By Jessica Holmes
Hello again, everyone, and boy do I have a fun serial for you this month!
The Doctor and pals have had a bumpy landing on the Moon, arriving at a lunar base in the '70s– the 2070s, that is! However, it soon turns out that things are not quite what they seem at this weather station, and an old foe lurks in the shadows…
Let’s recap and review Kit Pedler’s The Moonbase.
Continue reading [March 6, 1967] Men On The Moon (Doctor Who: The Moonbase)
by David Levinson
Method or madness?
The assassination of President Kennedy a little more than three years ago is a moment engraved on everyone’s hearts and minds. The arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald brought some relief, but his subsequent murder by Jack Ruby denied Americans the catharsis a trial would have provided, with the clear presentation of all the evidence. Ruby’s recent death just before his retrial has denied whatever release that might have offered. As such, Americans have had to make do with the report issued by the Warren Commission on the assassination, and a lot of people aren’t satisfied with its conclusions. Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane calls into question many of the Commission’s findings and has found an audience. The book has spent 25 weeks on the New York Times list of best-selling non-fiction.
On February 17th, the New Orleans States-Item published a story revealing that District Attorney Jim Garrison was investigating the assassination. In a news conference the next day, Garrison announced his office was working on seeking an indictment of “some individuals in New Orleans” for their role in President Kennedy’s death and promised that arrests would be made. On February 22nd, pilot David Ferrie was found dead in his New Orleans home. Garrison has accused Ferrie of being the get-away pilot for the conspirators and had been preparing to take Ferrie into protective custody. In a news conference on the 24th, Garrison dropped a bombshell. Speaking about his office’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination, he declared, “We solved it weeks ago. There remains only the details of evidence, and there is no question about it. We have the names of everyone. We have all the details.”
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison
Is there anything to this? Garrison seems pretty confident. On the other hand, he has a reputation as a grandstander. He’s overseen numerous vice raids in the French Quarter, resulting in lots of arrests and very few trials. The raids brought him into conflict with local judges and the police, and he’s accused both groups of corruption, but there have been no indictments. He’s even been unanimously censured by both houses of the state legislature for maligning their members. Time will tell if there’s something to this or if it’s just another dog-and-pony show.
Reversion to the mean
Knowing that last month’s spectacular issue was going to be a hard act to follow, I lowered my expectations for this month’s IF. I may not have recalibrated properly. Even some of the decent stuff is pretty forgettable.
This old-fashioned cover bears little relationship to the Chandler story it supposedly illustrates. Art by Gray Morrow
Continue reading [March 4, 1967] Mediocrities (April 1967 IF)
A Cold, Cruel Counting
by Jessica Dickinson Goodman
Most of my friends only experience the war through numbers. Unless they have family on the streets where the bombs are falling, in uniform or not, kill counts reported on the screens in our homes are the only way many people track the war in real-time.
It helps me to remember that TV show writers don't live in a pocket universe, one more far-seeing, wiser than the one in which we all shower and shave and find holes in our socks every day. Unless they are unlucky enough to have participated in the current war, their knowledge of the war comes from those same sources.
The pictures we see on television or in our papers – bombs, bodies, landscapes we've never driven through, leaders speaking languages we do not, propaganda both crudely and delicately crafted – have limited currency. But numbers, kill counts especially, are strangely memorable. We repeat them, over and over, as if these numbers tell us something of what it is like to fight and die on the other side of the world.
Gideon's copy of The World in 1966: History as We Lived It by the Writers, Photographers, and Editors of The Associated Press (Published February 1967) has this to say about the ongoing conflict in Vietnam:
"The allied side lost nearly 14,500 dead during the year, including some 4,800 Americans. Enemy dead were placed at 50,000, but some officials privately said the figure was inflated."
The war in "A Taste of Armageddon" feels like the product of this numbers-based approach to understanding war. In this writerly extension of bloodlessly reported casualty counts, Captain Kirk and his crew face two entire societies (Eminiar Seven and Vendikar) which conduct their war via computers and then tally up the expected deaths. Living people then march into disintegration chambers to keep their 500 year war's gory score. Those societies have chosen to ensure that:
Anan: […] Our civilization lives. The people die, but our culture goes on.
Kirk: You mean to tell me your people just walk into a disintegration machine when they're told to?
Anan: We have a high consciousness of duty, Captain.
Backing up, Captain Kirk and his crew had been ferrying Ambassador Fox to open up diplomatic relations with Eminiar Seven, who they have little knowledge of. They are warned away, but acting under the Ambassador's orders, they disregard the warnings. It soon comes to light that, by entering orbit around Eminiar Seven, the Eminians and Vendikans now consider the Enterprise as a fair target in their murderously bloodless war games. When Captain Kirk declines to order the crew to transport themselves to the surface to be disintegrated, the leaders of the planet hold him and the rest of the landing party hostage.
There is some clever interplay, personal bravery, voice-faking trickery, stubborn commitment to principals on both sides, a self-sacrificing lady in distress, a self-important diplomat, some cruel things said about diplomats as a category by Mr. Scott ("Diplomats. The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank"), and finally, a threat of overwhelming force, via the apparently genocidal standing "Order Twenty Four." (I spent much of the episode hoping "Order 24" was an old joke between the Captain and Scotty, but that shoe never dropped, leaving me disturbed as to Starfleet's comfort with destroying sentient life en mass). Eventually, Captain Kirk gains the upper hand and forces the Eminians and Vendikans to the negotiating table, with the following mandate:
Kirk: "I've given you back the horrors of war. The Vendikans now assume that you've broken your agreement and that you're preparing to wage real war with real weapons. They'll want to do the same. Only the next attack they launch will do a lot more than count up numbers in a computer. They'll destroy cities, devastate your planet. You of course will want to retaliate. If I were you, I'd start making bombs. Yes, Councilman, you have a real war on your hands. You can either wage it with real weapons, or you might consider an alternative. Put an end to it. Make peace."
Make Love, not War
Because, despite the callow specimen of a diplomat that Ambassador Fox turns out to be, all wars – computer-run or otherwise – end at the negotiating table. Smart leaders try to get there as soon as possible, because they know the reality that the Eminians and Vendikans did not seem to grasp: every life lost in war is a blow to that culture. Every dead body, bomb explosion, pitted landscape, dead leader, and bit of corrosive propoganda is part of cultural death.
To be clear, I am not against self-defense in war. A proper pacifist, I am not. If I had the option of being drafted, I could not honestly mark myself a conscientious objector because I do believe there are some wars that need fighting; the jacket I wear in my photo was a relative's Plebe jacket from West Point, class of '49 and he is not the only one to serve in my family. But wars of choice are an entirely different matter to me. Those leaders who wake up one morning and decide to send other people's children to die over borders they should not have crossed in the first place are a curse upon our shared world. We have no idea how the war between the Eminians and Venikans began – by choice, by misunderstanding, by cement-shoe treaties, or with one attacking and the other defending. They do not seem to recall the inciting incident either. In the end, like all wars, peace will only come from talking.
And I find myself agreeing with Captain Kirk, wishing more people would know the consequences of war, and not just the counts of it. Perhaps we too would seek peace and hold her more dearly if we did.
Four stars.
A Polite and Gentle War?
by Erica Frank
I'm sure Dr. Leary would have something to say about the psychology of a whole society—two whole planets, in fact—that has indoctrinated its people so well that they politely march off to death when a computer tells them to.
This is exactly the opposite of the Human Be-In that took place in San Francisco last month, with its focus on "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Instead, the Eminians (and, presumably, Vendikans, although we don't meet them) have a whole culture of "Show up, tune out, drop dead."
The Eminians could take a page from our book…
While their society appears peaceful to Kirk and his team, there must be a great deal of turmoil under the surface. It's not easy to get people to just politely walk to their deaths, so their indoctrination must start very young—perhaps in infancy. Otherwise, how could you explain to a six-year-old that Mommy is leaving forever because a computer said she's dead now? Do parents calmly hand over their children to be disintegrated? …Or are children exempt from "war death," and that's one of the "messy" parts of war that their game avoids? Either way, Eminiar must have a booming business in last-minute video recordings left at the disintegration center for loved ones to pick up later.
However, I suspect the people are not so controlled as all that. While some people—like the High Council—might walk quietly to their own deaths for the sake of society, the general populace may not be so compliant.
"All those in favor of marching to your death, please remain seated."
What terrors must their death guardians commit on the populace, to convince millions of people to leave their families to die?
What do anti-war protests on Eminiar look like? Perhaps they hang around the death centers, handing out flyers that say "You Still Live! Reject the Computer and Reclaim Your Life!" Of course, the High Council would have the Enterprise crew believe that nobody protests, that everyone follows orders. But if that's true… why do their guards carry guns?
Eminiar seems to be a technologically advanced society. Surely a society that is at peace except for the cold calculations of the war itself, has little experience with interpersonal violence. But their guards are armed and well-trained. If people go to their deaths without complaint, why would their guards be so combat-ready that they are able to take down Kirk and his team? Who are they trained to fight when Federation agents aren't visiting?
I think we only got to see a tiny slice of Eminian life, filtered through the biases of the council that calmly declares millions of deaths and then makes sure that number comes true. We saw "Ministry of Peace" propaganda, not what life is actually like for most people.
Four stars. The more I think about this episode, the more chilling implications I find.
Mutually Assured Accounting
by Lorelei Marcus
How often can someone confidently say they are living through an historic event? The kind of world-altering occurrence or period that will go down in the textbooks, that kids will memorize for years to come.
I think everyone lives through three or four. I narrowly missed World War II, but the bulk of my life has been spent in the conflict that has succeeded it. Indeed, this one may be even more global in character than the last, because we all are living in its shadow: The Cold War.
I know the Cold War is a big deal, beyond the news items, the Duck and Cover drills, the Ban the Bomb protests, because it is everywhere in my entertainment. In songs like Barry MacGuire's Eve of Destruction. In movies like Dr. Strangelove, Failsafe, On the Beach, Panic in Year Zero. On the small screen in shows like Twilight Zone and Britain's The War Game. Books like Alas, Babylon and Farnham's Freehold.
These cautionary tales are so omnipresent that they've almost become cliché. Sure, we're all afraid of the Bomb. Using it is clearly senseless. What else can/need be said?
So you can imagine my surprise (and not a little delight) at Star Trek's complete inversion of this theme with its latest episode, "A Taste of Armageddon".
Rather than the typical structure of two equally matched parties tensely avoiding conflict because of mutually assured destruction, instead the episode plunges us right into a Hot War. A hot but clean war with no real weapons, but innumerable calculated casualties.
"G-4" "It's a hit!"
To stave off the possibility of total annihilation from an ever-escalating conflict, the two superpowers (planets in this case) chose to guarantee destruction, but only of people. What a clever, callous twist! Not only is it a comment on how nations might paradoxically value their existence over their constituents (what is a country if not the people living in it?) but it also highlights that no matter how efficiently one conducts a war, the result is still death and ruin.
The only answer is peace. Five stars.
Getting to Know You
by Gideon Marcus
My colleagues have done an excellent job discussing the content of the episode, so I just want to note a few nifty things about its production.
One of the things that endears Star Trek to me is its ensemble nature. This was a particularly balanced episode that saw many of its principals shining (though Uhura still remains underused, and Sulu was absent this week). I was particularly impressed with Chief Engineer Scott's first televised turn at the helm, at which I thought he did just fine. It seems a little strange to have the engineers in line for the bridge's center seat, but the "Starfleet" of the "United Federation of Planets" (terms of art we're starting to hear more and more) seems a lot looser on branch distinctions than the U.S. Navy. Viz. Kevin Riley (is he still around?) moving from Engineering, to Navigation, to Communications–a path Lt. Uhura also seems to have traveled.
"I'll nae lower th' screens!"
This is the second time we've had a special Federation commissioner on board. While I did not appreciate Mr. Fox most of the time, I do appreciate that the Enterprise is often a courier as well as a scientific vessel and sometimes warship. The jack-of-all-trades cruiser-like nature of the ship allows for a wide variety of interesting stories.
Joe Pevney has returned to take up the director's megaphone. He and Marc Daniels appear to have most put their imprimatur on this fledgling show, and they have yet to really disappoint (sometimes scripts let them down, of course). A name I am seeing more is Gene L. Coon, usually in co-writing credits. I've seen him all over television, particularly on Laredo, COMBAT!, and Wagon Train. I'm sure there are others I've missed/forgotten. Along with his arrival, I'm noticing a minor change in tone. Trek feels less like an anthology show that happens to have consistent characters, and more like its own entity–a lived-in universe.
I suppose it was inevitable that, as the world of Trek became established, folks not attached to the show would want to become part of the phenomenon, particularly in light of the big "Save Star Trek" campaign we saw at the end of last year. So it is no surprise that we are seeing our first Trek-specific clubs and even club 'zines.
Trek has been guaranteed at least one more season. I look forward not only to more great episodes like this one (I give it a solid four stars), but also to learning more about the inhabitants and worlds that populate it!
Something WEIRD is going on. Join us tonight at 8:30 PM (Eastern and Pacific) for what looks like it will be a very strange episode of Star Trek:
Here's the invitation!
by Gideon Marcus
The Big Push
After a year of build-up, air raids, and smaller actions, the United States and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam have opened up the largest offensive of the war. Operation Junction Central involves some 50,000 troops pouring into the logistical heart of VC-controlled South Vietnam west of Saigon. Their goal: to find the communist equivalent of the "Pentagon". It's a classic hammer and anvil style operation, with nearly a thousand paratroopers forming the brunt of the anvil behind enemy lines. The push is accompanied by the biggest logistical bombing raid we've seen in weeks.
Whether this colossal effort will bear fruit remains to be seen. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army have only seemed to grow despite constant combat. More and more often, the fights occur on even, conventional terms rather than as furtive guerrila efforts.
But with half a million soldiers "in country", I suppose it was time to do something. Perhaps the momentum of operations will switch to the allied forces.
Business as Usual
Analog editor John Campbell seems unaware that institutional decay has set in. And with no great competitors from without, he is unwilling to change a formula for his magazine that has remained for the past two decades. I suppose that, as long as he sells more than everyone else, he doesn't need to.
On the other hand, I read that Analog's monthly distribution is down from the 200K+ it enjoyed early in the decade. Maybe the wolves at the door will instigate a sea change. Or a palace coup…
In any event, until that happen (note the subjunctive mood), we can expect more issues like the one for March 1967. Dull. Uninspiring.
by John Schoenherr
The Time-Machined Saga (Part 1 of 3), by Harry Harrison
Harrison once again displays his near interchangibility with Keith Laumer, at least when he writes "funny" stuff (his dramatic prose is a notch above Laumer's, I think). This serial involves a film company on the verge of bankruptcy. Salvation appears in the form of a time machine. Said "vremeatron" will not be used to alter history, purloin lost treasures from the past, or other, potentially lucrative (but old hat) endeavors. No, instead, the movie house is going to travel back to A.D. 1000 to film the True Story of Leif Erickson…Hollywood style.
Said on-location filming will cut costs dramatically: no need to hire extras, no unions, and best of all, since the time machine can come back to the moment after it departed, no time involved! (the production company still gets paid for the time it spends in the past, though). What could go wrong?
I suspect we'll get the answer to that question next installment.
A tepid three stars thus far. I could take it or leave it.
Radical Center, by Mack Reynolds
by John Schoenherr
In a piece designed for Campbell's reactionary heart, Reynolds writes about a time in the not-too-distant future when the trends of apathy, crime, and downright down-on-Americanism have reached a zenith. A hack journalist, badly in need of a story, posits an imaginary illuminati bringing this malaise upon us intentionally.
Little does he know how right he is.
I can't help but deplore the sentiment behind and suffused into this piece. Next, we'll have stories about how long hair is Ruining Society. On the other hand, I feel Reynolds has something when suggests that unscrupulous forces will utilize apathy of the masses to allow their comparatively small blocs to sway policy. Also, I really liked the line, regarding a clown of a politician, "He was laughed into office."
So two stars and a wrinkled nose.
Countdown for Surveyor, by Joseph Green
My eyes lit up at the title of this one. I love pieces on the Space Race, and this inside dope promised to be exciting.
It wasn't. It's as dull as reciting a checklist, and three times as long.
Two stars.
In the Shadow, by Michael Karageorge
by Kelly Freas
After a short piece (probably by Campbell) about ball lightning and free-floating plasma (interesting so far as it goes), we have the latest story by Michael Karageorge, whoever he is.
The space ship Shikari is exploring a new gravitational source zooming through our solar system. It emits no light, but it has the mass of a star. Is it a cold "black dwarf"? A rogue neutron star? Or something else entirely?
The characterization in this one can be reduced to a set of 3×5" index cards each with two or three words on them. Things like "irritable, downtrodden genius". "Absent-minded professor." "Weeping woman." "Comforting woman."
On the other hand, the science is pretty neat, even if I don't buy it for a minute.
I didn't hate it. It's not as good as Karageorge's first story, though. Three stars.
The Uninvited Guest, by Christopher Anvil
by Kelly Freas
A shiny ellipsoid appears on a launch pad and starts to take nibbles out of everything: walls, roads, machinery, people. It appears invulnerable to attack, but it also seems to be of failing vitality. The problem, it is deduced, is that if the thing dies entirely, it will explode with the power of an atom bomb.
Can the alien visitor be thwarted or succored before time runs out?
For an Anvil story, it's not bad. Which means a high two or a low three. I'm feeling charitable today.
The Compleat All-American, by R. C. FitzPatrick
by Kelly Freas
A young man, good at anything he wants to be, is dragooned by his father into playing football. His remarkable abilities, largely consisting of not getting hurt and performing miracles with the pigskin when under pressure, catch the eye of two government investigators.
After fifteen pages of shaggy dog fluff, we learn that said All-American is invulnerable and unstoppable. He also, luckily, has no ambition. Three more shaggy pages of dog fluff follow this revelation.
I guess this is what's under the barrel. One star.
What's the score?
Half way around the world, forces clash in a titanic struggle between Democracy and Communism. Or maybe it's pitched fight between a downtrodden people and the venal imperialists and their running dog lackeys. However you characterize it, Something Big is Happening.
But here on the pages of Campbell's mag, not much of interest is happening at all. Analog finishes at just 2.3 stars, by far the worst mag of the month. Above it are Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.6), Fantastic (3.2), New Worlds (3.25), and IF (3.3).
Things are actually worse than it seems. Only the last of these mags was really outstanding (Fantastic is mostly reprints, New Worlds was basically an Aldiss novel with a few vignettes for ballast).
Adding insult to injury, just one woman-penned story came out this month, and there were only 25 pieces of fiction in all the magazines, period.
Something's gotta change soon. This can't go on forever…
by Mark Yon
Scenes from England
Hello again!
In the world of British SF magazines, things have moved since last time we spoke. In the comments on my review of SF Impulse last month, my colleague Kris here at Galactic Journey gave me the news from the BSFA magazine Vector that despite the publishers going bankrupt, Brian Aldiss has managed to secure a deal with the British Arts Council for funds. This has propped up New Worlds for a while. But notice – the funding is just for New Worlds.
So something has had to give. As a result, the two magazines have merged from this issue, hence the new banner heading (even if sf impulse is in much smaller type – expect to see that disappear soon!)
To be fair, though, I have noticed over the last few months that the magazines have become very similar to each other anyway – both have had book reviews, letters pages and even the same roster of writers flitting between the two magazines. It almost makes me wonder if the editors Mike Moorcock and Keith Roberts (with a helping hand from Harry Harrison) had an inkling…
Anyway, all of this is explained in Moorcock’s editorial, entitled “Changes Coming”. Understandably, lots of praise for Aldiss and all of those who fought for New Worlds with the Arts Council. It looks like the magazine may have survived (again) – at least for a while.
To the New Worlds/SF Impulse issue.
Report on Probability A by Brian W. Aldiss
And after the praise already heaped upon Brian, here’s some more.
According to Moorcock’s Editorial, Brian has donated his story to the magazine. Knowing that funds are tight (ie: non-existent) Brian, like all of the other contributors this month, have given this complete novel of over 100 pages for free (or at least a minimal amount.)
That’s the plus-point. Readers may be less happy knowing that, like last month’s Just Passing Through in SF Impulse, this is Brian in experimental mode. Anyone expecting a humourous Aldiss story or a more-straightforward science fiction story may be disappointed.
Mr and Mrs Mary are being observed from three different perspectives by ex-employees of Mr and Mrs Mary, which make up this report. G is a gardener who watches Mr and Mrs Mary from a summerhouse. S is an ex-secretary who does the same from an outhouse in the back garden. C, the ex-chauffeur, is in the loft of the garage close to the Mary’s house. We have a story divided up into different perspectives and written in three different sections (The number three seems important here!) It is a story of surveillance, about observation and effect of being observed. Therefore, lots of meticulous descriptions of what the observers and Mr and Mrs Mary are doing follows.
The reason for this observation slowly becomes apparent when we realise that the observers and the observed are being watched themselves by Domoladossa and Midlakemela, aliens who think that this observation of “Probability A” is important. (It seems that the universe has a number of probabilities, of which this is just one.)
And then we get to the point that Domoladossa and Midlakemela, who are watching the observers watching Mr. and Mrs. Mary, are being watched themselves by The Distinguishers, who are in turn being watched…. confused yet?
It is easy in some ways to see why not a lot happens – although that seems to be the point. The dialogue reminded me a little of Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter in its stylistic brevity and manner – something that with Aldiss’s literary bent I am sure is no coincidence. It is also weirdly voyeuristic – much of what is described seems mundane and of little consequence, yet I found myself wanting to keep reading.
I guess that the reason for these descriptions of the obvious, whilst they may seem very boring to me/us, is that the world of the Mary’s and their observers is being described for those who have never seen it before. It shows us our world as others see us. Together these viewpoints create a mosaic of often rather mundane events – lots of talk of processed fish, factory strikes, the weather (especially rain.) It’s all rather British and summarises perhaps how others see us.
Interestingly, the constant watching and the events observed makes the whole thing feel claustrophobic and unsettling. Have you ever felt you’ve been watched? Here you are!
There are a lot of unanswered questions. Whilst we are told that ‘it’ may be important, what is the purpose of the surveillance? Is it just to observe? And why is it the Mary family that are being observed? Mrs. Mary is described at one point to perhaps being “the key to everything”, although we are not always clear what “everything” is. Is it something creepy or even malicious?
This may not be to everyone’s tastes – despite Moorcock pointing out on the back cover that it is “perhaps his most brilliant work to date”, the lack of a plot makes it rather against the usual grain. I suppose that it is this that has made the novel a hard sell – I understand that this story has been around a while before being published – but it is one that kept me thinking. Does feel a tad too long, though. Nevertheless, it has stayed with me since reading, a sign that the story has made an impact. 4 out of 5.
The Ersatz Wine by Chris Priest
A story of multiple narratives all chopped up into a jumbled tale. A story of nothing turned into a confusing nothing that plays with form but is probably a story where the form is more important than the narrative. 3 out of 5.
The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race by J. G. Ballard
Ah – the now predictable scenario of J. G. using contemporary people and elements to tell his downbeat cut-up tale. Before we’ve seen included JFK, Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe amongst others. However, I’m not sure about this one where the events of the assassination are turned into a motor race. For example, Oswald starts the race by firing his gun, Kennedy is disqualified at the hospital for taking a turn for the worse, Johnson takes the lead and wins the race.
Although it happened a good 18 months ago, Kennedy’s assassination still feels quite recent to me, and perhaps too recent to become something of amusement. It feels wrong, like making a joke about the poor Apollo astronauts recently would be. Is the use of JFK here to shock, to be controversial? Possibly. As satire, I guess it can be seen to be puncturing the balloon of pretentiousness that often surrounds public figures. Does it work? Not sure… despite the description on the back cover (see below) about it being witty and filled with deeply-considered comment, I really get the impression Ballard finds this all very funny, but if it is, to me it’s a one-trick joke stretched too far. 3 out of 5.
Hunger’s End by Robert Cheetham
Another recently emerged writer in these pages. An odd allegorical tale that deals with expense, perfection and beauty and how a hunger for what you desire may be more important than mere functionality. Well, that and a sea sponge that bites a woman’s finger off. 2 out of 5.
No Book reviews or letters pages this month.
Summing up New Worlds / SF Impulse
As the back cover shows, there’s clearly a need to advertise the magazine this month. Obviously, I am pleased to see anything from New Worlds / SF Impulse. There was a point where I didn’t expect anything. With all of that stuff going on in the background it is rather difficult to judge the magazine purely on its written material. Brian’s novel is oddly memorable, but I’m not entirely sure that it works. Praise should be given in that it epitomises the brave new world of the New Wave, but like most of that work I suspect that it will receive as much criticism as praise. The Ballard is typical Ballard, but – dare I say it – not perhaps his best. Priest still underwhelms and Cheetham’s story, by comparison with the Aldiss and Ballard, is very much a lesser item in the issue.
But I guess we should be grateful to read ANYTHING this month. As we will be next month.
Until the next!
The Best of Tyrants, The Worst of Tyrants
by Janice L. Newman
Eugenics—the idea that people can be ‘bred’ to emphasize certain desirable traits the way breeders do with animals or botanists do with plants—is an interesting concept in a science fiction setting. So it’s not surprising to encounter an episode of Star Trek built around the concept. What is a little surprising is that the narrative doesn’t do more to condemn either the concept or the practice.
by Kaye Dee
Tasmania’s Black Tuesday
The poet Miss Dorothea Mackellar refers to Australia as a “sunburnt” country, but the recent devastation in Tasmania reminds us that Australia is also very much a “sun-burned” country.
Bushfire disasters are nothing new in Australia, but the horrific catastrophe of 7 February, which has already been dubbed “Black Tuesday”, ranks as one of the worst this country has experienced. In less than a day, 62 people were killed (the second largest number in the nation’s bushfire history) and more than 900 injured. Almost 1300 homes are believed lost and over 1700 other buildings destroyed. It has been estimated that at least 62,000 farm animals have also perished.
After a long dry spell, it seems that an unfortunately “ideal” combination of weather factors on the 7th led to the disaster. Across southern Tasmania, the island state that lies to the south of the Australian mainland, there were already extremely high temperatures (the maximum was 102 °F!) and very low humidity when intense winds from the northwest fanned a number of bushfires burning in remote areas into raging infernos.
110 separate fire fronts burned through around 652,000 acres in the space of just five hours! Within a forty mile radius around Hobart, the state capital, many towns and rural properties have experienced significant damage: twelve towns have been completely destroyed. Even Hobart itself has not escaped unscathed, with hundreds of homes and businesses razed, including the famous Cascade Brewery. With most communications and services cut, thousands were evacuated to Hobart at the height of the emergency, and it is believed that up to 7000 people are now homeless. The total damage bill is already being estimated at a staggering $40,000,000 Australian dollar values! But recovery efforts are underway and help is pouring into the “Apple Isle” from all over Australia. Southern Tasmania will rise from the ashes, but recovery will be a long process that will take many years.
by Gideon Marcus
Literal tragedy
Kaye's tragedy is heartbreaking, the sort of thing one for which one flees into fiction. Sadly, the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction offers little in the way of solace.
Sooty pages
by Jack Gaughan (these folks don't actually appear this issue…)
The Sea Change, by Jean Cox
The editors Ferman have saved perhaps their best for first. A young failure, son of a brilliant marine biologist who committed suicide at the height of his career, attempts one final emulation of his father. In a poignant scene, he doffs his clothes, dives into the water, and drowns.
But rather than die, he finds himself kept alive via a biological symbiote on his back. He is welcomed into an underwater commune of sorts, a living socialism of sea creatures for which his hands and intellect are desired additional traits. Recruited to dispose of their failed attempts to create humans underwater, he is faced with a choice: a blissful existence as part of a hive mind underwater, or a sorrowful existence as an independent failure on dry land.
In a way, this tale is the opposite of Bob Sheckley's Pusher, one of my very favorite stories. Sea Change is beautifully written, but I found the end unconvincing, and the decision disappointing.
It teeters on the edge of four stars, but just misses, I think.
The Investor, Bruce Jay Friedman
Odd piece about a stock broker whose pulse becomes directly tied to the share price of one of his investments. I think it's supposed to be satire?
Two stars.
Zoomen, Fred Hoyle
On a trip in the Scottish Highlands, a fellow is scooped up by aliens and imprisoned on a ship with eight other humans of many backgrounds, four men and four women. Our hero believes that they are destined to be seeding stock for an interstellar menagerie. Clues include the even gender make-up, their indifferent treatment, and their rough conditioning (made to be nauseated as a goad).
This tale is nicely written, a bit reminiscent of the beginning of Hoyle's October the First is Too Late, which also started with a Scottish trek. Like that novel, but even more so, the ending is a let down, and without any of the attendant philosophical interest.
Three stars.
The Long Night, Larry Niven
A momentary uptick with this bagatelle, a variation on the deal with the devil theme. A student of magic decides to cap his doctoral thesis by summoning a demon. Of course, now his soul is forfeit, unless he asks for the right gift–and uses it to its fullest.
It's fun, and apparently utilizes the author's B.S. in Mathematics.
Four stars.
Relic, Mack Reynolds
Like all mountains, once one reaches the summit, it's all downhill from there. In this tale, we meet an octogenarian Lord Greystoke, now mostly insane and very violent. The slightest affront sends him into a murderous rage, and he soon builds up a trail of bodies, punctuating each kill with an ululating bull gorilla roar.
Another "funny" piece. I din't like it.
Two stars.
Crowded!, by Isaac Asimov
It's been nearly a decade since Dr. A started this column, and of late, he's been running out of ideas. He's back to geographic lists, taking a hodgepodge of mildly interesting facts from almanacs and atlases. This time, it's a list of "great cities" (over a million residents) and their world distribution.
I've got an atlas, too, Isaac. A couple of 'em.
Three stars.
The Little People, by John Christopher
Which leaves us with the much-anticipated conclusion of the serial. In the first installment, we were introduced to Bridget, heir to a dilapidated Irish hostel…and a secret. After her first group of neurotic guests have been assembled, they find hints that the place is inhabited by Little People.
In Part 2, we find that they are not of magical provenance at all, but are actually tiny Jews, forced into diminution and then tortured by an exiled Nazi scientist. Much brouhaha is made regarding their disposition. I assumed Part 3 would resolve the outstanding threads.
It does not. Instead, each of the lodgers has some sort of vision, mostly unpleasant. A good forty pages is taken up with these nightmares in which the eponymous tiny ones make no appearance whatsoever. In the end, the episodes are explained as some kind of ESP-as-torment, and the manor is abandoned.
It's the worst of cop-outs, redolent with sex. I'm afraid no amount of attempts to titilate can cover the fact that there's no there there.
Two stars for this segment, and two and a half for the serial as a whole. I prefer consistent mediocrity to an undelivered promise.
Scorched Earth
And that's that! A disappointing 2.7 star issue with only one unalloyed success, and that one very short. In the latest Yandro, Don & Maggie Thompson maintained that F&SF is the best of the SF mags. That may have been true a decade ago. It hasn't been true in a while.
Just as Tasmania may rebuild, so F&SF could return to greatness. I just hope I live long enough to see it…
by Gahan Wilson (by way of Mack Reynolds, it seems…)
by Gideon Marcus
Failing Fair
Three titles for you today across two books (reminds me of the old astronomical saw: "Three out of every two stars is a binary"). None of them are great, but one of them is surprisingly decent given the source.
Twin Planets, by Philip E. High
"Fast-paced, readable fun," pretty much describes everything Mr. High has written of late, and perhaps ever (my records only go back to 1961). His latest effort, Twin Planets, (from Paperback Library) does not break the mold.
It starts promisingly enough: A fellow named Denning is driving his car when it suddenly becomes very cold, the policemen are dressed quite oddly, and the sun is now a sullen orange orb on the horizon. Has he traveled to the future? Into another dimension?
Turns out, the answer is both. Earth has an analog that the natives call "Firma", with a slightly different history. Centuries ago, aliens appeared and froze the planet's rotation (with attendant momentum-related catastrophe). The world is now divided into a temperate zone, a hot zone, and a frigid region (where Denning had been transported).
Denning has a twin on Firma, name of Liston. Possessed of insatiable sexual desire that couples with his intelligence and strength, he is banished to one of the inhospitable zones early in the book, to be recruited by the resistance. Said resistance also taps Denning, who comes into his own superhuman powers–as well as a raging libido and attractiveness to women.
Turns out Denning and Liston are biological constructs, originally to be linchpins of the resistance, but by the end of the book free agents with a hankering to topple the aliens who run Earth from the shadows. Lots of running around, killing people, implied sexual exploits, and a happy ending.
This is a very old style of book. And while some of the ideas are quite interesting, for the most part, they are set aside for the action. Also, the competent women characters suffer for being hapless victims of their hormones, unable to resist the pheromones of their superhero companions. I raced through the first quarter of the book, but the last quarter took me several days, despite the novel's brevity.
Two and a half stars.
Envoy to the Dog Star, by Frederick L. Shaw, Jr.
Next up is Ace Double #G-614. Ace is known more for publishing "fast-paced, readable fun" than "thought-provoking classics" but you never know. After all, Tom Purdom's I Want the Stars and Terry Carr's Warlord of Kor both came out as halves of Ace Doubles.
Not so this first novel, I'm afraid. Mr. Shaw, whose name is completely unknown to me, starts off with a bang. If Anne McCaffrey wrote The Ship Who Sang, this book is the tale of "The Ship Who Barked". On board the inventively named "Spaceship-One" (presumably, Mr. Shaw is English) is a lone crewmember: a disembodied dog's brain. His mission is to scout out the Sirius system, which has been identified as a likely target to possess planets. Indeed, it has four planets, all identical copies. Only one of them is inhabited, by a Eloi-ish race of humans with Greek/Italian-esque names and blonde hair, who live symbiotically with a race of prehensile-handed dogs. Turns out the canines are the real power behind the throne (with truly groan-worthy names like "Chienandros" and "Perralto." Our hero, who calls himself "Ishmael", must work with them to secure colonizing rights while also delivering a message of warning to war-ravaged and overpopulated Earth.
There are things I liked about this book. Ishmael is a fun narrator, reminding me of Hank "The Beast" McCoy from Marvel's X-Men comic. The opening forty pages or so, before the ship gets to Sirius, are quite fun, indeed. The ship uses time travel as a space drive (letting the universe move underneath, as it were), which I've only seen once before, in Wallace West's The River of Time.
But the science is about thirty years out of date (planets formed by stellar collision, indeed), every gizmo is detailed for the pulp fans, and the setting and characters have as much subtlety as brutalist architecture.
Three stars for some vapid fun.
Shockwave, by Walt and Leigh Richmond
This is the one I was really worried about. The Richmonds, a married couple that (reportedly) collaborates telepathically, have heretofore been Analog exclusives. The best they've managed thus far are a pair of passable three-star shorts, the rest being bad to dreadful. And in contrast to the other three tales, it's the beginning that's discouraging. Terry Ferman ("Terran Freeman?") is an electrical engineering student who, upon twiddling with a certain radio transmitter, finds himself on a faraway planet. He is now a captive of a computerized jailer, who refers to him as a basic galactic citizen and impresses upon him a rudimentary knowledge of the star-spanning polity he is supposedly a member of. Terry is also given a set of nifty tools including a ray gun, X-Ray glasses, a pocket translator, and a compass. At this point, I was sure this was going to be some kind of interstellar spy story, thinly cloaked wish fulfillment for boys.
But as the book goes on, Terry's situation becomes more complex. He meets Grontag, a dinosaur-like alien, also a student of electricity, who was similarly summoned unwillingly. They befriend "Tinkan", a robot that has become independent of the computer and developed a will of its own. It becomes clear that some sort of catastrophe has befallen the galactic civilization, and the marooned team must figure out what happened, why, and who might be responsible.
It's a very technical story, with lots of doodads created by someone who clearly has a background in electrical engineering. The pacing is excellent, however, with each section more interesting than the last. The Richmonds also have interesting things to say about repressive civil relationships like slavery and marriage. After the slow start, I finished the book in just two sessions, which is saying something.
Three and a half stars.
Five out of Two
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
One of the little curiosities of the ease of getting American science fiction novels in Britain depends on whether they have a UK edition coming out.
If there is no UK publisher on the horizon it is a little harder to get hold of, but no one worries if a bookseller imports them. You may not be able to pick them up at WH Smith’s or your local library but most good booksellers with an interest in SF will probably be able to help you find a copy.
On the other hand, if it has a UK edition coming out, you will really struggle to get hold of an overseas version and have to wait for the local version to be produced. This is the case with both the books I am reviewing, and whilst I had a contact send me an early copy of The Einstein Intersection, I had to wait for The Revolving Boy:
The Revolving Boy, by Gertrude Friedberg
Thankfully, it is well worth the wait.
At the start of this book there is not much to suggest this is going to be science fiction. Yes, this is set very slightly in the future, but it is simply a slightly more conservative United States of the 1970s, not something requiring much imagination given signs of backlash like Republican gains in US midterms or Mary Whitehouse’s crusades over here. At first sight it appears to be about a good relationship between a mother and a child with autistic tendencies. The common depiction of autism in science fiction is often very negative.
Take, as an example, this passage from Disch’s recent Mankind Under Leash:
The nuts – in this whole cellblock you won’t find anything else. And these, I should point out, are only the worst, the most hopeless cases. ‘Autism’ is the technical word that the psychologists use to describe their condition.
Whilst in The Revolving Boy young Derv feels the need to spin around on occasion. His mother is willing to accept this as something he does. She only interferes when he is spinning on the stairs and so works for a compromise:
She told Derv in an offhand way that he must not spin on the stairs and why.
‘But what if I have to?’
Although she knew he thought of it this way, in terms of coercive psychological need, she was a little taken aback by the straightforward way he put it.
‘How many do you have to take?’
‘Just two on the stairs. I take another when I get outside.’
‘Then suppose you take the three when you get outside.’
‘All right,’ he said
It was as easy as that.
It shows such a mature and well-reasoned approach to a child with autistic tendencies. No suggestion it is caused by a ‘refrigerator mother’, not showing a complete inability to communicate with the outside world, but a child with a different perception and how you can work with them in a loving way to allow them to function in a world where most people do not have these tendencies. As someone who appears to have a lot of these tendencies, I was very heartened by this.
At the same time he makes friends with Prin, who is quiet and has perfect pitch. Together they are able to form a bond that allows them to connect in a world that can be hard for those that do not fall into patterns expected by wider society.
The source of science fictional content comes from the fact that Derv turns out to have been the first child born in space. When he was weightless and away from other signals he seems to have become connected to an electromagnetic signal from another solar system. As he gets older he finds himself leaning towards this signal whenever he is awake. This comes to the attention of Project Ozma who believe he may be the key to discovering extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Despite the concept of a child being able to point the direction for our radio telescopes, the whole story goes to great pains to appear realistic and make it seem less fantastical than most of what you would read in Analog or If.
But at its heart it is also a character story, the tale of him and Prin growing up. It is heart warming, clever and a real delight to read.
Five Stars
The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany
All of us here at Galactic Journey see Delany as one of the brightest talents currently writing science fiction, so it is with great anticipation we wait for his next novel. He began with writing his tales of a fantasy-tinged future Earth with The Jewels of Aptor and the Toron novels, but more recently has moved to outer space tales such as Babel-17. He seems now to have come back down to Earth but is also attempting to do something more ambitious than before.
Greek myths have been a regular source of inspiration for writers of the fantastic. The tale of Theseus and the Minotaur itself has been retold by authors as different as Jack Williamson and Thomas Burnett Swann. Here Delany blends in a number of Greek myths into this tale, but adds a kind of Ballardian spin to it, where our popular culture is seen just as much of a myth to these folks. With The Beatles being seen as a later example of the Orpheus myth and advertising slogans used as nuggets of wisdom at the start of chapters.
The Orpheus myth is probably the most central of the tales here, for Lo Lobey himself is a musician and his driving force is to save his beloved Friza from Kid Death. However, the way legends are treated in this book is fascinating, that there is not really a distinction between truth and fiction, and it is entirely possible for one to imitate the other. I can’t help but wonder if Delany has some familiarity with the ideas of C. S. Lewis but is choosing to apply them in a non-Christian context.
In this future, humans have all left the Earth and others are inhabiting it in the remains of humanity. We are introduced to this concept so casually I almost missed it when it is stated by PHAEDRA (a computer with the kind of silly reverse acronym people are fond of these days). It is an interesting concept that manages to at once be central to the story but also you could enjoy without knowing. For this is what Delany does, carefully layering understanding so it can be read in multiple ways, just like the myths that are being imitated.
For there is so much more in here than I have space to elucidate. Among others it touches on areas such as racism, gender, ESP, colonialism, the nature of truth and more besides.
I have seen Delany’s earlier works compared with the late great Cordwainer Smith’s writing. The Einstein Intersection, I would posit, is much more reminiscent of Zelazny. As such it is less accessible than The Ballad of Beta-2 but also more ambitious and thankfully succeeds.
Delany continues to be one of the brightest new lights of science fiction writing and this continues to reveal new depths to his talents.
Five Stars
by Jason Sacks
Sometimes Too Much Plot is Too Much
One of the things I love about Philip K. Dick’s novels is how they always seem to be about one thing but usually end up being about something very different. Usually his fake-out strategy works brilliantly, but in his latest novel, Dick seems to believe his own fake-out.
Counter-Clock World by Philip K. Dick
Counter-Clock World starts with an idea which could inspire a full novel just in its implications: What if time, somehow, started rolling backwards? How would living in a counter-clock world affect human relationships, our relationship with history, families, the economy, society? Would rebirth be a horror or pleasure? How would those who mourned the dead, maybe even moved beyond their mourning, handle the change? What would be the implications to a society if a specific person was reborn, a person who might be especially evil or especially good or just especially controversial?
These are all tantalizing questions, and Dick does explore most of them in this fascinating book. Of course, Dick being Dick, he explores many of them obliquely, in veiled allusions and small asides in dialogue. Far from making his ideas feel weaker, though, this commonplace element gives the book a naturalistic feel (as outlandish ideas often do in Dick novels) while also feeling profoundly strange.
I gotta say, there are also plenty of ridiculous ideas in this book, like how he shows cigarettes are smoked from stub to full cigarette (with the odor diffusing as the cigarette grows), or the idea that food is regurgitated and reconstituted into its source foods (okay, rather a disgusting idea), or how eventually everyone reverts to baby age and then has to crawl back into a womb and be absorbed into a body (a surprisingly moving scene in the book).
But there are also plenty of eerie moments in Counter-Clock. As the book begins, Officer Joseph Tinbane is cruising past a cemetery when he hears a voice beckoning him from a grave. Landing, he discovers an old woman has woken up in her coffin and is begging for help escaping her home six feet underground. Dick quickly establishes this as a normal part of Tinbane’s job, as Dick relates this event often becomes an all-night ritual which requires enlisting the services of something called a Vitarium.
Thankfully, the officer knows a man named Sebastian Hermes, reborn himself and the owner of The Flask of Hermes Vitarium.
This being a Dick novel, rebirth hasn’t been an ideal experience for Hermes. Sebastian is even more neurotic than he was when alive, haunted by nightmares of his awakening in his grave and stuck in a complicated marriage with someone who doesn’t quite understand him. Hermes sort of dreams of emigrating from California to Mars, but he’s literally grounded on Earth, digging up the bodies of those who died, more or less systemically since the Hobart Effect struck and changed everything.
So I’ve given you an idea of this book, and its world, and yeah, you say, I’m in. I'll buy the book because this all sounds fascinating.
Hold off for a second before running to the paperback stands at your local Korvettes, because all my setup is kind of prologue.
What if I told you Dick’s main topic for this issue is the idea of what happens if a popular religious prophet is reborn, and the prophet is in opposition to an evil Library?
Yep, it’s a Philip K. Dick novel, so you gotta be ready for a swerve.
See, Dick’s attention is really on the recently resurrected body of the Anarch Thomas Peak, dead prophet and founder of the Udi cult. The Anarch is articulate, philosophizing from the likes of Plotinus, Plato, Kant, Leibnitz, and Spinoza. Naturally, a group of fascist librarians hate the Azarch, and somehow the book descends into being a crazy oddball escape heist which involves LSD bombs, the slowing down of time, nuclear weapons striking a library, and the odd paradox of what happens when you kill someone who was already dead.
Yeah, Counter Clock World is more than a little crazy, which is no surprise really. What is surprising, though, is how Dick never quite gives this book the usual foundation in humanity most of his novels contain. This book lacks the warmth of Dr. Bloodmoney, or the existential horror of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer or the deep empathy of Martian Time-Slip. Instead we get an inelegant jumble which never quite lives up to the considerable potential of its amazing premise.
Three Stars
by Gideon Marcus
Last minute reprieve
If you're just an average, everyday stf-loving citizen, you've probably been feeling pretty secure about the new show, Star Trek. After all, it's leaps and bounds better than any other SFnal show on TV (e.g. Voyage to the Bottom of the Aquarium, It's About Time (this show got canceled), Time Sink, Lost in Spoof, The Invasive, etc.) Surely if Irwin Allen can get his shows renewed, Gene Roddenberry can, right?
Well, maybe not. Late last year, the fanzines and club meetings were abuzz. Seems Harlan Ellison had sent out a written plea, letterheaded by more than half a dozen Big Names in the SF screenwriting biz (self-importantly dubbed 'The Committee') begging trufans to write their local stations, NBC, Desilu, the Pope, etc. voicing their support of the show. Otherwise, it might not finish out the season and certainly won't get renewed.
This call was met mostly with enthusiasm, though there were cynics. Thousands of letters were sent (one over-enthusiastic fan conjectured the number was "around a million"). It now appears that Trek will run another season after this one is done.
There is something of a preemptive quality about all of this. Talking to astute newspaper-clippers and folks in the know, I learned that Trek was greenlit for a full season back in October, before the alarm was sounded. Now, I don't think it's a bad idea to tell the powers-that-be how much you like a show to make sure it stays on longer than the usual crud, but I worry that this may have been a bit of crying wolf. If the network really does plan to axe this lovely new SF show in the future, will they take us seriously then? Tune in next winter, I guess.
An Orgy of Destruction
Speaking of last-minute reprieves, this week's Trek episode, "Return of the Archons", was full of 'em.
Investigating the loss of the starship Archon decades before, the Enterprise visits Beta 3, an uncharted world. The episode begins quite effectively with a cold open: Lieutenants Sulu and O'Neill, in Western garb, are being chased through a nameless 19th Century-style city, completely unadorned with signs or other decoration. Before Sulu can be beamed aboard to safety, he is zapped by goons in monk robes. Once aboard the ship, the vivacious helmsman is reduced to a grinning imbecile, now one with "the body".
In perhaps the greatest disregard for sense I've yet seen on the show, three of the most senior crew transport down to investigate. There, they find a world of zombie people, placid, without will. Except that night is "Festival", an uncommon but periodic occurrence when the muzzle is removed and people give in to their urge to lust and rapine. All of this, the mindlessness and the maelstrom, is the will of "Landru", some sort of omnipotent, telepathic God.
Landru.
Some of the Betans are resistant to being "absorbed" into the body, however. They do their best to help Kirk and co., though they fail to prevent Dr. McCoy (who the captain jarringly keeps calling "Doc" rather than "Bones" in this episode) from losing his mind to Landru. It is determined that this status quo has existed for 6,000 years, a reaction to a period of world-threatening savagery. Landru was a real fellow who set up this completely (except for Festival) peaceful and static society to save the people of Beta 3.
It worked, but only at the cost of the human soul. And, as Kirk and Spock correctly guess, only a soulless entity could create such an order: in this case, a computer of Landru's construction. When directly confronted, the computer quickly gives up the ghost, and Beta 3 is left rudderless. A team of sociologists (the Enterprise conveniently has them on hand) stays behind to provide better guidance than LANDRUVAC.
My colleagues will discuss the various elements of this episode in subsequent sections so I'll keep my comments narrow. "Return" is quite a good episode, utilizing existing costumes and sets (for other Desilu shows, presumably) to get more bang for the budget (though if the Enterprise had a panoply of outfits they got from Bonanza, you'd think they'd have them for other eras, too – would have been useful when they visited modern day in Tomorrow is Yesterday! There are inconsistencies and some areas underdeveloped due to lack of time, but the show flows pretty well.
If only they'd had access to this wardrobe in earlier episodes…
There are lots of messages one can divine from "Return", notably the "computer-driven society is bad" message we've gotten a few times before. Going deeper, particularly tying in with Spock's noting that the peace and tranquility of Beta 3 is that of the factory, the machine, I discern an indictment of Communism. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" sounds like a good idea in theory, but it robs humans of their individual dignity, placing power solely at the venal top. Landru's projected image, with his robes and cult of personality, calls to mind Mao and Confucius, with inflexible dogma and inescapable "justice".
Such a society clearly cannot stand. I wonder, however, if simply toppling the big boss and (mostly) leaving the wrecked culture to fend for itself, is the best way to ensure a future of democratic enlightenment.
Four stars. It's solid entertainment for all its stumbles.
Silicon life?
by Abigail Beaman
If something does not feel, only does what it is told, and shows no creativity, is it alive? That’s what this week's episode titled, "Return of the Archons", was about. A computer-run colony of people with a very stagnant culture that seemed to be more destructive than helpful. This episode, despite having some flaws, is probably one of my favorite episodes, not only because Mr. Spock looks very dashing in his cloak, but because it digs into what makes a human being alive.
Dashing Mr. Spock.
Society, by definition, is the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community, and from what we know, Landru has not allowed the Betans’ society to thrive. Instead, he has allowed it to stay in this linear pattern, which is nothing more than the same routine every day. Well, that is except for one day, of course, during the Festival, where it seems you are allowed to do whatever (and whomever) you want, without Landru's instruction. But why is the culture so stagnant? That’s simply because Landru is a machine.
Our first glimpse of "Landru".
Throughout the episode, it is suggested multiple times that Landru is not human by Mr. Spock, and as someone who isn’t fully human, he should know. And by the end of the episode, Mr. Spock is right but also somewhat wrong. Landru was a human many years ago, but now he no longer exists as a living creature but is instead a computer, who may have his knowledge but not Landru’s wisdom. While Landru tried to save his people from the ruins of war, by having a machine input and output peace and tranquility above all, he created a machine that prohibited all human creativity and advancements. To put it simply, these Betans are not thinking for themselves as they have a machine telling them what to do and probably how to feel non-stop. It’s even stated by Mr. Spock, after Kirk causes the Landru machine to self-destruct:
“They have no guidance. Possibly for the first time in their lives.”
Free will is the basis of all of humanity. Without free will, we are nothing more than just robots. We are nothing more than what Landru was, awaiting the next input from a human. If you cannot think for yourself and rely on someone to tell you what to do, are you truly alive? That point was underscored by the confrontation between Landru and Kirk talked: Landru could ordered its men to kill Kirk or simply stop talking, but instead, Landru allowed Kirk to tell it what to do. Landru does not have free will, therefore relies on someone to tell it what to do.
Yes, a programmed society IS a dead society, for it contains no individuals. It can not grow from human mistakes. It will stay the same, because that is what it is programmed to do. It is programmed to give you the same result each time. A human can never give you the same result all the time, no matter what you tell them.
That’s why, to me this episode kept me thinking, even in the slower parts of the episode. And just for that, I give it my good old rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.
But also for Mr. Spock in a smock.
Everything Old is New Again
by Janice L. Newman
“Return of the Archons” was a fun episode, but one that doesn’t hold together well if you look at it too closely. I had to wonder if the story was written to make use of sets and costumes Desilu had on-hand. If so, they did a decent job, making the transitions from Western Town to what looked like Castle Dungeon fairly convincing. Plus, it was fun to see the crew dressed in period costume even if, as The Traveler noted, this was inconsistent with prior episodes.
Garb and scenery weren’t the only things we’d encountered before. From music, to actors, to the very theme of the story, all of these were recycled from other episodes.
Setting aside the Enterprise crewmember regulars, at least one of the townspeople appeared in a prior episode: the old man Tamar, who dies at the hands of Landru’s enforcers, appeared as the illusory leader of the colonists in The Cage (or as most people will remember it, The Menagerie). Re-using actors is common practice, of course, but it’s always fun when one can identify someone that’s been seen before.
“Aren't you Vina's father?” “Of course not! Vina's parents are dead…I mean…Vina who?”
As for music, Star Trek commonly reuses themes written for the first few episodes of the show. I thought it particularly cleverly done this time, with the driving ‘encounter with the Fesarius’ music from the The Corbomite Maneuver used to back the violent ‘Festival’ scenes juxtaposed effectively against the eerie, wailing piece that begins with a descending half step that was first introduced in The Cage/The Menagerie (though viewers not privileged to see The Cage may have first encountered it in other episodes). Themes from several other episodes were interwoven throughout, but those two in particular stood out to me as interesting choices. I especially liked that the piece from The Cage, which has usually been used to introduce beautiful women who are viewed through a soft-focus lens, was instead used to underline how oddly the people of the planet were behaving.
And then there’s the thematic recycling. While it’s not a one-to-one match, there are definite resonances between Return of the Archons and What Are Little Girls Made Of?, the episode where Kirk encountered (and ultimately destroyed) multiple androids. Doctor Korby, or at least his android version, had envisioned a society where all people were turned into androids like himself. When confronted, he cried, “I'm the same! A direct transfer. All of me, human, rational, and without a flaw.” Contrast this with computer-Landru’s words: “I am Landru. I am he. All that he was, I am. His experience, his knowledge.” Consider, too, that computer-Landru built a ‘rational’ society of people who were little more than robots, fulfilling a similar vision to Korby’s dream.
Reusing and recycling can be good if it’s done with cleverness. Just as a skilled tailor can take an old dress and disguise it as a new one with a few alterations, changing the context can make costumes, sets, actors, music, and even themes feel like new and different choices. It’s a good cost-saving measure and an efficient use of what one already has on hand.
But like a dress that’s been altered too many times, sometimes the seams start to show. There were too many questions left unanswered in Return of the Archons for me to enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed other episodes. What exactly was the purpose of “The Festival” and how often did it occur? How wide was Landru’s influence – for example, were the people of “the valley” also under his control? (And if not, why did they not seek to free their neighbors from it?) Why were some people immune to Landru’s influence? Why was it so easy for Kirk to break Landru at the end (another parallel with What Are Little Girls Made Of?), despite the fact that his logic didn’t make much sense?
Dialectic at thirty paces
I can come up with answers to all of these questions, and I’m sure you can as well. Sometimes that’s the fun of shows like these: filling in the holes. But leave too many holes and a garment falls apart. I’m afraid that under closer scrutiny, Return of the Archons does just that, which is why I can only give it three stars.
Computer Dating
by Lorelei Marcus
There are many issues that come from a society run by a computer. Of course, there's the lack of will of its inhabitants, as Abby points out. But beyond that, there are serious logistical concerns. Landru's utmost priority is to "preserve the good of the body" or protect the community he is in charge of. He does this by assimilating every one of his citizens into a state of compliance, and then has them walk around all day greeting each other. "A simpler time" indeed.
Assuming there is no labor in this society, and all the infrastructure is produced and controlled by machines (perhaps using energy to matter food converters like we've seen on the Enterprise), then the biggest logistical issue in Landru's society is the production of more people.
(Note: the beings we see are not actually humans but aliens on their own planet with a coincidentally similar biology to us. Despite this, those from the Enterprise frequently refer to them as humans and rejoice in the destruction of Landru because it makes the society more human. Now who's doing the assimilating?)
I believe Landru's solution to the (need for) population issue is Festival Day, one of the great mysteries of the episode. A time when the young adults of the town (the elderly are excused) riot in the streets, breaking windows, setting fires, and generally committing acts of lust and violence alike. It's a horrific display, and one that contrasts jarringly with the normal tranquility.
Kirk's hotel overlooks the Sunset Strip.
There are two explanations for Festival, one being that, while Landru has an immense capability to pressure human minds into subservience, inevitably there will be some, over time, whose suppressed emotions boil over and cause outbursts (or perhaps even turn them into resisters). The Festival allows them to get these out of their system in a directed fashion.
The second explanation: as far as I can tell, there are no interpersonal relationships in this culture, which would lead to a distinct lack of intimate sexual encounters.This would lead to extinction. So Landru kills two birds with one stone, allowing its people to indulge their baser desires on Festival, and nine months later, producing the next generation for Landru to influence. An elegant solution to an inelegant problem. Something that could only be conceived by a machine.
I personally have no opinion on the rightness of Landru's programmed culture, but I do feel the concept had and has a lot of potential for a science fiction setting. I wish Captain Kirk had taken a little more time to explore and understand his surroundings before deciding that destroying them was the only option. Perhaps this episode will inspire more stories with a similar premise, but more fleshed-out worlds. We can but hope.
Three stars.
When you assume…
by Erica Frank
Sigh. Once again: An entity with godlike abilities controls a society where a veneer of peacefulness hides an underbelly of fear and violence. This time it's a soulless computer, not an "evolved" being—but it still treats humans as playthings. Two clichés for the price of one!
I suppose it's difficult to write about benign beings with godlike powers; if they exist, wouldn't they be out helping people and making the galaxy a better place? How would the Enterprise even encounter them, except in a setting like Shore Leave – "here's our vacation resort; enjoy?" But I am so very tired of the variations on "actually, ESP stands for Evil Supremacy Powers."
Setting aside the hackneyed science fiction elements and focusing on the story itself, I thought Kirk missed his mark, and more than once.
When he spoke to Reger and Marplon, trying to convince them to help him fight Landru, he tells them to set aside their fears and "start acting like men!"…as if they were actually humans who grew up in a human culture. Instead, they are aliens who just look like humans, raised in a culture where, for thousands of years, people who show any resistance have their memories and personalities wiped, and become "of the body"—forever lost to their loved ones.
They don't have a context for bravery. They have no stories of heroes to inspire them. They have a whispered legend: Someday, the "Archons" will return to save us. But they have no plan for assisting. Defiance, for them, is secrets and stealth, not confrontation. Yet Kirk expects them to act like human men from a culture that values heroism.
“Did we say 'resistors'? We meant 'rejoicers!' We love Landru!”
Later, Kirk told Landru that the society he'd built wasn't peaceful, but stagnant, that people need creativity and free will. That's true—but he failed to mention the "Festival" of violence and destruction. Why didn't he mention Tula's injuries, the rubble in the streets, the terror and carnage of the twelve hours of Festival? Those seem like much stronger counterpoints to Landru's claim of a "perfect and tranquil" society.
However, even though I sighed at the mind control, and may have yelled at the screen during Kirk's talk with Landru, I enjoyed most of the episode. The blend of an apparent 19th-century culture with "lawgivers" who look like medieval monks was delightful, and I'm fond of "religious kook" language, even when it's obviously forced. Maybe especially then—I did like Kirk's pretense of being "of the body" near the end of the episode.
Three and a half stars. Fun to watch; even more fun to critique.
A Perfect Society—for Whom?
by Jessica Dickinson Goodman
The "Festival" scenes from "Return of the Archons" reminded me of a piece by Miriam Allen deFord in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction back in 1956. She was responding to a Saturday Review column by Dr. Robert S. Richardson, where he argued women should absolutely be included on future missions to Mars – as sex toys for the male astronauts. Ms. Allen DeFord deftly picks apart Mr. Richardson's argument, redolent with "subconscious male arrogance," piece by piece, in an article I have laid out in my feminist scrapbook; but it was her successful shredding of his argument that women are emotionally unsuitable for space travel that I thought of most during this week's Star Trek episode.
Women. So emotional.
Ms. Allen deFord writes:
"The notion that women are inherently more emotional and excitable than men is a hoary myth that belongs back in the days of the 18th century 'vapors' and Victorian swoonings. Actually, the convention that induces men to repress every indication of emotion makes neurosis more prevalent among them than among women."
Men. The picture of mental stability.
That see-sawing between repression and violent emotional excitement formed the core of Landru's unbalanced world. But the near-total invisibility of women on Beta Three – with the exception of Tula, the daughter of a saloon-keeper who seems to only have existed to be brutalized during the Festival – was exactly the kind of society that Dr. Richardson had envisioned humanity creating on Mars. One where women's only roles are to be carried off by men, screaming.
Landru takes Beta 3 back to a simpler time: the Neolithic.
I like Ms. Allen deFord's vision better, because it reminds me of the world we are usually treated to on the Enterprise. One which is composed of, as she says: "a bisexual instead of monosexual staff of prioneer observers, investigators, and technicians." It is a future where women are not toys or victims, but living people who sing, study, lead, organize, and live. Where: "Women are not walking sex organs. They are human beings. People, just like men."
Landru's major failure in this episode wasn't just assuming that the best world for his descendents would be one characterized by dull emotional repression, punctuated by scarlet periods of neurotic violence; it was designing a world where women held no meaningful power and were confined to roles which profoundly limited their human potential far below the men in their society.
Here's hoping in the next episode, Lieutenant Uhura gets more than one line and we go back to having fully human women alongside us on our journeys to the stars.
If you squint, you can almost see Uhura in this episode.
Three stars.
PS: I wish some brave soul would collect and republish Ms. Allen deFord's essay and other pieces from her era so more people could enjoy her incisive wit and colorful prose; maybe pair it with some women-centered fiction by Mari Wolf, Alice Eleanor Jones, or Evelyn E. Smith.
Tonight at 8:30 PM (Eastern and Pacific), Hollywood Palace presents Ricardo Montalban and his Amazing Supermen!
Come join us – here's the invitation!
by Cora Buhlert
Winter in the City and the Park
It's cold a wet February here in my hometown of Bremen, but the first signs of spring are already visible and audible in the form of the red and white pavilions and the shouts of the barkers of the Bürgerpark tombola.
The Bürgerpark (citizen's park) is a roughly 200 hectare big park in the heart of Bremen, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. The park contains several lakes, a luxury hotel, a restaurant, a coffee house, a theatre, a small zoo as well fountains, bridges, benches, statues and lots of beautiful scenery. Beloved by the people of Bremen, the upkeep of the park is financed almost entirely by donations as well as the Bürgerpark tombola, a charity raffle that has been going on every year since 1953 in the late winter and early spring.
Whenever I chance to find myself in the city center at Bürgerpark tombola time, I inevitably buy a few tickets. After all, it's for a good cause and you can win some great prizes such as cars, holiday trips, sports tickets or cruises. Though so far, all I won was a packet of rice.
More from the Cimmerian Barbarian
But even though I only won an underwhelming prize from the Bürgerpark tombola, I did hit the reading jackpot this month with yet another great collection of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories from the 1930s courtesy of Lancer Books.
After Conan the Adventurer, which I reviewed last month for the Journey, I cracked open the purple edged pages of the follow-up collection Conan the Warrior with a mix of excitement and apprehension. For while I was happy to spend more time with the Cimmerian, I was also worried that this collection would be a let-down, compared to the high quality of the previous installment.
However, I need not have worried, because Conan the Warrior is even better than Conan the Adventurer, collecting one good and two excellent stories.
Red Nails
The novella "Red Nails" was serialised in Weird Tales from July to October 1936 and has the distinction of being the last Conan adventure that Robert E. Howard completed before his untimely death in 1936. And what an adventure it is.
Once again, the story opens not with Conan, but with another character, Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, a female pirate and mercenary, who had to go on the run when she killed an officer of the army in which she had enlisted, after he tried to rape her. Now Valeria makes her way through the uncharted jungles of the Hyborian Age equivalent of Africa. Unbeknownst to Valeria, Conan, who served in the same mercenary army, has fallen for Valeria and followed her into the jungle, quietly dispatching any other pursuers.
Valeria is a marvellous character, a warrior woman who is Conan's equal in many ways. "Why won't men let me live a man's life?" Valeria laments at one point. "That's obvious," Conan replies with an appreciative look at Valeria's body. Robert E. Howard is usually considered a writer of masculine fiction and Conan is clearly a man's man, but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety and competence of the female characters in these stories. Not every women in these stories is as impressive as Valeria or Yasmina from "The People of the Black Circle", but they are all characters with personalities and lives of their own and every one of them is given a chance to shine.
At first, Valeria is not too pleased to see Conan, but this quickly changes when Valeria and Conan find themselves pursued by what they call a dragon, but which twentieth century readers will quickly recognise as a dinosaur who has survived the extinction of its brethren. Now I was not expecting to see Conan and Valeria fighting a dinosaur, but my inner ten-year-old who loved dinosaurs was delighted.
Together, Conan and Valeria manage to kill the dinosaur, but fearing there might be more in the jungle, they flee into the desert, where they spot yet another mysterious and seemingly abandoned city on the horizon. However, Xuchotl, which is not so much a city but a giant enclosed maze, is far from abandoned. Instead, it is home to two rivalling factions who are engaged in a generations long blood feud to the exclusion of all else. The title refers not, as I had initially assumed, to women's fingernails, but to copper nails which are hammered into a column to keep a tally of enemies killed.
In spite of their best efforts, Conan and Valeria cannot avoid getting dragged into that feud. But other dangers lurk in Xuchotl as well, including a treacherous king, a vampiric queen with an unsavoury interest in Valeria and a mad sorcerer.
Robert E. Howard clearly enjoyed writing stories about mysterious cities in the desert inhabited by drugged out or otherwise insane inhabitants and monsters both human and supernatural, since no less than five of the seven stories in these collections include a variation on this theme. "Red Nails" is the best of these and it almost seems as if the previous stories were practice runs for this one.
Howard also contrasts the madness and inhumanity of Xuchotl's inhabitants and their endless feud with the warmth and humanity of both Conan and Valeria. There is a wonderful moment where Conan's interrupts the pompous King Olmec's victory speech with a gruff "You'd best see to your wounded." We also see Conan and Valeria taking care of each other and treating each other's injuries. Fantasy fiction rarely pays attention to the physical cost of battle, but the Conan stories repeatedly show that characters, including Conan, can and will be wounded. Robert E. Howard's father was a Texas country doctor, so Howard knew a thing or two about injuries.
Another amazing (and very bloody) adventure with a heroine who's Conan's match in every way. Five stars.
The Jewels of Gwahlur
This novelette appeared in the March 1935 issue of Weird Tales and finds Conan still (or once again) in Africa, climbing the sheer walls of a cliff surrounding the ruined city of Alkmeenon. Inside this city, there rests a legendary treasure of priceless jewels known as the Teeth of Gwahlur.
Conan is eager to get his hands on this treasure and has ingratiated himself with the King of Keshan in order to steal the jewels, which happen to be sacred to the people of Keshan.
However, Conan isn't the only one who's after the jewels. There's also his rival Thutmekri and his accomplice, the fake oracle Muriela. Furthermore, the city of Alkmeenon once again is not nearly as deserted as everybody believes, but is still being stalked by the monstrous servants of its former masters.
So far in this collection, we've seen Conan the mercenary, Conan the warlord and Conan the pirate. This story adds a new dimension to the Cimmerian and gives us Conan the con man, who is literally running a long con to get his hands on the jewels. The city of Alkmeenon, located in the center of what a modern reader will recognise as an extinct volcano, is a very evocative setting. Though unfortunately, the descriptions of the black characters who appear in the story are once again dated and no longer appropriate to the civil rights era. The heroine Muriela is no Valeria either, but closer to the stereotype of the clinging and whimpering damsel.
A fun heist story starring Conan. Four stars.
Beyond the Black River
This novella was originally serialised in the May and June 1935 of Weird Tales and is set on the northern edge of Aquilonia, the Hyborian age equivalent of France and also the kingdom Conan will eventually come to rule. Aquilonia has recently expanded its borders northwards into the wilderness inhabited by the barbarian Picts. The Picts are understandably not happy about this.
The historical Picts were a people who lived in what is now Scotland during the late Roman era and the early Middle Ages. Little is known about them and so Howard uses a lot of poetic licence to turn his version of the Picts into analogues for American Indians, setting up a frontier conflict. The Picts are very much depicted as offensive stereotypes here, though Howard also wrote several stories chronicling the struggles of a Pictish chieftain named Bran Mak Morn with the Roman Empire, where the Picts are portrayed in far more sympathetic light.
Once again, the novella opens not with Conan, but with a young man named Balthus who has come to Aquilonia's newly opened frontier, lured by promises of cheap and abundant land. However, Balthus quickly encounters the Picts and is saved by none other than Conan, who has come to Fort Tuscelan to serve as a mercenary. Since Conan's homeland Cimmeria borders on Pictish territory (though the Cimmerians and the Picts are ancestral enemies), the Fort's commander puts Conan's wilderness skills and knowledge of the enemy to good use by sending him on scouting missions.
Conan is convinced that Aquilonia's expansion plans will eventually fail, when the various Pictish tribes rally together to kick out the invaders. After all, that was what the Cimmerians did when Aquilonia attempted to annex their territory. Balthus has heard stories of that legendary battle for the Aquilonian Fort Venarium and asks Conan if he was there. "Yes," Conan says and calmly tells Balthus that he fought on the Cimmerian side as a fifteen-year-old. So Conan fought the very people at the age of fifteen that he will come to rule as a king some twenty-five years later and sees absolutely no contradiction in this.
Conan's prediction proves to be accurate, for the Pictish wizard Zogar Sag has rallied the tribes and is gearing up for an assault on Fort Tuscelan. Conan and a party of scouts, including Balthus, sneak into Pictish territory to take out Zogar Sag. But they are ambushed and only Conan and Balthus survive. However, the attack on Fort Tuscelan has already begun and all Conan and Balthus can do is to warn the Aquilonian settlers, so they can flee before they are slaughtered.
Of all the Conan stories I've read so far, this one is the bleakest, since it literally ends with everybody except for Conan dead. This includes Balthus who makes a heroic last stand together with a feral dog named Slasher to allow the settlers to escape to safety.
Now I'm very much not a dog person and Slasher, who went feral after the Picts murdered his owner and now takes revenge on the slayers in his own fashion, is very reminiscent of the slobbering and barking menaces that chased after me behind much too low fences when I rode my bicycle to school as a kid. That said, Slasher is a marvellous character in his own right and the mix of total savagery towards the Picts and affection towards Balthus rings so true that I wonder if Howard owned a dog. I'm not someone who cries at movies or books and managed to sit through all of Doctor Zhivago without shedding a single tear. However, the heroic sacrifice of Slasher and Balthus made even me misty-eyed.
"Beyond the Black River" also showcases Howard's versatility, since he plops Conan into what is basically a western. And considering Howard grew up in Texas at a time when the so-called Old West was still within living memory, it seems only natural that he would draw on the frontier era in his fiction.
To someone from West Germany, the Old West is just as exotic as the Hyborian Age. Nonetheless, I connected to this story, because I noticed many parallels between the Cimmerians and later the Picts kicking the Aquilonians out of their respective homelands and my own ancestors, led by the Cherusci chieftain Arminius, kicking the Romans out of Northern Germany in the battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD.
"Beyond the Black River" also ends with what is probably one of Howard's most famous lines: "Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural; it is a whim of circumstance… And barbarism must always ultimately triumph!"
A bleak and grim story that will stick in your mind for a long time. Five stars.
A Multi-faceted Barbarian
So far, I have read a few of the Conan stories in scattered reprints in magazines and collections as well as two of Lancer's new paperback collections and I'm struck by the variety of settings and themes in the stories that Robert E. Howard wrote about this character. But even though the various stories reveal different aspects of the Cimmerian, Conan always remains recognisably the same character.
Those who have heard of Conan, but have not read the actual stories featuring him, inevitably cite Conan's violence, his physical strength and his womanising as his most notable characteristics. Nor are they wrong, because Conan is clearly a violent man. Those at the receiving end of his sword or his fists usually deserve their fate, but it's also difficult to overlook that Conan outright murders the pirate captain Zaparavo in "Pool of the Black One" to take over his ship and also murders a rival in "Drums of Tombalku" to usurp his position.
A lot of people also think that Conan is stupid, an illiterate Barbarian, big of muscle and small of brain. They could not be more wrong, because the Conan depicted by Robert E. Howard is actually a very intelligent man. He speaks, reads and writes multiple languages. He is a also a brilliant military strategist and tactician and – at least in "The Jewels of Gwalhur" – a clever con man.
As for the womanising, like many men, Conan does think with the dangly bit on occasion. In "Red Nails", Conan literally walks across half a continent in order to go after and protect the woman he has fallen for.
In the seven stories collected in Conan the Adventurer and Conan the Warrior, Conan is without female companionship in two of the stories and with a different woman in the each of the remaining five. And even though most Conan stories end with Conan walking off into the sunset with his current lover, the woman in question is usually nowhere to be seen in the following story. This is a pity, for while some of the female characters in these stories are insipid non-entities like the woman clinging to Conan's leg on Frank Frazetta's cover for Conan the Adventurer, Conan is also paired with some remarkably strong women like Valeria from "Red Nails" or Yasmina from "People of the Black Circle".
But then, Conan is extremely charismatic. He may be a loner and wandering outlaw for much of his career, but Conan never has problems persuading people to follow him. In "Drums of Tombalku", Conan goes from prisoner marked for death to leader of the warriors who have captured him within the space of a few days. And in "Pool of the Black One", Conan steals the crew of the pirate captain Zaparavo from under his nose by gaining their loyalty. Even though those stories haven't been reprinted yet, it's easy to see how Conan will wind up becoming King of Aquilonia, the very country whose warriors he helped to kick out of his native Cimmeria at the age of fifteen.
Though for Conan, loyalty is not a one way street. In fact, the most notable of Conan's traits that appears in story after story is his deep loyalty towards friends, lovers, comrades in arms and people he feels responsible for. In "People of the Black Circle", Conan's main goal throughout the story is freeing the seven of his men who have been captured by the authorities of Vendya. Nor will Conan abandon the people he has adopted, even after they try to kill him. And when one of his friends is killed, as happens in "Drums of Tombalku" and "Beyond the Black River", Conan swears bloody vengeance on the killers.
Closely linked to Conan's deep loyalty towards people he feels responsible for is a trait that is not often brought up in connection with a violent Barbarian warrior, namely his compassion. For these stories demonstrate again and again that Conan deeply cares about people, whether it is his budding friendship with Balthus and Slasher in "Beyond the Black River", his protectiveness towards Valeria in "Red Nails" or Conan freely foregoing the great treasure he has been chasing after for the entire story in order to save a life at the end of "The Jewels of Gwalhur". Indeed, it is when pitted against a merciless and utterly inhuman opponent, whether it's the wizards of Mount Yimsha in "People of the Black Circle", the blood-mad inhabitants of Xuchotl in "Red Nails", the apathetic pleasure seekers of Xuthal in "The Slithering Shadows" or the murderous Pictish warriors and wizards in "Beyond the Black River", that Conan's humanity shines most brightly.
Now that Lancer is reprinting all the stories, you owe it to yourself to get to know the real Conan, this fascinating and multi-faceted character that Robert E. Howard created more than thirty years ago.
Three fabulous tales of the Cimmerian Barbarian. Five stars for the collection.
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