The author is better known around these parts for his sword-and-sorcery yarns about Brak the Barbarian, firmly in the tradition of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan. This new novel is a horse of a different color.
Cover art by Richard Powers
The planet Missouri had a revolution some time before the story begins. Advanced technology and a bureaucratic form of government were replaced by nineteenth century ways of doing things and fierce individualism.
In other words, the place now resembles Hollywood's fantasy of the Old West. There are some so-called savages who play the role of American Indians. Towns are full of outlaws and dance hall girls. There are sheriffs around, supposedly to maintain law and order, but they aren't very effective.
Our long-suffering hero is Zak Randolph, a minor government worker who ekes out a living by supplying souvenirs (such as miniature outhouses) to tourists and staging phony shootouts to entertain visitors from other worlds. He also arranges to have local badmen sent to more civilized planets to amuse those who hire them.
This latter function gets him in trouble. One of the leased gunfighters heads back to Missouri before his contract runs out. Zak has to track him down or risk losing his position. (What keeps him on the wild-and-wooly planet at all are his girlfriend and the presence of native plants that supply minerals that can be made into jewelry. Otherwise, he's a peaceable sort who hates the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later culture of the place.)
Along the way, he has to deal with ruffians who despise him as a coward. There's also the mystery of a legendary gunfighter called Buffalo Yung. Zak isn't sure this terrifying figure really exists. Then he gets reports from various places that he's been shot dead, apparently more than once. And what does this have to do with the disappearing bodies of lawmen killed by Yung?
Until recently, it seemed like there was at least one major airplane crash every month. That’s one of the reasons almost every airport has a place where you can buy short-term life insurance for your flight. But crashes seem to be giving way to a new risk: hijacking (or skyjacking as headlines writers would have it; the term will never stick). Last year alone, there were roughly 100 incidents around the world. That’s worse than crashes ever were.
In the U.S., the hijacker usually demands to be taken to Cuba. It’s mostly an inconvenience for the passengers, who get to their destination much later than planned and don’t even get to see any of Cuba. It’s become so common that it’s the subject of jokes and skits. But these incidents are taking on a more violent turn.
My colleague Cora recently reported on two failed hijacking attempts in Munich, one of which left one dead and ten injured. Not long after that, Swissair Flight 330 was destroyed by a bomb. Those three attacks have been attributed to a Palestinian terrorist organization. On March 1st, a bomb was found on board an Ethiopian Airlines flight before it left Rome. On the 17th, a gunman aboard an Eastern Airlines shuttle flight wounded the pilot and fatally wounded the co-pilot after being told the plane had to refuel in Boston. Fortunately, the co-pilot was able to wrest the gun away from the hijacker before succumbing to his wounds, allowing the pilot to land the plane safely. To date, this is the only airplane hijacking in America to end with a fatality.
On March 31st, a Japanese group calling themselves the Red Army Faction hijacked a flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka and demanded they be flown to Cuba. After being told the plane was incapable of flying that far, they demanded they be flown to North Korea instead. While refueling in Fukuoka, they released 23 passengers, mostly children and the elderly. An attempt was made to land the plane in South Korea and trick the hijackers into believing they’d reached Pyongyang. Unfortunately, they realized what was going on after the plane landed. Following some tense negotiations, the Japanese Vice Minister for Transportation, Shinjiro Yamamura, traded himself for the rest of the passengers and the plane flew on to North Korea. The hijackers were granted asylum and the plane and crew were allowed to return to Japan (not necessarily a given with North Korea) a few days later, arriving in Tokyo on the morning of April 5th.
That’s a lot in less than two months. But in the midst of all that, airplane hijackings and bombings also made it to the movies. March 5th saw the premiere of Airport. Depending on who you ask, it’s either a disaster or a hit; either way it’s star-studded. Take a look at the poster.
You probably know who most of these people are.
Based on the 1968 novel by Arthur Hailey, the film is about the operations of an airport crippled by a blizzard and dealing with a wrecked plane on the tarmac and an inbound flight with a suicide bomber aboard, plus lots of soap opera stuff. While critics almost universally panned the book, it spent 64 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, 30 at #1, and was the biggest selling novel of 1968. The critics are no kinder to the film (“dull” seems to be one of the nicer things they say), but once it went to wider release, it promptly spent two weeks as number one at the box office and is still in the top five. There must be something in the water. Or the air.
Spacejacked
The hijacking theme continues in this month’s Venture, which is dominated by Edward Wellen’s new novel. It’s normal for Venture to give most of its space to a condensed novel, but it feels like more space than usual is taken up this time.
I’m still not sold on Tanner’s covers, but this one is better than most. Art by Bert Tanner
1970 has been a bit of a tough year for us in Seattle.
Our major local company, Boeing, has suffered the worst year in its history. The Boeing Bust keeps continuing, as the 1969 layoffs have grown into a full-scale decimation. Unemployment is up around 10% now, the worst since the Great Depression, and my family and I are starting to panic. Of course, the fall of Boeing hits many other local industries, so places like restaurants, bookstores and movie theatres are especially hard hit by this. And many of my friends have either moved or contemplated moving – even if they will lose money on their fancy $50,000 homes in the suburbs.
Sales of this widebody jet have been declining
To make matters worse, we’ve also lost our pro baseball team, which I wrote about last summer. The Seattle Pilots premiered in ’69, in a minor league park and with the worst uniforms in the Majors. But after just one season, the team is gone—relocated to Milwaukee, of all places, leaving behind a community that embraced them despite the challenges. For my friends and family, it wasn’t just about losing a baseball team; it was about losing a piece of the city’s identity. Just as we gained a second sports team to join our beloved SuperSonics, they were wrenched away from us.
Their home park, Sick’s Stadium, had its flaws. But it was our flawed park. Fans showed up, hopeful that the Pilots would grow into something more. Their financial struggles were well-known, reported faithfully in our local Times and P-I, but few expected the team to vanish overnight. When the sale was finalized on April 1, 1970, it felt like an April Fools’ joke—except it was real. The Pilots were rebranded as the Brewers, and we were left without a Major League Baseball team.
In fact, the Pilots trained in Spring Training as the Pilots before a chaotic moment as they traveled north from Arizona. Equipment trucks were redirected from highway pay phones, as the team learned they would be playing in Wisconsin rather than Washington. The new Brewers played their first game this week at Milwaukee County Stadium. The Pilots are no more.
Of course, the lawyers are getting involved and we may get a team in the future – but a city that deserved some good news has received some devastating news instead. We are like mariners without a destination as far as baseball goes.
The Machines Live
And in the midst of all that frustration comes a film that’s ultimately about mankind’s frustrating hubris.
Colossus: The Forbin Project, adapted from the 1966 novel, is claustrophobic, unsettling, and uncomfortably plausible. If Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey made us marvel at the potential of artificial intelligence, Colossus comes along and shakes us out of our dreamy optimism. This isn’t a sleek, cool machine with a calm voice and vague philosophical musings. This is cold, unrelenting domination, and there’s no arguing with it.
Organized by a fundamentalist coalition, religious fervor dominated the gathering. That said, there were plenty of Birchers and Nazis in attendance, too, making this a truly ecumenical demonstration.
There must be a growing demand for original anthologies of science fiction, because they keep coming—both standalone titles and series. Infinity One is, going by its title, the first in yet another series of these, although notably there is one reprint between its covers (really two reprints, as you'll see), a story that many readers will already be familiar with. Robert Hoskins is an occasional author-turned-agent-turned-editor, whose high position at Lancer Books has apparently resulted in Infinity One. Will there be future installments? Does it really matter? We shall see.
The tagline for Infinity One is “a magazine of speculative fiction in book form,” which strikes me as a sequence of words only fit to come from the mouth of a clinically insane person. This is a paperback anthology and nothing more nor less. I mentioned in my review of Nova 1 last month that Harry Harrison claimed that he simply wanted to put together an anthology of “good” SF, although I’m not sure if Hoskins had even such a basic goal in mind.
Apollo 13 coverage starts tonight and goes on for the next two weeks! Don't miss a minute. Check local listings for broadcast times.
by John Boston
Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye
The May Amazing presents a new face to the world. That is, the cover was actually painted for the magazine, as opposed to being recycled from the German Perry Rhodan. It’s not by one of the new artists editor White was talking up in the last issue, but rather by John Pederson, Jr., who has been doing covers on and off for the SF magazines since the late 1950s. Ditching the second-hand Europeans is a step forward in itself, though this particular cover is not much improvement: a slightly stylized picture of a guy sitting in a spacesuit on a flying chair with a disgruntled expression on his face, against an improbable astronomical background.
by John Pederson, Jr.
But it is an interesting development for a couple of reasons. First, in the letter column, White goes into more detail than previously about the European connection, in response to a question about why the covers are not attributed. White says: “The situation is this: an agency known as Three Lions has been marketing transparencies of covers from Italian and German sf magazines and has sold them to a variety of book and magazine publishers in this country, including ourselves. These transparencies were unsigned. One of our competitors credited its reprint covers to ‘Three Lions;’ we felt that was less than no credit at all. Therefore, unless the artist’s signature was visible, we omitted the contents-page credit. As of this issue, however, Amazing returns to the use of original cover paintings by known U.S. artists.”
So much, then, for Johnny Bruck, and a hat tip to the diligent investigators who have identified all his uncredited reprint covers as they were published. In addition to Pederson, White says, he’s obtained covers from Jeff Jones and Gray Morrow, and in fact a Jones cover is already on last month’s Fantastic. Further: “I might add that, beginning with our last issue, the art direction, typography and graphics for the covers of both magazines has been by yours truly.” So White has pried one more aspect of control of the magazine from the grip of Sol Cohen, presumably all to the good, though the visible effect to date is limited.
March saw not one, but two attempts to overthrow the established government in smaller countries. One failed, but the other looks like it may have succeeded.
Cyprus is the island south of Turkey, west of Syria, north of Egypt
Cyprus is a troubled nation. The populace is divided between those of Greek and Turkish decent, and the long-running hostility between Greece and Turkey spilled over to Cyprus. When the island sought independence from the United Kingdom, Greek Cypriots hoped for eventual union with Greece, which was not acceptable to Turkish Cypriots. The British were able to block annexation (or enosis, as it is called in Cyprus) as a condition for independence, but relationships within the island are so rocky that UN peacekeepers had to be brought in to keep the two populations from each other’s throats.
A major figure in the independence movement was Orthodox Archbishop Makarios III, who has led the country ever since. Before independence, he was a strong supporter of enosis, but was persuaded to accept that it would have to be put off as a hoped for future event. Makarios isn’t terribly popular with western leaders; he’s been a major voice in the Non-aligned Movement. Some in Washington have taken to calling him “the Castro of the Mediterranean.” In the last few years, he’s made himself unpopular at home as well. He’s taken away guarantees of Turkish representation in government and has also moved away from the idea of enosis. His justification is the Greek military coup of 1967, stating that joining Cyprus to Greece under a dictatorship would be a disservice to all Cypriots.
Archbishop Makarios III visiting the Greek royal family in exile in Rome earlier this year.
On March 8th, somebody tried to kill Makarios. His helicopter was brought down by withering, high-powered fire. Makarios was uninjured, but the pilot was severely wounded. Fortunately, nobody else was on board. At least 11 people have been arrested, all of Greek heritage and strong supporters of enosis. Given the military nature of the weapons used, some are also accusing the Greek Junta of involvement.
Meanwhile in south-east Asia, Prince Norodom Sihanouk is out as the leader of Cambodia. Like Makarios, he hasn’t been popular in the west, due to his cozy relations with both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. He’s also allowed Cambodian ports to be used for bringing in supplies for the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong, while also ignoring the use of Cambodian territory as part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Sihanouk was out of the country when anti-North Vietnamese riots erupted both in the east of the country and in Phnom Penh. Things quickly got out of hand, with the North Vietnamese embassy being sacked. By the 12th, the government canceled trade agreements with North Vietnam, closed the port of Sihanoukville to them, and issued an ultimatum that all North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong forces were to leave the country within 72 hours. When the demand wasn’t met, 30,000 protesters rallied outside the National Assembly against the Vietnamese.
On the 18th, The Assembly met and voted unanimously (except for one member who walked out in protest) to depose Sihanouk as the head of state. Prime Minister Lon Nol has assumed the head-of-state powers on an emergency basis. On the 23rd, Sihanouk, speaking by radio from Peking, called for an uprising against Lon Nol, and large demonstrations followed. A few days later, two National Assembly deputies were killed by the protesters. The demonstrations were then put down with extreme violence.
l: Prince Sihanouk in Paris shortly before his ouster. R: Prime Minister Lon Nol.
Where this will lead is anybody’s guess. The new government (it should be noted that the removal of Sihanouk appears to have been completely legal) has clearly abandoned the policy of neutrality and threatened North Vietnam with military action. Hanoi isn’t going to take that lying down; if the war spreads to Cambodia, will the Nixon administration expand American involvement? Add in Sihanouk urging resistance to Lon Nol and the deep reverence for the royal family held by many Cambodians, and it all looks like a recipe for chaos.
What is man
Some of the stories in this month’s IF deal directly or tangentially with what it is that makes humans human. The front cover also raises a question that we don’t have an answer to. We’ll get to that at the end; let’s look at the issue first.
It's the end of the month, and that means the latest Analog is on tap. This one starts and even mids with the usual drudgery… but the latter third breeds a little hope.
In my last article, I wrote that a feeling of hope and optimism was permeating West Germany ever since the general election last fall. Sadly, on February 13, 1970, those good vibrations were disrupted by a reminder of the darkest time of German history.
It was a cold Friday night in the Glockenbach neighbourhood of Munich. The shops on Reichenbachstraße had already closed for the night and in the Victorian apartment buildings lining the street, people were enjoying the start of the weekend.
On of the buildings along Reichenbachstraße is the Munich synagogue, built in 1931. It was the only synagogue in Munich to survive the Reichskristallnacht on November 9, 1938, because the Munich fire brigade stopped the Nazi mob from setting fire to the building, insisting that a fire would spread out of control and burn down the entire densely populated street.
After World War II, the synagogue reopened and now serves as the main synagogue for the Jewish population of Munich. The Jewish congregation of Munich also purchased an adjacent Victorian apartment building to serve as a community centre, library, restaurant, kindergarten and as a home for elderly members of the congregation and students.
Shortly before nine PM, an unknown person or persons entered the community centre, took the elevator to the top floor and spread gasoline in the wooden stairwell on their way down. Then, they struck a match, lit the gasoline and fled. The resulting fire spread rapidly through the old building.
The community center of the Munich synagogue on Reichenbachstraße all ablaze.
At the time of the arson attack, fifty people were inside the community centre, celebrating the sabbath. Forty-three of them were rescued by neighbours and the Munich fire brigade. However, the fire in the stairwell had cut off access to the upper floors of the building, trapping several resident in their rooms.
A resident of the old people's home at the Jewish community center on Reichenbachstraße in Munich has been rescued and is taken to hospital.Medical student Sara Elassari escapes the fire.
Twenty-one-year-old medical student Sara Elassari, who lived on the top floor, managed to escape through the window and scramble down a drain pipe, from where she was rescued by the fire brigade. Seventy-one-year-old Meir Max Blum, who had returned from the US to his city of birth only the year before, jumped from a window and succumbed to his injuries. Six other residents aged between fifty-nine and seventy-one were found dead in their rooms. All seven victims had survived the Holocaust – some in hiding, some in exile, some imprisoned in concentration camps – only to be murdered in their homes in supposedly peaceful West Germany.
A burned out room at the Jewish community center in Munich.
Too Many Suspects
As of this writing, we do not know who is responsible for this terrible tragedy. The Munich police are following various leads. The obvious suspects would be the far right, since West Germany has no shortage of old and new Nazis. However, there is also evidence pointing at an eighteen-year-old far left radical with a history of arson, because Anti-Semitism does not thrive only among the right.
Finally, the arson attack might also be connected to the Middle East conflict, especially since a Palestinian terrorist group had tried to hijack an El Al plane during a stopover at Munich-Riem airport only three days before. The hijack attempt failed, but one passenger, thirty-two-year-old German-Israeli businessman Arie Katzenstein, was killed and ten other people were injured, some of them critically. On February 17, another hijack attempt was foiled, also at Munich-Riem airport but thankfully without casualties. Were the same terrorists also responsible for the arson attack? So far, we don't know.
Two police officers examine the aftermath of the foiled hijack attempt at Munich-Riem airport on February 10, 1970.The transit lounge at Munich-Riem airport after the failed hijack attempt.The airport bus, where the would-be hijackers ignited a hand grenade, killing 32-year-old German-Israeli businessman Arie Katzenstein.
However, the sad truth remains that twenty-five years after the end of the Third Reich, eight Jewish people (the seven victims of the arson attack as well as the victim of the airport attack) were murdered and several others injured in the heart of Munich. The old venom of Anti-Semitism is back, if it ever left in the first place.
Nuclear War as Comedy
When the world outside becomes too terrible to bear, the cinema offers a respite for an hour or two. And so I headed out to see a movie that debuted at last year's Berlin Film Festival, but is only now reaching West German cinemas. And since the movie was billed as a comedy, it would seem to guarantee a good time.
Federico Fellini is unquestionably one of the most beloved filmmakers in the so-called international arthouse circuit. Despite shooting Italian productions, working well outside the Hollywood system, Fellini has already garnered a back-breaking eight Oscar nominations. I won't be surprised if his latest, Fellini Satyricon (which henceforth I'll simply refer to as Satyricon), nabs him another nomination, despite its immense strangeness. United Artists, responsible for distributing Satyricon here in the States, have been shrewd in their marketing, seemingly aiming at the overlap between those who frequent arthouse theaters (people like me) and those who watch B-movies at the drive-in (also people like me).
Fellini Satyricon
Normally, when writing about a film, or really any narrative, I try to give you a blow-by-blow of the plot; however, in the case of Satyricon, I don't think this would be feasible or desirable. This film is the latest effort from Fellini as both a fantasist and a storyteller who, at least since La Dolce Vita a decade ago, has clearly become disillusioned with traditional narrative. Satyricon is so loose in plot and yet so rich in imagery that to go over the plot would be doing it a disservice. I can at least give you the setup, though.
![[April 16, 1970] Junk Day for Ice Crowns (April 1970 Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/700420covers-672x372.jpg)
![[April 14, 1970] Take this spaceship to Alpha Centauri (May 1970 <i>Venture</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Venture-1970-05-Cover-475x372.jpg)
You probably know who most of these people are.
I’m still not sold on Tanner’s covers, but this one is better than most. Art by Bert Tanner![[April 12, 1970] And What Happens When the Machines Take Over? (Colossus: the Forbin Project)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/colossus4-672x372.jpg)
![[April 10, 1970] A Style in Treason (May 1970 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/700410galaxycover-651x372.jpg)
![[April 8, 1970] All Too Finite (<em>Infinity One</em>, edited by Robert Hoskins)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/ANCL00221-400x372.jpg)
![[April 6, 1970] Uncovered (May 1970 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/amz-0570-cover-672x372.png)
![[April 2, 1970] Being Human (May-June 1970 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IF-1970-05-Cover-472x372.jpg)
Archbishop Makarios III visiting the Greek royal family in exile in Rome earlier this year.
l: Prince Sihanouk in Paris shortly before his ouster. R: Prime Minister Lon Nol.
Suggested by Troubleshooter. Art by Gaughan![[March 31, 1970] Seed stock (April 1970 <i>Analog</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/700331analogcover-672x372.jpg)
![[March 28, 1970] Cinemascope: No Vacancy (The Bed Sitting Room)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The_Bed-Sitting_Room_film-256x372.jpg)
![[March 26, 1970] A Quartet of Whimsy (<i>Satyricon, Skullduggery, Horton Hears a Who, Necropolis</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/700324cinemascope-672x372.jpg)
