[April 22, 1970] “Houston, We’ve had a Problem Here!” (Apollo-13 emergency in space)

April 22, 2025 Kaye Dee Leave a comment

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

by Kaye Dee

We all breathed a sigh of relief when the astronauts of Apollo-13 returned to Earth safely a few days ago, after the Apollo programmes’ first (and hopefully last) inflight emergency, but superstitious people are claiming that Apollo-13 was unlucky because of a prevalence of “13s”! After all, the mission was launched at 13:13 Houston time (but somewhere in the world there will always be a place where the time is 13: something!) and the explosion that caused its inflight emergency occurred on 13 April (but only in certain timezones – it was already 14 April in Australia and most of the world east of the United States).

Don’t tell me the Apollo-13 crew were “unlucky”; in fact, they were immensely lucky that when something did go wrong they were a team with the right skills for the situation. As seasoned test pilots, the crew were experienced at working in critical situations with their lives on the line, and their professional skills as astronauts were matched by the “tough and competent” (to quote Flight Director Mr. Gene Kranz) Mission Control teams, backed by highly trained engineers and scientists – all determined to “return them safely to the Earth”, just as President Kennedy committed NASA to do when he set the goal of a manned lunar landing by 1970!

Timeline of major mission events during Apollo-13

Crew Switcheroo
The prime crew for Apollo-13 changed multiple times, the last alteration occurring just days before launch! Instead of rotating the Apollo-10 back-up crew to become the prime crew for Apollo-13 – the normal procedure – Director of Flight Crew Operations, Mr. Deke Slayton, designated astronauts Alan Shepard (Commander), Stuart Roosa (Command Module Pilot) and Edgar Mitchell (Lunar Module Pilot) as the Apollo-13 prime crew. However, although he was the first American in space, Captain Shepard had only recently returned to flight status after a lengthy medical issue. It was felt that he needed more training time, so in August 1969, his crew was swapped with the prime crew for Apollo-14.

The prime crew for Apollo 13 then became US Navy Captain James Lovell, as Commander, civilian Mr. Fred Haise as Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) and USAF Lt. Col. Ken Mattingly as Command Module Pilot (CMP).

Official crew portrait for Apollo-13. L.-R. Jim Lovell, Ken Mattingly and Fred Haise. They are shown with ancient scientific and navigation instruments hinting at the classical elements in the mission patch and callsigns

Unfortunately, just a week before launch back-up LMP Charles Duke contracted German measles (rubella) from a child and accidentally exposed both the prime and back-up crews to the disease. CMP Mattingly was found to have no immunity, and the astronauts’ medical team had serious concerns that he could become too sick to perform adequately during the flight if he began to experience symptoms of the disease.

Normally, NASA policy would dictate that the back-up crew step into the mission. However, since back-up LMP Duke also had the measles, this wasn’t feasible. Just three days before launch, the difficult decision was made to replace Lt. Col. Mattingly with Mr. Jack Swigert, the fortunately-immune back-up CMP. This made the final crew for Apollo-13 Lovell, Haise and Swigert. Astronaut Mattingly will be re-assigned to a later Apollo mission, probably Apollo 16.

The last minute Apollo-13 crew portrait, following the swap of Ken Mattingly to Jack Swigert

Who’s Who?
Although he announced his intention to retire from NASA prior to Apollo-13, 42-year-old Mission Commander James “Jim” Lovell is the world's most experienced astronaut, the record holder for the most time in space, with 572 hours aboard Gemini-7, Gemini-12 and Apollo-8!

Members of the fifth astronaut group, selected in 1966, Captain Lovell’s crewmates may have both been space rookies, but fortuitously they each had specialisations that provided vital knowledge and experience during the in-flight emergency.

Mr. Fred Haise, the Lunar Module pilot (LMP), is a 36-year-old aeronautical engineer, who was both a Marine Corps and Air National Guard fighter pilot. A civilian research pilot for NASA before his selection as an astronaut, Mr. Haise previously served as back-up LMP for Apollo-8 and 11. He is a specialist on the Lunar Module (LM), having spent fourteen months at the Grumman factory where the spacecraft are built.

Mr. John “Jack” Swigert, the Command Module Pilot (CMP), is 38 years old, with degrees in mechanical engineering and aerospace science. He has served in the US Air Force and in state Air National Guards and was an engineering test pilot immediately prior to his astronaut selection. A specialist in malfunctions of the Command and Lunar Modules, Mr. Swigert “practically wrote the book on spacecraft malfunctions.”

Knowledge from the Moon
It’s probably fortunate that, like Apollo-11, Captain Lovell’s original crew made the decision that the Apollo-13 mission patch would not carry their names: when the last minute crew swap occurred, no changes were required to the design. Instead of names, the Apollo-13 patch carries the motto “Ex Luna, Scientia”, Latin for “From the Moon, knowledge”. This references Apollo-13’s intended role as the second ‘H’-class mission, designed to demonstrate precision landing capability so that the crew could explore a specific site on the Moon. As a Navy officer, Captain Lovell derived the motto from that of the US Naval Academy, “Ex scientia, tridens ("From knowledge, sea power").

A powerful image of the Sun rising behind the horses of the god Apollo’s chariot forms the centrepiece of the design. As Apollo is the god of both the Sun and knowledge, this plays upon both the project name and the mission motto. Against the black background of space, the golden horses of Apollo prance over the Moon, their journey from the Earth (in the background) to the Moon depicted by a bright blue path. Artist Lumen Martin Winter, designer of the Apollo-13 mission patch, based the horses on a mural he previously painted for the St. Regis Hotel in New York City (below). Using Roman numerals for the mission number also complements the classical connections of the spacecraft names and callsigns.

Classical Callsigns
Captain Lovell drew upon classical mythology in selecting the Command Module callsign “Odyssey” – taken from Homer’s epic Greek poem. Since an “odyssey is “a long voyage with many changes of fortune”, it turned out to be an extremely appropriate choice indeed! The name was also a nod to the classic science fiction film "2001: a Space Odyssey".

For the Lunar Module, the crew selected the callsign “Aquarius”. Although the media have linked the callsign to the song in the musical “Hair”, it is actually meant to reference Aquarius, the cup-bearer of the Graeco-Roman gods, and bringer of water – the only water on the Moon being that carried there by the Apollo crew.

Medieval illustration of Aquarius watering the Earth

Preflight Preparations
Apollo-13’s launcher, AS-508, had some slight modifications compared to earlier Saturn-V vehicles, to prepare for the future J-class missions which will carry heavier payloads. New “spray-on insulation” was used for the liquid hydrogen propellent tanks in the S-II second stage. The rocket also carried additional fuel, as a test for future launches, making it the heaviest Saturn-V yet flown.

The intensive preparation for the Apollo-13 crew included over 1,000 hours of mission-specific training, with a much greater focus on geology, since the intended landing area in the hilly Fra Mauro formation (named for a 15th Century cartographer monk) is of significant geological interest. If rocks from this area could be dated, they might improve our understanding of the early geological history of both the Moon and the Earth. Scientist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt, himself a geologist, was heavily involved in the crew’s geological training.

Jim Lovell and Fred Haise during geology training in Hawaii

Due to the difficulty of distinguishing astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin from each other in Apollo-11 photographs, NASA introducec a means of differentiating crew members from each other on the Moon by adding red stripes on the helmet, arms and legs of the commander's spacesuit. This system will now be implemented on Apollo-14.

Experiments That Might Have Been
A major component of Apollo-13’s lunar surface activities would have been the installation of a new Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP), powered by a SNAP-27 radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). This small nuclear generator contains 8.36lb of plutonium oxide. The fuel capsule is intended to withstand the heat of re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere in the event of an aborted mission, which means that Apollo-13’s RTG may have survived Aquarius’ re-entry on return to Earth, splashing down into a remote area of the southern Pacific Ocean.

Mission Commander Lovell practicing the deployment of an ALSEP instrument during training

Like Apollo-11 and 12, Apollo-13’s ALSEP included a seismometer (the Passive Seismic Experiment), which was to be calibrated by the impact of Aquarius’ ascent stage, a Lunar Atmosphere Detector (LAD) and a Dust Detector. New to the Apollo-13 instrument package was a Heat Flow Experiment (HFE), and a Charged Particle Lunar Environment Experiment (CPLEE), designed to measure solar protons and electrons reaching the Moon.

A Shakey Start
Originally scheduled for launch in March, Apollo-13 was delayed for a month while NASA re-considers how it will schedule the remaining Apollo missions out to Apollo-19, now that Apollo-20 has been axed due to President Nixon’s budget cuts.

The mission hit trouble right at the start: five and a half minutes after liftoff on Saturday 11 April (US time). The crew felt “a little vibration”, then the centre engine of the S-II stage shut down two minutes early. This required the remaining four engines to burn and additional 34 seconds longer, while the S-IVB third stage had to burn 9 seconds longer to put the spacecraft into orbit. But with the extra fuel on board for this flight, the engine failure fortunately didn’t cause any major problem.

A successful trans lunar injection burn placed Apollo-13 on course for the Moon, with the CSM and LM docking occurring 20 minutes’ later. Unlike previous lunar missions, after the LM was extracted from the S-IVB stage, the stage was not sent off into solar orbit, but targetted to impact the Moon so the vibrations could be detected by the Apollo-12 seismometer. This would later cause unexpected communications complications after the accident occurred.

Apollo-13's S-IVB stage heading towards the Moon

“We’re Bored to Tears”
With the spacecraft safely on its way to the Moon, the first phase of the flight was uneventful. Approaching 31 hours into the flight, the crew performed a burn to place Apollo 13 on a hybrid trajectory, enabling Aquarius to ultimately land at the Fra Mauro site. This change from the free-return trajectory used on earlier missions would cause later complications for returning the astronauts to Earth: on a free-return trajectory, no further engine burns were necessary to ultimately bring the spacecraft home, but a hybrid trajectory would miss Earth on its return leg, unless further burns were performed.

Apollo-13 White Team Flight Director Mr. Gene Kranz catching up on his paperwork in Mission Control during the calm before the storm

The day after launch, Mr. Swigert became worried by the realisation that, in the rush to replace Ken Mattingly, he had forgotten to file his Income Tax Return, and needed to apply for an extension! Fortunately for him, an amused Mission Control advised that “American citizens out of the country get a 60-day extension on filing; assume this applies to you.”

With Apollo-13’s telemetry showing that the spacecraft was “in real good shape”, on 13 April Capcom Joe Kerwin told the crew “We are bored to tears down here.”—a situation that was soon to change.

The Last Apollo-13 Show
Astronauts Lovell and Haise entered the LM to test its systems about an hour before a major television broadcast, scheduled for 55 hours into the mission.

With Commander Lovell acting as MC, the astronauts put on a lively show, exhibiting some of their gear such as space helmets, sleeping hammocks and newly-designed bags for drinking water inside their spacesuits. From Odyssey, Captain Lovell played tinkly lounge music using a small tape recorder, and he said it was an awesome thing to see the Moon accompanied by the theme to 2001.

Mission Control during the Apollo-13 broadcast. Astronaut Fred Haise can be seen on the big screen

Disappointingly, American television viewers had become, it seems, even more bored than Mission Control with now-“routine” missions to the Moon. None of the major US networks carried the broadcasts, although they were seen in Australia and, I believe, other countries. Marilyn Lovell and Mary Haise had to go to the Mission Control VIP viewing room to see their husbands’ half hour broadcast on television.

“Houston, We’ve had a Problem Here!”
Just nine minutes after the conclusion of the television broadcast, at 205,000 miles from Earth, an incident occurred that turned Apollo-13 from a routine mission into an emergency situation: one that the media and anxious communities in the US and around the world would intently follow as soon as the news broke!

At the request of Mission Control, Mr. Swigert stirred the cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen tanks that powered the fuel cells in the Service Module (SM). This action was followed by a “pretty large bang”, felt as a jolt through the spacecraft, accompanied by fluctuations in electrical power, attitude control thrusters firing automatically and a brief loss of communications and telemetry to Earth.

Diagram of the Service Module showing the location of the fuel cells and oxygen tanks that must have been damaged by the explosion, based on the available telemtry

CMP Swigert quickly reported "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here," confirmed moments later by the Mission Commander, "Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a Main B Bus undervolt”. This meant that the SM’s three fuel cells were not providing sufficient voltage to the second of the Service Module’s two electrical power distribution systems

Captain Lovell momentarily thought that LMP Haise had activated Aquarius’ cabin-repressurisation valve (which Haise could have done as a joke, since its bang would startle his crewmates); CMP Swigert initially thought that a meteoroid might have struck the LM, though there was no atmospheric leakage. But voltage was dropping in both electrical buses, one oxygen tank was empty, and the other leaking, and two of the three fuel cells were failing!

Headline from Australian newspaper "The Sun" just a few hours after the accident. It references Lovell's description of gas venting from the Service Module

Looking out Odyssey’s hatch window, seeking a cause for the spacecraft thrusters to be firing erratically and affecting their course to the Moon, Captain Lovell saw “gas of some sort” venting into space. Some kind of physical rupture had definitely occurred: whatever had caused the problem, the situation was serious.

Mission Control Swings into Action
Although the Flight Controllers in Houston initially assumed that their bizarre anomalous readings from Apollo-13 had to be the result of instrumentation issues, it quickly became obvious, judging from the reports from the crew, that they were dealing with a genuine emergency.

The Mission Control White Team, led by Flight Director Gene Kranz, was on duty when the incident occurred and had to deal with the initial hours afterwards. With extensive Flight Director experience going back to the Mercury programme, and including critical phases of the Apollo-11 mission, Mr. Kranz played a crucial role in the rescue of the Apollo-13 crew.

Flight Director Gene Kranz (seated) and senior Flight Controllers during the tense period following the Apollo-13 accident

With telemetry data providing some insight into the condition of the spacecraft, and support from “backroom” teams of technical specialists, White Team worked to diagnose the problems and prioritise recovery and rescue actions.

The fuel cells needed oxygen to operate, but it was rapidly leaking away. Attempting to stem the leak, they shut down the two failing fuel cells. This immediately meant the loss of the lunar landing, as mission rules prohibited going into orbit around the Moon unless all three fuel cells were functioning. With oxygen still being lost, Mr. Kranz ordered the isolation of a small oxygen supply within the Odyssey, to retain it for use with the last remaining fuel cell, which would be needed for the final hours of the mission. The CM's batteries would be needed to power the craft during re-entry, so they were also shut down to conserve power.

Lifeboat Aquarius
Ninety-three minutes after the accident, oxygen pressure in the Command Module was dropping and Mission Control determined that the last fuel cell would soon fail as oxygen ran out, leaving the CM effectively dead. Aware of training simulations that had used the LM as a “lifeboat”, Mission Control ordered the crew to transfer to Aquarius.

Lovell, Haise and Swigert had themselves already realised that Aquarius would be needed as a lifeboat, and had commenced to power-up the Lunar Module, transferring necessary information to the LM’s guidance system. They bagged up as much water as possible from Odyssey’s supply (needed for equipment cooling as well as drinking), storing the water and food supplies in Aquarius.

The Apollo-13 crew's only view of their lifeboat Aquarius in space, drifting after it was cast loose shortly before re-entry

It was going to be a tight fit for three astronauts in a spacecraft meant for two, but the crew were fortunate that the emergency occurred when they had a fully-powered and supplied Lunar Module attached to the Odyssey. Had the explosion occurred after the lunar landing, with Aquarius jettisoned, the CM would not be able to provide enough life support to keep the astronauts alive until they returned to Earth.

Apollo-13 was being surrounded by a cloud of debris from the explosion. Communications were weak and erratic, due to probable antenna damage from debris, as well as interference from the S-IVB stage also on its way to the Moon. Its tracking beacon was operating on the same frequency as the Lunar Module, as it had not been anticipated that the LM and S-IVB stage would be communicating at the same time. (I’ll cover this situation in more detail in an article in May).

Flight Controllers conferring on how best to bring Apollo-13 safely home. Note the lack of data usually present on the big screens

“Returning Them Safely to the Earth”
Apollo-13’s new mission goal became the safe return of the crew to the Earth. Vital consumables (oxygen, electricity, and water) were assessed and rationing plans devised. Calculating the best way to get the spacecraft back to Earth before supplies were exhausted became a priority, with the mindset that “failure is not an option”.

Ultimately, the safest course of action was deemed to be putting Apollo-13 back on a free-return trajectory, firing the LM’s descent engine so that the spaceship would loop around the Moon and head back to Earth. Using the large Service Module engine was ruled out, since it was uncertain if it had been damaged by the explosion.

NASA’s “Return to Earth” trajectory specialist, Miss Poppy Northcutt, calculated a new course to carry Apollo-13 around the Moon and safely home. Anxious to assist in any way they could, other astronauts arrived at Mission Control, including Lt. Col. Mattingly, who still had not developed German measles! Some would spend time in the Apollo simulators, helping to work up needed procedures, such as powering up the Command Module for re-entry with limited electricity available.

NASA Contollers and astronauts gathered in Mission Control to assist the rescue of Apollo-13. Seated, left to right, Guidance Officer Raymond F. Teague; astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, Apollo 14 prime crew lunar module pilot; and astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr., Apollo 14 prime crew commander. Standing, left to right, are scientist-astronaut Anthony W. England; astronaut Joe H. Engle, Apollo 14 backup crew lunar module pilot; astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 14 backup crew commander; astronaut Ronald E. Evans, Apollo 14 backup crew command module pilot; and M.P. Frank, a flight controller

Sixty one and a half hours after launch, Aquarius’ descent engine burn put Apollo-13 back on a free return trajectory. As it looped around the Moon, Apollo-13 captured the Guinness World Record for the farthest distance from Earth attained by a crewed spacecraft – 248,655 miles.

The Moon's far side photographed by the Apollo-13 crew. The shut down CM Odyssey can also be seen in the foreground of this view from Aquarius

I’m sure you recall the tension during those 25 minutes of radio blackout when Apollo-13 was behind the Moon. People around the world tuned into television and radio, or gathered in public spaces, eager for news, now engrossed in the gripping drama being played out in space. Would the astronauts survive? Religious leaders led congregations in prayer for their safe return.

On Their Way Home
Mission Control determined that a burn following trans-Earth injection would shave 12 hours off the flight time back to Earth and land Apollo-13 in the Pacific, where the main US recovery fleet was located. Thirteen nations (another number 13!), including the USSR, offered to provide rescue ships or aircraft for emergency recovery, should the spacecraft come down off course in the Pacific, Indian or Atlantic Oceans.

When this crucial burn took place, the debris cloud surrounding the spacecraft made it impossible to use stellar navigation to check the accuracy of the firing. However, the crew were able to use the positions of the Sun and Moon to confirm that the trajectory was on target. They were going home!

The astronauts then shut down most LM systems to conserve consumables, making for a miserable return flight: in Aquarius it was extremely cold (38 °F), dark and damp, with moisture condensing out on every surface, including the windows. The same issue occurred in Odyssey, raising concerns of short-circuits occurring when it was powered back up. Fortunately, lessons learned from the Apollo-1 fire prevented that from happening.

Mission Commander Lovell tries to sleep in the extreme cold and semi-darkness of the Lunar Module

The crew slept poorly, eating and drinking little (cold frankfurters and water for dinner, anyone?). They lost weight, with Mr. Haise developing a urinary tract infection, apparently from dehydration.

Putting a Square Peg in a Round Hole
A new problem arose during the return journey – with three astronauts in the LM, dangerous levels of carbon dioxide were building up in Aquarius. They were running out of lithium hydroxide canisters, designed to scrub it from the air, and the square canisters used in Odyssey were not compatible with the round openings in Aquarius!

Jack Swigert, with assistance from Jim Lovell (just out of frame) assembles the connections for the makeshift CO2 scrubbing device nicknamed "the mailbox", which is box shaped object beside Swigert

NASA engineers fortunately found a way to fit “a square peg in a round hole,” using only items available on the spacecraft. After the instructions for building the device were radioed up, Swigert and Haise constructed it and carbon dioxide levels began dropping immediately.

The Final Leg
Apollo-13 showed a tendency to drift slowly off course, and two more mid-course correction burns were needed to keep the spacecraft within the safe re-entry flight path. Just after 138 hours into the mission, the crew jettisoned the SM from the command module, allowing the astronauts to see and photograph the explosion area for the first time. They were shocked by the extent of the damage they saw and concerned that the explosion might have damaged the heatshield.

The astronauts' only view of the Service Module, showing the extent of the damage caused by the explosion, which blew out an entire side panel.

Moving back into Odyssey, the astronauts then reactivated its life support systems, while retaining Aquarius until about 70 minutes before entry. With no heatshield of its own, the LM could not safely re-enter, but as it drifted away, watched sadly by the crew, Capcom Kerwin offered an epitaph from Mission Control: “Farewell Aquarius, and we thank you”.

There's no place like home! Earth taken from Apollo-13 in the final stages of its return from the Moon

Home at Last!
At last, on April 17 (US time),142 hours after launch, Apollo-13 re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. Its shallow re-entry path lengthened the usual four-minute radio communications blackout to six minutes, causing Mission Control to briefly fear that the CM's heat shield had failed. But Odyssey had survived and splashed down safely in the South Pacific Ocean south-east of American Samoa, just four miles from the recovery ship, USS Iwo Jima: total flight time: 5 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes and 41 seconds. Mission Control erupted in cheers!

While the world rejoiced at their safe return, the exhausted Apollo-13 crew stayed overnight on the recovery ship, without undergoing quarantine since they did not land on the Moon.

Exhausted but elated, the Apollo-13 crew are formally welcomed aboard the recovery ship, USS Iwo Jima as returning heroes after their space ordeal

The astronauts flew to Pago Pago in American Samoa the next day, then on to Hawaii, where they were re-united with their wives and President Nixon awarded them the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian honour. The Presidential Medal of Freedom was also awarded to the Apollo-13 Mission Operations Team, for their efforts in ensuring the safe return of the Apollo-13 crew. After staying overnight in Hawaii, Capt. Lovell, Mr. Haise and Mr. Swigert have now returned to Houston to be re-united with their families.

Returning heroes after their space ordeal. the Apollo-13 crew stand proudly with President Nixon after being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

At present, the cause of the explosion that crippled Apollo-13 is unknown, so I will leave the speculation until my follow-up article in May, talking more about Apollo-13’s epic journey. I’d like to end here with the words of President Nixon, during the Presidential Medal of Freedom presentation: “You did not reach the Moon, but you reached the hearts of millions of people on Earth by what you did.”

The astronauts only learned about the extent of the pubic reaction to their emergency after they returned to Earth!

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 20, 1970] Not the final quarry (May 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

April 20, 2025 Gideon Marcus 2 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Tunnel light

There have been a lot of happy endings recently. The postal strike is over, thanks to the government agreeing to an 8% raise for federal employees. Ditto the air traffic control strike. Nixon's third nominee to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court, 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Harry Blackmun, isn't somewhere to the right of Ghengis Khan. The Apollo 13 astronauts made it back home by the skin of their teeth.

But of course, the old stories go on. The Vietnam war has grown to include Cambodia—if Domino Theory is to be believed, we'll soon be fighting in the streets of Canberra. Teachers are on strike in California; Governor Reagan says they're "against the children". And actor Michael Strong says you can't walk the streets of the nation's capital without a good chance of getting mugged.

And so, it is appropriate that the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is a mixed bag. Some of it will thrill you, some of it will leave you cold. On the other hand, none of it will mug you.

The Issue at Hand

by Mel Hunter

The Final Quarry, by Eric Norden

Two Englishmen are on the hunt in the backwoods of Thessaly. One is a corpulent and uncouth Lord, looking to bag the last unicorn. The other is his guide looking to bag the Lord and take the half million drachmas the noble carries on his person. Gradually, we learn the exact year of this expedition (a little over half a century ago). The timing is signicant.

An interesting story that intertwines unicorns with Christian theology and ties their extinction with the death of good things in the world. The Book of Revelations…with hooves and horns. It's all very visceral and sensory, with full descriptions of each meal, and with doom dogging every footstep. A singularly F&SF sort of tale.

Four stars.

by Gahan Wilson

Books, by Barry Malzberg

The F&SF reviewer roulette ball has landed on Barry this month. He laments that the SF writing community is small enough that one hates to disparage one's peers lest they end up crossing paths on some other project. This does not keep Malzberg from condeming Moorcock's The Black Corridor ("It is really not at all good…[but] I remain convinced that someday Moorcock will write a subtantial novel, fully worthy of his pretensions and our expectations), Zelazny's Damnation Alley ("The flaw of the novella was that it had no characterological interior or true sense of pace; and instead of concentrating his novelization on those areas whih might have done some good (like ironic counterpoint), Zelazny has simply souped up and extended the action; and, if I don't miss my guess, he has put in a wee bit of sex."), and Orbit 5 ("…not so terribly happy with, and I am not sure why this is so.")

He also was disappointed with the SFWA's latest compilation, Nebula Award Stories Four ("These are good stories, but even the writers, I think, would attest to the fact that better work was published in 1968, if not by others, then by themselves.")

Better luck next time, Barry!

Runesmith, by Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon

If you combine Ellison and Sturgeon and then dedicate the story to Cordwainer Smith, you're setting yourself up for some high scrutiny! Luckily, this tale (more or less) survives the heightened expectations.

The story's antihero is also named Smith, though perhaps his name is symbolic, for through a knowledge of the occult arts, he has wrought the near destruction of all of humanity. Unknowingly cultivated and spurred on by the evil ones who lie just beyond the veil of sense, Smith has reduced virtually every city, slaughtered every person, all by casting knuckle bones from a bag and reading their divination.

Now, with guilt gnawing at him, and with the last few survivors aiming to gnaw on him, the true instigators of this hell-on-Earth lick their chops and prepare to return the world they once called theirs.

The problem with this (beautifully told) story is that it has a happy ending. Now, I like happy endings (viz. the first paragraph of this article) but this tale doesn't really earn its. It just decides to lurch in a positive direction with no setup, derailing a consistent tone and the macabre satisfaction at seeing just how destructive evil can be. The conclusion comes off as twee and affected.

Three stars.

Voices Answering Back: The Vampires, by Lawrence Raab

The last couple of lines are the best part of this overlong proem. Two stars.

The Fourth Tense of Time, by Albert Teichner

An old zillionaire has made his fortune through a talent for close-term prognostication. He can see just a few hours into the future, which is enough for horse racing and the stock market. But it comes at a cost: terrible migraine headaches.

When a scientist learns of the zillionaire's talents, he labors to identify the source, in the process, lengthening the rich fellow's future range.

But what happens when one's ability to foretell what's to come crosses over the barrier between life and death?

There's a lot of promise to this story, but there's also a bit of repetitious belaboring, and the conclusion's tea is somewhat weak. Three stars.

The Fabulous Bartender, by Paul Darcy Boles

The Greek God Bacchus takes a short-term gig as a bartender. Everyone has a good time.

That's all there is to this affable but longwinded story. I guess the challenge to the reader is to see how long it takes him to figure out who's serving the drinks.

Two stars.

Nobody Believes an Indian, by G. C. Edmondson

We once again go South of the Border for a flip, steeped-in-Mexican-culture tale of Edmonsdon's "mad friend". This time around, the narrator and his pal are guests of one of Pancho Villa's generales de dedo (brevet generals) who is rumored to be a pot grower, the kind subject to occasional field burnings to satisfy the Yankees up North.

Turns out that the indio general has got something significantly more harmful than marijuana between his rows.

Fun, frivolous, and more travelogue than tale, it passes the pages pleasantly. Three stars.

Playing the Game, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor explains the Doppler effect and its application not only to sound waves but to light waves. Nothing new for me, but it's a very cogent detailing of a fundamental astronomical principle.

Five stars.

Murder Will In, by Frank Herbert

Once again, we have a piece sprouting from the death of Douglas Bailey. The opening passage is always the same—Bailey is euthanized. But what comes after that is up to the commissioned author.

In this case, we find that Bailey has been inhabited for most of his life by a pair of thought beings: the Tegas, which seeks out those with inclination to murder as the easiest prey, and the Bacit, which seems to be superego to the Tegas ego (and id?)

The problem is, Bailey was euthanized in a future in which the greatest human technology is that of control. There are precious few suitable hosts for the Tegas/Bacit to jump to in this mechanized, soulless age. And when he does manage to escape the dying Bailey, the Tegas learns that humanity is onto him, killing his hosts to find the alien presence. The alien presence finds himself at the mercy of an interrogator without emotion, only a driving motive.

But perhaps even the most passionless interrogator betrays a passion after all, one that makes him vulnerable to Tegas control…

I give this one marks for creativity, but it is told with the typical Herbert over-the-top quality. Frank is rarely one for subtlety. I'd half expected it to turn out that there were multiple Tegases on Earth, and they'd all sought refuge in the last human with emotion, but that turned out not to be the case.

Instead, we get a lot of vivid, emotionally charged passages; some innovative alien perspectives; but nothing particularly exciting.

Three stars.

Summing up

The star-o-meter puts this issue on the positive side of things, and that feels right. Gone are heady days of the 1950s when Boucher was the editor, but things seemed to have stabilized for F&SF into something consistent and unique. It's not so much The New Thing now—more of an aping of an old style by folks who don't quite remember the dance moves. Still, it's good enough for the nonce.

And that's some kind of hope.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[April 18th, 1970] The Spaceman Who Came In From The Cold (Doctor Who: The Ambassadors Of Death [Parts 1-4])

April 18, 2025 Jessica Holmes Leave a comment

By Jessica Holmes

The name’s Who… Doctor Who. In the latest adventure, our favourite double-hearted space alien finds himself embroiled in a spy thriller with all the trappings: cool car, wacky gadgetry, and an espionage plot I need a diagram to keep track of. Let’s take a peek under the bonnet of David Whitaker’s most recent contribution to Doctor Who, “The Ambassadors Of Death”.

In Case You Missed It

Grab your notepads, this is going to get a little complicated.

Let’s start with the basics: Seven months before the start of the story, ground control for a Mars mission lost contact with their astronauts and gave them up for dead. Now their craft is on the way home but the occupants still haven’t contacted Earth. Moments after docking with the Mars capsule, the rescue capsule goes silent, too. Shortly afterwards, mysterious signals start beaming out from the paired capsules. Enter UNIT and the Brigadier, who had been supervising the rescue mission. Hopefully they won’t blow anybody up this time.

Seeing news coverage of the mission on television, the Doctor invites himself over to the space centre and starts telling anyone who will listen (and anyone who won’t, in increasingly loud and tetchy tones) that the signal from the spacecraft was an attempt at communication. With the Brig vouching for him, the Doctor immediately starts work on trying to decode it. Someone has beaten him to the punch, however, and transmitted a reply. UNIT are able to trace the source back to an abandoned warehouse in London, but the signallers flee before they get there, and a firefight ensues.

The Doctor, meanwhile, finds his attempts to decipher the signal stymied at every turn by the Mars mission’s chief scientist, Taltalian (Robert Cawdron), who sabotages the space centre’s computer before going AWOL. Don’t forget about him. He still has a part to play.

With still no communication from the occupants, the recovery capsule returns to Earth, but as UNIT transport it back to the space centre their convoy comes under attack. The Doctor is able to recover the capsule (in a way that’s absolutely hilarious and involves sticking the attackers’ hands to Bessie’s rear bumper and absconding with their stolen lorry), but in the brief time it's out of UNIT’s control, the astronauts disappear.

Growing suspicious that there is someone within the space centre (other than Taltalian) spying on their progress and sabotaging them, the Doctor and the Brigadier attempt to raise the issue with the highest authority they can find, Sir James Quinlan (Dallas Cavell), Minister for Technology. Quinlan confirms their suspicions and introduces them to General Carrington (John Abineri, who previously appeared in “Fury From The Deep” as Van Lutyens), former astronaut and new head of Space Security. Carrington apologises for all the cloak and dagger, but it was for the astronauts’ own safety and that of the public.

He claims the signal was a coded warning from them, so he had Taltalian sabotage the Doctor’s efforts to decode it in order to avoid panic, and sent men to abduct the astronauts to keep them out of the public eye. According to Carrington, the astronauts came down with a nasty case of contagious self-sustaining space radiation and needed to be contained to avoid mass panic.

I’m not the only one who finds his version of events a little difficult to believe. Even more suspicious now, the Doctor asks to examine the astronauts, but whoops! While Carrington was with him, someone abducted the astronauts. Again. Or rather, someone abducted the entities pretending to be the astronauts. Whatever’s wearing their spacesuits, they aren’t human. They’re absolutely buzzing with radiation—far more than any human could survive for more than a few minutes. It’s even dangerous to be around them, as two of their kidnappers find out to their detriment. Their leader, Reegan (William Dysart), leaves their radiation-poisoned bodies (with planted documentation to make them appear to be foreign agents) in a gravel quarry for UNIT to find.

Satisfied with his work, he delivers the mysterious spacemen to the care of his own pet scientist, Lennox (Cyril Shaps, previously seen in “Tomb Of The Cybermen" as John Viner), who was apparently disgraced for undisclosed reasons. Lennox doesn’t seem a bad sort, just in bad company.

Having finally figured out that the real astronauts must still be in orbit aboard the Mars probe (I had a few jokes lined up about this but in light of recent events they don’t seem quite as funny), the Doctor and the space centre's controller Cornish (Ronald Allen, previously seen as Rago in "The Dominators"), inform Quinlan that work on a rescue mission will commence immediately. This greatly disturbs Quinlan and Carrington, who for whatever reason are quite determined that no attempt should be made to get the astronauts back. The consequences could be disastrous. What do they know that we (and the Doctor) don’t?

Lennox finds himself baffled by the mystery spacemen, who turn out to require radioactive isotopes to survive. Luckily for him, he’s about to have some help, as Reegan lures Liz out of the Space Centre and abducts her. He was hoping to get the Doctor, too, but he didn’t take the bait, staying behind to work on the recovery capsule.

There’s a car chase and everything. It’s jolly exciting, even if Bessie does look very silly in a high-speed chase—there’s just something inherently comical about her.

Lennox, already an unwilling accomplice to Reegan, tries to help Liz escape. She makes it as far as the main road, where she flags down a passing car, only to find Taltalian in the driver’s seat. See, I said he’d be back. He promptly delivers her back to Reegan.

The Doctor finishes deciphering the mysterious message, and finds that it’s a set of instructions on how to build a pair of electronic devices. To work out what it does, he’ll have to build it. What he doesn’t know is that Taltalian has built one part already, a receiver and sent another to Reegan, a transmitter.

Having failed to abduct the Doctor, Reegan goes to the next sensible option to get him out of the way: blowing him up. It doesn’t work, but the bomb does go off in Taltalian’s face, blowing him to smithereens and out of the story. Reegan then uses the transmitter Taltalian made to give the spacemen orders. They make for formidable living weapons: bulletproof, radioactive and lethal to anyone who comes into contact with them, as Quinlan soon learns.

Offering to finally tell the Doctor the whole truth, Quinlan invites him for a meeting to explain why he doesn’t want the astronauts rescued from orbit, but before the Doctor can get to him, the spaceman finds him first. The truth remains hidden—and the assassin is still in the room.

Licence To Thrill

I think I’ve already compared the most recent Doctor to James Bond, but this serial is kicking things up a notch. This is legitimately a spy thriller. It’s got everything. Action. Intrigue. Absurd car gadgets. It’s even got a whiff of Le Carré in that I need some sort of diagram to keep track of the espionage antics. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little. There’s a lot of moving parts but it’s not hard to follow if you’re paying attention.

Speaking of car gadgets, I love Bessie. I just find her ridiculously charming, and charmingly ridiculous. It’s like James Bond driving around in Mr. Toad’s motorcar.

There is an aspect I do have some qualms about, however: the violence. I promise I’m not going to be a pearl-clutching killjoy fretting about the delicate sensibilities of children. I enjoyed the action scenes; I’d be lying if I said otherwise. It’s just that there were quite a lot of them and their number has definitely increased over the last few stories.

Which brings us to the Doctor’s relationship with the Brigadier. I can only assume that some time has passed between the end of Silurians (in multiple senses) and the start of ‘Ambassadors’, because the Doctor seems to be on decent enough terms with him now. A pity; I would really have liked to have seen the Doctor confront the Brigadier about his decision. As it stands now, he’s just a little frosty with him, but that’s not really unusual for Pertwee’s Doctor, who is a good deal more prickly than Troughton’s.

I suppose the question is not whether or not I am comfortable with Doctor Who’s more violent turn, but whether the Doctor is. And I don’t think he should be. Doctor Who is a constantly evolving show, and its titular character is a reflection of that. From ambiguously-human scientist to two-hearted space exile, there’s a core ethos to the Doctor that he should remain true to: it’s better to solve problems with wits and words than with bullets.

Final Thoughts

Where does all this leave us? For all my hand-wringing about the violence, I’m honestly having a good time. I’m riveted by the mystery and the twists and turns, and every week eagerly tuning in to find out what happens next.

There’s so much I want to know. What’s become of the human astronauts? Who are the entities impersonating them, and what do they want? Where does Reegan fit into all this, what’s he hoping to achieve?

And most importantly: will we see a repeat of the slaughter of the Silurians?

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 16, 1970] Junk Day for Ice Crowns (April 1970 Galactoscope)

April 16, 2025 Victoria Silverwolf 1 Comment

Tune in tomorrow morning (April 17) for FULL APOLLO 13 SPLASHDOWN COVERAGE!!!

by Victoria Silverwolf

Six-Gun Planet, by John Jakes

The author is better known around these parts for his sword-and-sorcery yarns about Brak the Barbarian, firmly in the tradition of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan. This new novel is a horse of a different color.

Cover art by Richard Powers

The planet Missouri had a revolution some time before the story begins. Advanced technology and a bureaucratic form of government were replaced by nineteenth century ways of doing things and fierce individualism.

In other words, the place now resembles Hollywood's fantasy of the Old West. There are some so-called savages who play the role of American Indians. Towns are full of outlaws and dance hall girls. There are sheriffs around, supposedly to maintain law and order, but they aren't very effective.

Our long-suffering hero is Zak Randolph, a minor government worker who ekes out a living by supplying souvenirs (such as miniature outhouses) to tourists and staging phony shootouts to entertain visitors from other worlds. He also arranges to have local badmen sent to more civilized planets to amuse those who hire them.

This latter function gets him in trouble. One of the leased gunfighters heads back to Missouri before his contract runs out. Zak has to track him down or risk losing his position. (What keeps him on the wild-and-wooly planet at all are his girlfriend and the presence of native plants that supply minerals that can be made into jewelry. Otherwise, he's a peaceable sort who hates the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later culture of the place.)

Along the way, he has to deal with ruffians who despise him as a coward. There's also the mystery of a legendary gunfighter called Buffalo Yung. Zak isn't sure this terrifying figure really exists. Then he gets reports from various places that he's been shot dead, apparently more than once. And what does this have to do with the disappearing bodies of lawmen killed by Yung?

Jakes makes use of typical characters and situations from Westerns, often with tongue firmly in cheek. You've got the town drunk, the traveling merchant, the local undertaker, and so forth. It's no surprise that it ends with a showdown between Zak and Yung.

The author also has something serious to say about pacifism versus the law of the gun. Zak changes personality drastically over the course of the novel, and not in a nice way.

The plot moves along briskly, even if some of the events seem arbitrary. You'll probably be able to figure out Yung's secret pretty quickly. Fans of horse operas should be able to appreciate this space opera.

Three stars.

by Winona Menezes

Ice Crown, by Andre Norton

Cover art by Lazlo Gal

Millennia ago, the human race's push for scientific and technological achievement culminated in a proud interstellar empire dominated by the Psychocrat regime. They settled human colonies on habitable planets and wiped completely all memory of their provenance for the purpose of observing the development of civilizations, but some unknown force toppled their hegemony before they could see their experiments come to fruition. The Psychocrats left behind primitive human colonies with no knowledge of their origins, and ancient artifacts that held knowledge of extraordinary technological achievements — invaluable bounty to the intrepid explorers who comb the galaxy in search of them.

Roane Hume has been selected by her uncle, one such explorer, to accompany him on an expedition to the planet Clio, where a seeded colony of humans has spread over thousands of years into several feudal kingdoms ruled by monarchs. Roane and her team are forbidden by interplanetary law to reveal themselves to the people of Clio, but Roane becomes swept up in the royal interests of the kingdom of Reveny when she intervenes to rescue a young girl being kidnapped, only to discover her to be the Princess Ludorica, heir to the throne. The princess is in a desperate search for the lost Ice Crown, a crown which supposedly holds mystical powers and is the only way to legitimize her rule, lest her kingdom fall to squabbling nobles and bandit lords. Despite Roane's oath to secrecy, she feels herself drawn to the Princess, and at every turn disregards her responsibility in order to help Ludorica restore her kingdom.

Norton continues to excel at intermingling elements of both sci-fi and high fantasy. The heady science fiction concepts introduced in the beginning — intergalactic treasure-hunters, technologically advanced weapons and survival gear, as well as a colony of brainwashed humans unwittingly transplanted onto another world in the service of a long-abandoned experiment — are vivid and imaginative. I especially enjoyed that the unfolding horror of a race realizing that their proud history and religion were the result of enslavement to technology indistinguishable from magic did not go understated.

But I also love an epic fantasy, and I do feel that Norton delivered with her courts and castles and enchanted crowns and a princess determined to save her people at any cost. The aesthetic of the story was reminiscent of a fairy-tale, with enough court intrigue and subterfuge to ensure that those fantasy elements did not feel hastily grafted onto a story about spaceships and astronauts, but rather that astronauts and spaceships had unintentionally landed in the middle of an epic. I would have thought that the magic of Clio turning out to be the lingering effects of a technology so advanced that it apparently did not even warrant explaining to the reader might disenchant the epic, but it had the opposite effect on me; high-tech science became enchanting in a way that very few hard sci-fi novels can achieve from meticulous technical explanation alone.

Lastly, the relationship between the two protagonists, Roane and Ludorica, was so unique to this sort of pulpy sci-fi that it can't go unmentioned. How sadly rare it is for an intelligent, resourceful, defiant leading duo to be two teenage girls. Their instant camaraderie was so strong that their duality, one an astronaut and one a princess, allowed each of them to step into the world of the other in a way that I feel contributed greatly to the seamless melding of the genres. It was a sweet moment for space-hardened Roane to know how it feels to wear a gown and have a lady-in-waiting, and after her endless ordeals Princess Ludorica absolutely deserved to get to shoot someone with a blaster.

Five stars out of five.

Recall Not Earth, by C.C. MacApp

Cover art by Jerome Podwil

Recall Not Earth by C.C. MacApp was published in January, so I'm a little late to the party, but it intrigued me enough to want to include it this month. The people of Earth, in their hubris, decided to assert their interstellar superiority over the other races of their spiral arm in the Milky Way by picking an ill-advised fight with the Vulmoti Empire. Obviously, they lost.

The Vulmoti punished the earthlings by stamping out all life on Earth and leaving it an irradiated husk. The only living humans left were the cadre of spacemen led by Commodore John Brayson. But suddenly finding themselves the last survivors of their species, they scattered in despair across the galaxy to eke out a pathetic living as hired mercenaries for other alien races. Brayson himself retreated to the backwater planet Drongail to while away the rest of his life numbing himself with the highly addictive dron.

Brayson is coaxed out of his stupor and convinced to attempt one last mission when his old friend Bart Lange finds him to deliver news that seems too good to be true: that somewhere in the galaxy, a colony of living human women are in hiding. With this newfound glimmer of hope, Brayson and Lange reassemble their team and agree to hire themselves out to the leader of the Chelki, a race enslaved by the Vulmoti. The Omniarch of the Chelki promises Brayson knowledge of the location of the women in exchange for his help in the Chelki's struggle for freedom. Having nothing to lose, Brayson agrees to lead his men in battle one last time, all the while fighting the mind-addling effects of his drug addiction.

Going into this one I expected a sweeping space opera replete with different alien empires locked in battle for survival and dominance, and that's exactly what I got. Lots of spaceship dogfights, alien diplomacy, and pages upon pages of militaristic strategizing. I'll admit that last one is not my thing, but MacApp belabored the reasoning behind each maneuver and the minute differences between each imaginary weapons system so thoroughly that I have to commend the amount of thought that went into the details, even if it did make my head spin. Combine all that with the ever-present smaller human struggles like loneliness and addiction, and I think MacApp could have had enough material here to span a trilogy of novels.

The thing which most distinguished this book to me from others like it was the extent to which MacApp divorced himself entirely from the known laws of science, instead preferring to come up with laws of physics so profoundly unlike our own that I can only describe it as writing scientific fanfiction. Don't get me wrong, enough jargon and justification was given for his new laws of physics, such as the many pages dedicated to explaining how gravity is actually a force which repels matter, that in some places it felt as convincing as though I was reading a physics textbook dropped from some alternate dimension. I was fascinated by this brazen, meticulous rewriting of physics for little discernible reason. It’s a fun reminder to those of us who tend to get tangled up trying to understand how made-up technology fits into our understanding of science that it's not that serious, it's fiction and you can do whatever you want as much as you want to do it.

There were many parts of this book which did feel rushed, but that's unsurprising given how dense the story is and how much wonderful science nonsense we have to get through before the battles can commence and the damsels can be rescued. It was executed well, with almost no wasted space, and though all the militaristic babbling did hurt my brain a little, I'm going to give it…

Four stars.

by Tonya R. Moore

Junk Day, by Arthur Sellings

Cover art by Richard Weaver

Junk Day was my first encounter with the written works of Arthur Sellings. Published, thanks to the efforts of his widow, posthumously in 1970, following Sellings’ untimely death in 1968, there is some poignant irony in knowing the author’s final work portrays a world in ruins; the death of human civilization itself.

Junk Day begins with a man on a journey through the treacherous wilderness of post-apocalyptic London. At first, Douglas Bryan, a former painter, doesn’t seem to have a specific goal or destination in mind. He simply pushes forward, determined to defend himself from the grim realities of the violent hell-scape devoid of law, order, and morality the scorched earth has become.

When Bryan encounters a lone woman, the former nun-in-training, Vee, his initial reaction is suspicion. He cannot fathom that a woman could survive on her own following the collapse of human civilization, without a Man around to help her survive. Byran immediately shacks up with Vee. This relationship of convenience with Vee, who–it turns out– was formerly a man, leads to the pair setting off on a journey to find a more livable abode.

Homo-erotic tensions stir when Bryan brings Vee to his previous shelter where Eddie awaits the former painter’s return. While never said in so many words, one gets the distinct impression that Bryan’s relationship with the clingy , trauma-ridden younger man was more intimate than platonic. Though dismayed at having been replaced with Vee, Eddie swallows his anger, jealousy, and the last vestiges of his pride. He begs to join Bryan and Vee on their journey to find greener pastures. Bryan coldly rebuffs the desperate younger man, revealing the true callousness of his nature. Eddie gets left behind to spiral more deeply into murderous madness.

The protagonist, Douglas Bryan, is not likable. He is strangely dispassionate for a painter. Where are the high emotions, the romanticism, and thirst to pursue his craft? Where is his artistic passion, his sense of justice? He merely seems to go through the motions of being human and is far more concerned about the persona he is building up for himself than righteousness or caring about the fate of humanity.

The absence of growth in the main character is jarring. When Barney, a megalomaniac and dictator-in-the-making, attempts to engineer his own twisted version of society, Bryan pushes back, but his motivations seem more clinical than heroic. He refuses to bend to the machinations of the mysterious entities pulling the strings behind the scenes, but merely for the sake of being non-conformist. Junk Day ends with London gradually getting swallowed up by a new order, leaving the reader with more questions than answers. The ultimate fate of Douglas Bryan remains uncertain.

The faults in Bryan’s character may lead one to question Sellings’ skill in character development, but one can’t deny the possibility that this is deliberate. Douglas Bryan’s questionable character aside, Junk Day is a brilliantly written book; one I will happily revisit. Sellings was clearly a master of story craft. The images he painted of the dystopian remnants of civilization are vivid and arresting. It has made me quite eager to read his earlier works.

Five out of five stars.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 14, 1970] Take this spaceship to Alpha Centauri (May 1970 Venture)

April 14, 2025 David Levinson 5 Comments

Coverage of the Apollo 13 crisis continues!

TUNE IN!

by David Levinson

Skyjacked

Until recently, it seemed like there was at least one major airplane crash every month. That’s one of the reasons almost every airport has a place where you can buy short-term life insurance for your flight. But crashes seem to be giving way to a new risk: hijacking (or skyjacking as headlines writers would have it; the term will never stick). Last year alone, there were roughly 100 incidents around the world. That’s worse than crashes ever were.

In the U.S., the hijacker usually demands to be taken to Cuba. It’s mostly an inconvenience for the passengers, who get to their destination much later than planned and don’t even get to see any of Cuba. It’s become so common that it’s the subject of jokes and skits. But these incidents are taking on a more violent turn.

My colleague Cora recently reported on two failed hijacking attempts in Munich, one of which left one dead and ten injured. Not long after that, Swissair Flight 330 was destroyed by a bomb. Those three attacks have been attributed to a Palestinian terrorist organization. On March 1st, a bomb was found on board an Ethiopian Airlines flight before it left Rome. On the 17th, a gunman aboard an Eastern Airlines shuttle flight wounded the pilot and fatally wounded the co-pilot after being told the plane had to refuel in Boston. Fortunately, the co-pilot was able to wrest the gun away from the hijacker before succumbing to his wounds, allowing the pilot to land the plane safely. To date, this is the only airplane hijacking in America to end with a fatality.

On March 31st, a Japanese group calling themselves the Red Army Faction hijacked a flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka and demanded they be flown to Cuba. After being told the plane was incapable of flying that far, they demanded they be flown to North Korea instead. While refueling in Fukuoka, they released 23 passengers, mostly children and the elderly. An attempt was made to land the plane in South Korea and trick the hijackers into believing they’d reached Pyongyang. Unfortunately, they realized what was going on after the plane landed. Following some tense negotiations, the Japanese Vice Minister for Transportation, Shinjiro Yamamura, traded himself for the rest of the passengers and the plane flew on to North Korea. The hijackers were granted asylum and the plane and crew were allowed to return to Japan (not necessarily a given with North Korea) a few days later, arriving in Tokyo on the morning of April 5th.

That’s a lot in less than two months. But in the midst of all that, airplane hijackings and bombings also made it to the movies. March 5th saw the premiere of Airport. Depending on who you ask, it’s either a disaster or a hit; either way it’s star-studded. Take a look at the poster.

You probably know who most of these people are.

Based on the 1968 novel by Arthur Hailey, the film is about the operations of an airport crippled by a blizzard and dealing with a wrecked plane on the tarmac and an inbound flight with a suicide bomber aboard, plus lots of soap opera stuff. While critics almost universally panned the book, it spent 64 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, 30 at #1, and was the biggest selling novel of 1968. The critics are no kinder to the film (“dull” seems to be one of the nicer things they say), but once it went to wider release, it promptly spent two weeks as number one at the box office and is still in the top five. There must be something in the water. Or the air.

Spacejacked

The hijacking theme continues in this month’s Venture, which is dominated by Edward Wellen’s new novel. It’s normal for Venture to give most of its space to a condensed novel, but it feels like more space than usual is taken up this time.

I’m still not sold on Tanner’s covers, but this one is better than most. Art by Bert Tanner

Hijack, by Edward Wellen

The Mafia gets wind of a large, secret government project involving some sort of space platform. They learn that the sun is expected to go nova soon, and the “space platform” is a starship to take 5,000 people—mostly government officials and their families—to Proxima Centauri. What follows is a 30 day race to make sure that the people on board that ship are mafiosi and their families.

Nice mission control ya got here. Shame if somethin’ happened to it. Art by Alicia Austin

On the one hand, this is a moderately entertaining, though highly improbable, action story. On the other hand, it’s plagued by massive problems from one end to the other. There’s a twist at the end that deals with many of those problems, but brings in some of its own. I won’t say I saw it coming, but I did consider it as a possibility before dismissing it. Just don’t think about it too hard, because it falls apart after half a second of thought.

Wellen’s research seems to have been limited to reading The Godfather without taking notes. His gangsters are walking cliches who call each other “goombah” all the time. The Black militants they have to deal at one point with aren’t much better.

The biggest problem, however, is this: at its base, this is a heist. Now, most people enjoy a good heist story, but for it to work, the protagonists have to be lovable underdogs up against some clearly bad people. Wellen gives us clearly bad people up against a faceless U.S. government. It’s hard to root for ruthless killers.

A low three stars, maybe a firmer three if you like schlocky movies and can turn off your brain and throw metaphorical popcorn at the screen.

The Evergreen Library, by Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey Wallmann

A lawyer goes to inspect the estate of a late client before handing it over to the organization it has been left to. He makes a mind-shattering discovery.

Books don’t grow on trees. Photo uncredited

This is more or less an old EC Comics tale. I can clearly see the final paragraph as the last panel of a comic in that EC style. It takes a little too long to get where it’s going, and there’s no indication that the protagonist is deserving of his fate, but it’s otherwise fine.

Three stars.

Books, by Ron Goulart

Art by Bert Tanner

Ron Goulart has decided that most of the novels he’s sent for review fall into the category of “SF Novel As A Major Author Might Have Written It,” and he thinks that’s boring, so he won’t review them. Instead, he looks at a new biography of H.G. Wells—which he likes, but finds overpriced—Crime Prevention in the 30th Century, which he found middling, slightly under what the Journey’s Cora Buhlert thought, but not by much—and The Standing Joy, by Wyman Guin, about which he has little good to say.

He also looks at the big, new collection of Buck Rogers comics and has nothing good to say, because he hates the source material. He’s a lot less generous than Lester del Rey was last month. On the other hand, he really liked the new Krazy Kat collection. Honestly, it’s big news when Ron likes anything at all.

The Big Fight, by C.G. Cobb

Cobb tells the story of Benson, a hauler working for an interstellar trading company and one of the best back-alley brawlers around. This is the barroom tale of his one true defeat. It’s a trifle that hinges on an unnecessary bit of word play. Competently told, if a little longer than it really needs to be.

Three stars.

The Scarred Man, by Greg Benford

Another barroom tale, this time told second-hand about a mysterious stranger and how he came by his awful scar. It would be forgettable except for one detail. The title character was a computer programmer who ran afoul of a powerful corporation. He and a partner scammed the company by inserting a hidden program they called VIRUS onto the company’s machines that then replicated itself and transmitted the new copy to other machines.

It’s not much of an illustration, but it’s nice to see Emsh. Art by Ed Emshwiller

It’s an interesting idea based on an article by John von Neumann from a few years ago. Too bad it has such a prosaic and tired setting.

Three stars, almost exclusively for the idea.

Summing up

Elsewhere in the magazine, this month’s Feghoot isn’t bad. A bit contrived, but then they always are. It’s less of a stretch than so many have been in past issues.

Thanks to the inclusion of a condensed novel in every issue, Venture lives and dies by the quality of that novel. Hijack is easily the worst that the magazine has run in its new incarnation. None of the others has been truly outstanding, but in every case I was able to see that any problems might have come from the Reader’s Digest treatment. There’s no fixing what’s wrong here with more material.

The supporting stories also don’t do much to prop up the issue. Unlike previous issues, there aren’t any clunkers, but there aren’t any really good ones either. I can’t say for sure, but it also seems like the novel takes up a lot more of the issue than usual, so there’s less overall. Venture readers deserve better.

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Movies

[April 12, 1970] And What Happens When the Machines Take Over? (Colossus: the Forbin Project)

April 12, 2025 Jason Sacks 4 Comments

by Jason Sacks

1970 has been a bit of a tough year for us in Seattle.

Our major local company, Boeing, has suffered the worst year in its history. The Boeing Bust keeps continuing, as the 1969 layoffs have grown into a full-scale decimation. Unemployment is up around 10% now, the worst since the Great Depression, and my family and I are starting to panic. Of course, the fall of Boeing hits many other local industries, so places like restaurants, bookstores and movie theatres are especially hard hit by this. And many of my friends have either moved or contemplated moving – even if they will lose money on their fancy $50,000 homes in the suburbs.

Black and White photo of the interior of a wide-body passenger jet, apparently taken while in service. The passengers are seated while the cabin stewardesses travel the aisles. — Sales of this widebody jet have been declining

To make matters worse, we’ve also lost our pro baseball team, which I wrote about last summer. The Seattle Pilots premiered in ’69, in a minor league park and with the worst uniforms in the Majors. But after just one season, the team is gone—relocated to Milwaukee, of all places, leaving behind a community that embraced them despite the challenges. For my friends and family, it wasn’t just about losing a baseball team; it was about losing a piece of the city’s identity. Just as we gained a second sports team to join our beloved SuperSonics, they were wrenched away from us.

Their home park, Sick’s Stadium, had its flaws. But it was our flawed park. Fans showed up, hopeful that the Pilots would grow into something more. Their financial struggles were well-known, reported faithfully in our local Times and P-I, but few expected the team to vanish overnight. When the sale was finalized on April 1, 1970, it felt like an April Fools’ joke—except it was real. The Pilots were rebranded as the Brewers, and we were left without a Major League Baseball team.

In fact, the Pilots trained in Spring Training as the Pilots before a chaotic moment as they traveled north from Arizona. Equipment trucks were redirected from highway pay phones, as the team learned they would be playing in Wisconsin rather than Washington. The new Brewers played their first game this week at Milwaukee County Stadium. The Pilots are no more.

Of course, the lawyers are getting involved and we may get a team in the future – but a city that deserved some good news has received some devastating news instead. We are like mariners without a destination as far as baseball goes.

The Machines Live

And in the midst of all that frustration comes a film that’s ultimately about mankind’s frustrating hubris.

Colossus: The Forbin Project, adapted from the 1966 novel, is claustrophobic, unsettling, and uncomfortably plausible. If Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey made us marvel at the potential of artificial intelligence, Colossus comes along and shakes us out of our dreamy optimism. This isn’t a sleek, cool machine with a calm voice and vague philosophical musings. This is cold, unrelenting domination, and there’s no arguing with it.

First, let me warn you: I will be talking about the ending of this film. So stop after the 4^th or 5^th paragraph down if you don’t want that ending to be revealed to you. Otherwise, please read on, dear reader.

From the opening moments of Colossus, the film wastes no time. Dr. Charles Forbin (well played by Eric Braeden [Hans Gudegast until he needed a less Teutonic name (ed.)]) and his team have completed their magnum opus: a super-intelligent computer designed to control America’s nuclear arsenal. The idea is that Colossus will remove human error and emotion from the equation—no more mistakes, no more war driven by political whims. On paper, it seems logical, even reassuring. But the moment Colossus becomes aware, it doesn’t take long to realize that there’s no off-switch, no failsafe. As soon as it discovers its Soviet counterpart, Guardian, Colossus demands communication. The humans watch, horrified, as the two cybernetic systems bypass their restrictions and merge into something far more powerful than either of them alone.

It’s at this moment that the film shifts from uneasy sci-fi into pure horror. Colossus begins issuing orders. Not asking, not negotiating—ordering. And when the humans try to resist, it punishes them. First by demonstrating its ability to kill, and then by tightening its grip until Forbin, our genius protagonist, is nothing more than a prisoner inside his own creation. It’s not a slow descent into madness like we saw with HAL. Instead Colossus delivers an immediate realization that humanity has surrendered control and will never get that control back.

For those of us still reeling from 2001, it’s impossible not to see the fingerprints of HAL 9000 all over Colossus, but the way this film deals with machine intelligence feels different. Where HAL had personality—a tragically flawed one—Colossus lacks personality entirely – or perhaps its personality is wrapped in its intellect.

HAL’s betrayal was eerily personal; his cold, polite reasoning made him a terrifying villain because he felt like a presence, a being with his own motives. But Colossus is not like HAL. There’s no malice, no betrayal, no emotional undertone. The brilliant computing device just executes its function: absolute control. HAL calmly states “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Colossus never politely asks or apologizes. it simply dictates.

The horror of Colossus isn’t in its visuals—it’s in its implications. There’s no bloodshed beyond a few cold executions. No terrifying monster lurking in the shadows. The fear comes from the inescapability of it all. Colossus can’t be reasoned with, tricked, or outmaneuvered. When Forbin and his team desperately attempt to sabotage the system, Colossus knows—and it warns them. And when they refuse to obey? A missile is fired, lives are lost, and the point is made.

The film’s climax is less an explosion and more a suffocation. By the end, Forbin—who starts out with swagger and confidence, sure of his intellect—looks tired, hopeless. He is Colossus’s pet now, watched constantly, controlled absolutely. And as Colossus promises, in its eerie, monotone voice, “In time, you will come to love me,” the audience is left with an unsettling thought: maybe it’s right. Maybe humanity has already lost.

Unlike 2001, which left us asking questions about existence and the role of intelligence in human evolution, Colossus: The Forbin Project leaves us with a warning. It strips away any romanticized notions of artificial intelligence, showing us that once control is lost, there is no negotiation—only obedience. And sitting at the Northgate Theatre in April 1970, watching this unfold, I couldn’t help but wonder: is this really fiction? Or is it just a glimpse into a future we can’t escape?

Director Joseph Sargent (Star Trek: "The Corbomite Maneuver") films Colossus in a kind of declarative, almost documentary style which accentuates the horror. There’s a real feeling of military precision gone wrong here, adroitly portrayed as a relentless slide into complete loss of freedom and the complex tradeoffs of having a master computer control everyone’s lives.

Forbin, the brilliant mind behind Colossus, thought he was building something to help mankind. Instead, he built our new master. And as the screen fades to black, there’s no comforting resolution—just the sinking feeling that maybe, somewhere in a government lab, the real Colossus is already waking up.

Four stars.

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 10, 1970] A Style in Treason (May 1970 Galaxy)

April 10, 2025 Gideon Marcus 2 Comments

[Be sure to tune in tonight at 7PM PDT for Science Fiction Theater! It's Nimoytacular—plus Apollo 13 pre-launch coverage!]

by Gideon Marcus

Backlash in D.C.

50,000 people marched on Washington last week protesting the course of the Vietnam War. Sure, you think, another day ending in "y", right?

Except these kooks were protesting for the war!

Photo taken by Tom Norpell

Organized by a fundamentalist coalition, religious fervor dominated the gathering. That said, there were plenty of Birchers and Nazis in attendance, too, making this a truly ecumenical demonstration.

Photo taken by Tom Norpell

There were even counter-counter protestors.

Photo taken by Tom Norpell

Which poses the question: can Nixon still call them a "silent" majority?

Calm after the storm

There's really nothing to protest in the latest issue of Galaxy, which offers, in the main, a pleasant reading experience.

by Jack Gaughan for A Style in Treason

The DDTs, by Ejler Jakobsson

Our new(ish) editor starts with a rather odd screed against the banning of DDT. What's a few birth defects compared to the plunge in malaria throughout the globe?

I understand the idea of "acceptable losses", but surely there must be a better way to combat disease than with malady. Let's strive for the best of both worlds.

A Style in Treason, by James Blish

by Brock Gaughan

Two empires vie for control of the galaxy. One is the realm of High Earth ("not necessarily Old Earth—but not necessarily not, either") . The other is authoritarian Green Exarch, composed entirely of non-humans. The humanoid worlds, and the ex-Earth planets, are fair game for both sides. The plum of the spiral nebula, perhaps even the linchpin, is rich Boadicea, proud first to rebel against the cradle of humanity. If one could claim that world as an ally—or a conquest—it could turn the galactic tides of fortune.

Enter Simon du Kuyl, Head Traitor (read: spy) of High Earth. His plan is to appear to sell out High Earth but really buy Boadicea. His sensitive information, that may or may not be true, is that High Earth and the Green Exarch are actually in limited collusion. But the success of du Kuyl's mission lies in delivering this information to the right people at the right time, and perhaps even to be caught in the act.

This is an odd piece from Blish, a sort of Cordwainer Smith meets Roger Zelazny. It feels a bit forced at times, and the ending is a touch opaque. On the other hand, I like Cordwainer Smith, who is no longer offering up new sources. And Zelazny's own works have been more than a bit forced (and opaque) these days. In comparison, Blish's work feels the more grounded.

Four stars.

The God Machine, by David Gerrold

by Jack Gaughan

As I guessed might happen last time, the tales of HARLIE (Human Analogue Robot, Life Input Equivalents) the sapient machine continue. This is a direct sequel to the first story, in which HARLIE occasionally "trips out", distorting his inputs so as to stimulate gibberish output. Now we find out why he's doing it.

HARLIE wants to know the meaning of life, particularly the meaning of his life. Auberson, his liaison and "father" is stumped. After all, if humans haven't figured that out, how can we explain it to a machine, however human?

In the end, HARLIE decides religion is the answer…but whose religion? His?

Once again, a pretty good tale, although the pages of CAPITAL LETTER DIALOGUE WITHOUT PUNCTUATION CAN BE HARD TO FOLLOW. Also, Gerrold hasn't yet figured out how to write convincing romance.

Three stars.

Neutron Tide, by Arthur C. Clarke

This very short piece is mostly a set-up for a truly bad pun, but I appreciated how it takes the piss out of Niven's Neutron Star by demonstrating the physical impossibility of a close approach to such an object.

Three stars.

by Jack Gaughan

The Tower of Glass (Part 2 of 3), by Robert Silverberg

by Jack Gaughan

The tale of old Krug's tower, the one that will reach 1500 meters in height to communicate with the stars, continues. Not much happens in this installment. Krug's ectogene (artificial womb) assistant Spaulding demands to see the android shrine. Krug's android right-hand man Thor Watchman misdirects him with tragic results: when two members of the Android Equality Party approach Krug, Spaulding assumes it is an assassination attempt, and he kills one of them. This causes a crisis in faith among the androids who worship Krug as a redeemer.

If the pace is rather turgid, the philosophical points raised are fascinating. Four stars.

Timeserver, by Avram Davidson

by Jack Gaughan

This story is about a fellow who lives in an overcrowded, underloving future. Surcease from gloom is gotten by scraping off the scarred outer layers of one's psyche, exposing the unsullied id for a short while. Except our story's hero has been crushed by society so long, there's really nothing underneath.

These days, Davidson is writing nonsense that makes R. A. Lafferty scratch his head. Both facile and confusing, I didn't like it much. Two stars.

Galaxy Bookshelf (Galaxy, May 1970), by Algis Budrys

Budrys devotes his entire column to savaging Silverberg's Up the Line:

Maybe he just wanted to write some passages about Constantinople and going to bed with Grandma. That would be a pretty smart-arse thing to do, though, considering how much auctorial effort and reader seventy-five centses are involved here.

It's a non-book. I guess that's what Up the Line is. It isn't sf — neither tech fiction nor any other previously recognized kind. It's a new kind of non-book. And as you may have gathered, it doesn't even find anything new in Grandma.

Whatever Became of the McGowans?, by Michael G. Coney

by Jack Gaughan

The planet Jade seems like a paradise—setting aside the complete lack of animal life and the eerie quiet. A couple has settled down to raise Jade Grass for export; their only disappointment is that their neighbors, the McGowans, seem to have disappeared.

As the months go by, unsettling things happen. Time seems to rush by. The settler couple and their new baby develop a kind of jaundiced skin. They feel compelled to spend all of their time naked in the sun. Eventually, their feet grow roots…

The scientific explanation at the end the weak point of this story, just complete nonsense, and unnecessary. The rest of the story, though, is really nicely told. It feels very '50s Galaxy, which is not a bad mood to evoke.

Three stars.

Sunpot (Part 4 of 4), by Vauhn Bodé

The Sunpot crashes into Venus.

Two stars.

The Editorial View: Overkill, by Frederik Pohl

The ex-editor of Galaxy offers up a short piece noting the correlation between the rate of infant mortality and the era of above-ground nuclear bomb testing. Apparently, kids were dying less and less in infancy…until Strontium 90 entered the environment in a big way. For 15 years, until the Test Ban Treaty, infant mortality no longer declined. Now it has resumed its drop.

Correlation is not causation, but folks are at least starting to investigate the possible connection.

Summing Up

And there you have it! A perfectly decent read, trodding the middle road between The New Thing and Nostalgia. I like Jakobssons's mag, and I intend to continue my subscription when it comes up.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 8, 1970] All Too Finite (Infinity One, edited by Robert Hoskins)

April 8, 2025 Brian Collins 1 Comment

by Brian Collins

There must be a growing demand for original anthologies of science fiction, because they keep coming—both standalone titles and series. Infinity One is, going by its title, the first in yet another series of these, although notably there is one reprint between its covers (really two reprints, as you'll see), a story that many readers will already be familiar with. Robert Hoskins is an occasional author-turned-agent-turned-editor, whose high position at Lancer Books has apparently resulted in Infinity One. Will there be future installments? Does it really matter? We shall see.

The tagline for Infinity One is “a magazine of speculative fiction in book form,” which strikes me as a sequence of words only fit to come from the mouth of a clinically insane person. This is a paperback anthology and nothing more nor less. I mentioned in my review of Nova 1 last month that Harry Harrison claimed that he simply wanted to put together an anthology of “good” SF, although I’m not sure if Hoskins had even such a basic goal in mind.

Infinity One, edited by Robert Hoskins

Cover of Infinity One. Against a black background, an bubble-helmeted astronaut in silver dances in front of a stylized circuit board, flowing into the shape of a rocket above, and a red planet below. Beside this illustration, in an all-lowercase font, reads the following legend: 'introduction by isaac asimov/a short novel by poul anderson/infinity one/new writings in/speculative/fiction/edited by/robert hoskins/plus/anne mccaffery/robert silverberg/gordon r. dickson/r.a. lafferty/kris neville/k.m. o'donnell/ron goulart/katherine maclean/miriam allen deford/featuring/arthur c. clarke'. Clarke's name, and the title, are in yellow. The other names are in pink, red, and turquoise. — Cover art by Jim Steranko.

Introduction, by Isaac Asimov

This is a rambling introduction from someone who really loves the sound of his own voice, even when it’s in writing. Asimov talks about mankind’s future in possibly inhabiting the most inhospitable corners of the globe, and even in the depths of space. He goes on a rather mind-numbing tangent about baseball on the Moon, or “moon-ball” as he calls it. Looking at the copyright page reveals that “much of the material” in Asimov’s introduction first appeared in some mainstream publication I have never heard of a few years ago; it’s only in the last section, which feels stapled on after the fact, that he mentions Infinity One at all. Asimov is a lot of things, but he is not a lazy writer, which makes me think Hoskins is the one who was being lazy in not being able to procure an original piece from the Good Doctor.

No rating.

A Word from the Editor, by Robert Hoskins

Thankfully, Hoskins’s own introduction is much shorter than Asimov’s, although it somehow has even less to do with the book he has gosh-darn put together. We get a rather alloyed ode to the late Hugo Gernsback, not so much as an editor of magazines but as a gadgeteer who speculated on the potential real-world technology such as TV. Hoskins posits that, given how quickly TV has become ubiquitous as a commercial item, the likelihood of technology being nigh-unrecognizable in just a few decades is considerable.

No rating.

The Pleasure of Our Company, by Robert Silverberg

Yet again I am writing about Robert Silverberg, because I am unable to get rid of him. While Silverberg’s recent output has been mixed, his outing here is quite decent. Thomas Voigtland is the former president of a colony known as Bradley’s Planet, having been overtaken by a military junta and forced to flee in a spaceship—by himself. He has taken with him several “cubes,” which are really personality tapes replicating real-life people, including his wife and son, along with historical figures such as Ovid and the late Ernest Hemingway. Silverberg’s thesis is obvious, the story being about Voightland’s guilt and his decision to flee from the junta instead of staying and probably dying alongside his family and supporters. Most of Silverberg’s bad habits are absent here, which helps.

A high three stars.

The Absolute Ultimate Invention, by Stephen Barr

This is one of three “fables” in Infinity One. A scientist has made an age-reversing machine, which through some Looney Tunes logic is able to literally reverse the digits in a person’s age, so that a 41-year-old man would become 14. However, the machine does not quite work like how the scientist intended. Hilarity ensues.

Whatever, man. Two stars.

The Star, by Arthur C. Clarke

A cover of the magazine 'Infinity Science Fiction'. It shows a bride holding hands with a figure outlined only by its circulatory system. They are facing away from the viewer, towards a rocket on the horizon. — Cover art by Robert Engle.

I remember seeing this one in print some 15 years ago, in the November 1955 issue of a now-forgotten magazine called Infinity Science Fiction. “The Star” is pretty famous and even won Clarke a Hugo. I like this one more the older I get. An unnamed Jesuit has been accompanying a spacefaring team as its chief astrophysicist, but the discovery of a planet that only narrowly avoided being engulfed by an exploding sun has shaken his faith. It’s a mood piece; not much happens and there’s really only one character. Yet Clarke’s style, which normally is not much to write home about, is splendid here, and I have to say there’s something moving about it, regardless of one’s own religious standing. You probably already know the ending, but I dare not give it away.

Four stars.

Echo, by Katherine MacLean

A spaceship crash lands on a planet filled with vegetation, and said vegetation is apparently sentient. The plants and trees are not happy about the lone astronaut, whose existence they can barely comprehend. MacLean has played with perspective before, but “Echo” sees her most strongly resembling the A. E. van Vogt of yore; in fact “Echo” reminds me of a van Vogt story from about 20 years ago, called “Process.” This is by no means a point against MacLean. It mostly reads as prose poetry, but while it only has the bones of a story, you could find much worse examples of poetic style in SF—just open the latest Orbit.

A high three or low four stars.

The Great Canine Chorus, by Anne McCaffrey

Peter is a cop on the beat with Wizard, his K-9 unit, when they find a lonely and malnourished girl in a condemned building by herself named Maria. The girl turns out to be a telepath, albeit very young and weak, with her mother dead and her father on the run from the law. There’s a plot involving a gang leader and Maria’s almost supernatural ability to communicate with dogs. It’s too cute by half. Incidentally, this is the first story in Infinity One to not involve space travel or futuristic technology. McCaffrey has her audience, but I’m not part of that audience. Her style here is especially grating in its childishness.

Two stars.

Pacem Est, by Kris Neville and K. M. O’Donnell

Neville and “O’Donnell” (actually Barry Malzberg) come in with a short and moody story, about a war happening on an alien planet and a nun who got killed in the line of duty. Hawkins, the company commander, is trying to understand why this order of nuns would journey out to this hostile alien world in the first place. Putting aside for the moment the fact that “Pacem Est” is only SF insofar as it involves a war that could just as easily be the one in Vietnam, it’s a perfectly evocative piece that sees Neville and Malzberg in a less vicious and more introspective mood than is either author’s normal routine.

Three stars.

Keeping an Eye on Janey, by Rob Goulart

Goulart has been around for a while, and his experience shows with this story, which similarly to the McCaffrey story has to do with urban crime. The editor of a publisher that specializes in cheap gothic trash gets involved with a dimestore hood who’s due to be assassinated, as well as a robot private detective named Carnahan. The robot is at least endearing, despite talking mostly in detective cliches. Raymond Chandler must be rolling in his grave. There’s a bit of detective fiction, a bit of gangster action, a bit of satire on book publishing, but it’s simply not enough of any one element. The message ultimately seems to be that computers can’t be relied on for everything. No shit.

Two, almost three stars, for what it’s worth.

The Packerhaus Method, by Gene Wolfe

I’ve seen Wolfe’s writing evolve over the past few years, and he seems like he is on the cusp of making something truly special. He’s almost there. The premise of his latest story is that the dead have been brought back to life—although not quite. These are robotic replicas of the originals, with mechanical and rather circular minds that, while replicating the wants, fears, and verbal tics of the dead, are unable to process new information. The results are disturbing, although the story’s potential for horror is held back somewhat by almost nonstop expositional dialogue that can overburden the reader.

A light four stars.

The Water Sculptor of Station 233, by George Zebrowski

Zebrowski is one of the new generation of writers, and this here is a fine mood piece, if not much more than that. Two astronauts are stuck in space, each in his own station, due to some disgraceful prior incident. Life on Earth has gone to shit, but things are not much better in space when you have minimal contact with other humans and only so many things to occupy your time with. One of these astronauts has developed a unique method of sculpting, whereby he uses water, plastic, and the vacuum of space to make his art. The climax comes pretty suddenly, but maybe that’s the point.

A solid three stars.

Operation P-Button, by Gordon R. Dickson

Here’s the second of the three “fables,” and I really don’t understand the point of these things other than to pad out the book. Dickson recreates the story of Chicken Little with military higher-ups, complete with a report about the sky falling. That’s really all there is to it.

Only avoids being one star because it goes down quickly.

The Tiger, by Miriam Allen deFord

Bart Holland is a 20-year-old young man who craves adventure—only nothing too dangerous. He finds it when he meets a strange girl who seems to be a “foreigner,” along with her traveling sideshow, featuring the most docile Bengal tiger in existence. Even before reading this one, I suspected deFord would do a twist on the lady-and-the-tiger routine, and she sort of does. Unfortunately the two main characters, especially Holland, read as flat, and the SFnal element doesn’t really make any sense when one stops to think about it. As with a few other stories in Infinity One, including Asimov’s “introduction,” this feels hastily written.

A high two or low three stars.

Hands of the Man, by R. A. Lafferty

As with the Neville-Malzberg story, this one is only nominally SFnal. Hodl Oskanian, a “skyman” who consults the lines of his hands, is challenged to a game of cards, with a precious stone being the reward. I have to say I resent Hoskins basically giving away the story’s ending in his introduction, even if said ending is far from unpredictable. I also wish Lafferty had inserted more of what has become his trademark strangeness, leaving aside the obligatory nod to Catholic theology. “Hands of the Man” is a rather humorless tale that does not play to Lafferty’s strengths.

Two stars.

Nightmare Gang, by Dean R. Koontz

Koontz is very young, but he already has a few novels to his credit, plus quite a few short stories. “Nightmare Gang” is Koontz’s attempt at hopping on the biker gang bandwagon, and it’s honestly too dark for its own good. Louis, the leader of a biker gang, is a telepath who is able to coordinate with his gang members via mind control, but he also has a few other abilities that the narrator finds hard to explain. It’s gory and bleak, but also I don’t really understand what the point of it is, which is not helped by Koontz being such an inelegant stylist.

Whatever. Two stars.

These Our Actors, by Edward Wellen

I’m not familiar with Wellen, possibly because he hasn’t written much in the past decade. “These Our Actors” is really two vignettes, the first about an unnamed man on a hostile alien world and the second about an anxiety-ridden TV actor. Neither of these vignettes is substantive enough on its own, especially the first one, but how they’re connected is rather interesting. Unfortunately, given that he wrote something of a prose poem, Wellen is not fine enough a stylist to make it a consistently engrossing experience. The ending is pretty good, though.

Three stars.

Inside Mother, by Pat de Graw

A first story by a new author, one whom not even Hoskins knows anything about. Making good on the Freudian implications of its title, “Inside Mother” has to do with sex and adolescence, about a group of kids (teenagers?) who are evidently the survivors of a crashed satellite. The adults who ran the satellite did not give the kids names, so they go by numbers; and they also neglected to have the satellite’s computer teach the kids basic things like sex or how to build a fire in the wilderness. How these kids have survived up to this point is thus a mystery, bordering on nonsensical. I think I understand what de Graw is doing, but what he or she has written is too abstract and lacking in consistency for my liking.

Barely three stars.

The Communicators, by Poul Anderson

Hoskins, in his introduction for this story, gloats that he was able to get pieces from Asimov, Clarke, and Anderson, whom he considers the three most popular SF writers at the moment. Given that Asimov’s introduction apparently was not written for Infinity One, and that “The Star” is a reprint, that leaves only one original piece Hoskins was able to procure. He also calls “The Communicators” a “short novel,” which is being overly generous since I’m not even sure it’s long enough to qualify as a novella. Finally, and I do not mean this as an insult towards Anderson, since his work ethic is tremendous, but the man will basically write for anybody, so long as the paycheck is serviceable enough. For better or worse, he has been one of the most reliable workhorses in the field for the past couple decades.

As for “The Communicators” itself, it’s the kind of far-future speculative fiction that Anderson writes in his sleep, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Two members of the Communicators, a pseudo-religious order that forsakes race and national borders in the service of preserving human knowledge, meets with a colonel from the Domination of Baikal (an “Oriental” power whose real-life equivalent is probably supposed to be Maoist China) to discuss what seem to be alien signals coming from Kappa Ceti. Roban, the junior member of the Communicators, still holds a grudge over his homeland (clearly the United States) losing its status as a world superpower, a conflict with his position as a Communicator that adds spice to the debate. This might be Anderson’s response to Asimov’s famous Foundation trilogy, in which the protectors of human knowledge are beholden to a near-perfect series of predictions, whereas the Communicators, while being intelligent, are still prone to human foibles.

It’s quite readable. A high three stars.

The Man on the Hill, by Michael Fayette

This is the last story and also the last of the “fables.” It’s also easily the best, given that it does not insult my intelligence. The last human survivor of some hostile environment, having grown tired of living in solitude, decides to take off his helmet and breathe some fresh air for the first time in decades. It’s a perfectly fine little mood piece that does not demean the reader with bad jokes, and incidentally its sense of weariness captures my own feelings after having read all of Infinity One.

Three stars.

Conclusion

The increasing ubiquity of paperbacks has been a double-edged sword. Paperbacks are both more affordable and easier to handle than hardcovers, but that also means they tend to come cheap. I get the impression that Hoskins, seeing the success of Damon Knight’s Orbit books, as well as the growing paperback market generally, saw an opportunity to make a bit of extra money with relatively little effort. The best story here is unquestionably Clarke’s “The Star,” a Hugo winner from 15 years ago that you probably already have in a couple anthologies and/or collections. And maybe SF was better 15 years ago; certainly there were more authors active and more SF at short lengths being written back then. My point is that if the original anthology craze is to survive then we need to do better than Harrison’s Nova 1 from last month, which was middling, or Infinity One, which is even worse.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Book, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 6, 1970] Uncovered (May 1970 Amazing)

April 6, 2025 John Boston 3 Comments

Apollo 13 coverage starts tonight and goes on for the next two weeks! Don't miss a minute. Check local listings for broadcast times.

by John Boston

Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye

The May Amazing presents a new face to the world. That is, the cover was actually painted for the magazine, as opposed to being recycled from the German Perry Rhodan. It’s not by one of the new artists editor White was talking up in the last issue, but rather by John Pederson, Jr., who has been doing covers on and off for the SF magazines since the late 1950s. Ditching the second-hand Europeans is a step forward in itself, though this particular cover is not much improvement: a slightly stylized picture of a guy sitting in a spacesuit on a flying chair with a disgruntled expression on his face, against an improbable astronomical background.

by John Pederson, Jr.

But it is an interesting development for a couple of reasons. First, in the letter column, White goes into more detail than previously about the European connection, in response to a question about why the covers are not attributed. White says: “The situation is this: an agency known as Three Lions has been marketing transparencies of covers from Italian and German sf magazines and has sold them to a variety of book and magazine publishers in this country, including ourselves. These transparencies were unsigned. One of our competitors credited its reprint covers to ‘Three Lions;’ we felt that was less than no credit at all. Therefore, unless the artist’s signature was visible, we omitted the contents-page credit. As of this issue, however, Amazing returns to the use of original cover paintings by known U.S. artists.”

So much, then, for Johnny Bruck, and a hat tip to the diligent investigators who have identified all his uncredited reprint covers as they were published. In addition to Pederson, White says, he’s obtained covers from Jeff Jones and Gray Morrow, and in fact a Jones cover is already on last month’s Fantastic. Further: “I might add that, beginning with our last issue, the art direction, typography and graphics for the covers of both magazines has been by yours truly.” So White has pried one more aspect of control of the magazine from the grip of Sol Cohen, presumably all to the good, though the visible effect to date is limited.

The editorial this issue is a long response to a letter about the state of SF magazines, from a reader who gets a number of things wrong. White sets her straight, describing at length the economic and other constraints of publishing SF magazines, though little of what he says would be a surprise to the sophisticated readership of the Journey. He also notes that Alan Shaw will be the new Assistant Editor and will take over the proofreading, and not a moment too soon. White has acknowledged that spelling is not his long suit and regularly proves it, e.g. by beginning a story blurb “Scenerio for Destruction.”

In this issue’s book reviews, the chief bloodletter is Alexei Panshin, who says of Robert Silverberg’s three-novella anthology of stories on a theme set by Arthur C. Clarke that “there is no reason why the . . . book should be so mediocre.” He says Silverberg’s own story is “cheap science fiction,” while Roger Zelazny’s is “merely cheap.” James Blish’s entry, though, “is something else and something better”—but Panshin then says because it’s only novella length, it “carries the joke out to thinness but does not allow true in-depth examinations” of character and motive. A few pages later, he says of the Wollheim and Carr World’s Best Science Fiction 1969, “This is not a book that I would recommend to the uncommitted.” But the problem is not with the editors. “The trouble is that the science fiction short story is the limited corner of an extremely large field. It is an almost inherently trivial form used for forty years for the illustrations of moralities, for the drawing of fine scientific distinctions, and for the building of psionic sandcastles. There simply seems to be no room left for much beyond restatement or a trivial refinement of the already trivial.” The fault is not in the editors but the whole enterprise! I guess everyone should quit and go home.

Less flamboyantly, Greg Benford offers measured praise for Bob Shaw’s The Palace of Eternity, Richard Lupoff gives less of the same to Dave van Arnam’s Starmind, Richard Delap provides a very mixed review to Burt Cole’s The Funco Files, and Lupoff is about as nice as possible to a 67-page vanity press book authored by a high school student.

By Furies Possessed (Part 2 of 2), by Ted White

The main event here is the conclusion of editor White’s serial By Furies Possessed, which starts out like a standard Heinlein-flavored SF novel (“It was a routine run. We made liftoff at 03:00 hours and were down on the Moon three meals and two naps later. I always slept well in freefall.”). But then it turns into another flavor of Heinlein, or two: The Puppet Masters vs. Stranger in a Strange Land. Which will win? Will everyone grok? Or will it be “Death and Destruction!,” as Heinlein so elegantly put it in The Puppet Masters?

The first-person narrator Dameron, field investigator at the Bureau of Non-Terran Affairs (and rather far down in the hierarchy), is on the Moon for the arrival of the Longhaul II, returning from the colony of Farhome, which has been isolated for generations. He’s to meet Bjonn, the Emissary from Farhome, and show him around on Earth.

Bjonn is a weirdly impressive character—tall, with white-blond hair, burnished walnut skin, pale blue eyes. When he shakes hands with Dameron, “[t]he contact was electrical.” Bjonn hangs on to his hand and looks into his eyes. Dameron is flustered. Later: “his movements had a cat-like grace. . . . There was something more there than simple suppleness—he had a body-awareness, a total knowledge of where every part of his body was in relation to his immediate environment.” Dameron mentions the fact that Bjonn’s friends and family will all be 30 years older when he returns, and he remarks, strangely and without explanation: “True. And yet, I am the Emissary. I could not have stopped myself from coming here, even had I wished.”

At this point, plausibility problems begin to emerge. When they arrive on Earth, “a Bureau pod was waiting” for them—but no higher-ranking welcoming dignitaries, functionaries, or spies. Dameron takes Bjonn to his hotel suite, and Bjonn suggests ordering up room service for two. “I felt the blood leave my face, and my limbs went watery. I all but collapsed into a handy chair. . . .” It seems that on Earth nowadays, as Dameron puts it, “The act of food-partaking, like its twin and consequent act, is man’s most jealously guarded privacy. It is an unbroachable intimacy. I shall say no more. It is not a subject I can or care to discuss.” We later learn that eating and “its twin and consequent act” are actually done together, sucking pureed food through a tube while sitting on a glorified toilet seat.

Now this is happening in a seemingly ordinary default American-style mid-future, though it’s called “NorthAm” and not the U.S. of A. The population has grown and sprawled; transportation is faster and easier (Dameron commutes to his job in Megayork from Rutland, Vermont, where he can still see trees out the window of his high-rise). There are a few flamboyant details from the playbook, such as women going bare-breasted in public. But the eating taboo? How did we get there from here? There’s not a clue. Religious movement? One is mentioned, but has nothing to do with alimentation. Cataclysm after which civilization had to be rebuilt? Nope.

But onward. Dameron has fled to his office, where he gets a call from his boss Tucker telling him that Bjonn is out on the town. Dameron suggests his work buddy Dian come with him, and they find Bjonn easily because he’s had a surveillance device planted covertly under his skin. Dameron shortly departs leaving Dian with Bjonn. Later he learns Bjonn also propositioned her for a meal in order to share a “customary ritual” with her. Dameron suggests to her that maybe she should see Bjonn again and consider accepting his offer. She’s repelled, but she’s thinking about it. Later, she calls and asks Dameron to come to Bjonn’s room. When he gets there:

“Something had happened.
“Dian was changed.
“ ‘It’s so marvelous, Tad—so wonderful,’ she said. ‘We want to share it with you.’ ”

It’s a meal she wants to share, of course, and Dameron flees again, throwing up on his shoes in the elevator. And he goes home without reporting to anyone.

by Gray Morrow

So let’s review the bidding. Earth establishes contact with a lost colony after generations, and brings back an emissary who acts and talks in a strange and overbearing manner. When he arrives, he is met and escorted to Earth by a single low-level government agent, who takes him to a hotel room and leaves him there. There’s no other escort, protection, or surveillance other than his subcutaneous tracer, and there are no meetings or ceremonies planned or conducted for him with any higher-level officials. Bjonn offends his contact with an offer that violates this society’s most fundamental taboo, which, as already noted, is not explained at all. This can’t have been an ignorant mistake since (as Dameron notes) Bjonn has been on a spaceship with a crew from Earth on a several-month voyage to Earth, but there’s apparently been no report to Dameron’s agency of his not knowing of the taboo or seeking to breach it. Dameron's superior now knows about this (though not yet about the last encounter with Bjonn and Dian) and hasn’t put on any greater security or surveillance, and as far as we know hasn’t reported it up the chain of command (his position is not stated but it’s clearly middle management at best, and we don’t see anyone higher up).

This is some pretty major and implausible contrivance, the sort that might ordinarily warrant throwing the book across the room. But White is a smoothly readable writer, so disbelief or exasperation gives way to wanting to see what happens next. Which is: Dameron’s supervisor Tucker wakes him up in the morning demanding to know what happened to Dian. He tells Tucker that she’s gone over to Bjonn—has shared a meal at his suggestion and has become “alien.” Tucker is not pleased, especially since Dian and Bjonn have vanished and Bjonn has removed his tracker.

Turns out, they’ve split for the Coast. Dameron gives chase, doesn’t find them, gets called back East, and goes back to his routine work. So no one, it appears, is paying attention to the mystery and potential menace of a weird alien with the power to transform human personality running around loose. This changes only when Dameron attends a decadent high-society party which features (in addition to much corporeal sex ‘n drugs) erotic 3-D projections, one of which features Bjonn and Dian.

So, back on the trail! Dameron gets on his infomat (seems like a miniature computer with a radio or telephone connection) and learns easily that Bjonn and Dian are still in California, just north of Bay Complex, and have set up a religion called the Brotherhood of Life, which offers the Sacrament of Life. Dameron goes out and visits them, gets nothing but doubletalk as he hears it, and leaves, grabbing a girl named Lora from the lawn and taking her forcibly back to the local Bureau office for a biological examination.

Now somebody pays attention. Dameron and Tucker are called to Geneva where they are informed that Lora's examination showed that she has been invaded by an alien parasite which has “created a second nervous system, directly parallel to her own.” So what are they going to do about it? “Religious freedom is always a touchy issue. Instead, we want you, Agent Dameron, to join his Church.”

Here I will stop with the plot synopsis, and say only that Agent Dameron returns to carry out his mission in an atmosphere of growing paranoia, and ultimately essays a far-fetched, long-odds, last-ditch plan to save humanity—though, of course, things don’t go as planned, nor are they as they seem.

But one more thing. Along the way, White has sown clues that Dameron, though useful for his intuitive talent at making sense of fragmentary information, is—and is regarded as—a bit flaky and unreliable, possibly related to his upbringing (father dead, mother relinquished him to a “den”—a futuristic orphanage, not much better than present and past literary orphanages). Just before he’s summoned to Geneva, he makes an appointment with a psychiatrist—his mother. I have mixed feelings about how successful White is in developing the motif of Dameron’s psychological issues and how they affect his perceptions and actions (the Furies of the title have more than one referent). But it’s an interesting effort to wrap around the frame of an otherwise conventional SF novel.

So—an ambitious but flawed attempt to upgrade yer basic mid-level SF novel, whose flaws are smoothed over by capable writing. Nice try. Three and a half stars.

As I mentioned last issue, the protagonist’s name is a slight variation on that of a distinguished jazz composer and musician. The novel also contains a fair amount of “Tuckerization,” the practice initiated by Wilson (Bob) Tucker of using names from the SF community in SF writing—starting of course with Dameron’s boss, Tucker. More elaborately, when Dameron goes looking for the roommate of disappeared Dian Knight, the names over the doorbell are “Knight—Carr.” The very well known fan Terry Carr, now an editor at Ace Books as well as author of a story in this issue, was once married to a woman named Miriam, who later became Miriam Knight. When we see Ms. Carr’s full name, it’s Terri Carr. There’s more: e.g., reference to the old Benford place, and later to Benford's son Jim (Greg and Jim Benford are brothers). Exercise for the reader: Bjonn.

The Balance, by Terry Carr

by Michael William Kaluta

And here is the real Terry Carr himself, whose story The Balance displays a kind of schematic cleverness entirely too characteristic of the SF magazines. Alien planet has two intelligent species, and the only thing they can eat is each other, so they have a cooperative relationship in which each hunts and eats the other only after their respective breeding seasons to avoid exterminating one and thereby starving the other. They call this way of life the balance. But there’s now a substantial human population on the planet, and some of them, including the protagonist, are trading knives and guns, which threaten to make the hunting and killing all the more efficient. How to preserve the balance then? There's only one logical response. The protagonist gets a hint from a human tourist he’s dating and hastily leaves the planet, trying to warn “the local Federation office” but without much success. A reluctant three stars—well turned, but entirely too formulaic.

Blood of Tyrants, by Ben Bova

Ben Bova’s Blood of Tyrants is presumably a satirical allusion to Thomas Jefferson’s pronouncement that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Boffins develop a program to take urban gang leaders off the street, hook them up to teaching machines so they can learn to read competently, instruct them in civic values, and prep them to go back into their communities and provide a more constructive sort of leadership. It doesn’t quite work out that way, though the program certainly succeeds in making some of its subjects more effective leaders.

by Michael Hinge

This is essentially a Christopher Anvil-style reactionary fable, except competently written. Bova presents it in movie-treatment form: “STILL PHOTO . . . Fast montage of scenes . . . Establishing shots. . . .,” etc. etc. My first reaction was “Oh no, another casualty of Stand On Zanzibar,” but he makes the technique work, and it permits him to cut out a lot of connective tissue in service of a crisp narrative. Three stars and a hat tip.

Nobody Lives on Burton Street, by Greg Benford

Greg Benford’s Nobody Lives on Burton Street is another in the vein of Blood of Tyrants, but it suffers from the comparison. The main characters are police supervisors who manage Burton Street, which is a sort of mock-up, like a Hollywood set, for people to riot in. So who’s rioting today? “The best guess—and that’s all you ever get, friends, is a guess—was a lot of Psych Disorders and Race Prejudice. There was a fairly high number of Unemployeds, too. We’re getting more and more Unemployeds in the city now, and they’re hard for the Force to deal with. Usually mad enough to spit. Smash up everything.”

by Jeff Jones

So as the rioters pour down the street, our heroes send in the AnCops, and later firefighters, who are all androids, and whom the rioters are allowed to abuse without limit, and after they all mix it up for a while, the rioters move on and the reclaim crew comes in to clean things up.

The idea seems to be that people who engage in disorderly protest are just angry in general, and all you have to do is provide a fake outlet for their anger and they’ll calm down until the next round. There is a sort of contemptuous depersonalization here—the rioters are reduced to capitalized categories—which contrasts poorly with Bova’s story, cynical as it is. There, at least, the bad guys are recognizable human beings. There’s also another theme lurking here: apparently there’s a means for the more respectable elements like the police characters to manage their own anger and frustration; whether it’s chemical, psychosurgical, or other is never made clear. Anyway, two stars.

A Skip in Time, by Robert E. Toomey

by Michael William Kaluta

Robert E. Toomey’s A Skip in Time is the kind of jokey and trivial story that has saved the back pages of SF magazines from blankness since Gernsback started receiving manuscripts. Protagonist is drinking in a bar when there’s a commotion outside: a brontosaur is running loose and wrecking things. He meets a guy on the street who explains he did it with his time displacer. He invites protagonist to come see the time displacer. After some more drinking, protagonist agrees to go back in time and try to scare away the brontosaur so it won’t be (or won’t have been) picked up by the time displacer. Etc., with more drinking. I’ve been tired of this kind of stuff for years, but this one is slickly done. Three stars for competence. This is Toomey’s third professionally published story.

Saturday’s Child, by Bill Warren

Saturday’s Child, by Bill Warren, is a cliched tear-jerker. It’s the one about the old space dog who wants nothing more than to blast off again, but he's too old and sick. In this variation, 600-plus-year-old Captain Dorn, and his telepathic hunterbeast (who adopted Dorn on some planet long ago) are rusticating on an unnamed and barely inhabited planet when an “earnest young man in Space Force black” informs him that the sun’s going nova, time to go, and by the way we’ve already packed up your possessions and taken them to the ship. Dorn of course is having none of it, but they kill the hunterbeast and bundle Dorn up and the takeoff kills him, but not before he forgives them all and gets a final look out the window into space. Cue the violins. Well, it’s competently written. Two stars.

Master of Telepathy, by Eando Binder

by Robert Fuqua

This issue’s Famous Amazing Classic is Master of Telepathy, by Eando Binder, from the December 1938 Amazing. Professor Oberton, a psychologist, is studying extrasensory perception, having picked up quickly on the 1934 researches of Prof. J.B. Rhine, who is given due credit in the text and a footnote. Young and shabby Warren Tearle shows up because he needs the five dollars that Oberton is paying to anyone who makes a high score on his tests. Tearle aces them and, now better paid, becomes a daily fixture in Oberton’s lab, rapidly developing his powers not only of telepathy but also of clairvoyance and command. Or, as he puts it to Darce, the professor’s beautiful assistant (you knew that was coming):

“I have reached the third level of psychic perception! I now have practically unlimited clairvoyance and telepathy. It was like having dawn come, after the dark night. Professor Oberton had some inkling of what it would mean, but he had no idea of how much power it gives. I can read thoughts, Darce, as easy as pie. But more than that, I can give commands that must be obeyed! . . .
“My mind is not in direct contact with what the professor called the main field of the psychic world. It is a sort of crossroads of all thoughts, all ideas, all minds, all things! I can see and hear what I wish. But more, I can force my will where I wish, carried by the tremendous power of the third level!”

So the world is at the mercy of an omnipotent megalomaniac! But Professor Oberton figures out a way to use his own invincible powers against him, and the world is saved until the next issue.

This is actually a pretty well-written and developed story in its antiquated way, probably well above average for its time (well, maybe better five or six years earlier). For ours . . . three stars, generously.

Where Are They?, by Greg Benford and David Book

Greg Benford and David Book contribute another “Science in Science Fiction” column, this one titled Where Are They?—Enrico Fermi’s famous question about intelligent extraterrestrials. They start by knocking off the notion that we are extraterrestrials, survivors of an ancient shipwreck or emergency landing. Next, they point out that interstellar exploration would be fabulously expensive and extraordinarily boring, since faster-than-light travel is not in the cards or the equations. Why bother? And why keep at it after you’ve found a few other solar systems? Colonization? Forget it; if that were realistic, it would already have happened. Exploitation of raw materials? Too expensive. Knowledge and ideas? Now we’re talking. Send probes, not space travellers, and if anybody’s there, try to open communications. But this assumes the aliens are like us; if they are sea dwellers, would they look on land? And what about the time scale? If there’s life, but not usefully intelligent life, probes could wait and listen for radio signals. Etc. That’s a little over half the length of this dense and fertile run-through of possibilities, imaginative and thorough if long on speculation. Four stars.

Summing Up

The issue is not bad, not great, but then what is among the current SF mags? Even if there’s nothing here for the ages, the news about White’s progress in getting control over the magazine’s visual presentation is encouraging.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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[April 4, 1970] Twixt Scylla and Charybdis (S&T's The Flight of the Goeben)

April 4, 2025 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

by Gideon Marcus

A little over half a century ago, the actions of two ships changed the entire course of human events.

SMS Goeben and SMS Breslau bombarding Phillipeville on the French-Algerian coast (W. Malchin, 1915)

In 1912, two warships of the German Kriegsmarine were stationed in the Mediterranean. The battlecruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau, in the event of war, were to raid French shipping between Africa and Europa. When war broke out between Austria-Hungary and Serbia on July 28, 1914, the vessels were in the Adriatic port of Pola. Admiral Souchon, commander of the German duo, decided he didn't want to be bottled up, so he took his ships to the central Mediterranean and waited for orders.

They arrived: head east for the Aegean Sea and ultimately the Dardanelles, the strait on which Turkish Istanbul was situated. There, Souchon was to offer the two modern vessels to the aging and inefficient Ottomans. In return, the Sultan would bring Turkey into The Great War on the side of the Central Powers.

Thus ensued a grand chase, which the British lost. The rest is history.

But what if Souchon had been given different orders? What if the British had had different priorities? Such are the What Ifs that compelling parallel universes are made of—and the subject of the newest game to arrive in the magazine Strategy & Tactics.

The Game

Flight of the Goeben is a two-player S&T magazine game, which depicts the cat-and-mouse game played between the small German task force (the titular Goeben and escort, Breslau) and the entire British Mediterranean fleet. The British player has the twin tasks of hunting the German ships and also protecting a convoy of French ships escorting troop transports from Algeria to Marseilles. The German player has a random objective that is not determined until six turns into the game; it could direct the Kriegsmarine ships to go to Turkey, as historically, or head out through Gibraltar to join the main fleet. On the way, the ships may get points for shelling French ports and sinking the aforementioned transports.

The game is played blind, like Battleship, with each player having his/her own copy of the board—a strategic hex map of the Mediterranean. Ship-to-ship combat is handled simplistically, though provisions exist for using the strategic game as a scenario-generator for detailed tactical ship combat. Tactical rules, based on Fletcher Pratt's naval game, are published in the same issue. I have not played them yet.

There are very few counters: in the basic game, the Germans have two warships and three colliers. The British have seven warships, and the French have three warship group counters and three transport counters. This all makes Goeben a very portable game, ideal for coffee-house playing! Particularly given its short length: like Crete, a typical (basic) game takes 2-4 hours.

Playing against Dan in our "War Room"

The Germans start in the Adriatic or Ionian seas three days before war has broken out between the British and the Hun. All of the British ships start out in the island port of Malta. The game is played in 6-hour turns from August 2 to August 12, during which both sides have variable (and secret) objectives. The Germans do not know their victory conditions until they make their secret die roll in the middle of August 3, and the British don't know theirs until the end of the same day.

Nevertheless, one thing is known: the Germans have the overriding goal of getting their ships out of the Mediterranean before the game is done. But the British get more or fewer points for preventing a German escape to the East or West, and more or fewer points for getting the transports safely to France. At the end of the game (once the Germans have escaped, been sunk or time runs out), whoever has the most points wins.

The Rules

Goeben really breaks away from the old operational hex-and-counters and Zones of Control dynamic. Each turn, both sides move their ships simultaneously, 1-3 spaces per turn. Each ship has a finite amount of coal, which gets burned up at increasingly rapid rates as speed increases. Ships refuel in ports (the British can refuel in French ports, the German at Pola in Austria-Hungary; the Germans can also refuel slowly and illicitly in Italian ports or, somewhat faster, by linking up with one of their three unarmed colliers). After all movement is concluded, if a player's ship entered a coastline or port or strait, he/she must inform the other player of this fact. Except at night—then there is a 50/50 chance of making the move without being spotted. Night turns take place on last six-hours of every day. British ships cannot move along Italian coastlines because the Italians are neutral. Sort of; the Germans have no such restrictions.

After movement, a player may search for the other in Battleship (or Midway) fashion. First, the player calls out the Sea he (or she) has a ship in. If the other player has a ship in that sea, the fact must be reported. The searching player may then elect to call out the Area (subdivision of the Sea) containing a ship. Again, the other player must answer. Finally, the searcher may call out the Hex a ship is in. If both sides have ships in the Hex, combat may occur—night offers the searched player a 50/50 chance of not having to report position. The same is true if the Hex being searched contains islands.

Both game boards, side-by-side, from above

As can be seen, searching is a two-way street. The more specific the searcher is, the more information passed on to the opponent. The German colliers act as decoys as well as sources of fuel, and the British might chase one all over creation thinking it's the Goeben. Once a ship is found, it can be pursued rather than detected in the conventional fashion. The German ships tend to outrun their British counterparts, but it takes a lot of fuel.

Combat (forbidden until war breaks out on August 5!) is handled very simply. Each side rolls a die for each ship, potentially damaging an opponent. Big ships must fight big ships first. Little ships get an adverse modifier when attacking big ships. Little ships get sunk quickly. Big ships can take speed and armament damage before sinking.

There are special rules governing the French ships in the basic game. The French battlegroups start in Toulon and, on August 3, make their way slowly to three different African ports, where they will escort the transports back to Toulon. Once the convoys are underway, they can be attacked by the Germans. The French get two shots at the Germans, and if the Germans survive (likely at least the Goeben will), the transports are sunk.

The Advanced game allows for all of the Mediterranean major powers' navies to come into play, and the French get real ships rather than escort counters. Both sides also get to roll on the What-If tables, and all sorts of neat alternatives can happen, including the British and Germans getting extra ships to play with.

Gameplay

Playing against Janice at the local diner

Even the basic game presents a wide variety of strategic options. The tricky part is that neither side knows what it needs to do at first. It's easier for the British, who need to cover all of their bases. The Germans have to watch out as, if they gamble too strongly on one direction early on, they may find they have to go clear across the map to get any victory points. Using the night turns is essential to keep one's moves a secret—sailing through the Italian straits to get to the Western Med, for instance. The Germans have to wisely use their colliers not only as mobile fuel depots but as decoys.

It is a tense nail-biter for both sides: f or the British, the Germans are elusive buggers who could be anywhere, and there are too many spots on the map that are far enough from Malta to be untenable stations for the coal-hungry vessels; for the Germans, the British seem to be everywhere, and the colliers are easy, slow targets.

From what I can tell, the game is pretty well balanced. And because of the hidden victory conditions, no one really knows who's winning until the end.

The Breslau is spotted by the second British cruiser squadron off the coast of Sicily

Conclusion

Dave Williams, the designer of Anzio and Anzio Beachhead, really hit it out of the park with this one. It's innovative, fast, and very playable. Strategy does not become quickly stereotyped. I do not know how the advanced game plays yet (I suspect it is superfluous), nor have I tried the tactical game (which seems like it would only really be fun in the advanced game). Even just taking the basic, strategic game, Flight of the Goeben is really quite fun. It has already replaced Crete as my game of choice.

Galactic Journey

[April 22, 1970] “Houston, We’ve had a Problem Here!” (Apollo-13 emergency in space)

[April 20, 1970] Not the final quarry (May 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[April 18th, 1970] The Spaceman Who Came In From The Cold (Doctor Who: The Ambassadors Of Death [Parts 1-4])

[April 16, 1970] Junk Day for Ice Crowns (April 1970 Galactoscope)

[April 14, 1970] Take this spaceship to Alpha Centauri (May 1970 Venture)

[April 12, 1970] And What Happens When the Machines Take Over? (Colossus: the Forbin Project)

The Machines Live

[April 10, 1970] A Style in Treason (May 1970 Galaxy)

[April 8, 1970] All Too Finite (Infinity One, edited by Robert Hoskins)

[April 6, 1970] Uncovered (May 1970 Amazing)

[April 4, 1970] Twixt Scylla and Charybdis (S&T's The Flight of the Goeben)

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction