical places with many surprises. The journey to the frozen wastes, where Spock and McCoy find the lonely and beautiful prisoner, pushes Spock and McCoy to the brink both physically and emotionally. Kirk has to find unwilling allies in a strange past to save himself from his own prison, and after all that, has to fight to prevent re-imprisonment to save the lives of this crew. I found it amazing that this episode was able to push beyond the cheap narrative devices to deliver a worthy hour of TV. It ultimately rewarded the viewer’s patience for putting up with these forgivable follies to get to some good sci-fi at the end. All gripes aside, I enjoyed watching “All Our Yesterdays”.

Four stars.





[March 16, 1969] Flight of the Space Spider (Apollo 9)



by Kaye Dee

Riding on Apollo's Coat-tails
The Traveller recently referred to President Nixon’s 8-day European tour, but it would seem Mr. Nixon deliberately decided to pave the way by riding on the coat-tails of the general international applause accorded to the historic Apollo-8 mission. Shortly before he announced his own trip to Europe, the President personally dispatched Apollo-8 commander Colonel Frank Borman and his family on an eight-nation European goodwill tour. (The other Apollo-8 crewmembers, already in training as part of the Apollo-11 backup crew, were not available to participate in the tour.)


Departing on 2 February, Col. Borman, his wife Susan, and two sons undertook a 19-day tour, visiting the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, West Germany (including West Berlin), Italy (including Vatican City), and Spain (like Australia, home to an Apollo Manned Space Flight Network station and a Deep Space Network facility): an itinerary very closely paralleling that later followed by President Nixon!

The Borman family meets the Royal Family and Col. Borman presents a picture of the Moon to the Pope during his goodwill tour of Europe

Col. Borman said that he was particularly gratified to make the journey because of a conviction that space efforts “can be a very positive force for creating better relations among the people of the world”.

A Long-Delayed Mission
But while Colonel Borman was embarking on his diplomatic mission, the crew of the long-delayed first test flight of the Lunar Module (LM) in Earth orbit were in the final stages of preparations for the Apollo-9 mission, which splashed down just a few days ago with all its objectives successfully completed. Intended to be Apollo-8, the mission was bumped later in the sequence due to a succession of technical delays in the development of the LM, the first manned spacecraft designed solely for operations in space.


Apollo-9’s main task was to qualify the LM for manned lunar flight, demonstrating that the craft could perform all the necessary manoeuvres required for a landing on the Moon. The flight was therefore intended to be very much a mission of “firsts” that would finally fully test-out the entire suite of hardware needed to accomplish a Moon landing mission. It would see the first flight of the complete Apollo Saturn vehicle – Saturn V launcher (AS-504 for this mission), Command Service Module (CSM-104) and Lunar Module (LM-3) – as well as the first docking and extraction of a LM from the Saturn S-IVB stage.


 
Putting the LM through its paces would involve the first flight tests of its upper and lower stages, with the first firings of their engines in space, and include the first rendezvous and docking between with the CSM and LM. The mission would also undertake the first spacewalk of the Apollo programme, to test the reliability of the Apollo A-7L space suit and the Portable Life Support System (PLSS) backpack, essential for lunar surface operations.

The Crew Who Waited
Original 1966 crew photo of Astronauts Scott, McDivitt and Schweickart. Their training for the flight that eventually became Apollo-9 commenced in January 1967, even before the Apollo-1 fire

Probably the best prepared mission crew to date, the Apollo-9 crew originally came together in January 1966, as the back-ups for Apollo-1, before being assigned as the first crew to fly the LM. Their 1,800 hours of mission-specific training was equivalent to about seven hours for every hour of their eventual flight!

With so much riding on a successful LM test flight, Apollo-9’s crew comprised two veteran Gemini astronauts and one rookie. Mission Commander Air Force Col. James McDivitt previously commanded the Gemini-IV mission, during which the first US EVA was conducted. Command Module Pilot Lt.-Col. David Scott, also with the US Air Force, was Pilot of Gemini-VIII, its flight cut short by the first US in-flight space emergency, but for which he undertook considerable EVA training.

Finally Go for launch! Astronauts McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart in their official Apollo-9 pre-flight crew portrait

The new kid on the block for Apollo-9 was LM Pilot Mr. Russell Schweickart, originally selected in the third group of astronauts in 1963. An experienced fighter pilot, serving with the U.S. Air Force and the Massachusetts Air National Guard between 1956 and 1963, Mr. Schweickart joined NASA as a civilian, from a position as a research scientist at the Experimental Astronomy Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Mr. Schweickart is nicknamed “Rusty” for his red hair (but in Australia, with our sense of humour, we’d have called him “Bluey”!).

Introducing Gumdrop and Spider
Because Apollo-9 would have two spacecraft from the same mission operating independently for the first time (unlike the Gemini VI-VII rendezvous, in which the two spacecraft were separate missions with their own callsigns), they each required separate callsigns for easy communications identification. NASA Administrators therefore finally lifted the ban on spacecraft names, which has been in operation since the beginning of the Gemini programme, permitting the crew to select their own names for the CM and LM.

The Apollo-9 CSM and LM being prepared for launch at Kennedy Space Centre

The astronauts chose “Gumdrop” for the CM, based on the shape of the capsule, which resembles the popular sweet, and “Spider” for the LM, given the spider-like appearance of the lander, with its four spindly legs. Unfortunately, it seems that certain NASA officials were not happy with these choices, feeling they were not dignified enough, so I hope they will not place restrictions on the names that can be selected for future missions, or force the crews to revert to dull numerical callsigns.

Patching Up
North American Rockwell artist Allen Stevens seems to be quite a favourite with the Apollo astronauts as a mission patch designer. He has designed the patches for Apollo-1, 7 and Apollo-9, and seems to have had a strong influence on the design of the Apollo-8 patch.

Stevens’ Apollo-9 patch evolved from a design he originally developed when Apollo-9 was still anticipated to be Apollo-8. The relatively simple concept depicts all the vehicle elements of the Apollo mission – the Saturn V in launch configuration, with the CSM and the LM flying separately as they would do during orbital test manoeuvres. In the final version of the design they appear against a mottled blue background that could represent either the Earth’s oceans or orbital space. Rather than show the CSM and LM docked together in orbit, as we often see them in NASA illustrations, Stevens chose to depict them in their on orbit ‘station-keeping’ positions, with the CSAM and LM facing each other, although this does give the impression that the CM is attempting to dock with the front of the LM!

Completing the design, the names of the crew and mission circle just inside the red-bordered edge of the patch, with the “D” in McDivitt’s name also filled in red. This is a nod to Apollo-9 being originally designated as the “D” mission in the sequence of Apollo flights prior to the Moon landing.

A Busy Moonport
Due to the long delay with the LM, preparations for Apollo-9 initially overlapped those of Apollo-7 and 8. By February, while the astronauts were spending long hours in mission simulators preparing for their flight, Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) was a hive of activity with Apollo-9 in the final stages of pre-launch testing, and advance preparations for Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 also underway (Apollo 10 is currently due for launch in May and Apollo 11 in July).  

In addition to Apollo-9’s launch preparations, the Apollo 10 spacecraft was moved from the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building (MSOB) to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for mating with its Saturn V launcher (above left); the first and second stages for the Apollo 11 Saturn V arrived, with the stacking of that launcher commencing in the VAB (above right); and the upper and lower stages of the Apollo 11 LM were also mated in the MSOB, in preparation for testing in the altitude chamber. NASA is really moving at a cracking pace to achieve a manned lunar landing this year!

An Unexpected Delay
The countdown for Apollo-9 commenced on 26 February, for a planned launch on the 28th. But fate stepped in to delay the crew’s trip to space just a bit longer! Ironically, despite their years of training for this mission, the astronauts pushed themselves so hard in their final weeks that, as launch day approached, they developed cold-like symptoms such as sore throats and nasal congestion.

Apollo-9's LM crew, McDivitt and Schweickart, training in the Lunar Module simualator

For NASA’s most complex manned mission to date, senior managers and flight surgeons wanted the crew to be in the best possible health for the 10-day flight. (They were probably also mindful of preventing a recurrence of the issues with the Apollo-7 crew, due to in-flight health problems). Consequently, the launch was rescheduled to 3 March to give the astronauts time to recover.

Finally on their Way!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once KSC medical director Dr Charles Berry finally cleared the crew for launch, Apollo-9 left the pad exactly on time at 16:00GMT on 3 March. Hopefully the smooth launch impressed Vice President Spiro Agnew (on right in the picture below), who was present in the Launch Control Centre in his new role as Head of the National Space Council, especially as President Nixon has asked his science adviser, Dr Lee Dubridge, to report on possible cost reductions within the US space programme.

To maximize the chances of accomplishing them, in case any problems forced an early return to Earth, the most critical mission tasks were scheduled for the first five days of the flight. So once the Saturn rocket’s S-IVB third stage and the CSM were safely in orbit, things moved quickly. During the second orbit, CM Pilot Scott turned the CSM and successfully docked with the Lunar Module, nestled in the Spacecraft-Lunar Module Adapter of the S-IVB stage. The linked spacecraft were ejected from the S-IVB, which was then remotely controlled to simulate Trans-Lunar Injection and eventually be sent into a solar orbit.

Demonstrating that the “probe and drogue” CM-LM docking assembly worked properly is another crucial step towards enabling the future Moon landing. If this system didn’t work, a lunar landing would not be possible.

Once the probe is inserted in the drogue it retracts and pulls the two spacecraft together so that a series of twelve latches locks them tight.

Burning Along
Six hours into the mission, the next task was to establish that the docked CSM-LM could be manoeuvred using the Service Module’s Service Propulsion System (SPS) engine. A five-second burn placed the CSM in an orbit of 125 by 145 miles, to improve its orbital lifetime. This short firing demonstrated the CSM guidance and navigation system’s ability to control the burn and showed that the LM’s relatively light structure could withstand thrust, acceleration and vibration.

Following the first sleep period on an Apollo mission during which all three astronauts slept at the same time, Apollo-9’s second day focussed on putting the SPS engine, and the CSM, to the test, through a series of three burns. The first burn, lasting 110 seconds, raised Apollo 9’s orbit to 213 miles and tested the structural dynamics of the docked spacecraft under conditions simulating a lunar mission. This involved gimballing (swivelling) the SPS engine to determine whether the spacecraft’s guidance and navigation autopilot could dampen the induced oscillations. The CSM remained very stable, with the oscillations damped within just five seconds.

Apollo spacecraft diagram key. CSM (right) and LM (launch configuration) docked. I – Lunar module descent stage; II – Lunar module ascent stage; III – Command module; IV – Service module. 1 LM descent engine skirt; 2 LM landing gear; 3 LM ladder; 4 Egress platform ("porch"); 5 Forward hatch; 6 LM reaction control system quad; 7 S-band inflight antenna (2); 8 Rendezvous radar antenna; 9 S-band steerable antenna; 10 Command Module crew compartment; 11 Electrical power system radiators; 12 SM reaction control system quad; 13 Environmental control system radiator; 14 S-band steerable antenna

The second SPS burn lasted 280 seconds, changing the orbit to 126 by 313 miles, while the short third burn, just 28.2 seconds, changed the plane of the spacecraft’s orbit. These orbital changes were designed to position Apollo-9 for better ground tracking and lighting conditions during upcoming mission activities.

Space Sickness Strikes
Entering the LM and checking out its systems was scheduled for flight day three, but planned operations were initially disrupted when space sickness reared its head. Flight surgeons still know little about this condition, which seems to affect some astronauts but not others, and some more than others.

A view inside Command Module Gumdrop

Both Col. McDivitt and Mr. Schweickart were affected, with McDivitt apparently experiencing some mild nausea. Mr. Schweickart, however, vomited in the CM and again later in the LM. When Col. McDivitt contacted the flight surgeons from the LM to report the medical situation, they were less than happy that the earlier incident had not been initially reported, as they could have treated Schweickart’s symptoms sooner.

Opening Up the LM
Although the initial bout of space sickness delayed the start of operations to clear the docking tunnel and access the LM, the astronauts were able to continue with the day’s activities, and both Commander and LM Pilot used the docking tunnel to make the first ever transfer between manned spacecraft without needing to spacewalk. With Lt.-Col. Scott remaining in the CM, and hatches between the Gumdrop and Spider closed, the LM’s communications and life support systems demonstrated that they were operating independently from the CM. Schweickart also deployed Spider’s landing legs (which had been folded for launch) into the position they would assume for landing on the Moon, giving the LM the appearance of its namesake!


A Jumping Spider!
During the nine hours they inhabited Spider, still docked to the CSM, Col. McDivitt and Mr. Schweickart conducted a major test of the Lunar Module’s descent engine, firing it for 367 seconds to simulate the pattern of throttling planned for a descent to the lunar surface. For the final 59 seconds of the burn McDivitt controlled the throttling, varying the thrust from 10 to 40 percent and shutting it off manually, marking the first manual throttling of an engine in space.

This burn, which demonstrated that the LM descent engine could manoeuvre the combined LM-CSM stack, was followed by an additional SPS firing after the LM crew returned to the CM. Together, these burns placed Apollo 9 into an orbit of 142 by 149 miles, ahead of the rendezvous exercises to be performed on day five.

Red Rover (Doesn’t Quite) Cross Over
The step-by-step testing program for Apollo-9 earmarked the fourth day of the mission for a spacewalk to test the reliability of the Apollo EVA suit and the PLSS backpack, necessary because it would be impractical and dangerous for astronauts to move across the Moon’s surface trailing umbilical lines connected to the LM. As the only EVA scheduled before the Moon landing, it was the single opportunity to test the PLSS operationally in space.

Astronaut Schweickart training for his planned EVA

Using the call sign “Red Rover”, “Rusty” Schweickart was originally scheduled to perform a two-hour EVA to simulate a space rescue technique in the event that a CM-LM docking could not be made, crossing from Spider to Gumdrop. This would have involved him exiting the hatch on the LM and making his way along the outside of the spacecraft to the CM hatch, where Lt.-Col. Scott would be standing by to assist access to the CM. However, the LM Pilot’s bout of space sickness led Col. McDivitt to initially cancel the EVA, due to the flight surgeons’ concerns about the dangers of vomiting in a spacesuit. This also meant the cancellation of a planned TV broadcast of the spacewalk itself, which would have been another first.

Wearing Golden Slippers
But with Mr. Schweickart feeling somewhat better by day four, a modified short EVA was substituted to enable the EVA equipment test to be carried out. After McDivitt and Schweickart again transferred to Spider, Mr. Schweickert climbed out onto the LM porch for a 37.5-minute EVA, exclaiming “Hey, this is like spectacular” as he stood in the void. For much of this time, the astronaut’s feet were held in gold-coloured restraints, nicknamed the “Golden Slippers”, but he was also able to move around the LM’s exterior using handholds to retrieve some experiments.

At the same time, David Scott, wearing a bright red helmet, made a stand-up EVA in Gumdrop’s hatch and both astronauts photographed each. Scott, too, retrieved experiments from outside the CM. Mr. Schweickart has said that he found moving around easier than it had been in simulations and was confident that he could have completed the spacewalk to the CM had it gone ahead.

The Spider Takes Flight

The key event in Apollo -9’s programme was the undocking and rendezvous tests scheduled for the fifth day of the mission. These manoeuvres would simulate all the activities required for a successful lunar landing and return to lunar orbit. With McDivitt and Schweickart in Spider, and Scott remaining in Gumdrop, the two craft undocked to commence a complex set of manoeuvres and burns of both the LM descent and ascent engines. These tests also carried a new element of danger. The Lunar Module has no ability to return to Earth on its own, since it lacks a heatshield: if something went seriously wrong its crew could end up stranded in space with no way home.

After 45 minutes separated but station keeping, an initial 24.9-second LM descent engine burn placed Spider into a 137 by 167 mile orbit; a second 24.4-second firing circularized the orbit around 154 by 160 miles, approximately 12 miles higher than Gumdrop. Over the next four hours, McDivitt fired the LM’s descent engine at several throttle settings, before lowering Spider’s orbit to begin a two-hour ‘chase’ to catch-up with Gumdrop. The LM descent stage was then jettisoned, and the ascent stage engine fired for the first time, lowering the LM’s orbit still further and placing Spider 75 miles behind and 10 miles below Gumdrop for the rendezvous manoeuvre.

Although it is planned that in future Moon missions, the Command Module pilot will conduct the rendezvous with a returning LM, for Apollo-9 Spider carried out the rendezvous, to demonstrate that the manoeuvre could be performed by either craft. Apart from this difference, the approach and rendezvous hewed as closely as possible to the current plans for lunar missions. Mission Commander McDivitt flew the LM close to Gumdrop, manoeuvring Spider so that CM Pilot Scott could see each side of the vehicle and inspect it for any damage. As he photographed the ascent stage, Scott joked “You’re the biggest, friendliest, funniest looking Spider I’ve ever seen.”

McDivitt then docked to the CM, guided by Scott, as Sun glare was interfering with his vision. Once Spider’s crew returned to Gumdrop, the ascent stage was jettisoned and remotely commanded to fire its engine to fuel depletion, simulating an ascent stage’s climb from the lunar surface. With the approach and rendezvous operation complete, the only major LM system that had not been fully tested during Apollo-9 was the lunar landing radar.

A Bit Camera Shy
Unlike the previous two missions, Apollo 9’s packed programme restricted the television broadcasts made by the astronauts. Spider was equipped with a Westinghouse b/w Lunar Surface Lunar TV Camera, identical to the one taken to be carried to the Moon’s surface on the first landing, as another equipment trial. This low-light “slow scan” camera produced a 320 line, 10 frames per second non-interlaced picture.

Only two broadcasts were from Spider. The first, seven minutes’ long, occurred on day three and showed Mr. Schweickart and Col. McDivitt working in the confined space of the LM. The second broadcast occurred shortly after the end of the EVA on the fourth day, with Spider’s crew still wearing their spacesuits.

The quality of this 15-minute transmission was much better than the previous day, and the crew treated viewers to a scene of Col. McDivitt eating. The camera was then pointed out the LM’s top window to show Gumdrop, then through one of the forward windows to glimpse one of Spider’s attitude control thruster quads and a landing leg. Finally, the view switched back into the cabin to show the LM’s instrument panel and a radiation detector. Once the LM ascent stage was jettisoned, on day five, there were no further broadcasts as the CM did not carry a television camera.

Cruisin' in Orbit
Once the crowded test schedule of the first five days was complete, the second five days of Apollo-9’s flight, intended to test the endurance of the CSM for the total length of a Moon landing mission, were quiet and relaxed by comparison.

Col. McDivitt thanked the Mission Control team for their work during the hectic first half of the mission and jokingly mused: “Might give you the impression that it might work, huh?” The crew sang a belated “Happy Birthdays” to Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., Director of Flight Operations at the Manned Spacecraft Centre, and Apollo 9 crew secretary Charlotte Maltese.

There were additional SPS burns on days six and eight to change the spacecraft’s orbit, with no major activities scheduled for the ninth day, although the astronauts made observations of the Pegasus 3 satellite, passing within 1,000 miles and 700 miles of Apollo 9 during two successive orbits. They also observed the LM ascent stage from about 700 miles away.

Observing the Earth
The main activity of the second half of the Apollo-9’s flight was the mission’s only formal scientific investigation, a programme of multi-spectral terrain photography, using four Hasselblad 70 mm cameras pointed out the CM’s round hatch window. This allowed photographs to be taken in four specific wavelengths of the visible and near infrared spectrum simultaneously.

Multi-spectral images. The same view of San Diego and parts of California in four different wavelengths

This experiment was designed to determine whether multi-spectral photography can be effectively utilised for earth resources programmes such as agriculture, forestry, geology, oceanography, hydrology, and geography. The results will help to refine the instruments for the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS), due for launch in 1972, Landsat, and techniques for multi-spectral photography to be conducted aboard the Skylab space station in the early 1970s.

Altogether 127 complete four-frame sets of photographs were taken over California, Texas, other areas of the southern United States, Mexico, the Caribbean and the Cape Verde Islands. Astronauts also took more than 1,100 standard Earth observation photographs of targets around the world, using colour and colour infrared film and a handheld Hasselblad camera.

Apollo-9 astronauts' colour photograph of the North Carolina coast and a colour infra-red view of California's Salton Sea

Coming Home
Apollo -9 returned to Earth on 13 March (the 14th for us here in Australia), the tenth day of the mission. Re-entry was delayed by one revolution due to heavy seas in the primary recovery area, but Gumdrop splashed down safely in the Atlantic, within three miles of the recovery ship, the USS Guadalcanal, after a mission totalling 241 hours, 53 seconds – just 10 seconds longer than planned!

On board the recovery ship, the crew were treated to a share of a 350-pound cake baked in their honour. Now safely back in Houston for their flight debriefings, NASA’s attention – and the world’s – is already turning to Apollo-10, due to fly in May to test the LM around the Moon!

Ready for the Next Steps
While Apollo-9 might not have seemed as exciting a mission as Apollo-8’s epic lunar voyage, it was critical because it has simulated in Earth orbit, as far as possible, many of the conditions that the astronauts and their equipment will face when the lunar landing attempt is made. Beyond that first landing and its successors, there is the Apollo Applications Programme, and other developments such as the Skylab manned earth orbiting workshop. Everything that has been learned in space with Apollo-9 will be useful sooner or later in future space activities!

And you can bet we'll be covering each and every one of them here on the Journey…

Apollo-9 view of the Moon


[March 14, 1969 ] (March 1969 Galactoscope)

It's a highly superior clutch of books this month around—plus a double review of the new Vonnegut…


by Victoria Silverwolf

Sophomore Efforts

By coincidence, the last two books I read were both the second novels to be published by their authors. Otherwise, they are as different as they could be.

The Null-Frequency Impulser, by James Nelson Coleman


Cover art by John Schoenherr.

Coleman's first book was something called Seeker From the Stars. I haven't read it, so I can't comment. In fact, I was completely unfamiliar with this author, so I asked my contacts in fandom and the publishing industry about him. I turned up a couple of interesting facts.

Firstly, he's one of the few Black science fiction writers. (The most notable is, of course, the great Samuel R. Delany.) That's a good thing for the field. The more variety of writers, the better the fiction.

Secondly, he's currently in jail for burglary. It seems that he's taken up writing while incarcerated. That seems like a decent path to rehabilitation, so let's wish him good luck while paying his debt to society.

But is the book any good? Let's find out.

At some time in the future, humanity has reached the far reaches of the solar system. However, a conglomeration of business interests known as the Five Companies has put a stop to further development of space science, unless they control it. They're so powerful that they have their own secret police. Not even the World Government or the Space Patrol can keep them from crippling research.

Our protagonist is Catherine Rogers. She is part of a private space research group that dares to defy the Five Companies. Trouble starts when a scientist shows up at their headquarters, shot by the secret police. Just before dying, he gives Catherine and her colleagues a book and a key to a hidden cache of highly advanced technology brought from another world.

We quickly find out that two aliens in the form of glowing spheres are on Earth. One of them is insanely evil. He kidnapped the other, who is essentially the queen bee of her species. He intends to mate with her against her will, forcing her to produce one hundred million offspring (!) who will be raised to be as wicked as himself.

He wants to feed off the life force of human beings, and teach his children to do the same, wiping out humanity. Complicating matters is the fact that the evil alien shares his mind with one of the leaders of the secret police, who wants to get his hands on the advanced technology.

This all happens very early in the book, and we've got a long way to go. Suffice to say that Catherine and her friends work with the good alien, who has enormous psychic powers, to defeat the bad one.

The author's writing style isn't very sophisticated, sad to say, nor is the plot. Much of the time I imagined this story as a comic book. On the good side, the pace keeps getting faster and faster. By the end, it makes Keith Laumer look like Henry James.

I also appreciate the fact that the heroes are of mixed races, and a large number of them are women. All in all, however, I have to confess that this is a disappointing work.

Two stars.

The Place of Sapphires, by Florence Engel Randall.


Uncredited cover art.

Randall's first novel was called Hedgerow. I haven't read that one either, but apparently it's a Gothic Romance without supernatural elements.

Unlike Coleman, I'm familiar with this author. She had two excellent stories published in Fantastic a few years ago.

Will she be as adept at a longer length? Let's take a look.

An automobile accident claims the lives of the parents of two sisters. Elizabeth (twenty-four years old) escapes without a scratch, but Gabrielle (nineteen) is severely injured. The two young women move into a house owned by the great-aunt of a doctor who cared for Gabrielle during her long and painful recovery.

The house is located on an island off the coast of New England, the perfect setting for a Gothic Romance. Elizabeth and the doctor fall in love, giving us the other mandatory element for this genre.

The first half of the book is narrated by Gabrielle. On the very first page she feels the presence of Alarice, a woman who lived in the house long ago. (She's the dead sister of the great-aunt. Throughout the book, there's a strong parallel between the two pairs of sisters, including a love triangle.)

It's obvious from the start that Gabrielle is mentally and emotionally unstable, after her traumatic experience, so it's not always clear what's real and what's not. The second half of the book is narrated by Elizabeth, who gives us a very different perspective on events, including the tragic accident.

I haven't mentioned a third narrator, who shows up only a few pages from the end, adding a genuinely chilling touch.

This is a beautifully written book, with great psychological insight into its characters. Besides gorgeous language that makes me want to read it out loud, it has a plot as intricately woven as a spider web. We witness the same things happen from different viewpoints, completely changing what we thought we knew.

Five stars.



by Brian Collins

This month's Ace Double is a very good one for both Fritz Leiber fans and readers in general. The quality packed into this Double is unsurprising, though, since it is all reprints. There's the short collection Night Monsters, which contains four stories that all run in the horror vein. Three of these stories were previously printed in Fantastic, and so Victoria covered them some years ago. The other half is The Green Millennium, one of Leiber's more overlooked novels, first published in 1953 and not having seen print in the U.S. in about fifteen years.

Ace Double 30300

Cover art for Ace Double 30300. The cover for Night Monsters is by Jack Gaughan while the cover for The Green Millennium is by John Schoenherr.
Cover art by Jack Gaughan and John Schoenherr.

The Black Gondolier, by Fritz Leiber

The longest story here is also the best, at least in terms of the sheer beauty of Leiber's prose. It's Southern California in the early '60s, and the narrator is recounting the strange ramblings of a friend of his who would disappear under mysterious circumstances. Said friend believes that not only is oil a corrupting force, but that oil might somehow be alive. The supernatural is never seen but is strongly alluded to, in passages so evocative, so oppressive, that they compare with Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The plot itself is rather structureless, but this doesn't matter because Leiber is so good at chronicling modern horrors such as industry and the urban landscape. I lived in California (in Pasadena) for a short time, and I'll be sure never to return.

Five stars.

Midnight in the Mirror World, by Fritz Leiber

Another contender for best in the collection is a more personal, more melancholy story. A middle-aged man, a chess-player, astronomer, and divorcee who reads somewhat like a stand-in for Leiber, sees a silhouetted figure behind him in the doubled mirrors he sees going up and down the stairs every night. Without giving away the ending, the apparition may be the ghost of a theatre actress he had met by chance who had committed suicide not long after their encounter. The man, in an attack of conscience, is confronted with a memory he had suppressed, of a person he had deeply wronged, though he didn't know it at the time. It's a ghost story, a striking portrait of guilt, and in a strange way, a love story.

Five stars.

I'm Looking for "Jeff", by Fritz Leiber

As an unintended companion to the previous story, this one is interesting. It also features a ghostly woman who has been wronged, albeit the crime committed upon her is much worse. We're led to believe at first that this woman is simply a temptress, but while she may creep up on the unsuspecting male lead, she is not a totally malicious specter. "I'm Looking for 'Jeff'" is about a decade older than the other stories, and it certainly shows a restraint (given the horrific crime at the center) that Leiber would probably not show if he had written it today. My one real problem is the ending, which is an expositional monologue from a third party that explains the twist, rather than Leiber showing us what happened.

Four stars.

The Casket-Demon, by Fritz Leiber

The last and shortest is also the most lighthearted; it's what you might call a horror-comedy. An actress is quite literally fading (her body is becoming more transparent) as her popularity is on the decline, so she resorts to a very old family ritual that might make her famous again—at a price. The satire is cute, although I think Leiber tackled something similar but better and more seriously in "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes." I'm also not sure about those rhyming couplets. It's fine, but ultimately minor.

Three stars.

The Green Millennium, by Fritz Leiber

Phil Gish is aimless and unemployed, but his life quickly gets turned upside down when he meets a green cat he takes an immediate liking to. He calls the cat Lucky, and like Lovecraft, who liked taking care of strays, he thinks of the animal as his own—only for Lucky to run off. Man gets cat, man loses cat, man goes looking for cat. This is the skeleton on which the book's plot is built, but it balloons into something much weirder and more convoluted.

The future America of The Green Millennium is dystopic, but not in ways we now take as obvious. Robots have become normalized, taking away much of human labor, and the people themselves are largely hedonists desperate for stimulation—not even for pleasure itself but more to fight off boredom. Despite being first published in 1953, it reads like something written in the past few years—in the wake of the New Wave and even something like Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Certainly it could not have been serialized in the magazines of the time, what with the explicit references to sex and drug use.

The plot, at its core, is simple, but Leiber introduces a colorful array of characters, all of whom want Lucky as much as Phil does. These characters include, but are not limited to, a husband-wife wrestling duo, an analyst who sounds like he himself could use an analyst, a woman with prosthetic legs that hide what seem to be hooves for feet, a pack of corporate higher-ups who may as well be mobsters, actual mobsters, and a few others I have not mentioned. The green cat might be an alien, or a mutant, or a weapon devised by the Soviets, I won't say which.

I might sound inebriated as I'm trying to explain all this, but let me assure you that I haven't smoked or ingested marijuana in five months!

Leiber is a mixed bag when it comes to comedy: he can be pretty funny, but he can also write The Wanderer. The Green Millennium is a madcap SF comedy that was written at a time (the early '50s) when Leiber could seemingly do no wrong, and it demonstrates his keen understanding of things that haunt the modern American. Most importantly, it's just a lot of fun.

Four stars.



by Gideon Marcus

Seahorse in the Sky, by Edmund Cooper

On a routine flight from Stockholm to London, sixteen travellers (eight women and eight men) with no connection to each other, find themselves whisked to another world. Their new environs are suggestive of nothing so much as a zoo habitat designed to be reminiscent of home. To wit: a strip of highway flanked by a supermarket and a hotel, complete with electricity and running water. Two automobiles sans engines. A few workshops. A nightly replenished supply of booze, groceries, and tools.

Russell Graheme, M.P., quickly takes charge of the unwilling emigrants, organizing exploration parties. Soon, contact is made with a medievalist enclave, a Stone Age encampment…and what appear to be flocks of fairies.

What is this world? Who brought them there? And to what end? Those are the key riddles answered in this terrific little new book.

It's sort of a cross between Cooper's book Transit (in which five humans are transported to an extraterrestrial island) and Philip José Farmer's "Riverworld" series (in which everyone who ever lived is transported, along with his/her culture, to the banks of an extraterrestrial world-river) with a touch of the whimsy of L. Sprague de Camp (viz. The Incomplete Enchanter). It reads extremely quickly, and what with the short chapters and quick running time, you'll be done with the novel (novella?) before you know it.

What really engaged me, beyond the tight writing and fine characterization, was the central message of hope throughout the book. In "Riverworld", the various cultures who find themselves alongside each other in the hereafter almost immediately form belligerent statelets; war is the constant in Farmer's series. But in Seahorse, it's all about making peaceful contact, working together, having a productive goal. There's no Lord of the Flies to this story (though it is not unmitigatedly happy, either). Cooper clearly has a positive view of humanity, or at least wants to inspire us toward his idealistic vision. Count me in.

Five stars.

Contrast this upbeat book with the other one I read recently…

Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

By page 100, Gideon determined that Slaughterhouse Five is not a book one enjoys, but rather experiences.

Two thirds of the way through the book, Gideon realized he'd been hoodwinked. Slaughterhouse Five is not science fiction at all, but rather the author's attempt to convey his experiences as a POW in Nazi Germany during the War, culminating in his presence at the firebombing of Dresden (now sited in East Germany). The SFnal wrapping, in which Billy Pilgrim is abducted by 4D aliens who unstick him in time and incarcerate him in an extraterrestrial zoo, seems there mostly to get eyes on the book. Or maybe to maintain a certain detachment from the material by changing the genre from "memoir."

For the same reason Billy Pilgrim, the eternal schlemiel, gets to be the closest thing the book has to a hero rather than the author, himself. The only way Vonnegut could work through his battle fatigue and War-derived ennui was to make the protagonist as hopeless and hapless as possible, to reflect the flannel-wrapped blinders through which the author now sees the world. To Vonnegut, Earth is a pathetic stage on which man inflicts indignity on himself and then on others. Then they die. So it goes.

On or about page 81, Gideon got a little tired of the fairy-tale language Vonnegut employs. It worked in Harrison Bergeron, but it's a bit of a one-trick pony.

Somewhere along the line, Gideon figured that the inclusion of the starlet, Miss Montana (who exists to provide someone besides the enormous Mrs. Pilgrim for Billy to stick his hefty wang into) was so that, in addition to appealing to SF fans, the book would appeal to horny SF fans. And horny readers in general. And because S.E.X. s.e.l.l.s.

Kilgore Trout, if he existed, would probably be reprinted these days in Amazing.

About a third of the way in, Gideon determined that he would write the review of Slaughterhouse Five in the style of Slaughterhouse Five.

Whatever the book is not, it is, at the very least, a memorable account of the author's feelings toward and memories of those dark last months of the war. It is a poignant counterpoint to all the jingoistic WW2 films that have come out this decade, and perhaps a more suitable epitaph for the millions who died in that conflict. So it goes.

Four stars.



by Cora Buhlert

War is hell: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Last month, thousands of people gathered in Dresden to remember the victims of the Allied bombings in the night from February 13 to 14, 1945, the night from Shrove Tuesday to Ash Wednesday and never was a day more aptly named. These memorial gatherings happen every year and while the number of East German officials and politicians attending and the degree of belligerence in their speeches waxes and wanes with the greater political situation (East German officials like using the Dresden bombings for propaganda purposes as an example of the infamy of the West), one thing that remains constant is the number of Dresdeners who come to remember the dead and the nigh total destruction of their city.

Frauenkirche Dresden
The burnt out ruin of the Church of Our Lady in Dresden, once a jewel of Baroque architecture.

Dresden Semper opera
The Semper opera house in Dresden after the bombings. The exterior is still standing, but the once gorgeous interior is burned completely out.

I have never seen Dresden before 1945, though my grandmother who grew up in the area told me it was a beautiful city and how much she missed attending performances at the striking Semper opera house, which was largely destroyed by the bombings and is in the process of being rebuilt (The proposed completion date is 1985). However, I have visited the modern Dresden with its constant construction activity and incongruous mix of burned out ruins, historical buildings in various stages of reconstruction and newly constructed modernist office and apartment blocks and could keenly feel what was lost.

Dresden postcard
Views of the modern rebuilt Dresden in postcard form

I also know survivors of the Dresden bombings such as my university classmate Norbert who witnessed Dresden burning as teenager evacuated to the countryside and who – much like Kurt Vonnegut – was forced to help with the clean-up work and body recovery and wrote a harrowing account of his experiences for the university literary magazine.

Of course, Dresden was not the only German city bombed. Every bigger German city has its own Dresden, that night when entire neighbourhoods were wiped out and thousands of people, the vast majority of them civilians, were killed. For my hometown of Bremen, the night was the night of August 18, 1944, when Allied bombers destroyed the Walle neighbourhood next to Bremen harbour (while miraculously missing most of the harbour itself, similar to how the bombing of Dresden miraculously missed the industrial plants on the outskirts of the city). My grandfather, a retired sea captain, lived in the Walle neighbourhood. He was one of the lucky ones and survived, though his home in a housing estate for retired seafarers was destroyed. I remember sifting through the still smoking rubble of Grandpa's little house with my Mom the next day, looking for anything that might have survived the bombs and the firestorm and finding only two bronze buddha statues that Grandpa had brought back from Thailand. These two buddhas now stand guard in my living room, the war damage still visible. Meanwhile, the street where Grandpa once lived no longer exists on modern city maps at all.

Old Slaughterhouse in Dresden
An aerial view of Dresden's old slaughterhouse, where Kurt Vonnegut was imprisoned and survived the bombing of the city.

This is the perspective from which I read Kurt Vonnegut's latest novel Slaughterhouse Five, which uses science fiction as a vehicle for Vonnegut to describe his experiences as a prisoner of war who survived the bombing of Dresden and – like my classmate Norbert – never forgot what he saw that night and in the days that followed.

The result, much like the contemporary Dresden with the burned out ruin of the Church of Our Lady overlooking a parking lot and a hyper-modern restaurant and entertainment complex sitting directly opposite the newly restored Baroque Zwinger palace, is jarring and incongruous. Vonnegut's protagonist is Billy Pilgrim, an American everyman whose suburban postwar life is disrupted when he is abducted by aliens and becomes unstuck in time, forced to revisit the bombing of Dresden over and over and over again.

Ruins of the Church of Our Lady in Dresden in winter
No, this photo of the burnt out ruin of the Church of Our Lady in winter was not taken in 1945, but in 1960. It still looks the same today.

Dresden in the 1960s
A banner advertises an exhibtion of contemporary Soviet art, while the ruins of Baroque Dresden loom in the background.

Restaurant complex Am Zwinger in Dresden
The ultra-modern restaurant complex Am Zwinger, the largest in all of East Germany, opened only last year – directly opposite the newly restored Baroque Zwinger palace.

Aerial view of the restaurant complay Am Zwinger
Aerial view of the ultra-modern restaurant complex Am Zwinger, which includes a self-service restaurant, the Radeberger beer cellar and the Café Espresso, pictured here. Just don't expect the coffee on offer to actually taste like espresso.

Restaurant complex Am Zwinger, terrace
Tourists lounge in the terrace café of the restaurant complex Am Zwinger, overlooking the recently rebuilt Baroque Zwinger palace.

Slaughterhouse Five is not so much a novel, it is a metaphor for the trauma of war, a trauma that still hasn't subsided even twenty-four years later but that keep rearing its ugly head again and again. Many veterans report having flashbacks to particularly traumatic experiences during the war – any war. But while those flashbacks are purely psychological, poor Billy Pilgrim physically travels back in time to the worst night of his life over and over again.

Barely a blip on the radar

The bombings of World War II loom large in the collective memory of people in Germany and the rest of Europe, yet they are comparatively rarely addressed in contemporary German literature. Der Untergang (The End: Hamburg) by Hans Erich Nossack from 1948, Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben (A Time to Love and a Time to Die) by Erich Maria Remarque (who was not even in Germany, but sitting high and dry in Switzerland during WWII) from 1954 and Vergeltung (Retaliation) by Gert Ledig from 1956 are some of the very few examples. It's not as if World War II plays no role in German literature at all, because we have dozens of war novels. However, these are all tales about the experiences of soldiers on the frontline, not about the civilians getting bombed to smithereens back home. Most likely, this is because war novels focus on the experiences of men (and note that both Slaughterhouse Five and Remarque's A Time to Love and a Time to Die focus on soldiers experiencing bombings and air raids) and the experiences of men are deemed important. Meanwhile, the people who suffered and died during the bombing nights of World War II were mainly women, children, old people, sick people, prisoners of war, concentration camp prisoners and forced labourers and their experiences are not deemed nearly as relevant.

A Time to Love and a Time to Die by Erich Maria Remarque

Retaliation by Gert Ledig

Considering how utterly destructive the bombing of Dresden was, it's notable that it is barely a blip on the radar of German literature in both East and West. Erich Kästner's memoir Als ich ein kleiner Junge war (When I was a little boy) touches on the bombing of Dresden, where Kästner grew up, though the book is not about the bombing itself, which Kästner did not experience first-hand, because he was living in Berlin at the time. And for the twentieth anniversary of the Dresden bombings, Ulrike Meinhof, one of the brightest lights of West German journalism, penned a scathing article for the leftwing magazine Konkret, condemning Winston Churchill and Royal Air Force commander Arthur Harris for ordering the attack on Dresden under false pretences. "Was Winston Churchill a war criminal?" the cover of the respective issue of Konkret asked, while quite a lot of readers wondered why this was even a question.

Issue 4, 1965 of Konkret

When I was a little boy by Erich Kästner

So should Slaughterhouse Five, a work by an American author, albeit one who witnessed the bombing of Dresden first-hand, become the definitive account of the destruction of Dresden and of the bombing nights of World War II in general? I hope not, because I want to read more accounts by German civilians about the bombings of World War II. Nonetheless, I'm glad that Slaughterhouse Five exists, as an account about the horrors of war by one who has seen them. I'm also glad that this novel was published in the US, because too many Americans still consider the bombings of cities and civilians during World War II justified. Maybe Slaughterhouse Five will make some of them reconsider, especially since – as I said above – it wasn't just Dresden that was destroyed by bombing. It was also Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Rotterdam, Coventry, Guernica, Hamburg and right now, it's Hanoi. And the next generation's Billy Pilgrim is currently locked up in a bamboo cage in the Vietnamese jungle somewhere, watching the flames over Hanoi turn the sky blood red.

Not a pleasant book at all, but an important one. Four and a half stars.

A Tale of Two Wizards: The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs

The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs

And now for something much more pleasant. For after a difficult book like Slaughterhouse Five, you need a palate cleanser. Luckily, I found the perfect palate cleanser in The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs, a young American writer currently living in Britain. The Face in the Frost is thirty-year-old Bellairs' third book and his first foray in the fantasy genre.

John Bellairs
John Bellairs

The novel starts off with a prologue that informs us that this is a book about wizards – just in case readers of Bellairs' previous two books, collections of Catholic humour pieces, are confused – and then introduces us to the setting, two adjacent kingdoms known only as the North and the South Kingdom. Such prologues can be dry and boring, but Bellairs' whimsical humour, which is on display throughout the book, makes them fun to read.

Once the introductions are out of the way, we meet our protagonist, the wizard Prospero ("not the one you're probably thinking of", Bellairs helpfully informs us) or rather his home, "a huge, ridiculous, doodad-covered, trash-filled two-story horror of a house that stumbled, staggered, and dribbled right up to the edge of a great shadowy forest of elms and oaks and maples", which Prospero shares with a sarcastic talking mirror which can offer glimpses of faraway times and places, though mostly, it's just annoying and also has a terrible singing voice.

Illustration from The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs
Prospero's house, as illustrated by Marilyn Fitschen

This first chapter very much sets the tone for the entire novel, humorous and whimsical – with moments of dread occasionally creeping in. For Prospero has been plagued by bad dreams of late, he has the feeling that a malicious presence is watching him and finds himself menaced by a fluttering cloak, while getting a mug of ale from his own cellar. To top off Prospero's very bad day, he finds himself attacked by a monstrous moth that "smells like a basement full of dusty newspapers".

Luckily, Prospero's friend and fellow wizard Roger Bacon – and note that this time around, Bellairs does not inform us, that this is not the one we're thinking of, so this likely is the famed medieval scholar and creator of a talking brazen head – chooses just this evening to drop by for a visit, after having been kicked out of England, when a spell went awry and instead of constructing a wall of brass around the island in order to keep out Viking raiders, Bacon instead raised a wall of glass with predictable results.

As the two old friends discuss the day's events, it quickly becomes clear that something or rather someone is after Prospero and all that this is linked to a mysterious book that Bacon tried to locate on Prospero's behalf. However, it's late at night, so the two wizards go to bed, only to awaken in the morning to find the house surrounded by sinister grey-cloaked figures, sent by a rival wizard. There's no way out – except via an underground river that the two wizards navigate aboard a model ship, after shrinking themselves down to toy size.

A Magical Mystery Tour

What follows is a marvellous, magical quest, as Prospero and Bacon attempt to figure out just who is after Prospero and once they do, how to stop that villainous sorcerer from casting a spell that will plunge the whole world into everlasting winter. On the way, the two wizards encounter such fascinating locations as the village of Five Dials, which turns out to be an illusion, a magical Potemkin village of hollow houses inhabited by hollow people. They also escape all sorts of horrors their opponent sends against them such as a magical puddle that will capture a person's reflection, should they happen to look into it, and of course the titular face that appears in a frost-encrusted window to mock and menace Prospero.

Fantasy is experiencing something of a boom right now, triggered by the paperback release of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and Lancer's reprints of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan the Cimmerian. But while Conan has inspired a veritable legion of other fantastic swordsmen and barbarian warriors from Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné to Lin Carter's Thongor, Lord of the Rings has inspired very few imitators. Until now.

This does not mean that The Face in the Frost is a carbon copy of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. Quite the contrary, it's very much its own story, even though the Tolkien inspiration is clear and was acknowledged by Bellairs. Furthermore, Bellairs' light and frothy tone makes The Face in the Frost a very different, if no less magical experience than Professor Tolkien's magnum opus.

The Face in the Frost is a delightful book, skilfully mixing humour and whimsy with horror and dread, and the illustrations by Marilyn Fitschen help bring the wonderful world of Prospero and Roger Bacon to life. The ending certainly leaves room for a sequel and I hope that we will get to read it sooner rather than later. At any rate, I can't wait to see what John Bellairs writes next.

A wondrous confection of whimsy, horror and pure joy. Five stars.


by Robin Rose Graves

Society Without Gender…

Another year, another Le Guin. For those tuning in for the first time, my introduction to Le Guin began two years ago, with her novel City of Illusions, which left me disappointed. Last year, I read A Wizard of Earthsea, where finally I saw Le Guin’s potential realized. When I saw she has another book coming out this year, I was interested, but reined in my expectations when I realized The Left Hand of Darkness would take place in the same universe as City of Illusions.

This is book four of the Hainish Cycle, but fortunately, you do not need to read these books in order to understand the story. In fact, I found little connection between this book and the previous one.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Genly Ai is an envoy sent to the snowy planet of Winter to convince the people to join the Ekumen (a sort of alliance between planets). Winter, or Gethen in their native language, is not as technologically advanced as the rest of the universe. They have yet to build airplanes, let alone a vehicle capable of space travel. Following an outsider’s perspective allows readers to learn about a new culture alongside the narrative main character.

As per my experience with her previous works, Le Guin excels at creating compelling and unique settings. Smaller, intermediate chapters offer folkloric stories from the planet of Winter to further enhance the reader’s understanding of Gethenian culture.

All the characters are human, though the Gethenians differ in one key way. They are completely androgynous except for once a month when they enter their reproductive cycle (known as “kemmer”) where they then shift into either male or female (as in they can either impregnate or become pregnant.) Which role a Gethenian will take on during kemmer is not predetermined and can change between cycles.

This confuses and occasionally disgusts Genly Ai, who regards all characters with he and him pronouns, perhaps because he is male and unable to empathize with or respect anyone who isn’t.

Without gender, Le Guin posits that there is no sexuality, no rape, no war. People who get pregnant are not treated as lesser. Children are raised by everyone, not just the person who gave birth to them. Jobs account for kemmer, giving time off for those experiencing their cycle, and special buildings are set aside for reproduction.

Contrasted with the world we live in today, this book subtly calls out the sexism of our own society, while also exemplifying how we may improve. I was pleasantly surprised by the feminist slant of this book.

Five stars.


Reflections in a Mirage, by Leonard Daventry


By Jason Sacks

Leonard Daventry is a British science fiction author whose work tends to follow standard pathways – until it doesn’t. As my fellow Galactic companion Gideon Marcus wrote about one of Mr. Daventry’s previous novels, Daventry likes to explore ideas of free love and complex relationships, using familiar set-ups with slightly surprising resolutions.

His latest book, Reflections in a Mirage, is an excellent demonstration of how Mr. Daventry takes on those challenges while delivering his own unique view of the world. Unfortunately, this novel is perhaps overly ambitious for its length. Mirage consequently falls short of the author’s clear goals.

We return to the lead character Daventry established back in 1965 in A Man of Double Deed: Claus Coman is a telepath, a so-called “keyman” who can create connections to minds of both humans and non-humans. Coman is enlisted to join a motley band of outcasts and criminals who journey to one of the many worlds which humanity has discovered among the vast stars: a forbidding but intriguing planet called Sacron. Coman at least has the comfort of traveling with longtime companion Jonl, a woman with whom he’s had a complex relationship.

But just as many British exiles to Australia rebelled against their crew, the group of 50 outcasts rebel against the crew of their space cruiser. A violent, vicious battle kills most of the men who can fly the cruiser, and terrible damage is visited upon the ship. They only have one choice: to land on the planet which is ironically called Paradise 1. Paradise 1 seems to be a desert world, nearly bereft of any life whatsoever, but there are hints the planet may be more complex than it initially seems.

In fact, we get an intriguing revelation towards the end of the book (with a few concepts which will be well understood by Star Trek fans), but I found myself hungering for more context of the deeper story. At a mere 191 paperback pages, I was constantly under the impression that Daventry had to cut out important elements to the story; its brevity leaves the conclusion feeling a bit unsatisfying.

Reflections in a Mirage is at its best when it explores the human relationships it depicts. Coman’s relationship with Jonl is at the center of the story and provides a happy connection where so many of the other connections are tenuous. Daventry spends some time showing Jonl’s relationship with other women on the colony ship – the men and women are partitioned away from each other – and alludes to furtive, loving relationships among the women. There are similar hints about some of the men's connections to each other, and a strong implication that this society accepts a full gamut of sexuality, from polygamy to homosexuality and even to asexuality.

All of that is very interesting, and places this novel firmly in a “new wave” mindset, but there’s just not enough of it to satisfy. Ultimately, Reflections in a Mirage has the potential to be great, but I felt Daventry needed at least 100 more pages to fully illuminate his story.

You’ll probably be more satisfied reading some of the other works in this column. (I do recommend the LeGuin and Vonnegut books.)

3 stars




[March 12, 1969] Rock Opera (Star Trek: "The Savage Curtain")


by Erica Frank

This episode opened with the Enterprise circling an uninhabitable lava planet with a poisonous atmosphere, but anomalous readings of some kind of civilization or power source. They planned to leave anyway, until they got a message…from Abraham Lincoln.

title card for the episode superimposed over an over the Sulu and navigator shot of the viewscreen with Abraham Lincoln sitting in a high-backed chair against the background of space
"Welcome to Washington, Captain Kirk!"

Our crew is now very experienced with meetings with aliens who seem to be people from history or mythology. Most of them wanted to call his bluff immediately, but Kirk played along: he wanted to find out what's happening.

What's happening: A creature made of rock has decided to figure out what good and evil are by pitting four "good" heroes against four "evil" villains for the edification of its people.

a roughly humanoid rock creature with multiple glowing eyes stands in front of a styrofoam rock formation
Your host for the evening: an Excalbian rock creature that can read minds, terraform parts of a lava world, and shapeshift.

The Excalbian had arranged for Kirk and Spock—two people on the side of "good" (and the only living people involved)—to be joined by Abraham Lincoln, whom Kirk respects deeply, and Surak, the Vulcan philosopher who led the Vulcans out of war into their modern peaceful, logical society.

screen capture of Spock, Kirk, Abraham Lincoln, and Surak
Abraham Lincoln dresses and speaks like a 19th-century statesman. Ancient Vulcan philosophers apparently dress and speak like the hippies who hang out at Haight & Ashbury in San Francisco today.

They were given opponents: Four of the worst villains from history (three of which we have never heard of before this episode)—two humans, one Klingon, and one other.

The Excalbians wished to "discover which is the stronger" of good or evil, and they had arranged what they call a "drama" with all the delicacy of a small child placing bugs in a jar and shaking it. In essence, "Here, we have put you all together and demanded you fight… whoever lives, that side must be the strongest."

As leverage to force the "good" side to fight, Kirk's crew would all be killed if he fails. The villains faced no such threats. Nor could they; whatever family or friends or honored associates they once had, none are alive today.

screen capture of the four villains of the episode. Genghis Khan is in furs, Colonel Green is in a red jumpsuit, Zora also in furs but with a bare midriff, and Kahless is in the standard Klingon uniform of stripped grey mesh vest and pants over a black long-sleeve shirt
The villain line-up, from left to right: Genghis Khan, who needs (or at least gets) no introduction; Colonel Green, a genocidal war leader from 21st century Earth; Zora, a mad scientist from Tiburon; Kahless the Unforgettable, the Klingon tyrant.

At first, I wondered about the inclusion of Zora and Kahless: Is Klingon history so well-known to Kirk and Spock that the Excalbians can draw him from their minds? But the Federation and Klingons have been at odds for some time; they might well be familiar with their most famous historical figures. Zora seemed an outlier—until I remembered where I'd heard of Tiburon. It was the home of Dr. Sevrin, who led the quest for Planet Eden. (Apparently Tiburon has a history of unethical doctors.) Spock might well have known more about the planet's history.

The events that followed were annoyingly predictable. Green briefly attempted to negotiate, which was a distraction for an attack; the villains were driven off; Surak followed to speak to them, which resulted in his death; Lincoln tried to rescue him only to die as well; Kirk and Spock managed to defeat or drive off all four of the villains by themselves.

The Excalbian declared them the winners, but said he does not see any difference between their two philosophies. Kirk pointed out that he was fighting for the lives of his crew but the villains were fighting for personal power or glory. The Excalbian did not seem convinced, but sent them on their way, unharmed.

What was missing: Any mention that the value of "good" over "evil" is not shown on a battlefield, but in day-to-day living. That one strength of "good" is cooperation and shared resources—nearly irrelevant in a fabricated setting, with no time to develop tools, and a pre-selected pool of people who were chosen to play specific roles.

screen cap of Colonel Green, a swarthy middle-aged man in a red jump suit holding a sharpened stick taking cover behind a styrofoam boulder
Colonel Green, the only white man on the "villain" team, watches from behind a rock while his companions fight for their lives. Maybe their lack of unity did matter.

I would have liked more consideration of the true nature of the six historical people: Just before they beamed "Lincoln" aboard the Enterprise, Spock said his readings were those of a "living rock" with claws. It seems likely that all the other people were Excalbians playing the part of historical characters. They were offered "power" if they won—but what would that mean? Would the other Excalbians hand them each spaceships and send them along to their respective planets? What could they possibly offer Genghis Khan?

Three stars. Interesting, but the pacing was odd (long, slow buildup to a couple of quick fight scenes), and I wanted more from both the philosophical and science fiction aspects.


Fair to Middlin’


by Janice L. Newman

Star Trek does like its ‘message’ episodes. Sometimes, as with "Day of the Dove or "The Enterprise Incident", the scriptwriter does a pretty good job of addressing the issues of the day. Other times, the scriptwriter does a poor or muddled job of Saying Something, as in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield".

The Savage Curtain falls somewhere between these two extremes. Roddenberry had a couple of pretty clear messages he wanted to send: “violence can be justified if the cause is just” and “peace is an admirable goal, but one that takes time and sacrifice, and in the meantime sometimes violence is necessary”. It’s not surprising that the man who wrote (or re-wrote) “A Private Little War” would want to make these points. But in doing so, he missed the chance to make a much clearer distinction between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, one that would have served the story better.

The ‘evil’ characters in the episode showed an absolutely remarkable amount of teamwork. Colonel Green immediately took charge, and the others simply deferred to him and obeyed him. It stretched credibility just a little to see GHENGIS KHAN passively taking orders without so much as a peep of protest. In order to tell the exact story Roddenberry wanted to tell, characters that should have been backstabbing each other to get ahead or refusing to work together at all instead acted as a well-oiled unit. They had to trust each other, support each other, and listen to each other. In fact, the ‘evil’ characters had to act a little bit good. (While the ‘good’ characters in turn had to commit violence to make the story work, necessitating that they behave in an ‘evil’ way.)

How much more effective could it have been if the ‘evil’ characters had actually behaved in a selfish, anti-social, backbiting manner, and were defeated by people who worked together for the common good? How much more powerful could the message have been if the ‘good’ side found a solution that wasn’t based in violence, using teamwork, cleverness, and the combination of their knowledge and skills?

Maybe it would have been trite, but the idea of good and evil being absolutes is pretty trite, too.

screen cap of Kirk, Uhura, and Lincoln on the bridge of the Enterprise
The bit with Uhura explaining that race relations had progressed so far that words were no big deal was nice, though.

Three stars.


By What Right

by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

In an episode that gave us Abraham Lincoln in space, cultural figures from Klingon and Vulcan history, and an amazing alien design, the thing that I kept thinking about after the episode was this:

KIRK: “How many others have you done this to? What gives you the right to hand out life and death?”
ROCK: “The same right that brought you here. The need to know new things.”

The question has been posed before. What right does Starfleet have? As early as season one, in "The Naked Time", a crewman despaired over humanity polluting space and sticking their noses where they “didn't belong”. His distress was exaggerated by an alien liquid, but the question was real. Is the crew—or Starfleet at large—doing harm in their quest for knowledge? The first directive shows that there has been significant thought on this, instructing Kirk not to infringe on cultures and to make repairs when possible if there has been a violation of the directive. It's an imperfect rule, and one that is broken frequently. Kirk or another officer decides that he knows better, or finds a reason why the directive doesn’t apply. There have been times when that directive hampers life-saving action.

The Excalabian’s actions are cruel by human standards, and as a means to understand the philosophy of “good vs. evil” make no sense to me. But that itself works as a mirror. I have no insight into the alien mind, no way to know what metric it judges by, no concept of how it views humans in relationship to itself. Equal beings? The way humans might regard a very clever animal? Insects under a microscope? Maybe even the way humans view other humans that fall outside their range of “people”.

screen cap of the Enterprise view screen showing an overhead shot of the villains Zora, Khan, and Kahless splitting up in rocky terrain to ambush the good guys
This amoral broadcast brought to you in living color on NBC!

Human history is full of examples of people seeking knowledge and trampling over others to get it. The many places considered “untouched” on Earth that already have inhabitants, lands reshaped and mined for resources, animals hunted to extinction. The victims of experiments done under the guise of “progress”, psychological and physical studies done without permission, or care for the comfort or pain of the subjected person. Plenty of this has been done deliberately, but lack of ill-intent doesn't change the consequences either. As astronauts practice maneuvers in space, it is important for us, now, to remember that everything leaves a trace. The moon is a remarkable example, but hardly the only one. Just because we can doesn't mean we should – and yet, humans have a place in the universe too, and knowledge is part of that.

The question is not one with an easy answer, and might not have a correct answer. I think it is a question we should not stop asking though, because if we stop, that is when we have decided that yes we *do* know better, and stop caring what, or who gets hurt.

Even with all that philosophy, the episode still felt much like re-do of Kirk fighting the Gorn Captain in Arena, with more puzzling pieces than actual interesting plot.

2 stars


Truly Alien


by Joe Reid

“The Savage Curtain" was something unique.  We have witnessed previous episodes where alien races test humans to see if they are honorable, or understand empathy, or if they are worthy of something.  This week we had an alien race that wished to weigh the concepts of good and evil by playing the parts of the noble and of the wicked themselves; instead of seeking to understand something conceptually, they chose to understand experientially.  Coupled with the inhumanity of their physical appearance, they were the most alien aliens that we have seen in a very long time from this show.

If I wished to understand women better, what options would be available to me?  I suppose that I could talk to a woman to learn about them.  I could go to my local library and borrow a few books about women.  Hell, I could even watch women to attempt to learn about them through observation.  I don’t have the ability nor would choose to become a woman and fully live as one merely to satisfy my curiosity.  Excuse that poor and possibly male-chauvinistic example. 

Let’s say I wanted to understand Phantom Limb Syndrome.  That is the sensations that amputees experience from limbs that are no longer there.  It would be impossible for me to truly understand what it is like without experiencing it.  My point being that who would be willing to go through dismemberment to experientially understand something?  Although through grave misfortune we could experience such a thing, we would experience it as ourselves.  The Excalbians had the ability to learn by becoming who they were not. The very concept is alien.

screen cap of the rocky Yarnek confronting Captain Kirk
"Don't look so stone-faced, Captain.  Haha.  That's an alien joke."

Walking a mile in another man’s shoe is one thing, walking with another man’s legs is entirely different.  As novel as this ability of the Excalbians is, what’s more interesting and alien is the lack of judgment they had against the concepts of good and evil.  It was as if these creatures never ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as humanity had in the story from the book of Genesis.  How would beings such as the Excalbians gain that knowledge?  Kirk and crew had a clear sense of right and wrong, the Excalbians seemed to not only lack it, but also held no bias of one over the other.  Kirk apparently came to the same conclusion.  As the Enterprise left Excalbia at the end of the episode, the crew cast no negative aspersions against the Excalbians for their lack of understanding.  They were aliens and they got what they were after.  Thankfully no one died.

In this episode the crew clearly found a new lifeform and new civilization.  This one being a powerful yet innocent race of aliens whose reasoning is far removed from human rationale.  They were refreshingly different and a welcomed change to the way that aliens are usually presented, as humans with some greasepaint.

4 stars


Eclipse Glasses for War


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

On September 11th of this year, people on the west coast of America will see most of a solar eclipse. Adults who are smart or at least a little prepared will be viewing it through special eclipse sunglasses. Those of us with small children will be building cardboard boxes with pinholes in them, since there’s nearly nothing as futile as putting unwanted sunglasses on a toddler.

The boxes work like this: you pick a box big enough for both of your heads — like a home television box — and poke a round hole in it. When the appointed time to look comes, you put the box on your heads with the pinhole behind your right shoulder, aim the pinhole at the sun, and look the other way. The shadow of the earth will then creep across that perfect bright dot beaming onto the opposite wall of the box, allowing you and your child to track its progress without risking young eyes.

The dark box is a child’s version of Plato’s Cave, allowing us to safely view astronomical truths too large and too bright to safely see with the naked soul. It is also a bit like going to the movies: the appointed time, the rising tension, peak, and denouement, the use of light and darkness to tell a story. Most important to the experience is both the smallness and safety of it and of us: the sun is no more in that box than we are on its surface, but viewing it so allows us access to realities we could not otherwise safely imbibe.

That’s how I think of Star Trek’s suite of war analogy episodes, thoughtfully listed by Erica in the head article. The daily truth of America’s war on Vietnam involves numbers so astronomical, forms of violence so molten and charring, it is difficult to look directly at, much less explain to a child. But there are some dimensions of the conflict which can be conveyed in an episode like this, just as that pinhole box can convey the sun’s roundness, brightness, the semi-circular shape of earth’s intruding and then receding shadow, and the emotional excitement of having a Mama put a funny box over your head for 45 minutes during playtime. Likewise, this episode gave us some shapes from the war: the torture of POWs becomes Sarek’s simulated cries over the hilltop; the horror of punji sticks embedded in the darkling trails of the jungle become stakes carved and thrown by the characters. And tens of thousands of soldiers become four against four; brutal still, yes, but grokable. We don’t have Lodges and Westmorelands, Ho Chi Mins and Mao Tse-Tungs, but we can see the flickers of them in the shadows on the wall.

Lincoln, crouched in his black suit and stovepipe hat, attempts to untie Surak, who is seated and tied to some bamboo stakes in foliage
A poor man's Hanoi Hilton

Maybe you didn’t see this week’s episode as an allegory for Vietnam, but remember, we too are in the box or the cave, and what we bring with us affects what we see there. I see punji sticks and you may see the Bataan Death March. I see POWs and you may see a lynched man. But this episode gives space for us to approach different forms of violence and peace, evil and good, as and when we need to.

One way it does this is with the abject silliness of seeing Abraham Lincoln in space, shipless and fancy free. See, the episode seems to say, nothing is real here; this is just a silly sci fi show. But that is part of the box too and of the cave. The silliness of joining a new context shakes us free of our old one and allows us to see the dot on the wall, its roundness, its brightness, and the exact geometries of its transfiguration in a way we could never see the sun directly. The disgust I felt for the rock monster treating our beloved crew as chess pieces and bargaining chips only lightly touched on the incandescent rage I feel towards the Westmorelands and Maos of the world—playing greater power games as children die bloody. But it did allow me to touch it, to engage with it, to see it as small enough to understand the shape of it for once rather than be overwhelmed and blinded by its light.

This was not a good episode, as detailed above. The dialogue and morals were cloudy and at times crudely wrought. But as one in a series of episodes touching on different aspects of our nation’s current war, it did what it was supposed to: give us 48 minutes in the dark and the quiet to think about things we might not otherwise have been able to, see the shape and changing ways of them, and come out of it having touched something far beyond our reach.

Three stars.



[Come join us tomorrow (March 13th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek!  KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific.  You won't want to miss it…]





[March 10, 1969] Speed (April 1969 Fantastic)


by Victoria Silverwolf

High Velocity

Vehicles travelling very rapidly were in the news this month, both in a good way and in a bad way.

On March 2, the French/British supersonic airplane Concorde made its first test flight in Toulouse, France.  At the controls was test pilot
André Édouard Turcat.


Up, up, and away!

The plane reached a speed of 225 miles per hour (far below the speed of sound) and stayed in the air for twenty-seven minutes.  Just a test, but expect a lot of sonic booms in the near future.

The same day, tragedy struck the Yellow River drag racing strip in Covington, Georgia.  Racer Huston Platt was at the wheel of a car nicknamed Dixie Twister when it smashed through a chain link fence and hurdled into the crowd at 180 miles per hour.


Image of the disaster from a home movie taken by a spectator.

Eleven people were killed instantly.  One later died in the hospital.  More than forty were injured.

All this rushing around is likely to induce vertigo.  Appropriately, the Number One song in the USA this month is Dizzy by Tommy Roe, a catchy little number that captures the feeling perfectly.


Even the cover art makes my head spin.

Speed Reading

With no less than thirteen stories in the latest issue of Fantastic, it's obvious that several of them are going to be quite short, resulting in quick reading. 

The new stories slightly outnumber the reprints, at seven to six, but the old stuff takes up more than twice as many pages.  Apparently today's writers like to finish their works at a quicker pace than their predecessors.  Or maybe it's just a lot cheaper to buy tiny new works and fill up the rest of the magazine with longer reprints.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

As usual, the cover is also a reprint.  It appeared on the German magazine Perry Rhodan a few years ago.


Also as usual, the original looks better.

Characterization in Science Fiction, by Robert Silverberg

This brief essay by the Associate Editor promotes more depth of character in the genre, and praises new authors Roger Zelazny, Samuel Delany, and Thomas Disch for their skill in that area of writing.  Can't argue with that.

No rating.

In a Saucer Down for B-Day, by David R. Bunch


Illustration by Dan Adkins.

The magazine's most controversial writer returns with a tale that is closer to traditional science fiction than most of his works.  The narrator is an Earthman who is returning to his home planet with an alien.  He wants to show the extraterrestrial Earth's big annual celebration.

The author makes a point about a current social problem, maybe a little too obviously.  Even if this had been published anonymously, it would be easy to tell it's by Bunch from the style.  (Just the fact that the narrator says YES! more than once is a strong clue.) More readable than other stuff from his pen.

Three stars.

The Dodgers, by Arthur Sellings

A sad introduction tells us the author died last September.  This posthumous work features an engineer and a physician who land on a planet where many of the alien inhabitants are suffering from weakness and green blotches on their skin.  As soon as the humans arrive, a bag full of gifts for the extraterrestrials vanishes.  The mystery involves an unusual ability of the aliens.

I hate to speak ill of the dead, but this isn't a very good story.  The premise strains credibility, to say the least, and the ending is rushed.

Two stars.

The Monster, by John Sladek


Illustration by Bruce Eliot Jones

A fellow eager to be a space explorer replaces a guy who's been the only person on a distant planet for a long time.  The world turns out to be a dreary, boring place.  The environment is so bad that our protagonist can't go outside for more than a moment.  His only company is a robot in the form of a woman. 

The author makes his point clearly enough.  You're likely to see it coming a mile away.  Still, it's not a bad little yarn.

Three stars.

Visit, by Leon E. Stover

The Science Editor for Fantastic and Amazing (which must be an easy job; do they ever have any science articles?) gives us this account of aliens landing in Japan.  The American military officers present consult with a science fiction writer and a cultural anthropologist.  After a lot of discussion, the aliens finally come out of their spaceship.

For a story in which not much happens this sure goes on for a while.  Much of the text consists of references to other SF stories.  The ending is anticlimactic.  It left me thinking So what?

Two stars.

Ascension, by K. M. O'Donnell

The introduction reveals that O'Donnell is a pseudonym for the editor.

But which editor?

Glancing at the table of contents, you see that the Editor and Publisher is Sol Cohen, and the Managing Editor is Ted White.  Cohen or White?

Trick question!  It's actually Barry N. Malzberg, who was very briefly editor for Fantastic and Amazing.  (My esteemed colleague John Boston goes into detail about the situation in his article about the March issue of Amazing.)

Obviously this issue was assembled under the auspices of Malzberg.  Nobody ever said the publishing industry was fast.

Anyway, this is a New Wave yarn about a future President of the United States.  (The 46th, which I guess puts the story somewhere around the year 2024 or so.) Civil liberties are thrown out, the President has an advisor killed, he gets kicked out by the opposition and shot, the cycle goes on.  Something like that.

You can tell it's New Wave (with an acknowledged nod to J. G. Ballard) because sections of the text are in ALL CAPITALS and it ends in the middle of a sentence.  I suppose it's some kind of commentary on American politics.

Two stars.

The Brain Surgeon, by Robin Schaefer

Guess what?  This is yet another pseudonym for Malzberg.  Must have had trouble filling up the issue.  (No surprise, given the miserly budget.)

A man sends away for a home brain surgery kit that he saw advertised on a matchbook cover.  He gets the instruments and an explanatory pamphlet in the mail.  But what can he do with it?

Something about this brief bit of weirdness appealed to me more than it should.  There's not much to it, really, but what there is tickled my fancy.

Three stars.

How Now Purple Cow, by Bill Pronzini

A farmer sees a (you guessed it) purple cow in his field.  There's some talk of UFOs in the area.  Then there's a twist at the end.

Very short, without much point to it.  A shaggy dog (cow?) story.  A joke without a punchline. 

One star.

On to the reprints!

The Book of Worlds, by Dr. Miles J. Breuer

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear with this pre-Campbellian work of scientifiction from the pages of the July 1929 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Hugh Mackay.

A scientist discovers a way to view the fourth dimension.  This allows him to see a enormous number of worlds similar to our own Earth, at stages of development from the first stirrings of life to the future of humanity.  What he perceives has a profound effect on him.


Illustration by Frank R. Paul.

I have to confess that I wasn't expecting very much out of a story from the very early days of modern science fiction.  This was a pleasant surprise.  The author clearly has a point to make, and makes it powerfully.  What happens to the scientist at the end may strike you as either poignant or silly.  Take your pick.

Three stars.

The Will, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

The January/February 1954 issue of the magazine supplies this moving tale.


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

The narrator's teenage foster son is dying of leukemia.  The boy is obsessed with a television program about a time travelling hero called Captain Chronos.

(No doubt this was inspired by the author's work on the TV show Captain Video not long before the story was first published.)


Illustration by Jay Landau.

The boy has a plan, involving his collection of stamps and autographs.  But does he have enough time left?

Just from this brief description, you probably already have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen.  Despite the fact that the plot is a little predictable, however. this is a fine story.  The emotion is genuine rather than sentimental.  The ending is both joyful and sad.

Four stars.

Elementals of Jedar, by Geoff St. Reynard

Hiding behind that very British pseudonym is American writer Robert W. Krepps.  This pulpy yarn comes from the May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by H. J. Blumenfeld.

A spaceship captain with the manly name of Ken Ripper and his motley crew of aliens from various worlds are in big trouble.  Forced to land on a planet said to be inhabited by living force fields of pure malevolence, they have to figure out a way to escape with their lives.


Illustration by Rod Ruth.

Boy, this is really corny stuff.  I have to wonder if it's a parody of old-time space opera.  When the hero curses by saying Jove and bounding jackrabbits!, it makes me think the author is pulling my leg. The fact that one of the aliens on the spaceship is a humanoid twelve inches tall makes me giggle, too.  Even if it's tongue-in-cheek, a little of this goes a long way.

Two stars.

The Naked People, by Winston Marks

This story comes from the September 1954 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Ralph Castenir.

The combination of a sore ear and a fight in a tavern sends the narrator to the hospital with a brain infection.  When he comes out of his coma, he is able to see the ethereal figure of a unclothed man.  The lecherous fellow is able to solidify himself sufficiently to have his way with a pretty nurse while she's unconscious and under his control.


Illustration uncredited.

Then a female ghostly being shows up, with an obvious interest in our hero.  It seems that these folks have been hanging around, unperceived by normal people, since the dawn of humanity.  They materialize enough to steal food and, to put it delicately, act as incubi and succubi.

I get the feeling that the author didn't quite know how to end the story.  The hero fends off the advances of the lustful female being and saves the pretty nurse from the male one.  He even marries her.  But the naked people are still around, with all that implies.

An unsatisfying conclusion and a slightly distasteful premise make for a less than enjoyable reading experience.

Two stars.

And the Monsters Walk, by John Jakes

This two-fisted tale comes from the July 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures


Cover art by Walter Popp.

The narrator starts off aboard a ship bound for England from the Orient.  Burning with curiosity, he investigates the secret cargo hold, although the captain warned the crew this was punishable by death.  He finds boxes containing humanoid creatures.

Barely escaping with his life, he makes his way to shore.  Mysterious figures are out to kill him.  On the other hand, a Tibetan mystic and a beautiful young woman try to help him.  In return, they want his aid in combating a conspiracy to destroy Western civilization by using demons to slaughter world leaders.


Illustration by David Stone.

John Jakes is best known around here for his tales of Brak the Barbarian.  Those stories proved that he had studied the adventures of Conan carefully.  This yarn convinces me that he is also very familiar with the pulp magazines of the 1930's.

I'll give him credit for not being boring, anyway.  The action never stops, although you won't believe a minute of it.  The author's intense, almost frenzied style keeps you reading.

Three stars.

I, Gardener by Allen Kim Lang

Our last story comes from the December 1959 issue of the magazine.


Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

The narrator pays a visit to a prolific writer.  He speaks to a very strange gardener, who proves to be something other than what he seems.

I'll leave it at that, because I don't want to give away too much about the simple plot.  You may be able to figure out who the model for the writer is, given the title of the story and the fact that the character's name is Doctor Axel Ozoneff.  (The introduction to the story makes it obvious, so I'd advise not looking at it.)

Not a great story.

Two stars.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Alexei Panshin

Leiber looks at novels by E. R. Eddison, and Panshin has kind words to say about The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.

No rating.

Quickly Summing Up

Another average-to-poor issue, with only Miller's story rising above that level.  At least most of the pieces make for fast reading, although a couple of the worst ones may make you furious at their lack of quality.  You may be tempted to watch an old movie on TV instead.


From 1954, so it should show up on the Late, Late Show sometime soon.






[March 8, 1969] Around the Universe (April 1969 Galaxy)


by Gideon Marcus

Around the World

Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, is back from a tour of Europe.  All of his visits made headlines, particularly when he went to the Vatican and a couple hundred students held signs that said, "Nixon go home!"

Hey now—we don't want him either!

The Dick met with the "Jesus of the Franks", General DeGaulle, for a high profile religious summit.  Our President failed to return with the next Ten Commandments nor a commitment to allow Britain into the European Community (much less France's return to NATO).

Nixon is now back in the States.  Apparently, Jack Benny managed to buy more than a gallon of gas at Texaco since he made it all the way to Andrews Air Force Base to amuse the President upon his return.  Well, maybe the air fare was on the country's dime.

newspaper photo of a profile of a laughing Richard Nixon, his wife smiling full-face to his left

One of the places Nixon did not stop, but sent a staffer in his stead, was the funeral of Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol.  The Jewish leader's death was rather a surprise, and his interim replacement is something of a dark horse: 70 year old foreign minister Golda Meir.  She is the first woman leader of the Jewish state, and one of the few female national leaders this century.  It is possible she will step down in favor of her party confederate Yigal Allon when he stands for the next regular election against conservative rival General Moshe Dayan.

newspaper photo of Golda Meir's face—she is an elderly, Jewish woman with dark hair, bushy eyebrows, and a big nose; she is wryly smiling

Into the wild Blue/Black yonder

As I type this, Apollo 9 is currently in orbit, its crew practicing a series of maneuvers that will be duplicated on this summer's trip to the Moon.  It's sort of like a Gemini training mission (two of the astronauts, Scott and McDivitt, are Gemini veterans) but with Apollo hardware.  It is fitting, therefore, that the latest issue of Galaxy deals with space in almost all of its stories:

cover painting of a spaceship descending on a planetoid, a wary-looking, bipedal alien looking up at it
by Reese

Witch Hunt, James E. Gunn

line drawing of two bearded and mustached men in 17th Century outfits dueling with swords
by Adkins

Centuries after a nuclear apocalypse, the Earth's four billions reduced to just one hundred million, humanity lives in a patchwork of low-technology communities.  There are the farmers, who make up the vast majority; the villagers who comprise a rude middle class; the Luddites, barbarians who plunder, mostly for fun; the arrogant Neo-Scientists, who enslave many so that a few may reconstruct the wisdom of the past; and the Empires—petty states whose influence extends no further than their capital regions.

And there are the witch-doctors, who use "magic" to heal and educate, and the pilgrims, who seek the truth.  "Witch Hunt" is the tale of two such pilgrims, their tour of America's degraded communities, and a survey of their relative merits and lacks.  Of course, the story reveals the truth they have been searching for.

There is more than a whiff of Silverberg's Nightwings serial here, and while the prose is not quite so beautiful, it is serviceable.

Four stars.

Beam Us Home, James Tiptree, Jr.

Hobie was a precocious child whose life was irrevocably influenced by Star Trek, though the TV show is never mentioned by name. 

A successful teen and, later, frustrated serviceman, he can't shake the feeling that he is somehow separate from the human race.  The story's conclusion bears much in common with that of "Witch Hunt". I wonder if putting thematically-similar stories together was deliberate or coincidental?

Something about this story reminds me a bit of the works in our Rediscovery anthologies, or perhaps a bit of the works in the fanzines. In particular, the focus on Trek and also the fact that the protagonist is a minor for much of the piece set it apart from many of the stories we encounter regularly.  I had to check the byline to make sure it wasn't by Evelyn E. Smith, or Rosel George Brown, or Zenna Henderson, for example. 

As a whole the story isn't bad, but unfortunately, Tiptree botches the end. Three stars.

How Like a God, Robert Bloch

line drawing of a tailed, bipedal alien looking into what appears to be the heart of a giant cave or geode
by Reese

Pride goeth before a fall: Mok is an incorporeal being who refused to surrender his personality to the group; as a consequence, the divine Ser confines him to an alien, physical body and banishes him to a planet of primitives.  There, Mok becomes a kind of Prometheus, elevating the aborigines' culture and technology.  But is Mok a God…or a serpent in the garden?

Kind of a neat piece.  I think it falls on the lower side of the three/four star divide.

Buckets of Diamonds, Clifford D. Simak

line drawing of a man holding a set of pipes approaching a pile of electronic junk; someone is throwing a bucket of diamonds on the pile
by Reese

Simak loves to write "pastoral science fiction" set in his stomping grounds of Minnesota, and so, "Buckets of Diamonds" reads a bit like The Andy Griffith Show meets The Twilight Zone.  Drunk Uncle Charlie gets locked up in the pokey one day when he is found staggering down the street, an Old Master's canvas under one arm, and carrying a bucket of diamonds.  Later, he disappears from jail and turns up driving a hovercar alongside a sour-faced alien…who presently encourages all of the citizenry to dispose of their technological gadgets!

All of this is much to the chagrin of Charlie's nephew-in-law, a local attorney who must sort the mess out.

Not much to this tale, which ultimately doesn't go anywhere, or when.  Three stars.

Slave to Man, Sylvia Jacobs

Tony is an editor for one of those schlock-houses that produces "the sexies" (prurient pulps).  One day, he notices he's getting a lot of torn off covers from returns that say "Help!  Help!  I am being held in bondage!  I am only 15 years old!"

Who he finds when he seeks the poor soul out, and how said soul revolutionizes the sexies industry is both amusing and, perhaps, prescient.

Four stars.

And Now They Wake (Part 2 of 3), Keith Laumer

line drawing of a man hitting with a sledgehammer a collection of cylinders
by Jack Gaughan

The saga continues of two immortal aliens destined for a final confrontation somewhere in 21st Century America.  Last time, we learned that Gralgrathor had self-exiled from his stellar Federation to go native amongst medieval Vikings.  His confederate, Lokrien, murdered 'Thor's wife and child to incentivize his return to galactic civilization.

In this installment, Lokrien, now fully healed from vicious scars he carried for decades, is looking for 'Thor, who now goes by the name of Grayle.  Grayle, as you recall from last time, escaped from the Caine Island maximum security prison, where he had been languishing for over a century.  Both immortals have assistants: Lokrien's is a mercenary cabbie who is efficient with his fists; Grayle has picked up a lovely woman named Anne who insists on helping him despite not knowing the whole story.

Meanwhile, an enormous whirlpool is growing in the middle Atlantic, generating hurricane force winds across the hemisphere.  It seems to be powered by the newly online broadcast power plant on the Eastern seaboard.  Attempts to shut down the plant are all thwarted by some unknown force.  You can bet that the aliens are somehow involved, however…

Still interesting stuff.  Four stars.

For Your Information: The Drowned Civilization, Willy Ley

This month's article is a potpourri dedicated to three questions: 1) how easy would it be for a planet to capture a new moon, 2) how would the Earth's land contours change should the ice caps melt, and 3) what kind of creature is the biblical zaphan?

Three stars.

There and back again

Well, that was rather fun!  Nothing spectacular, but all in all, a rapid, enjoyable read.  Galaxy remains my favorite of the monthlies, and I can't wait to see how the Laumer turns out.  I am also happy to see that we're getting at least one woman writer each month again.  The magazine was at its best when that was the case back in the '50s, and Sylvia Jacobs turned in one of my favorites of the issue.

Until next time…keep up to date with Nixon on Laugh-In, and science fiction on the Journey!






[March 6, 1969] Different points of view (Star Trek: "The Cloud Minders")

Just Bad


by Janice L. Newman

Star Trek has given us some amazing episodes over the past three seasons, episodes that made us think, made us gasp, made our hearts bleed for the characters and made us laugh out loud. Unfortunately, we’ve also had many kinds of bad episodes, from ridiculously, gloriously bad, to offensively, teeth-grindingly bad, to bizarrely bad, to pathetically bad. Yet somehow, The Cloudminders manages to be a different kind of bad than any we’ve seen before.

title cards superimposed over a relief map of an anomyous piece of ground heralding that the title is

The story opens, as it so often does, on the Enterprise. A plague has affected a planetary member of the Federation, and the cure requires a substance found in only one place in the galaxy, the planet Ardana. (Is it just me, or have there been a lot of plagues recently?) When Kirk and Spock beam down to Ardana, however, instead of finding the precious shipment of zenite waiting for them, they are attacked.

screen capture of Mr. Spock administering a judo chop to a red-jumpsuited mook against a styrofoam rock set
In the heat of the moment, Mr. Spock has forgotten how to do a Vulcan Neck Pinch

The attack is interrupted by Plasus, the High Advisor of the planetary council. He brings the two of them to Stratos, a city in the clouds, where they meet Droxine, his daughter. Kirk and Spock go to the quarters prepared for them.

screen capture of Plasus, a patriarchal, bearded mature man in gray and white robes looking at his daughter, an incredibly thin young blonde woman in a shimmery halter top and skirt
"Don't fret, my dear.  We only have two more scenes like this where we tell each other things we already know for the benefit of the audience."

Once they’re gone, two guards bring in a “Troglyte”, a member of the underclass who work in the mines. Plasus starts to interrogate him, but he breaks free and throws himself over the balcony.

screen capture of a red jumpsuited and head-scarfed Troglyte jumping toward the camera over a balcony rail to his death as Plasus and two guards in oversized gray t-shirts and berets watch
"Anything to get out of this picture!"

There follows one of the strangest and clumsiest bits I’ve ever seen in a Star Trek episode. Spock has a voiceover where he talks about the split between the haves and have-nots on the planet, overlaid atop flashbacks to scenes we just watched. He also has some highly un-Spocklike thoughts about Droxine’s charm, purity, and sweetness.

And speak of the devil, Droxine appears and proceeds to flirt with him. Having watched nearly three seasons of Star Trek we expected him to politely brush her off. Defying everything we have ever seen and learned about the Vulcan, Spock responds in-kind, flirting back and using what Gideon calls, “the boyfriend voice”. The dialog would have been eye-rollingly bad enough if Shatner had been spouting the lines, but it was unbearable with Spock doing it.

Speaking of Shatner, the scene (thankfully) cuts to where he’s taking a nap. A woman creeps up to him, a weapon in her hand, but he grabs her and immobilizes her before she can do anything. He tells her he’ll release her if she’ll answer his questions, and she agrees.

screen capture of a brunette woman in a blue halter and skirt combination brandishing a knife and approaching an apparently asleep Captain Kirk laying in bed on his back
Yvonne Craig returns to reprise her role in "Whom Gods Destroy" sans green paint…

Unfortunately, the scene now returns to Spock and Droxine, where they are discussing (groan) the Vulcan mating cycle, and whether anything might ‘disturb’ it. Spock actually says, “Extreme feminine beauty is always disturbing, madam.” If this were a ploy, like The Enterprise Incident, maybe I could forgive it (though the writing in that episode was far better than this one). If Spock were intentionally seducing Droxine to get the much-needed zenite, taking a page out of Kirk’s book, maybe I could believe that he would say these words. But there is never any indication that Spock’s words are anything but sincere.

screen capture of Droxine looking up at Spock, her mouth parted
"Can't I do anything?  Perhaps some Plomeek soup…or some Tranya?" (or) "Mrs. Droxine, you are trying to seduce me…"

Kirk calls out for Spock and Spock hurries to respond, so I guess at least one thing is still right with the universe. Droxine, Vanna, and Kirk argue politics for a while, and then Vanna is taken away to be tortured for the names of her associates. At her scream, Kirk and Spock come running. Kirk and Plasus argue about whether torture is an effective way to get information until Plasus orders them to return to their ship.

Back on the Enterprise, McCoy helpfully explains that zenite gives off a gas which makes people stupid and violent, but that the effects can be nullified with a face mask or removal from exposure. Kirk tries to explain this to Plasus, who unsurprisingly refuses to listen. Kirk then sneaks back down to the planet, getting beamed directly to Vanna’s cell. He makes a deal with her to trade masks for zenite, but she betrays him as soon as they’re beamed down to the mines. Snatching off his mask, she forces him to start digging. She gets too close to him with her stolen phaser, though, and he overpowers her and triggers a cave-in, sealing them in. Determined to prove to Vanna that the gas makes people stupid and violent (something which her own experiences should probably have convinced her was true, given that she went between the floating city and the mines regularly) Kirk has Plasus beamed in with them and makes him start digging.

screen capture of Kirk's arm and hand holding a phaser pointing at an upset Plasus in a cave setting
"Hear that, Plasus?  That's… the sound of… the men… working on the… chain… gang."

Plasus and Kirk, overcome by the gas, start fighting. Vanna gets a hold of Kirk’s communicator and calls the Enterprise for help. Vanna screams that the gas is affecting them as the crew beam to their rescue.

The final act takes place in Stratos once more, the city in the clouds. Vanna has agreed to supply the zenite, and Kirk will give the Troglytes the masks. Spock and Droxine have one final, nauseating moment, Kirk and Plasus snipe at each other unpleasantly, and then the crew leaves with just three hours to spare to save a dying planet.

screen capture of Spock and Kirk on the transporter platform of the sky city, Stratos, Kirk holding a communicator to his mouth
"That's all for now.  Tata!"

Well. That was an episode.

It’s hard to explain just why this episode was so bad. The writing was clunky, with every conversation going on three times longer than necessary. The guest characters felt like childish caricatures, while our beloved crewmembers (especially Spock) felt nothing like themselves. The pacing was bad, the acting not good, the directing clumsy. It was just…bad. In every way. There was no good episode inside trying to get out this time.

If I thought that NBC were the evil masterminds that some believe, I would say that they saved this episode for late in the season deliberately. Really, who’s going to complain about Star Trek’s cancellation after seeing this garbage? But I’m guessing that the sub-par script, sub-par direction, and sub-par acting were actually due to budget cuts, as NBC has shown they don’t much care what the fans think or want or say, no matter how many postcards we send them.

One star.


Not Bad


by "Greenygal"

I have mixed feelings about "Cloudminders", mostly relating to the xenite gas.  It's a terribly convenient plot device; it means that I have to sit and listen to McCoy–McCoy!–talk about how the lower class really are mentally inferior to the upper class, which is such an ugly idea and is particularly jarring in this episode about bigotry and social inequality; and even though the stuff is "shipped all over the galaxy" (did no one do any testing on unprocessed xenite?) and the Troglytes mine it all their lives, apparently McCoy is the only one who's ever noticed that raw xenite can affect people's brains.

On the other hand, the Stratos sets and outfits are lovely.  I thought the actors for Plasus, Droxine, and especially Vanna put in excellent performances. I really appreciated that Kirk is just not a part of Vanna's emotional story; she's not romantically or sexually interested in him and she doesn't learn love or mercy or responsibility or anything like that from him.  Eventually she is convinced that he's telling the truth about the masks and that's as far as it goes.  Bonus points for her ending the episode looking at Droxine, the other metaphorical half of the planet's future, instead of Kirk.

And oh, the message.  Yeah, yeah, the xenite is clumsy, but it doesn't stop this episode from being sharp and fierce and clear about what it's portraying.  Plasus and Droxine are pleasant and intelligent and educated, and they're also terrible bigots who talk so reasonably about how of course it's just natural for the Troglytes to do all the work and have no rights while the Stratosians get everything.  Everything Plasus says is awful, but Droxine expressing the same horrible ideas in sweet, reasonable tones is chilling, and emphasizes both that this is a societal problem and that it doesn't matter how nicely you express your bigotry, it's still bigotry.

Also, we've got the Troglyte in the beginning being willing to throw himself off Cloud City rather than be taken, and Vanna being strapped to the torture pillar, as a clear show-not-just-tell for how bad things are under the surface.

screen capture of a closeup of Vanna's face, glowing yellow, mouth open in pain
Not as fun as Barbarella's torture…

And as a counterpoint to all this awfulness, we've got Kirk and Spock saying in no uncertain terms "What?  They do all the work and they don't get the same advantages?  They don't get light?  That's awful.  That's unthinkable.  What do you mean they don't understand things like loyalty and justice?  Obviously they do, if you're the one behaving like violence is the only option that's your problem, Jack, and also you're not going to lay a hand on her unless you go through me."  Our Heroes absolutely refused to tolerate a single bigoted statement, and it just made me so happy to hear. (And in particular I appreciated it in contrast to Last Battlefield's "well, really, when you think about it, aren't both sides equally to blame for racial conflict?")

And what I think really saves the xenite gas from sabotaging the message is that fixing it does not suddenly fix everything.  The Troglytes are still working in the mines, and Vanna says they're still going to be fighting for their rights, and Plasus is still talking about how awful they are.  (And how "ungrateful"; I really enjoyed seeing Vanna flatly deny that she owes him anything for her training.) The masks will make things better for the Troglytes, and Droxine shows that the Stratosians can change.  But there's still a real conflict here that didn't get an easy science-fictional solution, and I appreciate that.

I think 3.5 stars is fair.  It's a flawed episode, no question, but the things that I like about it, I really like.


Skin Deep Rationale


by Joe Reid

The notion that a presumed higher group gets to benefit from the labor of a presumed lesser group while giving no thought to the lives and wellbeing of that lesser group is premise of this week’s episode of Star Trek.  “The Cloud Minders” is a funny title for this episode, seeing as how the title itself even ignores the existence of that lesser group.  This episode wasn’t named “The Dirt Miners”.  It was those in the clouds who held the authority, and those under the surface who challenged that authority.  At first glance this premise sounded compelling.  On review the whole premise fell apart due to one simple fact—the Troglites really didn’t need the Stratosians for anything.

The episode began with Starfleet in need.  They needed the mineral, zenite, to save people on another world.  The Stratosians, who somehow had authority to represent all Ardana to Startfleet, promised that they would provide the mineral that they themselves would not take part in gathering.  The loathsome long haired Troglites were tasked with collecting the zenite.  The complete lack of anyone being compensated for anything was the real head scratcher here.  The Federation was giving the people of Ardana nothing for their zenite.  The Stratosians appeared to offer the Troglites nothing for their labor in mining the zenite.  From what I gleaned, the Troglites seemed as if they were entirely self-sufficient and had no need of anything from the Stratosians.  Granted, they did come up with a plan for capturing Starfleet officers in order to ransom them for weapons to fight the cloud people for the sins of talking down to them.  Outside of emotional slights, the Troglites didn’t appear to require food, clothing, or shelter from the Stratosians.  Why bother with fighting them?

screen capture of Vanna in a white mini-sundress taking the mask off of Kirk being held in a cave by two jumpsuited and head-scarfed Troglytes
"We need nothing from you—certainly not these stupid-looking masks!"

Looking at the Stratosians themselves: people with time to pursue art, learning, and leisure, but utterly lacking the ability to do labor or automate labor.  If they were truly learned, they would have had a method to keep the people that they depend on happy.

The reason that this episode logically fell apart for me, outside of the fact that any real motive for conflict was absent, was that the conflict was resolved by the Enterprise crew, by forcing both sides to learn of a problem that neither side even knew existed.  The knowledge that zenite poisoning caused the retardation of the Troglites didn’t truly change the circumstances on the planet.  It didn’t even remove the bigotry of the Stratosian leader.  It just made Kirk and the Troglites happy, and that fixed everything.

Setting aside the flawed logic and lack of rationale in this episode, the costumes and sets felt very original.  The premise of the story was worthwhile as an ideal, but its shallow execution detracts from the weight that this episode could have carried.  I would like more from my science fiction.

2 stars


[Come join us tonight (March 6th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek!  KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific.  You won't want to miss it…]




[March 4, 1969] Here Endeth The Lesson (Doctor Who: The Seeds Of Death [Parts 4-6])


By Jessica Holmes

“The Seeds Of Death” draws to a close, and time is running out for planet Earth. Let’s check in with the Doctor and company to see how humanity’s fate unfolds, and whether the human race will learn anything from this whole ordeal…

ID: Fewsham (white male, 30s) sits in front of a computer terminal between two Ice Warriors (left foreground, right background, both wearing scaly armour and helmets)

In Case You Missed It

At the end of the last episode, the Ice Warriors began their attack, sending a seed pod to the London T-Mat control centre. The pod soon bursts, instantly killing the nearest man, and leaving the rest struggling for breath. They’re able to disperse the cloud of spores, but realise too late that they’ve dispelled it into the open air. And soon the seeds take root, growing, bursting and expanding across the grounds outside. And it’s not just London—it’s happening to T-Mat centres across the northern hemisphere.

Maybe these seeds are why the Ice Warriors always sound so terribly asthmatic? Poor things have allergies.

Meanwhile on the Moonbase, Jamie and Phipps sneak around the base, successfully snatching an unconscious Doctor away from under the Ice Warriors’ noses. They also attempt to reach the temperature controls, but find the vent too small to wiggle through. Zoe is small enough, however, and volunteers for the job.

Back on Earth, the autopsy report on the dead man comes back, and Radnor and Eldred are baffled to find that he died of oxygen starvation. It takes several minutes for the brain to start dying from lack of oxygen, so how can he have died instantly? Unfortunately, this is never adequately answered. And they don’t get much chance to mull it over, because the invasion has begun. An Ice Warrior suddenly bursts from the London T-Mat booth. Eldred and Radnor watch in horror as it kills their guards before heading out to terrorise the rest of the facility.

ID: an Ice Warrior outside. They wear a scaly-textured helmet which obscures most of the face. The bottom jaw and chin are visible, they also appear scaly.

Starting to worry about how long Zoe and Phipps are taking, Jamie is about to go after them when an Ice Warrior stumbles upon the room in which they are hiding. He and Kelly attempt to take it down with the heat trap, but it seems that its power supply is depleted. All they can do is hide.

Fewsham spots Zoe and Phipps as they open the vent, and pretends not to notice, instead choosing to distract the Ice Warrior guarding him so that she can sneak past. However, the Ice Warrior turns as she tries to sneak back out. It guns down Phipps, then turns its weapon on her. Fewsham finally finds his backbone, trying to stop the Warrior. He’s no fighter, but luckily the rapidly increasing temperature overwhelms the foe. He assures Zoe that he will help her and her friends get back to Earth, and she slips back into the tunnels.

Meanwhile in the hideout, the Doctor picks the worst possible time to regain consciousness, alerting the Ice Warrior to the group’s presence. But the Ice Warrior is feeling a little hot under the collar, and soon collapses. They’re as sensitive to heat as I am.

ID: Jamie (white male, dark hair, young adult), the Doctor (white male, dark hair, middle-aged) and Zoe (white female, dark hair, young adult) stand in a glass box, similar to a phone booth.

Zoe makes it back to the group, and they all head back to the control room, free of Ice Warriors for the moment. They’ll have to be quick, all piling into the T-Mat booth. Fewsham beams them down, but chooses to stay behind. The others don’t understand why at first, but it becomes clear soon enough that he’s actually being brave. He’s spying on the Ice Warriors.

The others are back on Earth in the blink of an eye (the Doctor is quite disappointed by how boring the trip is), where things are not going well. Having killed the T-Mat control guards, the invading Ice Warrior is now wandering the complex, killing anyone who gets in its way. Its latest target is the Weather Control Station.

The Doctor is eager to start analysing the mysterious fungus rapidly spreading outside, and soon discovers that it contains a compound that absorbs oxygen very efficiently. And it’s very aggressive. A pod starts growing out of the sample, and the Doctor throws everything in the lab at it. The only thing that works…is water. Gosh, it would be a terrible pity for the Ice Warriors if they’d decided to use their water-vulnerable biological weapon against a planet where water covers about 70% of the surface.

Oh.

The Doctor in a science lab. There is various scientific equipment in the background. The Doctor stands in the midground, holding a flask and holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nose. He is looking at a flask on the table, which has a large white bubble growing out of it.

At least they thought to do something about the rain. That’s why they attacked the Weather Control Station. The rain has been cancelled for the foreseeable future.

Not realising there is nobody there, Zoe and Jamie go to tell the Weather Control people to bring down the mother of all rainstorms. What’s worse, they inadvertently lock themselves in with the Ice Warrior.

Meanwhile on the Moon, the Ice Warriors, pleased with Fewsham’s apparent loyalty to them, show him their communications device. They assure him that as long as he continues to serve them, he will be spared. The Warriors discuss the final phase of the invasion with their grand marshal, and unseen, Fewsham activates the video link with Earth.

Fewsham is surrounded by 4 Ice Warriors. He is standing behind a waist-high drum-shaped device with a screen set into the front.

Radnor and Kelly are preparing to launch a satellite to act as a relay to enable T-Mat to be controlled from Earth, albeit at a lower capacity. Fewsham’s transmission changes things, however. The Ice Warrior fleet will be following a signal from the device on the Moon in order to join up with the advance party. If that signal were to be muddled or interrupted, the fleet would miss the Moon and end up in orbit around the Sun (should I point out that the Sun is quite a lot further away than the Moon?). At the Doctor’s urging, Radnor and Kelly immediately start preparing the satellite to send out a false homing signal.

As for poor Fewsham, his act of bravery earns him the wrath of the Ice Warriors.

Half the battle is won! But there’s still the fungus to deal with. The Doctor’s horrified to learn the lone Warrior was last seen at the Weather Control Station, and he takes off as fast as his silly little run can take him.

The Doctor, up to his chest in foam and with his back to a metal wall, looks into the foam with a comical expression of shock and horror.

Finding the door locked, he hammers on it as he struggles against a sea of fungus. He pulls some terribly funny faces as the tide rises. All his banging and yelling distracts the Ice Warrior from hunting the still-trapped Jamie and Zoe, allowing them to escape their hiding spot. As Jamie leads the Warrior on a wild Scot chase, Zoe gets the door for the Doctor. He glides in majestically on a wave of foam… and promptly slips and goes head over heels.

Did I see Zoe laughing at him, or Wendy Padbury corpsing? Who’s to say.

Jamie meets back up with the group, and they all hide in the solar energy room as the Ice Warrior starts attempting to breach the radiation door. Radnor is sending a squad of guards, but will they get there in time?

For that matter, will they do any good? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Ballistic weapons seem to have no effect on the thick armour of the Warrior, and the squad are soon forced to retreat. However, the Doctor and Zoe have made good use of their time, converting a couple of energy cells into a portable heat gun. It makes short work of the Warrior.

The Doctor figures he can get the Weather Control working again by bypassing the control panel. It’s fiddly work, but he thinks he has it right. Probably.

The Doctor stands outside the T-Mat booth (glass and metal, like a phonebooth) holding his heat gun. He has a square solar energy pack attached to his shoulder, many wires draped around his neck, and has hemispherical metal dishes in each hand.

With the rain taken care of, the Doctor has one last little thing to do. Once the satellite is in orbit, he’s going to T-Mat himself to the Moon and destroy the Warriors’ homing device. He almost looks cool with the heat gun strapped to him, confidently getting into the T-Mat booth. Almost. This is still the Doctor we’re talking about.

Unfortunately he’s interrupted, and the Ice Warriors destroy his weapon. And it seems the device is still transmitting. The Ice Warriors decide to keep the Doctor alive for the time being— they still need someone to operate the T-Mat for them. And yet the Doctor doesn’t seem all that worried.

He has no reason to be. His plan has worked. The device is still transmitting yes—but only within the confines of the control room. The fleet, following the false signal, has missed the Moon entirely, and is rapidly heading towards the Sun, with no means of course correction.

The Ice Warriors are outraged at him for killing an entire fleet. The Doctor simply retorts that they tried to destroy an entire world.

The Doctor’s saved Earth, and now it's Jamie's turn to save the Doctor. Arriving in the nick of time to distract the Ice Warriors, the Doctor and Jamie finish off the last two with their own weapons and a power cable. They return to Earth as the rains start. This storm is going to be truly Biblical.

All that’s left for the people of Earth is to, uh, get T-Mat back up and running (with some safeguards this time) and otherwise go right back to how they were doing things before this whole fiasco started. Eldred points out that having access to alternative means of transportation would have made this whole situation a lot easier, but nobody seems to agree with him. Nobody other than the Doctor, but he isn’t sticking around to make any supporting arguments.

Naturally.

Yes, that sounds a fairly accurate assessment of humanity. We’re not very good at learning from our mistakes—or when we do, we take home the wrong lessons.

The Doctor (left) confronts an Ice Warrior (right). There's another Ice Warrior in the background.

 

The Right Lessons

Well, we got plenty to enjoy in the last half of the serial. Action! Suspense! Patrick Troughton pulling really funny faces! It’s a pity however, that the debate that drove the first half of the serial was forgotten towards the end. Even though old technology ended up saving the day, Radnor and Kelly never really acknowledge that fact. In the end, even the near-ending of the world couldn’t break through their arrogance.

That said, the old technology vs new technology conflict didn’t die entirely. I suppose you could say it moved to a different venue. It’s not just the humans who are over-reliant on new tech. It’s the Ice Warriors, too. See, space travel is good ol’ Newtonian physics, and physics is basically practical maths. It’s lots and lots of maths. When we engage in space travel, we don’t have homing signals to rely on, just cold hard sums. I can only assume that the Ice Warriors have all but forgotten how to do this. Why do difficult calculations when you can just blindly follow a signal? Unfortunately, as with T-Mat, this technology which makes travel so much easier is also subject to tampering. And now they’re too dead to have learned their lesson.

I’ve been a little confused over the past few serials as to how much of a pacifist the Doctor actually is. Sure, he states himself to be against violence, but he has absolutely killed people, both directly and indirectly. But I'm coming to think of it not as character inconsistency, but character development. When his adventures had much smaller stakes, or had other people nearby who were willing to do the dirty work, he certainly was a staunch pacifist. I don’t think I could have imagined William Hartnell’s Doctor using a heat gun like that. I think he’d be horrified at the new (well, not so new any more) Doctor for even thinking of it. That’s not to say that I think it was the wrong thing to do. Rather, I think the Doctor has learned that sometimes he doesn’t have good options. For him, pacifism is an ideal. It’s something he always aspires towards, but sometimes cannot reach.

Sometimes there is more at stake than his own morality.

The Doctor holds up two round metal dishes with lightbulbs in the middle.

And that, I think, brings me to another thing that the serial delves into: the nature of cowardice. There’s a lot to be afraid of in this story, and I think the serial makes clear that it’s perfectly all right to be afraid, as long as you still do the right thing. Look at the Doctor, he’s often frightened. Not just in this serial but in more or less all of his stories. Put him in a threatening situation and he’ll pull all sorts of faces while clinging to the nearest Scotsman for moral support. But he always steps up when there’s more at stake than his own safety. He might be a bit of a scaredy-cat, but he’s certainly no coward.

Nor is Phipps, who we see in the latter half of this serial is struggling to cope with the stress of the situation. While leading Zoe through the tunnels, he suffers an attack of nervous exhaustion. Zoe deals with it in her characteristic matter-of-fact manner. It’s not any kind of failing, it’s a symptom. They rest, he calms his nerves, and they get back to it. In his story, we see that even the bravest can only keep it up for so long—and that’s okay.

So what is cowardice? Surrendering to fear, and allowing others to come to harm in your stead. And that’s what we see with Fewsham. I cannot blame him for being scared, but I can blame him for collaborating with the Ice Warriors to save his own skin at the expense of his friends, colleagues, and the human race. And yet even for him, there’s a chance for redemption. He doesn’t have to somehow stop being scared, and he never does. To his dying moment, he’s terrified. But he does the right thing, and that makes all the difference. He might have spent most of the story a coward, but he doesn’t die as one.

Fewsham (left) talks to the Doctor (right).

Final Thoughts

That was fun, even if nobody learned anything. But having given it thought, I don’t think it matters. These people are not real. The lesson isn’t for them. The lesson is for us.

Not that there are many world leaders eagerly tuning into a low-budget science fiction serial for moral lessons. (Except Lizzie in Buck House. I bet she loves it.)

But this is a programme aimed at young minds, and I think it is trusting them to watch and listen thoughtfully. By not allowing the characters to come to a definite verdict, it invites the young audience to consider for themselves. Hopefully they will draw some useful conclusions, and perhaps one day avoid the mistakes of an imagined future.

4 stars out of 5 for "The Seeds Of Death".




[March 2, 1969] Dreams and reality (April 1969 IF)


by David Levinson

A different kind of colonialism

When the Indian subcontinent gained independence, the Muslim and Hindu regions went their separate ways, contrary to the hopes of Gandhi. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, and there have been several conflicts between India and Pakistan over the border. But there is another problem which is beginning to make itself felt.

There are two Muslim regions of the subcontinent separated by India, and so Pakistan is split into East and West Pakistan—but unlike East and West Germany, they are a united country. The west comprises the Punjab and points west to Afghanistan, while the east is made up of eastern Bengal and the Ganges delta. West Pakistan holds a majority of the population and almost all of the political power.

East Pakistanis have felt increasingly marginalized in the twenty-two years since independence. As an example, the only official language is the western Urdu, which uses the Arabic script, while Bengali, with its own script and long literary history, is ignored. Civil unrest in the east has grown, led by the Awami League under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. They aren’t asking for full independence, merely autonomy with Pakistan becoming a federation of two nations with joint defense and foreign policy.

President Ayub Khan’s rule is becoming increasingly shaky. It is widely believed that the 1965 election was fraudulent and he actually lost. The military now supports Zulifikar Ali Bhutto, and there have been massive student protests in the last couple of years. Ayub Khan thought he had a way to regain support, but it seems to have blown up in his face.

Ayub Khan greets LBJ in Karachi in 1967.

In January of last year, the government announced they had uncovered a plot for the secession of East Pakistan with the help of India. Over a thousand people were arrested, among them Sheikh Mujib. Originally, the plan was for a court-martial, but President Khan later opted for an open trial, perhaps thinking he could move public opinion his way before next year’s elections. As a result, the number of accused was reduced to 36.

The trial was set to begin in Dacca on February 6th, but public unrest resulted in a delay. Then on the 15th, Sergeant Zahurul Haq was shot and killed in his prison cell. When word got out, East Pakistan exploded. The rioters tried to set fire to the State Guest House where the judges and chief prosecutor were staying. The officials escaped, but some of the evidence was destroyed. A week later, the government dropped all charges, and the prisoners were released.

It’s a huge embarrassment for Ayub Khan, and it’s hard to see how he survives this politically. Meanwhile, Sheikh Mujib and the Awami League are riding high. Let’s hope that a peaceful resolution can be found.

Sheikh Mujib (center) emerges from prison.

Science fantasy

And now, this month's first magazine, featuring (like the Pakistans) a single entity with two names—Worlds of IF and Worlds of Tomorrow.

Once upon a time, the term science fantasy was another name for science fiction. These days, it usually refers to work that combines elements of both science fiction and fantasy. Spaceships and magic, that sort of thing. This month’s IF runs strongly in that direction, starting with a new serial from one of that movement’s most prominent authors.

Like I said, swords and spaceships. Art by Adkins

Toys of Tamisan (Part 1 of 2), by Andre Norton

At the urging of his cousin Kas, Lord Starrex buys Tamisan, a powerful action dreamer. Seeking to craft a dream that will impress a former adventurer, she hits on the idea of setting her creation in a place where the history of their city and world turned out differently. Before she can finalize her plans, Starrex demands her services, and Tamisan learns that both he and Kas will be sharing this dream, which has never been done before. The dream appears to be all too real, and Tamisan discovers that she can’t break out of it unless both of the other dreamers are with her. She finds Starrex, but Kas seems to be aboard the approaching spaceship. To be continued.

A spaceship approaches to meet a different welcome than it actually did. Art by Adkins

As you might expect from Norton, this is a well-written adventure, but it’s just not my cup of tea. The mix of science fiction and fantasy is similar to her Witch World books, and I haven’t really enjoyed those. The casual acceptance of Tamisan’s slavery—even if it’s not called that—is also very off-putting.

Three stars for now, but those who like this kind of thing might rate it higher.

Starbright, by E.G. Von Wald

Starbrights are gemstones that take ambient light and emit a color characteristic to the individual stone as long as the wavelength of the stone’s light is longer than that it takes in. Gem collector Sean Macnessa has come to the Aldebaran system, following a rumor of seven rare red starbrights. His search will involve him with local politics, a missing princess, and a Golden Ruberg.

The story is a trifling adventure tale, but it’s fun. It’s not overly long, the humor works, and the reader is given just enough information to work out the solution.

A solid three stars.

A Report on the Sixth International SF Film Festival, by Luigi Cozzi

What it says on the tin: a quick rundown of the festival held in Trieste, Italy. 2001 was naturally a big hit and the only film we covered here at the Journey. The big winner, though, was the British film The Sorcerers, which took awards for the film and its stars, Catherine Lacey and Boris Karloff (who died at the beginning of February).

Three stars.

That Season, by Lawrence Mayer

Humans are rare, maybe unique, among mammals in that they don’t have mating seasons in which females go into heat and males compete violently for access. But what if that changed? That’s the question new author Mayer asks, looking at the events right before, during, and immediately after one season a few generations after such a change. I’m not sure I agree with his conclusions—once could even argue he presents a best-case scenario—but he tells it well, particularly in exposition provided by showing us things rather than “As you know, Bob” conversations.

Three stars.

Spork of the Ayor, by Perry Chapdelaine

Expectations can have a large effect on how you feel about what you read. Where I grew up, “spork” was a humorous name for a spoon with tines on the end (spoon+fork=spork), so I was expecting a farce. Instead, Chapdelaine gives us a straightforward tale of a human raised among intelligent beings not of his kind, who must use his innate human skills to save his adoptive people.

Spork learns to use direct action against the Tepen. Art by Reese

From that picture and the title, you can probably tell that this is basically Tarzan, just with aliens and mental powers. It’s fairly typical of other Chapdelaine stories I’ve read: decently written, but much too long. From the loose threads at the end, it looks like we’ll be getting more. Unfortunately, I’ve never been a fan of Tarzan.

A low three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey looks at the brain and sleep. He starts with electronarcosis, which may be able to cure insomnia and treat schizophrenia. He then discusses the idea of recording dreams and playing them back for others. Lester is making good use of his time in the Galaxy Publishing office. This is the third month in a row in which his article has directly referenced a story in the current issue of either IF or Galaxy. I like it; it gives the article a bit of extra relevance to the reader.

Three stars.

The Light Bearer, by William M. Lee

Pete Coghill is a biochemist with a knack for finding flaws in other people’s research. It hasn’t made him many friends, but management loves him. After accidentally dosing himself an LSD derivative, he has a strange encounter with a prominent scientist. It changes his life for the better, but he will have to pay for it one day.

This story isn’t what it looks like, or what Pete thinks it is. It’s actually quite fun and turns the whole concept on its head.

A high three stars.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Jack Williamson

An interesting interview with an interesting man. Some of that’s down to the life he’s led so far, but some of it probably due to his being a university lecturer who knows how to engage his audience. This is the first time the interview has been with someone who isn’t in the issue, which contrasts with what I said about the del Rey article.

Jack Williamson. Art by Gaughan

Four stars.

Tourists Welcome, by Roger Deeley

The sleepy British town of Maxcombe Parva has been hit with a spate of car thefts in one night. Police sergeant Slocombe wonders if local poacher and con man Geoff Rye might know something. It’s not his style, but he has been known to sell tourists something he doesn’t actually own.

An amusing little tale, though it takes a dark turn right at the end.

Three stars.

Retief, the Long-Awaited Master, by Keith Laumer

The diplomatic mission Retief is on runs afoul of the Groaci, and it’s up to him to save everybody’s career and reputation. I’m going to keep a copy of that sentence on file; it will save time when reviewing the next Retief story.

Retief and Magnan meet the locals. Art by Gaughan

When this story was teased last month, I wondered if enough time had passed for it to feel fresh. The answer is no. Laumer isn’t just going through the motions, the way he was a few years ago, but these are all stamped out by the same cookie cutter. Only the frosting is different.

Three stars, but only recommended if you’re new to the series or are a really big fan.

Summing up

This is a typical middle-of-the-road issue. Rather than rehashing what I usually say at the end of theses articles, let’s talk about art. There’s not much of it, with only three stories being illustrated. No one seems to have paid much attention to it during layout either. The piece reproduced here for “Toys of Tamisan” ran on page 93 for “Spork,” and the piece reproduced here for that story ran on page 27 for “Tamisan.” You’d think somebody would have noticed that even the robots are posed much too naturally and dynamically to have been drawn by Adkins. The magazine really needs to do better with its art.

Bloch could be good or bad. His humor is hit or miss.






[March 1, 1969] Beyond this Horizon (March 1969 Analog and Mariner 6)

photo of the face of a long haired man with glasses
by Gideon Marcus

On to Mars!

black and white photo of Mariner 6, a round probe with four rectangular solar panels jutting from it at right angles

Four years ago (has it been that long?) Mariner 4 became the first space probe to sail by Mars.  This event instantly destroyed a thousand dreams.  The 21 grainy, black and white pictures returned by the spacecraft's TV cameras showed a cratered, lunar-type surface.  The Martian atmosphere was found to be less than 1% as dense at the surface as that of Earth.  Gone was the romantic Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett.

These findings should not have come as such a surprise—the abundance of craters and the thin atmosphere had already been suspected before Mariner 4 ever got there.  But the photographic evidence was the final nail in the coffin.  Mars is dead.

Or is it?

Mariner 4 was a rather limited spacecraft.  We only got 21 pictures, after all.  And while 7 millibars may not seem like much, that's a veritable atmospheric blanket compared to the Moon or Mercury.  We need more data.

This is why a second generation of spacecraft, Mariners 6 and 7, are being sent to Mars.  These are heavier spacecraft with more sophisticated equipment: infrared and ultraviolet radiometers (measuring Martian energy output in those wavelengths), a better TV camera, and the ability to reprogram the spacecraft in flight, as needed.

color photo of an Atlas Centaur rocket taking off from a red launch complex at night

Mariner 6 took off last week on the 24th, and Mariner 7 will blast off March 21st.  We've yet to have both members of a Mariner pair make it to its destination (Mariner 1 and Mariner 3 both had mishaps), but hope springs eternal.  Come this summer, perhaps around the same time a man sets foot on the Moon, we will unveil more mysteries of the fourth planet.

illustration of a blue-furred humanoid, stripped to the waist, looking at a viewscreen with crocodile-head humanoids waving primitive weapons furiously
by Kelly Freas

On to the stars!

Trap, by Christopher Anvil

line drawing of crocodile-headed alien holding a mouse trap clamped around the tale of a furry humanoid stripped to the waist
by Kelly Freas

I have a private joke that every Chris Anvil story for Analog begins (Mad Lib style):

[Military Rank] [WASPy male name] of [military organization] [verbed] down the [corridor/hall/base] lightly touching his [weapon] clipped to his [clippable article of clothing].

"Trap" did nothing but reinforce this cliché, and I hunkered down for a slog of a novella.

Instead, I got a reasonably interesting, technical tale about peaceably dealing with implacable aliens, who possess an unbeatable weapon.  In this case, the planet is a swampy wasteland, the aliens have the ability to teleport anywhere they've been before, and the humans and Centrans (in an alliance since the 1956 story, "Paradise Planet") must find a way to make peace before the aliens find a way to teleport onto every ship and planet in both empires.

It starts a bit slow, but I found myself compelled.  Certainly better than the fare Anvil usually offers us in Analog.  Three stars.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, by R. E. Allen

How does Mannie supply all the movies and music producers with the top talent?  Why, by dowsing over each of the actor's/musician's headshots with a divining rod, of course!

Not much of a story.  Not much science fiction.  Two stars.

They're Trying to Tell Us Something (part 1 of 2), by Thomas R. McDonough

diagram of four pulsar graphs with amplitude of signal versus time

This month's science article is on those enigmatic, recently discovered interstellar radio beacons known as pulsars.  Beeping on the radio dial on the average of once a second (some are faster, some are slower), they are significant for their unwaveringly precise timing and for their enormous power output—some one billion times the power output of all of Earth's civilizations!

There is a lot of interesting information in this article, but what annoys me is that McDonough seems convinced that pulsars are the work of "Little Green Men" (LGM), and presents his article accordingly.  Nowhere in the piece is the general accepted wisdom that the regularity of the signals and the fact that they seem to carry no information (not to mention their tremendous power) indicates that pulsars are rapidly rotating stars, and likely rapidly rotating, collapsed dead stars called "neutron stars".

This isn't esoteric knowledge I gleaned from The Astrophysical Journal—it's from the Sunday Supplement of Escondido's rag of a paper, The Times-Advocate.  So, its exclusion from McDonough's piece must be conscious, and that makes his arguments suspect.  Perhaps he'll discuss neutron stars in the next piece, but they really should have been front and center.

Three stars.

Minitalent, by Tak Hallus

line drawing of a courtroom setting with an older judge with glasses, a steno clerk woman behind him, and a gallery of seal-like aliens, looking at a worksuited human with a gallery of humans behind him
by Leo Summers

Alice Culligan, third mate and computer officer on the space ship Iphigenia, witnessed a crime: gun runners had smuggled cruel "nervers" to a race of aborigines.  They were caught, but the company they're working for looks to get away scott free.  They will do anything to ensure that verdict—including silencing Miss Culligan forever.

But Alice has an ace up her sleeve: a minor talent for telekinetics.  And in a computerized world, sometimes a little push is all that's needed…

Similarly premised as Larry Niven's sublime "The Organleggers", this tale (Tak Hallus' first) is not as deftly told.  That said, it is pretty good, and I liked the heroine very much.  It's clearly in the vein of, say, James H. Schmitz, so if you like him, you'll like this.

By the way, Tak Hallus is simply Arabic for "pseudonym", so who knows?  Maybe it really is Schmitz!

Four stars.

From Fanaticism, or for Reward, by Harry Harrison

line drawing of a man with a beam rifle shooting at a robot that looks like a suit of armor
by Leo Summers

An assassin named Jagen performs a job and, with the help of a teleportation system, escapes The Great Despot's justice.  But is there any ultimate evasion the efficient robot machines of the Despot's police force?

The well-written piece is really a setup for the philosophical question posed at the end.  The answer is surprising for such a libertarian mag as editor Campbell's.

Five stars.

Wolfling (Part 3 of 3), by Gordon R. Dickson

line drawing of two stylized men in tunics dueling with glowing rods, a woman crouched over a body in the background
by Kelly Freas

And now, the conclusion of Wolfling.  By Gordy Dickson.

Jim Weil, archaeologist and Ace of All Trades (the term "bannou" (万能) is even more appropriate), had infiltrated the High-Born empire he was sent to detachedly examine, becoming a general in its armies.  Having discovered a plot to destroy the imperial warrior race of Starkiens, Jim quickly returned to the throne world to thwart a plot on the Emperor, himself.  He is successful in defeating the pretender, the Emperor's cousin, but now he must return to Earth and face treason charges for possibly incurring the imperial wrath on humanity.

In a dramatic courtroom scene, Jim explains his actions, how they saved the Earth, and the true origin of humanity vis. a vis. the High-Born.  Did we come from them, or did they come from us?

The answer is rather disappointing, more along the lines of something I'd expect written in the pulp era than modern times.  In addition, all of the energy-saber dueling seemed unnecessary; when everyone can teleport at whim, how do you keep your foe in the same room long enough to dispatch him?  Or keep your foe from materializing behind you?

But most of all, I had expected a statement against eugenics, but instead got something of a defense of it.  If not for the skilled writing, I might rate it more poorly.

Three stars for the serial as a whole.

On to the numbers!

black and white photo of a plump Black woman leaning over an eighth-grade white girl seated at a computer, a eight-grade black boy behind her, mathematical equations on the blackboard behind them all

You know, it's been quite a month!  With Analog clocking in at 3.4 stars, it's near the top of the heap rather than taking its usual place in the middle.  Ahead of it were Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4) and IF (3.5).  The good news is, the spread was pretty narrow: Galaxy scored 3.3, New Worlds 3.2, New Writings 14 3.  Only Amazing scored below the three-line (2.7), and it was still better than usual.

In other vital statistics, women produced 11% of the new fictional content.  The superior stuff this month would fill three full-sized magazines.  Given that there were seven published this month, that's a good ratio.

Stay tuned for the end of next month when we find out how April's magazines do…and how Mariner 7 flies!






55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction