Category Archives: Fashion, music, politics, sports

Politics, music, and fashion

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

[August 2, 1970] Fimbulsommer (September-October 1970 IF)

1 Comment


by David Levinson

Protecting the environment

Americans are becoming increasingly concerned about the environment. Smog and litter have been common complaints for many years, but people are now paying attention to things like pesticides and other chemicals in the ground and water. Some say that the current attention began with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, but 1969 may have been the tipping point.

Last year began with the disastrous oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. A few months later, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire (and not for the first time). The mayor of Cleveland tried unsuccessfully to use it as a springboard for cleaning up the river, but Time magazine picked up the story and used pictures of the more dramatic 1952 fire to launch its new “Environment” section. As the year drew to a close, the environment was also the subject of several papers presented at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union. All of which contributed to the massive participation in Earth Day back in April.

The government has noticed and begun to take action. Back in December, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to submit a report on the effects of planned projects on the environment. President Nixon signed it on New Year’s Day, declaring, "the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment." The Nixons even participated in Earth Day by planting a tree on the South Lawn of the White House.

One of the problems is that there are dozens of government agencies overseeing various aspects the environment and environmental policy. Sometimes they work at cross purposes or their goal is at odds with protecting the environment at large. For example, the bodies that oversee the approval of pesticides or fertilizers are concerned only with the improving crop yields, not with the larger effects on insect life or algal blooms far downstream of farms.

On July 9th, President Nixon submitted Reorganization Plan No. 3 to Congress. The plan proposes the creation of an Environmental Protection Agency into which all the various departments and agencies will be folded. The goal is to create concerted action, unified monitoring, and hopefully to eliminate conflicts of interest. This actually seems like a pretty good idea. It’s now up to Congress to approve or reject this reorganization.

Photograph of President Richard Nixon and his wife standing on the lawn outside the White House. Mrs. Nixon is using a shovel to plant a tree.The Nixons participating in Earth Day.

Taking the science out of science fiction

I’m not one to indulge in all the shouting about the Old School and the New Wave. Eventually, the two will reach a balance, and something new will emerge. The focus on character and society is all to the good; the fripperies of style over substance will soon be forgotten. But some of the stories in this month’s IF are enough to make me throw up my hands in despair and join the old guard in kvetching about what the New Thing is doing to science fiction.

Cover of Worlds of If Science Fiction depicting three shadowy figures in the foreground in front of a blue, spherical craft with a red wake, all against a wormholeish/tunnel blue background with a bright center. The cover announces the stories The Seventh Man by George C. Chesbro, Ballots and Bandits by Keith Laumer, and Life Cycle by Jark Sharkey, and the novel Fimbulsommer by Randall Garrett and Michael Kurland.Suggested by “Fimbulsommer.” Art by Gaughan.

Continue reading [August 2, 1970] Fimbulsommer (September-October 1970 IF) →

1 Comment Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[July 26, 1970] "The Hearts of Men" and Women (June and July "Gay Pride" Protests)

Leave a comment

 
By Jessica Dickinson Goodman

In the past 30 days, according to The New York Times, American homosexuals have shouted at a gubernatorial candidate on the street, forced the American Medical Association into private session, published theses and books, debated the "frivolous"ness of their rights with U.N. Youth Assembly delegates, been the subject of a positive resolution at the Lutheran Church in America's biennial convention, a negative note from a Vatican aide.

And perhaps most powerfully, they marched.  

New York Times Image Caption: "Treading in the steps of all the other miniroity groups that have been pressing their demands with demonstrations, homsexuals held a mass parade in New York last week to protest the discriminations they suffer." Photo: Grainy black and while photo of people hugging, a sign above reading "Gay Pride."

"Thousands of young men and women homosexuals from all over the Northeast marched from Greenwich Village to the Sheep Meadow in Central Park yesterday proclaiming 'the new strength and pride of the gay people.'"

Continue reading [July 26, 1970] "The Hearts of Men" and Women (June and July "Gay Pride" Protests) →

No comments Leave A Comment
Book, Fashion, music, politics, sports

[July 22, 1970] Solace for Your Trillion-Year-Old Spirit (George Malko's Scientology: The Now Religion)

Leave a comment


by Arturo Serrano

I've spent the last few months exchanging letters with an American friend, who has been educating me about a curious phenomenon they're seeing over there: the quick emergence of new religions whose foundation is, uniformly, some account of an alleged extraterrestrial encounter. From the peculiar case of the Mormon faith, I already knew that the Americans had a unique ability to cook up a doctrine from whole cloth and make it explosively successful in terms of gaining devotees and social influence. But even that knowledge did not prepare me for the alarming piece of investigative journalism which my friend has mailed me along with his latest letter. It's a book published this year, written by a Dane called George Malko, with the title Scientology: The Now Religion. It describes the author's journey to explore and unravel a whole intricate system of theology, liturgy, morality, and salvation begun only two decades ago, by the obviously troubled science fiction writer of moderate fame, named Lafayette Ronald Hubbard.

Cover of the book Scientology: The New Religion, by George Malko. The illustration shows a big dollar sign in the middle of the page.
Delacorte Press, New York.

In a nutshell, Scientology (a bland, uncreative name if I've ever heard one) teaches that the human spirit has lived countless lives in countless bodies on countless planets, and we all carry the scars of emotional trauma accumulated over aeons of reincarnations. But fear not! The same church that reveals to you that you have this problem happens to be selling the solution: by letting a complete stranger take note of your darkest secrets in front of a lie detector, you can achieve the next level of enlightenment. And the next. And the next. With each milestone, you're supposed to become more in control of yourself, more unperturbed by the psychic echo of your past lives, and more capable of performing feats of paranormal wonder. There's a finely subdivided series of degrees of perfection you can rise to, provided that you can afford the requisite study materials. That's the only penitence that this church expects of you: the thousands upon thousands of dollars that it costs to buy its ever-increasing but, unsurprisingly, never complete form of happiness.

Continue reading [July 22, 1970] Solace for Your Trillion-Year-Old Spirit (George Malko's Scientology: The Now Religion) →

No comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[July 10, 1970] Prison Break in West Berlin: The Liberation of Andreas Baader

Leave a comment

Tune in tonight at 7pm Pacific for the latest episode of Science Fiction Theater!

A color photo of several men and a woman, all in business attire, standing around a conference table in an office.

A color headshot of a white woman with long dark brown hair.  She is wearing a headband and a dark red turtleneck, and is smiling at the camera.
by Cora Buhlert

This is not the article I was planning to write this month. In fact, I was going to review the Ballantine Adult Fantasy collection Zotique, which reprints the haunting stories Clark Ashton Smith published in Weird Tales for the first time in more than thirty years.

However, Clark Ashton Smith will have to wait – he has been waiting for more than thirty years by now, after all – because there have been some most shocking developments in the West German leftwing sphere.

A Pleasant Spring Day in West Berlin

Two black and white postcards from Berlin-Dahlem.  Each is a collage of several photos, showing public buildings, tree-lined streets, and parks with statues and lakes.

Two black and white postcards from Berlin-Dahlem.  Each is a collage of several photos, showing public buildings, tree-lined streets, and parks with statues and lakes.

The Dahlem neighbourhood of West Berlin is a normally a quiet upper middle class suburb, where nineteenth and early twentieth mansions line leafy cobblestoned streets. There is little traffic here, birdsong can be heard echoing from the gardens and rarely are there sounds louder than a whirring of a lawnmower or the barking of a dog. But on May 14 at eleven AM, the quiet of Dahlem was interrupted by the sound of gunfire.

The source of those shots was a white mansion with dark green shutters, nestled in a garden with birch and pine trees on Miquelstraße. It was a warm and sunny spring day, so the windows on the ground floor were wide open. This mansion houses the library of the German Central Institute for Social Issues, i.e. not a place where anybody would expect gunfire.

A color photograph of a white plaster two-story building with trees in its front yard.  The upper floor has multi-paned windows with dark green shutters.  The bottom floor has wooden accents around the windows and door in the same green.  A green picket fence with brick pillars on either side of the gate is in the foreground.
The German Central Institute for Social Issues on Miquelstraße 83 in West Berlin

Shortly after the shots, an engine howled and a car raced down the street. Georg Linke, the 62-year-old janitor of the Institute, staggered across Miquelstraße, clutching his side, only to collapse in a driveway, bleeding profusely from gunshot wounds in his arm and his abdomen. He was found by a student who wanted to consult the library.

"That was the Meinhof woman," a man in uniform yelled from the open window of the Institute, while the student yelled back they should call an ambulance, because someone had been shot.

Initially, there was some confusion about what precisely had happened at the German Central Institute for Social Issues. But gradually, it became clear that the quiet Miquelstraße had just witnessed one of the boldest prison breaks in recent German history.

Continue reading [July 10, 1970] Prison Break in West Berlin: The Liberation of Andreas Baader →

No comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 6, 1970] The Day After Judgment (August/September 1970 Galaxy)

3 Comments

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

Hello, Louie!

Enough talk about Cambodia, Israel, and the Race Problem.  How about some happy news for a change? 

Satchmo, sometimes known as Louis Armstrong, had a birthday this last Independence Day.  The famed trumpter and gravel-throated crooner, known for his ear-splitting smile and breaking racial barriers, has just finished his seventh decade.

"It's awful nice to be breathing on your 70th birthday, let alone feeling in the pink," he observed.

Photo of a smiling Louis Armstrong, with a cigarette and a bottle of cognac.

A big tribute was held in Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium for Armstrong on July 3rd, perhaps the most influential jazz musician since the genre was born.  While he did not puff his cheeks to blow his horn (he is still recovering from a kidney infection), he did sing for his audience, joined by a number of fellow jazz greats.  Proceeds from the event will go to the Louis Armstrong Statue Fund.

So, happy birthday to New Orleans' favorite son.  What a wonderful world.

Hello, Jimmy!

As Galaxy approaches its 20th birthday, I see it has reverted to the format the magazine took back in 1958: it is once again an overlarge bi-monthly (like sister mag IF, which means we essentially get three mags every two months).  On the one hand, this makes room for bigger pieces, like the superlative story that headlines this month's issue.  On the other hand, it means more room for dross like Heinlein's new serial that taillines the book.

Read on.  You'll be grateful I did the screening for you…

The cover of <i/>Galaxy. It shows a silver rocket, resembling a wide-winged airplane, speeding towards a futuristic city that is engulfed in an inferno of green, yellow, and red. A banner on the cover says, in all capital letters, 'LARGER THAN EVER — 32 MORE PAGES!'
Cover by Jack Gaughan

Continue reading [July 6, 1970] The Day After Judgment (August/September 1970 Galaxy) →

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

[June 26, 1970] Hard Hats & Flower Power Collide

Leave a comment

Black-and-white portrait of a fair-haired white woman wearing a woven hat and looking to her right, directly into the camera, with a slight smile
by Gwyn Conaway

“Flowers are better than bullets.”

This has been said upon occasion, especially over the last decade, but in bygone eras as well. War-weary Americans and English poets alike have waxed poetic over the familiar adage. These days, however, the sentiment is laced with gunpowder.

B&W photograph of a white woman with short dark hair holding a daisy to her face, as a line of soldiers stand opposite her with bayonets out-thrust
Jan Rose Kasmir put flowers in guns pointed at her during a protest at the Pentagon in 1967 at which she wore a cotton shift decorated in daisies. She recalls being saddened by how young the soldiers were. These were men she could have been on a date with, if only there weren't a philosophical trench separating them.

Allison Krause also said this as she put a flower in an Ohio National Guardsman's gun at Kent State University on the weekend of May 4th, 1970, less than two months ago. Later, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on student protestors, wounding nine and killing four, including Miss Krause. Since then, students nationwide have protested in the name of peace and a growing distrust of the government's motivations to use deadly force, both at home and around the world.

Of course, the photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, just 14 years old, will live in infamy for generations. The chilling scene still haunts me, the young girl wailing over the body of a fallen boy with shaggy hair and a pair of flat-soled sneakers.

B&W photograph of a dark-haired white teenager kneeling in the road next to a prone body with her arms outstretched and her face raised in shock and grief, as a crowd of concerned people begins to re-congregate
Mary Ann Vecchio, 14, cries over the body of Jeffrey Miller, one of the four victims during the Kent State Massacre on May 4, 1970.

And just four days later, during a New York City protest honoring that boy in his sneakers and the other students that died, a band of several hundred laborers and office workers also took to the streets. The Hard Hat Riot was a culture clash that illustrates the divide in America.

Long hair versus trim cuts. Band shirts versus button-downs. Bell bottoms versus slacks. This division is more than a generational or political gap. Our country is splitting down the seams of ideology. The Hippies had been a countercultural movement in the sixties, but I am certain that events like these will transform their radical ideals and fashions into the mainstream.

B&W photograph of clean-cut white men in belted trousers wearing sunglasses and hard-hats kicking at a smaller-group of long-haired, jeans-wearing people sitting hunched protectively on the ground
Though people on opposite sides of the picket line see dramatically different messages when they judge the fashion identities of these men, the message couldn't be clearer. The rift in America will have a lasting impact.

Since the Vietnam War protests began in 1965, “Flower Power” has been a consistent message for the movement, expressed in wacky, beautiful, creative, and bold ways. Daisies, a flower ubiquitous across the nation in gardens and the wild, is the flower of choice with its pure white petals and plush center. The term signals a commitment to pacifism and peaceful protest but is transforming before our eyes.

B&W fashion photograph of a white man with a neatly trimmed moustache and a styled mop of curls and a pair of glasses where the lenses have been blacked out, and the right lens has been painted over with a stylized daisy blossom.  He wears multiple long strands of beads as necklaces over a floral/paisley patterned dress shirt with a matching neck-tie
A British man wearing a provocative flowerpot hat decorated in silk flowers with a pair of spectacles, one of which is patterned as a daisy. He likely wore this to a festival in 1967.

Continue reading [June 26, 1970] Hard Hats & Flower Power Collide →

No comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[May 24, 1970] Let It Be (The Beatles break up)

1 Comment

a middle-aged woman in a white turtleneck, wearing a beaded necklace
by Victoria Lucas

No.

No, no, no, no. no. I don’t believe it, can’t believe it, am not going to believe it.

A black-and-white photograph of Paul McCartney on stage in a suit, arms crossed
Paul McCartney

"You and I have memories,
Longer than the road that stretches Out ahead."

Continue reading [May 24, 1970] Let It Be (The Beatles break up) →

1 Comment Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[April 24, 1970] Save Our Ailing Planet (Earth Day: April 22)

Leave a comment

Tune in tonight at 7PM Pacific for a very funny and excellent episode of Science Fiction Theater!

Overdramatic closeup of William Shatner as Captain Kirk in Star Trek.


by Erica Frank

Timothy Leary's exhortations to "turn on, tune in, drop out" have found their limits:

You can't turn on if your every breath is filled with poison.
You can't tune in if you are surrounded by industrial cacophony.
You can't drop out of living on Earth: Science fiction plans notwithstanding, it's the only planet we have.

Before we can live in harmony with nature and each other, we need to address the damage we have done and undo the harms to the land, the sea, the sky that sustain us.

That's what Earth Day is about: A day of protest against industrial waste and environmental toxins. A day of celebration of the world we share and the peace we hope to build in the future. A day of education and cooperation, of hard truths and hopeful plans, of turning fear and anger into new relationships and useful actions.

Poster saying War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things, with a drawn flower on a bright yellow background.

Smog is also not healthy for children and other living things. Part of the goal of Earth Day is to bring the energy of anti-war protests to protecting our environment.
Image by Another Mother for Peace (AMP), an anti-war activist group.

Continue reading [April 24, 1970] Save Our Ailing Planet (Earth Day: April 22) →

No comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports

[April 4, 1970] Twixt Scylla and Charybdis (S&T's The Flight of the Goeben)

Leave a comment

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

A little over half a century ago, the actions of two ships changed the entire course of human events.

Black-and-white photograph of a warship.
SMS Goeben and SMS Breslau bombarding Phillipeville on the French-Algerian coast (W. Malchin, 1915)

In 1912, two warships of the German Kriegsmarine were stationed in the Mediterranean.  The battlecruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau, in the event of war, were to raid French shipping between Africa and Europa.  When war broke out between Austria-Hungary and Serbia on July 28, 1914, the vessels were in the Adriatic port of Pola.  Admiral Souchon, commander of the German duo, decided he didn't want to be bottled up, so he took his ships to the central Mediterranean and waited for orders.

They arrived: head east for the Aegean Sea and ultimately the Dardanelles, the strait on which Turkish Istanbul was situated.  There, Souchon was to offer the two modern vessels to the aging and inefficient Ottomans.  In return, the Sultan would bring Turkey into The Great War on the side of the Central Powers.

Thus ensued a grand chase, which the British lost.  The rest is history.

But what if Souchon had been given different orders?  What if the British had had different priorities?  Such are the What Ifs that compelling parallel universes are made of—and the subject of the newest game to arrive in the magazine Strategy & Tactics.

The Game

Promotional logo for the game The Flight of the Goeben.

Continue reading [April 4, 1970] Twixt Scylla and Charybdis (S&T's The Flight of the Goeben) →

No comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 2, 1970] Being Human (May-June 1970 IF)

Leave a comment

A white man with short gray hair poses in front of a wooden wall. He is wearing a gray blazer, yellow shirt, and black necktie, and is smiling toward the left of the viewer.
by David Levinson

Counting coups

March saw not one, but two attempts to overthrow the established government in smaller countries. One failed, but the other looks like it may have succeeded.

A color geographic and political map of the Mediterranean basin, showing the island of Cyprus in the middle of the image.
Cyprus is the island south of Turkey, west of Syria, north of Egypt

Cyprus is a troubled nation. The populace is divided between those of Greek and Turkish decent, and the long-running hostility between Greece and Turkey spilled over to Cyprus. When the island sought independence from the United Kingdom, Greek Cypriots hoped for eventual union with Greece, which was not acceptable to Turkish Cypriots. The British were able to block annexation (or enosis, as it is called in Cyprus) as a condition for independence, but relationships within the island are so rocky that UN peacekeepers had to be brought in to keep the two populations from each other’s throats.

A major figure in the independence movement was Orthodox Archbishop Makarios III, who has led the country ever since. Before independence, he was a strong supporter of enosis, but was persuaded to accept that it would have to be put off as a hoped for future event. Makarios isn’t terribly popular with western leaders; he’s been a major voice in the Non-aligned Movement. Some in Washington have taken to calling him “the Castro of the Mediterranean.” In the last few years, he’s made himself unpopular at home as well. He’s taken away guarantees of Turkish representation in government and has also moved away from the idea of enosis. His justification is the Greek military coup of 1967, stating that joining Cyprus to Greece under a dictatorship would be a disservice to all Cypriots.

A white man with short gray hair poses in front of a wooden wall. He is wearing a gray blazer, yellow shirt, and black necktie, and is smiling toward the left of the viewer.Archbishop Makarios III visiting the Greek royal family in exile in Rome earlier this year.

On March 8th, somebody tried to kill Makarios. His helicopter was brought down by withering, high-powered fire. Makarios was uninjured, but the pilot was severely wounded. Fortunately, nobody else was on board. At least 11 people have been arrested, all of Greek heritage and strong supporters of enosis. Given the military nature of the weapons used, some are also accusing the Greek Junta of involvement.

Meanwhile in south-east Asia, Prince Norodom Sihanouk is out as the leader of Cambodia. Like Makarios, he hasn’t been popular in the west, due to his cozy relations with both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. He’s also allowed Cambodian ports to be used for bringing in supplies for the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong, while also ignoring the use of Cambodian territory as part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

A color geographic and political map of the southeast Asian peninsula, with Cambodia in the center of the image.

Sihanouk was out of the country when anti-North Vietnamese riots erupted both in the east of the country and in Phnom Penh. Things quickly got out of hand, with the North Vietnamese embassy being sacked. By the 12th, the government canceled trade agreements with North Vietnam, closed the port of Sihanoukville to them, and issued an ultimatum that all North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong forces were to leave the country within 72 hours. When the demand wasn’t met, 30,000 protesters rallied outside the National Assembly against the Vietnamese.

On the 18th, The Assembly met and voted unanimously (except for one member who walked out in protest) to depose Sihanouk as the head of state. Prime Minister Lon Nol has assumed the head-of-state powers on an emergency basis. On the 23rd, Sihanouk, speaking by radio from Peking, called for an uprising against Lon Nol, and large demonstrations followed. A few days later, two National Assembly deputies were killed by the protesters. The demonstrations were then put down with extreme violence.

Two black and white photos.  On the left, Prince Sihanouk stands outside in front of several other men.  He has black hair and a concerned expression.  He is wearing a suit and tie and an overcoat, and is gesticulating with one hand while looking to the right of the photographer.  On the right, a head shot of Prime Minister Lon Nol.  He has gray hair and is wearing a black suit and tie.  He looks directly at the camera with a neutral expression.l: Prince Sihanouk in Paris shortly before his ouster. R: Prime Minister Lon Nol.

Where this will lead is anybody’s guess. The new government (it should be noted that the removal of Sihanouk appears to have been completely legal) has clearly abandoned the policy of neutrality and threatened North Vietnam with military action. Hanoi isn’t going to take that lying down; if the war spreads to Cambodia, will the Nixon administration expand American involvement? Add in Sihanouk urging resistance to Lon Nol and the deep reverence for the royal family held by many Cambodians, and it all looks like a recipe for chaos.

What is man

Some of the stories in this month’s IF deal directly or tangentially with what it is that makes humans human. The front cover also raises a question that we don’t have an answer to. We’ll get to that at the end; let’s look at the issue first.

The cover of the May-June 1970 edition of Worlds of If science fiction magazine. The magazine name and edition date are written in yellow across the top of the cover, except the word IF which appears in large white letters over a red rectangle.  Below this is a color painting of a white man's head staring directly out at the viewer. At the top of his head there are black lava-rock-like shapes that appear to be exploding out from his forehead.  The head appears to be emerging from a red and yellow pool of lava which is surrounded by dark swirls around the edge of the pool. At the bottom of the cover titles are listed: Novelette The Piecemakers, by Kieth Laumer; The Reality Trip by Robert Silverberg; Zon by Avram Davidson; Troubleshooter by Michael G. Coney. To the right the tagline of the magazine reads: If, the magazine of alternatives.Suggested by Troubleshooter. Art by Gaughan

Continue reading [April 2, 1970] Being Human (May-June 1970 IF) →

No comments Leave A Comment