All posts by Gideon Marcus

Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

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

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

Justice delayed

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stay tuned…

Entertainment delayed

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

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

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

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

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

Five stars.

The Dirty Old Men of Maxsec, by Phyllis Gotlieb

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

How to Kidnap a Moon, by Robert S. Richardson

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

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

Anyway, three stars.

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

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

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

Two stars.

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

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

Three stars.

Dead End, by Norman Spinrad

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

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

Two stars.

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

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

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

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

A Cautious Look to the Future

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

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

See you then.




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Fashion, music, politics, sports

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

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

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

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


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


Janice and me playing Patrol with toy soldiers

With the latest issue, Volume 3, Issue 2 (#18 total), there is a new editor at the helm: Jim Dunnigan.  Dunnigan's name may be familiar to you as the fellow who developed 1914 and Jutland for Avalon Hill… and also a self-published game on last year's takeover of Columbia University.  He has elected to apply his wargame-creation talents toward designing a brand new board wargame for S&T—Crete.


Cover of the latest issue of S&T


Table of contents of the latest issue of S&T

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

Lorelei provided the box cover art!

So how does it play?  Read on!

Vital Statistics

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

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


Three maps (one complete, two partial)

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

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

The Rules

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Gameplay

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

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


Me, ebullient after a local victory

After Action Report

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

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

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




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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

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

Options in Space

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Options in Print

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


by Kelly Freas

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

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

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


by Kelly Freas

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

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

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

A Relic of War, by Keith Laumer


by Vincent Difate

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

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

Four stories.

The Big Rock, by Robert Chilson


by Kelly Freas

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

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

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

Three stars.

Proton to Proton, by R. Dean Wilson

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

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

Three stars.

Test Ultimate, by Christopher Anvil


by Vincent Difate

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

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

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

Jump, by William Earls


by Vincent Difate

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

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

Two stars.

Compassion, by J. R. Pierce

by Leo Summers

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

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

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

Three stars.

Doing the math

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

Lesser entries for October include:

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

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




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 22, 1969] Unsmoothed curves (October 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Government by the Many

Every four years, Americans head to the polls to vote for who they want to lead the Free World.  At least, that's what they think they're doing.  What really happens is your vote determines if your choice for President wins your state.  And then, representatives of the states, the so-called "Electoral College", announce who they've been empowered to choose.  Technically, these representatives are not bound to uphold the will of the voter; in practice, bucking the election results has been for protest rather than consequence.

This means that the swingier the state and the bigger the state, the more attention it will get.  For instance, California, somewhat evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and currently the most populous state in the Union, is more important to a candidate than, say, a reliable and sparsely settled state like Arizona.

No more?  This week, the House passed a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would make Presidents directly electable.  This would mark the first major change to the system since 1803.

It looks like half the Senate is in favor, but it will take two thirds of that chamber plus three quarters of the states for the measure to go through.  Opposing such reform are representatives of small states and rural areas, as they wish to retain their outsized impact on the process.  With the rapid rate of urbanization, particularly on the coasts, this proposed amendment threatens to wipe out the electoral relevance of most of the central region of our country, from the Rockies to the Mississippi. 

But that's precisely why the time for such an amendment has come, its advocates propose.  People vote—not acres.

The bill faces an uphill battle, but it's an idea whose time has probably come.

Magazine by the Few


by Ronald Walotsky

Even with an Electoral College, with 50 states, you still get something approximating the will of the people.  With a science fiction magazine, you've only got six to fourteen pieces.  That means any individual story can dramatically affect your enjoyment of an issue, and the variations in quality can make for a wild ride.  Such was my experience reading the latest Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Feminine Intuition, by Isaac Asimov

Susan Calvin, renowned roboscientist, has gone into semi-retirement, passing the torch to the new generation.  Said successors develop a robot with flexible programming, one that can make free associations rather than rely on its own hard-coding.  Its designers, all male, decide that such fuzzy thinking could only be ascribed to a female, and so they built the robot with feminine curves and a sexy contralto voice.  JN-5, or "Jane", is a big hit with all the (male, of course) scientists and politicians.

Jane is employed to determine which of the 5500 stars with 80 light years of Earth would be most likely to be inhabitable so that humanity's limited interstellar capacity can be used most efficiently.  Jane fingers three candidates, but she and her maker are killed in a freak accident.  Only Susan Calvin can save the day.

The story drips with male chauvinism, but ultimately, that's the point.  It's an uncomfortable ride, but wait for the end, which redeems the story.

Three stars.

Come to Me Not in Winter's White, by Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny

A brilliant physicist discovers his wife has but one year to live.  He builds a room in which time goes much more slowly so that he will have more time to discover a cure.  When the wife gets lonely (since she's by herself for all of…what…a week?) the husband picks out a brilliant but plain woman to be his wife's companion.

Decades later, when the physicist discovers the cure, he returns to the room to find the two women making love.  Jealously, he locks the room and accelerates time, leaving his wife to die, his wife's lover to live out the rest of her life with the corpse, and for both of them to be out of the physicist's ken in the blink of an eye.

I didn't like the story much when I read it, and now, having to revisit it for this summary, I realize that I hate it.  Not just for the misogyny, but for the absurdity of the premise (there are no spinoff societal effects from inventing time control?!) and the laughability of the final insult—oh no! Wife is not only unfaithful but (whisper it) a homosexual!

One star.

The Movie People, by Robert Bloch

A perennial extra, veteran of 450+ films, spends most of his life at the Silent Movies.  He's not just reliving his glory days; it's how he can catch glimpses of his lost love, a fellow extra, who died in 1930, just as her career was beginning to take off.

The fellow knows every movie, every scene in which he and his girlfriend appeared.  So why does she start showing up in films she never appeared in before, some that even date to before her start in show biz?  And why does it seem she is mouthing messages for him alone?  Is she enjoying a kind of celluloid life after death?

A pleasant, sentimental story.  Three stars.

A Final Sceptre, a Lasting Crown, by Ray Bradbury

Once transportation via personal helicopter becomes a cheap and ubiquitous reality, everyone moves away from points north of 40 degrees latitude to reside in California, Florida, the Mediterranean, and other like climates.  This is the tale of the last man in England, and the friend who tries to convince him to join the other emigrés.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one—was the Earth growing cold?  Had their been a calamity in the Northern Hemisphere?  No.  People were just leaving wholesale out of personal preference.

Never mind that some people like seasons.  Never mind that the tropics can't fit all those people.  Never mind that Aleuts and Laplanders haven't left their ancestral homes despite the capability of moving to town if they want to.

Lots of folks like Bradbury.  Maybe I started on him too late.

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Worlds in Confusion, by Isaac Asimov

Wherein the Good Doctor takes on Velikovsky and his ridiculous, religion-cloaked-in-pseudoscience tome, Worlds in Collision.  Did Jupiter really eject Venus as a comet?  Did that rogue planet stop the Earth in its tracks, causing no ill effects beyond the Ten Plagues and the pausing of the day at the Battle of Jericho?  Do people really believe this claptrap?

Four stars.


by Chesley Bonestell

"Russian astronauts have arrived on the rim of Copernicus only to discover that the Americans have already been there …"

The Soft Predicament, by Brian W. Aldiss

A mission to Jupiter finds the gas giant teeming with life.  On the Moon, a giant black edifice (made by people, not aliens) sifts human dreams, becoming the repository for archetypes—the goal to find a solution to strife and hatred in the world.  On Earth, the globe is split between Communist, Free, and Black domains.  The "Free" world is highly regimented, with children taken from their parents after a decade, and marital partners divorced on the same schedule.

Our protagonists, such as they are, are neurotic Westciv citizens, adapted, but not adjusted, to the new way of life.  Their collected dreams represent the only way out of the mess technology has gotten us into.

What a lousy story this is.  Turgid, mock-momentous claptrap.  Budget Ballard.  Thoroughly unentertaining, its message buried, and not a lick of science to be found in this so-called science fiction.  I recognize that the definition of the genre now goes beyond nuts-and-bolts engineering stories to include softer sciences like psychology and sociology, and that the New Wave is an experiment in bringing a degree of literary-ness to SF, but this is too much of a thing.

One star.

The Man Who Learned Loving, by Theodore Sturgeon

A brilliant engineer-turned-hippie stumbles upon the principle of perpetual motion.  In order to keep the discovery from being used for evil, he leaves his life of Bohemian idyll, cuts off his hair, and Makes it Big.  Thus armored in respectability, he carefully manages the revolution's global introduction, ensuring peace and propserity for all humanity.

Upon returning to the backwoods town where he left his lady love and a life of languor, his erstwhile paramour chides him for selling his soul for progress when he could have had love.

This is the sort of story Lafferty or Davidson might have played more for laughs, Sheckley more for bitterness.  Sturgeon presents it completely straight, and as always, he writes pretty well.  His statement seems to be: rather than just be nice and preach love, actually do something to make the world better.

On the surface, he has a point.  Free love is all very nice, but aren't those dirty hippies really just parasites on real working society?  On the other hand, Sturgeon rigs the deck.  His hero discovers the patently impossible after a few days' work.  Moreover, there are plenty of believers in the hippie ethic who are working, giving, and improving the world.  It's a mentality, not a nationality.

Sturgeon, who predates the Swinging Sixties, obviously bears some resentment toward the new crowd.  Kicking straw men is not the answer.

Three stars.

The Electric Ant, by Philip K. Dick

Mr. Poole, executive of a powerful corporation, is in a flying-car accident.  When he regains consciousness, he finds he is not a human at all but an "electric ant"—an android.  Designed to be a figurehead, all of his memories are programmed, his life a lie.

He becomes determined to find the nature of his ongoing programming and discovers that there are no further limits on his thoughts and activities.  He does, however, discover a punched tape spool that controls his sensory input.  Poole begins fiddling with it, altering his subjective reality.  His ultimate goal is to experience everything in the universe at once, something he thinks, as a robot, he can handle better than a human might.

Dick once again turns in a story about a middle-aged man going through an existential crisis.  There is also the drug-use metaphor (Dick is into uppers, I understand).  It doesn't make the most sense—the ant's reality is subjective, but the external universe also exists, so what, exactly does the tape spool control? Poole is determined to find out, taking himself on a psychedelic, 2001-esque journey whose mission is to prove or disprove Solipsism. I feel Dick takes the easy, the obvious way out, at the very end.

Three stars.

Get a Horse!, by Larry Niven

Niven returns to the realm of fantasy, but this time, with a completely new character and setup.  Hanville Svetz is a hapless time traveler from more than a thousand years from now.  Hailing from a polluted, dictatorial future, he has been sent back to 1200 AD to find an extinct beast for the Secretary General's zoo—a simple horse.

What Svetz actually finds, and the troubles that befall him on his quest are interesting and delightful.  There is a deft, sardonic touch to this story, and room has been left for many follow-ups.  I look forward to them.

Four stars.

Science Fiction for the woodpile

As with last month, the latest F&SF finished on the wrong end of the 3-stars mark.  Though F&SF is the shortest of the SF digests, it took me the longest to finish.  I just wasn't looking forward to it.  I can see why my nephew, David, canceled his subscription a few years back. It's a pity that this twentieth anniversary issue is so dismal compared to the ones that came out when the magazine was young. That said, hope springs eternal, and I would hate to miss stories like Get a Horse!.

I just wish my job would let me skip the stories I don't like…




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 12, 1969] Earthshaking (October 1969 Galaxy)

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

Time for a change

My local rag, The Escondido Times-Advocate, isn't much compared to, say, The Los Angeles Times.  But every so often, they are worth the subscription fee (beyond the TV listings and the funnies).  Take this article, for instance, which might well be at home in a Willy Ley column:

Basically, CalTech has a new timepiece with more precision, accurate to the hundredth of a second, so that when it is used in conjunction with a seismometer, earthquakes can be better mapped.  More excitingly, the new clock weighs just eight pounds—less than a tenth that of the hundred-pound monster it replaces.

Transistors have made it to geology.

We hear all about small computers and more efficient satellites, but this story really drives home just how quickly the miniaturization revolution is diffusing to all walks of life.  Is a computerized pocket slide rule or a Dick Tracy phone that far off?

Making waves


by Gray Morrow

A lot has happened this year at the old gray lady of science fiction, Galaxy.  They changed editors.  They lost their science columnist.  And as we shall see from the latest issue, things are starting to change, ever so slightly.

Tomorrow Cum Laude, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

The revolution does not begin with this piece, a direct sequel to "Kendy's World", which came out at the end of last year.  If you'll recall, Kendy was a boy during the National Emergency, a time of civil and racial strife that rocked the nation into a semi-permanent police state.  Kendy was recruited by a Mr. Smith, who gave him a scholarship at National University—which turned out to be a training camp for spies.  "Tomorrow Cum Laude" details Kendy's first mission.

He is sent to the University of Southern California to take pictures of a biological centrifuge.  Why he is sent on a domestic espionage mission when he has been trained in Russian is never explicitly stated.  Moreover, the overarching mystery remains: why did the first cosmonaut to Mars chicken out after finding…something…on Phobos, and why are the Soviets building a secret base on the Moon?  Did they find a monolith?  Two?

All of this is background to Kendy's personal story, his slow, jerky maturation into adulthood.  His growing feelings for his accidental roommate, the beautiful woman, Amani, from the southern Californian all Black city-state of Nairobi.  His conflicted loyalties to the government of the United States.

Aside from an overuse of the word "amble" (hint: try sprinkling in a "saunter" or two), it's not a bad story, actually.  It reads a bit like a juvenile except the subject matter is rather deep, and at one point, Kendy describes himself as, frankly, horny.

I'm enjoying this series more than his first one, about the Esks.

Three stars.

Truly Human, by Damon Knight

Here is where the change becomes noticeable.  Knight, who predates but has embraced the New Wave, offers up this interesting piece about triune aliens, who can only think as trios.  They abduct three humans to see if they can be adapted to their way of thought.  The test is, unfortunately, not altogether scientific.

The beginning and end are the most interesting bits, creatively rendered.  The middle part is wanly droll, though effectively conveyed.

Three stars.

The God of Cool, by J. W. Schutz

A smuggler is shot by fellow gang members on the steps of the hospital.  As he had willed his body to the organ banks, he finds life after death in a myriad of don-ee bodies.  There are three wrinkles:

  1. The recipients of his organs end up being members of his gang;
  2. The smuggler retains a degree of consciousness in his frozen state; and,
  3. The smuggler retains a degree of control over his scattered parts…

The setup sounds a little silly, but I actually found it quite an effective story.  It's not played for silly, as it might have been in F&SF, and it doesn't try to explain the psi in scientific terms, as might have happened if it had shown up in Analog.  It sure wouldn't work in Niven's universe as detailed in "The Organleggers" and "Slowboat Cargo", though!

Five stars.

Element of Chance, by Bob Shaw

Cytheron is a young being on the cusp of adulthood.  He fears maturity, afraid to lose his identity in the adult shared mind, so he flees to the edge of a quasar.  There, he believes he is free from pursuit as no information can leave the gravitational warping of the dead star/collection of stars.  But he is also trapped—and for him to be freed will require a minor supernova, one which might have an effect on a neighboring star system with a familiar number of planets.

It's a mildly cute story, but I am generally averse to Catastrophism in my science fiction.  The universe seems to work by general rules; our Sun is not unique.  In any event, the piece feels like a veneer of fiction on a science article Shaw happened to read recently, sort of how Niven's "Neutron Star" is based on an Asimov science fact article (I can't remember when it came out—probably '64 or '65).

Two stars.

The Soul Machine, by A. Bertram Chandler

Yet another tale of John Grimes, this one from early in his career when he was a Lieutenant in command of a tiny courier ship.  It is, in fact, the direct sequel to "The Minus Effect", which came out just two months ago.  Is a fix-up novel in the works?

In this tale, the exalted passenger isn't a chef-cum-assassin, but rather an amiable robot on a mission—to lead a mechanical movement that places humans on the bottom of the command chain for a change.  Luckily for Grimes, not all computers think alike.

As always, pleasant but not particularly memorable.  Three stars.

Ersalz's Rule, by George C. Willick


by Jack Gaughan

Two aliens have been playing a competitive sport for the last forty years.  Their playing pieces are one human being each, born at the same time.  The winner of the game is the one whose human survives longer.

At first, it seems one alien has all the advantages: his human can do no wrong, suffer no lasting malaise.  He is, however, bored and reckless.  The other alien's piece is a slob whom the breaks never favor.  These circumstances lead to the rare invocation of Ersalz's Rule, which affords the possibility of the two pieces switching places.  It's a Hail Mary gambit, but it's all the player's got at this point.

The problem with this tale, aside from its heavy handed clunkiness, is that everything is arbitrary.  The rules of the game are introduced such that there are no real stakes, and the ending is just kind of stupid.

Two stars.

Take the B Train, by Ernest Taves


by Jack Gaughan

On a train trip through France with his distant wife, a fellow discovers that his garage opener doesn't just trigger his door—it also swaps out his spouse with parallel universe versions of herself.  Investigating further, the man determines that the gizmo does a lot more than just that, and he ends up hip-deep in a temporal, spatial, and emotional trip from which he may never return.

This would have been a fantastic setup for a stellar novel, perhaps by Ted White.  As it is, I still enjoyed the romantic and fulsome writing of the the piece.  I also appreciated the protagonist's mixed feelings toward the various might-have-been marital partners.  Taves never does explain how how our hero acquired the device, though there are hints.

Four stars, but a bit of a missed opportunity.

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

At the beginning of the century, there were just 92 "natural" elements.  Humanity has added 12 to the roster by dint of atom-smashing effort.  Ley talks about them and provides tables describing their stability (or lack thereof).

Asimov would have done it better (though we might not have gotten tables in F&SF).  Three stars.

Stella, by Dannie Plachta

A lonely man, perhaps one of the last, is sitting on the frozen surface of his world, watching as The Last Star rises.  He is alone, as his estranged wife has sought shelter and warmth underground.  Only a surgically implanted broadcast power receiver protects him from the elements.

Then Stella arrives on a dot of blue flame.  She is invisible, but she describes herself as desirable, and her voice and touch certainly indicate that she is.  When she begs the man for his receiver, he finds he cannot resist her entreaty, though it means his death.

It's all very unclear and metaphorical, and I suspect if I knew what Plachtas was trying to say, I might like it less than I did.  Nevertheless, I found it moving.  Maybe it's a Rorschach Test of a story and it hit me at the right time.

Three stars.

Dune Messiah (Part 4 of 5), by Frank Herbert

This was supposed to be the final installment of Dune Messiah, but the editor said he had just too much good stuff to fill the magazine.  Hence Part 4 rather than Part Ultimate.  Of course, having trudged through the prior three bits, I was not looking forward to yet another slog.

I was pleasantly surprised.  Oh, it's still a series of conversations.  Sure, not a whole lot happens.  But we do have an interesting situation set up and then resolved: Hayt, the resurrected ghola of Duncan Idaho, is mesmerized by Bijaz the Tleilaxi dwarf and given a frightful compulsion.  The tension of Part 4 is how this episode will play out, and Herbert manages it reasonably well.

Sure, there is way too much time spent on the now eyeless Paul and his frightening visions.  Yes, I could give two figs about Chani, Paul's true love, destined to die for the last two installments.  True, everything in the last 150 pages could probably be compressed to 50, and I'm still not sure if the payoff will be worth it.

That said, I was not disposed to skim, as had happened in each of the prior sections.  For that, Frank Herbert, you get…

Three stars.

Aftershocks

Thus, nothing Earth-shattering.  Nevertheless, there's a certain gestalt to this issue that feels a bit fresher than prior ones—even though almost half of the issue is devoted to continued serials!  Maybe it's because those authors are finally turning in better work than they have in a while.

Perhaps we are finally witnessing a moment of change for this fading pillar of SFnal fiction.  It would be pretty neat to see Galaxy transform itself into a leading magazine again.

Stay tuned!


Hopefully, the magazine will fare better than this Ocotillo Wells home that got damaged in last April's quake…




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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 6, 1969] A hot time in the old town (Worldcon in St. Louis!)

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by Gideon Marcus

What an idea to have the 27th World Science Fiction Convention in crummy St. Louis in summer!  It was hot.  It was muggy.


From Fanac

And it was glorious.  Thanks, Ozark SF Assn., particularly co-chairs Ray and Joyce Fisher, for your bid and your hard work.  Apparently, the bid traced its beginnings all the way back to the Room 770 con party at Nolacon I (New Orleans 1951), the last of the small Worldcons—under 200 attendees.

What a contrast, St. Louis!  This was the biggest, longest Worldcon ever held, with a reported attendance of 1534.  Partying began Tuesday evening in the con committee suite, registration for the con began Thursday, programming ran to Monday, and the parties were still going the following Tuesday night.  "Night", of course, is an arbitrary designation: Joe Haldeman was tending bar for the WSFA through 7:30AM on Friday.

Because the con was longer than ever, the price went up accordingly: $4 to show up, $3 to vote.


Registration.  From Calisphere

Aside from the slow elevators, one couldn't fault the facilities.  The Chase Park-Plaza, billed as "the biggest and best con hotel west of the Mississippi", charged prices to match: $13 single, $18 double, suites starting at $35.  That's if you could get in—the hotel oversold 20% on their reservations but only got 5% cancelations.  Hundreds were turned away.


From Fanac

As you can see from the program, there were lots of interesting panels in addition to the permanent fixtures: the dealer room, the art show (10th annual International Science-Fantasy Art Exhibition) run by Bjo Trimble with Bruce Pelz, and (in a new addition) all night movies.  Vern and Rita Coriell hosted the "Dum-Dum" of the Burroughs Bibliophiles.  Janie Lamb supervised the N3F Hospitality Room.


Dealer hall.  From Calisphere


Art show.  From Calisphere


From Calisphere


Art auction.  From Calisphere


Larry Niven and Robert Silverberg.  From Calisphere


Lexy Panshin.  From Calisphere


Audience.  From Calisphere


Bar con: Sidney Coleman, Evelyn del Rey, Judy-Lynn Benjamin, Edna Budrys, and unidentified.  From Calisphere


Room party.  From Calisphere

Jack Gaughan was the first artist since Frank Paul in '56 to be the convention Guest of Honor.  Harlan Ellison was the toastmaster, a job he's quite good at.  A little longwinded, but always funny.  On Friday, he auctioned off Bob Silverberg for $66 before Silverbob, in turn, auctioned Harlan off for $115 to a bunch of young ladies wearing Roddenberry sweatshirts.


Harlan at the auction.  From Calisphere

Ellison took that opportunity to plump for "Clarion", a school for S-F authors, and since he had driven the bids up so much, he asked if the auction proceeds might be split, half to the con, half to Clarion.  Ray Fisher said sure.

Later, Ellison said he was planning on leaving cons and the fan scene to focus on writing.

The Costume Ball on Saturday night was momentous for several reasons.  First, a sample of the contestants:

Grand Prize and Judge's Choice went to Karen Anderson and her daughter, Astrid.  The former turned the latter into a vampire, complete with gory, dripping blood.  It was possibly the best performance at the Masquerade ever.


From Fanac

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro won Honorable Mention Most Beautiful as "Ilmatar" of Finnish legend. Co-winner was Dilip Cowlage as Nimue the Enchantress.


From Fanac

The Carters, Lin (pro and fan) and Noel, came as Ming the Merciless and Princess Aura of Flash Gordon fame.  They won Popular Vote #3.


From Fanac

The Keeper and the Houris won Honorable Mention Best Group.


From Fanac

Most humorous went to Rick Norwood, who went as Charlie Brown (of Peanuts fame, not the famous fan).  And thereby hangs a tail.  A kite tail.

See, Rick was stumbling around a lot as part of his shtick.  Near the end of the event, while folks were waiting for the results, he fell off the runway and plunged into the movie screen the con was renting from the hotel for $40 a day. 


Rick Norwood as Good Ole Charlie Brown, just before he fell through the movie screen.  Good grief, indeed.  From Fanac

Harlan jumped into the fray, asking how much it would cost to replace the screen.  $250 was the answer.  So he walked the floor, soliciting donations so the convention wouldn't have to cop the bill.  He collected $600!  Then and there, he suggested that the excess go to Clarion.  Ray countered with the proposal that the money buy a beer bust on Monday.  The latter went over well.

Sunday night was the Awards Banquet, with a paid attendance of 660 (would have been more except that tickets were only sold until Saturday noon.) Dinner was great, as was the service, and Harlan did a bit of pre-show gab to get everyone in the mood.

Out of nowhere, Ellison announced (not proposed, not suggested) that the excess funds collected earlier were going to Clarion.  The audience was not keen on this, especially since rumor had the screen repair going for $36 and the collection take $800.  Harlan went on, belatedly, to justify the move, saying that the State of Pennsylvania was about to withdraw financial support for the workshop.

Elliot Shorter, a huckster from New York, drew himself up to his full eight feet (well, that's how he looked compared to Harlan) and said "Now, wait just one goll-darned minute, Harlan." He and Bruce Pelz led the protest.  Ray Fisher tried to bail Harlan out, but Ellison's pride was wounded, and he called the crowd "stingy bastards."  Ray tabled discussion until the business meeting the next day (it was decided that the extra money would establish a Worldcon Emergency Fund—just for things like emergency screen repair.)


Ellison and Fisher.  From Calisphere

At the banquet Lester Del Rey eulogized Willy Ley, who passed away in June. L. Sprague de Camp then read the text of a special plaque given by First Fandom to Willy's wife, Olga, in place of the First Fandom Award which Willy was slated to get this year.

Jack Gaughan spoke about his work in the art field, and Englishman Eddie Jones, winner of the Trans Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF) this year, also gave a speech.

And then the Hugos were announced…


Robert Bloch presents Hugos.  From Calisphere

Best Novel

Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner [Doubleday]

Nominees

Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin [Ace]
Nova by Samuel R. Delany [Doubleday]
Past Master by R. A. Lafferty [Ace]
The Goblin Reservation by Clifford D. Simak [Galaxy Apr, Jun 1968; Putnam]

Not too much dissent here given the amount of overlap with our Stars picks.  Indeed, we both picked the Brunner for the top spot (though, truth be told, I personally didn't get past page 100—I like my books short.  Maybe I'm just old.) The Panshin is great, and the Delany is worthy, though some murmur under their breaths that it is more impressive than good.  I can't comment on the Lafferty, as we didn't cover it.  The Simak didn't get a Star or even an honorable mention, but it's a fine book.  Indeed, it's possibly my favorite Simak novel.

Best Novella

“Nightwings” by Robert Silverberg [Galaxy Sep 1968]

Nominees

“Dragonrider” by Anne McCaffrey [Analog Dec 1967, Jan 1968]
“Lines of Power” by Samuel R. Delany [F&SF May 1968]
“ Hawk Among the Sparrows ” by Dean McLaughlin [Analog Jul 1968]

Novellas are rare in SF and good ones even rarer, so it's not surprising that we at the Journey and those at the Worldcon liked much the same stuff.  What's strange, however, is that the nominators chose two novellas that were later expanded to full serials—to wit, the Silverberg and the McCaffrey.  "Sparrows" was on our Honorable Mention list.

Best Novelette

Best Novelette

“The Sharing of Flesh” by Poul Anderson [Galaxy Dec 1968]


From Calisphere

Nominees

“Total Environment” by Brian W. Aldiss [Galaxy Feb 1968]
“Getting Through University” by Piers Anthony [If Aug 1968]
“Mother to the World” by Richard Wilson [Orbit #3, 1968]

Three hits and a miss—the Anthony is good…for Anthony, and the Wilson was roundly panned when Kris reviewed it.  It's really a shame that so few slots are devoted to this length at the Hugos because there are so many stories to choose from.

Short Fiction

Best Short Story

Winner: “The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World” by Harlan Ellison [Galaxy Jun 1968]

Nominees

“All the Myriad Ways” by Larry Niven [Galaxy Oct 1968]
“The Dance of the Changer and the Three" by Terry Carr [Farthest Reaches]
“The Steiger Effect" by Betsy Curtis [Analog Oct 1968]
“Masks" by Damon Knight [Playboy Jul 1968]

Harlan and Larry made the Dean's list again, but not for the stories we'd have chosen.  It's neat to see that fans are choosing tales from beyond The Big Five, although the Knight is weak.  As for the Curtis, I have no idea how that one made the cut, especially given just how many great stories came out last year.

Best Dramatic Presentation

Winner: 2001: A Space Odyssey [Paramount] Directed by Stanley Kubrick; Screenplay by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick; based on the story “The Sentinel” by Arthur C. Clarke

Nominees

Yellow Submarine [Apple/Hearst/King Features] Directed by George Dunning; Written by Al Brodax, Roger McGough, Jack Mendelsohn, Lee Minoff and Erich Segal

Charly [ABC Pictures/Selmer] Directed by Ralph Nelson; Screenplay by Stirling Silliphant; based on the short story and novel Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Rosemary’s Baby [Paramount] Directed by Roman Polanski; Screenplay by Roman Polanski; based on the novel by Ira Levin

The Prisoner – “Fallout” [Everyman/ITC] Written and directed by Patrick McGoohan

For the first time Star Trek didn't make the ballot—not even with a single episode!  That's a shame as there was plenty of good Trek last year, particularly "Is There in Truth No Beauty."  2001 was no surprise, but Rosemary's Baby is horror, and Charly was underwhelming.  Interestingly, we picked an episode of The Prisoner ("The Schizoid Man") but not the last one, which was rather incomprehensible.

Best Professional Magazine

Winner: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction ed. by Edward L. Ferman

Nominees

Analog Science Fiction and Fact ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Galaxy ed. by Fred Pohl
New Worlds ed. by Michael Moorcock
IF Science Fiction ed. Fred Pohl

This year is just a reshuffling of last year's picks.  I suppose they were somewhat starved for choice, as usual.  One wonders if they might open up the selection to anthology series like Orbit.

Best Professional Artist

Winner: Jack Gaughan

Nominees

Frank Kelly Freas
Leo Dillon and Diane Dillon
Vaughn Bodé

I'm not sure why Jack keeps winning.  Perhaps it's because he hobnobs with the fans more than the rest.  Bodé is the newcomer, and his whimiscal style is charming.  You mostly saw him around the Pohl mags.  Freas, of course, does almost every Analog cover (which makes it surprising he didn't win).  The Dillons do a lot of Ace covers, so they get a lot of eyeballs on their work.  It's interesting because they have to fit their work in these small boxes due to the domino layout of the covers.

Best Fanzine

Winner: Science Fiction Review ed. by Richard E. Geis

Nominees

Riverside Quarterly ed. by Leland Sapiro
Trumpet ed. by Tom Reamy
Warhoon ed. by Richard Bergeron
Shangri L’Affaires ed. by Ken Rudolph

It's interesting that Trumpet got nominated on the strength of just one issue—but it is a highly professional fanzine.  I expect they'll get nommed again this year (Niven has a great piece in the latest one).

Riverside Quarterly, like Science Fiction Review (né Psychotic) is an excellent literary criticism mag, and its pages are largely filled by pros.  Warhoon, a similar, if less attractive 'zine, I avoid because they publish Walter Breen.  Shangri L’Affaires is the house organ for the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society.

Best Fan Writer


Warner at Discon ('63).  From Calisphere

Winner: Harry Warner, Jr.

Nominees

Richard Delap
Banks Mebane
Walter A. Willis

The hermit of Hagerstown has jumped from nominee to winner, and no surprise.  His perzine Horizon has been a staple of FAPA (Fantasy Amateur Press Association, natch) since the '40s.

I see Richard Delap all over the place, mostly reviewing books.  Banks Mebane runs the Washington (D.C.) Science Fiction Association.  Walter A. Willis is a well-known Irish fan.

Best Fan Artist

Winner: Vaughn Bodé


From Calisphere

Nominees

George Barr
William Rotsler
Tim Kirk
Doug Lovenstein

Vaughn's stuff was at Worldcon's art show this year.  Like Gaughan, he has feet firmly in both the pro and fan worlds.  He also did a cute comic that came out at the convention.  Barr does cover art and also the comic "Broken Sword", which appears in the fanzine, Trumpet.  Bill Rotsler, "The Amiable Bulldozer", has been everywhere and seen everything.  He's also been doing covers since the '40s.  Tim Kirk specializes in fantasy, particularly Lord of the Rings.  I don't know Doug Lovenstein.

There was a pair of informal awards presented as well:

BIG HEART AWARD:

Presented to Harry Warner Jr. by Forry Ackerman (accepted by Bob Bloch)

and

The FIRST FANDOM AWARD:

presented to Murray Leinster by last year's winner, Jack Williamson (accepted by Judy Lynn Benjamin)


Jack Williamson.  From Calisphere

Where next?

This year, Worldcon moved to a two-years-in-advance bidding tradition, which was actually convenient since next year, the event will be in Heidelberg, West Germany, which could have made the bid for 1971 difficult.  As it turns out, '71's con (Noreastcon) will take place in Boston.


Noreastcon bid table.  From Calisphere

And that's that!  I think we all deserve a rest after all of that drama.  Time to crack into all of those great science fiction books that have been recommended by our pals at the World Science Fiction Society!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 31, 1969] Over (and under) the Moon (September 1969 Analog)

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

Being #2, they try…harder?

Last October, just after Apollo 7 went up, it looked as if the Soviets still had a chance at beating us to the Moon.  Their Zond 5, really a noseless Soyuz, had been sent around the Moon two months ahead of our Apollo 8 circumlunar flight.  Just a month later, the similar Zond 6 took off on November 16 and zoomed around the Moon before not just landing, but making a pinpoint landing in the Kazakh S.S.R. (near its launch site) with the aid of little wings.  Apparently, the prior Zond 5's splashing down in the Indian Ocean was not according to plan.

Shortly after the flight, the Soviets dropped the bombshell that Zond 6 could have been manned—and the next one might well be.

Well, as we all know, the Communists didn't beat us around the Moon.  Moreover, they didn't beat us to the Moon, either.  Remember all that talk about Luna 15 during the flight of Apollo 11?  That was the probe launched just before Columbia and Eagle, rumored to be a sample-return mission.  Well, it crashed into the aptly named Sea of Crises about 500 miles northeast of Eagle's landing site on July 21.  Had its mission been successful, the Soviets might have had bragging rights about getting the first batch of Moon rocks.

But, as the Ruskies found out after who knows how many unsuccessful Luna flights, only succeeding in 1966 with Luna 9, complicated maneuvers rarely work on the first time out.

That said, even with the clear American victory in the Moon race, the Soviets appear to still be going strong.  Earlier this month, Zond 7 sailed around the Earth's companion, landing on August 14.  Still no people onboard, but perhaps they worked out the communications troubles that reportedly plagued the last two Zond missions.

Whether these Zond flights presage an upcoming attempt with people onboard remains to be seen.  According to former NASA chief Jim Webb, the Soviets are also building a super rocket, which they will use to put cosmonauts on the Moon.  Put two and two together, and perhaps the early 70s will see the USSR catch up to and surpass the US.

Unless we get to Mars first…

Being #1, they've stopped trying

Analog has, for decades now, kept the title of the most-read science fiction magazine on the market.  On the other hand, editor John Campbell has been sitting on his laurels for a long time, producing an unexciting periodical for the past several years.  The latest issue of Analog only adds more fuel to the argument that perhaps it is time for the old don to step down and let someone vigorous take his place—at least to bring the magazine into the 1960s!


by Kelly Freas

Your Haploid Heart, by James Tiptree, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

A two-man team is sent from Earth to the planet of Esthaa.  Their mission: to determine of the humanoid inhabitants are, well, human.  The results may put to bed the two competing theories that explain the ubiquity of the human form in the galaxy: common evolution and random scattering, or independent, convergent evolution.

The Esthaans are a robust, beautiful people, but there is something somehow phony about them.  Meanwhile, they seem to be on the verge of completing a genocide against the primitive Flenns…who also appear to be a type of human.

What is the connection between the two races?  And why have the civilized Esthaans developed such an antipathy for the pathetic Flenns?  And is an earlier Terran expedition somehow the cause of all this?

There's some interesting biology wrapped up in this story (as suggested by the title), and since biology is not my specialty, I can't even begin to speculate how plausible it is.  But it's an interesting story, well-written, and easily the best I've read from newcomer Tiptree.

Four stars.

Starman, by W. Macfarlane


by Leo Summers

The assistant fifth mate on an interstellar tramp freighter decides to jump ship on a backwater world.  The natives have reverted to savagery after once having broadcast power and space travel.

Said starman soon learns that Stone Age living isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Luckily, there are a few relics of the old days left at his disposal.

This is a fun, if inconsequential, story.  The writing is breezy, fun, and tongue-in-cheek, though the casual slurs are somewhat offputting.  I'm also getting very tired of humans, humans everywhere instead of true E-Ts.

Three stars.

The Big Boosters of the U.S.S.R., by G. Harry Stine

Speaking of the Soviet super-booster—amateur rocketeer Stine conjectures as to the configuration and capability of the USSR's rocket stable.  Of course, given how secretive the Russians are, there's a lot of guesswork involved.

I appreciated it, but I have to wonder how accurate he is.  In particular, I'm not sure why he believes that Soyuz 1 was launched on a different rocket from the later Soyuz missions.  I've seen nothing to that effect.  Maybe he's talking about whatever is shooting up Zonds around the Moon.  Those are, after all, just stripped down Soyuzes.

Anyway, four stars.  We'll see how right he is in a decade or so…

Damper, by E. G. Von Wald


by Peter Skirka

A tyro hotshot joins the Weather Control Bureau and is dispatched to a small, Arabian country.  When a Soviet incursion threatens the peace, he shifts the focus of his rain-making efforts from irrigation to interdiction.

Aside from the casual and constant male chauvinism, I have a hard time buying weather control as an SFnal theme, particularly so thinly sketched out as it is in this story.  Orbital lasers (don't those count as space-based weapons?) pumped a lot of heat into the atmosphere to evaporate ocean water and create onshore winds—that heat doesn't go away.  What happens when the Earth warms up by several degrees thanks to all that extra heat?  Beyond that, the technique wouldn't work anyway: it takes more than wet air to make rain; you need some kind of condensate material.  That's why planes seed clouds with silver iodide so the water has something to coalesce around to make droplets.

Two stars.

Stimulus-Response, by Herbert Jacob Bernstein


by Kelly Freas

A trio of scientists are using electrodes and encephalograms to record brain patterns.  The goal is to train a dog to use specific thoughts to trigger its food dish.  In the process, the researchers accidentally teach the beagle how to telekinese.

Not only is this story a turgid bit of pseudo-engineering, but then it abandons science entirely to enter the region of Campbell's beloved psi.  Look, I can sort of enjoy psionics if I treat them like a kind of magic, but when they're mixed in with engineering to get a patina of respectability—and the story is deadly dull to boot—well, there's only one score for it.

One star.

In His Image, by Robert Chilson


by Leo Summers

A biologist synthesizes the first androids—they are human in all respects, save for their satyr-form lower halves.  Bred to be performers, they have been conscious just six months, but have the minds of college professors and the bodies of nubile goddesses.  When the Actors' Guild sues for an injunction against their use in the entertainment business citing unfair competition, a friendly reporter purchases one of them despite the fact that they are sentient and, for all intents and purposes, human. The goal is to force the courts to declare the androids fully human and thus exempt from measures against discrimination.

The question of whether or not androids are people has frequently been explored in science fiction, from the sublime Synth to the less than perfectly successful Trek episode Requiem for Methuselah.  Chilson's tale is… well, it's dull and kind of stupid.  The androids have no personality save for interchangeable sex kitten, the writing is uninspired, and the universe implausible.  It's not even clear what point Chilson is trying to make, so muddied are all the story's elements.  In the end, the plot of the story, such as it is, seems only to exist so we can have a trio of jiggly goat girls mincing around.

One star.

The Visitors, by Jack Wodhams


by Kelly Freas

Terrans land on the first inhabitable world ever found and make first contact with the natives.  Turns out "primitive" doesn't mean "defenseless."

This would be a two-star story, inoffensive but not noteworthy, except for the sheer number of words Wodhams wastes getting to his point.  Twenty pages that could easily have been condensed to, I dunno, five.

One star.

Crashlanding

Well, like the Soviets, Analog is churning issues out that look like winners, but really are just unimpressive retreads.  This one clocks in at 2.4, which is higher than Galaxy (2.2), but lower than Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.7), Visions of Tomorrow (2.8), Amazing (2.9). If (3.0), New Worlds (3.3).

Only one new piece of fiction was written by a woman, and if you took all the decent stuff published this month, you'd only be able to fill two digests—and that's with the extra paperback anthology this month.  Whither short SF?  Whither the Soviet space program?

I guess we'll see what happens next month…




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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 24, 1969] Flying and dragging (September 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Flying

By the time this makes press, we'll already (hopefully) be on the flight back to San Diego.  As with most publications, though we try to hit the press as fresh as possible, there is a delay between writing and printing.  This is exceptionally unavoidable this time 'round because…

…we're off to Woodstock!

Specifically, the Woodstock Art & Music Fair, an "Aquarian Exposition" in White Lake, New York.  There's an art show and a craft bazaar and hundreds of acres of sprawl, but the main draw is the music: 27 bands, from Jimi Hendrix to Janis Joplin to Glen Beck to Sweetwater to Ritchie Havens, playing in 12-hour swathes, 1pm to 1am, every day (except the first—then, it's 4pm to 4am, apparently).

Well, we couldn't miss a chance to see something like this, so we booked tickets to Idlewild…er… JFK, chartered a bus, and we're headed for Max Yasgur's farm.  This isn't our first rodeo, so we've taken a few precautions:

1) We left early to avoid the rush.  With more than 100,000 expected to show up for this thing, there's going to be traffic jams;

2) We bought supplies in case we can't get what we want to eat;

3) We brought our own toilets!  A handy trick we developed camping up in Sequoia country: take a bucket, fill it a quarter way with Kitty Litter, and stick a toilet seat on top.  It works as well for people as it does for cats, and you don't have to dig latrines!

So, we're hopeful to get good seats and enjoy, as much as anyone can, three days of fun in the open air.  We'll have a full report when we get back!

Dragging


by Chesley Bonestell

Sweet Helen, by Charles W. Runyon

On a distant world, rich with export goods, yet another trader succumbs before his tour is up.  Two deserted.  One went native.  One shot himself.  The company sends a professional troubleshooter to find out what happened.

Somehow, the natives are the culprit.  The amphibian humanoids run twenty males to the female, and the female is in charge.  The men all compete for the honor of breeding with her; the rest die.  The females are humanoid and lovely… for a while.  They swell into enormous toads when it is time to become gravid. 

The troubleshooter is unable to determine the exact problem, until too late.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if they had sent a woman trader (probably).  And apparently women traders do exist in Runyon's universe, though they are rare enough to not be sent except by deliberate assignment.

Also, none of this would be an issue if the aliens weren't so uniquely humanoid and compelling to humans—a cliché I find tiresome these days.  Really, this is just a "women are dangerous" story in SF trappings, something done much better, and more creepily, in Matheson's "Lover When You're Near Me" almost two decades ago.

Two stars.

Bonita Egg, by Julian F. Grow

A riproarer of an adventure involving a middle-aged doctor, a young, East-Coast-educated Apache woman, and a dark-skinned alien named Mwando.  The last wants to abduct the former pair, but he is continually thwarted by his would-be captives' pluck, as well as the woman's outlaw uncle and tribal chief father.  Not to mention a platoon of Union artillerymen led by the bullheaded Winfield Scott Dimwiddie.

It's all rather silly and a bit long-winded, but it's not unreadable.  A low three stars.

Muse, by Dean R. Koontz

Leonard is a famed musician, or rather, he is when he's got Icky the symbiont alien on his back.  But anti-slug/human prejudice runs strong on old Earth, and his father wants Leonard to lose the connection for his own good.  Tragedy ensues.

Koontz is a pretty good writer, generally, but this story smacks of being an early, hitherto unsold work.  It's less artfully written, with repetitive phrasing in places.  The story is threadbare—if it's a metaphor for drugs, it's clumsy; if not, it needs a lot more development to be effective.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Patient, by Hoke Norris

This is the story of the first brain transplant, as told from the point of view of the doctors who performed it and the patient.  Much discussion of the ethics involved and the problems ensuing, particularly with regard to the families of the donor and donee.  The patient is unable to reconcile his past with his present and ultimately commits suicide.

Sorry to give things away, but this is really a tedious, stupid piece.  It is pedestrian and repetitive, a stark contrast to, say, Fiztpatrick and Richmond's Half a Loaf series, which covers the same ground.

Also, that the doctors performed their operation on a day's notice, and none of the legal or moral t's were crossed or i's dotted reminds me of how space travel used to be depicted: a guy would build a spaceship in his backyard and fly to the Moon.  You'd think a lot more infrastructure would be needed before such a thing could even be contemplated.

One star.

The Screwiest Job in the World, by Bill Pronzini

Phineas T. Fensterblau has an odd hobby: collecting unusual animals, particularly ones with the power of speech.  To this end, he has employed the resourceful Elroy, who travels the world, proving the veracity of the claims of those who would sell exotic beasts to the millionare eccentric.  In the course of his work, Elroy has uncovered ventriloquists, dwarfs in costumes, hidden transmitters, etc.  But when he is sent to the Alaskan wilderness on the trail of a talking Kodiak bear, Elroy finds something completely new.

This isn't a bad story, but since it is set up as a mystery, it would have been better if the reader had been filled in on the clues before their lumpy exposition near the end.  That could have raised the piece from three stars to higher.

The Man Who Massed the Earth, by Isaac Asimov

Dr. A continues his layman presentation of first semester physics, explaining what weight is and how Cavendish determined the gravitational constant "G".  It's actually pretty interesting, and there is an intuitive explanation as to why the weight of the Earth…is zero.

Four stars.

J-Line to Nowhere, by Zenna Henderson

In this non-The People story, Henderson tells the tale of a teen girl who gets an urge to see the world outside the crammed city-scraper she's lived her whole life in.  She succeeds, but can't figure out how to get back.

There's a lot of gushing thoughts, but not a lot of story to this one.  Three stars.

Finishing the trip

Well, that was dreary!  Remember the days when fiction took you to better places than reality?  Of course, I haven't gotten to Woodstock yet, so maybe it will be equally disappointing…but somehow I doubt it.

Stay tuned!

(and dig on what F&SF has got coming next month…I'm excited for the Niven, of course.)




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Science / Space Race

[August 8, 1969] Two by Four (Mariners 6 and 7 go to Mars)

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by Gideon Marcus

Into the Wild Black Yonder

Ten years ago, when we started our planetary series of articles, none of other worlds in our solar system had been explored.  Since then, five intrepid spacecraft have toured two planets.  Mariner 2 and Mariner 5 probed Venus, returning the revelation that the shrouded world is a seething cauldron.  Mariner 4 returned the first pictures of the Red Planet, shocking humanity with images of Moonlike craters and reports of a vanishingly thin atmosphere, dashing forever the vivid, science fictional conception of Mars as an inhabitable world.

Now, twin Mariners 6 and 7 have flown by Mars, dramatically increasing what we know about the fourth planet.  While we'll never get back that fantasy so elegantly woven by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett, the new Mars is also not a blasted husk either.


Distant views of Mars, as seen by Mariner 7 as it approached the planet

The Next Generation

Despite the blow to morale given by Mariner 4, Mars still seemed like the most hospitable place for life to have arisen apart from Earth.  After all, are there not microorganisms living in the harsh environments of Antarctica and at the bottom of the sea?  Even though the Martian atmosphere is just 1% as thick as that of Earth, this is still plenty dense compared to, say, the Moon.  Moreover, Earth's atmosphere is just 1% that of Venus.  Who's to say when an atmosphere is "thick enough"?

So, just a few months after Mariner 4 flew past Mars, Mariners 6 and 7 were authorized.  At first glance, they look a lot like their predecessor, but the differences are profound—both internally and externally.


From top to bottom: Mariners 2, 4, 5, and 6/7 (note the family resemblance of the last three—Mariner 5 was actually a modified Mariner 3/4 backup!)

First, the insides: the new Mariners are the first spacecraft made only to examine their target planet.  All of the prior Mariners had experiments for monitoring the interplanetary environment—solar wind, magnetic fields, that sort of thing.  Mariners 6 and 7 carry two TV cameras (one narrow, one wide-angle), an infrared radiometer (to measure the temperature of Mars), and ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers (to determine the chemical makeup of the Martian atmosphere and surface).  That's it.

As for the outsides, since 1965, when Mariner 4 passed by the Red Planet, there has been a revolution in communications technology.  Not only do the new Mariners carry more powerful transmitters and antennas, but with the construction of the new 210 foot antenna at Goldstone, supplementing the old 85 footers, data can be transferred between the spacecraft and Earth at a rate more than 2000 times the 8.33 bits per second speed of Mariner 4.  It also helps that Mars is closer to Earth this time around, and that the rocket carrying Mariners 6 and 7 is the beefy new Atlas Centaur, which can loft more weight than the old Atlas Agena so the onboard electronics can be heftier and thus more capable.


The 210' "Mars Dish" at Goldstone, California

What this means for us on the ground is that instead of sending back just 22 images of Mars, the new Mariners could transmit hundreds of pictures, all while returning real-time spectrographic and radiometer data.  All of this aided by the installation of the first computer equipped on an interstellar probe, capable of remembering 128 "words" some 22 characters in length.  And that computer can be reprogrammed on the fly from Earth!

On their Way

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the same folks who built the other Mariners, assembled four spacecraft for the mission.  The first was a stay-at-home test model, the second a source of spare parts.  The other two were redundant probes—an understandable precaution given the loss of Mariners 1 and 3.  However, the twin ships weren't entirely redundant; Mariner 6 was targeted to fly over the Martian North Pole while #7 was aimed over the South Pole.

Problems with the spacecraft began before liftoff.  Mariner 6's Atlas rocket, which maintains its structure through internal fuel pressure, sprung a leak and began to deflate like a balloon.  It had to be replaced with Mariner 7's rocket, and a new one ordered from Convair.  This did not delay the launch, however (which had to go at a set time to reach Mars with a minimum of fuel use), and Mariner 6 blasted off on February 24th.  Mariner 7 took off on March 27, but because of its course, was set to reach Mars just five days after its sister.


The launch of Mariner 7

Both rockets performed beautifully, requiring only minor mid-course corrections early in the flight to ensure they zoomed close by the fourth planet.  There were some minor technical problems: The radio on Mariner 6, used to determine range from Earth, kept locking on its own signal rather than Earth's, making it useless.  It fixed itself later in the flight, however.

Similarly, the star tracker designed to keep Mariner positioned properly lost sight of Canopus.  After weeks of engineers scrambling to find an alternative guiding star (they even tried the Large Magellanic Cloud, but the galaxy was too diffuse to be useful), that system fixed itself, too.  Finally, the onboard solar sensors that told how much sunlight was hitting Mariner 6's power panels, began reading too low.  Was the Sun going out?  No.  The sensors had just drifted out of calibration.

Mariner 7's only issue was a radio receiver that dropped to about 20% of its sensitivity, apparently due to cold.  Ground controllers switched it to high power, which warmed the thing up and fixed it.

Thus, its vexing teething pains dealt with, NASA now had, for the first time, two fully operating probes with which to explore Mars.

The Great Galactic Ghoul

On July 29, even as Mariner 6 was finishing the transmission of 33 low-resolution approach images, Mariner 7 suddenly began spinning wildly, all of its scientific data telemetry channels scrambled.  Had an asteroid hit the spacecraft?  Had there been an instrument explosion or some kind of short circuit?  Was there some kind of Great Galactic Ghoul guarding the Red Planet?  No answer was quickly forthcoming.


Collage of Mariner 6 images as it approached Mars

Nevertheless, engineers raced to salvage the mission—with Mariner 7 arriving shortly after its sister, and from a more favorable angle, the JPL science team wanted the spacecraft's experiments all in working order. 

Cautiously, computer engineers went over every bit of code and methodically tested all of Mariner 7's instruments.  They were in working order, but because of the accident, uncalibrated and useless.  How to get real data points to use to base the radiometer and spectrometer data against?


Engineers at the Mariner control center at JPL

As it turned out, the two TV cameras on board were in good order and unaffected.  By pointing them at Martian targets and using the data they returned, it was possible to calibrate the other experiments.  And so, just in the nick of time, Mariner 7 was ready, come close encounter time, to do some real science.

Exploring Barsoom

So what did the two probes find as they whizzed past Mars, almost grazing it from a scant few thousand miles away?

Well, at first they seemed to confirm Mariner 4's findings.  There were all the craters in stark detail.  There was no evidence that there had ever been widespread water—absent was the erosion one would expect from oceans or even rivers.


A lunar landscape, courtesy of Mariner 7

On the other hand, if Mars wasn't Earth's twin, neither was it sister to the Moon.  As each Mariner went behind the planet, beaming radio signals through the Martian atmosphere, it was confirmed that surface pressure was around 7 millibar—a refinement rather than a revelation.  But they did determine that carbon dioxide makes up a greater percentage of the air than even on Venus.  Nitrogen was completely absent, which was a surprise.  So was ozone, which means that the surface is fairly baked by ultraviolet—again, a strike against life on the planet.

The Red Planet is not quite geologically moribund, however.  The vast Hellas region, smooth of craters, and a region of convoluted terrain akin to the American Badlands, suggests some kind of volcanic activity in comparatively recent times.

Unlike the Moon, clouds scud across the Martian sky, mostly composed of dry ice.  While it may not rain on the planet, it does frost, and maybe even snow ice and carbon dioxide.  The climate changes with the seasons, with polar (dry?) ice caps spreading and receding.  The tropical highs soar to a balmy 60 degrees, but the polar lows plunge to 240 degrees below zero.


A view of the Martian North Pole, snapped by Mariner 6—note the ice cap

Thus, Mars is an inhospitable place…but it if it lacks biological life, it is nevertheless an interesting living, breathing planet in its own right.

What's next?

Mariners 6 and 7 are still functioning, and their onboard systems should work until at least 1971.  Not only might they return pictures of any asteroids or comets that drift by, they will also constitute an experiment in and of themselves.  As they drift through the solar system, terrestrial scientists will measure variations in the timing of their telemetry signals and use them to prove General Relativity—something that requires great distances to detect subtle theoretical variations.

As for successors, a Martian orbiter is already in the works for the 1971 alignment, and in 1973, a probe will use the gravity of Venus to enable a probe to fly by and then visit, for the first time, Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun.

And also in 1973, the Viking orbiter/lander combo, successor to the overlarge Voyager project, will give Mars a real look.


The 1971 Mars Orbiter

If the 1960s were the dawn of interplanetary science, the 1970s will see its maturity.  I find this as momentous an achievement as footprints on the Moon.

I can't wait to rewrite all of the articles in our solar system series!




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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 31, 1969] Stranger than fiction (August 1969 Analog)

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

Dip in Road

A week has gone by since Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28 year-old worker on Robert F. Kennedy's campaign, lost her life.  Of course you've read the news.  She went to Martha's Vineyard for a reunion with other campaign workers, where she met the last surviving Kennedy brother, Teddy.  According to the Senator, Mary Jo was a bit tipsy, so he offered to drive her home.  His car ended up off a bridge.  He survived; she did not.

A tragedy.  Moreover, it is a far from clear-cut strategy.  Kennedy says he tried to save Kopechne, but that he was too exhausted to succeed—but he failed to call the police, who might have been able to help.  Indeed, he called his lawyer instead.  Last weekend, the Senator pled guilty to leaving the scene of the crime.

It's also unclear just what Kennedy and Kopechne were doing on the deserted dirt road that led to the scene of the accident.  It wasn't on the way home.  Was something clandestine in the works?  Was Teddy also sozzled?

There's a lot of talk about what this incident means for Kennedy's career, how he's not going to be able to run for President in '72, etc.  Perhaps this was all an innocent accident.  Maybe the only lesson we should get from all of this is that it's not smart to drive under the influence.

All we know at this time is that there as many questions as answers, as well as inconsistencies in the Senator's testimony.  I hope, for the Kopechne family's sake, if nothing else, that more is learned in the days to come.

In any event, once again, a Kennedy career has come to a sudden, unexpected halt.

Steady as she goes

If the political news is chaotic, such cannot be said for the latest issue of Analog, mostly composed of the plodding "problem" stories the magazine is known for.  However, amidst the tired tales is one standout that is definitely worth your time.


by Kelly Freas

The Teacher, by Colin Kapp


by N. Blakely

On a distant world, evolution is locked in the Jurassic—reptiles rule the globe.  Except these deadly dinosaurs are near intelligence, and quickly crowding out the race of sentient humanoids that shares the planet.  Enter "The Gaffer", a spaceman from Earth who walks the fine line between providing the skills and technology to defeat the reptiles, and avoiding becoming deified, unduly influencing the native culture.

Sounds a bit Star Trek, doesn't it?

The story is competently written, though Edgar Rice Burroughs was far better at pitting technological man vs. primeval monster.  I appreciated the acknowledgment that cultural and technical exchange is a dicey subject.  I'm not sure with some of the assumptions, particularly that any group exposed to Terran culture is doomed to adopt its worst qualities.

Anyway, three stars.

The Timesweepers, by Keith Laumer


by Vincent Di Fate

This one starts out as the tale of a time traveler whose job is to repair the past from the meddlings of earlier time travelers… and it sort of ends that way, too!  But in-between, it's a beautiful onion of adventure, moving at breakneck speed as the scope of the universe of time-lines expands into infinity.  It is both gripping adventure as well as the apotheosis of time travel stories, and Laumer manages it all in just thirty pages.  At first, I thought things were moving a bit quickly, but once I got to the end, I realized they'd taken just the time they needed.

I've often observed that there is "funny" Laumer and there is "serious" Laumer, and that the latter is the more worthy (though the ex-USAF officer makes a pretty good living on his endless parade of Retief stories, so what do I know?) The Timesweepers is serious Laumer, and it's seriously good.  It'd make a phenomenal movie someday.

Five stars.

Minds and Molecules, by Carl A. Larson

Somewhere in this turgid mass of verbosity are some interesting concepts: injectable "memory" RNA that teaches, or at least aids memory.  Drugs that stimulate enzymes to abet sanity and tranquility.

But man, this is just too hard to read to be a useful science article.

Two stars.

Chemistry … AD 1819, by William Henry, M.D., F.R.S.

Excerpts from a 150 year old chemical tome, illustrating how the useless powders of today might be the miracles of tomorrow.  And also a cautionary tale against sampling your own wares… lead is a poor flavor-additive!

Three stars.

Pressure, by Harry Harrison


by Peter Skirka

Three men descend in a bathyscape not to the bottom of the ocean, but to the surface of Saturn.  Their mission: to install a matter transmitter in the seething, cryogenic sea that comprises the sixth planet's lower atmosphere for scientific study.  Getting there's not the problem—it's getting back!

A decent technical tale with a lesson on morality and the role of the test pilot at the end.  Definitely a dash-off for cash rather than one of Harrison's more subtle, worthy tales.  Interestingly, Harry's time in England betrays itself; the name he chose for the base orbiting Saturn is the prosaic "Saturn One".

Three stars.

All Fall Down, by John T. Phillifent


by Vincent Di Fate

An interstellar transport suffers a malfunction and must make planetfall to effect repairs.  The problem: they make landing amidst the only civilized place on the planet, which proves to be an autocracy that immediately impounds the ship and enslaves the crew.  Worse yet, they're the second bunch from Terra to get this treatment; the first is a team of anthropologists who showed up a year before.

But Lennox, a bright young man with a computer-augmented brain, knows how to sell the local autocrat on a scheme that looks promising, but will ultimately be his undoing, affording the Terrans a chance to escape.

Phillifent, who also writes as John Rackham, is rarely brilliant, and he isn't here.  Once again, we have entirely human aliens.  I don't mind so much when Mack Reynolds uses his interstellar federation as a setting for interesting geopolitical stories—in that case, the planets are all human colonies with latitude to develop any societies they like.  But when the aliens are just people, the whole thing seems contrived.

There is also never an explanation for why the stranded ship had to interact with the planetary civilization at all, which was restricted to a small peninsula.  The indigenes could not help with repairs, so why not park in the woods and leave the natives alone?

But most of all, the story just isn't particularly interesting.

Two stars.

Androtomy and the Scion, by Jack Wodhams


by Vincent Di Fate

A spy is subject to a new torture, one that leaves his body completely at the mercy of his captors.  It involves the insertion and cultivation of…something…inside the spy's brain.

Now that they have complete control over him through the judicious incitement of pain, they expect him to become the perfect double-agent.  But the technique they use has a blind spot—and some hidden advantages.

Tolerable, though not particularly plausible, adventure.  Three stars.

Womb to Tomb, by Joseph Wesley


by Leo Summers

In the far future, human combatants are shielded from the shock of high G space maneuvers by being encased within and filled with something akin to amniotic fluid.  Since liquid is not compressible, they suffer no ill physical effects (once the requisite hookups are installed).  The only problem—the soldiers sent out to fight revert to infancy, so seductive is the prospect of being returned to even a virtual womb.

This story is a reasonably placed mystery, and the proposed technology is pretty neat.  It's just the stupid Twilight Zoney ending that kills it.  Someone will probably nick the idea for their own piece, just dumping the dopey conclusion.

Three stars (because the innovation is nifty, even if the end is dumb).

Starved for choice

If not for the Laumer, this would be a thoroughly disposable issue.  But that Laumer…

All told, we end up just north of three stars, putting us akin with Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.1) and New Worlds (3), ahead of Galaxy (2.8) and Venture (2.8), and behind New Writings 15 (4.3) and Fantastic (3.4)

On the plus side, the four and five star works would fill nearly three digests.  This is, however, largely due to the superlative New Writings and the serial that takes up most of Fantastic, so if you're looking for bang for your buck, those are the places to go.

Oh—the Hugo nominees have been announced.  I can't say I much fancy the choices, but there's at least one in each category that isn't too bad.  We'll, of course, have the results after Labor Day.

Until then… excelsior!




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