All posts by Gideon Marcus

Science / Space Race

[Nov. 23, 1960] Premature Ejection (Mercury-Redstone 1)

1 Comment

The American manned space program is on a tight schedule if it wants to place an astronaut in orbit before the Soviets.  The Communists already have a striking lead.  They had it three years ago when they launched the first Sputnik, and they've maintained it with the recent Sputnik 5, which featured two Muttniks, who were returned safely to Earth after an orbital flight. 

It may well be that, as I write this, the Soviets will already have put a man in space.

NASA is moving at as brisk a pace as they can manage while doing their best to guarantee the safety of our spacemen.  I can only imagine the frustration and impatience of the seven Mercury Astronauts, who were picked a year and a half ago as they cool their heels watching the test program play out.

So far, we've seen several low altitude launches of the Mercury spacecraft (Little Joe).  There has been a test of the Atlas orbital booster (Big Joe).  But there had yet to be an all-up suborbital test of the Mercury-Redstone, mimicing the first few missions that will be flown.

Until the day-before-yesterday.

MR-1 has been on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral in Florida since late October.  No pilot was assigned to the Mercury capsule, not even a monkey or a dog.  The flight was just to ensure that all of the components would work properly during a 15-minute trip.  The mission was originally scheduled for November 7, but a sudden loss in fuel pressure during the countdown caused launch to be aborted.

A similar problem was caught and fixed on the launch pad the morning of November 21.  As the count went to zero, all systems were go.  The Redstone booster ignited at 9 a.m. 

And promptly shut off a second-and-a-half later.  The booster stack was just four inches off the ground, and it settled back onto its fins without tipping over.  But the true ignominy of the event happened at the top rather than the bottom of the stack.  The escape tower, designed to drag the Mercury capsule to safety in the event of a booster failure, took off like a scared rabbit but left the spacecraft behind.  Adding insult to injury, the main and reserve Mercury parachutes then popped out the top of the capsule.  You probably saw this comic event on the TV news.

Yesterday, some brave engineers went out to unplug the booster and figure out what went wrong.  It turns out that the culprit was a safety mechanism, a little two-prong plug designed to shut off the booster engine if there was too much of a time delay between the disconnection of the prongs as the rocket launched.  The plug has been designed for the stock Redstone missile; the Mercury-Redstone combination, being heavier, took longer to launch and thus set off the safety mechanism.

The booster is damaged but reusable.  We'll likely see it fly in December.  Still, it's a setback in the program, which still has a few more test flights to go until a person can be launched.  I'm guessing we won't see an American in space until next Spring or Summer.

1 Comment Leave A Comment
Comics, Movies, Science / Space Race

[Nov. 21, 1960] I aim at the Stars (but sometimes I hit London)

6 Comments

If the United States is doing well in the Space Race, it is in no small thanks to a group of German expatriates who made their living causing terror and mayhem in the early half of the 1940s.  I, of course, refer to Wehrner von Braun and his team of rocket scientists, half of whom were rounded up by the Allies after the War, the other half of whom apparently gave similar service to the Soviets. 

I don't know if the Russian group is still affiliated with the Communist rocket program–I don't think so.  Last I heard, they had all been repatriated.  But bon Braun's group is still going strong.  Until last year, they worked under the auspices of the Army, but now they are employed in a civilian capacity by NASA.  Their giant Saturn project is the backbone of our nascent lunar program.

Of course, the fact that an ex-Nazi is playing such a pivotal role in our space program may not sit well with some.  Perhaps to address this concern, the rather hagiographic movie, I Aim at the Stars has been released.  Interestingly, it's not quite so sympathetic as it might have been.  Von Braun is played as a rather soulless figure, unconcerned with the political ramifications of his work.  He cares only about his rockets.

Or as a math student from the Bay Area has sung:

"Don't say that he's hypocritical.
Say instead that he's 'apolitical'.
'Once the rockets are up, who cares
where they come down. 
That's not my department,'
says Wehner von Braun."

A special comic book was made for the movie and handed out at some of the premieres.  I've gotten my hands on one of them, and having been given permission to reprint, my editor is reproducing it in its entirety for those of you who won't make it to the flicks to enjoy Curt Jurgens do a rather good job of not looking at all like Wehrner von Braun.

Enjoy!

6 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[November 19, 1960] Saving the Best for Last (December 1960 Analog)

5 Comments

As the year draws to a close, all of the science fiction magazines (that is to say, the six remaining–down from a 1953 peak of 45) scramble to publish their best fiction.  Their aim is two-fold: firstly, to end the year with a bang, and secondly, to maximize the chances that one of their stories will earn a prestigious award.

By which, of course, I refer to my Galactic Stars, bestowed in December.  There's also this thing called a Hugo, which some consider a Big Deal.

And that's probably why the December 1960 Astounding was actually a pretty good ish (for a change).  I'll gloss over Part 2 of Occasion for Disaster, co-written by Garrett and Janifer, and head straight into the stand-alone stuff.

First, you've got an editorial foreward with Campbell whinging about the Dean Drive again.  But this time, he promises never to talk about it again.  This ostensible reactionless drive has finally gotten a review from some government agency or another, which is all Campbell says he really wanted.  But even Campbell seems doubtful that Dean's work will be vindicated, probably on account that the thing is a fraud.

The first piece of actual fiction is Poul Anderson's novelette, The Longest Voyage.  It's an atmospheric gem featuring the first circumnavigation of a globe.  I say a globe because it becomes clear early on that this sailing vessel, even though it be crewed by men, and men who speak an archaic dialect of English, is not plying the oceans of Earth, but rather some colony world where technology has regressed only to rise again.  The Captain's destination, aside from his port of origin, is an island where (it is rumored) a spaceship crashed decades ago. 

There is a real richness to this tale, which borrows liberally from the argot Anderson showcased in his excellent The High Crusade.  And then there's the deep theme–if given a chance to leapfrog one's culture from the Renaissance to the Interstellar, skipping the centuries of investigation and discovery, would one, should one do it?  What's more important when solving a problem: The answer or the process?

Four stars.  It's what Garrett wishes he could have done with Despoiler of the Golden Empire.

Harry Harrison is back with The K-Factor.  Sociometry is perfected such that human cultures can be reduced to a set of variables, the most important being our K-Factor or propensity for war.  But what happens when someone deliberately stimulates a world's violence factor?  An interesting premise marred by being told largely through exposition.  Three stars.

The Untouchable, by Stephen A. Kallis, a fellow I've never heard of before, is a tiny thing that was probably included to fill a space rather than on its merit.  Oh, it's not bad, this story of an invention that makes objects intangible, but it feels like the beginning of something rather than a complete piece.  Three stars.

Campbell writes the science-fact article this issue: They do it with Mirrors.  Either Astounding's editor is too cheap to pay for outside help, or he thinks too much of himself to let anyone else write the column.  Perhaps both.  In any event, this one is on Project Echo, and Campbell spends a dozen pages writing what I managed to convey in two (in my article on Courier).  I did appreciate him pointing out, however, the the world's first communications satellite is as much a triumph of rocketry as it is ground-based computer signal processing.

Gun for Hire is another Mack Reynolds piece that features some element of violence in the title.  It's actually a lot of fun, this story of a hit man transported to the future by pacifists who want him to rub out a would-be dictator.  I was particularly impressed with the assassin's characterization.  Four stars.

Finally, we have Donald E. Westlake, another unknown author (though come to think of it, I might have seen his name in a table of contents of a lesser mag last year).  He gives us Man of Action, again a case where a 20th Century fellow is abducted by folks from the future.  In this instance, the man is not a thug but an effete interior decorator.  He is compelled by his robotic captors to play a sort of 20 Questions game to determine why the future has stagnated, and how to put some pep back into it.  The execution is very nice, though the solution is a bit pat.  Three stars.

Wowsville.  For the first time in memory, Analog has delivered an issue with no clunkers, and with some genuine sparklies to boot.  Well done, Mr. Campbell.  More of this, please.

5 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[November 16, 1960] Fully Fledged (a November Space Race update)

1 Comment

The bird finally has wings!

By bird, I mean that lawn-dart of a rocket plane, NASA's X-15.  Until yesterday, that sleek black vehicle, designed to probe the edges of space from underneath, had been a work in progress.  The X-15 had already flown 25 times, zooming at faster than Mach 3 and climbing to a height of 40 kilometers.  But its engines, a pair of Reaction Motors XLR11s, were an old set of training wheels: virtually the same rockets that pushed Chuck Yeager's X-1 past the sound barrier in 1947. 

Together, these engines gave the plane a thrust of 32,000 lbf (pounds of force–or the force of Earth's gravity on one pound of matter).  That's nothing to sneeze at, but it was always an interim solution.  Yesterday, veteran test-pilot Scott Crossfield took the X-15 for a spin with the engine it was always meant to have: the Reaction Motors XLR99. 

Unlike the XLR11, the XLR99 can be throttled smoothly from 0-100% (as opposed to the XLR11, which had eight discrete speed settings depending on how many sub-engines were firing).  Moreover, just one XLR99 delivers 57,000 lbf, almost twice as much as two of its predecessors.

Now, Crossfield didn't really test the new engine to its limit, "only" taking the craft to Mach 2.97 and a height of 24 kilometers.  However, the XLR99 is going to make a whole new class of flights possible.  In a couple of years, expect to see the X-15 hitting Mach 6 and reaching the 100,000 kilometer mark. 

Who knows?  Someday, you might take off for orbit from your local airport instead of strapped to the top of a firecracker.

Speaking of which, the first full test of the suborbital Mercury-Redstone (NASA's Mercury one-man space capsule on top of a Redstone booster, the kind at the base of the Juno 1) is set for November 21.  There won't be anyone on board for the mission, but it is the next critical step in the flight-test schedule.

Finally, the Air Force has, at last, come clean regarding its Discoverer capsule-return program.  The newspaper coverage of the latest launch on November 12 and the subsequent recovery of the Discoverer reentry capsule on November 14 was surprisingly detailed.  Discoverer 17 did carry a camera (though, ostensibly, only for testing equipment to be carrried on the next-generation SAMOS satellite).  Moreover, the military even disclosed that they used an upraded Agena second stage on its Thor-Agena boosters.  This means they can lift heavier payloads to higher orbits–great news for the civilian program since NASA will be using Agenas in its upcoming Venus and Mars flights.  This is actually a case of decreased government redundancy since, until the Air Force revealed the Agena, NASA was going to develop its own version, called the Vega.  Now they don't have to.

Discoverer 17 actually did some science this time around, too.  Propitiously timed to launch during a solar flare, the satellite carried a bunch of human tissue samples and a silver bromide emulsion block.  Scientists will study the effects of heightened space radiation on these items, which should provide some useful information to the manned space program.

So smiles all around from all three corners of the American space industry.  1961 is going to be a fun year, methinks.

1 Comment Leave A Comment
Magazine

[November 13, 1960] Evening out (December 1960 Galaxy, second half)

10 Comments

It's hard to keep the quality up in a long-format magazine like Galaxy, especially when your lower tier stuff gets absorbed by a sister magazine (IF).  Thus, it is rare to find a full issue of Galaxy without some duds that bring the average down.  Editor Gold has saved this month's weak entries for the second half.

Not that you could tell at first, given the fascinating Subject to Change, by Ron Goulart.  A creepy story about a woman, her gift for transformation, her struggle with kleptomania, and her increasing estrangement from her fiancee.  Four stars.

H.B. Fyfe's Round-and-Round Trip is a hoot.  If you're an inveterate traveler like me, you'll especially appreciate this tale of a fellow who seems to be trapped on the interstellar version of the M.T.A., endlessly shuttling from planet to planet, never reaching his destination.  But does he actually have one?  Or is the journey the thing?  I'm torn between three and four stars.

But then we have Blueblood, by Jim Harmon.  Human explorers find a planet of blue humanoids racially divided based on the depth of the skin's hue.  The darker ones are seemingly dumber than the lighter ones.  I held my breath for some kind of satire or allegory regarding our present prejudicial woes in this country, but the story took a left turn somewhere and just left me with a bad taste in my mouth.  If it's allegory, the message to be gleaned is disturbing, and if it is not, then it's just a weak tale.  It's too bad–Harmon is fairly consistently good.  Two stars this time.

Patrick Fahy is another complete novice, and Bad Memory, illustrated by Mad Magazine's Don Martin, is unimpressive.  A space horticulturalist sacrifices all to turn his planet into a Jovian swamp.  On the upside, he falls in love.  On the downside…well, I didn't like the downside.  Two stars (you might like it more than me).

The issue is wrapped up by Daniel Galouye's Fighting Spirit, about a space force clerk who shennanigans his way into real combat only to find that war isn't quite the rifle and stiff upper lip type.  More the garlic, cross, and mirror type…  Three stars.

All told, we end up with an issue that just barely crests the three-star line on the Journey-meter.  Still, that's pretty good for an issue in "decline," and there are some definite gems, albeit more amethyst than emerald.

By the way, speaking of Don Martin, the newest Mad Magazine has hit the stands.  As you can see, they successfully predicted the outcome of the race:

But they also hedged their bet–this was the outside cover:

10 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[Nov. 11, 1960] A Celebrated Veteran (December 1960 Galaxy)

12 Comments

Ten years ago, a World War Two vet named H. L. Gold decided to try his luck as editor of a science fiction digest.  His Galaxy was among the first of the new crop of magazines in the post-war science fiction boom, and it quickly set an industry standard. 

A decade later, Galaxy is down to a bimonthly schedule and has cut author rates in half.  This has, predictably, led to a dip in quality, though it is not as pronounced as I'd feared.  Moreover, the magazine is half-again as large as it used to be, and its sister publication, IF, might as well be a second Galaxy.  All told, the magazine is still a bargain at 50 cents the issue.

Particularly the December 1960 issue.  There's a lot of good stuff herein (once you get past yet another senilic Gold editorial):

The reliable J.T. McIntosh leads off with The Wrong World, in which the Earth is conquered…accidentally.  There was some misunderstanding by our invaders as to the technological level of our world; for the more advanced planets, we're supposed to get an invitation to interstellar society, not a savaging.  It's kind of an oddball piece, but it kept my attention despite the late hour at which I began it.  Three stars.

Next up is brand-newcomer, Bill Doede with Jamieson, an interesting tale of teleporting humans whose talents are viewed as akin to witchcraft.  Not a perfect tale, but definitely a promising beginning to a writing career, and with a female protagonist.  Three stars.

For Your Information is interesting, if not riveting, stuff about a Polynesian feast involving thousands of mating sea worms.  I understand they're a delicacy.  I'll take their word for it…  Three stars.

Charles V. de Vet is back with Metamorphosis, a story about a symbiotic life form that makes one superpowered… but which also turns the host into a ticking time bomb.  You spend much of the story pretty certain that you know how to defuse the bomb, such that it strains the credulity that there should be anything to worry about.  The ending, however, addresses the issue nicely.  Three stars.

Finally (for today) we have Snuffles by the rather odd but compelling R.A. Lafferty.  He writes stories in a style that shouldn't work but somehow does.  That's either some innate talent or blind luck.  Given his track record, I'm betting on the former.  In any event, the novelette details the misadventures of a six-person planetary exploration crew (two women, life scientists–women are always cast as biologists for some reason) who are at first charmed and then menaced by a sexless Teddy Bear monster with delusions of Godhood.  A fascinating story.  Four stars.

Next time, we'll have works by Ron Goulart, H.B. Fyfe, Jim Harmon, Patrick Fahy, and Daniel Galouye.  That's a pretty good lineup!

12 Comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[Nov. 8, 1960] Across the Finish Line (the 1960 Presidential Election results)

10 Comments

At long last, the contest is over.  Not since the 1876 clash between Hayes and Tilden for this nation's highest office have the results been this close; it was not until this morning that anyone could really be sure who would be taking possession of the Oval Office in January 1961.

In fact, as I took in a late lunch yesterday, the big IBM computer at CBS had already predicted a Nixon win with overwhelming confidence.  This was an artifact of the flow of voting in this country: the day belongs to the Republican voter–it is only when the Democratic voter clocks out of his urban, blue-collar job that the tide begins to shift. 

By dinnertime, CBS' big brain had switched opinions based on the torrent of Kennedy votes streaming in from the Northeastern seaboard and the big Eastern cities.  New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago all threw the balance of their support for the Democratic candidate.  Just as the tide was cresting, President Eisenhower took to the airwaves exhorting me and my fellow West-Coasters not to give up the fight (the message was lost on me, of course; I'd voted that morning). 

Because the contest was not yet over.  The Senator from Massachusetts had acquired a hefty lead, but it was slowly eroded as the night went on.  When the polls closed in California, it became clear fairly quickly that the Union's second largest state was still undecided.  The Los Angelinos had not followed the example of the other big cities, their ardor for Kennedy moderated by their fondness for native son Nixon.  By midnight Pacific Time, when I decided to turn in (I still had work the next day, after all), the fate of the presidency rested on four states: Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, and California.

It was all over when I turned on the news at around 8.  Kennedy had won Minnesota.  California and Illinois canceled each other out.  Michigan had gone Democratic at around 3 AM, putting a seal on the event.  When all was said and done, the national margin was only about 100,000 votes, barely .1% of the electorate.  At first blush, this result flies in the face of the wild enthusiasm that greeted Kennedy wherever he toured.  But elections in this country are not dictated by the mob, and Nixon's supporters were bound to be more "conservative" in their exuberance.

I'm still processing this victory in my thoughts and feelings.  A year ago, the Vice President seemed a shoe-in.  All he had to do was ride the coattails of Eisenhower prosperity.  Senator Kennedy was too untested, too highfalutin to be a winner.  And yet, after the TV debates, no one could argue that Jack Kennedy wasn't ready for the Big Leagues.  Nixon's tone became more bitter and defensive.  It was hard to imagine this angry man carrying on the tradition of his gentle, moderate predecessor.  Despite this, both men fought with tenacity to the very end, and the outcome was never certain until it was upon us.

And so the 1960 election ends with the country divided sharply, not just demographically, but physically.  Nixon swept the West and Appalachia.  Kennedy won the Northeast and South.  Yet, it is a testament to how far we've come since the election just a century ago that the losing half of the populace will not riot or secede.  In two months, they will give their respect and reverence (though perhaps with a modicum of grumbling) to the new President. 

The burgeoning Space Race, decolonization, Communist expansionism, and desegregation are going to be the volatile issues of the 1960s.  Let's all hope that President Kennedy, whether he's in the White House for four or eight years, will be up to tackling them.

10 Comments Leave A Comment
Book

[November 6, 1960] Take Five (Store of Infinity by Robert Sheckley)

3 Comments

There are few folks who have taken greater advantage of the Silver Age of science fiction (i.e. the Post-War boom and bust of the digests) than Robert Sheckley.  As of last month, the fellow had already published four collections of his works.  The beneficiaries of this production are Bob's pocketbook…and every reader who gets hands on his stuff.  Sheckley's mastery of the science fiction short story, whether straight, humorous, cynical, or downright horrific, is legendary.

Now, Notions: Unlimited, Sheckley's fourth collection, just came out in June.  Moreover, I'd had reason to believe that November would be a month of slim pickings for new fiction.  Imagine my surprise (and delight!) at finding yet another Sheckley collection on sale.

This one, Store of Infinity, may be my favorite of them all.

All of the stories are reprints of magazine stories, and there are no clunkers in the bunch.  Going through in order, we have:

The Prize of Peril (May 1958 Fantasy and Science Fiction): In the near future, the most popular gameshow on television is a live manhunt.  At every turn, the fugitive is pursued not just by would-be killers, but also a camera crew and a vapidly excited host.  Can a contestant survive?  And what price victory?  The theme was recycled for a part of Sheckley's recent novel, The Status Civilization.

The Humours (originally Join Now in December 1958 Galaxy): This rewrite is substantively similar to the original, but the premises are completely different.  In the future, it is possible to transfer parts of one's personality to a perfectly realistic android.  In the original story, this was done to address a labor shortage on Mars and Venus; individuals would split their personalities in three to work on all of the solar system's inhabited planets simultaneously.  In The Humours, the split is therapeutic, a remedy for Multiple Personality Disorder.  Both tales feature the journey of the "original" (at least, the personality piece inhabiting the human body) to reintegrate his brother personas.  A fun ride.

Triplication (May 1959 Playboy): A set of three humorous vignettes, the kind that are usually droll and forgettable.  Sheckley does it better.

The Minimum Man (June 1958 Galaxy): Who is best equipped to investigate a wild planet for colonization?  Not trained mercenaries, not seasoned jungle trekkers, not veteran explorers–for though they may survive the ordeal, their experience will not tell you if your average, civilization-softened settler can handle the place.  No, you want to send the least qualified pioneer possible.  If he can survive, anyone can.  Sounds like a silly premise, but it's really a beautiful story of a clod, his robot, and an untamed world.  Probably my favorite piece of the book.

If the Red Slayer (July 1959 Amazing): When resurrection technology is perfected, what's to keep a soldier from fighting forever in an endless war?  Nothing, apparently.  A bitter story with an ironically light touch; contrast with the jingoistic Dorsai! and Starship Troopers. 

The Store of the Worlds (September 1959 Playboy): Would you give up ten years of your life and your worldly possessions for a jaunt to an alternate Earth where all of your dreams have come true?  And just what kind of world would you have to have come from to make this trade appealing.  I tell you, Bob Sheckley is reason enough to get a subscription to Heffner's magazine…you read it for the articles, don't you?

The Gun without a Bang (June 1958 Galaxy): A silent weapon may be great for an assassin or a spy, but not so great against dumb animals.  After all, it is the loud report of a rifle as much as anything that scatters the wolfpack.  Still, a bangless gun can have some utility…  The weakest story of the collection, which is to say it gets three stars rather than four or five like the others.

The Deaths of Ben Baxter (July 1957 Galaxy): An excellent multiple-timeline story in which folks from a doomed future attempt to thwart their fate by adjusting the past.  The critical juncture involves the meeting of the same two men in three disparate settings (British, Hindu, and familiar New York).  My second favorite piece. 

4.5 stars.  Pick it up while you can!

3 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[November 4, 1960] Less is More (the launch of Explorer 8!)

2 Comments

Have you ever listened to a pleasant radio broadcast only to have it fade out half-way and wondered what caused the interruption?  Or perhaps you've marveled at how, on rare occasions, you can catch programs from faraway countries.

NASA's about to take some of the mystery out of these phenomena.  Yesterday, the space agency successfully launched number eight in its Explorer series of small science satellites, the first in over a year.  The 41kg probe has a brand-new type of mission, to explore the ionosphere–the upper atmospheric layer where atoms are violently stripped of their electrons by the merciless Sun, thus ionizing them. 

This region has some fascinating properties, most significant of which is its ability to reflect radio waves.  This is why you can pick up shortwave broadcasts from around the globe.  The ionosphere is also a quicksilver place whose ability to relay radio changes by the minute. 

Until today, the ionosphere had only briefly been probed by suborbital sounding rockets or by satellites on their way to orbit on other errands.  Explorer 8 was purpose-built for the task of ionospheric study by Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, NASA's first established research center.  As Explorer dips low in its eccentric orbit, four of its seven experiments measure the electrical charge on the probe's surface, the temperature of the electrons around the satellite, the total electrical current rushing over the satellite's skin, and the concentration of charged particles around the probe.  Two other experiments measure the density of micrometeoric dust, and the final one allows measurement of atmospheric density.  Interestingly, there are no solar panels on Explorer 8, as they would interfere with its ability to take measurements.  We can expect a couple of months of good, battery-fueled data collection, however.

In plain English, Explorer 8 will give us our first true map of a crucially important piece of our atmosphere.  The ionosphere is, essentially, our first sea wall against the ocean of space.  Not only will we better understand radio propagation, we will also be able to quantify atmospheric electricity and analyze the base of our planet's magnetosphere. The instruments on Explorer 8 will be refined for use in future probes to other planets, letting us study them with similar comprehensiveness. 

It's great news, but the really exciting bit is that the Explorer 8's rocket, the Army's Juno II, worked at all.  The booster was developed by Von Braun's Huntsville, Alabama team back in 1958 as a competitor to the Air Force's Thor Able.  When the Army got pushed out of rocket development, the Juno II became an orphan.  As a result, the folks working on it stopped caring so much, and the rocket has since had a lackluster performance record.  At a NASA hearing this summer, there was talk of pulling the plug entirely on the program.  However, it was determined that of the four boosters left (built and paid for), at least two could be expected to work.  Might as well use what you have rather than let them go to waste, I suppose.

That leaves three boosters, of which at least one will probably accomplish its task.  Anyone want to make a bet on which one it will be?

2 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 3, 1960] With a little help from a friend (Murray Leinster's Men into Space)

9 Comments

Keeping up with all the science fiction releases is virtually impossible for one person.  Luckily, I'm not making this Journey alone.  When it turned out I could only review one of October's books, long-time fan TRX offered his services as a guest contributor.  He chose to cover Murray Leinster's Men into Space, a collection based on the recently completed television show which had garnered a strong fan base (alas, I was not one of them).  Let's see what he's got for us…

Our Gracious Host asked if I might do a guest post about the new Leinster book.  I naturally leapt at the chance.

While it's officially an October release, the book hasn't completely propagated through the publishing supply chains yet.  After a fruitless search through the local stores, I had an idea and called the lady at Big River Books (my favorite store) and gave her the title and author and asked if she could special order it for me.  Sure, not only that, she'd have it drop-shipped to my house to save me a trip to pick it up.  And she'd let me pay for it next time I was in.  I was delighted, but I'm not sure of the wisdom of being able to buy books over the phone with credit…

A plain brown envelope (well, buff is close enough to brown) showed up in due course, containing one (1) newly-printed book.

From the description on the back cover, "Men Into Space" sounds like it might be a "media tie-in", like the novel released after Forbidden Planet hit the theaters a few years ago.  If so, neither of my local stations has picked up the show.  I can only tell you about the book.

"Men Into Space" consists of short stories following the career of Space Force officer Ed McCauley:

As a lieutenant, McCauley makes the first manned rocket flight.

As a captain, McCauley deals with an injured crewman while piloting the first space-plane.

As a major, McCauley deals with a potentially-fatal construction accident while in charge the building of the first space station.

As a colonel, McCauley deals with a murderous personnel problem while overseeing the establishment of a series of radio relays to the moon's far side, then deals with a technical problem aboard a rocket to Venus, and another personnel problem on a Mars mission.

Lots of nuts and bolts details about ballistics, rocket fuels, radiation, the van Allen belts, and so forth.  And with each story, McCauley deals with progressively more complex human problems as he moves up in rank.

If you're starting to smell something odd… yes, this is a juvenile.

It's a *good* juvenile, however.  I was a rocket-head from the time I learned about the Army's missile program after the war, and if I was thirteen years old again I'd be all over this book.  I would have been entertained and instructed at the same time.

The problem is, judging from the cover, it appears to be marketed as a normal science fiction novel, not as a collection of stories appropriate for "Boy's Life."  I think most of the readers here at Galactic Journeys would be quite disappointed… and then they'd find their kids under the blanket reading it by flashlight after bed time.

Men into Space author Murray Leinster made his first sale in 1916.  In the last 44 years he has written a huge number of novels, short stories, and both radio and television scripts.  He has written westerns, mysteries, romance… and lots of science fiction.  He's an old hand who knows his craft back to front, and I expect he wrote exactly what he intended to.  Or what he was contracted for.

I don't know how the book will be marketed to schools and libraries, but the mass-market paperback edition is almost certainly going to be shelved with the rest of the science fiction instead of with the juveniles, and I expect that most purchasers will be in for a shock.  And that's doubly sad, since many of the the youth Leinster wrote for may never come across the book.

In short, Men into Space probably aims too low for the average Galactic Journeyer…but Christmas is coming, and if there are any ten-to-fifteen-year-old readers on your shopping list, they might find the book very enjoyable.

The nicely typewritten review was accompanied by the following note scrawled on a half-sheet of legal pad.

"Reading a book for review" is a very odd thing.  Book reports in school were mostly done to prove I'd actually read the book.  Here, I've tried to describe what the book *is*, not just what happened in it, and to make a guess as to what others here might think of it.  And I only made it a few pages in before I thought "what is this trash and how did it get printed?", and I started composing a scathing review in the back of my mind as I was reading.  I would have put the book down before finishing the first story had I not committed to writing a review.  About halfway through I realized what kind of book I was reading, and then had to stop and reconsider everything I'd read up to that point.  And when I finished and wrote the review, I looked at it again the next day and realized it was ridiculously long and crossed out most of it before retyping it and going to the Post Office.  Murray Leinster might be an old hand, but this sort of thing is new to me!

Experts make the challenging look easy, I guess.  But practice makes perfect, and I'm happy to say that we will likely see TRX again someday!

9 Comments Leave A Comment