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Magazine, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 20, 1969] Stars above, stars at hand (January 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

December 20, 2024 Gideon Marcus 1 Comment

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

by Gideon Marcus

Being #2… stinks

On the scene at the launch of Apollo 12, President Nixon assured the NASA technicians that America was #1 in space, and that it wasn't just jingoism—it was true!

Well, even a stopped clock, etc. In fact, all accounts suggest the Soviet space program had some serious setbacks last year, the results of which will be felt through at least to 1971. Schedules got shifted as large rockets were earmarked for purely military service in response to the escalating (now calmed) Sino-Soviet crisis. But the biggest issue was reported in Aviation Weekly last month: apparently, the Soviets lost a Saturn-class booster on the launch pad before liftoff last summer. I hadn't even heard that such a thing was in development! The rocket's loss has set back the USSR's manned space program by at least a year, resulting in tepid non-achievements like their recent triple Soyuz mission rather than the construction of a space station or a trip to the Moon.

This is actually the rocket from the Soviet film The Sky Calls (American title: Battle Beyond the Sun)

It didn't help that the Soyuz pads were occupied during the summer as the Soviets tried to match our lunar efforts. It may well be that their Saturn was rushed to service too soon, and similar gun-jumping may have caused the loss of the Luna 15 sample-return mission.

Speaking of which, in September, the Soviets launched Kosmos 300 and 305. Both of them were heavy satellites that went into the orbit usually used for lunar Zond missions. And then they reentered shortly thereafter…in pieces. It's not certain if these were to be circumlunar flights or retries of Luna 15. Either way, they didn't work out, either.

Meanwhile, the Apollo mission moves blithely along. Apollo 13 will go to the Moon next March to Fra Mauro, a landing site photographically scouted out by the Apollo 12 folks. This chapter of the Space Race is well and truly over, won by the forces of democracy championed by such luminaries as Spiro Agnew.

That's a good rock

Speaking of Apollo 12, you may recall earlier this month I talked about analysis of the Moon rocks brought back by Apollo 11. A similar report has come out about the rocks brought back by Conrad and Bean. Dr. Oliver A. Schaeffer of New York State Univ. at Stony Brook says they are only 2.2 to 2.5 billion years old—1-2 billion years younger than the Armstrong and Aldrin's samples. This means some kind of surface activity was ongoing on the comparatively quiet Moon—meteorite strikes and/or vulcanism, we don't know yet.

NASA astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad, commander of the Apollo 12 mission, holds two moon rocks he and Alan Bean brought back to Earth. Taken last month at Manned Spacecraft Center's Lunar Receiving Laboratory.

Also, Dr. S. Ross Taylor of Australian National Univ. says the Apollo 12 samples contain about half the titanium as the Apollo 11 rocks and also more nickel, though otherwise, their chemistry is similar. Thus, the Moon is far from homogeneous, and we have just scratched the surface (so to speak) of the mystery that is the Moon. As we get more samples from more sites, a better picture will come together, but it will undoubtedly take time; imagine trying to contemplate all of Earth's geologic diversity from just two short digs?

Holiday Feast

Cover by Mel Hunter

Longtooth, by Edgar Pangborn

Ben Dane is a widower with a bad heart, stranded by a blizzard at his friend Harp's house. When the home is beset by a furry, anthropoid monster, the two give chase. Is it a crazed lunatic? An alien? The Abominable Snowman?

Pangborn really lets you live inside his characters, vividly depicting the Maine land and farmscape as well as the personalities that populate his stories. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the tale's telling, which takes its time, satisfied with the redolence of its scenery. The real problem is the uninspired ending; what we have here, aside from the liberal sprinkling of four-letter words, is a piece that could have come out in Weird Tales thirty years ago.

Three stars.

Books (F&SF, January 1970), by Joanna Russ

Ms. Russ has come into her own as a columnist—her review of Day of the Dolphin was so funny that I was compelled to read it aloud to my wife. She goes on to damn Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron with faint praise, agreeing only with the simple premise that all men have their price. Russ gives highest marks to Jack Vance's Emphyrio, which our Victoria Silverwolf enjoyed.

Indeed, Russ' opinions mirror those of our own staff, though Jason liked Dophin more than Joanna did.

Russ ends her piece with a tepid review of a tepid anthology: Best SF: 1968, edited by Harry Harrison.

A Matter of Time and Place, by Larry Eisenberg

The name "Emmett Duckworth" inevitably elicits a weary sigh, for this series following the offbeat adventures of an inventor are invariably stupid.

Such is the case here where Duckworth is pressed into service by the Pentagon to make a host of ambitious but unworkable weapons. In the end, he discovers that there is a conservation of local entropy: the more domestic disorder in America, the more peaceful the world becomes.

Every scientific assertion in the story is ludicrous. It doesn't even work as farce. One star.

by Gahan Wilson

E Pluribus Solo, by Bruce McAllister

The last bald eagle, locked inside the Smithsonian for its protection, is under attack. A mercenary with a vicious falcon sidekick has been hired to dispatch this American icon. All that stands between them is one overmatched security guard…

This is a gruesome story, and I wasn't sure if I was going to like it, but the end is redeeming.

On the edge of three and four stars. I guess I'll flip it to the latter.

Car Sinister, by Gene Wolfe

This is a genuinely funny piece. A fellow takes his Rambler American to the seedy shop in his village to be serviced. What he doesn't know until too late is that his car has been stud serviced by another vehicle…and his car is now pregnant.

The only failing to this story is that it doesn't end. It just sort of trails off, either too soon or too long after the punchline is delivered. The implied biology of cars is fascinating, though. They seem to be like Gethenians from Left Hand of Darkness: all are capable of giving birth, but they can take on either sexual role.

Four stars.

A Third Hand, by Dean R. Koontz

A genetic freak dubbed Timothy is cooked up in a DoD lab. Armless and legless, and with only one eye, he is nevertheless one of humanity's most gifted members. That's because he has an IQ of 250+ and Gil Hamilton's ability to psionically manipulate small items at close range. Eventually, he is given prosthetic arms and legs to give him a "normal" life—sort of a flip side to McCaffrey's The Ship Who… series (where deformed brains are turned into spaceship control centers).

But that's just setting up the character. The story starts when Timothy witnesses the death of his guitarist buddy over the visiphone at the hands of a notorious crime boss. The handicapped genius applies all of his resources toward bringing the fiend to justice.

Koontz throws a lot of interesting future tech into his story: home printers that reproduce daily photostatted newspapers; androids that uncannily imitate their owners; floating death machines called Hounds. What he doesn't do is anything with his protagonist. Timothy is unique in all ways except mindset, which is not only conventional, but not even particularly brilliant. In the event, his main distinction is his limited telekinesis, and if you've read Niven's "The Organleggers", then you certainly won't get much out of this.

Three stars.

Ride the Thunder, by Jack Cady

Highway 150 is haunted, and all the cargo-haulers know it. And it's because of a mean young cuss called Joe Indian, who runs an old Mack with a load of turkeys, transported in the most inhumane way possible. What's his story, and how is the spectral visitation ended? You'll have to read to the end to find out.

A fine ghost story, by a trucker for truckers, originally published in Overdrive, a trucker mag, in 1967. Four stars.

Bughouse, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Two couples at a personal soirée. One of the husbands suggests that they might all be a little mad, and he proposes to prove it by having them all eat an Oriental bug poison (which should have no effect on humans—unless they're "buggy").

A slight, but interestingly written, piece. Three stars.

The Lunar Honor-Roll, by Isaac Asimov

This month's science article has a touching book-end: Ike's dad apparently lived long enough to experience not only the flight of the first aircraft but also the first lunar mission, passing away a couple of weeks after the flight of Apollo 11. A fan of science fiction, he instilled a love of learning and educating that has served The Good Doctor well. The meat inside the reminiscence is a nice piece on the naming of the Moon's prominent features. Why are so many 16th Century, medieval, and Greek astronomers honored? Why do we have Alps and Apennines on the Moon as well as lakes, seas, and an ocean?

Worth reading. Five stars.

A Delicate Operation, by Robin Scott

Getting a brilliant doctor out of East Germany to freedom in the West is tough at the best of times. A "white" operation, where a double is sent in so the target can escape, is considered unworkable because no suitable man can be found for the job. A "black" op (smuggling out as hidden cargo) is planned, but when the latter fails, it seems all hope is lost. That is, until Dr. Celia Adams, a supremely talented British biologist, takes matters into her own hands. Can she succeed where the cynical, oversexed CIA veteran (the ostensible hero of our story) cannot?

This is a tight, fun story whose ending you'd likely only guess because you know it has to be SFnal given where it was published. Much is made of the East German doctor being gay, which turns out to be fundamental to the plot.

Four stars.

Seasons Greetings!

Well that was a fine repast (even if the two cover authors turned in the lesser works). And we're now up to a two-magazine streak. Will 1970 be the year F&SF truly deserves the Hugo it won in August? That would be something to celebrate, indeed!

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

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 16, 1969] Holiday haul (December Galactoscope)

December 16, 2024 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

We have a fine sextet of science fiction books for you this month: largely readable, with two clunkers and one superior read…

by Gideon Marcus

Ace Double 66160

Earthrim, by Nick Kamin

by Panos Koutrouboussis

A generation or two from now, the Earth is recovering from a devastating war between the Western World and the Chinasian alliance. At first, the latter was winning, surging into Australia and with a plan to cross the Bering Strait. Then things bogged down. Eschewing the use of nuclear weapons (for an unexplained reason), the death rate became fantastic.

One day, the war just stopped. Or, more specifically, someone stopped them. Sounds like a positive development, but whoever did it is now exerting dictatorial control over the globe, futzing with governments, economies, even population growth rates and somehow slowing the age of human maturity!

Now, a decade after the war, Michael Standard, a battered veteran of the Australian front, is the one man who can stop the war-stopper. He is equipped with a prosthetic arm which is set to fire its hand like a cannon when face to face with the entity who styles himself "The Rim".

In many ways, Earthrim is a conventional action yarn, not too different from the series hero paperbacks like the new "Executioner" series. Standard is an irascible brute who lurches from fight to fight, surviving by animal cunning and will to live. The world Nick Kamin (a new author) creates is not particularly visionary. There is one lady character, and she is a prostitute, existing for the sole purpose of 1) being Standard's lover, and 2) getting Standard to Rim.

But Kamin does some interesting stuff. He begins the story with a compelling hook: Standard is put under to have his prosthetic arm's shoulder put back into its socket, which brings a hapless doctor into the plot. Then we get scenes from Standard's past, woven in quite deftly, making his character more interesting and his personality a bit more palatable (though how he acts like a moron most of the time, but can whip out an erudite observation on topology is a bit strange).

The other characters are actually well drawn, from Jeannine the prostitute to Dr. Graystone. Even the cops on the trail of Standard get decently fleshed out, though their role is somewhat incidental. Kamin is also a compelling author. He's got the modern style down pat, and the lurid mode works well for Ace Doubles.

The biggest problem with the book is the revelation at the end that no character has exercised free will. Everything that happens is ultimately the will of Rim or Condliffe, the fellow who equipped Standard with the arm-gun. The journey is interesting. The writing is good. But the story is a steel lattice that the characters can only inhabit, not change.

Three and a half stars.

Phoenix Ship, by Leigh and Walt Richmond

by Jack Gaughan

The Richmond husband-and-wife team (supposedly, the wife does the typing, with the husband sending telepathic instructions from his living room easy chair) has another Ace Double for us. Stanley Thomas Arthur Reginald (S.T.A.R.) Dustin is an Earther, nephew to an asteroid belt-dwelling rabble-rouser named Trevor Dustin. Stan's dad wants his son to be nothing like his uncle, so he enrolls him in an arctic university for a proper indoctrination…er…education. Said education is most unusual. Stan gets weekly "inoculations" and then is given a series of exams. The questions are highly technical—impossible to answer without years of classes. Yes somehow, unconsciously, Stan seems to have the answers floating in the back of his mind.

Not content to let his hindbrain do the work, Stan spends all of his waking hours studying so that he could pass the tests even without the mysterious, subconscious aid. As a result, after four years, Stan has one of the most remarkable minds in the solar system. He finishes his schooling just in time for his uncle to lead a rebellion against Earth, winning independence for the Belt through a series of brilliant space naval maneuvers.

This makes Stan persona non grata on Earth, whereupon the school's headmaster sneeringly informs Stan that he has been drafted into the Marines, and he will have to report for duty in two weeks as one of Earth's finest. Well, Stan won't stand for that—he skips town, heads to orbit, and then off to the Belt…where he has a date with destiny and a second war with Earth.

Written in a much (much!) more juvenile vein than the Kamin, this is an odd duck of a book. With its cardboard characters, mustache-twirling villains, perfunctory inclusion of a single female (to be the love interest, natch), and its basic plot, it feels like something out of the 30s. On the other hand, the loving detail lavished on things like weightless maneuvers, dealing with explosive decompression, and space station construction are pulled from the current pages of Popular Science. There are tantalizing details on living in the Belt. Most interesting was that virtually all of its denizens are scarred or deformed, testament to the hostile environment, but no less human for it. Anderson and Niven have written about Belters, but the Richmonds have taken the first, if clumsy, steps to flesh out living in the Belt, I think.

The problem is neither Anderson nor Niven wrote this book, and the Richmonds really weren't up to it. The subject matter required twice its length. At the hands of a Heinlein, it could have been a second The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. As is, it's an occasionally entertaining, but largely turgid and by-the-numbers throwaway.

Two and a half stars.

by Jason Sacks

Lord of the Stars, by Jean and Jeff Sutton

Speaking of husband and wife writing teams… Lord of the Stars is a new juvenile sf adventure co-created by the husband-and-wife team of Jean and Jeff Sutton. Stars is readable and fun, but lacks the fire and flash of the best juveniles.

Like many juveniles, Stars is a coming-of-age story which tells the story of how a young boy discovers a world around him much more complex and interesting than he ever could have expected. As in many of these types of books, Danny has a destiny to fulfill, and as he learns of his destiny, the boy also learns the creature who had mentored him is evil, and he meets his true friends along the way.

Hmm, it occurs to me there is a lot of familiar archetyping in that description. That archetyping is a big part of the strength and weakness of this book. Because sophisticated readers know basically how a story like this will proceed, we're looking for signposts that indicate a different viewpoint or more complexity – as in the recent Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin. But the Suttons aren't after the same level of complexity as Panshin was, and that leaves this book as merely an average juvenile sf yarn.

Cover by Albert Orbaan

The Suttons center Lord of the Stars around Danny June. As we meet Danny, he's all alone on a mysterious planet. He's been lost on the planet since his parents' colonist ship blew up, wandering the planet with the help of an amazing telepathic octopus-creature named Zandro. Zandro has incredible abilities and is extremely intelligent, guiding our boy in his means to survive the planet, and seeming to groom Danny for a greater fate.

But others want Danny as well. The great Galactic Empire, spanning thousands of stars, is after Danny. In chapter two we are introduced to the 17th Celestial Sector of the Third Terran Empire, led by Sol Houston, who see Danny as the kind of creature who can destroy their empire.

That aspect of the book is dully familiar, but at least the Suttons bring in a bit of playfulness with the names of the Galactic leaders. For reasons lost in the fog of time, the names Sol and Houston are legendary, so the leader of the empire is named Sol Houston. And so on, names explained in fun and clever asides which added to my pleasure with this book.

Similarly, there's an amusing tangent in which a set of Empire bureaucrats try to figure out what they can do to affect the lives of Danny and his friends. The bureaucrats fall into an almost talmudic debate about which regs to follow, which rules can be broken. It's in those moments one can see real-life arguments with governments and school boards made manifest. (Jean Sutton works as a high school teacher while Jeff Sutton works as an aerospace consultant, so both know plenty about bureaucracy).

But the core of the book centers around Danny, his great psychic powers, and the attempts by his friends and allies to break Danny away from Zandro's influence. Along the way, Danny battles the plans of Gultur, Lord of the Stars; communicates psychically in subspace with a group of androids; and makes friends.

All of this is quite fun, since the Suttons bring just the right amount of seriousness to bear with Lord of the Stars. This is also a well-written, crisp little novel — no surprise since Jeff Sutton has written fiction and nonfiction since he left the Marines after the War. Still, Danny comes across as bit of a cipher and the plot machinations are a bit creaky.

Overall, a pleasant novel that's a bit of a throwback but still is worth the read.

Three stars.

by Victoria Silverwolf

The Best Laid Schemes o' Mice an' (Space)Men

Two novels in which interstellar voyages gang agley (with a tip o' the Tam o' Shanter to Bobby Burns) fell into my hands recently. One is by a Yank, the other by a Brit. Let's take a look at 'em.

The Rakehells of Heaven, by John Boyd

Wraparound cover art by Paul Lehr

Atlanta-born Boyd Bradfield Upchurch writes under the penname listed above. He's whipped out a couple of previous novels quickly. The Last Starship from Earth came out last year, and The Pollinators of Eden just a few months ago.

This latest work starts with a psychiatrist interviewing a spaceman who came back from his voyage too early. More concerning is the fact that it was supposed to be a two-man effort, and his partner isn't with him.

The text quickly shifts to first person narration by the astronaut himself. His name is John Adams, better known as Jack. (I'm not sure if his name is supposed to be an allusion to the second President of the United States or not.) He's a Southern boy, just like the author.

His missing buddy is Keven "Red" O'Hara, a stereotypical Irishman who has a toy leprechaun as a good luck charm and wears underwear with green polka dots. (The latter is actually part of the plot.)

We get quite a bit of background about their days before the spaceflight. Suffice to say that, after an encounter with an old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone preacher and his nubile daughter, Jack gets religion and Red gets the girl. (He actually marries her but, as we'll see, that hardly ties him down.)

Their mission takes them to a planet in another galaxy. (There's no real reason the place has to be so far away. In other ways, this isn't the most realistic space voyage ever to appear in fiction.) The inhabitants are very human in appearance, the main difference being very long, strong legs that are used in about the same way as arms.

The aliens live in a logical, technologically advanced society with no apparent form of government. Society is made up of what are pretty much universities. The two Earthmen are welcomed, and even allowed to teach classes.

It should be noted that the locals wear extremely short tunics and nothing else, not even underwear. This very casual almost-nudity (which really conceals nothing) goes along with the fact that they consider sex to be no big deal, just something they do when they feel like it. Children often result, of course, and never know who their fathers are.

For Red, this is an opportunity to have relations with as many of the beautiful young women surrounding him as possible. Jack, on the other hand, wants to convert the natives to Christianity. That includes dressing modestly, courting the opposite sex chastely, etc.

Can you guess that this is going to backfire?

Complicating matters is the fact that Jack falls in love with one of the aliens. It seems that Earth doesn't consider extraterrestrials to be human unless they meet a long list of very specific conditions. That includes being able to defend their planet from invaders. (Obviously this is a cynical ploy on the part of Earthlings to be able to enslave any aliens who are weaker than they are.) In essence, Jack is marrying an animal, legally, unless he can prove they meet all the conditions.

Things reach a climax during the performance of an Eastertime Passion Play, meant to convey the story of Christ's sacrifice to the aliens, who are entirely without religion. (Red, nominally a Catholic, goes along with Jack's evangelism, mostly because he enjoys putting on shows.)

Yep, that's not going to go at all well either.

This is a satiric novel, not quite openly comic although it's got some farcical elements. There's also quite a bit of sex. This may be the only science fiction book I've read with a detailed description of a woman's genitalia.

The last part of the novel, which goes back to the psychiatrist, has a twist ending that doesn't quite make sense. Maybe the best way to describe this odd little book is to compare it to an episode of Star Trek combined with a dirty and blasphemous joke.

Three stars.

The Black Corridor, by Michael Moorcock

Cover art by Diane and Leo Dillon

Prolific author and controversial editor Moorcock needs no introduction to Galactic Journeyers.

A fellow named Ryan is aboard a starship heading for a supposedly habitable planet orbiting Barnard's Star. The trip will take five years, and three have already gone by. He's the only person awake on the ship. In hibernation are his wife, their two sons, and other relatives and friends.

(We'll find out, by the way, that a couple of the men have two wives each. This drastic change in Western European society [everybody is British] is taken for granted, with no discussion.)

Flashbacks take us to a future Earth that is rapidly disintegrating into chaos. Tribalism rears its ugly head. Ryan, the manager of a toy company, fires a kindly employee just because the fellow is Welsh. Things get much, much worse as the book continues. Ryan and the others hijack the starship in order to escape Earth, which they feel is doomed.

Aboard the ship, Ryan suffers nightmares. These are often surrealistic. At times, the text turns into words in all capitals that are placed on the page to form other words. These typographical tricks contrast strongly with the main parts of the narrative, which use simple language to convey truly horrific happenings.

It's hard for me to say much more about what happens, because Ryan is quite obviously experiencing a mental breakdown. You can't trust that what you're told is real.

This is a very dark and disturbing book. The New Wave narrative technique associated with the nightmares is a little gimmicky, but otherwise the novel is compelling in its portrait of both individuals and society in general falling apart.

(It should be noted that, according to scuttlebutt, many of the scenes set on Earth were written by Hilary Bailey, who is married to Moorcock. He rewrote that material, and added everything set in space. The resulting work is credited solely to Moorcock, apparently with Bailey's consent.)

Four stars.

Only one book from me this month, and unfortunately it's not a very good one. It's also, for better or worse, a familiar face. John Jakes has been writing at a mile a minute this year, with The Asylum World being what must be his fourth or fifth novel of 1969. Unlike some previous Jakes novels (a couple of which I reviewed), which lean more towards fantasy, this one is very much science fiction. If anything, the changing of genres is for the worse.

The Asylum World, by John Jakes

Cover of the book The Asylum World. Text on the cover says: A mind-blowing science fiction satire of our times. The illustration shows a human figure with a mirror instead of a face. A night landscape is visible in the mirror and behind the human figure. — Cover artist not credited.

The year is 2031, and while mankind still lives on Earth, to an extent, a widespread race war between blacks and whites (I am not kidding) has resulted in not only Earth being split into Westbloc and Eastbloc (obviously a futuristic equivalent of our current cold war with the Soviets), but, I suppose on the bright side, a Noah's Ark of humanity has been established on Mars, where people live in domes, more or less in racial harmony. Sean Cloud is young, brash, and a "subadministrator" of this Martian colony. He's also hopelessly in love Lydia Vebren, who likes Sean but is hesitant due to his mixed racial heritage. Sean is half-black and half-white, is apparently unable to pass as the latter, and Lydia has a prejudice against black men.

There's also another, larger problem: a fleet of alien ships is making its way through the solar system, to Mars, possibly for peace, but also possibly to make war. The Martian colony does not have the armaments to defend itself, so Sean and Lydia are sent to Earth to bargain with the leadership in Westbloc, which itself is on the verge of turning to shambles.

The back cover says The Asylum World is satire, which strikes me as a bit odd, because in my experience satire is supposed to a) be humorous, and b) provide a topic on which the author may try to prove a point. No doubt this novel is Jakes's attempt at providing commentary on the current political climate in the U.S., especially racial strife over the past decade, not to mention that yes, tensions between the Americans and Soviets have resulted in us nearly blowing ourselves to bits at least once already. The problem is that I'm not sure what the hell he is trying to say, other than to make some center-of-the-road statements such as, for example, bemoaning the irrelevance of the family unit in this not-too-far future. There's a general sentiment of "Why can't we just get along and learn to speak honestly with each other?" which is all well and good, but men around my age and younger are dying. Sean's mixed racial heritage, which seems like it should be fodder for symbolic meaning (he is, after all, the offspring of two races, and now he must join Westbloc with Mars), but Jakes does very little with this.

I could continue to berate Jakes's political naivete, and I could also delve into how even at 170 pages this novel spins its wheels a fair bit (it really could have been a novella); but instead I'll focus some on how, despite taking place several decades into our future, The Asylum World strikes me as having been written only in the past year, maybe in the span of a month or two (why not? Michael Moorcock has written novels in a matter of days), and that I do not see how it could remain relevant in say, another ten years. When Sean comes to Earth he spends most of the novel at the "Nixon-Hilton." Sure. There's also the "Statue of the Three Kennedys." The bubbling conflict between Westbloc and Eastbloc is more or less what we are now dealing with, despite the very real possibility that the Soviet Union may not exist in 2031. Or indeed the United States. This seems like a novel written specifically to be published in 1969, so that readers may "get it" while it still gives the impression of being timely—at which point, having finished the novel in a day or two, said readers will toss it aside. At least Jakes is now slightly less at risk of having to beg for money on a street corner.

Two stars. I will surely forget about it.

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Science / Space Race

[December 6, 1969] Here comes the Sun (and Moon) — a NASA and friends space update!

December 6, 2024 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

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

by Gideon Marcus

With the Apollo missions taking so much of our attention (there were four flights this year), it is understandable that unmanned missions and science have gotten short shrift. I'm going to try to address this oversight now.

Far out!

Do you remember Pioneer 6 (launched Dec. 16, 1965) and Pioneer 7 (launched Aug. 17, 1966)? They are deep space probes designed to observe the Sun from widely different vantage points. In fact, we've been a bit remiss: since '66, two more identical Pioneers have gone up: Pioneer 8 (December 13, 1967) and Pioneer 9 (November 8, 1968). A fifth and final Pioneer was launched August 27, 1969, but its carrier rocket exploded. The loss of that one is pretty bad; whereas the others are all spread out fairly equidistantly around the Sun, more or less as far away from it as the Earth, Pioneer "E" was going to be put in an orbit that kept it close to Earth, where it would be used to give as much as a two-week warning of dangerous flare activity.

Nevertheless, NASA is blazing along with four satellites. Indeed, thanks to the longevity and spread-out positions of Pioneers 6 and 7, they were able to perform an unique experiment. On Nov. 6, the two satellites were 175 million miles apart on a common line with the Sun, and scientists observed the difference in behavior of solar wind particles due to their passage through space in opposite directions. In a similar vein, on Dec. 2, when the spacecraft reached points on a common spiral line leading out from the Sun (the star rotates, so it flings out particles in a spiral rather than linear fashion), scientists measured different kinds of solar particles coming from the same events on the Sun.

We'll have to wait for the journals to publish any papers, but this is the kind of large-scale, long-term science made possible by the Pioneer probes!

Another cool example of Pioneer science

Far in!

While the Pioneers study the Sun far from Earth, there are a host of spacecraft monitoring our home star from Earth orbit. For instance, we haven't talked about the Orbiting Solar Observatories (OSOs) for a while, but there have been six so far. They were the first heavy satellite series to be launched by NASA, providing nearly continuous coverage of the Sun since 1962, in wavelengths we can't observe from Earth because they are blocked by the Earth's atmosphere: ultraviolet, X-Ray, and gamma ray.

Why was the Sun such an early focus? Three major reasons: 1) understanding the dangers posed by flares and their relation to the high energy particles trapped by Earth's magnetic field is critical to ensuring astronaut safety, 2) surveying the Sun and comparing changes on the solar surface with fluctuations of space weather near Earth tell us both about the interactions of the two as well as the nature of both, and 3) the Sun is the closest star at hand, and what we learn about the Sun as a star can be applied to the millions of other stars we can observe.

The revelations OSO have given us are not easily conveyed. It's not like Explorer 1, which discovered the Van Allen Belts—a hitherto unexpected phenomenon—or the TIROS weather satellite, which discovered storms we hadn't even known about. Rather, they give us a huge body of data with which we can refine our understanding of how the Sun works, and also so that we can better predict space weather. What's called "basic research."

OSO 1 operated continuously from March-May 1962, and intermittently on to August 1963, returning data on 75 solar flares—most importantly, what events preceded, succeeded, and coincided with them in many different wavelengths, a fingerprint of an eruption, so to speak.

(ground-taken picture of the Sun flaring)

OSO 2 expanded its coverage to the corona, that bright bit of the Sun you can only see during a lunar eclipse. Its launch was delayed until February 3, 1965 because the original OSO B was damaged in a launch explosion, April 14, 1964, that killed three technicians! Though OSO 2 returned data for nine months, I can't find a single article on the Sun that stemmed from it. There's one on about 20 other stars observed by the satellite, though, and the difficulties of seeing through the Sun's glare to them.

OSO 3, the one that launched March 8, 1967, and not the one that failed to orbit in August 1965, was more successful. It returned interesting solar data, for instance finding solar X-ray sources that weren't flares, determining that the chromosophere (visible surface) didn't necessarily heat up before a flare, and monitoring the change in the solar spectrum over the course of its 28-day rotation.

And the onboard gamma ray experiments told us a lot about the universe. For instance, the torrent of gamma rays streaming in from the universe is highly confined to the galactic plane, and particularly toward the Milky Way's core, which means it must be galactic in origin. OSO 3 also observed X-ray bursts from a star (maybe stars) that isn't the Sun: Scorpius X-1, later determined to be a neutron star, and Lupus XR-1 (which may or may not be the same source—the literature is unclear). The satellite stopped working just last month.

OSO 4 went up October 18, 1967, and was the first OSO to carry an international experiment—a University of Paris device that measures the Sun in the ultraviolet frequency that best shows solar activity ("Lyman-alpha"). Indeed, it was the first OSO to scan the Sun in ultraviolet at all. Also really cool is that its X-ray resolution is such that it could watch flares in X-ray wavelengths as sharply as we could see it on the ground in the visual spectrum, so scientists could make one to one comparisons.

You'll note the use of past tense—the satellite is still in orbit, but its tape storage failed in May 1968, and last month, OSO 4 was ordered into standby mode.

That brings us to the OSOs we haven't covered yet. OSO 5 went up on January 22, 1969, and has the ability to scan the Sun in the X-ray range more quickly and thoroughly. OSO 6 went up August 9. I don't have too much to say about them because it's too early for papers. NASA reports both did their jobs fine, and they're still operating. Like OSO 3 did, they not only study the Sun but also galactic X-ray sources…so stay tuned.

Small satellites are doing their part, too. For instance, Explorer 41, the latest in the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform series, launched June 21 into a high orbit that goes almost halfway to the Moon. The Sun this satellite examined has been unusually quiet, an expected trait of the "solar maximum"—the time in the Sun's 11-year cycle of highest output. On the other hand, low-energy galactic cosmic rays rates fluctuated more than usual, and interplanetary conditions appeared to be more disturbed. The satellite is still operating.

Finally, and only tangentially related to the Sun, there are the missions of Aurorae and Boreas, launched October 3, 1968 and October 10, 1969, respectively under the auspices of the European Space Research Organization (ESRO). They report on the brightness of Earth's aurorae, the composition and temperature of the ionosphere, and the charged particle environment in orbit. The first satellite is still working just fine, but Boreas went into a lower than expected orbit, and it reentered on November 23rd. Still, the mission was deemed successful.

Rocks to dig

Veering back into the manned space program, there was some exciting coverage during the Apollo 12 flight that I didn't have a chance to relate. As Conrad, Bean, and Gordon finish their three weeks in quarantine (joined on Dec. 2 by 11 scientists and technicians who had accidentally been exposed to lunar samples), this is a good time to talk about what we've learned from Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Walter Cronkite had, as a guest on his programming, Dr. John O' Keefe—a geologist at NASA's Goddard Space Center. The visibly excited O'Keefe stated that the most extraordinary aspect of the Moon rocks is that they are deficient in nickel and cobalt as compared to the Sun, that latter body presumably being representative of the nebula that originally coalesced and formed our solar system.

Why is that significant? Well, the Earth's crust is similarly lacking in nickel and cobalt (and other "precious metals" that dissolve easily in iron, collectively called "siderophiles"). We know Earth has a dense iron core because nothing else would account for the planet's mass with respect to its volume, and also, it explains why the planet has a magnetic field. While our planet was first cooling, it makes sense that the siderophiles melted and mostly sank to the center of the planet.

The Moon has no core—we know this because its density (volume divided by mass) is too low, and it has no appreciable magnetic field. That the Moon's surface rocks correlate to Earth's surface rocks, and because its density appears to be constant from crust to center, that suggests that the Moon was somehow formed from Earth's crust. It is, in fact, a piece of our planet's outer surface that somehow spun off into orbit and formed its own little, low-density world.

What causes this is still unknown. Perhaps the Earth was spinning so fast when it was formed that its middle flew off. Or maybe a rogue planet smashed into the Earth. What we do know is that the composition of the Moon rocks puts paid the hypothesis that the Moon formed separately from and at the same time as Earth, since we'd then expect its crust's composition to either be more like that of the Sun, or for our moon to have a dense core.

We also know that whatever created the Moon happened quite early in Earth's history. The lunar rocks have been dated as 4.6 billion years old. That's very close to the estimated age of the Earth. What I found particularly exciting is that the Moon rocks must be the very oldest rocks we've ever encountered, except maybe for meteorites. That's because erosion and vulcanism are constantly erasing the Earth's surface, and the oldest rocks I know of down here are somewhere around 3 billion years old.

As we continue to explore the cosmos, we shall find more data points with which to create an holistic view of the universe, something that would be impossible were we to stay Earthbound. I am happy that I live in the Space Age, when our scientific knowledge is expanding exponentially. Who knows what new discoveries 1970 will bring!

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

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 30, 1969] Capstone to a decade (December 1969 Analog)

November 30, 2024 Gideon Marcus 10 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Atrocities in Vietnam

The news has been brewing for a while, and now it's on the front page: 1st Lieutenant William J. Calley Jr., a 26-year-old platoon leader stationed in Vietnam, has been "life or death" court martialed for the murder of 109 South Vietnamese civilians "of various ages and sexes."

This so-called "My Lai incident" took place northeast of Quang Ngai city on March 16, 1968 in a village called Song My—code-named "Pinkville". Calley, enraged at the death of his chief sergeant, appears to have ordered his unit to eliminate everyone in the hamlet. Several of his men went on a bloody spree; others did what they could to avoid involvement. One even shot himself in the foot so he could be medivaced out. A number came forward with the story, which was investigated and then dismissed by the 11th Infrantry Brigade. Letters to Congress have prompted the reopening of the case and investigation into the original investigation.

If Calley is convicted, he faces no less than life imprisonment, and death by firing squad is on the table.

The court martial comes on the heels of the July 21, 1969 charge of Green Beret commander, Col. Robert Rheault, and six of his officers with murder and conspiracy for the secret execution of a Vietnamese spy suspect. Those charges were dropped two months later when the CIA, whose operatives were key witnesses, refused to cooperate. Whether the government's tacit support of brutality increases or decreases the odds of Calley facing the music remains to be seen.

Mediocrities in Print

by Kelly Freas

December's final magazine is Analog. Let's hope this makes for pleasanter reading that the newspapers.

Turning first to the book review column, and skipping the editorial (for those who want recapitulations of Campbell's latest blatherings, go buy the collected volumes that have recently come out), P. Schuyler Miller offers up some nice coverage of translated Perry Rhodan books from West Germany. He goes on to cover a Silverberg collection of antediluvian tales called The Calibrated Alligator. They were written back when Silverbob was writing 50,000 words a week and rapidly killing himself. The quality of his work was moderate; he devoted most of his energies to the kinds of books once sold below the counter, but which are now on brazen display in New York newstands.

Miller liked Timescoop, though he thought it lesser Brunner (but not least Brunner). Pretty much what Jason said when he wrote about it. He also thought much of Isle of the Dead, by Roger Zelazny, as did Victoria Silverwolf early this year. Finally, before dispatching a bunch of reprints, he gives middlin' praise to Mack Raynolds' Time Gladiator, which is really just the serial Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes, a People's Capitalism story so old, it still has Joe Mauser in it! I liked the story, but I find Reynolds' near-future predictions fascinating, even if his writing is often just workmanlike.

This, by the way, is why I like Schuyler so much—he agrees with us! (And he doesn't play favorites; coming out first in Analog doesn't automatically increase the score).

In Our Hands, the Stars (Part 1 of 3), by Harry Harrison

by Kelly Freas

That dopey looking sub-ship on the cover and as the headline illustration is, in fact, a submarine turned into a spaceship. How did it happen?

Arnie Klein is an Israeli researcher who develops…something. So explosive is this secret (literally—the story begins with his invention blowing up his laboratory) that he flees to Denmark, seeks asylum, and enlists the aid of his friend, Nobel Prize winner Ove Rasmussen. The two work together to build a woking model of the contraption, and then install it in a submarine.

Pretty early on, it's obvious what the thing will do: generate antigravity.

All of this takes us to about Page 40 of the serial, and none of those pages are necessary. The information conveyed in those dry ~10,000 words of text could easily have been woven into an in media res beginning—and Harrison is fully up to the task. That he padded things out so much, with uninteresting characters and inconsequential events, suggests he's in it for the per-word rates.

Anyway, after the Blæksprutten is commissioned, a trio of Soviet cosmonauts find themselves marooned on the Moon with a limited oxygen supply. Klein and Co. take their ship up to Luna and rescue them. Meanwhile, down on Earth, there's some Cold War spy machinations of limited interest.

Harrison can do much better. This is like cut-rate Mack Reynolds, really. Anyway, 3 stars, I guess, but if it's all like this, we're going to end up in the 2.5 zone.

Is Biological Aging Inevitable?, by Capt. John E. Wrobel, Jr.

This is an interesting piece on what we think causes mortality (lots of options), what's being done about it (not that much, surprisingly), the effects of immortality on society (only positive ones listed), and the mythological underpinnings of mortality acceptance (quite interesting).

I found the article quite graspable, and the use of chapter divisions greatly improved readability. Let's hope this becomes a feature for future nonfiction pieces.

Four stars.

Mindwipe, by Tak Hallus

by Vincent DiFate

"Tak Hallus" returns for his sophomore tale (his first, also appeared in Analog.) In this one, space-hand Ernest Schwab is on trial for a heinous crime: blanking the mind of the Terran governor of the planet Paria. It turns out Schwab is one of the very few telepaths known to humanity—even he didn't know he had this power. Now it is up to Public Defender Benson to prove that he was manipulated into action by another telepath rather than acting of his own volition. Doing so will take Benson on an adventure, from the courtrooms of Earth to the tunnels of the burrowing indigenes of Paria…and place a bullseye on his own head for meddling!

This is a pretty neat piece. It suffers for being rather workmanlike in execution, as if it were a little rushed, and I found the society of the future a bit too similar to that of the present (particularly the role of women). Nevertheless, it captures interest and offers up a decent mystery as well as, in the process, presenting an interesting alien race.

Three stars.

Testing … One, Two, Three, Four, by Steve Chapman

by Leo Summers

A bird colonel, stuck in service to an electronic brain, is given the task of overseeing a trio of servicemen who are undergoing computerized tests qualifying them for extraterrestrial deployment. What he doesn't realize (but what is obvious fairly early on) is that this assignment is, in fact, a test of his capabilities.

Not bad. The sort of thing Chris Anvil might have come up with.

Three stars.

Superiority Complex, by Thomas N. Scortia

by Leo Summers

Things fall off a cliff for these last two vignettes, probably accepted more for their useful length than quality. This one takes us to a time several generations after The Bomb wiped out half of humanity. Researchers are trying to revitalize the race through eugenics, specifically tracking down the descendants of "Phil Jason", an exceptional man who wrote screenplays in old Hollywood until he blew his own brains out. If society could manufacture more of his type, then perhaps it could be rejuvenated.

Turns out that "Phil" was really "Phyllis", and the spirit of her genius lives on throughout the human race…explaining why women always seem to rule from the shadows, preferring the power behind the throne rather than the throne itself (this is the story's contention, not mine).

A dumb, sexist piece. One star.

Any Number Can Play, by Richard Lippa

by Vincent DiFate

A meteorologist man-and-wife team investigate anomolaus weather off the coast of Florida and find the wreck of an enemy warship that had been creating the storm. Portentous intonations of "could this be happening globally?"

Weather control is all the rage these days, in fiction and nonfiction. Personally I can't buy that all the silver iodide crystals and laser beams will have half the effect that, say, a century of industrial society is having on the Earth. But I also take issue with attibuting harmful weather to malevolent foreign entities. That road leads to Silly Science. We had enough of that with folks like Lysenko. What's next? Railing against vaccinations?

One star.

End of the line

And so ends the last magazine of the calendar year—not with a bang, but with a 2.7 star whimper. This puts it above Vision of Tomorrow (2.8), Fantastic (2.1), and the shockingly bad New Worlds (1.9), but well below Galaxy (3.1), If (3.2), Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4), and The New S.F. (3.6)

Now that all the magazines are done, I can give you a sneak preview of what the Galactic Stars will look like. Here are all of the mags/anthologies in order of average:

New Writings 3.679824561
Fantasy and Science Fiction 3.102574451
IF 3.070572755
New Worlds 3.030241097
Galaxy 3.005917367
Vision of Tomorrow 2.921091331
Venture 2.824404762
Analog 2.688902006
Fantastic 2.645528083
Amazing 2.622086594
Orbit 2.571428571
Famous 1.897435897

As you can see, Analog finished pretty close to the bottom, barely acing out the Ted White mags (which are on their way up). Campbell's going to have to do better than this if he wants to keep his ~170,000 readers, I imagine.

In other statistics, women wrote just 3% of the new fiction this month, and the four and five star pieces would fill three small digests (out of the eight published). Not an auspicious way to end the decade, but perhaps the '70s will offer up a New New Wave.

See you on the other side!

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

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Science / Space Race

[November 26, 1969] From the Earth to the Moon…and back (Apollo 12)

November 26, 2024 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

by Gideon Marcus

Just four months ago, men first set foot on the Moon, fulfilling a millennia-long dream of humanity as well as culminating a decade-long Space Race between the superpowers. And the question on everyone's lips: how do you top that?

It's important to remember that the flight of Apollo 11 was not the end, but only a beginning—just as John Glenn's orbital flight, Gus Grissom's mission in Gemini 3, Wally Schirra's in Apollo 7 were all beginnings. The Moon Port is open, and it is time to start the exploration of the cosmos in earnest.

Appropriately, the flight of Apollo 12 was planned to mark an incremental expansion upon the prior mission's success. Scheduled for a November 14 launch at 11:22AM Eastern time months in advance, the second lunar mission would include the following improvements:

Time spent on the Moon would be 32 hours, half again more than the 21 hours spent by Apollo 11.
There would be two Extravehicular Activities (EVAs) rather than one.
The astronauts would set up a series of experiments designed to operate for one year from the lunar surface.
The Lunar Module (LM) would execute a pinpoint landing at Site 7 in the Sea of Storms, as opposed to the less precise touchdown made by Eagle in July
As a result, the astronauts would be able to recover the TV camera from Surveyor 3, which had soft-landed on the Moon two years prior.
The Moonwalks would be televised in color this time.
After lunar exploration, Apollo 12 would spend an extra day in lunar orbit photographing future landing sites.

In all, Apollo 12 promised to be only slightly more ambitious than its predecessor, but how much more ambitious than a flight to the Moon do you need?

Crew and Capsule

The astronauts selected for this mission included two veterans and a rookie, the first time since Apollo 9 that an Apollo crew has included a newcomer. The mission commander was Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr., an irrepressibly cheerful and talented fellow who almost made the Mercury 7. He was pilot on the Gemini 5 endurance mission and commander on Gemini 11, which conducted docking and microgravity experiments. Richard "Dick" Gordon served as Command Module Pilot, and since he had been Conrad's pilot on Gemini 11, it must have seemed like old times. The newcomer was Alan Bean, who, like Gordon, had been part of the third group of NASA astronauts. His job was to pilot the Lunar Module down to the Moon's surface.

Left to right: Conrad, Gordon, and Bean

The timing for this crew's mission was determined by quirks of fate, only becoming set in stone in December. NASA has a protocol of assigning back-up crews (stand-ins who will replace mission crews in an emergency) to live missions three flights later. Originally, Conrad and Gordon had been the back-up crew for Apollo 8, along with third group astronaut Clifton Williams. Apollo 8 was supposed to test the LM in Earth orbit. But after the successful flight of Apollo 7, which tested the Command and Service Modules, and with the threat of an impending Soviet circumlunar flight, Apollo 8 was bumped to the 9th slot, and the December 1968 flight was reprogrammed for a mission around the Moon.

Conrad and Gordon backed up the delayed Apollo 9 flight, along with Alan Bean, who replaced Clifton Williams, who had died in a test flight October 5, 1967. Nine plus three is twelve, and so those three were put on the second lunar lander mission. But if Williams had not died, and had Apollo's missions gone as schedule, then it would have been Conrad and Bean to set the first steps on the Moon.

As with the prior Columbia and Eagle, NASA wanted proud names for the Apollo 12 vessels. Thousands of NASA employees and contractors sent in their suggestions, and the all-Navy crew decided on Yankee Clipper for the Command Module and Intrepid for the Lunar Module. This marks the first time that a NASA ship has shared a name with one that appeared on Star Trek—namely, the Vulcan-crewed starship in "The Immunity Syndrome". Of course, Intrepid has also been used for American naval vessels since the country's founding, but one has to wonder if Trek's outsize impact on popular culture wasn't a factor. I guess we'll see if we ever get a spaceship called Enterprise…

The crew were intimately involved in the creation of the Apollo 12 patch. The blue and gold motif was chosen to honor the U.S. Navy. The Eagle was featured on the last patch; this time, Yankee Clipper got to star. Al Bean went to the library to round up suitable ship references for the clipper and worked closely with the artist to ensure it had a truly "American" look, nixing the first draft as looking too much like the Argo from Greek myth.

Stormy weather

In 1949, President Truman chose Cape Canaveral in Florida to be the nation's spaceport as it allowed launches over the Atlantic rather than over populated regions; it is also as close to the equator as you can get in the continental United States, which means space launches get the most boost from the Earth's rotation.

But it also rains a lot in Florida, and an approaching storm front threatened to delay the Nov. 14th launch date. There was a four and a half hour window that day; if rain grounded the launch beyond that point, the back-up date was Nov. 16th, with a different landing site.

An internal problem reared its head, too: one of the fuel cells (a kind of refillable battery) on Yankee Clipper was leaking hydrogen and had to be replaced.

Nevetherless, at 22 minutes past the 8:00 (Pacific time) hour, Apollo 12's Saturn V spurted flame and began its ascent, President Nixon in attendance with his family. The rocket was almost immediately lost in the clouds. Moments later, ABC anchor Frank Reynold's voice went tremulous. He reported that an electrical shock, perhaps caused by a lightning strike, had shot through Apollo 12, taking the fuel cells off-line. Worse, the inertial navigation platform "eight-ball", common to air and spacecraft alike, went haywire. Without these, the mission would probably have to be scrubbed.

Flight Director Attitude Indicator: the "platform" or "Eight-ball"

Apollo Commander Conrad, to his credit, retained his cool. "I always like to start out behind the eight-ball and get ahead," he joked as the spacecraft slid into its first orbit around the Earth.

Moonward, Ho!

Once in orbit, a reset brought most of the affected systems back on line, and bright stars were used to realign the platform once Yankee Clipper had passed into night time. Conrad and Bean thoroughly checked their lunar module, entering it ahead of schedule, to ensure there was no lightning damage. That survey complete, they blasted out of orbit into a "free-return" trajectory that would take them around the Moon. On the way, they snapped this picture of the Earth:

They also conducted two color broadcasts, Dick Gordon donning shades to deal with the solar glare. Although we've seen it before, I always marvel at the spaciousness of the Apollo/LM complex compared to prior spacecraft. That one can travel fifteen feet now without hitting anything seems like incomparable luxury compared to the cramped Gemini and Mercury capsules.

After three days, Yankee Clipper decelerated, entering lunar orbit. Apollo 12 was now at that scary juncture, out of radio contact for 45 minutes every hour and a half as the spacecraft ducked behind the Moon. And, as CBS anchor Walter Cronkite never failed to remind us, if the Service Module's engine did not fire, the astronauts would be stranded a quarter million miles from home.

While looping the Moon, the Apollo 12 crew returned live TV shots, gawking at the stark beauty of the horizon, whose peaks looked like distant clouds to them, and at the pebbled landscape, which Conrad described as cotton candy someone had shot BBs at.

The big crater, Copernicus, ejecta of which ridged the Apollo 12 landing site

Fra Mauro, potential future landing site of Apollo 13

Stormy approach

As Intrepid undocked from its mother ship and began its hour-long descent to the lunar surface, two concerns sprung up: firstly, a solar flare had erupted, threatening radio communications, if not the lives of the astronauts; secondly, Alan Bean got a congested nose—but a decongestant pill kept trouble at bay.

Then the LM was on its way, the two Navy aviators, Conrad and Bean, as jovial as any two spacefarers have ever been. Cronkite noted to former astronaut Wally Schirra that the spacemen seemed particularly jocular this flight, to which the Navy Captain replied that that's the way it should be; astronauts shouldn't have to be stuffy.

At first, the spaceship flew almost perpendicular to the lunar surface, not so much landing as orbiting. In fact, until a final burn at about 50,000 feet, Intrepid was in an orbit just nine miles high, such a feat being possible because the Moon has no atmospheric drag.

See how the ship is sideways for most of it?

Once the landing burn commenced, the Intrepid began slowly arcing toward vertical, its engine spewing close to its maximum thrust: some 9000 pounds of force. As the lunar horizon came into view, the astronauts burst into excited exclamations. The target crater was right where it was supposed to be, and they were bang on course. Pete Conrad maneuvered the LM closer and closer to the lunar surface, Bean calling out altitude checks and attaboys in a constant stream. As the module descended, a huge cloud of black dust billowed up—a feature of that site, as Surveyor 3 had found previously. At last, Intrepid landed in "Pete's Parking Lot" just 600 feet from Surveyor 3 with 7% of its fuel left in the tanks, a healthy margin. The pinpoint landing had worked out perfectly.

Going for a walk

Unlike Apollo 11, no post-landing rest period was planned for the astronauts. Who could restrain them anyway, at this point? Just four hours after touchdown, Pete Conrad was out the hatch and making his descent down the ladder. This happened around 3:30 in the morning for me. I have to wonder what viewership was like for this flight given that coverage started at 10 PM. Luckily, Amber works third shift, so we kept each other company on the phone, and when I fell asleep around 11:30 PM, she kindly gave me a wake-up call when the Moonwalk began.

True to style, Pete's first words as he lit on the lunar surface were, "Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" I watched the astronaut toodle around, in color and at 30 frames per second, for a while, but then fell back into unconsciousness around 4 AM. No worries, I thought. The exciting stuff wouldn't happen until the second EVA…

Hard to tell, but that's Conrad jumping down to the surface

Except when I woke up and watched the news, it turned out Alan Bean had accidentally set up the camera on a tripod pointed directly at the Sun. In short order, the picture tube had burned out. So much for color TV from the Moon.

I'd actually missed the deployment of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), which included a seismometer, a magnetometer, and a spectrometer for measuring the solar wind. The last instrument, in particular, would return data that would be compared with that being returned from Explorer 35, which has been in lunar orbit since 1967. This will tell us if the Moon, itself, generates or conducts any electric fields that can't be detected from space. All are powered by a SNAP-27 nuclear reactor that creates electricity from radioactive decay. The solar wind experiment was, in part, built by Marcia Neugebauer, whom you may recall was responsible for similar devices on the Venus probe, Mariner 2.

Diagram of ALSEP components laid out on the Moon

I did not miss, however, the astronauts walking into Surveyor 3's crater. As they bounced around, Bean noted that they looked like they were in one of those overcranked silent films of the '20s. They collected samples, uttering profound statements like, "That's a good rock!" The landing site is particularly good for selenology (the lunar equivalent of geology, natch), because the terrain is rather varied; ejecta from Copernicus crater when it was formed fell over the site, creating a mixed set of soil.

Then they found Surveyor and, as planned, began taking a hacksaw to it to bring some pieces home with them. Interestingly, they noted that it was no longer white, but a kind of tan. A trick of the light or erosion? We don't know yet. The metal also seemed to have crystallized, becoming more brittle than it had been on Earth.

The astronauts blasted off from the Moon and, with almost blasé affect, docked with Yankee Clipper. Bean and Conrad rejoined the more laconic Gordon, and they jettisoned Intrepid's top half. Shortly thereafter, they activated the half-LM's engines and plowed the vehicle into the Moon in a test of the ALSEP's seismometer. So much for that ten million bucks. The result was a Moonquake that lasted a good hour, so long that NASA scientists believe the impact may have triggered a landslide. Either that, or the material of the Moon is unique such that, instead of dampening shock waves, as on Earth, it actually amplifies them.

Intrepid as seen from Yankee Clipper; sorry for the monochrome—I snapped this shot off my black and white TV

After a day of photographing the Moon from orbit, Yankee Clipper fired its main engine, broke lunar orbit, and began the three day trip to Earth. On the way, the space trio gave us one final broadcast and also snapped a shot of the Earth as it eclipsed the Sun. All the while, the astronauts suffered from runny noses and wheezy breath, the consequence of lunar dust ending up in the capsule.

On the morning of the 24th, Yankee Clipper sailed into the Earth's atmosphere and the typical radio blackout. Three minutes before splashdown at 12:58 Pacific time, cameras from the U.S.S. Hornet recovery carrier, 1200 miles south of Hawaii, spotted the three orange and white parachutes, just two and a half miles away. This ties Apollo 8 for the closest recovery. The command module touched the roughest waves ever encountered on an Apollo recovery, immediately inverting. Recovery was swift and efficient, the Hornet's helicopter #66 making its fourth Apollo astronaut pick-up (previous ones included 8, 10, and 11).

Once the spacemen were on the carrier, we got to see that they were not wrapped up in suits, but merely wearing respirators. They jauntily waved to the cameras as they entered their quarantine trailer, where they will stay for five days, before transferring to a larger facility for thirteen more days. Missing were the folks in protective suits immediately washing away their bootprints. One has to wonder if they'll even bother with quarantine after this mission. They don't seem to be taking it very seriously this time.

President Nixon called the astronauts to congratulate them. He capped the conference with an on-the-spot promotion. This is customary for spacemen after each flight, but I think this is the first time the President has done it. Conrad, Bean, and Gordon are all now Navy Captains.

There was some concern that Apollo 12's systems might have been permanently damaged by the lightning that struck on take-off. Nothing seems to have been hurt at all, but there is still a clamor to launch the next missions in clearer weather to avoid another strike.

The lightning strike was caught on camera after launch but not discovered by NASA until later

It is an amazing and saddening thing that the public seems already somewhat tired of the Apollo missions. NBC's David Brinkley and CBS' Harry Reasoner could barely keep the disdain out of their voices as they described the astronauts gallivanting on the Moon, as if they were personally wasting taxpayer money. Conrad and Bean's casual mien, rather than charming the public, seems to have belittled the enterprise in the public's esteem.

Beyond that, NASA itself is in turmoil. They are demoralized at what they see as the end of an era, rather than the beginning of a new one. Vice President Agnew may be gung ho on going to Mars, but President Nixon refuses to make any commitments. To quote Music Scene's David Steinberg, who said this about Nixon's Vietnamization speech, "We would like to go out of our way to salute President Nixon, who in his speech exactly one week ago had the courage and the confidence to believe that he actually said something."

After that comment, an FBI agent stepped up and snapped his picture. This became a running gag.

NASA scientists feel that they have not been listened to, and that the Apollo missions stress engineering and political issues over the acquisition of knowledge. Indeed, many prominent researchers have quit, and others have been laid off.

Nevertheless, the money has been paid and the Saturns have been built. Apollo 13 is scheduled to launch next March to some spot scouted by Apollo 12, and we'll have at least four more missions after that (Apollo 20 has been cancelled; Apollos 18 and 19 may be on the block). I, personally, am excited that travel to the Moon has become routine. We are very much at a similar juncture as when Schirra flew his textbook Sigma 7 flight, and he didn't even make the front page. You know what? I am okay with taking the spectacle out of things. Let's get down to the real business: exploration and utilization of space. It's not about the missiles anymore, but humanity.

The kind of humanity down-to-Earth heroes like Conrad, Bean, and Gordon represent. Hear, hear, folks.

The astronauts enter their quarantine trailer, one of them miming a pistol shot at the crew

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What is the Galactic Journey?

November 21, 2024 Gideon Marcus 4 Comments

[And now for a piece from the 21st Century perspective for new visitors]

What is Galactic Journey? It's a time machine, sure, but what does that mean?

Galactic Journey is so staggeringly big, so comprehensive, that I suspect even our fans don't know all of its facets. We review every SFF story that comes out, but did you know we’re also a TV station? A radio broadcaster? A LARP?

Strap in—we're taking a ride:

At its heart, Galactic Journey is a blog—or to use a more period term, a ‘fanzine’—written as if its authors are fans living exactly 55 years ago. We move forward, day by day, in exact parallel with modernity. As I write this, it's currently November 20, 1969; next year will be 1970.

We publish an article every other day. That's 150+ articles a year. 300,000K+ words. That's five Kitra novels. Or half a Patrick Rothfuss book. 🙂 We cover virtually EVERY short-form SFF piece that gets published, magazine or anthology.

In the process, we've rediscovered so many classics that never should have been lost. From Cordwainer Smith to Katherine MacLean, Bob Sheckley to Rosel George Brown. Classic science fiction is more than Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke.

Women wrote ~10% of what was published in the 1960s. Their work has gotten forgotten more than most. We've brought it back and shone a spotlight on it. To learn more, see our series on The Second Sex in SFF (and while you're at it, enjoy our series on the women pioneers of space science.

We're as broad a team as possible. 26 writers contribute to the Journey on a regular basis. They hail from around the world, from all demographics, ages, persuasions. Want West Germany? Try Cora Buhlert! Japan? Yo Aoyama!

Every year, we put out the Galactic Stars. Forget the Hugos and Nebulas: THIS is the real list of the best SFF of the year.

Dig comic books? We cover those too!

How about wargames? We're nuts for those!

9) Not to mention almost every full-length SFF novel, television show, and movie released that week. Do you like The Twilight Zone? Check out our coverage.

Star Trek? Here you go.

10) Fiction is nothing without context. We cover the Space Race, the music, the fashion, the politics, the games, the technology. The Journey isn't just a 'zine—it's a portal to the past. See our Apollo coverage and Gwyn Conway's fashion column

11) Beyond the articles, the Journey is SO much more. Read on:

12) Every Thursday, we broadcast Science Fiction Theater, a hand-picked anthology show featuring the best SFF to date. Twilight Zone. Outer Limits. The Prisoner. Supercar. Join us!

13) Every Saturday, our UK contingent broadcasts the original Star Trek as aired on the BBC, complete with a suite of other period programming. (We aired Trek on our US station from '66-'69). Come watch!

14) We recreate special events: July saw the Moon landing. In August, we had Woodstock: all three days, 70 hours (about 9 hours of sleep). Apollo 12 is happening RIGHT NOW:

15) All of these can be enjoyed through Portal 55, our Discord Server. When we're not hosting special events, we are a real-time community of super nice, knowledgeable people who love to talk SFF! Also, a 1969 LARP!

16) KGJ broadcasts 24/7 the coolest and latest tunes, updated almost daily. With a five day rotation, you'll never get bored. And KOLD plays the classics of the '50s, 3000+ songs, for nostalgia-lovers. Tune in!

17) We even have a museum! Come see our displays of period technology and household items, all actually in our physical collection.

So dive in! Enjoy, enjoy. And if you're digging it, leave comments and drop us a line!

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 20, 1969] You say you want a revolution… (December 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

November 20, 2024 Gideon Marcus 4 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

When you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out

250,000 miles from Earth, the astronauts of Apollo 12 are circling the Moon, photographing Earth's neighbor for future landing sites before coming home. And in the nation's capital, the city is still reeling from the footsteps of 250,000 protesters who marched on Washington in the largest anti-war event in American history.

This second "Vietnam Moratorium Day" followed on the heels of last month's nationwide protests, to which President Nixon responded with apathy and his November 4th speech, in which he touted his secret timetable for "Vietnamesation"—the turning over of defense of South Vietnam to President Thieu's government, and also played up his support from "The Silent Majority" of Americans.

The protest movements have still fallen short of the planned nationwide strike, and this latest one has been eclipsed by the Moon landings. Nevertheless, they are making waves. In addition to the quarter million in Washington D.C., 100,000 marched in San Francisco in the West Coast's largest peace demonstration in history.

That demonstration was, in fact, peaceful. Not so the march on Washington, where extremists, protesting the trial of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and six "Yippies" for allegedly inspiring the Chicago Democratic Convention riots last year, clashed with police and were driven back by tear gas.

There is no word, as yet, if there will be a third Moratorium march in time for the Holidays, but one can probably expect more such outbursts from the Unsilent Minority so long as there is no end in sight to the Vietnam War, which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Americans so far.

The say that it's the institution

Last year, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction won the Hugo for Best Science Fiction Magazine. It was a bit of a surprise since 1968 was hardly one of the magazine's best years—but then, 1968 wasn't a consistently great year for any magazine. However, if one were to judge F&SF's 1969 output solely on the basis of this month's issue, one's estimation of the magazine would, indeed, be justifiably high! Read on with pleasure:

by Ed Emshwiller

Bye, Bye, Banana Bird, by Sonya Dorman

In the not too far future, the Earth is under a world government, humanity has a few extraterrestrial colonies, and the Planetary Patrol, thoroughly integrated by race and sex, keeps the peace both at home and among the stars.

This is the tale of Roxy Rimidon, a young "Pippa" recruit who goes through a rigorous Basic Training before receiving her first assignment: to the Dominion of Cuba to investigate the sabotage of banana shipments to the agricultural colony of Vogl.

It's light, interesting, suspenseful, and (refreshingly) from the female perspective—sort of Heinlein's Starship Troopers meets Pauline Ashwell's Lysistrata Lee stories. What's not to like?

The only thing dragging this tale down is its lack of balance. Half the story is boot camp, and the other half is the assignment. On the other hand, if this novelette is merely setup for a clutch of Rimidon stories, then all is forgiven.

Four stars.

Hunting, by Robin Carson

Norman Hart is a deer hunter who, despite years of trying, has yet to bag a single buck. This time, with the help of a grizzled huntsman, and a little magic, he just might get what he's after.

Even if it's not what he intended…

There are a lot of Twilight Zone-y ways this amiable piece could have ended, and I had to ruminate for a while to decide if I liked the one Carson chose. Ultimately, I did.

Four stars.

by Gahan Wilson

The Adventure of the Martian Client , by Manly Wade Wellman and Wade Welman

What if Arthur Conan Doyle's twin titans, Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger, worked together? And what if the case they were on took place during the Martian conquest as depicted by H. G. Wells?

The result might be something like this, the first collaboration between SF veteran Manly Wade Wellman and his son. The tone is right; the ending is a touch anti-climactic.

Three stars.

The Falcon and the Falconeer, by Barry N. Malzberg

A Christmas story: a bunch of naval personnel on the backwater Rigel XIV decide to hold a nativity pageant among the natives. It was a natural fit, what with the indigenes all looking like, and having much the mental attitude, of terrestrial donkeys. But between the aliens' telepathic abilities and the religious inclinations of the crewman chosen to play the Infant, an unintended miracle occurs.

'Tis the season, indeed! A fun, nicely laid out piece, with properly rising tension and multiple viewpoints…but ultimately trivial and forgettable.

Three stars.

Lord of Sensation, by Leonard Tushnet

"Joe Roland was a modest man. He disclaimed any great genius as the cause of his phenomenal success…but a genius he nevertheless was, if a genius is one who builds the germ of an idea into an overwhelming craze."

The secret to M.I.T. graduate Roland's success? Capitalizing on the augmentation of the senses. First, he electronically enhances the sound of The Murderers, a second-rate rock band, to leave club-goers in ecstacy. But the extra vibrations cause long-term hearing and psychological damage, so Roland turns, one by one, to the other four senses, with both increasing victories and correspondingly deeper consequences.

A fun cautionary tale on the importance of doing research before experimenting directly on humans.

Three stars.

The Luxon Wall, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor offers up a fascinating discussion on tachyons, those hypothetical particles that only travel faster than light, and what that hyperluminal universe they inhabit might be like.

Dig it. Four stars.

Formula for a Special Baby, by Julian F. Grow

Dr. Hiram Pertwee, late of Vermont, now somewhere out West, has yet another run-in with an extraterrestrial. This one arrives on a flying teacup speaking German, dressed in lederhosen, and accompanied by a voluptuous cat-woman. His mission is to go to Bavaria and whisper a strange incantation to a baby there. Pertwee is shanghaied to be his guide.

Aside from being the first in the now four-part series of stories to reveal the exact year in which they occur (1879), the most that can be said for "Baby" is that it is another Pertwee tale.

Which isn't bad. They're fun, if not literature for the ages. Three stars.

We are doing what we can

What a pleasant issue that was! Not a clunker in the bunch, and some fine reading besides. Keep it up, Fermans père et fils, and you might just take another golden rocketship home again next Worldcon!

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 12, 1969] Leadership initiatives (December 1969 Galaxy)

November 12, 2024 Gideon Marcus 9 Comments

Tune in, starting November 13, for twelve days of Apollo 12 coverage!

by Gideon Marcus

Happy Anniversary

A year ago, Richard Milhouse Nixon won the Presidency in part on his "secret plan" to get us out of Vietnam. A few months into his term, besieged by increasingly strident demands for progress, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger urged patience. If things weren't resolved by November, then we would have cause to complain.

Last week, President Nixon revealed his plan for "Vietnamization" in a prime time television address. It called for eventual turning over of the reins of war to the South Vietnamese. However, the President refused to set a timetable for this turnover, saying that such would lead to undue Communist advantage. Nixon suggested that America might step down its bombing by, say, 20%, and see if the North Vietnamese match our draw-down, but the Paris peace talks are dead, and the U.S. would stay the course as long as was necessary.

The President concluded by asserting that the "silent majority" of Americans was behind his plan, and that no foreign power could defeat the United States: defeat could only come from within.

Well, you can imagine that this statement, tantamount to a continuation of President Johnson's pre-1968 policies, did not sit well with a lot of folks, including a host of Congressmen. The unquiet minority also plans to make their voices heard in a second Moratorium march in a few days. We'll see if it has more impact than the last one.

In Other News

If Nixon's address was something of a disappointment, in contrast, the latest issue of Galaxy makes for consistently pleasant reading:

by Jack Gaughan and Phoebe Gaughan

Editor Eljer Jakobsson introduces a new act by artist Vaughn Bodé. Looks like it will be funny, nudie, SF cartoons. Sure, why not?

Also of interest is Budrys' Bookshelf column. I often don't agree with his taste, but I generally enjoy the way he writes his reviews. I found it interesting that Isaac Asimov's unwanted advances toward women have now become so commonplace that Budrys felt he had to alloy his review of the Good Doctor's latest, Opus 100, in his very first paragraph:

"Now you take Isaac Asimov… Well, taking him from the pages of Opus 100, his hundredth book (Houghton Mifflin Company, $5.95), one finds him so various, so beautiful and new that it is only with a wrench of the mind one recalls the last time he pinched one's wife's bottom."

By the way, there is no Willy Ley column (RIP), and they have not found a replacement science writer.

Jamboree, by Jack Williamson

In the future, robots rule, adults are forbidden, and children are raised in Boy Scout-styled prison camps. Two twelve-year-olds attempt a revolution, but quickly learn the futility of resistance.

A bleak story with a downer ending, but at least it's memorable.

Three stars.

Half Past Human, by T. J. Bass

This novella is heralded as a "novel complete in this issue." It is, at least, a complete story, and not a bad one.

The premise: five thousand years from now, three trillion humans infest the planet. They all live underground, the surface being reserved for the cultivation of crops. Virtually no animals have survived into this dark future, so the few remaining individuals, the "I people", living on the surface, mostly get their protein from cannibalism. The underground people have all been evolved for docility, a trait phenotypically displayed by a lack of a fifth toe (presumably the pinky toe). These four-toes are known as "Nebishes".

When I first read about this setup, I assumed this was going to be a satirical, tongue-in-cheek story. It's not, except maybe for a few, farcical touches here and there. What it is is the story of Moses Eppendorff, a comparatively enterprising four-toe, who discovers a new food source and is rewarded with a trip Outside. Eschewing the typical Outside activity—going on a Hunt for I people—he instead takes a hike up a mountain, experiencing solitude for the first time.

He also encounters Moon, a 200+ year-old I person, his 200+ year-old dog, and a sentient spear from the before-times who calls itself Toothpick. Encouraged to abandon the underworld, Moses wanders with these companions, learning about the world including some fascinating biological changes the surface dwellers have evolved to avoid capture/kill. Ultimately, in the most jokey, but blessedly understated, part of the book, Moses, carrying his staff, leads the I-people to what they think is the promised land.

It's actually a pretty good yarn, one of the better overpopulation stories out there. It does an interesting job of contrasting modes of humanity by population density, and Bass creates a compelling world. The prose is occasionally clunky, and the transitions are such that the individual segments don't always dovetail seamlessly, but for a new writer (his first story came out last year), he shows a lot of promise.

Three stars.

Eternity Calling, by John Chambers

An alient bloodsucker, a semi-independent member of a sentient collective, happens upon a human starship. Its one inhabitant is a preacher looking for souls to save. By the end, the shaken terrestrial leaves convinced that the alien has a closer analog to a soul than he does.

This story starts so promisingly, with the extraterrestrial viewpoint vividly drawn. The latter half of the story is a simple dialogue, and not a particularly impactful one at that.

Two stars.

The Year of the Good Seed, by Roger Zelazny and Dannie Plachta

A terran explorer is drawn to a star for its pulsating bursts of energy. It turns out the inhabitants have a tradition of celebrating every quarter century with a pyrotechnic display. Specifically, they detonate nuclear bombs in orbit!

Of course, such activities are purely for their aesthetic appeal. Like the Chinese and their gunpowder firecrackers, the aliens wouldn't dream of using such devices for warfare. At least, they hadn't thought of it until humans gave them the idea…

Rather a silly story, and not as clever as the authors think it is. Two stars.

Downward to the Earth (Part 2 of 4), by Robert Silverberg

Continuing the tale of Edmund Gunderson, former bigwig at the former company colony on steamy Nildoror. Last installment, Gunderson was seeking permission from the native elephantines to travel to the Mist Country, where the Nildoror are reborn, though we don't know why Edmund wants to go there. His request is granted, provided he return with a human named Cullen, who has committed a nameless crime.

So, with a Nildoror escort, Gunderson goes on a long trek across the countryside. A highlight of this jaunt include Edmund's recounting of the event that shocked him into accepting the sentience of the natives, despite their having no formal civilization. Another is when he comes across two dying humans, hosts to an extraterrestrial parasite, and has to decide whether to put them out of their misery.

I wasn't sold on the piece last time, but I now feel I've gotten over the hump and can really live inside not just Gunderson's mind, but also that of his guide, the Nildoror named Srin'gahar. I prefer brooding Silverbob (q.v. The Man in the Maze and Hawksbill Station) to Zelazny look-a-like or borderline-smut Silverbob.

Four stars for this bit, and elevating the work as a whole.

Oracle for a White Rabbit, by David Gerrold

Human Analogue Robot, Life Input Equivalents (HARLIE) is a sapient machine designed to mimic as well as analyze the thought processess of people. One day, Harlie goes on a jag, producing reams of nonsense poetry. These outbursts always follow the mass intake of human-produced modern art.

But is the problem the torrent of non-rational input, or is there something broken inside the computer? Is it a malfunction at all?

I'm not sure that I'm completely sold on the premise or the story, but I have to concede, it feels very modern. David Gerrold, by the way, is the hip young man who penned the script for the Trek episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles". I think this is his first traditionally published science fiction.

Three stars, and let's see where he goes next!

Horn of Plenty, by Vladimir Grigoriev

The inventor, Stepan Onufrievich, happens upon a decayed sign in Moscow, which exhorts citizens to deposit their scraps. It depicts a cornucopia with a man shoveling scrap into one end, producing consumer goods out the other.

Inspired, Onufrievich sets out to build a real Horn of Plenty…and he succeeds! But, this being the Soviet Union, happy times do not last long.

Of course, this story is fantasy, not science fiction, but the satire is nicely biting. I am surprised this one made it past the censors. I am also quite impressed with the translation job: the story reads breezily and charmingly.

Four stars.

Doing the math

Per my Galacto-sliderule, this issue finishes at a modestly entertaining 3.1 stars. That's a little deceptive as the novella and the Silverberg really are at the high end of their ratings, and the two-star stories are short. I feel that Jacobsson is transforming his magazine into something more current. Pohl did an admirable job, but the new Galaxy may end up once again in the vanguard of science fiction digests.

Just in time for the 20th anniversary of the magazine. Keep it up, Eljer!

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 24, 1969] How sweet it isn't (November 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

October 24, 2024 Gideon Marcus 6 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Rats!

A study just completed by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has concluded that cyclamates may cause bladder tumors in rats.

How does this affect you?

Decades ago, it paid to be plump. It was a sign of wealth and health. It was attractive! These days, we're in the Grape Nuts generation, and it's now all about fitness and being slender. How to reconcile the popularity of fizzy sweet sodapop and the desire to cut sugar from our diets (despite the Sugar Council telling us it's good for us)?

Early this decade, a slew of soft drinks came out, sweetened not with sugar, but with a blend of artificial sweeteners—saccharin and cyclamates. Diet Rite and Tab may not have tasted just like Coke and Pepsi, but they did the job and preserved the waistline.

But now, thanks to the HEW report, soft drink companies are all pulling their cyclamate sodas off the market as of February 1, 1970. Grab your vintage colas while you can, because they won't exist come next spring!

What does the future hold for diet sodas? Well, for now, saccharin is still legal, though by itself, it's a bit bitter (remember the "sach" tablets Winston Smith put in his coffee in 1984)? There is talk of putting sugar back into diet sodas…just less of it.

And, since this is a science fiction 'zine, we can always speculate that new and better sweeteners will be developed. Maybe even on purpose this time—did you know that both saccharin and cyclamates were discovered by accident? Constantin Fahlberg was researching coal tar derivatives and forgot to wash his hands before going for lunch, when he discovered saccharine was discovered in 1879. And grad student Michael Sveda was working on anti-fever drugs in 1937; some got on a cigarette, and when he took a drag, it tasted sweet.

Cue the commercials:

Bob: My cigarette just isn't doing it for me anymore.
Larry: Try mine! It's new.
Bob: Hey! Not bad…sweet!
Larry: You better believe it.

by Jack Gaughan

Of course, with a lede like the one I just wrote, you can guess that the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is less than palatable.

The Mouse, by Howard Fast

Three-inch aliens descend to Earth in a teeny saucer and smarten up a little mouse to be their telepathic eyes and ears to scout out the world. When the rodent's work is done, he is heartbroken to find that the aliens must leave, abandoning him to a life of loneliness, the sole example of his kind. Despondent, he kills himself.

Not only is the story an unecessary downer (the mouse was exposed to the worst humanity had to offer, but also the best—couldn't he have found human friends to love?) but it's written clunkily, as though Howard dashed it off quickly, and didn't bother to correct it. It's the kind of work I do if I neglect to read my work aloud before sending it in to a publisher.

Two stars.

A Feminine Jurisdiction, by Sterling E. Lanier

The latest Brigadier Ffellowes shaggy dog tale has him stranded just after the Nazi invasion of Crete (how timely!) on an Aegean island lost to time, housing a trio of mythical sisters. One of them has, shall we say, a stony-eyed gaze. Of course, we know the Brigadier will escape (how else could he live to tell the tale?) but the fun is in the how.

I could have done without the casual sexism. World-traveler Ffelowes surely could not have forged his opinion on matriarchies solely on this one stacked-deck example. Beyond that, the well Lanier plumbed for material is a little mined out. Still, it's a competent and entertaining yarn.

Three stars.

Penny Dreadful, by Ron Goulart

A ghost writer cum secret agent (or is it the other way around?) is on one of the planets of the Barnum system, a frequent Goulart setting, mostly known from his Ben Jolson stories. All he wants to do is collect his fee from deadbeats. In the process, he ends up cleaning up local politics.

Goulart, at his best, does light, spy/detective stuff really well. This is not his best. Indeed, it's among his worst—incomprehensible and somehow incomplete.

Two stars.

The CRIB Circuit, by Miriam Allen deFord

A young computer operator, who died of cancer in 1970, is revived after five centuries of cold sleep. But the Brave New World she wakes up into is not interested in welcoming her as a citizen, but only as a temporary subject of study before she is to be put down again. Must keep the population constant, you see! Can Alexandra come up with a way to extend her second life?

I had thought her solution would be a variation on the Scheherazade shtick from 1001 Arabian Nights, but it's actually a bit cleverer. There's also a nice sting in the tail of the piece. I should have seen it coming; that I didn't is a credit to DeFord's writing.

Four stars, and my favorite piece of the ish.

Come Up and See Me Some Time, by Gilbert Thomas

A pre-teen genius builds a psychic space ship and prepares to head off into another dimension, presumably to be reunited with his murdered mother. But not before giving an ostentatious and horrific reply to his father, who we learn is responsible for his wife's death.

Told from the point of view of the father, the tale is just silly. It's more of a mood piece than anything, and frankly, I didn't care enough about the schmuck to get into his head.

One star.

After the Bomb Cliches, by Bruce McAllister

Martin Potsubay is convinced The End Is Nigh. So he builds a bomb shelter, and when the air raid sirens begin to blow, ensconces himself inside. But the trumpets keep blowing, and in the end, there's no way to avoid Armageddon…or the heavenly recruitment officers!

This is definitely my favorite McAllister piece to date, bordering right between three and four stars. On reflection, I think I'll finally give him the win.

Four it is (but I still like the deFord better!)

The Sin of the Scientist, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor takes Oppenheimer's "physicists have known sin" line and runs with it, defining "sin" in a scientific sense, and discussing which scientists have committed it. His answer is an interesting one.

Three stars.

Diaspora, by Robin Scott

A catastrophe has rendered the Earth uninhabitable, and just one small colony of 400 humans is left. Establishing themselves on a kind world, farm yields explode and the settlement prospers. Yet, their puritannical leader refuses to loosen the reins of privation. One rebellious type chafes under the tyrant, and so he plots an escape, establishing himself as an independent concern. This proves instrumental to the colony's success…and as it turns out, all according to plan.

This story is decently written, but the overly deterministic nature of the premise is a turn-off. The idea that the colony was founded with the expectation that it would need a malcontent to ensure its success, and that a ten-year agenda could be stuck to so as to carry out the plan, beggars belief. It's the kind of thing I expect from Analog.

Three stars.

After the Myths Went Home, by Robert Silverberg

Future-dwellers get bored of reconstituting historical personages, so they turn to reviving mythical people. After having their fill of hanging out with the whole panoply of (Western) legends, from Adam to Hercules to JFK, they banish them, too. But the result is there's never a hero around when you need one…

Silverbob phoned this one in. It has the veneer of literariness, but it just coats a hollow interior.

Two stars.

Ptui!

Like soda without sweetener, the latest F&SF was a bland mouthful. Still, the two good pieces are enough to keep me going, albeit with ever fading enthusiasm.

But perhaps next year, the editors will find the right formula to spice up their wares…

by Gahan Wilson

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Science / Space Race

[October 22, 1969] Three for Three! (the flights of Soyuz 6, 7, and 8)

October 22, 2024 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

by Gideon Marcus

(Un?)Lucky Seven

In 1959, NASA unveiled the identities of the first seven astronauts—the folks who would fly the Mercury capsule into space. Over the course of two years, from 1961-1963, six of them rode a pillar of flame beyond the Earth's atmosphere, one at a time.

This month, the Soviets orbited seven cosmonauts at once.

Like Sputnik, this momentous occasion was not exactly a surprise. Indeed, since late August, the USSR had put out releases to the effect that cosmonauts would be taking to the skies in record numbers. The mission started innocuously enough with the launch of Soyuz 6 on October 11 carrying cosmonauts Shonin and Kubasov on their first flight. Significantly, their flight plan included "experiments…on the methods of welding of metals in a high vacuum and in the state of weightlessness." Such techniques have application in the development of orbital space stations, the next inevitable phase in space development.

Comparison of the Soyuz booster compared to the ones that launched the Voskhod and Vostok capsules

The next day, Soyuz 7 blasted off with cosmonauts Filipchenko, Volkov, and Gorbatko—like the Soyuz 6 crew, all rookies. Given the prior Soviet announcements, the successful previous flight and docking of Soyuz 4 and 5, and the maneuvers made by Soyuz 6 on its first day in orbit, the launch of Soyuz 7 was no surprise. In fact, cosmonauts in both crews had been the back-ups for the cosmonauts on Soyuz 4/5. It seemed a second docking/impromptu space station mission was in the works. But was that the plan?

Apparently not, for the next day, yet another Soyuz was launched, this time carrying veterans Shatalov and Yeliseyev, who had actually flown on the last Soyuz mission. By the 15th, all three spacecraft were in sight of each other. The stage was set.

And then…

The next day, Soyuz 6 crew did do their welding experiments and then landed. On the 17th, Soyuz 7 returned to Earth. Soyuz 8 followed on the 18th. Though all of the spacecraft jockeyed around each other while in each other's vicinity, no docking was made or, per the Soviets, even attempted!

Can we buy that there was no docking plan at all? We know from Soyuz 4/5 that adding a docking adapter to the basic Soyuz design means extra weight for the spacecraft. Soyuz 6, with its "Vulkan" experiment package in the forward science module (that spherical bit ahead of the command module, where the crew sits during take-off and reentry) probably couldn't carry anything more. But Soyuz 7 and 8 could have, and given their particular crews, it sure seemed like a docking was in the offing.

An ad hoc space station based on an illustration released by the Soviets—was this what was supposed to have happened?

The actual mission of the three spacecraft is anyone's guess at this point. Certainly, the coordination of three crews in orbit is a big deal in and of itself, so maybe that was the point. The knowledge gained from the flight of the three Soyuz will be valuable both in the future construction of a space station and also when/if the Soviets decide to try for their own lunar mission (though, if they need three craft to go to the Moon, that suggests their rockets aren't as big as our Saturn V, necessitating more launches0.

But given that the Soviets love their space spectaculars, and we just had the biggest one of all this summer, with a repeat set for next month, I'd bet rubles to borscht that the Russkies had planned something more dramatic than playing orbital footsie.

I guess we'll see come Soyuz 9/10/11!

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction