According to the very latest Science Fiction Weekly (formerly Degler), F&SF has failed to gain readership in the last several years. Contrast this to the steady gains (and 2x readership in general) that Analog has enjoyed.
Van Arnam ascribes this stagnation not to the inherent superiority of Campbell's mag, but the fact that F&SF just can't get the same kind of distribution that the other mags enjoy. The owners of Fantastic and Amazing benefit from having two mags to use as leverage. Fred Pohl has three, sort of. And Analog is put out by Condé Nast, which means newsstands get Analog as part of a larger package including big deal pubs like Vogue.
So the question becomes this: would F&SF score better with the fans if distribution was no longer a factor? In other words, is F&SF a better mag than the rest? Let's look at this month's issue and find out!
I always enjoy stories that mix magic with technology, and this piece by David Redd does so quite well. The setting is distant world with a steep axial tilt and a long orbit. Thus, for decades of its solar sojourn, whole swaths of the planet are in perpetual day or night.
Humans came to this world and drove away, enslaved, or slaughtered the natives of the northern polar continent when it was in sunlight. They built cities, exploited the land, and in general behaved like the expansionistic menace we so often are. Then the night came again…
As of the beginning of the tale, the dryads, gnomes, fur spirits, oreads, elves, and trolls, have lived in peace for some time, mining the abandoned human colony for metallic treasures under the endless starry night. But the serpent is returning to paradise: Josef Somes, a human from the southern lands, is trudging north in search of valuable "life-rock", and he doesn't care who he has to kill to get it.
The hero of our story is a the White Lady, a dryad. Her companions, a stolid, axe-wielding gnome, two fur spirits, and a cronish oread, form a squad whose mission is to dispatch the human before he can defile the fairy Homeground.
There is a lovely world here, and an unusual storytelling perspective. If the story has any fault, it is the rather prosaic language and somewhat shallow treatment. I feel Thomas Burnett Swann could have raised the material up to five stars.
It's still a fine piece, though, and an excellent opening to the issue. Four stars.
The Saga of DMM, by Larry Eisenberg
The synthetic drug, DMM, is not only the tastiest substance in existence, it is the richest food imaginable. And it's a powerful aphrodesiac. It soon proves more popular than pot, acid, reds, whites, and heroin comined. A wave of fornicative obesity sweeps the world, with catastrophic results.
Pretty frivolous satire. Not really worth your time. Two stars.
by Gahan Wilson
Brain Wave, by Jennifer Palmer and Stuart Palmer
A male college student is mentally contacted by a comely alien woman from from Alpha Centauri. A friendly correspondence ensues.
I find I have very little to say about this up-front story, which reads like some kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy until the end, whereupon it has a rather silly twist conclusion (that I suppose is meant to be horrific, but it's really not).
"Mildly diverting fluff" covers it. It straddles the 2/3 star barrier, but I think it ends up on the poorer end of the spectrum.
Cerberus, by Algis Budrys
Marty McCay is an amiable ad man, legendary for his mildness. His method for coping with his wife's flagrant infidelities is to tell shaggy dog tales with a punning punchline. In the end, we see that the butt of his jokes was always himself.
There's no science fiction in this tale. What there is, however, is some excellent writing. Four stars.
Noise, by Ted Thomas
In this month's science fact vignette, I thought Thomas was going to propose a sonic weapon. Instead, he outlines the invention of selective ear-plugs that would blot out the bad noise, but admit desired sounds.
One of his better pieces, which is to say, it doesn't stink.
Three stars.
To Behold the Sun, by Dean R. Koontz
The first expedition to the sun is about to take off, crewed by three regular humans and a cybernetic ship-master. Unfortunately, said cyborg is still shellshocked from losing his beloved in a fire several years prior. And what is the sun if not a big ball of fire?
Behold feels as if Koontz read a bunch of Zelazny tales and thought, "I can do this too!" Well, he can't. His writing is hamfisted, the science is silly, and the situation is contrived.
Besides, if they wanted a safe trip to the sun, they should have waited until nighttime…
Wilson not only provides the cartoons for each issue of F&SF, he is also an author. Mandarin is the story of a pulp villain increasingly taking control of his creator's work, ultimately departing from the printed page into reality.
Reasonably well done, and arguably more successful than his drawings. Three stars.
The First Metal, by Isaac Asimov
I rate an Asimov article by its memorability and quotability. The good Doctor's discussion of the earliest knowledge of metals was pretty interesting, and I ended up summarizing the piece to my family on one of our morning walks. The only real fault with the piece is that it would have been well served by a couple more pages.
Four stars.
The Chelmlins, by Leonard Tushnet
A droll piece about how the Jewish version of the Leprechauns helps keep the schlemiels of the Polish city of Chelm from becoming schlimazels. It's the kind of story Avram Davidson might write, though had he done so, it may well have been funnier. Chelmlins isn't bad, but it doesn't quite hit the mark hard enough.
Finally, the latest story in the Vermillion Sands setting. These tales of the rather surreal artists colony tend to be my favorite by Ballard. This particular one involves a troupe of cloud-sculptors: glider pilots who use silver iodide and custom aircraft to create ephemeral images in the sky. They are hired by a bitter widow possessed of extreme vanity, with deadly results.
If you've read one story, you've read them all. They universally involve desolate landscapes, a dreamy sense of time, and have a sour undertone. This was dramatic stuff when Ballard first came on the scene early in the decade, but it's getting a bit played out.
Three stars.
Hung jury
This issue turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. There are some stand-out pieces and some duds. Most interestingly, we have a several stories that would have been well served by being written by greater talents. On the other hand, rawer authors have to start somewhere, so I'd hate to deny them their chance to improve.
All in all, this issue would probably keep me subscribing, particularly at the discounted holiday rates. I don't know if the quality demonstrated in the December 1967 F&SF would be sufficient to displace other mags for the Best Magazine Hugo, however, even if distribution were not an issue.
It's all academic, in the end. As long as you order directly from the company, it doesn't really matter how many newsstands the magazine ends up on. So tell your friends and get a subscription today. You just might help F&SF outlast all of its competitiors!
We have been harbinged. When Harry Harrison, recently departed as editor of SF Impulse and suddenly appeared as book reviewer in this magazine that seemed to have eschewed features entirely, I wondered whether it was an omen of a larger change.
And here that change is, in big letters at the top of the cover of this December Amazing: “HARRY HARRISON New Editor.” Joseph Ross is gone from the masthead and his departure is unheralded elsewhere in the magazine, though Harrison is quite gracious to him in his book review of Ross’s anthology The Best of Amazing.
by Johnny Bruck
Otherwise, the kudos are reserved for the recently-deceased Hugo Gernsback. Harrison’s editorial is a tribute to him, and Science Fiction That Endures, Gernsback’s own guest editorial from the April 1961 anniversary issue, is reprinted. Gernsback says among other things that enduring SF stories are those that “have as their wonder ingredient true or prophetic science,” and notes that Jules Verne and H.G. Wells wrote most of their notable SF early in their careers, later succumbing to “science fiction fatigue—the creative science distillate of the mind had been exhausted.” That sounds scientific!
But does this change in masthead mean any actual material change in this too frequently lackluster magazine?
The most visible difference is that the cover and title page have suddenly become more crowded. Nine items are touted on the cover, five of them touted as “NEW” and others as “SPECIAL” or even “XTRA SPECIAL.” There’s so much puffery going on that the cover illustration, by Johnny Bruck from the German Perry Rhodan periodical, is confined to the bottom third of the cover, though little harm is done, since it’s quite horizontal in orientation, depicting a spaceship traveling very low and being pursued by flying snakes. Beat that, Frank R. Paul!
Other aspects of the magazine’s presentation represent both continuity and change. The proofreading is still terrible; look no farther than the misspelling “Lester del Ray” on the title page of his story. And curiously, part of the magazine—pages 90 through 125—is in a different, smaller typeface than the rest, though this increase in wordage is not touted on the cover or elsewhere.
As to the contents, the balance is shifted only a little. Two short stories and the serial installment are original, one story is probably reprinted but this is its first appearance in English, and four short stories are reprinted from earlier issues of Amazing and Fantastic. And of course we don’t know whether Harrison actually had much of a hand in selecting what went into this first issue of his incumbency. But the question of reprints versus new material seems to be a continuing sore point. Note the column on the left side of the cover—five iterations of "NEW"—which musters everything in the magazine that's not a reprint, including the book review column.
So, too early to tell, but promising—it almost has to be, given Amazing’s doldrums of mediocrity to date under Sol Cohen. As Bob Dylan, the alleged troubadour of my generation, put it:
I wish I was on some Australian mountain range.
I wish I was on some Australian mountain range.
I got no reason to be there, but I imagine it would be some kind of change.
First, to the non-reprinted fiction. The longest piece of fiction here is the second installment of Frank Herbert’s serial Santaroga Barrier, in which the suggestively named Gilbert Dasein tries to unlock the secret of the reclusive town of Santaroga, which seems to involve a psychoactive substance called Jaspers that the locals all consume. As usual I’ll hold my comments until the story is complete.
The Forest of Zil, by Kris Neville
by Jeff Jones
Kris Neville, who contributed prolifically to the SF magazines during the early 1950s but slowed down considerably thereafter, opens the issue with The Forest of Zil, a cryptic story of space explorers who land on a planet entirely covered in forest and begin to make plans to clear trees to make space for human activities. The forest begs leave to differ, and its response can be read either as an epic in brief of raising the ante exponentially, like A.E. van Vogt but not as noisy, or as a weary parody of the entire conceptual armamentarium of SF. Or maybe something else! How many faces can you find lurking in the coffee shop placemat? Four stars for this subtly memorable piece.
Charles L. Harness, a patent lawyer by day, is present with The Million Year Patent, in which the technicalities of patent law collide with those of relativity, not very interestingly to this lay person. Two stars.
An Unusual Case, by Gennadiy Gor
The “Sensational Story from behind the Iron Curtain” per the cover is Gennadiy Gor’s An Unusual Case, translated from Russian by one Stanley Frye. Gor, born to a family exiled to Siberia by the Tsar, was apparently part of the avant-garde in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, but survived to write popular science texts as well, and to start writing SF in 1961. There’s no indication where this story was previously published, if at all. It’s a first-person account by the creator of an artificial intelligence (apparently at least humanoid; a hand is mentioned) of his rearing of this pseudo-child, which is cut short when representatives of the corporation that financed the project come to take it away, as it protests piteously. It’s short and poignant, though blunted a bit by not making much sense; the ingenue develops detailed memories of human life that its creator didn’t put there. Three stars, and I hope we see more of Gor’s work here (or anywhere).
The ”Ray Bradbury Masterpiece” touted on the cover is The Smile, from the Summer 1952 Fantastic, set in what seems like an American town after a nuclear war has mostly destroyed civilization and left everyone who survived destitute. People of course respond in the only logical way—by destroying or defiling any available relics of the former civilization. A while back it was smashing an old car with sledgehammers; today everyone is lining up to spit on a fragment of a famous painting (clue: the title). But young Tom just can’t get with the program. It’s a bit overdone, but Bradbury’s overdone is better than many writers’ perfectly-baked. Or something like that. Three stars.
Stacked Deck, by Lester del Rey
Our Journeyer-in-Chief recently had occasion to mention “the sort of inferior stuff that filled the lesser mags of the ’50s.” Here’s the real article, Lester del Rey’s Stacked Deck from the November 1952 Amazing. Del Rey is one of SF’s hardy journeyman professionals, in the game since 1937 as writer, first for John Campbell’s Astounding and Unknown, then for everyone in sight during the 1950s’ efflorescence of SF magazines. In the ‘50s he edited magazines and anthologies and wrote novels as well as stories, including a prodigious ten of them under various pseudonyms for the Winston series of juvenile SF. Occasionally he excelled, and his work almost always maintained a basic level of competence.
Almost always. Sometimes a working writer just has to crank it out, inspiration or no, as in this excruciatingly contrived piece. Before it opens, a man flew to the moon, without enough fuel to get back, expecting to be rescued in time by a later expedition. (This already makes no sense.) But that rocketeer, inexplicably, showed up again on Earth, talking about entities he encountered on the moon but claiming scrambled memory. So a better-equipped expedition sets out, only to discover that the Russians are neck and neck with them. All this is told in an annoyingly jaunty, I’m-just-a-regular-guy first person style, as in the opening sentence: “The bright boys with their pep talks about space and the lack of gravity should try it once!”
by Ed Emshwiller
Upon landing, our heroes find a building with an airlock, and inside, a nice lounge with red leather chairs, a cigarette machine, and plenty of alcohol and food, along with a machine shop and a lot of electronic gear, with signs and manuals in English and Russian—and a vault full of missiles, ready to be armed with warheads. They surmise the Russians are finding something similar.
So what gives? All along there have been passing references to gambling, such as the protagonist’s having bought a sweepstakes ticket, and racing magazines lying around, some inside the mysterious building. Our hero picks up one of the latter and finds a note in it written by the aliens who set up the building, explaining that they are all betting on whether the Earthfolk will blow themselves up in short order, or avoid extermination and come calling on the aliens a bit later. Narrator ruminates: “I don’t like being the booby prize in a cosmic lottery. And that’s all the human race is now, I guess.”
And that arid gimmick is the story, with no other redeeming feature. Del Rey must have been short on the rent that month. One star.
Speaking of gimmicks, arid ones that is, Mack Reynolds’s Luvver (Fantastic Adventures, June 1950) is about as contrived as Stacked Deck. Old Donald Macbride and his flirtatious daughter Patricia are having spaceship problems and make an emergency landing on a handy planet despite the “RESTRICTED ZONE. LANDING FORBIDDEN” warning that comes over the radio. The local garrison, consisting of Steve and Dave, hustles them off their ship—blindfolded—and into their quarters, warning them not to look around, not to go outside, not to open the windows, without explaining why.
But Patricia, of course, goes outside, and before Steve can drag her in, she sees a little animal–a luvver. He knocks her out and the guys shoot her up with “the lethe drug,” since wiping her memory is her only hope. Steve explains to the old man that all animals have means of defense—speed, size, venom, scent, etc. The luvvers’ defense is eliciting undying love—“a stronger force than the most vicious narcotic”—in anyone or anything that sees them. If Patricia retains her memories, she will “die of melancholy” if kept away from them, and if they escaped their world, pandemonium would ensue.
The gimmick is slightly less inane than del Rey’s, and Reynolds writes in a style more facile and natural than del Rey’s artificial and irritating voice, so two stars, barely.
The gem of the issue, remarkably, is Charles L. Cloukey’s Sub-Satellite, from the March 1928 Amazing. It recounts a great inventor’s construction of a spaceship and his voyage to the Moon in it, and the attempt on his life there by a disgruntled and demented former employee who has stowed away. It is well told in an agreeable, slightly stilted but very plain style with a good balance of narration and exposition, reminding me of (my old memories of) Jules Verne. It too ends with a gimmick—one that has been used in later decades by better-known writers—but there’s much more of a story here than in del Rey’s or Reynolds’s efforts, so it doesn’t detract from the whole. Four stars.
So who’s this Cloukey? Never heard of him, though I’m familiar with most of Gernsback’s repeat contributors. Turns out he died in 1931, at age 19, of typhoid fever, after publishing eight stories, a poem, and a serial novel in Gernsback’s magazines. Sub-Satellite was his first story, and he was not quite 16 when it was published. Forget G. Peyton Wertenbaker, whose The Man from the Atom, done when he was 16, was pretty terrible—Cloukey is the real prodigy of the Gernsback years. Too bad he didn’t last.
Summing Up
So, not a bad issue, with a couple of four-star stories, and some evidence (mainly the cover and table of contents) that the new regime at least wants to make the magazine look a bit livelier. Whether a sustained improvement is in process of course remains to be seen.
Books seem to be published faster than ever these days, and many are worth a gander. Please enjoy this triple-whammy featuring SEVEN sciencefictional titles…plus a surprise guest at the end!
Shaw recently made a big impact with his Hugo-nominated short story, Light of Other Days, and I've enjoyed everything he's come out with. So it was with great delight that I saw that he'd come out with a full length novel called Nightwalk.
I went in completely blind, and as a result, enjoyed the twists and turns the story took far more than if I'd known what was coming. Thus, I give you fair warning. Avoid the following few paragraphs if you wish to go into the book completely unaware.
by Frank Frazetta
Sam Tallon is an agent of Earth based on the former colony and now staunch adversary world, Emm Luther. In-between are 80,000 portals through null-space. Would that there could be but one, but hyperspace jumping is a blind affair, and the direct route between portals is impossible to compute. Only trial and error has mapped 80,000 matched pairs whose winding, untrackable route bridges the two worlds. Luckily, transfer is virtually instantaneous.
Literally inside Tallon's head is the meandering route to a brand new world. Given the dearth of inhabitable planets, both overcrowded Luther and teeming Earth want this knowledge. Before Tallon can escape with it, he is captured by the Lutheran secret police, tortured most vividly and unpleasantly, and sent for a life sentence to be spent at the Lutheran version of Devil's Island, the Pavillion.
Oh yes–in an escape attempt, the sadistic interrogator whom Tallon fails to kill on his way out zaps his eyes and leaves him quite blind.
Tallon is not overly upset by this development. At this point. he is quite content to spend the rest of his life in dark but not unpleasant captivity…except the wounded interrogator is coming for a visit, and Tallon knows he won't survive the encounter. Luckily, he and a fellow prisoner have managed to create a set of glasses tied into the optic nerve and tuned to nearby glial cells. They will not restore a man's sight…but they will allow him to tune in to the vision of any animal about him. With this newfound advantage, Tallon must make the thousand mile trek back to the spaceport, and then traverse the 80,000 portals to Earth.
Alright–you can read again. Nightwalk is 160 pages long. 60 of the pages, the first 30 and the last 30, are brilliant, nuanced, full of twists and turns, and genuinely exciting. The 100 pages inbetween comprise a well-written but forgettable thriller. I will not go so far as to agree with Buck Coulson, who wrote in the latest Yandro: "pulp standard; described by Damon Knight as "putting his hero in approximately the position of a seventy-year-old paralytic in a plaster cast who is required to do battle with a saber-tooth tiger and there being no place to go from there, kept him in the same predicament throughout the story, only adding an extra fang from time to time." But the assessment is not completely inapt.
Nevertheless, the book kept me reading, and if you can keep momentum through the middle, the whole is worthwhile.
3.5 stars.
ACE double H-34
Another month, another "ACE double". They seem to increasingly becoming my province these days, or perhaps I'm becoming the resident Tubb novel reviewer. Either way, I'm thoroughly amenable to the relationship!
I originally covered this novel when it appeared in the pages of Analog. Long story short: it's a history lesson disguised as an SF story–Reynolds doesn't even bother to color his nations, which retain their stock names of Alphaland and Betastan, as if this were an Avalon Hill wargame or something.
Not one of his better efforts, and it doesn't even have the benefit of Freas' nice art. A low three stars.
Three centuries from now, England is still recovering from "the Debacle", an atomic paroxysm that all but destroyed the world in the 1980s. Society has calcified into an oligarchic, capitalist nightmare, with a few rich entities ultimately controlling everything: the loan sharks, the power generators, and the hypnotists. In many ways, it is the last group that is the most powerful, for a generation after the Debacle, they fostered a pervasive belief in reincarnation. With their guidance (or perhaps suggestion), all (save the rare odd "cripple") persons can Breakthrough to their past lives). So universal is this belief in multiple lives that many have become "retrophiles", living out their lives in the guise of a former existence, even to living in towns constructed along archaic lines.
Into this world are thrust three bonafide time travelers, put in stasis in the 1970s to await a cure for their radiation-caused illnesses. Not only are they exiles in an age not theirs, but they have also amassed a tremendous debt in their centuries asleep. Brad Stevens, an atomic physicist born in 1927, is determined to free himself and his 20th Century comrades from the fetters of financial obligation. Thus ensues a rip-roaring trip through an anti-utopian Britain, filled with narrow escapes, exotic scenery, and a few interesting, philosophical observations.
Tubb has already impressed me this year with his vivid The Winds of Gath, and he does so again with this adventure. Indeed, Tubb is such the master of the serial cliff-hanger that I found myself quite unable to put the book down, reading it in two marathon sessions. Of particular note are his observations on faith, on the seductiveness of nostalgia, and on the pernicious nature of laissez-faire capitalism, which inevitably degenerates into anything but a free market.
What keeps this story from a fifth star is precisely what garners it a fourth: it is quick, excellent reading, but it doesn't pause long enough to fully explore all of its intriguing points. Thus, it remains like Ted White's Jewels of Elsewhen–beautifully turned, but somewhat disposable.
Still, I'm not sorry I read it, and neither will you be. Four stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
From the L File
Two new science fiction novels with titles that begin with the twelfth letter of the alphabet fell into my hands recently. Other than that trivial coincidence, they could hardly be more different. Let's look lingeringly, lest literature lie listlessly languid.
The first thing you'll notice when you open the book is a map. With that, and the title, I wonder if the author and/or the publisher is alluding to J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings, which has recently become quite popular here in the USA. That series has a map too.
Map by Jack Gaughan
Given the size of a paperback, it's darn hard to see everything on the map, which has a lot of detail. Fortunately, it's not really necessary. I'll point out a few landmarks as we go along.
A Public Works Project
We start in the middle of the map. At first, you might think the novel takes place in the past, with horse-drawn vehicles and such. We soon find out that it's thousands of years in the future. Our own technological society is nearly mythical, lost in the mists of time. There are bits and pieces of it here and there, left in ruins.
It seems that humanity lost its spirit long ago. Civilization has stagnated. A military officer has a plan to deal with that, and he explains it to a government official.
Take a look at the extreme southwest corner of the map, right next to the compass. That's a place where gigantic remnants of the glory days of yesteryear lie wasting away. The officer's scheme is to build a huge starship from what's left and carry its passengers to a new, better world.
If that sounds crazy to you, you're on the right track. There is no real intent to complete the project. Instead, it's just a trick to get the population excited about something, and working together for centuries. Think pyramids and cathedrals.
The first step is to launch a series of bloody wars, so the folks in the middle of the map can make their way to the coast, conquering and slaughtering along the way. Make no mistake; there are a lot of gruesome battle scenes in this book.
Many years later, society is divided into a small number of elites, who know the truth about the phony starship, and the ordinary people, who do not. The latter come to almost worship it. Under the leadership of a charismatic figure, they revolt against their rulers.
We're still not done with bloodshed. Without going into details, suffice to say that the naval fleets of the islands off the eastern coast (look at the map) get involved. This leads to a conflict that makes everything else that happens in the book look like minor skirmishes. Then we get a wild twist ending that really pulls the rug out from under you, making you rethink everything you thought you knew about what's going on.
This is a strange book. There are no real protagonists. The plot takes place over a couple of centuries or so, and characters come and go very quickly. This accelerates in the latter part of the novel. Some chapters consist of only one sentence, and read like excerpts from a history book. (The author is a history major, still in college.)
It's also a dark and cynical book. From the deception that starts the story to the completely unexpected revelation that ends it, it's full of sinister plots, secretive government agencies, and human lives sacrificed for the schemes of others.
A sense of despair and resignation to fate fills the novel. The commander of the naval fleet I mentioned above knows that building up his ships for the upcoming war will take eighty years, and also knows that wholesale destruction will be the outcome of the conflict, but accepts the situation as inevitable.
It's an intriguing work, but one that's very hard to love.
There's no map in this book, but it does have what must be the world's longest dedication. See for yourself.
I don't recognize everything on that massive list — The Ears of Johnny Bear? — but I am familiar with much of it. What do those things have in common? Unless I am mistaken, none of them are very recent. Keep that in mind.
Next we get the book's basic premise.
I get the message. It's that darn Youth Culture everybody is talking about. I suppose that's because a lot of post-World War Two babies are in their teens and early twenties now. Mods, hippies, bikers, protestors; they're all young folks, aren't they? The two authors of this novel don't seem too happy about the situation.
Don't Trust Anyone Over Twenty-One
(Apologies to political activist Jack Weinberg for stealing and distorting his famous quote. The original number was thirty.)
Something like a century and a half from now, people are only allowed to live to the age of twenty-one. We get an explanation late in the book as to how this happened, but never mind about that. Most folks go along with this, but some try to escape. These rebels are called — you guessed it — Runners.
There's a special police force that kills Runners. They're known as Sandmen. Our hero, Logan 3, is a Sandman near the end of his assigned lifetime. He gets a gizmo from a dying Runner that is supposed to lead the person who holds it to the fabled refuge known as Sanctuary. Determined to find and destroy the place, he pretends to be a Runner himself. The dead man's sister, Jessica 6, is also a Runner. You won't be surprised to find out she's the love interest, too.
Most of the book consists of the pair's wild adventures all over the world as they try to find Sanctuary. Feral children in a decaying part of a city; an inescapable prison at the North Pole; rebellious young folks who ride around on what seem to be flying motorcycles; robots recreating a Civil War battle; and much, much more. The plot moves at an insane pace, and you probably won't believe a minute of it.
Meanwhile, a Sandman named Francis 7 tracks down the two. He's kind of like Inspector Javert from Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables or Lieutenant Gerard from the TV series The Fugitive. Cold-blooded and relentless, he never gives up. He's also got a secret of his own, leading to a surprise ending.
I get the feeling that the co-authors threw wild twists and turns at each other, shouting Top This! as they tossed pages of the manuscript back and forth at each other. It's a wild ride indeed. As I've indicated, it's got a lot of implausible aspects. The one that really stood out for me was when Logan and Jessica instantly — and I mean instantly — fall in love when they pose nude for a ice sculpture carved by a half-man/half-robot. (Long story.)
If you like lightning-paced action/adventure novels with a touch of satire, you'll get some fun out of this one. Just don't expect serious speculation about where the younger generation is taking us older folks.
Three stars.
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
Not Quite What We Were Tolkien About!
Whilst it has been delayed by the legal shenanigans around the paperback edition of The Lord of The Rings, we are going to be getting the next installment in Tolkien’s Middle Earth series, The Silmarillion, very soon. Cylde S. Kilby was helping Professor Tolkien over the summer and gives some details in a recent edition of The Tolkien Journal, including that this is going to borrow a lot from Norse Myths around the creation of Midgard. Sounds like an epic and complex work for sure.
However, in the meantime, we have a new tale from him, not related to Middle Earth. In some ways, it is a more traditional fairy story, but with many fascinating elements that make it well worth your while.
Every twenty-four years, in the village of Wootton Major, there is held the feast of Twenty-Four where a great cake is made by the Master Cook and shared with Twenty-Four children. The current Master is not particularly skilled in his job and often relies on his apprentice. However, he ignores it when the apprentice tells him not to add the Faery Star to the cake, which ends being eaten by young Smith.
On Smith’s tenth birthday, the star begins to glow on his forehead, and he has many adventures, including into Faery itself.
One of Pauline Baynes many beautiful illustrations in the book
As you can probably tell, Smith of Wootton Major is not an epic quest narrative filled with battles and doom (as you may expect if you have only read The Lord of The Rings). Instead, this is a more charming and quiet work of his, resembling more closely Leaf by Niggle or The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
I don’t want you to get the impression from this it is boring or frivolous. If the Middle Earth novels are like your eighth Birthday Party with all your best friends, this is like snuggling up by a roaring fire with a mug of cocoa and a wonderful book. Different but can be equally enjoyable.
As anyone at all familiar with him will tell you, Tolkien is an absolute master of language and can use it multiple ways to create whatever effect is needed. Here he creates an effortless amiability about the whole thing, introducing wit and joy without seeming forced or conceited. The story is just a marvelous experience.
Apparently, this story came from another project, specifically as an introduction for a new version of George MacDonald’s The Golden Key. He wanted to explain about Faery using this as a kind of metaphor; however, this ended up being expanded into a story in its own right, one I am very glad to have.
It seems odd that Dodie Smith’s latest novel The Starlight Barking has flown under the radar.
It is written by a great novelist who is beloved by mainstream literary publications, and whose play Dear Octopus is currently a hit in the West End. It has been praised by luminaries such as Christopher Isherwood. Moreover, it is the sequel to a beloved children’s classic, the movie version of which was the first movie ever to earn more than $100 million in the cinemas.
And yet, it is also a very odd illustrated novel. Though I find much to recommend in the work, I can understand why it seems not to have grabbed the public imagination as much as the work to which it is a sequel, The Hundred and One Dalmatians.
Picking up shortly after the first book, The Starlight Barking finds the protagonist Dalmatians Pongo and Missis living in Suffolk. One night, all living beings other than dogs fall into a deep magical sleep. The dogs also discover that they can fly, communicate across long distances, and operate machines.
Each dog takes on the jobs of their owners. Having been adopted by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Cadpig (the runt of the litter from the first book) is therefore now in charge of the country. She summons her family to London to help.
A subsequent scene in which the United Kingdom Cabinet goes to the dogs is a highlight of the book. Followers of British politics will note the well-drawn satire of Secretary of State George Brown depicted as a clumsy but cosmopolitan Boxer, and Minister of Transport Barbara Castle depicted as fussy and officious poodle. (Is the refusal of James Callaghan to devalue the Pound the reason that his dog is shown as being less mathematically inclined than the other dogs?)
Back in Suffolk, Cruella de Vil’s Persian cat — who helped the dogs escape in the first novel — turns out to be unaffected by the sleeping illness as she was named an “honourary dog.” The cat suggests that Cruella must be behind the plague of sleep, and therefore must be killed. But when the dogs find Cruella, she is asleep like the rest of humanity. So they spare her.
An alien, Dog Star Sirius, appears at the top of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square. He admits that he is behind the sleep, and that he has come to Earth to save dogs from an impending cataclysmic nuclear war.
Sirius invites all dogs everywhere to join him in the sky, and gives them a day to decide. Pongo is given the final choice. I won’t spoil the ending, but let me be completely up-front here: it doesn’t get less weird.
This is a flawed and chaotic short novel. But it is that chaos of a childhood flight of fancy; unbounded by expectation, and brimming with whimsy. Dodie Smith’s writing alternates between compelling action writing, and something poetic and magical. Her evident affection for dogs in general leads her to make them very lovable characters.
Given that the only animated movie that Disney has released since 101 Dalmatians was a critical and commercial flop (The Sword In The Stone earned just $20M), they may try to film this sequel. If and when they decide to do so, I hope they have the ambition and the audacity to stay true to this novel.
I would wager that if there were a Hugo Award category to celebrate works geared for younger readers, The Starlight Barking would be a strong contender for that shortlist.
The tomfoolery of "I, Mudd" was a delight, but I'm personally more of a fan of the serious episodes that delve deeply into the drama and science. The preview for this week's episode presented a new planet, mystery, and even new characters–how exciting!
"Metamorphosis" begins with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy on a Galileo shuttle craft, escorting a civilian woman back to the Enterprise. The woman is Nancy Hedford, Commissioner for the Federation, who was acting as a diplomat to prevent war between two colonies before she was pulled from her task after contracting a rare but deadly disease. She must be treated within the next twenty-four hours or she'll die.
I'm always pleased to see new competent female characters on Star Trek, and here's one that isn't set up to be a love interest for Kirk. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like her character is going to last long. Almost immediately, the shuttle craft is hit by a strange energy beam and is pulled towards an asteroid with its own atmosphere, almost exactly like that of Earth's. Spock theorizes that the planetoid is a fragment from a larger planet that's been split apart. That still doesn't explain how such a small celestial body could retain its own atmosphere, but perhaps there's some supernatural reason for it that they will explain later.
Hedford understandably begins panicking and orders Kirk to put the craft back on course. It's a fascinating contrast to see her civilian reaction compared to the coolheaded and seasoned Enterprise crew. Unfortunately, despite Kirk's best efforts, the craft is still forced to land on the asteroid, and thanks to a powerful dampening field, cannot take off again.
The Galileo Four
Soon after they land, something – or someone – calls to the party and begins to approach them. It turns out to be a young man in a jumpsuit, reminiscent of the Federation uniform, but clearly older in style. The man is amiable, and he seems relieved to see other people again. He recognizes Spock as a Vulcan, but he takes particular interest in Hedford because she is a "beautiful woman". Hedford, twenty-three hours away from death and stuck on an asteroid in the middle of nowhere, brushes off the advance irritably.
Disdain at first sight
The man takes the party to his home, a building he apparently built with the scraps of his ship which was pulled to this planetoid like the Galileo craft. Except, it's revealed, that his ship crashed 150 years ago and he's actually Zefram Cochrane, the original inventor of warp drive! Cochrane explains that at age 87 he took a ship into space to die, but he was discovered by an alien being which drew him to this asteroid and forced him to live there with it. The alien, which he calls the Companion, restored his youth and stopped him from aging, and he's since built a life here with his newfound immortality. (And he was able to grow crops to sustain himself, despite the asteroid's soil comprising almost entirely nickel and iron, but perhaps the Companion had something to do with that).
Kirk's craft was brought here because Cochrane told the Companion he would die of loneliness without other humans in the hopes of being freed. Instead the Companion brought the humans to him, and now refuses to let them leave. Hedford's fever worsens, and she breaks down hysterically, disgusted by the idea of being trapped and forced to be someone's consort.
I wouldn't be too happy, either.
Forced into action by Hedford's deteriorating condition, Kirk begins to think of a plan. The Companion is intelligent and can communicate with Cochrane fairly fluently. It also appears to be composed of raw electricity, and possesses great healing properties if Cochrane's de-aging is any example. Of course the only way to deal with a one-of-a-kind, sentient, all-powerful creature like that… is to kill it! (What is that speech that Kirk gives in the intro? Something about seeking out and exterminating new life and new civilizations? I can never remember.)
Spock conveniently pulls out his electric impulse scrambler (I can only guess where he keeps it), and their attack on the Companion goes about as well as you might expect. Kirk and Spock almost die and are saved only by Cochrane's intervention. McCoy gently suggests to Kirk that perhaps they could try negotiating with the alien instead of hurting it. Kirk agrees that the negotiation sounds like a good idea, and he orders Spock to adjust their universal translator to work on incorporeal beings.
Yes, maybe talking is the better option.
One cut later, and Spock's magically gotten the translator to work. Kirk explains that the alien's voice from the translator will be interpreted as however the creature perceives itself; what a surprise when the voice that comes out is female. Cochrane is dumbfounded, "how can that be possible?"
Kirk makes the point that male and female are universal concepts that apply to all living creatures, and obviously this creature is just female. (I guess he forgot about his basic biological studies and the numerous asexually reproducing living creatures: single celled organisms, plants, certain lizards, Talosians…)
Anyway, because of the Companion's newly discovered sex, Kirk makes the completely baseless assumption that the creature is romantically in love with Cochrane and that is why it sustains him. Cochrane, despite having the wisdom of two entire lifetimes, and living the better part of that time with this creature, finds the possibility of being loved by an alien absolutely disgusting, and he completely rejects the Companion.
Just then, Hedford cries out, and everyone remembers that she exists. On the verge of death, she makes a moving speech lamenting that though she lived an accomplished life with a successful career, she will never get the chance to love romantically or be loved. How selfish Cochrane is, for receiving such a pure form of love and then rejecting it because of his own biases.
I never had time for love because I stop wars for a living. What's his excuse?
Kirk tries to negotiate with the Companion one last time, in the hopes that it might possibly free them to save Hedford's life. Except, instead of actually discussing a deal and offering the Companion literally anything, Kirk pulls his Kirk logic on the alien and convinces it that the only way for the Companion's love and Cochrane to coexist is for the Companion to be human. I think it would've been simpler to ask if the Companion could just let McCoy and Hedford go so they could save her life, and then he and Spock would stay behind to keep Cochrane company until the Enterprise could return and sort things out. Just me?
The Garden of Zephrem.
Of course the Companion disappears, and then shortly after a completely healed Hedford appears, restored by the Companion who has now occupied her body. Hedford walks towards Cochrane and explains with the Companion's voice that if not for the alien's intervention, Hedford would have ceased, but now they coexist inside her body and are both there, and are both in love with Cochrane. Cochrane instantly gets over his xenophobia now that his lover has a female body, and they decide to stay on the asteroid and live happily ever after together. Oh yeah, and by possessing Hedford's body, the Companion gave up her immortality and Cochrane's with it, and also she can't leave the asteroid because it's the source of her life force, so they are actually stuck there for the rest of their lives. But now they can spend the next 100 years planting fig trees and having sex, so it all works out.
And what about the intergalactic war that Hedford was supposed to stop? Well, in the words of Captain Kirk, "I'm sure the Federation will find some woman, somewhere to stop it."
This episode was so frustrating because it started with so much promise, and then failed in every regard at the ending. I was intrigued to see how they would handle the psyche of a 200-year-old man, and also the relationship between a human and a non-humanoid alien. The writer and Glenn Corbett's performance did neither of these subjects justice. Shatner's performance was particularly stilted, to the point where I had trouble following what he was saying at many points. The pacing started off sharp, but began to meander as the characters made stupider and stupider decisions, and the focus jumped to fun but unnecessary scenes on the Enterprise. But what bothers me most of all is the tragedy of Hedford's character framed as a happy ending.
Not necessarily a happy ending.
The companion speaks for Hedford at the end, and while it claims that both of them are there in consciousness, there is no evidence to justify it. All of Hedford's personality, her tenacity, her drive to complete her duty, and her anxiousness to return to her very pressing work, are gone after she is possessed. Presumably, she really did die on that asteroid, and all that remains are her body and her memories, which the companion takes advantage of to its own end. Or perhaps more horrifyingly, Hedford is still there, but so overpowered by the Companion that she is imprisoned in her own body, doomed to be the slave of this alien and its lover.
I can only hope that this type of story is a fluke, and will not become a standard for Star Trek.
Two stars.
by Joe Reid
Who’s Fooling Who?
It is often the case that at the end of an episode you are left with all of the answers to the questions that were posed in the show and a reasonable conclusion to the adventure of the week. The intelligent heroes are drawn to a place. In that place they discover a mystery. They use the powers and abilities at their disposal to solve that mystery and are rewarded. The rewards are treasure, or freedom, or their own safety, or that of the ship. It’s been a reliable formula that I’ve never had reason to doubt, until this week’s episode.
We never doubt what we have seen, because Kirk and Spock directly tell us exactly what is or has happened. In “Mirror, Mirror”, Kirk told us that the crew has traveled to a parallel universe. In “The Changeling”, Spock told us the origins of the space robot named Nomad. “The Doomsday Machine” had Kirk telling us that the giant space funnel was an ancient planet killing weapon that got out of control and destroyed its creators. How in space did he know that? More importantly, what if Kirk was wrong in some of his musings?
We ascribe superior intelligence to characters in sci-fi: they are smarter than us, and smarter than whatever baddy they face. What if this time, instead of our heroes understanding, and outsmarting the baddy, it was the creature who outsmarted the members of the crew?
One smart lady.
“Metamorphosis” featured a powerful entity. “The Companion” finds an 87-year-old man, Zefram Cochrane, who may or may not have been dead when she found him. She rejuvenates him to the prime of youthful manhood, feeds him, and keeps him from going insane for 150 years. She communicates with him in a physical way, enmeshing herself among his very cells. She must have been pretty advanced to do that.
When the Companion discovered that “the man”, Cochrane, needed female companionship, she reached millions of miles into space and located a vessel containing a dying human woman which would provide the means for her to personally meet the needs of the man. She grabbed the moving shuttle craft, and by power of force drew it several millions of miles to be stranded on her little asteroid. If that wasn’t powerful enough, when the Enterprise started to search for the lost shuttle, they discovered a trail from the shuttle to follow. The Companion, millions of miles away, made the trail vanish. This creature possessed the ability to manipulate living and inanimate matter on a cellular level from a vast distance.
As our heroes attempted to communicate with the companion, we thought we were shown a creature that demonstrated the intelligence of a child in her understanding of humans. A creature that they had to guide to an understanding of humanity using their superior intellect. What we really saw was a creature so smart that it guided the heroes down a path where they felt accomplished, but it met its own agenda. All without threatening the Enterprise or killing anyone.
In the end the Companion was able to convince a 230 year old man to love her, everyone else that she was not a threat, and she convinced a dying, love-starved woman to allow her to possess her body. This episode posed a challenge to the assumption that we understand the story as it is portrayed on the screen. “Metamorphosis” gave me the satisfaction of doubt at the conclusion. I liked it.
Four stars.
Boring Sex(es)
by Jessica Dickinson Goodman
As I watched "Metamorphosis," I found myself thinking of fig wasps. In my evenings and weekends, I run a small community garden on a church campus; a volunteer fig tree grows long and tall between the fence and the tool shed. When Mr. Cochrane mentioned wanting to plant a fig tree, I figured he was referencing this line:
"But they shall sit every man under
his vine and under his fig-tree;
And none shall make them afraid;"
(Micah 4:4, Tanakh, New Jewish Publication Society of America; a similar quote can be found in 2 Kings 18:31-32 Christian Bible, Revised Standard Version)
The thing about fig trees is they require pollinators. Trees can't ask other trees on dates – or kidnap them for 150 years to flirt with them in incomprehensible energy being ways – so they rely on wind or other species for reproduction. Many trees are self-fertile, meaning the adventuring pollinator need only traipse from one blossom to the next on the same branch, finding different reproductive parts at every turn in a complex mosaic. A few dioecious trees segregate these roles tree-by-tree, but most are self-fertile and don't break into easy categories like "male" or "female."
In general I find, the more I know about plants and pollinators, the less concepts like "male" and "female" mean anything at all.
"Yes. The matter of gender could change the entire situation."
Take figs, as Mr. Cochrane so clearly wants to. Figs can only be pollinated by a tiny wasp who crawls through their fleshy outsides to get to tiny flowers inside, sometimes ripping its wings off in the exercise because the fit is so tight, and spreading pollen as it goes. You see, the fruity flesh we love to eat on toast or in jams is not actually a fruit, botanically speaking, but mushy flowers. The wasp repeats this journey from flower to flower until, exhausted, it lays its eggs and dies inside the fig, to be consumed by those flowers. One portion of the baby wasps – once they metamorphosize from eggs to adults and mate with their own siblings – will live and die without ever leaving that fruit, spending their entire lives carving tunnels for the other portion to escape and continue the cycle.
I don't know about you, but very little of the above sounds like human sex to me, whether the act or the category.
"The idea of male and female are universal constants." Really?
Still, human scientists often slap labels like "female" on the wasps that climb into figs and "male" onto those who never leave them. They even do so for other pollinators for whose societies those categories fit even less well, like European honeybees, who have at least three clear reproductive roles, and for whom scientists have weirdly assigned "male" to two of (drones and workers) and "female" to the third (queen). The nature I work with every day is vastly more creative and varied than "male" and "female" – a fact which Jewish scholars know well, as the Talmud references up to eight sexes (zachar, nekevah, androgynos, tumtum, aylonit hamah, aylonit adam, saris hamah, and saris adam).
What about an alien society with three sexes, or eight, or none at all, or one who relies on star-blown space ships for their own reproduction? What if Hedford's death had been framed as part of the life-cycle needs of the energy being and not the pale nothing it was?
Now that is science fiction I would love to watch.
As Lorelei points out, this episode had so much promise. While I don't expect television writers to love the complex realities of Earth's natural world in the way that most gardeners do, I do expect them to do even the most basic of research about the world we all share every day, rather than slapping labels on alien life in ways that limit our imaginations rather than expanding them.
Two stars.
The next episode of Trek is tomorrow! Apparently, we're going to meet Spock's parents…
"I, Mudd" follows the tradition set by three other episodes we've seen so far, in which the crew of the Enterprise has to out-logic a robot ("What are little girls made of," "Return of the Archons," "Changeling"). Even though this episode recycles many of the same themes we've seen in those episodes, it offers enough unique elements to make it my favorite of its kind.
We open on a hallway conversation between the ship's doctor and chief science officer where the ever-cynical medico's instincts lead him to correctly identify an interloper on the ship in the form of the newest crewmember, Lieutenant Norman.
"What did he call me?"
Unfortunately, Spock rebuffs Dr. McCoy's theory (logically) because his reasoning points out Norman's inhuman behaviors, many of which overlap with those of Spock himself. McCoy insists that "the ears make all the difference" but the damage is clearly done as the supposedly unemotional Spock abruptly extricates himself from the conversation with an acerbic retort.
"I mean, you're one of the good ones."
McCoy is immediately vindicated when Norman's next move is to hijack the ship. He single handedly dispatches two security teams, all of engineering including Scotty, rigs the controls to blow if the ship deviates from the course he assigns it, and barges straight onto the bridge to explain the now-captive crew's new situation. Norman presents Captain Kirk a "choice" to either go on a four day voyage to an unknown destination or face the immediate destruction of the Enterprise. Ever cool under pressure, Kirk demands to know the nature of his attacker. Norman responds only by peeling back a panel under his shirt to reveal an android abdomen full of wires.
An android's navel–note that these robots don't use integrated circuits…
Further inquiries over who sent him are met with "I am not programmed to respond in that area" before he immediately shuts himself off. So confident is he in his power play (pun intended) that Norman leaves his unconscious body standing in the middle of the doorway to the bridge. Apparently no one disturbs him for four days as the crew seems startled from their normal activities when Norman abruptly awakes and makes further demands. He acts as if he's giving the crew another choice as he requests a set of personnel to accompany him on the planet they're now orbiting, but again refusal means certain death. At least he said “please” this time.
It soon becomes clear why Norman was reluctant to reveal who sent him, because we next open up to a throne room centered around none other than the illustrious Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Undeterred by Mudd's declaration of newfound sovereignty, Kirk charges at him and commences a delightful volley of banter where Mudd catches the crew up on what he's been up to since they last left him in custody for his transgressions. Surprising no one, Harry's made a mess of every situation he's been involved in and has found himself marooned on this planet of 200,000 androids while fleeing the consequences of his actions. Through much childish bickering on Harry's part, Kirk manages to wrench the truth out of the scoundrel, soon discovering that Mudd is just as much a prisoner of the androids as the Enterprise crew is.
"They won't let me go!"
A strange detail comes into play when the crew is being led away and stumbles upon the shrine to Stella, Mudd's wife. It seems odd that Harry would be so sentimental as to make an exact replica of the nagging shrew he gratefully abandoned galaxies away. It must follow that either the loneliness of being the only human on an android planet compelled Mudd to seek security in the familiar or he is such an adversarial man that the ability to make a version of a nemesis he could program with an off button proved to be an irresistible temptation. The most ironic element of that situation is that Stella may be shrill and harping but with a husband like Harcourt, the audience can't help but be squarely on her side.
Unsurprisingly, the androids reject Mudd the second they have any other humans to compare him to, and devote themselves to providing everything the crew wants so they can better serve humanity. They explain that serving humans gives the androids renewed purpose and protects humans by taking care of their every need to save them from themselves. Elements of the gilded cage they're presented with tempt each of the crew members in turn, but whenever a wish contradicts the terms of their captivity, the crew begins to notice that the androids balk at the paradox by freezing in place, their ID necklaces flashing until the conflict is resolved. It is subsequently discovered that the androids are part of a partial hive-mind directed by Norman and that they defer to him to avoid overloading individual units when logical computation is stalled. Thus ensues a campaign to confuse and overload as many androids by whatever means possible. Fake music, subterfuge, logical fallacies, play acting and flat-out lies become weaponized against the unsuspecting computers; each crewman performs their ridiculous acts admirably, especially Spock, who befuddles several androids all by himself.
"Sorry, ladies. I'm just too good for you."
The episode reaches a delightful climax as the crew's play-acting for Norman finally causes literal steam to billow out of his ears and he admits humans are too complex to be managed by anyone but other humans. In the even more satisfying conclusion, after reaching a peaceful solution to coexist with the androids, Mudd's punishment is revealed to be exile on the android planet so they can help him rehabilitate his nefarious ways. Mudd initially rejoices in this reward of a punishment, until the crew unveils his personal attendants: 500 copies of Stella, this time without her off switch.
Not one line of the script is superfluous and every crewman is at their most efficient and capable as they execute every plan flawlessly. The script, plot, performances and design of this episode click together as seamlessly as the gears powering a well-constructed android.
I am a self-confessed, dyed-in-the-wool robot-a-phile. It is thus inevitable that I give this episode…
5 stars
The Shrew in the Ointment
by Janice L. Newman
I’ll admit, the preview for this episode had me worried. “Mudd’s Women” had some good elements, but was overall one of the weaker episodes of the first season. Happily, this episode was much better than that first one starring Mudd. There was just one problem that took it down a star for me – a fly in the ointment, if you will.
It was an old, old, joke even when Shakespeare did it: the harridan wife and her ne’er-do-well husband. Despite the fact that the audience knows that Harry Mudd’s perspective is unreliable, and thus his version of his wife may not represent the real woman, upon seeing the cartoonishly-awful “Stella” android we can’t help but be repelled and thus sympathize with the charismatic Mudd. Yet a moment’s thought makes one realize how nonsensical it is in the context of Star Trek. This is the future. Is it really so hard to get a divorce if one is unhappy with one’s spouse? If two people are so miserable together, is it truly necessary for one of them to flee into outer space? And sure, another moment’s thought is all it takes to realize that Mudd likely married his wife to gain some kind of monetary benefit, and that if we were in her place, we might be shrill, too. Still, Stella isn’t particularly funny, and for me, even Mudd’s comeuppance was poisoned by her sour, nagging presence.
If Harry Mudd put you in a closet, you'd make this face, too.
The rest of the episode is great, though; one of the best “break the computer” ones we’ve seen. Four stars.
A little bit of Vaudeville
by Gideon Marcus
Something I love about the stellar anthology show, Star Trek, is how versatile it is. One week, we're getting political commentary, with ramifications right from the headlines of today (e.g. "A Taste of Armageddon"), another we're getting a Halloween-themed piece ("Catspaw"). An episode might be a rendition of a classic war movie ("Balance of Terror") or a retelling of Hamlet ("Conscience of the King").
"I, Mudd" takes place almost entirely on a spartan subterranean set, and largely features entertaining characters conversing with each other. It's like an extended Hollywood Palace sketch. It really shouldn't work, but it does.
From Kirk's masterful exchanges with Mudd (with Kirk displaying just the right mix of exasperation, anger, and amusement) to Chekov's lively Cossack dances, to the halting…yet endearing…cadence of…the androids, to Uhura's silky mock betrayal (she really is getting a chance to shine this season!), to the grand finale filled with pantomimed absurdity–it's a stage-bound pageant of comedy. Interestingly, the avante garde Marc Daniels was tapped to direct rather than the more stagey Joe Pevney. You see his surrealistic influences particularly during the dance scenes.
No caption required.
That the story is actually pretty good is a bonus. If the show doesn't quite reach five star status for me, it's because while I enjoyed the show thoroughly, it was a bit too frivolous to feel like "real" Star Trek–essentially the same complaint I had about "Catspaw", but with an execution that makes me all but forgive the lapse.
Four stars.
Tonight's episode seems like it will be more of a serious affair. At least we'll find out what happened to Glenn Corbett after he left Route 66…
Here's the invitation! Come join us.
Also, copies of The Tricorder are still available — drop us a line for details!
Tomorrow, history will be made: the first Saturn V, largest rocket in the history of the world, will take off. If successful, Project Apollo's launch vehicle will be "man-rated", and one hurdle between humanity and the moon will have been cleared.
Of course, we'll have full coverage of the event after it happens, but this sneak preview makes a dandy segue. For today's article is on a literary type of explorer: Galaxy magazine. Unlike Apollo, Galaxy, which started in 1950, is a tried, tested, and even somewhat tired entity. Back in 1959, Galaxymoved to a larger, but bimonthly, format. This has not been an entirely successful endeavor, and in few issues are the problems more glaring than in this one. For if an editor needs to fill up 196 pages every other month (not to mention the 164 pages of one or two sister magazines), that editor's standards must sometimes slip…
Out on the edge of space lies the mineral-poor planet of Freehold. Thinly settled by humans, and then also by the alien Arulians, it lies just outside the Empire. A growing insurgency threatens to topple the existing order, and Ridenour, an imperial troubleshooter, is sent in to monitor the situation.
by Gray Morrow
Sounds pretty nifty, but it's not. The first twenty pages of this seventy-page piece are nothing but characters explaining the story to each other. Skimming the rest of the tale, I determined that it's all more of the same. Moreover, Poul doesn't even try to disguise what he's doing. He spotlights it by having his endlessly explaining protagonist marvel at what a pedant he's being–and when other characters do the same thing, he inwardly notes how much a pedant they're being.
As Kris notes:
Rule 1 of writing: If your characters are finding what you are doing contrived, so will the reader.
The whole thing is written in that archaic style Poul reverts to when given the chance, though there's no reason to do so in this book. He also can't resist being a bit sexist, even in a story that takes place thousands of years from now. Dig this gem:
"But in the parks, roses and Jasmine were abloom; and elsewhere the taverns brawled with merriment. The male citizens were happily acquiring the money that the Imperialists brought with them; the females were still more happily helping spend it."
Because in the future, women don't work; they are parasites on the real producers–the men.
Feh. One star.
That already gets us nearly halfway through the book. Things do not immediately improve…
The South Waterford Rumple Club, by Richard Wilson
by Jack Gaughan
Aliens drop bags of counterfeit money on a small American town. Economic collapse ensues, facilitating an extraterrestrial takeover.
I was about to write that Wilson was an unknown name to me, but looking through the archives, I see he's made several appearances in science fiction magazines over the past two years. He's just eminently forgettable. This story does not change the trend. For one, he spends a couple of pages giving a history lesson as to why an influx of fake currency is such a deadly weapon–akin to anthrax and mustard gas. And then we get a tedious demonstration of such an attack, followed by a couple of pages of (not well thought out) aftermath.
This is the sort of inferior stuff that filled the lesser mags of the '50s. It doesn't belong here.
Two stars.
Thank goodness for Silverbob. From here on, out, the issue is quite good. But you have to make it to page 96! (or simply skip the dross)
King of the Golden World, by Robert Silverberg
Elena, a human, has married Haugan, chief of a tribe of aliens that lives on an island dominated by twin volcanic mounts. Theirs is a genuine love, despite their divergent evolutions, but full understanding still eludes the Earth woman. Though the mountain on which the village is sited is clearly about to erupt, Haugan seems in no hurry to evacuate his people. It is only on the eve of disaster that Elena learns the true, alien nature of Haugan's people. Will she embrace it or be repelled?
This is really quite a sensitive story, timeless and nuanced. I suspect it was influenced by Silverberg's recent nonfiction histories of the original American inhabitants (collectively referred to as "Indians").
Four stars.
For Your Information: Astronautics International, by Willy Ley
Ten years ago, it was enough to keep up with the Soviets and the Americans if you wanted to know what was up in space. These days, Earth's orbit has become a truly international province, and this month's article focuses on the efforts of the non-superpowers, of which there are many.
As a space buff, articles on satellites always score extra marks with me, so I hope our tastes are aligned. Four stars.
Black Corridor, by Fritz Leiber
A man awakens, naked, without memories, inside a featureless corridor. Ahead of him lie two doors: one is labeled "Water", the other "Air". Behind him a wall moves toward him implacably. Choose…or die.
But beyond the first pair of doors is another, and another. Is this a test? Will the test end? And what is its purpose?
Less a science fiction story and more a metaphor for life itself, this piece's worth depends solely on the execution. Thankfully, Leiber is up to the task.
Four stars.
The Red Euphoric Bands, by Philip Latham
A comet is heading straight for an Earth on the brink of atomic war. Is it our doom…or our salvation?
On the one hand, the storytelling and the science are quite excellent. On the other, the conclusion is silly. Moreover, there is a fundamental fault in this otherwise accurate piece: a comet with a two light year orbit would have a period of around six billion years–too high to serve the purposes of the story.
Thus, three stars.
Galactic Consumer Report No. 3: A Survey of the Membership, by John Brunner
The first galactic survey, conducted by Good Buy magazine, turned out to be something of a fiasco–too many beings responded, and they were just too variegated to provide anything like a profile of "an average consumer". Yet, you couldn't call the exercise less than successful…
This series tends to be silly and throw-away, but this installment I liked a lot. Why? Because it's almost like a Theodore Thomas article from his F&SF column–a couple dozen story seeds all in one piece. So many stories feature aliens that are little more than humans in costume. This one presents some real aliens. It also made me laugh a few times.
On the former Kzin world of Down, orbiting a feeble red dwarf, humans have established an agricultural colony. In addition to its colorful history, Down offers another attraction: the Grogs. These are comical-looking, human-sized creatures that have two phases in life. At first, they are four-legged creatures with a dog-like intelligence. In this form, they rove the deserts of Down, hunting and mating. Eventually, the females anchor themselves to a rock, where they stay the rest of their lives.
And yet, these creatures have enormous brains, suggesting a great intelligence. Why did they evolve them, and what can they do with them? Garvey, an entrepreneur whose line is making prosthetics for "Handicapped" species, ones without manipulative organs of their own (e.g. dolphins, the enormous Bandersnatchi of planet Jinx), smells an opportunity.
Handicap, like last year's A Relic of Empire, expands what is becoming a sweeping common universe, tying in the Kzinti of The Warriors, the Thrintun of World of Ptavvs, and the hyperdrive era of Beowulf Shaeffer. What I really like about Niven is that he isn't in a hurry to tell his story. There are asides and subplots, weaving a meandering course through entertaining vignettes, before tying everything together at the end. Niven's universe feels lived in, and all of its facets are interesting. That there's a nifty story at the heart of Handicap is a bonus…though my eyebrows were raised a bit by this exchange:
Garvey: "For as long as we expand to other stars we're going to meet more and more handless, toolless, helpless civilizations. Sometimes we won't even recognize them. What are we going to do about them?"
Jilson (a guide): "Build Dolphin's Hands for them."
Garvey: "Well, yes, but we can't just give them away. Once one species starts depending on another, they become parasites."
This feels a bit like an indictment of welfare, foreign aid…or assistance to the handicapped. I would not jump to concluding that Garvey's views necessarily represent Niven's views, but I also would not be surprised, as he is a hereditary millionaire, and the plutocracy often thinks ill of public demands on their wealth. I will simply note that I think Garvey is being short-sighted. Isn't it worth the investment of a little charity to create an entirely new potential market of both imports and exports? If you give away limbs to the crippled, schools to the poor, food to the starving, will they really just sit on their duffs? Or will they simply now be unencumbered members of society, ready to participate fully? I submit that equalization of opportunity through government assistance and charity actually serves capitalism rather than subverts it.
Well, that's a tiny quibble, and again, just because Garvey thinks this way doesn't mean the author does. If anything, I'm glad he gave me something to think about–along with a good story!
A day in the life of the postal clerk of the future. A particularly bad, seemingly endless day. The kind that tries a person's soul…or tests one's abilities.
Harrison is reliably good. He does not disappoint here. Four stars.
To the Black Beyond
Having trudged through a barren literary landscape for half the span of a magazine, it was comforting to have solid ground to trod for the latter half. But now that the Galaxy is done, I am once again adrift. Who knows what lies in store within the covers of the next magazine or paperback that will cross my desk? Like the expanses of space, it's all an unknown adventure.
Luckily, there are still enough treasures waiting to be found to make the journey worth it!
It took a long time—far longer than it really should have—but The Abominable Snowmen finally lurched towards a pretty good conclusion. Let’s take a look at the second half of the latest Doctor Who serial.
It seems like scarcely a day goes by without images of young people protesting showing up on the evening news and landing on our doorsteps. These days, it’s usually about the war in Vietnam as President Johnson ratchets up the number of troops involved yet again. Monday, October 16th saw the start of Stop the Draft week. Induction centers in cities all over the country were blockaded by protesters, while many young men either burned their draft cards or attempted to hand them in to authorities, which is now a criminal offense. Arrests were plentiful. In Oakland alone, 125 people (including singer Joan Baez) were arrested, and I’ve seen estimates that as many as 1,000 draft cards were either burned or turned in. The week culminated in a march on the Pentagon. Check back later this month for an eyewitness account from the Journey’s Vickie Lucas.
Joan Baez is arrested in Oakland.
Of course, the protests didn’t end there. On October 27th, Father Philip Berrigan, Rev. James Mengel and two other men, forced their way into Selective Service office in Baltimore, Maryland and poured blood into several file drawers containing draft records. The men have refused bail and are being held awaiting trial.
Fr. Berrigan pouring blood into a file drawer.
Conflicts big and small
When we study literature in school, we’re usually taught that conflict is one of the most important elements in narrative and drama. It’s often broken down into three types: man against man, man against nature and man against self. The December issue of IF has them all.
Futuristic combat in The City of Yesterday. Art by Chaffee
For the first several episodes, this second season of Star Trek was solidly impressive. We got to attend a Vulcan wedding. We saw a mythological deity from human antiquity in a sci-fi setting. We saw a transistorized deity faced and defeated. Then a dark alternate universe, followed by a giant cornucopia of doom! I regret that I must mention the episode with the red colored rock lizard worshippers, since that was undoubtedly the low point of this season. Sadly, this week’s episode, titled “Catspaw” comes very close to hitting the low that “The Apple” achieved.
Dear readers, in my opinion, futuristic sci-fi shows should avoid doing holiday themed episodes. I have no desire to watch sci-fi episodes about Christmas or Thanksgiving. Nor Easter, the 4th of July, Passover, Saint Patrick’s Day, or Columbus Day. So, watching what clearly stood out as "made for Halloween" was disappointing. Especially since I do not feel that the episode was served by the inclusion of said theme.
We started this seventh episode of the second season on the bridge of the Enterprise as our heroes awaited a report from the landing party composed of Scotty, Sulu, and a Crewman Jackson. A message came in from Jackson, with no word about the others. As Jackson beamed up to the ship, he arrived on the transport circle dead on arrival. Then from the non-moving mouth of the dead man came a ghostly warning to leave the planets and that the Enterprise was cursed.
"There is a curse on you! Also, you've left the oven on"!
Determined to find out the fates of Scotty and Sulu, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy beam down to the planet to find their people. Arriving on the surface they find that it was a dark and foggy night. What comes next, I was not expecting: As the trio begin their search, they are confronted by three ugly witch apparitions, and wouldn’t you know it they have a poem to share. “Winds shall rise, and fog descend, so leave here all, or meet your end.” Poetry so bad that it even garners a negative review from Spock.
"Hail Captain Kirk, Thane of Cawdor!"
If that isn’t a blatant enough holiday reference, Kirk and the others soon find themselves at a dark and eerie castle. Upon entering they are startled by a black cat which leads Kirk to make the first explicit Halloween reference of the night about trick or treat. They follow the cat hoping to see where it would lead them only to be knocked unconscious as the floor collapsed below their feet.
"There's my litter box!"
They awaken to find themselves chained to the walls of a dungeon next to a skeleton that looks exactly like what it is: a Halloween decoration, or maybe a model skeleton from my kid’s science classroom. As the doors to their cell open, we get our first looks at Scotty and Sulu as they enter the dungeon. Both are under some sort of magic spell and can’t speak but make it clear that they will take Kirk and the others to the people in charge.
I hope they weren't paid by the line for this one…
They meet two aliens that have taken the forms of a wand-sporting wizard named Korob, and the beautiful witch, Sylvia. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy find themselves at the mercy of powers that could endanger the Enterprise in orbit, conjure items out of thin air, and mind control their crewmembers.
Korob and Sylvia–a tale of two coiffures
It is here that the spooky themes began to subside as the magicians reveal themselves as truly alien, with little understanding of humans or even having physical bodies. They need humans and our minds to allow them more of the new experiences that they had created. An interesting premise, but since this is Halloween, it is drowned in hocus pocus.
In the end, Kirk is able to learn about and destroy the magic wand…er…transmuter, the item that allowed their powers to work. The defeated aliens returned to their original forms and promptly die. The conclusion of the episode comes fast with virtually no transition, save for a brief explanation from Kirk to his newly liberated crew.
"The missing pages of the script are right there."
Outside of the unnecessary holiday theme, this episode managed to stay true to the elements of what makes Star Trek good. The characters' behaviors were consistent with what we have come to expect. Kirk was smart and brave. Spock was insightful, and others, so long as they were not mind controlled, behaved as they should. Also the aliens had actual, explained reasons for their actions. All this combined made this episode passable and not the absolute debacle that “The Apple” was.
3 stars.
A fool thinks himself to be wise
by Janice L. Newman
It wasn’t a surprise to learn that the same author who wrote "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", one of the worst episodes of the first season, also wrote "Catspaw". Robert Bloch is famous for his horror writing, particularly the movie Psycho. But his horror fantasy scripts simply do not translate well to the grounded science fiction of Star Trek.
"Catspaw" was a frustrating experience. Not just because it didn’t feel at all like a Star Trek episode (and naysayers in the fanzines will no doubt comment, as they did with "Miri" in the first season, that they happened to catch this episode and weren’t impressed), but also because it had the potential to be an interesting episode but simply couldn’t make it work.
Firstly, the idea that the ‘collective unconscious fears’ of our species would be reflected in a gothic castle, Shakespearian witches, and black cats, is simply ridiculous. If there is some kind of collective unconscious for humanity, the reflection of it must necessarily be both much more chaotic and universal to the human experience. This flaw could have been overcome either by saying that the aliens drew their ideas of us from our popular culture, or perhaps that they drew on one particular crewmember’s unconscious fears. Alternatively, rather than using the traditional gothic symbolism, the show could have tried something more innovative, imagining what might frighten any human anywhere throughout all of history.
Another flaw was the pacing. The scene of Sulu unlocking everyone’s chains took far too long, for example, while the final scene felt rushed. The scenes on the bridge were dull, especially with the wooden DeSalle in charge.
"I am acting!"
A particularly annoying problem with the episode was that it set up situations to be resolved and then didn’t follow through. The most egregious example of this occurs when the bridge crew finally manage to ‘dent’ the forcefield around them—only to have the forcefield lifted by one of the aliens before they can escape it on their own. While I would have been mildly irritated at the similarity to "Who Mourns for Adonais?" if the crew had cleverly managed to escape, I was far more irritated that the crew was set up to escape and then not given the opportunity to do. What was the point of those scenes on the bridge, then?
The ‘horrific’ aspects to the story often came across as comedic instead. Perhaps the ugly witches might scare a young child watching the show, but the room full of adults I was watching with chuckled at their appearance and their sung proclamations. One of the saddest pieces of wasted potential was the aliens’ true appearance. They looked like little birds made of pipe cleaners, and when they came on the screen they got the loudest laugh of the evening. A scene which could have and should have been poignant or grotesque was again turned comedic by poor writing, pacing, and framing.
I’m torn as to what rating to give this episode. On one hand, it didn’t even feel like an episode of Star Trek. On the other, there were some interesting elements, and it wasn’t confusing like "The Alternative Factor" or dully exasperating like "The Apple". Plus, there was a cat. Still, when all is said and done, the wince-inducing scenes between Kirk and the Sorceress canceled out what good there could have been. I can’t give it more than one star.
Signifying Nothing
by Amber Dubin
It's ironic that this episode is called "catspaw" because the plot is about as cohesive as a heavily pawed ball of yarn; a tangle of threads that don't hold together or go anywhere.
The acting quality of the episode peaks early with the deeply convincing collapse of ensign Jackson off the transporter pad. Yet the fact that he is the only non-essential crewman sent down to this clearly hostile planet makes less than no sense. Continuing the madness, after Jackson's corpse is used to deliver a message of warning that's immediately ignored, Kirk, Spock and McCoy are subjected to another gratuitous display from disembodied witch heads spouting Shakespearian-esque poetry. You would think this theme of theater-obsessed eccentric illusion-projectors would continue, but you would be wrong, as the only further theatrical implications come in the form of the heavily made up and costumed Korob, whose appearance is given no explanation.
Though you must admit: the camera loves him!
In further defiance of explanation, the crew wakes up chained to the walls of a dungeon after the floor of the castle they enter haphazardly collapses beneath them. Next ensues an absolutely mystifying scene where a zombified Sulu painstakingly unlocks their restraints cuff by cuff. This gesture is immediately made unnecessary when they are teleported into a throne room with Korob, one of their captors. As we've seen in "Squire of Gothos" or "Who Mourns for Adonais?" Korob reveals himself to be overpowered alien attempting to understand the nature of man. He doesn't get too far in his speech, however, before he is upstaged by the real star of the play, the necklace-wearing black cat that transforms into Sylvia, a beautiful woman.
I was hoping Sylvia's introduction would lead to a McCoy-centered episode, as Bones seems to be unable to take his eyes off her.. necklace.. from the moment she enters. That theory is immediately banished as they are all teleported back to the dungeon and McCoy re-enters as a zombie (a role to which he is well-suited). The task of seducing the femme-fatale then predictably falls on Kirk, who delivers his clunkiest and least believable performance in the series so far as he outright fails in his attempt to make her feel too pretty to harm them any longer.
Despite this entirely nonsensical plot, somehow the biggest disappointment of the episode is yet to come as the aliens descend into madness. Korob is killed by a giant door, which is as easily avoidable as it is imaginary, making it therefore harmless to a being capable of casting such illusions. Even more absurdly, these magical beings, who are said to be powerful conjurors with no abilities of sensory perception, are suddenly revealed to resemble tiny, delicate bundles of exposed nerves.
Jim Henson presents: rejected muppets!
The episode abruptly ends, nothing is resolved, no one understands anything better and I'm baffled by the fact that a simple framing device of a crewman explaining Halloween to Spock at the beginning of the episode could have cleared up where these aliens got material for all the imagery in the episode. Instead, we spent more time watching Sulu unlock imaginary restraints than we do deciphering the nature or motivations of crusty blue pipe-cleaner puppet-gods.
Ridiculous. Two stars.
by Gideon Marcus
The Play's the Thing
I must confess–I did not hate this episode. Not because it was good; heavens no! It wasn't even Star Trek. Just our favorite characters having a Halloween lark. In fact, in my mind, I've completely disregarded it as a Star Trek episode. Just as Spock and Uhura sometimes jam together in the lounge (why haven't we seen that this season?), and just as Kirk insists that real turkey be served on Thanksgiving, I've concluded that it is an Enterprise tradition that Halloween is celebrated with a big todo.
I can see Sylvia actually being Lt. McGivers' replacement, and with a minor in theatrics. Once aboard the Enterprise, she began penning her magnum opus: a play involving all of the senior officers of the ship. Suddenly, all the nonsensical bits make sense. The beaming down of Scotty and Sulu as a landing party, the spooky settings and effects, the endless kissing scenes ("Oh, but Captain, these are vital to the plot! Really, it won't breach protocol at all…")
"Did I hear a door slam? Darn. We'll have to do the whole take over!"
Taken as such, suddenly the episode is palatable. It does move pretty well. Theo Marcuse is always a delight (and a genuine war hero, and he has a great last name; he's probably my cousin). The score was nifty, particularly in the fight scene. Less so in the five minute bit when Sulu unlocked Kirk's fetters.
And there was abundant display of a cat. That, alone, is worth a star.
So, again, "Catspaw" isn't a good episode. But I would watch it in reruns three times before I suffered through "The Apple" again…
Two stars.
Something Wicked this way Comes
by Jessica Dickinson Goodman
I rather enjoyed this episode. As Amber said, it wasn't good. But it was fun. Maybe it's because I enjoy camp. I liked Theo Marcuse's silks and jewels and perfectly shaved eyebrows. I liked the kitschy sets – perhaps borrowed from a recent vampire flick? – and as other writers have noted, the cat was a special treat.
I was less impressed by how many of the so-called ‘collective unconscious fears' involved woman-hating. Crones and seductresses, liars and cheats, the non-crewwomen in this episode were like something from Jesse Helms' fever dreams, no collective I'm a part of.
Janice's proposition that the episode would have been better if it had featured truly universal fears sparks my imagination far more than anything in the episode itself. What truly scares everyone? In a world with apocalypse-worshiping churchgoers, can we say everyone is afraid of death? I would say that many, many of us are afraid of a nuclear attack from our friends across the Bering Strait, but people living outside of the blast zones could be reasonably excused from the universality of that fear.
Stepping away from the philosophical mindtwister Janice gives us and back to this rather silly episode, I am looking forward to seeing this one in reruns. There's just something so fun about our heroes getting tied up – several times – like maidens in a gothic novel.
I think the Captain is starting to enjoy it…
Watching Captain Kirk once again try to kiss his way out of trouble was made all the more fun when his captor/target caught him at his game and refused to play anymore. Despite Sylvia's embodiment of a mushy handful of cruel gender stereotypes, I found myself enjoying her time on screen more than almost anyone aside from the core cast. Cheers to Antoinette Bower for taking a two-dimensional role and turning it into something fun and memorable.
There were many, many, many ways this episode could have been improved. I would be disappointed if next week's episode shared in the same nasty stereotypes of women. I fear it will, as it centers on one of my least favorite characters in this series, Mr. Mudd.
Perhaps Sylvia will make a guest appearance and turn him into a toad before he hurts more women.
Three stars.
I don't know how likely it is that Mudd will get his comeuppance, but we can certainly hope!
The episode airs tomorrow night. Here's the invitation! Come join us.
Also, copies of The Tricorder are still available — drop us a line for details!
This week's foreign news was dominated by affairs in the Middle East. When the papers weren't talking about the United Nations futilely trying to hammer out a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt (whose conflict has become a continuous low burn rather than a short conflagration), they were gushing over the crowing of Persia's "King of Kings".
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, the uncrowned king of Iran for the last 26 years, chose his 48th birthday to crown himself Light of the Aryans, emperor of "the world's oldest monarchy." Also crowned was his wife, Farah, who became the first empress of Persia since the 7th century A.D.
Taking place in the dazzling Hall of Mirros in Gole-stan Palace, the event was possibly the most expensive coronation in history, with newspaper accounts breathlessly describing the type and number of jewels employed in the various accoutrements of state and decorations. The affair concluded with 101-gun salutes, kicking off a week of celebrations that are just wrapping up today.
According to the Shah, the reason for the long delay between ascension to rule and formalization of said rule was that he did not want to take the grand title until Iran had become a modern, prosperous state.
My only aim is to further the prosperity and glory of my nation, and make Iran the most progressive country in the world, resurrecting its ancient glory and grandeur. For this I will not hesitate to sacrifice my life.
While the newspapers and newsreels seem dazzled by the Shah's extravaganza, many of Iran's 25 million people were less impressed. One young woman, student at the Tehran University, would have fit right in at this spring's protests of the Shah's visit to West Germany:
Why should he spend all this money on his coronation? There are so many poor people. He should give them the money.
It should also be noted that while the Shah did take the throne of Iran in 1941, his reign was not uninterrupted. Unmentioned in all the newspaper accounts I could find of the coronation was the two-year tenure of Mohammed Mosaddeq, the democratically elected but leftist prime minister of Iran from 1951-1953. During the Mosaddeq administration, the Shah fled the country, only returning when a coup removed Mossadeq from power—an event which, if not instigated with assistance from the United States and the United Kingdom, was certainly extremely convenient for both governments.
Magazine of Magazines
It has been a couple of years since Analog Science Fiction won the Hugo Award for Best Magazine, but there's no question that it still reigns supreme both in subscribers and general esteem. However, some have complained that editor John Campbell does not do enough to mix up the contents of his publication, relying on the same bunch of authors every month, resulting in a somewhat tired affair.
This month, there are no old hands in the table of contents, but like the throne of Iran, has anything really changed?
What a strange opening novella this is: a long lost colony world is peopled by numerous bands of Scots, operating at an 18th Century technology level…but with an American Indian organization. The latter seems eclectic, using terms like sachem, cacique, as well as counting coup, but no explanation as to why these marooned Celts adopted customs from the western hemisphere are forthcoming.
Anyway, this is the tale of John of the Hawks, a boy on the verge of manhood, who achieves maturity by counting coup on three cattle-rustling men of Clan Thompson. His ascension is delayed by the arrival of men from another world. They represent themselves as scouts, but what they really want is the abundant platinum deposits on planet Caledonia.
The outworlders don't actually play much part in this story. Mostly, we get scenes of John of the Hawks riding horses, battling rival clansmen, facing off against and falling in love with Alice of the Thompsons–a lass who is Every Bit as Good as a Man. It all reads like a dime Western.
And if "Guy McCord" isn't Mack Reynolds, I'll eat my hat. From the interspersed history lessons to the trademark invented slang, it's got his fingerprints all over it.
A low three stars.
Prostho Plus, by Piers Anthony
by Kelly Freas
The writer of the execrable Chthon has thankfully returned to short stories. This is a readable, if not particularly remarkable, tale of a dentist who is tasked with filling the molars of an alien.
A story like this would usually be played for laughs, but Prostho is done straight, with an underlying tinge of horror.
Three stars.
The Case of the Perjured Planet, by Martin Loran
by Kelly Freas
The interstellar librarian, name of Quist, is back for his second story. Using the purveying of books as a cover, the librarian corps is really a division of agents whose job is to monitor the various governments of the galactic confederation.
This time around, Quist is investigating a planet with a secret: it's not that there's evidence that the drab, earthquake-riven world of Napoleon 6 harbors something hidden, but rather the lack thereof. Quist, knee-deep in 20th Century style detective novels, decides to take a page from Sam Spade's book, and opens up a private detective agency on the planet in the hopes that the clues will come to him.
Like last time, it's not a tale that will stick with you, but there's a maturity to the story's telling that suggests Loran is 1) quite a good writer who just needs a better subject/venue or 2) "Loran" is as real a name as "Guy McCord", and a quite good writer is slumming in Campbell's mag.
Three stars.
Applied Science Fiction, by Will F. Jenkins
And now for the highlight of the issue. Will Jenkins, better known to the science fiction community as Murray Leinster, is not only a renowned writer–he also is an inventor. Here is the tale of how he conceived the incredibly useful technology of front projection, allowing actors to appear in ready-made projected scenery in a far more convincing and versatile manner than rear projection.
I really enjoyed this piece, and bravo Mr. Jenkins. Five stars.
The Cure-All Merchant, by Jack Wodhams
by Kelly Freas
A doctor manages a successful practice by dealing in placebos, much to the horror of the straight man inspector assigned to investigate his activities. This piece goes on endlessly, asserting that drugs are useless, and the human mind is all.
Ducks like a quack. One star.
Mission: Red Plague, by Joe Poyer
by Kelly Freas
This last piece is a sort of sequel to Operation: Red Clash, again involving the mythical X-17 hypersonic reconaissance plane. This time, the spy jet observes the deployment of a biological plague on the Sino-Soviet front. The problem is the X-17 cockpit isn't completely airtight…
Poyer writes competent Caidenesque technophiliac stuff, but he has trouble hanging an interesting story on it.
Another low three stars.
Spot the difference?
On the surface, it appears Analog has gotten out of its rut, exploring the output of several new authors. But it doesn't take much inspection to see that Campbell's mag offers more of the same, between the pseudo-Reynolds piece, the workmanlike Loran, Anthony and Poyer, and the truly bad (but Campbell-pleasing) Wodhams. Only the Jenkins/Leinster is truly noteworthy, pulling the issue up to a three star rating.
That puts it below Fantasy & Science Fiction (3.25) and New Worlds (3.2) and above IF (2.8) and Fantastic (2.7) In other words, middlin', which one would expect of a mag doing the same ol', same ol'.
For those keeping up with statistics, the amount of superlative stuff this month could fill a Galaxy-sized mag; not terrific given that five magazines came out with a November 1967 cover date. Women produced a surprising 12.5% of all new short fiction, an achievement rendered less impressive for those stories all appearing in one magazine–F&SF, which was the best magazine of the month.
So here's hoping Analog goes for real change next month rather than the veneer of change. Maybe it'll be a failed experiment…or maybe Campbell will get to oversee a new Golden Age. Be bold, John!
![[November 22, 1967] Being #3… (December 1967 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/671122cover-653x372.jpg)
</small![[November 20, 1967] Fresh Air? (December 1967 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/amz-1267-cover-497x372.png)
![[November 18, 1967] Escape Velocity (November Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/671120covers-672x372.jpg)
![[November 16, 1967] <i>Star Trek</i>: "Metamorphosis"](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/671116title-672x372.jpg)
![[November 10, 1967] Mudd in the computer (<i>Star Trek</i>: "I, Mudd")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/671110title-672x372.jpg)
![[November 8, 1967] Four to go (December 1967 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/671108cover-672x372.jpg)
![[November 6, 1967] Reaching the Peak (Doctor Who: The Abominable Snowmen [Part 2])](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/671106snowmenonthemountain.jpg)
![[November 4, 1967] Conflicts (December 1967 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/IF-1967-12-Cover-672x372.jpg)
Joan Baez is arrested in Oakland.
Fr. Berrigan pouring blood into a file drawer.
Futuristic combat in The City of Yesterday. Art by Chaffee![[November 2, 1967] Trouble and Toil (<i>Star Trek</i>: Catspaw)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/671102title-672x372.jpg)
![[October 31, 1967] Same ol' (November 1967 <i>Analog</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/671031cover-672x372.jpg)
