Yes, San Francisco is known for earthquakes, and perhaps I should be more careful with that word "epicenter." However, just as earthquakes start deep underground, so did the current cultural cluster of motion in this town whose underground is decidedly showing.
Free the Muses!
That's "motion" as in "motion pictures," but also as in music, which is sound in time. Music has been locked up in conservatories and other academic institutions for far too long. Time to let it loose. And lo and behold it consorts with experimental movies and finds people with electronic talent, and you get a spectrum of separateness, with pure films at one end and pure music at the other, and in the middle a fusion.
That fusion was happening at the San Francisco Tape Music Center for years before I moved to this cultural epicenter, in the collaboration of artist Anthony Martin and the composers who work and perform at the Center. I've seen some of these remarkable pieces, although when I hear them on the live broadcasts on public radio station KPFA when I can't go, the theater pieces and light shows don't really come across. (Imagine me sticking out my tongue here.) The most exciting event this year, though, has to be the one that exploded onto the music scene on November 4, by composer Terry Riley, rendered at 321 Divisidero by fellow composer and Tape Music Center performers Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Morton Subotnik, and Pauline Oliveros.
Composer Terry Riley
In C
Here's what SF Chronicle music critic Alfred Frankenstein wrote about Riley's shaker "In C" under the headline "Music Like None Other on Earth":
"This primitivistic music goes on and on," and "At times you feel you have never done anything all your life long but listen to this music and as if that is all there is or ever will be, but it is altogether absorbing, exciting, and moving, too."
Frankenstein captured my feelings exactly as I listened to the music. Mark my words, in half a century this will look like the most influential musical event of this time period.
Sandy but not a beach
On the other end of the spectrum, there was also a VIF (Very Important Film) that debuted in September in the U.S. and somewhat later here in The City, another culture bomb that I predict will also be analyzed nearly to death in future rounds of teaching and criticism. "Woman in the Dunes" concerns a traveling entomologist (you could call him a bug catcher) and a woman who is not allowed out of her hole in sand dunes. It was made in Japan with an interesting sound track by Tôru Takemitsu, from a book by Kôbô Abe. I have been told that the Japanese title is "Suna no onna" (sand woman).
The sand woman lying in her hut covered with sand
Said to be a "new wave" film, even though it is "foreign" it might be an Oscar magnet. The performances of the two main actors have been lauded, and the story has been given different interpretations. What I find most telling about it is that of the two main actors the man is named (Niki Jumpei) but the woman is not. If she ever had a name, it is not revealed during this story, although we know that she is a widow. She is a captive of the nearby community, who keep her in the sand pit, shoveling sand for their use and sale; when the man is captured as well, her situation does not immediately improve, although Jumpei is ultimately responsible for her escape. Go see it if you can. Is this an "underground film"? No, but it's not mainstream either; you will not find it in your neighborhood movie palace.
Avant-garde films
Most of the films made in and around San Francisco are not considered to be Oscar-worthy, but they could be called "underground films." They are made, for instance, by members of the Canyon Cinema, founded by Bruce Baillie. The experimental films made by Baillie and Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage, and many others, are played at small venues in the Bay Area. Mostly distributed on black and white 16-mm film (with some Super-8 after Brakhage's equipment was stolen), they blur and sharpen focus, play with sound and light. Some filmmakers draw or paint on the film itself, or use color sparingly. It appears that film, too, needs to be released from the movie theater, even the ones that play foreign films like "Woman in the Dunes."
Digging deeper
To find the venues for the music and movies I am coming to love (including, by the way, the beautiful "Window Water Baby Moving" by Brakhage that still gets played from time to time), I increasingly find that I have to know someone or pick up a mimeographed flyer or see a small poster tacked up.
Scene from Brakhage's "Window Water Baby Moving"
Now that I've wormed my way to San Francisco, I seem to be digging my way further underground. Who knows how far down this rabbit hole goes!
Science fiction and fantasy are closely aligned genres. Indeed, there is no hard line between them (like the continuum from sharks to rays) and one person's "soft" science fiction is another's fantasy. Each of the monthly SFF mags has carved out its own turf in the spectrum between hardest SF and fluffiest fantasy.
Analog has chosen the firmest of grounds, its stories highly scientific; even the recent Lord D'Arcy tales are a kind of highly rigorous fantasy. Galaxy, IF, and Worlds of Tomorrow also hew solidly to "reality". The magazines that trip more fantastic tend to indicate such in their titles: Fantastic, Science Fantasy, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
The name of the last one belies the fact that precious little, if any, science fiction appears within its covers these days. It didn't used to be so; during the Mills era, Naked to the Stars, and many other definitive science fiction works appeared. But ever since Avram Davidson took over, and even though he has been gone two issues now, F&SF has been a horror/fantasy mag.
And this is a problem. While SF is an ever-evolving genre, powered by new discoveries that unlock entire subgenres, fantasy is an unstructured, amorphous mass. And horror is (at least for now) a pile of cliches. Seen five Alfred Hitchcock Presents (the TV analog to F&SF) and you've seen them all. You may enjoy those five very much, but after a season of them, you're through with the genre.
F&SF's all-starring January 1965 issue is chock full of stories that might have been passable, if lesser, tales back in 1949. These days, they are frustratingly inadequate, especially given the new 50 cent price tag.
Exibit F (for Fantasy/Failure)
by Mel Hunter (depicting a landing on Neptune's moon, Triton — the closest this issue will get to SF)
We start with an "after the Bomb" piece, which I guess qualifies it as a low form of SF. However, its premise is sheer fantasy. In brief, it is centuries down the line, and civilized humanity has lost the ability to breed. The more comfortable we become, the lower our fertility, the sicklier are our children. Only the ignorant savages outside the last City remain fecund.
One City-dweller is a throwback, leading raiding parties into savage lands to kidnap children to be raised back at home. Whence come this spark of atavistic vigor? Of course, it turns out he's a kidnapped savage. And also that the primitives, themselves, are descendants of City-dwellers abandoned as children. Because all it takes to regain the spark of life is utter deprivation.
It's a dumb story, and women are portrayed as neurotic wives and would-be wet nurses.
Two stars.
Dimensional Analysis and Mr. Fortescue, by Eric St. Clair
Margaret St. Clair (and as her alter ego, Idris Seabright) is one of the best known names in the genre. Her husband, Eric, is an up-and-comer. Unfortunately, his latest story, about a fellow who opens a funhouse but finds it was inadvertently equipped with an interdimensional rift, is a down-and-goer. Just too broadly written and inconsequential; the kind of frothy stuff Davidson dug. Meringue can be tasty, but you can't live on it.
Two stars.
Begin at the Beginning, by Isaac Asimov
The Good Doctor's article is on calendar year system. Entertainingly spun, and including a few tidbits I had not been hitherto aware of, it nevertheless is a history lesson rather than a scientific piece. That's okay, as far as it goes, but it's much easier to present a non-technical piece for a layman than to explain an abstruse topic.
Three stars.
The Mysterious Milkman of Bishop Street, by Ward Moore
Turn-of-the-Century fellow engages a new milkman who promises to deliver his goods right to the doorstep rather than let it freeze on the street. The product is superb, the service excellent — too excellent. When it starts mysteriously appearing inside the house, the fellow decides he's had too much of a good thing and abandons his residence.
I liked that this story turns the "if it seems too good to be true" cliche on its head (there's never anything untoward about the milk; in fact, during the term of the milkman's engagement, life had been significantly better for the drinker). However, it ends abruptly and with insufficient development. It needed another sting for its tail.
Brilliant scientist devises a contraption to record the genesis of great inventions. It's really just an excuse for a brace of ha-ha vignettes, which aren't very funny.
A disappointment, both given the author and the promising title (which is now useless).
Two stars.
The Biolaser, by Theodore L. Thomas
The Science Springboard is back, this time positing a time when laser scalpels are so thin, they can splice DNA like reel-to-reel tape. Maybe it's possible?
Three stars, I guess.
Those Who Can, Do, by Bob Kurosaka
An impudent college student interrupts his teacher's math lecture with a demonstration of magic. The teacher responds in kind.
No really, that's it.
Two stars.
Wogglebeast, by Edgar Pangborn
Molly, a middle-aged woman with an inherited fancy for magical (if mythical) creatures, befriends a Wogglebeast when it emerges from a pot of chicken soup. She keeps the odd animal, which is never really described until the end, as kind of a pet, kind of a good luck charm. Fortune does seem to follow, and she even, at the age of 41, manages to become pregnant. The story, however, has a sad ending.
A sentimental and well-written tale, it doesn't have much more than emotion going for it. And I'm getting tired of women portrayed solely as mothers or wanting to be mothers.
Three stars.
Love Letter from Mars, by John Ciardi
Good meter on this poem, but after reading it five times, I've still no idea what the author is trying to communicate.
Alright. I won't leave it at that. The Blakeneys are the descendants of a four-person crew stranded on a (entirely Earthlike, of course) planet hundreds of years ago. Severe inbreeding has dulled their intelligence and bred in odd superstitions. When a fresh foursome of shipwreckees arive, the results are not happy ones.
Another vaguely promising tale that comes to an unsurprising, uninspiring end.
Finally, we have the longest piece of the mag, about the goings on in a Shakespeare company which culminate in a seemingly spectral conclusion during the Ghost's appearance in Hamlet.
Leiber, of course, recounts from experience, being a prominent actor, himself. But unlike the excellent No Great Magic, there is not a hint of fantasy or science fiction in this F&SF story. And while I appreciated the 30 page, (deliberately) gossipy and meandering behind-the-scenes look at life in an acting company, that's not why I subscribed to this mag.
Three stars.
Back to Reality
What a disappointment that was! If new editor Ferman can't find anyone to write proper SF, or even imaginative F for F&SF, he might as well change the magazine's masthead. As is, it's false advertising.
Oh well. There are plenty of interesting magazines and books next to it on this month's newsstand…
[Holiday season is upon us, and Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), on the other hand, contains some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age — many from F&SF's prouder days. And it makes a great present! A gift to friends, yourself…and to the Journey!]
The uproar at the University of California at Berkeley continues, with student leader Mario Savio becoming instantly famous for his cri de couer: “There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”
Ever see that corny old silent movie Metropolis, with its oppressed workers desperately struggling against the gigantic levers of a future civilization’s industry? Do you think Mr. Savio might have had those scenes in mind? Is our culture now to be dominated by the imagery of old science fiction, recycled through late-night TV? It can’t come soon enough for me.
The Issue at Hand
by Michael Arndt
Speaking of retrograde imagery, the January Amazing leads off with what seems a striking misjudgment. Though it features the first installment of a serial by the up-and-coming Roger Zelazny, his longest work to date, the cover is a cartoony though well-executed depiction, by newcomer Michael Arndt, of an extraterrestrial boxer being knocked out of the ring, with a Damon Runyonesque audience looking on, clearly illustrating Blue Boy by the determinedly mediocre Jack Sharkey. Zelazny’s story is relegated to smaller type above the magazine title, with his name hard to read against a bright background. Amazing is clearly leading from the wrong side. (Can’t anybody here play this game?)
He Who Shapes, by Roger Zelazny
by George Schelling
Promising as it seems, I will withhold reading and commenting on Zelazny’s serial He Who Shapes until the concluding installment is at hand, as is my practice. A look at the first few pages indicates that the story involves psychiatric treatment by mental projection—not exactly a new idea (see Peter Phillips’s Dreams Are Sacred from 1948 and John Brunner’s more recent The Whole Man), but not overly familiar either. Zelazny also seems to be making the most of his theatrical background in this one. We will see the results next month.
Blue Boy, by Jack Sharkey
Blue Boy is even worse than I expected. The protagonist, formerly involved in the boxing world, has been drafted, and is sent with a large crew on a mission to Pluto, where they encounter blue-skinned humanoids, whom they clap into the brig, and hastily head back towards Earth. The Plutonians are quite muscular and have a knack for footwork, so our protagonist gets the idea of sneaking onto Earth with one and turning him into a boxer.
by Michael Arndt
That’s about as far as I got (halfway) in this offensively stupid and also interminable screed (34 pages but seems like much more), which is written, and padded, in a stilted and circumlocutory style which seems pretty clearly intended as a pastiche of the above-mentioned Damon Runyon. “Why?” one might cry, but the wind only whispers . . . “one cent a word.” One star. No stars. Heat death of the universe. Cessation of all brain activity. Bring back Robert F. Young!
We return at least to the semblance of sentience with Norman Spinrad’s A Child of Mind, a clever variation on a stock SF plot. Three guys from Survey land on a planet which seems idyllic, but of course there’s something wrong; there always is. This time, the majority of the females of the various local fauna have cell structures indicating they are really different organisms under the skin.
Turns out they spring from “teleplasm,” an inchoate life form whose modus vivendi is, whenever a male of any species passes by, to discern and produce his ideal mate. Why this all-female survival strategy? As the hero, ecologist Kelton, Socratically explains to one of the other guys:
“Who pays for a wife’s meals?”
“Her husband, of—Oh my God!”
Er . . . that’s not always how it works. If a lioness could speak, she would have a rather different account of things, as would many other females of other species. But never mind, because, of course, very shortly, all three crew members have their own cocoon-grown dream girls: the thuggish one has an adoring slave, the mama’s boy has a sexy mama figure, and well-balanced Kelton has a merely supernaturally beautiful mate who understands his every desire.
This road leads nowhere, of course—to species extinction, since teleplasm doesn’t breed in the usual fashion, and not even to short-term satisfaction for Kelton, to whom
“. . . Woman had always been Mystery.
“And a creature of his own mind could hold no mystery for him, only the unsatisfying illusion of it.”
So Kelton does the only sensible thing, which you can probably guess. While Kelton’s devotion to the autonomy of Woman may be creditable, there are hints of some pretty strange attitudes drifting through the story. At one point, as Kelton is musing about how the teleplasm women are custom-made for their men, he thinks, “Swapping them would be like swapping toothbrushes.” Earlier, Spinrad quotes a “saying among Survey men: ‘Planets are like women. It’s not the ugly ones that are dangerous.’”
Well, let’s reserve the psychoanalysis and give the author credit for a reasonably well-turned story—but meanwhile, Mr. Spinrad, you might think about putting some women on your space crews. Three stars.
The Hard Way, by Robert Rohrer
Robert Rohrer’s growing competence suffers a setback in The Hard Way, a one-set psychodrama starring the sadistic Lieutenant Percy, who is delivering several prisoners from a penitentiary on Earth to one on Mercury. Unfortunately they missed the turn towards Mercury and are heading towards the Sun, to die of heat on the way. May as well have some fun with it! thinks the Lieutenant, and offers the prisoners a choice between slowly roasting to death and opening the airlock for a faster and cleaner exit. Contrived, cliched, scenery-chewing. Two stars, barely, and mainly to distinguish it from the abysmal Sharkey story.
The Handyman, by Leo P. Kelley
by George Schelling
Leo P. Kelley’s The Handyman is a pleasantly inconsequential dystopia about a small town where everything seems pretty nice except for the medical facility, the Hive, which spirits sick people away to its sterile and overlit premises and forbids any medical practice but its own. Old Doc Larkin must ply his profession covertly, masquerading as a handyman and carrying his instruments concealed in a loaf of bread newly baked by his wife. Three stars, also barely.
The Men in the Moon, by Robert Silverberg
by Virgil Finlay
The second of Robert Silverberg’s “Scientific Hoaxes” articles is The Men in the Moon, concerning the hoax perpetrated by journalist Richard Adams Locke, who published a series of articles in the New York Sun concerning the observations of profuse flora, fauna, and people on the Moon, supposedly made by famed astronomer William Herschel from his observatory at Cape Town, South Africa. Herschel was indeed in Cape Town but of course made no such observations and didn’t know Locke was making these claims until years later. Like its predecessor, it’s an interesting story capably told. Three stars.
Summing Up
So: another dose of mediocrity from this historic magazine that hasn’t done much of anything for us lately, and owes us big time, at least those of us putting down good money for it each month. Maybe the Zelazny serial will be its redemption. Hope springs eternal, but it’s getting tired.
[Holiday season is upon us, and Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), on the other hand, contains some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age. And it makes a great present! Think of it as a gift to friends…and the Journey!
The season of giving is upon us. For women, perfumes like the classic scent Tosca are the most popular gifts, while men tend to find ties, socks and underwear under the tree.
Personally, I think that books are the best gifts. And so I gave myself Margaret St. Clair's latest, when I spotted it in the spinner rack at my local import bookstore, since I enjoyed last year's Sign of the Labrys a lot. Even better, this book is an Ace Double, which means I get two new tales for the price of one. Or rather, I get six, because one half is a collection of five short stories.
The first half is a brand-new science fiction novel called Message from the Eocene. The protagonist, a being named Tharg, is tasked with transporting a cosmic guidebook across hostile territory. The reader learns in the first paragraph that Tharg is not human, because he has a triple heartbeat. Tharg lives on Earth, but the Earth of billions of years ago (long before the Eocene, so the title is a misnomer), a world of volcanos and methane snow, devoid of oxygen. Tharg "breathes" via microorganisms inside his body that break down metallic oxides to oxygenate his blood and has extrasensory perception.
Tharg is in trouble, for a mysterious enemy is trying to thwart his mission. This enemy turns out to be the Vaeaa, a legendary alien race, who are believed to have deposited Tharg's people on Earth in the first place.
Tharg is taken is taken prisoner, but not before he manages to hide the book inside a volcano (it has a protective casing). Under interrogation, Tharg has an out-of-body experience. As a result, his consciousness remains, when his body dies during an escape attempt, to witness the extinction of both his people and the Vaeaa, though the Vaeaa manage to set up a projector on Pluto to keep out further cosmic guidebooks first.
Over billions of years, Tharg's spirit observes life arise and evolve on Earth. Tharg realises that the book might help with his condition, but he has no way to retrieve it. So Tharg decides to ask the Earth's new inhabitants for help. But how to make himself known, considering that Tharg is a bodyless spirit being and never was human in the first place?
Misadventures and miscommunications Margaret St. Clair
The rest of the novel chronicles Tharg's attempts to communicate. Tharg's first attempt targets the Proctors, a Quaker family in 19th century England. This goes disastrously wrong, because not only do the Proctors come to believe that their house is haunted – no, Tharg also gets trapped in the house. Taken on its own, the Proctor segment feels like a Victorian ghost story, except that the ghost is a desperate disembodied alien. The insights into the lives of 19th century Quakers are fascinating, but then Margaret St. Clair is a member of the Society of Friends.
Tharg's next attempt targets Denise, who lives with her husband Pierre in a French colony in the South Pacific. Denise has extrasensory perception, making her the ideal subject. But once again Tharg only succeeds in giving Denise nightmares and causing hauntings in the mine Pierre oversees. Worse, the superstitious miners blame Denise for the hauntings. They kidnap the couple and give Denise hallucinogenic herbs to increase her abilities. Now Denise is able to communicate with Tharg long enough to realise that he wants them to recover the book.
So Pierre uses his mining job to blast a hole into a mountain at the very spot where Denise insists the book is hidden. After some trouble with Vietnamese workers – an incident St. Clair uses to explain that oppression during colonial times has left the Vietnamese angry and frustrated, which leads to violence, a lesson that is highly relevant to the situation in Vietnam today – Denise and Pierre manage to retrieve the book. Alas, once they open the protective casing, the book bursts into flame and is destroyed.
Tharg now sets his sights on the projector the Vaeaa installed on Pluto to keep future cosmic guidebooks away from Earth. For if another book were to arrive, Tharg might finally be able to escape his condition.
Sacrifices and success
There is another time jump to 1974, when strange things happen. An experiment detects a purely theoretical particle, a sea captain sees a mermaid, Canadians dance under the Northern lights and a Tibetan monk has a vision. Tharg views these events as signs that another guidebook is on the way. But due to the projector on Pluto, it will never reach Earth.
In order to shut down the projector long enough to let the book through, Tharg has to dissolve himself in the collective consciousness of humanity, which will also mean his annihilation. So Tharg sacrifices himself and the book is picked up by an expedition to Venus. The novel ends with Tharg waking on the astral plane in a replica of his original body, just as the US-Soviet crew of the spaceship to Venus is about to open the book.
This is a strange and disjointed, but fascinating novel. Though Tharg is one of the rare truly alien aliens of science fiction, he is nonetheless a likeable protagonist and the reader sympathises with his plight. Tharg is also an unlikely messiah, sacrificing himself to assure the future of humanity.
Humanity being uplifted and our minds and bodies evolving is a common theme in our genre. However, Message from the Eocene offers a very different variation on this theme compared to what you'd find in the pages of Analog, even if psychic abilities are involved. The enlightenment offered by the book is reminiscent of both Buddhism and various occult traditions, while its arrival alludes to the so-called Age of Aquarius that astrologers believe will arrive soon.
In a genre that is still all too often peopled solely by white American men, the humans Tharg encounters are of all genders, races, nationalities and religions and all are portrayed sympathetically. For if the alien Tharg does not discriminate based on superficial criteria, then maybe neither should we. It is also notable that even before they receive the book, St. Clair's near future Earth is a more peaceful place than our world, where China has withdrawn from Tibet and the US and USSR cooperate in space.
Message from the Eocene is a story of failed communication, but also a story of evolution and enlightenment and overcoming one's limitations. Given the state of the world today, this may be just the message humanity needs.
Three Worlds of Futurity, the other half of this Ace Double, is a collection of five short stories originally published between 1949 and 1962. The three worlds in question are Mars, Venus and Earth.
In "The Everlasting Food", Earthman Richard Dekker finds that his Venusian wife Issa has changed after lifesaving surgery. One night, Issa announces that she is immortal now, that she no longer needs to eat and that energy sustains her. Soon thereafter, she leaves, taking their young son with her. Richard takes off after her to get his son back, Issa's human foster sister Megan in tow. After many trials and tribulations, they finally find Issa – only for Richard to lose his wife and son for good. But while Richard is heartbroken, he has also fallen in love with Megan.
"The Everlasting Food" is a curious mix of domestic science fiction in the vein of Zenna Henderson and Mildred Clingerman and planetary adventure in the vein of Leigh Brackett, and never quite gels. I did like Megan, who is described as dark-skinned, by the way, but Issa is hard to connect to and Richard, though well meaning, falls for Megan a little too quickly. Furthermore, the villain feels like an afterthought who comes out of nowhere.
"Idris' Pig" opens on a spaceship to Mars. George Baker is the ship's resident psychologist. His cousin Bill is a courier and passenger aboard the same ship. When Bill falls ill, it's up to George to deliver the object Bill was supposed to deliver, a blue-skinned sacred pig. However, Bill can only give George very vague instructions about where to deliver the pig and so the pig is promptly stolen. And so George has to retrieve it with the help of Blixa, a young Martian woman. As a result, George gets mixed up with drug dealers and Martian cults, involved in an interplanetary incident and lands in jail. He also completely forgets about the woman he has been trying very hard not to think about and falls in love with Blixa.
This is an utterly charming story, a science fiction screwball comedy reminiscent of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby. A hidden gem and true delight.
"The Rages" is set in an overmedicated Earth of the future. Harvey has a perfect life and a perfect, though sexless marriage. However, he has a problem because his monthly ration of euphoria pills has run out. And without euphoria pills, Harvey fears the oncoming of the rages, attacks of uncontrollable anger, which eventually lead to a final rage from which one never emerges. The story follows Harvey through his day as he meets several people and tries to get more pills. Gradually, it dawns upon both Harvey and the reader that the pills may be causing the very rages they are supposed to suppress. The story ends with Harvey throwing all of his and his wife's pills away.
This is a dystopian tale in the vein of Brave New World and Fahrenheit 541. The future world St. Clair has built is fascinating, if horrifying, and I would have liked to see more of it. However, Harvey is a thoroughly unlikeable character, who almost rapes two women in the course of a single novelette. Maybe Harvey could have rediscovered his messy humanity without resorting to sexual violence.
"Roberta" is the shortest and most recent story, first published in Galaxy in October 1962, reviewed by our editor Gideon Marcus here. Roberta is a confused young woman with the unfortunate tendency to kill men. Robert is the phantom who won't leave her alone. Eventually, it is revealed that Roberta had a sex change operation and that "Robert" represents her former self, as do the men she kills.
Transsexualism is a subject that science fiction almost never addresses, even though our genre is ideal for it. After all, there are transsexuals living in our world right now and science offers possibilities to make it much easier for them to live the lives they want to. So I applaud Margaret St. Clair for tackling what is sadly still a taboo topic (and for having her heroine utter another taboo word, "abortion"), though I am troubled that science fiction's only transsexual heroine (so far) is also a multiple murderer.
In "The Island of the Hands", Dirk dreams about his wife Joan who died in a plane crash at sea. He hires a plane to check out the coordinates from his dream and crashes on an invisible island. Dirk finds Joan's plane and a dead body and also meets Miranda, a young woman who suspiciously resembles Joan. He is on the Island of the Hands, Miranda informs them, where everybody can shape their heart's desire from mythical mist. Dirk tries to shape Joan, but fails. He spends the night with Miranda, who confesses that Joan is still alive, but trapped in the mist. Dirk goes after her and rescues Joan, only to learn that there is a very good reason why Miranda looks so much like an idealised version of Joan.
It's no surprise that this story was first published in Weird Tales, since it has the otherworldly quality typical for that magazine. "The Island of the Hands" reminded me of the 1948 Leigh Brackett story "The Moon That Vanished", where another heartbroken widower finds himself faced with a magical mist that shapes one's heart's desire.
All in all, this is an excellent collection. Not every story is perfect (though "Idris' Pig" pretty much is), but they are all fascinating and make me want to read more of Margaret St. Clair's work.
Four stars for the collection.
[But wait! There's more!]
by Gideon Marcus
False Finishes
After such a remarkable pair of books, I hate to sully this edition with less than stellar reviews. But the year is almost up, and there are a lot of books to get through. So, here is a trio of novels that start promisingly and then fizzle out.
If you can get past the punny title, Gifts grabs your interest from the first. In the near future, the humanoid Greks land in a miles-long spaceship. They were just sailing by, training a class of Aladarian engineers, and thought they'd pop in to give humanity a myriad of technological gifts. The aliens are welcomed with riotous joy — after all, soon no one will have to work more than one day a week, and all the comforts of the world will be evenly distributed.
But one fellow, Jim Hackett, is suspicious. Despite being a brilliant young physicist, he was rejected as a candidate to learn Grek science after failing to comprehend it. Was he just not bright enough? Or were the Greks feeding us gobbledegook to keep us ignorant? And then, why did the Greks abruptly leave after six months, just as desire for the fruits of their wondrous technology was peaking, but the ability to sate said desire was lacking? Finally, after the Grek ship had left, why did an archaeologist party find the bones of Aldorians in the ship's waste ejecta? And worse yet, those of humans?
So Hackett and his fiancee, the capable Dr. Lucy Thale, work together to reverse engineer the Grek technology so that, when they return to a world whose populace is fairly begging for them to come back, Earth can stand against them and provide for its own.
What begins as a fascinating mystery quickly proves overlong. Leinster is much better with short stories, before his Hemmingway-esque style can wear thin. The endless repetition of certain phrases and epithets brings to mind the devices Homer used to make The Illiad easier to recite from memory, but they don't do a reader any favors. As for characterization, Leinster might as well have named the characters A, B, and C for all the color they possess. A shorter story would have made that issue stand out less.
Anyway, it's an interesting storyline; it would make a good movie, but as is, it's a mediocre novel. Three stars.
From the notable pen of comics writer and, now, SF author Gardner Fox, we have a brand new ACE novel. And this one isn't a short 120-pager. No, this time we've got 157 pages devoted to the adventures of Bran Magannon, formerly an Admiral of a Terran space fleet, vanquisher of the invading Lyanir, and now a discredited exile, wandering across the known and unknown galaxy. Arsenal starts off beautifully, like a space age Fritz Leiber fantasy. A nearly penniless Bran arrives on the desolate world of Makkador to make traveling funds through gambling. There, he throws dice against, and loses to, the lovely Peganna, queen of the Lyanir. And then we learn Bran's tragic past: how he divined how to defeat the seemingly invincible Lyanir ships; how he negotiated for the Lyanir to be given a sanctuary world within the Terran Cluster of stars. How Bran was betrayed by an ambitious subordinate, who sabotaged the talks, discredited Bran, and condemned the Lyanir to inhabit a radioactive wasteland of a planet.
But now Bran has an ace up his sleeve — he has discovered the ancient portal network of the Crenn Lir, a precursor race that once inhabited countless worlds. If Bran and Peganna can find the Crenn Lir arsenal before they are caught by Terran and Lyranir agents, they might be able to negotiate with the Terrans as equals and secure a sanctuary for the weary aliens.
I tore through the first third of this book, but things slowed halfway through. I grew irritated that there was exactly one female character in the book, though I did appreciate the natural and loving relationship Peganna and Bran shared. What promises to be a galaxy-trotting adventure with big scope and ideas ends up a rather conventional story on a very few settings. Things pick up a bit in the final third, but I found myself comparing the endeavor unfavorably to Terry Carr's Warlord of Kor, a somewhat similarly themed Ace novel from last year.
With the Fox taking up so much space in the Ace Double, the second title must needs be short. Luckily, John Brunner's Bridge to Azazel, which came out in February's issue of Amazing, fit nicely. Both lengthwise and thematically: Endless Shadow also features teleportation across the stars, in this case involving a Terra reestablishing contact with farflung space colonies.
The general consensus among the Journey's various readers is that this was a premise with a lot of potential, but that Brunner failed to deliver satisfactorily. Ratings ranged from two to three and a half stars. Call it an even three.
Books to Come
These days, there are almost more books coming out than a fellow (or even a band of fellows) can read! So, to make sure we cover all of the important books of 1964, there will be a second Galactoscope in a couple of days. May they be more akin to the stellar St. Clairs than the disappointing Leinster/Fox/Brunner.
[Holiday season is upon us, and Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), containing some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age, makes a great gift! Think of it as a gift to friends…and the Journey!
Only a year ago, I would eagerly wait for the latest from The Outer Limits. These days, being a fan of The Outer Limits has become a bit of rollercoaster ride, with some pretty high peaks, but far too many valleys. For this reason, the most recent entries of the series took me a little bit by (pleasant) surprise. Allow me to elaborate.
I, Robot, by Robert C. Dennis
I, Robot introduces the first two stories of Eando Binder's metal protagonist, Adam Link (Amazing Stories, 1939), to a whole new generation. The episode tells the story of a robot that is so advanced and almost human that he stands trial after being accused of murdering the very scientist who created him, Doctor Charles Link (Peter Brocco of The Twilight Zone’s Hocus-Pocus and Frisby and The Four of Us Are Dying). The “all-functional” machine, is able to read, “to think, to reason, to perform.” Not surprisingly, the robot goes by the name of Adam. It is assumed that the robot killed his creator simply because, “Doc was alone in his lab. Nobody else could have done it.“
Leonard Nimoy of The Twilight Zone’s A Quality of Mercy makes his second appearance on The Outer Limits — this time in a meatier role, after a very minor role in the less-than-stellar OL ep, Production and Decay of Strange Particles. Here, he plays reporter Judson Ellis, reporting on the case, which he refers to as “Frankenstein killed by his own monster.” Charles’ niece, Nina (television actress Marianna Hill), insists that Adam is “kind and gentle,” so she enlists the help of Attorney Cutler (Broadway star Howard Da Silva) at Ellis‘ recommendation. Throughout the trial, Adam insists that an accident caused Doctor Link‘s death, but Adam may be more human that anyone realized. So much so that he and the doctor were seen arguing right before Link’s untimely death.
I, Robot has an intriguing premise and a pretty remarkable cast of characters, which includes robot Adam Link, who has to believable enough for the episode to work. I, Robot could have benefited from slightly more creative photography, though. Another complaint I have is that little Christine Matchett, who is adorable, seems a bit miscast in the role of Evie, the girl who first encounters Adam. I do, however, find the flashbacks of the doctor assembling and training Adam with Nina to be quite charming. I have never been a fan of court dramas, but I may be a bit partial to this entry due to my weakness for references to Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein (1818), and there certainly are a lot of them. Perhaps too many. In any case, I, Robot is an enjoyable entry of the series, so it receives three stars.
The Inheritors Parts 1 and 2, by Seeleg Lester and Sam Neuman
This two part episode marks Robert Duvall’s second time on The Outer Limits (last season‘s The Chameleon), and he certainly does not disappoint. In The Inheritors, Duvall stars as Mr. Adam Ballard, the Assistant Secretary of Science, who is investigating four soldiers who have been shot in the skull during combat. The men not only miraculously survive, but seem to actually grow smarter as a result of their injuries. Ballard believes that “when the bullet was removed, another brain, an intelligence, got in and took over.” He sets off on a mission to find the “ore from which those bullets were made”, because he suspects that the bullets all came from the same meteoroid and that aliens may have “each man working independently under the compulsion of that brain in his head” on a top secret project.
Like many episodes this season, The Inheritors lacks any type of creature or "bear", and this entry is more than strong enough without one. Besides, Duvall’s Ballard character meets a pretty worthy opponent in Lieutenant Philip Minns (played by Czechoslovakian actor Steve Ihnat). Just superb performances all the way around. The writing does require some suspension of disbelief, but everything is so masterfully told that it almost doesn't matter. A number of scenes are nothing short of exquisite. Everything ends with an unexpectedly uplifting conclusion, which is enjoyable, assuming that you can tolerate an overly sentimental ending. Four stars.
Keeper of the Purple Twilight, by Milton Krims
Warren Stevens of The Forbidden Planet and The Twilight Zone’s Dead Man’s Shoes is scientist Eric Plummer, who is worried about losing funding for a project before he has a chance to finish it. Contemplating suicide, he is stopped by an alien named Ikar, who is capable of vanishing into thin air and also disguising himself as a human being (played by Robert Weber of 12 Angry Men), but is unable to feel human emotions. Eric trades with the extraterrestrial his emotions in exchange for the knowledge he needs to complete his project. Needless to say, things do not go according to plan, and Eric’s relationship with his girlfriend only complicates matters.
Interested in the episode’s title, I was really looking forward to watching Keeper of the Purple Twilight. Sadly, a memorable name is practically all that the episode has to offer. This hour of the program has some nicely atmospheric moments early on and decent special effects, but the episode soon grows less interesting the more things go on. Keeper of the Purple Twilight is filled with unsatisfying writing, wooden performances and incredibly irritating characters. Though, I have to praise the costume design, because all of the aliens are pretty sharply dressed in their crushed velvet suits. Two stars for Keeper of the Purple Twilight.
Things seem to have improved dramatically on The Outer Limits since this time just one month ago. I, Robot was a pleasure to watch, and both installments of The Inheritors were, hands down, the best offerings all month. Even with my complaints about Keeper of the Purple Twilight, this has without a doubt been the strongest month of the second season thus far. I can only hope this is an indication of what is yet to come.
[Join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
Are you ready for the most ambitious serial Doctor Who has yet done? I hope so, because that’s what I’ve got for you today: The Dalek Invasion Of Earth! We’re welcoming Terry Nation back into the writer’s chair, and coming face to face with a familiar foe.
Mariner 4, launched November 28, 1964, is on its way to Mars. Shortly after launch, the smart folks at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (some of whom I met last weekend!) determined that Mariner was going to miss its destination by some 200,000 kilometers. So they calculated the nudge it would take to deflect the ship toward a closer rendezvous with the Red Planet. This morning, the little spacecraft was ordered to fire its onboard engines for a 20 second burn, and it now looks like Mariner will come within just 10,000 kilometers of its target!
On the other side of the world, the Soviets have informed the world that their Zond 2 probe, launched two days after Mariner 4, needs no course correction. On the other hand, on Dec. 2, it was reported that the probe is only generating half the power it's supposed to.
Similarly, in the science fiction magazine world, no fewer than three magazines got new editors this year (Fantasy and Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, and New Worlds), and two of them have the same editor with a different name (Amazing's and Fantastic's Cele Goldsmith is now Cele Lalli).
But in Fred Pohl's trinary system of Galaxy, Worlds of Tomorrow, and IF, not only is leadership unchanged, but so is content. Nowhere is that clearer than in the January 1965 issue of IF, which like its predecessors, is an uneven mix of old and new authors, old and new ideas, and generally inferior but not unpleasant work.
In other words, on course, but running on half-steam.
The Issue at Hand
by Gray Morrow
In many ways, this is not the issue Pohl wanted on the news stands. The cover doesn't illustrate any of the contents of the issue; it's supposed to go with Jack Vance's novel, The Killing Machine. But since that story ended up in book print before it could be serialized, it was pulled from appearing in the magazine. Instead, we got the sequel to Fred Pohl's and Jack Williamson's The Reefs of Space, which had the virtue of being an IF-exclusive series and co-written by the editor.
It's a good thing Pohl had it in his back pocket!
Starchild (Part 1 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson
by Gray Morrow
Hundreds of years from now, the solar system is ruled by the Plan of Man, a computer-led collective in which everyone's lives are ordered, and dissent is rewarded with a quick trip to the body banks for organ harvesting. But out in the stellar outskirts, in the frigid birthplace of comets, the steady creation of matter in the universe provides rich feeding grounds for the fusorians. These cosmic plankton eaters in turn create vast reefs in space, homes to the seal-like spacelings and their predators, the dragonesque pyropods. These reefs have also become shelters for Terran dissidents yearning to be free. The Reefs of Space told the tale of their first human visitors.
Starchild is the story of Machine Major Boysie Gann, a spy sent to Polaris station to suss out traitors to the Plan. He ends up kidnapped to the Reefs and then made a messenger to the Planner, the human liaison with the Planning Machine. Mysteriously teleported back to Earth, Boysie bears with him The Writ of Liberation: if the Plan of Man does not end its attempts to subjugate the free people of the Reefs, the "Starchild" will blacken the Sun…
I was a bit chary of this serial at the beginning. Williamson is a pulp writer from the way-back, and it shows. Pohl can be brilliant, but Reefs was more pedestrian (except for the gripping middle section). But Starchild kept me going the whole way, sort of a Cordwainer Smith "Instrumentality" story, though with less poetry.
Four stars so far.
Answering Service, by Alma Hill
A Boston fan and writer, Hill is new to my ken but has apparently been published since 1950. Service shows us a world where the SPCA has won, cats and other "aggressive" animals are tolerated only in zoos, and mice are overrunning the world without check. One man is determined to reverse this situation.
Utterly forgettable. Two stars.
The Recon Man, by Wilson Tucker
by Nodel
A young man wakes up from an amnesiac coma with a push to his back out the door of a house. Onto a Heinlein moving road he goes, along with dozens of other male commuters to some mysterious labor destination. A spitfire, himself, the other drones are so many zombies. Only the pink jumpsuited women have any personality; they seem to run the show.
The man is harnessed to a machine, tasked with creating bacon by conceptualizing it so it can materialize in front of him. He soon gets bored with this role and makes neckties and carpentry tools instead. This shuts down the assembly line early, and one of the female supervisors takes him home to see what's wrong with him.
Slowly, memories of a fatal car crash, centuries before in 1960, coalesce in the man's mind. How did he get to this strange world? For what purpose? And how long does he have to live?
Recon Man is a neat little mystery with a truckload of dark implications. I liked it a lot. Four stars.
Vanishing Point, by Jonathan Brand
by Gray Morrow
This is the second outing by Brand, his first being a disappointment. He fares better with this one, a space story within a bedtime story (the framing is cute but not particularly necessary) about Earth travelers on the first emissary mission to an alien race.
The place chosen for first contact is a sort of mock-Earth made by the aliens, a beautiful park of a world stocked with all sorts of game. It even has a centenarian, human caretaker. But neither the park, nor the old man, are what they seem.
Not bad. Three stars.
The Heat Racers, by L. D. Ogle
Then we come to our traditional IF "first", the piece by a heretofore unpublished author (or at least an unpublished pseudonym). This one is a vignette about a race of anti-grav sailboats. I think. The motive force and levitative technologies are never really explained.
Another trivial piece. Two stars.
Retief, God-Speaker, by Keith Laumer
by Jack Gaughan
And last up, we have yet another installment in the increasingly tiresome saga of Retief, the diplomatic superspy of the future. This one involves a race of money-grubbing, seven-foot, theocratic slobs, and the diminutive, subterranean aliens they mean to wipe out like vermin. Can Retief establish formal relations with the former while saving the latter?
By the end of the novelette, you probably won't care. This is easily the goofiest and most heavy-handed entry in the series. I think it's time for Laumer to cut his losses.
Two stars.
Summing Up
All told, this month's issue is more "half a loaf" than "curate's egg". The parts I liked were lots of fun, and as for the dreary bits, at least they made for quick reading. I've said before that Pohl doesn't really have enough good material for three mags, but he could have a dynamite pair.
On the other hand, IF is a place to stick new authors and off-beat stories. I just wish they were more consistently successes!
Maybe 1965 will be the year IF gets a mid-course correction…
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
This past summer has brought great changes to the political landscape, and some people aren't happy about that. The University of California at Berkeley has banned civil rights activism and political fundraising. This is ostensibly to "keep the peace," but in reality, it smacks of telling students, "Don't pay any attention to the injustices you see in the world around you. Focus on your grades, not on the society where you'll be living once you get your degree."
Many students were involved with voting registration drives in the South this summer, and they returned to school intending to support CORE—the Congress of Racial Equality—and other civil rights groups.
Newspaper article about first-time voters, from The Afro American, Nov 28, 1964.
But the school wants no part of their enthusiasm for fixing longstanding oppressions and discriminations. Several times, students have clashed with both faculty and the local authorities.
Protest at Sproul Plaza
Yesterday was the largest one yet. The "FSM," Free Speech Movement, drew a huge crowd of at least 1,500 students and possibly as many as 5,000. They gathered in Sproul Plaza and gave speeches, then folk singer Joan Baez led them in singing "We Shall Overcome" before they went into Sproul Hall and protested all night long.
Joan Baez on the steps of Sproul Hall.
The student who spoke right before Miss Baez was Mario Savio, recently back from registering voters in Mississippi. He gave an impassioned, impromptu speech about why they are protesting. He had been told that the university's President Kerr refused to support the students. Kerr said, "Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his Board of Directors?" Savio pointed out that this analogy has other implications: if Kerr is a manager of this hypothetical company, the faculty are "employees." That would make the students the raw material that they're selling. Kerr's casual explanation denies the students' humanity, and in return, they refuse to accept his authority.
There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus—and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!!
Mario Savio speaks to the crowd.
Deeper Meaning
It fills my heretic heart with joy to see young people so adamant about fighting injustice, about shutting down the systems that stifle and oppress those who want to make a better world for everyone. I look at the words printed above, and they don't carry the full intensity of Savio's speech, all the more powerful because he's not reading it from cards or a page. He probably had some idea what he wanted to say when he took the stage, but that's not always enough. Plenty of politicians have discovered that there's a difference between planning a speech in your living room, and giving the same speech to a live audience of thousands.
Savio pulls it off beautifully. I don't believe there's any amount of polish or practice that could've made his words have more impact. He's caught the zeitgeist of the moment: looking the status quo in the eye and saying, "No, that's not good enough."
Psychedelic Journey
With a less confrontational approach, that's what Ken Kesey and his "Merry Band of Pranksters" were doing this past summer. They loaded themselves into a converted yellow schoolbus, which they painted in all sorts of colors, and took a trip across the country. Their crew included a philosophers, a couple of athletes, a former military man, several activists, and a pregnant woman. Kesey himself is a famous author; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came out just a couple of years ago to great critical acclaim.
The "Pranksters" decided to film their journey as they went, so they could make a documentary later. The documentary itself hasn't been released yet, but some of the footage is available.
They experimented with all sorts of consciousness-raising techniques: meditation, Eastern mystical practices, and intoxicants of varying legalities. They had some… interesting encounters with local authorities. The police often pulled them over, not for suspicion of crimes, exactly, but because they'd never seen a bus like that.
They had to hide the marijuana and alcohol, but the LSD is entirely legal… for now.
Incidents and Accidents
They had an easy way to talk to police and any locals who looked at them strangely: "We're making a movie about our road trip!" Then they'd bring out the cameras and show off the designs painted on the bus. Sometimes they'd show the living arrangements inside, and all of that was unusual enough to keep anyone from noticing signs of drugs or petty crime.
They had several small adventures: The bus got stuck in a sandy field; one person "freaked out" and left the group to go home; the pregnant woman (known as "Generally Famished") lost her purse and felt trapped. But they also had fun and tried absurd games to pass the time. They even went to the World's Fair in New York.
Pranksters dancing and playing instruments in Pensacola, Florida.
Kesey said he learned something from his time working in an asylum that he believes was "the most important thing I've ever learned: Every once in a while, all the power, the attention that you have, comes to bear on exactly what you're doing, and doesn't decide whether it's good or bad. It just decides that it is. And the only thing you can do is enjoy the ride."
Living in the Future
That kind of "just accept it" may seem to clash with the student protests above. But they are two sides of the same coin: a rejection of the mundane, predictable life with its rote habits and strictly assigned roles. They're both striving for a future that welcomes change, celebrates diversity, and respects individuality. They both stand in stark contrast to the corporate forces that want a pliant, unthinking populace dedicated to "progress" that mainly serves to make rich people richer.
I would welcome Savio's chosen future, and I could enjoy the future Kesey and his friends want. They may even be two approaches with the same goal. While neither of them is directly involved in science fiction's visionary leanings, they both carry a reminder for us: As we develop incredible machines, as we reach out toward the stars, what kind of future are we making for the people who will live with our incredible technology?
Somehow, I don't think Disney and GE's version of "progress" includes Savio's or the Pranksters' ideal future.
[Come celebrate with us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
This week, humanity embarked on its most ambitious voyage to date. Its destination: Mars.
I use the term "humanity" advisedly, for this effort is a global one. On November 28, 1964, the United States launched Mariner 4 from Cape Kennedy. And just yesterday, the Soviet Union's Zond hurtled into space. Both are bound for the Red Planet, due to arrive next summer.
That both missions commenced so close to each other was not a coincidence. Every two years, Earth and Mars are situated in their orbits such that a minimum of energy can be used to get from one planet to the other. This favorable positioning applies equally to democracies and communist states.
Mariner 4 and Zond are not the first Martian probes: identical Mariner 3 was lost a few weeks ago, and Zond's predecessor, Mars 1, failed a couple of months before it could reach its target. Let us hope these new spacecraft have more luck. So far so good!
It is possible that these two probes will revolutionize our understanding of Mars, just as Mariner 2 changed our view of Venus forever. It is, therefore, appropriate that I summarize our knowledge of the planet on the eve of collecting this bonanza of new information.
Another Earth?
Mars has been known to us since ancient times. Because it wanders through the constellations throughout the year, it was classified as a "planet" (literally Greek for wanderer). When it is in the sky, it is one of the brightest objects in the sky, with a distinct reddish tinge, which is why it has been associated with the bloody enterprise of war.
Until the invention of the telescope, all we knew about the fourth planet from the Sun was its orbital parameters: its year is 687 days, its path around the sun very circular, and its average distance from the Sun is around 141,600,000 miles.
Even under magnification, Mars can be a stubborn target; at its nearest, about 35 million mies away, the planet measures just 25 seconds of arc from limb to limb (compared to the Moon, which subtends 1860). Still, early telescopes were good enough to resolve light red expanses, darker expanses (believed to be seas), and bright polar caps. Said caps waxed and waned with the Martian seasons, brought on by the planet's very Earthlike tilt of 25 degrees. Because the Martian surface was visible, unlike those of Venus or Mercury, the day was calculated to be just over 24 hours long. Indeed, Mars appeared to be a world much like Earth.
Mars for the Martians
In 1877, our understanding of the planet broadened. Astronomer Asaph Hall discovered two tiny moons, named Phobos and Deimos, and we were able to deduce the mass of Mars — about 10.7% that of Earth. Combined with the planet's diameter of 4200 miles, that meant Mars' density was about four times that of water. This is only two thirds that of the Earth, which suggests that the planet is poorer in heavy metals, and/or that, because the planet is less massive overall, its layers are not so tightly bound together with gravity. From Mars' measured mass and diameter, we learned that the surface gravity is 38% that of Earth; sprinting and jumping should be much easier there. Flying…well, more on that in a moment.
1877 was also the year that Mars came into our public consciousness in a huge way — all because of a silly mistranslation. Giovanni Schiaparelli turned his 'scope to Mars and saws something remarkable: dozens of fine straight streaks crisscrossing the planet that seemed to link up the dark patches (which were, if not oceans, at least areas of vegetation suggesting the existence of water). He called them canali, which is Italian for "channels". But to English ears, it came out as "canals", which strongly connotes construction by intelligent beings.
Well, you can see what an uproar that would make. Very soon, folks like Wells and Burroughs were writing tales of Martian aliens. And not just aliens — civilizations beyond those found on Earth. The thinking went that the planets' ages corresponded to their distance from the Sun. Hence, Mercury was a primordial hunk of magma. Venus, shrouded in clouds, was probably a steamy jungle planet on which Mesozoic monsters roamed. And beyond the Earth, Mars was a cold, ancient world, its verdant plains dessicated to red deserts. To avoid catastrophe, the Martians built planet-spanning canals to bring water to their cities. Being so advanced, it was obvious that they had mastered space travel, and had either visited us or were on the verge of doing so.
Even the more practical-minded scientists were hungry for evidence of life, even primitive stuff, existing off of the Earth. Mars seemed like the prime location for extraterrestrial creatures to be found. For one thing, the planet clearly had an atmosphere, wrapping the planet's edges in a haze and producing a marked twilight.
Originally thought to be a touch thinner than Earth's, more recent measurement of the polarization of Martian light (the vibration angles of light reflected off the atmosphere) suggested that the surface air pressure was about 8% that of Earth. That was too thin for easy breathing, but not too thin for life. If there was enough oxygen in the mix, perhaps a person could survive there.
Mars Today
Such was our understanding of the planet perhaps a decade ago. Recently, ground-based science has made some amazing discoveries, and it may well be that Mariner and Zond don't so much revolutionize as simply enhance our understanding of the planet.
I just read a paper that says the Martian atmosphere is about a quarter as dense at the surface that thought. This isn't just bad for breathing — it means NASA scientists have to rethink all the gliders and parachutes they were planning for their Voyager missions scheduled for the next decade. Observations by spectroscope have found no traces of oxygen and scarcely more water vapor. The planet's thin atmosphere is mostly made up of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The ice in the polar caps may well be mostly "dry".
Because of the lack of water and the thin air, erosion is probably much less of a factor on Mars. In a recent science article in Analog, George Harper says that the planet's surface may be riddled with meteorite craters that never got worn away. Close up, Mars may end up looking more like the Moon than the Earth!
And those canals? Telescopic advances in the late 40s made it possible to examine Mars in closer detail than ever before. The weight of astronomical opinion now disfavors the existence of canals.
Still, old dreams die hard. I imagine we will cling to our visions of Martian life and even civilizations long after such notions are proven unworkable. To kill such fancies, it'll take a blow as serious as that delivered by Mariner 2, which told us that it's hot enough to melt lead on the surface of Venus.
We'll find out, one way or another, in July 1965!
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
Thanksgiving is over, and the holiday season will officially begin tonight with the lighting of the first of the Hannukah candles. After that, it's just a short skip and a jump to that more widely celebrated holiday.
I am, of course, referring to the Winter Solstice.
It is an appropriate season, then, for science fiction's most-read magazine, Analog, to finish its year of publication with a bang. Fantasy and Science Fiction is fond of issuing "All-Star" magazines, in which the majority of the authors are big names. The December 1964 Analog isn't so dubbed, but nevertheless, it's chock full of heavy hitters. Let's take a look!
Armed Assault
by Robert Swanson
Tempestuous Moon, by Joseph H. Jackson
It has been the subject of wives' tales and farmers' almanacs that the phases of the Moon have an effect on the weather. In particular (they maintain), some points in the lunar cycle are likelier to be rainy than others. And now Analog has got a breathless article confirming the folk wisdom. Take that, doubting eggheads!
It's true that (editor) Campbell is notorious for printing the worst pseudoscience pieces, and Jackson's article is mostly blather. However, if his data be accurate, they are compelling. While the phases of the Moon should have no effect on the Earth, per se, they do correspond to geometries between the Sun and the Moon with respect to the Earth. And both of those bodies do have a profound effect on our planet every day in the form of tides. I can conceive that a strong tide, for instance when the Sun and Moon's forces combine to cause Spring Tides, might create lower atmospheric pressures, reducing the amount of moisture the air can hold, causing rains. Neap Tides would have the opposite effect.
Or it could all be garbage. Are there any pieces in reputable journals?
Calhoun the interstellar Med Service man and his adorable pet/assisant, Murgatroyd, are back. This time, they are investigating an impossible plague, one which seems to suppress the immune system rather than directly infecting the body. Worse, this disease kills tormals, the monkey-like race that Murgatroyd belongs to. Since this latter is an impossibility, tormals being immune to all diseases, Calhoun suspects foul play.
by Kelly Freas
I love the Med Service stories. Sadly, they are suffering from the same malaise that has infected all of Leinster's writing to date. It causes him to write only in short, declarative statements, often repeating himself for no reason. Also, this tale's solution is given mostly in exposition, which kills the fun of the mystery.
Still, even substandard Calhoun and Murgatroyd is pretty fun, and the picture of the sick tormal is too cute for words. Three stars.
Shortstack, by Leigh and Walt Richmond
by Kelly Freas
The latest vignette by the Richmonds is an odd one, more a dramatized advertisement for a unique power generator. It uses the heat differential between the top and bottom of a plastic cylinder to drive an engine and also to distill water.
A man trapped out in a wilderness that would give Deathworld a run for its money gets buzzed by an obnoxious tourist. When said sightseer falls out, the hermit takes his skimmer and rides to safety. The moral of the story: don't take what you have for granted, and a stint in the muck might do you good.
Enjoyable, despite the smugness of the ending. Three stars.
Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes (Part 3 of 3), by Mack Reynolds
by Robert Swanson
We return to the world of the early 21st Century, where society has stratified into stagnancy: in both East and West, the top 1% rule everything, the bottom 90% are jobless and tranquilized, and only the middle 9% have any real agency. Last time, Estruscan professor and gladiator-extreme, Denny Land, had just won a tripartite contest over custody of a Belgian scientist who had invented anti-missile missiles, something with the potential to destabilize the world.
But when the Americans go to pick up the scientist, he has disappeared! And rather than express disconcertment, Land's boss, Joe Mauser seems almost unsurprised…
Land goes back to his old school with a promotion and bump in caste, but he can't hide his frustration and disenchantment. Reenter Bette Yarborough, who recruits Land into the Sons of Liberty to try to upend the whole rotten world order. And then comes an even unlikelier ally in the cause — former foe and Sov-world agent, Yuri Malshev. Together, can the three create a revolution?
And what if the revolution has already happened, and nobody knows?
This installment was the most engaging, well-paced and thoughtful, though there may have been one too many wheels within the wheels. Perhaps a Part IV would not have been amiss. I was grateful that Bette turned out not to just be a love interest (though more than one female in the universe would have been nice). If anything, Denny and Yuri had more chemistry…
Anyway, four stars for this segment. Call it three and a half for the novel as a whole. I appreciate that Reynolds is willing to make "if this goes on" predictions. I wonder how right he will prove to be…
An alien astronaut crash lands on the shore of an Adriatic village. Injured and barely conscious, he is taken to a local scientist for help. But can an effective treatment be developed in time?
This simple story is given depth and emotion by the unusually talented Harrison, who will probably get my nomination for one of the year's best authors. Four stars.
In Israeli's Negev desert, a scientist wrestles with his conscience — and his superior — over the the new bomb he's invented. On the one hand, it will give the little Jewish state inordinate power; on the other hand, power never remains exclusively owned for long.
An interesting think piece whose title has a double meaning. Three stars.
High Marks
Well, color me surprised! Analog, normally a disappointing performer, scored a respectable 3.2 stars — second only this month to the superlative Galaxy (3.6). Science Fantasy and Worlds of Tomorrow both scored an even 3 stars, largely thanks to better-than-average long pieces balancing out less impressive small ones.
And on the negative side of the ledger, we have a lackluster IF (2.8), a still-Davidson weighted Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.6), and Cele G. Lalli's mags did worst of all: Fantastic got just 2.3 stars, and Amazing broke the two barrier, scoring a jaw-dropping 1.9. What happened?
Women published just 5 and a half of all the stories in magazines this month, all of them very short. Betty Friedan would be rolling in her grave, and she's not even dead!
Ah well. 1965 approaches, a chance to wipe the slate and start anew. But before then, you will want to see our Galactic Stars awards when they come out in a few short weeks! Then you won't have to wade through the dross to get the gems — we'll have done the work for you.
Happy Holidays!
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
![[December 17, 1964] San Francisco as Cultural Epicenter (Woman in the Dunes, etc.)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/womanlying-672x372.jpg)
![[December 15, 1964] Failed Flight of Fancy (January 1965 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/641215cover-672x372.jpg)
![[December 13, 1964] Save us from Yourselves (January 1965 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/641213cover-480x372.jpg)
![[December 11, 1964] December Galactoscope](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/message_from_the_eocene-296x372.jpg)
In "The Everlasting Food", Earthman Richard Dekker finds that his Venusian wife Issa has changed after lifesaving surgery. One night, Issa announces that she is immortal now, that she no longer needs to eat and that energy sustains her. Soon thereafter, she leaves, taking their young son with her. Richard takes off after her to get his son back, Issa's human foster sister Megan in tow. After many trials and tribulations, they finally find Issa – only for Richard to lose his wife and son for good. But while Richard is heartbroken, he has also fallen in love with Megan.
"Idris' Pig" opens on a spaceship to Mars. George Baker is the ship's resident psychologist. His cousin Bill is a courier and passenger aboard the same ship. When Bill falls ill, it's up to George to deliver the object Bill was supposed to deliver, a blue-skinned sacred pig. However, Bill can only give George very vague instructions about where to deliver the pig and so the pig is promptly stolen. And so George has to retrieve it with the help of Blixa, a young Martian woman. As a result, George gets mixed up with drug dealers and Martian cults, involved in an interplanetary incident and lands in jail. He also completely forgets about the woman he has been trying very hard not to think about and falls in love with Blixa.
"The Rages" is set in an overmedicated Earth of the future. Harvey has a perfect life and a perfect, though sexless marriage. However, he has a problem because his monthly ration of euphoria pills has run out. And without euphoria pills, Harvey fears the oncoming of the rages, attacks of uncontrollable anger, which eventually lead to a final rage from which one never emerges. The story follows Harvey through his day as he meets several people and tries to get more pills. Gradually, it dawns upon both Harvey and the reader that the pills may be causing the very rages they are supposed to suppress. The story ends with Harvey throwing all of his and his wife's pills away.
"Roberta" is the shortest and most recent story, first published in Galaxy in October 1962, 
In "The Island of the Hands", Dirk dreams about his wife Joan who died in a plane crash at sea. He hires a plane to check out the coordinates from his dream and crashes on an invisible island. Dirk finds Joan's plane and a dead body and also meets Miranda, a young woman who suspiciously resembles Joan. He is on the Island of the Hands, Miranda informs them, where everybody can shape their heart's desire from mythical mist. Dirk tries to shape Joan, but fails. He spends the night with Miranda, who confesses that Joan is still alive, but trapped in the mist. Dirk goes after her and rescues Joan, only to learn that there is a very good reason why Miranda looks so much like an idealised version of Joan.
![[December 9, 1964] Out of Left Field (<i>The Outer Limits</i>, Season Two, Episodes 9-12)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/641209a-672x372.jpg)
![[December 7, 1964] Panic On The Streets Of London (<i>Doctor Who</i>: THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/641207iconic-672x372.jpg)
![[December 5, 1964] Steady as she goes (January 1965 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/651205cover-672x372.jpg)
![[December 3, 1964]: Future Bound (Civil Rights and a Colorful Journey)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/641203JoanBaez-474x372.jpg)
![[December 1, 1964] Planet Four or Bust! (What we know about Mars)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/641201mars-672x372.jpg)
![[November 29, 1964] All-star (December 1964 <i>Analog</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/641129cover-672x372.jpg)
