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December 1, 1963 Last stop (December 1963 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

LosCon in Los Angeles!

It's been an exciting November for the Journey.  After a sad interlude on the East Coast, which saw the untimely death of our President, we flew back to Los Angeles for a small science fiction convention put on by the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society.  It was great fun, a real class act.  Not only did we get to put on a show (in which the assassination, of course, featured prominently), but we also met Laura Freas, wife of Kelly Freas, the illustrator who painted Dr. Martha Dane.  As y'all know, Dr. Dane graced our masthead until very recently, and she remains the Journey's avatar.

And for those of you who missed the performance, we got it on video-tape.

At last, success for NASA

I read an article in Aviation Weekly that noted that 1963 just hasn't been a great year for NASA space shots.  There have only been eight successful missions thus far.  Unlike in the old days (you know, five years ago), when satellites didn't fly because of balky rockets, now missions are more likely to be delayed for lack of funding on the ground or for thorny technical issues as mechanisms get more complicated.

But successes do happen, and on November 27, Explorer 18 soared into orbit.  Also known as the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP), it is essentially a deep space explorer.  At the closest point in its orbit, it zooms at an atmosphere-scraping 160 kilometers in altitude, but at its furthest, it flies up to a quarter million kilometers out — more than halfway to the moon.

IMP is the first of seven satellites that will monitor the sun's output over a long period of time, measuring its ups and downs over the course of its 11 year activity cycle.  It will also measure interplanetary magnetic fields, the speed and composition of the solar wind, and the strength of the cosmic rays that shower the solar system from intergalactic space.

In many ways, Explorer 18 continues the missions of Explorers 10 and 12, spacecraft that made incredible discoveries about our local space environment.  What makes IMP so special is its size and endurance: it will be in space much longer than its predecessors, and its more advanced instruments are capable of more refined measurements. 

It is also hoped that IMP will be for interplanetary space what TIROS is for Earth — a weather satellite providing up to date information on the environment "up there."  Thus, Explorer 18 will not only expand our knowledge of interplanetary physics, it will also be an early warning system, alerting astronauts as to upcoming solar flares and other potentially dangerous events. 

Pretty neat!

Last magazine of the year

Every month, the Journey does its level best to review every science fiction magazine that gets published.  As far as I can tell, we cover all the regular American ones plus the British New Worlds (only Science Fantasy, also British, escapes our coverage).  By tradition, Analog is the covered last, and thus, the December 1963 Analog is the last magazine of the year.  Once this one is reviewed, we can finally get down to the fun business of determining the stats: which mag had the best stories, the most consistent quality, the most women published, and so on.  Call it SFnal baseball.

So how was this last issue?  Read on!

The Nature of the Electric Field, by John W. Campbell

In addition to a nonsensical editorial, Editor Campbell wastes several oversized pages with the reprint of a century-old treatise on electricity.  I guess it's to show how times change, and therefore, we shouldn't be so quick to denounce things like Dianetics, reactionless drives, psionics, dowsing, and other pseudo-sciences.

One star.

Cracking the Code, by Carl A. Larson

Larson's article is on DNA and scientists' attempts to understand how a sequence of amino acids can be the blueprint for all of life's manifestations.  It's a subject that would have been better handled by Asimov…or really, anyone else.  On the other hand, some of Larson's poetical turns of phrase are cute, like analogizing cells to an alien race whose environment is so utterly foreign to our ken, and that's why it's taken so long to decipher their language.

Two stars, I guess.

Dune World (Part 1 of 3), by Frank Herbert

I was mistaken when I called this new serial Herbert's first novel.  He had a serial back in 1956 called Under Pressure that I must have read some seven years ago, but I couldn't tell you what it was about if you put a gun to my head.

Anyway, this new one seems to be generating a lot of buzz, and I can see why.  It features Paul, 15 year-old scion to House of Atreides, whose father, the Duke of Atreides, has been granted the fiefdom of Arrakis.  Arrakis — desert planet — Dune.  This barren wasteland, where water is worth its weight in platinum, offers but one export: Melange, the geriatric spice that affords immortality, cures ailments, and tastes really good, too.  As Arrakis is the only source of melange, control of the planet is a sought plum, indeed.

Except, the Duke knows it is a trap set by the planet's former masters, the Barony of Harkonnen.  In collusion with the Padishar Emperor, Harkonnen has hatched a complicated plan to humiliate and discredit (and probably kill) the Duke, a scheme which whose intricacy might even give Machiaveli pause.

There is a lot to admire in this new work.  It's a fresh universe, highly developed, with a lot of attention to detail and inclusion of many foreign cultural influences.  Women play a prominent role, with the genders being apparently somewhat segregated, each having their own spheres of power.  There are at least two important female characters, something I'm always delighted to find in my science fiction.

One of the aspects of Herbert's world is the conscious disdain for, and even ban on, the use of computers.  Instead, human "mentats" have been bred for the ability of calculation.  This not only creates an interesting new class of person, it neatly relieves the author of predicting the development of electronic brains.

Dune Planet is not, however, an unalloyed success.  In the hands of Cordwainer Smith or even Mack Reynolds, folks who have a deep grounding in other cultures as well as the writing chops to convey them, it would be a masterpiece.  Herbert, on the other hand, is a pretty raw writer.  His stuff can be creaky and dull, the viewpoint shifts from paragraph to paragraph, and his use of ellipses dots is…exuberant (they say we hate most in others what we dislike about ourselves; Herbert writes a bit like I did not long ago before certain editors whipped me into shape).

So, three stars so far, but I'm still reading and look forward to more.

Conversation in Arcady, by Poul Anderson

In George Pal's The Time Machine, Rod Taylor arrives at the far future and discovers humanity living under (seemingly) idyllic circumstances.  They no longer need toil for food, shelter, or clothing.  They do not fight each other nor feel the need to rule.  At first impressed, the time traveler is dismayed to find that the desire to advance, the struggle to improve has been lost.  In perhaps the most effective scene of the movie (at least, it was for me), Taylor finds shelves of books that crumble to dust at the slightest touch.

Poul Anderson's latest is a note for note copy of this scene with the exceptions that 1) Anderson's Eloi are not so simple and childlike, 2) there are no Morlocks fattening up people for supper, and 3) the time traveler can see nothing positive about the situation whatsoever.

I think Anderson is trying to say something poignant, that our race is nothing without the need to better itself.  Or perhaps he's striving for a subtler point — that those who only find meaning in struggle can never find peace, and maybe peace isn't a bad thing.  Or maybe he's saying both things at the same time.

I think he was going for just the first, though.  Three stars.

The Right Time, by Walter Bupp (John Berryman)

John Berryman's series is set in the current world but where psionics are common (but secret).  It's a perfect fit for Analog what with Editor Campbell's peculiar pseudo-scientific beliefs, yet somehow Berryman's stories manage to be good.  This one, about a telekinetic precog with the ability to predict and potentially heal a fellow's heart attack, is my favorite yet.  Four stars.

Thin Edge, by Johnathan Blake MacKenzie

Author Randy Garrett is back under the pseudonym he prefers when he writes about life in the asteroid belt.  This latest piece is about a Belter who is killed by Earthers for the secret of the super strong cording used for rock towing, and about the other Belter who comes to Earth looking for revenge.

It's written with some facility, but the Belters are always too clever and the Earthers too dumb.  A low three or a high two, depending on your mood.

All right!  It's time to tabulate the data for December!

Analog finished in the middle of the pack with 2.8 stars, above F&SF (2.1) and Fantastic (2.2), but below Galaxy (3.2), Amazing (3.2), and New Worlds (3.2), not to mention last month's issue of Gamma, which I didn't get to until this month (3.3).

There were 44 pieces of fiction between the seven magazines, four of which were written by women.  9% is fairly standard these days, sadly.  I'm not sure what's causing the decline, though the numbers were never that much better.

Next up, we'll be covering the UK's newest SF TV show, and beyond that, 1963's Galactic Stars!

Stay tuned.

[The party's still going on at Portal 55.  Come join us for real-time conversation!]

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Science / Space Race

[November 3, 1963] Listening To The Stars (the new Arecibo Observatory)

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[Our newest writer hails from Lancashire (England), where she is also brand new faculty at a local College. Though she will primarily be covering science fiction in film and print, she is also a bit of a scientist, as you'll see from this most intriguing new article. If only Analog could get pieces this readable…]


By Jessica Holmes

On clear nights, I like to bundle myself up in as many blankets as I can find, wheel my way over to the park, and sit clutching a flask of tea as I peer down the sight of my fold-up telescope, gazing at the stars. It’s been a ritual of mine for as long as I can remember, ever since I got my very first telescope and charged up the hill to get a better look at the moon. I recall being tremendously disappointed until my mother pointed out I hadn’t taken the lens cap off.

When I managed to use it properly, it opened a window to worlds beyond worlds, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’m no astronomer by any means, more of an enthusiastic amateur. If I'm lucky, I may get a nice look at the Galilean Moons, but I often find myself wishing I could see so much more, wondering if somewhere out there, there's someone peering back, too far away to see. Then again, that might be the starry-eyed romantic side of me, having grown up with my nose firmly buried in any book that could take me to another world. Well, just this week, the stars came a little bit closer with the opening of a new telescope.

This is the Arecibo Observatory, and it's the largest radio telescope built to date:


Image courtesy of NAIC

The Call Of The Night

But what is a radio telescope? How can we observe space through radio? Does Jupiter sing? Are the bodies of the solar system harmonising in a heavenly chorus?

Well, that's not far off the mark. If you have the right equipment, you can even listen to Jupiter’s emissions yourself! You’ll need a shortwave radio (Jupiter radiates strongest at 22Mhz), and you’ll have to build yourself a large dipole antenna. What you'll hear is an eerie, aggressive static, a lot like waves crashing on the beach. These are the radio emissions produced by charged particles racing through Jupiter’s magnetic field.

The visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum conveys but a tiny slice of all the information that can be observed in our universe. Above the range of our sight lies the realm of ionising radiation: the extreme ultraviolet, hard and soft x-rays (yes, just like the ones doctors use in hospitals) and deadly gamma rays. Below the range of frequencies we can see is the infrared, and lower in frequency still is the realm of microwaves and radio waves. There are objects in the sky which are utterly undetectable through modern optical telescopes, but the Observatory may detect its invisible radio emanations. Take the recently discovered 'quasi-stellar objects' for example. These are colossal structures located out in the furthest reaches of space, their light so red-shifted that it’s only recently that we’ve actually been able to see one with an optical telescope. How did we know they’re out there? Because they’re screaming at us — in the radio spectrum.


Artist’s impression of a quasar. Image courtesy of JPL.

Radar And Pylons And Dishes, Oh My!

Designed by Professor Gordon and engineered by T. C. Kavanagh, the observatory, which has been in construction since mid-1960, was dedicated on the first of this month and cost a hefty $9.3 million to build. For those of us on my side of the pond, that's £ 3, 323, 995 13s 9½d, if my calculations are correct.

So, what shiny toys did this money buy? More than I ever got for Christmas as a child, that's for sure. Nestled in a natural karst sinkhole south of the Puerto Rican town of Arecibo, the colossal wire-mesh dish, suspended by three pylons of which the tallest is 111m (365 ft), currently operates at frequencies between 300 Mhz and 10 GHz. This is much higher in frequency than any radio station you or I might tune in to, as the FM radio band caps off at 108 MHz. The dish is spherical in contour, and so focuses along a line rather than a fixed point as a parabolic reflector does. While this requires a complex line-feed system in order to carry out observations, the trade-off is that it enables repositioning of the receiver in order to view different parts of the night sky. This is because a spherical mirror's error is the same in every direction, whereas as with a parabolic reflector moving the receiver away from the focal point would produce uneven astigmatism.

This receiver is suspended 46 m (150 ft) over the reflector on a 900-ton platform, which sits on a rotating track, the 93m (305 ft) azimuth arm, enabling the telescope to observe the heavens in a forty-degree cone of visibility about the local zenith (an imaginary point in the sky directly above the observatory). This unique suspension system was devised by Helias Doundoulakis. The observatory is also equipped with a 430 MHz radar, which has been in operation since October last year, and is capable of taking measurements in Earth's ionosphere (the ionised part of our upper atmosphere), and radar astronomy, in which microwaves are bounced off distant objects so astronomers can analyse the reflections. There is a catch, however: the round-trip of light to objects beyond Saturn is longer than the telescope can actually track them, so it isn’t possible to make radar observations of more distant objects.


The observatory under construction, a year and a day ago. Image courtesy of NAIC

One Eye On The Future

How, precisely, does it work? Let us say, for example, that the telescope was making an observation of Jupiter. As the radio waves from Jupiter reach Earth, they are collected in the dish, which is curved to focus the signal into the receiver, which moves to track the planet's movement through the observatory's cone of visibility. The data are then recorded, and collected by astronomers for interpretation.

With this, it is hoped that the Observatory can give astronomers a greater understanding of our celestial neighbours, with some of the finest observations yet achieved.

Closer to home, it is hoped that the Observatory will give us a greater understanding of our own world. Professor Gordon's initial intention of the Observatory was to study Earth's ionosphere. The dish can take measurements of radio waves in this area, and the on-site radar, as mentioned above, can send and receive signals into and out of the ionosphere. With these, it will be possible to measure electron density, ion and electron temperatures, ion composition and plasma velocity with the new equipment, through a technique of Professor Gordon's devising in which a radar beam is sent into the ionosphere, which then becomes scattered, and this scattering is recorded by the instrument, and can then be interpreted.

In time, the Observatory will be able to peer further and further into the reaches of space, making detailed observations of our solar system and beyond. At any rate, I'm excited to see what secrets of the stars the Observatory may unfold, and eagerly await the many thrilling discoveries that are sure to come. Oh, and should any astronomers happen to hear any outer-space radio shows, be sure to tell me the frequency. I’d love to tune in some time.

Further reading:

For anyone interested in carrying out some amateur radio astronomy, you can contact NASA, who will be happy to share instructional resources for just that.

And if you’re a scientist and you’d like to make use of the Observatory, you can get in contact with the committee to submit your proposal.




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Magazine, Science / Space Race

[October 20, 1963] Science Experiments (November 1963 F&SF and a space update)

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by Gideon Marcus

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to a special, extra-large Fifth Anniversary edition of the Galactic Journey. 

Five years ago tomorrow, I created the Journey to detail the day-by-day adventures of a science fiction magazine fan who just happened to also be a space journalist.  In the passage of five circuits around the sun, the scope of this project has expanded tremendously to cover books, movies, tv shows, comics, politics, music, fashion, and more.  The Journey has grown from a solo project to a staff of twenty spanning the globe.  Two years ago, we won the Rod Serling Award, and this year, we were nominated for the Hugo.

Imagine where we'll be in another half-decade!

Nevertheless, as we look back to our humble beginnings, it is appropriate that the topics I have slated for discussion today are ones we have covered sine 1958, namely the space race and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Ticking back from Midnight

Earlier this month, President Kennedy signed the Senate-ratified Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, outlawing American and Soviet above-ground nuclear tests.  No longer shall we detonate atomic blasts in the sky just to see the pretty glow and tinge our TANG with strontium-90.

It's an exciting first step toward controlling the nuclear genie, but the question now becomes, 'How do we enforce the ban?'  A way had to be developed to tell if the other side had tested a bomb without telling us.

Enter the two 'Vela-Hotel' satellites.  Launched on October 18, 1963, they have detectors sensitive enough to pick up the flash of radiation associated with a nuclear blast.  Moreover, these probes will do scientific duty while they enforce the peace, studying X-rays, gamma-rays, neutrons, and charged particles as they pass through interplanetary space, measuring the bow shock, the sheath, and the tail of Earth's magnetic field.  A series of six launches is planned.

Mapping the Magnetosphere

Though the energetic electrons and protons that swirl around the Earth barely weigh 150 pounds total, they carry the tremendous electric and magnetic charges that encircle our globe, protecting us from the endless solar wind of radiation.  One of the great scientific uses of satellites is the mapping of these magnetic fields to better understand the mechanism of their creation and their interaction with the sun's own fields.

Along with the two Vela-Hotels, a five-pound hitchhiker was launched specifically to measure the intensity of charged particles in the magnetosphere using an omni-directional radiation detector.

This new probe in some ways continues the mission of Explorer 14, which began to die in August of this year.  It's still running, but it has lost the ability to modulate its transmissions, rendering scientific data as an incomprehensible babble.  Nevertheless, the doughty satellite collected 6500 hours of data and mapped enough of Earth's magnetosphere to give it a definitive shape.  We now know that, in addition to the compressed bow shock where our planet's field meets that of the sun, there is a long tail in Earth's shadow in the shape of a pointed arch.  Explorer 14 also determined that Earth's field gradually shifts from the traditional north pole/south pole dumbell shape to a simple radial (round, equally distributed) field with distance from the planet.  Finally, Explorer 14 confirmed the tentative discovery reported by Explorer 6 that the charged particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field make a current of electricity ringing the Earth clockwise around its equator.

Pretty neat stuff!

Experiments in Literary SF

On the ground, the stable of authors in Editor Avram Davidson's pay has embarked on their own series of experiments in the form of the November 1963 F&SF.  Some were more successful than others, but none were failures (inasmuch as any experiment can be a failure…):

A Rose for Ecclesiastes, by Roger Zelazny

The once-proud civilization of Mars is a desiccated shell, a treasure trove of dusty tomes and ancient rites amidst tended by the last vestiges of the race.  What hidden wisdom lies behind the sacred temple walls of the Red Planet?  Polyglot and somewhat precious Mr. Gallinger is dispatched from Earth to find out.  Along the way, he learns the secret the Martian people have been carefully guarding, at profound cost to his soul.

This is a hard piece to judge.  On the one hand, it's very clearly an experiment at literary sf, the kind that Sturgeon and Dick have produced to tremendous effect many times in their careers. I greatly admire people who can write the stuff — I'm currently knee deep in my first attempt, so I understand the difficulty involved.  Zelazny almost pulls it off, but he's just not yet seasoned enough an author for the feat.  The story comes off as too affected to be entirely effective.

Moreover, there really is no excuse these days for Mars to be depicted as Earthlike nor its inhabitants entirely human.  That's not science fiction.  It's laziness. 

Three stars.

Mama, by Philip Winsor

Did you ever read the story where it turns out babies retain the memories of their past life for a while after reincarnation?  Apparently, Winsor has too, or Mama is a stunning case of convergent evolution.  Maybe I'm just remembering this tale from a past life.  Three stars.

Welcome Stranger, by Isaac Asimov

I just nonfiction articles on two axes: 1) How entertaining is it to read, and 2) Did I learn anything?  This particular piece is on Xenon, in particular; noble gasses, more broadly; and molecular bonds, in general.  My ignorance of chemistry is profound, so the fact that Dr. A was able to teach me about all of these topics and leave me with a desire to learn more is remarkable.  Four stars.

Wings of Song, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

When the last musical instrument has been lost, and even the wood to repair it is a forgotten memory, will song die as well?  This moving piece by sf-writer/musicologist Biggle is hardly plausible, but as a cautionary tale, it's thoroughly haunting.  Four stars.

Winged Victory, by S. Dorman

The sole woman-penned piece in the book (the "S." stands for "Sonya"), Victory involves a confirmed bachelor and the lady who hen-pecks him into submission.  It's a weird tale whose message is literally that the dating game is for the birds.  Just long enough to make its point; three stars.

Eight O'Clock in the Morning, by Ray Nelson

[So impressed was I by this tale that I read it aloud to my family one night.  The Young Traveler insisted on writing her own review — who am I to argue?]


by Lorelei Marcus

A man named Nada awakes to find the world's been overtaken by aliens that control every aspect of human life. These "Fascinators" lead us, own us, are among us, and so Nada finds it his duty to try and save us. A thrilling story to read, it has you on the edge of your seat questioning his every move. Is this really the savior of humanity, or some crazed serial killer? The story is woven with expert writing that gives the main character a lack of doubt (only we have doubts), and a quick pace. A thoroughly enjoyable and insightful short story, it won't take more than ten minutes of your time to read, and the ending might surprise you.  Five stars.

The Eyes of Phorkos, by L. E. Jones


by Gideon Marcus

Lastly, we have the tragic story of James Carew, an English dilettante who plunges into archaeology to compensate for the unhappiness stemming from his fantastically ugliness.  On a small island in the Aegean, he discovers that at least one of the legends of Perseus was based wholly in fact.  This find makes Carew heir to the powers of one of Greek Mythology's most terrifying monsters, and we all know the effect of power (particularly the absolute kind) on a character.

Written in a quaint style, it begins better than it ends, but it's never unrewarding reading.  Three stars.

As you can see, not only was the content of this issue experimental in nature, but so was the format.  Where F&SF normally has the most stories per issue of the SF digests, tending toward vignettes over longer pieces, the November issue had two full novellas and a handful of shorter stories.  This makeup is closer to that of, say, Analog.

The cover is also something of a departure, marking pulp era illustrator Hannes Bok's return to SF after a long hiatus.

All in all, I'd judge this issue a successful effort, certainly more challenging and rewarding than much of the stuff that comes out these days.  On the other hand, there's virtually no science in these pages, which is somewhat worrisome for a magazine whose title would suggest otherwise.

I'd be interested to know what you think.

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Science / Space Race

[October 14, 1963] Take a little trip… (Timothy Leary's Psychedelic Review)

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by Erica Frank

Our external freedom is expanding daily. We are developing ever more powerful technology, with bold goals such as flying to the moon and someday the stars; the human race has a tremendous talent for turning potential into reality. Because of this, psychedelic research goes hand-in-hand with traditional science studies; as the introduction to this journal says: "We can no longer accept the notion of a value-free science or espouse a naive optimism with regard to scientific and technological progress. We need to complement our technical skill in controlling the external world with a corresponding development of our inner resources."

Doctor Timothy Leary has joined Ralph Metzner to found a new academic journal: the Psychedelic Review. The first issue was released in June, and I believe it's very relevant to the Journey. The Review's purpose is studying psychedelic substances like LSD, psilocybin and mescaline, in order to enhance "the individual's control over his own mind, thereby enlarging his internal freedom."

It's dense reading, very much an academic journal aimed at philosophers, historians, and medical professionals. I am none of these, but the articles are still fascinating to me (and hopefully, to you, too!)

"Can This Drug Enlarge Man's Mind?", Gerald Heard

Gerald Heard is an esteemed philosopher with multiple books in that field, and the the author of science fiction books The Doppelgangers and The Lost Cavern.

The drug in question is LSD, short for Lysergic Acid Diethylamide – no wonder everyone uses the initials! The editors mention the controversy surrounding the drug: its detractors say it warps minds, while its proponents claim it inspires creativity and perhaps even wisdom. It is agreed, however, that it is not habit-forming nor physically toxic.

Heald describes the subjective effects of LSD, as reported by its users: it produces "a profound change in consciousness… You see and hear this world, but as the artist and musicians sees and hears." This shift in awareness, a kind of hyper-sensitivity to the world, often also brings a new awareness of the self; Heard compares this to a passage in the Odyssey, which differentiates between two types of thought: those from "the Gate of Horn," relating to events of the real world, and those from the "Gate of Ivory," the source of fantasy. LSD brings ideas from the latter, which are so intense that they can result in profound changes like those of a deep religious experience. He points out that the drug does not create personality changes; the experience only awakens the potential; he recommends more research find the full value of LSD in psychoanalysis and the creative arts.

Worth reading for the combination of internal reports and external description of the LSD experience.

The Subjective After-Effects of Psychedelic Experiences: A Summary of Four Recent Questionnaire Studies, Editors

This reviews and combines the results of four questionnaires filled out by people who have experienced LSD or psilocybin mushrooms in psychiatric settings. Most people claimed it was a positive experience; only a scant handful believe it harmed them. Many now noticed a deeper significance to various aspects of life; some reported that the people close to them had noticed positive changes. Some benefits lasted for years after a single experience, such as alcoholics with longer periods of sobriety and fewer arrests.

The calculations were especially interesting, as they showed how to take an intensely subjective experience and describe it in a way that's useful for medical research. I am not convinced, however, that the psilocybin study should've been included, since it's a different substance and it involved student volunteers instead of psychiatric patients.

"The Hallucinogenic Fungi of Mexico: An Inquiry into the Origins of the Religious Idea Among Primitive Peoples", R. Gordon Wasson

Wasson and his wife studied the history of mushrooms across the world, looking through ancient texts in multiple languages, trying to figure out what role mushrooms played in folklore and history.

His research focuses on psychoactive mushrooms, and how they were used for ecstatic experiences, allowing the user to feel that the human soul has touched the divine. He mentions that we have no good ways to describe these experiences:

We are entering upon a discussion where the vocabulary of the English language, of any European language, is seriously deficient. There are no apt words in them to characterize your state when you are, shall we say, "bemushroomed." For hundreds, even thousands, of years we have thought about these things in terms of alcohol, and we now have to break the bonds imposed on us by the alcoholic association.

He traveled into the mountains of Mexico, regions where the old languages are still used and Spanish is rare (and of course, they've barely heard of English), and took mushrooms under the guidance of tribal shamans. The practical details were covered in "Seeking the Magic Mushroom," published in Life magazine a few years ago; this article focuses on the experience itself. He seems to be looking for words that does not exist, and so falls back on using several paragraphs to describe the sensations and realizations he had.

I found the linguistic aspects of this article more interesting than the philosophical considerations, although those were also intriguing.

"A Touchstone for Courage", Plato

This is an excerpt of a passage from Plato's The Laws. I have never done well with Plato. I agree with Clinias: "I fear I hardly follow you, yet pray proceed with your statement as though I did."

Plato mentions how potential courage is rarely fully developed because most people don't often face their fears. He then discusses the value of a hypothetical drug that could inspire fear, and allow people to overcome those fears without the physical risks that attend most challenges that require courage.

The implication is that even the unpleasant, darker experiences of LSD and related substances have value: they allow people to face their innermost fears, and if not conquer them, at least endure them, and realize the fear itself did not destroy them.

I can't tell if this is "Plato taken far out of context" or "exactly the kind of consideration he would've wanted to inspire."

"Provoked Life: An Essay on the Anthropology of the Ego", Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn was an expressionist poet and author; this essay was originally published in Germany in 1949 and is reprinted with permission; this may be the first English translation available to the public.

The essay is beautiful and intense… and I have no idea what it actually says. It reads like a longer, more detailed and personal version of the drug experiences described in the earlier articles. The purple prose makes it hard to follow; the essay is packed with exotic imagery and sensory overloads, enough that I couldn't decide if he was making a point or just pondering a set of ideas.

"The Individual as Man/World", Alan W. Watts

Alan Watts is a philosopher who strives to bring Buddhist concepts into mainstream, Western psychology. His works include The Way of Zen and The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness. This article, originally a lecture delivered at Harvard, doesn't address psychedelics per se, but the personal experience of consciousness.

Watts points out that how people understand their own existence often does not match well with the descriptions taught in the sciences: a biologist's or ecologist's description of humanity bears little relation to human life as we experience it. Modern science is just as much a victim of cultural biases as the ancient Greeks, which presumed that all living things were distorted reflections of pure, abstract archetypes.

He discusses importance of considering people as a whole being, not a collection of parts, despite the current trends in medicine and psychology to reduce people to organ-based emotions and socially programmed impulses.

Watts is a delight to read. Even when he's explaining very complex concepts, he uses down-to-earth language that sets a foundation that builds them toward a single point of understanding. This is probably my favorite article in this issue.

"Annihilating Illumination", George Andrews

This is a poem in the Beat style: it does not rhyme; most lines don't begin with capital letters; they aren't of matching lengths; there is an utter lack of punctuation in this three-page poem, save for a single quoted sentence and the final period.

It reads like a shorter, less pompous version of "Provoked Life," and is therefore much more accessible, if not any more comprehensible.

While being struck by lightning in slow motion
the fire sears away layer after layer
sizzles me down to my ultimate ash
I quiver shrieks of laughing crystals
the radiant frenzy of the storm's soul dwells in the guts of the dragon

That's the beginning; it continues like that for three pages. I think I don't have access to the right drugs to enjoy this kind of poetry.

"The Pharmacology of Psychedelic Drugs", Ralph Metzner

This is the hard science article. It defines psychedelic substances  as those "whose primary effect on human subjects is the radical alteration of consciousness, perception and mood", and outlines the criteria for the ones being included in this review. These include negligible somatic effects, no addictive qualities, and a specific history in psychiatric literature.

I confess, I skimmed this article. I am not a chemist, not a biologist; once they start dragging out the molecular structure charts, I can be entertained but not informed. I know enough chemistry to understand the raw meanings of the diagrams, but not enough to have any idea how those connect to the practice of medicine.

This article is 30 pages; the references are an additional 15. The tone is very different from the other articles. It's written by one of the editors; I wonder if they created the journal for the purpose of publishing this. It reads like a chemical study in a medical journal, of little interest to other fields. It's possible that psychiatrists would find value in it, but only for understanding the biological effects; this article lacks the humanizing approach of the others.


Dr. Timothy Leary and Dr. Richard Alpert, Harvard, 1961

If you read medical journals, Psychedelic Review may be right up your alley. Otherwise, it comes across as a heavy-handed attempt to insist that psychedelic substances are worthy of real scientific consideration. This is understandable, given the recent history of the editors.

In May of this year, just about the time this issue was published, Dr. Leary and Dr. Richard Alpert were fired from Harvard for involving students in psychedelic substance testing. While they committed no crimes in sharing LSD and psilocybin with students, they did violate university policy, which only allows such substances to be given to graduate students. In addition, the university claims Leary was not meeting his lecture requirements.

I suppose that means he'll have more time to focus on research; I look forward to future issues of the Psychedelic Review.

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Science / Space Race

[August 29, 1963] Why we fly (August Space Round-up)

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by Gideon Marcus

We've become a bit spoiled of late, what with space spectaculars occurring on a fairly regular basis.  So, I was not too surprised when a friend buttonholed me the other day and exclaimed, "When is the Space Race gonna get interesting again?"  After all, it's been a whole two months since the Vostok missions, three since the last Mercury mission, and even satellite launches have been few lately.

Oh ye of little faith.  The real work doesn't happen when the rockets go up, but after their payloads are aloft.  A lot happened in the arena of space this month — you just have to dig a little to learn about it.  Here are the exciting tidbits I gleaned (and the journos missed) in NASA's recent bulletins and broadcasts:

Bridging the Continents

Communication satellites continue to make our world a smaller place.  Syncom, built by Hughes and launched by NASA late last month, is the first comsat to have a 24-hour orbit.  From our perspective on the Earth's surface, it appears to do figure eights around one spot in the sky rather than circling the Earth.  This means Syncom can be a permanent relay station between the hemispheres.

It's already being used.  On August 4 the satellite allowed Nigerian journalists and folks from two U.S. services to exchange news stories as well as pictures of President Kennedy and Nigerian Governor General Dr. Nnamdi Zikiwe.  Five days later, voice and teletype was exchanged between Paso Robles, California and Lagos, Nigeria.  This 7,700 mile conversation represents the longest range real-time communication ever made.

And, on the 23rd, Syncom carried its first live telephone conversation — between President Kennedy and Nigerian Prime Minister Sir Abubaker Tafawa Balewa, as well as several other official conversations.  One has to wonder if the whole scheme wasn't hatched just so Jack could expand his pen pal list to West Africa…

More comsat news: RCA's Relay 1 is still alive and kicking, having been used in 930 wideband experiments, 409 narrowband transmissions, and 95 demos of TV and narrowband broadcasts.  And in a stunning imitation of Lazarus, AT&T's Telstar 2 came back on-line after having been silent since July 16.  I understand there will be an unprecedented experiment next month: NASA is going to use Relay and Syncom to bounce a message from Brazil to Africa.  Expect that kind of satellite ping-pong to become common in the future.

Finally, NASA's passive comsat, Echo 1, continues to be used for tests.  Come winter, it will be joined by Echo 2.  Because if there's anything space needs, it's more balloons.


First pass of Echo 1 satellite over the Goldstone

Predicting the Weather

Mariner 2, the Venus probe that encountered the Planet of Love last December, went silent early this year.  Yet its reams of data are still yielding discoveries.  During the spacecraft's long flight toward the sun, it took continuous measurements of the solar wind — that endless stream of charged particles cast off from the roiling fusion reactor of our nearest star.  These measurements were then compared to readings made on Earth and in orbit.  Scientists have now determined that the sun's radioactive breeze blows in gusts from 500 to 1350 kilometers per second, the bursts correlated with expansions in the solar corona.  When a particularly strong stream of electrons and protons, sizzling at a temperature of 500,000 degrees F., slams into the Earth's magnetic field, it causes disruptions in broadcasts and communications.

Closer to home, Explorer 12 soared far from Earth in its highly eccentric orbit, charting long-lived solar plasma streams in interplanetary space.  The satellite determined that these gouts of plasma caused geophysical disturbances more than twenty days after their creation.

One can imagine a constellation of satellites being deployed to provide solar system-wide space weather reports.  Not only would they help keep astronauts safe as they journeyed from planet to planet, but they'd also let radio operators on Earth know when to expect static in their broadcasts.

And speaking of weather forecasts, Tiros 6 and 7 continue to be our eyes in the sky, tirelessly shooting TV of Earth's weather.  They've already tracked the first hurricane of the season, Arlene.  Who knows how many lives and dollars they will save with their early warnings?

Previews of Coming Attractions

The ill-starred lunar probe, Ranger, has failed in all five of its missions.  In fact, NASA is 0 for 8 when it comes to moon shots since 1959.  Perhaps Ranger 6, set for launch around Thanksgiving, will break this losing streak.  It will be the first of the Block 3 Rangers, lacking the sky science experiments that flew on Rangers 1 and 2, and the big seismic impactors carried on Rangers 3-5.  The new Rangers will just shoot TV pictures of potential Apollo landing sites.  This sacrifice of science in deference to the human mission has not gone without protest, but given the dismal track record of the program, the labcoat crowd will have to take what they can get.

A full year after Ranger (hopefully) reaches the Moon, a pair of Mariners will set sail for Mars.  Unlike last year's Mariner 2, Mariners 3 and 4 will carry cameras to provide our first close-up view of the Red Planet.  Let's just hope neither of these upcoming probes meet the same fate as Russia's Mars 1, which died last March.

At some point in the mid-60s, even bigger Mariners will fly to the planets, carried by the big liquid oxygen "Centaur" second-stage.  The first successful test fire took place on August 17 just down the way from my house — at General Dynamics/Astronautics San Diego

And finally, another 271 space candidates applied to NASA this year.  They have been screened to 30, and out of them, 10-15 will be selected in late October to comprise the third group of astronauts.  None of them are women yet, but perhaps there will be some in time for Group Four.


Pilots Jerrie Cobb and Jane Hart testify before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, July 1962.  That's an Atlas Centaur model next to them.

Who knows?  Maybe you'll be one of them!

[Want to talk to the Journey crew and fellow fans in real-time?  Come join us at Portal 55! (Ed.)]

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Science / Space Race

[Aug. 14, 1963] Engineers at Play (Spacewars!, hacking, and the PDP-1)

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[Want to talk to the Journey crew and fellow fans?  Come join us at Portal 55! (Ed.)]


by Ida Moya

A War in Space, in the Computer

Last month the traveler reviewed the August 1963 issue of Galaxy magazine. His assessment of this issue was that it contained standout stories by lesser authors, and lesser stories by standout authors. But one thing our intrepid traveler did not mention was Frederik Pohl’s editorial about his visit to M.I.T.’s computer section to play a game called Spacewar! on one of their computers.

Why is that a big deal?  Because Spacewar! is one of the very first "computer games," and possibly the very first not based on an existing game (Tic-Tac-Toe, Chess, Tennis, etc.)


Editor Frederik Pohl’s editorial about Spacewar. Note too the ubiquitous advertisement for the Rosicrucians. I wonder what that is all about?

Pohl waxes poetic, imagining himself to be the Fenachrone while his opponent is Dick Seaton. He used a simple handheld control to fly spaceships programmed in the computer to accelerate, steer, and shoot torpedoes at one another across a cathode-screen readout. I had to look it up – those characters are from the Skylark of Space series, a work by Edward E. Smith, Ph.D., originally serialized in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories in the 1930s.

Pohl doesn’t tell us what kind of computer he saw Spacewar being played on, nor does he name the people responsible for programming the computer to play such an active and compelling game. But I can take a guess from what I have seen about computing – it is a PDP-1, a Programmed Data Processor-1, made by Digital Equipment Corporation.

A new way to use the Computer

These young men at M.I.T. are a different generation from the buttoned-down physicists and computer scientists I work with here at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. The computer users here in the Theoretical Physics or “T” division tend to be very serious about their computing, and there is no time for frivolous use of these expensive machines. The IBM 7090 and other equipment we have is carefully guarded, and has no time for games.


The TX-0 computer at M.I.T. (Image courtesy Computer History Museum)

From what I hear, these fellows at M.I.T. are a bunch of unwashed boys who emerged from the model railroad club to play with this spare computer called a TX-0. This TX-0 is a transistorized version of another one-off military computer called Whirlwind, also developed at M.I.T. These young men are not doing anything like serious physics or science, but are rather doing these useless but extremely clever things like making programs that convert Arabic numerals to Roman numerals in as few steps as possible. These kids could only get time on the TX-0 in the middle of the night, when other people aren’t using the valuable computer time, so they have very undisciplined habits and working hours. I hear that they call what they are doing “hacking.”


Brochure for Friden Flexowriter (Image courtesy Living Computers: Museum + Labs)

One interesting thing about this “hacking” and the computers they use is that, instead of using punched cards, like the batch processing we do on our IBM Stretch, they use a Friden Flexowriter, an unwieldy sort of teletypewriter, to make punched paper tapes of programs that they then directly feed into the computer. The hackers have direct access to the computer, and can fix programs themselves, rather than having to give their card deck to an operator, and hope that the results come out. That is what Pohl is talking about in his article when he says “…add another tape.”


The PDP-1 at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

A couple of year ago, in 1961, one of the designers of the TX-0, Ken Olsen, founded a company he calls Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). DEC donated PDP-1 serial number 1 to M.I.T’s Research Lab for Electronics, and these hackers have been playing with it ever since. One of these young men, with the unlikely moniker “Slug” Russell, is a big fan of science fiction, including the swashbuckling works of E.E. Smith. He and his friends designed this “computer game,” presented on the 19-inch DEC Type 30 display. The game includes a lot of realistic physics in the movement of the spaceships, and a background star field based on a real star map. They must have a lot of time on their hands.

The leader of “T” division here at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Roger Lazarus, is suspicious of these small “time-sharing” computers like the PDP-1. He would rather invest in larger computers where all the power is used for calculating our nuclear tests, rather than sharing the power across a number of users. So we have not gotten our own PDP-1 at LASL. However, our sister institution, the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (once the University of California radiation Laboratory at Livermore), received a PDP-1 in 1961.

Cecilia Larsen and the PDP-1


Cecilia Larsen, center, working on the PDP-1 at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

Cecilia Larsen, my colleague at LRL, has told me all about working with this PDP-1.

Cecilia has an interesting story of how she got into computing. She is a native of Livermore, California, where her Portugese immigrant parents owned a small general store. She received her B.A. from Dominican College in San Rafael with a full scholarship, and then went on to UC Berkeley where she achieved an MA in history, a general secondary teaching certificate, and a Technical Writing certificate. She also got a certificate in Music from the University of San Francisco. Cecilia’s husband died in 1943, so she held many jobs to support her 2 children and widowed mother.

A dozen years ago, in 1951, Cecilia saw an advertisement for a “Girl Friday” at what turned out to be the start up of Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. She works with Ernest Lawrence himself, as well as lab manager Sid Fernbach and that wicked Edward Teller. Did you know that Dr. Teller made Oppie, J. Robert Oppenheimer, lose his security clearance? Over what, some crazy accusation that this great man was a communist? What a terrible thing. At any rate, this California laboratory was set up to provide competition to the nuclear weapon design we are doing at Los Alamos, and sometimes we have strong feelings about what they are doing out there.

Cecilia and asked for more training to become oriented toward the work of the lab, so she was placed in an internship at the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. There she learned about the organization by working in several departments, including the Tool and Machine Shop. She later also helped set up the Laboratory’s Technical Information Department, a library of all of the classified documents that Dr. Teller and his team needed to use. Sounds so like what Charlotte Serber did at Los Alamos library!


Univac computer, showing various peripherals including a Unityper.(Image courtesy Computer History Museum)

Cecilia also got to travel to Philadelphia with the engineers to learn how to use their very first computer, the Univac LARC. The LARC came out before the IBM Stretch, but after the IBM 7090. Back at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Cecilia led the team of women that created the magnetic data tapes for the Univac on this cumbersome machine called a Unityper. Since your typing directly went onto magnetic tape, the work absolutely had to be correct, or you would have to start over. They would have two tapes made by different gals, and then compare them to see if they were the same. And they better be the same, or else. What a crazy system.

When the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Livermore got their PDP-1 it probably came with Spacewar! in memory. I hear that the engineers from Digital Equipment Corporation do that to test whether the computer was working once it is turned on at its new location. Since the Laboratory is a secure site, used to model nuclear tests, they aren’t too likely to have a lot of computer game play going on, or a lot of outright “hackers” like university computer sites are breeding.

All the young engineers depend on Cecilia at the Laboratory. She always remembers everything, she knows where everything is, and she is unflappable. She never loses her temper, and that is very important to all of the young guys who don’t know what they are doing there. Cecilia tells me that she didn’t see much play when she works during the day, but perhaps the younger and more audacious computer users pull out the paper tapes in the evenings when the administrators go home.

In any event, it makes sense, corresponding with all the other upheavals in our society today, that there is a new generation of computer experts coming of age who are very different from the buttoned-down white-shirt-and-tie fellows we see from IBM.  Who knows what they'll come up with next!


Spacewar! in action

(By the way, though there are currently few places you can play the world's first computer game, given my contacts, I think I can help you sneak in for a session or two.  Just head over here.  Tell them Ida sent you…)




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Science / Space Race

[July 4, 1963] Down Under to the Worlds of Men (Woomera, Part 2)

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by Ida Moya

There’s been some great (and terrible) science fiction writing in the journey last month. I so appreciate these reviews, which help me find interesting things to read, and bring me up to date on the preoccupations of science fiction authors. The illustrations from the magazines that The Traveler includes are so compelling in style and subject matter. I think that they are an under-appreciated art form that, perhaps, sometime in the future, could become appreciated and highly collectible.

A few months ago I wrote about my friend Mary Whitehead, who works as an Experimental Officer in Australia. She recently wrote me back with some corrections, that I will pass on to you, in order not to mar the historical record.

For example, I said that Mary lived at Woomera, which was not the case. I was conflating the rocket testing range with the place where most of the computing work got done. She actually lives near the Weapons Research Establishment (WRE), which is located in Salisbury, a small town about 15 miles north of the big city of Adelaide. Woomera Rocket Range is in the isolated outback another 300 miles north of that.

In 1949, Mary, who studied mathematics in college, got a job in the Bomb Ballistics Section of the WRE. At that time, Mary was the only professional woman at Salisbury. Her first work was to lead a team of female Computers. At first, they used mechanical calculators like the noisy Friden’s and then Marchant’s like we used at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.


Bomb Ballistics Group Computer Judith Ellis recording data with pencil and paper from film, in 1949. (Courtesy of Defense Science and Technology Group)

In 1956 British company Elliott Brothers developed a custom-designed digital computer called WREDAC (Weapons Research Establishment Digital Automatic Computer) for WRE; one of but four digital computers in Australia at that time. This was a very sophisticated vacuum tube machine, a one off made a few years later than the ENIAC-style MANIAC we used at Los Alamos. In 1960 the WRE acquired the modular, somewhat mass-produced IBM 7090 mainframe computer, which is so valuable that they run it constantly, in three shifts.

Mary and some of her crew do go every once in a while to stay for a week at Woomera Village, next to the test range. She insisted that the Computers be able to observe the actual launches of rockets and missiles, and be trained in the operation of the data collection equipment — kinetheodolites, high-speed cine-cameras, radars, radio missile tracking systems, Doppler and telemetry reception equipment — in order to better interpret the results when they get back to Salisbury.


Two Computers wearing their army gear operate a kinetheodolite at Woomera around 1949.

Early on, it was quite a battle with the Range Superintendent to get her team to Woomera. He was concerned that it was an unsuitable and morally dangerous place for unattached young women. The compromise was that the women wear army gear – hat, khaki shirt and slacks, heavy brogues and leather jerkins for cold weather.


A team of computers visiting Woomera in 1950, wearing the army dress required by the Range Superintendent. Experimental Officer Mary Whitehead, Chaperone for the group, is second from the left. (Courtesy of Defense Science and Technology Group)

Back then, Woomera also did not have facilities for women, so they returned early from the range to have their showers from 4 to 5, before the men returned. The female Calculators also ate in the Officer’s Mess, so that they did not have to consort with the rougher men in the Other Ranks Mess. Today, though, the women working at Woomera have their own hostel and mess and no longer have to wear that army gear.

One part of Woomera range is a row of carefully calibrated cameras that take a series of photographs of a test launch. Her team also calibrates the cameras, which involves taking photographs of the starfield and getting the framing exactly right; a project that can take several weeks. Once calibrated, the tests commence and the launch photographs go back to the analysts, who use an overhead projector and other specialized equipment to translate each piece of film into location and time data. It’s really an amazingly detailed process involving a lot of cooperation. Now, what once took her team 4 weeks to calculate using Marchants, can be done in just a day on the IBM.


Long range Baker-Nunn camera for tracking satellites and photographing rockets, Woomera

Another mistake in my article that Mary pointed out to me was that she had never visited Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. When she visited America, she went to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to get a better star catalogue. She also went to Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, and then the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Washington State, where she consulted with some men who had devised the mathematics for using stars as background markers for measuring the trajectories. Mary also went to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, which must be where we met. She didn’t get to observe any missile tests at White Sands, but spoke with a man there who studies the refraction of light.

The project Mary is working on now is called Black Knight. It is a research ballistic missile, a test vehicle being used to get data to better design and build missiles, develop launch techniques, and learn how to handle such a big item. Mary’s group examines the Black Knight’s trajectory and re-entry into the atmosphere. So it’s important to get those measurements right, so these ballistic missiles can be better designed.


Blue Streak, one of many missiles tested at the Range, on its launcher at Lake Hart, Woomera, 1963

Mary, like me, is working for her government. In Australia and Britain, like the United States, there are careful bureaucracies that establish titles and pay rates. As a female Experimental Officer, Mary is paid the standard women’s rate of two-thirds of the male wage. Most of Mary’s female Computers are right out of school, and are expected to stay for only a few years, until they are married, when it is mandatory that they retire. Miss Mary Whitehead is not married, perhaps because of this system. Mary has even joined the Professional Officer’s Association to try to lobby for equal pay for equal work, but she is frustrated because the rest of the members are men so they don’t think too much of her appeals. Right now she trains new recruits, who start at the men’s base pay, which is more than she makes as an experienced officer. This Programmed Inequality that includes discarding of skilled Calculators and discouraging of skilled female technical workers is a great loss to the accuracy of this trajectory work in particular, and the development of computing technology in Australia and the United Kingdom in general.

I won’t tell you yet how much I make, but I too am stuck in a similarly unfair and enraging bureaucratic system. But, like me, Mary finds the work and constant learning so stimulating that it is almost worth it. Fortunately, the national push for equal rights among the races and sexes is beginning to change this awful standard. The 1960s is opening with turbulence; some people agitating for change, while other forces oppose this change, as the Traveler keeps pointing out. It’s a confusing time and hard to know what is real anymore. Perhaps a little science fiction and fantasy will ease this pain, and give us some insight into the potentials that we can build into our tomorrows.




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Science / Space Race

[June 24, 1963] First Ladies (July 1963 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

The most inspiring news this month, at least for anyone interested in humanity's first tiny steps away from our home planet, was the fact that Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova became the first woman in space.  She orbited the Earth forty-eight times aboard Vostok 6, landing safely after nearly three days inside the tiny spacecraft.

This was certainly a welcome distraction from the continuing battle in the United States over civil rights.  On June 11, Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in an attempt to block desegregation of the school.  Only after the National Guard arrived to remove Wallace did he step aside.

The next day, in Jackson, Mississippi, NAACP activist Medgar Evers was murdered, shot to death in his driveway.

The same day, President Kennedy addressed the nation on the subject of civil rights.

It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal.

Let us hope that all Americans take these words to heart.

Those of us wishing to escape from this distressing conflict can go out to a movie theater and spend four hours watching Cleopatra, said to be the most expensive film ever made.

We can also enjoy the novelty of listening to Japanese crooner Kyu Sakamoto singing Ue o Muite Arukou (I look up as I walk).  Despite having been given the inappropriate English title Sukiyaki, this lovely, gently melancholy tune has reached number one on the US music charts.

And in the vein of literary distractions, one can do worse than a science fiction magazine.  Given Tereshkova's recent achievement, it's appropriate that the latest issue of Fantastic features a pair of firsts from women.

Artist Jacquelyn Blair, who has previously done interior illustrations for editor Cele Goldsmith's magazines, provides the cover art.  Not only is this the first time she has moved from the inside.  This is also the first time she has received credit under her full name.  Earlier issues simply listed her as Blair.  This seems to be standard practice for interior artists, so I don't think it was an attempt to hide her sex. 

Blair is not the first woman in her field.  Perhaps the most famous female illustrator of fantastic fiction is Margaret Brundage, who provided many covers for Weird Tales.  In any case, Blair's cartoonish cover properly matches the mood of the magazine's lead story…

The Trouble with Tweenity, by Jack Sharkey

A scientist discovers that an infinite number of worlds exist between normal matter and antimatter.  To solve the near future's extreme traffic congestion, the President of the United States uses devices that allow people to travel to these worlds.  All sorts of problems result.  Attempts to solve these dilemmas lead to further complications.

Typical for the author, this is a silly farce.  The science is complete nonsense, even for a comedy.  Much of the story is pure exposition.  One or two jokes provide mild amusement.  Two stars.

He That Hath Wings, by Edmond Hamilton

This month's reprint comes from the July 1938 issue of Weird Tales.  A baby is born to a woman who dies in childbirth.  She and the infant's father, already dead, were exposed to radiation in an electrical explosion.  The child has hollow bones and special muscles to control the wings he develops.  He grows into a man who can fly.  He falls in love with a woman who returns his affection, but cannot allow herself to marry someone the world thinks of as a freak.  The man must choose between flight and romance.  Sacrifice and tragedy follow.

Although this story begins in the old-fashioned style of pulp fiction, it soon becomes poetic.  The author's descriptions of the joy of flying are particularly effective.  A minor quibble is that the scientific explanation for the man's mutation is not convincing.  This emotionally powerful tale would have been even better as pure fantasy.  Four stars.

A Hoax in Time (Part 2 of 3), by Keith Laumer

In the first part of this serial, our three protagonists – a wealthy idler, a carnival performer, and a robot in the form of a beautiful young woman, created by a super-computer – wound up in the remote past.  The idler and the robot escaped.  In this installment, they return to rescue the performer, only to find that thirty years have gone by.  While waiting for the others, he helped the savage people of the past progress into healthy, self-reliant individuals.  When the three go back to their own time, they find that his efforts have changed the present.  In particular, the super-computer no longer exists, leaving them unable to journey through time again and put things back the way they were.

This part of the novel is less comic than the first.  It also has less action and more talk.  The author creates an interesting alternate version of reality.  Although the world he depicts has its flaws, it seems intended as a functioning libertarian society.  The author's philosophy also comes through in the final section of this installment, when the idler goes through an intense training program of self-discipline in order to become a valuable member of his new home.  The story is never boring, even when it becomes nothing more than a discussion of ideas.  The performer's ability to bring technology to the prehistoric people, in the manner of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, strains credibility.  Three stars.

The Recurrent Suitor, by Ron Goulart

This is a sequel to last month's story Plumrose.  The narrator, a man of 1961, is still stuck in 1897.  The occult detective Plumrose brought him there with a time ray.  He serves as the detective's reluctant assistant until Plumrose can repair the time ray.  In this story, the mismatched pair help a young man rescue his fiancée from a family curse.  As with the previous story, this is a light comedy, poking fun at old-fashioned Gothic fiction.  Three stars.

A Contract in Karasthan, by Phyllis MacLennan

This is the first published story by the author, and one hopes that it will not be the last.  A man journeys around the world in search of the magical place for which he yearns.  When he finds it, he must decide whether to remain or return to mundane reality.  This is a delicate, moody, dream-like fantasy.  It has the flavor of a myth.  The author's elegant style casts a spell over the reader.  Five stars.

Final Audit, by Thomas M. Disch

In the Nineteenth Century, a clerk has a peculiar form of precognition.  Although he fills out a book of postal expenses one month after the actual transactions, he can see one month ahead.  In other words, he knows what he is going to write in the book one month in the future, dealing with the expenses made on the day he sees them.  This strange ability seems useless, since it deals with such trivial matters.  Over many years, the clerk tries various ways to turn this to his advantage, without luck.

This is an unusual story, written in a deliberately old-fashioned style.  Although it is not a comedy, one can't help feeling that the author has his tongue firmly in his cheek.  Although the ending is predictable, the portrait of a life wasted in pursuit of an impossible goal is effective.  Three stars.

All in all, it has been a banner month for women in science and science fiction.  Let's hope that Tereshkova, Goldsmith, Blair, and MacLennan continue to serve as role models for other pioneering women, in the far reaches of outer space or deep within the human imagination.

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Science / Space Race

[June 20, 1963] Crossing stars (the flights of Vostoks 5 and 6)

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by Gideon Marcus

Gordo Cooper's 22-orbit flight in Faith 7 afforded America a rare monopoly on space news during the month of May.  Now, a new Soviet spectacular has put the West in the shade and ushered in a new era of spaceflight.

On June 14, Lt. Colonel Valery Bykosky zoomed into orbit atop the same type of rocket and in the same type of Vostok capsule that took his four predecessors to space.  Call signed "Hawk," he circled the Earth for just a hair shy of five days, beating the previous record set by Andrian Nikolayev in Vostok 3 by a few minutes.  Bykovsky conducted experiments, floated unstrapped from his seat a few times, ate, slept, and otherwise did the normal things one might expect of a cosmonaut.  He landed early yesterday morning.

That's not the exciting bit.

Two days after Hawk's flight began, he was joined by "Seagull" in Vostok 6.  As with the twin flights of Vostoks 3 and 4, Hawk and Seagull's trajectories were tailored to overlap so that the two spacecraft could get within hailing distance.  They shared radio transmissions and reported observing each other.  Vostok 6 landed around the same time as Vostok 5.  In most ways, the mission of Hawk and Seagull marked no new ground over the previous joint mission.

Except one: Vostok 6 was crewed by Valentina Tereshkova, a textile worker from Moscow.  She was the first woman and the first civilian in space. 

Let that settle in.  There are a lot of ramifications. 

When Project Mercury was established, NASA solicited applicants with a specific set of talents.  They had to be male military test pilots with thousands of hours of jet experience.  Seven were ultimately chosen, six of whom have flown.

Six Soviets have also flown.  Five were male military test pilots, but the sixth had never enlisted.  Tereshkova's closest relevant experience is that her hobbies included parachuting.  That the Soviet space program anticipated and insisted on including a civilian woman is significant.  Moreover, in her sole space flight, she logged more hours than all previous American astronauts combined.

You can call it a media stunt.  You can sneer that the Vostok capsules are bigger and more automated and therefore Tereshkova's role was limited to that of a passenger, not a pilot.  That's cold comfort, though.  The fact is, the Russians are thinking long-term.  They want to know how space affects men and women because they intend on not just conquering space but settling it.  Furthermore, they are demonstrating that Communism is an equal-opportunity business.  For all of our touting of democracy, America has no plans to let women join the space corps. 

So let's tally where we are in the "manned" space race as of June 1963.  The Americans have just finished the Mercury program, which had six flights, two of them suborbital.  The longest mission lasted a day-and-a-half.  There won't be another crewed flight until late '64, when the two-manned Gemini goes up.

Meanwhile, the Soviets launched six crewed Vostoks over roughly the same period.  But, they got there "fustest with the mostest," (Gagarin went up a month before Shepard), all of the flights were orbital, Vostok has an endurance at least three times that of Mercury, the Soviets mastered the art of double-launching, and, of course, their program is sophisticated enough to accommodate a non-pilot.  America may have been the first to break the sound barrier, but the Communists were the first to break the space gender barrier.

Our one consolation is that the near real-time appreciation of the Vostok flights was made possible by the existence of American communications satellites.  The TV transmissions from Vostoks 5 and 6 were relayed across the Atlantic via Telstar.  That's a pretty weak "yeah, but." 

Here's a better one.  Let's bring women into the astronaut corps.  In fact, there is already a reserve of thirteen woman pilots who have voluntarily subjected themselves to and passed the same test regimen as the Mercury 7.  Led by NASA consultant, Jerrie Cobb, they've been waiting in the wings for three years now.  They are eager and fit to fly — all they need is the green light from the space agency.  Given that the next class of astronauts will include civilians, there should be no barrier to letting one of these qualified women fly in Gemini and/or Apollo.

There shouldn't be…

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Science / Space Race

[May 22, 1963] Beyond the Typewriter (IBM Computers and how they work)

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by Ida Moya

I was very impressed by this month’s paean to the IBM Selectric Typewriter by traveler Victoria Lucas. Her sensuous love of the very physicality of the thing really got to me. As I mentioned before, knowing how to type is what made me what I am today; I too used this panoply of ever-better equipment, so I really enjoyed her story. The IBM Selectric is an incredibly satisfying typewriter to operate.

The most intriguing part of Miss (Mrs.?) Lucas’ article was her closing question, “What are you going to do to steal my heart next, IBM?  For example, where is this computer thing going? Will it be the next love of my life?”

Answer: The computer will be the next love of your life. (Or maybe your master.)

My place of employ, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL), is a frontrunner in adopting new computing technologies. I have worked in different capacities as LASL moved from calculating equipment that ran with hand-propelled gears and ratchet wheels, to things electrically controlled by mechanical switches, to those using electomechanical relays. (The IBM Selectric uses yet another kind of electromechanical switch, though since it is not properly a computer I won’t address it now.) The height of switching technology was until very recently vacuum tubes, which are now being by supplanted by transistors. Transistors, an amazing miniaturized technology, are much smaller than vacuum tubes, work faster, and don’t get as hot.

With computers, there are a lot of viewpoints from which one can focus. I think of computers more from the perspective of an operator: making software programs run on the computers, and producing and analyzing the results. Other people think about computer architecture — how does the data flow in and out of the computer, and what happens when the information is processed inside.

Here is a picture of one of the three vacuum tube-based IBM 704 computers at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. One of my colleagues, a computer operator, is shown opening the front door of the IBM 729 tape drive. As you can see, no special protective gear is required, and she doesn’t even have to wear a hair net. This is from just a few years ago; the computers we have now are even faster and more sophisticated.

The way we get a program into the computer is to punch the program onto cards, then use the card reader (the low piece of equipment in the center of this photograph) to transfer the program onto magnetic tapes. From the tape, the program is read into the computer’s core memory.

Data – for example, parameters for an experimental design study for a thermonuclear warhead, something you want to calculate over and over again with different settings — is then punched onto another set of cards, and read directly into the core memory. The program is transferred yet another time, to the CPU, the Central Processing Unit. There, the program acts on each of the data points in the core as appropriate. The results are printed out onto greenbar paper by the printer, which is the rightmost piece of equipment.

IBM produced this nifty card to illustrate the wonderful equipment they have to punch, sort, and interpret the cards.

We even have this little slide rule, which managers use to calculate how long it will take for keypunch operators to do a job. This little rule is our master – woe betide you if you cannot keep up!

I’m not sure what computing establishment this picture below is from, but here are a bunch of gals using IBM 026 card punches, very much like here at LASL. It’s nice to have a job and be a part of something important. But this windowless room jam packed with keypunch operators is depressing. Imagine how loud it is in there for these women. (Mary Whitehead tells me that when they were using calculators Weapons Research Establishment in Salisbury, Australia, they had carpeting in the room and egg crates lining the walls to attempt to absorb some of the sound. Not so lucky here.)


From Wikipedia

And heaven help them if they ever have to use that fire extinguisher. The cords on the floor look like a real trip hazard. However, most of these gal are just working for a year or two before they get married and become housewives, so it doesn’t pay to make the conditions any better. Me, even though my husband works at the Santa Fe Railroad, we don’t have that luxury. We both have to work in order to make ends meet and raise our wonderful children. I suspect more and more women are going to join the workforce permanently in the coming years, and these conditions will become a lot more humane for all of the future computer workers.

Another perspective from which to understand computing is the physical components inside the computer that come together to make a larger whole. For example this IBM Field Replaceable Unit (FRU), pictured below. On top of the unit are several vacuum tubes, while the rest of the contraption consists of resistors, diodes, and other discrete components. Electrons flow through this and, ingeniously, compute the Boolean logic of ands, ors, and nots.

I took this module as a souvenir from our IBM 704 system when it was decommissioned. Unlike the computers built as one unique unit, like say the one-off computers ENIAC or MANIAC, the 704 is constructed of a small number of modules. If a component in one of these modules goes bad, the individual module is removed and quickly replaced with a new module – then the computer works again. The bad module can be tested and repaired at a more leisurely pace.  These computers are expensive to own and run; keeping them “up” as much as possible, for all three shifts, is imperative.

The IBM 7030 Stretch was also designed with modularity in mind. Instead of tubes, the Stretch uses transistors, as you can see on this Standard Modular System (SMS) card below. This particular module, about the size of a playing card, is a “two-way AND,” a particular kind of Boolean logic gate. SMS cards were first developed for the Stretch, and are also used in the brand new IBM 7090, 1401, and other super-fast IBM computers and peripherals of today.

If you look closely at the transistors, which are the metal cans, you can see the Texas-shaped brand mark of Texas Instruments. This American company has learned how to mass-produce transistors. Inside this can is a teeny little piece of germanium crystal, a “semiconductor,” with some probes attached. (And by attached, I mean soldered together by women using binocular microscopes and steady hands, jammed together in another terrible windowless room). Manipulating and transforming the way electrons flow through these cans is, ultimately how the computer does our bidding. Interestingly, computer operators don’t need to know about this in detail; we can leave it to the expert computer engineers and technicians.

IBM is not the only company using a modular strategy. For example a few days ago the traveler showed a brand-new Siemens 3003 computer system. I don’t have a parts book for this German company, so I don’t know what this particular module does, but you can see in the picture below there are two silver can-shaped transistors, plus some other colored packages of components.


(Courtesy of The Living Computer Museum

So, Miss Lucas, there is plenty to love about computers. Don’t get stuck just being a typist, and join us in the transistorized revolution!

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