February’s rain and sleet freeze the toes right off the feet, as Flanders and Swann once sang. Still, there’s reason to celebrate: the Family Law Reform Act has come into effect, reducing the age of majority from 21 to 18 for most purposes, homosexual sex being a notable exception. Decimalisation continues apace, with the half-crown coin being taken out of circulation (don’t worry, you can exchange it at most banks).
Term has resumed at Royal Holloway College and my students are attacking the writings of Margaret Mead with their usual enthusiasm. However, there is also widespread unease among our Nigerian foreign student community over the capitulation of Biafra: many of them have had no news of their families, and are also concerned about when they will be able to go home. The university is rallying round to make sure everyone is housed, and there are jobs aplenty in Southwest London if they need to stay a while, but it is still an anxious situation for them.
Jubilant street scene in Lagos upon the news of surrender, January 12, 1970
No news of Yoko Ono after December’s festive anti-war campaign. Rumour has it she and her husband have gone off to New York for some reason, so I expect I’ll be covering her activities less often. What all this means for her husband’s band, I’m not sure.
On to New Worlds, which continues its trajectory back to being an SFF magazine, but unfortunately almost every story is suffering from a lack of originality this month.
Cover by Roy Cornwall
Lead-In
Mostly introducing new writers and illustrators to the magazine, as well as showcasing the pieces by Ballard and Watson, and drawing the reader’s attention to a new, presumably ongoing, feature of the publication—of which, more later.
A piece about a crash-landed astronaut finding his way to civilisation. There are resonances with Ballard’s earlier story “You and Me and The Continuum” (Impulse Magazine 1:1, 1966), and also some vivid sexual imagery about car crashes, which makes sense given that the Lead-In tells us Ballard is currently working on a novel about these. Interesting enough as a revisitation of familiar Ballard themes but no new ground broken. Three stars.
Soul Fast by Gwyneth Cravens
Illustration, artist uncredited (possibly Charles Platt)
A story by a woman in New Worlds is always worth remarking on, particularly a woman who is a current editor of the New Yorker. However, I can’t help but notice that women writers in New Worlds always seem to get pigeonholed into writing about domestic or otherwise nurturing themes. This one, for instance, is about food and the role it plays in relationships. There are some interesting satirical commentaries on race and how over-privileged White Americans with superficial attitudes towards spirituality crib from Black and Asian cultures, which makes it worth checking out. Four stars.
Japan by Ian Watson
Illustration by Judy Watson
This is the standout piece of the issue. Watson, a Tokyo resident, introduces Japan to English readers in a surreal, outré travelogue emphasising the weird SF-ness of living in a country where the atmosphere isn’t breathable, earthquakes and fires are endemic, sexual fetishes are catered to in the mainstream media, and consumerism takes on the status of art. The illustrations are by Watson’s wife Judy. It’s beautifully written, though, having been to Japan once or twice myself, I worry that it’s over-emphasising the strangeness of the country to a point where it might simply confirm Europeans’ stereotype that the East is a bizarre and hostile place. Nonetheless, five stars.
Apocrypha by D.M. Thomas
A poem about the life of Jesus. It’s not terribly original, but I did find it engaging and nicely written. Three stars.
6B 4C DD1 22 by Michael Butterworth
Illustration by Alan Stephanson
Another not-terribly-original piece in the vein of “let’s drop acid and describe the resulting trip as an SFF story.” The mind-altered protagonist lurches back and forth between several different realities, some more surreal than others, with recurring characters playing different roles. I like Butterworth’s way with prose, and some of the metaphors and descriptions are genuinely arresting, but I’d like to declare a moratorium on anyone using Alice in Wonderland as an acid trip metaphor; it’s been done to death. Similarly, while I really like the accompanying art, it looks exactly the same as every other set of illustrations intended to show an acid trip (see above). Four stars.
A Spot in the Oxidised Desert by Paul Green
Illustration by John Bayley
A short prose poem from the point of view of a dying sentient tank in a future desert battlefield. Possibly the most innovative piece this issue. Four stars.
The Bait Principle by M John Harrison
Illustration by Ivor Latto
Patients in an asylum begin to share each other’s delusions, and, in doing so, bring them into reality, leading to an ailurophobe being tormented by human-sized cats. This is an amusing twist on the familiar crazy-people-are-actually-seeing-the-truth genre, but at the end of the day that’s all it is. Two stars.
The Wind in the Snottygobble Tree: Conclusion by Jack Trevor Story
Illustration by Roy Cornwall
Finally this serial lurches to an end, with some heavy-handed satire about the Catholic and Scientologist churches, spies and the police. I have the feeling that the story-so-far summary is in fact retroactively adding elements, but I’m not interested enough to go back and find out. The eponymous tree finally appears (it's a species of yew, apparently), but I don’t think it’s got much to do with the story apart from being a bit gross. One star.
A Vid by James Sallis
A short poem which didn’t really do much for me. Two stars.
Books
By Mike Walters, John T. Sladek and Douglas Hill. There’s a delightfully excruciating pun on the first page, although Walters has to contort his review in order to fit it.
Music
As regards the new feature I mentioned above: New Worlds now has a music column! This is certainly a welcome innovation, and I look forward to seeing whether the New Wave has a particularly distinctive take on album reviews.
Overall, I’d say the magazine is suffering this month from a lack of originality. Everything is competently written at worst and sometimes really beautiful, but most of it is things that have been done before. Even the music column is something we see over and over in other magazines, and whether the fact that the reviewers are from the usual New Worlds crowd will make a difference is uncertain.
Is the New Wave played out? Can it (and Mr. Yoko Ono’s musical career) survive into the new decade? Time will tell.
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
by Gideon Marcus
Up in the sky!
There are some intrepid women whose names are household words: Willa Brown, Jerrie Mock, Amelia Earhart. Others are not so familiar. The other day, I read the obituary for a pioneering soul I'd not known of before.
Blanche Stewart Scott was born in 1885. A native of Rochester, she was 25 when she drove a 25-horsepower Overland stock car from New York to San Francisco, her 69 hour journey marking the second time a woman had made a transcontinental drive.
This attracted the interest of aviation pioneer Glen Curtiss, who took her under his wing (so to speak) and trained her to fly. Apparently, Mrs. Scott had never seen an airplane before her coast-to-coast jaunt; she was caught in a traffic jam outside Dayton, Ohio, caused by a flying exhibition out of Wright Field.
After just three days of instruction, she made her first solo flight on September 5, 1910, from an airfield in Hammondsport—what may well be the first time an American woman piloted an aircraft.
Over the next four years, until she gave up flying, she suffered 41 broken bones in a number of crashes. She was one of the lucky ones: "Most of the early women fliers got killed," she once observed.
Scott's later career included working as a scriptwriter, film producer, and radio broadcaster in Hollywood. In 1948, she became the first woman to ever ride in a jet aircraft. During the '50s, she combed the country for vintage planes to stock the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton.
She died on January 12 at Genesee Hospital in her native town of Rochester, New York.
Who says you can't still publish Adam and Eve stories? This time, our parabolic (is that the adjective form of parable?) two are "Dorn" and "Lara", respectively the Master and Mistress of Fortress Desire and Fortress Hope. They are young clones, the last two humans alive, residing in twin, invulnerable bastions on the Moon.
Three centuries after atomic apocalypse destroyed their planet, the two beings are still conducting weekly mutual bombardments, begun ages before by their predecessors. Then the "Ezkeel", alien guardians of Earth, return to unite them so that they can repopulate their home planet. I leave it to you to decipher the thinly disguised biblical reference in their race name.
Anyway, Shapiro manages to write both in a peurile fashion and for the Playboy set (perhaps the two aren't that divergent, after all).
Illustrator Wilson (he gets around; I see him drawing for Playboy too) takes a stab at short story writing. In this vignette, mysterious forces have erected a thousand-foot statue of Mickey Mouse in the Nevada desert. The point of the story, aside from the feeble joke ending, is to see how long it takes the reader to realize what has happened, as the figure is obliquely described as characters ascend it like a cliff face.
I got the joke halfway through page 2. The rest seemed superfluous.
Two stars.
Books (F&SF, February 1970), by James Blish
Blish tags in for Russ this month, reviewing five classic fantasies and one new novel:
James Branch Cabell: FIGURES OF EARTH,
James Branch Cabell: THE SILVER STALLION.
Lord Dunsany: THE KING OF ELFLAND's DAUGHTER.
William Morris: THE WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD.
Fletcher Pratt: THE BLUE STAR.
All from Ballantine Books, New York, paper, 95¢: 1969.
He likes and recommends all of them. I've read none of them…
He is less effusive about Josephin Saxton's THE HIERos GAMOS OF SAM AND AN SMITH. He appreciates the surrealism of it, but he would have preferred that this odd Adam-an-Eve story had remained in its own world rather than transitioning into ours.
by Gahan Wilson
His Only Safari, by Sterling E. Lanier
Brigadier Ffelowes relates of the time he went to the Kenyan highlands and came face to face with the man-eating monster that inspired the Egyptian god Anubis.
Lanier does a good job of reviving the pulp era for modern audiences. A brisk, taut read.
Four stars.
Watching Apollo, by Barry N. Malzberg
Our astronauts may be the stalwart vanguard of humanity, but they also have to shit, sometimes.
A precious homosexual and a straight-laced starship captain escape a spacewreck, landing on an odd human colony. In contrast to their overcrowded, overconfining Earth, the new world's people are free, untechnological, and possessed of profound psionic powers. The skipper is unable to adapt or understand. The Terran civilian, unpleasant and mistrustful, eventually loses his inhibitions (and, apparently, his proclivity for men), becoming one with the outworlders.
Told in a dreamlike fashion to suggest the odd psychic phenomena and the constant wordless communication, I found this story's affected style off-putting. Sex was described obliquely, less to avoid offense, it seemed; more as if Russ was embarrassed of describing the act.
I also didn't like anyone in the story, nor did I care much what happened to them. The alienness of the colonists would have had more impact had things started with a more familiar, constrasting viewpoint.
I understand this story is also actually a detached piece of a larger novel due out later this year. Perhaps it would make more sense in context.
Two stars.
The Tracy Business, by Gene DeWeese and Robert Coulson
Fans of the fanzine Yandro know who Robert "Buck" Coulson is (Juanita Coulson's husband). He and DeWeese write Man from U.N.C.L.E. novels under the name "Thomas Stratton".
This story follows a private dick hired by a shrewish woman to find out why her husband disappears every four weeks for three days, spending a boodle of money in the process. Hint: it's not another woman, and it's not blackmail.
It's a rather obvious tale, and unpleasant to boot. Two stars.
The Multiplying Elements, by Isaac Asimov
The Good Doctor explains those "rare earths" that have their own separate spot on the periodic table, and also how they were first isolated from their containing ores. However, we have yet to learn why they occupy their own sub-table.
Chemistry is not my strong suit, and this article is necessarily incomplete, but I'll give it four stars for now.
Dream Patrol, by Charles W. Runyon
Way back in 1952, J.T.McIntosh (when he still was calling himself M'Intosh) wrote a neat story called Hallucination Orbit. The premise was that there were these solitary garrison stations at the edge of the solar system, manned for months at a time. Eventually, the folks stationed there started having hallucinations, which was the sign they needed to be relieved. The sentry of that story dreamed a succession of increasingly convincing female companions. The tension of that tale lay in our hero's increasingly challenging attempts to distinguish fantasy from reality.
It was a warm and ultimately sweet story, and it is one of my favorites. There's a reason it got republished in the Second Galaxy Reader (1953).
Dream Patrol has the same premise, except the illusions are caused by hostile aliens, and there is no cure. There's also a streak of misogyny to the whole thing. Hell, almost 20 years ago, McIntosh had women in his space navy; that's unfathomable to Runyon.
Two stars.
Autopsy report
Given how good last month's issue was, this abysmal 2.3-star mag is quite the surprise. Let's hope this constitutes an outlier. One prominent obituary this month is quite sufficient!
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
It's been a while since we've heard from Wilson Tucker, fan-turned-pro-but-still-very-much-a-fan. Hence, I was delighted to see that he had a new book out last month. Except, of course, it's not new at all, as I soon found out.
The story: Corporal Russell Gary, Fifth Army, veteran of "Viet Nam" and now Stateside on a recruiting stint, has gone on a bender for his 30th birthday. When he wakes up in a seedy motel room in a small town outside of Chicago, he finds that everyone in town is dead. Several days dead.
Turns out that some unnamed enemy has ravaged the American northeast with atomic fire and plague. Within 48 hours, almost everyone east of the Mississippi has died. West of the river, what's left of the country has set up a nationwide blockade, ensuring that the pestilence remains contained. No attempt is made to give succor to the thousands of Americans who have proven immune to the diseases.
Silence follows Gary as he braves the increasing barbarism until he can make his way back to civilization. Not a particularly bright nor sympathetic character, but with the instinct and training for survival, he partners up when convenient, kills without compunction when advantageous. He never becomes a brave hero or a romantic figure. Aside from a brief reference to New Orleans' straggling along, there are no enclaves of east-bank recovery. This is a holocaust from which no one is trying to rebuild. Just bands of increasingly hungry and desperate marauders, of which Gary is simply the one Tucker chooses to make his viewpoint.
There is no happy ending—indeed, there can't be. Gary is a disease carrier. The western United States has abandoned the east, and the east is a rotting corpse. And so, we have a story that starts like Andromeda Strain, continues like Alas, Babylon, and ends like a sour version of Spawn of the Death Machine.
Per the copyrights page, The Long Loud Silence originally came out in 1952, and was "specially revised and updated" for this release. That sparked my curiosity—how adroitly would Tucker handle the modernization? 17 years is a fair stretch, so it didn't seem like a slap of paint would be sufficient.
It wasn't. The story feels very much of its time (right around the time I got into science fiction, actually). There are no hippies, no reference to television. Lots of talk about radio and movies. The attack on the country is localized, believed to have been launched from Greenland…because ICBMs hadn't been invented yet. I'm pretty sure the Soviets now have missiles that can hit any part of the country. Certainly the new Russian bombers could hit Los Angeles as easily as New York. There's also a point in the book where a misprinted dogtag is an issue, and the implication is that it dates to the early 40s, which would match if Gary had been a WW2 war vet, which (having gotten a copy of the '52 release) it looks like he originally was. In fact, comparing the two versions, it looks like Gary's war background is the only change.
Setting that aside, and just reading "Europe" for "Viet Nam", how is the book? Well, it reads extremely well up through page 81. Gary teams up with interesting characters, including a fellow soldier/school-teacher, a jewel-mad girl named Irma, and a starving refugee named Sally. Seeing the ravaged geography and following the details of survival are compelling. The abortive probes of the Mississippi are exciting and tragic.
But after that, not only does Gary become more and more unlikable, but the author keeps repeating himself, copying whole passages from earlier in the book. The story just isn't long enough to need reminders like that.
I do appreciate that Tucker was willing to write an anti-hero, gritty and realistic. On the other hand, it means the narrative and the message of Silence is necessarily limited. The journey is interesting, but it doesn't say much other than that everyone is something of a bastard, civilized or otherwise.
Still, I actually finished the book, and quickly, which is more than I can say for the other two books I received last month.*
3.5 stars.
*The Yellow Fraction by Rex Gordon, is about a planet settled by a generation ship. There are three factions: the greens, espousing the terraforming of the world; the blues, espousing adaptation of humans to the world; the yellows, asserting that landing was a mistake. The yellows were right, but the totalitarian government doesn't want to hear about it. I lost interest around page 40.
*Star Giant, by Dorothy E. Skinkle, is about a seven foot humanoid alien genius who is exiled to Earth. It was too juvenile and silly for me.
I used to know a follower of Aleister Crowley, back in California. A little flighty and blustering, like most of his sect, but he told me something that’s stuck with me ever since:
“If you can't be good, be bad.”
That is a phrase that was in my mind throughout reading Sex and the High Command, the new novel by John Boyd. His last novel, The Rakehells of Heaven, was reviewed last year by Victoria Silverwolf. She described it as "an episode of Star Trek combined with a dirty and blasphemous joke." This novel is much the same, although it has far more dirty jokes than blasphemy. Dedicated “For Aristophanes and Lenny Bruce”.
Ugh. We haven’t even started the book and I’m already rolling my eyes.
by Paul Lehr
Our story follows Navy Captain Benjamin Hansen, captain of the UNS Chattahoochee, bringing his crew to Norfolk, VA, after eighteen months in Antarctica. But the docks are strangely peaceful…
It transpires that a peculiar new drug from California called Vita-Lerp is allowing women to orgasm without the involvement of a man. I have it on good authority that this is possible without drugs, but Vita-Lerp also allows for “self-childbirth” — women are able to reproduce independently, although it seems to result in no boy children being born to those women. Dr. "Mother" Carey, who developed Vita-Lerp, is also president of a movement called the FEMs, which has created cells through women’s meetings and book clubs. These cells have also taught the women “New Logic” and “New Grammar”, which puts a feminine ending on all masculine nouns, and has only female and “neuter” genders.
To help defend against the obsolescence of men, Captain Hansen is brought into the confidence of the highest offices of US power, as well as a crewman of his, Chief Water Tender McCormick. The latter has been chosen for President against Dr. Carey, as he is “Lothario X”, the ideal lover. In return, he asks for a wife of his own, one guaranteed to be “uncorrupted” by the FEMs movement. According to him, ”’I’m not particular, sir. I just want me some pretty little mountain doozy, not over eighteen, with a good shape, who can cook crackling bread.’”
(I’ve never understood that, the belief that women are most desirable when they’re teenagers. Everyone is so awkward and gangly, and pimply besides.)
A man named John Pope is sent to find the woman in question. He is a man’s man, and is the most likeable character in the book by a fair margin. However, not long after he completes his mission, Pope is killed by a prostitute and framed to look as if he died while having sex with another man. Is that the worst fate in the world? Is that the only context in which homosexual love can be imagined by this author?
It is discovered that Vita-Lerp may be used as a rectal suppository, and allows men to become women. The remaining men immediately accept the transformed person as "she” and a woman, an enlightened attitude which is surprising, given how stupid everything has been up to now. Speaking of which, Hansen is eventually taxidermied as an example of the now-extinct male species.
I have had real trouble writing this review, because I couldn’t decide how to go about it. Do I address it as science fiction? As a comedy? If the latter, what humor is there? If I am unable to understand the humor, what conclusions can I draw from the book itself?
”After the ceremony, Dr. Carey’s all-girl crew got the yacht away from the dock at Newport News with a minimum of scraped paint and the loss of only one bollard off the dock.”
Is this funny? I know that there is a stereotype of women not being able to drive well, but I think that is a matter of the limited practice time often afforded them. Beyond the plot’s suggestion of Lysistrata (a play by Aristophanes about women denying their warring husbands sex until they negotiate peace), there doesn’t seem to be much to suggest Aristophanes' wit, either.
The best thing I can say about this book is that it’s never boring. I always was interested in learning what happened next, no matter how stupid or silly.
If you can’t be good, be bad.
Two stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover
Cover art by Jack Gaughan.
Let's see; this sure looks like it's a sword-and-sorcery yarn, with a mighty-thewed hero and a dragon. Too bad that has nothing at all to do with what's between the covers. More false advertising, I'm afraid. Nevertheless, let's take a look inside and see what we've got.
We begin at an abandoned gold mine and ghost town that have been changed into a tourist attraction. A guy wearing nothing but a pair of torn shorts runs out of the mine. A ten-foot-tall monster with two heads blasts him with something that causes him to explode from the inside out. There's also a helicopter full of tourists, so old Two Heads blasts them, too.
That gets the reader's attention, anyway. We next meet our hero, a brilliant scientist who has a vast organization working for him. Among his employees are a guy who tells fortunes with a deck of cards and a woman who uses a crystal ball.
Why all this mystical stuff? It seems this guy also uses psychic methods to figure things out. He and his colleagues have a way of looking into their minds, kind of like mediation, and getting glimpses of the future.
Anyway, a military officer shows up and asks our hero to check things out at the site of the helicopter disaster. Heading for the same place, but separately, are two of his associates, a statuesque woman and a ape-like fellow.
(At this point, I was reminded of the old Doc Savage yarns that Bantam Books has been reprinting as slim paperbacks for the past few years. In a lot of ways, this new novel harks back to the pulp magazines of the 1930's.)
From this point on, the chapters alternate between the hero and his two pals. Suffice to say that they all get captured and wind up underground. Besides the two-headed monsters, we've got small robot miners and a bunch of kidnapped humans brainwashed by invisible aliens intent on taking over the world. Did I mention that there's also a Mad Scientist and his Beautiful Daughter?
At times, I thought the author was pulling my leg. There's a fair amount of teasing banter between the hero's two friends, and constant arguments between the monster's two heads. Then there's the scene in which the hero and the Beautiful Daughter keep their conversation secret from the aliens by speaking in Pig Latin . . .
This is a very silly book. Despite what I've said above, I can't really call it a satire or a comedy, because there's also some pretty gruesome violence. It's a quick read, and too goofy to be boring, but hardly worth slapping down four bits at your local drug store.
When writing reviews, it’s generally a good habit to separate the writer from the work. We reviewers have a responsibility to consider a book or story based on the quality of its writing, characterization and themes. We feel obligated not to fixate on a writer’s personal life nor on their political beliefs. Whether that creator supports Reagan or Brown, McCarthy or Nixon, is less important than their ability to write a compelling piece of fiction.
That’s true unless their personal life or political philosophy fuels their fiction – and most especially if that fiction is propaganda for that writer's philosophy.
Taurus Four by Rena Vale is a work of propaganda which shows the true colors of its author. This novel is sexist, pro-colonial, anti-Women’s Lib, anti-hippie, anti-Communist propaganda. Its author is one of the more repulsive creatures to be part of California’s political scene since World War II.
Those are strong words, I know, but please hear why I say them.
Rena Vale has been associated for many years with the work of the California Un-American Activities Committee (CUAC), even into the last decade. She has actively worked against the efforts of anti-War protesters, framed the questions the CUAC used to interrogate their witnesses, and painted the Free Speech Movement a communist plot.
Rena Vale's 1952 treatise on the evils of Communism
Vale has the feeling of a zealot, because she was a convert away from Communism. During the 1930s, she briefly joined the Communist Party, attending meetings alongside luminaries as John Steinbeck, but she felt pushed out by sexist Party members. Vale believed Steinbeck’s research into The Grapes of Wrath demonstrated that the acclaimed author was looking to advocate communism. Vale even claimed that in 1936, while still dabbling with Communist Party membership, she attended a Party meeting at the home of Lucille Ball. Yes, Rena Vale believes Lucille Ball is a Communist.
Vale, in short, is a conspiracy theorist who sees an evil Communist around every corner and a traitorous subversive behind every anti-War protester. She tracked civil rights activists as early as 1963, cataloging the daily lives of members of the Ad Hoc Committee to End Racial Discrimination, the Berkeley Peace Center, the Free Speech Movement and other Northern California organizations into a massive compilation of detailed information which might have rivaled that of the national HUAC.
Thus Vale has a significant and long-lasting role in the anti-Communist crusade. That crusade led to loyalty oaths, repression of free speech, and to groups like the Hollywood Ten, skilled screenwriters whom studios denied employment (in fact, I'm reviewing the 'comeback' film for one of those blacklisted writers later this month. Ring Lardner Jr. is credited as the screenwriter of the new film M*A*S*H).
Vale is an avowed anti-Communist. She's a woman who makes her living through the organized and brutal oppression of those who disagree with her.
Vale believes science fiction can be used as propaganda to further her repugnant beliefs. And though science fiction has been used for propaganda since at least the days of H.G. Wells (see The Shape of Things to Come, among other works by him), authors must demonstrate some real grace to make that propaganda compelling.
Cover by Robert Foster. It has has absolutely nothing to do with the book.
There is little grace in Taurus Four. The propaganda is not compelling. I think this brief excerpt will give you a bit of an idea of why I was repulsed rather than compelled by the ideas in this novel.
To communicate, to permit one’s self to become involved emotionally with alien creatures, brought doubt of the total rightness of Earth and Mankind. Did the strong and virile men of the American old West (sic) ever doubt the rightness of white Yankees in pushing westward to the Pacific Ocean? Were there any among them who had the bad judgment to listen to the redman’s tale of woe? If so, history obliterated them. History recorded the words of the strong, not those of the weaklings who fell by the wayside.
Taurus Four is peppered with ideas and phrases like that fragment. At its base in her novel is the pessimistic thought – pessimistic to Vale anyway – that at the end of the Cold War, the Soviets “dictated fashion as well as many other social, political and scientific customs,” that Soviet supremacy “was accepted and [it] became a matter of historical record that the ‘bourgeois-capitalist’ countries were decadent, the people degenerating into pulpy softness.”
From that world we meet our protagonist, Dorian Frank XIV, a pudgy and henpecked 32-year-old “space sociologist” from that soft society who can’t even pilot his landing vessel correctly. Frank crash-lands his ship on Taurus Four, and rather than obey orders and stay close to his ship, Frank decides to wander off in search of food.
More concerned with protecting his tender feet and avoiding sunburns than with prudence, Dorian eventually finds himself in a strange village settled by descendants of 1960s San Francisco war protesters. Those people have gone wild in the 300 years since their ship landed on this distant world: living naked, not cutting their hair or nails, descending into a kind of pidgin English, and eating only fruit from the sacred “manna” tree. They are ruled by a cruel and despotic leader who orders sacrifices to a native god.
While most of the members of the tribe resemble American Indians, the chief’s daughter looks more European-descended: her “skin was almost white instead of the reddish tan of the others; her hair was fine and pale, muscles firm, stomach flat and breasts perfect.”
The girl, Teeda, is racially superior to her peers from a colonial standpoint, which helps cause Dorian to fall for her – despite the fact she’s just 14 years old. Yes, this girl has a man twice her age admiring her breasts (I feel a little sick just quoting that line). But that sexualization is all fine in the context of the novel because, well, the couple barely even kiss before Dorian is rescued. And even beyond that, Teela is hard-wired for the traditional work of women. Despite the fact she’s lived naked all her life, when asked to wash clothes she embraces the work: “I wash now. I think I do more better than you.’ He laughed. ‘It's instinctive I guess—something carried in the genes that makes women want to wash clothes!”
An example of the cards Vale maintained as part of CUAC, this shows how John Steinbeck's activities were tracked.
Frank adopts a paternalistic approach to Teeda – perhaps logical since she is practically young enough to be his daughter. But he also takes a paternalistic approach to the colonists, embracing a James T. Kirk-style approach to upending their peaceful life and introducing chaos and worry into a long-stable existence. Of course, this peaceful society embraced communal property, lack of individual rights, and a feverish devotion to their absolute monarch. All those attributes could be found in the Soviet Union, so by definition they are evil philosophies which must be destroyed.
Therefore Frank, quickly coming into his own as an aggressive man who has even lost his baby fat, is the logical man to redeem these primitive people. He grows into a true Colonial whose mission becomes the need to modernize the natives’ civilization. Frank won't listen to "the redman's tale of woe."
I’ve already written 1000 words on this essay, and I hope my points here are cogent. But I’d like to note one more thing: this book is just not well written.
Oh, sure, Vale is literate. Her sentences aren’t too long, and her settings are vivid enough. But she struggles badly with characterization, she writes a pathetically clichéd villain, and the details of this world are sketchy at best. Over and over, I found myself slightly compelled by a hint of gracefulness in Taurus Four, only to become overwhelmed by bland events of political grandstanding or a disgusting glimpse into her politics.
The book feels amateurish, like the work of someone who understands the mechanics of writing but has no idea of its skills. Since she is 72 years old, I don’t expect Rena Vale to improve.
This is not a good book, and I can’t recommend it. Furthermore, I don’t want Vale to receive another penny of anybody’s money.
1 star.
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
The news to start this decade seems to be unrelentingly gloomy. The crisis in Biafra is only worsening, Mainland China and the USSR are at each other’s throats, and, at home, the government appears paralyzed on how to deal with inflation or the Unions.
But I want to take a break from grim reality and talk briefly about one of my favourite new TV programmes of recent months, Strange Report.
It stars the unlikely team of Anthony Quayle (regular star of war films) as retired police detective Adam Strange; Kaz Garas (relative newcomer) as student and jack-of-all-trades Hamlyn Gynt; and Anneke Wills (Polly from Doctor Who) as model and artist Evelyn McClean.
Together the trio solve unusual crimes together. These have included such cases as a kidnapped Chinese diplomat, murders by witchcraft and the killing of a student demonstrator behind the Iron Curtain.
There are several reasons this appeals to me, and would to other SF fans I imagine. Firstly, even though it never becomes SFnal, the cases work from a viewpoint that feels very scientific. That no matter how odd things may seem, they will always have a rational explanation.
Secondly, the cases are willing to address complicated issues, without attempting to preach. Even in dealing with some clearly despicable characters, there is an attempt made to understand their point of view and give both sides of the argument. To me it feels like the writers have their own ideas but don’t want to patronise the viewer, we are encouraged to make up our own minds.
Finally, is the dynamic between our triumvirate of heroes. Much like in Star Trek, you get the sense that, in spite of their different viewpoints they all clearly care for and respect each other. It would have been easy to have Strange constantly belittling Evelyn and her trying to show that women could do things for themselves. But, instead, there is a respect and a willingness to listen. Perhaps that is what the terrible world outside our windows really needs?
Back in the pages of SF publications, we have our own strange reports. One coming in from Vision of Tomorrow and the other from New Writings:
Vision of Tomorrow #5
Cover by Gerard Alfo Quinn
The only point of interest in the introduction is it labelling itself as Britain’s only original SF magazine. I guess it is a point of debate if New Worlds still counts as science fiction or not.
Dinner of Herbs by Douglas R. Mason
Illustration by Jeeves
Fenella, a thought chandler at a dianetics lab, has gone to a villa to have a tryst with engineer Gordon Reid. Also staying with them is their domestic servant, a former psychologist android. But is three a crowd?
A darker and more complex tale than it first appeared. However, I think it would benefit from toning down the descriptive prose and upping the character work.
Three Stars
Technical Wizard by Philip E. High
Illustration by Alan Vince
Two empires in space have come into contact, the more technically advanced human empire and another larger one, populated by fox-like creatures. A single human is sent into the fox people’s empire on a broken-down old ship to warn them. A parapsychic plague has spread through the human empire almost destroying society. Gelthru and Feen have to determine if the human is telling the truth, or if it is all a magic trick to keep them from invading.
An interesting concept and I enjoyed how it made the human the other and the fox-people the protagonists. However, I feel like it needed some more editing to rise above the pack.
Three Stars
Flanagan's Law by Dan Morgan
Illustration by Jeeves
Capt. Terence Hartigan of the freighter Ladybug is finally given clearance to leave Calpryn, a planet where the main occupation, and entertainment, is lawsuits. However, five hours before blast-off O’Mara goes missing. Hartigan sets off to find him before they find themselves in more legal hot water, but the captain quickly becomes entangled in the planet’s labyrinthine bureaucracy.
I have previously failed to find Morgan’s satires either poignant or funny. This continues that trend but with the addition of some questionable Irish stereotyping.
One Star
Fantasy Review
Uncredited illustration
Kathryn Buckley reviews New Writings in SF-15, which she liked but not as much as I did, and John Foyster gives praise to The Black Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Outlaws of the Moon by Edmond Hamilton, Kavin’s World by David Mason and Needle by Hal Clement.
One of the Family by Sydney J. Bounds
Illustration by Alan Vince
Having completed the terraforming of Phoebe-Four, Richard Daniels takes his wife Jane and son Kenny to the neighboring Phoebe-Five for a holiday. Whilst it is meant to be uninhabited they find an intelligent alien, who they call Alan. He quickly becomes like one of the family, but Dick finds his presence both annoying and a cause for concern.
A bit of an old-fashioned tale, but well-told and with a reasonable twist. Wouldn’t have looked out of place as an episode of The Outer Limits.
Three Stars
On Greatgrandfather's Knee by Jack Wodhams
Illustration by Dick Howett
Six-G GFM Frank (that is Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather on your mother’s side) tells Furn tales of early space travel. But with longevity meaning all the kids having over a hundred great relatives, these tales of adventure are a dull chore.
Whilst Wodhams captures well the boredom of kids having to visit older relatives, I am not sure what the point of it all is.
Two Stars
The Impatient Dreamers: Hands Across the Sea by Walter Gillings
Insignia of Gernsbeck’s Science Fiction League, designed by Frank R. Paul
This month Gillings discusses Gernsbeck’s Science Fiction League’s branches in England, the early days of New Worlds, fanzine Scientifiction and Gillings' talks with publishers to get a new British SF magazine off the ground.
Clive Soame notices a strange ad in the personals and concocts a scheme to sleep with a rich woman and take her money. However, the assignation Rogel and Silver were communicating about was much more complicated than he first thought.
Whilst not revolutionary, an interesting enough take on the lecherous man and alien conspiracy genre. Surprisingly, more than the science-fictional elements, I found myself enjoying the descriptions of Sydney. Very well painted.
Three Stars
Life of the Party by William F. Temple
Illustration by Eddie Jones
In San Remo, business magnate Mannheim and reporter Don both notice a jet disappear in mid-air. Following its route, they find themselves on a strange coastline, with a giant white cube standing alone by a desert. Entering the cube, they discover a translucent liquid wall leading to a kind of theatre-cum-hotel. The missing jet passengers are there but aged and confused. Don and Manny assume it will be simple to escape, but some force is determined to keep the visitors from leaving.
Taking up over a quarter of the magazine, this is easily the longest piece here, but it makes good use of its length, creating an eerie sense of the uncanny. However, the story is a pretty old one (at times I was recalling The Odyssey) and I was disappointed with the way the women characters were written.
Evens out at Three Stars
After Ragnarok by Robert Bowden
Illustrated by Gerard Alfo Quinn
The final piece is from an author who I believe is new (at the very least I have not seen him covered by my GJ comrades). After Ragnarok, the world lays shattered. Ottar and Ragnar sail the seas in their ship powered by the ancient technology of the diesel engine. There is a rumour that long ago, some of the gods escaped across the Bifrost, also called Orbit. But could it be possible they are returning? And what will that mean for the world?
Yes, it is another piece of post-apocalyptic-medieval-futurism (try saying that after a few drinks!) However, it has a good style and I have a soft spot for this type of story. The level of cynicism involved also makes it appeal to me.
Four Stars
Tomorrow’s Disasters by Christopher Priest
Instead of our usual preview of next issue’s contents, Priest gives us a short review of Three For Tomorrow. Needless to say, he adores it.
So that is it for the relative newcomer to the scene, but what about the old hand?
New Writings in SF-16, ed. by John Carnell
Even if we accept the contention that Vision of Tomorrow is the only British SF magazine, New Writings still helps keep up the national side with its regular doses of Carnellian science fiction. According to John Carnell, all the stories in this issue deal with problems that are galactic in scope. Let us see if that makes them Galactic Star worthy.
Things don't get off to a great start with the return of Colin Kapp's Unorthodox Engineers. Here they are hired to help rescue a construction crew from Getawehi, a planet with an impossible orbit, where gravity is not perpendicular to the surface and 1+1=1.5079.
At almost fifty pages, reading through this was a major slog. These tales must have their fans, but I was personally glad when they disappeared from New Writings a few years back. According to our more learned editor, the concept is very, very, broadly viable, which raises it just above rock bottom for me.
George Exton has developed a method of producing mirror images of himself, able to independently work on multiple tasks with the same degree of knowledge and skill as the original. But what is the cost to someone of doing this?
A well-worn trail is being beaten here, and not particularly effectively either.
Two Stars
Throwback by Sydney J. Bounds
Since the Great Change all humans have had the ability to connect via ESP. All that is, except for one person who is completely opaque to all psychic phenomena. Out of pity he is made the keeper of the Museum of Language, with access to all the books and knowledge of the world. Even though he gives weekly lectures, few care about anything other than the present. But when strange lights appear in the sky, only he can save the planet from total panic.
A tightly-told little tale. A bit obvious but enjoyable nonetheless.
Three Stars
The Perihelion Man by Christopher Priest
Capt. Farrell is grounded after an accident near Venus dulls his senses. Whilst pondering what to do with his life now, he is offered a unique opportunity to go back into space. 250 old nuclear satellites have been stolen and are now orbiting the sun, and Farrell may be the only person who can get them back.
This is Priest’s most impressive work to date. He has managed to skillfully produce an exciting adventure story that also has some interesting political elements. That is not to say it is as deep as a New Worlds piece, but it is a fun ride.
Four Stars
R26/5/PSY and I by Michael G. Coney
Hugo Johnson is an agoraphobe who has not left his apartment in two months and is believed to be at risk of killing himself. As such his psychoanalyst provides him with a roommate, robot R/26/5/PSY, or Bob for short. However, Bob is not designed to make Johnson’s life easier, not at all….
An interesting little psychological short. It felt like a combination of I, Robot, a Zola story, and The Odd Couple.
Four Stars
Meatball by James White
And we finish off with the return of White's Sector General and, as the name suggests, their continued explorations of the planet Drambo, nicknamed "Meatball". With the Drambons brought to the hospital station, they must now learn to interact with the numerous other species on board. At the same time Conway has to work out how to deal with the nuclear destruction taking place on the planet below.
It is possible that my memory is cheating me, but I don’t recall other Sector General tales focusing on a single case so much before. Maybe it is planned to be a novel fix-up? This piece definitely has the feel of a staging section, it spends a lot of time recapping earlier events and ends abruptly. Still rather interesting but does not stand alone or feel complete by the end.
Three Stars
Strange Brew, Read What’s Inside Of You
Evelyn and Strange ponder what we have just read
Whether on the page or the screen, it seems that if you put a group of talented people together and ask them to deal with imaginative scenarios, they can often strike gold…or at least silver. Even if there is little here that is likely to win a Galactic Star, there is plenty worth checking out.
Here's to many more years of Vision, New Writings, and Strange Report. The seventies may not be looking much like a decade of peace and harmony, but it can at least be one of good solid entertainment.
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
Unions have been a positive for workers. They’re why we have the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, paid time off, why blue collar workers are able to buy a house, not to mention not owing their soul to the company store; I’m old enough to remember when none of those things were a given. Of course, as human institutions, they are also flawed, and where money and power flows, those flaws can turn to worse things. That’s what gives many politicians—and the editor of a certain science fiction magazine—a pretext to rail against them.
One of the most important unions this century has been the United Mine Workers of America. Much of that stems from the four decades of leadership by John L. Lewis, who died last June. Lewis took a well-earned retirement in 1960 and was replaced by his vice president Thomas Kennedy. Old and in poor health, Kennedy was largely a caretaker and was soon followed by Lewis’ chosen successor, W.A. “Tough Tony” Boyle.
Lewis ran the UMWA with an iron fist, ignoring demands by the rank-and-file for a greater say in the union. He maintained his power through skill, charisma, and reputation. Boyle has run things with a similar style, but lacks most of what kept Lewis in charge. There’s even a feeling among the membership that he tends to favor the interests of the mine owners over the workers.
Enter Joseph “Jock” Yablonski. He was one of the leading figures in the opposition to Boyle’s policies. He had also been the president of the UMW’s District 5 until Boyle unilaterally stripped him of office in 1965. Last May, Yablonski announced he would challenge Boyle for the UMW presidency in the December election and was formally nominated in September. Boyle won the election on December 9th by an almost 2-to-1 margin, and Yablonski conceded. However after seeing the detailed election results, Yablonski promptly asked the Department of Labor to investigate the election. On the 18th, he also filed five civil lawsuits in federal court against the UMW over a variety of irregularities.
On January 5th, Yablonski’s older son, Kenneth, discovered the bodies of Yablonski, his wife Margaret, and their 25-year-old daughter Charlotte in their home in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. The next day 20,000 miners in West Virginia staged a one-day wildcat strike in protest against Tony Boyle, who they believe is responsible for the murders. Hours after the Yablonskis were buried, several of his supporters met with his attorney to plan further actions to reform the union.
As I write, the police have no leads. A $60,000 reward has been offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction. I don’t want to point any fingers without evidence, but an awful lot of people close to Yablonski are looking hard at Tony Boyle and the acrimony surrounding last month’s election.
Corrupt institutions
Most of this month’s Venture is given over to the new Keith Laumer novel, which spends quite a while with miners. But it and the other stories in the issue deal with corruption, both institutional and personal.
A not very representational image for Laumer’s new story. Art by Bert Tanner
Lt. Ban Tarleton is the son of an admiral and a proud member of the United Planetary Navy. He firmly believes in the status quo and holds no truck with rebellious Hatenik philosophy. But a purge leads to his discovery of some unpleasant facts, eventually resulting in him being cashiered from the Navy and sentenced to permanent exile on a harsh Class I planet. There, he finds work as a miner and makes a discovery that may give him the power to bring the whole system down.
Ban must use his best friend’s corpse as a trap. Art by Bert Tanner
Laumer is probably best known for his comedic stories, particularly those about the interstellar diplomat Retief, but he mostly writes serious stuff. Those tales come in two flavors: two-fisted adventure and thoughtful pieces that frequently tug at “masculine” emotions like duty and sacrifice. The Star Treasure is very much in the former category, but it also differs from Laumer’s usual approach.
Laumer’s typical adventure protagonist is an old-school Competent Man writ very large. Ban, on the other hand, blunders from episode to episode, generally succeeding through dumb luck. Laumer also tends to go wildly off the rails, often to the point of the surreal, investing his protagonists with incredible powers or giving them an alien background of which the were unaware. This one goes off the rails, too, but it’s right at the end. That usually happens around the mid-point. I guess this counterbalances The Seeds of Gonyl, where it happens on page one.
An ambitious but untalented colonel is captured and tortured by the enemy. There are a number of science-fictional elements.
Looks more like Neil Diamond to me. Art by Craig Robertson
It’s hard to say much about this story without simply retelling it. There is one thing that kept me from liking it: The colonel has a cat, and the cat dies. Twice. I understand how it fits in the story, but it put me off completely.
Anyway, McIntyre seems to be new. I don’t know if that V. hides a Virginia or a Virgil and can’t make a guess based on the writing either. Either way, there are signs of some solid talent. More from this author would not be amiss—just leave the cats alone.
Objectively three stars, but only two from me for reasons already stated.
Disposal, by Ron Goulart
You probably don’t think about how much trash you and your family generate. Someone in the house takes the cans to the curb on the appointed day and brings back the empties once the truck has been by. What would happen if that didn’t happen? What if there wasn’t a nearby dump you could take the trash to yourself? Goulart asks those questions with a slight science-fictional twist.
Although the story takes place in Goulart’s old stomping grounds of San Francisco, I recall reading that he recently moved to New York City. It would have been after the great garbage strike of a couple years ago, but he may have been inspired by horror stories from the locals. His typical satirical style is fully in evidence, but he keeps the outright wackiness in check.
Three stars.
Standoff, by Robert Toomey
A human and an alien find themselves on opposite sides of an asteroid after their ships were destroyed in combat. Hostilities are extreme, and neither side takes prisoners. If they work together, the two might find a way for both to survive.
As the situation of the story became clear to me, I expected something like John Boorman’s 1968 film Hell in the Pacific (starring Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune). That might have been Toomey’s original inspiration, with a possible assist from the 1965 Frank Sinatra feature None But the Brave, but that’s not where the story goes. The ending might be darker than either of those films.
A high three stars.
Summing up
Elsewhere in the issue, we get a “super Feghoot,” which is twice the usual length at a full page. Unfortunately, the pun is extremely tortured, resulting in one of the worst Feghoots I’ve ever read. Meanwhile, Ron Goulart has finally found a book he likes. Two, in fact. One is a Doc Savage reprint, the other A Wilderness of Stars, an anthology edited by William F. Nolan. Most of the stories seem to be from the 1950s. I’m not to sure that Ron is all that keen on the modern state of science fiction, even the old fashioned stuff.
So, a rather middle-of-the-road issue. However, it’s dominated by the condensed novel, far more so than any of the previous issues. If we have to have a novel in every issue, let’s at least make it something shorter so we can have a couple more stories as well.
Wellen’s written some good stuff, so I hope this more than the pot-boiler thriller it appears to be.
Fireworks for saleThe town of Delmenhorst welcomes the new year and the new decade with fireworks.Some people welcomed the new year and the new decade with glamorous balls.Meanwhile, many private New Year's Eve celebrations in West Germany looked a lot like this: a family or a group of friends gathered in a living room decorated with paper streamers to celebrate… while at least one person fervently wishes they were somewhere, anywhere else.
And so the annual New Year's Eve celebrations felt a little cheerier, the fireworks were a little brighter and everybody seemed more optimistic, even though much of West Germany is currently covered in a thick layer of snow.
Old and young are frolicking in the snow on sledding hills around West Germany.You're never too young to learn to ski.
But before New Year comes Christmas and this year, Santa left two new books under my tree, both of which offer a glimpse into a future that is not quite as optimistic as West Germany feels at the moment.
A Paranoid Nightmare: Drug of Choice by John Lange
One of the brightest rising stars of the thriller genre is John Lange. He burst onto the scene in 1966 with the heist novel Odds On and has been delivering entertaining thrillers, usually set in exotic locations and often laced with science fiction elements, at a steady clip since then. I reviewed two of them – Easy Go and Zero Cool– for the Journey.
Eventually, we learned that John Lange was the pen name of a young Harvard medical student named Michael Crichton, who released a novel under his own name last year. The Andromeda Strain, reviewed here by my colleague Joe Reid, was unambiguously science fiction and also drew on Crichton's medical knowledge, since it is about a deadly microbe from outer space.
What is more, Lange/Crichton also wrote a medical thriller called A Case of Need under yet another pen name, Jeffrey Hudson. The novel deals with a controversial issue, namely illegal abortion and the fact that it often leads to the preventable deaths of young women, which is probably why Crichton chose a different pen name to distance it from his John Lange thrillers and the novels under his own name. In spite of the controversial subject matter, A Case of Need won a highly deserved Edgar Award last year.
But whatever name he writes under, John Lange a.k.a. Michael Crichton a.k.a. Jeffrey Hudson is always worth reading. And so I was excited to read his latest novel, Drug of Choice.
Drug of Choice once more draws on Lange/Crichton's medical experience, for protagonist Roger Clark is a medical resident at Los Angeles Memorial Hospital. One day, a Hell's Angel is brought in, comatose after a motorbike accident. It seems like just another day in the emergency room, until Clark notices that the biker has no visible injuries…. and that his urine is bright blue. Clark assumes that some unknown drug is to blame for the young man's condition. However, the next day the biker awakes from his coma as if nothing had happened… and the colour of his urine is back to normal.
The case is certainly strange, but Clark quickly moves on. But then it happens again. Up and coming actress Sharon Wilder is brought to the hospital, comatose for unknown reasons. And her urine is blue. This triggers Clark's inner Sherlock Holmes and he begins to investigate. Clark learns that both Sharon and the biker were patients of the same psychiatrist. Contrary to medical ethics, Clark also gets involved with Sharon herself and winds up accompanying her on holiday to San Cristobal, a new island resort in the Caribbean, which is billed as the perfect vacation spot.
San Cristobal indeed seems to be paradise and Clark enjoys wonderful days with Sharon Wilder. But absolutely nothing is as it seems at San Cristobal, for instead of a luxury resort, the hotel is just a few dingy rooms where the guests are kept in a state of comatose bliss by a mysterious drug, which also has the side effect of turning urine blue. Behind everything is the mysterious Advance Corporation… who want to recruit Roger Clark to work for them and they won't take "no" for an answer.
Similar to A Case of Need, Drug of Choice starts out as a medical thriller, dealing with a hot social issue, in this case drug abuse. However, once Clark gets to San Cristobal and sees the disturbing reality behind the glamorous façade, the novel takes a turn into Philip K. Dick territory – a world of paranoia, drugs and shadowy powers that one man cannot beat… or can he? Indeed, if you'd given me the novel in a plain brown paper wrapper and without an author name, I would have assumed that this was Philip K. Dick's latest novel. Except that from a purely stylistic point-of-view, Lange/Crichton is a better writer than Dick.
From the entertaining adventure thrillers of a few years ago via his Edgar winning A Case of Need to last year's The Andromeda Strain and now Drug of Choice, John Lange/Michael Crichton keeps getting better and better and is quickly becoming one of the most exciting new voices in both the thriller and science fiction genre.
Supposedly, Michael Crichton earned his doctorate last year, which means that the reason he started writing, namely to pay his way through medical school, no longer applies. Nonetheless, I sincerely hope that he will keep writing, under whichever name he prefers, because John Lange/Michael Crichton is too good a writer to lose him to medicine.
A paranoid nightmare of a thriller in the vein of the best of Philip K. Dick. Four and a half stars.
Crime Prevention in the 30th Century, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson
Another hot button issue of our times, particularly in the US, is rising crime rates that plague particularly the big cities and plunge their citizens into fear. However, crime rates are also rising in West Germany, albeit more slowly, and those crimes which most impact the average citizen such as burglary and theft also have fairly low detection rates, whereas the 1969 West German crime statistics boast high detection rates for offences such as abortion or sex between adult men (recently decriminalised) which many people believe should not be criminalised at all
In his introduction to the anthology Crime Prevention in the 30th Century, Hans Stefan Santesson, former editor of Fantastic Universe and The Saint Mystery Magazine and therefore familiar with both science fiction and crime fiction, addresses the fact that many people in the US and elsewhere fear rising crime rates, but also points out that crime isn't a new phenomenon, but has always been with us and always will. Just as there will always be a need for police officers and detectives to investigate those crimes.
"Jack Fell Down" by John Brunner
First published in the March 1963 issue of Science Fiction Adventures, this novelette introduces us to Marco Kildreth, a cybernetically enhanced engineer who is out fishing in a ferocious storm on the Atlantic, when he makes an unexpected catch – a dead body. A closer examination reveals that the dead man did not drown, but was dropped into the sea from a great height. What is more, Marco recognises the dead man as one Jack Yang, member of a delegation from the colony planet Morthia who was on Earth for an important conference. Marco Kildreth not only happened to attend the same conference, but negotiations to give Morthia and its neighbour planet a so-called Builderworld, an automated factory planet to supply all needs of the population, were blocked by the Morthian delegation, giving Marco a motive to want to get rid of Yang.
Marco Kildreth did not murder Jack Yang. But after some investigations of his own, he has a pretty good idea who did…
John Brunner uses the structure of the traditional murder mystery to tell a greater story about the post-scarcity Earth of the future and the colony world Morthia which is governed by a genetically determined feudalism. The establishment of an automated Builderworld to produce anything the impoverished population of Morthia needs would threaten the elevated position of Morthia's ruling elite, which is why the Morthian delegation is vehemently opposed to this.
As a science fiction story, "Jack Fell Down" is an excellent look at one or rather several future societies and manages to create a vivid setting in only 39 pages. As murder mystery, however, it is unsatisfactory. We do learn who committed the murder and why, but the clues are never properly planted.
Two stars, mostly for the background world.
"The Eel" by Miriam Allen deFord
First published in the April 1958 issue of Galaxy, this story follows the titular Eel, a particularly slippery thief who is wanted on eight planets in three different solar systems. The Eel does not operate on his homeworld Earth, though Galactic Police there wants him, too, to extradite him to the worlds where he committed his crimes.
After twenty-six years, the Galactic Police finally get lucky and catch the Eel. There's only one problem. Where should he be extradited, considering that he committed crimes on eight different planets, all of which are extremely interested in putting him on trial and punishing him according to their respective laws?
The Eel is finally extradited to Agsk, a world which does not have the death penalty, but which punishes criminals by executing the person they love most in front of their eyes. There is only one problem. The Eel has neither family nor friends and apparently never loved anybody except for himself. But just when the Agskians are about to execute the person the Eel loves most, namely himself, the Eel reveals that he has one more ace up his sleeve…
"The Eel" perfectly shows off Miriam Allen deFord's gift for dark humour and the solution for how the Eel wiggles out of his punishment is ingenious.
Five stars.
"The Future Is Ours" by Stephen Dentinger
The first mystery posed by this story is "Who on Earth is Stephen Dentinger?" The resolution to that one is quite simple: Stephen Dentinger is a pen name of prolific mystery writer Edward D. Hoch (the "D" stands for Dentinger) who also dabbles in science fiction and horror on occasion.
The story follows a police officer named Captain Felix who is about to test drive the time machine, or rather chronological manipulator, invented by one Dr. Stafford. Captain Felix plans to travel to New York City in the year 2259 AD to learn about new techniques for police work. What he finds, however, is not at all what he had expected…
This very short (only three pages long) tale is a typical example of the "twist in the tail" story that was popular twenty-five years ago, but has become rare since. This type of story relies on the twist being good and in this case it is.
Three stars.
"The Velvet Glove" by Harry Harrison
First published in the November 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe, this novelette follows Jon Venex, an unemployed robot living on a future Earth beset by anti-robot prejudice. One day, Jon responds to a job ad asking for a robot with his specific skills, and gets much more than he bargained for, when he finds himself strapped to a bomb and forced to work for a gang of drug-runners. Worse, he finds the remnants of his predecessor.
Jon uses all his robotic skills to alert the authorities without violating his innate programming never to harm a human being. But even if he succeeds, will a robot ever be treated as an equal on this future Earth?
Like John Brunner's "Jack Fell Down", Harry Harrison uses the structure of a crime story to present his vision of a future Earth. However, Harrison is a lot more successful at blending science fiction and crime fiction and "The Velvet Glove" manages to work as both. What is more, Jon Venex is a very compelling protagonist.
Four stars.
"Let There Be Night!" by Morris Hershman
Morris Hershman is another author better known for mysteries than for science fiction. His vignette "Let There Be Night!" first appeared in the November 1966 issue of The Saint Mystery Magazine.
Curt Yarett is unhappily married to Edna, an alcoholic. However, alcohol abuse is a criminal offense in this brave new world of the future and so Curt has the perfect way to get rid of his wife by reporting her to the authorities…
The focus of this brief vignette is less on the "crime" committed and more on changing mores and laws, particularly with regard to intoxicating substances and how what is illegal in one time may well be considered perfectly acceptable in another. Considering the rise in drug use in recent years, this is certainly an important topic. However, the story itself is too brief to truly delve into the questions it raises.
Two stars.
"Computer Cops" by Edward D. Hoch
Edward D. Hoch puts in his second appearance in this anthology—this time under his own name—with this tale about a crime-fighting agency called the Computer Investigation Bureau, CIB for short, fighting electronic crime in the not too far off future of 2006 AD. It is one of the two non-reprints in the anthology.
One day, Carl Crader, director of the CIB, is summoned by Nobel Kinsinger, one of the richest men in the world, for someone has been using his SEXCO machine, a computer used to buy and sell stocks at the New York Stock Exchange, without authorisation. Crader quickly homes in on two likely suspects, John Bunyon, Kinsinger's assistant, and Linda Sale, his secretary. However, the truth turns out to be quite different…
Of the various stories in this anthology, "Computer Cops" matches the theme – how will law enforcement agencies investigate and hopefully prevent crime in the future – the closest. "Computer Cops" is very much a so-called police procedural, i.e. a type of mystery which delves into the methods the police uses to investigate crimes. To me, it felt very much like a futuristic version of the popular West German pulp crime series G-Man Jerry Cotton. "Computer Cops" also succeeds both as a science fiction and a crime story.
However, there are two problems with this story. The first is that the female characters are relegated to secretaries in miniskirts or bodystockings – all the investing and investigating is done by men. Compare this to Tom Purdom's "Toys", which features a female police officer, and John Brunner's "Jack Fell Down", which features a woman as the Secretary of Extraterrestrial Relations as well as a female professor of sociology and which also casually notes that not everybody in the future is white.
The other problem with this story is that 2006 AD is not very far off at all, only thirty-six years in the future, which means that many of us may well live to see it. As a result, this also means that many of the predictions that Hoch makes, either as part of the plot or casual off-hand remarks, may well turn out to be completely and hilariously wrong. Of course, it's reasonable to assume that New York City's World Trade Center, currently under construction and the tallest building in the world, once completed, will still be standing in 2006. Using computers to make deals on the stock market seems quite likely and billionaires getting involved into politics to the point of bankrolling or even leading invasions of independent countries sadly isn't too farfetched either. However, the assumption that Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba will crumble in the next few years may well turn out to be premature.
Probably the most successful blend of science fiction and crime fiction in this anthology.
Three stars.
"Apple" by Anne McCaffrey
The second new story is Anne McCaffrey's novelette, which opens with a seemingly impossible crime. A priceless fur coat, sapphire necklace, haute couture gown and jewelled slippers, have been stolen from the display window of a high-end department store in the brief time lag between security camera recordings.
The only way this crime could have been committed is via telekinesis. This is what brings in telepath Daffyd op Owen of the North American Parapsychic Center, an organisation which identifies and trains people with parapsychic talents and also works to end prejudice against them. All Talents at the Center were present and accounted for, when the theft occurred. This means that the thief must be a so-called "wild Talent", i.e. a Talent who's unregistered and unknown to the North American Parapsychic Center. Worse, this crime endangers the passing of a bill providing legal protection for Talents.
So the hunt is on for the telekinetic thief. Daffyd op Owen's Talents quickly zero in on an apartment block in a deprived part of town and find an apartment full of stolen goods – but not the thief. One of the Talents tracks the young woman – it is quickly determined that the thief must be female, because a man would only have taken the necklace and fur coat, but not the dress or the shoes – to a train station, where she uses her abilities to throw a baggage cart at her pursuer and crushes him. In spite of the girl killing one of his people, op Owen wants to bring her in alive and unharmed. But sometimes, there are no happy endings…
In recent years, Anne McCaffrey has been more interested in the dragons of Pern than in good old Earth, but she has also written a few stories about the Talented and their struggle for recognition.
"Apple" clearly shows McCaffrey's strengths as a writer. The action scenes are frenetic and there is some interesting characterisation, too, in the scenes where op Owen and his police counterpart Frank Gillings butt heads. However, this story also displays the issues I've always had with McCaffrey's work, namely latent prejudice that underlies much of it – ironic in a story that is about overcoming prejudice. And so the thief is the proverbial bad apple, because she is a) poor and b) of Romani descent, though McCaffrey uses a much less polite term.
A otherwise good story, marred by some of McCaffrey's persistent issues.
Three stars.
"Rain Check" by Judith Merril
Originally published in the May 1954 issue of Science Fiction Adventures, "Rain Check" follows a shapeshifting alien who was brought back from Mars and is being taken to see the US president aboard a secret express train. However, the alien escapes during a refuelling stop – not for malicious reasons, but out of pure curiosity.
After some time spent as a large package on the platform, the alien takes on the shape of a human woman and wanders into an all-night diner. However, the alien's appearance attracts the attention of Mike Bonito, the man behind the counter, who promptly tries to chat up what he thinks is an attractive woman.
Turns out Mike Bonito is a civil defence warden, when he's not bartending, and was specifically told to be on the lookout for the runaway alien, though all they have to go on is a vague description of a male human. However, there will be an important meeting of all civil defence wardens in the city later that day. The alien, now named Anita, gets herself invited to come along, after manifesting a civil defence badge.
The American astronauts who captured the Martian believe that the alien's special abilities will help them win a war. However, "Anita" has a reason of her own for wanting to explore Earth.
This is not so much a crime story, but a cloak and dagger type spy story. Of course, being a Judith Merril story, it's also very well written and "Anita's" observations about life on Earth and particularly the persistent rain, so alien to a Martian, are fascinating.
Five stars.
"Toys" by Tom Purdom
"Toys" begins with a hostage situation. A group of children and their "pets" – an elephant, a gorilla, two dragons (created via genetic engineering) and two tigers – have taken a family hostage and demand that a committee made up of parents negotiate with them. Meanwhile, various adults are congregating outside and threatening to enter the house and beat up the children.
Police officers Charley Edelman and Helen Fracarro are called in the deal with the situation. They storm the house and find themselves fighting off both the "pets" and the children who have transformed their educational toys such as genetic engineering kits into surprisingly effective weapons. Will Charley and Helen be able to diffuse the situation before someone – adults, kids or pets – gets killed?
"Toys" is an action-packed story and offers some interesting speculation about how even in an increasingly affluent world, there will always be those who have less than others, even if they would have be considered wealthy as recently as thirty or forty years ago. Anne McCaffrey's "Apple" makes a similar point and is also largely set in a modern housing estate like those that are increasingly replacing the slums of old, raising the living standards of the working class, while not changing their economic status.
"Toys" also succeeds at blending science fiction and police procedural. Charley and Helen are compelling protagonists and I wouldn't at all mind a series of Charley Edelman and Helen Fracarro futuristic police procedurals.
That said, I also had a big problem with this story and that is that I intensely dislike stories about evil children. Now fear of children and young people is a common theme in science fiction. With the children of the postwar baby boom now in their teens and early twenties, an age when they begin to have political opinions and demands that don't necessarily match their parents', we have seen an uptick in dystopian stories about tyrannies set up by young people such as Logan's Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson or the movie Wild in the Streets. But there are older examples as well such as the 1944 story "When the Bough Breaks" by Lewis Padgett a.k.a. Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore about a couple terrorised by a superhuman baby. "Toys" certainly fits into the tradition of science fiction terrified of young people having a mind of their own. But though it is well written, I just don't care for stories of this type.
Three stars.
"Party of the Two Parts" by William Tenn
First published in the August 1954 issue of Galaxy, this story is an epistolary tale in the form of a galactogram from one O-Dik-Veh, a patrol sergeant on duty out in the galactic boondocks, to Hoy-Veh-Chalt, desk sergeant at headquarters and O's cousin, wherein O recounts his latest case.
O has been assigned to watch over the third planet of Sol a.k.a. Earth to make sure that its inhabitants don't blow themselves up before they have matured enough to be inducted into the great galactic community. Much like "Anita" from Judith Merril's "Rain Check", O finds Earth damp and unpleasant. What is more, the patrol office had to be erected on Pluto, a planet O describes as "a world whose winters are bearable, but whose summers are unspeakably hot". These few paragraphs tell us both clearly and very entertainingly that whatever O and Hoy are, they are very much not human. O also refers to their commissioner as "Old One" and is mentioned to have tentacles, so I imagined O and Hoy as something like H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu, only as a cop.
O's latest problem started when L'payr, a career criminal from the planet Gtet, escapes on the eve of the trial that will put him behind bars for life, steals an experimental spaceship and ends up on Earth, specifically the suburbs of Chicago. However, L'payr, who is basically a telepathic amoeba, can't survive on Earth for long, so he needs supplies to get his ship spaceborn again. So L'payr telepathically lures high school chemistry teacher Osborne Blatch to his hideout to trade alien pornography for chemical components from the high school lab. Though Blatch is less interested in the pornography – it is amoeba pornography, after all – and more in learning about where the mysterious puddle-shaped alien came from. L'payr, however, doesn't stick around to discuss the state of the galaxy with Blatch, but legs it once he has all the chemicals he needs. Blatch, meanwhile, finds an excellent use for the amoeba pornography he acquired and publishes a biology textbook with detailed illustrations of amoebas reproducing.
We haven't heard much of William Tenn lately, ever since he became a professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. This is a pity, because Tenn's satirical science fiction has always been a delight. And indeed "Party of the Two Parts" starts out utterly hilarious, but then gets bogged down in a lengthy debate whether pornography is pornography, if it doesn't titillate anybody due to not depicting remotely the correct species and whether a crime has been committed that allows for L'payr to be extradited back to his homeworld. The way that O entraps L'payr and L'payr – with some help from Osborne Blatch – tries to wiggle out of his extradition are both ingenious and funny, but the story is still longer than it needs to be.
Four stars.
Police Work of the Future
All in all, this is a solid anthology of stories blending science fiction and crime fiction. That said, the title Crime Prevention in the 30th Century is something of a misnomer, since the stories are more focussed on police officers solving crimes or criminals committing crimes and trying to evade the law than on the prevention of crimes. What is more, none of the stories are explicitly set in the 30th century.
Nor is this anthology particularly useful as a blueprint for policing techniques of the future – only Edward D. Hoch's "Computer Cops" even remotely offers a look at what actual police work might look like in the future. However, Crime Prevention in the 30th Century is not a police academy textbook, but a science fiction anthology and as such it offers an entertaining look at several very different futures. I find that the stories which are at least somewhat humorous work better for me than the more serious tales.
Three and a half stars for the anthology as a whole.
After a long day of skiing, nothing is better than a hot cup of coffee, preferably fortified with something a little stronger.
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
That's a question that you can answer with more confidence than before, if you're willing to shell out a whole bunch of bucks. On Christmas Day the Japanese company Seiko introduced the world's first quartz wristwatch. (There have been clocks using quartz crystals, but not anything this small.)
As I understand it, quartz crystals vibrate in a precise manner when voltage is applied to them. Thus, the tiny bit of quartz inside the watch, powered by an itty-bitty battery, provides an unvarying pulse that supplies extraordinary accuracy.
The Quartz Astro 35SQ keeps time to within five seconds per month, which is said to be about one hundred times better than a mechanical watch of good quality.
The catch? You have to pay 450,000 yen for it. That's well over one thousand dollars. You can buy a nice new car for the price of two watches.
Quite a stocking stuffer.
If you like, you can use your fancy new timepiece to measure how long it takes to peruse the latest issue of Fantastic.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
Or maybe the publishers can measure how much time they saved by copying the cover art from yet another issue of Perry Rhodan instead of waiting for an artist to create a new one.
The title translates to The Cannons of Everblack. Note the use of English for what I presume is the name of a planet.
Editorial, by Ted White
This wordy introduction wanders all over the place. The editor states that the magazine is getting a lot more mail from readers. (See the letter column below.) He says that he doesn't like the name of the magazine, and suggests changing it to Fantastic Adventures, the name of the old pulp magazine from which reprints are often drawn. (The sound you hear is me screaming No!)
He discusses the old problem of defining science fiction as distinguished from fantasy. The essay winds up complaining about an article by Norman Spinrad that appeared in the girlie magazine Knight. Apparently Spinrad griped about SF fans and pros being hostile to the New Wave. Sounds like a tempest in a teapot to me.
No rating.
Double Whammy, by Robert Bloch
The author of Psycho leads off the issue with another shocker.
Illustration by Michael Hinger.
A guy who works at a sleazy carnival is afraid of the geek. If you don't know what a geek is, you haven't read William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel Nightmare Alley, or seen the movie adapted from it the next year.
A geek is an alcoholic who has fallen so low that the only work he can get is pretending to be a so-called wild man and biting the heads off live chickens.
Our slimy protagonist seduces a teenager. When she tells him she's pregnant, he refuses to marry her, leading to tragic results. The girl is the granddaughter of a Gypsy fortuneteller, who has a reputation for supernatural revenge.
This is an out-and-out horror story that may remind you of the 1932 film Freaks. (Like that controversial film, it features a man without arms or legs.) The author saves his final punch to the reader's gut until the last sentence. If you don't like gruesome terror tales, it may be too much for you. I thought it accomplished what it set out to do very effectively.
Four stars.
The Good Ship Lookoutworld, by Dean R. Koontz
This space opera begins with a fight to the death between a human and a weird alien, apparently just as a sporting event.
Illustration by Ralph Reese.
This violent scene is just a prelude to a yarn in which the triumphant human recruits the narrator (another human) to join him in a mission to salvage a derelict alien starship. The vessel was operated by an extinct species of extraterrestrials who seem to have been nice folks. They just traveled around the universe bringing entertainment. Too bad a disease wiped them out.
The starship turns out to contain the headless skeletons of its crew. That's mysterious and scary enough, but when our heroes journey back to their homebase in it, parts of the ship disappear, one by one. Can they survive the long voyage before the whole thing vanishes?
This is a fast-paced adventure story with a twist in its tail. Given a few clues, you might be able to figure out the surprise ending. It's a little too frenzied for me, but short enough that it doesn't wear out its welcome.
Three stars.
Learning It at Miss Rejoyy's, by David R. Bunch
The narrator has dreamed about visiting the place named in the title since childhood, when his dad told him about it. The stunningly desirable Miss Rejoyy promises him an intimate encounter with her if he can meet the requirements. He has to pay to enter a room where his reactions to pain and pleasure will be measured.
The narrative style is less eccentric than usual for this author. The content, however, is just as strange. There are some really disturbing images. The point of this weird allegory is a very pessimistic one, which is likely to turn off many readers. Still, it has an undeniable power.
Three stars.
Hasan (Part Two of Two), by Piers Anthony
Here's the conclusion of this Arabian Nights fantasy.
Illustrations by Jeff Jones.
Summing things up as simply as I can, the title hero went through many adventures before stealing away with a woman who could turn herself into a bird, hiding the bird skin that gave her this power. More or less forced to marry him, she had two sons with him. She eventually found the skin and flew off to her native land with the children.
In this installment, he sets off on an odyssey to find her. This involves a whole lot of encounters with strange people and supernatural beings. In brief, he gets involved with a magician, rides a horse that can run over water, rides on the back of a flying ifrit, meets a group of Amazon warriors, faces an evil Queen, takes part in a huge battle, and witnesses an explosive climax.
Some of the many characters in the story.
A wild ride, indeed. This half of the novel has a fair amount of humor. The magician and the ifrit are particularly amusing. The plot turns into a travelogue of sorts, as Hasan journeys from Arabia to China, then to Indochina and Malaysia, winding up in Sumatra.
A helpful map allows you to follow the hero's travels.
A lengthy afterword from the author explains how he changed the original story from One Thousand and One Nights. He also offers several references. One can admire his scholarship.
The resulting story is entertaining enough. I'm still a little disconcerted by the fact that Hasan kidnaps the bird woman, and that she eventually decides that she loves him anyway. A product of the original, I suppose.
Three stars.
Creation, by L. Sprague de Camp
This is a very short poem about various legends concerning the creation of humanity by an assortment of deities. It leads up to a wry punchline. Not bad for what it is.
Three stars.
Secret of the Stone Doll, by Don Wilcox
The March 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures supplies this tale of the South Seas.
Cover art by J. Allen St. John.
The narrator winds up on a paradisical Pacific island. He falls in love with a local beauty after rescuing her from drowning.
Illustrations by Jay Jackson.
Everything seems to be hunky-dory, but his new bride insists that she must make a journey to a part of the island kept separate from the rest by a stone wall. Because the islanders have a strong taboo against discussing fear or danger, she can't tell him what it's all about. Along the way, they meet a madman with a sword and the object mentioned in the title.
Apparently, he's a visitor to the island, just like the narrator.
I found this exotic, mysterious tale quite intriguing. The revelation about the woman's journey surprised me. (There's an editor's footnote — I assume it's from the original publication — that tries to offer a scientific explanation. This is just silly, and the story works much better as pure fantasy. The new editor's suggestion that it relates to something in Frank Herbert's Dune also stretches things to the breaking point.)
Maybe I'm rating this story higher than it might otherwise deserve because I wasn't expecting much from this issue's reprint. Unlike a lot of yarns from the pulps, it isn't padded at all, with a fairly complex plot told in a moderate number of pages. Anyway, I liked it.
Four stars.
According to You, by Various Readers
As the editorial said, there are a lot of letters. Bill Pronzini offers an amusing response to a reader who didn't like his story How Now Purple Cow in a previous issue. I didn't care for it either, so I'm glad he's a good sport about criticism.
The other letters deal with all kinds of stuff, besides talking about what kind of stories they want to see (offering proof that you can't please everybody.) One speculates about a combination of Communism and Christianity. (The editor dismisses this as unlikely.) Many react to an editorial in a previous issue about the cancellation of the Smothers Brothers TV show.
No rating.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Alexander Temple
Just like Fred Lerner did in the last issue, Leiber praises Lin Carter's Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings for its history of fantasy fiction, and condemns Understanding Tolkien by William Ready, while admitting that it has a few good insights. He praises The Quest For Arthur's Britain by Geoffrey Ashe and Isaac Asimov's The Near East: 10,000 Years of History as fine nonfiction books with subjects relating to fantasy fiction.
Temple very briefly discusses The Demons of the Upper Air, a slim little book of poems by Leiber. It's a lukewarm review, talking about his occasional careless choice of words . . . hardly to be compared with his prose and recommends it for Leiber fans only.
Worth Your Time?
This was a pretty good issue, with nothing below average in it. I imagine others will dislike some of the stories, but I was satisfied.
While admiring your new thousand dollar watch, don't forget to get a new calendar as well. I wonder how long I'll be writing 1969 on checks.
Did you make it to either of these groovy concerts?
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
by Gideon Marcus
A little off the top
And so it begins. For eight years, NASA enjoyed an open budget spigot and, through persistence and endless shoveling of money (though a fraction of what's spent on defense, mind you), got us to the Moon. Now the tap has been cut to a trickle, and the first casualties are being announced.
Apollo manager George Low at a press conference on the 4th
Of the 190,000 people employed at the space agency, a whopping 50,000 are going to get the axe before the end of the year. Saturn V production is being halted. Lunar missions are going down to a twice-per-year cadence (as opposed to the six in thirteen months we had recently).
Apollo 20, originally scheduled to land in Tycho crater in December 1972, has been canceled. Astronauts Don Lind, Jack Lousma, and Stuart Roosa now get to cool their heels indefinitely. Apollos 13-16 will go up over the next two years followed by "Skylab", a small orbital space station built from Saturn parts. Then we'll get the last three Apollo missions.
After that… who knows? If only the Soviets had given us more competition…
Oh, and in the silly season department:
On the 6th, Columbia University's Dr. Gary V. Latham, seismologist and principal seismic investigator for Apollo program, withdrew his proposal that an atomic bomb be detonated on the Moon. You'll recall Apollo 12 sent the top half of Intrepid into the lunar surface so the seismometers Conrad and Bean had emplaced could listen to the echoes and learn about the Moon's interior.
Latham got some pretty harsh criticism of his idea, so he dialed things back, suggesting NASA should find way to hit the Moon hard enough to create strong internal reverberations. Let's hope they don't use Apollo 13…
A sampling from the upper percentiles
The news may be dour on the space front, but the latest issue of Galaxy is, in contrast, most encouraging!
In the early 1990s, America has become a hollow shell, spiritually. All of the worst elements of our modern day have amplified: the hippies have sold out to become consumers, Black Americans are confined to walled Ghettoes, kids are dropping out in growing multitudes.
Into this era, a movement is born—the New Shakers. They live the Four Noes: No hate. No war. No money. No sex.
a riff on American Gothic by Jack Gaughan
This hero of this tale, such as there is one, is a journalist who is doing a series of interviews on the movement. As time goes on, we learn that he is also tracking down his missing son, whom he believes has been inducted by the growing cult.
It's fascinating stuff, but there's no end, nor is the piece indicated as "Part One of [N]". On the other hand, it is concluded with "MORE TO COME", which is less dispositive than it might be since that phrase gets used often in the story proper.
I'm going to give it four stars on the assumption that we're going to see more stories in this world a la Silverberg's Blue Fire series. If this turns out to be a literary cul de sac, then we can drop the score retroactively.
There are some stories your read, and you just know it's going to be superlative. I've felt guilty these last few months, handing out five-star reviews so sparingly, wondering if my standards had gotten too high. And then I read something that is truly superior, and I realize that, for five stars to mean anything, it's got to be saved for the very best.
I shan't spoil things for you. It's about a man and a woman, the former an engineer, the latter a cipher, both troubled. It involves electricity and bonsai and an understated romance (no one writes romance like Ted Sturgeon), and it is the best thing I've read in a dog's age.
Another bi-month, another sequel, this one involving Lieutenant Grimes in command of the Adder courier ship. As a result of his last adventure, Grimes is (supposed to be) no longer in the passenger business. Instead, he is sent to a nearby star to meet with an insectoid Shari queen. Unfortunately, the cargo they ask him to transport is…a pupate Shari princess.
This is all fine and good, so long as the nascent queen remains in cold stasis. A power outage causes her to hatch, however, and she soon has the crew in her thrall. Worse, she has increasing interracial designs on the young Lieutenant!
Yet another pleasant but unremarkable adventure. We're definitely going to see a fix-up Ace Double half, I'm sure.
Three stars.
The Last Night of the Festival, by Dannie Plachta
by Jack Gaughan
Two archetypes, Dawn and Dusk, walk through a macabre parade filled with hedonistic and gory spectacles. Each scene is punctuated by an italicized interstitial with some oblique reference to Nazi Germany. The story is illustrated like a picture book such that the text only fills perhaps a third of the page.
Like much of Plachta's work, it's an abstract and abstruse piece. Are the two on their way to Hell? Do they represent actual people? I'd appreciate it more if I knew what he was trying to say.
Continues the journey of Edmund Gunderson toward the mist country of the planet he once administered as a mining colony. The key beats include a reunion with his lover, Seema, who stayed behind when he left. She has become enamored with the planet, surrounding her station with a garden of native life. She is also caring for her husband, Kurtz, who was horribly distorted by his attempt to participate in the Rebirth ceremonies of the elephantine indigenous Nildoror.
Another key beat is his entry into the misty cold of the temperate zone. It is implied that Rebirth involves the swapping of consciousnesses between the Nildoror and the simian Sulidoror, the other intelligent race on the planet. We learn that Gunderson plans to emulate Kurtz—to offer himself as a Rebirth candidate as a sort of expiation for his sins against the indigenes.
This section is more episodic and Heart of Darkness than the prior ones, and it left me a bit cold. I do appreciate how much time Silverberg has spent developing a truly alien world, however, and the anti-colonialist sentiment is welcome. I just have trouble relating to or even buying the characters, and that deliberate abstraction, distancing, gives the whole affair a shambling sleep-walk feel to it.
If that's your bag, you'll love it. For me, we're at three stars for this installment.
After They Took the Panama Canal, by Zane Kotker
America is conquered by the Soviets. Rape, re-education, and reduction ensue.
All this is told compellingly from the point of view of Myra, a not particularly bright (by design) woman, who is selected to be a consort to several conquerors, and to bear several of their children. In the end, she helps lead a revolt of sorts.
I cannot tell the sex of the author from the name, but the style is unlike those employed by any male authors I know. In any event, the narrative is reminiscent of 1954's A Woman in Berlin, a harrowing autobiographical account of a journalist in Germany's capital when the Russians came.
Four stars.
Sunpot (Part 1 of 4), by Vaughn Bodé
Here we've got a tongue-in-cheek space adventure starting Captain Belinda Bump, who for some reason is topless throughout the strip. Actually, it seems quite natural to go nude in space—after all, Niven's Belters are nudists. However, prurience seems intended: Bump is referred to as "Nectar Nipples" and "Wobble Boobs", and the overall style feels something like a black and white version of what fills the final pages of Playboy each month.
In this short installment, Captain Bump runs across the next Apollo mission. High jinks ensue.
The art is fun, and I want to like the characters, but Bodé needs a new letterer. Maybe he can borrow Sol Rosen from Marvel.
Three stars.
Doing the math
While nothing in this magazine quite hits the highs of Sturgeon, and Plachta keeps swinging and missing (no one I've talked to has managed to decipher Ronnie's intent), it's still a pleasant read from front to back. I have a suspicion Galaxy will outlive Apollo.
That's something, at least!
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
The term “vast wasteland” has become something of a catchphrase for Journeyfolk, a reference to Newton Minow’s castigation of the offerings on television all the way back in 1961.
There have been quite a few good shows in the interim, including standouts The Twilight Zone, Dangerman (aka Secret Agent) and of course our favorite, Star Trek. We’ve also seen cases where television has been used to educate and bring awareness to social issues, such as the NET Journal series and the special, The Rejected.
Maybe it’s because so many theatrical releases are targeting adults these days, or maybe it’s just an idea whose time has come, but a group of educators, philanthropists, and television producers have turned their eyes toward the glass teet as a way to educate and entertain the very youngest of us. The idea, as I understand it, is to harness the things that make television addictive and use them to teach basic educational concepts as well as important life skills. The show began airing on November 10, 1969. I didn’t catch its premier episode, but I did manage to sit down and watch a couple over the following weeks.
There's a signpost up ahead…
Sesame Street is a bit like a daily Laugh-In for the five-and-under set. It’s a conglomeration of short pieces, most of them independent of each other and self-contained. Some pieces have live actors in them, some have puppets, some have both people and puppets interacting with each other. These pieces are interspersed with animated or live-action movies that are a bit like commercials – if commercials taught “counting to ten” or “words that start with the letter ‘D’”. Many of the pieces are funny, and some have an unexpectedly surreal aspect that I found wildly entertaining.
Stills don't convey the frenetic feeling of some of these shorts, like this one about counting to ten
For example, the first skit features “Gordon”, one of the actors, playing a good-natured joke on “Ernie”, one of the puppets (voiced by Jim Henson). Indicating four items, three plastic instruments and a banana, Gordon asks Ernie which one doesn’t belong with the others. Ernie chooses the banana, carefully explaining his reasoning. Gordon suggests Ernie try playing the banana like an instrument, whereupon Gordon honks the bike horn he has hidden behind his back, leading the startled Ernie to believe that his banana can toot, until Gordon shows him the trick.
Gordon shows Ernie what makes the banana go toot
Ernie chortles, and the two of them decide to play the same joke on another puppet, a passing blue monster. The blue monster, however, proceeds to eat the plastic instruments and somehow play the banana such that lovely flute music fills the air, leaving Gordon and Ernie very confused. “Nice tone on that banana,” the monster comments, “and the harmonica was delicious!”
Cookie Monster plays the banana
It is absolutely hysterical, even with the repetition of ideas which form the foundation of the skit, and it makes me wonder if the show is targeting parents along with their children. (I did also wonder if showing the blue monster eating the small plastic instruments was a good idea. I can imagine children swallowing plastic whistles and harmonicas in imitation.)
The rest of the skits and interstitials weren’t quite as funny to my adult eyes, but many still had a slightly surreal edge. It wouldn’t surprise me if Sesame Street becomes popular with college-age kids who enjoy mind-altering substances.
Three muppets demonstrate three types of vehicles…and then smash them into each other
The other episode I saw featured an ongoing story where “Oscar the Grouch”, an orange puppet who lives in a trash can (apparently by choice), loses his trash can lid. The lid, he is careful to explain, is round. If there were any doubts about the Laugh-In connection, they are put to rest when Oscar says he’s going to go play his ukelele (which starts with the letter ‘U’, we are reminded) to feel better. He disappears into his can and the strains of “Tip-toe Through the Tulips” issue forth from it. Oscar’s full story is told in skits interspersed with more of the same frenetic “shorts” about letters and numbers, a cross between commercials and Laugh-In’s “Quickies”. Reinforcing the “educational commercial” idea, each episode has a “this episode was brought to you by” a particular letter and number at the end.
Oscar is planning to leave, now that his trash can is no longer a home. Most of the cast are here: (l. to r. Gordon, Susan, Jenny, and Mr. Hooper)
It’s fun, but does the show do what it sets out to do? Obviously, a couple of episodes is not enough to tell whether the lofty goal of improving early education (especially among underprivileged children) will be achieved. For that, we will have to wait a year or two and compare the progress of children who watched the show to those that didn’t. From the two episodes I watched, though, I saw more than just numbers and letters and animal sounds being taught. The cast is made up of people of different races, with Black and White actors working together as equals. The puppets are both human-looking and monstrous, but most of the monsters are actually kind and shown to be people just like everyone else. Some of the stories identify and give names to emotions: sadness, anger, fear, happiness. Themes of kindness, sharing, and cooperation are subtly interwoven into many of the skits.
Two muppets demonstrate the value of sharing
I don’t know if educational television will save the world, but I’m looking forward to seeing the world it helps create. Hopefully it will be one a little bit closer to that place where, as the theme song says, “the air is sweet”: Sesame Street.
This article brought to you by the letters "G" and "J", and the numbers "1", "6", and "1970".
Susan gets the last word and waves goodbye from Sesame Street
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
Every December, the American Geophysical Union holds its Fall Meeting in San Francisco. There, a number of papers are presented on a wide variety of topics in fields such as geology, oceanography, meteorology, space, and many more. Usually, it might produce a paragraph or two in the back pages of your newspaper on an attempt to predict earthquakes or some new information about the Moon, but this year’s meeting garnered headlines (hardly front page news, but more than just filler). Most of attention went to the proposal to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon to build up a seismological picture of our neighbor and the news that Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice as it rose into the skies above Florida. However, it was another article that caught my eye.
Most of the column inches went to a presentation by Dr. E.D. Goldberg of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. He spoke of the “complex ecological questions” raised by the amount of toxic substances we’re dumping into the ocean. The use of lead in gasoline results in 250,000 tons winding up in the ocean every year, over and above the 150,000 tons that are washed there naturally. Oil tankers and other ships discharge a million tons of oil into the sea annually, with the result that there are “cases of fish tasting of petroleum.” Mackerel had to be taken off the market in Los Angeles due to unacceptable levels of DDT, while in Japan 200 people were poisoned and 40 died before authorities traced the cause to mercury discharged into Minimata Bay by a chemical company. Dr. Goldberg asked, “Will [pollution] alter the ocean as a resource? Will we lose the ocean?”
Dr. Edward D. Goldberg of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California
That seems like the sort of pollution we can do something about. Perhaps more concerning is the warning provided by J.O. Fletcher of the Rand Corporation. Fletcher is a retired Air Force Colonel, best known for being part of the crew that landed a plane at the North Pole and for establishing a weather station on tabular iceberg T-3 (now known as Fletcher’s Ice Island), which is still in use. He called carbon dioxide the most important atmospheric pollutant today. It is responsible for one-third to one-half of the warming thus far in the 20th century. The human contribution may surpass that of nature within a few decades. Global warming could increase the melting of the polar ice caps and change the Earth’s climate.
Col. Fletcher (r.) on his ice island in 1952. This was the most recent photo of him I could find.
Fletcher’s warning was underscored by Dr. William W. Kellogg of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who stressed the need to educate people that “man has got to change his way.” He added that global climate is going to have to become a problem that can be managed.
Dr. William W. Kellogg of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado
If the warnings of Fletcher and Kellogg sound familiar, that’s because you read it in IF first. Back in the April, 1968 issue, Poul Anderson had a guest editorial talking about the dangers of increased warming. In the August issue of the same year, Fred Pohl had an editorial warning about increasing levels of carbon dioxide. [And Isaac Asimov wrote about it back in 1958! (ed.)] An article from UPI has a much wider reach than IF, and people are more likely to take working scientists more seriously than a couple of science fiction writers. Let’s hope they pay attention.
Pressure Tests
It’s not uncommon for authors to put their characters through the wringer, pushing them to or even past their breaking point. Some would argue it’s the best way to get a story out of a setting and characters. Several of the stories in this month’s IF have taken that approach, though one subject has an awfully low tolerance for stress.
Cover by Gaughan. Supposedly suggested by Whipping Star, but it looks more like it illustrates Pressure Vessel to me.
Pressure Vessel, by Ben Bova
Robert O’Banion is second in command on a mission into the depths of Jupiter, looking for life. Grieving over the loss of his wife, he only feels truly comfortable when he is connected to the ship and its computer, flying the vessel like it’s his own body. Add in a general sense of urgency and friction between the scientific and military members of the small crew, and there’s a lot of tension.
Art by Gaughan: O’Banion hooked up to the ship.
Bova has written a couple of stories about Dr. Sidney Lee, in which humanity is desperately seeking the aliens who built the strange machines on Titan, still working after millennia or even longer. Lee doesn’t appear in this story, but the protagonist’s wife knew Lee on Titan and fell in love with him there. There are some flaws in the tale—notably the protagonist’s psychological suitability for the mission—but it’s still very strong.
Four stars.
A Matter of Recordings, by Larry Eisenberg
Another of Eisenberg’s awful Emmett Duckworth stories. This time, Duckworth has come up with a way to record memories so they can be played back to anyone. The usual nonsense follows.
Two stars.
Can recordings made in a harem stop a revolution? Art uncredited, but probably by Gaughan
Prez, by Ron Goulart
Norbert Penner is looking forward to spending the winter alone with his girlfriend on her family’s palatial estate. Unfortunately, he doesn’t like her dog, the titular Prez. Worse, thanks to cybernetic enhancements, Prez can talk and has the intelligence of a 10-year-old. He’s able to make very clear that the feeling is mutual without having to pee on Penner’s leg.
Prez recharging his batteries. Art by Gaughan
This is a fairly typical Goulart comedy, though not as wacky as some. If you like those—and I do—you’ll like this one.
Three stars.
The Cube, by C.M. Drahan
Humans and the E-tees have been at war from the moment they first made contact. The Telepath chosen as humanity’s representative for the truce talks on a remote planetoid seems remarkably unsuited for the task.
Art by Gaughan
Drahan is this month’s new author. Unfortunately, there’s no biographical information, so I don’t know anything about the person behind the initials. It’s a decent debut. Bits of the story may come across as confused with a casual reading, but careful attention should make everything clear. This is an author I’m willing to see more from.
Three stars.
A Game of Biochess, by T.J. Bass
On a layover at a space station, tramp trader Spider meets Rau Lou during a chess game (biochess refers to a game against a biological opponent, rather than a computer). The two hit it off, but not on a sexual level. When Spider has a big score that will let him upgrade his ship to a two-person crew, Olga the ship’s computer suggests Rau Lou. However, she has disappeared, so Spider and Olga go looking for her.
Spider makes his way to the wreck of Rau Lou’s ship. Art by Gaughan
Bass is shaping up to be a pretty good writer. He still needs to work on throwing around medical terminology (Bass is a doctor), but he has reined it in this time. I only had to pull down my dictionary once. Otherwise, this is a fine story with a nice twist at the end.
A high three stars.
Hired Man, by Richard C. Meredith
A human mercenary working for an alien employer is the only survivor of a raid on a human settlement. The pay is excellent, and the offer for a six-month extension will set him up for a long time.
Power armor, but this mercenary is no Johnny Rico. Art by Gaughan
All the previous Meredith stories I can think of have been brutal war tales with depth. This one is no different. The ending hits the protagonist with a question the reader has probably been asking all along.
Four stars.
Fruit of the Vine, by George C. Willick
The smuggling of flora and fauna between the worlds of the Federation is punishable with death. Somehow, grape varieties suitable for wine-making have reached almost every world. This story weaves three threads together: the official search for the smugglers, a group known as the Entertainers, and a skid row bum staggering through a winter night.
Art by Gaughan
There are a lot of flaws in this story. It’s fairly obvious how two of the three threads tie together, the whole thing is too long, and the set-up is a little hard to believe. While the desire to keep potentially hazardous plants and animals from moving between worlds is commendable, are there really 49 habitable worlds where people can and are willing to eat the local produce from the moment they arrive? But it’s told well.
Three stars.
Dry Run, by J.R. Pierce
General Devlin, D.I.A., is a special adviser to the Prime Minister on the Panda War. In this case, D.I.A. stands for Demon In Attendance, not Defense Intelligence Agency. His job seems awfully easy.
Probably not Devlin. Art by Gaughan
This is a fun, little story that proposes something I’m sure many of us have thought at times. The Vietnam analog is obvious, but not overdone. While it might be trivial, the whole thing doesn’t overstay its welcome.
The alien Caleban Fanny Mae has signed an unbreakable contract with the human Mliss Abnethe, allowing herself to be whipped. The flagellations are killing Fanny Mae, and if she dies nearly every sentient being in the galaxy will die with her. It’s up to Saboteur Extraordinaire Jorj McKie to stop Mliss.
In this installment, McKie tracks Mliss to an impossibly primitive planet, where he finds himself imprisoned. We also learn that there is someone else driving Mliss to do what she’s doing. Time travel may also be involved. To be continued.
McKie favors the Bond school of defusing traps by walking into them. Art by Gaughan
I’m not sure if I really like this story, but it is keeping my interest. In many ways, this feels more like the Frank Herbert who wrote The Dragon in the Sea than the navel-gazer we’ve seen of late. There’s more action in the first chapter of this installment than in the whole of Dune Messiah. It remains to be seen how well he handles the interesting questions he’s asked so far.
Three stars.
Summing up
Elsewhere in the magazine, Lester del Rey is back in form, offering actual criticism over mere review. He might be the best reviewer in the magazines right now. I’d say his only competition is Joanna Russ over in F&SF. Meanwhile, Ejler Jakobsson’s answers in the letter column offer quite a bit of news. Philip José Farmer is working on a Riverworld novel, the promised new issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is coming soon, and there will be news about the IF First program in the near future.
All in all, not a bad issue. A couple of excellent stories and only one clunker out of nine. Jakobsson is turning out to be a fine replacement for Fred Pohl.
![[January 22, 1970] Sergeant Pepper's New Wave Writers' Club Band: New Worlds, February 1970](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/NW_2_70_cover-672x372.png)
Cover by Roy Cornwall
Illustration, artist uncredited (possibly Charles Platt)
Illustration by Alan Stephanson
Illustration by John Bayley
Illustration by Ivor Latto
Illustration by Roy Cornwall
![[January 20, 1970] Jolly good Ffelowes (February 1970 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/700120fsfcover-672x372.jpg)
![[January 18, 1970] Below par (<i>The Long Loud Silence</i>, <i>Sex and the High Command</i>, <i>Beachhead Planet</i>, and <i>Taurus Four</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/700118covers-672x372.jpg)
![[January 16, 1970] Strange Reports (<i>Vision of Tomorrow #5</i> and <i>New Writings SF-16</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/V5-NW16-672x372.png)
![[January 14, 1970] Root Rot (February 1970 <i>Venture</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Venture-1970-02-Cover-483x372.jpg)
A not very representational image for Laumer’s new story. Art by Bert Tanner
Ban must use his best friend’s corpse as a trap. Art by Bert Tanner
Looks more like Neil Diamond to me. Art by Craig Robertson
Wellen’s written some good stuff, so I hope this more than the pot-boiler thriller it appears to be.
![[January 12, 1970] A Glimpse into the Future: <i>Drug of Choice</i> by John Lange and <i>Crime Prevention in the 30th Century</i>, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/CRMPNTRY7D1969-310x372.jpg)
![[January 10, 1970] Time On My Hands (February 1970 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/COVER-672x372.jpg)
![[January 8, 1970] Slow Sculpture, Fast reading (the February 1970 <i>Galaxy Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/700108galaxycover-672x372.jpg)
![[January 6, 1970] Can you tell me how to get to <i>Sesame Street</i>?](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/700106banana-672x372.jpg)
![[January 2, 1970] Under Pressure (February 1970 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/IF-1970-02-Cover-500x372.jpg)
Dr. Edward D. Goldberg of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California
Col. Fletcher (r.) on his ice island in 1952. This was the most recent photo of him I could find.
Dr. William W. Kellogg of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado
Cover by Gaughan. Supposedly suggested by Whipping Star, but it looks more like it illustrates Pressure Vessel to me.
Art by Gaughan: O’Banion hooked up to the ship.
Can recordings made in a harem stop a revolution? Art uncredited, but probably by Gaughan
Art by Gaughan
Spider makes his way to the wreck of Rau Lou’s ship. Art by Gaughan
Power armor, but this mercenary is no Johnny Rico. Art by Gaughan
Art by Gaughan
Probably not Devlin. Art by Gaughan
McKie favors the Bond school of defusing traps by walking into them. Art by Gaughan