Category Archives: Serial

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

[June 12, 1970] Something Good! and Nothing Terrible (July 1970 Amazing)

3 Comments


by John Boston

The July Amazing is fronted by John Pederson, Jr.’s second cover, an agreeable Martian-ish scene, reminiscent of nothing so much as . . . Johnny Bruck on a good day.  So maybe the new commitment to domestic artists isn’t quite the boon I thought it was.  We’ll see.

Cover for Amazing magazine, July 1970. The illustration shows a small space colony on a desert planet. In the foreground, two men in astronaut suits ride a futuristic car. Text on the cover announces stories by Piers Anthony, Bob Shaw, and Robert Silverberg.
by John Pederson, Jr.

The non-fiction this month is a bit less gripping than usual.  White’s editorial recounts his unsatisfactory encounter with a woman who wanted to write an article about SF fandom, but apparently never did (or it never got published).  He then segues to a discussion of Dr. Frederic Wertham and his campaign against comic books which culminated in his book The Seduction of the Innocent.  Then, finally, to the point: Wertham is now saying he too will write about SF fandom and White doesn’t think it will be any good.  He’s probably right, but until we see what Wertham produces, discussing it is a little pointless. 

The letter column remains contentious but is getting a little repetitive; at this point it’s hard for anyone to say anything new about New Wave vs. Old Farts, and no more inviting topic has emerged.  The fanzine reviews are as usual, and the book reviews . . . are missing, damn it!  To my taste they have been about the liveliest part of the magazine.  I hope the lapse is momentary.

But speaking of SF fandom, I’ll take this lack of much to talk about as an occasion to mention something fairly striking about the magazine’s contents under Ted White’s editorship: there is an unusually large representation of Fans Turned Pro, authors who have—like White—been heavily involved in organized SF fandom.  This issue features Bob Shaw, a leading light of Irish fandom and heavy contributor to the celebrated fanzines Slant and Hyphen, who later won two Hugo Awards as best fanwriter among other distinctions; he also had a story in the second (7/69) White-edited issue.  Greg Benford (once a co-editor with White of the also-celebrated fanzine Void) has one of his co-authored “Science in Science Fiction” articles (the fifth) in this issue, and three stories to boot in White’s eight issues, as well as regular appearances in the book review column.  Robert Silverberg, who published a slightly earlier well-known fanzine Spaceship, supplied an impressive serial novel and has a story in this issue.  Terry Carr, another renowned fan editor, had a story in the last issue.  Alexei Panshin is not to my knowledge a fan publisher but has won the Best Fan Writer Hugo for his prolific contributions to others’ fanzines.  Harlan Ellison (short story in 9/69 issue) published the legendary Dimensions in the 1950s.  Joe L. Hensley (same) is a member of First Fandom and published a fanzine in the 1940s. 

And what does it all mean?  The floor is open for sober analysis and wild speculation.

Continue reading [June 12, 1970] Something Good! and Nothing Terrible (July 1970 Amazing) →

3 Comments Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 10, 1970] I will fear I Will Fear No Evil (July 1970 Galaxy)

9 Comments

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

Tired of it all

Antiwar protesting isn't just for civilians anymore.

About 25 junior officers, mostly Navy personnel based in Washington, have formed the "Concerned Officers Movement".  Created in response to the growing disillusionment with the Indochina war, its purpose is (per the premiere issue of its newsletter) to "serve notice to the military and the nation that the officer corps is not part of the silent majority, that it is not going to let its thought be fashioned by the Pentagon."

Reportedly, C.O.M. came about because an officer participated as a marshal at the November 15, 1969 Moratorium anti-Vietnam War march, got featured in the Washington Post, and later received an unsatisfactory notation for loyalty in his fitness report.  The newsletter and movement are how other officers rallied in his support.

Copy of a Concerned Officers Movement newsletter dated April, 1970.

Because C.O.M. work is being done off duty and uses non-government materials, it is a completely lawful dissent.  According to Lt. j.g. Phil Lehman, one of the group's leaders, there has been no harassment from on high as yet.

We'll see how long this remains the case.

Really tired of it all

After reading this month's issue of Galaxy, I'm about ready to start my own Concerned Travelers Movement.  Truly, what a stinker.  Read on and see why:

Cover of July 1970's Galaxy Science Fiction, featuring a red cover depicting the bald head of a man held by electrodes floating in the background while a short haired woman stands in front. The cover depicts the titles, 'Robert A. Heinlein's Latest and Greatest Novel I WILL FEAR NO EVIL THE ALL-AT ONCE-MAN R.A. Lafferty THE THROWBACKS Robert Silverberg
cover by Jack Gaughan

Continue reading [June 10, 1970] I will fear I Will Fear No Evil (July 1970 Galaxy) →

9 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 4, 1970] Something old, something new (July-August 1970 IF)

6 Comments

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

Voyages into the known

Readers over 30 may remember Thor Heyerdahl and his Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947. He hoped to prove that the Pacific islands had been reached from South America before Polynesians got there from the west. The balsa log raft he built eventually ran aground in the Tuamotu archipelago in French Polynesia, demonstrating that such a voyage was at least possible. However, most archaeologists and anthropologists consider it far more likely that any contact between Polynesia and the Americas (there is some highly inconclusive evidence) was initiated by the Polynesian people, who have a proven track record of crossing vast distances into the unknown.

In any case, Heyerdahl has inspired a number of imitators hoping to travel farther, including some attempts to travel west to east. On May 29th, Spanish sailor Vital Alsar Ramirez started his second attempt to sail from Ecuador to Australia. The first attempt in 1966 failed after 143 days when the raft was rendered no longer seaworthy by teredo worms.

The new raft, dubbed La Balsa, has one major improvement over the Kon-Tiki: a moving keelboard. This will allow the raft to be steered toward more favorable currents, where Kon-Tiki could only drift with assistance from the simple square sail. Such keelboards are known to Ecuadoran natives and so are a perfectly reasonable addition. Best of luck to the four men aboard.

A black and white photo of a wooden raft on the water against a foggy background.  It has a square sail on a tall mast near the center.  On the left, a person is standing holding a line attached to the sail.  Under the sail three people are sitting.  To the right of the mast there is a small shelter with a grass roof, containing boxes and barrels. La Balsa puts to sea.

Speaking of Thor Heyerdahl, his current interest is in demonstrating that ancient Egyptians could have reached the Americas in reed boats. His first attempt last year aboard the Ra got within about 100 miles of the islands of the Caribbean before it became so waterlogged it began to break apart. Now he’s giving it another go.

The Ra II features a tether to keep the stern high, which should help keep the boat from suffering the fate of its predecessor. This is something the original ought to have had; such tethers are clearly visible in ancient Egyptian depictions of reed boats. The crew also plan to take marine samples along the way to study ocean pollution. The Ra II set out from Morocco on May 17th.

Of course, as with the Kon-Tiki, proving that such a voyage could have been made won’t prove that it was. The Egyptians were never great sailors, generally contracting ocean navigation out to more maritime cultures of the eastern Mediterranean. Still, best of luck to Heyerdahl and his crew as well.

A color photograph of a modern reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian reed boat on the water, against a clear blue sky.  It has a black sail at the prow supported by a tall mast made up of two timbers leaned together in a triangle.Oars are sticking out horizontally from the main deck. One person is standing at the prow and another at the stern, where a rudder extends into the water.  Two people are standing on the upper deck near one of the mast timbers. The Ra II under way. Note the tether keeping the stern high.

Polishing the family silver

Science fiction has a lot of tried and true plots, some better than others. But good writing can occasionally make a hackneyed, sub-par plot something better, and bad writing can turn an intriguing concept into a slog. Fortunately, this month’s IF has a lot more of the former.

The front cover of Worlds of If science fiction magazine. The magazine title is in the upper left corner, and on the lower left the featured pieces are listed with titles in black and authors in red: Second-hand Stonehenge, by Ernest Taves; Time Piece, by Joe Haldeman; and The Fifth Planet, by Larry Eisenberg.  THe cover illustration is a painting of a white man's face shown half in shadow against an abstract background. The left of the background is blank white, extending in swirls into an abstract helmet surrounding the man's face.  A headset microphone extends down the right side of his face to his mouth. The right of the background is bright red with jagged yellow and black accents, which are reflected in the left side of the helmet. In front of the man's face tiny oval spaceships fly upward in an arc, surrounded by tiny blue planets and white stars, at which the man gazes intently.Suggested by “Time Piece”. Art by Gaughan

Continue reading [June 4, 1970] Something old, something new (July-August 1970 IF) →

6 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 31, 1970] A Compulsion to read (June 1970 Analog)

3 Comments

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

Monster-eyed bug

Last week, NASA released the news that the Apollo 12 astronauts brought back a fourth astronaut at the end of their flight last November.  A common human germ, Streptococcus mitis to be exact, was found to have hitched a ride back with Surveyor 3's camera, after surviving some 32 months in the harsh environment of the lunar surface.

Streptococcus mitis under a microscope.
Streptococcus mitis (c) Ansel Oommen

Frederick J. Mitchell, a scientist at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, stated that it was "notable, but not unexpected" that a bacterium might make and survive the trip to the Moon as a stowaway on a terrestrial spacecraft.  Thanks to insufficient clean-room procedures, it was probably deposited on Surveyor's camera when the camera's shroud was removed for repairs and then replaced, and then launched with the soft-lander in 1967.  The high vacuum of space actually freeze-dried the bug, allowing it to remain viable indefinitely. 

The Surveyor 3 camera on a black background.
the Surveyor 3 camera

Given that we were unable to prevent terrestrial life forms from contaminating our nearest celestial companion, one has to wonder if we will taint Mars or Venus when we launch probes to the surfaces of those planets in the next decade.  It's a bit like Schrödinger's equations—just as you affect what you see by looking at it, you can't investigate a planet without risking an alteration of said planet.  It may well be that humans will land on Mars in the 1980s to find icy ponds rimed with Earth bacteria.

It's enough to make you want to leave well enough alone!

Bug-eyed caterpillars

Cover of analog Science Fiction, June 1970 featuring a futuristic barge on a craggy ocean shore. The featured title is 'STAR LIGHT' by Hal Clement
by Kelly Freas

On the other hand, this month's Analog is quite good, and well worth your time.  Let's take a look:

Continue reading [May 31, 1970] A Compulsion to read (June 1970 Analog) →

3 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 16, 1970) The Tocsin and The Believing Child (June 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

2 Comments

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

Rime of the Recent Mariner

I always cast about the news for tidbits to head my articles.  After all, when people read my writings, say, a half-century hence, I want them to be appreciated in the context in which they were created.  Creations, and critique of those creations, cannot stand in isolation (or so I believe).

But, wow, how many times can I talk about the latest protest/riot (six killed in Atlanta last week), or Cambodia (Admiral Moorer recently assured us that the reason we can't destroy the mobile NVA base is…because it's mobile; but we did liberate 387 tons of ammunition, 125 tons of prophylactics, and 83 tons of Communist finger puppets so the Search & Destroy mission was absolutely a success), or the Warm War going on in the Middle East (2 Egyptian Mig-21s shot down the other day, 2 Syrian Mig-17s the day before, but the Israelis absolutely did not lose an F-4 over Lebanon) before it all sounds the same?  Even Governor Reagan's latest escapades into cost effectiveness and court stacking are old hat.

Photograph of a middle-aged white man in a military uniform.
This iteration of Bull Wright instills less confidence than Dan Rowan's…

To heck with it.  Today, I'm going to stick with news in my bailiwick, and nifty news to boot.

You folks surely remember Mariners 6 and 7, twin probes sent past Mars last year, returning unprecedented information and photos from The Red Planet.  Well, even now, both probes are contributing to science, long past their original mission.

JPL astronomer Dr. John D. Anderson and Cal Tech astronomer Dr. Duane O. Muhleman are using the two spacecraft to test the validity of Einstein's theory of relativity.  Per Einstein, the velocity of light slows in the presence of a gravitational field.  If that's the case, then the signals from the Mariners, as they pass the Sun, should decrease—slightly, but measurably. 

To measure this, the two scientists had to wait until Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 passed behind the Sun with respect to the Earth.  For the former, this happened on April 30; for the latter, May 10.  The precise distance-measuring system the two scientisits built in the Mohave Desert should register a slow-up of 200 millionths of a second in the spacecrafts' round trip signal.

This confirmation, should it be reported, will help put paid efforts by other scientists who say that Einstein's theories are wrong or inaccurate, by as much as 7% according to Princeton's Dr. Robert H. Dicke, who needs that to be the case for his theory of Mercury's curious orbital eccentricities.

Black-and-white photograph of a house-sized parabolic antenna. Text below the image says: The Mars Station of the Deep Space Network, with two-hundred-and-ten-foot reflector, high-power transmitter, and quick-change tri-cone feed, tracks Mariner six and Mariner seven through superior conjunction, beyond the Sun, at ranges up to two hundred and forty million miles.

In other Mariner news, New Mexico State Univ. astronomer and Mariner project scientist Bradford A. Smith has some neato news about Phobos, the larger of Mars' moons.  Mariner 7 snapped a picture of the little rock at a distance of 86,000 miles.  JPL photo-enhancement techniques indicated that Phobos was nonspherical and was larger and had a darker surface than previously thought.  It's just 11.2 by 13.7 miles in dimension, elongated along the orbital plane.  Its average visual geometric albedo is just 0.065, lower than that known for any other body in the solar system.

With its weird shape and composition, all signs point to Phobos not being a sister or daughter of its parent planet, but rather, probably a captured asteroid.

Very blurry black-and-white photograph of the Martian moon Phobos, visible only as a tiny smudge of irregular shape against a gray background.

The issue at hand

In a happy, elevated mood, now let us turn to the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction—after all, it doesn't do to review stories on an empty soul.

Cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for June 1970, announcing stories by Isaac Asimov, Ron Goulart, D. F. Jones, Harry Harrison, and Zenna Henderson. The illustration shows a man in a diving suit near a rift in the ocean floor.
cover by Jack Gaughan illustrating

Continue reading [May 16, 1970) The Tocsin and The Believing Child (June 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction) →

2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 8, 1970] Tower of Glass (June 1970 Galaxy)

2 Comments

Be sure to tune in tonight at 7PM Pacific for a terrific Science Fiction Theater!

a panel showing the words IN COLOR, with each letter in a different color.

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

It shouldn't happen here (or anywhere)

It was a scene out of Saigon or Prague.  It shouldn't be happening in Middle America.  On May 4, Ohio National Guardsmen, shot four Kent State students dead, wounding ten more.  Here's what we know:

On April 30, President Nixon announced that U.S. troops had entered Cambodia, expanding the war in Southeast Asia.  This sparked mass May Day protests across the country.  After the Kent State ROTC building was burned down over the weekend, Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom asked Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes to dispatch the National Guard to the campus.

Clashes between students and law enforcement escalated, with several students reportedly being stabbed by guardsman bayonets.  Calls for the Guard troops to be recalled were refused.  This set the stage for Monday's tragedy.

It is not certain what triggered the firing.  Eyewitnesses said about 600 protestors surrounded a company of 100 Guardsmen and began pelting them with rocks and hunks of concrete.  A single shot rang out, whether from a guardsman's rifle or someone else's firearm, is unknown.  Without a warning, the guardsmen then began a three second volley, half of them pointing their guns into the air, the other aiming levelly—into the milling crowd of boys and girls.

Ohio National Guard members move toward students at Kent State University

Amont the dead were William K. Schroder, 19, a sophomore from Lorain, Ohio; Jeffery Miller, 19, a freshman from Plainview, New York; Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, a junior from Youngstown, Ohio; and Allison Krause, a 19-year-old freshman from Pittsburgh.  John Cleary, 19, a freshman from Scotia, New York; Dean Kahler, a 20-year-old freshman from East Canton, Ohio; and Joseph Lewis, just 18, from Massillon, Ohio, were reported in critical condition at Robinson Memorial Hospital in nearby Ravenna.  They were not all protestors—indeed, Miss Krause had just telephoned her parents to express disgust at the demonstration. 

A wave of new protests is wracking the country, now with fresh ammunition.  And it is ammunition that is at the center of this outrage, for the Guard did not use tear gas, rubber bullets, or blanks.  Never mind if they should have been on the campus at all.  At the very least, their rules of engagement should not have incurred collateral deaths on innocent students.

There are just two positive consequences of this tragedy.  The first is that if the goal of calling in the Guard was to cow protestors, it has backfired spectacularly.  The second is that, on May 5, President Nixon announced that American troops would be withdrawn from Cambodia in seven weeks.  How much this decision is in reaction to the demonstrations and how much is due to the heavier-than-expected resistance of the Communists is presently unknown.

I suppose there's one more result—I've been radicalized, and I plan to start marching.  It's something I've always supported in the abstract, but observed a modicum of restraint, recalling Tom Lehrer's sentiment, "It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against – like peace, and justice, and brotherhood, and so on."

But now we see that the audience doesn't all agree, and some of them shoot.  I know I'm in the over-30 untrustworthy set, but you'll see my grizzled mug in among the protestors in the weeks to come.

Congratulations, Dick—you managed something Lyndon couldn't.

Shards

And so I plunge into fiction, hoping for a relief from the growing madness.  I am greeted with more madness: each of the stories in The latest issue of Galaxy is broken into pieces, with their ends crammed into the latter half of the magazine, as if written like some strange BASIC program with too many GOTO commands.  Nevertheless, it's the stories that count.  How are they?

Picture of a multi-armed spacecraft sliding into a disc of blackness in front of the Moon
cover by Jack Gaughan illustrating The Moon of Thin Reality

Continue reading [May 8, 1970] Tower of Glass (June 1970 Galaxy) →

2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 30, 1970] Praise for the Resident Witch (May 1970 Analog)

2 Comments

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

With the inflation scare going away, national protest attendance down to the tens of thousands, and a Supreme Court on its way to being filled, not to mention a lull in space news, I can finally turn my attention where it matters: this month's science fiction magazines!

I'm always grateful when Analog turns in a decent issue to round out the month, and this month's edition has some real bright spots.

The cover of Analog; a color image, showing a Viking riding horseback through a forest. Behind him rises a ruin, and in the sky above is outlined the faces of a woman, and a wolf.
by Kelly Freas, illustrating "But Mainly by Cunning"

Continue reading [April 30, 1970] Praise for the Resident Witch (May 1970 Analog) →

2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 10, 1970] A Style in Treason (May 1970 Galaxy)

2 Comments

[Be sure to tune in tonight at 7PM PDT for Science Fiction Theater!  It's Nimoytacular—plus Apollo 13 pre-launch coverage!]

A color photograph of Leonard Nimoy and a white woman standing together in front of a curtain.  He is looking down and to the right of the frame and the woman's eyes are closed as she leans on his shoulder.

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

Backlash in D.C.

50,000 people marched on Washington last week protesting the course of the Vietnam War.  Sure, you think, another day ending in "y", right?

Except these kooks were protesting for the war!

A black and white photograph of a pro-war protest outdoors in Washington DC.  Government buildings are in the background.  In the foreground a group of white women are holding up a long banner which reads Let's Demand Victory in Vietnam. The woman at the center of the banner is holding two American flags crossed over her chest.  Behind them a crowd of people are holding up signs.  The only one legible reads In God We Trust.
Photo taken by Tom Norpell

Organized by a fundamentalist coalition, religious fervor dominated the gathering.  That said, there were plenty of Birchers and Nazis in attendance, too, making this a truly ecumenical demonstration.

A black and white photograph of white men marching down a city street while carrying banners on long poles.  At the top of each pole is a symbol of a lightning bolt inside a circle.  Beneath that a sign reads NSRP, the acronym for the National States Rights Party.  The banner extending down from the sign also has the circle-and-lightning-bolt motif, with God Bless America written above and below it. A crowd of onlookers is in the background.
Photo taken by Tom Norpell

There were even counter-counter protestors.

A black and white photograph of a white man with chin length dark hair standing outdoors.  He is wearing a knit cap and leather jacket and smoking a cigarette. He has his hands in his pockets and is frowning.  Over his jacket he is wearing a pillowcase with arm and head holes cut in the seams.  On it is painted Thou Shalt Not Kill. -God.  The center of the O in Not has a button attached to it showing a hand making a peace sign. A woman in an overcoat and rain hood is standing behind him.
Photo taken by Tom Norpell

Which poses the question: can Nixon still call them a "silent" majority?

A black and white photograph from a newspaper showing more of the people attending the pro-war protest.  In the center front is a man in a wheelchair holding an Merican flag, with another man standing behind him guiding the chair.  A woman to his left is holding a sign with multiple slogans pasted on it, including Stand Up for America and Wallace 72. In the background other protesters are carrying American flags as well as other signs, mostly reading In God We Trust or Victory in Vietnam. The newspaper caption reads: March for Victory: Some of the estimated 50,000 people who took part in the parade advocating victory in Vietnam as they assembled in Washington yesterday.

Calm after the storm

There's really nothing to protest in the latest issue of Galaxy, which offers, in the main, a pleasant reading experience.

A color photograph of the cover of the May 1970 edition of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine Along the left side are listed stories by David Gerrold, James Blish, Avram Davidson, and Arthur C. Clarke.  The image shows a blue and black blob-like shape with multiple eye-like orbs embedded in it, against a yellow background.  Other orbs extend upwards from the blob, attached by black threads.  Parts of the blob seem to have been pulled up like pieces of dough around these upper orbs. The upper orbs have, from left to right, a green-cast image of half of a man's face (the other half is in shadow); A red-cast image of a man standing and looking outward; and a star or galaxy against a backdrop of outer space.
by Jack Gaughan for A Style in Treason

Continue reading [April 10, 1970] A Style in Treason (May 1970 Galaxy) →

2 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

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

3 Comments

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

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

Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye

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

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

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

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

Continue reading [April 6, 1970] Uncovered (May 1970 Amazing) →

3 Comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

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

Leave a comment

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

Counting coups

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is man

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

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

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

No comments Leave A Comment