All posts by Gideon Marcus

Magazine

[June 9, 1961] Common denominator (July 1961 IF)

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Science fiction digests, those monthly magazines filled with s-f short stories, are often like little anthologies.  Editors will let their "slush pile" stack up, and when they have enough of a kind of piece, they publish them in a themed issue.

I don't know whether the theme of the July 1961 IF science fiction was intentional or not, but it definitely focuses on the issues of over-population and over-mechanization.  That is, in the future, there will be too many of us, and we won't have a whole lot to do. 

I'm not particularly concerned about the former.  We live on a big planet, and although our presence on it definitely has an impact, I don't think living space is going to be an issue for a long time, if ever.  On the other hand, the latter topic holds a strong fascination for me. 

We've already seen a precipitous drop in the percentage of people employed in agriculture.  Industry looks like it will shed workers soon, too, as the use of robots increases.  That leaves the nebulous "service" sector, whose added value to our lives seems rather arbitrary.  Eventually, I foresee a world where no one has to grow or build anything…and then what will work mean to us?

It's a worthy topic for discussion.  Sadly, the writing in the July 1961 IF fails to impress and often downright disappoints.  Here's what we've got:

Jim Harmon is an often lackluster IF perennial.  His novelette The Planet with no Nightmare, involves an insomniac space explorer and the strange planetoid he and his two crewmates discover.  On said world, the animals play dead when startled, but when no one's watching, they disappear.  It has a promising opening, but the end is no great shakes.  Three stars.

Then there's William Stuart, who started with a bang and hasn't quite recreated his initial spark.  The Real Hard Sell tells of a salesman in a world where selling is the only human profession remaining.  Like many of the stories in this issue, it is frightfully conventional except for its premise.  Still, as a satire of our current commercial practices, it's not bad.  Three stars.

Now brace yourself – those were the good stories of the issue.

The Stainless Steel Knight is John Rackham's attempt at humor featuring a hapless Terran agent, a faithful alien companion, and colonies that adhere to storybook milieus.  In this case, the planet the agent visits is modeled on England of the Middle Ages.  As to following the issue's theme, the story is all about the agent's mission to slay a "dragon", a leftover automated tractor/combine that threatens to put the colonists' serfs out of work.  Well, the Arthurian hijinx was better in Edward Eager's Half Magic, the Middle English better in Anderson's The High Crusade, and the medieval satire better in Pratt and De Camp's The Incomplete Enchanter.  Two stars.

Once again, James T. McIntosh saves his dreck for IF.  He often can write so well, but Doormat World, about a returned colonist taking advantage of Earth's spate of super-pacifism, is a poor, disgusting little piece.  One star.

A Taste of Tenure is a surprisingly clumsy piece by Gordon Dickson in which a businessman, promoted to the executive level, finds himself unable to discharge his predecessor's secretary, protected as she is by the government's strict "right to work" laws.  Again – interesting premise, but utterly conventional despite taking place two centuries from now, and the ending is a confused muddle.  Two stars.

Finally, we have The Junkmakers, by IF newcomer Albert Teichner.  It has a great concept: planned obsolescence taken to an absurd extreme: enormous communal potlaches are held at five year intervals and given an almost religious significance.  If there were any characters in this story, or much of a plot, it'd be a real winner.  As it is, it's the outline of a piece for someone more skilled (Cordwainer Smith?) to develop into a masterpiece.  Two stars.

So there you have it.  A collection of stories by IF's reliable stable on an interesting theme that barely breaks the two-star barrier.  This is easily the worst issue of IF I've read.  Editor Fred Pohl better start enforcing some higher standards, or I predict this magazine will end up following the path trod smooth by Infinity, Venture, Imagination, and thirty other digests born in the 50s.

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Science / Space Race

[June 6, 1961] America’s Answer to Lunik: Project Ranger

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by Lawrence Klaes

[The Space Race continues to run at an ever-accelerating pace.  To keep up with all the new developments, I've tapped my friend and fellow professional space historian to tell us a very special program that just might score for the United States in the next inning…]

President Kennedy declared three weeks ago before Congress that America shall make the bold step of “sending a man to the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” before the end of this decade.  This has given a much needed – and quite literal – boost to the American space program. 

It couldn’t have come at a better time.  Since that day in October of 1957 when our geopolitical and space rivals, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR for short, lofted that 184-pound silvery sphere they called Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit, the Communists have handily outpaced us on virtually all key fronts of the Space Race.  First animal in orbit.  First man in orbit.  First probe to Venus.  First victories in the race to that big golden prize in our night sky, the Moon.

In one year alone, 1959, the Soviets sent the first space probe flying past the Moon and on into solar orbit.  This was followed by the first manmade vehicle to impact another world, with their Luna 2 littering the lunar dust with pennants engraved with the Soviet Coat of Arms.  The USSR rounded out their lunar triumphs of 1959 with a circumlunar imaging mission that revealed the hitherto unseen lunar farside.

So which Superpower will be the first to orbit the Moon?  The first to land, with robots and then with manned spacecraft?  Experts in various fields might understandably side with the Soviet Union, including those in the West.  In a mission-by-mission comparison, America’s efforts at exploring and conquering the Moon pale.

All of the first three Air Force Pioneer lunar probes fell short of their celestial goal.  Of the next two, made to order by Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, California (JPL), Pioneer 4 alone escaped the confines of Earth’s gravity and headed into interplanetary space in March 1959.  Unfortunately, the small conical craft was many thousands of miles too far away for its scientific instruments to examine the Moon and slipped on to join its Soviet counterpart, Luna 1, in solar orbit.

Then it was STL’s turn again with their advanced Atlas Able Pioneers.  All four of them failed.  Spectacularly.

And so, back to JPL.  They have a new robotic lunar exploration program that they are confident will return some of NASA’s prestige in space and ensure that one day soon the Stars and Stripes will be standing tall on the lunar surface — before the Hammer and Sickle.  Named Ranger, it is actually a three-step program of increasingly sophisticated species of spacecraft: what the space agency calls Blocks.

The two Block I machines will fly this year.  Looking like an oil rig with two long solar panel “wings” at its base and a large high-gain directional dish antenna beneath, the first two Rangers will initially enter an Earth parking orbit and gradually be moved farther out into space until well beyond the Moon.  There the controllers at JPL will put the probes through their paces to see how they handle the cislunar environment to improve upon the next blocks of Ranger missions.  These won’t just be engineering flights; each Block I Ranger it will also fly a suite of scientific instruments. 

Now, JPL thought these science Rangers were good enough to make good Venus probes, too.  Their intention was to launch these modified Rangers using the Atlas-Agena B combination of rockets. 

NASA rejected this plan, instead asking JPL to develop a more ambitious planetary probe labeled Mariner A, which would use an Atlas rocket with the powerful Liquid Oxygen Centaur second stage.  The Centaur booster has a more powerful payload lifting capability, which translates into sending their Mariner A concept with more scientific instruments to either Venus or Mars.

However, the Centaur has had a number of technical issues during its development.  There is genuine concern that the new booster will not be ready in time to send a probe to Venus during the 1962 launch window.  A delay would mean waiting for the next launch window over two years hence.  NASA officials and others are quite certain that the Soviets could have their own Venus probes on their way to the second world from the Sun by next year.  A successful exploration of that planet would bring yet another space victory and political glory to the communist nation.  Thus the Ranger bus option to flyby Venus and see what dwells under its mysterious bank of clouds remains a plausible alternative.

Back to the Moon: the first Block I Ranger is scheduled for launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida atop an Atlas-Agena B for late July, 1961.  Its sister probe, Ranger 2, will follow into space aboard a similar rocket sometime in October.

Ranger Block II will be the first Moon missions.  Scheduled for 1962, three probes will fly through the airless void to make a direct hit on the Moon.  The original proposal called simply for each Ranger to carry a TV camera to map potential landing sites.  But, just as nature abhors a vacuum, scientists abhor minimum missions.  Thus, some of the sky science experiments from Block I will make their way to Block II — over the protests of engineers, who abhor complication. 

The neatest bit is the MoonQuake detector.  It is hoped that the Rangers will not be completely destroyed at the end of their missions: Each probe carries atop its main bus a thick sphere of balsa wood.  At the very center of each ball is a seismometer which will determine if the Moon produces quakes just as they occur on Earth.  The balsa sphere will protect the sensitive geological instrument upon impact with the lunar surface.  Six silver cadmium batteries will power the seismometer for up to one month after the rough landing. 

Just as with earthquake science here on Earth, the Ranger 3 through 5 science packages should teach us much about the composition of the lunar interior and if the Moon is still geologically active or not.  Although most scientists now accept that the vast majority of lunar craters were caused by ancient meteor and comet impacts, it may be that some of them are actually the calderas of volcanoes.  Scientists want to know if any of them may still be active. 

Finally, we have Ranger Block III.  As with their predecessors, the robot probes of Block III will also be sent plunging into the Moon.  While these mechanical explorers will not survive their high-speed impacts with the lunar crust, they will nevertheless return thousands of increasingly detailed images of particular regions of the Moon in real time using a bank of onboard television cameras.  These images will help scientists understand the finer details of the lunar surface both for geology as well as assisting NASA with future locations for soft landing missions, including manned vessels.

The manned program that will benefit from the findings of the Ranger program is Project Apollo.  The space agency had already planned Apollo as a follow-up spacecraft to Mercury with goals including a circumlunar flight or even a lunar orbital mission.  With President Kennedy’s new mandate to place a man on the Moon by the end of this decade, NASA has already begun to expand Apollo to include the ability to land astronauts on the lunar surface.  Whether this will involve using the entire Apollo craft and the powerful Nova rocket currently on the drawing board or perhaps an alternate concept of a separate Apollo craft and lander will be decided after much study and debate.

One thing from all this is certain, though: The Soviet Union has clear ambitions for the ultimate high ground of space.  Should the Soviets come to dominate Earth orbit and our neighboring worlds, especially if they include nuclear arms in this mix, the American way of life will be under a greater threat than ever before since the end of the last World War and the start of the Cold War. 

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Book

[June 3, 1961] Hope Springs (Poul Anderson's Orbit Unlimited)

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Today's article is about second chances.

The newspapers are full of scary news these days.  Overpopulation.  Tension between the East and West.  The threat of global disaster.  Some feel that we are headed toward a doomed future, one of increased authoritarian governments, of scarcity, of rationing.  That we lost something when the last frontiers closed, forcing us to turn inward, toward oblivion.

Poul Anderson's just come out with a new book along those lines: Orbit Unlimited.  It's a fix-up of sorts, composed of four stories, two of which I've reviewed before.  There are many scenes and as many viewpoint characters, but they all revolve around a central premise: a hundred years from now, freedom is ended, humanity is stagnant, and just one sliver of hope remains – a harsh world around the star e Eridani called Rustum.

I was not particularly charitable to Anderson when I first reviewed Robin Hood's Barn and The Burning Bridge, the two stories that comprise the first half of Orbit.  He'd recently written the abysmal Bicycle built for Brew, and in general, he was at the tail end of a multi-year slump (and I had no way of knowing its end was near).  Moreover, the stories did not do well on their own; giving them a common premise gave them a combined value greater than their sum.

So Anderson's stories are getting a second chance, just as the Earth gets a second chance, if only in the pages of Orbit Unlimited.

The first tale struck me much more favorably this time around.  Robin Hood's Barn is the story of the choked, nearly hopeless Earth, and the old, canny politician, Svoboda, who tries to force one last gasp of colonizing desire by increasing the government's tyranny.  The first time around, I took the story at face value, and it felt like yet another of those smug tales where one fellow has a preternatural ability to manipulate others such that the pieces always move as desired.  Plus, there were no women in the story, and that always gets a strike from me unless there's a plausible reason.  More on that later.  On reexamination, it seemed Svoboda's gamble was far less certain, really an act of desperation that just barely paid off.  That made it all much more palatable.

Now that I knew that Orbit's next story, The Burning Bridge, was set in the same universe, I was able to see it in a new light.  I'd been lukewarm toward this story the first time.  In Bridge, the colonial fleet in mid-flight when a message from Earth is received.  Things are better, they are told, and they should come home.  It's a tempting offer, one that Fleet Captain Joshua Coffin is sure the majority of the colonists will take.  But he knows what they've fled, and he suspects that the respite will be a temporary one, perhaps already vanished after the decades it will take the fleet to return.  So he forges a second message, one with more forceful language, one which could tip the vote in the direction he wants. 

Again, this story is oddly anti-woman.  The women colonists are kept segregated from the all-male astronauts even to the point of dressing in all-concealing clothing as the women do in some Moslem countries.  That degree of conservatism seems counter to our current prevailing trends.  Nevertheless, I found Bridge compelling.

Part three, And yet so Far, came out in one of the last issues of Fantastic Universe back in October 1959.  I didn't read it so I missed this story.  In Far, the fleet has arrived at Rustum, but one of the vessels has suffered a catastrophe and now is adrift in the midst of planet's deadly Van Allen Belts.  Sleeted with radiation, the ship is inaccessible and yet it must be accessed for it carries cargo vital to the colony's success.  Admiral Nils Kivi refuses to consider a risky salvage mission for many reasons, not the least of which is his innate hostility for colonist Jan Svoboda, politician Svoboda's son.  But Kivi has a soft spot for Svoboda's wife, Judith, and Jan is not above using her to manipulate Kivi into coming around.  This is an impactful, bittersweet vignette.  I can't imagine it being terribly successful without the context of the preceding tales, however.  Moreover, it was published before Bridge, which must have confused hell out of anyone who read both stories.

The final and longest piece, The Mills of the Gods, has not, to my knowledge, appeared in any magazine.  It is set ten years after planetfall.  The three thousand colonists have vastly supplemented their numbers with children born in both the normal fashion and "exogenetically" – from frozen sperm and ova brought along to augment the colony's limited genetic range.  There is an overt prejudice against the exogenes and a general oppressive conservatism to the colony in general.  In cultural outlook, it feels like something out of the 19th Century (or perhaps the depths of the last decade).  Men run business.  Women tend house.  It is as if the people of Rustum, in their escape from oppression, could think of no alternative to it.  Rather like the Pilgrims seeking freedom from religious intolerance so that they could practice their own peculiar version in the New World. 

At the start of Mills, one of the exogenes, Coffin's foster son, Danny, runs away from home.  When he is not found on the relatively small mesa that forms the colony's borders, it is presumed that the youth descended toward sea level, into the thick atmosphere and alien ecology of Rustum's flatlands.  Only Jan Svoboda is capable of helping Coffin make the trek to rescue Danny, and he must be bribed into it by the colony's wily mayor, Theron Wolfe.

This was my favorite of the book's episodes.  Few writers can convey an alien world with both vividity and mundanity like Anderson.  Their journey below the cloud deck into the noxiously dense atmosphere of Rustum was as exciting a travelogue as any Burroughsian tale of Pellucidar or Barsoom, but with the bonus of being scientifically rigorous.  Of course, the emotional interplay between the religious Coffin and the cynical Svoboda formed the heart of the story, without which the scenery would have been pretty but pointless. 

I'm not sure if Anderson had the entire novel in mind when he wrote the first words of Barn or if the concept evolved over time.  There is such a consistency to the themes that I have to believe the skeleton was pre-plotted.  Throughout, there are the recurring instances of what I'd term "selfless manipulation."  The manipulator never relishes his actions, and it is only hoped that the results will be favorable.  There is never an omniscient viewpoint from which we get the satisfaction that things will go as hoped (though the events of each succeeding story suggest that they did and will). 

Orbit also repeatedly portrays humanity with an inclination toward the reactionary.  Time and again, people must consciously choose to break free of the chains of conservatism, which is never depicted positively.  In this context, the atavistic roles for women make more sense.  Given that, both prior and subsequent to Anderson's bad period, the author portrayed women quite progressively, I have to think that the theme of sharp gender dichotomy was intentional – i.e. another facet of undesirable conservatism.

I could be entirely wrong, reading into Orbit what Anderson never intended.  It could just be a happy accident that the four stories hang together so well.  I doubt it, however; Anderson has proven to be a highly nuanced writer when he wants to be.  Orbit has something to say, and it speaks with a clear voice throughout. 

It's worth hearing it out.  3.75 stars.

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Science / Space Race

[May 31, 1961] First from the sun (The planet, Mercury)

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For many of us, the motivation for reading science fiction is the opportunity to explore worlds beyond our own.  Only in fantasy can we fly to faraway planets and see the unusual sights they afford us.  But, as I try to convey in this column, science can also reveal places every bit as interesting as the those that are the fruits of imagination. 

For instance, there are eight planets besides the Earth whirling around the sun, each of them a wildly different orb from ours and each other.  Moreover, while we are still on the eve of a new era of observation, utilizing space probes like the recently failed Venera and the ambiguously targeted Pioneer 5, yet the progress of technology has revolutionized even ground-based observation.  Our conception of the planets has evolved significantly in the last half-century (to say nothing of a full century ago).  It boggles the mind to imagine what we might know in another fifty years.

Let me show you these worlds, as we know them today, and as we used to know them.  I've written about Venus, and I've written about Pluto.  Today is Mercury's turn.

Mercury was known to the oldest civilizations.  It was named after the swiftest of the Roman gods because, being the closest planet to the sun, it completes its trip around the star in the shortest time.  A hundred years ago, we knew very little about this little world, in large part because it is usually lost in the sun's glare; from our vantage, Mercury never strays far from its parent star.  We knew its period (year): 88 days.  We had a rotation (day): slightly longer than that of the Earth.  The latter was a guess – it seemed that some vague features could be resolved on Mercury's tiny disk, and since they did not move much from day to day, it was thought that Mercury's day must be similar to ours. 

We knew that Mercury has no moon.  This actually makes it harder to determine the size and mass of the planet; luckily, Mercury is occasionally visited by Encke's comet, on which it exerts a measurable pull.  From that and optical observations, it was guessed that Mercury was just over 3000 miles across, about fifteen times less voluminous than the Earth.  This made it by far the smallest planet in our solar system.  We knew nothing of the planet's tilt, and there was speculation that, if the seasons were severe enough, that life might survive at one of Mercury's poles.  The relative dimness of the planet, even taking into account its size, suggested that it didn't have much of an atmosphere – at least, not a reflective one. 

And that's it!  Not a big scientific haul for a planet that was closer to Earth, on average, than Mars.  Even the early science fictioneers had little to say about the planet: Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martians knew that Mercury, which they called "Rasoom," was inhabited by an advanced race, but nothing more.

Now we move to the present day…and we still don't know a whole lot about Mercury!  We do now know that Mercury must be airless or nearly so.  It would be hard for a planet so small to hold onto the energetic gases that make up an atmosphere, particularly a superheated one.  Additionally, whenever Mercury has crossed the disc of the sun, in an event known as a transit, observers have spotted no telltale halo that would betray the existence of air.  The romantic notion that life could exist on the planet seems forever excluded even from the realm of science fiction, though it should be noted that some mid-century polarimetry observations (measuring how sunlight scatters off of things) suggest that there is some Mercurian atmosphere. 

We still don't know much about the surface of the planet, but it is assumed that it mimics that of Earth's moon.  It has a similar color, and the difference in the density of light reflecting depends on Mercury's phase (both of the planets closer to the sun than the Earth exhibit phases, of course – from new, to crescent, gibbous, then full, and back again); this suggests that the planet's surface is rough.  Imagine giant Mercurian craters, jagged mountains, deep canyons, all more outsized than we generally conceive thanks to Mercury's light gravity.

And that 24-hour Mercurian day?  Well, there is another rotation scheme that fits the evidence even better.  If Mercury doesn't rotate at all, presenting one face to the sun at all times, as the moon does to the Earth, this also is consistent with its unvarying surface features over the span of several days.  In fact, given Mercury's proximity to the great gravitational pull of the sun, it is likely that Mercury is "tidally locked". 

Thus, one side of the planet is forever being broiled with terrific intensity, hot enough to melt lead!  Then you have the back side that never sees the sun.  It may well be the coldest place in the solar system – even more frigid than faraway Pluto.  Imagine an eternally dark landscape so cold that there could be lakes of hydrogen.  The dimmest of shadows would be cast by the rugged Mercurian mountainscape in the meager Venus-light.  Talk about bleakly exotic!

And at Mercury's ring of unchanging twilight, perhaps there is a temperate zone where life could yet flourish, especially if there is, though evidence be against it, a measurable atmosphere on the smallest of our solar system's worlds.  I suppose there may yet be stories to write about the first planet from the sun…

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TV

[May 29, 1961] Oasis in a Wasteland (The Twilight Zone, Season 2, Episodes 25-27)

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Newton Minow, the new Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, offered the following challenge to the National Association of Broadcasters earlier this month (May 9, 1961). 

"I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there for a day without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland…

…When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse."

He is, of course, stating the obvious.  If you park yourself in front of the idiot box all day, your mind will be turned to mush by the soap operas, game shows, inferior anthologies, and the endless commercials (sometimes as many as ten 30-second spots per hour!).  But, for the more discriminating, there are about six hours of good TV on any given week.  If you like Westerns (and you'd better..because there are so many!), there's Rawhide and Maverick, though the latter is much reduced in watchability since James Garner left the cast.  You've got Route 66.  Andy Griffith has got a fun show.  Dobie Gillis is still amusing on occasion.

And then you've got Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone.  I'm shed much ink over the fact that this second season hasn't been as good as the first.  The last three episodes, however, comprise a solid streak of goodness that I think you'll enjoy if you catch them during the summer reruns (and, as is now tradition, you'll get a one-two review punch with both me and the Young Traveler reporting our thoughts):

——

The Silence, aired about a month ago, is a most peculiar episode.  For the first time since Zone's debut segment, we have 25 minutes without a single science fictional or fantastic twist.  Rather, this show, about a rather obnoxious Gentleman's Club regular who is bet that he can't keep his mouth shut for a year, relies solely on fine acting, lush cinematography, and compelling storytelling to hold your attention until the final reveal.  It's a neat trick, and Serling probably could only get away with it because we were all expecting a gimmick.  Four stars.

I highly enjoyed this episode.  It really had the feel of a first season Twilight Zone episode, with its creepy twist.  The sets were interesting, the plot intriguing, and the acting spectacular.  I appreciate that the episode was more realistic than other episodes, with the character's actions having consequences, rather than some unknown force messing with them.

I enjoyed the concept, and it had the right amount of creepiness.  The actor's expressions really helped convey different parts of the story and I absolutely loved the twist.  I won't spoil it for you, but it is very good.

I give this episode a solid 3 and a ½ out of five stars.  I highly recommend you watch this episode for yourself, and enjoy this well done story, just as I did.

——

Shadowplay is a gripping piece.  A man on Death Row (a cliched, broad version thereof) attempts to convince his attorney, his prosecutor, his contact at the newspaper, that the world is just a solipsistic fantasy.  Once the convict sits in the electric chair, and the circuits are opened, it will not be the criminal who dies, but the entire world.  Moreover, this will not be a one-time event: in fact, it is all the nightly dream of the condemned man.  Over and over, he almost convinces the phantoms to grant a stay of execution.  Almost.  Not quite.

The tension of the episode derives from this iteration's outcome.  Will he break the cycle this time?  Four stars.

I felt that this episode was actually kind of slow.  I was somewhat unsatisfied by the end because it felt like despite there being some tension, the ending was actually fairly predictable. There was no twist in this one, the story simply unfolded and then it was done.

The cinematography and acting was very good, but I really disliked the plot.  I have never particularly liked the whole “people going crazy” angle that Twilight Zone likes to use, and this episode started right off with it.  I was also slightly disturbed with the episode's concept, which I suppose is what they want you to be, but it just left an overall bad taste in my mouth.

I would give this episode 2 out of five stars, however this is simply my opinion, and if you enjoy this concept, then I would highly recommend you watch this episode, if not for the plot, then the cinematography.

——

Last up is The Mind and the Matter, a comedy piece starring comedian Shelley Berman.  Berman plays a finicky insurance clerk, hemmed in at all times by people.  People on the subway.  People in the cafeteria.  People at the office.  Crowds everywhere.  When he discovers the psychic ability to wish everyone away, or in the alternative, make them all like himself (the one fellow he thinks he can stand), it seems he's finally found the answer.  Relief, however, is short-lived in both cases.

While not an outstanding episode, I could not help noting how attractive it was, with truly crisp cinematography.  Also, as with the other pieces on which I report this month, the emphasis is increasingly on characterization, making you care about the people portrayed beyond the twist ending.  Three stars.

I actually enjoyed this episode a lot.  The cinematography was just as good as the last one, the pacing was good, and the plot had a lot I could relate to.  Though I don't “despise people” like the main character did, I related a lot to the loneliness and boredom he felt towards the middle of the episode.  When you have no responsibilities and there's no one to talk to, you can get pretty bored, and I think that was wonderfully conveyed so we could relate to it. 

As I said earlier, the cinematography and acting was very good.  The special effects were amazing, making everyone the same person, it really allowed for some funny moments.  I think the thing I liked most about the episode though, is the ending.  It didn't end with any crazy people, or a terrible twist; the man simply learned his lesson, and continued his life.

I would give this episode a solid 3 1/2 stars.  It was funny, lighthearted, and I highly recommend you watch it yourself.

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Magazine

[May 21, 1961] Pineapple Upside-down Month (June 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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Have you ever heard/seen Karl Orrf's Carmina Burana?  It's an opera of sorts, the performance of a set of medieval poems to music.  It is likely that you're at least familiar with its opening number, the catchy Oh Fortuna!.  Well, having seen Carmina, I can tell you that even Orff knew there wasn't much to the rest of the piece – as evidenced by the fact that Oh Fortuna! gets performed twice, once at the beginning and once at the end.  You can snooze through the rest.

This month's Fantasy and Science Fiction is like Carmina: a tremendous beginning followed by a largely snoozeworthy remainder.  I suppose that, if you want to complete the analogy, you can simply read the opening piece again after finishing the book.  You probably will.

For Cordwainer Smith's Alpha Ralpha Boulevard is one of the best stories I've read in a long time.  Most tales of the future are either frustratingly conventional or completely opaque.  Not so in Boulevard, which features a world dominated by "Instrumentality", an omniscient computer dedicated to the happiness of humanity.  16,000 years from now, after a placid, highly regulated existence, people are, at last, offered the luxury of uncertainty (or at least the illusion thereof). 

With just a few subtle strokes of his pen, Smith presents the trappings of an alien yet utterly believable world: the trio of reborn humans, programmed to think themselves French; the compelling homunculi, servant animals bred into a mockery of the human shape; the servile androids; the contrived movie-set surroundings; the ancient, decayed ruins of the old technology.  Moreover, Boulevard has a great story, the quest for meaning in a predestined world.  It's a masterpiece – evocative and brilliant.  Five stars.

Arthur C. Clarke's Crime on Mars is an adequate (but not exceptional) little art heist mystery.  I find it interesting that he publishes these very straight sf stories here rather than other, perhaps more suited, mags.  Perhaps there wasn't room in the other digests (or perhaps F&SF pays the best rates!) Three stars.

George, on the other hand, by John Anthony West, is a dreadful slog: a henpecked husband slowly succumbs to a creeping paralysis over the course of an evening; the story is told mostly in shrill exchanges between the afflicted and his spouse.  One Star. 

Doris Pitkin Buck's Birth of a Gardener is another domestic dispute piece with some vague nonsense about anti-matter.  Although Gardener makes good use of Buck's personal expertise in horticulture, her knowledge of science is less complete.  Two stories.

Mark Twain's reprinted A Curious Pleasure Excursion, an advertisement for a comet ride in the style of the great ocean cruises of the last century, is clever and funny — an all-too-brief island of quality in an sea of dreck (to continue the sailing metaphor).  Four stars.

Go for Baroque is the second woman-penned piece in the magazine, by mystery writer Jody Scott.  I think it's about a crazy time traveler who cures the sane of our world with his chaotic, exuberant madness.  Maybe.  It's hard to tell.  It is written in this "modern" style that I see more and more in more literary places, half stream-of-consciousness, half nonsense.  I really don't like it.  Two stars.

By popular demand, I include this month's pun-ishment, the latest tale of Ferdinand Feghoot.  Read at your personal peril.

Older writers are interesting.  They tend to stick to old techniques and clichés even as they adapt them to current themes.  Miriam Allen Deford's, The Cage, reads like a Lovecraft tale, complete with a mad scientist regaling a young reporter of his horrifying plan.  In this case, it is the breeding of a race of super-insects to supplant humanity in the event of a nuclear war.  But the author somehow elevates the story to something more than the sum of its parts, steering it subtly to a thoughtful conclusion.  Three stars.

What do you get when you combine the carefree misogyny of Randall Garrett with the increasingly impenetrable prose of (the once masterful) Avram Davidson?  Why, Something Rich and Strange, about a connoisseur of seafood and women who sails off to find a mermaid to love, a task at which he is ultimately successful.  With many pages devoted to lurid descriptions of pescatory cuisine, I had a strong suspicion that the tale would end with the protagonist eating his fishy sweetheart.  Rather, it turns out that the siren is an old hag with, nevertheless, admirable culinary talents.  The punchline is thus, "She's not much to look at, but she sure can cook!"  One star.

So perhaps I may end up owing my friend, Mike, a beer or two after all, since he may be right that 1961 will not be F&SF's year to win the Best Magazine Hugo.  Normally my favorite of the Big Three SFF digests, F&SF came in at the bottom of the heap this month at just 2.75 stars.  Compare this to Analog's 3 stars, and Galaxy's stellar 3.5 stars. 

On the plus side, this month saw the most stories by women: four out of twenty-two.  I won't call it a trend until I see this proportion again, of course.  Interestingly, the top contenders for Best Story were both written by Cordwainer Smith.  Maybe the fellow should start his own magazine…

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Movies

[May 19, 1961] One of our Continents is Missing! (Atlantis: The Lost Continent)

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The cinema is one of those eternal joys.  I can't see it ever dying out, even though doomsayers have been predicting just that for decades.  Radio was the first real competition, especially when movies were silent.  But then Talkies came out around 1930, and radio doesn't have moving pictures.  Television does, and it seems a stronger contender.  Still, although ticket sales have declined, the film industry has responded by showing the kind of spectacle you can't see on the small screen.  Epics like The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, Spartacus.

Those definitely provide impetus to hit the movie houses, but I'd go even if the blockbuster never had been invented.  For me, it's a chance to get away from the world.  My daughter and I (and sometimes my wife) go into that darkened room, redolent with the smell of butter and popcorn.  We've got our pop and our candy.  The floor is just a touch disconcertingly sticky.  You don't have to dress up to go to the movies these days, particularly in California.  The lights go out, the curtains open, and for two hours (or more, if it's a double-feature or you get a couple of shorts) all of your worries disappear.  It's a portal beyond reality.

Particularly if, like us, you're into the fantasy and s-f flicks.  Let's face it — if I want to see everyday drama, I woun't bother plunking down a quarter for the privilege.  No, I go to the movies to see something other worldly.  Much of it is subpar, but plenty is good.  Moreover, the best of the genre have comedy and action to rival conventional movies in addition to possessing that element of the Beyond I crave.  Not that I don't watch mainstream films: I saw Spartacus and Ocean's 11 last year.  It's just that I also saw every monster, alien, and space movie that came out in 1960, and I plan to keep up the practice through this decade and beyond.

And tell you all about it…

With that, let me report on last Saturday's outing.  The Young Traveler and I went to the local drive-in for the latest from George Pal, the wizard who brought us last year's amazing The Time Machine (winner of the Oscar for Best Special Effects!).  On tap was Atlantis: The Lost Continent, a sumptuous swords and sandals epic a la The Seven Voyages of Sinbad. 

The pace is quick.  Within five minutes of the movie's start, our hero, the Greek fisherman, Demetrios, has pulled up a nearly drowned beauty from the ocean.  This most unappreciative and haughty girl is none other than Antillia, Princess of Atlantis.  She demands that Demtrios chauffeur her beyond the Pillars of Herculues into the Atlantic Ocean, back to her home, but the fisherman believes the journey would be suicide. 

Antillia is not to be denied, however, and she steals the man's boat to make the trip herself — only she is too inept a sailor to outrun Demetrios, who is a powerful swimmer.  The fisherman's first inclination is to turn the ship back home, but he wavers in the face of Antillia's charm.  Demetrios agrees to sail to Atlantis if, in return, she agrees to marry him upon their return to Greece.  The deal made, the pair sojourn for a month, enduring storms, gods, and other Mediterranean hazards.  I at first thought that Atlantis would be an Odyssey-esque adventure, and that the lost continent might not figure prominently in the film.  This, of course, was silly.  One does not make a movie about Atlantis without showing its dramatic sinking, especially if that someone is George Pal!

Out in the middle of the ocean, the pair encounter a menacing sea monster.  In a very effective scene, Demetrios attempts to ward off the creature, but his spear bounces off with…a metallic clang!  The sea serpent is, in fact, an Atlantean submarine, the first indication of Atlantis' super-advanced technology.  The ship's captain, the wily Zaren, takes the pair aboard and whisks them to Atlantis.

At the continent's capital, Antillia is joyfully reunited with her father, the well-meaning but doddering King.  Demetrios, however, finds himself in chains, put to work alongside Atlantean slaves mining the powerful energy crystals that are the secret to Atlantis' strength.  Atlantis, for all its beauty, is built on depravity.  From the Roman-esque gladiatorial games, to the grinding inhumanity toward the non-Atlanteans, including Mengele-esque experiments on the slaves with the aim of turning them into human-beast hybrids.  As if nature itself knows that such an abhorrent state cannot be withstood, the continent is rocked with increasingly violent quakes, and it is foretold that wicked Atlantis shall not survive for long.



Zaren, the true power behind the throne, remains heedless of the warnings of Sonoy, his astrologer, and of Azar, the good-hearted priest (who has turned his back on the pagan gods and has found faith in the True God).  Rather, the wily usurper has concocted a plan to take over the world, crafting a giant beam weapon powered by the mother of all energy crystals.  It is up to Demetrios, Antillia, and Azar to delay Zaren so that the impending natural catastrophe can thwart his plans.

Without giving too much of the ending away, I can confirm that the sinking of Atlantis does occur, and it is magnificent.  Some excellent model work mixed with clever optical effects makes for a satisfying conclusion.  Other noteworthy elements are the score (though there is some recycling of motifs from The Time Machine) and the acting, particularly the performances turned in by John Dall (Zaren, who was in Spartacus) and Paul Frees.  The latter is never seen; rather, his vocal talents are evident throughout.  The versatile Frees, who you've assuredly heard in prior films, and will hear in films to come, is the film's narrator and the looped-over voice of many of the characters. 

Atlantis, a colorful and lovely film, is actually quite dark for its genre.  Perhaps it is because the monsters in Atlantis are humans that the scenes of cruelty and torture are so hard-hitting.  There is definitely a morality about the film — evil places, whether they be called Sodom or Atlantis, no matter the level of technology (or, perhaps, even because of it), shall not be tolerated.  Perhaps there's a touch of Walter M. Miller in Pal.

While it's not the tour de force that his last movie was, Atlantis was a solid piece of work that is worth your time.  The first half is better than the last half, but the end is worth sticking around for.  Three and a half stars.

I greatly enjoyed Atlantis, though more for its visuals than its plot. It is more of a movie that leaves you with a taste or feeling, rather than memory of a story.  It shares many aspects of Sinbad, in terms of visuals and feel.  As my dad said, it is very much a sword and sandals movie.

To my dad's point, there were a few moments that were violent, but overall it's a pretty tame movie (unless you count an entire civilization collapsing into the ocean not tame.) The special effects were also amazing.  They were as good as the The Time Machine, if not better.  I specifically like the fact that they built an entire mini Atlantis solely to destroy it.  Knowing that it was by George Pal though, I'm not surprised.

Overall I would also give it a solid three and a half.  Not nearly as good as the Time Machine, but still a great movie.  Especially compared to most of the movies we watch.  I highly recommend you go to see it for yourself, for the amazing visuals and for the experience as a whole. 

This is the Young Traveler, signing off.

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Magazine, Science / Space Race

[May 16, 1961] The Fourth Revolution (the next step in communication)

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Why read science fiction?  To act as your headlights as you hurtle faster and faster down the but dimly visible road to the future.  Reading through this month's Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy (June 1961), I found Dr. Isaac Asimov's article particularly thought-provoking.  I'd like to get your thoughts.

It's called Four Steps to Salvation.  The Good Doctor attributes the success of our species to a series of revolutions in communication.  They are:

1) Speech.  Some tens of thousands of years ago, humans developed the ability to communicate via verbal language.  Before that, conveyance of art and technology was limited to imitation — monkey see, monkey do.  The creation of sophisticated tools, the taming of fire, the evolution of artistic technique was impossible before we could talk to each other.  After all, how sophisticated can a skill get when it must be reinvented from scratch every generation?

2) Writing.  Per Asimov, oral tradition only has a lifetime of about four generations (the longevity of Homer's epics notwithstanding).  Written language was the revolution that made civilization, literally the creation of cities, possible.  So goes his contention, anyway.  I'm not convinced that civilization sprang from writing; rather, I think writing was a technology made necessary by civilization.  Nevertheless, there is no denying the wonders a set of representative squiggles called the alphabet allowed.  Knowledge could now be stored indefinitely to the advantage and delight of engineers, musicians, and countless bureaucrats.

3) Printing.  Everyone is familiar with the tragedy of the Alexandrian Library's burning.  That was just one event of many — in fact, a comparative handful of classical works made it out of late antiquity owing to the paucity of books and the indifference toward their storage.  When composing a codex involves weeks of painstaking work, particularly when literacy is at a premium, the distribution of written works is necessarily quite limited.  This makes any single work vulnerable.

Gutenberg changed all that.  Suddenly, books became commodities, available to everyone.  Ideas could no longer be suppressed,.  The ability to read spread and flourished.  Scientific growth exploded now that everyone had access to everyone else's works.  It is no exaggeration to say that books powered the Renaissance.

Fast-forward to today: 1961.  I've heard that there is more information generated by our species in a single decade than was created in all the years of history prior.  Not only is impossible for one person to know everything there is to know (the last time for that was around Dante's time in the early 14th Century), but in fact, it is impossible to know everything about just one discipline of science. 

This is Asimov's concern: the current methods of communication are simply too slow and restricted to facilitate dissemination of all of humanity's knowledge.  The whole system of science will eventually, he asserts, collapse under its own weight of data.  Here we are on the verge of a whole new age of invention and we are in risk of losing it all for our inability to build upon it.  What's required is a new, fourth revolution in communication.

And he doesn't know what it is.

'Is telepathy the answer?' Asimov wonders aloud (knowing full-well that there's no such thing, at least not naturally).  He suggests microfilm and punch cards but then quickly dismisses them as insufficient solutions.  He then, almost plaintively, turns the question over to his readers.  That's how I got involved.

I'm an optimist.  I believe the human race will always fox its way out of a pickle no matter how daunting.  As for this puzzle, I can't say I have a concrete answer either, although the very phrase "fast-forward,," a newish term referring to the practice of speeding ahead on a magnetic tape medium, suggests a potential course. 

These days, it is true that computers get much of their input from punch cards, little pieces of cardstock with holes in them that represent the digital alphabet understood by machines.  But they also can read tape now, dramatically increasing their storage capacity.  One wonders if there might be some kind of ultimate computer some day, an OMNIVAC with terminals in every home, such that we can all access the sum of human knowledge, stored on tape, with the press of a few keys?  Throw in those visiphones that have been a staple of science fiction since Dick Tracy, a few of those Arthur C. Clarke communications satellites to facilitate cross-ocean broadcast, and WHAMMO!  You've got yourself a global knowledge network, up to the task of keeping all of humanity in touch and up to date.

That's just one solution, of course, and the fact that no one seems to be talking about it suggests it's unfeasible.  On the other hand, they say that technological advance is the result of taking tools that already exist and putting them together in a new way.  One way or another, I think we're on the verge of that fourth revolution. 

What do you think?

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Magazine

[May 14, 1961] Friendly disputes (June 1961 Analog)

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I've got a long-running feud going on with Mike Glyer, editor of the popular fanzine, File 770.  Well, feud is probably too strong a word given that we're good friends and avid mutual readers.  In fact, we usually get along quite well.  All fans are united by love for the genre and our status as oddballs, after all.  But Mike and I just can't seem to agree on Analog, a monthly science fiction magazine.

Here are the indisputable facts: Analog is the elder statesman of the digests; it pioneered real sf back when all the other outlets were pushing pulp adventure.  Analog has the biggest circulation of any of the current digests, somewhere around 200,000 per month. 

Now for the disputable ones.  Analog is the most conservative of the mags.  It's generally Terran-centric, with Earthlings portrayed as the most cunning, successful beings in the galaxy (which is why, of course, most aliens look just like us).  While the serialized novels in Analog are often excellent, the accompanying short stories tend to be uninspiring.  The science fact columns are awful.  Editor John Campbell's championing of psionics and reactionless engines (in real-life, not just fiction), crosses into the embarrassing.  All these factors make Analog the weakest of the Big Three magazines, consistently lagging in quality behind Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. 

Of course, Mike disagrees.  He's even wagered that Analog will take the Hugo award for Best Science Fiction Magazine this year.  I think he's dreaming.  F&SF has won three years in a row, and barring some unexpected decline in quality, it will do so again. 

I'll take that bet, Mike Glyer!  Two beers to your one.

As evidence for my case, I present this month's Analog, dated June 1961.

I will give Campbell credit where it is due.  While women are rare in Analog (as they are everywhere in published sf lit), Campbell does make an effort to "discover" female authors.  That's how we got the delightful Pauline Ashwell, and now we have the promising Leigh Richmond.  Her first story, Prologue to an Analogue, involves a coven of witches that solves world crisis after world crisis with their televised incantations.  Is it sorcery, technology, or something entirely different?  A story that manages to be both Campbellian yet also pretty neat.  Three stars.

I'm not sure why L. Sprague de Camp's Apollonious Enlists was included.  Normally, Sprague writes fun, light fantasy.  This piece is non-fiction, an essay on the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Ptolemaic Egypt, with some pointed parallels drawn with our modern methods of government.  I guess there weren't any fiction vignettes handy to fill the 8-page slot.  Two stars.

Fallen Angel shows us a far future in which the Terran dominion is but a small corner of a larger Galactic Federation.  We have something of an inferiority complex as, compared to the blond, perfect Grienan, leader race of the Federation, humanity seems barely out of childhood.  In fact, we have only made it as far as we have thanks to "Experiment," an anarchistic enclave in which humans express their base impulses until they are thoroughly tired of them.  Only a small proportion of the population are truly incurable, and they become permanent residents.  It's a program that seems barbaric to the rest of the civilized galaxy and is ridiculed accordingly.

In Angel, the aristocratic Grienan are taken down a peg when its ambassador volunteers to go through Experiment and loses all of his highfalutin culture and manners, almost losing his very humanity (Grienanity?) See?  Terrans really do know best!

High is a prolific writer who's hitherto stayed on the British side of The Pond.  His latest work does little to recommend that he emigrate.  Two stars.

Lloyd Biggle Jr. is like a Cepheid star – highly variable.  His latest, Monument, may be the high point of his career to date.  I wasn't optimistic.  The set-up involves a backward paradise planet, populated by (of course) completely human aliens, a marooned Terran who vows to protect the natives from a rapacious Earth Federation, and the inevitable coming of the representatives of said polity.  There's no real science fiction in this tale of classic exploitation – you could transplant the "aliens" to an island in the Pacific Ocean and replace the Federation with the United Nations (and, perhaps, that's the point; I prefer my analogies slightly less direct).

And yet.  It's a well-told story, engaging throughout, and it's fundamentally an honest one.  There are no gimmicks or silly twists.  Just a series of interesting scenes, compelling characters, and a problem to be solved.  Four stars.

The science fact this month, George Willard's The Complex Problem of the Simple Weather Rocket starts well enough, describing the armada of radio balloons deployed daily by meteorological agencies, but it quickly degenerates into a fannish gush, recommending a switch to little sounding rockets based on the machines currently employed by model rocket enthusiasts.  Kind of a pointless article, especially given that weather balloons are cheap, and now they are augmented by the TIROS weather satellites with their hourly photos.  Two stars.

That leaves the third installment of Cliff Simak's very good serial, The Fisherman, which I won't review until it's all done next month.  Running the numbers, Analog clocks in at a straight three of five stars: acceptable, but not astonishing.  Certainly not Hugo material.  At least not this year…

Sneak preview: Last night, the Young Traveler and I went to the drive-in to take in George Pal's latest, Atlantis: the Lost Continent.  It was a hoot, and we'll tell you all about it next time…on Galactic Journey!

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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 11, 1961] Spotlighting Women (The Second Sex in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Part 3)

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Here's a question I've gotten more than once: what is the point in spotlighting woman writers?  Shouldn't I simply point out the good stories as I find them, and if they happen to be written by women, bully for them?  Why should I create an artificial distinction?

Those are actually fine questions, about which I've given much thought.  I make no claims to being an expert, or even someone whose opinion should matter much to you.  All I have is my taste, my gut and (lucky for me) my own column in which to voice my opinions.  So take my words as strictly my viewpoint.

We live in a particular kind of world.  Men are the default: the default heroes, the default writers, even the default pronoun.  Open a history book, and it will be filled with the names of great men.  Women are a seeming afterthought.  You may not even have thought twice about it.  It seems "natural" that movies should star men, that books should star men, that men should be the generals, the presidents.

But, there is a change a brewing.  Black men universally won the right to vote in 1865.  Women secure duniversal suffrage in 1920, fully three generations after the least privileged men.  The gap is narrowing.  This year, a Black man became skipper of a U.S. Naval vessel.  1961 also marks the year a woman became a shipboard U.S. Naval officer for the first time.  Women are now just one generation behind the least advantaged of the men.  Someday, we may be on a level playing field, all races of men and women.

Science fiction is supposed to be forward-looking, yet socially it seems stuck in the present, or even the past.  One almost never reads about woman starship captains or woman presidents or woman…well… anything.  I don't think this is the result of deliberate collusion by the science fiction writing community.  It's just that society is the air we breathe.  We are unconsciously bound by its rules and traditions.  Unless something shakes up our viewpoints, we'll stick in our ruts and continue to accept this male-dominated paradigm as the natural order of things.

So when I spot something unusual that I think should be universal, I note it.  I encourage it.  I enjoy it.

Without further ado, part #3 of my encyclopedic catalog of the woman writers active as of this year of 1961:

Zenna Henderson: It should come as no surprise to any regular reader of my column that I love Zenna Henderson.  While her The People stories do not comprise all of her work, they are representative — unabashedly personal tales, bittersweet and feminine, utterly unlike anything else.  Henderson's science fiction career began early last decade and is one of the most vivid hallmarks of the divide between the digest and pulp eras.  I strongly recommend Rosemary Benton's recent article as a introduction to his brilliant author and her work.

Katherine MacLean: One rarely forgets first impressions, and MacLean made a significant one on me with Unhuman Sacrifice, single-handedly saving the November 1958 Astounding, the first magazine I ever reviewed for this column.

This was actually a sort of a rediscovery — she has been publishing stories since the late '40s, many of which I read in Galaxy.  I wonder if she's now near the end of her career.  Once a prolific writer, her pace slackened after 1953, and I've only seen one of her stories since Sacrifice, the good Interbalance.  Perhaps she's just busy with other things, or maybe she publishes in the few remaining magazines I don't cover on a regular basis.  In any-wise, Ms. MacLean is highly regarded, both by me and the general community.  Check her out, and don't miss her early work published under the name of her former husband, Charles Dye.

Anne McCaffrey: Speaking of first impressions, one of the fun aspects of my job as surveyor of our genre is spotting new authors as they arrive.  Ms. McCaffrey hit the ground running with her 1959 story, The Lday in the Tower.  She topped herself with the recent The Ship who Sang.  Two points make a line; if we continue the trend, it is clear that Ms. McCaffrey is destined to produce some pretty spectacular stuff.  I can't wait!

Judith Merril: There once was a SF club in New York City.  It was called the Futurians, it only lasted 8 years (ending around the same time as WW2), and it had an outsized impact on the genre.  The 1st WorldCon was a Futurian event, for instance, and its members included future famous personages such as Isaac Asimov and Fred Pohl. 

And Judith Merril (who was Mrs. Pohl for a little while).  She has been a pillar of the community ever since, both as a writer and a prolific anthologizer; she has produced a series of "Best of" books since 1956, and her taste is sharp.  My experience with her own writing has been mixed.  They comprise just two stories and a novel.  The stories were good, the novel was terrible (though Fred Pohl and P. Schuyler Miller liked it; what do I know>).  I suspect Judy will be around for a long time, so I imagine I'll have more on which to evaluate her by the next time I do one of these.

C.L. Moore: I may be stretching a point in calling Ms. Moore a current writer.  A veteran of the pulp era, Ms. Moore wrote most prolifically in partnership with her late husband, Henry Kuttner (who I knew best as Lewis Padgett).  He died in 1958, and I've not seen hide nor hair of her since.  For this reason, the Journey has covered none of her works, and while I'm sure I must have read some of Moore (psuedonymously, collaboratively, or solitarily), I couldn't tell you about any of those stories off the top of my head (though I do own the Galaxy Novel, Shambleau; perhaps I shall try it out.)

Andre Norton: Despite the name, Andre Norton is a woman, and she has enjoyed a burgeoning career since her debut a little over a decade ago.  She is given to florid, adventury prose, filled with strapping folks and derring-do.  In a recent review of one of Ms. Norton's latest books, Alfred Bester opined dismissively that perhaps women just can't write action.  Well, he's wrong.  Now, mind you, I haven't yet read much Norton.  I started Stargate, which failed to grab my interest, and I finished Crossroads of Time, which I quite enjoyed.  She's got a new one coming out this Summer, which I'll call the tie-breaker. 

Meanwhile, Bester hasn't published a story since 1959.  Maybe men just can't write science fiction anymore…

I'll have the fourth (and final) installment in this series sometime next month.  Cheer-i-o!

(Part one is here!)

(Part two is here!)

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