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[December 12, 1969] A More Liberal Society? (Vision of Tomorrow #4)

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By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

A composite of three theatre posters. Top left: poster for the play Hair, showing a reflected head in yellow chiaroscuro. Top right: poster for the play Love, showing two naked men wrestling and two women raising their arms in bliss. Bottom: poster for the play The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, showing four women standing next to each other. Behind them is a drawn face of a woman. The poster advertises actress Maggie Smith in big pink letters. The tagline of the poster says: Out of one Jean Brodie would come a whole generation of Jean Brodies... experimenting with sex, society and everything else. All the way to the right of the poster is a drawing of a man looking at the four women.
Just some of the many brands of sex you can enjoy at your local tobacconist theatre

It seems the final death knell for Capital Punishment in the UK will be sounded soon. There is a vote soon in the House of Lords, widely expected to pass, to make the trial period for the abolition of the death penalty permanent. Over the last few years we have seen a raft of reforms, removing Victorian laws and decriminalizing a number of controversial practices. At the same time, censorship is being removed so you can see nudity on the West End or watch young women discussing sex in the cinema. This would seem to be placing Britain into a more permissive society.

Still frame from a Monty Python scene. It shows a policeman talking to two men who are sitting at a table. They're in a room with blue-and-white tiled walls and a hideous yellow door. Through a window on the wall, a portion of a house of red brick can be seen.
“Sandwiches, blimey! Whatever did I give the wife?” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

But that does not seem to be true in all areas. The crackdown on the use of illicit drugs continues apace, with heavy-handed tactics of the police being widely reported. Meanwhile, the Northern Irish MP Bernadette Devlin is currently appealing against a six-month sentence of “inciting persons unknown to commit the offence of riotous behavior” for encouraging resistance to police during the so-called Battle of the Bogside.

As such, it appears this liberalism has its limits. Actors can get their kit off in front of the public but not smoke cannabis in their own homes. Women can get access to the contraceptive pill and abortions (assuming their GP agrees) but they still cannot get a mortgage without a male guarantor. People from more different backgrounds are becoming MPs but political activity outside of official parameters is still viewed with suspicion.

This sense I have of British society also reflects what I am seeing in Visions of Tomorrow. It seems to be throwing off some of its earlier conservatism but has not become a second New Worlds either. Instead, the contents of this issue would not be out of place in Dangerous Visions.

Vision of Tomorrow #4

Cover of the magazine Vision of Tomorrow. The cover illustration shows a rocket over a rocky landscape. There is a greenish-yellow sky in the background, with a small moon and a huge moon. Text on the cover announces the stories Trojan Horse by E. C. Tubb and Psycho-Land by Philip E. High, plus stories by J. Wodhams, C. Priest, and S. J. Bounds.
Cover illustration by Eddie Jones

Now back on its regular monthly schedule, the editor gives us an incredibly dull introduction, discussing whether SF has become a mainstream genre. No more insight is given than the hundred other editorials on the subject for the past 30 years.

The Ill Wind by Jack Wodhams
Ink illustration of The Ill Wind by Jack Wodhams showing a man in a quarantine suit removing his helmet, causing smell lines to come from him, much to the displeasure of a judge and clerk of the court.
Illustrated by Dick Howett

Gongi Wackerman stinks and has been going through many experiments to see if he can be rid of his noxious odour. However, one such test concludes his scent has a psychedelic effect on people and they want to employ him to help mental patients.

Wodhams is not an author I have particularly enjoyed in the past and this continues that trend. It is so silly and dull, it makes his Undercover Weapon, seem like a work of high literature.

One star, only because I can’t go any lower.

Trojan Horse by E. C. Tubb
Ink illustration of Trojan Horse by E. C. Tubb, showing a naked woman inspecting a naked man in a box
G. Alfo Quinn gives us an illustration that seems more at home in New Worlds

In the future, laws and self-censorship have been abolished. People are free to act on their own choices. Even murder is allowed, but classes are taught to ensure that people are smart with their actions as a means of self-defence.

Marlo French is contacted by Ed Whalen, High Boss of Chicago Chemicals. Whalen’s daughter Naomi has stolen their new compound and is hiding out in the impenetrable Staysafe Apartments. As a discreet freelancer, French is tasked with getting back the pills by any means necessary.

Marlo discovers that Naomi has a penchant for Mannikins, robotic male blow-up dolls, and so proposes to impersonate one in order to get inside her flat.  But this case may not be as simple as he believes.

This is a much darker and more complicated tale than I expected from these pages or Ol’ Edwin. He posits a world without laws or morality but makes it feel real and vivid, not a cardboard cutout for a simple point. The case itself has a great atmosphere and consists of the kind of twists and double-crosses you would expect from hard-boiled detective fiction. I hope we get more exploration of this future, as it is more fascinating to me than Raynolds’ People’s Capitalism or Anderson’s space navy tales. 

I am not sure if he is getting better, or if I am getting more tolerant as I age through my thirties, but I found this to be his second exemplary tale in as many months.

A High Four Stars

Ward 13: A Tale of the first Martian by Sydney J. Bounds
Ink illustration of Ward 13 by Sydney J bounds as a man is held back by two people in the shadows, as he looks at a woman bathed in light.
Illustrated by Dick Howett

In City Seven Hospital, Dr. Kirby is part of a team that collects on scene organ donations before they are stolen by illegal freeze-wagons. One night, on his way home, he finds one of his nurses under attack by a gang. In attempting to rescue her, he is kidnapped and put to a surprising purpose.

I don’t think it was just me grooving to a Zappa record that meant I had trouble concentrating, I found it over-described and dull. Also these kind of panicky stories about organ transplants and population explosions have become so common they already feel more cliched than ray guns and flying saucers.

A moderately interesting twist in the tail keeps it just off the bottom rating.

A Low Two Stars

Breeding Ground by Christopher Priest
Ink illustration of Breeding Ground by Christopher Priest showing a space-suited man walking between a space scene and one filled with small hairy spirals
Illustrated by Dick Howett

Luke Caston, a space salvager, comes across the wreck of the Merchant Princess, a lost ship fabled to carry tons of gems. However, the ship is infested with Space-Mites, three-inch hairy coils that reproduce at an extraordinary rate when they find a source of electrical energy. They also happen to be Caston’s biggest fear.

A reasonable story, reasonably told. Not revolutionary but atmospheric and enjoyable.

Three Stars

Trieste: SF Film Festival by John Carnell

Whilst much of the rest of the SF community were eagerly watching the Apollo 11 mission in July, the New Writings editor John Carnell was attending an SF film festival in Trieste, Italy. The award winners were as follows:

Best Film: The Last Man (France)
Best Actress: Taja Markus – The Time of Roses (Finland)*
Best Actor: Tobias Engel – You Imagine Robinson (France)
Animated Short Film: Cosmic Zoom (Canada)

Others he calls out of note include The Illustrated Man, Mr. Freedom and Windows of Time, whilst pouring scorn on the British entry The Body Stealers and giving a mixed review of an Italian adaptation of The Tunnel Under The World.

An interesting look at films that might otherwise pass us by. I will certainly be keeping my eyes peeled for showings at the BFI.

Four Stars

*Luna fanzine gives the winner as a different actress from the same film, Ritva Vespa.  I have not been able to ascertain which report is accurate.

The Impatient Dreamers 4: Science Fiction Weakly by Walter Gillings
Cover for the magazine Scoops. It shows, in red-and-blue chiaroscuro, a gigantic robot towering over a city's skyscrapers. The text at the top of the cover says: Britain's Only Science Story Weekly. Next to the robot's hand is text that says: The Story Paper of To-morrow. Text at the bottom announces the story Creation's Doom.
Reproduction of a cover from Britain’s short-lived attempt to get into the SF game. Artist unknown.

The recitations of Gillings’ memories of SF yesteryear reaches 1934.  He tells us of the short-lived weekly magazine Scoops, his own early attempts to get an SF magazine off the ground, and serialisations of Burroughs and Conan-Doyle.

By this point you know what to expect from Gillings, and this untold history continues to impress me.

Five Stars

Time-Slip by Eric Harris
Drawn illustration. The words Time Slip appear in big black letters next to the top half of a naked prehistoric man. The bottom of the image has a baby's face looking at the reader with a disturbingly stern expression.
Illustrated by Dick Howett

Constable Paul goes with an Arunta tracker called Nungajiri to try to find a family lost in the outback. Whilst four of the party are found, the baby remains unaccounted for. Even though the rest of the police think he is crazy, Paul and Nungajiri are determined to see if they can bring the child home.

This is a strange kind of tale. It starts of as a standard mystery story and evolves into one involving geometry, nodal-points in the timestream and the concept of Dreamtime. It felt to me like a cross between Picnic at Hanging Rock and an early HP Lovecraft story. One that I am not sure I understood but I am pretty sure I am not supposed to either.

I am afraid I am not particularly familiar with depictions of aboriginal Australians (having never visited the country myself and I have no familiarity with the Arunta religion) and as such I do not feel particularly qualified to comment on it. I will say this felt somewhat cliched to me but not meanspirited, although that is only a personal sense.

A tentative Four Stars, at least until someone with more knowledge than me can fill in the gaps.

Psycho-Land by Philip E. High
Ink illustration for Psycho-Land by Philip E. High showing a man all in shadows walking into a gaggle of angry faces, crashed cars and flames.
Illustrated by Dick Howett

Peter Carton, a sufferer of dementia praecox, has taken control of a machine that makes people in range subject to paranoia and irrational anger. With thirty thousand lives in jeopardy, the government is forced to call on William Charles Hopwood, a noble prize-winning physicist and ardent pacifist, as possibly the only person qualified to both resist the impulses and turn off the machine.

Devices affecting brain waves have become a common feature of SF recently, but this manages to elevate itself above the pack in a few different ways. Firstly, the atmosphere. As it indeed says in the text, High makes a small city seem like an alien world. Secondly, pacificists rarely have an active role in SF stories, so it was fascinating to see how this concept could be used. Finally, the twist in the tail is a good one, I will be thinking about it for some time.

A High Four Stars

Takeover by Harold G. Nye
Drawn illustration. It shows a TV set superimposed over a zoomed-in series of ripples resembling a fingerprint.
Illustrated by Eddie Jones

Charlie Adams is a grumpy hypochondriac who finds himself in the midst of a plan by television sets to destroy humanity.

I am reliably informed this is a pseudonym of Lee Harding, an unprolific but solid writer. As a piece of satire on modern society and religion it is more subjective than most pieces. The silliness didn’t land for me but may appeal more to others.

Two Stars

Prime Order by Peter Cave
Ink illustration of Prime Order by Peter Cave showing a large robot carrying a woman through shallow water in the style of Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Illustrated by Dick Howett

On a routine mining expedition, one of the team caught space fever and then proceeded to murder the crew and destroy the ship. In order to avoid another such incident, Martin Stone at Amalgamated Electronics is asked to design one of the most intelligent and powerful robots ever. It also has one significant difference to all prior models. Asimov’s first law of robotics:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Is replaced with:

The Robot must be able to protect the majority of the party at all or any cost.

The result is Robot R.E.D. 197, who appears to work perfectly in testing. However, when he and a mining crew crash land on an uncharted planet, his logic circuits are pushed to their limit.

At first glance this seems a more traditional tale that would fit snugly into Analog’s pages. However, it is lifted up by the cynicism of the people involved and the darkness of the ending.

A high three stars

Fantasy Review
Ink illustration of white on black showing a spaceman in a tight craft surrounded by a wide array of controls.
Illustration by Jeeves

Ken Slater reviews John Brunner’s Quicksand, which he highly recommends, Peter Weston raves about Larry Niven’s collection Neutron Star and Kathryn Buckley praises Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight (with the caveat of allowances for being a newcomer to novels). Meanwhile, John Foyster has mixed feelings about the contents of Carr & Wollheim’s latest World’s Best SF, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and the multi-authored Conan of Cimmeria, but is full of praise for Harry Warner, Jr.’s All Our Yesterdays.

A New Era?
Ink illustration of Life of the Party showing a man in an RAF bomber jacket walking emerging from a white portal.
Preview illustration by Eddie Jones for next month’s short novel, Life of the Party

So, this marks a slight change of direction for Vision of Tomorrow. Gone are the Kenneth Bulmer swashbucklers—in their place are atmospheric tales of ambiguous morality. The kind of pieces Harlan Ellison would probably be happy with.

Whether this trend continues or reverses into the 70s will probably be a reflection of where British society heads. On the one hand, all the recent court cases and laws on censorship have been on the side of more liberality. On the other, there are prominent voices that decry the current obsession with “pills and pot” in the media.

A black and white promotional photo for Noel Coward's This Happy Breed on BBC2 in 1969. Newspaper photograph announcing the TV show This Happy Breed. It shows a woman in a dress and a hat, looking straight ahead while a man standing behind her is talking.
Last night, BBC2 went with more traditional fare: This Happy Breed to celebrate Noel Coward's 70th Birthday

Anyway, there will be many years ahead to worry about that. For now, I wish you all the joy of the season and, if I don't see you sooner, a happy new year!

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


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Book, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 8, 1969] Do Better (January 1970 Amazing)

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by John Boston

The January 1970 Amazing continues in its newly-established course—“ALL NEW STORIES Plus A Classic”—though it’s fronted in the all-too-long-established manner, with another capable enough but generic cover by Johnny Bruck, reprinted from a 1965 issue of Perry Rhodan. Editor White has acknowledged this practice and, I suspect, is looking to end it when circumstances and the publisher permit.

Cover of Amazing Stories for January 1970. The illustration, by Johnny Bruck, shows a team of astronauts walking away from a crashed rocket on a desert with a pink sky. The text on the cover announces the stories Questor by Howard L. Myers, Moon Trash by Ross Rocklynne, Merry Xmas and Post/Gute by John Jakes, a novel by Philip K. Dick, and the essay Science in S F by Greg Benford and David Book.
by Johnny Bruck

The usual complement of features are here, starting with a long editorial meditation about the Moon landing, reactions to it, the progress (or lack thereof) of technology generally, and a note of cogent pessimism about the future of the space program: we can do it, but will we? The book reviews continue long and feisty, with White slagging James Blish’s generally well-received Black Easter, concluding: “At best, then, Black Easter is not a novel, but only an extended parable. At worst, it is a tract. In either case, it pleads its point through the straw-man manipulations of its author in a fashion I consider to be dishonest to its readers.” The milder-mannered Richard Delap says that Avram Davidson’s The Island Under the Earth “isn’t a horrid book like some of the dredges of magazine juvenilia we’ve seen recently; it’s soundly adult and imaginative but just too uneven and incomplete to be a good one.” Damning with faint praise, or the opposite? New reviewer Dennis O’Neil, a comic book scripter and “long a friend of SF, and a one-time neighbor of Samuel Delany,” compliments Thomas M. Disch’s Camp Concentration: “Of all the adjectives which might be applied to Camp Concentration—‘artful,’ ‘brilliant,’ and ‘shocking’ come to mind—maybe the most appropriate is ‘heretical.’ ” He then reads the book in terms of Disch’s assumed religious background. “Catholicism is a hard habit to kick. James Joyce didn’t manage it, and neither does Tom Disch.”

The regular fanzine reviewer, John D. Berry, is on vacation, so White turns the column over to “Franklin Hudson Ford,” apparently a pseudonym of his own, for a long and praiseful review of Harry Warner’s fan history All Our Yesterdays. The letter column is even more contentious than the book reviews, with one correspondent addressing “My Dear Mr. Berry: You and your coterie of comic-stripped idiots” (etc. etc.). John J. Pierce, he of the “Second Foundation” and denunciations of the New Wave, explains that he really does have some taste: “If the romantic, expansive traditions of science fiction are to be saved, they will be saved by the Roger Zelaznys and the Ursula LeGuins, not by the Lin Carters or the Charles Nuetzels”—a point I had not realized was in contention. William Reynolds, an Associate Profession of “Bus. Ad.” at a Virginia community college, tries to correct White about the operation of the Model T Ford and provokes a response as spirited as it is mechanical. One Joseph Napolitano complains about “new wave stories”: These new wave writers “don’t want to work. Its [sic] not easy to come up with an idea for a story and they just don’t want to take the time and use what little brains they have to do this.” (Etc. etc.)

After all this amusing contention, it is unfortunate to have to report that the fiction contents of this issue are pretty lackluster.

A. Lincoln, Simulacrum (Part 2 of 2), by Philip K. Dick

I’m a great admirer of Philip K. Dick’s best work, and some of his less perfect productions as well. So it’s painful to report that A. Lincoln, Simulacrum, is a bust. It has its moments, but there aren’t enough of them and they don’t add up to much, even though the novel’s themes reflect some of Dick’s long-standing preoccupations.

Protagonist Louis Rosen is partner in a firm that manufactures and sells spinet pianos and electric organs. But now his partner Maury is branching out into simulacra—android replicas of historical persons, designed by his daughter Pris. They’ve started with Edwin M. Stanton, President Lincoln’s Secretary of War. How? “. . . [W]e collected the entire body of data extant pertaining to Stanton and had it transcribed down at UCLA into instruction punch-tape to be fed to the ruling monad that serves the simulacrum as a brain.” Ohhh-kay.

More importantly, why? Because Maury thinks America is preoccupied, in this year of 1981, with the Civil War, and it will be good business to re-enact it with artificial people. Pris is now working on a Lincoln simulacrum.

Sepia drawing by Michael Hinge. It shows a man in a business suit talking on a telephone while he smokes a cigarette, and the face of a woman also talking on a telephone.
by Michael Hinge

Staying over at Maury’s house, Louis meets Pris, recently released from the custody of the Federal Bureau of Mental Health, which provides free—and mandatory—treatment for people identified as mentally ill per the McHeston Act of 1975. Louis mentions that one in four Americans have served time in a Federal Mental Health Clinic. Pris was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and committed, in her third year of high school.

Louis asks her to stop her noisy activities because it’s late and he wants to go to sleep. She refuses, and says, “And don’t talk to me about going to bed or I’ll wreck your life. I’ll tell my father you propositioned me, and that’ll end Masa Associates and your career, and then you’ll wish you never saw an organ of any kind, electronic or not. So toddle on to bed, buddy, and be glad you don’t have worse troubles than not being able to sleep.” Louis thinks: “My god. . . . Beside her, the Stanton contraption is all warmth and friendliness.”

In a later encounter: “Why aren’t you married?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you a homosexual?”
“No!”
“Did some girl you fell in love with find you too ugly?”

In addition to this finely honed nastiness, Pris is also capable of considerable depression and self-pity. After the Lincoln is completed:
“Oh, Louis—it’s all over.”
“What’s all over?”
“It’s alive. I can never touch it again. Now what’ll I do? I have no further purpose in life.”
“Christ,” I said.
“My life is empty—I might as well be dead. All I’ve done and thought has been the Lincoln.”

Louis is shaken by these encounters. He sees a psychiatrist and gives a paranoid account of events to date, threatening to kill Pris. Further: “I was not kidding when I told you I’m one of Pris’ simulacra. There used to be a Louis Rosen, but no more. Now there’s only me. And if anything happens to me, Pris and Maury have the instructional tapes to create another.” Later he reiterates, in a conversation with the Stanton: “I claim there is no Edwin M. Stanton or Louis Rosen any more. There was once, but they’re dead. We’re machines.” The Stanton acknowledges, “There may be some truth in that.”

And if you’ve missed the point about humans and simulacra, here it is from the other direction. The Stanton says he would have liked to see the World’s Fair. Louis says: “That touched me to the heart. Again I reexperienced my first impression of it: that in many ways it was more human—god help us!—than we were, than Pris or Maury or even me, Louis Rosen. Only my father stood above it in dignity.”

The characters get involved with Sam Barrows, a rich guy who is the talk of the nation, in hopes of a profitable business relationship. Barrows is selling real estate on the Moon and other extraterrestrial locations. He sensibly trashes Maury’s idea of Civil War re-enactment, but his proposal is hardly an improvement; he wants to create simulacra of ordinary folks to go live in his off-planet housing developments and make them seem homier to potential buyers. (Sounds very practical, right?)

Pris then takes up with Barrows and begins calling herself Pristine Womankind. Meanwhile, Louis is getting progressively crazier, propelled by his obsession with Pris, and eventually winds up committed to the Federal Bureau of Mental Health—and is glad. There are a few more events and revelations I won’t spoil.

So, what follows from this prolonged but foreshortened precis?

First, this is not a very good SF novel, because it doesn’t follow through on its SFnal premises and also doesn’t make a lot of sense in general. It starts with the premise that historical replicas can be convincingly manufactured, and can exercise volition and easily adapt to a world a century in their future. OK, show me. But Dick doesn’t. We actually see relatively little of the Stanton and the Lincoln over the course of the novel. Further, we’re told that these artificial people are variations on models developed by the government. For what? And where are they and what are they doing? There’s no clue about the effects of this rather monumental development, other than allowing an obscure piano company to tinker with it.

The novel’s envisioned future doesn’t add up either. We’re told the setting is the USA in 1981, but there is routine space travel and colonization of the Moon and planets. More mind-boggling, there is the Federal Bureau of Mental Health—created by statute in 1975!—under which the entire population must take mental health tests administered in schools, and those deemed mentally ill are committed to a mental health clinic. As already noted, a fourth of the population has been committed at some point. And what political or cultural crisis or revolution has not only countenanced such an authoritarian regime, but also come up with the money for such a gigantic system of confinement?

Dick also seems to have made up his own system of psychiatry. Louis is diagnosed with a mental disorder requiring commitment through the James Benjamin Proverb Test. While interpretation of proverbs is sometimes used in psychiatric diagnosis, I can’t find any indication that this Benjamin Test exists anywhere besides Dick’s imagination.

Louis is asked to interpret “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”

“ ‘Well, it means a person who’s always active and never pauses to reflect—’ No, that didn’t sound right. I tried again. ‘That means a man who is always active and keeps growing in mental and moral statute won’t grow stale.’ He was looking at me more intently, so I added by way of clarification, ‘I mean, a man who’s active and doesn’t let grass grow under his feet, he’ll get ahead in life.’
“Doctor Nisea said, ‘I see.’ And I knew that I had revealed, for the purposes of legal diagnosis, a schizophrenic thinking disorder.’”

Turns out the correct answer—which Louis says he really knew—is “A person who’s unstable will never acquire anything of value.” But if any of the other interpretations of this deeply ambiguous platitude—or acknowledgement of its ambiguity—proves one a schizophrenic, I guess I’d better turn myself in. (Cue soundtrack: “They’re Coming to Take Me Away.”)

The doctor goes on to explain that Louis has the “Magna Mater type of schizophrenia”:

“ ‘The primary form which ‘phrenia takes is the heliocentric form, the sun-worship form where the sun is deified, is seen in fact as the patient’s father. You have not experienced that. The heliocentric form is the most primitive and fits with the earliest known religion, solar worship, including the great heliocentric cult of the Roman Period, Mithraism. Also the earlier Persian solar cult, the worship of Mazda.’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said, nodding.
“ ‘Now, the Magna Mater, the form you have, was the great female deity cult of the Mediterranean at the time of the Mycenaean Civilization. Ishtar, Cybele, Attis, then later Athene herself . . . finally the Virgin Mary. What has happened to you is that your anima, that is, the embodiment of your unconscious, its archetype, has been projected outward, unto the cosmos, and there it is perceived and worshipped.’
“ ‘I see,’ I said.”

Now, nowhere is it written that an SF writer can’t invent future psychiatry, any more than future physics or sociology, or alternative history. But plopping this scheme down in the America of 12 years hence, without support or explanation of how we got there from here, is incongruous and implausible. And the nominal date of 1981 is not the issue. The novel is firmly set in the familiar USA of today or close to it, with androids, spaceships, and psychiatry based on ancient religions in effect stuck on with tape and thumb tacks.

Of course, absurdity and incongruity are far from rare in PKD’s work, but they generally appear in the context of madcap satire or grim lampoon (consider Dr. Smile, the robot psychiatrist-in-briefcase in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, whose function is not to cure, but to drive the protagonist crazy so he can evade the draft). But that’s not what’s going on here. This novel, though it has its witty moments, presents overall as thoroughly sober and serious, assisted by Louis’s flat first-person narration.

So, if it’s not good SF, is it good anything else? Editor White said in the last issue, “It’s more of a novel of character than any previous Philip K. Dick novel, and in writing and scene construction it approaches the so-called ‘mainstream’ novel.” Pris is an appallingly memorable character, both for her conduct and for her effect on others, and her part of dialogue is finely honed. A novel that closely examined her and her effect on those around her might be quite impressive. But in a novel that starts out with android historical figures and ends up in a national coercive mental health system, with spaceships and moon colonies along the way, there’s too much distraction for Pris and her relationships to be adequately developed.

The bottom line is that the author has mixed up elements of SF and the “mainstream” novel without developing either satisfactorily or adequately integrating them.

In the last chapter, the author makes a conspicuous effort to bring the novel’s disparate elements together, and winds things up in the most quintessentially Dickian fashion imaginable. In fact, it all seems a little too pat. But wait. Remember editor White’s cryptic statement in last issue’s editorial that this serial was not cut, but was “slightly revised and expanded” for its appearance here? There’s a rumor that this last chapter was not actually written by Dick, but was added by White. True? No doubt we’ll find out . . . someday.

A readable failure. Two stars.

Moon Trash, by Ross Rocklynne

Ross Rocklynne (birth name Ross Louis Rocklin) started publishing SF in 1935 and became very prolific in the 1940s, placing more than 10 stories most years through 1946, many in the field leader Astounding Science Fiction, but most in assorted pulps. After that his production fell off, he disappeared from Astounding, and ceased publishing entirely from 1954 to 1968, when he reappeared with a burst of stories in Galaxy. He was a heavyweight by production, but seemingly a lightweight by lasting impact. Only five of his stories were picked up in the explosion of SF anthologies of the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, and to date he has published no books.

Sepia drawing by Ralph Reese. It shows two boys wearing astronaut helmets looking at a strange, tall alien creature with many tentacles and huge eyes.
by Ralph Reese

Moon Trash is a contrived piece about young Tommy, who lives on the Moon with his cranky old stepfather Ben Fountain; his mother seems to be dead though it’s not explicit. Tommy has bought the official ideology of keeping the Moon spick and span, and Ben gets annoyed when Tommy picks up things that Ben has dropped along the way. Then Tommy finds a bit of trash that somebody dropped about a million years ago, and it leads them to a cave full of artifacts of an alien civilization, including precious gems.

Ben’s not going to tell anybody and is going to see how he can make money from this find, but in his greed he pulls a heavy statue over and it kills him. Tommy reports that Ben fell down a crater wall, returns the artifact Ben had taken to the cave, tells no one about it, and resolves he’s going to work and become a big shot on the Moon. The obvious subtext of the title is that even on the Moon there will be people who are down and out or close to it—people like Ben are the Moon trash, though young Tommy is a class act. Three stars, barely.

Merry Xmas, Post/Gute, by John Jakes

John Jakes had been contributing to Amazing and other SF magazines, mostly downmarket, since 1950, to little notice or acclaim until he devised his Conan imitation Brak the Barbarian for Fantastic. In his very short Merry Xmas, Post/Gute, an impoverished author tries to get the last remaining book publisher to read his manuscript, only to be told it is closing its book division as unprofitable. It’s as heavy-handed as it is lightweight. Two stars.

Questor, by Howard L. Myers

Howard L. Myers—better known by his very SFnal pseudonym, Verge Foray—contributes Questor, a semi-competent piece of yard goods of the sort that filled the back pages of the 1950s’ SF magazines. Protagonist Morgan is part of a raid brigade attacking Earth, without benefit of spaceships, which are passe in this far future. He’s a Komenan; Earth is dominated by the Armans; it's not clear why we should care. Morgan is special; his assignment is to pretend to be a casualty and fall to Earth; but he’s hit by a “zerburst lance” and both he and his transportation equipment are injured. He lands in a Rocky Mountain snowbank and emerges, after some recuperation, to find himself in a valley he can’t climb out of.

Sepia drawing by Jeff Jones. It shows a human figure shooting lightning from a bazooka.
by Jeff Jones

But all is not lost. A talking mountain goat, named Ezzy, appears (intelligence and fingers engineered by long-ago humans), and offers to help him out. We learn just what Morgan is looking for on Earth—it’s called the Grail! Or, the goat says, “it can be called cornucopia, or Aladdin’s Lamp—or perhaps Pandora’s Box. . . . The only certain information is that it has vast power, and has been around a long time.” Morgan later adds, “We only know it appears to assure the survival and success of whatever society has it in its possession.” Can we say pure MacGuffin? And of course there is a wholly predictable revelation at the end involving the goat. Two stars for egregious contrivance.

The People of the Arrow, by P. Schuyler Miller

Sepia drawing by Leo Morey. It shows a prehistoric battle with spears and clubs between minimally dressed humans and apes. A steep mountain can be seen in the background.
by Leo Morey

This month’s “Famous Amazing Classic” is P. Schuyler Miller’s The People of the Arrow, from the July 1935 Amazing, and it does not impress. Kor, the leader of a migrating prehistoric tribe (having recently dispatched his elderly predecessor), returns with a hunting party to discover that their camp has been attacked by ape-men (he can tell by their footprints). They have wreaked terrible carnage and have carried off the women they did not kill. So the hunting party pursues the ape-men and wreaks terrible carnage on them with their superior armament (see the title). Miller does make a credible attempt to suggest the workings of Kor’s mind and his appreciation of the changing landscape he traverses, but it’s all pretty badly overwritten and mainly notable as a large bucket of blood. Miller—now best known as book reviewer for Analog and its predecessor Astounding—did much better work later. Two stars.

The Columbus Problem: II, by Greg Benford and David Book

Last issue’s “Science in Science Fiction” article asked how difficult it would be to locate planets in a star system from a spaceship traveling much slower than the speed of light. This issue, they ask how difficult it would be from a spaceship traveling much faster—say, a tenth of light-speed. (The authors say flatly: “To the scientific community, . . . FTL is nonsense.”) Then they take a quick turn for several pages of exposition about how an affordable and workable sub-light spaceship could be designed. The Goldilocks option, they suggest, is that proposed by one Robert Bussard: a ramscoop (magnetic, since it would need about a 40-mile radius) to collect all the loose gas and dust floating around in space and channel it into a fusion reactor.

Sounds great! Once you solve a few technical problems, that is. And then finding planets is a breeze. They’ll all be in the same plane, as in our solar system—it’s all in the angular momentum. Approach perpendicular to that plane, and Bob’s your uncle. Then a fly-by can reveal basics of habitability—gravity, temperature, what’s in the atmosphere—but looking for existing life and habitability for terrestrials will require landing, preferably by remote probes of several degrees of capability.

This one is denser than its predecessor, but as before, clear, clearly well-informed, and aimed at the core interests of, probably, most SF readers. Four stars.

Summing Up

So, assuming one agrees with me about the serial, there’s not much of a showing here for this resurrected magazine, though it’s far too early to be making any broad judgments. Promised for next issue are (the good news) a serial by editor White, who has demonstrated his capabilities as a writer, and (the bad news) a story by Christopher Anvil! No doubt a Campbell reject. Let’s hope the promising overcomes the ominous.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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[December 4, 1969] "Weed" and Weirdness (July–December 1969 Playboy)

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by Erica Frank

The science fiction haul at Playboy has gotten smaller, although this half-year batch is fairly good.

Cover of Playboy, October 1969 issue.
Playboy's October 1969 cover–the trick with the cord is cute.

Slaves or Masters? by David Rorvik (July)

This is an article about the future of robotics. The word robot comes from the 1921 science-fiction play R.U.R. (Rossum´s Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek; it's derived from a word that means "worker."

This article gives an overview of the history of robots (dreams of robot workers go back to the Iliad and the "mechanical golden girls" serving Hephaestus), discusses what separates them from mere machines — and goes on to assign them human emotions.

Text from the story, describing a robot on the edge of a "nervous breakdown" before it is repaired.
Machinery does not have "nervous breakdowns," and nervous breakdowns are not fixed by circuit changes.

Robot emotions aside, they are a welcome addition to the labor force, as they can be assigned tasks that are too dangerous or difficult for humans. They can lift heavier objects and be designed to reach into places that human hands cannot. So despite the worries of some fiction, they’re not “stealing human jobs” – they’re reducing human risk and allowing precision that humans can’t get.

However, the author seems to think that, in 15 years or so, we'll have a Jetson's-style Rosie-the-Robot in every household. Three stars; the writing is good and the details are solid, but the conclusions don’t match the data available. Four stars, if you really like robots.

A Breath of Lucifer by R. K. Narayan (July)

Sam the nurse is helping our nameless protagonist recover from eye surgery by being his 24/7 attendant and eyes. He gets paid 8 rupees a day… a little more than one dollar, with which he supports a wife, 8 children, two sisters, and a niece. Sam talks of his past in wartime, on campaigns, but does not mention which war, which locations. Sam integrates himself in family visits and seems oddly jealous of the other nurses, and keeps returning to his story of portraying Lucifer in a play.

Like many Playboy stories, this is pleasant to read and goes nowhere. It is unclear if there are any fantastic elements in this other than Sam's exotic stories. Three stars.

Can You Feel Anything When I Do This? by Robert Sheckley (August)

A middle-class housewife gets a surprise delivery from Stern’s Department Store. She is upset that someone bought her a (boring) vacuum cleaner when she already has one. She plugs it in and it announces its identity and abilities.

Text from the story, describing the future functions of the robot vacuum cleaner
In the future, vacuum cleaners will wash dishes, sew buttons, iron your clothes, and take out the trash.

After removing a stain on her clothing, the vacuum notices Melisande was tense, and gives her a massage with several attachments directed at different muscle groups. She is grateful for the assistance, but concerned about how it feels… “Should it feel so good?” The robot tells her it’s a side effect of the treatment. “Pleasure is sometimes unavoidable in the pursuit of health.” It proceeds to… address her health… at great length.

She demands to know who sent him, and he says he sent himself, that he saw her shopping and fell in love. "And now we have found each other, despite inconceivabilities…. We must make plans."
The ending has a nice twist — Melisande is no man's toy — and I think only the not-quite-declared robot-enhanced orgasm earlier allowed this story to work its way into Playboy, because it doesn’t normally carry much in the way of feminist themes. Four stars.

A woman's legs, her skirt raised high, with a robot vacuum cleaner draping itself lovingly around her.
Illustration by Hy Roth

The Dannold Cheque by Ken W. Purdy (September)

A dealer of antiquities combines “autograph, artifact, photograph” to sell for very high prices. (One piece: a holograph of a 1938 letter by Winston Churchill mentioning a drought; a small clipping of grass from the area, and a photo of the man himself.) He discusses a project with Mr. Dannold: Dannold once chanced to thwart an assassination attempt against the Prime Minister, and has a voided £250,000 cheque to commemorate the event.

He was going to receive the hefty award, but before it got to him, he admitted that he didn’t vote for the prime minister and considered his election an “unmitigated disaster.” The cheque was cancelled before he could reach a bank; it was a worthless novelty he carried for decades before he found the antiques dealer. He sold it for 50,000 francs. (About $10,000 – quite a lot of money, enough to buy several new cars, but nothing compared to the almost $600,000 value of the original!)

This is a fascinating example of a science fiction setting with no science fiction themes at all. A sprinkling of technological terminology is scattered throughout the story; a mention of a painter from 2068… but the story is a bog-standard “sold an interesting curio to a pawn shop” tale. And it was rather difficult to put the timeline of events together, possibly because I kept waiting for something science-fictional other than “this is set in the future.” Two stars.

Alice & Ray & Yesterday's Flowers by Saul Braun (October)

This is the story about the people behind the song Alices’s Restaurant, which shot Arlo Guthrie into fame. Apparently the song takes some artistic license with the story… there weren’t any handcuffs. And the second half of the song – Arlo vs the Draft Board – was pure fiction when the song was written, and did not become fact later, even if parts of it were used as inspiration. The movie takes even more license with the story.

The article here is about life with Alice & Ray in their church-converted-to-a-residence, a hippie haven that sounds very colorful and festive:

The radical activists are the same old noise, but the others are new, and, friends, they are turning. Only from within is it possible even to find them— and to know that are witnessing here is a major turning. While our astronauts fly to the moon, these other pioneers fly to a place of altered perceptions and altered relations, of altered being, of extreme presentness, virtually without past or future.

It’s a nice blend of exposition and contemplation, taking the personal experiences of a handful of people and using it as a showcase of a broader movement and shift in cultural awareness. Three stars.

Pot: A Rational Approach by Joel Fort, MD (October)

On May 19, 1969, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act was unconstitutional. Notably, it’s unconstitutional to require people to incriminate themselves, and the MTA did exactly that.

The article makes a strong argument that marijuana should be legalized: that its health benefits are certainly no worse than alcohol, that the penalties for it are often excessive (rape can get a person five years in prison; selling a matchbox of weed can be 50 years), that there is no solid evidence that its use leads to harder drugs, and so on. It’s extensive and well-written, and it will convince nobody but its carefully selected audience of wealthy men who like to think themselves intellectuals. Three stars.

1970 Jazz and Pop Poll (October)

This is provided just for fun; we are long past the deadline for the actual poll. Please avail yourself of a copy of this ballot, complete with a stunning cover page starring Janis Joplin, and discuss your choices with your friends.

Nine Lives by Ursula K. Le Guin (November)

A pair of interstellar miners, after searching and working alone for years, have found their target planet and their support crew arrives – a tenclone of five males, five females, all with the same beautiful bronze body and attractive face and genius mind. Ten identical twins whose entire lives are focused only on each other.

Until a mining accident kills nine of them, and the one who’s left has to try to figure out how to be a person without the only family – the only sense of self – he’s ever known. A fascinating and haunting story that explores the nature of identity and companionship. Five stars.

Five identical androgynous people, tilting to the right.
They’re all John Chow, but they need a way to identify each other. The men were Aleph, Kaph, Yod, Gimel and Samekh; the women Sadhe, Daleth, Zayin, Beth and Resh.

Cordle to Onion to Carrot by Robert Sheckley (December)

Howard Cordle was a milquetoast sort of man who got pushed around a lot, until he met the god Thoth-Hermes (definitely a god, not a hallucination, not a stoned hitchhiker) who told him that “the Stew” (metaphor for all reality) needs both “carrots” (aggressive bullies) and “onions” (passive victims like himself). After a moment of enlightenment, he decides to try his hand at carrothood.

A cartoon depiction of the events in the story

Cordle is polite, friendly, and accommodating – until he faces discrimination because he doesn’t seem high-class enough for whatever venue he is visiting, at which point, Cordle invokes his inner carrot and becomes what is colloquially known as an “obnoxious asshole.” He does wind up with better service this way, but almost drives away the woman he loves, who thought he was not like that. When they are married, he takes his vacations alone.

There is almost no science fiction here, although Sheckley is an accomplished SF writer and the tone and style come through. The story is enjoyable but has no real resolution, with a potential message of “being an asshole can get you what you want; the cost is… being an asshole.” Three stars.

Episode & Postscript by Timothy Leary (December)

This is a memoir, of sorts, recounting some of the events following his & his family’s 1965 arrest for less than an ounce of marijuana. (The ultimate result of this case was the Supreme Court ruling that nullified the MTA.) He begins not by focusing on the legal hassles involved, but on the concept of pleasure vs reward.

A psychedelic-pastel scene of flowers and mushrooms
The first several pages are decorated with flowers and mushrooms. 

He does not denounce the sense of accomplishment that goes with rewards, but wants people to be more in tune with the natural sense of pleasure of just being themselves, not requiring external stimuli and game-systems to feel at peace.

This is an engaging read, although he shows the racism expected of a white man with an elite education: He praises black people for being more in tune with “natural fleshly pleasures.”

His understanding of the laws around psychedelics is interesting, and his accounting of the events make it clear that he believes everyone is playing out their roles, which he intends to disrupt.
In between his philosophical meanderings, he manages to tell the story of his arrest, and how he made the decision to challenge the constitutionality of the marijuana laws rather than accept a plea bargain and get off with a few years of probation. They had a system, you see, and Leary declined to go along with it. He got a 30-year sentence that was put on hold while he challenged the law itself.

Four stars if you have an interest in drug laws or hippie philosophy; three stars otherwise.

I think I'm done reviewing Playboy. They're very expensive for so little science fiction, and I'm not fond of most of the interviews and the humor. I am glad I read this set, though; the Le Guin story was wonderful, and both the Sheckley stories were fun.




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[December 2, 1969] Communication Breakdown (January 1970 IF)

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


by David Levinson

Free press

American readers and those who follow American politics are no doubt well aware of President Nixon’s speech on the “Vietnamization” of the war in Indo-China. All three national networks carried the speech, of course, and followed it up with analysis and commentary. This apparently didn’t sit well with the White House.

On November 13th, Vice President Spiro Agnew addressed a regional Republican committee in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he attacked the networks, accusing them of political bias in their news coverage. He complained that the president’s speech had been subjected to “instant analysis and querulous criticism” without giving the American people time to digest the speech for themselves. Agnew accused “a small and unelected elite” of exerting undue influence on public opinion without any check on their power. He even called it a form of censorship.

Vice President Spiro Agnew addressing the Midwest Regional Republican Committee.

Some television executives accused Agnew of attempting to undermine the freedom of the press and intimidate a form of journalism that requires a government license in order to broadcast. I’d say the intimidation was at least partly successful, since all three networks carried the Vice President's speech. However, the networks are also fighting back. The CBS news magazine 60 Minutes devoted a full hour to rebutting Agnew’s charges.

When asked if anyone in the administration had an advance look at the speech, White House press secretary Ron Ziegler denied it. He also said that the White House would have no reaction to statements by other members of the administration and that Nixon and Agnew had not discussed the speech. That’s nonsense. A speech like this would never be made without approval at the highest levels, and if it had been, the White House would have promptly issued a statement distancing Nixon from the remarks or at least trying to soften them. I’d say the administration has fired a shot across the bows of the news media.

White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler

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[November 30, 1969] Capstone to a decade (December 1969 Analog)

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

Atrocities in Vietnam

The news has been brewing for a while, and now it's on the front page: 1st Lieutenant William J. Calley Jr., a 26-year-old platoon leader stationed in Vietnam, has been "life or death" court martialed for the murder of 109 South Vietnamese civilians "of various ages and sexes."

head shot of a smiling Lieutenant Calley, in uniform

This so-called "My Lai incident" took place northeast of Quang Ngai city on March 16, 1968 in a village called Song My—code-named "Pinkville".  Calley, enraged at the death of his chief sergeant, appears to have ordered his unit to eliminate everyone in the hamlet.  Several of his men went on a bloody spree; others did what they could to avoid involvement.  One even shot himself in the foot so he could be medivaced out.  A number came forward with the story, which was investigated and then dismissed by the 11th Infrantry Brigade.  Letters to Congress have prompted the reopening of the case and investigation into the original investigation.

If Calley is convicted, he faces no less than life imprisonment, and death by firing squad is on the table.

The court martial comes on the heels of the July 21, 1969 charge of Green Beret commander, Col. Robert Rheault, and six of his officers with murder and conspiracy for the secret execution of a Vietnamese spy suspect.  Those charges were dropped two months later when the CIA, whose operatives were key witnesses, refused to cooperate.  Whether the government's tacit support of brutality increases or decreases the odds of Calley facing the music remains to be seen. 

Mediocrities in Print


by Kelly Freas

December's final magazine is Analog.  Let's hope this makes for pleasanter reading that the newspapers.

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[November 24, 1969] The Wind That Shakes The Snottygobbles O: New Worlds December 1969

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Tune in at 12:45 pm Pacific for LIVE splashdown coverage of Apollo 12!

Photo portrait of Fiona Moore. She is a white woman with long curly dark blonde hair. She has glasses and is wearing a light blue blouse under a sleeveless green velvet vest.
by Fiona Moore

Once again, greetings from London. The big news this month is that Britain is now a space power! Yes, thanks to the launch of the Skynet 1-A satellite, we now have our very own presence in orbit. Can regular rocket launches from Woomera be far behind?

BW photograph of Skynet 1A satellite. It is cylindrical with solar panels making out all of its visible shape.
Skynet 1-A is GO!

In news that’s closer to home, Royal Holloway College has acquired a colour television for the student lounge, and I’ve been taking advantage of my position as Staff Advisor to the Film Club to make use of it. The students’ new favourite programme is a delightfully surreal children’s stop-motion SF tale called The Clangers, featuring aliens that look like pink mice and live on an asteroid. I much prefer it to Monty Python, myself. One of my more enterprising students has worked out a knitting pattern to make her own; I’m sure an official one will be not long in coming. I shall keep an eye on the Radio Times.

Photo from the show. Standing on a desert grey ground, pink mice-shaped aliens with red and gold vests are looking up and raising their arms. There are a few stars visible in the sly. The aliens seems to be made out of fabric.The Clangers, I love them all

On to this month’s, sadly rather thin, issue of New Worlds. Sadly, Britain’s new space-faring ways are not reflected in the magazine’s content. I tend to like New Worlds best when it’s being a SF magazine with a literary sensibility, but this month it is thinking of itself as a literary magazine with a few weird or surreal touches, so I found this issue disappointing. I even found myself missing the Jerry Cornelius segment!

Cover of New Worlds for December 1969. There is the shape of a person with unkempt hair in black on yellow. The cover reads: New Worlds Number 196 3s 6d Special new writers issue Plus: Ballard on Hitler Sladek on God Harrison on Pot Moorcock on Neophiliacs Platt on the Underground & more!Cover of New Worlds for December 1969

Although it is advertised as a “new writers’ issue”, only two new writers are actually included. Once again, book reviews take up almost a third of the publication. There is no art this issue, only photographs, and by only two photographers, which makes me wonder if they’re saving money by not commissioning drawings.

Their 1970 preview advert suggests they should be back in more SF territory with the next issue, which purports to “look ahead to 1980”, and I hope that’s not wrong.

Lead-in

A short one this issue, mostly highlighting the two new writers, C.R. Clive and Michael Biggs, and encouraging people to buy the abovementioned 1970 first issue, promising us Brian W. Aldiss, Pam Zoline and Thomas M. Disch as well as the usual suspects. We all know how well that went last time, so I’m not holding my breath.

Rise and Fall by Marek Obtulowicz

BW photograph of a man with closed eyes. He seems to be sleeping.Photo by Gabi Nasemann

A man named Lykke goes on a few dates with his neighbour, Janet. They have sex and a lot of rather pretentious conversations about autumn leaves. It’s all really rather banal. I struggled to see the point of it all. Two stars.

Hemingway by Michael Biggs

As the title suggests, a Hemingway pastiche about a reporter going to Vietnam. It’s a skilful enough evocation of Hemingway’s style and fairly exciting, and I suppose it’s got the subtext of comparing the current ongoing, seemingly neverending, conflict with the wars Hemingway himself covered. I’m not a huge Hemingway fan but it at least held my attention. No illustrations. Three stars.

Graphics and Collages by Ian Breakwell

Illustration by Ian Breakwell A collage with patterned paper, BW photographs and a text in capital letters covering the whole piece. The text reads: Follow my lead said the old electrician have a stake in the wrecked roomOne of the better collages

As the title suggests: collages of text and pictures forming illustrated short-short stories or prose poems. A portrait of squalor, a joke about an electrician, something about sports and physical culture, a factual article about skin grafts juxtaposed with images of radios and televisions, a piece of what looks like found poetry about business. As with a lot of these things it didn’t really appeal to me, though apparently it appeals to the editors of New Worlds. Two stars.

The Last Awakening by C.R. Clive

Photo by Gabi Naseman BW photograph of a white man. He's looking down to the left of the picture.Photo by Gabi Nasemann

This is the only story this issue that could really be described as SF, a postapocalyptic narrative mostly involving a forty-four-year-old man leching over a teenage girl with the excuse that they’re the only ones left alive. If I didn’t know the author was 27 I would have put it down to wish fulfilment. The prose is pretty good, with some nicely evocative touches about the postapocalyptic landscape, but I wish it had been put in the service of something less predictable. Two stars.

The Wind in the Snottygobble Tree Part II (a Jack Trevor Story)

Photo by Roy Cornwall BW photograph of a street. There are houses and vehicles. A pedestrian is crossing the street in the background.Photo by Roy Cornwall

Not much of an improvement on part I, really, other than that there’s less improbable sex and more time devoted to making it ambiguous whether our protagonist, Marchmont, is a secret agent or just an innocent caught in the crossfire. Apparently it’s to be continued next month. I can’t say I’m terribly looking forward to it. One star.

Book Reviews

Our esteemed editor has told me that I don’t need to review the book reviews, so I won’t go into too much detail about these. However, there are a couple this issue that are worth checking out. J.G. Ballard reviews Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, treating it as a psychological portrait of a man obsessed with hygiene and pseudo-biology. Elsewhere, John T. Sladek reviews Erich von Daaniken’s Chariots of the Gods, getting more and more scathing as he gets further and further into the weeds; as someone who absolutely loathes that book and rues the impact it has had on some of our more impressionable undergraduates, I giggled all the way through it. Finally, Michael Moorcock has a go at The Neophiliacs, which is somewhat more long-winded than Sladek’s review of von Daaniken but no less scathing.

Advert for John and Yoko's Wedding Album. BW purple tinted photograph of Ono and Lennon in front of a flight of stairs. They are looking at the camera and surrounded by people in suits.Advert for John and Yoko's Wedding Album, because I can.

In closing, I shall torment the Yoko Ono anti-fan club in my audience by revealing that the last page is an advert for her and John Lennon’s Wedding Album. Sorry, people; she’s here to stay. I understand that her husband is handing back his MBE in protest at the British government’s positions on Biafra and Vietnam. Sadly, I don’t think it’ll make much difference.

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


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[November 20, 1969] You say you want a revolution… (December 1969 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

When you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out

250,000 miles from Earth, the astronauts of Apollo 12 are circling the Moon, photographing Earth's neighbor for future landing sites before coming home.  And in the nation's capital, the city is still reeling from the footsteps of 250,000 protesters who marched on Washington in the largest anti-war event in American history.

This second "Vietnam Moratorium Day" followed on the heels of last month's nationwide protests, to which President Nixon responded with apathy and his November 4th speech, in which he touted his secret timetable for "Vietnamesation"—the turning over of defense of South Vietnam to President Thieu's government, and also played up his support from "The Silent Majority" of Americans.

The protest movements have still fallen short of the planned nationwide strike, and this latest one has been eclipsed by the Moon landings.  Nevertheless, they are making waves.  In addition to the quarter million in Washington D.C., 100,000 marched in San Francisco in the West Coast's largest peace demonstration in history.

That demonstration was, in fact, peaceful.  Not so the march on Washington, where extremists, protesting the trial of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and six "Yippies" for allegedly inspiring the Chicago Democratic Convention riots last year, clashed with police and were driven back by tear gas.

There is no word, as yet, if there will be a third Moratorium march in time for the Holidays, but one can probably expect more such outbursts from the Unsilent Minority so long as there is no end in sight to the Vietnam War, which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Americans so far.

The say that it's the institution

Last year, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction won the Hugo for Best Science Fiction Magazine.  It was a bit of a surprise since 1968 was hardly one of the magazine's best years—but then, 1968 wasn't a consistently great year for any magazine.  However, if one were to judge F&SF's 1969 output solely on the basis of this month's issue, one's estimation of the magazine would, indeed, be justifiably high!  Read on with pleasure:


by Ed Emshwiller

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[November 14, 1969] To Experiment or Not To Experiment, That is the Question. (The New S. F. & Vision of Tomorrow #2)

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By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

Among musicians right now, there seems to be a split around whether to look towards an experimental future or an idealized past for their inspiration.

Covers for Blind Faith LP and Single of Je T'Aime, both featuring nudity
Both in pop music and SF, nudity and sex remain sources of controversy.

The most explicit examples of Futurism come from two recent singles, Zager and Evans’ In the Year 2525 and David Bowie’s Space Oddity. But there is also the debut album from King Crimson, featuring the song 21st Century Schizoid Man, The Moody Blues’ space inspired LP, and Pink Floyd performed a new piece recently in honour of the Moon Landing. In addition, the music industry is pushing what is acceptable sexually whether that be in artwork, such as the Blind Faith cover above, or interesting choices of sounds on pop songs.

Cover for Barabajagal by Donovan, featuring an Edwardian style cover, and Unhalfbricking by Fairport Convention, featuring an old couple in front of a garden fence.
Did the Kinks have a point about preserving village greens?

On the other hand, at this time last month 4 of the top 5 singles were all country influenced songs, from Bobbie Gentry, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. Now, there has always been some country influence in the charts (as shown by Jim Reeves having 7 posthumous top 20 singles and counting) but it is certainly reaching a new level when the Beach Boys and Rolling Stones are both trying it out. In addition, folk is also growing, often with a nostalgic edge, in such songs as Fairport Convention’s Who Knows Where the Time Goes or Donovan’s Atlantis.

These differences can also be seen in SF and, perhaps, there is no clearer division than that which can be observed between the two publications I am reviewing today.

The New S.F., ed. by Langdon Jones
The New SF hardback cover 1969.
Cover by Colin Mier

An introduction by Michael Moorcock

Who else would you choose but Moorcock to introduce this selection of New Wave authors? Here he talks about how the “new SF writers” or “New Worlds group” have moved beyond spaceships and monsters to do more person-centric poetic pieces.

Fourteen Stations on the Northern Line by Giles Gordon

Fourteen different men observe an unnamed woman to different degrees of lechery as she walks up a hill. She fails to notice them as she has other things on her mind.

If it was not in this collection, it would probably not be considered SF, more akin to a Joyce than a Gernsback, only approaching the latter with the surrealism of the mind.

Moorcock’s introduction notes this as an example of a “compacted novel”, one that could be extended to a traditional novel but that would blunt the impact significantly. I cannot determine if I wanted this to be longer, shorter or reworked, but something is amiss. The metaphor, though obvious, is a good one (what passenger on a train pays attention to the small commuter stations?) and the difference in the inner lives of the observer and observed make a solid basis. But it left me wanting something better from it.

Three Stars

The Peking Junction by Michael Moorcock

A Jerry Cornelius story from his creator. In this episode, Europe has been devastated by American bombs (of course Europe still supports their allies in this action) and our dandified spy goes to China to deal with a downed American plane. His mission is complicated by the fact that he falls in love with one of the Chinese generals.

One interesting element here is Moorcock explicitly calls out the connection between Cornelius and his other tales:

Having been Elric, Asquiol, Minos, Aquilinus, Clovis Marca, now and forever he was Jerry Cornelius of the noble price, proud prince of ruins, boss of the circuits. Faustaff, Muldoon, the eternal champion…

There was always a suggestion of this previously, and The Blood Red Game (Science Fiction Adventures, 1963) and A Cure for Cancer both feature multiple universes, but I believe this is the first time we get it confirmed that this is not simply a case of repeated motifs.

Looking at it in this manner, we see the biting contemporary satire evolving into a more epic struggle and Moorcock’s other heroes as more than just throwaway fantasy figures. Rather there is a degree of tragedy in them having to deal with these various forces of order and chaos, making horrific choices for, what they hope, is the greater good (which rarely ends well).

A High Four Stars

Fast Car Wash by George MacBeth

A car gets cleaned… that is the entire story.

Moorcock calls this a readymade poem. I am assuming forthcoming are also a transcription of microwave instructions and George MacBeth’s shopping list.

One star

The Anxiety in the Eyes of the Cricket by James Sallis

Another Jerry Cornelius story, who is seemingly becoming to the New Wave what the Cthulhu tales have become to SF horror. This vignette apparently takes place shortly after the end of The Peking Junction (although Moorcock indicates this is better read as an alternative version) as JC returns to England a broken man. He stays in the house of his friend Michael, a man who predicted the apocalyptic future. They spend their time drinking and having sex between watching devastation from their window and discussing the nature of guilt.

A much quieter tale and more introspective than the other Cornelius tales with a good dose of narrative experimentation (if Michael is not surnamed Moorcock, I will eat my hat) added in. It is also incredibly bleak, with cities burning, Britain used as America’s crematorium, and Cornelius a broken man now simply looking for his missing family. But it is all the more powerful for it.

Five Stars

The New Science Fiction: A Conversation between J. G. Ballard & George MacBeth

This is the transcription of part of a discussion on BBC Radio 3 (formerly the Third Programme) last year titled The New Surrealism. In this extract, J. G. Ballard explains why he moved away from linear storytelling.

I missed this on its broadcast and I am very pleased it was reproduced here. Ballard manages to explain eloquently what he is trying to achieve in his stories and it has given me an increased appreciation for his work. Two sections I want to call out here as particularly incisive:

…one has many layers, many levels of experience going on at the same time. On one level might be the world of public events, Cape Kennedy, Vietnam, political life, on another level the immediate personal environment, the rooms we occupy, the postures we assume. On a third level, the inner world of the mind. All these levels are, as far as I can see them, equally fictional, and it is where these levels interact that one gets the only kind of inner reality that in fact exists nowadays.

…Burroughs’s narrative techniques… [are] an immediately recognisable reflection of the way life is actually experienced, that we live in quantified non-linear terms – we switch on television sets, switch them off half an hour later, speak on the telephone, read magazines, dream, and so forth. We don’t live our lives in linear terms in the sense that Victorians did.

Recommended for fans and confused readers alike.

Five Stars

So Far from Prague by Brian W. Aldiss

Another of Aldiss’ tales of Europeans in India. This time Slansky, a Czech filmmaker, is staying in a Das’ hotel outside Delhi when he hears of the Soviet invasion, He wants to get back home to help resist the attack, Das thinks they should be concentrating on their joint film project on the nature of time. Things get even more complicated when Slansky discovers there is a Russian guest in the room below his.

Interestingly, this manages a similar feel to Sallis’ piece even though it is contemporary rather than apocalyptic and could only be considered SFnal in the broadest sense. Here it is an exploration of the age-old argument of whether art can or should be apolitical, with this sense of gloom and despair. An important reminder that worlds are being blown up outside our window, not just in our magazines.

Four Stars

Direction by Charles Platt

An unnamed man has an argument at home. In response he gets drunk in a pub and then wanders around London in an inebriated haze.

Another piece where I am not sure the point of it, nor what it is doing in an SF anthology. There are some interesting writing techniques but that is all I can see to recommend it.

A low two stars

Postatomic by Michael Butterworth

We are told of four impossible beings, who may or may not be the same character across different time periods.

Not sure what its purpose is but it is certainly evocative.

Three Stars

For Thomas Tompion by Michael Moorcock

Moorcock completes his trilogy of entries with a four-line poem, addressed to the father of English clock-making.

Simple but well done for what it is.

Three stars

A Science Fiction Story for Joni Mitchell by Maxim Jakubowski

A science fiction writer has grown dissatisfied with the genre; instead he wants to write neo-psychedelic pop songs and tales of drug journeys. However, he has a deadline to hit, and the adventures of Coit Kid vs. the Subliminal Police don’t write themselves. Anyway, there is no chance of his other ideas intruding on a good old-fashioned science fiction story, is there?

A hilarious take on writing, modern pop music and science fiction cliches. It is done in a series of cut up pieces but logical rather than disparate. The whole exercise is delicious and I am going to be remembering many of the lines for some time.

Five Stars

The Communicants by John Sladek

This novella is a fragmented narrative, telling of a disparate set of people who work at Drum Inc., a technology company which provides a wide variety of services over phone lines and dreams of superseding Bell as the national monopoly.

Members of this organisation include Marilyn, who keeps getting mysterious calls that simply say “Marilyn, he loves you”, Sam Kravon, who is being driven mad by his job in Estimates, Phil Wang, the Art Director who is sure people are questioning his loyalty to the US, Ray, a cripple who is being constantly shuffled between departments, and David, who believes reality is refrangible.

At the same time, there are hints of experiments going on within the company that are of interest to the CIA.

Partially this is an extension of his multiple-choice form tales from New Worlds, with these regularly interrupting the text. And partially this is an experiment of split narratives, with the narrative like a butterfly flitting between different stories with such regularity that I wondered if I could use a flow chart.

Whilst it is an interesting experiment, it goes on for far too long (at almost 70 pages, far longer than anything else in this collection) and the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Three Stars

Seeking a Suitable Donor by D. M. Thomas

An organ donor before their surgery contemplates his journey to this point.

The strange alignment of the text doesn’t add much to this tale of familiar themes but a perfectly reasonable example.

Three Stars

The Holland of the Mind by Pamela Zoline

Graham, Jessica and their child Rachel take a holiday from the US to Amsterdam in 1963. However, visiting the Venice of the North is not going to help them outrun their problems.

This is a tricky one to review. On the one hand it is beautifully written but shocking look at depression and the breakdown of a marriage, counterpointing the history of the Netherlands with their personal situation.

On the other, it is barely SFnal. There is one moment towards the end which could be taken as such. But it could also be taken as metaphorical and\or natural phenomena. As such I was partially disappointed. It reminded me somewhat of Morris’ travelogue Venice.

However, I adore Morris’ writing. As such I am happy to give it the benefit of the doubt and judge it as a piece of literary short fiction. On those grounds it is brilliant.

Five Stars

Quincunx by Thomas M. Disch

As the name suggests, this is made up of five vignettes:

• Chrysanthemums: Mr. Candolle ponders the meaning of chrysanthemums in hospital rooms
• Representation: The narrator speaks of his lost love Judith
• The Death of Lurleen Wallace: A circular tale of princes, presidential campaigns and books
• Mate: A letter from former lovers which also deals with a correspondence chess match
• The Assumption: Miss Lockesly teaches her class about death

I am not sure though what shape we are meant to form. To some extent they are all about endings in different ways but no consensus is reached nor are they particularly profound.

Two Stars

Thus ends this experiment of a book, one which I have rated all over the place. To change a famous quote, there is a thin line between genius and drivel. This anthology erases it.

Vision of Tomorrow #2
Vision of Tomorrow #2 cover, with a picture illustrating Quarry by E. C. Tubb
Cover Illustration: Gerard Alfo Quinn

Issue #2 has finally arrived. No explanation is given for the delay other than “circumstances beyond our control”.  Whatever the reason, we shall now dive into the contents:

Quarry by E. C. Tubb
Black & White ink drawing of a man lying in the desert with a hot sun beating down on him
Illustrated by Gerard Alfo Quinn

Quelto Daruti is a prisoner of the Federation. he decides to make use of an obscure law. The Quarry-Hunt. He is to be hunted across the harsh landscape of Zen to sanctuary. If he can make it alive, he will be pardoned, but the only person who ever managed it before died of their wounds soon afterwards.

Durati however has two advantages the authorities do not know about. Firstly, he is a telepath. Secondly, the Terran league are very interested in his survival

Yes, it is yet another spin on The Most Dangerous Game, but a pretty good one. Stylistically it can be heavy at times, but this is made up for when it is action packed.

Just sneaks in at four stars.

Strictly Legal by Douglas Fulthorpe
Black and white drawing of the Moon with a giant spider across it
Illustrated by James

The intelligent spider-creatures of Proxima Centauri claim ownership of Earth’s Moon, on the grounds that it detached from one of their planets when it was molten. At first everyone assumes this is a joke. However, it turns out they are in deadly earnest, and the legal implications of the case will have devastating consequences.

This is a slippery slope argument delivered with all the subtlety of a brick through a window. The style is readable enough, but it requires so many “what-ifs” to make the idea work, I am not surprised everyone inside this piece of fiction assumes it is all a joke.

Two Stars

Moonchip by John Rankine

Millenia ago a small piece of metal fell to Earth. It has now been mined and ended up part of a car, one that is involved in a strangely high number of fatal accidents. But that is just coincidence, right?

I found this to be a dull and violent tale with little purpose. Maybe if you enjoy hoary old horror stories or car-based fiction it will appeal to you, but not to me.

One Star

A Judge of Men by Michael G. Coney
Black and white drawing of two men standing in a jungle shaking hands with a creature who resembles an elephant's leg with tentacles attached.
Illustrated by Eddie Jones

Scott travels with the trader Bancroft to the planet Karumba, the only source of Shroom (a kind of puff ball that can be woven) in the galaxy. The Shroom harvest is lessening as the planet gets colder and Karumbans may face extinction. However, having seen how humans treat animals in zoos, they refuse to allow any scientific help from humanity. Bancroft is willing to respect the Kamburans' wishes, the young ambitious Scott, however, is determined to solve the mysteries of this world, no matter what anyone else may think.

This did not go in the direction I expected. This started out seeming like it was merely going to be an experiment in xenobiology and the effects of planetary tilt but it went into much deeper territory around what it means to be a person, respect for native belief systems and the responsibility of ethical science.

My only complaint is it was too short to address all of the areas it touched on properly. I would love to see it expanded into one-half of an Ace Double.

A high four stars

Frozen Assets by Dan Morgan

Larry is a used air-car salesman who, with his fiancée Olivia is determined to find a way to get rich quick according to their realist philosophy. The first scheme involves being married to a wealthy divorcee but it turns out the pre-nuptial agreement states that Olivia won’t get any money from accidental death until after five years.

Larry then discovers there is a cure for cirrhosis of the liver, a condition his rich uncle Frank was cryogenically frozen with. He hopes to revive Frank and take control of his estate, however Frank is not quite as witless as Larry supposes.

This is the kind of story I dislike. It requires the setting up of a series of silly rules people follow, explaining them as they go along. In addition, it wends all over the place, barely sticking in one place for more than a moment.

One star

The Impatient Dreamers 2: Aims and Objects by Walter Gillings
A series of article cut outs with the caption: Headlines from the Ilford Recorder of 1931 proclaimed the 'new literary movement' which aimed to popularize science fiction. A leaflet circulated through remainder magazines on sale here appealed to readers to get in touch with the Science Literary Circle started by Walter Gillings and Len Kippin.

Filling in the gap between installments 1 and 3, we learn of Gillings' efforts to show that there is a strong enough market for science fiction in Britain to support a magazine.

This series continues to be excellent and contains a lot of fascinating details. Such as that Britain at this time didn’t have specialist fiction magazines at all and that Len Kippin just would hand out leaflets wherever he saw SF on sale.

Five Stars

Echo by William F. Temple
A human sits in an advanced room with lizard-like men in spacesuits
Illustrated by B. M. Finch

The Saurian Venusians have taken over the body of Richard Gaunt by use of a temporary echo of the personality of Narvel. They intend to steal the secrets of Organic Materials Inc., however, it turns out that being a human is harder than it seems.

I actually covered this last year in Famous, and I was planning to just reprint my review from there. However, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to look for any changes. I was taken aback that it was almost entirely rewritten. The plot remains identical but the prose is almost a complete overhaul. To compare one of the more similar sections:

Famous version:

Being a mammal, without previous experience, was to me a series of surprises, mostly unpleasant.
Gaunt, I knew, had the social habit of drinking whiskey. I first drank whiskey on the Pacific with a couple of engineers from Minneapolis.
After a while, I remarked with some concern. “Darn, it, the grav-motors are failing.”
This sometimes happened on space trips, and until they were repaired everyone had to endure free fall. I’d felt the beginning of free fall coming on; at least, I felt I was beginning to float. And I said so.
The two men looked at me strangely, then at each other.
“One whiskey on the rocks and he’s floating,” laughed one.

And the Vision version:

I became a Tyro mammal among experienced mammals.
My deficiencies first began to show on the spaceship to Earth. On the passenger list I was Richard Gaunt. I was Gaunt, physically. I did my best to act like him personally.
I knew he had this social habit of drinking whisky. I gave it a whirl at the bar with an engineer from Minneapolis.
After two whiskies, I remarked, ‘What’s gone wrong with the grav-motors?’
My companion looked at me strangely.
‘They seem okay to me. Sure I’s not the whisky hitting you? This special space brew is potent, you know, if you’re not used to it.’

Now, the scene being depicted has the same purpose: Narvel giving an example of not being used to certain human situations with impersonating Gaunt by his lack of familiarity with Whisky causing him to think there is an issue with the grav-motors. But the feel is completely changed. The prior version is concentrating on feelings and giving it a more comedic sense. The new version is more cerebral and philosophical about the nature of identity.

I still have a number of problems with the text but the changes make it clearer to me what he is trying to do. As such it jumps up a little bit in my ratings.

A low three stars

Undercover Weapon by Jack Wodhams
A shocked woman standing in a light beam clutching her clothes as they disintegrate around her.
Illustrated by James

The Fiberphut fabric disintegrator was developed as a means of removing bandages without damaging the skin underneath. When the army look to test its possible military applications, Lt. Cladwell makes his own duplicate model at home. He and his brother-in-law are determined to make a fortune from this device…along with many amorous encounters along the way.

This is the kind of unfunny sex comedy that seem to be growing in popularity at the cinema these days. I don’t like it there and I don’t like it here. I am a little surprised to see this included given last month’s stated “no pornography” policy, but I guess as nothing is described it is considered “good clean fun” by Harbottle. I, on the other hand, find it lecherous and dull.

One Star

Dancing Gerontius by Lee Harding
A collage of ink drawing pictures of a young woman, an old man with a thought bubble, an old man being pushed in a wheelchair, a woman with one leg up and a shadow standing with arms raised
Illustrated by A. Vince

The elderly on welfare are generally kept in a dream-like state in specialist facilities. However, annually they participate in Year Day, where a combination of drugs and advanced machinery allow them to participate in a period of bacchanalian hedonism. We follow Berensen’s experiences as he is crowned King for the day.

An evocative piece that did not go in the direction I expected it to. Quite haunting by the end.

Four Stars

Minos by Maurice Whitta
A black and white ink drawing of a spaceman fighting a minotaur like creature.
Illustrated by Eddie Jones

The final piece is by a new writer to me. The colony-ship Launcelot crash lands on Amor VII, killing almost ¾ of the occupants, including all the women. Another ship primarily composed of women also makes landfall, but contact is lost. From the Guinevere there start emerging minotaur like creatures that attack the men of Launcelot, what could have happened?

This whole piece is kind of a muddle, smelling to me of new author problems. The concepts are good and the point an interesting one. At the same time the action sequences are well written. The problem is structural. For such a small piece too much time is spent in irrelevant sections and the more poignant parts are rushed.

It is not bad though and I hope that Mr. Whitta can sort the issues out in the future.

A low Three Stars

Rating of stories from issue #1: 1. Anchor Man by Wodhams 2. Vault by Broderick 3. When in Doubt - Destroy! by Temple 4. Sixth Sense by Coney 5. Are You There Mr. Jones? by Lem 6. Swords For A Guide by Bulmer 7. Consumer Report by Harding
Story rankings from issue 1, my main surprise is seeing the fascinating Lem below the woeful Coney, but each to their own.

Fantasy Review
Naked Woman from behind standing in front of a river filling from a pipe, raising her arms as a planet and its moon are seen in the sky.
Illustrated by Philip Harbottle

Ken Slater reviews Timepiece by Brian N. Ball (which he did not enjoy) and Harry Harrison’s Deathworld 3 (which he did). We then have a new reviewer, Kathryn Buckley, covering Stand on Zanzibar in a highly complementary manner. Perhaps trying to balance coverage of the New Wave along with the Good Old Stuff?

Best of Both Worlds?
Two spacesuited figures setup a large device whilst a futuristic city glows in the distance.
Additional illustration by Eddie Jones

In both my SF and my music, I am generally drawn towards the future facing experimental works, preferring Colosseum and Chip Delany over The Band and Edgar Rice Burroughs. But I also appreciate both have their advantages and place.

Doing a Sunday afternoon of gardening is wonderful accompanied by some Neil Young or Townes van Zandt. Just as an adventurous tale of daring-do might not be as accomplished as one of Ballard’s cut up stories, it can be a more fun and easy read.

So, whilst neither is perfect, with both the above publications showing successes and failures, I like to think that science fiction is big enough to have both our swashes buckled and our minds expanded.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 12, 1969] Leadership initiatives (December 1969 Galaxy)

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Tune in, starting November 13, for twelve days of Apollo 12 coverage!

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

Happy Anniversary

A year ago, Richard Milhouse Nixon won the Presidency in part on his "secret plan" to get us out of Vietnam.  A few months into his term, besieged by increasingly strident demands for progress, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger urged patience.  If things weren't resolved by November, then we would have cause to complain.

Last week, President Nixon revealed his plan for "Vietnamization" in a prime time television address.  It called for eventual turning over of the reins of war to the South Vietnamese.  However, the President refused to set a timetable for this turnover, saying that such would lead to undue Communist advantage.  Nixon suggested that America might step down its bombing by, say, 20%, and see if the North Vietnamese match our draw-down, but the Paris peace talks are dead, and the U.S. would stay the course as long as was necessary.

The President concluded by asserting that the "silent majority" of Americans was behind his plan, and that no foreign power could defeat the United States: defeat could only come from within.

Well, you can imagine that this statement, tantamount to a continuation of President Johnson's pre-1968 policies, did not sit well with a lot of folks, including a host of Congressmen.  The unquiet minority also plans to make their voices heard in a second Moratorium march in a few days.  We'll see if it has more impact than the last one.

In Other News

If Nixon's address was something of a disappointment, in contrast, the latest issue of Galaxy makes for consistently pleasant reading:


by Jack Gaughan and Phoebe Gaughan

Continue reading [November 12, 1969] Leadership initiatives (December 1969 Galaxy) →

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[November 8, 1969] Arabesques (December 1969 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

From Arabia to Japan

The collection of Middle Eastern folktales known in English as Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights is familiar to folks all over the world.  Case in point, as Rod Serling might say, is the recent Japanese animated film Senya Ichiya Monogatari, which is loosely based on the collection.


Japanese poster for the film.  I don't know if it will ever show up elsewhere.

I should point out that this is not a cartoon intended for children.  Like the work which inspired it, it contains considerable erotic material.  If it ever gets released in the USA, it might get the infamous X rating.

I bring this up because the latest issue of Fantastic contains the first part of a new novel inspired by the same source as the film.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck

As is often the case lately, the cover is (ahem) borrowed from a German publication.


Die Herrscher der Nacht (The Ruler of the Night) is the title of the German translation of Jack Williamson's 1948 novel Darker Than You Think.

Editorial, by Ted White

The editor begins by telling us how the magazine's lead serial (see below) fell into his hands.  Long story short, it failed to find a publisher, got reviewed in a fanzine, Ted White read it and liked it.  He then goes on to relate the big changes in Fantastic and its sister publication Amazing.  My esteemed colleague John Boston has already discussed this in detail, so let me give you the Reader's Digest version.  Higher price, more words, only one reprint per issue.  Nuff said.

No rating.

Hasan (Part One of Two), by Piers Anthony


Illustrations by Jeff Jones.

More than half the magazine consists of the first installment of this Arabian Nights fantasy adventure. 

Hasan is a rather naive and foolish young man, living in Arabia around the year 800 or so.  He meets a Persian alchemist who demonstrates how to turn copper into gold.  His mother warns him not to trust this fire-worshipping infidel, but Hasan's greed overcomes what little common sense he possesses.

The wicked Persian kidnaps him and takes him on an ocean journey to the island of Serendip. (We call it Ceylon nowadays—the magazine provides a helpful map).

Despite this, Hasan still trusts the alchemist enough to perform the dangerous task of being carried to the top of a mountain by a roc, in order to gather the stuff needed to transform copper into gold.  The poor sap doesn't realize that the Persian intends to leave him stranded on the peak, where he'll starve to death.

Suffice to say that, with a lot of dumb luck, Hasan makes his way to an isolated palace inhabited by seven beautiful sisters, who adopt him as their brother.  He goes on to witness birds change into even more beautiful women, one of whom he is determined to have for his bride.  (She has little say in the matter.)


Seeing her naked while she is bathing makes him fall madly in love.

Without giving away too much, let's just say that the further adventures of Hasan and the bird woman will appear in the next issue.

The author appears to be well acquainted with One Thousand and One Nights, given his accompanying article on the subject (see below.) As far as I can tell, he captures the flavor of this kind of Arabian folktale in a convincing way.  Despite the fact that the hero is kind of a dope, and that the female characters (except Hasan's long-suffering mother) mostly exist to be alluringly beautiful, this half of the novel makes for light, entertaining reading.

Three stars.

Morality, by Thomas N. Scortia


Illustration by Bruce Jones.

It's obvious from the start that this is a science fiction version of the myth of the Minotaur, although the author doesn't make this explicit until the end.  The legendary monster is an alien stranded on Earth, forced to serve an ambitious king while trying to contact his own kind.

There's not much more to this story than its retelling of the old tale.  It plays out just as you'd expect.

Two stars.

Would You? by James H. Schmitz

A wealthy fellow invites an equally rich acquaintance to make use of a magic chair.  It seems that it has the ability to allow the person seated in it to change the past. 

I hope I'm not revealing too much to state that neither man chooses to alter his past, preferring to leave well enough alone.  That seems to be the point of the story.  A tale of fantasy in which an enchanted object is not used is unusual, I suppose, if not fully satisfying.

Two stars.

Magic Show, by Alan E. Nourse

A couple of guys watch a magic show at a cheap carnival.  One of them heckles the magician, who invites him to take part in his greatest feat.

You can probably see where this is going.  No surprises in the plot.  I have to wonder why a real, powerful magician works at a lousy little carnival.

Two stars.

X: Yes, by Thomas M. Disch

An unspecified referendum always appears on the ballot in every election.  Everybody knows that the proper thing to do is vote No.  A woman chooses to vote Yes, just as children vote Yes during their mock elections.

Can you tell that this is an odd little story?  I'm not sure what the author is getting at, unless it's something about conformity and rebellion.  At least it's not a simple, predictable plot.  Food for thought, I guess.

Three stars.

Big Man, by Ross Rocklynne

The April 1941 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this wild yarn.


Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

I can't argue with the accuracy of the title.  A gigantic man — he's said to be one or two miles tall — walks through the Atlantic Ocean to Washington, D. C.  The behemoth is under the control of a Mad Scientist, who intends to take over the United States government and run things the way he thinks they should be run.


Illustration by Robert Fuqua.

It's up to a heroic pilot and his girlfriend (who, in an incredible coincidence, turns out to be the sister of the young fellow who was transformed into the giant) to defeat the Mad Scientist and end the reign of terror of the Big Man.

Boy, this is a goofy story.  I think the author saw King Kong too many times.  The premise is, of course, absurd, and it's treated in the corniest pulp fiction manner imaginable.

One star.

Alf Laylah Wa Laylah — A Essay on The Arabian Nights, by Piers Anthony

As part of the magazine's Fantasy Fandom column, this article is reprinted from the fanzine Niekas.  It discusses One Thousand and One Nights in detail, comparing English translations and offering examples of the kinds of tales it contains.  Copious footnotes, some serious and some playful.  The author clearly knows his subject.

Three stars.

Fantasy Books by Fritz Leiber and Fred Lerner

Leiber quickly gives a positive review of Captive Universe by Harry Harrison, praises Walker and Company for reprinting science fiction classics in handsome hardcover editions, defends the use of strong language in Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad, gives thumbs up to A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle, and talks about Eric R. Eddison's fantasy novels.  He ends this rapid-fire essay by comparing the way that Heinlein, Spinrad, and Eddison describe a woman's breasts.  (The latter excerpt is a really wild bit of outrageously purple prose.)

Lerner, in an article reprinted from the fanzine Akos, talks about two nonfiction books about J. R. R. Tolkien.  He dismisses Understanding Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings by William Ready as poorly written and overly interpretive, and praises Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings by Lin Carter for its discussion of epic fantasy in general.

No rating.

… According to You, by various

The letters from readers offer both praise and criticism.  One of the editor's replies reveals that sales of the magazine went down when Cele Goldsmith was in charge, even though the quality of fiction improved.  I hope that's not a bad omen for the way Ted White is taking the publication.

No rating.

Worthy of Scheherazade?

Not a great issue, although Anthony's novel and related essay are well worth reading.  The new stuff is so-so and the reprint is laughably poor.  It might be better to watch an old movie instead.




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