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TV

[Jan. 12, 1960] Twilight of the 60's (Twilight Zone monthly wrap-up

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I was asked by a dear reader if I had stopped watching The Twilight Zone on Fridays, it having been a month since I last discussed that delightful science fiction/fantasy/horror anthology.  Well, fear not.  I just like to let four episodes get into the queue before describing them.

In fact, if anything the show has only gotten better.  It helps that creator Rod Serling has been joined by a myriad of other established writers, which broadens the themes and tones we get to see.

Four weeks ago, Episode 12, What You Need debuted.  A kindly old sidewalk peddler seems to know exactly what items a given person can use at any given moment to achieve success.  At first, one expects the episode to have a cynical sting in it—perhaps it's a deal-with-the-Devil sort of thing.  But it's not.  In fact, as my daughter and I guessed early on, it turns out that the salesman has a limited sense of precognition.. and a big heart.  But what happens when this fellow runs across an unscrupulous man whose heart is as dark as the peddler's is light?  Has the criminal found a golden goose?  Or a tiger by the tail?

It's really good stuff, though the salesman has a plot-summarizing line at the end that is wholly superfluous, I suppose to drive the point home for the slower folks at home.

The Four of Us are Dying, the following week's episode, involves a man who can change his face to match that of any person he can see, in life or photo.  It just takes a little time to concentrate.  He hatches a scheme to win the heart of a beautiful woman and to bilk a criminal of ill-gotten gains.  But when he puts on the wrong face at the wrong time, he suffers the consequences.  A solid, surreal show that is very effective despite the complete lack of special effects.

I was a little disappointed with Richard Matheson's Third from the Sun, in which two families attempt to flee impending Armageddon by departing their doomed planet in a spaceship.  The kicker, obvious from the title, is that the refugees aren't going from, but rather fleeing to Earth.  It suffers from overlongitis in the middle act, as earlier episodes did, and the constantly crooked camera angles look more silly than atmospheric.

Just the other day, we saw I Shot an Arrow into the Sky, about the first manned spaceflight.  The ship goes off course during take-off and crashes on a remarkable Earth-like "asteroid."  The next twenty minutes involved the crew dealing with thirst, hopelessness, and most significantly, a selfish crewmember gone mad and murderous with the desire to survive.  Both my daughter and I knew how it would end almost from the beginning—in fact, the expedition had crashed on Earth, and the actions of the crazy crewman were wholly unecessary.

I suspected the ending since the "asteroid" had an terrestrial atmosphere, was the same distance from the Sun, and all the other incidentals (including gravity and geology) were identical.  Of course, this sticks in the craw a couple of ways.  On the one hand, to buy that the crew had landed on an "asteroid," you have to believe that the writer has no idea what the surface of an asteroid would really be like.  After all, asteroids have so little mass, relative to a planet, that they have no atmosphere and virtually no gravitational pull.  Moreover, no asteroid routinely comes very close to the Moon.

On the other hand, since it was so manifestly obvious to the audience that the crew had actually crashed on Earth, one has to wonder how the crew was so thick-headed as to miss the fact.

My daughter noted that space stories have been a common topic on this show, which makes sense given the current mania for the Space Race.  I just wish The Twilight Zone had the budget to really pull off stories set off-planet.  I feel the show is more successful when it sticks to intimate, moody, Earth-bound stories.

P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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Magazine

[Jan. 08, 1960] Between Peaks (January 1960 If)

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I've finally finished the January 1960 IF and can report fully on its contents.  January has been a decidedly uninspiring month for digests.  They're all in the 3-star range (though for Astounding, that's actually a good month!) with no knockouts in the bunch.  Perhaps this is the calm before the storm.

The reliable if stolid Mack Reynolds (writing as Mark Mallory) kicks off this issue with The Good Seed.  Can a man trapped on a tiny island by a swelling tide escape before he is drowned?  Perhaps with the help of a sentient, telepathic plant.  It's actually quite a touching story.

James Stamers seems to be a newcomer, and it shows in his unpolished writing.  Despite this, his The Divers, about psionic neutrals (essentially anti-telepaths) with the ability to astrally project, has some fascinating ideas and some genuinely evocative scenes.  Had Stamers given the tale to Sturgeon to work over for a final edit, I think it could have been an epic.  As it is, the story suggests that its author is a diamond in the rough waiting to be polished.

Two Ulsterians, Bob Shaw and Walt Willis, wrote the short Dissolute Diplomat, about an unsavory space traveler who crashes on an alien world, bullies the jelly-ish inhabitants into fixing his ship, and then gets what he deserves in a groan-worthy fashion that is truly pun-ishing.

The Little Red Bag, by Jerry Sohl, is a good piece of thrilling writing, at least until the somewhat callous and abrupt end.  A fellow on a plane has the power of tactile clairvoyance—and he discovers a ticking time bomb in the luggage compartment.  Can he save the passengers before it goes off?  Having flown the route that the plane takes many times (Southerly down California into Los Angeles), the setting is quite familiar, which is always fun.

Daniel Galouye (how do you pronounce his name?) is up next with the interesting teleportation yarn, The Last Leap.  Three military subjects have gone AWOL after artificially gaining the ability to materialize anywhere.  Surely they were not killed–after all, even the vacuum of space poses no danger, for the 'porters reflexively snap back to a safe spot; moreover, they instinctively avoid teleporting into solid objects.  What could have happened?  You find out in the end…

To Each His Own, by Jack Sharkey, stars a team of Venusians who explore the Earth after a recent holocaust.  The nature of said disaster is never made explicit until the very end, though it is alluded to subtly.  I confess that I should have figured out the gimmick ending, but I didn't.  I suppose that constitutes a point in the author's favor.

Margaret St. Clair has a fun story (The Autumn after Next) about a magical missionary whose job is to convert magic-less cultures into adepts at the Arts.  He meets his match, and his end, attempting to introduce the most reluctant of tribes to the supernatural.  Better than The Scarlet Hexapod, not as good as Discipline, both IF stories.

Finally, we have Cultural Exchange by J.F. Bone wherein a crew of space explorers meets a sophisticated alien race with both superior and inferior technologies.  It is a first contact story of Cat and Mouse with both sides attempting to be the predator.  Not stellar, but satisfying.

That's that!  It's an unremarkable issue, slightly under the standards of its older sibling, Galaxy, I'd say.  Worth a read, but you won't remember it next month (unless, of course, you review my column).

Note: If you like this column, consider sharing it by whatever media you frequent most.  I love the company, and I imagine your friends share your excellent taste!

P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Movies

[Jan. 5, 1960] Perpendicular to Up (4D Man)

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What is it that separates schlock from the sublime in a science fiction movie?  To the nondiscriminating, I suppose they all look the same.  The same may go for the discriminating, but for opposite reasons.  I know I have very high standards when it comes to my science fiction.  This is the price I pay for having read so many excellent stories.  Thus, for me the visual medium generally lacks, though there are exceptions.

So why do I keep going out to the drive-in?  Well, occasionally there are good films, and if I know what I'm getting into, I can enjoy a bad film.  Science fiction movies are generally dreadful, so I am well-prepared for the experience. My daughter, though only 10, is a discerning person, herself, so we always have good conversations about films afterward (and during!)

Last week, 4D Man was on the menu.  It was made by the same crew that brought us The Blob.  In brief, it involves a fellow who is convinced that, using the powers of his mind and some field-generating doohickey, he can force solid objects through other solid objects.  He brings it to the attention of his sober, scientist brother, who eventually masters the art.  In the process, the brother becomes a monster, for the application of said art causes rapid aging, and the only way to regain youth is to steal it from others.  He becomes a sort of vampire, and his ability to become insubstantial renders him all but invulnerable.


The trick is to push really hard.

Quite an odd duck, this movie.  For one thing, the sci-fi twist doesn't really get involved until halfway through.  Instead, we are treated to a love triangle between the brothers and the elder brother's colleague/assistant.  I say treated because I actually quite enjoyed this part.  In particular, I was happy to see that the colleague, played by the talented Lee Merriwether, was intelligent and independent.  When the younger brother, whose actor's name escapes me, attempts to nobly decline the lady's attentions in deference to his older sibling, she makes it perfectly clear that she is her own woman, and she chooses who she wants.  She is also, ultimately, the hero of the movie, managing to vanquish the monster rather cleverly. 


Scientists doing Science.


I think The World, The Flesh, and the Devil taught us how to resolve this situation.

There is a lot to enjoy about the movie.  Robert Lansing plays the older brother in a competent, understated manner, and he is a pleasure to watch.  As I mentioned upstream, Lee Merriwether's smart scientist character is a breath of fresh air.  The younger brother's actor is eager, if nothing else.  One might find the incessant jazz soundtrack somewhat off-putting, but I liked it.  The special effects are inexpensive but convincing.  It's in color, which is still uncommon for sci-fi films.


Big brother masters the art of pushing….


…and uses it predictably.


But is it worth the price?

But how was the science, you ask?  Well, it's ludicrous, of course.  The younger brother attempts to attribute the power of matter phase-through to a fourth-dimensional field that acts as an amplifier for the talented mind; hence, the movie's title.

I think it's hogwash.  It's easier to believe that both brothers are mutants, and that the older brother, with his more-disciplined psyche, is able to master the ability.  This hypothesis is strengthened by the fact that Lansing's character is able to phase even without the field generator.

From the reviews, it does not appear that 4D Man will beat out The Blob in popularity or box office.  I attribute this, in part, to the lack of a catchy theme.  It's still a fun 90 minutes if you look at it as a live-action comic book, however, and worth it for Merriwether and Lansing.

By the way, in case you've been under a rock the last few days, Senator Jack Kennedy has tossed his hat into the presidential race for this year.  It is encouraging to think that my chronological peer could run for this nation's highest office.  On the other hand, my political sympathies tend to be more in line with those of Hubert Humphrey and (the yet undeclared) Stuart Symington.  Or Nelson Rockefeller, whose star rose and fell last year.

Just please please don't give us Tricky Dick in November!

Note: If you like this column, consider sharing it by whatever media you frequent most.  I love the company, and I imagine your friends share your excellent taste!

P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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Magazine

[Jan. 2, 1960] Happy New Year! (January 1960 F&SF)

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Good Lord, is it already 1960?

When I started this endeavor in 1958, I had only a vague notion what it would look like and how long it would last.  Over the past year 14 months, Galactic Journey has settled into what I hope is a consistent, yet varied, mature column.  Moreover, I have suspicion that this column will last just about as long as I do, as I see no reason to ever stop.

It is hard to imagine Galactic Journey with bylines dated with futuristic years like 1965 or 1972 or 1988, but why not?  Perhaps one day, instead of San Diego, Seattle, or Sapporo, the dateline will read Sinus Rorus, Syrtis Major, or Saturn.

Returning to the present, it must be 1960, for that is the date on the current Fantasy and Science Fiction, January to be exact.  Actually, the February issue has already arrived, but that's a topic for a future week.  In the meantime, let's see what the first F&SF of 1960 has to offer:

Poul Anderson is back with another Time Patrol story, The Only Game in Town.  This time, Everard and his faithful Indian companion (I kid; Salgado is quite a well-developed and co-equal character) are dispatched to the American Southwest in the 13th century to stop, get this, a Mongol invasion.

It's not so silly as it sounds.  In fact, it sounds downright plausible that the Mongols could, after conquering China, send a scouting expedition to the New World.  It didn't take many horsemen to conquer the Aztecs, and the Mongols were a formidable race, to be sure.  What makes this story interesting, aside from the fine writing and evocative setting, is Everard's dawning realization that the Time Patrol's mission may not be as pure as once thought.  The Time Cops are told they are to preserve the original timeline, but in this story, they appear to be meddling for meddling's sake rather than fixing damage caused by others.

I look forward to learning more about the secret agenda of Everard's future employers.

Then we have A Divvil with the Women, apparently a resubmission of an earlier story once published in a lesser magazine.  It's by Eric Frank Russell (slumming as "Niall Wilde"), and it involves an unpleasant fellow who makes a deal with the devil—with disastrous results, of course.  My, but these stories are popular these days!  It's no longer than it needs to be to deliver the punchline, which is a blessing (pun intended).

Damon Knight has translated a piece from F&SF's French edition: The Blind Pilot by Charles Henneberg.  Sadly, the thing is only half-translated or something; it's well nigh unreadable, and I didn't make it past the first few pages.  Oh well.

Reginald Bretnor, who writes the execrable Ferdinand Feghoot puns in F&SF under a pseudonym, has a very silly short-short ("Bug-Getter") that, you guessed it, ends in a pun.  I must confess that I did laugh, so it couldn't have been all bad.

For once, Asimov has a decidedly unremarkable article.  It's called Those Crazy Ideas, and it segues from a discussion of Asimov's personal creativity to observations on how scientific creativity can be maximized.  Fluffy.

Cliff Simak's Final Gentleman just barely misses the mark.  Quite a long tale for F&SF, it is one of those excitingly creepy tales with a prosaic payoff.  In this case, a respected author retires after 30 years only to find that the trappings and details of his life are largely imaginary, sort of a psychic cloak that surrounds him, altering his surroundings and himself to seem more refined and engaging than they actually are.  I found this notion compelling.  After all, I often swathe myself in a fantasy, pretending to be decades in the past.  I complete the illusion by listening to old music, using obsolete slang, wearing out-of-date clothing.  It is a conceit in which I engage to better understand a bygone era for historical purposes, and simply to have a fun invisible refuge from the real world.  Hey—it's cheaper than heroin.

But in Simak's story, the psychic hoodwink is perpetrated solely to influence the course of history through an implausible Rube Goldberg chain of interactions.  I was disappointed, but you may feel differently.

A Little Girl's Christmas in Modernia, by Ralph Bunch, is next.  In this future, we gradually trade in our flesh parts for metal as we grow older.  Bunch's tale features a fully human moppet and her mostly-converted parents in the kind of inconsequential story I'd expect to find in a slick.  I suppose they needed a Holiday-themed story to fill out this issue.

What do you do when an alien weather probe crashes into your backyard?  You bake it, of course, and thus unintentionally forestall an extraterrestrial invasion.  G.C. Edmondson's The Galactic Calabash is fun, though it took me several sessions to get through the short story, largely because I always picked it up at bedtime.

Rounding out the magazine is the quite good Double Double, Toil and Trouble by Holley Cantine.  An anarchist turned recluse decides to take up magic, eventually learning the secret to doubling anything.  It starts out well enough, but the ending provides a cautionary tale against dabbling in the Dark Arts.  Holley Cantine, I understand, is a bit of a political theorist, and Double has a deeper message wrapped in a gentle fiction coating. 

And so the January 1960 F&SF ends as it began with a four-star story.  In-between, there lies a muddle of uncharacteristic unevenness such that the whole issue clocks in at a mere three stars, the same as this month's Astounding.

That just leaves us with the January IF, whose reading is in progress.  In the meantime, I'll soon have a report on my latest excursion to the drive-in with my daughter.  It don't all gotta be highbrow, after all.

Happy New Year!

Note: If you like this column, consider sharing it by whatever media you frequent most.  I love the company, and I imagine your friends share your excellent taste!

P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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Book, Magazine

[Dec. 22. 1959] Put a finer point on it (Starship Troopers)

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It is common practice for serials published in science fiction digests to get turned into stand-alone novels. Not only does this constitute a nice double-dip for publishers and authors, but it offers the writer a chance to polish her/his work further.  Sometimes, the resulting product ends up something of a bloated mess.  In the case of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, the novelization of Starship Soldier (which appeared in F&SF a couple of months ago), the opposite is the case.  Heinlein’s expanded story has turned a flawed gem into a masterpiece.

Left virtually intact are the first two acts as presented in F&SF.  Johnny Rico is a bright but rather callow youth who joins the "Mobile Infantry" without much forethought.  After an intense and vividly portrayed Basic Training, Rico becomes versed in the art of combat from within a suit of powered armor with enough power to destroy a 20th Century tank company.  He then goes off to fight an interstellar war against the "Bugs," a hive-mind race of Arachnoids, and their co-belligerents, the humanoid "Skinnies."  There is precious little depiction of combat, however, with the exception of a well-executed first chapter (Basic Training is described in flashback).

It was all well done, but the serial just sort of ends without much resolution or pay-off.  The novel includes a full third act wherein Rico is involved in a mission to capture one of the Bug "brains" for interrogation/experimentation purposes.  This is what the novel needed, and I have to wonder if Heinlein intended it to be there all the time, but was limited by space constraints.  It makes the book a must-have, and it is possibly the best thing Heinlein has written to date.

Of course, there is a bit more of the jingoistic, even Fascist pro-militarism speeches issuing from the mouths of various officers and professors.  I imagine a number of impressionable young folk will be motivated to enlist after reading the book.  I can only hope that we don't fight any major wars over the next decade or two, though so long as the minute hand on the F.A.S. Doomsday Clock remains at two minutes to Midnight, that seems wishful thinking.

Then again, so long as there are just 120 seconds to Armageddon, the next major war is likely to be very short.

Note: If you like this column, consider sharing it by whatever media you frequent most.  I love the company, and I imagine your friends share your excellent taste!

P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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Science / Space Race, Uncategorized

[Dec. 19, 1959] Like Water for Rockets (The testing of the XLR115)

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In other news, the XLR-115 rocket was successfully tested on December 7, 1959.


State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/31535

I see you scratch your head.  "Is that important?" you wonder.  "Aren't rockets tested all the time?"

Yes and yes.

You all have heard of Newton's Third law, "For Every Action, there is an Equal and Opposite Reaction."  This principle powers our rockets: through the controlled rapid combination of fuel and oxygen (also known as burning), exploding gasses are produced, which are given a hole at the base of the rocket through which they can escape.  This action propels the rocket in the opposite direction—up, hopefully.

The heavier the rocket, the more fuel it takes to send it into space.  Fuel is by far the largest component of any rocket through most of the rocket's flight (until it is all used), so it stands to reason that one would want the lightest, most efficient fuel possible.

Up to now, rockets have used familiar fuels, from petroleum derivatives to alcohol, because they are relatively cheap and easy to manipulate.  To break the weight barrier, one needs a truly light material, preferably the smallest stuff that could possibly oxidize.  Hydrogen happens to be the lightest element possible, Atomic Number One.  It burns: most of you know the chemical nomenclature for water is H2O, which simply means that any molecule of water comprises two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.  Water is, essentially, burnt hydrogen. 

If one could bottle hydrogen safely in a rocket, then it would be the most efficient rocket fuel possible.

It's a tough project.  It won't do for the hydrogen to be kept in gas form, as in a World War I zeppelin.  That would result in an overlarge rocket and very elaborate mixing and ignition mechanisms.  No, you need to store the stuff in liquid form, and that takes a very cold and very good Thermos, indeed.  Just a few years ago, the idea of using liquid hydrogen as rocket fuel was as much science fiction as hyperspace and flying cars.

Until now.  The XLR-115 is a liquid hydrogen rocket.

Thus, the next generation of rocketry has begun.  At first, the XLR-115 will be used in the Centaur second stage, allowing boosters like the Atlas to send large payloads to high orbit, the moon, and the planets.  Ultimately, the liquid hydrogen rocket will likely be a vital component is the first manned lunar rocket. 

And that's why this news is important.  Now you know.

Note: If you like this column, consider sharing it by whatever media you frequent most.  I love the company, and I imagine your friends share your excellent taste!

P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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Magazine

[Dec. 17, 1959] Same ol' Same ol'? (January 1960 Astounding)

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There are times that I feel I could trot out the same Astounding review every month.  It would go something like this:

"Editor John Campbell continues to showcase Human-First, psionic stories with young male protagonists and virtually no female characters.  The table of contents features Randall Garrett, Robert Silverberg, Poul Anderson, and Murray Leinster.  Yet again, the magazine is a disappointment."

For the most part, the above summary would serve this month, but there is a kicker at the end of this review.

Skipping the first part of a serial by a fellow of whom I've never heard (a Harry Harrison), the issue opens up with one of Murray Leinster's weaker outings, Attention Saint Patrick.  Leinster is often excellent, but in this one, he's just boringly droll, telling the story of an Irish space colony that relies on giant serpents to control its vermin problem—in this case, little dinosaurs with diamond teeth. 


by Bernklau

Then we have the truly ridiculous A Rose by Other Name, a Chris Anvil story about how the removal of military and jingoistic jargon from our vocabulary makes it impossible to go to war.  Not good.

Campbell has tried to make his magazine more respectable by including a slick paper non-fiction segment starting this month.  Frank Foote and Arthur Shuck penned Solid Plutonium Headache about the technical and physical difficulties associated with working this dangerous radioactive material.  A more boring article I have never read, which is a shame because there's nothing wrong with the subject matter.  Until Campbell finds himself an Asimov or a Ley, I think his non-fiction section won't be worth much—particularly as the slick paper is not at all absorbent.

Poul Anderson's The Burning Bridge, about a fleet of interstellar colony ships on a 40-year trip to settle a new world, is decent.  Recalled by Earth nearly a few years into their flight, the fleet's Admiral must determine whether or not they will return or press on.  The cast is nicely international, and women play an important (though oddly segregated) part.


by Bernklau

Then we have The Garrett, in this case Viewpoint.  A fellow dreams himself into the future and discovers a strange new world before snapping back to his original time.  The now-typical Randallian gimmick is that the person is a famous figure from the past, and the destination is now-ish.  It's not as bad as it could have been, but Garrett loses a star just for being Garrett.

Finally, we have The Silverberg: Stress Pattern.  This story is hard to rate because there are really two things going on here.  On one hand, we have the story of a sociologist and his assistant wife (no doubt inspired by Bob Silverberg's wife and partner, Barbara) and the slow unraveling and subsequent recovery of their lives.  The characterization and writing are quite good, and I was carried along for the entirety of the tale's 30 pages.

On the other hand, in the end, the story is a rather ham-fisted argument against the leveling qualities of increased socialism (small "s") and social welfare.  The message of the story is that while we might keep the lower classes fat and happy, the secure smart people are just going to get bored and restless.  While such an argument could be made against a uniform public school curriculum, and while in true Socialism, the only way to get ahead is to cheat, I don't think things can progress in America as Silverberg contests.  Moreover, that part just feels tacked on to tickle Campbell's fancy.  It has that "secret society knows all the answers and can manipulate humanity like a machine" conceit I generally find tiresome.

Still, Bob is coming along.  I think if he tried writing for another magazine, he could put his talent for prolific writing and good portrayals toward making something truly good.  He's not Randy Garrett, even though he works with him regularly.

All told, it's a 2.5 star issue.  But I promised a kicker: the serial, Deathworld, is excellent so far, and I'm keenly anticipating next month's installment.  You'll have to wait until next February to get the review, but I think it will be a good one!

Stay tuned!

Note: If you like this column, consider sharing it by whatever media you frequent most.  I love the company, and I imagine your friends share your excellent taste!

P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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TV

[Dec. 15, 1959] Between Superstition and Knowledge (Twilight Zone 4-week wrap-up)

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This Friday night was a bit of a repeat performance of last week's: another trip to the German delicatessen in Escondido, another beer, another coffee and dessert.  This time, I was in the most enjoyable company of my wife, and we had an avid discussion of what it is to be a "fan." 

A mutual friend of ours once observed that fandom has three things in common—the following utterances:

"Where did you get that?"

"How can we get more people into it?"

"It's not as good as it used to be…"

It's true that fandoms come and go.  The "Golden Age" of science fiction, when Astounding ruled the roost with its Campbellian stories, is departed.  The boom of science fiction magazines came to an end a couple of years ago.  The cozy British country-house mystery is becoming a thing of the past. 

Things change.  It's an inevitable part of life.  But it's a mistake to get so stuck in nostalgia that one cannot see the old fandoms that continue to thrive (Conan Doyle, for instance) or the new evolutions in current fandoms (the small but rising tide of female authors, the general increase in quality of science fiction and fantasy even as the number of digests diminishes). 

There are also brand new fandoms.  I am very excited to have gotten in on the ground floor of one on which the paint is still wet: Rod Serling's anthology science fiction show, The Twilight Zone.

Three months ago, the program was an exciting idea.  Now, eleven episodes in, it is a bonafide phenomenon with staying power.  Though the quality of each episode varies, of course, Twilight Zone is still head and shoulders above what came before on television.  I've high hopes it will only rise in excellence.

Here's what my daughter and I have enjoyed for the last four Fridays:

Time Enough at Last came out on November 20.  The buzz I hear is that it went over well, and there's no question that Burgess Meredith turned in a fine performance as a frustrated bibliophile bank teller, who finds himself alone after surviving a nuclear holocaust.  But the ending, where he finds a lifetime of books to read and then immediately breaks his glasses, is not clever.  It's just cruel, and it soured me on the whole piece.

Charles Beaumont is the first writer whose name isn't Rod Serling to pen an episode, and his outing, Perchance to Dream was interesting.  A fellow with a heart condition is afraid to sleep for he knows that a temptress in his dream will lead him into a carnival of horrors, which will aggravate him into cardiac arrest.  The afflicted man tells his story to a sympathetic doctor, and we get to see the narrative progress in flashback.  It's creepy and fascinating.  I guessed the ending early on, but the tale was so compelling, I forgot all about my premonition until it actually happened.

I enjoyed the subject and setting of Judgment Night, in which a German man finds himself aboard a British liner cruising the Atlantic during World War II.  He is deathly afraid of U-Boats and seems to be certain that an attack from under the sea is impending.  It's a suitably atmospheric piece though somehow a bit plodding.  It was during this episode that my daughter noted that virtually none of the protagonists on the show are female.  I can only recall one, from The 16 millimeter Shrine.

This week's episode, (And When the Sky was Opened, was a winner.  Written by the master of science-fiction horror teleplays and fiction, Richard Matheson, it stars the excellent Rod Taylor as one of three survivors of a spaceplane crash.  It seems each of the astronauts is disappearing one-by-one, not just from the Earth, but from history and memories.  Creepy creepy stuff, though my daughter complained that she was getting tired of episodes featuring "people acting crazy."  (A neat tidbit: the spaceplane featured is the X-20, a real-life Air Force project that has either just gotten or is in the process of getting the green light for construction.  This vehicle will be the next step beyond the X-15, actually capable of orbital flight!)

As much as I enjoyed the episode, it shared the same overwrought middle that I've seen consistently in the last eleven episodes.  This, I think, is the main weakness of this young show.  While the writing is often brilliant, the acting usually excellent, and the cinematography remarkable, the middle third of each episode tends to take a bit too long padding out the set-up before the payoff. 

Perhaps I'm just a little too clever, guessing the ends before well before they happen.  It may well be that Twilight Zone is starting easy to draw in the uninitiated, those who haven't read a thousand science fiction stories already.  With all the talent going into this program, I have faith that the show will continue to mature and, as with science fiction, move beyond "gotcha" storytelling.

What say you?

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P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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Science / Space Race

[Dec. 12, 1959] Beeping its last (The end of Vanguard 3)

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Two days ago, there were three active satellites—two Vanguards and one Explorer.

Yesterday, there were two: Vanguard 3 has gasped its last beep.

For 84 days, the last of the Vanguards circled the Earth, returning data from its solar X-Ray detectors, its magnetometer, and its micrometeoroid sensors from an orbit higher than that of its dumber, smaller older brother, Vanguard 1.

Did you know that the Sun emits X-Rays?  That's what happens when you heat gasses to millions of degrees Kelvin; such temperatures are common in the solar corona, the bright fringe of gas surrounding the sun's disk that one can see during a solar eclipse.  The atmosphere absorbs most extraterrestrial X-Rays, so a satellite is needed to gather comprehensive data.  Sadly, all of the energetic particles trapped in the Earth's Van Allen Belts swamped Vanguard 3's detectors, and no useful data were obtained. 

On the other hand, Vanguard 3's magnetometer did a heck of a job, returning more than 4000 signals, nearly 3000 of which were of high quality.  We have never had such a comprehensive map of our planet's magnetic fields, and it is likely that scientists will be studying these results for years to come, learning how these fields interact with the solar wind to cause phenomena from radio storms to aurorae.

Speaking of radio, if you've ever listened to your shortwave, you might have heard "Whistlers"–those enigmatic sound that calls to mind a skyrocket flying overhead or birds chirping or even a flying saucer.  Such signals have been heard since radios were invented, and it is now known that they are emitted by lightning and propagated in the ionosphere.  Vanguard 3 was able to "tune in" to Whistler emissions with its magnetometer, which allowed scientists to make some estimates of the density of electrons in the ionosphere.  Two for one is a good deal!

No micrometeoroids pierced Vanguard 3's hull for the duration of its mission, but that doesn't mean the satellite didn't run into its share of space junk.  The first preliminary estimates from returned data suggest that 10,000 tons of space dust crash into the Earth's atmosphere every day.  That sounds like a lot, but considering that it is spread out over the entire surface area of the planet, it's a negligible concern to a small satellite.

With the silence of Vanguard 3, the Vanguard program has come to a virtual end (though Vanguard 1 still keeps beeping away).  Three successful launches out of eleven seems like a pretty lousy record.  Consider this legacy, however: the bonanza of returned data, the comparative inexpensiveness of the program, the first stage being turned into the Vega second stage booster for other rockets, the second and third stages being used on the Atlas Able and the Thor Able rockets, the Vanguard worldwide signal receiving station pioneering space communications.  Vanguard surely must count as a raging success.  Moreover, Vanguard set an important precedent by showing that rockets can be used for purely civilian purposes as well as for sending weapons of mass destruction across the globe.

If my epitaph is half as laudatory, I shall be a very happy corpse.

Up next—The Twilight Zone and then… Astounding!

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P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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