The universe is based on a host of magic numbers. Without them, the cosmos would be entirely different and probably uninhabitable. Some of these "constants" are familiar to the layman, Pi perhaps being the most so. Engineers are familiar with electron-Volts and atomic masses. Chemists know Avogadro's number, the relationship between atomic mass and metric mass. Mathematicians know e.
e is a truly fascinating number. Roughly equal to 2.71828, it is the fundament of exponential growth. For example, if you have a $1 compounded annually at 100% interest, at the end of a year you'll have $2. If you have $1 compounded monthly at 100% interest, at the end of the year you'll have $2.62. If you have $1 compounded continuously (i.e. over an infinite number of instants), you will have $2.71828 at the end of the year.
In calculus, if you integrate the function e to the x power, you get… e to the x power! Conversely, of course, the derivative of e to the x is e to the x. That means that e to the x is the one function whose rate of change is the same as its position is the same as its acceleration.
What does this have to do with Analog Science Fiction, particularly this latest issue?
by Kelly Freas
Well, when you have the same editor for 30 years, and he hires the same writers every issue, and he has a rigid editorial policy that eschews innovation and prioritizes certain pseudo-scientific fetishes, you end up with a certain kind of consistency. Not necessarily a desirable consistency, but consistency nevertheless. Read on, and you'll see what I mean.
You know you're in trouble when Chris Anvil gets the cover. Actually, this continuan of the saga of Captain Roberts and his crew of two isn't so bad. Previous installments had the trio serendipitously developing a mind-control ray and using it to wrest a planet from a despotic computer. Then the three posed as nobility to sway said planet further. It was all very glib and distasteful, and I didn't like it.
This story spends two thirds of its length rehashing the events of those stories for new readers and then bringing the trio back, making it a quartet (with Bergen from a story in the December 1967 issue), and unleashing them on a new problem. A somewhat primitive planet is fractured into more than a dozen petty kingdoms, and the Interstellar Patrol needs a majority of them to agree in order to establish a base. In the last third of Royal Road, we get the solution to this conundrum. It mostly involves creating an economic catastrophe that only kingdoms favorable to the Imperial Patrol are equipped to address, thus putting these kingdoms on top. Anvil does note that the gambit could have killed millions, so at least things aren't quite so glib as before.
At least now the quartet of Captain Roberts has been transformed into a sort of Retief series. Anything's an improvement. Anyway, I didn't hate it. A low three stars, I guess.
After the vastly superior alien federation shows up on Earth, a sociologist is brought back to see what he assumes will be their advanced technology. Instead, it turns out that humans have been quite a bit more successful than the ee-tees, at least in one vital field.
A Twilight Zone episode writ small, but inoffensive. Three stars.
Kent is a person with a literal split personality. His left half is under the control of a silent partner, dubbed "Pard", while Kent, nominally the "dominant" personality, runs the right half. Together, they lead a pleasant life as an extremely successful concert pianist. That is until Pard gets them both tangled up in a spy conspiracy that threatens not just the world…but themselves!
I liked the story's handling of mental handicaps, and it's a pleasant piece overall. Three stars, but the highest three stars in the issue.
It's RIGHT Over Your Nose!, by Ben Bova
by Kelly Freas
In this science-ish article, Bova suggests that quasars, highly red-shifted quasi-stellar radio sources, may in fact be Bussard ramjets run by aliens. Thus, rather than being natural phenomena of tremendous power far outside the galaxy, they are artificial phenomena of middlin' power within.
I tend to prefer natural over artificial solutions to problems. Plus, why is every star-drive in the galaxy going away from us?
Still, it's readable, if breathless. Three stars.
The Mind Reader, by Rob Chilson
by Leo Summers
Robot mini-planes prove to be decisive in the next Southeast Asian war. This story is told mostly in dialogue between two people in a sort of "As you know, Bob…" fashion.
The concept is interesting and unique. The story is not compellingly told. Two stars.
Finally, we have the next installment in Satan's World, which started last month. The crew of Muddlin' Through was split up when David Falkayn was abducted by Serendpity Inc., a galactic information clearing house. This provoked Polesotechnic League magnate Nicholas Van Rijn to take a personal hand in things, sending Adzel the saurian centaur to retrieve the poor lad.
Turns out Falkayn (predictably) had been brainwashed. It also turns out that Serendipity is working with, perhaps in the thrall of, a race of mysterious aliens known as the Elders. The ulterior motive of this ostensibly neutral organization suggests some new power may be planning some kind of galactic conquest.
Meanwhile, Chee Lan the foul-mouthed Cynthian and Falkayn head to the world Serendipity told him about in part one–the frozen world in a cometary orbit that is closing in on its star, Beta Crucis. This will cause its cryosphere to melt, revealing a mother-lode of precious metals. But Van Rijn's team isn't the only one interested in the world, aptly dubbed "Satan". Twenty UFOs have just dropped out of hyperspace in the vicinity, and they don't look friendly…
Anderson has a lot of tics I don't like, particularly his drawing of characters as…well, assemblages of tics. Adzel is a placid Buddhist, Falkayn is a cipher, Chee Lan is a salty Little Old Lady from Pasadena, and Van Rijn is a lustier, more Dutch version of Raymond Burr's Ironside.
The author also devotes lots of ink to the physical descriptions of his astronomical creations, which I'm sure are fascinating to some, but perhaps are most gratifying for the three cents a word they earn him.
That said, just as I start to get bored, I find myself turning the page and reading on. So, another three star segment.
Less than Three
So, just like the constant "e", Analog clocks in at just under three. Indeed, that's how I feel about the magazine as a whole lately. Sure, there are better issues than others, and sure, there are some standout pieces, but for the most part, I find myself doing anything–cleaning the bathroom ceilings, cataloging my 45s, sorting stamps–rather than read Analog. Not that I hate the experience when I get to it. It simply doesn't give the thrill of anticipation that Galaxy still gives me after all of these years. Even F&SF, which hasn't been terrific since 1962, retains residual goodwill.
Of course, this month's Analog clocks in at 2.9 (rounding up 2.85), which is better than Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.6). But it's worse than Galaxy (3.1) and IF (3.3).
It was a really thin month for magazines, and out of the four that were published, the better-than-three-star stories would barely fill one of them. At least women wrote 11% of new fiction pieces, which is on the higher end lately.
Well, here's hoping that next month's Analog picks a different constant to ape, if it can. And let's hope it's not Planck's Constant!
Danger: Diabolik is the epitome of a comic book movie: it has a wild, often surreal plot. It features outlandish lead characters who could never exist in real life. It includes absurd twists and turns. It has a surreal visual style.
And yeah, Danger: Diabolik is an absolutely wild groovy gas of a film.
It seems appropriate for this to feel like a comic book movie because Danger: Diabolik is adapted from an Italian comic strip which has been running since 1962. One of my favorite comics zines, the Rocket's Blast Comicollector, recently ran an article that talks about how Diabolik is massively popular for its wild spy hijinks, its beautiful lead characters, and for its convenient small size that makes it easy to carry on a train or bus.
Diabolik was created by a woman named Angela Guissani, a former fashion model turned founder and editor at the Astorina publishing house. Astorina started with board and card games, but Guissani hit the jackpot when she invented an idea for a magazine that commuters to Milan could read on their way to work. With insipration from the French character Fantômas, Angela invented a masked criminal who always seemed to escape the law, an anti-hero who could be embraced by the average middle class reader.
And so Diabolik was born, chased by Inspector Ginko, monthly. Within seven issues, the comic was a smash hit as readers fell in love with the masked rogue who could do almost anything, wearing his black suit or special masks as he robbed from the rich, loved his beautiful girlfriends, and traveled between his own secret lairs. He and his women also dressed in gorgeous, of-the-moment fashion, which seemed to sparkle off the page.
All of which makes it a natural to adapt Danger Diabolik to the big screen, especially under the direction of Mario Bava, a man who loves to use color and fashion to tell a story.
And what a wild, wonderful, groovy story this is.
Diabolik the film is true to its comic book roots. Diabolik himself, played with gusto by John Philip Law, is a lover and a fighter. He's a man who clearly can't do anything halfway: during the film we watch him commit not one, not two, but three different heists–plus he blows up a tax building. After one of the heists we watch him make love to his partner Eva Kant, played by the glorious Marisa Mell, on a bed covered with $20 bills, and it's hard to tell if their orgasmic ecstacy is due to Diabolik's superhuman lovemaking or because the couple's lust for cash is satiated at last.
But any satiation only lasts until the next opportunity comes their way, and Diabolik soon is on the trail of the most valuable emerald necklace in the world, stored high in a tower. This set of scenes allows us to watch Diabolik scale high towers, smartly elude guards with diversions and sleight-of-hand, and bring home the jewels to a loving girlfriend.
Even that isn't enough, and in the film's wild and wonderful ending set piece, Diabolik goes from underwater scuba craft to train to steal a giant gold ingot worth more than many small countries which he can use for his own reasons which might involve more sexual relations or might involve building even more elaborate structures for him to live in.
Of course Diabolik is a zillionaire, so that means he has all kinds of gadgets even James Bond would envy – Ferraris and Maseratis of course, the aforementioned scuba craft, fog jets and knockout pills, white action suits and black action suits, groovy showers and an amazing Batcave-like place and wow really doesn't this all sound a little like a world even Bond's nemesis Blofeld would envy?
Honestly, it's all a bit over-the-top at times, like drinking three Italian droppio shots all at once. Diabolik is hyperkinetic, absurdly colorful, ridiculously dynamic and wonderfully silly. Of course it is; with famed British comedian Terry-Thomas as one of the Diabolik's nemesis, it's no suprise this film sometimes veers close to Batman style camp, and even goes over it.
Director Mario Bava does his best to keep this movie on some kind of even ground. He's one of the finest action/horror directors working right now in Italy. I had high praise for Bava's'65 flick Planet of the Vampires, which was spookier and weirder than it had any right to be, and Danger: Diabolik is sillier and wackier than it has any right to be.
The film seems saturated with primary colors, so saturated at times that it almost seems to glow from the brilliant color pallette. The sets, too, seem selected not for their utiliarian use but for their garish weirdness. The chairs and tables in this movie look great, and that's all we need as viewers to suspend our disbelief and glory in the near neon glow of Bava's wild creation.
I should mention that the music in this film is composed by the great Ennio Morricone, whose unprecedented score for 1967's grand epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was one of the greatest media events of last year. His work here doesn't match those unbelievable heights, but it's charming how, for instance, we get a little guitar riff every time Diabolik's car appears on screen, or how occassionally the soundtrack would riff on 1960s surf music.
The spy genre seems a little played out in 1968, with Sean Connery walking away from the Bond role after You Only Live Twice, the Matt Helm movies playing as NBC network movies, and TV shows Man from UNCLE and I Spy soon to be off the air. But if Danger: Diabolik is one of the last of a dying genre, spy films are going out with a kiss kiss bang bang.
I recently dived deep down into the abyss of Z-grade filmmaking with a pair of inept science fiction films. Grab your flashlight and come spelunking with me into the bottomless cavern of movie malfeasance.
This subterranean smorgasbord of silliness begins with stock footage of the casinos in Las Vegas. Two cops drive by and get a call to investigate a listening disturbance [sic]. That's a situation I don't recall ever appearing on Dragnet.
"Be sure not to help this guy, everybody! Just stand around and stare at him!"
In what is very clearly a set, and not Las Vegas, we see a fellow with his ear to the ground. He's raving about something that sounds like ants underground. Understandably, the cops drag him away as a kook, and he winds up in a mental hospital.
(By the way, the sanitarium has slot machines, for use by compulsive gamblers. At this point, I had to wonder if the film was a deliberate spoof. Unfortunately, I don't think so.)
Then they tell you what movie you're watching, in case you wandered into the theater by accident.
Our hero is a naval officer, recently assigned to lab duty on land after an experimental underwater habitat was destroyed in an earthquake. (Hint: It wasn't a natural disaster.) The sister of the listening guy happens to be his assistant. She tells him that her brother keeps asking to talk to him.
Peter Arne, as Arnold Kramer, in bathrobe, and Kerwin Mathews, as Commander Jonathan Shaw, in uniform. "Before I listen to your crazy story, allow me to remind you that I was the star of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which was a much better film."
It turns out that the guy isn't a paranoid nut, but a seismologist who has figured out that (wait for it) a Chinese general and his minions have dug their way under the Pacific Ocean and most of the way across the United States. The plan is to fill the tunnels with atomic bombs and, I don't know, rule the world, I guess. (We find out he's planted similar bombs under Peking, so he's working on his own, like any proper megalomaniac.)
A minion inside a Chinese digging machine. "Peek-a-boo!"
After a few skirmishes underground (excuse me, I mean a battle beneath the Earth), the good guys figure out that the general's supplies are coming from some place in the middle of the Pacific. They use their own digging machine to raid the place.
Carefully labeled, in case some swabby thinks it's a tank or something.
Along for the fun is our Good Girl, a Hawaiian geologist. She doesn't do much, really, except look pretty and fall into the arms of our hero.
"Gee, Miss Yung, you're beautiful without your glasses!" The character has a Chinese last name, but is played by Viviane Ventura, a British/Colombian actress. A small hint of casting problems to come.
The raid is a fiasco, with a bunch of Marines getting killed. Our hero gets captured by the bad guys.
Martin Benson as General Chan Lu. "Before I explain my sinister plan, in the proper manner of any James Bond villain, allow me to remind you that I had a small role in Goldfinger, which was a much better film."
At this point, our movie's Bad Girl enters. She hypnotizes our hero, using what is very obviously one of those little battery-operated handheld fans you use to cool yourself off on a hot day. She recites this bit of doggerel over and over, in order to wash the hero's brain thoroughly.
Red is green
Green is red
The East is sunrise
The West is dead
I don't think Robert Frost has any competition to worry about.
"I will control your mind through the power of a refreshing breeze!"
I should note that this character (Dr. Arnn) is played by Paula Li Shiu, a Chinese actress. All the other Chinese characters (except a few minor nonspeaking roles) are played by Occidentals. This kind of casting is embarrassing, but if Christopher Lee can play Fu Manchu, I guess anything goes.
The general in the tube gizmo he uses to descend to the underground tunnels. "The next wise guy who says 'Beam me up, Scotty' is going to get it!"
The bad guy has all kinds of supposedly Chinese stuff decorating his underground headquarters, just in case you forget what nationality he's supposed to be. He also has a pet hawk, just to show you how evil he is.
"The next wise guy who says 'This movie is for the birds' is going to get it!"
Will the good guys win? Oh, come on, you know the answer to that already.
Nothing like an atomic bomb for a happy ending.
Quality of film: Two stars.
Level of derisive amusement: Four stars.
All the Way Down to the Bottom
What happened to the word "The" and the hyphen between "Astro" and "Zombies"?
This cheapskate epic begins with a woman driving down the road. Get used to this kind of thing, because we'll have plenty of scenes that go on and on where people do ordinary things. Eventually, she winds up in her garage, where she's killed by a guy in a skull mask.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is an astro-zombie.
We then get our opening titles, oddly filmed over scenes of toy robots.
Nothing says quality like dime store special effects.
Cut to some science types and some government types talking in an office. Long and confusing story short, it seems there was a project to transmit thoughts from folks on Earth to brains in artificial bodies in spacecraft.
Government guy, played by Wendell Corey, looks concerned. He had a similar role in Agent For H.A.R.M.
It seems that one of the scientists working on the project got kicked out, and is now on his own. He's played by John Carradine, of course.
"You want me to play another Mad Scientist? How much does it pay?"
Naturally, Carradine has a hunchback for an assistant. Believe it or not, his name is Franchot.
"My parents could have named me 'Fritz' or 'Ygor,' but no . . ."
Franchot grabs a dead guy out of a car wreck and drags him back to the lab. If I've managed to follow the plot correctly, he wants to put a brain into his body and create another astro-zombie. Apparently, the previous one had a murder's brain and went on a killing rampage.
There's also a woman in a bikini strapped down on a table in the lab. She has nothing to do with the plot.
Meanwhile, foreign spies are after Carradine's secret. A lot of the running time is spent with the good guy spies and the bad guy spies fighting each other. The leader of the bad guys is played by the amazing Tura Satana, so memorable in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Tura and one of her minions.
I have to say something about Tura's appearance here. She wears tons of makeup, including gigantic false eyelashes. Her fingernails look like daggers. There's a special credit for her costume designer, who really did an interesting job.
Tura in pink. Is she auditioning for Star Trek?
No opportunity is lost to put her remarkable body on display.
A little something for the leg men in the audience.
Anyway, let me get back to the plot. We've got a couple of heroes, of a sort, as well as a heroine/potential victim.
Here they are, in a time-killing scene at a nightclub in which they watch a topless dancer covered in body paint. Is it really cricket for a guy to take a woman out to see a stripper?
They come up with a plan to have the heroine act as bait for the astro-zombie who's slaughtering women left and right.
"Uh, guys? I don't think that's such a good idea. And which one of you is supposed to be my boyfriend, anyway?"
Stuff happens. The funniest scene is when the astro-zombie runs out of energy, and has to hold a flashlight to his head in order to charge his photoelectric cells.
"Thanks, Eveready!"
Boy, this is a dreary little movie. Only the presence of Tura Satana makes it watchable.
One more cheesecake shot for the road.
Quality of film: One star.
Level of derisive amusement: Five stars.
Witchfinder General is a real game-changer not just for British horror but for horror films in general. This is a movie without monsters, ghosts, psychopathic killers or, even, witches (at least real ones). The terror comes from people’s belief in witches, and what that belief makes them do to other people, and, in making that change, this film is an artistic statement that transcends genre.
The story is set, as a clunky (and rather unnecessary, since the same information is conveyed in the first few scenes) voiceover at the start tells us, in 1645, the height of the English Civil War. It is ostensibly based on the life of a genuine historical figure of the time, Matthew Hopkins, the so-called “Witchfinder General”. He is a minor landowner who made his career travelling around Southeastern England identifying witches using bogus techniques and confessions extracted under duress. In fact, the story bears almost no resemblance at all to the known facts of Hopkins’ life, barring his name, that of his assistant Stearne (in real life their roles were reversed), the location (East Anglia) and the methods used to extract confessions from witches. This is a minor complaint, however—and might not even be a complaint, as the story the movie tells is possibly more disturbing than Hopkins’ actual biography.
The film’s main positive figure, at least at the outset, is Richard Marshall, a young Roundhead soldier engaged to Sarah Lowes, the niece of a small-town Church of England priest. Sarah’s uncle is accused of witchcraft by his neighbours (we never learn the specific reason for this, which chillingly suggests that it’s a fairly banal local conflict that escalates to horrific extremes) and Hopkins and Stearne arrive, arrest and torture the accused. Sarah, desperate to save her uncle, sleeps with Hopkins; when Stearne, envious and sadistic, rapes her, Hopkins discards his promises to Sarah and has her uncle executed. Richard, hearing of the tragedy but arriving too late to stop it, marries Sarah and swears vengeance on Hopkins. Matters escalate, leading eventually to a bloody confrontation which clearly brings home that violence only begets more violence, and that no one in this story is going to escape without severe damage.
The civil war backdrop is sketched in matter-of-factly. Perhaps surprisingly, given that subsequent British popular culture tends to dislike the Parliamentarians (in Sellars and Yeatman’s phrase, the Cavaliers were Wrong but Wromantic, and the Roundheads Right but Repulsive), the film resists the temptation to lay the blame for the witch hysteria at Cromwell’s door. Richard and his men are more or less positively portrayed, as is Cromwell himself when he turns up for a brief cameo after a successful military campaign. Some of the film’s power arguably lies in the fact that they, and Hopkins, are all ostensibly on the same side, and, while we see very little of the atrocities of the war itself, it is clearly part of what is fueling the communities’ drive to turn on their own. The viewer is also left to fill in some details themselves: for instance, the absence of a lord of the manor in the village where Sarah and her uncle live suggests he was a Royalist, possibly also hinting at why relationships have broken down between the villagers and why Sarah’s uncle is now accused of heresy.
In casting terms, Vincent Price is credibly chilling as Hopkins, largely because of the way he underplays his role: he talks about torture and murder in the same banal tones as one might discuss a land boundary dispute, and he pretends hypocritically to be serving the public interest. Robert Russell as Sterne is a much more familiar figure from horror films, loathsome and sadistic, but provides a necessary contrast to Price, acting as a kind of expression of Hopkins’ id. Newcomers Ian Ogilvy and Hilary Dwyer, as Richard and Sarah, are very pretty to look at, but they also have the acting chops to handle their characters’ descent as they are subjected to increasing torment and degradation.
Michael Reeves’ direction works well, contrasting the beautiful scenery of Southeast England with the awful behaviour of its inhabitants. His best, albeit hardest to watch, efforts come in the film’s climactic scene. In it, Hopkins escalates his method of execution from simply hanging witches to burning them—not at the stake, but strapped to a ladder slowly lowered into the fire. As this takes place, the camera turns its pitiless gaze around the crowd, showing a variety of different reactions: from religious rapture, to horror, to fear, to pleasure. Most horrifyingly, it also shows children absorbing the violence around them. We later see the same children roasting baked potatoes in the execution fire, a detail that is terrifying in its matter-of-fact presentation.
The story’s contemporary relevance is also clear. Sexism visibly fuels the witch-hunting activities, and prejudice against women and fear of their sexuality in the wider culture allows the likes of Hopkins and Stearne to flourish. Desensitisation to war, as we are seeing in America and elsewhere, allows people to condone and commit acts of violence in their own communities. Revelations after the collapse of the Nazi regime, and reports from behind the Iron Curtain, show clearly how petty grievances between neighbours can, under totalitarian rule, lead to arrests and torture. The viewer can’t leave the cinema thinking it could never happen here: clearly it not only can–it has.
The film makes the most of its economical 86 minutes, and is definitely not for the faint-hearted. By mining British folk culture and history, and by focusing on human evil itself rather than monsters and spirits, Reeves has opened up the possibilities of a whole new kind of horror movie and paved the ground for a new, artistic subgenre; I can’t wait to see what this new pioneer of British cinema will come up with next. Five out of five stars.
It sometimes astounds me how long Galactic Journey has been around. Eight years ago, we covered the launch of Echo 1, a big balloon shot into orbit so that NASA eggheads could use it as a cosmic message relay. More importantly, it was an artificial beacon, proof at a time when the Americans were losing the Space Race, that we had established a visible presence in outer space.
In just a few days, Echo 1 will be no more. Though the air at Echo's altitude is, to terrestrial standards, a fine vacuum, there is enough there to pull at the satellite. For the past eight years, the tug has slowed down Echo, and this month, it will fall out of orbit, plunging into the atmosphere, where it will burn up.
All things must pass, and Echo had a good run, but still, it's a little sad.
Last month, we lost Anthony Boucher, who helmed F&SF for much of the '50s. His term was excellent, and he also wrote some great stories, too, my favorite being The Quest for St. Aquin He was only 56.
Since Boucher's tenure, F&SF has been an inconsistent magazine. There have been good issues of F&SF, and there have been less than good ones. The latest is one of the latter kind, and its underwhelming quality serves only to make us pine all the more for what we've lost.
by Ronald Walotsky
The Consciousness Machine, by Josephine Saxton
Zona Gambier is a mental technician, proficient in the usage of WAWWAR, a device that has revolutionized psychotherapy. It dredges the animus of one's mental dysfunction, bares it to the possessor, and in doing so, cures the ailing person of any psychological malady. It is thus a matter of great consternation when she finds that her patient, Thurston Maxwell's, animus does not seem to correspond to his condition–namely a predilection for sexual assault.
The imagery WAWWAR produces is the story of a teenage boy living ferally, hiding from all of humanity, until he comes across a newborn, still attached to her just-dead mother. He raises the child, somehow providing for it, until she is old enough to be an adoptive sister. Later, as an adult, they become lovers. Finally, they have a child together, completing a kind of circle.
Ultimately, we find out what this story means, and whose animus it actually is. The writing is rather nice, but the explanation at the end is ad hoc, and I certainly wouldn't call the piece science fiction. Science-esque, perhaps.
Three stars.
Of Time and Us, by David R. Bunch
Better poetry than some, worse than others. I'm not sure I care for the sentiment, espousing the futility of humanity against the infinity of chronology.
Overpopulation stories have been de rigeur for more than a decade now, to the point where the genre is a bit overripe. Especially given that, according to articles I've been reading lately, the population growth rate has been steadily declining in the First World for most of the '60s. Now, will that continue? There are an awful lot of Baby Boomers coming of age, and perhaps the trend will reverse itself. But it does seem that large families, at least in the West and other developed areas, are falling out of fashion.
Which is why Sheckley's satire of overpopulation stories, in which a mild-mannered father, tired of sharing his one-room flat with five others (with five more on the way), enters a deadly competition, is a breath of fresh air. Along with 60 other participants, he must complete a foot-race through the wilds of New York City, populated by the lowest forms of humanity. His prize: one of the last free-standing acres of land on the continent.
Very quickly, you see that the thing is a lampoon, and as such, it's quite tolerable. Indeed, it's the closest thing to an old-style Sheckley story I've read in a long time, and old-style Sheckley is one of my favorites.
Four stars.
Settle, by Ann MacLeod
A couple buys a fixer-upper. Soon, the man of the house starts losing pieces of himself. First a toe, then a foot, onto his leg and torso, until he is just a head. Still, he goes on repairing elements of the home, determined to make it livable. Eventually, he is just a set of teeth and a bit of brain, mowing the lawn by mouth, until he is crushed under the knee of his toddler son. The end.
Per the editor's preface, this story is about how a money pit takes its toll in flesh from its owners. I'm glad that was explained to me, because otherwise, I'd have no idea.
Author Burt Filer is apparently married to Settle's author, Ann MacLeod. His tale is the superior of the two.
A man in his mid-30s wakes up to find his body ten years older. Apparently, he has "backtracked"–a decade from then, he swapped physical forms with his younger self (which apparently destroys the future incarnation so as to prevent paradoxes). He has no memory of the next ten years, nor why he chose this particular date to come back to.
All he knows is that his polio-crippled leg is now reasonably robust, and that his wife is not altogether happy with his new, somewhat weathered, appearance.
Eventually we do find out what would motivate a man to give up a decade of life, and it's a reasonable justification.
Three stars.
At the Heart of It, by Michael Harrison
This is both an old tale and an old-fashioned tale. It details the tragic story of a bookseller who discovers a profane book, one that teaches the reader the art of transferring one's soul into an inanimate object.
There are no surprises, and the kicker comes at the end, like all its Weird Tales brethren. I imagine this would have been humdrum in the 30s and it certainly doesn't cut the mustard now.
Two stars.
Counting Chromosomes, by Isaac Asimov
The Good Doctor explains the relatively new science of genetics and the role chromosomes, which are essentially punch cards that govern cell reproduction, have in them. He spends a good deal of time on sex chromosomes, and the effects that mutated sex chromosomes have on human beings.
Fascinating stuff, but there is an air of eugenics about his discussion, particularly in calling chromosomally abnormal human beings "defectives" and describing the recent exclusion of Ewa Klobukowska from women's sports on the basis of an extra Y chromosome as a positive development, ensuring competitions remain "sportsmanlike", rubbed me the wrong way.
Three stars.
The Secret of Stonehenge, by Harry Harrison
In this vignette, archaeologists armed with a time-traveling camera send it back to find out why and when Stonehenge was created. Turns out that the camera leaves chronological echoes, afterimages that last long after the camera has departed. Of course, it is these images, that, to primitive Britons, could only have been a sign of the gods, that spurred the creation of Stonehenge.
Harry should know better. We've known since 1963 that Stonehenge was an astronomical calculator, able to predict eclipses and solstices. It was built where it was because it needed to be to function properly.
In any event, the far more exciting (and dangerous) discovery is that long-range time travel can be used to communicate with the past, but this was not touched upon.
Two stars.
Sea Home, by William M. Lee
The first long-term permanent underwater residence has been completed. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Sea Home has a problem: its five long-term crew, already at depth, are undergoing physiological changes. It appears to be linked to the special air mixture they're breathing to alleviate pressure issues; their blend includes oxygen, helium, and sodium hexaflouride–the latter two ingredients serving as a kind of buffer, one very light, and one very heavy.
There's a lot wrong with this story. For one, it's a novelette for a one-gimmick story. Lee tries to add color and reasonably competent writing to hide the fact, but there are simply no mysteries to keep you intrigued beyond the central one.
And the central one is stupid. The premise is that the absence of nitrogen triggers all sorts of biological miracles. Free from the shackles of nitrogen, our bodies become more efficient, our brains get smarter, our skin sprouts tiny fields of gills fer Chrissakes. It reminds me of the early stories about long-term weightlessness, when, because we had no data, sf writers filled in the blanks any way they wanted.
Except we do have data. Gemini 7 was in space for 14 days, its crew breathing a pure, 5psi oxygen atmosphere. None of them got any smarter or developed vacuum-breathing gills or what-have-you.
Dumb. Two stars.
Cithaeronion farewell
As you can see, this issue is sort of like the work of a taxidermist. It looks like F&SF, many of its contents are familiar, but the breath of life is missing. Would that someone new could come along and instill the esteemed publication with the vigor it enjoyed under its past master.
I was greatly impressed by Robert Silverberg's recent novel Thorns. It seemed to mark a new direction for a prolific author of competent, if undistinguished, science fiction. Will his new book reach the same level of quality? Let's find out.
Christmas Day, 1998. A naked man appears out of nowhere, floating down from the sky. This fellow calls himself Vornan-19, and he claims to come from the year 2999.
With the year 2000 approaching, members of a worldwide apocalyptic cult fill the streets with wild orgies of sex and destruction. As you'd expect, the arrival of Vornan-19 changes things. Is he a fraud? A sign of the impending end of the world? Or proof that Earth will survive for many years to come?
Let's slow down a bit, in the same way the novel does at this point, and introduce some important characters.
The narrator is Leo, a physicist. He's working on time reversal. So far, all he's been able to do is transform a particle into an antiparticle, sending it backwards in time, but also causing it to be instantly destroyed. He's convinced that honest-to-gosh time travel is impossible, and therefore he thinks Vornan-19 is a phony.
Jack is a brilliant graduate student. He's been working on the theory of obtaining all energy from an atom (without the pesky side effect of a nuclear explosion), but he's not interested in any practical applications. For unclear reasons, he drops out and goes to live with his stunningly beautiful wife Shirley in a remote part of the Arizona desert.
The United States government sends Leo and a few other scientists to act as tour guides for Vornan-19, of a sort. They really want these geniuses to figure out if he's truly from the future. (Even if he isn't, he could be useful in convincing the cultists that the world isn't going to end in the year 2000.)
What follows is an episodic account of Vornan-19's encounters with people of the twentieth century. He causes chaos at a billionaire's party, in a mansion that keeps changing shape. He seduces men and women. Vornan-19 remains a mystery, revealing very little about himself or the world one thousand years from now. He becomes an object of religious devotion, leading to the book's dramatic but enigmatic conclusion.
After the intensity of Thorns, this is a surprisingly leisurely book. (I believe it is also the author's longest novel, at about two hundred and fifty pages.) We spend a lot of time with Leo, Jack, and Shirley before the narrator goes off with Vornan-19.
There's also quite a bit of sex. Jack and Shirley are nudists, and pretty soon Leo joins in. The group of scientists following Vornan-19 around includes both women and men, and we get to learn who's sleeping with whom, and who wants to sleep with whom, and who isn't sleeping with whom. Leo spends time with two prostitutes, one supplied by a grateful U.S. government, the other working at a legal, automated brothel.
(I've heard that Silverberg writes a lot of so-called adult novels under various pseudonyms, so maybe he's gotten into the habit of including this sort of thing.)
There's even a sex scene that serves as the book's climax. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the obvious pun.) We also find out why Jack ended his research, and what that has to do with Vornan-19.
This is an elegantly written novel that held my attention throughout. As I've indicated, it's hardly a thriller; the reader needs to be patient to fully appreciate it. There's a touch of satire and some interesting speculation about the technology of the near future.
I sometimes like to read books by authors I know nothing about, in the hope of getting a nice surprise. Well, this one certainly is not nice!
What is there to like about this?
The plot? No, dull plodding sub-Reynolds spy nonsense.
The characters? Paper-thin, laden with racist stereotypes.
The style? Long run-on sentences and expository dialogue which are about as exciting as drying paint.
Feel free to miss out on such writing as:
"Are you talking about the Alphans or spacemen in general?"
"Spacemen in general." The Doctor lifted his eyes. "I'll have to admit, I often think the Alphans are more complicated than others."
"In what way?" asked York.
"They're rather inscrutable," Bendbow explained. "As a psychomedician, I realize they don't wear their emotions or thoughts as transparently as most of us. But that's a racial characteristic."
Don’t buy it. Don’t read it. Don’t even acknowledge it. See it coming down the street, run the other way.
Save yourself!
Indeed, so bad, so offensive is this book, with enough off-handed bigotry to make even John Campbell blush to publish it, that with the blessing of the Journey staff, we've inaugurated a brand new award for badness. If the Queen Bee is bestowed for conspicuous sexism (thank goodness we have a word for the phenomenon now!) then there is only one name for the "honor" The Programmed Man deserves:
Is it an anatomical textbook? No, it's the debut novel of John Sladek.
Scientists want to create a self-replicating machine. Why? To get a government funded grant of course.
Quickly this invention gets out of hand, with robots consuming large quantities of metal and electricity, multiplying and converting other machines into robots, displacing humans from their homes, and even killing them.
The story follows a large cast of characters, ranging from scientists to soldiers, love interests, foreign spies, reporters, et cetera. At times, it’s difficult to follow, particularly in one fast paced section of the book where nearly every paragraph hops to another character’s perspective. With a number of names to follow, characters are best distinguished by their quirks, and while sometimes they feel more like caricatures than characters, it makes for a funny read.
The tone of this book reminds me of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 or Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Speaking of the latter, I can’t help but think this is a also response to the creation of the atomic bomb. The plot revolves around the negligent nature of scientific discovery without consideration of the consequences. Much like the atomic bomb, the reproductive system might solve a more immediate problem, but the lasting effects continue to hurt civilians who had nothing to do with the creation or any say in whether something like that should exist.
Possibly this is a response to Karel Capek’s play "R.U.R." a work that is referenced in the story. To spoil a forty year old play, the fatal flaw in the robot’s revolution is their dependency on humans to make more robots. I can see this being the inspiration for Sladek’s main conflict.
Author John Sladek
Though an American writer, Mr. Sladek is currently publishing overseas, and were it not for the hilarious title, my sister probably would not have bought this book as joke on her latest trip abroad. Hopefully it will come to the states soon.
I enjoyed reading this and it earned quite a few laughs from me. While lighter on the science side, The Reproductive System clearly comes from a love of science fiction, referencing many works that came before it. The ending is perhaps appropriately happy, though a bit too convenient for my taste, but I think that was intentional on Sladek’s part, ending on one last humorous critique of the genre.
Are you a Mack Reynolds fan? Then you'll like this book because it is the essence of Mack Reynolds from top to bottom, incorporating all of his strengths and few of his weaknesses.
In brief: The time is the late 20th Century. The setting is the United American States. If you've read Reynolds' Joe Mauser stories, then you know this future Earth is both a utopia and a dead end. The Cold War still simmers, but the People's Capitalism of the UAS and the Communism of the SovWorld are now two sides of the same coin: automation has put most people out of work, and wealth is concentrated with the elite while everyone else is stuck in fairly rigid castes, most living on the dole and watching telly while tranked up on free drugs. Common Europe and the few neutral countries aren't much better off.
Mick Grant and Anna Enesco are scholarship students, awarded their grant from the Joshua Porsenna endowment for a very specific reason–both seem to have the talent of precognition. The plot thickens when the mysterious and (in most places) illegal Monad Foundation also offers both of them exorbitant grants. All the Monads want is for the two to study socio-economic texts, from Anarchism to Zapata, Communism to Technocracy. Throw in the involvement of both military and government intelligence, and you've got the makings for quite an exciting time! But Reynolds manages to throw in yet another twist before finishing this slim novel, revealing the identity of the mysterious Porsenna.
The pacing for this book is excellent. Not a single chapter concluded that didn't tempt me to move on to the next. The setting is fascinating and also disturbingly plausible, and the motivation of the Monadians makes a depressing amount of sense. Of course, this being Reynolds, the book is peppered with historical essays with subjects like the anarchist Bakunin and the Greek colony of Cumae. Somehow, Reynolds makes it work. Maybe it's because the subject material was germane or simply well-presented, but it never turned me off.
The only real disappointment I had was the Anna Enesco's evolution into a caricature. She is at first played for frigid but independent. Over time, she falls for Mick, but there's never really a pay-off scene that sells the attraction. It's just accepted as having happened. By the end, her dialogue is stilted in the extreme.
I think dialogue has always been Reynolds' weak point. The man has traveled the world and has a broad knowledge of things. He knows how to plot, how to pace, how to build a world, but his characters are simply pieces in that world (though Mick isn't badly drawn, if a bit dense).
Unfortunately, this book came out November of last year; I only got to it now. As a result, though I'm giving it four stars, it's too late to make last year's Galactic Stars. Still, I recommend it.
Captain Randall and his crew have been preserved inside their submarine for over a thousand years. When an alien species refuses all compromise and sets out to destroy human life to make space for their own ever-growing population, these men are revived. They find humanity has genetically suppressed aggression and can't fight back, even in self defense against the Nerne.
Randall is physically outmatched, but future technology defends against future threats, and using old tricks and weapons they are able to sneak attacks under the radar. He is assigned eager robots who join his crew. After one of his men accidentally discovers how to unlock aggression – in one of my least favorite segments, when he hits a woman who insults him after they have sex, after which they… fall in love immediately and decide to get married – Randall recruits more humans. An unanticipated ally comes in the Revain, who have been fending off the Nerne for centuries. These alien allies bring their advanced tech, ships, and pills that work just as well to unlock aggression.
In the end, what ends the war isn't overwhelming force or superior firepower – it's social disruption. Using the computing of the robots, and the methods of the past, they undermine the highest ranking Nerne and cause the population to question the waves of existing lives sacrificed for potential future life.
The Nerne aren't alone in upheaval. Humans have also had a shift. With aggression, passion was also suppressed. Visible violence was removed, but other insidious forms remained – the crew had been used as a sort of nearly-alive wax museum for years before revival as a grim reminder, the government overruled the people's say, sent political opponents to become aggressive "deviants", and tasked robots – who were capable of feeling – with fighting and "dying" for them. Randall is disgusted by modern humanity's hands-off approach that still puts others in the line of fire and at the callous disregard of life by the Nerne. He doesn't delight in war, but recognizes when violence is called for to stop more death.
High makes clever use of the change in times and thinking. They didn't swoop in and do more damage, they were simply unexpected. How did they make humans violent again? Punching them in the face! It sounds absurd, and it is! But in a society without aggression, no one would be able to take that first swing.
While the whole book is set in a theater of war it explores what it means to be peaceable and how that can, and can't be achieved. It also makes a compelling case for contraceptives, and against eugenics.
Anthropol member Vernay is sent on an undercover assignment to a planet that his organization recently made and lost contact with when their scout team was killed. He is conditioned to fit in with the people, once from Earth, who live on Ujvila. It's a society strictly ordered by sex and rank, with men as subservient. He joins up with resistance fighters, helping facilitate change through the planet's own people and systems. Vernay must work around the Galactic Military (Gal-Mil) who have the same end goal but use force. He is captured and tortured, then meets the political and spiritual leader, the Kalauz. She confirms the existence of an alien presence that Anthropol had previously thought only metaphorical. These small aliens operated replicated human-forms but are no longer a threat as planetary defense scans for them.
Lori, the Captain of the Gal-Mil presence, is captured and sent to a "joy-labor camp" where prisoners rarely live past two years. Vernay volunteers himself to the camp to break her out or die trying. They escape with rebel help.
Vernay puts together odd hints he has noticed through his time on the planet, and brings it to a head when he calls to see Rosid, a resistance leader. Many of the rebels are, in fact, Ngign aliens posing as Ujvilans. Trisk, an Ujvilan rebel and cousin to the Kalauz, is horrified to discover that her people's minds were destroyed to create duplicates for the aliens. Vernay finds the one weak spot on the constructed body, the Ngignians dying in moments without a means to filter the atmosphere. They reach the Kalauz, but she too has been replaced. Trisk destroys her body, and takes over as Kalauz, starting social reform.
The epilogue calls Vernay and Lori back to the planet, as Trisk had spent four years improving the world, only to regress it to the original state, spurring new revolutionaries.
Anthropol went from a political revolution plot to an alien takeover in the last moments of the book. Although clues lead up to it, the plot turned so many times in the final chapters that it seemed there was another book's worth of material that hadn't been fully incorporated. Since so much time was spent exploring alternative methods, having the ultimate defeat come by physically attacking and killing the aliens instead of using Anthropol tactics was a let down. Also, Trimble recreated a female/male style system among the women, with feminine, "pretty" women as leaders, and masculine women given the roles usually assigned to men. As a commentary on the treatment of the sexes, it fell short.
When we learned that last year’s Countdown was playing in San Diego theaters, The Traveler and I decided to make a night of it and drive down to watch it. The Traveler is a space buff, of course, so it was a natural fit. Would I recommend it? Well, it depends.
The story is simple and straightforward, with few surprises. When the Russians send up a civilian astronaut to circumnavigate the moon, with three more astronauts presumably soon to follow and actually land, NASA implements an emergency plan to get a man on the moon at any cost. He’ll be stuck there for a year, provided he can find and enter a previously-sent shelter pod before his oxygen runs out. Public relations concerns force NASA to tap the less-qualified civilian Lee for the role rather than their first choice, Colonel Chiz. After many conversations, discussions, arguments, and training sequences, Lee is sent to the moon to land a few days after the Russians. What happens next is, shall we say, narratively predictable, but I'll let you watch the movie to see for yourself.
Lee and Chiz in the modified Gemini that will go to the moon–it's clear NASA helped Warner Bros. make this film.
The movie feels grounded in realism in a way that few modern space movies do. This is a story of the ‘here and now’, with current technology, fashion, and language. It’s a bold choice, and a risky one. With technology changing so quickly, it seems likely that the movie will soon feel dated and possibly even silly. Within a couple of years, it’s highly likely that either the Russians or the Americans will succeed in landing on the moon, and what then? The story will simply be a ‘could have been’, perhaps interesting in its time, but quickly forgotten as it is eclipsed by true events. Unless the movie ends up being prescient. Who knows?
While the story and visuals are deeply entrenched in the ‘now’, however, certain aspects of the movie feel groundbreaking: specifically, the way sound is handled, both the conversations between characters and the music. I’ve never seen a movie or play where characters talk over each other so much. It’s confusing and sometimes frustrating, trying to follow the thread of a conversation as other characters are shouting. It feels more like ‘real life’ in some ways; after all, real conversations are often filled with interruptions, stops and starts which almost never show up on screen or stage. The technique was used a bit too much, perhaps, as sometimes I thought that it continued to an unrealistic degree. The actors seemed a bit uncomfortable with it as well, a few times starting or stopping in an artificial way. I imagine after training in one kind of acting, to do something so different must have been disconcerting. This is not to say that the actors did a poor job. Duvall in particular impressed me, turning in a powerful performance as the bitter passed-over Colonel Chiz.
Everyone talking at once–Altman's invention.
The real star of the movie, though, was the music. Atonal and dissonant music is not new. Arnold Schoenberg, for example, spent the first half of the century writing music that sounds strange to Classically-trained ears. What is new, at least to me, is the use of dissonance in a mainstream movie soundtrack, and not just for a moment or two, but for most of the movie. The soundtrack eschews the Romantic-style orchestral music which is standard in most films, and instead uses eerie, unsettling themes that swell and fade with high-pitched notes and low groans, punctuated by the occasional pounding of timpani. Still orchestral, but not sweet. Not predictable in its progressions, but rather filled with deliberately clashing chords. It’s not quite to the level of atonality that Schoenburg ended up writing, but it’s unusual and fresh, and it does an amazing job of building tension even absent of every other factor. In some ways, the soundtrack might have been more suited to a horror movie! Is this the beginning of a new trend in movie music? I understand that Planet of the Apes, which came out after this film, uses similar dissonant themes. On the other hand, I understand that 2001 features The Blue Danube and Also Sprach Zarathustra, which are both undeniably fine pieces of music, but hardly ‘modern’. So I guess we’ll see!
It's the music that really sells the scene as Lee struggles with the lunar simulator.
So do I recommend the movie? For space buffs, yes, absolutely. The grounding in modern technology and the efforts at realism will be appreciated by people who know what they’re looking at (even if, as The Traveler pointed out to me, they used footage of the wrong rockets). For everyone else? The plot is paint-by-numbers. The fate of the Russian astronauts didn’t come as a surprise. Nor did Lee’s. The conflicts of the movie—with Chiz, between Lee and his wife, between the surgeon and the head of the project—are all more or less resolved by the end. Everything is tied up neatly, and that’s that.
But even if space isn't your bag, if you love music, especially modern and unusual music, this film may well be worth the price of entry!
Three stars.
by Gideon Marcus
What an interesting beast Countdown is. Like the novel, Marooned, it is very much of its time. As Janice notes, it's instantly dated. But the test of the plot isn't whether or not it could happen now, but whether or not it was plausible at a certain time.
There is clearly a point of divergence from our universe in this movie. In the chronology of Countdown, a back-up "Gemini to the moon" plan was prepared. The Soviets had more luck with their program, and, indeed, a completely different program (no mention is made of Soyuz in the film; it must have been written before April 1967.) With those facts as a given, the events of the movie make sense, and indeed, make a fascinating counterfactual.
The Soviet craft is exclusively referred to as a "Voskhod" (with varying degrees of mangling in the mouths of American actors)
The basic thrust of the movie is still relevant, even if the facts are dated. As we speak, Apollo 8 is being planned for a circumlunar flight toward the end of the year. We know the Soviets have been planning for such an endeavor, too, linking up their Soyuz craft in orbit in preparation. That flight around the moon wasn't in the cards until we were worried the Communists might beat us to the punch. What corners are we cutting to make it possible?
This is the movie's mission, but it's also Apoll 8's trajectory.
There's a lot to like about this movie. The acting is excellent. I recognize Robert Duvall from his endless TV roles (including "The Inheritors" and "The Chameleon" episodes of The Outer Limits and "Miniature", an episode of The Twilight Zone), and James Caan from the episode of Hitchcock, penned by Harlan Ellison, with Walter Koenig. The direction is innovative, naturalistic and tight. Newcomer Robert Altman does a lot with a little: this is clearly a low budget film, using flagrantly inaccurate stock-footage rockets (Atlas Agena for the first Pilgrim flight; a Titan II for the second) instead of a Saturn. I'm kind of surprised they didn't use Saturn 1 footage, honestly.
Ted Knight as a Shorty Powers type describes the mission. Note the Saturn V in the drawings.
But this is what we actually see–a Titan-Gemini launch.
There are two main motifs that run through this film. The first is difficulties in communication. Altman has his actors constantly talking over each other, often failing to listen to each other. This manifests itself technically when Stegler's radio gives out, punctuating conversation with frequent drop-outs.
Reacting to a failure to communicate.
The second is, of course, countdowns. Robert Duvall recites the numbers from ten to zero a dozen times in the film. Altman knows there is suspense in that little trick, and despite its frequent use, it isn't really overdone.
Duvall counting down.
If there's a problem with the film, it's that, despite all the flurry and tension and concerns, there are really no decisions to be made. Like a spaceflight mission, the movie completes its pre-planned trajectory with little input from the characters along for the ride.
So I think I give it 3.5 stars. The execution deserves five; as a narrative, it's barely a two. On the other hand, let's be honest–were these events to play out in real life, with astronauts in peril on the way to the moon, we'd be absolutely riveted. Of course, in that case, we wouldn't necessarily know everything was going to be all right in the end…
But there's more! Enjoy this bonus review of a…lesser Sci-fi movie.
by Gideon Marcus
There was no "Love Machine" in the movie I saw. I have no idea what it's talking about.
I shoulda run when I saw the "American International Pictures" logo.
Alright, it's true that AIP doesn't always make shlock, but this time, they indubitably did. 1964's The Time Travelers, directed (sort of) by Ib Melchior and also co-written by him is an hour and a half you'll never get back.
But is that really so bad?
We open up on a "lab" where an "experiment" in time travel is taking place. Three scientists and a dopey electrician occupy the far left side of the room. A screen, positioned clearly for our benefit rather than the scientists', occupies the middle of the room, showing where the time window is currently focused.
When the screen refuses to show the future, Steve, the headstrong beefcakey one, decides to push the circuits to their maximum. The result is as expected: things spark and catch fire. But serendipitously, the screen becomes more than a window–it's now a portal! The dopey electrician goes through to investigate, the bohunk and the goateed elder scientist (made of wood or some other unmoving substance) go after him. When weird humanoid mutants show up and menace Carol, the remaining scientist, she clobbers them with fire extinguisher exhaust. Then the portal starts to collapse. She goes through to warn bohunk and goatee…but it's too late. They're all trapped.
107 years in the future!
Thus ensues a chase that pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the film, because it goes on for what feels like a good five minutes. Here's where I realized that there was no budget for retakes or second unit work. What they shot, they had, and if they were going to fill a movie's run-time, they were going to use every last bit of it.
What's really funny is the four of them hold off about a dozen mutants, armed with spears, by throwing rocks at them. For some reason, the mutants never think to throw their spears… or rocks.
Anyway, they stumble upon a cave complex guarded by an electric gate. An attractive older woman in form-fitting trousers (there's a lot of form-fitting trousers in this flick) greets them, accompanied by a bunch of creepy, but not ineffective androids, and brings them to their council chamber. Turns out that only most of humanity died in an atomic calamity (depicted in stock footage narrated by the council leader, none other than John Hoyt, who is in everything, including the original Star Trek pilot).
But though the mutants increase their attacks every day, there is hope. The future humans have discovered an inhabitable world around Alpha Centauri (which Alpha Centauri, they don't say…) and have built a starship to get there called… "Starship". I'm amazed there are no British actors in the cast because that's a British name if I ever heard one.
John Hoyt and… Starship.
1964's finest.
It's all very When Worlds Collide, up to and including the extreme caucasianicity.
At first, the four time travelers are offered a berth on Starship. This is great because dopey electrician (you can see the impact he had on me–I don't remember his name) has fallen in love with the assertive beauty in form-fitting trousers, Reena (none other than Miss Delores Wells, Playmate of the Month for June 1960; don't ask me how I know this).
Ahem. Form-fitting trousers.
I do like that about this film–men and women seem to share power pretty equally in this future. Except when it comes to fighting. Then it's all up to the menfolk and androids.
Anyway, Councilman Willard, a real jerk, insists that Starship can't accommodate any more people, so the time travelers have but one option–build a time portal back to the past.
"I don't wanna take 'em with us!
It's finished at the same time Starship is ready, and also when the mutants make their final attack. Starship launches but then explodes, killing all on board. The mutants fight their way to the time portal room, slaughtering many men in form-fitting trousers as well as androids. We get to see one android catch fire and burn. For about a full minute. Because, after all, they shot it, so it's gonna get shown.
"So much for being a real boy…"
The portal is finished in time, the time travelers jump through, along with Reena, John Hoyt, and a few other trouser people, and they find themselves back in the lab at the moment of their fateful experiment. But they find that time has frozen for them. Their only hope is to jump through the screen, currently focused on the far future. They emerge onto a landscape reminiscent of the end of When Worlds Collide…hmmm.
Then, because run-time was short, they recapped the entire movie at an accelerated (or speeded up) rate, I guess to indicate a time loop. In fact, they do it twice before rolling credits.
Things that are bad:
The acting: even John Hoyt is bad.
The cinematography: "Hey, I set up the camera–you want I should move it?"
The pacing.
The science (Lord, the science).
Things that are good:
The score: sure, it doesn't always fit the action, but there is a groovy number that clearly influenced the theme of a certain show we all know and love…
The scene with the half-mutant refugee that Carol saves from Willard–but nothing more is done with this wasted opportunity.
You can't see that his hands are deformed claws of flesh–I wanted to see more of this kid.
Delores Wells: look, I make it a point not to be a lech, but… vavavoom.
The magic tricks: several times, they lift stunts straight from Harry Blackstone's repertoire–they take off an android's head and put it back on; dopey electrician is "teleported" from a magic box. It's like Vegas, but on film!
Superfan Forrest Ackerman has a cameo.
Hey 4-E!
Two stars. Don't fail to miss, even if it's tonight's Late Late Movie…unless you want a laugh and/or an eyeful of form-fitting trousers.
I've previously confessed my inexplicable enjoyment of beach movies. A similar vice to which I am addicted is my passion for films about motorcycle gangs.
This particular kind of cheap drive-in feature has exploded ever since the success of The Wild Angels last year.
There are already a bunch of these movies out there, all featuring guys on big bikes riding around, drinking beer, making out with chicks, getting into fights, and generally raising Cain.
But what if they weren't guys?
Three films I saw recently raised my hopes that I'd see the distaff side of things for a change. Not all of them met my expectations. Let's take a look.
The Hellcats
The poster for this low budget cycle flick certainly emphasizes the women in the cast. The trailer does the same thing, putting the names of five of the female characters right up there on the screen for all to see. But is that really what we get?
The movie starts with the funeral of one of the gang. The plot is both simple and difficult to follow, but let me do my best to explain it.
The dead member of the Hellcats was working with the cops. It seems that the cyclists are helping some gangsters push drugs, and he was informing on the crooks. The gangsters killed him, I guess. This isn't the most coherent movie in the world.
Anyway, they also kill one of the cops. The dead man's brother and girlfriend are our protagonists. They manage to join the Hellcats. Eventually, after a lot of random stuff happens, the Hellcats blame the gangsters for the death of one of their members and a big fight breaks out.
So where are all the tough biker chicks we're expecting? Well, they're around, but they don't do very much. Even the one-eyed blonde shown on the poster is a minor character. (You can see what she really looks like in the scene shown above. Not as scary as the poster.)
Not a good movie. Read a book instead.
Maybe not this one.
Quality of film: Two stars.
Bad Girl content: One star.
The Mini-Skirt Mob
The trailer for this somewhat more professionally made film makes it clear who the villainess is, and even features a knockdown, drag-out fight between the Bad Girl and the Good Girl. More false promises?
During the opening credits, I thought I had walked into the wrong theater and was watching a Western. Horses in a motorcycle movie? Well, it turns out the hero is a champion rodeo rider, although that has nothing to do with the story.
The cowboy has just married our Good Girl, played by Sherry Jackson. Hey, she was on Star Trek!
This makes our Bad Girl, played by Diane McBain, very mad. It seems she had a relationship with the cowboy some time ago, and doesn't want to let him go. Together with a few male sidekicks, she and the other members of a female gang called the Mini-Skirts give the newlyweds a hard time.
(Truth in advertising. The gang members really do wear miniskirts, as impractical as that may be on motorcycles. I'd hardly call them a mob, however, as there are only four of them. One of them, the leader's little sister, turns out to be not so bad after all.)
It all leads up to an out-and-out war, with rifles and Molotov cocktails as the weapons. People get killed. There's one death scene that's pretty darn gruesome.
The movie manages to create some suspense, and there are a lot of visually impressive scenes of the desert, courtesy of the state of Arizona.
Quality of film: Three stars.
Bad Girl content: Three stars.
She-Devils on Wheels
The trailer for this Florida-filmed epic reveals two things. It's got a bunch of Bad Girls, and it's really, really cheap.
The opening credits feature a painting of a screaming woman on a cycle. I hope you like it, because it shows up a lot. Between scenes, the same thing appears, spinning around like a record.
The Man-Eaters motorcycle club (their symbol is more cute than scary) have races to determine who has first pick from a bunch of men who are, apparently, just waiting around to be chosen as intimate companions for the night. When one member chooses the same guy too often, the others accuse her of being in love, which is against the rules. She has to drag the fellow behind her bike, leaving him a bloody mess, to prove her loyalty to the gang.
(There's a lot of fake blood in this thing. Director Herschell Gordon Lewis also gave the world extremely gory films such as Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!,Color Me Blood Red, and A Taste of Blood.)
The two most interesting Man-Eaters are Queenie, the leader, and Whitey. The latter is — how should I put it? — zaftig? Rubenesque? Anyway, she's not your typical Hollywood starlet trying to look tough.
There's also Honeypot, a new member. She gets the plot going.
After the Man-Eaters have a fight with a male gang, defeating the boys easily, the guys get their revenge by kidnapping Honeypot and returning her a bloody mess. (Do you sense a pattern here?) The Man-Eaters set a trap for the leader of the men, leading to our big shock scene (which you may have spotted in the trailer.)
Make no mistake. This is a terrible movie. The acting is atrocious. (I understand that women who could ride motorcycles were hired, rather than women who could act.) But it delivers the goods. These are very Bad Girls indeed.
Quality of film: One star.
Bad Girl content: Five stars.
Overall, not very good movies. Sometimes you just have to go back to the classics.
We approach the end of another series of Doctor Who, and it’s been a bit of a rough one, hasn’t it? Other than the occasional standout, I feel that I’ve ended up finding every other story terribly repetitive. As I began to watch the last serial of the current run, I had hope that my faith in the series would be rewarded. After all, when Doctor Who is good, it’s really, really good, and this latest serial was scripted by David Whittaker (who wrote The Enemy Of The World, possibly my favourite story) based on a story by Kit Pedler (who is to the Cybermen as Terry Nation was to the Daleks). With a writing duo like that, things looked very promising for the serial. Was my faith rewarded? Let’s mull it over as I give you a quick rundown of The Wheel In Space.
EPISODE ONE
With Jamie still a bit sulky over Victoria’s exit from the TARDIS, things go from bad to worse for the lad as the time machine breaks down, leaving him and the Doctor stranded. To be on the safe side until he can get the TARDIS working again, the Doctor removes the doohickey that makes it appear bigger on the inside, the Time Vector Generator. The pair then split to search the rocketship for any crew or mercury for the TARDIS’ battery. They spend the better part of the episode doing this, with a break for lunch. That’s just what the kids want to watch: a couple of blokes operating a vending machine. The scene of them actually obtaining lunch is about as interesting as it sounds, but they do have a nice little discussion on how they think Victoria is getting on back on Earth.
They’re unable to find any mercury for the TARDIS, although the one place they haven’t searched is the rocketship’s control room. Unbeknownst to them, there is a countdown timer in there. But counting down to what? Out of ideas, and having at least confirmed that they’re safe for now, Jamie settles down for a nap.
Yes, it seems the ship is abandoned, drifting aimlessly…just like this serial.
There is however a robot making the rounds, and while the Doctor and Jamie are in the crew cabin, it seals shut their section of the ship.
This serial has slower pacing than 2001 (at least from what I've read), and that’s saying something.
With only a couple minutes left in the episode, something resembling action finally happens. The countdown in the control room hits zero. The ship lurches as it releases a number of silver spheres into space. The jolt wakes Jamie up and knocks the Doctor over, resulting in a nasty crack on the head. A dazed Doctor uses the Time Vector Generator to unseal the door (it apparently works sort of like a high powered laser beam) and Jamie helps him escape the robot and run back to the cabin, again employing the TVG to see the robot off.
They’re safe for now, but the Doctor passes out from his injury.
Meanwhile, the crew of a nearby space station have discovered the drifting rocket ship. This is the Wheel, so called because it looks a bit like a wagon wheel from above. It’s an Earth vessel, observing deep space phenomena and warning spacecraft of potential hazards. They attempt to get in contact, and as they do so, something hits their outer hull. They don’t realise it yet, but it’s the silver spheres from the rocket ship.
Unable to hail the rocket on the radio, the crew of the Wheel are faced with a choice: should they leave the ship be, or blow it up on the off-chance that its autopilot is still active and may drive it into the station?
EPISODE TWO
Fortunately for the Doctor and Jamie, they have the Time Vector Generator, which Jamie flashes out the porthole in an attempt to get the attention of the space station. The Wheel detects the unusual signal, and sends some men over to investigate the rocket, soon finding the Doctor and Jamie and bringing them back to the Wheel.
Now we’re all together, let’s go over the crew of the Wheel. We’ve got Jarvis Bennett (Michael Turner), the station’s controller, who is quite high-strung and prone to stressing out. There’s also Dr. Gemma Corwyn (Anne Ridler), the medic and resident voice of reason, and the astrophysicist-librarian-maths-genius-wunderkind Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury). Filling out the cast are a few more or less interchangeable crewmembers of various nationalities portrayed with varying degrees of sensitivity.
Corwyn gives the Doctor and Jamie a thorough medical examination, finding that Jamie is perfectly fine but the Doctor, unsurprisingly, has a concussion.
With how long he’s been unconscious I’m surprised it’s not worse than that.
While the Doctor recovers, Zoe shows Jamie around the Wheeel, and the two don’t exactly hit it off. She laughs at his kilt, and he threatens her with a spanking. She seems quite delighted by the prospect. Make of that what you will.
For her part, though she likes him well enough, Corwyn is suspicious of Jamie’s story. He’s not exactly a good liar. Case in point: when asked, he told her that the Doctor’s name is ‘John Smith’, a name that is somehow conspicuously generic. Corwyn and Bennett start to suspect that the Doctor and Jamie might be saboteurs. There has been growing opposition to the space program back on Earth.
Zoe and Jamie arrive at the Wheel’s control room just as Bennett is about to go ahead with blowing up the rocketship. Uh-oh, the TARDIS!
Meanwhile aboard said rocketship, the timer begins to count up. There’s something strange in the room, a couple of large…eggs? They begin to glow, and humanoid shapes become visible inside. They stir, and a silver-gloved hand punches its way out of the shell.
Could it be… the Cybermen?
EPISODE THREE
Wanting to delay the destruction of the rocket for obvious reasons, Jamie grabs some conveniently located spray-on quick-set plastic and sabotages the Wheel’s laser-gun. Bennett catches him in the act. Jamie couldn’t have picked a worse time to disable the gun.
Why? Because…well…because of a load of absolute poppycock, even by the lax standards of the programme. A star in the Hercules Cluster is about to go nova, and the radiation flux will fling asteroids and any other space flotsam right at the Wheel.
Science fiction writers, I’ve noticed, often have difficulties with understanding just how big space is. The cluster in question, formally designated Messier 13, is twenty-two thousand light-years away. Assuming the Wheel is situated at the edge of the solar system (its precise location isn’t made explicit, but given its stated purpose as an early warning system, observatory and halfway house for spacecraft heading into deep space, I think that makes the most sense), any nova in Messier 13 would pose about as much threat to it as farting ant in the Sahara.
I’m nit-picking, but only because I’m bored.
Because they don’t have enough problems already, some stowaways have weaseled their way aboard the station. Cybermats! One of the crew encounters one. Thinking it’s some sort of space bug, he hides it in a cupboard. While left to its own devices, it goes ahead and tucks into the entire ship’s stock of the material needed to repair the laser.
Meanwhile, the Cybermen are preparing the next phase of their plan. It seems that (somehow) they triggered the nova, and another that occurred the previous week. They are trying to lure the crew of the Wheel to board their rocket in search of more material with which to repair the laser. Pity they didn’t wake up earlier, they could have saved themselves a bit of bother.
The star in Messier 13 goes nova. As tempted as I am to go off on a tangent about the speed of light, I shall restrain myself and take off my insufferable know-it-all hat.
Zoe cheerfully informs the others of the danger they’re in. She’s not quite as good at tact as she is at reciting facts and figures. ‘All brain and no heart’, as one of the men describes her. Seems a little harsh if you ask me.
One of the hapless crew runs afoul of a swarm of cybermats. He doesn’t appear to have twigged that these things are about the size of a football. Just punt them! He encases one of them in quick-set plastic, but the others overwhelm and kill him in a spectacle of truly glorious over-acting. Poor fellow, choked to death on all that scenery he chewed.
Corwyn finds his body, though by then the cybermats have fled. She presents the encased cybermat to the Doctor, who x-rays it and discovers the true nature of the threat to the station.
Alas, it’s too late. A pair of men from the Wheel have already arrived on the rocket. They immediately run into the Cybermen, who swiftly bring them under the influence of a mind-control ray. Their first command? To take the Cybermen to the Wheel.
Final Thoughts
Doctor Who is a teatime show, but I almost nodded off a couple of times while watching the first couple of episodes. I’m genuinely surprised by this, given the track record of the writers and how much I usually enjoy the Cybermen. There’s just so much padding! The whole thing drags terribly, turning any potential for suspense into a slog.
The Cybermen themselves have had another design update. They're mostly the same as their previous appearance, but have now got a little notch at the corner of each eye that looks a bit like a teardrop, as well as a notch at the bottom of the mouth slit. I don't know, i think the entirely utilitarian, featureless design of the previous iterations was creepier. The mouth notch just looks a bit awkward.
Will the later half of the serial improve on things? Perhaps, now that the antagonists have deigned to show up.
I imagine Vegas bookies are tearing their hair out trying to predict the Presidential race this year. On January 1, the hard money would have been on President Johnson beating Governor George Romney in a fairly easy race. Then McCarthy and Nixon won in New Hampshire. The former sent LBJ announcing his resignation and the latter gave the former Vice-President the first victory of his own since 1950.
Then Bobby Kennedy jumped in, trying to steal McCarthy's lunch. Inevitably, Vice President Humphrey threw his hat in the ring, instantly commanding the loyalty of most democratic party bosses. Meanwhile, Romney's dropped out, but Nelson Rockefeller, who said he wasn't going to play this year, has jumped in.
So, who will face each other come Labor Day? It's anyone's guess, especially since both McCarthy and Kennedy just won recent primaries. I guess we'll have to see if the New York Governor's campaign has legs, and if Humphrey's position translates to delegates at the convention.
Stay tuned…
Nine to Rule Them All
It's similarly a horse race with the latest issue of Galaxy, which presents a solid batch of stories. Which one is the best? That's a hard choice, too!
by Paul E. Wenzel
But first, the editorial. Remember a few months ago F&SF ran competing ads from SF authors for and against the war in Vietnam?
Well, now Pohl's mags are doing it.
Pohl (Galaxy's editor) says it's not just enough to bitch about it. Someone needs to come up with a solution. He figures SF fans are about the smartest people around, so why don't we try our hand at it?
So now there's a contest, first prize $1,000, details at the bottom of this article. Of course, given that you can't devote more than 100 words to the issue, and given that the war has been going on since 1945, in one way or another, and given that a lot of smart people have been trying to fix this thing…I somehow feel 100 words is not enough.
Or as my friend the divorce lawyer likes to say: "Imagine trying to fix a car. Now try to imagine fixing that car while another party is actively trying to dismantle it."
Ever wonder why all people seem to go psycho all of sudden? Why a race with countless religious texts devoted to peace, harmony, and brotherhood just goes buggy every so often?
What if some other planet, in order to preserve their peace, harmony, and brotherhood, is beaming all their psycho energy to us? Sort of a bad emotions disposal process.
This is one of Ellison's lesser pieces. It probably means a lot to him, but it's rather disjointed and vague and not as profound as he wants it to be.
Three stars.
How We Banned the Bombs, by Mack Reynolds
by Vaughn Bodé
Right now, the world population is 3.5 billion and rising. Naturally, this has been the cause of concern and the topic of more than a few science fiction stories. Bombs is one of the lesser efforts.
Reynolds posits a Reunited Nations government so powerful that, in response to the Population Explosion, it can enforce a ten-year ban on childbirth through mandatory provision of contraceptives to women. At the end of the ban, it turns out that the contraceptive drug's effect was permanent, and all human women are completely sterile.
This, by the way, is the end of the story. The rest of it involves characters talking to each other, telling tales they all know about how the world ended up in this predicament (which doesn't make for much of a story).
The whole premise is silly. The population in this projected, not-too-distant future is 3.5 billion, same as it is now, yet resources are so scarce, they're banning the production of alcohol so as to husband their grain crops. Somehow, the ReUN can sterilize EVERY woman on Earth, none slipping through the cracks. And then, no one foresees or predetermines that the universal contraception has adverse effects.
In the words of Laugh-In's Joanne Worley: "Dummmmmb!"
One star.
Detour to Space, by Robin Scott Wilson
(uncredited artist)
Object 3574 is circling the Earth in a polar orbit. Unannounced, the General is convinced it's a secret Russkie bomb. NASA's long-hair thinks otherwise. The majority decides to send up an Apollo to check it out. The object is covered in green slime and pebbled with tektites, suggesting extraterrestrial origin…
There's a lot to like about this tale, especially the sting at the end of it. Scott convincingly describes the apprehension with which we Americans greet the arrival of a new star in the heavens. I know I scour the papers and call my Vandenberg buddies whenever anything goes up to get some insight into otherwise classified launches.
Where the story beggars credibility is the use of Apollo spacecraft, launched from Vandenberg, to intercept 3574. You just can't do it–there's no way to get a Saturn there. Much more likely would be to send up an Air Force Gemini (they're making them for the planned Manned Orbiting Laboratory). But that would have killed the story.
This is what happens when you know too much about a subject, reviewing a story by someone who doesn't quite know enough… three stars.
Daisies Yet Ungrown, by Ross Rocklynne
Joe Wehrle, Jr.
After the big bombs created the time-space Rift, God told Rickert to jump through with Sears catalog robots and claim a new world 350,000 trillion light years from Earth. But this is so far away that God's grace cannot reach, and Lucifer's tool, the newcomer Dorothy, has arrived to take his planet away from him.
This is an odd, poetic story that you, at first, think is going to be satirical, sort of a cross between Sheckley and Bunch. Instead, it's kind of pretty and sweet, way different than I was expecting.
Three stars.
For Your Information: Jules Verne, Busy Lizzy and Hitler, by Willy Ley
This is a pretty interesting piece on attempts using a gun rather than a rocket to fire a projectile, if not into space, at least a terrific distance. Essentially, it's like a rocket, but with the propellant on the outside.
A man taking the matter transmitter home finds himself in the future version of Devil's Island, a colony for hardened criminals. Surely, there has been some kind of malfunction, for he can remember no crime. But the wheels of justice never make a mistake, or do they?
This would be a fairly slight tale if not for the execution. Luckily, Harrison (who I understand has just retired from the editor helm of Fantastic and Amazing) is a master of execution.
As expected, the first adventure of Thorinn, a human raised by trolls in a Nordic nightmare, has a sequel. Last time, the resourceful Thorinn had been tossed into a deep well as an offering to the gods to end a ceaseless winter. Making his way through the caves he found, Thorinn discovered a hatch that opened not onto but above a new world. This story details what he finds below.
In an almost Oz-like setting, the people of the Vale enjoy a life of complete ease. The grasshopper men and the doughwomen and the fancymen and the children, they eat the food that grows on trees and bushes, they frolic, they discuss, and when they want adventure, they seal themselves up in the pleasure pods for the night…or sometimes an eternity.
Thorinn is the snake in the garden, slowly poisoning the place with his foreignness and his willingness to kill. Ultimately, he hatches an escape plan, but not before leaving his mark.
This is an interesting episode, but not as compelling or as clever as the first one. Three stars.
Booth 13, by John Lutz
Here's a new author, or at least, new to me. John paints a grim future in which populational ennui has settled in. All that's left is war, the tranquilizer lysogene, and the death booths. If life gets just a bit too monotonous, there's always a quick and easy exit–and now, people are taking it in ever-increasing numbers.
It's not badly done, but my biggest issue is not enough explanation is given as to why everyone is so melancholy. Perhaps that's the point–if you give everyone an easy out, even the mildest inconveniences can trigger a snap decision. Or maybe the author is simply extrapolating from the current, profound American despondency.
Last time, if you recall, Pete Maxwell has gone off to do research at the crystal planet, a world with the accumulated knowledge of two universes (it had lived through the last Big Crunch). The fading intelligences of the planet offered all of its wisdom in exchange for The Artifact, a featureless black object dating back to the Jurassic period. When Maxwell got back to Earth, he found that he'd already come back, duplicated by some quirk of matter transfer, and died.
This datum takes a back seat to bigger concerns–the Wheelers, bags of insect colonies bent on acquiring the lore of the crystal planet, have already purchased The Artifact, and once it is in their possession, plan to take over the universe. It is up to Maxwell, his tentative ally Carol, her sabre-tooth tiger Sylvester, their Neanderthal pal Alley Oop, the Ghost, William Shakespeare, the librarian who sold The Artifact, the goblin O' Toole, and several bridge-dwelling trolls to somehow stop the transaction before it's too late.
I must say, Simak pulls off a large set of emotional tones very well. You feel the sense of impending dread when it seems the Wheelers have clinched the deal. The comedic scenes are genuinely amusing. Yet, there is a grounding to the story that keeps it from being Laumerian or Anvilian lampoon. The revelations of the true nature of the fairies, little people, banshees, and whatnot are pretty good, too, though a bit abrupt. Perhaps they'll have more time to breathe in the novel version.
The only bit I had trouble with was The Wheelers, for whom I felt sympathy once I learned their motivation. There's an undertone of unconscious racism where they're concerned–they're bad because they're icky, different. When you learn what their status had been vis-à-vis the crystal planet, it all becomes a bit more unsettling.
Nevertheless, pleasant reading by a master. Four stars.
Picking a Winner
Well. It's obvious which story was the loser here (let's just call the Reynolds tale 'Harold Stassen'). But as to a winner, well that's a little harder. Several of the three-stars are quite nice; my four-star to the Harrison may be arbitrary. We can exclude the Simak because it's a serial, but it anchors this and the last issue well.
I suppose in an issue where (all but one of) the stories are good, the real winner is…us.
![[May 31, 1968] Euler's Issue (June 1968 <i>Analog</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/680531cover.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
</small![[May 28, 1968] <i>Danger: Diabolik</i> is the Grooviest Spy Movie of the Year So Far](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/s-l1600-1.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[May 24, 1968] How Low Can You Go? (<i>Battle Beneath the Earth</i> and <i>The Astro-Zombies</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Untitled-2-1.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[May 22, 1968] Finding a New Way: <i>Witchfinder General</i>](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/680522poster.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[May 20, 1968] Dying, deflating, and deorbiting (June 1968 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/680520cover.jpg?resize=665%2C372&ssl=1)
![[May 18, 1968] Four Out of Six Ain't Bad (May 1968 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/680518books.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[May 16, 1968] Counting down, and a blast from the Past (<i>Countdown</i> (1967) and <i>The Time Travelers</i> (1964))](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/680516posters.jpg?resize=672%2C360&ssl=1)
![[May 14, 1968] Bad Girls On Bikes (<i>The Hellcats</i>, <i>The Mini-Skirt Mob</i>, and <i>She-Devils On Wheels</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Untitled-2.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[May 10, 1968] Horse race (June 1968 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/680510cover.jpg?resize=393%2C372&ssl=1)
