Category Archives: Science Fiction/Fantasy

Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[June 8th, 1969] Dissension In The Ranks (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 5-7])

1 Comment


By Jessica Holmes

When I said this serial was long, I wasn’t exaggerating. We’re getting closer to the end—but we’re not there yet.

Let’s check up on how the Doctor and company are getting on in “The War Games.”

ID: The Doctor (right, dark haired middle-aged white male, baggy suit), talking to the Science Chief (middle-aged white male, balding, wearing lab coat and visor with cross shaped eye holes). Seated in front of them with his head in a metal vise is Carstairs (30s-ish white make in WW1-era British sergeant's uniform)

In Case You Missed It

We last left the TARDIS team scattered, the Doctor on his own in the sprawling futuristic central command, Jamie with the Resistance in the 1860s, and Zoe about to be shot as a spy for the Kaiser. Suffice to say, I’m having a lot more fun than they are.

Fortunately for Zoe, she’s more valuable alive than dead, so while the Security Chief hauls her in for questioning, the Science Chief takes Carstairs for more thorough reprogramming. And he has an eager audience of one: the Doctor, who the Science Chief hasn’t yet realised isn’t meant to be here.

As for Jamie, he manages to persuade the Resistance not to kill their prisoner Von Weich, and also reveals to them their puppet-masters’ true means of communicating with central command and moving troops from zone to zone; not tunnels, as they had assumed, but the big green (or so he says) travelling box that's bigger on the inside. It turns out later that it's called a SIDRAT (pronounced 'side-rat'). Funny acronyms on a postcard, please.

The Doctor takes the opportunity to rescue Carstairs when the Science Chief de-programs him in preparation for proper reprogramming, and the pair of them strap him into his own machine before running off to find Zoe. Zoe’s a little the worse-for-wear following her interrogation at the hands of the Security Chief and his truth-seeking visor/bizarre binoculars. On the one hand, the Security Chief now knows about the Doctor and the TARDIS. On the other, he made the mistake of showing Zoe images of all the Resistance leaders—along with their names and their respective time-zones. Thanks to Zoe’s perfect memory, they now have the information they need to start finding these separate pockets of resistance and bringing them together.

ID: The Security Chief (back to camera, smart suit, wearing an elongated visor) interrogating Zoe (seated, white brunette girl approx. late teens). There is a stripey background.

They’d better get a move on, because the War Chief is already dispatching guards via SIDRAT to the American Civil War Zone to investigate the disturbance there— and they’ve already killed Harper, the soldier who came to Jamie and Lady Jennifer's rescue earlier. Pity. I hoped he was going to stick around for at least a little while longer. Survival rates of Doctor Who side characters are already pretty low. Looks like they drop to zero if you’re not white.

The other members of the Resistance manage to overpower the guards, however, and Jamie takes a ride back to the base in the SIDRAT, accompanied by his Resistance allies (save one who gets held back from the adventure to keep Von Weich company. That one happens to be played by David Troughton.  The surname is not a coincidence. What's the opposite of favouritism?)

Fortunately for the Science Chief, the Security Chief finds him before he gets his brains too badly scrambled, but the Security Chief is too suspicious of the War Chief’s true motives to report the incident to him. It turns out that the War Chief and War Lord are not from this world; unlike him and his cohorts, their people have the secret of time-and-space travel. If the Doctor has this secret too, thinks the Security Chief, perhaps his overlords are bringing in more of their own people to sabotage the experiment.

Well, their technology does seem similar. Same function, familiar design, and SIDRAT is literally just TARDIS backwards. But the Security Chief called them 'Time Lords', and I don’t know about you but the Doctor does not strike me as terribly lordly.

ID: The Doctor and Zoe, both in stolen British WW1 army uniforms.

Jamie and the Resistance get a rather frosty reception when the SIDRAT arrives at central command, stunned by a barrage of ray-gun fire. The guards drag him and his allies off to the reprocessing room for examination, and the Doctor heads to the neighbouring room to attempt a rescue from the other side.

Finding that Jamie has never been through the reconditioning process, the Science Chief sends him to the Security Chief for interrogation. Taking advantage of the distraction, the Doctor and Carstairs break into the reconditioning room through a wall panel, quickly overpowering the Science Chief and his guard.

It’s not long before they’ve also rescued Jamie (while the Security and War Chiefs are running round like headless chickens searching for them), and with some handy disguises they all pile into the SIDRAT, the Doctor managing to make it work with surprising ease. Sending Zoe on ahead with the Resistance, he hangs back with Jamie and Carstairs to steal the reprocessing machine.

The SIDRAT arrives back at the barn not a moment too soon, because Von Weich is trying to hypnotise his way out of captivity. His guard manages to fight off his control, however, and shoots him dead.

ID: The Doctor tapping at a control panel while Jamie (20s white male, wearing British military cap) looks on apprehensively.

Meanwhile, the Doctor nicks the processing machine, and it looks like he’s about to make a clean getaway when his stolen SIDRAT grinds to a halt. The pod is impregnable, just like the TARDIS, but what happens if the dimensions inside suddenly match the dimensions outside? It becomes rather snug, that’s what. And with the War Chief outside pushing the dimensional control dial down even further, it won’t be long before the trio are pressed to a pulp.

With no choice but to surrender, the Doctor emerges from the SIDRAT, only to drop a gas grenade from his stolen WWI gear a moment later. While the security guards are reeling, he rushes to the control panel, stealing the navigation circuit rods and restoring the inner dimensions of the vehicle. Just to be safe, he snaps off the lever for good measure, and absconds with the SIDRAT.

Unable to track him while the SIDRAT is still moving, the War Chief prepares for the arrival of the War Lord (Philip Madoc). This man is rather a different beast to the War Chief. He’s quieter, surprisingly soft spoken until he gets angry, and there’s no doubt that this is the most dangerous man on the planet right now. And he is very, very tired of the War and Security Chiefs’ bickering.

The War Lord (left, middle-aged white male, receding hairline, glasses, dark turtleneck) standing around a large map built into a table, with the War Chief (middle, middle-aged white male, dark hair) and the Security Chief (right, middle aged white male, glasses, balding). There are security guards in the background.

On board the SIDRAT, they’re no clearer on where they’re heading, least of all the Doctor. No matter the specific model of Space-Time machine, one thing is guaranteed: the Doctor is a lousy driver.

Landing in the Roman zone, the Doctor, Jamie and Carstairs have to make a hasty break for the time zone barrier, lest they end up on the wrong end of a centurion’s spear.

They aren’t really any better off for stepping into 1917, with General Smythe immediately ordering his gunners to fire on them. Fortunately, they aren’t pinned down for long before Zoe arrives with a small band of Resistance troops. However, more troops arrive to arrest the Doctor, bringing him and his friends back to the chateau, where Smythe sentences him to death…again.

Once again they get about as far as tying him to the post when a surprise attack scuppers the execution, this time coming from the Resistance. Smythe gets himself killed while attempting to escape, and the Resistance secure the chateau.

Wishing to avoid spoiling his little experiment by using his elite security forces, or destroying the valuable equipment at the chateau by simply bombing it off the map, the War Lord orders the local forces (British and Prussians and Frenchmen, oh my!) to assault the chateau on all sides.

The Doctor using the reprogramming device on a French soldier with Jamie's assistance.

With the attackers closing in, the Doctor has an idea. Finding a control device for the local time zone barrier in Smythe’s quarters, with Zoe’s help he’s able to create a new barrier encircling the chateau. The Resistance can come and go as they please, but the programmed soldiers outside will find themselves unable to approach. A single soldier managed to get into the chateau before the barrier went up, and the Doctor is quickly able to deprogram him with the processing machine. It's encouraging to see that it works, but deprogramming every single one of the untold thousands of soldiers throughout the zones will take until doomsday. Until the Doctor gets his hands on some more equipment, this will have to do.

Unfortunately it’s not certain that he’s going to get that chance. Now isolated from the zone outside, there’s nothing stopping the War Lord sending a SIDRAT of his own security forces. And so the Doctor falls into the hands of the War Lord.

The War Lord, looking thoughtful.

A WHAT Lord?

Well, well, well. Things are really getting interesting. This War Lord seems to be an entirely new kind of enemy, with a power level beyond any we’ve yet seen, save for perhaps the Great Intelligence or the Toymaker. The strong implication that he and the Doctor may be of the same world is a tantalising one.

Time Lords: quite a grandiose name for an alien race, don’t you think? Are they just too pompous for their own good or is that a title with actual meaning? It’s hard to imagine this Doctor as any kind of lord—though I think I could see it with his previous incarnation. It’s an interesting notion, but I hope we’re not going to spoil all sense of mystery about the Doctor. That’s part of the fun.

I’m happy to report that astonishingly for a serial of such length, the pacing still works. It’s a really fun ride with no signs of slowing down. We’ve not seen much of the War Lord yet, but he’s very promising so far. Philip Madoc’s presence on-screen is magnetic. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens when he comes face to face with the Doctor.

Final Thoughts

It’s a funny thing, simultaneously being eager for the conclusion of a story, yet at the same time wishing it didn’t have to end. I’ve grown very fond of this incarnation of the Doctor, and it’s strange to think that the next time I sit down at the typewriter to hammer out my thoughts on his escapades, it will be the last. Of course, the Doctor himself will keep on going (for however long the BBC sees fit), but not as the funny little chap with the recorder. I could wax lyrical about him— but I will save that for next time.

Still, no point grousing about it. The wheel of history keeps on turning, and so does Doctor Who.




1 Comment Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 6, 1969] Blue Skies (July 1969 Amazing)

1 Comment


by John Boston

Samuel Johnson described second marriages as the triumph of hope over experience.  It is tempting to say something similar about changes of editor at Amazing.  But that impulse is at least postponed by the upbeat mien of this July issue.


by Johnny Bruck

That sky is about as blue as any I've seen on a magazine cover, and more importantly, the cover goes some way to answer the cry for a good cover by Johnny Bruck, whose hackneyed spaceships and guys with guns have become so tiresome on recent issues.  This one is a bit cartoonish, but at least it’s clever and amusing—a spaceport scene with some impressive-looking spacecraft, but the people on the ground have eyes only for the bright yellow futuristic automobile, with huge tailfins, a transparent dome over the passenger compartment, and whitewall tires.  Oh, it has side fins too.  Maybe it flies.

The magazine’s contents also lean in a promising direction.  Almost half of the magazine (70 of 144 pages, excluding the front and back covers) is devoted to the first part of Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line.  It’s rare for magazines to give that big a chunk of available space to a serial installment, but it makes sense in a bimonthly magazine. As a side benefit, it leaves less room for the reprints, which take up only 27 pages.  The book review column is back, with substantial reviews by William Atheling, Jr. (James Blish) and editor White.  The letter column is here again, and the promised fanzine review column has now appeared, nine pages worth, by John D. Berry.  White’s editorial says that the fan feature in Fantastic will be reprints of selected fanzine articles.  The guest editorials in Amazing will be gone—the editorial spot’s going to be his. It all gives a sense of an energetic editor getting a quick start at implementing his desires.

A more dubious innovation is the new typeface.  Multiple typefaces are nothing new at Amazing, but Silverberg’s serial, Leon Stover’s article, and the book and fanzine reviews and letter column are set in a tiny typeface that challenges my ill-made eyes (see the glasses in my photo?).  Microscopic type for things like letter columns is an old tradition—just check your copies of the Hugo Gernsback Amazing if the silverfish haven’t gotten to them—but for this much of the magazine it spells headache for me and I suspect many others.

Up the Line (Part 1 of 2), by Robert Silverberg

The biggest deal in this issue is of course Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line.  Silverberg, formerly a capable journeyman magazine-filler, has in recent years become a much more powerful and original writer. In just the past two years he has produced four novels that put him in a different league entirely than did his earlier work: Thorns, To Open the Sky, Hawksbill Station, and The Masks of Time, with several more out or on the way this year. 


by Dan Adkins

Per my practice, I will hold off reviewing and rating Up the Line until it is finished.  But a quick peek reveals that it is a time travel story, told in the first person by a young man at loose ends who joins the Time Couriers—not the Time Police, the Couriers’ nemesis—and that it is a considerable departure from the relatively serious recent works mentioned above.  Parts of it suggest that the author wrote with the stage in mind.  The vaudeville stage, that is.  E.g., as the protagonist explains to his new friend the Time Courier why he abandoned his budding career as law clerk to a Judge Mattachine:

“My uncle is Justice Elliott of the U.S. Higher Supreme Court.  He thought I ought to get into a decent line of work.”

“You don’t have to go to law school to be a law clerk?”

“Not any more,” I explained.  “The machines do all the data retrieval, anyway.  The clerks are just courtiers.  They congratulate the judge on his brilliance, procure for him, submit to him, and so forth.  I stuck it out for eight days and podded out.”

“You have troubles,” Sam said sagely.

“Yes.  I’ve got a simultaneous attack of restlessness, weltschmerz, tax liens, and unfocused ambition.”

“Want to try for tertiary syphilis?” Helen asked.

“Not just now.”

So Mr. Silverberg appears to be having a good time.  Reading a little further confirms that he also seems to be trying to offend everyone in sight, which may explain why this new novel by a fast-rising author is appearing in the field’s lowest-paying magazine, rather than in the more stately mansions of Pohl, Ferman, or JWC, Jr.  In any case, I look forward to completing these scabrous revels.

Only Yesterday, by Ted White

Editor White’s Only Yesterday is a more somber time travel story, in which the ill-at-ease protagonist Bob approaches a young woman as she gets off a train, asks if he can walk with her, says he’s a friend of a friend (she suggestibly supplies the friend’s name, and he agrees), and she invites him in for refreshments and to meet the family.  He hits it off with her and her brothers and her parents, and offers to tell her fortune—a futuristic vision which turns into nightmarish war.  She’s shocked and disturbed, and he quickly says he was making it up, offers a more palatable vision, and beats a hasty retreat.  Revelation of who he is and why he’s there follows.  It’s smoothly written and well visualized, but the ease with which Bob inserts himself into the family setting is too implausible to overlook.  Still, nice try, very readable, three stars. 

Hue and Cry, by Bob Shaw

Bob Shaw’s Hue and Cry is about as far as one can get from his very well received Light of Other Days.  It's a cartoonish story in which a spaceship full of humans lands among sentient carnivorous reptilians who think of them only as food, scheme to eat them all, and are thwarted with a silly gimmick.  Two stars, generously.

Poison Pen, by Milton Lesser

The reprints in this issue are a mostly malodorous batch from the doldrums of the mid-1950s.  The best that can be said for them is that they don’t take up much space.

Milton Lesser’s Poison Pen (from Amazing, December 1955) is a silly botch of a story.  For thirty years, humanity has been under the thumb of the extraterrestrial Masters.  Now they’ve left, and people are dancing in the streets.  The main thing we know about the Masters is that they made people keep diaries and read from them in neighborhood gatherings, and that practice continues.  Why?  Dr. Trillis says it’s because the Masters taught everyone “from the cradle” to be compulsive exhibitionists (how?) so they could control people, “and the older generation either had to go along with it or feel left out.” So people ought to stop with the diaries and the readings, he says.  But they don’t.  Worse, they start stealing other people’s diaries and making fake entries in them—false confessions of having been “co-operationists.” Executions begin.  Our hero helps Dr. Trillis escape and they wind up in a settlement of people “who somehow haven’t been contaminated,” in New Jersey.


by Paul Orban

If the description sounds sketchy and incoherent, that’s because the story is.  It’s an insult to the readers, pretty clearly dashed off without a thought of anything but a quick check.  One star.

No Place to Go, by Henry Slesar


by Erwin Schroeder

Henry Slesar’s No Place to Go (Amazing, July 1958), by contrast, is at least a competent piece of yard goods.  A crack team of astronauts goes to the Moon, takes a look outside, and sees Earth blow up, leaving them alive but stranded. Shortly, some of the astronauts are blowing up too.  But wait—April fool!  It was all a test!  They were drugged with a hypnotic chemical, visions planted in their heads while they slept!  The captain then tells the guy who didn’t blow up that he’s now second in command, and he’ll be going to Mars.  It's cliches wrapped around a gimmick, but unlike Lesser’s story, it doesn’t reek of contempt for the readership.  Three stars, generously.

Note that in our crude rating system, what I’ve just described as “cliches wrapped around a gimmick” gets the same grade as White’s much more capable effort.  Just remember that there’s a lot of space between 3.0 and 3.9.

Puzzle in Yellow, by Randall Garrett


by Leo R. Summers

Randall Garrett’s Puzzle in Yellow (Amazing, November 1956) is a trivial gimmick story on that ever-popular theme, the Stupid Alien.  Extra-terrestrial Ghevil is scoping out Earth for invasion and pillage by the “hordes of Archeron.” He wants to check out an isolated military installation, so he finds a remote building with big walls and turrets, and figures he’s found what he’s looking for.  He kills the first person he sees emerge from the building, and disguises himself in the man’s uniform.  He tries to enter and is shot dead.  Take a wild guess what the installation he tried to enter actually is. The yellow of the title, by the way, refers to Ghevil’s blood.  Two stars, barely.

The Pendant Spectator, by Leon E. Stover

Leon Stover’s “Science of Man” article this month is The Pendant Spectator, a phrase he got from Samuel Johnson’s novel Rasselas, which means, more or less, someone with a view from a height.  “Spaceship Earth” is also invoked.  Stover seems to have abandoned his project of educating us all about anthropology.  Here we have a protracted editorial on the necessity for humanity to get its act together and get right with the biosphere, limiting population, developing energy sources (i.e., the sun) that will neither pollute the atmosphere like fuel combustion nor overheat the place like nuclear power, engaging in international cooperation, accepting a degree of coercive regulation in these and other causes, etc.  It’s hard to argue with any of it, but it’s also hard to imagine that the SF readership is who needs to hear it, so it seems a bit pointless.  This series seems about ready to die a natural death.  Two stars.

Summing Up

So the harbingers seem to be blowing in the right direction, even if the actual fiction contents, possibly excepting Silverberg, are not much changed from the recent norm.  “Looking good” would be premature, but “looking like it might look good” would fit.  Or—as I’ve said more times than I can count about this magazine—promising.




1 Comment Leave A Comment
Magazine

[June 4, 1969] Death and Dating (January–June 1969 Playboy)

1 Comment


by Erica Frank

I'm back to review more issues of Playboy, and I'm still not looking at the pictures. Well. I have looked, in passing. But I am honestly not reading the magazine for the pictures, because as pleasant as some of them are, they get monotonous. They are all very pretty young women, but there is a sameness to them; they are all young, all slender, all devoid of anything that would make them stand out in a crowd, were they wearing clothing suitable for office work or shopping. So I am not here for the unclad ladies, who always have faintly mysterious smiles but look like they've been told to look sexy rather than happy.

Playboy cover - March 1969. A smiling blonde woman flies a kite shaped like the Playboy bunny.
Playboy's March 1969 cover–the only one in this set where the woman looks like she's having fun.

I am here because it's widely known in the science fiction industry that Playboy has much higher rates than any of the officially-science-fiction magazines, and that means they sometimes publish gems that bypass the other magazines. However, to find those gems, I have to wade through a lot of stories that are maybe science fiction, perhaps, if you squint, and some that are apparently what the mainstream public thinks science fiction should be.

Incident in the Streets of the City by Robert Coover (January)
A man is hit by a truck and lies in the street, dying, while the people around him talk. I kept waiting for the plot to kick in. And then, since I was told this might be in the "SF" category, I kept looking for those elements. That might be "he doesn't immediately die, despite taking some very fatal-seeming injuries."

The discussions around him are compelling, but nothing happens here. There's a tragedy and everyone seems to be ignoring it. That may be the point of the story. It was engaging without being interesting, a fascinating blend I'd like to avoid in the future. Two stars.

The Schematic Man by Frederik Pohl (January)
Half of this two-page story is explaining what a computer does; the rest is a man attempting to create a complete and accurate mathematical model of himself. And while computer capacity has indeed gotten large, I have my doubts that even the most advanced super-computer could hold the full details of an adult human's memories, beliefs, and thought processes, along with all the biological data about him.

Our protagonist, Bederkind, discovers his own memories and skills are fading as he places more data about himself into the computer, until he is not certain if "he" is the original man or a model in a computer's storage banks. Two stars–the writing is deft enough, but I found myself quite indifferent to Bederkind's fate.

Whispers in Bedlam by Irwin Shaw (February)

This novella stars Hugo, a football player, who starts to go deaf in one ear. This is a problem that can lose him his job, so he goes to see a specialist surgeon. Soon he can hear the other linebacker just fine. And then he can hear the opposing team's quarterback in the huddle. And then he starts to be able to understand their code. And then he starts to be able to hear thoughts, both on the field and off.

He has the best season of his career – goes from a moderately talented but not-bright player, to the best guy on the team: He intercepts passes; he is never fooled by a fake handoff; he knows which direction the quarterback will break. He gets involved with gambling–he knows what cards the other guys have–and picks up a couple of girlfriends on the side, since he can hear which women are interested.

Then it turns a bit dark: the team owner notices he's staying out late and running with a bad crowd, which will bring bad publicity to the team if the papers get word of it. His plane has a delayed landing, and he's the only passenger who knows the crew thought they were going to crash. His girlfriend tells him she has a headache and can't see him tonight–and as he's leaving, he hears her laughing brightly to someone else. He attends church and hears the utter hypocrisy of the preacher. Hugo's amazing new gift is turning into a curse, and it's making him miserable.

The resolution was somewhat predictable but nicely done. Three stars.

Next—the Planets by Arthur C. Clarke (March)
This article is about the impending certainty of exploration of the other planets in our solar system. It begins with a discussion of the costs: "the energy cost of transferring a man from the surface of the Earth to that of Mars is less than $20." (He admits the machinery is notably more expensive.) Clarke points out that Jupiter, not Earth, is the obvious place to look for life and variety in our solar system.

This is hopeful and enthusiastic; it assumes space travel will roughly follow the trajectory of airplanes: First, the public claims that it's impossible, followed by test cases and grudging admittance that it could be done (but isn't worth the cost and effort), followed by a rush of technological advancement and commercial activity as everyone insists they were always in favor of it.

Clarke seems to miss a key point in his analogies, though. We knew air travel was possible: Birds do it all the time. We knew it was possible to fly across the ocean, possible to use wings to travel from one city to another distant city. We didn't know it was possible for humans using machinery, but we knew it could be done.

The article ends with, "The Earth is, indeed, our cradle, which we are about to leave. And the Solar System will be our kindergarten."  But there are no birds traveling from here to Mars. Waving past the technological difficulties means assuming an awful lot of facts not in evidence.

The overview of details about the Solar System, plus a warning against assuming our current information is entirely accurate, are well done. The blithe assumption that we'll soon be setting up scientific bases on Mars or even Jupiter are pure hype, but still an enjoyable read. Three stars.

A Man's Home Is His Castle by Ron Goulart (March)
This story is set in the near future of 1973. A man inherits a magical, computerized, sentient house from his uncle. His girlfriend does not like the house, which does things like "turn her into a statue to keep her from leaving." He is, we are supposed to gather, extremely in love with her. You can tell by the way he describes her.

She was tall, with a smooth tan and long gentle blonde hair. Her breasts had an upright, angry look under the blue chambray of her shirt.

I have no idea what angry-looking breasts are supposed to look like, especially under a chambray shirt, which should hide most of the appearance of breasts other than their general size.

A collage of a gilded house with a man's legs with wings at the ankles; the house has a a lady's legs coming out the front windows; from the side door near the back, an arm holds a banjo. Behind the house is a rainbow and blue sky with fluffy clouds.
I do love the artwork that accompanies some of the stories, even when it doesn't seem to connect well to the story itself. Maybe especially then. I tried to figure out who the artist is, but all we have is that little stylized "ap" in the bottom corner.

He complains to the house: "You're supposed to be a triumph of science and sorcery and you can't even keep the girl I love from running off to join an electronic musicians' group."

The house keeps suggesting bribing her instead of casting spells to change her personality, but he declines. Eventually, while he is out of town at a meeting, the girlfriend and house negotiate their relationship.

I wanted to give this four stars–it's a pleasant read, with an interesting conclusion. But the characters are flat and the sorcery is almost boring, and there are also the "angry breasts" to consider. Three stars.

Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?
This is a picture-heavy behind-the-scenes look at an upcoming movie. The title is an obvious reference to Hieronymous Bosch, the 15th century surrealist painter.

Excerpt from the Heironymous Bosch painting Haywain, showing three nude people and several animal people/creatures.
While Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights gets more attention, there are also some pretty strange things going on in The Haywain, as you can see.

Hieronymous Merkin, the protagonist, divides his attentions between several ladies: Mercy Humppe, Polyester Poontang, and Trampolena Whambang, among others. Director Anthony Newley, who is also the star actor, insists that he "wanted to make a really erotic romantic movie" as opposed to the current trend of movies that are "blatantly sexual without being either sensuous or romantic."

A nude man walks on a dance painted with a zodiac; two clockwork men are also on the floor.
While this scene is intriguing, I gather it may be the closest the movie gets to recognizable science fiction themes.

Pitched as a "zany erotobiography" (I believe that's suppose to be a faux biography of the protagonist, rather than a direct reflection on the star/director/producer's life history), the movie covers Merkin's life from adolescence to present-day. He is haunted by The Presence of Death and a shady character named Good Time Eddie Filth, who appears in a puff of lavender smoke and encourages his lechery.

A man and a woman are in bed together; she is topless and smiling as he cups her breast with one hand and stares happily down at her tits.
This is Hieronymus and a woman labeled "a frisky extra." At least they both look like they're having fun.

The movie is scheduled to open next summer; it also features Joan Collins and Milton Berle. I haven't decided if I'm interested in seeing it–it doesn't seem to have nearly as much science fiction content as Barbarella–but I must admit my attention has been piqued. Three stars for this pictorial article.

Death's Door by Robert McNear (March)
I do not care for sports stories, and I do not care for ghost stories, and this is both. A reporter visits a small island off the coast of Wisconsin, where the Big Game is happening for the first time since 1947, when tragedy struck the winning team. I had to push myself to finish it–not because it's poorly written at all, but because it was quite obviously a ghost story about a sports team, so it's about ⅓ spooky ambiance and ⅓ sports fan chatter and the remaining plot is buried in bits and pieces between those.

I'm glad I kept reading. I could tell something was going on, and I was avidly trying to put the pieces together, and I was pleasantly surprised by the ending. It is not a happy ending, but it does nicely wrap up all the loose ends and odd questions raised during his investigations.

Four stars if you enjoy sports or ghosts or both; three if you don't.

Prey by Richard Matheson (April)
The setup for this is too obvious: 33-year-old Amelia is caught between her overbearing mother and her sullen boyfriend. She always spends Friday evenings with her mom–but this Friday is her boyfriend's birthday, and she bought him a present, a "genuine Zuni fetish doll" rumored to contain the spirit of a killer. He's a collector of anthropological artifacts, and this one is unique. It even includes a gold chain meant to keep the spirit trapped inside the doll.

Three Zuni Kachina doll images from the 1894 anthropology book 'Dolls of the Tusayan Indians' by Jesse Walter Fewkes.
Actual Zuni kachina dolls are icons of beneficent spirits that are treated with respect, not fear; they look nothing like the one described in the story.

Amelia's mother is annoyed that she's thinking of skipping their movie night. Her boyfriend is annoyed that she is letting her mom interfere with their relationship. You can see where this is going: Will she send the killer after her acrimonious mother or her petulant boyfriend?

Turns out the killer is not that easily controlled, and Amelia is soon fighting for her life. But the tale does have a few twists left; I was surprised more than once at how it played out. The story is well-written; the characters are more silhouettes than people, but they are believable silhouettes; the plot contains unexpected twists without innovation. Three stars.

The Chimeras by Arthur Koestler (May)
I'm discovering that the more actually science-fictional the story, the more likely it is to be a dud. A man visits a psychotherapist because he is obsessed with the dangers of chimeras. In an interesting twist, we discover that chimeras are a new mutation spreading through humanity. The patient insists he is the only one to see the dangers clearly; that everyone else is infected with chimerism and has a blind spot about them. The doctor wants to cure his delusion; the patient wants to gain this blind spot so he can be less anxious.

I suppose it's intended to be a surprise that the patient is correct, that a horde of chimeras are rampaging destructively down the street while the doctor insists it is a peaceful Scout's Love Brigade march. It fails to be surprising, and the conclusion is pointless. Two stars.

Downwind from Gettysburg by Ray Bradbury (June)
Playboy has a knack for finding science fiction stories where the fantastic elements have no connection to the core problem or its solution. In this, a scientist-historian who is avidly devoted to President Lincoln creates a robot version of him to honor his memory, and a jealous, pathetic man named Booth shoots the robot. Nobody believes robot-Lincoln is a person, but we are led to understand that the creation was a singular process; repairs may be difficult or impossible.

The bulk of the story is about why Phipps is obsessed with Lincoln and why Booth feels compelled to destroy him (it). The short version: Phipps is a Lincoln fan; Booth is what we might charitably called "a piece of work," the kind of man who cannot see someone else happy without wanting to break whatever brings them joy. 

Both the crisis and its aftermath seemed muted–a momentary turbulence in the characters' lives. A nice enough story, but it did not strike me as memorable. Three stars.

A Life in the Day of by Frank M. Robinson (June)
Jeff is a popular fellow, the life of the party, famous for his photo on the front cover of the Times, facing off against the cops with his STUDENTS FOR FREEDOM sign. Jeff thinks anyone over 25 is a drag and a bore, and he flirts with a probably-17-year-old pretty girl and quotes activist "wisdom" to win her affection.

Psychedelic art - two colorful images of a young man's face.
Gene Szafran's art is certainly colorful. I'd certainly be willing to hang out with a fellow who looks like this–but alas, this is only an artistic rendition of the protagonist.

Jeff is an egotistical ass, rude to anyone he thinks is not cool enough to be in his presence and firmly convinced that he's always going to be the center of attention. He gets stoned and digs the music and tries to ignore Ann, the drunk woman who tells him he won't be able to keep up with the new trends forever.

At two A.M., Jeff hears the door buzzer and he does not want it opened – but someone does, and suddenly… a crowd from outside presses in, and he doesn't know anyone anymore. The party swirls around him and ignores him; he is no longer the exotic hippie in the toga but the weirdly-dressed guy wearing a bedsheet. He looks out the window and the storefronts are all changing signs; he doesn't know the street anymore. He has, as Ann warned him, lost his connection to the younger generation. Two years, she said, and apparently his time is up.

I enjoyed this, possibly because I can enjoy reading about a drunken stoned college party even if the story basically goes nowhere. Jeff is a jerk and it's rather gratifying to see him lose his place as a minor celebrity. However, the fantastic element in this story is easy to excuse as "he was stoned" rather than anything supernatural happening.

Three stars if you like hippies; two if you don't.

Conclusion: Much of a Muchness
Playboy's stories, like Playboy's naked girls, have a certain uniformity that sometimes borders on tedium. They are all well-written, skillfully crafted by people with strong vocabularies and a good command of metaphor and description. And they all serve to validate the viewpoints of moderately-wealthy libertarian white men who think women are properly either ornaments or servants.

The stories are often "an interesting interlude, with an odd twist" – no progression of character, no puzzles to be solved, no change in the people or the world, just a growing awareness of "Oh, I guess this is how things are."

Each story, on its own, is reasonably interesting and well-made. As a set, they grow boring, and they show the biases of the editors who put the issues together.




1 Comment Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 2, 1969] The ever-whirling wheel (July 1969 IF)

4 Comments


by David Levinson

A change is gonna come

Regular readers of Galactic Journey or of SF magazines in general may have noticed that neither Galaxy nor IF published last month. With a bit of detective work, I’ve put together what happened.

The clues are on the masthead. Editor Fred Pohl is now listed as Editor Emeritus, while the editor is Ejler Jakobsson. The publisher is no longer Robert M. Guinn, but Arnold E. Abramson, and Galaxy Publishing has been replaced by Universal Publishing. (That last worried me for a moment, but I quickly remembered that Amazing and Fantastic are put out by Ultimate Publishing under Sol Cohen.)

There’s also an editorial from Fred, talking about the changes. Most importantly, he’s stepping back to focus more on writing. That and the fact that he’s sticking around to look over the new editor’s shoulder (Fred’s words) for a while suggests his departure is voluntary and doesn’t suggest any misgivings about the new ownership on his part. Plus, we should be getting new stuff from him more often.

Who is Ejler Jakobsson? He had a few horror stories back in the late 30s, cowritten with his wife Edith, but if his name sounds familiar, it’s most likely because he was the editor for the revival of Super Science Stories from 1949-1951. Coincidentally, that magazine had been edited by Fred Pohl before it was shut down by wartime paper shortages.

What changes can we expect? Fred prefers to let us see them as they happen, but the promo for next month hints at some. IF is getting a book review column by Lester del Rey. That may or may not mean the end of his “If… and When” column. We’re also getting a twelve part series by Willy Ley, “The Story of Our Earth.” That might suggest some changes over at Galaxy.

Of course, the biggest question is what sort of stories Jakobsson will buy. It will be a while before we get a good feel for that, since there’s bound to be a backlog of stories selected by Pohl. It took several months for the Fermans over at Fantasy and Science Fiction to change the course set by Avram Davidson, but Ted White has wrestled Amazing and Fantastic into a new direction almost immediately. We’ll see, but we should have a good idea by the time we start the new decade.

A bang or a whimper?

Since this is the last issue under Fred Pohl’s leadership, it’s fair to ask what sort of note he goes out on. Will he put out a strong issue, go out on a high note and remind us why this magazine has won three straight Hugos? Or will it be utterly awful and make us glad he’s gone? Not to ruin the suspense, but the July issue is really just another typical, middle-of-the-road example. There’s some good stuff and some not so good. Let’s start with the cover.

Art credited only as couresy of Three Lions, Inc. but actually by German artist Johnny Bruck.

You may recall that the last issue had a similar uncredited cover that Robert Bloch apparently used for his story Groovyland. Once again we have a Johnny Bruck cover, originally for Perry Rhodan #102, which an American author has used for inspiration. This time Keith Laumer has come up with a story much more clearly based on the art than Bloch’s was. I’m not keen on this trend, though it’s slightly better than what they do over at Amazing and Fantastic.

Here’s the original art by Johnny Bruck.

The Towns Must Roll (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

Long-time readers of Mack Reynolds’s work will be familiar with his stories of People’s Capitalism. That appears to be giving way to what he calls the Meritocracy. The biggest difference so far is the replacement of every citizen’s ten shares of Inalienable Basic with a Negative Income Tax.

In Mack’s latest novel, the NIT enables people to pick up and move to places anywhere in the world where the cost of living is lower. They often gather in rolling towns that consist of mobile homes that make the fanciest Airstream trailer look like a pup tent. Our protagonist is Bat Hardin, a man of mixed race who provides police services to a town on its way to South America. After crossing into Mexico, the town encounters unexpected hostility from the locals, including credible threats of extreme violence. Meanwhile, Bat’s authority in the town is being threatened by an extremely racist, newer resident. To be concluded.

Bat has been kidnapped to deliver a message: Gringos go home. Art by Gaughan

This is typical Reynolds of the better sort. He’s not just rehashing the same tired plot points, and while there’s the usual lectures on history and economics, they’re reasonably concise and to the point. Mack is quicker to point out the flaws in the system, but also subtler than usual. As a man who thinks he has no future in the Meritocracy because an Army test rated his IQ as 93, Bat is an interesting character, though he seems much brighter than that; we’ll see if whether that will be relevant to the plot or just Reynolds not being able to write someone of low average intelligence. Plus, we’ve got a tense situation. I look forward to seeing how this all plays out.

A solid three stars.

On the Dead Star, by Jack L. Austin

An explorer aboard a one-man scout, with only the ship’s computer intelligence for company, discovers an impossible structure on the surface of a Black Dwarf.

This month’s new author gets off to a good start. The writing was sound and the situation intriguing. Unfortunately, Austin loses his way. The story just goes on too long; it could easily have been half the length. As is often the case in such tales, the conclusion winds up being rushed. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, but the whole thing wraps up in a couple of paragraphs, with the action taking place off-screen. It could be better, but Austin is only 20 and has room to grow. I’ll give him a chance.

A low three stars.

Autohuman 14, by Bruce McAllister

This story of policeman Grabe Massel is hard to summarize without giving away the big mid-point revelation (though you’ll probably see it coming). Let’s just say he has a very close relationship with his car.

There’s probably a really good story to be told with this set-up, but I’m not sure this is it. There’s some excellent writing here, particularly the use of engine noise, but it also feels like there’s a barrier that dulls the impact of the narrative on the reader. Still, it may be the best thing McAllister has written. He may finally be getting close to a breakthrough.

Three stars.

Spork Conquers Civilization, by Perry Chapdelaine

Tarzan… er, Spork is back. This time he and the Ayor travel to a human-occupied planet and deal with an evil dictator. Along with the mix of A.E. van Vogt and Edgar Rice Burroughs that the previous stories have offered, this one has a large dollop of Doc Smith. There’s probably more to come, since Spork appears to be Lord Greystoke… er, a lost prince, but I’m not looking forward to seeing any of it.

Barely three stars.

Spork and an Ayor. Art by Reese

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Robert Bloch

In this month’s interview, Robert Bloch talks about discovering science fiction, learning his trade with the Milwaukee Fictioneers, particularly Stanley Weinbaum, and making ends meet during the Depression. I would have liked a few words about his relationship with H.P. Lovecraft, but it’s a good interview overall.

Three stars.

Portrait by Gaughan

The Half Man, by Keith Laumer

Long cut off from the rest of humanity, the planet Meries is being considered for reintegration into the human community. At some point in the past, the people and domestic animals of the planet became acquatic through genetic manipulation. Part of the team assessing the planet is Gon, the son of an itinerant trader and a local woman. Gon was raised on Earth and is having trouble making contact with the locals. He finally does so on the last day of the mission.

Gon has an encounter with a descendant of Earth dogs gone wild. Art by Barr

Keith Laumer tends to write stories that are either meant as humorous satire or two-fisted Competent Man adventures. Once in a while, though, he writes something deep and thoughtful. This is one of those rare occasions, despite the fact that it was written based on art created for another story in another language. Actually, it’s probably weaker for using that Johnny Bruck cover as the climax of the story. Still, it’s one of Laumer’s better pieces.

A high three stars.

A Day for Dying, by Charles Nuetzel

Charles Travers is arrested on false charges of treason and condemned to participate in the Tele-Games. His odds of survival are practically nil.

Nuetzel is unknown to me, but he’s apparently sold a few stories to a minor publisher and the semi-pro zine Spaceway. This story is fine, but nothing special. There’s a sting in the tail, but it doesn’t bite as hard as I think Nuetzel wanted it to.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

How common is life in the universe? That’s a question that has had many answers over the years. Del Rey looks at those answers and how they’ve changed, along with the experiments and scientific findings that have caused those changes.

Four stars.

Where the Beast Runs, by Dean R. Koontz

Three hunters go after a creature that has killed several other groups just as experienced as they are. One of them will also have to confront a traumatic experience from his childhood.

The beast reflects Andy’s trauma back at him. Art by Adkins

With a few changes, this could have been a straight adventure set in Africa or South America. Like Bruce McAllister, Koontz shows a lot of promise, but never quite crosses the threshhold to being really good. He keeps getting close and does so here, but doesn’t quite get there.

Three stars.

Summing up

There it is. The last IF that is fully Fred Pohl’s. There’s nothing spectacularly good, but nothing spectacularly bad. As for the future under Ejler Jakobsson, we’ll have to wait and see. I’ll miss If… and When if it gets dropped for another book column. There’s also no letter column this month, but that might be to make space for some longer pieces as well as be an artifact of Pohl’s departure from the big chair. We are getting a new issue of Worlds of Fantasy in a few months. Let’s just hope that for IF and Galaxy all this, to paraphrase President Kennedy, symbolizes a beginning as well as an end, “signifying renewal as well as change.”

A sign of the changes to come. At least the Chapdelaine doesn’t look like more Spork.




4 Comments Leave A Comment
Conventions/Performances, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 31, 1969] When eras collide (June 1969 Analog)

2 Comments

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

Huzzah!

It's hard to believe it was just six years ago that the Renaissance Pleasure Faire started in the suburbs of Los Angeles:

"Counterculture" didn't even have a name yet (I think we were calling it "contraculture"), but already, there were folks weary of the modern age, casting their eyes back to a simpler time.  You know, when there were far more things that could kill you, and much fewer opportunities to escape drudgery…

Anyway, I reported on our last foray into the past a couple of years ago.  These days, the back-to-then movement is stronger than ever, with the Society for Creative Anachronism exploding (do they have a thousand members now?) and Renaissance Faires catching on.  They are a good fit for the Pagans and hippies and folks looking for an escape.

We're not immune to the lure.  Here are some scenes from this month's event:










You may recognize the fellow in blue

What really makes the Faire such a delight is the attention to detail.  Everywhere you go, there are actors and actress really playing a part, making the whole thing an exercise in living history.  Of course, as my "character" styles himself a member of the Habsburg clan, you can bet I razzed the Queen when she paraded by with her foppish retinue.

Nevertheless, I hope the Faire retains its purity, prioritizing the spirit of the event rather than descending into a kind of cynical capitalism.  Though, I suppose, that's what the original faires were all about…

Alas!

Speaking of cynical capitalism, I feel that Analog editor stays on the job these days just for a paycheck (and a podium for his irrascible editorials—which he then compiles and sells in book form!) While the latest issue isn't terrible, it certainly doesn't scrape the heights it achieved "back in the day."


by Leo Summers

Artifact, by J. B. Clarke

The name of J. B. Clarke is unknown to me.  Perhaps he's Arthur Clarke's little brother (sister?) His writing isn't bad, nor even is the premise, but the execution of this first tale of his…


by Leo Summers

A beach ball-sized orb appears in interplanetary space.  When an Earth spaceship tries to pick it up, it zips away at faster-than-light speeds a couple of times, as if to demonstrate that it can, and then becomes docile.  After it is picked up, the humans assessing the artifact determine that it was deliberately sent to jump-start our technology.  But was the rationale benevolent or otherwise?

This would have been a great story had not Clarke explained from the very beginning that the scheme was a plot by the evil Imperium to instigate a diplomatic incident a la the Nazis asserting a Polish attack against the Germans on September 1, 1939.  This would give the rapacious aliens legal precedent to annex our planet.  Moreover, we learn that an agent of the "Web", the galactic federation of which the Imperium constitutes a small portion, is already on Earth, guiding our assessment of the artifact.

As a result, there's no tension.  We know everything will turn out fine.  Indeed, it's a strangely un-Campbellian story in that humans aren't the smart ones in the end.  But because there are no decisions to be made, no suspense to the outcome, the story falls flat.

Two stars.

Zozzl, by Jackson Burrows


by Leo Summers

This one gets closer to the mark.  It stars a big game hunter whose quarry is a telepathic beast.  The creature's natural defense is to access your fears and throw pursuers into a nightmare world, repelling them.  It's a neat concept, and Burrows (another name with which I am unacquainted), renders the dream sequences quite effectively.

While we learn a bit about our hero's past and motivations, he never really has to solve any puzzles to win his prize.  He just wins in the end.  There needs to be more.

Still, I really dug the idea, and there's definitely potential for Jackson.  Three stars.

Dramatic Mission, by Anne McCaffrey


by Leo Summers

Here's the latest installment of the The Ship Who.  This series stars Helva, a profoundly disabled woman who, at a young age, was turned into a cybernetic brain for a starship.  Together with a series of "brawns", the human component of the ship's crew, she has been on all kinds of adventures.

In this story, we learn that brain-ships can earn their independence (paying off the debt of their construction) and fly without brawns, and that many vessels strive for this status.  But Helva prefers to ride with company—indeed, she insists on it.

Well, her wish is granted.  Short-listed for a priority mission to Beta Corvi, Helva is tasked to transport a troupe of actors to a gas giant in that system, where they will perform Romeo and Juliet for a bunch of alien jellyfish in exchange for an important chemical process.

The problem is the drama that unfolds before the drama: Solar Prane, the star, is dying from chronic use of a memory-enhancing drug.  His nurse is deeply in love with him.  His co-star and ex-lover is jealous and stubbornly insists on sabotaging the production.  It is up to Helva to be the grown-up in the room and save the day.

There is so much to like about this story, so many neat, unique things about the setting and characters, that it's a shame McCaffrey can't help getting in her own way.  She loves writing waspish, unlikeable characters, and her penchant for including casual, off-putting violence reminds me of what I don't like about Marion Zimmer Bradley.

This is one of those pieces I'd like to see redone by someone more talented and sensitive.  Zenna Henderson, maybe, if I wanted to see the soft tones enhanced, or Rosel George Brown (RIP) if I wanted something a little lighter and funnier.

Three stars.

The Nitrocellulose Doormat, by Christopher Anvil


by Peter Skirmat

The planet of Terex has turned into a death trap for the terran Space Force.  Invited in to deal with an insurgency problem, a combination of religious proscriptions against advanced technology and a flourishing black market that loots what munitions are allowed in, the human troops are not only made into sitting ducks but laughing stocks.

Enter a canny colonel of the Interstellar Corps, whose bright idea is to suffuse all incoming logistics with explosives so that, when they are stolen, they explode.  Deterrent and humiliation, all in one.

It may seem that I've given away the plot…and I have.  It's given away fairly early on, and the rest of the story is simply an explication of the plan's success.

I should have liked the story less than I did, but it reads pretty well.  Three stars.

The Ghoul Squad, by Harry Harrison


by Leo Summers

A rural sheriff digs in his heels at the notion of government agencies harvesting the organs of newly dead victims of traffic accidents in his jurisdiction.  He sticks to his principles even at the cost of his own life, decades later.

This story doesn't say anything Niven hasn't said (much) better in The Organleggers, The Jigsaw Man, and A Gift from Earth.

Two stars.

Jackal's Meal, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Leo Summers

The human sphere of stars has begun to brush against the part of the galaxy claimed by the loosely knit Morah, aliens with a talent for profound modification of bodies, internally and externally.  In the middle of sensitive negotiations between the two empires over a contested bit of space, a bipedal creature runs amok at the space dock.  It is impossible to determine if the being is a Morah made to look like a human or a human made to look like a Morah.  Ultimately, the fate of the two empires rests on this hapless person.

Easily the best story in the issue, both interesting and well written, though it still rates no more than four stars.

Give me the past

Short story SF appears to be on the decline in general, with only four magazines out this month.  Of them, Fantasy and Science Fiction was by far the best, garnering 3.4 stars, but Fantastic and New Worlds both barely made three stars, and Mark, who covers the last mag, has been grumbling about all the newfangled, outré stuff.

As a result, you could fill just one digest-sized magazine with all the good stuff that came out this month.  In other statistical news, women produced just 8% of all the new fiction this month.

It's enough to make you long for the (romanticized) good ol' days…but who knows what the future holds?




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 26, 1969] Cornelius Overload! New Worlds, June 1969

3 Comments


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

The continuing voyage of the new-new-new New Worlds continues apace. (Apologies – I’m still recovering from being told that it looks like the BBC are finally – finally! – going to show Star Trek over here starting in the Summer!)

Anyway, on to this month’s issue. 
A black and white drawing of Jerry Cornelius, staring at the reader. Black skin, white hair, black clothing, red background, , with a blue background. The head is facing towards the reader in the middle of the page.
Cover by Mal Dean

Well, that’s better!! After the succession of frankly dull covers with faces on, this is a breath of fresh air – scarily dark, vivid, startling – never has Jerry Cornelius looked more frightening. Should get casual readers interested!

Lead-In by The Publishers

The fact that we have two stories of Jerry Cornelius this month is heralded by the Lead-In, as it should.

A Cure for Cancer (Part 4 of 4) by Michael Moorcock
IMAGE: We have a black person facing a group of inviduals in the story- a bishop, a woman holding a gun, a naked woman, a woman in a catsuit, an officious looking male and a question mark.Drawing by Mal Dean

As we reach the end of the story things begin to make some sense, although to some extent the point of the story is to be confusing, I think!

It is still non-linear, almost dadaist in its narrative structure. This is a story less about plot and more about the little vignettes, scattered across different times and different universes. At times the contradictory nature of these elements add to the confusion.

Keeping it simple, Jerry manages to retrieve the gizmo he has been chasing over the last three parts and we now know that it is important because it allows the user to control multiple universes and see all the alternatives at once. As a result, characters we thought had gone now reappear – Bishop Beesley, Jerry’s brother Frank, Mitzi, and most important to Jerry, his sister Catherine.

The Cure for Cancer is perhaps most important for being an indicator of the times. It is the sort of story I think you need to read with Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced?, or the Beatles’ White Album playing in the background – both artists have been mentioned in the narrative. Its thoughts on race, war (deliberately satirising Vietnam) and sexual freedom are indicative of being made for an angry, disillusioned and, perhaps most of all, young readership. 4 out of 5.

Three Events of the Same View by John G. Chapman

Another one of those anti-religious stories New Worlds likes. In the first part, Pope Honorius is imprisoned in a castle by the cardinals after declaring there is no God. In the second, a domestic scene involving a garden shed and a request to store cadavers there before an Undertakers Convention. In the third, the view is from a Commandant in a concentration camp. Nice prose, but if there’s a connection, I couldn’t see it. 3 out of 5.

Playback by Granville Hawkins

An un-named narrator uses illegal equipment to play back a recording of sex. It unfolds that the recording is of his wife, who with their children has been killed in a destroyed London by the moralistic "Calvs". As a final act of defiance, our narrator shows the unlawful recording to the public by projecting it onto a chapel wall. It doesn’t end well. An odd yet memorable story, well written, graphically depicting a dystopian future – rather like Orwell’s 1984 meets the Night of the Long Knives, with racist hangings, castrations and sex. 3 out of 5.

Babel by Alan Burns

PHOTO: Two images, split horizontally. The top half shows owls. The bottom half has two people running from left to right across the picture. One is a man dressed as a cowboy, the other a woman dressed in a black catsuit. Drawing by Mal Dean

An author on his debut here. This is a story that has paragraphs, each a different story. In other words, this is Ballard-type pastiche, which could be good, but this is filled with such stream of consciousness nonsense that it feels like a bad hallucinogenic drug trip. For example: “Men are opening the Moon. Streams of wheels have springs of space.” 2 out of 5.

Between the Tracks by Ron Pagett and Tom Veich

A story with the same events repeated over and over, but slightly different each time. Most begin with a ‘boy’ travelling along ‘the tracks’ but things are not what they seem. Allegorical tale, with nods to Bradbury’s Martian stories, I noticed. Nicely done, but I’m not sure I ‘got it’. 3 out of 5.

Spoor by Alan Passes

PHOTO: An black and white photo of ripples in water, possibly a lake. Photograph by Gabi Nasemann

A story about a man searching for Jayne in a Royal Park. Along the way a number of people around him are suddenly eaten by dangerous animals – a lion, an alligator. At the end he finds Jayne fornicating with a gorilla. I get the impression that all this is meant to be funny (“Me Tarzan, you Jane”, perhaps?), but I just found it unpleasant and meaningless. Another dream-state tale. 2 out of 5.

Flower Gathering by Langdon Jones

IMAGE: A picture of the page, showing pretty patterns of text that say THE GARLANDS OF LOVE WEAVE FOR US.
Langdon Jones’s latest piece, text written out in pretty patterns (which is rapidly becoming a prose-thing that I hate) to say THE GARLANDS OF LOVE WEAVE FOR US – or is that WEAVE FOR US THE GARLANDS OF LOVE? I guess this is an attempt to give prose a new form, but for me pretty meaningless. 1 out of 5.

Sub-Entropic Evening by Graham Charnock

IMAGE: A photograph of a man with curly hair playing a guitar whose face is obscured by a gas mask. Photograph by Gabi Nasemann

We’re back in Graham’s CRIM-world for this one. (The first was in New Worlds in November 1968, the last in the March issue three months ago.) This is a story where nothing is what it seems, another set of descriptions written as if the people are in a drug-induced, dream-like state. Jones, Dragon, Velma, and Cat live near an Arena where people seen as enemies of the state are routinely incinerated, and there’s a music concert played by musicians which can cause blindness and death in some sort of suicide pact. It’s all vivid but odd and rather unpleasant. Not a place I’d want to live in, but I guess that is the point. 3 out of 5.

The Fermament Theorem by Brian W Aldiss

A black and white drawing of four figures walking to the foreground, emerging from a desert island. The person in front is carrying a head on a pole.Drawing by Mal Dean

In which Brian Aldiss takes up the mantle to write a Jerry Cornelius story. Earlier in the year Mike Moorcock did say that the sharing of the Jerry Cornelius character was about to happen. Is it any good? It is such a confused mess of satire, social commentary and sex that readers will either think of it as a work of genius or be horrified by the unstructured elements claiming to be a story.

IMAGE: A black and white image drawn in a circle of an old man waving a white flag that has been shot in the head.Drawing by Mal Dean

I enjoyed it, even if I’m not sure I understood it all. There’s a story in there about the origin of the solar system being allied to the Moon and sex, comments on popularism and culture, not to mention lots of obscure references to people such as astronomer and science fiction writer Fred Hoyle, the Archbishop of Canterbury and author Robert Graves. In summary, Aldiss manages to take the key characteristics of a JC story – fluid sexuality, references to culture, fashion and society – and turn them into a satirical commentary – I think. What I found most interesting was that although Cornelius barely appears in the story, Aldiss has managed to write a Jerry Cornelius story in Moorcock’s style. It doesn’t feel out of place in the Jerry Cornelius series, although lighter in tone than A Cure for Cancer. I’ll give it 4 out of 5, although I accept that it could score anywhere between 2 (unstructured mess) – and 5 (work of genius!) depending on the person reading it.

Book Reviews: Use Your Vagina by J. G. Ballard

Image of the advertisement for the book as shown on the back page of New Worlds.Advertisement from the back cover for the reviewed book.

In which J. G. Ballard reviews in detail a “sexual handbook.” Wouldn’t happen in Analog!

Book Reviews: The Boy from Vietnam by M. John Harrison

More relevant, perhaps, Harrison reviews a collection of two stories, one by Aldiss and one by Ballard in a book entitled The Inner Landscape, with varying degrees of success. Harrison then claims that Aldiss is “on better form” with his collection of five novellas in Intangibles, Inc. Eric Burdick’s Old Rag Bone is a non-genre book seemingly dealing with Catholic guilt.

Lastly and in keeping with contemporary themes, Harrison reviews Norman Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam? reminding me that the magazine is sold in the US as well as England. The book was reviewed in more detail by Douglas Hill in the March 1968 issue of New Worlds.

Book Reviews: The Comrade from Ploor by James Cawthorn

James Cawthorn generously reviews E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Subspace Explorers as a book that “offers the kind of entertainment that made the good old days of sf what they were” (ie: not the sort of story found in New Worlds today!), Brother Assassin by Fred Saberhagen which “stretches credibility just a little” and John Brunner’s Double! Double! which has “no credibility whatsoever”. There’s also an Ace Double with Code Duello by Mack Reynolds and The Age of Ruin by John M. Faucett, a review of a new biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs by Richard A. Lupoff, World of the Starwolves—a space opera by Edmond Hamilton, and positive reviews of James H. Schmitz’s This Demon Breed and Hal Clement’s story collection, Small Changes. I was pleased to see some more traditional sf get some positive comments.

Book Reviews: The Machiavellian Method by R. Glynn Jones

R. Glynn Jones reviews a book on tyranny, which is most disconcerting for having photographs of Hitler’s teeth.

Book Reviews: Woman’s Realm by D. R. Boardman

Lastly, D. R. Boardman reviews The Tunnel by Maureen Lawrence, a “competent first novel”. Was mildly pleased to see that it has been written by an ex-academic who is local to me, but not really my sort of thing, being the story of “a bored lonely woman living a boring life”.

Summing up New Worlds

Good news: although the scores may not reflect it, this is a better issue than the last. Although not perfect, the magazine scores with the conclusion of the Moorcock serial and Brian Aldiss’s take on the character. They are recognisably similar yet different, both confusing and subversive. New readers will not have a clue, regular readers will appreciate the word play and anti-establishment satire.

On the other side of the coin, there is also lots of material by relative unknowns, the new lifeblood of the magazine. Most of it is acceptable, though rarely outstanding. For example, the Hawkins was OK, but like Obtuowicz’s story last month really was another unpleasant story without anything really new to offer, Alan Passes’ Spoor was just dreadful.

Anyway, that’s it, until next time.




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Horror, Movies

[May 24, 1969] Cinemascope: The [NOUN] of [PROPER NAME]’s [NOUN]: Blood of Dracula's Castle and Nightmare in Wax

2 Comments


by Fiona Moore

It’s exam time here at Royal Holloway College, and there’s nothing better than a bad movie to burn off the stress whether you’re studying or marking. As a break from examining sociology papers, I’ve taken in a double bill of new American movies to check out the state of the low-budget horror world in, well, the States.

Poster for Blood of Dracula's Castle
Poster for Blood of Dracula's Castle

A young couple (Gene O’Shane and Barbara Bishop) inherit a castle somewhere in Arizona (yes, really). Upon arrival, they find out that the tenants are Dracula (Alexander D’Arcy), his wife (Paula Raymond), his pagan priest butler (John Carradine and probably the best thing in the movie), a shambling moronic manservant named, for some reason, Mango (Ray Young), and a werewolf (Robert Dix). At this point the viewer should be wondering if this is, in fact, a spoof along the lines of The Addams Family or Carry on Screaming, but no, apparently it’s being done straight. It continues on in the same grab-bag-of-horror-cliches vein (pun intended), echoing the Mad Libs feel of the title, up to an ending which I think is a cargo-cult version of the climax of Witchfinder General.

A still from Blood of Dracula's Castle depicting four people chatting in the hall of a castle.
The Draculas: they're just regular folks.

Which is a pity, because I think there could be genuine satirical potential in a modern-day Dracula. He and his wife are living an affluent and luxurious Southwestern socialite lifestyle; rather than biting their victims to death, they have a cellar full of young women whose blood they periodically extract and drink from wine-glasses. It’s not too far a stretch to view this as a metaphor for the movie world, where the old and established prey on the young and naïve, and get away with it thanks to a permissive social environment. Their relationship with the werewolf, Johnny, is also one that could have been more interestingly explored, as they use him to do their dirty work so as to maintain plausible deniability. But this isn’t that movie.

I never like to be totally negative about a film, so I will say that the landscape is beautiful and is shot to its best advantage. The castle scenes were filmed at the real-life Shea’s Castle, a 1920s folly in the California (not Arizona) desert, and I’d like to see more of it. The opening features a groovy theme tune that really ought to make it into the charts.

A still from Blood of Dracula's Castle depicting a human sacrifice ritual.
There's also a human sacrifice scene, because you have to have one of those for some reason.

However, the acting is wooden, the script appears to be a first draft, there are a lot of time-wasting filler sequences and inexplicable character actions. For instance, the girls that the Draculas have chained up in the cellar apparently just hang there, not bothering to attempt escape or even conversation. A human sacrifice to the god (sic) Luna takes place right in front of our protagonists and neither of them do anything to stop it or even raise an objection. The horror is surprisingly chaste and bloodless (particularly given the movie’s title) so there isn’t even the benefit of titillation or a good cathartic wallow in gore. The opening section is a long and seemingly pointless advertisement for an aquatic theme park named Marineland.

One star, mostly for the castle.

Poster for Nightmare in Wax
Poster for Nightmare in Wax

Vincent Renard (Cameron Mitchell), a brilliant Hollywood makeup artist and lover of the beautiful actress Marie Morgan (Anne Helm), is disfigured when the studio head Max Block (Berry Kroeger), who has designs on Marie himself, throws a glass of wine at Renard just as the latter lights a cigarette. Some time later, Vincent is working at a Hollywood-themed wax museum; Marie’s boyfriends seem to have a habit of disappearing, and tribute mannequins of them winding up in Vincent’s wax museum. You can see where this is going, particularly as one can assume his revenge plan for Max is a bit more complicated than simple murder, though there’s a twist at the end which could have been better handled.

A still from Nightmare in Wax depicting a man working on a wax head.
How to get a head in Hollywood.

The performances are at least better than in Blood of Dracula’s Castle, with two weary policemen (Scott Brady and Johnny Cardos) trying their best to investigate the goings-on and Victoria Carroll providing some humour as Theresa, a mercenary blonde trying to get onto Max’s casting couch. There’s some knowing humour about Hollywood and its incestuous, venal culture, and, once again, there’s a groovy psychedelic dance number, albeit in the middle of the movie rather than the start.

We get a little more motivation for the main character than in the previous movie, through the interesting, if not terribly original, idea which comes in towards the end of the story, that Vincent is convinced everyone else is laughing at him and yet we also see that the other characters, in fact, respect his genius as an artist even if they think he’s a bit weird as a person. His turn towards misogyny is also credibly introduced, as his experiences with Hollywood cause him to believe that all women are simply interested in trading sex for career advancement.

A still from Nightmare in Wax depicting Vincent's laboratory.
I hope I wasn't the only one who shouted "Frying tonight!" at the sight of the boiling vat of wax.

Again, though, it’s all a bit tedious and bloodless, and the cliché of the bitter, scarred artist has been done, well, to death. This is another movie where the script could definitely have done with another draft: plot threads are left hanging, and the motivations of secondary characters left unexplained. The idea that Vincent is deeply insecure really ought to have been brought into the story earlier than it is. A movie director who is something of a Hitchcock figure, but young and handsome, is introduced with great fanfare, leading one to assume that he will be Marie’s new love interest and the one who saves her from Vincent’s twisted affections, but then he vanishes from the story with no explanation.

Two stars.

One conclusion I’m drawing from this slate of films is that the traditional horror genre is, for the moment at least, played out. Vampires, werewolves, twisted scarred genisues and imperiled ingenues don’t have much to offer these days. The future, on both sides of the Atlantic, is clearly with the folk horror movement.




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Fashion, music, politics, sports, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 22, 1969] News / Beginnings (Review of Ubik) / My Book (Preview)

8 Comments


by Victoria Lucas

!NEWS BULLETIN!

Since those of you reading this might not be familiar with events in Berkeley, California, I thought I should report here the death of James Rector, a 25-year-old man shot by a sheriff deputy while on a roof watching the protest against the destruction of community improvements to a vacant lot belonging to the University of California, otherwise known as "People's Park."

Shot on May 15, he died on the 19th after several surgical attempts to repair vital abdominal organs damaged by the load of buckshot. A similar volley blinded another man, Alan Blanchard, on the same roof on the same day. If you have an urge to climb onto a roof to view a protest, suppress it. Law enforcement authorities do not recognize buckshot as lethal and are allergic to perceived threats from above. (I am quite opinionated about events like this. You may wish to seek other reports to obtain other views of the same events.) Below is a poem printed as a flyer, circulating on the streets now.


Michael McClure, "For James Rector"

We now return you to your regularly scheduled article


Cover of Ubik by Philip K. Dick

A Marathon Start

Beginning to read Philip K. Dick’s new book Ubik (1969, Doubleday) is like starting a marathon in the middle. Seeing other runners rushing by, you try to keep up, faster and faster, fearing to trip up. Not only does the book start in the middle of a crisis in what appears to be an important US company, but it also has a vocabulary full of made up words of which the meaning can only be inferred: “psis,” “teeps,” “bichannel circuits”; and the dead (if their relatives can afford it) are kept in “moratoriums” instead of crematoria or cemetaries. How can you keep up with things you can’t understand in a future you can only glimpse as felt by unfamiliar characters?


Author Philip K. Dick

Wondering if all Dick’s books are like this, I picked up library copies of his Eye in the Sky and The Cosmic Puppets (both 1957). The latter begins with a quiet, bucolic scene of children playing beside a porch. No rush. The former begins with an accident that causes injury, involving something called a “bevatron” and a “proton beam deflector.” No rush even there. For the most part, the vocabulary is ordinary in at least the beginning of these two. A little research turns up the fact that Dick first used the word “teep” (for telepath), for instance, in his story “The Hood Maker,” said to have been written in 1953, published in 1955, a year in which he used the same invented abbreviation in Solar Lottery.

Why is Ubik so different from other s-f books, even his own? Well, I had to persist to find out, and maybe you will too. I bet you’ll never guess where I found this book. I did not buy it. I found myself in a hand made hippie pad in the woods, dropped off by my husband Mel while he and one of the owners of the place went off to (I think) get wood for the winter. The other owner left with them or for some other errand, and I was alone in their kerosene-smelling dwelling, without anything to do. Wandering upstairs, I found bedding and pillows, and this book.


Not the actual house, but close

Since I hadn’t finished it by the time they returned, I borrowed it. This was the first really “science-fictiony” book I ever read. (I don’t count Flowers for Algernon, which I reviewed here on January 28, 1966, because that book has no assumptions out of the ordinary save one: that an experimental drug exists that can increase intelligence—no rocket ships, no bug-eyed monsters, no “vidphones.”)

Maybe Science Fiction Is Experimental Writing?

Anyway, persisting, I find myself in a future in which all the paranormal phenomena we humans have imagined are real and the foundation of industrial espionage and security, and the dead have a “half-life,” their brains wired into "consultation rooms" as their frozen bodies stand in caskets in a “moratorium," as above. The head of Runciter Associates, the company in crisis as above, must consult his dead wife Ella about the crisis. The “half-life” phenomenon, it is stated, “was real and it had made theologians out of” everyone. The citizens of this future are understandably prone to panic, to anxiety, to uncertainty.

Epigraphs for each chapter appear to be advertising for Ubik, which is variously represented as a “silent, electric” vehicle, a beer, a type of coffee, a salad dressing, a plastic wrap, etc. What is Ubik and where does it come from? No one knows. (Read the last epigraph in which it reveals its own nature to the extent it can.) Soon Runciter’s employees run into Pat, an “anti-precog.” It seems that she is an unusual practitioner of anti-precog[nition] in that she neither time-travels nor appears to do anything at all. But she changes the present and future by changing the past, leaving the affected people with little but (only sometimes) a trace memory of any previous present they have just experienced. Is all that strange enough for you? Wait! There's more.

There's Jory, dead at 15 years of age, who is on the wrong side of the struggle in the book between light, intelligence, and kindness, and greed, ignorance, and darkness. Keep an eye on him. His parents pay to keep his casket in the same areas as other "half-lifers," although his strong "hetero-psychic infusion" is clearly disturbing Ella Runciter and others.


Science-fiction satire?

Also keep in mind that in the previous year Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater was published with a helmeted pig riding a unicycle on the cover and has been described as satire. Satire is seldom funny-ha-ha, but it is often funny. This book is occasionally funny-ha-ha, especially in the ridiculous clothing that appears to be popular in this dystopian future (1992).

For instance take this passage, in which an important space mogul enters wearing ”fuscia pedal-pushers, pink yakfur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse, and a ribbon in his waist-length dyed white hair.” OK, maybe that isn’t so far from what you might see now on Haight Street. But if this book were made into a movie, retaining Dick’s careful costuming would ensure it would be laughed off the screen.

The Cryonics Connections


Robert Ettinger in World War II uniform

Also notice that in 1967 the first person had been frozen, Professor James Bedford, preceded in 1962 by Robert Ettinger's book The Prospect of Immortality, in which he introduces the idea of cryonic suspension. Attempted cryopreservation of human beings was a real thing from then on. Which is part of what suggests that this book is satire as well as science fiction. And compare the plot of this book with that of Robert A. Heinlein's A Door into Summer, serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in October, November, and December of 1956 (published as a book a year later). In Heinlein's book a company executive is outmaneuvered and winds up in "cold sleep," waking up in the year 2000.

Mum's the Word

But anything more I write about the plot beyond what I’ve already written could well give away the plot. I can give you this hint, though, asked by the above-mentioned anti-precog (Pat) after most of the characters have experienced a bomb blast on Earth's moon: “Are we dead, or aren’t we?” And this one: the book makes it clear that human beings are so constituted that we can only know what our brains tell us (and, by the way, who is "us"?), which interpret what our senses (or in this book also our extra senses) send to it.

Oh, and one more thing. Oddly enough the last sentence in the book does not give anything away: "This was just the beginning." In any case I give it 5 stars out of 5 and recommend that you at least peek into it and see if it makes you crazy.

And Now for Something Completely Different

I'm going to tell you the truth about why my husband Mel and I spend so much time commuting between Humboldt County and San Francisco/Berkeley. It's The Book.


Good thing I've got a Selectric

The Book is dominating my life right now. I've spent many nights, holidays, any days I'm not working as a temp for Humboldt County, transcribing and writing as well as interviewing. For perhaps a year now I have been working with John Jefferson Poland, Jr., otherwise known (by his preference) as "F**k" Poland (or "Jeff"). After founding a sexual freedom "league" in New York City, he moved to Berkeley and founded similar groups there and in San Francisco, but insisting that a woman take up the cause and run the San Francisco group.

He wanted to produce a book on women in the sexual freedom movement–every variety from those who were brought all unwary to an SFL ("Sexual Freedom League") meeting or party to those who were/are leaders and spokeswomen for the cause.

I had done both interviewing and transcribing (the latter for a living), so it was mainly a matter of pointing me in the right direction and saying something like "go to it!" Jeff has been present at some of the interviews, in some cases commanded to be quiet so the women could speak for themselves.

"Meetings" are informational affairs in which leaders of the movement talk about the politics behind the parties and how they are conducted. "Parties" are what might be called orgies, with cheap red wine, a raised thermostat, and mattresses almost covering the floor of a Berkeley house. No man or men who seek entry without female companion(s) are admitted. It's heterosexual couples or single women only allowed. (Gays are excluded because two men could couple up and then only reveal themselves as straight predators of women when they are inside in the semi-dark and difficult to roust.)

And then there's me with my tape recorder, microphone, notebook, and voice, talking with women, making dates for interviews elsewhere and elsewhen. Real names are not used, except for one leader of the movement, Ina Saslow, who was arrested with Jeff during a nude demonstration on a public beach, then jailed, has her own chapter in her own words.


Empty theater, full stage

One night in San Francisco recently there was a party in an empty auditorium. The only celebrity attending was Paul Krassner, and he must have come with a woman, given the rules. Did he come with me? I'm so tired and busy right now I can't pull up the full memory. I mainly recollect standing with him behind a phalanx of mostly empty seats and watching the stage, on which were at least a dozen writhing couples. We agreed that it was an extraordinary sight. Oddly, I do not remember specifically whether he or I was wearing a full set of clothes at the time, but I think we were.

The Book is still in process. I will report progress when there is any, if desired. By the way, the book bears Jeff's name and my pseudonym as authors and is due to be published by The Olympia Press, Inc. (New York). Initial plans are to publish a hardback book with pictures of both authors/editors. Who wants to review my book when it comes out?

Ubik – A Second View


by Jason Sacks

Our dear editor has asked me to tack on a small response to Vicki’s review of Ubik, because I’m a huge fan of Mr. Dick’s work. I’ve read nearly everything he has written, and I feel that Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney and especially Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are some of the finest science fiction novels of the '60s thus far.

On display in Ubik are all the elements which make Dick's work so transcendent and meaningful for me. We get miserable lead characters and subjective takes on reality; we get petulant children and time shifts and a weird, uncanny type of emotional resonance which only PKD can deliver.

I’m not going to dwell on the plot here, partially because my brilliant colleague has already done a great job summarizing this singular novel. And I’m also not going to dwell on plot because, well, this book has a plot, yeah it has a plot, but Ubik also has many plots, or no plots, or subtle plots, or infinitely recursive plots, or just some plotting that’s very particularly Phil Dick.

Am I making sense? I don't think I’m making sense….

And my lack of real coherence at this point is kind of appropriate, too. Because, like so many of Dick’s novels, Ubik has an incredible density of story; he presents layers and layers of events which build character and environment and plot and perceptions and problems, all tumbling and cascading upon itself in a kind of shambolic construction which constantly threatens to fall down upon itself. But all the while, as he seemingly casually is creating these seeming arbitrary events and twists, Dick gives readers these incredible moments, these flashes of insight, which reveal he has been managing his story well all along, until we amble to an ending which feels tremendously satisfying.

Ubik has a lot to do with psychics and psychic warfare between corporations who all aim to dominate each other. An attentive reader of Dick is well aware of his passion for both psychics and bizarre faceless corporations, but in Ubik he has created an elaborate, complex idea structure around the psychics – there are scales of precogs, and people who can cancel out precogs, and the literal rewriting of reality based on the work of the precogs, and a constant sense that nothing, absolutely nothing we see, is real — at the same time all of it is real.

Image from the back cover of the new hardback.

Again Mr. Dick’s writings always make me sound like a madman when I try to describe them. The reviewer’s dilemma!

But that’s the transcendent mindset the author puts you in with Ubik. He grounds readers in reality and then just as quickly yanks reality away from readers. One minute he’s depicting home appliances which demand dimes to open a fridge and 50 cents to use the bathroom faucet. The next he’s describing a prosaic journey to the moon, no big deal just a regular day at the office. The next minute we are following the results of a human-shaped bomb and tracking survival, and we suddenly start seeing entropy appearing everywhere, and the whole thing just moves at the speed of an SST, though perhaps the pilot of the plane is going from New York to London by way of Shanghai.

Is this review vague enough? I apologize, reader. As Vicki points out, I could be more specific, but seriously, if this sounds at all up your alley, Ubik will be a tremendously memorable read for you.

Which leaves the very tough question of a rating for this book. If Androids Dream is the absolute apex of science fiction (and I think it is), this book is one rung slightly below that level – if only because no character is quite as vivid as that book’s complicated and completely memorable Rick Deckard. That is a five star book, which means I give Ubik…

4½ stars

 




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

[May 20, 1969] Ad Astra et Infernum (June 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

8 Comments

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

To the Stars

Venus has gotten a lot of attention from Earth's superpowers.  Part of it is its tremendous similarity to our home in some ways: similar mass, similar composition, similar distance from the Sun (as such things go).  But the biggest reason why so many probes have been dispatched to the Solar System's second world (to wit: Mariner 2, Mariner 5, Venera 1, Veneras 2 and 3, and Venera 4) is because it's the closest planet to Earth.  Every 19 months, Earth and Venus are aligned such that a minimum of rocket is required to send a maximum of scientific payload toward the Planet of Love.  Since 1961, every opportunity has seen missions launched from at least one side of the Pole.

This year's was no exception: on January 5 and 10, the USSR launched Venera (Venus) 5 and 6 toward the second planet, and this month (the 16th and the 18th), they arrived.

Our conception of Venus has changed radically since spaceships started probing the world.  Just read our article on the planet, written back in 1959, before the world had been analyzed with radar and close-up instruments.  Now we know that the planet's surface is the hottest place in the Solar System outside the Sun: perhaps 980 degrees Fahrenheit!  The largely carbon dioxide and nitrogen atmosphere crushes the ground at up to 100 atmospheres of pressure.  The planet rotates very slowly backward, but there is virtually no difference between temperatures on the day and night sides due to the thick atmosphere.  There is no appreciable magnetic field (probably because the planet spins so slowly) so no equivalent to our Van Allen Belts or aurorae.

This is all information returned from outside the Venusian atmosphere.  Inference.  To get the full dope, one has to plunge through the air.  Venera 4 did that, returning lower temperatures and air pressures.  This was curious, but it makes sense if you don't believe the Soviet claim that the probe's instruments worked all the way to the ground—a dubious assertion given the incredibly hostile environment.  No, Venera 4 probably stopped working long before it touched down.

The same may be true of Veneras 5 and 6.  TASS has not released data yet, but while the two probes were successfully delivered onto Venus' surface, we have no way of knowing that they returned telemetry all the way down.  Indeed, the Soviet reports are rather terse and highlight the delivery of medals and a portrait of Lenin to Venus, eschewing any mention of soft landing.  The news does spend a lot of time talking about solar wind measurements on the way to Venus—useful information, to be sure, but beside the point.


The Venera spacecraft and lander capsule

Anyway, at the very least, we can probably hope to get some clarity on what goes on in the Venusian air.  It may have to wait until next time before we learn just what's happening on the ground, however.

To Hell

I bitched last month about the lousy issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Well, I am happy to say that the May issue is more than redeemed by this June 1969 issue, which, if not stellar throughout, has sufficient high points to impress and delight.


by Gray Morrow

Sundance, Robert Silverberg

Silverbob has a knack for poetic, evocative writing as well as rich settings.  He has successfully made the transition from '50s hack SF author to New Wave vanguard.  Which is why this rather forgettable tale is all the more disappointing.

It's about a Sioux spaceman named Tom Two Ribbons who is part of a terraforming contingent on a virgin planet.  Except what his compatriots call terraforming, he calls genocide, for the millions of indigenous Eaters that they are clearing out to make room for farms are, he claims, intelligent.  To prove his point, he goes out among the aliens, dancing their way and his way, hoping to avert catastrophe. 

But is any of it real?  Or is it all a figment of his traumatized mind?

I just found it all a bit hollow and affected, and also confusing.  Not bad, but nowhere near Silverbob's best.

Three stars.

Pull Devil, Pull Baker!, Michael Harrison

A Jewish dentist finds himself implacably hostile to an Aryan patient, and, to his dismay, finds himself wanting to cause him pain in the examination chair.  Turns out the two have a history that goes back centuries to another life, when the drill was in the other hand, so to speak.

So unfolds an age-crossing riddle, at the end of which lies a treasure of untold riches, if only it can be deciphered.

I dug this one.  Maybe I'm biased.  Four stars.

The Landlocked Indian Ocean, L. Sprague de Camp

De Camp offers himself up as a sort of half-rate Willy Ley, explaining why, for so long, the Indian Ocean was conceived of as a big lake rather than part of the world sea.  There's a lot of good information here, but it's not quite as compellingly presented as it could be.

Three stars.

A Short and Happy Life, Joanna Russ

Here's a great little prose-poem on ingenuity involving a barometer.  Good stuff.  Four stars.

A Run of Deuces, Jack Wodhams

Aboard a superluminary cruise ship, the bored passengers come up with a betting pool to relieve their ennui: the winner of the pot is whomever guesses at what distance from their destination the ship will pop out of hyperspace.

A lot of sex.  A lot of languour.  A predictable ending.  A low three (or a high two, if you're not in a good mood).

Operation Changeling (Part 2 of 2), Poul Anderson

Last month, we were (re-)introduced to the Matuchek family: Steve the werewolf, Virginia the combat wizard, Valeria the moppet, and Svartalf the familiar.  When Valeria was kidnapped by the agents of Hell, it was only a matter of time before her parents (and their cat!) would have to penetrate the perverse underworld to retrieve her.

Enlisting the aid of a pair of dead mathematical geniuses, in this installment, the trio warps into the infernal dimension, where they must face off against hordes of demons, baffling spatial topography, and the most evil of beings humanity has ever known.

There is good Anderson, there is boring Anderson, and there is middlin' Anderson.  This story is firmly in the "good" camp, with vivid descriptions, engaging (and often funny) characters, and the sort of light, fantastic adventure we haven't seen from Anderson since Three Hearts and Three Lions.  Poul does somber, dour, very well, so I think it's more work for him to keep things light—even as our heroes are arrayed against the forces of darkness!  It's never frivolous, but there's a fey quality that keeps things on the right side of horrific.

And that episode in Hell!  I've never read the like.  My only regret is that it's not longer, with a little more time for the Matuchek squad to come up with their novel solutions so that the reader can better follow along.  Perhaps it'll get expanded into a full length book at some point.  I hope so!

Four stars for this installment and the book as a whole.

The Fateful Lightning, Isaac Asimov

A boffo piece on the discovery of electricity.  It's good, although I found the explanation of how lightning rods actually work somewhat incomplete.

Four stars.

Repeat Business, Jon Lucas

A mom-and-pop boat charter take on a quartet of "travel agents" who are obviously (to the reader, at least) a bunch of aliens.  The E-Ts are sussing out the charterers and their sailing vessel to see if they might be a hit back home on Sirius or Spica or wherever they're from.

It's not a badly written tale, but it's so obvious, and the protagonists so clueless, that it feels sub-par.  Maybe this would have passed muster a couple of decades ago.  Now it's old hat.

Two stars.

Back to Earth

And there you have it: big news in the skies and in the SFnal pages of F&SF.  There's really no unpleasant reading at all in this month's mag, even if it isn't all novel or cutting edge, and the Anderson really ends with a bang—or a flash of brimstone, perhaps.  Combined with the exciting space news, and the recent launch of Apollo 10 (article to come!) I am really feeling over the Moon.

If you read this month's issue, and watch the ongoing Apollo coverage, I'm sure you will be, too!




8 Comments Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[May 18, 1969] Whirr Hum Bang Bang (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 1-4])

Leave a comment

[Join us for ongoing LIVE coverage of the Apollo 10 flight—going on right now!]


By Jessica Holmes

I’m a bad-news-first type of person, so I’ll get this out of the way: this is the last serial of the current series of Doctor Who. And, per the Radio Times, that makes this serial Patrick Troughton’s last as the titular Doctor. But here’s the good news:

We’ve got a good while to go yet, because this is a very long serial.

And better still, “The War Games” is brilliant.

ID: Zoe, the Doctor and Jamie stand on a a battlefield. There is debris in the foreground. The Doctor is holding a WWI-era helmet.

In Case You Missed It

From the moment the TARDIS lands in the middle of a sodden battlefield, the crew within are in terrible danger. Emerging to find themselves caught in the midst of the First World War, it’s not long before the team are captured under suspicion of being German spies.

However, it soon starts to become apparent that there’s something rather wrong here. Other than, you know, the total war and unimaginable horrors and all that. No, it’s a bit weirder than that. It certainly looks like we’re in France in 1917, and everyone is talking as if that’s the case, but the personnel have no backstories. Not in the ‘these people are badly written’ sense, but in the sense that when they ask one another about where they’ve been or what they’ve been doing, they have absolutely no idea.

General Smythe (60s ish, white, sideburns and British General's WWI uniform) looking stern.

It’s all to do with General Smythe (Noel Coleman) at the local British base, and the decidedly anachronistic communication device in his office. It soon becomes apparent that he’s collaborating with forces far beyond British high command, using mind control to manipulate the men and women under his command towards his own ends.

The new arrivals threaten to upset his control, and he wastes little time in court-marshalling the travellers. They don’t get a chance to defend themselves, and Smythe pronounces all three guilty. Jamie’s sent to a military prison to await trial on further charges of desertion from the highland regiment, Zoe is placed in the custody of a WVR until she can be sent to a civilian prison, and as for the ringleader of their little ‘spy ring’? The Doctor is sentenced to death.

This is treated with more gravity than we’ve usually come to expect from Doctor Who. Sure, everyone’s been in mortal peril plenty of times, but we get the feeling that the characters believe they’ll get out of it in one piece. That’s not the case here. If it were, the Doctor would have told his friends ‘see you soon’ rather than ‘goodbye’. And it’s played by all involved with real sincerity.

The Doctor tied to a post with his back against a stone wall. The shoulders of soldiers can be seen in the foreground. The Doctor looks panicked.

After a damp squib of an escape attempt that only succeeds in delivering the Doctor into the hands of his executioners, a surprise German attack grants Zoe and the Doctor an opportunity to flee.

Elsewhere languishing in military prison, Jamie’s very surprised when a Redcoat is thrown into the cell with him. Yes, a Redcoat. This chap seems to think that the year is 1745—and just like the WWI soldiers, he can’t remember how he got here.

We now arrive at a delightful sequence: the Doctor’s method of breaking into a prison. Does he go for brute force? Of course not. The stealthy approach? You’d think, but no. What he goes for is pure cheek. He flags a car down, berates the driver, and demands to be driven through the front gates.

Upon arriving, he pretends to be an examiner from the War Office, and goes on the opposite of the charm offensive. The offence offensive, you could say. He is very, very cross and hell-bent on making it everyone else’s problem. It’s adorable. And funny. Like being yelled at by the world’s angriest penguin.

Warden's office interior. Warden is facing away from the camera. The Doctor, who is shorter than him, is angrily yelling at him as Zoe watches from over his shoulder.
You see it too, right?

And it works! Not only does the warden buy the ruse, he shows the Doctor layouts of the prison, the logbook, and is about to approve of a visit to a particular Scottish prisoner when a phonecall comes in. Unfortunately, said Scottish prisoner has just tried to escape, aided by his unlikely Redcoat accomplice, who ended up shot in the attempt.

Thinking fast, the Doctor demands that the guards bring him the escaped prisoner. However, his bluster is starting to wear thin, and the warden grows suspicious of the pair of them. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, let alone off-the-cuff schemes that run on pure chutzpah.

Recaptured, it looks like the three are back where they started. However, two of the General’s subordinates, Lt. Carstairs (David Savile) and WVR Lady Jennifer Buckingham (Jane Sherwin), have started to become suspicious of the General’s conduct. Realising that they both have a sense of missing time, they’re a little more willing to listen to the ‘spies’ side of the story.

The General's Office. There is a round glass screen set into a wall panel. Lady Jennifer, her back to the camera, reaches up to touch it. Lt. Carstairs, seen from the back, is at the edge of the frame.

Having discovered it earlier in the unsuccessful escape attempt, Zoe shows the group the communication device in Smythe’s quarters. Smythe for his part isn’t around. He departed some time ago for a conference, travelling via a strange transportation pod that fades in and out of existence with a somewhat familiar sound.

Convinced by the evidence presented (which they couldn’t even see until they concentrated), Carstairs and Lady Jennifer agree to help. The group escape together in an ambulance moments before the General’s return, soon disappearing into a sea of fog… and reappearing on a Roman battlefield.

This is the moment where I fell in love with the serial.

Three Roman soldiers bearing an eagle standard standing on the crest of a hill.

Reversing away from the oncoming onslaught, they find themselves back (ostensibly) in 1917. The Doctor surmises that they crossed the boundary into another time zone. Two thousand years is quite a long way to wind your watch, to say nothing of the jet lag.

It turns out that what seemed to be northern France in 1917 is nothing more than a small part of a greater patchwork of historical periods and places. In one zone, it’s the 1640s in England. The next, 1860s America. The one thing all have in common is that in each zone, there’s a war on.

In the middle of all these warzones is an empty space. Logically, that must be the domain of whoever is orchestrating all this.

Their attempt to reach this central zone gets off to an inauspicious start with the group being captured by the Germans before very long (if I did have to complain about anything in this serial, it would be how often everyone gets captured), though they do escape quite quickly through some quick talking, the assistance of the sonic screwdriver, and perhaps most importantly, a gun.

Next stop: the American Civil War.

A futuristic control room. Lots of blinking lights and gleaming metal. Smythe stands across a table from the War Chief, who has a medallion around his neck. There are armed men dressed all in black in the background.

Their escape garners the attention of Smythe’s superior, the War Chief, a man of bad character and worse facial hair choices. Soon, all the armies of all the zones are under instructions to capture the time travellers.

The ambulance has a narrow escape from an ambush, with Lt. Carstairs staying behind to aid the others’ escape. The War Chief notes his loyalty with approval, and arranges to have him brought back to the central hub for re-processing. The War Chief (and the as-yet-unseen War Lord who commands him) have a great interest in the warriors of Earth, but to what end? It’d be funny if they were in some sort of futuristic unethical historical reenactment society.

Soon running out of petrol, the group take shelter for the night in a barn. The familiar electronic sound comes back, a travel pod fading into existence before their eyes. A band of soldiers emerge, but how did they all fit? Well, the pod must be bigger on the inside.

Once the soldiers have departed, the Doctor can’t help but take a look inside. As the sound of gunfire approaches, Zoe follows him in, the door suddenly shutting behind her. The pod de-materialises, separating Zoe and the Doctor from Jamie and Lady Jennifer.

A large group of WWI-era German soldiers in spiked helmets standing together.

The pod is indeed bigger on the inside—much bigger. There are multiple rooms filled with hypnotised soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder (try saying that five times when you’re drunk), all waiting to disembark at their appropriate time zones.

A gang of Union soldiers meanwhile arrest Jamie and Lady Jennifer, accusing them (much to Jamie’s frustration) of spying. It seems they’re to be granted a reprieve when a bunch of Confederates assault the Union troops, freeing them in the process. They’re even quite friendly. However, their leader, who we previously saw as the German commander in the 1917 zone, hypnotises them into believing that Jamie and Lady Jennifer are spies.

To their surprise, a man in the uniform of a Union soldier comes to their rescue. However, Harper (Rudolph Walker) is no Union solider: he’s one of a growing number of soldiers who have learned to resist the War Chief’s brainwashing. Together, they’re mounting a resistance. Recognising them as being from another time zone, he tries to help. It’s a noble effort, but doesn’t pan out, all three ending up in the Confederates’ clutches. Harper tries to win the Confederates over and break their brainwashing, but being a Black Union soldier, historical context is not on his side.

Fortunately for them, the rest of the Resistance aren’t far behind, but to Jamie’s distress they don’t plan on taking any prisoners.

Jamie and Lady Jennifer (left and right) talking with Harper (centre).

The Doctor and Zoe eventually end up at the travel pod’s origin point, and emerge to explore the sprawling facility. There are dozens of people working to keep this whole system going, and the pair disguise themselves as part of their number to sit in on a lecture given by the chief scientist.

Keeping thousands of people fighting perpetual fake wars takes quite a bit of brainwashing to accomplish, and it’s no good if people keep resisting the process. As such, he’s been working on improving the mental conditioning device. Lt. Carstairs is the guinea pig, and once the process is complete, he’s entirely willing to accept the reality presented to him. The year is 1917, he’s among his fellow officers, and the two strangers sitting in the front row are German spies.

You could make a drinking game out of this. Take a shot every time the Doctor and company get accused of being spies. Finish your glass if someone gets sentenced to death. You might need to get your stomach pumped afterwards.

Thinking he’s just got a bit carried away in the fantasy, the lecturer doesn’t believe Carstairs and has him wheeled away for further examination. The Doctor takes the opportunity to critique the mental conditioning device, and thereby learn how it works and how it might be used to de-condition a subject.

As he’s about to leave, the War Chief turns up, immediately realising that the Doctor and Zoe don’t belong. They have to run for it, getting separated in the chase. In all the chaos, Carstairs gets loose, and so does what he thinks he’s right: he goes after the ‘spies’. He soon catches Zoe, and there’s only one way to deal with a spy in the field. He’s going to have to shoot her.

The Doctor and Zoe standing in a futuristic corridor with metal wall panels. They are wearing white visors with cross-shaped eye holes.
It's called fashion, darling.

The Mystery Box

This is an adventure that is yet to fully unfold, but the slivers we’ve uncovered thus far are a delight. “The War Games” invites curiosity, and rewards us for it with even more to be curious about.

The TARDIS team getting caught in a wartime spy drama was already rather exciting, but throw in all these different time periods clashing with each other and we’re really cooking on gas. It’s imaginative, it’s thrilling, it’s exactly what Doctor Who should be.

Who are the War Chief and War Master? I get the sense that what we’ve seen so far is part of a grander and more sinister scheme. Whatever it is, it’s far from benign. Looking at how many untold thousands (likely more) of people they’ve abducted and fed into these endless wars and the level of technology they possess, one gets the sense that these people, whoever they are, are far more formidable than your average foe.

A man in a visor uses a vice-like device on the head of Lt. Carstairs, who looks afraid. Carstairs is tied to his chair.
Special offer: brainwash and mental conditioning now offered free with your cut and blow-dry!

Final Thoughts

“The War Games” is off to a terrific start.

It’s got a good pace to it, lingering a moment to let the emotional beats resonate, keeping up a steady rhythm when the action gets going. As such, despite the recurring plot point of the group getting captured, it doesn’t feel padded out. I like the characters, particularly the smart and self-assured Lady Jennifer. With all the different time periods, this feels like a properly big and sprawling adventure—an adventure I’m excited to see more of.




No comments Leave A Comment