This month on Doctor Who, we’re headed out of space and out of time and into a place rather more strange: the land of fiction. This is a bit of a weird one.
Let’s take a look at The Mind Robber, shall we?
This is supposed to be lava. Or Dulkis has oddly foamy volcanoes.
Once Upon A Time
Trying to describe the plot of The Mind Robber is like trying to describe the plot of Yellow Submarine or Alice In Wonderland. Technically speaking you can, but doing it in a way that doesn’t sound like you’re off your head on cough syrup (which I currently am, but that’s beside the point) is another question. We’re firmly in dream-logic territory here, so you might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.
With the TARDIS sitting in the path of an oncoming lava flow, it would behoove the Doctor to find somewhere else to park his motor. However, the ship refuses to start, forcing the Doctor to use the emergency unit to yoink the TARDIS out of reality entirely. And that is where the real trouble begins.
Being nowhere and nowhen, you’d think the TARDIS and its inhabitants would be safe. Surely nothing could exist outside of time and space, right? The Doctor doesn’t know, and what he doesn’t know can most certainly hurt them.
It’s not long before visions of home and voices in their head lure the three of them outside the safety of the TARDIS. When they try to return, the ship disintegrates, stranding them in a pitch-dark void.
The next we see of the crew, they’re separated and searching for each other in some sort of maze. Jamie gets shot by an English redcoat and turns into a faceless cardboard cutout. Zoe ends up trapped in a jar. The Doctor is beset by creepy children with a fondness for riddles.
It makes exactly as much sense in context.
The Doctor revives Jamie by putting his face back together (badly), and once reunited with Zoe the group try to get their bearings. What appears from ground level as a maze or a dense forest is in fact a page of written text. They’re in a world of words.
They’re then captured by tin soldiers and led to a black void where a charging unicorn tries to run them through. That’s a sentence I didn’t expect to write in the context of Doctor Who.
How do you stop a charging unicorn? Remind it that there’s no such thing as unicorns, silly. This actually works, and becomes a handy method for dealing with the fantastical threats of this strange place. In a world of imagination, belief is a powerful thing.
After another run-in with a redcoat, the Doctor gets a chance to fix Jamie’s face (he went all cardboard-y after once again trying to bring a knife to a gun-fight), the group find their way to a labyrinth. There they get separated, and the Doctor and Zoe come face to face with a Minotaur. Handsome fellow. Meanwhile, Jamie climbs Rapunzel’s tower. She doesn’t think much of him (only a prince is good enough for her), but is quite amusingly resigned to having every Tom, Dick and Harry use her hair as a rope.
Following a run-in with Medusa, some handy directions from Gulliver and a little tussle with a comic strip villain (and surprising combat skills from Zoe), the Doctor and Zoe eventually join him. Inside the tower, they find a device that’s been attempting (unsuccessfully) to predict (or control) the Doctor’s progress, narrating it as if it was in a storybook. Someone is trying to turn the Doctor into fiction.
The man behind the curtain, so to speak, is the Master (Emrys Jones). Formerly a serialist from the 1920s, he's now a servant to a supercomputer with a bit of a god-complex and no imagination.
Not shown: the gross bit of something or other the Master had in the corner of his mouth in some shots. Maybe he'd just finished his lunch when the Doctor showed up.
He’s technically a prisoner, but is quite enjoying himself. He has access to all of human literature and gets to make make-believe a reality. But he’s no longer young, and the Doctor is ageless. That’s why he’s been trying to trap him in this fictional world. In short… it’s a job offer.
One the Doctor isn't allowed to refuse, but he does so anyway.
The Master responds to his obstinance by taking Jamie and Zoe captive and trapping them between the pages of a book, both literally and figuratively. The line between those two concepts is quite blurry in the land of fiction.
The Doctor makes a run for it. He tries to edit the master tape of his narrative, but realises that writing fiction with himself as a character would trap him inside the story, and the Master would be able to do as he pleased.
This is probably the most miserable I've seen this Doctor. At one point he's on the verge of tears. Some very nice acting from Troughton. I just want to give him a hug and a cup of tea.
Getting tired of his resistance, the Master uses his powers to turn a fictionalised Jamie and Zoe against the Doctor. They trick him into stepping into a trap (which he really should have seen coming, but then again he was very upset and thought he'd lost them forever). With that, the Doctor’s imagination becomes part of the computer.
But what is this all for? The same thing every other Doctor Who villain wants, apparently. To take over the Earth.
However, the problem with plugging the Doctor directly into this computer is that he has a mind of his own. Now he can manipulate the narrative. What ensues could be called a battle of wills, but could equally be called a playground slapfight, but without anyone running home crying to Mummy about the other children not playing the game properly.
The Doctor frees Jamie and Zoe, so the Master dreams up a threat, which the Doctor conjures up a defence against, and on and on it goes. Neither side gets much of an advantage over the other, but the situation gets odder by the second. At one point Sir Lancelot ends up fighting Blackbeard. It is delightfully weird.
All this push and pull overloads the computer, and it eventually jams up, allowing the Doctor to break free. As the robots start firing on everything in sight, the Doctor and company flee. The computer blows up behind them, taking the fictional world with it.
With the narrative broken, things go back to how they should be. The TARDIS is in one piece. The Doctor and his companions are safe (as they ever can be)… and I expect that somewhere in the 20s a writer is waking up from a nap having had a very strange dream indeed.
Curiouser and Curiouser
So this is a surreal story to say the least. You’ve got companions changing faces (Hamish Wilson makes a pretty good Jamie for an episode), reality warping to fit a story, and a whole cast of fictional characters swanning about the narrative. Well, it’s a fictional story, so they’re all made up. Fictional within the world of Doctor Who. Extra-fictional. Double fictional.
You’ve got your classics like Medusa (with rather excellent stop-motion snake hair) and the Minotaur, at least one fairytale princess, a raygun-toting supervillain, and even book characters. Lemuel Gulliver (Bernard Horsfall) is probably the most prominent of the bunch. He pops up every now and then to speak in an oddly cryptic manner and offer some friendly advice before swanning off again. The reason for his cryptic speech is simple: he can only speak in words that his written counterpart used. He does his best to get his point across, but his vocabulary can only stretch so far. He acts of his own volition, but is unable to act against the will of the Master or even perceive anything that the Master doesn’t want him to see.
That’s just such a fascinating idea to me. It's a really interesting way to distinguish between the fictional and the real. And yet with that in mind, I have to wonder something. Lemuel Gulliver was never real in the first place, but there are characters in this story who were. How much of the original Edward Teach is left inside the fictionalised version of Blackbeard? Or Cyrano de Bergerac? Are they constructed entirely from the imagination? Or are they like the Master Controller, plucked out of time and forced to assume a role? It’s a ghastly fate when you think about it.
Come to think of it, it’s not so pleasant for the people who were never real in the first place. They might lack free will and have limited means to express themselves, but does that mean they don’t have actual consciousness? Do they think and feel, or are they just puppets with the illusion of life? Did they die when the computer blew up? Could they even be said to be alive in the first place? Am I thinking much too deeply about a surrealist romp?
Maybe we’ll leave this one to the philosophers.
Final Thoughts
What an odd serial. I still have questions about where the fiction-obsessed computer came from, or how it had such a huge degree of control over reality (or unreality, I should say), but mostly I’m just delighted. It’s so much fun! You never know what’s going to happen next, but whatever it is, it’s bound to be wonderful. Childlike glee, that’s what it gave me. I was big on the Greek myths as a child (the monster-related ones, naturally), so when the Minotaur turned up it was almost like an old friend. A big, old, man-eating friend.
Also, is it bad I’ve never got around to reading Gulliver’s Travels? I think I had a picture book about that bit with the little people but otherwise I have no idea what happens in it.
Anyway. The Mind Robber. It’s weird and surreal and sometimes things happen for no clear reason other than ‘because that’s how the story goes’, and I am…fine with that. I’m actually perfectly fine with not understanding everything. Why shouldn’t the world outside time and space as we understand it be one of pure imagination?
Although only bi-annual, rather than quarterly, at the moment, Carnell continues to regularly release his anthology series, easily eclipsing Pohl’s Star series and Knight’s Orbit. Will it be lucky #13?
New Writings in S-F 13
Carnell notes there is an international flavour to this volume, with four Brits, Two Aussies, One American and One Belgian. Has any English Language SF publication series managed to have a male Belgian author before a woman author of any nationality? I think it may be a first! (International SF had both in its second issue.)
The Divided House by John Rackham
Leaving in 1984 on a ten-year voyage to look for intelligent life, Space-Farer IV now returns (due to time compression) in 2104. They find an Earth divided by genetics between the ruling Croms and their slaves, the Nandys, and the crew are split into the different camps.
I recently saw Judgement at Nuremburg on the BBC and this brought to my mind a scene where a witness on the sterilization procedure says:
My Mother…She was a hardworking woman, and it is not fair what you say. Here. I want to show you. I have here her picture. I would like you to look at it. I would like you to judge. I want that you tell me, was she feeble-minded? My mother! Was she feeble-minded? Was she?
This story addresses the question of eugenics, how we can judge one type of person to be inferior to another and how easy it is for science to be perverted. Important ideas.
And yet, I am not 100% sure I understand the conclusion he is meant to be reaching, nor the way in which it is delivered. I suspect this may be a story Rackham is planning to expand to novel length.
Three Stars for now.
Public Service by Sydney J. Bounds
On a densely populated island city, the fire service are reduced to a policy of containment instead of stopping fires. The poor are crying out for change, but what else can Fire Control do?
Reading this, I wondered if it was inspired by Kowloon Walled City, where the lack of access roads make it impossible for fire vehicles to enter. As such, it felt believable even in its exaggerated fashion, and Bounds put it together with great style. Dark, atmospheric but an all too realistic vision of the future.
Four Stars
The Ferryman on the River by David Kyle
The tower platform is a common site from which people throw themselves to their death. Hector is a salvager who takes away those who jump and offers them a new life. But is he salvation or slaver?
This is very much a stylistic piece, so your opinions will likely depend on how you feel about a regular switch between long run-on sentences full of descriptions and short clipped statements, in other words, how I write. I like it.
Four Stars
Testament by Vincent King
The Exploration Corps travel to 3m2t670, the last unexplored planetary system in the galaxy. Their mission, to determine if any other world has ever evolved life. We hear the record of Officer Dahndehr as his apparent discovery of the remnants of an ancient civilization turns to disaster.
King has tended to specialize in Vancian Medieval Futurism, but he manages to do well here in more common SFnal settings. It is a touch old fashioned, like a combination between Clarke and Ashton Smith, but he adds a unique style to it and has a twist in the tail I did not expect. Well done all round.
Four Stars
The Macbeth Expiation by M. John Harrison
On an unexplored planet an expedition shoots a group of alien beasts. When they return to the site, however, there is no sign of the encounter. Did they fail to hit them? Were they hallucinating in the first place? Or is something stranger going on?
This is described as a psychological thriller, and I would say that is accurate. It is a fairly atmospheric example, which makes us question what is real, albeit an unexceptional one.
A high three stars, probably a fourth for those who really enjoy the subgenre.
Representative by David Rome
Catton is an insurance salesman who is annoyed by his young neighbours, The Brownings. They laugh off his sales attempts and are convinced they will never need it. However, upon discovering a near identical couple have moved in next to his friends, he suspects something stranger is happening.
This is another example of what I term “Exurban Uncanny”, which often turns up in New Writings, unnerving stories about the sterileness of new towns. This is a pretty good story of this type, if rather obvious.
Three Stars
The Beach by John Baxter
People live in the warm embrace of the beach. Swimming, partying and in full contentment. One day Jael suddenly notices that buildings exist beyond the beach and leaves to investigate.
I am not sure what to make of this. Is it meant to be a mockery of surf bums? A stylistic experiment? An exploration of how people cope with trauma?
Whatever it is, Baxter writes it well enough to earn Three Stars.
The City, Dying by Eddy C. Bertin
In breathless and experimental style, Bertin tells of Wade’s attempts to find meaning whilst living in a police state. But, in such a place, what is reality and what is nightmare?
Apparently, this was originally written for a Belgian literary contest, then translated into Dutch and further into English, revised by the author each time. However, you wouldn’t know it. It reads incredibly well and makes use of the kind of typographical experiments en vogue in New Worlds.
Yet, it doesn’t feel like it is doing anything particularly new; rather it is what might happen if Kafka had submitted a piece to Michael Moorcock.
A high three stars
Keep Calm and Carry On
So, overall, this was a pretty solid volume of his series. Nothing that would rise to an all time classic but nothing I did not find interesting to read. Will the series continue its success? Given the British John C. has been editing SF publications for just as long as his American counterpart, I don’t see either of them putting down their red pens any time soon.
by Victoria Silverwolf
Laughing to Keep From Crying?
The latest Ace Double (H-91) contains two short novels (probably novellas, really) with plots that seem comic, at first glance, but are treated mostly in a serious manner. Let's take a look at them.
Murphy's Law
The shorter of the two presents a situation in which anything that could go wrong does go wrong.
Target: Terra, by Laurence M. Janifer and S. J. Treibich
Cover art by Jack Gaughan.
Some folks are inside a space station carrying nuclear weapons to be used against the Enemy should war break out. Our hapless hero, Intelligence Officer Angelo DiStefano, has to deal with artificial gravity that changes from zero to three times Earth normal, and everything in between, at random. His magnetic boots wander around on their own. The food machine produces inedible stuff that looks like weirdly colored snakes.
Bad enough, but when he finds out that the station's weapons are aimed at every major city on Earth, Good Guys or Bad Guys, he's got real problems.
So far, the story seems like a black comedy farce. I was taken by surprise, therefore, when an expository chapter reveals that the majority of Asians died in a plague that didn't harm non-Asians. Not exactly funny. Anyway, that's got something to do with the surviving Asians getting ready to attack the others, which will cause the station's missiles to launch.
(I should mention that the station has run out of sex suppressant, so the only woman aboard has a paranoid fear of being raped. Sorry, I'm not laughing.)
Angelo tries to figure out who's trying to wipe out all life on Earth. Aliens? A mad saboteur? And what can be done to prevent total Armageddon?
There's a lot of quirky characters, from a "midget" electronics genius to a captain who never leaves the bridge. Besides the distasteful content I mentioned above, there's also another armed space station containing Africans. The implication that there's a sort of racial Cold War going on doesn't fit very well with the silly slapstick that starts the story.
Two stars.
Far Out Music
The other, slightly longer, half of the book features a musical group set on going where no one has ever rocked and rolled before.
The Proxima Project, by John Rackham
Cover art by John Schoenherr.
Horace McCool is a rich guy who is obsessed with the band's female singer. The members of the Trippers call themselves Jim, Jem, Johnny, and Yum-Yum. Nobody knows their real names, or anything else about them.
Horace wants to marry Yum-Yum, even though he's never even met her. When he manages to make his way backstage during a concert, she's not interested at all. (Her utter disdain may be best demonstrated by the fact that she casually strips nude in front of him in order to take a shower.) Unable to take a very firm No! for an answer, Howard gives her a gift that has a tracking unit hidden in it. With his loyal secretary, who has her own crush on one of the male members of the group, Horace follows Yum-Yum and the others to a mansion on the Moon, and then much further.
Sounds like a romantic comedy, doesn't it? And yet there's a serious tone to much of the story. The four members of the Trippers are super-geniuses who only started the band so they could raise enough money for their secret project. They're cynical about the rest of the human species, and just want to get away from Earth forever, even if it means a seemingly suicidal one-way voyage.
Horace's mad passion seems way out of character for an otherwise sensible fellow. The climax of the story strained credibility to the breaking point. I suppose the author might be saying something about the worship of celebrities and the Generation Gap, but it's not a profound work in any way.
Two stars.
A is for Anywhere
Next on my reading list is a book that takes its two protagonists on another wild journey, but not into outer space.
Dimension A, by L. P. Davies
The narrator is a teenage boy who gets a message from a buddy of the same age. It seems that the other fellow's uncle disappeared, along with his mysterious helper. Enlisting the aid of a scientist, for whom the narrator works, they try to figure out what happened.
Not much of a mystery, really, because we find out right away that the uncle was working on a way to reach a parallel reality known as (you guessed it) Dimension A. (Does that mean our own universe is Dimension B?)
What with one thing and another, the two kids accidentally land in Dimension A, and don't see a way back. They have to deal with hallucinations created by an unseen entity behind a green mist, as well as primitive humans who somehow manage to have ray guns. Can they find the missing uncle and make their way home?
The novel seems intended for younger readers, mostly because of the age of the two main characters. The language isn't overly simple, and adults of any age can read it without feeling they're being talked down to. The book doesn't try to be anything but an imaginative science fiction adventure story, and it succeeds at that modest goal.
Three stars.
New and Improved?
Two well-known writers recently published expanded versions of earlier works.
This is a revision of one half of an Ace Double from 1960. (D-421, to be exact. The other half was Dr. Futurity by Philip K. Dick.)
Cover art by Ed Emshwiller.
I haven't read it, so I can't compare it with the new version.
Cover art by Kelly Freas.
At some time in the far future, Earth is a place of wealth and leisure. Robots and androids (artificially grown humans, with blue skin to identify them) do the work, while other folks enjoy themselves.
(There's a brief mention of people who have lost their wealth through foolish behavior. They're known as the Dispossessed. Otherwise, poverty doesn't exist.)
During a time of wild celebration, the protagonist stumbles across an android who has been severely beaten and maimed. Another android, knowing his fellow slave can't survive, puts him out of his misery with an injection. The protagonist is horrified by what happened to the dead android, but it's just considered destruction of property instead of murder.
(Given the different skin color of the android and their legal position in society, an analogy with American slavery prior to the Civil War seems likely.)
Adding to the mystery is the discovery of a dead man nearby with a knife in his chest. A police detective comes by, but doesn't seem very interested in solving the case.
The surviving android, noticing that our hero is sympathetic, slips him an item taken from the dead man. It reveals that he was a very important person everywhere but Earth. This sends the protagonist on a journey to several different colonized planets, where he learns the dark secret behind the manufacturing of the androids. Along the way, people keep trying to kill him.
(There's a plot twist that made me want to call the book Blue Like Me, but that seemed too frivolous.)
Not in the same league as the author's groundbreaking masterpiece Stand on Zanzibar, but a competent science fiction novel.
The novella Hawksbill Station appeared in the August 1967 issue of Galaxy.
Cover art by Sol Dember.
The Noble Editor gave it a positive review when it first appeared. Will the novel be better, worse, or about the same?
Cover art by Pat Steir.
In the twenty-first century, the United States is under a totalitarian (but superficially benign) government. Capital punishment is banned, but political prisoners are sent back in time about one billion years. Since travel to the future is impossible, this is equivalent to a life sentence.
The protagonist is the de facto leader of the exiles. (All male, by the way; there's another prison colony for women millions of years apart from the men. The novel never visits the female prisoners, and that might make for an interesting sequel.) He's more or less sane, unlike many of the other guys. One is trying to make a woman out of mud. Another is trying to use ESP to escape. Yet another attempts to contact aliens.
The situation changes when a new prisoner arrives. He's younger than usual, for one thing. More telling is the fact that he claims to be a economist, but doesn't known a darn thing about economics. What is he doing here?
If you've read the novella, you know that's the same plot. What's been added is a series of flashbacks, showing how the main character became a revolutionary and how he was betrayed and imprisoned. (These sections also feature the novel's only female character. She doesn't show up too much, but her fate adds a certain poignancy.)
The flashbacks make the character and the world in which he lives seem more real, but they're not absolutely necessary. Whether you prefer the leaner novella or the richer novel is a matter of taste. There isn't a big difference in quality, if any.
Ted White has done it again…in more ways than one.
Some of you may remember Rosemary Benton's stellar review of Android Avenger, in which she gave five stars to the tale of Bob Tanner, a cyborg and revolutionary in a staid, computer-run future.
In the luridly (but appropriately) titled Spawn of the Death machine, Bob Tanner is back, and so is Ted White in fine form.
First, a little background, from the horse's mouth:
SPAWN was sold originally to Paperback Library, but was not my first submission to them (through my agent). The first book I submitted to them (in outline) was BY FURIES POSSESSED. They said they were looking for an Ace-Book-type book, so I figured, wothell archy, how about the sequel to an Ace Book? Which SPAWN is, being the sequel to ANDROID AVENGER (original title, changed by Don Wollheim, was THE DEATH MACHINE). That they bought.
The cover of the original edition of SPAWN was by Jeff Jones, who showed me the painting before I'd finished the book. The protagonist is holding a knife and defending the girl. So I wrote that into the book as a scene. But the art director decided to "improve" the cover and had the knife repainted (crudely) as a sword, and had shackles added to the girl, twisting her body in an anatomically absurd position. Pissed Jeff off no end, and me too.
Per Ted, Jeff is working on rewriting the rules of conduct for cover artists (keeping original paintings, selling only one-time repro rights). If successful, it will be a boon for all artists.
Anyway, as for the story…
Bob Tanner is wakened inside some sort of vault, naked, amnesiac. The robot brain inside exhorts him to explore the outside world, to spend a year amongst the humans, then report back with what he finds.
It turns out that civilization is long passed. He first arrives at the ruins of New York, the outskirts of which are inhabited by the most primitive of survivors, generations removed from the civilization Tanner only remembers in fragments. He is captured but escapes, taking with him the young Rifka, a captive member of the tribe.
Thus begins a series of adventures including a tangle with a bear, a run-in with a more advanced town with a mayor who doesn't let newcomers leave, a widespread constellation of farming communities at a 19th Century level of technology, and even a super-advanced enclave run by a group of individuals who were once the underdogs of society.
Through it all, Tanner becomes increasingly aware of his non-human nature—his metal bones, his ability to breathe fire, the hyperspeed he is capable of in brief spurts. And, at last, he discovers who he really is and decides what destiny he will forge for himself.
As is typical for Ted's books, I tore through this novel in short order. The man can't write a dull sentence even with a gun to his head. He takes the most cliché of settings and turns it into something fresh, certainly a damnsight better than Zelazny's recent stab at postapocalypse with Damnation Alley.
This may sound silly, but what I really liked about the book is that it's a romance. And not a "superman claims grateful damsel as prize" romance, but a believable progression of a relationship. Rifka is a well-realized character, one imbued with passion and an independent nature and set of priorities. It's not surprising that Ted draws her with such care—she is named after his wife, Robin Postal (Rifka means Robin in Yiddish). But, in general, the author is good with his female characters, surprising not just for the genre, but for the pulpy subgenre and venue.
I also really appreciate that one gets a pretty full picture of Bob Tanner even without having read the first book (in fact, I haven't, though it's on my shelf—it's really tough to find the time to read everything; even stuff you know is good). Honestly, the only real demerit to the book is its structure, really a series of vignettes. In that way, it is reminiscent of Omha Abides, C.C. MacApp's recent After-The-Apocalypse novel. Sure, White writes it better than most anyone else, but it still suffers from the disjointed, episodic nature of it.
Still, 4.5 stars, and I'm sure it'll make the Galactic Stars or at least get honorable mention this year.
I have a new favorite science fiction writer whose work I’m going to track. His name is Alexei Panshin and he’s had a terrific 1968.
Several months ago I reviewed Panshin’s novel Rite of Passage and found it intriguing, with great atmospherics, complex characters and a clever attitude which seemed to tell the story in multiple dimensions. Panshin told his story with a slightly ironic reserve to it, an approach which gave a detached commentary on the events, as if the narrator of the tale was someone looking back fondly at the events which shaped her.
That element is on display again in his newest novel, Star Well, but this time that ironic detached commentary reads like wry takes on the world readers are experiencing in the novel. For instance:
The apparently frightening and hopeless situation may turn out to have a candy-cream interior. That has been the main premise of the happy ending since the return of Ulysses.
Or he brings in a cute, clever meta-commentary about plot elements which gives the reader an aha! kind of feeling:
When managers of illicit traffic meet, their biggest plaint is the employment problem. In a word, henchmen. There are all too few young crooks willing to take training service under older and more accomplished men.
… a commentary which then goes into a detailed explanation of why it’s so dang hard to get good help these days, especially in a star base many light years away from anything important.
In short, these excerpts read like a bit of postmodern commentary on the space opera of Robert Heinlein. And since Panshin has written a monograph about Heinlein (Heinlein in Dimension, available through your local library, I’m sure), that reference has to be intentional.
Mr. Panshin's analysis of Heinlein
The lead character here is one Anthony Villiers, a kind of lazy trust fund baby who’s spending his life just wandering the Nashurite Empire, occasionally drifting when he has cash, occasionally grifting when he doesn’t have cash. He’s aristocratic and hates getting his hands dirty, but he also has a gentlemanly aspect about him which makes Villiers feel charming and kind.
Villiers finds himself at the Star Well, a space port/gambling hall/shopping stopover which has been drilled into an asteroid in an area of space in which “the stars don’t grow”; in other words, a simple stopover for travelers who need a warm bed and maybe a touch of the illicit while on their way to their final destination. As such, it’s a perfect place for illegal smuggling and inept, corrupt bureaucrats who are striving to improve their social position or at least their bank accounts.
A photo of Mr. Panshin from last year.
As you might guess, Villiers can’t help but get involved in the events at the Star Well, becoming quite the reluctant hero as he finds himself in conflict with Godwin, a man of low birth who yearns to be aristocratic, and Godwin’s boss Hisan Bashir Shirabi, a man with a massive inferiority complex who yearns to be like Villiers. Our protagonist also becomes unexpectedly close friends with the fifteen-year-old Louisa Parini, who traveled to Star Well en route to a stuffy finishing school but who craves adventure.
This is all so lightweight and enjoyable, and this whole charming souffle of a novel comes in at a mere 154 very quick pages – just like a Heinlein juvenile. And just like one of the juvies, there’s plenty of hints we’ll see more of Anthony Villiers in the future as he continues his peripatetic wanderings. I hope to spend many years following our besotted aristocrat as he wanders through the Nashurite Empire.
With two episodes under its belt, the third season of Star Trek has both disappointed and elated. The general reaction to "Spock's Brain" amongst the fan population (beyond the Journey) was universally negative. Buck Coulson of Yandro has even called for this season's producer Fred Freiberger to be ridden out on a rail. On the other hand, "The Enterprise Incident" wowed everyone. And so, we waited eagerly for Trek at 9:59 PM on a Friday night, a night when we could have been out drinking and carousing (who are we kidding—we're probably the only group for whom the Friday night "death slot" is actually perfect timing).
What we got was…well, closer to "Spock's Brain" in terms of quality. In brief:
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to a remarkably Earthlike planet, complete with pine trees, honeysuckle, and orange blossom (Spock must feel left out; when's the last time they visited a world just like Vulcan?) They are on a tight deadline: a moon-massed asteroid is making its inexorable way toward a collision with the planet. While it will take two months to reach its target, the Enterprise must deflect the body now, or the ship will not be able to sufficiently perturb the colossus from its present orbit.
Why they don't do this first is not explained. Perhaps they wanted to make sure there was something to protect on the planet before they went through all the trouble.
"I guess we do need to save this planet."
There is: a race of humans on the planet. These are also familiar, exhibiting traits of the Navaho, Cherokee, and Delaware tribes in ancient America (which sounds as plausible as a mix of French, Turkish, and Finnish cultures to me, but what do I know?) Beyond this, they discover an alien obelisk, clearly not made by the present inhabitants. A door to its interior is inadvertently opened, and Kirk falls in. After an encounter with some mind-numbing equipment inside, the captain loses all of his memory. Spock and McCoy, unable to find him, reluctantly abandon him to shift the asteroid.
Kirk emerges from the obelisk and is immediately accepted as a god. It helps that he saves a drowned child with artificial respiration and has a profound knowledge of primitive agriculture and lighting techniques. Conflict arises when he is given the Medicine Man's badge of office literally from the head of the former bearer. Worse still, in his new role he is expected to man the obelisk, which is actually a deflector station, when the asteroid approaches. Of course, Kirk doesn't know how to do this. Well, let's hope the Enterprise can stop it.
"Oy. I feel like the whole Sioux Nation is tap-dancing on my head."
They can't. They burn out every circuit on the ship trying to repel the asteroid, then to destroy it. (We do learn that the Enterprise has four forward-facing phasers, which is a nice bit of trivia.) Their warp drive destroyed, the starship must limp back to the planet on impulse power, just four hours ahead of the asteroid, and try to find a way to activate the obelisk. Spock spends two months on the problem, concluding only at the last minute that the strange glyphs decorating the structure are musical notes. When recited in proper sequence, they will open the thing up.
Spock, staying up to figure out the glyphs…or perhaps he's watching Johnny Carson.
Cut to Kirk (now known as "Kirok") atop the obelisk, the trees swaying and thunder rolling from the tidal force of the approaching moon. Beside him is Miramanee, the native princess to whom he has been wed and who bears his child. And there are lots of rocks. A whole bunch of rocks. Not tossed by the wind but by angry tribesmen who are angry that the false god can't figure out the obelisk.
"Oooo, that smarts!"
Spock and McCoy arrive in the nick-o-time to save the day. Kirk's memory is restored. He gets them in the obelisk. Spock works the machine (pressing a single button), and everything is fine. Except Miramanee. Her internal injuries are too great, and she and the unborn child are doomed. Kirk is sad. FINIS.
"Your star medicine man can save me, right?" "Um…"
Boy. The biggest problem with this episode is its contrived nature. This asteroid must be in the planet's solar system, yet the Enterprise has to go Warp NINE to reach it in time, straining its engines. Last episode, Warp Nine took the starship through the entire Romulan Neutral Zone in about a minute. Then, on impulse, it takes two months to come back. In Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Doomsday Machine, Balance of Terror, and The Menagerie, it's established that impulse may be slower than warp, but it's still faster than light. Get your technologies straight!
"Whatever you do, Mr. Sulu, don't take us out of Reverse!"
I also have trouble with the length of time it takes for Spock to decode the glyphs. In prior episodes, particularly "Wolf in the Fold" and "Conscience of the King", it's been shown that the ship's computer is extremely knowledgeable and very good at coordinating facts. This should have been a trivial problem for it to solve. Moreover, why didn't Spock enlist help? After all, it's not as if there isn't anyone else on the vessel skilled at communications, foreign tongues, and music…
Did Uhura have any lines this episode? Or was it just this quick cutaway?
The episode isn't terrible. It's reasonably paced (except when scenes are padded, like when Kirk, in voiceover, tells us exactly what he just told Miramanee in person about the shipboard dreams he's been having). The score is mostly new. The special effects are tremendous. The on-location shooting is lovely, especially since we're not at the usual Vasquez Rocks location (q.v. "Arena", "Friday's Child", etc. etc. etc.)
But it could have been more. A real exploration of Kirk finally getting a beach to walk on, away from the burdens of command. Instead, between the contrived plot, director Jud Taylor's inability to restrain Shatner's innate desire to chew scenery, and the tired white-man-as-savior-to-red-savages cliché (and couldn't the show have followed the trend set by High Chapparal and cast actual Native Americans?), I can't give this tale more than 2.5 stars.
That's better than Margaret Armen's first essay into Trekdom, "Gamesters of Triskelion", but that's damning with faint praise…
Cosmic Implications
by Lorelei Marcus
I cannot deny that this episode is severely flawed in many aspects, and I think that is important to highlight. But I would rather devote my piece to the interesting universal implications brought on by the existence of "The Preservers".
As Spock explains in the latter half of the episode, the Earth ecology and Indian tribes appear to have been seeded on the planet (rather than having evolved there) by the same advanced race that left the obelisk. His theory is that this alien race sought out dying civilizations and relocated them to inhabitable planets to preserve them.
A relic of the empire
Per McCoy's following off-hand observation, this becomes an easy explanation for many, if not all, of the humanoids scattered across the galaxy.
Previously, I theorized that the Star Trek universe actually comprised many alternate Earths in a sort of condensed multiverse, leading to a vast array of inhabitable planets and human-like aliens. With the addition of the Preservers, I think this theory is still viable, but now under the assumption that the many Earths were created to seed human communities. Indeed, perhaps even the moon-massed asteroid was placed around the planet to simulate our own moon.
This raises the question whether all the Earthlike worlds, from the one in "Miri" to pre-contaminated Sigma Iota 2 to the Roman world of "Bread and Circuses", were Preserver colonies. The over-controlling computer in "Return of the Archons" may have been a Preserver artifact left to regulate the colony. "Patterns of Force" even has two planets of humanoids next to each other. Maybe the Zeons were originally rescued Jews from 1940's Europe, explaining their overly apt names so similar to Isaac and Abram.
Theorizing aside, two major questions remain surrounding the Preservers. First, who are they? We've thus far encountered quite a few super powerful races who could fit the bill, but I think the technology level and the musical basis for communications suggests a less advanced level than, say the Organians (who presumably are beyond such things).
My first thought was the Greek Gods in "Who Mourns for Adonais", but the implication is that Apollo and the other Gods were stranded on their planet after one trip to Earth, making it impossible for them to seed multiple colonies. A more likely candidate is Trelane's race. The obsession with and research of human cultures, the machine that can turn a hostile world into a clement one, and even the knowledge of music—Trelane has a harpsichord in his living room—all make the adults of Trelane's race a leading candidate. Trelane himself may have been studying an old human civilization to locate and preserve future ones.
After all, who wouldn't want to save this fellow?
This leads me to my second question: why are the Preservers obsessed with humans in particular? We have seen there are more intelligent aliens than just humans, with their own rich civilizations and history. The Vulcans are the prime example of this. Could the Romulans have originated from a Preserver colony seeded from Vulcan? It seems quite likely, particularly if the colonists were obtained during or shortly after Vulcan's warring period.
Could this mean there are also rogue Klingon colonies evolved separately from the main empire? Did they exist once but were subsequently captured and incorporated? If the Preservers did not single out humans for preservation, perhaps the reason human settlements are so often found by the Enterprise is that the Preservers seeded them close to Earth for Terrans to find.
As my compatriots and I have mentioned, this was not a great episode. However, it kept me entertained nearly to the end, and its premises create vast implications about the Star Trek universe. For that, at least, I give it three stars.
Pilgrim's Regress
by Amber Dubin
After fans fought tooth and nail to prevent the series's cancellation, you'd think the episodes in season 3 would reflect the very best writing Star Trek has to offer. Instead, for episode 3, we have writer Margaret Armen, author of "Gamesters of Triskellion," who has not yet proven herself to be the show's best and brightest. I can't imagine the way this episode turned out was entirely her fault, however. I sense the pitch for this episode went somewhat like this: "Hey Margaret, we have this leftover set from a Western near a lake that we can use for this episode. We can only spare a couple regular staff members for the field shots so make sure at least half of the episode takes place on the ship. Oh, and Shatner's been complaining he hasn't had enough space to spread his wings so make sure this one's especially Kirk-focused. Make it happen."
I imagine the resulting scramble was: "uh, ok.. Western themes.. uh, Pocahontas.. and the rest of the crew was separated by .. uh.. an asteroid! and it's Star Trek because of.. ancient alien technology! Phew, I did it!" The resulting episode feels rushed, uninspired, and at times as frustratingly offensive as I find nearly all Westerns.
They get all the creativity out of the way at the beginning of the episode when they describe the planet as earth-like but entirely crater-free, and an advanced alien obelisk is introduced that Kirk accidentally opens with a series of tones. The fact that he gets amnesia by accidentally activating a booby trap, I found pretty creative as well, even though Shatner's delivery of the moment of shock leaves much to be desired.
It's all downhill from there, however, as the very premise for why the three bridge officers are exploring the planet is completely absurd. It's ridiculous that they would be casually exploring an imperiled planet, 30 minutes before their last opportunity to deviate the oncoming asteroid's path. It's silly that Kirk wanders off by himself without telling anyone what he's doing, and even more absurd that Spock has to explain to McCoy with rocks why they have run out of time to recover their captain when he gets lost. The resulting tension on the ship is painfully contrived, as not only is it revealed that they're so far from the asteroid that they have to speed at warp 9 for so long that they burn out the engines, but they also are immediately out of options when two rounds of phaser fire seems to have no effect. It's also silly that Spock would make the decision to limp back to the planet on impulse power, directly in the path of the asteroid and it's sillier that it takes him almost that entire two months to decode the music-based glyphs on the obelisk, when it has been well-established how well-versed the half-Vulcan is in musical pursuits.
The plot on the planet is not much more cogent than on the ship. The brain-damaged Kirk immediately woos and falls in love with the chief's daughter, because all red roads lead to Pocahontas. I cannot even bother getting offended by how many times the Native Americans are referred to as "primitive," even though it's more than infuriating that the longer Kirk spends with the tribe, the more broken and rudimentary his speech becomes (although this could have been Shatner more than enthusiastically taking advantage of an opportunity to talk more slowly). The part I get most offended by is a white savior bringing with him the innovative concepts of food preservation and lamps. Native American tribes were famous for their food preservation techniques! Moreover, the concept that indoor lighting had to be introduced to Native Americans is beyond insulting. Even cavemen brought torches into their caves! How primitive are they claiming this tribe to be? Also, I simply cannot abide the idea that an entire space-faring medical team could not heal Kirk's wife's mortal wound that could only have been inflicted by a maximum of two rocks. It was obvious the character had to die so that Kirk didn't look like a monster for abandoning his family on a backwater planet, but I think it's a mark of bad writing when I can so blatantly see the intention behind weak plot points.
Overall, this episode plays very much like a holiday special. It's the type of episode to be watched when you're stuffed as a tick after thanksgiving dinner and don't feel like getting up to change the channel. It's not particularly exhausting, but it's also neither memorable nor good. Someone did spend quite a lot of time making that cloak and obelisk look beautiful, though, so for that I give the episode..
2 stars.
"We can fly! We can fly! We can fly!"
[Come join us tomorrow night (October 11th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings. You won't want to miss it…]
Fred Pohl opens up this month's issue of Galaxy with a summary of the letters he's received from readers on how they would, in 100 words or fewer, successfully resolve the war in Vietnam. He has great faith in the power of harnessing a bunch of smart folks to spit out solutions to problems. I honestly don't know how useful someone's cursory stab at peace in Southeast Asia can be, even if it's from the pen of a clearly clever person like Judith Merril or Larry Niven.
He did, however, talk about a different kind of brain-tapping, one that has me very excited. There's something called Sigma, which is a scientific way of presenting scenarios to people and assessing their likelihood, feasability, and desirability. A consensus can then be reached and a mass-mind prediction derived.
And as it turns out, I recently was sent a copy of Probe a 14-volume compilation of technological predictions made by the folks at TRW's Space Technology Laboratories—the folks who gave us Pioneers 0, 1 and 2, Explorer 6, Atlas Able, Pioneer 5, the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, and parts of the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module. I've only just started perusing it, but it makes for fascinating reading. Of course, only time will tell if their predictions are accurate, or if they're even asking the right questions.
Of course, science fictioneers have been predicting the future in their own way for half a century. And while the stories in this issue may not depict situations that ever come to pass, I have to say that are, at least, quite entertaining!
by Sol Dember, illustrating Building on the Line
Perris Way, by Robert Silverberg
by Jack Gaughan
I had not expected a continuation of the story, "Nightwing," but "Perris Way" is a direct sequel. The tale picks up with our nameless Watcher, whose profession of scanning the skies for alien invasion, is no longer relevant as the invasion has come and succeeded, heading toward Perris (Paris) with his companion, the former Prince of Roum. That latter, a member of the Dominator caste, was blinded during the invasion by the alien-in-disguise Gormon for forcing himself upon the Flier, Avluela, whom Gormon loved. The two arrived at France's former capital to become members of the guild of Rememberers.
The erstwhile Watcher becomes an apprentice, and during his training discovers the true history of Earth and the hubristic crime that warranted the alien invasion. His halcyon half-year with the Rememberers is abruptly terminated when the Prince shames the guild with a tactless act. The Watcher, caught on the horns of a dilemma comprising the remedy to a Rememberer's anger versus (perhaps misplaced) loyalty to the Prince, comes up with a solution that ultimately pleases no one. It also leaves room for a Part 3, which, if a novelization be forthcoming, is probably necessary to reach the appropriate length.
Silverbob's language is exquisite. His poetic SFnal prose is probably even better than Zelazny's, and more approachable than Delany's. His history of Earth is as fascinating as any that has been drawn. On the other hand, he never treats his women well, and they are always sex objects, one way or another. Contrast that with James Schmitz's Dr. Nile Etland, showcased just last month in Analog, lest someone want to lecture me on how "this is just the way things are." Women do not exist just to be scenery, as much as those who hum "I'm a Girl Watcher" and hound the bosomy New Yorker Francine Gottfried on the way to work might like to think so.
It's still terrific stuff, but I can't give it more than four stars.
Keep Moving, by Miriam Allen deFord
Science fiction stories often play with the premise, "If this goes on…" DeFord, one of the genre's most venerable authors, offers up a 22nd Century in which freeways pave virtually every square inch of the planet, and commuter culture has become the norm. People don't even have homes anymore—they simply live in their cars, driving constantly to obtain food, entertainment, and presumably working while moving.
One man decides he's had enough and founds the "Live-In" movement, boldly staying put in one place over night. This crazy idea wins the casual endorsement of dozens and the fervent support of one particular woman, a rather famous poet. The ensuing partnership proves unstoppable.
Absolutely silly, but also quite charming. Three stars.
Building on the Line, by Gordon R. Dickson
by Gray Morrow
Clancy and Plotchin are mismatched, feuding workers on the Line, a galaxy-spanning set of teleporter stations. The two are building a set of Starlinks on the hostile world of XN-4010 when its incorporeal, gibbering race of "hobgoblins" unleashes a meteorite storm upon them. Plotchin is incapacitated, maybe dead, but there is hope that an experimental cryogenic unit in the man's suit might be sustaining him.
Clancy decides that staying put and waiting for rescue is less desirable than making the 36-mile trek back to the main exploration ship. And so, with Plotchin in his arms, he begins the brutal trek through the ice and near-vacuum of XN-4010, the hobgoblins nibbling at his psyche the entire way. This bit is truly thrilling, reminiscent of the middle section of Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel when our heroes are making a similar journey across the frozen wastes of Pluto.
The denouement, however, is a rather windy extolling of the virtues of heroic men expanding the horizons of mankind. It all felt a little hollow, especially as it is intimated that the hobgoblins may not be malicious but simply trying to defend their world from an onslaught of human tourists. That, to me, was the more important point, and it was tossed aside. Framed differently, Line's premise could have made an excellent novel, with themes similar to those explored brilliantly in Silverberg's The Man in the Maze. Alas.
Still, it's beautifully written, and the first two thirds are a wild ride.
Four stars.
For Your Information: My Friend, the Nautilus, by Willy Ley
This is quite a neat piece, definitely a throwback to Willy's better days. It's really the evolutionary history of mollusks, with an eventual focus on nautiloids and their relatives, the ammonites. No, this is not a Pennsylvania religious sect but a prolific family of shelled mollusks that thrived during the Age of Dinosaurs.
Given that octopuses (Ley calls the plural 'octopi', tsk tsk) are shockingly intelligent, and ammonites were advanced nautiloids, I think stories about sapient Mesozoic shellfish would be fascinating. Be sure to credit me with the idea if you use it.
Four stars.
The Market in Aliens, by K. M. O'Donnell
An unscrupulous fellow runs a brisk trade in sapient aliens. He has occasional twinges of guilt, but he perseveres, nevertheless.
This is a dark, ugly story. Looking back on it, I think I have to give it four stars. It says a lot with a little.
Locust Years, by Douglas R. Mason
by Brock
In the not too far future, universities literally recreate the past, casting lines through time to reel in prehistorical happenings for student viewing. But when a construction accident summons a wounded mastodon and opens up a time vortex, no one is safe—up to and including humans from other time frames!
This is an interesting story, if initially difficult to apprehend. Probably the best thing the author has written to date. Three stars.
This one's about bitter, middle-aged man, reeling from the recent loss of his wife and his ejection from the board of the company that made his fortune. Said company has discovered the secret of synthetic life, starting with the recreation of dinosaurs, and with the aim of creating complete humans. Ostensibly, the man hates his father-in-law, erstwhile partner in the endeavor, for his lack of morality, and for the coldness he has hitherto shown his family. In fact, there is something deeper going on, and a rift that may not be mendable, even as the father-in-law attempts to attone.
I found myself moved by this one. Definitely one of Aldiss' better efforts of late.
Four stars.
Eeeetz Ch, by H. H. Hollis
by Dan Adkins
I had gone into this one expecting from the title some sort of joke story. It's not.
Dolphins are hot news this decade. From Flipper to People of the Sea to World of Ptavvs, the idea of porpoises being partner sapients is catching on in a big way. Hollis' story details the visit of the junior Senator from Hawaii, Ramon Coatl (presumably of Filipino ancestry), to a Caribbean research center. There, the dolphin called Andy but really named Eeeetz Ch is being fitted with artificial hands and tested on advanced machinery. But the tests go both ways—the two scientists working with him (a man and a woman, the woman being the senior engineer; Silverbob, take notes) are fitted with artificial gills that plug into a plate surgically embedded in their sternums.
There's doesn't exactly seem to be a plot to the whole thing, until it's done, and you understand the stakes of Coatl's visit. Hollis says a lot about intelligence and handicaps, about technology and ethics, without spelling it out too heavy-handedly. Most impressively, all of the characters are extremely well realized. Andy the dolphin, in particular, is an alien. A likeable, sympathetic one, but not human.
This is my favorite story of the issue. It's both conventional and new, prosaic and profound. It made me laugh a couple of times. It kept me riveted.
Five stars.
Like, wow!
What a contrast, huh? Last month, Galaxy finished at a dismal 2.4. This month, we're at 3.9, probaby the best mag of the year. It reminds me of the old Gold days of the early '50s. Of course with a spread like that, it's hard to make any solid predictions, but at least there's always a chance every month that Galaxy will knock it out of the park like it did this month.
That's something to look forward to!
(oh, and dig the cool offer on the back of the mag—Trek is everywhere!)
Suspicions confirmed—this November Amazing names as Editor Barry N. Malzberg, who was listed last issue as Associate Editor. Sol Cohen is now merely the Publisher. Oddly, though, the editorial is by Harry Harrison, now listed as Associate Editor (though most likely gone). Go figure, or just say it’s more Sol Cohen chaos.
Johnny Bruck is back as the cover artist; this one (from Perry Rhodan #109, published in 1963) looks even more cliched and perfunctory than his earlier covers, making me wonder if they are really getting worse, or if I am just getting more tired of them.
by Johnny Bruck
“New” is sprinkled across the cover wherever possible to distract from the fact that once again, reprints dominate. Four new short stories take up 36 pages, just under 25% of the magazine. And the prize: “plus stories by: RAY BRADBURY (Winner of the Aviation Space Writers Association’s Top Award). . . .” Does Bradbury need that kind of boosting?
One of the new stories, interestingly, is a collaboration between Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany. When Delany appeared with a novel excerpt in the issue before last, his name was misspelled about half the time; this issue, it’s misspelled “Delaney” everywhere—on the cover, on the contents page (twice), on the first page of the story, in the book review column. Well, small mercy, it’s spelled right in the blurb for the story.
There are worse production botches, discussed when I get to them.
Harrison’s editorial, Science Fiction and the Establishment, is superficial and banal: the Establishment doesn’t like SF, it’s a problem all over, but it’s starting to get better, someday it will be gone. The book review column continues interestingly but incestuously, with James Blish as William Atheling reviewing Larry Niven, and Samuel R. Delany reviewing Blish. Leon E. Stover contributes another in his “Science of Man” series, discussed below.
Despite all the above kvetching about the magazine’s presentation, the good news is that the new short stories are as interesting a batch as we’ve seen in Amazing for a while, and the reprints are all readable or better, unlike many of their predecessors.
Power of the Nail, by Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany
Ellison and Delany’s Power of the Nail reads like what Ellison was publishing in the SF magazines around 1957, polished up by a smoother writer. Robert Zagaramendo and his wife Margret are Ecological Observers on the planet Saquetta, and boy howdy is Margret pissed: “You promised me better than this, somewhere.” Robert’s not too thrilled either, especially with Margret. Bickering is constant.
Saquetta features the Saquettes, mole-like aliens who are not at all cute, but have the interesting trait of being reincarnated when they die naturally, which is most of the time. But the vibrations of the “phase-antenna of the automatic ecology equipment” that the humans are burying in various locations draw the Saquettes away from their usual hideouts to places where they are vulnerable to attack by giant predatory birds, called molloks because that’s what the Saquettes scream when they’re being hunted.
by Dan Adkins
After further conflict with his wife, including a near-rape, Robert sets up “ecology equipment” near an especially large Saquette colony, complete with lurking molloks, and goes back later to find, as expected, hundreds of dead Saquettes. He builds little round coffins for them and nails them together, then goes back and tells Margret that they’re going home—and shortly, suffers a terrible and fatal punishment that is not clearly explained, though one may surmise it is related to the operation of the "automatic ecology equipment." (Compare David H. Keller's The Doorbell if you've ever read it.) In the moral universe of the story, it’s obviously because he decided to sacrifice hundreds of Saquettes in order to escape an emotionally intolerable situation.
It's a very vivid and readable story, which goes some way towards compensating for its ultimate obscurity. Three stars.
The Monsters, by David R. Bunch
The formerly prolific David R. Bunch, who has not appeared in Amazing since Sol Cohen took over, is back with The Monsters. It’s short as usual for Bunch, and on a familiar theme: the need to harden one’s small children against the brutalities of life by brutalizing them pre-emptively. (See Bunch’s earlier story A Small Miracle of Fishhooks and Straight Pins, Fantastic June 1961, and thence to Judith Merril’s annual “year’s best” volume.) Here, the threat the children are to be prepared for is a bit trite, but the writing is brisk and economical. Three stars.
Try Again, by Jack Wodhams
Jack Wodhams is new to me, though the Journeyer-in-Chief has not thought highly of his work in Analog. His Try Again is surprisingly good. Pyler, a psychiatrist, is having a session with the precocious five-year-old Tommy, who says he has lived before and remembers it. But this isn’t quite the same life as before, since with adult memories he acts differently the second time around. Tommy is much burdened by his knowledge of future events and the question whether he could do anything about them (it’s 1935, Mussolini has just invaded Ethiopia; and Tommy knows what comes later). Shortly he is kidnapped to Germany. An alternative history, even worse than the real one, is telegraphically unfolded. Tommy, who has disappeared from the plot after his interrogation, reappears at the terrible end. Four stars—maybe a bit crude, but powerful.
by Jeff Jones
The reading experience is undermined at the end by Amazing’s production values, or lack of them. The story stops on page 29 in the midst of a sentence with no “continued on” notice, and the reader is left to rummage through the magazine to find the rest of the text on page 138.
This Grand Carcass, by R.A. Lafferty
R.A. Lafferty’s This Grand Carcass is, typically, told in high Tall Tale mode, and it is also clearly a moral tale, though the precise moral may be a bit obscure. Mord comes to Juniper Tell offering to sell a device cheap that will allow Tell to “own the worlds.” So why is he selling it? He’s dying. Tell bites and is the new owner of Gahn, for Generalized Agenda Harmonizer Nucleus, which soon enough is outdoing and dominating all the other “general purpose machines.” Shortly, it is a full partner with Tell (in Tell and Gahn—get it?).
Before long, Tell, like Mord, is almost, er, gone, and Gahn (whose power inputs have been revealed as dummies) candidly admits: “I use you. I use human fuel. I establish symbiosis with you. I suck you out. I eat you up.” So Tell sells Gahn on to the next high-rolling sucker. Moral, did I say? Machines are the Devil? Anything that makes humans’ work too easy is damnation? Something along those lines, I’m sure. This is not one of Lafferty’s best; it is simultaneously obvious and vague and less deliciously absurd than Lafferty at his best. But it’s amusing enough, good for three stars.
In Ray Bradbury’s The Dwarf (Fantastic, January/February 1954), Mr. Bigelow, a dwarf, visits the carnival daily, forks over his dime at the Mirror Maze, and heads straight for the mirror that makes him look large. Aimee, a carnival worker, hangs out in the booth with ticket-seller Ralph when her business is slow. She is sympathetic to Mr. Bigelow’s plight. Ralph isn’t, and makes fun of him, and of her. Aimee discovers that Mr. Bigelow makes a living writing detective stories, which reveal his inner torments. Ralph plays a nasty trick on him, proving that Ralph is nasty, which we already knew.
by Sanford Kossln
Rather abruptly, end of story. Or is it? There’s no “Continued on . . .” at the end. As with Try Again, I rummaged through the magazine, but found no loose piece of the story. So I checked the original 1954 Fantastic . . . and there’s an entire page of text at the end that is omitted from this reprinted version.
No rating, since the full text doesn’t actually appear in the magazine. It’s not one of Bradbury’s better stories to my taste, but it’s a whole lot better complete than truncated. Sheesh.
The Traveling Crag, from the July 1951 Fantastic Adventures, is a silly confection by Theodore Sturgeon—a non-trivial category of his ouevre. On the other hand, silliness by Sturgeon is more palatable than that from less accomplished hands.
Cris is a literary agent with an assistant, Naome, who is obviously in love with him, though he is oblivious. Cris has received a story, The Traveling Crag, from an unknown, Sig Weiss, which “grabs you by the throat, shakes your bones, puts a heartbeat into your lymph ducts and finally slams you down, gasping, weak, and oh so happy,” and incidentally makes a lot of money fast. But Weiss sends no more stories. Cris visits to find out why, and the local storekeeper warns him, “Meanest bastard ever lived,” a judgment Weiss lives up to in the flesh.
by Lawrence (L. Sterne Stevens)
When Weiss finally submits another story at Cris’s urging, it begins: “Jets blasting, Bat Durston came screeching down through the atmosphere of Bbllzznaj, a tiny planet seven billion light-years from Sol.” This is the beginning of a notorious subscription ad that ran in Galaxy, headlined YOU’LL NEVER SEE IT IN GALAXY!, designed to distinguish Galaxy’s policy from that of lowbrow pulp magazines like . . . Fantastic Adventures and Amazing Stories. So to perpetrate this in-joke, Sturgeon must have convinced not only Galaxy editor H.L. Gold, but also Fantastic Adventures editor Howard Browne, to allow it.
But I digress. The point is that Weiss has turned in a bunch of crap, continuing his mean-bastard performance. Meanwhile, Cris meets Miss Tillie Moroney, who is offering a reward for an “authentic case of devil into saint,” and eventually tells him a story—“a science fiction plot”—about a humanoid race that has developed the ultimate weapon, one of which has apparently been lost on Earth for thousands of years. And she wants Cris to get Weiss to write another blockbuster story and then find out how and where he wrote it.
So Weiss produces another story that makes everyone cry, and Cris and Tillie head out to see him, but Naome the assistant contrives to get there first, and the ultimate weapon, a small object found after a rockslide, proves to have been the key to Weiss’s transformation, but it gets triggered, and one of Tillie’s blouse buttons emits communications from the humanoids, who explain to them all telepathically that the ultimate weapon was one that stops useless conflict, and now a reaction is propagating through the atmosphere to bring the weapon’s benefits to all the world (it’s science!), and by the way Naome has paired off with Weiss, and Nick with Tillie. “Outside, it was a greener world, and all over it the birds sang.”
It's all just Too Much, but rendered so smoothly as to disarm even the house misanthrope’s ire. Three stars for this feat of making fatuity charming.
He Who Shrank, by Henry Hasse
“Years, centuries, aeons, have fled past me in endless parade, leaving me unscathed, for I am deathless, and in all the universe alone of my kind. Universe? Strange how that convenient word leaps instantly to my mind from force of old habit. Universe? The merest expression of a puny idea in the minds of whose who cannot possibly conceive whereof they speak. The word is a mockery. Yet how glibly men utter it! How little do they realize the artificiality of the word!”
Yes! Rave on! Here is a fine specimen of the peak of cosmos-spanning rhetoric occasionally reached by early (pre-Campbell) SF, and what follows lives up to it in naïve grandeur. It is the first paragraph of He Who Shrank, by Henry Hasse, a novella from the August 1936 Amazing.
The plot is essentially that of The Man from the Atom run backwards. Atoms are solar systems and galaxies are molecules, and the Professor has devised a substance (called Shrinx!) that will reduce humans to subatomic dimensions so they can explore the sub-universes. When his unnamed assistant is unenthusiastic about making this one-way trip, the Prof stabs hin with the needle. As he shrinks, the Prof drops him onto a block of Rehyllium-X (sic!), where he descends into a microscopic scratch on its surface and is chased around by a germ, fearsomely portrayed by illustrator Morey.
by Leo Morey
Soon enough, our hero finds himself surrounded by luminous masses—nebulae!—and then, as he shrinks further, stars and planets. He alights on one occupied by gaseous intelligences, shrinks further to a planet of cave-dwellers, and then (in a powerful passage) to a planet of machines gone out of control. Their birdlike creators have fled to the world’s moon, as their mechanical heirs maniacally tear down the remains of their civilization and remake the world closer to their circuits’ desire.
Our hero continues downward, or smallward, through universes he cannot bring himself to recount except in the most summary form (“Suns dying . . . planets cold and dark and airless . . . last vestiges of once proud races struggling for a few more years of sustenance . . . [etc.]”) But then . . . he is mysteriously attracted to a tiny, distant spark of yellow, which on approach proves to be circled by planets including a tiny blue one that twinkles invitingly, so he approaches, descends, and finds himself in . . . Cleveland!
Well, actually, he lands in Lake Erie, flooding much of Cleveland as well as nearby Toledo. Upon attaining dry land, he is accosted by aircraft shooting at him, which he finds annoying. He is bundled into a vehicle and taken to Cleveland, to a building where scientists assemble to interrogate him, but are unable to understand his thoughts, though he can read theirs. He is not impressed by them, or humanity. He escapes and flees into the countryside, where he is drawn to an isolated house occupied by a writer, of science fiction of course, who is sufficiently enlightened to be capable of receiving his thought, and to whom the shrinking man tells his tale before continuing his apparently endless and by now wearisome voyage.
In one sense this is an odd story for Amazing to reprint, since it appeared in the 1946 anthology Adventures and Time and Space, edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas—one of the oldest stories in the book, and the only one from Amazing. That book is so well known that stories included in it are much more likely to be familiar to current Amazing readers than most of Sol Cohen’s other reprints. I read that anthology when I was a kid and wondered what this old-fashioned story based on scientific nonsense was doing in the company of Heinlein, Asimov, et al. But I’m younger than that now and can better appreciate its hokey majesty. Four stars, allowing for its age.
Henry Hasse (b. 1913) began publishing SF in 1933; this is his third published story. Aside from it, he is best known for collaborating with Ray Bradbury on a few minor early stories. None of his other work, which has appeared sporadically over the decades, has garnered the recognition that this story has.
One side note: This story presents a very early occurrence of what later was named Tuckerization, after its heavy use by Wilson Tucker: giving fictional characters the names of real members of the SF community. The Cleveland writer to whom the shrinking man tells his story is named Stanton Cobb Lentz, obviously a reference to Stanton A. Coblentz, a prolific SF writer mainly of the late ‘20s and ‘30s, whose work is nowadays most charitably described as quaint.
In Richard Matheson’s The Last Day (Amazing, April/May 1953), the Sun is about to destroy Earth (it’s swollen and red and much too hot). Protagonist wakes up after the last night, which he and friends have spent in drunken, lustful, and/or senselessly destructive pursuits. He decides this approach to the end is unsatisfactory, and after wrestling with his conscience reluctantly heads to his parents’ house (shooting an attacker en route). He has avoided this visit for years because of his mother’s excessive piety. But on this final hot day, she’s cool, and they hang out waiting for the end. The editor blurbs: “Waxing philosophical is like waxing a floor; it is powerful easy to fall on your face while trying it.” Matheson does not. Four stars, mainly for keeping just on the right side of bathos as he renders the conventional sentiments.
Science of Man: War Is Peace, by Leon E. Stover
Leon E. Stover is back with another of his “Science of Man” articles, War Is Peace, written in his usual dogmatic style. He takes on the likes of Konrad Lorenz (of On Aggression), arguing that aggression is not a mode of behavior that we must sublimate or otherwise redirect, but a goal-directed extension of human social organization. He says: “The ethologists have nothing to offer that can improve on what Karl von Clauswitz said of war in the 19th century: that it is an extension of politics carried on by different means.” And he concludes: “There is no magic solution to be found in animal behavior studies, psychology, or biology. Do not be misled. The only solution is better politics. But we have to know that to want it.” Well, maybe—he has no suggestions for how we get there in practice. But Stover recounts much entertaining anthropological lore along the way.
Three stars.
Summing Up
Well, that wasn’t bad at all. The new material is lively and interesting, and even the reprints are all readable or better, with nothing grossly stupid or incompetent. Admittedly, that shouldn’t be the standard, but in Sol Cohen-world it does make a difference. This issue is a magazine that one might actually purchase for enjoyment and not as a duty, a change not to be sneezed at. Can it continue?
[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 episode begins with Kirk acting strangely, and everyone on the Enterprise has noticed. He is snappish, angry, arbitrary; he gives orders that defy Federation law and threatens people who argue with him.
His crew is loyal; they have been through many hardships together—so when he orders them into the Romulan Zone, they obey, although they are obviously nervous.
The Captain's orders are final
They are, of course, discovered, surrounded by Romulan vessels of a new, Klingon design. Kirk and Spock are compelled to beam aboard the Romulan ship to discuss matters, in exchange for two Romulan prisoners sent to the Enterprise. Kirk insists their location is a matter of instrument error: by the time they discovered the mistake, they were too deep in Romulan territory to get away quickly. The Romulan Commander (the first woman flag officer we have met in the show) says that sounds like—well, she doesn't call it the produce of a hind end of a male cow, because she is being politely formal, and this is a television show for families (and the Romulans may not have cattle), but she obviously indicates that it sounds implausible to her.
Color her unconvinced
Spock… confirms her opinion. Says the captain has been irrational recently. That he ordered them past the Neutral Zone. Kirk gets angry and threatens him, and is removed to the Romulan brig. Later, he injures himself enough that they call McCoy to attend him, and he attacks Spock. Spock defends himself with the "Vulcan death grip," an attack we haven't seen before, that looks surprisingly similar to the mind-meld grip.
The closer Jim gets, the worse he looks…
The Romulans send the captain's body back to his ship while the Romulan Commander attempts to convince Spock that he'd be much happier in the Romulan empire.
Have we seen this before?
McCoy revives Kirk. (I wonder if anyone actually thought Kirk died.) Kirk tells a select few people that his supposed insanity was a ruse, a form of dodging accountability in case they were captured. This is an undercover mission.
The interesting part of the episode, for me, is the Romulan Commander's discussions with Spock. She attempts to seduce him in multiple ways, first laying out how much more power he'd have in the Romulan empire, and when Spock says he does not want command of a ship, she switches tactics. She offers him fine Vulcan food, which he admits is better than what's on the Enterprise. Pours him drinks—first a clear blue-green liquid, and later something orange, served in small glasses like liquor. Spock eats tiny food on toothpicks, and relaxes with her.
She puts herself into the bargain: "Romulan women are not like Vulcan females; they're not… dedicated to pure logic." She drapes herself enticingly, making sure he knows what she's offering. She whispers her name in his ear, and he tells her it's beautiful.
Oiling her traps
At each point, he makes appreciative comments, tells her that the offer is indeed a good one. That he can tell he'd have more power, more freedom, more creature comforts in the Romulan empire.
Eventually, he agrees to her terms: he will lead a small party of Romulans aboard the Enterprise, and from there order the ship to surrender at a Romulan port, her flagship at its side.
It doesn't matter what the terms are. He's lying. He's obviously lying—at least, it's obvious to anyone who knows him. Maybe outsiders who think Vulcans are actually emotionless would believe that Spock agreeing that the food is good means he's content to betray his heritage and his captain and wander off to a government with helmets designed to cover pointed ears.
Predictable but not boring
Instead, it turns out Spock was stalling for time so Kirk could sneak back to the Romulan ship in disguise and grab the new cloaking device. Scotty then has to install and use it before the Romulans get their phasers online—of course there's a deadline. But if we didn't believe Spock used a death grip on Kirk, we weren't going to believe the Romulans would succeed in blowing up the Enterprise. We wonder how they will escape, but not whether.
We could see the Commander convincing herself that her seduction was working—and we could also see Spock watching her reactions, feeding her facts that would convince her that he agreed, without actually admitting to being moved by her offer. Since he's a Vulcan, she doesn't expect him to offer an emotional reaction—and she fails to notice that not only is his enthusiasm lacking, so is any admission that he's actually been persuaded.
He says that the food is better than what the Enterprise has—he doesn't say that he'd leave his position for it. "Please give up your career; we have better snacks" is not going to work on anyone who actually likes their job.
Four stars. I loved the nuanced interactions between them, and I could tell something was off about Kirk but wasn't sure what until McCoy revived him.
Rewriting the present
by Gideon Marcus
Somewhere in North Korea, 83 American sailors and officers are interned, their captain occasionally forced to make confessions as to why his spy ship, the U.S.S. Pueblo, was inside Communist waters in January of this year. I'm sure you all remember the news—air units were redeployed from Vietnam to Japan, the U.S.S. Enterprise (the aircraft carrier, not Kirk's ship) was stationed off the North Korean coast, and there were rumbles of an impending World War 3. Indeed, if it hadn't been for the North Vietnamese launching their Tet holidays offensive at the end of January, shifting our focus, who knows where things might have ended up?
With The Enterprise Incident, the metaphor couldn't be more blatant. The Romulans have been remolded. Gone are the Kriegsmarine/Roman hybrids that populated "Balance of Terror". Now they are cloaked in Orientalism, down to the little sideburns Joanne Linville sports, with their smooth speech reminiscent of every movie that features a sinister Red Chinese or Korean. Vina's exotic theme from "The Cage" has been reworked for the Romulan Commander (effectively, I might add). The defense-minded Romulans, who showed no interest in capturing the Enterprise when it violated the Neutral zone in "The Deadly Years", suddenly want nothing more than the prize of one of Star Fleet's finest vessels, a greed that proves their undoing.
And so, the American public gets to have its cake and eat it, too. The Romulan Commander has the right of it when she accuses Kirk of entering Romulan space on a Federation-sanctioned espionage mission to get the cloaking device. Yet, thanks to a series of Mission: Impossible-style exploits, the "good guys" get away with not only bearding the lion, but stealing the lioness. Rah, rah. We win.
For ease of maintenance, you can't beat the easy-to-remove Cloaking Device!
This episode is only the latest in what has become a kind of motif. Earlier this year, John Wayne's "The Green Berets" (the movie that took Sulu away from us for much of Trek's second season) turned Vietnam into World War 2, complete with a platoon with soldiers named Muldoon and Kowalski—and precious few black troops. David Janssen, no longer a fugitive, plays a jaded reporter, who comes to learn the value of the American presence in Southeast Asia. And so, contrary to any news you might have read this year, we win the war in Vietnam.
And just last month, the movie Anzio came out, detailing that SNAFU of a landing on the Italian coast in January 1944. Robert Mitchum plays…a jaded reporter, who comes to learn the pointlessness of the American presence in southern Europe. Thus, the anti-war movement comes to World War 2.
Mind you, "The Enterprise Incident" is better than either of those two movies. It's superlatively paced, the dialogue crackles, the chemistry between Nimoy and Linville is palpable, and Shatner makes a convincing Romulan. I'm even getting used to Scotty's new hairdo. But the flag-waving has not been so blatant since "The Omega Glory". Juxtaposed with the nauseating Nixon ad that aired halfway through, lambasting American policy in Vietnam and promising "peace with honor", the episode just didn't sit well with me.
Four stars. Just have your Maalox tablets handy.
The Lady IS the Tiger
by Janice L. Newman
I’ll admit, when I watched The Enterprise Incident the other night, at first I was frustrated by the behavior of the Romulan Commander. But upon watching the tape we made of the episode with our trusty “Videocorder”, my feelings changed.
Women have an interesting, inconsistent place in the Star Trek universe. Sometimes they are slaves or seemingly exist only to titillate the male characters, like Shahna or Kara (the dancer from “Wolf in the Fold”). Sometimes they have positions of power and importance, like Uhura, Commissioner Nancy Hedford, or Sylvia. Yet even the women in the latter group often give up their position or power when tempted by romantic love. I originally thought the Romulan Commander fell into this same trap, but upon re-watching the episode, I realized I was wrong.
The Romulan Commander is doing her job.
These boots are made for commanding
When the Enterprise flew into the neutral zone, what a plum it must have seemed had fallen into their lap. After the ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ response from “The Deadly Years”, perhaps the Romulans re-evaluated their policy for when a ship like the Enterprise strayed into their territory. Or perhaps this particular commander was just especially ambitious. Regardless, rather than immediately blowing up the ship, she looked for a way to capture it and its wealth of intelligence. Knowing that the crew would surely self-destruct rather than let themselves be taken, she sought a crack in their armor that she could exploit.
Her interest in Spock thus becomes a rational, considered strategy rather than that of a woman letting her heart overrule her mind. She is believably attracted to him, but she is also doing her duty. If she can ‘turn’ Spock, and if he then orders the crew to surrender rather than self-destructing, not only will she win the starship, but the cooperation of a high-ranking Starfleet officer.
Perhaps her reach exceeds her grasp. Perhaps she is too greedy. With the benefit of hindsight and inside knowledge of Kirk’s and Spock’s personalities, it’s easy to be judgemental and say, “She should have just blown up the ship,” or “She should have known better.” But these are still better than, “She should have been thinking with her head rather than her heart.”
When her actions are viewed as those of an ambitious Romulan Commander who wants to get ahead and who is loyal to her people, they make perfect sense. After all, how many times has Captain Kirk used seduction to manipulate women and get what he wants? Can we blame the Romulan Commander for taking a gamble and trying the same? She may have lost, but I can’t help but respect her for trying.
I also appreciated Spock’s acknowledgement that no other outcome was possible, because she would not have truly respected him if he’d made such a choice. No matter how attracted to him she might have been, in the end she would merely have been using him, and they both know it. If there were any doubts that she was seducing him for political more than personal reasons, this line lays them to rest.
Three and a half stars.
The bounty
by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele
Two officers beam onto a ship. The captain is confident and capable, skilled at manipulation, and fools even the audience. One provides a distraction and the other collects a valuable asset in a dangerous gamble.
No, I don't mean Kirk stealing the cloaking device.
It was a neat trick and one that allowed the Enterprise to escape without a trace, but I would argue that it was not the actual mission goal, or at least, not the only mission goal. As Kirk and Spock went up against the Commander – who could serve as the Romulan answer to Captain Kirk – this was yet another layer of the ruse. Romulan technology is advanced, but what is more powerful? Knowledge.
It was only in "Balance of Terror" that Romulans were even seen for the first time in a century. Additionally, Starfleet intelligence had already told some of the Bridge crew that Romulans were now using Klingon ship design. Between a cloaking device and the weapons capability to obliterate entire outposts, why switch to a design that the Fleet is not only more familiar with but has dealt with more often? The Enterprise could be destroyed before they ever make contact with a ship past the Neutral Zone. An alliance with the Klingons could change the terms of the Organian peace treaty. Klingon/Federation battles may not be possible but bringing in allies might circumnavigate the way the Organians neutralized fighting capabilities. Finding a way to disrupt a power consolidation such as that seems a far more compelling reason to risk losing the Enterprise or potentially igniting a new conflict with the Romulans.
Spock obtains the real prize of the expedition
With Kirk "dead" and the more immediate threat "discovered", Spock was free to act. He and the Commander shared cultural information, confirming aspects of what the species knew of each other. He also had time to observe Romulan command structure, the quarters of the Commander, and possibly even collect information from her mind. This would be a gamble, as they share distant ancestry and Spock can be vulnerable when connecting with another mind, but not inherently riskier than the plan for Kirk.
Whether they escape with the cloaking device or intelligence, Starfleet gains something to use.
5 stars
Mission: Possible
by Joe Reid
In his letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul says, “…I am made all things to all men, that I by all means save some.” This episode, “The Enterprise Incident”, epitomized becoming many things to a varied audience. This episode skillfully blended multiple themes and genres into a cohesive quilt that when looked at from a distance you realize isn’t a quilt at all. It is a beautiful tapestry, a singular thing that through different sets of eyes will reveal itself differently.
In the past I complained about episodes that attempted to do too many things in one airing: “The Gamesters of Triskelion” comes to mind. The different themes in that episode were not blended, to the point of being jarring. “The Enterprise Incident” presents a military thriller, a heist story, a secret agent tale, a romance, and a science fiction story all rolled into one. This unified, multifaceted story is not the only reason that I loved this episode. Here are some other reasons:
It didn’t go out of the way to tell the audience what was happening. The events told the story. There was no long explanation from Captain Kirk as to what was happening. We were given no reason why Romulans were flying Klingon ships. There was no discussion as to why the commander of the Romulans was female and whether that was common. The audience was given no revelation as to whether or not Romulan commander had feelings for Spock or if she was simply tricking him. In this episode things were what they were, and it was up to the audience to make sense of the event for themselves. An intelligent tale for intelligent viewers.
Even Subcommander Tal is impressed
Another reason to love this episode is because of the amount of respect that was given to the Romulans. There were not overtly evil, mustache twirling, or stupid enemies in this episode. The Romulans made no logical missteps in the episode. Their actions were based on information that they verified. The Romulan commander didn’t take it for granted that Kirk lost his sanity, she allowed the information to be verified by both Spock and Bones before believing it. The Romulans monitored transmissions from their own ship and acted when they discovered alien/human signals. They remained vigilant and intelligent in every scene. Spock and the others didn’t defeat the Romulans, they simply outmaneuvered them by being slightly more clever in the way they responded to the information that each person had at the time. Outside of Kirk faking his death, no one was even killed in this episode, which for Star Trek is rare.
Seeing what came before it, I would have thought it impossible for Star Trek to tell a unique and novel multifaceted story, representing so many things to so many people, without speaking down to the audience. I’m happy to say that they successfully completed the mission in more ways than one. For that I am grateful.
Around the turn of the century, the British in Egypt set out to regulate the flooding of the Nile by building a dam at Aswan, near the First Cataract, a little under 150 miles north of what is today the border between Egypt and Sudan. They limited the height of the dam in order to prevent the submergence of the island of Philae and the many monuments there, but still raised the height twice by the mid-1930s. The reservoir nearly overflowed the top in 1946, and it became increasingly clear that the dam’s storage capabilities were insufficient for modern Egypt.
King Farouk favored the construction of dams in Sudan and Ethiopia, where cooler temperatures would mean less loss of water due to evaporation, but when he was overthrown, the new government under Nasser preferred a larger dam at Aswan under Egyptian control. One of the reasons for the nationalization of the Suez Canal was that shipping fees would pay for the new dam. The change in plans alarmed archaeologists, who pointed out that the entirety of the ancient province of Nubia would be flooded, inundating numerous ancient monuments and sites. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan appealed to UNESCO for help, and thus was born the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia.
The most impressive of the monuments to be rescued are the temples of Abu Simbel, built by Ramses II in the mid-13th century B.C. to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. Best known is the Great Temple, dedicated to Amun, Ra-Horakty, Ptah and the deified Ramses himself. The entrance is flanked by four statues of the pharaoh, each over 65 feet tall. Nearby is a temple dedicated to Hathor and Ramses’ favorite wife Nefertari.
Ramses gets a face lift.
But how do you rescue something like that? A freestanding temple can be taken apart stone by stone and rebuilt elsewhere. This was done with the temple of Kalabsha, in work funded and supervised by West Germany. The Ramesseum was carved into sandstone cliffs. One suggestion was to build a clear freshwater dam around the temples and create underwater viewing chambers. Instead, an international team of archaeologists, engineers, and heavy construction experts have spent the last four years carefully carving the entire site into enormous blocks with an average weight of 20 tons and moving the whole thing to a new site some 650 feet back from the Nile and over 200 feet higher. The work is finished, and on September 22nd the reconstructed Ramesseum was opened to the public. Let’s hope that the many other rescue projects are just as successful.
Optimists and pessimists
This has been a rough year all around the world, and so it’s natural to turn to our entertainment to make us feel better. Unfortunately, the trend in science fiction seems to be toward unhappy endings, and this month’s IF seems to lean more to the pessimistic side. It also takes us to Ancient Egypt in the far future.
Regular readers of the big American SF magazines will be familiar with Mack Reynolds’ People’s Capitalism, in which every citizen is granted Inalienable Basic shares that pay dividends that are enough to live off, while the more ambitious can earn Variable Basic shares and move up in the world. Meanwhile, the Universal Credit Card serves all economic and identification functions. All of that is made possible by a massive computerized data bank. What if a hostile power could tap into that data bank, or worse yet change or erase the data?
Action in the subway of abandoned Manhattan. Art by Gaughan
This first half of Reynolds’ new novel is delivered mostly in the form of lectures telling the protagonist things he already knows. Reynolds can usually make this sort of thing interesting, but normally he doesn’t rely on pages of dialogue for his exposition. Much of it seems to be based on Vance Packard’s The Naked Society from a few years ago, which he explicitly mentions. This is interspersed with a couple of action scenes, one of which is overly detailed to the point of being interesting only to practitioners of karate, and the other is largely taken from the recent Among the Bad Baboons. All in all, not Reynolds’ best work, but I don’t see how the second half can be anything but story, so the whole thing should be better.
A low three stars.
If… and When, by Lester del Rey
This month, del Rey delves into the science of ecology, which studies the interrelationships of living things and their environment. It’s the sort of thing that will be crucial in establishing a colony on another planet, but it’s rarely dealt with in science fiction, except as an occasional aside. It’s also sadly neglected in the real world, though that’s beginning to change. There’s a lot here for SF writers to explore.
Four stars.
Creatures of Light, by Roger Zelazny
Sometime in the distant future, all of humanity lies between the poles of the House of Life, ruled over by Osiris, and the House of Death, ruled over by Anubis. Now, an old threat is returning from outside, and various factions must take steps to stop it.
Anubis and Osiris determine the fates of humanity. Art by P. Reiber
The obvious comparison here is to Zelazny’s Lord of Light, though the “gods” here make the spacemen pretending to be the Hindu gods look like apemen banging rocks together. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote in a letter to Science earlier this year, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It’s all very Zelazny in terms of style and construction. However, there’s no actual story here; it’s just the author introducing various characters and establishing the conflict.
It says on the cover that this is an excerpt from an upcoming novel. That’s enough to save its rating, but the Lord of Light excerpts that ran in F&SF were much more successful as stand-alone pieces. I’m probably interested in seeing the whole thing, but something with a bit more of a traditional structure (if possible) would have been better.
Everyone is familiar with those times when you set out to get a lot done, and suddenly it’s the end of the day and you’ve accomplished next to nothing. That happens to writer George Belk every day until his agent puts him in touch with someone who can help.
I suspect Schmitz was inspired by a couple of days like those George describes. It’s a cute story, but it doesn’t play to any of the author’s strengths, especially his ability to create characters.
Three stars.
Now That Man Is Gone, by James Blish
The Waw has been nine years old for over 2,000 years. Humanity has been extinct for 1,994 years. The aliens who care for him call him the Waw, because he is the Next-to-Last, but there is no sign of the Ya. Until now.
Art uncredited
This is the most optimistic story in the issue, which seems odd coming from Blish, though it is tinged with melancholy as well. It’s also the inverse of a concept that forms the core of many Ray Bradbury stories. Nice enough, but nothing special.
Three stars.
Wizard Ship, by F. Haines Price
Primitive tribesman Hin bravely boards a ship of the gods which has descended from the sky. He soon figures out that the gods are mere mortals who plan to sell him into slavery. The three unscrupulous spacers aboard also don’t realize that primitive isn’t the same as stupid.
Price is this month’s new author, and it shows in his writing. The story is too long, and the darkly ironic ending isn’t worth the trip.
A low two stars.
Bookmobile, by Charles L. Harness
A report from an alien librarian describes how humanity lost the ability to read thanks to everything moving to audio.
What an incredibly stupid story; nothing about it makes any sense. It ignores the fate of the deaf when everything is spoken and nothing is written, which is odd considering a key point is that the librarian can’t hear. I’m also not sure how you look things up when it’s all audio. Harness is an attorney, you’d think he would find that important.
One star, because it makes me angry every time I think about it.
The Perfect Secretary, by Mike Kirsch
On the day Albert Willis opens his new business, a strange man offers him a free trial of an automatic secretary. It can write articles and letters, retrieve reference materials from a host of locations, and pretty much do his job for him. It’s rather more than he or its makers suspect.
Willis is presented with his new secretary. Art by Wallace Wood
An awful story about awful people being awful. And it comes with another dark ending. Kirsch seems to be another new author, though maybe he’s sold things in other genres. The writing is decent enough, but all the characters are horrible.
Two stars.
Summing up
That’s another month of IF in the bag. There sure are a lot of familiar authors here not putting their best foot forward. And Zelazny’s piece really deserves a grade of Incomplete. There’s not even enough there to tell us what the rest is going to be like. Add in all the attempts at being dark and gritty, and the whole thing’s rather unsatisfying. At least the serials are back.
Science fiction from A(simov) to Z(elazny). That Zelazny piece might be another part of the new novel.
Last week, the Soviets produced their latest space spectacular, potentially leaving America in the dust again. Zond 5, launched September 14, was sent around the moon, returning safely to Earth on the 22nd.
It's tempting to say, "What's the big deal," right? We've sent probes to the moon, too, and the Russkies have orbited lunar satellites and soft-landed spacecraft. What's special about Zond? Well, it's suspected that "Zond", a monicker usually reserved for interplanetary spacecraft, is really a lunar-adapted Soyuz. That means the Communists have completed a successful, robotic dry run for a human mission to the moon. We haven't even launched our first manned Apollo yet!
So we're in something of a race. Apollo 7 will go up in a couple of weeks, testing the spacecraft for an endurance run in Earth orbit. Apollo 8 is due to be a circumlunar shot, to be launched near the end of the year. That's the one to beat: if the Soviets make that journey before us, that'll be a feather in their cap.
That said, while our program was delayed 20 months due to the tragedy of Apollo 1 last year, the Soviet lunar program has undergone some setbacks, too. Most notably, their Saturn equivalent appears to be having teething troubles. While they might be able to send a Soyuz around the moon with their current rockets, landing cosmonauts will require a beefier launch system. Our Saturn is already man-rated.
If I were a betting man, I'd give the odds of the Soviets beating us around the moon at around 50/50. But as for landing on the moon, which is still planned for some time next year, I think we're still favored to win that one.
The medicine
This month's issue of Analog starts off extremely well. Savor the taste of the opening piece, as it's what will sustain you through the rest…
Trevelyan is the agent of an arcane, galaxy-wide service. Most of the such agents are employed for scouting, search and rescue, and mediation services. This time, Trevelyan is on a mission of crime prevention. His suspect: Murdoch Juan and his partner, Faustina. Ostensibly, they aim to set up pre-made colonies on the marginal world of Good Luck, offering transport and homes to settlers at a bargain. Trevelyan knows such endeavors are never profitable, and he suspects a shady angle.
by Kelly Freas
Such concerns are confirmed when he and his alien shipmate, Smokesmith, discover Murdoch's true target: a once-inhabited world, seared with abated radiation, abounding in empty cities ripe for occupation. But is that what the dead race would have wanted?
Poul Anderson's writing ranges from turgid to sublime. This piece is much closer to the latter end of the scale, and it benefits from lacking the author's typical linguistic tics. In addition to being a good read and an excellent depiction of a true alien race, I appreciate the moral questions raised and the conservationist attitude expressed. This would be good required reading for any apprentice building contractor or would-be Schliemann.
The galactic aliens have returned. Last time, they brought three gifts to revolutionize our food production, our computers, and our birth control—and leave us completely at their mercy. This time, Earth is being a bit more circumspect. Rather than accepting the ambassadors with open arms, a buck 2nd Lieutenant is dispatched to treat with them—with absolutely no briefing at all, but with a set of instructions designed to terrify and befuddle the extraterrestrials.
I often joke that every Chris Anvil story begins with [Military rank] [Name] [present participle verb], and this is no exception. I also, less jokingly, note that Chris Anvil's stories for Analog tend to be smug, stupid affairs. Thus, I was surprised to find I didn't hate this piece. It is somewhat smug, and the latter half is all explanation, but the premise is kind of interesting.
Right on the 2/3 border. I'll be generous and say three stars.
Taking the Lid Off, by William T. Powers
The "lid" in this science article refers to Earth's atmosphere, which prevents us from seeing the universe in most of the interesting wavelengths like X-ray and infrared. Powers, who wrote a terrific article on measuring charged particles last year, offers up a less impressive, but serviceable piece on lunar and orbital telescopes. It's just a bit less coherent than his last article, and with fewer revelations, although I did appreciate his explanation of using gravity gradients to stabilize satellites.
Three stars.
The Steiger Effect, by Betsy Curtis
by Leo Summers
Human merchants arrive at a planet that views internal combustion as a kind of witchcraft. Nevertheless, they buy our engines when they are demonstrated to work. But the engines all mysteriously conk out when humans reach a certain distance away. Turns out they—and all internal combustion engines, everywhere—run on psi energy, and always have. 'Humans secretly have psi powers and don't know it' certainly sounds like a plot tailor-made for Campbell, doesn't it?
Never mind that the premise makes no sense; the division of the (otherwise completely humanoid) alien society into "Men" (those who do with their minds) and "Boys" (those who do with their brawn) hews too close to a metaphor of antebellum days in the American South for comfort.
One star.
Underground, by Lawrence A. Perkins
by Kelly Freas
A senator is kidnapped by a Latin American insurgency that plans to harness earthquakes to topple their oppressive dictator [a plot reminiscent of the Doctor Who episode "Enemy of the World" -Ed].
This piece reads like one of those Ted Thomas mini science articles from F&SF turned into a story, except there's no real story—just a lot of show and tell.
Last installment, we learned that the colony of Nandy-Cline was about to be invaded by the rapacious Parahuans. The only thing holding them back was the concern that humanity was led by a shadow cabal of "Tuvela", a subrace of genetic supermen. Now, the security of the world lies in the hands of the youthful Dr. Nile Etland, who must convince the Parahuan that she is one of the mythical Tuvela. Luckily, she has a quartet of sapient otters as wingmen…
This is a frustrating novel. The premise is excellent, and Schmitz is one of SF's few authors who lets women be heroes. What keeps this book at the three-star level for me is the lack of characterization. I have a vague idea of who Ticos Cay is, the two-hundred year old man who we meet as a prisoner of the Parahuan. I even kind of know the various Parahuan. But Etland is a cipher, utterly uninteresting as a person. She goes through her James Bond maneuvers with competence and a few jitters, but with precious little demonstration of a soul.
My nephew enjoyed this serial a lot. It is creative, and the biology of the world well realized. If only I could say the same for Nile Etland.
The worthy stuff would fill two magazines, which would be an impressive amount if it hadn't taken seven publications to produce it. Women penetrated the magazines pretty well this month, but their lack of pieces in Worlds of Fantasy and The Farthest Reaches brought the aggregate percentage down to 11%.
And so, with science fiction as with science fact, we find ourselves in a bit of a holding pattern, awaiting what's to come next month. But whether it's the Soviets or the Americans, Campbell or Ferman, someone will entertain us.
And that's worth being ready for!
[Stop Press: Mark just got his reviews of this month's New Worlds to me. It's too late to run an article, so we'll be doubling up next month. For the sake of statistics, however, the magazine raises the amount of worthy material slightly, and it reduces feminine participation in SF magazine prose for October 1968 to 10%. Stay tuned…]
So far, 1968 has been an exemplary year for science fiction films. Filmgoers have had a chance to watch psychedelic, universe-spanning science fiction with 2001: A Space Odyssey and adventure science fiction with Planet of the Apes and buxom science fiction with Barbarella. And now we have down-to-earth, humanistic – and surreal – science fiction with the new film Charly.
Cliff Robertson stars in the new film version of the already-classic Daniel Keyes novel, which Victoria Lucas gave five stars to back in ’66. And while this film isn’t nearly as good as the novel, Charly still is a clever movie, somehow both a real change-of-pace and a film very much of its moment.
(If you’re confused by that contradiction, dear reader, stick around and I’ll explain myself to you.)
As we come to know him, Charlie Gordon (as the book names him; the movie calls our lead character Charly) is a man with the mind of a small child. He’s mentally impaired, with a low IQ, a childlike take on the world, and a temper to match his frustrations. When Charly is offered the opportunity to become the subject of an experiment to give him super-intelligence, he jumps at the chance. But Charly soon discovers how brilliance and happiness don’t always go hand in hand, and his new intelligence just makes him feel deep angst.
Victoria loved the book for its unique epistemological structure and the way writer Keyes gives the reader deeper insights into Charly’s perceptions of the events which happen to him. That subjective nature gave the book a certain amount of pathos which makes the novel embed itself into readers' minds.
Of course, no film can simulate the effect of a series of journal entries, so we are forced to get by with the events which play out on the screen.
Robertson in this film feels like Fredric March starring in a kind of odd version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this case dumb Charly is a kind of monstrous identity. Not because of his low IQ, but more because dumb Charly acts weirdly. He feels like someone we don’t quite comprehend because he’s so different from most of us.
Robertson method-acts and method-acts all throughout this film, seeming to inhabit Charly’s body and mind. When he has a low IQ, he seems twitchy and odd, a man distorted and damaged by his impairment. It’s a grand, actorly performance, a transformation on the screen, but somehow I just never connected to Charly's humanity. It feels a bit much. For instance, Charly acts kind of jolly when his coworkers at a bakery play a nasty prank on him, and Charly's penmanship feels a bit like gilding the rose on his disabilities.
The prank-playing bakery coworkers
There are some quite moving scenes, though. One which really stands out happens when Charly attends a class with other severely disabled people. He's the only adult in a room full of children with Down's Syndrome and other disorders. The kids are filmed realistically and respectfully while Charly comes across as a real freak. This wonderful sequence gives the character some real pathos, an undercurrent of sadness which helps to explain his transformation.
Charly playing with kids
Robertson delivers the kind of performance which feels like it’s specifically planned to garner its actor an Oscar nomination. There’s nothing really wrong with aiming for a precious golden statuette, but his performance does seem a bit calculated somehow. I felt like Robertson seemed too smart for the dumb Charly, planned out rather than spontaneous, considered rather than active in his scenes.
The best parts of this film are when Charly is transitioning to becoming smart. He hides out from people, seems to be really beginning to think through his experience, and we can actually see signs of emerging intelligence in these scenes.
As you might imagine, this sequence is where Robertson's calculated performance shines. Here we see the intelligence at work and feel we are watching a real person as Charly figures out how to live in his new experiences.
And then the movie takes a decided turn for the weird when Charly actually does become smart. At first he seems happy to be able to both lead seminars and be the lead subject them. His newfound genius brings intellectual intelligence but not emotional maturity nor insights into the world around him. Charly learns he may have actually been happier when he was innocent about everything which happened around him.
Charly begins to become paranoid, and his paranoia plays out in a series of increasing surreal sequences in which he imagines himself leading a motorcycle gang, endlessly professing love for his psychologist Alice (well played by Claire Bloom), and some oddly brilliant split-screen effects.
Charly even includes an undercurrent of paranoia in Charly's actions, as if he's being watched as part of a government conspiracy. Of course, he may actually be surveilled but we only see the paranoia from Charly's viewpoint, never from an objective viewpoint which might actually provide context for Charly's actions.
We even get a double-exposure shot in which director Ralph Nelson shows Charly running away from his old self, a very over-the-top bit which unfortunately made me laugh. This surrealism is just a bit too much for the narrative structure Nelson has set up in the first half and the movie threatens at times to teeter and fall under the weight of his ambitions.
I do have to mention the excellent soundtrack by Ravi Shankar. The music in this film feels both exotic and comfortable, a fascinating mix of west and east which helps to elevate this film, and certainly gives the soundtrack a very contemporary feel.
Charly is a fairly conventional film in its first half and a determinedly surreal film in its second half. Nelson seems up to the task in the first half but pretty much falls on his face in the second. It's somewhat worth watching for Cliff Robertson's interesting performance. I think his performance will be discussed come Oscar season. And though I only kind of liked this movie, it would be fun to see an Oscar won by a lead actor in a science fiction movie.
[Star Trek is back for its third season! Accordingly, we've devoted a great many inches to this rather uneven debut….]
by Janice L. Newman
This week we gathered all our friends together to start off a new season of Star Trek. We served dinner, then put our little portable color set outside and everyone enjoyed the lovely late summer night.
Well, everyone except me, that is. I was stuck inside with a VERY nasty cold that, oddly enough, no one else wanted to share with me. It made watching Spock’s Brain a lonely experience, but it did give me space to focus on the episode without being distracted by gasps, groans, or laughter—except my own, that is.
With the recent threats of cancelation and huge fan response, I expected NBC to put their best foot forward starting the new season. For Season 2 they knocked it out of the park with Amok Time. Could they do it again?
In a word, no.
Spock’s Brain had a lot of good elements. The set up was interesting, if fairly typical by now. An unknown alien vessel confronts the Enterprise. An alien woman appears on the bridge and knocks everyone out with a gadget worn on her wrist. When the crew awakens again, they are horrified to discover that Spock is missing. Then, in a twist I could not have predicted, they find that Spock’s body is in Sick Bay, but his brain has been carefully removed!
Kirk's brain doesn't pass muster…
Somehow Spock’s “incredible Vulcan physique” (McCoy’s words, not mine) allows him to survive without a brain until McCoy can get him on futuristic life support. However, they must get back Spock’s brain within 24 hours, McCoy tells Kirk, or they won’t be able to reconnect it.
Kirk, furious and terrified, orders the navigator to follow the trail of the other ship. When it dead ends in a known system, they must determine which of the three planets has Spock’s brain. Playing a hunch that the audience knows will be correct, Kirk chooses the one that seems the least likely.
The surface of the world is cold and barren, populated by all-male tribes of primitive humans. Beneath the ground, women live in luxury and comfort. But both groups are strangely childlike. Neither understand what Kirk wants when he demands “Spock’s Brain”.
The away team consists of Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Mr. Spock—or rather, his body, controlled remotely by McCoy with a little gadget. He is even more inexpressive than usual, and little ticking sounds are heard whenever he moves. If it sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is.
Own your own clockwork Spock!
The team is captured, escape, and eventually make their way to where Spock’s brain has been hooked up to the machine controlling the entire complex. His autonomic functions have been repurposed to control the air, water, heating, and so on. It’s not a new idea in SF—Anne McCaffrey’s The Ship Who Sang did something similar if I recall correctly—but it was one of the more interesting plot points in the episode.
Spock's brain after getting the Sargon treatment
The team learns that the childlike people occasionally get temporary boosts to their knowledge by wearing a funny helmet with pins sticking out of it. This is how their leader was able to remove Spock’s brain. When they force her to again partake of the forbidden knowledge, however, she refuses to help them. If Spock’s brain is removed, the machines will cease to function and her people will die.
McCoy, left with no other choice, dons the helmet himself, receives a temporary boost in knowledge and skill, and proceeds to reattach Spock’s brain. The knowledge runs out before he can finish, but fortunately he’s able to connect Spock’s vocal cords, and the Vulcan is then able to guide him through reattaching the rest.
Kirk, meanwhile, tells the leader not to worry her pretty little head, because soon the women and men will be living together like they should have been all along, and the Federation will ‘help’ them.
Spock is unusually garrulous as the episode ends, lecturing them all on Ancient Rome as the theme swells triumphantly.
Spock is all better now—he didn't even muss his hair!
The frustrating thing about Spock’s Brain is that there’s so much good in it. The acting is very good. Kelley, Shatner, and Nimoy feel like they’ve really started to slot together as a team. Their banter is smoother than ever, Kirk’s over-acting is kept to a minimum, and they deliver the most nonsensical lines with absolute sincerity and straight faces. For that alone, they all deserve Emmys.
Added to that is Marc Daniels’ excellent direction, with interesting angles and innovative camera work. The music, too, was new.
Yet none of it mattered, because the fundamental plot was such schlock that it was impossible to take seriously. Every time McCoy screamed out, “Where are we going to look for Spock’s brain?” or Nimoy robotically walked across the screen as little ticking sounds followed along in the background, I was thrown right out of the world of Star Trek and into a bad B-movie. It was funny. It just wasn’t Star Trek.
Hopefully next week the studio will have something better to offer us.
Two stars.
A Sow's Ear from a Silk Purse
by Amber Dubin
This episode started with promise, the way the scantily clad, mysteriously powerful alien women that smoothly and silently dispatches the entire crew harkens back to the hostile takeovers we’ve seen in other episodes like Norman from “I, Mudd” or the Kelvans from “By any other name.” We expect, then, the plot to follow a similarly cerebral path where this new species of alien demonstrates how their improvements upon humanoid society have allowed them to surpass us in power while sacrificing one very human trait whose immense value they’ve forgotten. That would be following a tried and true formula of an episode that, while banal, can still be entertaining. It is seemingly from this scaffold that this episode attempts to reach to higher heights, without recognizing that it never truly took the time to support itself beforehand.
This reach is visible in the beautifully presented viewscreens, the dramatic "behind the captain's chair" camera angle they debut in this episode, the smooth score, matchless acting and the shiny new svelte uniforms they've adorned the cast with. They took a step backwards with Scottie's new haircut, which is so devastatingly unflattering that it makes Chekov's Monkees wig look tolerable, but it's a small misstep when compared to the unforgivable sin of completely forgetting to attach these shiny tassels to an intelligible script or plot.
For once, Chekov's hair looks better than Scotty's…
The most obvious problem with the plot is the concept of removing Spock's brain. Spock has had his body hijacked countless other times but the insistence of using the removal of his physical cerebral organ this time, instead of just his consciousness, makes all the subsequent actions ridiculous. Also, the fact that none of the Imorgs even seem to know what a brain is is absurd. This leads me to my second biggest problem with the episode, and that is that the alien societal structure is incredibly poorly designed. Ostensibly, the species is segregated across gender lines with the females (the Imorgs) living underground, most likely for their own protection as the males (the Morgs) seem to have descended into violent, brainless savages. The most interesting implication I find with this structure is that Imorgs are described by the Morgs as “bringers of pain and delight.” This implies, to me, that their society must survive by the Imorgs periodically returning to the surface, not just to discipline the Morgs, but also to.. ahem.. milk them of their genetic material for reproductive purposes.
While this is a comical concept, the explanation for this setup makes no sense. It is explained that they became so advanced and so comfortable that their species' intelligence gradually atrophied like an unused muscle, thus requiring the externalization of said intelligence in the archival brain-training headset that certain members of society can put on to receive the combined knowledge of the ancients at their intellectual peak. Yet this raises the question: how did their loss of intelligence happen so slowly that it was unavoidable and yet so quickly that they were able to see it coming in order to store it externally to be used later? Perhaps there was a brain-eating disease that only spared the less intelligent? Yet this does not explain how McCoy's readings picked up evidence of a gradual degradation and does not explain how the best solution that these highly intelligent beings could come up with is to turn their habitat into a body controlled by a physical cerebral organ sustained for 10,000 year periods; meanwhile the remnants of their species are left to crawl around said body mindlessly like ants in a glass-bound ant hill.
As absurd as this premise makes the episode, it introduces what I see as its most redemptive quality: the positive sexism. As often as this show strives for portraying women as valued members of an advanced society, it's my personal opinion that it falls short too many times. This episode seeks to bend the needle at least a little bit in favor of a 'women being smarter than men' narrative, and I am a fan. The Imorgs, while dumb, are no more dumb than the Morgs, and I am quite fond of the fact that their highly intelligent ancestors chose the females as the more reliable receptacles into which to download the collective knowledge of their species. I also enjoyed that, while graced with the knowledge and basically the consciousness of the ancients, the Imorg priestess is successfully able to out-smart Kirk and is completely immune to his powers of persuasion. I find it infinitely refreshing that Captain Kirk doesn’t once again save the day by aggressively teaching the femme-fatale the value of love. Although when said woman decries that they can’t control the men without systems of punishment and reward, Kirk does sneak in a snide “there are other ways.” I could be reading too far into it, but the way he delivered the line made me think he was more than willing to provide instructions as to techniques that women can use to get men to do what they want (maybe he’d even suggest a hands on approach to the milking process).
"How about some lessons in healthy sexual relations?"
Despite this episode's obvious flaws, which there are many, I wouldn't overall say this is a bad episode. It's a testament to the commitment of the actors that they're willing to deliver solid performances of the sometimes silly lines with depth and sometimes deadly seriousness (Nurse Chapel’s 10 second fall alone is Oscar-worthy). In general, the characters appear much more polished than we've seen in some other episodes; and the lighting, which I think is a little too severe for Shatner's face in a couple of scenes, was an interesting departure and a bold choice. What the episode lacked in structural continuity, it tried to make up for in fluid pacing, an exceptional score, and special effects opticals that I believe have vastly improved from even the last season. Ultimately, however, the failure of editors to cut the obvious silliness out of the script makes all the high quality elements feel like lipstick on a pig.
They say you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear but apparently you can make a sow’s ear from a silk purse. This episode makes for one very stylish pig, but if it’s just going to dunk its head in the mud, I don’t see the point of the wasted effort.
Three stars.
The Mental Divide
by Joe Reid
Star Trek has returned for a 3rd season! I've missed our weekly sneak peek into the future as well as that regular glance into the mirror of our present. “Spock's Brain” is the name of this entry. Spock's brain is the apparent focus of this episode, at least on the surface. As I stated before, Star Trek is sometimes a mirror to show us who we are or may become. In “Spock's Brain”, we don't look good.
Watching shows like Star Trek, we see ourselves as the heroes. We picture ourselves as Kirk. We are Uhura. We are Chekov. From a narrative standpoint, we are actually the silly characters that the crew of the Enterprise are fighting, kissing, lying to, or helping each week. This week, we are the inhabitants of Sigma Draconis 6. What do the people of this planet tell us about ourselves?
The people of Sigma Draconis 6, which I will call Sixers from here forward, were divided by sex. The Sixer males were ignorant of relationships with the females outside of knowing them as the ones that bring pain and pleasure. Similarly, many men in our world don’t understand women. We sometimes reduce women to being instruments of pleasure, which if not handled correctly might lead to intense pain. Of course, it doesn’t help at all if men are uneducated and uncultured. Such men are reduced to seeing women in the context of either, “Heavens! She makes me feel good!”, or “Dammit! She is a pain in the neck!”
Women gain the upper hand in the battle of the sexes.
The Sixer women, being physically weaker than the men, and as ignorant as them, defaulted to using instruments of pain and pleasure to get what they wanted from men. Although the episode didn’t offer what pleasures were given to the men, I myself am intimately aware of the pleasures that today’s women use to get their way from a man and of the pain some of them inflict when they are not satisfied. Bill Shakespeare wrote about the fury of a woman’s scorn. I find myself questioning which is better—the long deep pain caused by a woman who hurts your soul or the short and intense pain of this episode’s futuristic torture device. Both seem equally bad ways of dealing with the opposite sex, based on an utter lack of compassion.
This portrayed male/female struggle, although interesting, was not a perfect mirror to our culture in that it gave no example to the pain that men have caused women today and throughout history. Also giving no notion that men could bring pleasure to women outside of what they can physically provide through their labor. In the end, "Spock's Brain" shows us that there must be more to successful human relations than simple Pavlovian techniques.
Another key lesson of the episode involves Spock’s brain and how it was to be used on Sigma Draconis 6. Sixers females could only continue their way of life if a controller was there to run their world. Without a controller, the females and males would have to rely on each other in a different way. This may seem far from reality, but I think this lesson should be taken as a warning rather than an indictment of our society. We should be wary of any leader, religion, philosophy, or machine that promises to take care of our needs or manage our lives to such a degree that it reduces our interdependence with those around us. Women and men need each other to survive, but all are better served through understanding and love over pain and pleasure. Families need each other in the same way. As do neighbors. Coworkers. Citizens of a country. People of a planet. Dependence on a solitary thing to care for us may lead to retardation of how we relate to one another.
Why think for yourself when you can just be force-fed knowledge?
For this exciting and thought-provoking episode of Star Trek, I offer 4 of 5 stars. It told a compelling and suspenseful yarn laced with relevant social commentary and caution—exactly what one wants from science fiction.
Four stars
Third Season Drinking Game
by Erica Frank
Take a drink every time you spot bad science, male chauvinism, Federation cultural supremacy, or the Enterprise crew pretending that an alien culture has human needs, interests, and abilities. …For this episode, make them small drinks. Sips only. Optionally, take long drinks; you may bypass a few others while you're raising your glass.
I'm leaving it to others to discuss the computer technology (take a drink), the womens' clothing (take a drink), and Kirk's ethics (take another drink), so as to focus on the split communities: Women living underground in the warm, computer-controlled facility; men living without technology on the frozen surface.
How are they making their clothes with "no sign of industrial development?" Those are awfully straight seams for hand-worked leather!
They have lived this way for thousands of years, long enough to have long forgotten why, even if they had attempted to keep records. They seem mostly content (or at least resigned): The men fear the women, but they do not band together to attack them; the women see no reason to change anything until they need a new "Controller."
(I have no idea how children happen. They're aliens. Maybe they lay eggs and the Controller keeps them in an incubator.)
But we are probably supposed to believe they are human-like, just split into communities so separate they don't even have words for sex or gender. Are we to believe these people, human-like enough to prefer buildings that are well-suited for our crew, wearing clothing that seems designed for human cultures, have no concept of human-like relationships? Of course not!
We have plenty of examples of what kind of relationships humans have, if you segregate them by sex: sailors, military forces, and even nunneries have a long history of homosexual behavior.
Of course, the residents of Sigma Draconis 6 won't have "gay" relationships that look like modern human ones: They have no notion of "husband and wife." They don't raise children together, don't have one employed partner and one housekeeper. (The men probably need every able-bodied person working for survival; the women's physical needs are all met by the Controller.) So their relationships – which may not be limited to pair-bonding the way that child-raising couples tend to be – would be mostly invisible to casual, short-term visitors like Kirk and his crew.
When the Morg realize that Spock is Kirk's oath-bonded partner, his assault on the women's complex will make so much more sense to them!
Two stars – mostly for the fascination of "how does that work?"; bump it to three if you've been drinking enough to put yourself in a pleasant fog.
Anything but Star Trek
by Lorelei Marcus
I think we're entering a new era. The music feels different, as if it's finally finding its groove after many years of experimentation. The politics are different, too, with black delegates trying to sit at the convention (and a young Julian Bond making a plausible run for Vice President!), and a weird match-up between two Vice Presidents.
Most of all, the TV is different. It's all in color, and there's just so many shows, most of them new. From Julia to The Mod Squad, everyone's jumping to be the fresh, hip thing.
Except, apparently, Star Trek.
It's ironic that this show, which broke new ground on television in not just science fiction but ethnic diversity chose to take such a step back into the past for its Season 3 debut. "Spock's Brain" felt like a plot straight out of the '50s. The society separated by men and women, the spooky science beyond our understanding, and even the new, tighter-fitting uniforms made the episode feel right at home next to Forbidden Planet.
What's worse, this quaint exploration of an alien society clashed sharply with the actual Enterprise and crew. For instance, the (excellent!) scene in which the bridge crew decide which of the three Sigma Draconis planets to investigate in search of Spock's brain feels like a scene from another show—and might as well be: the sentient races on the other planets never become relevant to the episode.
The bridge becomes the briefing room in one of the best scenes of the episode.
I didn't actually have much problem with the whole "brain removal" element of the plot, just how it was executed. A lot of the lines felt forced and corny, particularly Spock's indifferent voice-overs. His dialogue should have been the highlight of the episode, not the drag. Also, the surgery montage at the end of the episode was cheap, taken straight from Ben Casey or maybe even General Hospital. I was laughing too hard at that point to care whether or not the brain restoration surgery was a success.
Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy the episode at the time, and the actors salvaged what they could with the lines they were given, but it ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm disappointed that "Spock's Brain" was chosen to be the debut of Season 3. Perhaps a tongue in cheek episode like this (assuming the camp is deliberate) could have been fine midseason, but putting it front and center feels disrespectful to the show and characters, not to mention the audience. I don't regret writing all those letters to Mort Werner to keep Star Trek alive, but I fear the result may be a degraded, less sophisticated program.
Let's hope this episode is a fluke and not representative of the rest of the season.
Three stars
Minority Report
by Gideon Marcus
I'm going to go out on a limb here. I enjoyed this episode. Perhaps it was the endless summer over which I was starved for new Trek. Maybe it was the terrific giggles I got out of every time one of the gifted cast had to seriously pronounce the words "Spock's Brain" (usually preceded by variations of "Where are we going to look for…" and "Give back…")
The story didn't bother me. Was it rushed with intriguing concepts left undeveloped? Sure, but that's par for the course. There are only 50 minutes each week with which to introduce a plot and resolve it. The rest must be done with shorthand. Indeed, the episode wastes little time, clanging into action with a red-alert signal. And while Kirk does destroy a 10,000 year old society with no compunctions, he's done so before, under similar conditions ("Return of the Archons" and "The Apple"), and the Federation has specialists to help clean up the ensuing mess. Plus, in this case, it was personal—they'd taken (chortle) Spock's Brain!
Speaking of plots we've seen before, Spock's Brain (guffaw) is really just the inverse of "Return to Tomorrow". In that episode, three disembodied brains want Spock's Body (and those of Kirk and Dr. Ann Mulhall).
Of course, in the cold light of day, when I can't be swept along by the superb pacing, the new scoring, the slick new uniforms, the beautiful Daniels-shot bridge (how about those lovely viewscreen shots?!), getting to see all of the B-team doing their jobs, Scotty's disaster of a new hair style (did Jimmy's new wife Anita approve of this?), I can see there are issues with the episode. For instance, the idea of snatching a brain to power a society is fine. The notion of finding the best brain for the job makes sense. But Sigma Draconis had three class M planets in it. Surely there were scholars on Planet 3 or scientists on Planet 4 who could have done the job. (Also, Planet 4, with a technology grade of "G" or 2030 A.D. presumably has space travel and perhaps even warp drive—why hadn't they settled/explored Planet 6?)
Also, all this gas about "ion propulsion" being the cat's meow made no sense. Ion propulsion is something we use today, which I talked about in my article on the (failed) satellite ATS 4. It is a low thrust , economical drive that uses the constant ejection of cesium atoms to propel a spacecraft. Maybe Scotty's "ion propulsion" means something different, but it sounds goofy without further explanation. It's why Trek moved from "lasers", which are new but well known, to "phasers", which are made up but sound cool. Call it "muon" propulsion or better yet (to make up a word) "buon" or something.
"She's steam-powered, Cap'n! Far beyond what we can do with antimatter…"
All that said, I want to think that this rather silly script was Trek's essay at deliberate camp, sort of how The Trouble with Tribbles and A Piece of the Action were deliberate comedy and Catspaw was deliberate Halloween creepiness. In any event, the episode accomplished the main goal, which is that I'm eager to see what's on next week…even if it means I have to stay up past my bedtime to watch the furshlugginer thing, now that they've moved the air time to 10 P.M.!
![[October 12, 1968] (October 1968 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681012covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[October 10, 1968] Going Native (<i>Star Trek</i>: "The Paradise Syndrome")](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681010title.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[October 8, 1968] Probing the future (November 1968 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681008cover.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[October 6, 1968] Snail on the Slope? (November 1968 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/amz-1168-cover.png?resize=245%2C347&ssl=1)
![[October 4, 1968] (<i>Star Trek</i>: "The Enterprise Incident")](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681004title.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[October 2, 1968] Future History Lessons (November 1968 <i>IF</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/IF-1968-11-Cover.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
Ramses gets a face lift.
The Waw is bored. Art by Vaughn Bodé
Action in the subway of abandoned Manhattan. Art by Gaughan
Anubis and Osiris determine the fates of humanity. Art by P. Reiber
Art uncredited
Willis is presented with his new secretary. Art by Wallace Wood
Science fiction from A(simov) to Z(elazny). That Zelazny piece might be another part of the new novel.![[September 30, 1968] A spoonful of sugar… (October 1968 <i>Analog</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/680930cover.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[September 28, 1968] Intelligence Ain't All It's Cracked Up to Be: <i>Charly</i>](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/charly1.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[September 26, 1968] Brain drain: (<i>Star Trek</i>: "Spock's Brain")](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/680926title.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
