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Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 30, 1968] (Partial) success stories (May 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Chertona Dyuzhina (Baker's Dozen)

Luna 14 is the Soviet Union's latest space success story.  Launched April 7, it slipped into lunar orbit a couple of days later and began relaying data.  Per TASS, the spacecraft is still working fine, returning space weather reports and mapping the moon's hidden contours through the wobbling of its path due to lunar gravity.

No pictures have been returned, nor has there been any mention of an onboard camera.  However, since Luna 12 (launched October '66) did have one, it is generally believed that Luna 14 has one too–and it broke.  We'll probably never know.

Campbell's Seven

The latest issue of Analog is also not an unmixed bag.  However, it's still the best issue of the mag by a long shot since January.  That's something worth celebrating!


by Chesley Bonestell

Satan's World (Part 1 of 4), by Poul Anderson

David Falkayn is back!  The fair-haired protoge of Polesotechnic League magnate Nicholas van Rijn has been sent to Earth to find untold fortune.  More specifically, to inquire at Serendipity Inc., storehouse of all the universe's lore, for the quickest route between Point A (Falkayn) and Point B (wealth).  It's amazing what can be done with computers in the Mumblethieth Century!


by Kelly Freas

To do so, he puts himself at the mercy of the board of Serendipity, becoming a guest on their lunar estate.  His crewmates, Adzel the monastic saurian who talks like Beast from The X-Men, and Chee, who talks like Nick Fury from Sgt. Fury, stay behind…and worry.

With good reason, for Falkayn has been shanghaied, purportedly in love with one of the Serendipity board, but probably brainwashed or something.  Van Rijn gives Adzel and Chee the green light to investigate.

Falkayn stories are always somewhere in the lower middle for Anderson–serviceable but unexciting.  Once again, the author utilizes some cheap tricks to move things along, even calling them out in text in an attempt to excuse them (the long explanation of Serendipity's modus operandi; the sudden coincidence of a call by a critical character, etc.) None of the characters is particularly interesting, perhaps because of the extremely broad brush with which they're described, particularly Van Rijn.

Nevertheless, mediocre is pretty good for a Falkayn story, and I'm kind of interested.  Plus, Anderson's astronomy is always pretty good.

Three stars so far.

Exile to Hell, by Isaac Asimov


by Kelly Freas

This story is remarkable for being the first time Isaac has appeared in Analog (the magazine was Astounding when wrote for Campbell).  It is otherwise unremarkable–this vignette is written in '40s style, with a hoary "twist" ending, which was already incorporated as one of many elements in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Two stars.

Conquest by Default, by Vernor Vinge


by Kelly Freas

This one surprised me: alien anarchists, who by their law are forbidden to have polities larger than 10,000 people, take over a recovering post-nuclear Earth.  The Terrans are worried that they will suffer a fate similar to that of the Cherokees–annihilation, assimilation, relocation, or a combination of all three. 

Told from the point of view of one the conquerers, it very much seems like this will be one of those fatuous Campbellian tales where it turns out that free enterprise and libertarianism are the superior forces, and that the solution to "the aboriginal problem" has a neat and obvious solution.

But the story has a sting in its tail.

I had not expected to find an anti-capitalist, anti-libertarian screed in the pages of Analog, much less an acknowledgement of the American genocide…yet there it is!  And because the viewpoint character is an alien (and a comparatively sympathetic one, at that), the full impact of the story is saved for the end.

Four stars.

His Master's Vice, by Verge Foray


by Kelly Freas

Prox(y)ad(miral) Elmo Ixton lands his patrol ship, the sentient craft, Rollo, on the planet of Roseate on the trail of a rebel proxad who has gone to ground and recruited a network of criminal accomplices.  The agoraphobic and irritable Ixton ingratiates himself with very few people, but he does get his man…in time for the tables to be turned when the renegade takes over his ship.

Luckily, Rollo is not about to become an unwitting accomplice.

Not bad.  I didn't much like the Gestapo methods with which the "good guys" extracted the truth from suspects, though.

Three stars.

Fear Hound, by Katherine MacLean


by Kelly Freas

In late 20th Century New York, the city seethes with a despair so palpable, it almost seems the echoes of one person's broadcast pain.  Indeed, that is exactly what it is.  And the Rescue Squad, a corps of intellectual empaths, are on the case to find the source before s/he perishes in anguish, and in the process, telepathically pushes hundreds, maybe thousands more, to the brink of insanity or even death.

There's a lot of neat stuff in this one.  Obviously, you have to buy telepathy as plausible (something Campbell obviously does).  Given that, the idea of a group of people tracking down injured folk by their subtle telepathic emanations, and the unconscious mass effects these have on others, is pretty innovative. MacLean writes in the deft, immediate style that has made her one of SF's leading lights for two decades; the dreamy, choppy execution fits the circumstances of the story.

On the other hand, the bits about smart people essentially providing the brain for dozens of sub-average IQ types through unconscious telepathic links was something I found distasteful. There are also a few, lengthy explainy bits that could have been better worked in, I think.

A high three stars.

Project Island Bounce, by Lawrence A. Perkins


by Kelly Freas

The alien Ysterii arrive on an Earth not unlike that depicted in Conquest by Default.  Here, the crisis is that the blobby amphibians prefer the archipelagos of Asianesia to the dry expanses of Eurica.  This is causing a trade imbalance that will ultimately not only destabilize the world, but potentially lead to a cut-off of peaceful relations with the galaxy altogether.

Perkins doesn't tell the story very well, especially compared to Vinge's writing, and the "solution" is dumb. Two stars.

Skysign, by James Blish


by Leo Summers

Carl Wade, a Berkeley radical type finds himself trapped on an alien vessel floating above San Francisco.  As memory returns to his headachey brain, he recalls the he was the one "lay volunteer" among dozens of men and women chosen as ambassadors for their various technical expertise.

Now, Carl and a hundred-odd humans are prisoners in the gilded cage of the ship, offered all manner of food and a fair bit of recreation.  But they are nevertheless under the control of the alien crew, humanoids in skintight suits, with the ability to teleport and put the human captives to sleep at any time.

That is, until Carl, with the help of the Jeanette Hilbert, a brilliant meteorologist, figure out how to wrest control of the whole system from the aliens.  That's only half the story, since Carl and Jeanette have differing ideas on what to do with absolute power.

I liked this story, and Blish does a good job of putting us in the boots of a not-entirely savory character.  I find it particularly interesting that our radical protagonist is something of a jerk; I originally thought that this might be a subtle, anti-leftist dig, but Blish is an outspoken peacenik, so I think he just wanted to create a nuanced character.

Four stars.

Batting Average

Analog thus ends up at a reasonable 3.1 stars–not stellar, but certainly worth the 60 cents you pay for it (less if you have the subscription, of course).  That puts it at the bottom of the new mags (vs. IF and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5), but better than the reprints (Fantastic (2.7) and Amazing (2.0)).  The magazine average for the month was 3.1.

All told, if you took the four and five star stories of this month and squished them into one mag…well, you'd need one and a half. That amounts to about 40% of all new fiction this month. Again, not bad.

The sad news is only one story this month was woman-penned, making up for 4.3% of the newly published works.  And that one was MacLean's, meaning Analog wins this month's pink ribbon in a mass forfeit.

Well, I suppose you take your victories where you find them.  At least we ended up on the positive side of the ledger this month…




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[April 20, 1968] A treat for the senses (May 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Pleasures of the Flesh

There are lots of different kinds of science fiction, from the nuts-and-bolts problem-solving variety one might call the Astounding style, to the literary style of the British New Wave, to the softly surreal speculation that often characterizes Galaxy.  This month's issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is one of the more sensual mags I've read in a long time, putting you, the reader, firmly into the viewpoint of its protagonists.  From an SFnal perspective, the pickings are pretty slim, the speculations rather shallow.  But from a visceral point of view, well, each story sends you pretty far out, making for a perfectly satisfactory experience whose highlights come, welcomely enough, at the beginning and the end.


by Russell Fitzgerald (this suggestive cover is a little frustrating as it gives away the end of the story it illustrates…)

Strange New Worlds

Lines of Power, by Samuel R. Delany

First up, and rightfully so, is the latest novella by a man who has taken SF by storm.  It is set in or around the year 2050, when the world has been knit by endless power cables, providing no limit of electricity and prosperity.  The lines are laid out by self-contained crawler units (think the highway patrol motor homes from Rick Raphael's Code Three).  By the middle of the 21st Century, all of the world, from Siberia to Antarctica has been knit with energy.

But there are occasional holdouts.  One such Luddite concentration is in Canada, where a flight of future-day motorcyclists, soaring on winged choppers, have made their haven in the woods.  These "angels" are violently opposed to the encroachment of the self-described "demons" and "devils" that comprise the Power Corps crew of the "Gila Monster".

It is progressive in the extreme, with women bosses and free love: interracial, intergenerational, and any-sexual.  Modern-day (1968) hangups are completely discarded in a manner that Purdom pioneered and Delany has perfected.  At the heart of the story is the moral question, one we've seen explored on Star Trek several times–is it right to give the fruit of knowledge to those who actively reject it?

Like all Delany stories, this is a highly sensory piece, although it also requires close reading, as Delany likes to be a bit sparse with his linking sentences.  It's a simple story.  You will find no revelations, and the characters are bit shallow.  Chip (the name by which the author traditionally goes) has his kinks and tics, and they are all on display here, suggesting that this was a labor of love, but not necessarily too much effort.

Thus, a pleasant, but slightly hollow four stars.  You could start a magazine with much worse!


by Gahan Wilson

The Wilis, by Baird Searles

This is a beautifully told spotlight on an opera company, from the pen of someone as experienced with the field as, say, Leiber is with the theater.  Honestly, the supernatural components are almost superfluous, coming as they do at the end of the story, with little surprise and rather clunky integration.  But without them, I suppose the piece would not have been published, at least in this magazine.

Three stars, as well as the prediction that we won't ever see anything by Mr. Searles again–this was obviously a very personal piece, and I would be surprised if he has more ideas in him.  But you never know!

Gifts from the Universe, by Leonard Tushnet

Another fellow who writes what he knows is Leonard Tushnet, whose pieces have a delightful yiddish tinge to them.  Here, a retailer of gifts happens upon a wholesaler in ceramics whose stock is beautiful beyond compare–and at such a deal as to prices!  But the rather unusual wholesaler only accepts silver as currency, and his tenure and his wares have a definite expiration date…

You'll enjoy it; you'll even remember it.  A pleasant three stars.

Beyond the Game, by Vance Aandahl

The second-darkest piece of the issue comes from a young man who filled the pages of F&SF in the early '60s but then disappeared in 1964.  He returns with the tale of Ernest, a boy trapped in a sadistic game of dodge ball, huddled for safety behind the broad backsides of two of his teammates.  When the sadistic Miss Argentine (who may be a robot) notices the cowering tyke, she commands all of the kids to teach him a lesson.  In doing so, she unlocks the child's unearthly powers, which facilitate his escape.

Nicely told, this feels like it was conceived by Aandahl when he was quite young, and he waited until he was deft enough with writing that he could effectively put it to paper.  It's fine for what it is, which isn't all that much.  Three stars.

Dry Run, by Larry Niven

Now for the darkest piece, a fantasy from a fellow I normally associate with straight-forward "hard" SF (though I suppose The Long Night, which also appeared in F&SF, was also an exception).

Murray Simpson grips the wheel of his Buick, cigarette smoldering between his white knuckles, the stiffening body of his Great Dane in the trunk.  The dead dog is Simpson's doing, a dry run for the murder of his wife.

An accident forestalls the culmination of Simpson's plan.  Those who judge in life-after-death decide to find out how things might have otherwise played out.

Upon first reading this decidedly unpleasant tale (not just the subject matter; the depiction of a San Diego freeway traffic jam is too spot on for any local's comfort!) I was inclined to give it three stars.  After reading it aloud to my family as their bedtime story, the piece came to life for me.

Thus, four stars.

Backward, Turn Backward, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor takes a stab and planetary rotations and axial tilts in this month's science fact article.  I do appreciate that he advances his own theories as to what caused both the "direct" (counter-clockwise) rotations of most of the planets (the natural spiraling in of the bodies as they coalesced) as well as what caused Uranus to spin on its side and Venus to spin retrograde (perhaps collisions early in formation).

It's still a somehow dry and shallow piece.  I'm not quite sure what I want from Isaac, but he's not quite doing it for me these days.

Three stars.

A Quiet Kind of Madness, by David Redd

In the snowy winter wastes of Finland, lone huntress Maija comes across a strange creature, shivering and near death.  He looks something like a polar bear, but not quite.  As she nurses him back to health, she discovers he is intelligent, telempathic, and from an entirely different world.  When they sleep, her new Snow Friend takes her to his place-without-men, a warm place of perpetual sunshine.  It is a paradise to Maija, who would just as soon leave our world behind.

For a man pursues her, the relentless Igor, who six months tried to have his way with her, and is now back to claim her again.  But it is not just fear of Igor that spurs her on, rifle in hand, to fend off the man, but fear for Snow Friend, who will be just a pretty pelt to Igor.

As with Redd's previous story, Sundown (which also features a snowy landscape–Redd must have a deep familiarity with icy terrain), Madness is vivid and compelling, and more artfully told than Sundown.  It's almost a contemporary Oz story, with Snow Friend a refugee from a magical land.  It's also a beautiful character study, of the bitter and solitary Maija, of the not-entirely-bad Igor, of the well-meaning but still male Timo, and of the sweet, alien Snow Friend.

This time, it is not for lack of deftness that this piece falls just short of five stars, nor for its almost incidental fantastic qualities, but simply because the end is not quite satisfying–almost as if Redd, himself, was unsure how to conclude the piece.

Still, it kept me hooked.  A high four stars, and my favorite piece of the magazine.

Back to reality

As my colleague Kris puts it (and Kris insists it originated with me), Fantasy and Science Fiction's experiment at being a monthly version of Dangerous Visions appears to be paying off.  The May 1968 issue scores a solid 3.5 stars with no clunkers in the mix.  If none of the stories quite achieves classic status, well, maybe next month.

I only wonder where all the women went, given that the pages of F&SF were once the bastion of SFnal femininity.  Maybe they're all writing Star Trek scripts.

In any wise, pick up this issue and enjoy.  In this tumultuous day and age, it's nice to breathe the rich air of other worlds for a while.

Speaking of other worlds, come join us tonight at 8pm (Eastern and/or Pacific) for the rerun of "The Doomsday Machine", one of Star Trek's best episodes!

Here's the invitation!




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 28, 1968] Design for effect (April 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

There are all kinds of science fiction stories.  Some explore the human condition, prioritizing people and how they might be affected by emerging technologies.  Others are space or planetary adventures, utilizing an exotic locale as backdrop for classic derring-do.

Analog (formerly Astounding) has always emphasized technological pieces.  They are stories of gadgets, of scientific implementations, not people.  Even better is when the story underscores the libertarian, rather reactionary politics of one editor John W. Campbell Jr.

Sometimes, a skilled writer can get a story into Campbell's mag without that kind of tale.  In this issue, virtually none of them did…

The issue at hand


by Kelly Freas

Secret Weapon, by Joseph P. Martino

The interstellar war against the Arcani is going badly.  Now that the Terrans have doubled their Patrol Corvette fleet, suddenly their losses have quadrupled.  Somehow, the alien enemy is tracking down their gravitational signatures as they zoom through their patrol lanes at four times the speed of light–and even when the human crews manage to intercept the enemy warships, somehow they elude destruction.

Two ships are dispatched to find the answer to this crisis, equipped with a new nucleonic clock that allows the ships to communicate even at superluminary speeds.  Now they can cover each other in case of attack.  When attack inevitably comes, they discover the secret to the enemy's success.

Joe Martino probably enjoyed writing this novella, and John Campbell obviously enjoyed reading this novella, so I suppose the story must be called some kind of success.  However, if you don't enjoy things that read like the centerfold to a particularly dry issue of Popular Gravitics, I suggest you give this one a skip.  This probably could have been a great novel, with time devoted to, you know, characters and prose, as opposed to a thinly dressed up engineering problem whose solution is implied to be beyond the comprehension of the alien foe.

Two stars.

Handyman, by Jack Wodhams


by Leo Summers

A married couple, trapped on a muddy world with virtually no trappings of civilization, try to make even the most basic rudiments of technology to ease their plight.  Eventually, they figure out how to make ceramics, and when a rescue party finally appears, they are now happy to stay on their private world and even to start an export trade of their new kind of china.  Chalk up a win for enforced entrepreneurialism!

I kept waiting for Wodhams to explain how the planet-wrecked pair figured out how to make their ceramic, given that all the ways that didn't work were so lovingly detailed.

Still, the story is at least readable. A low three stars.

Phantasmaplasmagoria, by Herbert Jacob Bernstein


by Kelly Freas

According to the scientists, power from nuclear fusion, harnessing the union of hydrogen atoms to produce boundless electricity, is just twenty years away.  This story details the meandering road to the technology's serendipitous development.

It's a silly piece, and I'm not sure who thought it a good idea to put a fourth of the story in endnotes that one has to constantly refer to.  They aren't worth the pay-off.

Two stars.

Is Everybody Happy?, by Christopher Anvil


by Leo Summers

A hay fever drug has the unfortunate side effect of making everyone extra-friendly.  Society breaks down as folks would rather kibbitz than work.

It says something about Analog and its editor's beliefs that too much friendliness will obviously lead to economic ruin, as opposed to increased efficiency through greater cooperation. Call me crazy, but I work better when I like my co-workers.

Anyway, this is another "funny" piece by Anvil for Campbell, and it's as good as you'd expect it to be.

Two stars.

Incorrigible, by John T. Phillifent


by Leo Summers

A naval officer is up for treason, having facilitated the transfer of technical knowledge to the Drekk, potentially Earth's most dangerous foe.  The implacable lizards, inhabitant of a Venus-type planet (nicknamed "Wet" for its torrid, humid conditions) are incredibly quick studies, and interstellar spaceflight is only a few developments away.

But, the officer notes, at the end of a very long dialogue with his attorney (the sole point of which is to build to the punchline conclusion) the information leak was ultimately to humanity's benefit.  For it involves the ability to teleport water, which the Drekk will use to colonize the nearby planet, "Dry".  And once enough mass is teleported from Wet, the core will explode, destroying the evil aliens.

Well.

I can't imagine this is particularly sound science, this notion that Venus-type planets are at a critical point such that the lost of a few million tons of water can destabilize them, especially coming from a fellow who still characterizes Venus as "wet" five years after Mariner 2.  That notwithstanding, I might have been more tolerant, given the decent writing in this piece, if the author (under his pseudonym) had not used the exact same gimmick to end his recent novel, Alien Sea!

Two stars.

The Horse Barbarians (Part 3 of 3), by Harry Harrison


by Kelly Freas

Jason dinAlt's adventures appear to have come to an end with this third Deathworld novel.  By the end of the story, the Pyrran city has been destroyed by the planet, the horse barbarians of Felicity have been defeated, and Meta and Jason have finally professed their love for one another.

How is Temuchin, highest chief of the Felicitan nomads defeated?  After Jason is found out for the outworlder he is, the barbarian tosses him into a deep pit to die.  Instead, Jason finds his way through a maze of caves, discovering a passage from the frozen steppes to the rich lowlands.  All other methods of toppling Temuchin having failed, Jason tells the warlord the secret of the caves so that the barbarians can finally conquer the whole continent.

Almost immediately, Temuchin realizes his victory is really defeat, for taking all the cities means the inevitable death of the nomad way of life.  The nomads collapse within weeks, and the Pyrrans set up shop.

There are a lot of problems with this book.  Temuchin is supposed to be this awful, violent savage for slaughtering foreign invaders, and for wanting to take out the lowlanders.  Does this justify the Pyrrans in killing and facilitating the killing of far more people than Temuchin ever could have managed on his own?

Beyond that, the historical "lesson" at the end of the story is specious.  Sure, the Chinese sinicized the Mongols, but not all of them, and not in a matter of weeks.  And as for the Goths and Huns (also cited), the former were invited to settle the Roman Empire rather than becoming Roman after conquering, while the Huns were simply defeated in fight after fight.

Thus, I find Jason's actions and motivations more ruthless and inhuman than Temuchin's; they are also out of keeping with the peacenik environmental message so beautifully expressed in Deathworld.

All that said, there's no question that Harrison is a terrific writer (he almost makes you accept the unrealistic extents to which Jason pushes his body).  I turned to this serial first each of the last three months, and I finished each installment in a sitting.  As a result, while I give this segment three stars, and even though I find the premise repugnant, I still am giving the novel as a whole three and a half stars.

Local Effect, by D. L. Hughes


by Leo Summers

An alien space drive discarded near Earth's moon has drastic effects on human scientific development.  It turns out that the speed of light is not a constant…except around Earth.  Thus, Einstein's theory of relativity only describes a local phenomenon, not the universe as a whole.  Alien anthropologists from a faraway star survey humanity and note this local aberration with interest.

This is an interesting premise, but Hughes, knowing his audience (a certain editor named Campbell), turns it into an anti-scientific-establishment polemic, noting that, if only humans were a little more broad minded, they might not have gotten stuck in their rut.  After all, how dare we assume that the rules that hold locally apply to the whole universe?

Except, of course, that is the very soul of the scientific method.  Moreover, observations this century make it clear that relativity does hold throughout the universe–as early as 1919, just four years after the publication of General Relativity, light was seen to have been deflected around the sun's gravity well, pursuant to theory.

This could have been a fascinating story of aliens assuming that all beings should follow an "obvious" course of scientific development, deluded by their own understanding of all the facts.  Instead, we get…this.

Two stars.

Doing the math

If it's a race to the bottom, Analog has won handily, scoring just 2.3 stars this month.  This accomplishment is all the more sad when one realizing that this is a better score than it got last month!

Luckily, the other magazines of the month were somewhat better, including New Worlds (2.8), New Writings 12 (3.1), Famous Science Fiction #4 (2.9), Famous Science Fiction #5 (2.5), Famous Science Fiction #6 (2.7), Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.7)
IF (3.1), and the best, Galaxy (3.3).

Women penned just 4% of the new fiction this month, and even with all the issues of Famous (lumped due to logistics into this one month), there was still only 2.5 to 3 issues' worth of superior stuff.

I guess we'll see if the Pohl mags continue to reign, or if all fortunes oscillate.  I think it's safe to say, though, that Analog could definitely use a loosening of its editorial prescriptions.  Hope springs eternal!




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[March 20, 1968] Missed opportunities (April 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

A week is a long time in politics

The British Prime Minister Harold Wilson is fond of noting that a lot can change in just seven days.  In American politics, the last seven days have witnessed a lifetime of tumult.

It was just last year that President Johnson was polling in the 70s.  When Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, stand-offish, brainy, tepid in his commitment, took to the field last November, few took his insurgent, Anti-Vietnam-War campaign seriously.  Least of all, President Johnson, who did not even apply to be on the ballot in New Hampshire's primary, scheduled for March 12.

Then the Tet Offensive happened, giving lie to the idea of slow but steady progress in Southeast Asia.  The Credibility Gap between the populace and the President became a canyon, and when the dust had settled, Senator McCarthy had garnered just 230 votes less than LBJ in the year's first Democratic primary.

Just a few days latter, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who had last year demurred from running, referring anti-war supplicants in McCarthy's direction, decided to throw his hat in the ring.  The Democratic insurgency has become a full-on party civil war.

Johnson's complacence reminds me of Georges Ernest Boulanger, who in January 1889 was elected deputy for Paris and seemed on the verge of leading a personal coup against the Third Republic.  But on the fateful day of January 27, when the crowds roamed the streets and chanted his name, the would-be despot was nowhere to be found.  Turned out he had missed his moment, lost in the arms of his mistress rather than under arms with his supporters.

Who knows where all this is headed?  It just goes to show that even the most promising candidate can fail for lack of sufficient focus on the goal.  And this leads me into discussion of this month's issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.


by Bert Tanner

Burned batch

Have you ever been careless in the kitchen, not so much as to ruin dinner, but to render it far less palatable than it could have been?  All of the stories this month are missing something.  Their imperfection lies in missing some quality, or in some cases, an overcooking of sorts.  The result is a handful of ideas that could have been good in others' hands, or perhaps with more expert editing, or more time and care in production.

Flight of Fancy, by Daniel F. Galouye

After a long hiatus, the author of the brilliant Dark Universe returns to the pages of science fiction with this, probably the best piece of the issue.

Frank Proctor is an ad man, miserable in his career and his life, shackled to a beautiful woman who insists on tormenting him with affair after affair.  But he stubbornly refuses to divorce her, knowing it means financial ruin.  His only solace is his recurrent dreams in which he has the ability to fly.  He knows it is a stress reaction, but at least it is a moment's surcease.

A greater balm arises: at a company beach party, Frank falls asleep by the shore and immediately begins to soar in his dream.  While apparently still in slumber, he meets a lovely young lady, who also possesses the ability to fly.  Happily, she is still there when he wakes, and he assumes he must have been sleeping with his eyes open for her to infiltrate his sleep.

Of course, romance is inevitable.  But what of his Frank's scheming wife, and will the pictures she took of him and his new love put him over a barrel?  The ending is ultimately a happy one, if a bit pat.

This is a well-crafted and vivid story.  My only real issue is it feels a bit like wish-fulfillment, and I have to wonder if Galouye just went through a messy divorce.

Four stars.

Dead to Rights, by R. C. FitzPatrick

Crime boss Angelo Amadeo is rubbed out by his second.  When the instrument of Angelo's death turns stoolie, the second's devotees enlist a surgeon to recall Angelo to life, reasoning that if Angelo is not dead anymore, then he never could have been murdered.

The problem is, Angelo's body is brought back to life, but the soul inside is most definitely not his.  Instead, the reborn inhabitant preaches love of fellow man and everlasting life in the adoration of God.

You can see where this is going.

Too much effort is made to make this a "funny" piece, and the conclusion is obvious from the start.  Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Without a Doubt Dream, by Bruce McAllister

Antonio and his lovely wife, Alba, wake up one day to find their pine-ensconced villa suddenly surrounded by endless desert.  Worse, the insinuating sands are slowly creeping in, destroying all that they touch.  Antonio reasons that only his psychic ability is shielding them, but his doubt in the same talent is causing him to lose the battle.

McAllister describes this all in an earnest, somber tone, and he successfully captures the feeling of a pair of foreign protagonists.  However, the piece ends rather abruptly, and without a great deal of evolution of the story.  Moreover, the tone is a bit too one-dimensional.

Thus, for this third piece by this promising, 19-year old author, I give three stars.

Demon, by Larry Brody

Pinchok, a simple blue-collar worker who happens to be the denizen of another plane, is summoned to Earth in a pentagram by a would-be three-wisher.  When Pinchok turns out to be rather useless as a genie, the summoner decides maybe Pinchok should devote his talents to crime…for the benefit of the human, of course.

The concept of demons just being aliens in another dimension, and the art of demonology more a kind of kidnapping (with the implication that it might work the other direction, too, with humans becoming the demons) is an intriguing premise.

This tale, while pleasant enough, just doesn't do enough with it, however.  Three stars.

The Superior Sex, by Miriam Allen deFord

William, an astronaut, finds himself the newest member of an all-male harem, subject to an imperious and beautiful mistress.  He cannot recall how he got there, but he can recall being from a world dedicated to the principle (if not the assiduous practice) of equality between the sexes.  Thus, he rankles at his new role, and in an interview with his mistress, exclaims that he would rather die than live subjugated.

Of course, the truth of his situation is more complex than it first seems.

This is almost a great story.  DeFord, an ardent women's libber before the phrase was coined, has a promising message in this piece that is then muddled by its ending.  Too bad.

Three stars.

The Time of His Life, by Larry Eisenberg

One of science fiction's few writer/scientists offers up this tale of a middle-aged scientist resentful of forever being in the shadow of his Nobel-winning father, who covets his son's wastrel youth.  Said elder has now invented a kind of time travel, but it ages or youthens the traveler rather than sending him elsewhen.  In the end, both father and son get what they want.

A decent Twilight Zone-esque piece.  Three stars.

The Dance of the Sun, by Isaac Asimov

This month, the good Doctor discusses the phases of the inner planets with respect to the Earth.  He also notes that Dr. Richardson had done a similar piece for Analog a few months back.  Frankly, I was more impressed with Richardson's; I found Asimov's dry and difficult to follow.  And astronomy was my major!

Two stars.

Muscadine, by Ron Goulart

Mr. Muscadine is an android programmed to produce great books.  The secret to his success is the idiosyncrasies fundamentally coded into his electronic brain.  But as his eccentricities spin out of control, his agent finds himself conspiring with the android's programmer toward a drastic solution.

Goulart can write well, and he can also write funny.  He does neither here.  Two stars.

Final War, by K. M. O'Donnell

Finally, an anti-war piece in the vein of Heller's Catch 22.  It features a Private Hastings, a war-addled First Sergeant, and an indecisive Captain, whose unit spends three days a week capturing a forest, three days a week being driven from the forest, and Mondays resting.  What follows is the usual silliness of war, including friendly fire, endless red tape, and general insanity.

Harrison did it MUCH better in his Starsloggers.  This one meanders for way too long in a singular vein.  Two stars.

Expected results

With a limp offering like this, it's no surprise that this issue ends up on the wrong side of three stars.  It's a shame.  Joe/Ed Ferman's mag is often one of the frontrunners in the field.  But with a month like this, I suspect Mercury Publishing is going to have an upset when compared against its competitors for April 1968.

Luckily, science fiction is an endless primary, and a month is a very very long time.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 14, 1968] Bugs in the machine (Star Trek: "The Ultimate Computer")

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The MT Soul


by Joe Reid

Brothers and sisters, I am quite simply over the moon.  I feel rewarded and fulfilled due to what I just witnessed.  Above all else, I feel something that I haven’t felt in a while as a lover of Star Trek.  I feel respected.  As I enjoy the last few sips of my cocktail, I take pleasure in divulging my thoughts on “The Ultimate Computer”.  It was very good!  The end.


Liquor infused levity aside, I suppose I am obligated to expand on my thoughts.  The episode got off to a roaring start, with the Enterprise arriving at a space station with a visibly upset Kirk having been summoned to that station sans explanation.  When Kirk asked for an explanation, he was told that his explanation would be beamed aboard.  Commodore Wesley beamed in, someone who both Kirk and Spock appeared acquainted with.  Wesley told them that they were to participate in war games to test a new computer that would be installed on the Enterprise, replacing most of the crew.  Twenty crew members would be left aboard.

After the new M5 multitronic unit was installed, shrinking the crew, we met the tall and off-putting Dr. Richard Daystrom, creator of the M5.  He was a man lacking several human pleasantries, in that he was dismissive of people but very focused on and protective of the M5.  The two most human members of the crew, Bones and Scotty, caught Daystrom’s ire in the subsequent exchanges, demonstrating his preference for machines over men.


The new sheriff in town.

As the new M5 equipped Enterprise started its tour, it made a trip to a planet.  M5 took extra initiative, navigating the ship into its orbit and even picking assignments for an away team. It excluded Kirk and Bones, who it deemed to be unnecessary for the mission.  This bothered Kirk, who was already feeling put upon, having a computer taking on more of this job than he surmised.  The M5 also started turning off parts of the ship that were absent of crew members for some unknown reason.

Leaving the planet, the ship found itself under a sneak attack as a part of the war games Wesley had planned.  The M5 took complete control of the Enterprise, dispatching the attackers swiftly with weapons at 1% power as the exercise demanded.  This earned the M5 a success report from Wesley and Kirk a (perhaps joking) slight from the commodore, when Wesley called Kirk Captain “Dunsel”; dunsel referring to a part on a ship that serves no purpose.


"Good job, Captain Useless!"

Things were looking good for the M5 and Daystrom was very pleased with the outcomes, while Kirk flirted with depression at the thought of the day’s events.  It was at this time that the M5 took a bad turn, starting by its destroying (unprovoked) an automated ore freighter.  The crew quickly became adversarial toward the M5, which now had completely taken control of the ship.  All efforts to get control back from the rogue computer failed, even costing an engineer (not Scotty, thank heaven) his life.


Posthumous hazard pay is in order.

Daystrom was undeterred in his defense of his creation, not wanting to disconnect the M5, a sentiment which didn't change even as the real war games started when M5, using weapons at 100%, utterly defeated a group of starships and killed everyone on the Excalibur.  Daystrom didn’t even try to stop his creation until the M5 was threatened with destruction by the other ships.


Here comes the Piper.

In the end, it took Kirk, using his ironclad logic against the M5, which contained Daystrom’s embedded fears but also his morality, to prevail.  He prevented an attack not using the wizardry of technology, but by trusting in the intelligence, will, and heart of men.  Proving that spaceships still need men at the helm.

I loved this episode.  It had great acting, fantastic camera direction, an intelligent original story, and best of all, there was little to no exposition to explain what was happening to the audience.  We had to infer what everything meant based on the story elements provided.  Again, it was very good.

5 stars.

Homo ex machina


by Gideon Marcus

Star Trek, like much science fiction, often tries to convey messages in its stories.  Sometimes, it does so hamfistedly, other times contradictorily.  In "The Ultimate Computer", the show presented not one, but two themes simultaneously, and did so with subtlety and cleverness. Bravo.

Firstly, "Computer" addresses the specter of automation.  The episode does not endorse Luddism.  It is clear that someday at least some of the 430 jobs on the Enterprise will be performed by computer–indeed, halfway through the episode, the ship comes across a completely robot-controlled DY-500.  In other words, M-5's revolution is not the automation of spaceships, but the next development in their automation.

The dialogue between Bones and Kirk on the captain's impending obsolescence, as well as the undercurrent of tension between the captain and Commodore Wesley (who puts on a blustery front, but probably is no happier about M-5's ramifications than Kirk), are some of the best parts of the episode.

It should also be noted, that whenever computers have gone amok, it is not their fault: in "The Changeling", Nomad's functioning got cross-contaminated with Tan Ru's.  In "Court Martial", the ship's computer is deliberately tampered with by Ben Finney.  Even Landru in "Return of the Archons" only did what it was programmed to do.  In other words, computers are useful, inevitable, and desirable tools.

But this is not just a story of steam replacing sail, or iron horses replacing ponies.  It's about what happens when too much reliance is placed on automation without sufficient involvement of humans.  It's a cautionary tale in the same vein as Failsafe (the book or the movie).  No matter how sophisticated computers get, or what shortcuts their developers take to leapfrog their development, in the end, humans are necessary–to guide them, to control them, to maximize the utility of them.


The missing link–sane oversight.

One can quibble over details; this story was told in a dramatic way so as to get its point across in 50 minutes, and in doing so, there are some inconsistencies and some let-downs (the final confrontation between Kirk and the M5 is about two exchanges too short).  But for me, "The Ultimate Computer" feels like a return to form, one of the rare episodes of the second season that recaptured the essence of the first in feel, in technical proficiency, and coherence.

Four and a half stars.

Annoyingly Predictable


by Erica Frank

The M-5 is supposed to be able to run a ship normally crewed by four hundred with just 20 people. Of course, that turns out to be a lie, not because it can't, but because it doesn't bother with little details like, oh, following regulations, obeying the captain, and not killing people.

How the hell did this computer get approved for take-control-of-a-starship testing? And when Daystrom started to make excuses for it ("You don't shut off a child when it makes a mistake!"), why didn't Kirk immediately reply with, "You don't give a child command of a starship, either. And if a child grabs control of the family car and rams into another car – you don't let the child keep control. Shut this off NOW, or we'll start shooting our phasers into its circuit banks."

("But that would leave us floating dead in space!" he might answer. And Kirk could respond, "I'm sure someone will be along shortly to pick us up.")

Instead, Kirk lets it keep control long enough to kill over 60 people before getting Daystrom out of the way. Then he manages to use third-grade logic to get it to shut itself down: "What is the penalty for murder?" "Death." (Except we know otherwise – the only crime in the Federation with a death penalty was visiting Talos IV.) Unable to cope with the awareness that it violated its internal morality, it collapses.

…Where was that logic when it was shooting at the other ships? Why didn't the super-computer recognize the "laws of God and man" before it had broken them? Why didn't Kirk insist Daystrom talk it out of shooting before it had killed anyone? Shouldn't its logic work faster and more efficiently than a human's?

But we wouldn't get much story if the M5 had immediately recognized it was stuck between "defend myself" and "kill humans, whose protection is my purpose." So it couldn't notice that until the damage was done, its creator was unconscious, and Kirk was earnestly explaining exactly what it had done wrong.

As Snoopy might say: Bleah.

Just as dull as all the "psychic powers create sadistic manipulators" stories.

The acting was good. The story pacing was good. The explanations of the technology were good. Yet another "I liked everything but the plot" episode. Two stars.

Hey McCoy – got another Finagle's Folly lying around? I could use a drink.


"Here's to Erica, at least."



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[March 8, 1968] Inglorious (Star Trek: "The Omega Glory")

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by Gideon Marcus

Last year, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry won science fiction's highest award, the Hugo, for writing the two-part episode "The Menagerie".  It was a deserved laurel.  After all, he not only had written the excellent pilot that formed the germ of the double-show, but also made a reasonably interesting extension to fit the new format.

Unfortunately, Roddenberry has yet to reach that high water mark again.  Despite having plenty of screenwriting experience, he seems to only have had that one good story in him.  First, there was his disappointing adaptation of "A Private Little War", originally by Jud Crucis (that's got to be a kind of Cordwainer Bird).  And now, we have his worst outing yet–"The Omega Glory":

The setup should be interesting.  Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the red-shirted Lieutenant GAWLway beam aboard the abandoned but undamaged starship Exeter in orbit around an uncharted planet.  Everyone onboard has been reduced to crystals–sort of a reverse "Man Trap" phenomenon.  This seems shocking to Kirk and co. despite having seen a very similar phenomenon just last episode.  Obeying the exhortations of a tape by the mortally ill Exec of the Exteter (who, like Spock, is apparently a double-duty officer), they beam down to the planet.


"Save yourselves!  Go down to the planet!  I dunno why we don't, but you go ahead!"

There, they meet Captain Ron Tracey, the second active-duty Starfleet captain we've seen other than Kirk (we met four others in "Court Martial", at least one of whom had graduated to Starbase running).  According to Tracey, the planet confers immunity to the disease that killed his entire crew when the rest of the landing party beamed back aboard.  Also, the planet somehow makes all the inhabitants live life spans measured in millennia.

In the six months since Tracey beamed down, he teamed up with the 'Coms', "yellow" city-dwellers under siege by the savage "white" people.  Flagrantly violating the Prime Directive, more explicitly spelled out here than in any episode prior, he exhausted his hand phaser defending the village.


"We drained four of our phasers, and they still came. We killed thousands and they still came."

Now that Kirk is here, Tracey wants to go into the immortality bottling business, distilling the essence of the anti-disease and anti-aging qualities of the planet.

Except, as Bones soon figures out, there is no such thing.  The immunity is a natural (and permanent) phenomenon, and the natives live a long time because of freak genetics resulting from the near-total bacteriological catastrophe that wiped out civilization centuries before.

That's one thread of the episode.  The other involves finding out that this is a parallel Earth, like "Miri", and the 'Yangs' are the descendants of Americans (white ones, of course), adopting the ways of the Indians in order to survive, but carrying a corrupted tradition of Founding Father document worship.  Thus, they mangle the Pledge of Allegiance and the Constitution's preamble without understanding.  Luckily, Kirk is an avid historian, and he explains what these holy words really mean.  He also insists that the Coms (what's left of them–it appears the Yangs have killed nearly all of them by the end) are people too, and they need to be treated with the dignity and equality prescribed by our nation's most central document.


"This document is absolutely perfect as is.  It's a good thing you never made any changes to it."

And then they beam back to the Enterprise.  Happy endings for everyone.

Except the audience, of course.

So much about this show doesn't make sense, from the lack of children, to the paucity of population centers, to the way genetics and natural immunity works on the planet.  I won't even touch the racial aspects of the episode, which my colleagues are champing at the bit to address.

I will say that I am utterly confused by Captain Tracey's actions.  We've been led to believe that Starship captains are a breed apart.  Sure, Commodore Decker had his issues, but they were understandable given his situation.  But Tracey?  As soon as his crew fell ill and he didn't, you'd think he'd have beamed at least some of his people down.  And certainly he'd hold sacred the highest of orders (though not the one that violation incurs the death penalty.  That's number four.) Instead, he lets his crew die, doesn't warn Star Fleet of his situation, and becomes a little dictator.


"Crew?  What crew?"

The only thing that could possibly explain the situation is that "Ron Tracey" is actually Dr. Simon van Gelder, escaped from Tantalus without being cured, somehow assuming Captain Tracey's guise and stealing the "Exeter".  Outlandish?  Sure, but no more than this episode.


"I'm the real Captain Tracey!"

Two stars.  Why two?  Because I actually kind of dug how the show went back to the parallel Earth thing and didn't just abandon it for one episode.  Of course, they didn't do very much good with it…

When Worse Comes to Worst


by Janice L. Newman

We’ve had the best of episodes, we’ve had the worst of episodes. But never have I watched an episode so infuriating as “The Omega Glory”.

Like last week’s By Any Other Name, the story starts out promising. We’re swept up in the mystery and the danger to the senior officers we’ve come to know and love. And like “By Any Other Name”, it seems that “The Omega Glory” is prepared to play against expectations. On the planet Omega, the white people are violent and savage, while the non-white people (in this case apparently of Asian extraction) are peaceful and good. What a switch!

Just kidding! It turns out that the white people are the good guys after all. They’ll be setting up a democratic government any day now, and they’ll even let those no-good commies in…as long as the commies are okay with living under their system.


"I am Cloud McCarthy, and this is Wise Dicknixon.  We promise equality and fairness for the Coms."

I described Patterns of Force as “subtle as a brick”, but this episode went beyond that. The pro-democracy message was as direct and painful as a bludgeon to the face. It was all the more insulting in the way the white “yangs” (“Yankees”, GET IT?) started out as savage, violent, unwilling to parley or compromise, yet were still painted as the triumphant good guys in the end, for no other reason than that they were descendents of a Christian nation with an American democratic system (despite literally having no understanding of the very documents and principles they revered).

One grudging star, only because I can’t give it zero.

Losers Keepers


by Joe Reid

I recently saw a preview at the theater for the upcoming Planet of the Apes movie (based on the book) starring Charlton Heston. It's a flick about a world where cavemen-like humans in rags are dumb beasts and mistreated by the intelligent thinking and talking apes. 

Much like this week's episode, which featured wild men dressed in rags that appeared to be unable to speak and behaved like beasts.  A couple of months back we had the “Gamesters of Triskelion", which featured a Master Thrall Galt who shared the look of Ming the Merciless from “Flash Gordon”.  In fact it was that same episode that had me complaining about the amount of borrowing or sometimes outright theft that Star Trek employs in its stories.

If imitation is the best form of flattery, Star Trek is the Casanova of Burbank, California!  The number of its paramours have surely become legion.  Much like the erstwhile lover of legend, Star Trek is never able to focus on attaching to one thing at a time.  Episodes must borrow from multiple sources.  Even from other episodes of Star Trek.  For example, just last week we saw an episode where the powerful Kelvans turned members of the crew into white minerals.  This week a disease did it.  Two weeks ago the Nazis from Earth history showed up on another planet.  This week the US flag and constitution showed up, for no reason other than to attempt to throw a twist at the audience.  Both of these last two examples make me feel as if I am watching an episode of the Twilight Zone instead of Star Trek.  So many episodes of that show introduce elements into settings where they should not exist.  When it happened in the Twilight Zone it was thought provoking.  When it keeps happening in Star Trek, it lacks the same effect and is starting to leave me pining for repeats of the episodes that have more original stories.


"A man…can't just…turntosalt!"  "Captain, need I remind you what happened just last episode?"

I’d love for new episodes to stop with the borrowed elements and stick to bold new content, not plucked from the theaters, or the current newspaper headlines, or popular Earth characters like Jack the Ripper. 

Although the recent “Patterns of Force” was not an episode that I loved, I do love the fact that it was original and not an obvious rip-off from something else.  “The Omega Glory” could have been more glorious had its elements not been entirely borrowed.  That's only one of its sins, of course, but it'd be a start.

1 star

Beyond the Pale


by Amber Dubin

I want to preface myself by saying I am whole-heartedly enraptured with Star Trek. It is my first and only love, the only fictional universe I'd gladly abandon my own life to walk one day in its storyline, and I'd defend the continuation of this show to the death and beyond. I feel the need to profess my undying loyalty as a fan of this series, because I am about to unleash a diatribe that could only be wrought by the betrayal of an immeasurable love. This episode made me apoplectic. I've had my hackles raised from some insulting implications about the nature of women or certain races, but so far most of my reactions have been to subtleties. Subtle this episode was not.

The least subtle attack on my sensibilities was the racism. The Yangs are introduced as inhuman savages that cannot be reasoned with when they are first encountered. However, it turns out that they are not feral, merely driven wild by religious fervor. The supertext is that the Yangs' nature is that of Native Americans (what we have ignorantly called, for centuries, 'Indians'). I cannot begin to describe how offensive this concept is. Gene Roddenberry is saying here that Native Americans as a race are naturally a savage subspecies of whites, but they, like the fictional Vulcans, have trained to control their natures through a spirituality reverential governmental system. The fundamental insult lies in the implication that the government of whites partially tamed their savage nature (only partially, because the whole time sacred ceremonies take place, the majority of the tribe is outside yipping and howling at the moon). I hate that I have to explain this, but in reality, Native Americans have had democratic systems in place before most white societies that the white founding fathers actually drew from when they were drafting their governmental systems. In addition, the role of spirituality in most ancient Native American tribes was not a controlling cult-like obsession as could be argued is displayed by many modern organized religions, and was instead a much subtler, reverential guiding force that soothed the more offensive natural human instincts like a balm rather than a set of shackles.


"What do you mean 'they're too white?'  What do you think this is?  High Chapparal?"

Unfortunately the racial attacks in this episode are not only leveled at the Native American peoples. When it comes to the Comms, although it is implied that their genetics/immunological resistance is superior to humans, they are also implied to be inferior to the white race. This is apparent in the way that they immediately recognize Ron Tracey as their leader, after "getting over the shock of [his] white skin." This is offensive not only in the way it implies innate white supremacy, but also in the way they imply that it is natural for "asiatic races" to choose innately flawed governmental systems (godless totalitarianism and communism – for shame!) over the morally upright white, democratic Republicans. They even managed to throw in fetishization of female Asians just because this steaming pile of an episode needed a little sexism for spice.

And the science! My God, the poor, poor science! I'm too angry to even go into how terribly this episode mangled the concepts of genetic and cultural evolution. It didn't even have the most basic understanding of immunology and epidemiology! The fact that any of the plot of this episode made it off the cutting room floor goes beyond the pale of my tolerance and understanding. To say I am deeply disappointed in Gene Roddenberry is an understatement of the highest degree.

I wish I could give it less than one star, but I, like the actors in these scenes, am contractually bound by the system in which I work.

One star

Speaking of Star Trek, it's on tomorrow!  And it seems to presage a civil war…

Here's the invitation! Come join us.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 6, 1968] Trend-setter (April 1968 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Back in the saddle again

It's been a long time since the halcyon days of the early '50s, when Galaxy was setting the standard to beat, ushering in the Silver Age of Science Fiction (along with the more avante garde F&SF).  But now that editor Fred Pohl has collapsed his empire to just two mags, it seems he can afford to be more picky.  Indeed, IF is unusually good this month, and the April 1968 issue of Galaxy is by far the best I've read in a long time, and a strong contender for best magazine of March.


by Gray Morrow

Brave new worlds

Goblin Reservation (Part 1 of 2), by Clifford D. Simak

Simak is back with a odd brew of a story, perhaps in the same universe as Here Gather the Stars, as reference is made to a Wisconsin transit station.  Eschewing (for the most part) his usual pastoral motif, instead we get the first installment of the book-length adventure of Peter Maxwell, professor at the Time University in North America.  At least he was.  It seems that, while on the way to do fieldwork on the planet of Coonskin, Maxwell was duplicated.  One of him went on to his intended task.  The other ended up on a crystalline, roofed-over planet.  This world is some 50 billion years old, its inhabitants little more than ghosts, and they possess the knowledge of two universes since they lived through the last cosmological crunch and survived the most recent "Big Bang".

This latter Maxwell is the one we follow, since the other one died in a traffic accident upon arriving home.  Now, Maxwell is officially dead, out of work, and at loose ends.  Add to that there seems to be conspiracies, both human and alien, to get the secrets of the crystal planet from him, and things get very hot indeed.

That would be a twisty enough tale in and of itself.  Throw in the existence of fairies and ghosts (they've been around all along, but now they're acknowledged creatures who live on reservations) as well as working time travel (one of the main characters is Alley Oop, a brilliant Neanderthal), and things are complicated to the extreme!


by Gray Morrow

And yet, somehow Simak makes it all work.  It's an unusually humorous story, though the Morrow illustrations are perhaps too comic, and I tore through the half novel in short order.

I am looking forward to seeing where this all goes.  Four stars.

The Riches of Embarrassment, by H. L. Gold

Why does Miss McGiveney always seem to happen upon her neighbors at the most embarrassing moments?  It may just be her superpower.

This slight tale in particular feels like vintage Galaxy, perhaps because it's written by the magazine's first editor.  I hope Fred Pohl edited the story savagely…what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Three stars.

Brain Drain, by Joseph P. Martino


by Dan Adkins

Tom Harrison, a field agent of Intelligence Imports Incorporated, is in Thailand searching for a particular kind of student, and he thinks he has his target in high school graduate Manob Suravit.  It turns out that Triple-I is on the hunt for brilliant PhD candidates, and apparently there aren't enough in America (and/or perhaps there is value in recruiting from beyond our shores).

At first, I thought it would turn out Harrison was looking for folks with psi powers–I was glad to find the object of his search was more mundane.  Most of the story is excellent, redolent with such authentic color that I have to think Martino has spent time in Thailand.

The problem is the ending, where Harrison convinces the local schoolmaster to be happy about the loss of promising students.  Not so much the reasoning, but the near-polemic way the reasoning is delivered.  What could be a thoughtful piece, with shades of gray woven in (as the story appeared to promise earlier on) becomes something more suited for Analog.  Along the lines of "Hey, sure we take your smart kids, but you weren't using them, and you've still got plenty."

A missed opportunity.  Three stars.

Sword Game, by H. H. Hollis

A bored middle-aged topologist and a grubby would-be Gypsy team up with their tessaract-based circus show.  Said mathematician shoves his partner into a cylinder of fuzzy time and space and stabs her vividly, but harmlessly, with a sword while the audience marvels.

But said topologist bores of this, too, and the result is truly macabre (though ultimately happy).

Three stars, but I could see someone going to four.

For Your Information: The Devil's Apples, by Willy Ley

Willy Ley offers up a short, but interesting piece on potatoes.  Not much to say, really.  Three stars.

Touch of the Moon, by Ross Rocklynne


by Dan Adkins

What an odd piece this is, about a romance broken when one of the partners goes to the moon.  Gravity has an irrevocable effect not only on the body, but also the psyche.  But happily, loosing one's ties to Earth is ultimately good for the species if it ever wants to claim the stars.

This could have been a good story, but it's written far too amateurishly and with too implausible a premise.  The former is surprising given that Rocklynne dates back to the Golden Age.  On the other hand, I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since I began reading SF regularly (1954), so perhaps he's out of practice.

Two stars.

The Deceivers, by Larry Niven


by Jack Gaughan

Our old pal Lucas Garner is back, this time with a shaggy dog story about the first fully automated restaurant that opened in 2025.

Niven has a real knack for creating whole worlds with a few strokes.  He also joins multiple time periods with ease: Lucas Garner was born in 1939, so he is our contemporary.  He lives in the 2100s, and he reminisces about the 2000s.  Thus, his stories have touches of the futuristic as well as the familiar.

Four stars.

Galaxy Bookshelf, by Algis Budrys

I don't often comment on Algis Budrys' column, but this time, he has some important things to say…and a friend named Brian Collins (who has his own commendable 'zine) did an excellent job of summing it up while adding his own observations:

Algis Budrys dedicates the whole review column to Dangerous Visions, giving us a review I'd say is about 1,500 to 2,000 words long. Budrys has shown us before that he's one of the more "literate" people in the field, but he has a unique challenge with Dangerous Visions, a book he both highly recommends but is highly mixed on as far as its content goes.

He argues pretty well as to why this is a major work in the field and why you should get yourself a copy, despite a lot of the stories therein not holding up to scrutiny. It helps that he and I mostly agree on what works and what doesn't (I'm admittedly one of the few people who liked the Farmer), and it pleases me in a morbid way to find that I'm not the only one who was incredibly disappointed by the Sturgeon. But Budrys notes that while the bloated pseudo-lecture from Sturgeon is a failure, and far under Sturgeon's caliber, it works as a sort of counter-piece to the Emshwiller, which, as Budrys says, feels more like a classic Sturgeon story than the Sturgeon we got. Taken together, these two contribute immensely to a narrative that Harlan Ellison is trying to put forth with the book.

Will Dangerous Visions kick off a new movement in SF? No. We had already seen stuff published in F&SF and New Worlds that would have made fine contributions to Dangerous Visions. This book does not present a brave new world like Ellison claims, but rather as Budrys argues it serves as an essential reminder that change is inevitable and that the field has been changing and will continue to change. No doubt 50 years from now Dangerous Visions will be remembered for the best stories between its covers, but also as a historical artifact—a portrait of a genre in the midst of change, and change is often violent and unpretty.

The World and Thorinn, by Damon Knight


by Jack Gaughan

Finally, Damon Knight begins what looks like the first part of serial in all but name.  Thorinn is a human raised by trolls in a primitive, Scandinavianesque, not-quite-fantasy world.  When calamity befalls his family, they throw him down a well to appease the god Snorri.  Thus begins the first of Thorinn's subterranean adventures.

The first few pages are a bit slow, particularly when scenes are repeated from two different viewpoints (I really dislike that style), but the rest makes for an excellent puzzle story, written in a fine, almost Vancean style.

Four stars, and the anticipated book may rate higher.

The Other Show

Between the Simak and the Knight (both fantasy-tinged pieces), we have a couple of open promises.  We also have something of a new style: there's a lot more sex in this issue than I've seen recently in Galaxy.  Is Pohl taking a page from F&SF's book?  Or has the New Wave simply caught up to the Guinn publishing enterprise?

Either way, I like it.  More, please!

Don't miss the news — a new episode of KGJ's weekly round-up is being broadcast right now!



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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 26, 1968] Stormy Weather (March 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

There's no sun up in the sky

Out in the vastness of space, a constellation of man-made moons keeps watch on the Earth below.  Unlike their brethren, the military sentinels that look out for rocket plumes and atomic blasts, these benign probes monitor the planet's weather with a vantage and a vigilance that would make a 19th Century meteorologist green with envy.

In addition to the wealth of daily data we get from TIROS, ESSA, and Nimbus, the West is now getting aid from an unlikely, but no less welcome, source: behind the Iron Curtain.

Two years ago, the Soviets rebuffed the idea of exchanging weather satellite imagery.  "No need," was what they said; "no sats," was probably the real story.  For in August of 1966, all of a sudden, the USSR activated the "Cold Line" link between Moscow and Washington for the exchange of meteorological data.  This action coincided with the recent launch of Cosmos 122, revealed to be a weather satellite.

This constituted a late start in the weather race–after all, TIROS had been broadcasting since 1960.  Nevertheless, better late than never.  Unfortunately, the Soviets first sent only basic weather charts with limited cloud analysis.  Not much good without the raw picture data.  When we finally got the pictures, starting September 11, 1966, the quality was lousy–the communications link is just too long and lossy.  Our ESSA photos probably didn't look any better to them.

By March 1967, however, the lines had been improved, and Kosmos 122 was returning photos with excellent clarity.

We also got infrared data.  The resolution was much worse, but the Soviets maintained they did first discover a pair of typhoons bearing down on Japan.

Since then, the USSR has orbited at least two more weather satellites, Kosmos 144 and Kosmos 184, both returning the same useful data, often from different orbital perspectives than we can easily reach.  For instance, the Soviet pictures offer particularly good views of the poles and northern Eurasia.

It's a little thing, perhaps, this trading of weather data between the superpowers.  But anything that promotes peaceful exchange and keeps the connections between East and West ready and friendly is something to appreciate.  Sometimes the Space Race is more of a torch relay!

Raining all the time


by Kelly Freas

In sharp contrast, Analog remains an island unto itself, and like all inbred families, often produces challenged offspring.  Such is the case with the March 1968 issue, which ranges from middlin' to awful.

The Alien Rulers, by Piers Anthony


by Kelly Freas

We start with the awful.

Fifteen years ago, the blue-skinned Kaozo engaged our space fleet, destroyed it utterly, and became the benevolent masters of Earth.  They created a working socialist society, implementing tremendous public works projects, and humanity proved remarkably complacent under their rule.  Nevertheless, a revolution of sorts has been hatched, and Richard Henrys is tasked with the stickiest assignment–assassinate the Kazo leader, Bitool.

Henrys is quickly captured, but instead of facing execution, Bitool offers him a deal: protect Seren, the first female Kazo on Earth, during the next three days of the revolution, and he can go free.

Sounds like a decent setup.  It's actually a terrible story.  For one thing, the author of Chthon has all of his off-putting tics on display.  Seren is a straw woman, whose vocabulary is largely limited to "Yes, Richard," and "No, Richard."  The social attitudes of this far future world seem rooted in the Victorian times, with passages like this:

"You'll pose as my wife.  Hang on to my arm and–"

"Pose?" she inquired.  "I do not comprehend this, Richard."

Damn the forthright Kazo manner!  He had five minutes to explain human ethics, or lack of them, to a person who had been born to another manner.  Pretense was not a concept in the alien repertoire, it seemed.

He chose another approach.  "For the time being, you are my wife, then.  Call it a marriage of convenience."  She began to speak, but he cut her off.  "My companion, my female.  On Earth we pair off two by two.  This means you must defer to my wishes, expressed and implied, and avoid bringing shame upon me.  Only in this manner are you permitted to accompany me in public places.  Is this clear?"

And this one:

"I promised to explain why this subterfuge was necessary.  I didn't mean to place you in a compromising situation, but–"

"Compromising, Richard?"

"Ordinarily a man and a woman do not share a room unless they are married."

And then, there's the scene where the feminine disguise Richard puts together for Seren falls apart because her body lacks mammalian contours.  Why doesn't he then dress her in male clothes?  And when her stockings start to fall off her legs, I couldn't help wondering how they'd somehow uninvented Panty Hose in the 21st Century.

But then, I'm not sure if Piers Anthony has actually ever talked to a woman, much less seen her in her underthings.

On top of that, the final revelation that the Earth fleet was never destroyed, but instead went on to conquer Kazo, and the two planets have swapped overlords (both governments populated only by the very best technocrats) is so ridiculous as to beggar belief.  That Henrys is invited to become one of the ruling class largely for his novel ideas on how to cut a cake fairly, well, takes the cake.

One star.

Uplift the Savage, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Members of an interstellar agency learn that the best way to increase the technological sophistication of a primitive race is not to give them expertise, but allow them to steal it.  The two-page point is hammered in using fourteen pages of digs at women, higher education, and educated women.

One star.

The Inevitable Weapon, by Poul Anderson


by Harry Bennett

A scientist discovers teleportation.  Useless for interstellar travel, at least for a while, it's great for beaming in concentrated starlight–as a weapon at first, but potentially, to provide energy.

This would be a decent, one-page Theodore L. Thomas piece in F&SF.  Instead, it's fourteen pages of bog-standard detective/secret agent thriller.

Two stars.

Birth of a Salesman, by James Tiptree, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

Jim Tiptee's freshman story is an Anvilesque tale of breakneck pace and nonstop patter.  T. Benedict of the Xeno-Cultural Gestalt Clearance (XCGC) has got a tough job: making sure the trade goods of the galaxy not only take into account the taboos or allergies of alien customers, but also the transhipment longshorebeings. 

Tedium sets in by page two, which, coincidentally, is how many stars I rate it.

The Horse Barbarians (Part 2 of 3), by Harry Harrison


by Kelly Freas

A lot and very little happen in this installment of Jason dinAlt's latest adventure.  Last time on Deathworld III, Jason offered up his fellow Pyrrans as mercenaries to wipe out the horse barbarians on the planet Felicity.  It's fair play, after all, since these barbarians (absolutely not the Mongols, because they have red hair!) slaughtered the last attempt at a mining camp on their frozen plateau.

So, Jason accompanies "Temuchin", the warlord, on an expedition down a cliffside to the technologically advanced civilization on the plains below.  There, they steal some gunpowder, kill a lot of innocent people, and come back–in time to link up with the rest of the Pyrrans for a raid on the Weasel clan.  More slaughter ensues.

Jason feels kind of bad about his part in the killing, but it's all a part of a master plan to someday, eventually, pacify the warriors with by opening up a trade route with the south (as opposed to setting up off-world trade, since the barbarians hate off-worlders).  So whaddaya gonna do?

Well, personally?  Pick a different career path.  Even if the nomads are the biggest savages since the Whimsies, Growleywogs, and Phantasms, what right do the Pyrrans have to kill…anyone? 

Setting aside the moral concerns, Harrison is still an effective writer.  I wasn't bored, just a bit disgusted.

Three stars.

Practice!, by Verge Foray


by Kelly Freas

A shabby little private school for problem children is suddenly the subject of a set of accreditation inspectors.  There's nothing wrong with the kids or the staff–the problem is that the snoops might discover it's really a training ground for junior ESPers!  Luckily, the tykes are on the side of management, and the inspectors are snowed.

I went back and forth on whether this very Analogian tale deserved two or three stars.  On the one hand, I'm getting a little tired of psi stories (the headmaster in the story even says there's no such thing as something for nothing–and that's what psi is), and I resented the smug digs at public school.

But what swayed me toward the positive end of the ledger (aside from the unique and lovely art) was the bit at the end whereby it's suggested that the reason for the school, and the reason psi is so unreliable, is because, like music or language, it's something that needs to be practiced from an early age.  It's a new angle, and pretty neat.

So, three stars.

Can't go on…

Wow.  2.1 stars is bottom-of-Amazing territory, and it easily makes this month's Analog the worst magazine of the month.  Compare it to Fantastic (2.2), IF (3), New Worlds (3.3), and the excellent Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.6), and the contrast is even stronger.

Because of the paucity of magazines, you could fit all the really good stuff into, say, one issue of Galaxy.  On the other hand, women wrote 12% of new fiction this month, which is decent for the times (not to mention the episodes of Star Trek D. C. Fontana has been penning).

It's 1968, an election year.  Maybe this is the year Campbell hands the reins over to someone else.  It certainly couldn't hurt the tarnished old mag.

And then, maybe the sun will come out again!

Speaking of election news, there's plenty of it and more on today's KGJ Weekly report.  You give us four minutes, and we'll give you the world:



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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 20, 1968] 1-2-3 What are we fighting for? (March 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Sock it to me

In the middle of this month's issue of F&SF is this ad:

In short, 68 members of the science fiction community (most of them authors, but some I only know of from fandom) have paid lucre to support staying the course in Vietnam.  Some of the names on the list surprised me: Biggle, Buck, De Vet, Galouye… I should have thought they'd be less belligerent.  And, of course, Bradley's name just makes me sick.

But, as David pointed out, the language is "weasel-worded. It's perfectly possible to be opposed to the war, but feel that the US has an obligation to South Vietnam."

I'll also note that, for this ad to have come out in this issue, it must have been prepped last year.  This is before the recent offensive, when it could be said with a straight face (albeit with decreasing credibility) that we were slowly but surely "winning" in Vietnam.

I was rather surprised to find this ad in F&SF, to be sure.  It's the most liberal of the SF mags–this felt like it would be more at home in Analog.  But then, flipping to the back of the issue, I found this:

That's right–half again as many authors and fans are against staying in Vietnam (they use the older spelling, "Viet Nam").  One wonders which ad came first, and did the two campaigns know about each other?

Does this kind of political posturing belong in our science fiction magazines?  I was already seeing buzz about this in the fanzines even before the ad was printed (I somehow ended up out of the loop, but San Diego is a bit of a fandom backwater).  One fan opined that fans had no business politicizing our sacred pages.

I just think it's a mark of how polarizing and important this debate is that it now has spilled over into our sanctum sanctorum, the monthly escapist literature.  I can only imagine the war of ads will become more bitter now that the actual fight has escalated.

Doo-whackadoo


by Gahan Wilson

Aside from the shots traded in the dueling ads, the rest of the issue is actually surprisingly pleasant, if not entirely placid.  A number of these stories could have been played for horror, but instead, deliberately eschew it.  Intentional?  Or just a happy coincidence?  (I prefer my stories with happy endings.)

The Egg of the Glak, by Harvey Jacobs

Harold North is an unprepossessing campus cop, whose life is irrevocably changed when he meets and befriends the eccentric Professor Hickhoff.  In addition to being obssessed with the monopthongization of the English language (as well as with Harold North), the rotund professor also has a secret of the zoological kind.  Upon his untimely passing, his dying request is that North procure the egg of the last Glak, a Labradorian avian, from a local pet store owner.  After hatching it, North must release it in its home wilds.

Thus ensues a lusty, mildly hazardous, and rather droll journey in which North procures the egg and keeps it from the clutches of Nagle, an anthropologist who would make his reputation on the discovery.  Along the way, North finds romance, of a sort, but mostly haplesses his way through the endeavor.

What makes this tale is the telling.  It threads the line between light and serious, literary and earthy, bawdy and chaste.  It's something Goulart or Lafferty might have come up with on one of their better days.

Interestingly, Harvey Jacobs has only appeared on Galactic Journey twice before, and both were unfavorable outings.  This one, on the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed.

Five stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Ajeri Diary, by Miriam Allen deFord

DeFord, on the other hand, is a name that needs no introduction; she's as grizzled (in her ladylike fashion) as they come.  This tale is of an anthropologist who visites the rigidly segregated planet of Ajeri.  divided along sexual lines into "eskons" and "orgs", the researcher gradually learns that those terms do not precisely align with male and female.

Knowing deFord's penchant for horrific stings in the tail, I was on tenter hooks for much of the piece, especially when the anthropologists finds himself having more and more in common with the neuter "eskons".  But in the end, what we really have is a thoroughly logical state of societal affairs–indeed, something of an utopia…

For some values of utopia, in any event!

Four stars, and the Anti-Queen Bee Award for the month.

Whose Short Happy Life?, by Sterling Lanier

Two hundred years after the Atomic Apocalypse, a hunting party invades the Reserve in search of the most deadly game–the preserved tribes of The Enemy.  About halfway through, you'll figure out that something is amiss, but it's worth the ride to the end to figure out what it is.

Four stars.

Dinosaurs in Today's World, by L. Sprague de Camp

Unusually, we have two science fact articles this issue.  This is the weaker of the two, a piece on whether dinosaurs could yet live somewhere on the globe.  It's sort of a poor man's version of a Ley piece I'm sure I read several years ago.

Three stars.

Budget Planet, by Robert Sheckley

Here is an excerpt from an upcoming book, Dimension of Miracles, that (sort of) stands on its own.  It's the account of a planet builder who cuts corners every chance he gets, and his personal reminiscence of his contract with a certain Jehovah.

It's a lot of fluff, but kind of fun.  Three stars.

The Shapes, by J. H. Rosny aîné

This piece is a contender for the "oldest reprint" award.  A Damon Knight translation from the French (he's quite good at those), it is the story of an extraterrestrial invasion in a pre-Sumerian (but more advanced) Mesopotamia.

Not bad, though the "scientific account" portion in the middle both drags and feels strongly out of flavor with the beginning and end.

Three stars.

The Seventh Planet, by Isaac Asimov

This is a good, but somehow hollow account of the discovery and nature of the planet Mercury, one of the harder planets to observe as it never is very far from the Sun (I had little difficulty finding it when I lived in the desert — the horizons are very low there).

Four stars, I suppose.

That High-Up Blue Day That Saw the Black Sky-Train Come Spinning, by David R. Bunch

Finally, the most forgettable story is this piece of frivolity about two drunks who concoct an alien menace as a prank–but was one of them actually serious?

Two stars.

Who cares? I don't give damn!

However one may feel about the expanding war in Southeast Asia, I think we must remain united on this one matter: the March 1968 issue of F&SF is pretty darned good.  And if we be not united, well, I'd like to hear where you agree or disagree.

You won't even have to pay me to take out an ad…



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 8, 1968] The Trek Offensive (Star Trek: "A Private Little War")

6 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Science fiction often takes the events of today as inspiration for the stories of tomorrow.  Star Trek has been no exception, tackling current issues like Mutually Assured Destruction ("Errand of Mercy", "A Taste of Armageddon"), brainwashing ("Dagger of the Mind"), eugenics ("Space Seed"), and invasive species ("The Trouble with Tribbles").

But no episode has been so nakedly topical, so ripped from the headlines of today, as last week's episode, "A Private Little War".  For as it aired the Viet Cong were (and are) in the midst of a nation-wide assault on South Vietnam, from Vinh Loa in the south to Quang Tri in the north.  No provincial capital, no military base, was spared the boots of Communist troops, the booms of mortar fire. 

At the heart of Saigon, capital of South Vietnam, terrorist forces even managed to take the American embassy for six hours before being repelled by allied forces.  The myth of a hard but impending victory in southeast Asia has been shattered by the 80,000 enemy troops marching seemingly at will throughout the countryside.

And on the small screen, "A Private Little War" directly referenced 20th Century "Asian brush fire wars" as it explored the superpower-fueled conflict between the village and hill peoples of a formerly peaceful planet.

In brief:

The Enterprise has returned to the site of a Lieutenant Kirk's first planetary exploration, an idyllic world of peaceful hunters and traders that the captain had visited 13 years before.  There, he had befriended Tyree, a hunter of the hill people.

But things have changed in 13 years.  The trader city dwellers, formerly at an Iron Age level of existence, have suddenly jumped 12 centuries in technology, wielding flintlocks and hunting the hill people for sport and profit.  Surely, this cannot be a natural development.

Of course, it turns out it is not–a Klingon agent, rapidly advancing the armaments’ state of the art for the city dwellers, has designs on turning the planet into an Imperial colony.

Kirk reaches the conclusion that his only option is to arm the hill people so that they may resist.  But Tyree, now chief of the hill people, is a pacifist who refuses to kill, despite the strong entreaties of his wife, the Nanutu witch woman, Nona.  When Nona proves unable to sway her husband, she attempts to ensnare Kirk with her natural and artificial wiles. This effort unsuccessful, she finally makes a hasty attempt to defect to the city dwellers, apparently preferring the role of Quisling to that of martyr.

Sadly for Nona, the city dwellers have become addicted to rapine and plunder, and (in a scene I'm surprised passed the censors) first assault and then kill Nona.

Captain Kirk, over the strenuous objection of Dr. McCoy, arranges for the Enterprise to manufacture a hundred muskets.  He instructs Tyree, now infected with murderous rage toward the city dwellers over the murder of his wife, in their use.  And so the balance of power shall remain, maintained behind the scenes by two galactic superpowers.

There is, of course, more to the episode, including an interesting "B plot" involving Spock aboard the Enterprise, but I will let my colleagues discuss that.

This episode, smartly directed by Marc Daniels, and reasonably well-scripted by Gene Roddenberry and "Jud Crucis", nevertheless left us with some uncomfortable messages.  For one, it suggests there is no place for the conscientious objector in war, something we just saw hotly (and ably) debated on a recent episode of NET Journal.  "A Private Little War" also seems to say that, under the specter of Mutually Assured Destruction (in this case, at the hands of the Organians rather than by A-bomb), there is no way to win a proxy war.  Rather, the only option is to maintain both sides at armament parity.

I'll let Janice discuss the merit of this argument, but it was noted that, if "A Private Little War" is supposed to be an analogy for Vietnam, it's not a very good one.  Vietnam constitutes a stalled (for now) revolution in a former colony.  The existence of two countries in what was once eastern Indo-China (and Saigon correspondents hesitate to characterize South Vietnam as a functioning nation) is a brief anomaly whose existence has lasted less than 15 years.

Perhaps Roddenberry was not thinking of Vietnam for this episode, but the more apt situation of Korea, where after three years of inconclusive fighting, the superpowers have settled for a more-or-less nonviolent face-off behind the 38th parallel.  Of course, this conflict threatened and still threatens to spiral into active bloodshed with the seizure of the intelligence ship U.S.S. Pueblo two weeks ago.  Indeed, perhaps the only reason this incident has not met more outrage is thanks to the ongoing Tet Offensive thousands of miles away.

In any event, the result is something of a mixed and forced metaphor, a bit of rah-rah for the now obviously bankrupt American policy in Southeast Asia.  These drag down the otherwise excellent acting, writing, and direction (and good use of library music) to make this a three star episode.

False Dichotomy


by Janice L. Newman

“A Private Little War” presents us with a seemingly unsolvable quandary. With the Klingons arming one side, what is Federation to do but arm the other, allowing them to maintain a careful balance and thus preserve the species?

However, this is a false dichotomy. The fact that Kirk doesn’t recognize this, that he lets himself be mournfully caught up in the narrative of “We have no other choice!” suggests that he is so mentally mired in history and uncreative that he can’t even imagine another course of action. Or it suggests that he’s simply out-of-character, acting as a mouthpiece for a thinly-disguised Gene Roddenberry to explain why we have no other choice but to fight in South Vietnam and anywhere else that might fall to Klingon—I mean Communist—aggression.

There are countless possibilities for how the artificial conflict could have been handled. The Federation could have approached the Klingons with evidence of their interference and sought a solution. They could have removed the advanced tools and metals the Klingons were supplying the villagers and offered them better, non-violent alternatives. Captain Kirk could have worked with the hill people to attempt a rapprochement, reconciliation, and ongoing non-violence treaty with the people of the village, no matter how many weapons the Klingons offer. As horrible as it sounds, the Federation could even have held to its own principles of non-interference and chose to let one side destroy the other, leaving only one power on the planet. The fact that none of these options are even considered is awfully damning. It suggests that the writer wanted the audience to come to one and only one conclusion at the end of the story.


Federation diplomacy

Hopefully when Captain Kirk presents his findings to the Federation, cooler, smarter heads will prevail and determine a better way for handling the planet and its people. For, like McCoy, the sole voice of reason in this episode, I can only say, “…furnishing them firearms is certainly not the answer.”

The forced false dilemma dropped the episode a great deal in my estimation. The deeply disturbing rape and murder of Nona dropped it as well. The episode was well-made in many ways, and McCoy is wonderful as always, but I found the message and elements of the content repugnant enough that I can’t give it more than two stars.

Offensive Trek


by Charlotte C. Hill

With rare exceptions, women don’t fare well in Star Trek. We haven't seen a single one rank above Lieutenant. Too often they are harpies or husband-seekers. So today I’m serving a light helping of sexism, chattel slavery, and femicide, since that’s what they served me in "A Private Little War".

Seen through generous eyes, this episode introduced complexity with respect to women. Uhura is featured on the bridge, and Nurse Chapel in the medical bay. Kirk and McCoy see the one indigenous female they meet, Nona, as influential and worthy of respect. But Nona’s culture is a supposed “garden of Eden,” and her only avenue to power is through her husband, Tyree.

When she can’t Lady MacBeth Tyree into committing murders to advance her aims, she steals the captain’s phaser and tries to switch sides. If the leader of the hill people won’t wield the power she wants, she’ll offer power to his enemies… who don’t want it either, at least from a woman.

I expected the villagers to appreciate that Nona is a “witch” who knows medicines and can save a man’s life. But they ignore her skills and her misguided efforts to bring their people power and decide that the prudent thing to do is try to gang-rape her, and when that is interrupted, to murder her.

Perhaps Kirk’s “garden of Eden” references only the hill people, and during his long-ago planet survey he never understood the detente they’d maintained with evil villagers. Or perhaps this Eden had no sexual oppression before the Klingons poisoned the village people. I’d like to believe that. I’d try to believe it, if not for Nurse Chapel.

Woven through this episode are brief interludes with Nurse Chapel and the wounded Mr. Spock. What could have displayed modern women’s status compared to the immature natives was mostly a set-up to denigrate Chapel’s unrequited love for Spock. When she does what she should to help wake Spock, Scotty (of all people) appears in the sick bay and grabs her. And Scotty keeps holding her.


The scene speaks for itself

Thus, even the professional Nurse Chapel is restrained by a man when she clearly doesn’t want to be restrained. Her sanity and behavior are questioned even as (the male) Dr. M’Benga takes her place to complete her work, and she is only released when M’Benga orders her release. (Look! It’s the 23rd century and now when we physically restrain women, we aren’t considering rape. We’re so advanced!)

The scene ends when Chapel returns to Spock’s side to offer him help and her affection, which he rejects. Chapel is spurned. Ha. Hah.

Once again, only Lieutenant Uhura retains her promotion to full personhood over both her blackness and her gender. She is the shining beacon in an episode that offered far too much to criticize about Trek’s perspective on women.

A four-star episode with problems becomes a 2-star episode for casual rape, and for its narrow vision of equality in the future.

Something strange is going on tomorrow. You won't want to miss the next episode:

Here's the invitation!



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