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[April 6, 1970] Uncovered (May 1970 Amazing)

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Apollo 13 coverage starts tonight and goes on for the next two weeks!  Don't miss a minute.  Check local listings for broadcast times.

A black-and-white photo portrait of John Boston. He is a clean-shaven white man with close-cropped brown hair. He wears glasses, a jacket, shirt, and tie, and is looking at the camera with a neutral expression.
by John Boston

Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye

The May Amazing presents a new face to the world.  That is, the cover was actually painted for the magazine, as opposed to being recycled from the German Perry Rhodan.  It’s not by one of the new artists editor White was talking up in the last issue, but rather by John Pederson, Jr., who has been doing covers on and off for the SF magazines since the late 1950s.  Ditching the second-hand Europeans is a step forward in itself, though this particular cover is not much improvement: a slightly stylized picture of a guy sitting in a spacesuit on a flying chair with a disgruntled expression on his face, against an improbable astronomical background.

Cover of May 1970 issue of Amazing magazine, featuring a painting of what appears to be a spaceship (made for maneuvering within an atmosphere a la a contemporary jet plane) flying away from a pair of planets.  Overlaid over that space scene, there is a picture of an aging white man in a space-suit seated in what appears to be a command chair with lap controls.
by John Pederson, Jr.

But it is an interesting development for a couple of reasons.  First, in the letter column, White goes into more detail than previously about the European connection, in response to a question about why the covers are not attributed.  White says: “The situation is this: an agency known as Three Lions has been marketing transparencies of covers from Italian and German sf magazines and has sold them to a variety of book and magazine publishers in this country, including ourselves.  These transparencies were unsigned.  One of our competitors credited its reprint covers to ‘Three Lions;’ we felt that was less than no credit at all.  Therefore, unless the artist’s signature was visible, we omitted the contents-page credit.  As of this issue, however, Amazing returns to the use of original cover paintings by known U.S. artists.”

So much, then, for Johnny Bruck, and a hat tip to the diligent investigators who have identified all his uncredited reprint covers as they were published.  In addition to Pederson, White says, he’s obtained covers from Jeff Jones and Gray Morrow, and in fact a Jones cover is already on last month’s Fantastic.  Further: “I might add that, beginning with our last issue, the art direction, typography and graphics for the covers of both magazines has been by yours truly.” So White has pried one more aspect of control of the magazine from the grip of Sol Cohen, presumably all to the good, though the visible effect to date is limited.

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

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

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

Counting coups

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is man

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

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

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 31, 1970] Seed stock (April 1970 Analog)

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

It's the end of the month, and that means the latest Analog is on tap.  This one starts and even mids with the usual drudgery… but the latter third breeds a little hope.

April 1970 cover of 'analog SCIENCE FICTION SCIENCE FACT' featuring a blue man in a large visor helmet with a single eye decal pointing over the shoulder of a hooded wizard writing in a notebook, wearing a large medallion. The caption reads HERE, THERE BE WITCHES EVERETT B/> COLE
by Kelly Freas

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Magazine/Anthology

[March 24, 1970] 200 Not Out (New Worlds, April 1970)

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by Fiona Moore

Greetings from the Island of Formosa, more usually known as the Republic of China! Though the local name for the island is “Taiwan.” I’m here on a visiting fellowship at National Tsinghua University.

The Republic is a hub of electronics and engineering, and so there is a great appetite for SFF here. SF is regarded by the nationalist government as a way of encouraging young people into careers in science, and also SF, of the “if this goes on…” variety, is seen as a vector of “moral teaching”.

Nonetheless, for the past twenty years Taiwan has lagged behind Korea in the production of locally-written SFF. Most what is available is foreign SF works like Asimov and Clarke, in (often not very good, or indeed legal) translation. In fact, some translators leave the author’s name off the novel and pass it off as theirs! The scene is further hampered by restrictions on Japanese cultural products, an understandable reaction to 50 years of Japanese colonisation but nonetheless one which denies Chinese people a wealth of movie and comic-book content.

However, there are signs of change emerging, with the rise of a thriving short SF fiction scene. The appearance of Zhang Xiaofeng’s clone story Pandora in the China Times in 1968 has led to the publication of a lot of stories in mainstream newspapers and magazines, the creation of dedicated SFF magazines, and even an SF short story contest. The government is said to be encouraging the development of a “truly Chinese” SF. Some authors to watch include Chang Shi-Go, an electronics engineer by day and writer by night, Zhang Xiguo, and Huang Hai, who is rumoured to be putting together an anthology of near-future science fiction stories.

Meanwhile, my copy of New Worlds has followed me safely to Asia. It’s the 200th issue: will it mark a new direction for New Worlds, or will it be more of the same old worlds?

You can probably guess.

Cover of New Worlds April 1970. It shows the silhouettes of two human figures balancing on opposite ends of a seesaw that hinges atop the edge of a cliff.
Cover by Andrew Lanyon

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Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 20, 1970] Here comes the sun (April 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Out, damn spot!

A couple of weeks ago, Victoria Silverwolf offered us a tidbit on the latest solar eclipse.  I've since read a bit more about the scientific side of things and thought I'd share what I've learned with you.

It was the first total solar eclipse to be seen over heavily populated areas of U.S. since 1925, greeted by millions of viewers who crowded the beaches, towns, and islands where viewing was most favorable.  The eclipse cut a nearly 100 mile wide swath through Mexico, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and Nantucket Island, Mass.  It was 96% total in New York City and 95% in the nation's capital.

A black and white collage of several photographs of a partial solar eclipse over a college building. Below the image, the headline reads Partial Eclipse as seen in North County.  The caption reads The partial eclipse seen by teh North County Saturday morning is superimposed over the Palomar College Dome Gym in this collage by staff photographer Dan Rios.  The maximum ecliplse in this area was roughly 30 per cent at 9am as shown in the fourth sun from the left.  Seven states were treated to a full eclipse.
a clipping from Escondido's Times-Advocate

But ground viewing was only the beginning.  NASA employed a flotilla of platforms to observe the eclipse from an unprecedented variety of vantages.  A barrage of sounding rockets (suborbital science probes) were launched during the eclipse to take measurements of the Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere.

In space, radio signals from Mars probe Mariner 6, currently on the far side of Sun, were measured to determine how the eclipse affected communications and to study changes in charged particles in earth’s atmosphere.

Two Orbiting Solar Observatories, #5 and #6, pointed their instruments at the Sun to gather data on the solar atmosphere, while Advanced Test Satellite #3 took pictures of the Moon's shadow on the Earth from more than 20,000 miles above the surface.  Three American-Canadian satellites, Alouette 1, Alouette 2, and Isis 1, all examined the change the eclipse caused in the Earth's ionosphere.

Earthside telescopes got into the mix, too: Observers from three universities and four NASA centers at sites in Virginia and Mexico not only got great shots of the solar corona, but also of faint comets normally washed out in the glare of the Sun.

I can't imagine anyone in 1925 but maybe Hugo Gernsback could have foreseen how much attention, and from how many angles such attention would be applied, during the 1970 eclipse.  It's just one more example of how science fiction has become science.

Waiting for the dawn

The last two months of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction weren't too hot.  Does the latest issue mark a return of the light or continued darkness?  Let's find out…

The cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction April edition. At the center of the dark cover, a bright swirl suggesting a star or sun is surrounded by darker wisps emanating in spirals from it.  Below it is an alien landscape with craggy mountains in teh distance and black-streaked hills in the foreground, in muted shades of blue and brown.
cover by Chesley Bonestell

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[March 18, 1970] Future Cities and Past Visions (Vision of Tomorrow #7)

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Black & White Photo of writer of piece Kris Vyas-Mall
By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

My area of the UK (considered either the Northern Home Counties or Southern Midlands depending on who you speak to) is not a particularly densely populated region. Even with commuter growth since the War, there are only two towns within 50 miles that contain over 100,000 people. This is all set to change with a new government plan.

Milton Keynes Roadmap Plan with an indication of key travel routes and red dot in Bedford
Plan for new town (red dot is where I live)

The £700m plan for a new town has been approved. Called Milton Keynes (from a small village on part of the site) it is set to house 250,000 people before the end of the century and to be one of the biggest experiments in urban planning in British history.

Milton Keynes Housing Estate Plan showing square blocks on a grid system with large areas of green space
Example housing estate plan

First off, the city is designed to appeal to both ends of the social spectrum. For the upwardly mobile it is designed with the car-driving homeowner in mind. As many as half of properties are to be for sale rather than rented and with a density of 10 people per acre, to ensure that the managerial class don’t feel squeezed in. Also, the road system is designed on a grid to ease congestion with places of employment spread throughout the city, to stop rush hour traffic.

Colour coded plan of Milton Keynes
Zoning masterplan. Yellow is residential, purple employment, red commercial, blue education, green is for parks

For those less well off, there will be wide walkways for the handicapped to travel on easily and the development of a “dial-a-bus” service, ensuring that a bus will pick you up only a short walk from your house in a short period of time.

I could spend an entire article and not get close to all the experimentation to take place in Milton Keynes. The city of the future is coming soon!

Back in the magazines though, things seem to be heading in the opposite direction, as Vision of Tomorrow takes a turn towards the past:

Vision of Tomorrow #7

Vision of Tomorrow #7 Cover showing Jupiter as viewed from one of its moon's with two small astronuts in shaddow. In Bottom Left corner is listed Into The Unknown by John Russell Fearn
Cover Illustration: Jupiter as seen from Callisto by David A. Hardy

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[March 12, 1970] It’s A Dog’s Life (Orbit 6)

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By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

In 1889, Oscar Wilde wrote “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life”. This month, London has proved that.

Passport To Pimlico 1949 Flm Poster showing photos of the cast's head on cartoon bodies running through London streets, with barbed wire in the foreground and police looking on

In the 1949 film Passport to Pimlico, a small area of London declares independence and it ends with the British government forced to negotiate to get them back. Actual negotiations for reintegration of the Isle of Dogs concluded on Monday.

Reconstruction taking place in the Isle of Dogs as a Victorian building is being demolished in the foreground and a high rise flat complex rises behind it.
Post-War Reconstruction taking place in Isle of Dogs

The Isle of Dogs is not a true island, but rather a low-lying peninsula that marks a massive bend in the Thames. As such in the Victorian era it became a part of the London Docklands. However, as ship size increased more ships were moved further down the river. The railway lines were closed and the area was devastated in the blitz.

In the last decade a large project of council flat building took place in the region, with 97% of the population in government housing. However, amenities did not keep up with the rise in the population Schools, hospitals and shopping areas were not included in the plans, yet only one bus route services the entire region.

Black and White photo of Joint Prime Ministers of the short lived republic, Ray Padgett and John Westfallen standing in front of the docklands but behind a rope.
Joint Prime Ministers of the new republic, Ray Padgett and John Westfallen

In order to bring awareness to their situation, on the 1st March around 1,000 residents of the Isle of Dogs, led by Fred Johns (their representative on the borough council), blocked the swing bridges to the rest of London. They announced that a Unilteral Declaration of Independence would be forthcoming if their demands were not met and taxes would not be paid.

Map of the Isle of Dogs from 1969 showing the Port of London Authortiy buildings in orange and the river Thames in blue.
Area map of the short-lived republic (orange are those buildings owned by Port of London Authority)

On the 9th March the official declaration of independence came with the setting up of a citizen’s council and two Prime Ministers to run each side of the island. They issued a demand to return taxes that they said belonged to the islanders, and started on plans to setup their own street market and turn a disused building into a school. This drove headlines all over the world, with even Pravda from the USSR sending in a reporter.

Small printed card that says: Entry Permit To Isle of Dogs. To Be Shown at Barrier. Independent State of London. John Westfallen. Prime Minister

After meeting with the Prime Minister, a plan was announced by Tower Hamlets Council for resolving the issues raised by the Islanders with a full consultation. The council, however, denied that this protest had anything to do with the timing of this announcement. Whatever the cause, the Republic of the Isle of Dogs has achieved its goals, so it seems that entry permits will no longer be required to travel in and out of the region.

Back in the world of SF publishing, we have our own odd little affair. That of Orbit 6, which contains some good, some bad and many just plain confusing tales:

Orbit 6

Orbit 6 Hardback Cover as drawn by Paul Lehr showing an open hand with a rocket launching from it where behind is a stream of half lit planets in a line against a starfield. Below the title the editor and authors are all listed.
Cover illustration by Paul Lehr

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 10, 1970] Baby, It's Cold (And Dark) Outside (April 1970 Fantastic)

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photo of a dark-haired woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

Who Turned Out The Lights?

Folks living in certain parts of southern Mexico and the eastern coast of the United States and Canada were treated to a spectacular sight in the sky a few days ago.  On March 7, there was a total eclipse of the sun visible from those areas of the globe.

Black and white photograph with the silhouette of the moon centered and the haze of the corona seething around it. The final sliver of sunlight gleams like a gem at the top left of the 'ring'
The sun is about to completely disappear behind the moon.

I live in the southeastern corner of Tennessee, so I missed this extraordinary event.  Let's see; when do astronomers think a total solar eclipse will be visible from my neck of the woods?  Let me check my almanac.

August 21, 2017.  Holy cow, close to half a century to go. 

While I'm waiting, I can spend the time reading.  Just as a solar eclipse causes the Earth to cool down, at least for a moment, the latest issue of Fantastic features a new novella from one of the masters of imaginative literature that is dominated by a sense of cold.  Grab a cup of hot chocolate, wrap yourself up in a blanket, and join me as we dive into its icy pages.

Cover of Fantastic depicting a demonic young woman with spread black wings and a white dress flying against a red background
Cover art by Jeff Jones.

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

[March 8, 1970] They say that it's the institution… (April 1970 Galaxy and the incomplete Court)

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[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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

There ain't no Justice

It was only a few months that President Dicky tried to ram a conservative Supreme Court justice pick through the Senate to replace the seat left open by the retirement of the much laureled Chief Justice Earl Warren.  Clement Haynworth's candidacy went down to defeat in the Senate on November 21 of last year.

Now up is G. Harrold Carswell, until last year, the Chief Justice of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida.  He was elevated to the Fifth Circuit Appellate Court last June.  To all accounts, he is no less conservative than his predecessor, and he's a (former?) segregationist to boot.  His jurisprudence is also lacking: 40% of his rulings were overturned on appeal!  As Senator McGovern observed, "I find his record to be distinguished largely by two qualities: racism and mediocrity."  Nebraska's Senator Hruska damned with faint praise in his reply, to the effect saying, "Sure he's mediocre…but don't the mediocre warrant representation, too?"

Black-and-white photograph of a white man wearing a judge's robes.
G. Harrold Carswell

But as LIFE and other outlets are noting, Nixon's soothing rhetoric thinly veils a deeply conservative agenda, cutting social programs, withdrawing from world affairs, and trying to stack the Court with allies.  Carswell's nomination passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 16 of this year.  We'll see if the Senate as a whole can stomach him for the Court proper.

Plus ça change

Galaxy's editor Eljer Jakobsson is like Richard Nixon (well, perhaps this is a stretch, but indulge me—I need some sort of transition here!) He is trying all of the styles at his disposal in this new decade of the 1970s and seeing what sticks.  The result remains inconsistent, but not unworthy.


cover by Jack Gaughan

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[March 4, 1970] Harry's Heroes (Nova 1, edited by Harry Harrison)

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A white man with dark short hair and a dark van dyke beard sits on a yellow couch reading a fantasy periodical.  A window in the background shows an empty suburban street.
by Brian Collins

It seems that between Harlan Ellison’s massive (that is, quite bloated) Dangerous Visions and Damon Knight’s Orbit series, original anthologies are here to stay; not only that, but we’re starting to see more of them, albeit thankfully not on the same scale as Ellison’s book. Harry Harrison is nothing if not knowledgeable of the field we share, and he’s also been involved in nearly every aspect of SF publishing that I can think of. It helps, too, that he’s already released an original anthology, just last month actually, titled The Year 2000. I have to admit that calling this new anthology Nova 1 is a bit presumptuous, since it implies a guarantee of future entries in this new series; but time will tell if the number is unfortunate or not.

Nova 1, edited by Harry Harrison

The cover of Nova 1.  The title is written vertically in a 3-dimensional font.  The fronts of the letters are white and the sides are blue with white clouds. The title descends at a slant from top left to bottom right over a black background with many white stars.  At the bottom behind the number 1 is part of a large red circle, probably representing a nearby star or planet.  Next to the title is written in a blue plain font: An Anthology of original science fiction stories by Robin Scott, Robert Silverberg, Ray Bradbury, Gordon R. Dickson, James Sallis, Donald E Westlake, Piers Anthony, Brian W. Aldiss, and others.  Edited by Harry Harrison
Cover art by Johannes Regn.

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