[June 24, 1969] Checking in from Seattle: The Existential Stress of Progress (Galactic Pot Healer by Philip K. Dick)


by Jason Sacks

Welcome to Seattle, and let me tell you, June 1969 is a busy month here in the often quiet Pacific Northwest. We have a baseball team! And we may be losing a relic of our past while fighting about the present and rocking our own giant music festival… well, at least, we will be rocking a field out in the suburbs!

And I also wandered into the ineffable mind of my favorite author, Philip K. Dick, and found I had journeyed to places I scarcely could have imagined.

The End of the Market?

We live in revolutionary times, times which are painfully uncertain and terrifying. In our era of political assassinations, cities on fire, images of Vietnam on TV every night, and endless sports expansion, many of us find ourselves craving the pleasures and traditions of the past in order to help us have some small ground under our feet, some small element of history to cling onto.

But that need for tradition runs solidly into the endless American drive for progress. And we are seeing that collision of progress with tradition even here in our often quiet city.

If you’ve ever visited Seattle, you’ve probably stopped to visit our Pike Place Market, a farmers market on the hilly edge of the Seattle waterfront. The Market has been around since the dawn of the 20th century, but it may not live to see the 21st century – or even most of the 1970s. See, commercial interests have come for the quaint old market and its prime real estate, aiming to convert that area into fancy hotels and expensive housing. This has triggered a pitched battle and a bit of existential turmoil.

Seattle export Jimi Hendrix jammin' at the Market

Like New York with that neighborhood-destroying Robert Moses, many Seattle residents find ourselves fighting to preserve our landmarks against the machinations of moneyed corporate interests. And like New York with city advocate Jane Jacobs, we have our own leader of the cause. Victor Steinbrueck is a 57-year-old Seattle architect and University of Washington faculty member who has led the charge against the change

As Steinbrueck discusses in a recent issue of Seattle weekly Helix:

600 residents will be relocated in places mostly incompatible to their way of life, producing problems for themselves and others. Approximately 1400 workers will have their jobs placed in jeopardy trough relocation and termination of businesses. 233 businesses will be relocated or forced to close because of the disruption of the low cost market… the massive disruption to benefit a few is neither wise nor morally right.

Steinbrueck proposes several ideas for changes to the Market, all of which are devoted to keeping its unique character for generations to come. More than 53,000 people have already signed a petition to support his organization, Friends of the Market.

This struggle is existential for many of us who have felt buffeted around by the winds of change these days. We are hoping some of our favorite places survive the relentless, unforgiving march of progress, and Pike Place is one of those favorite places.

We can only hope and pray that Steinbrueck’s efforts will bear the same fruits Ms. Jacobs achieved in New York. I love the Market for many reasons, and hope I can continue to stop there for fruit, fish and fresh meals whenever I possibly can.

Rocking the Suburbs

On a cheerier note, there’s been a lot of buzz around town discussing the upcoming Seattle Pop Festival, which will be held in the sleepy Eastside suburb of Woodinville. Many Seattle music fans will be driving over the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge to see such amazing bands as The Doors, Chuck Berry, Albert Collins, the Guess Who, Ike & Tina Turner and the much hyped “New Yardbirds”, Led Zeppelin. (there’s a nice mix of traditional and new acts!)

It’s going to be an expensive event at $6 per day or $15 for the whole three days, and there have been rumors that drug peddlers in the University District have been more aggressive than ever before selling their merchandise in order to afford tickets. It would be groovy if our event was like that upcoming Woodstock event in New York, but I predict that event will be a bit of a bomb. I just don't think there are enough people here who will be excited to see a boring band like The Doors.

Piloting into Disaster

Sadly, we’ve all been looking forward to a major civic event which has definitely become a bomb. After many years of dreaming and a mere few months of planning, the Seattle Pilots debuted this April as the latest team in the American League. They’re now our second Seattle pro sports team, after the SuperSonics of the NBA, and while Washington Huskies football will always be the big sport in Sea-town, and the hydros as number two, my friends and family and I all had high hopes for the expansion Pilots.

Unfortunately, everything about the Pilots has shown that the Emerald City isn’t like Oz. Our team’s ballpark is strictly minor league, the players are strictly second-stringers, and even their uniforms are an absurd joke.

First of all the ballpark: the Pilots home field is called Sicks’ Stadium, and seldom has a name been more appropriate. The field has been in use since before WWII hosting games of the Seattle Rainiers and Seattle Angels of the minor league Pacific Coast League, and the place feels like a minor league relic. The walls often feel like they’re falling down, the bleachers are rickety, and you probably heard the (completely true) story that the stadium was still under construction on Opening Day. Worse than that, the bathrooms often overflow during games, which is just nauseating. And on top of all that, we have higher ticket prices than the other expansion teams this year. No wonder we rarely have crowds which even approach 20,000 fans.

The boys in pastel blue are resolutely in last place in the new American League West, without much hope of avoiding the curse of 100 losses this year. Aside from a couple of decent players, like Yankee castoff Jim Bouton, this year’s team might be long-forgotten in a few years…

If not, that is, for the dreadful uniforms the players are forced to wear. Embracing the idea of a “pilot” way too far, the team’s owners created a cap like no other in baseball, with a captain’s stripe and “scrabmbled eggs” on the bill, which just looks hideous. But hey they are just as bad as the weird powdered-blue uniforms with four stripes on the sleeves, which just look odd.

Just three months into the season, there are already rumors the Pilots may be a one-year wonder, leaving my beloved city for parts unknown. That would be a shame on one hand, but a relief on another. If we’re going to sail into the big leagues, I would hope it would be when steered by a fine mariner instead of a minor-league pilot. Perhaps we will keep the team, and perhaps the Pilots will be able to move into a rumored domed stadium sometime by the middle of the next decade. And hey, they could start winning, right? Just wait’ll next year, as they say.

Now Wait for the Pot-Healer’s Year

If you’ve ready any of the writing I’ve done for this zine, you’re probably aware I’m perhaps the biggest fan of Philip K. Dick on this staff. I’ve raved about his Dr. Bloodmoney, enthused about his transcendent Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and – just last month – waxed poetic about his sublime Ubik.

Mr. Dick has been remarkably prolific over the last few years and has been on a magical roll, success following success. This month sees his latest paperback original hit in a B. Daltons or Woolworths near you. And while brilliant as ever, Galactic Pot Healer is a decidedly different book than the ones I just mentioned.

The lead character of Pot Healer is a miserable middle aged man with few job prospects living a blandly dystopian near-future – hmm, well, maybe this book not too different from other PKD novels. But stay with me for a minute because this book goes in unexpected directions.

Joe Fernwright is a brilliant artisan, a man with the unique skills to repair antiquities from the pre-WWIII era in such a way that they look as good as they did before the War. The term for such a man is pot-healer. Joe’s been a pot-healer all his life. In fact Joe follows in the footsteps of his father, who was a great pot-healer in his time.

The problem, in a future North American megalopolis, is that there’s no more pot-healing work for Joe. All the pots have been fixed and, in this post-apocalyptic world, there are no more porcelain pots being manufactured. In fact, there’s scarcely any work for anybody in this massive, overpopulated world. Instead, Joe shows up to work each day, sits at his desk, and calls up colleagues in Russia and England on his office phone not to work – there is no actual work for anyone in this future world  to do – but instead to play pointless but clever word games just to make the long day feel slightly less meaningless.

It's a crushing, desperately lonely experience, bereft of any redeeming elements which would make life worth living. Joe has no family and really no friends, despite – or maybe because of – the fact that the megalopolis is so overcrowded. Even Joe’s small savings of a handful of actual metal coins, which he hides in his toilet back, are not able to gain him more than a few moments satisfaction in his life.

Until, that is, Joe starts receiving strange messages, which he soon realizes come from a strange being from another planet. The Glimmung summons Joe and a slew of other artifact hunters from across the galaxy – all suicidal dead-enders, all desperate for a chance to find fulfillment in their lives – to a remote obscure place called Plowman’s Planet where they can possibly achieve something which justifies their continued existence.

And though Joe finds some kind of love with an alien girl named Mali, ultimately Joe is unable to find peace with himself, leading to one of the bleakest, most powerful and satirical endings in all of Dick.

A fan named Karla shared a photo of her ceramic creation which dwells on an important plot point of the novel.

Galactic Pot Healer is one of PKD’s most downbeat and philosophical works. While Ubik thrills due to its endless tumble of ideas, Pot Healer is mostly about one idea, an idea central to Dick’s fiction: the feeling of deep, existential doubt and lack of fulfillment. Joe Fernwright is on a quest to truly find the true center of his being. In an amazing sequence I’ll let you discover yourself, Joe actually does find himself but finds himself desiccated, like the raw husk of an insect. He’s a man stripped raw, a man whose encounter with himself and with God leaves him frozen in his own mind, like a spider who spun his web in a tin can and starves to death waiting for a fly to hit his web.

Joe is a loser, but really what choice does he have? How can he actually change his life when every possible opportunity to do so is stripped away from him? What happens when great skills are lost, self-delusion is stripped away, and the stark reality is that everything is as dust?

This is all very emotionally exhausting stuff, for Joe and for the reader.

Mr. Dick

And that’s the difference between Galactic Pot Healer and Dick’s other recent novels. Characters like Robert Childan in The Man in the High Castle or Rick Deckard in Do Androids Dream or Palmer Eldritch in the book that bears his name are men of action, men who at least try to change their lives. Even boys like Manfred Steiner in Martian Time-Slip  or the homonucleus in Dr Bloodmoney take actions to remake the world in their images.

But Joe Fernwright is the ultimate PKD character pushed to the edge, the ultimate man who is powerless before his own pathetic weakness.

Thus I found it hard to read about him, even while sympathizing with his pain and angst.

This is minor Dick, to be sure, but still an essential part of his catalog.

3.5 stars.

 






[June 22, 1969] Game Over (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 8-10])


By Jessica Holmes

"The War Games" draws to a close, bringing us a thrilling conclusion, revelations of the Doctor’s origins, and some heartbreaking farewells.

The Doctor (right, foreground) meets with the War Chief (left, background.)
"If I join you, do I also have to grow the silly moustache?"

Continue reading [June 22, 1969] Game Over (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 8-10])

[June 20, 1969] Where to? (July 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Nihon, banzai!

In just the last ten years of covering our trips to Japan as part of Galactic Journey, we have watched with amazement as Japan executed nothing short of a miracle.  As of this year, the country is now the third largest economy in the world, and "Made in Japan" is no longer a stamp of poor quality.  Datsuns are rolling off the assembly line by the thousands and ending up in American showrooms.  The sky is dark with industrial smog.  It's almost enough to eclipse the left-wing student protests that keep popping up around the nation.

Of course, Japan still has a ways to go, at least domestically.  Fully a fifth of its population still is minimally housed, squatting in one-room shacks and waiting for the government to make good on its five year plan to give everyone a decent home.

One family that has no such difficult is the Fujiis, our adoptive parents, who we last visited five years ago!  This trip was particularly exciting for reasons I shall detail shortly.

First, a picture of the flower shop on the way to their house.  The town is Amagi, an agricultural town that specializes in grapes and persimmons.

Continue reading [June 20, 1969] Where to? (July 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[June 18, 1969] Sleazy Riders (The Sidehackers and Satan's Sadists)


by Victoria Silverwolf

I've spoken before about my inexplicable interest in cheap, trashy movies about motorcycle gangs.  Two more films in this genre arrived this month.  Hop on the back of my chopper and let's take a ride into the wild world of weirdos on wheels.

The Sidehackers

The opening credits are odd.  The image is reduced to a tiny part of the screen, surrounded by black.


So is it The Sidehackers or The Side Hackers?

My sources in the movie biz tell me that this thing was originally called Five the Hard Way, which is also the name of the song we hear during the credits.  My guess is that they had to chop up the opening to squeeze in the new title.

Anyway, we soon meet a pair of young lovers as they frolic in the woods and fields.  Boy pushing girl in a swing, both of them running through flowers in slow motion, etc.  Corny stuff.


Diane McBain as Rita.  She was in The Mini-skirt Mob, too.


Ross Hagen as Rommell.  He was in The Hellcats AND The Mini-Skirt Mob!

We meet Rommell's married buddy, who tells him all about the wonders of matrimonial bliss.  This romantic domestic drama is interrupted by the arrival of a guy who makes a living by performing stunts on a motorcycle.  (We never actually see this.) He's accompanied by his girlfriend and his gang.


Claire Polan as Paisley and Michael Pataki as J. C.

Fans of Star Trek may recognize Pataki. (Hint: It should be hauled away AS garbage!)

Then we get some sidehacking.  Oh, you don't what that is?  Well, it's a sort of motorcycle racing in which a guy is hanging off the side of the bike on something like an open metal cage.  Don't worry, this has nothing at all to do with the plot, and we'll never see it again.


Sidehacking!

The plot gets going when the sadistic J. C. beats up Paisley, who then tries to seduce Rommell.  He's a one-woman kind of guy, so he rebuffs her.  In retaliation, she tears her clothes and tells J. C. that Rommell attacked her.

This sudden change in mood from romance and racing to violence is jarring.  Believe me, it gets worse.

J. C. and his goons beat Rommell savagely.  Much more shocking, they rape and kill Rita.  After some time goes by, Rommell assembles a crew and sets out for revenge.  Don't expect a happy ending.

Fans of action movies will be disappointed by how the film slows down to a crawl until we get to the final battle.  Pataki chews the scenery as the psychotic J. C., and everybody else is pretty bland.  (One of Rommell's army — that's probably why he's named for an infamous Nazi general, even though he's supposed to be, more or less, the good guy — is named Crapout.  He's our wildly inappropriate comedy relief, has a thick Southern accent, and is really annoying.)

One star for an odd combination of boredom and nastiness.  Cut out the most disturbing scenes and you might have something worth mocking with some buddies.

Satan's Sadists

This one jumps right into the vile stuff.  Before the opening credits, a motorcycle gang comes across a man and woman.  They rape the woman, then kill both of them.  This is just a hint of what's to follow.


The opening credits feature some interesting abstract animation, and may be the best thing in the film.

A married couple picks up a hitchhiker in the middle of nowhere.  He just got out of the Marine Corps after serving in Vietnam.  They wind up at a little restaurant/gas station in the desert.


From left to right, the waitress who is our heroine; the ex-Marine who is our hero; and the married couple.  Not shown is the owner of the place.

The motorcycle gang shows up and immediately starts making trouble.  The leader is a guy named Anchor.  His girlfriend (whom he abuses as much as J. C. did Paisley) is Gina. 

The other hoodlums each have some kind of gimmick.  One wears a hearing aid, one takes LSD all the time, one has only one eye, one is big and strong, and one is an Indian.  (The last is nicknamed Firewater, and is probably the least evil of the gang.  Naturally, he's played by a non-Indian, John "Bud" Cardos, a pretty well-known stuntman of Greek ancestry.)


Russ Tamblyn as Anchor.  You may remember him from lots of movies, such as West Side Story and The Haunting.

[Are you sure that's not Arte Johnson? He looks 'very interesting'. (Ed.)]


Regina Carrol as Gina.  She's married to Al Adamson, the director.  He also recently gave us Blood of Dracula's Castle.

The gang takes everybody prisoner.  All but two of them haul the married couple and the guy who owns the diner outside.  They rape the woman then kill all three of them.

Inside the place, the ex-Marine manages to overpower the two gang members left to guard them, killing both.  He and the waitress escape via dune buggy, but the vehicle soon breaks down.  It all leads up to a battle in the desert.

(As if this weren't horrible enough, the big chase scene is interrupted when the gang finds three young women on a geology field trip.  Of course, they torment, rape, and kill them.  This is when Firewater objects to the murders, proving that he's still got a tiny bit of decency hidden deep inside.  His disagreement with Anchor leads to a big fight scene, made more effective by the experience of stuntman Cardos.)

Boy, this is nasty stuff.  It definitely delivers all the shocks it promises, unlike the occasionally tepid The Sidehackers.  It's a lot more coherent than Blood of Dracula's Castle, or Blood of Ghastly Horror, another offering from Al Adamson.  For those reasons, I have to give it two stars.

After this double feature, it's time to take a long, hot shower.  Let's hope future motorcycle movies won't be quite so slimy.


Coming soon!  As the poster indicates, it's already been shown at the famous Cannes film festival.  Let's hope it's better than these two films.






[June 16, 1969] The Voyage to Net a Dolphin (June 1969 Galactoscope)


by Victoria Silverwolf

Whodunit?

As far as I know, there aren't a lot of science fiction mystery novels out there. The most famous, of course, are Isaac Asimov's tales of police detective Elijah Bailey and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. The Caves of Steel (1953) and The Naked Sun (1956) are classics in this specific combination of genres.

A new book continues the tradition of a detective investigating a murder case in the far future. Will it be up to the level of the Good Doctor's predecessors? Let's find out.

Deathstar Voyage, by Ian Wallace


Cover art by Richard Powers

Murder On The Altair Express

The novel takes place aboard a luxury starship on its way from Earth to Altair. On board is police lieutenant/doctor of psychology Claudine St. Cyr. Her job is to make sure that the king of a planet orbiting Altair gets home safely. This seems like an easy assignment, as the king claims that everybody on his world loves him. It turns out this isn't quite true.

After foiling an assassination attempt on the king, things start to go very badly indeed. Somebody has sabotaged the gizmo that allows the starship to travel faster than light. This threatens to make the whole darn thing blow up, killing hundreds of passengers and crew.

As if that weren't enough, both the captain and the second in command die in mysterious ways. Can St. Cyr solve the crime and save the ship?

Suspects? We've got plenty of 'em. Just about everybody we meet has some kind of secret, from the king to a shopkeeper who sells St. Cyr a wristwatch with a second hand that runs backwards.

Notable among the possible killers are a wild-eyed religious fanatic and a guy with telekinetic powers. It takes a while for the plot to get going, but towards the end the author throws in a ton of twists and turns.

As a murder mystery, it generally plays fair with the reader. There are lots of clues scattered here and there, from a mysterious message left near the sabotaged gizmo to the aroma of a certain brand of cigar. My one quibble with the whodunit plot is that some of the twists depend on people concealing information from St. Cyr (and the reader) for pretty weak reasons.

As science fiction, well, that's a different matter. There's a long discussion of the way the starship gizmo works that is pure doubletalk. We also learn a lot about the way telekinetic powers work; more than I wanted to know, really. Despite the far future setting, it feels more like we're aboard the Queen Mary during the golden age of cruise ships.

A word about St. Cyr as a character. She's highly skilled as a detective and as a psychologist. She is also very beautiful, and just about every male character in the novel falls madly in love with her. She isn't afraid to use her feminine wiles to get information out of these besotted fellows, and this gets to be a bit much at times.

Overall, a light piece of entertainment that passes the time pleasantly, but will fade from memory as soon as you reach the last page.

Three stars.


photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

The Nets of Space, by Emil Petaja

I've only recently discovered Petaja, a Finnish-extraction author with a fantastical sense imbued in his writing and a penchant for incorporating themes from various mythologies. He's sort of a rip-roaring version of Thomas Burnett Swann, and I always enjoy (though not necessarily love) his work. His latest is no exception.


Cover art by Paul Lehr

The opening is a grabber: Don Quick is a technician bounced from the Alpha Centauri expedition at the last minute. The first scene of the book is a dream sequence in which he is in an enormous cocktail glass with dozens of other naked humans, glazed in brine, and they are one-by-one pulled out and dipped in sauce before being eaten by giant alien crabs.

When he awakens, Don finds himself back on Earth and recalls that he has been a mental patient for months. Is his dream a kind of clairvoyance? Or merely a kind of shell shock from the time he inhaled hyperspatial gas during a pre-launch accident involving the Centaur III? And why, when he falls asleep, does the dream continue sequentially and seem to portend an extraterrestrial invasion of the Earth?

Cervantes' classic Don Quixote figures strongly in this book; it is the external influence Petaja has chosen for his latest adventure. The whole thing is lighthearted enough that you're never too worried about Earth's possible impending disaster. Indeed, The Nets of Space is essentially a comic book in literary form—never mind the science or consistency. But it reads quickly: I finished it on a single flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka.

3.5 stars



by Jason Sacks

The Day of the Dolphin, by Robert Merle

The Day of the Dolphin is a work of fiction of great contradictions: it’s lighthearted and downbeat, escapist and embedded in the world; engaged in technological innovation and driven by characters; and written in manners both straightforward and elliptical.

If there ever was a book to drive a reader crazy, it’s this one.

At the heart of Robert Merle’s new novel is a fascinating concept. We all know that dolphins are smart animals. As this book reminds us, the brain size and complexity of the average dolphin is roughly analogous to those of a human brain. So what if a wise researcher was able to talk to dolphins in their language and teach dolphins to talk to us in ours? How would those dolphins navigate their learning, how would their approaches to the world be different from those of humans, and what would make those majestic creatures truly happy?

When Merle explores those ideas, The Day of the Dolphin leaps ecstatically like a dolphin leaping out of the water to shoot a basketball through a hoop. There’s a thrilling element of discovery as a secret government laboratory of scientists patiently work with a young dolphin to teach him a few words of English. When he starts to learn English, the scientists provide that dolphin a mate. And the courtship and love affair between the dolphin couple is fascinating and sweet and surprisingly moving. My favorite parts of the novel were the sections in which Merle shows the creatures change each other, drive their relationships and truly build a bond between themselves and the scientists who care for them.

But if a scientific agency is driving this research, you know there has to be some geopolitics involved, and of course there is. In fact, one character notes in a clever bit of metafictional dialogue the moment when the plot takes on Bond or Flint elements. There are human romances inside the research group. But there is also espionage, and secret taping, and a “dolphin gap” argument with the Soviets, and it is to sigh.

Mr. Merle

Because to me, all those moments of connection to the real world take away the most intriguing aspects of the book. The book pivots at its midpoint. At that point. The book swiftly changes from an intellectually absorbing exploration of science into an often dull, often by-the-numbers tale of espionage and intrigue. I predicted around page 20 that the dolphins would be sent on the mission they go on towards the end of this novel, and the impact of those actions were equally as obvious.

Merle writes much of this book in a kaleidoscopical style, full of long paragraphs with stream-of-consciousness approaches which kind of wander and meander from first person to third person, from grounded reality to revelations of emotion and often to outright gibberish. At first this style is thrilling or at least intriguing, but when Merle breaks up that approach with excerpts from letters or interviews conducted by government agencies, that break often feels like a necessary breath of fresh air. I kept finding my mind drifting as the characters’ minds drifted, ungrounded in reality or in this story but instead of my own thoughts about dolphins or work or the Miami Dolphins of the NFL.

It sounds like I hated this book but in truth I enjoyed The Day of the Dolphin for its brazen oddness and for Merle’s obvious passion for both the way he presents his story and the story itself. The more I read about them in this book, the more I wanted to read about our aquatic friends. I now have a nice stack of library books on my desk about Cetaceans because I find that species so interesting. I just wish The Day of the Dolphin had a bit more dolphin and a bit less human in its pages.

3.5 stars





[June 14, 1969] Boys and Girls From The North Country (The Conflict in Northern Ireland)


By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

I was asked by our esteemed editor to explain the issues going on in Northern Ireland today, having seen it reported in the American Press. He noted:

If I'm getting it in my podunk local rag several days in a row, it's news.

And, honestly, it is even surprising to see the Six Counties mentioned in the UK press. Although most people are vaguely aware it is part of the country, and may have heard of the discrimination going on from such documentaries as The Orange and The Green, it probably occupies no more daily thought than the situation in South Texas occurs to the average Seattle housewife. In fact, the only discussion of the region I can recall from the first half of 1968 was whether any of the new coinage was going to have an Ulster logo on it.

Blown up bridge of a large water pipe
Water supplies have been disrupted by explosions near Belfast

So, try to imagine one day turning on Walter Conkrite to see him telling you that barricades had been erected across San Antonio to keep the police out, bombs had gone off in Houston, Mexico had gone to the UN to ask for a peacekeeping force to be sent in and house representatives from the region were asking for the entire local government to be shut down.

That's an analogy. I am going to do my best to explain what is happening in specific. Whilst I will attempt to balance both sides’ views in this situation, even the basic choice of words is liable to inflame some people.  As an example, my mother (English-born but from an Irish family and has lived in the Republic for many years) recently had her flight forced to land in Belfast rather than Shannon. She opined to the man in the seat next to her “you'd think they could get us an airport in the same country”. The man’s angry response was “I think you will find Belfast is in the same country!”

All this to say, apologies for any offence caused to readers.

A Pre-History

Black and White Illustration of the Battle of the Boyne, with William of Orange riding into battle on a horse
Illustration of the Battle of the Boyne, which cemented Protestant rule in Ireland.

The roots of the current issues weave incredibly far back, but I will attempt to be brief. Since the Middle Ages, the English crown had attempted to gain control of its neighboring Island. This process was slow and the Hiberno-Norman Lords operated with a largely free hand, meaning that 400 years after the start of the process the majority of Ireland was still nominally independent.

During the Tudor and Stuart periods, the Anglo-Scottish governments attempted to gain more centralised control over Ireland. However, this was regularly rejected by many of the Irish inhabitants and was met with violence. A solution was seen in plantations, the giving of land to settlers at the expense of the native Irish farmers.

The biggest of these was James I’s plantation of Ulster. Following the Nine Years War and the subsequent fleeing of many Irish nobles, James gave land to new protestant British landholders, who were also banned from using any native labour and had to import British workers, predominantly Scottish Presbyterians and English Anglicans.

Via a combination of conflicts around religion in Britain (e.g. The Gunpowder Plot, The Civil War, The Glorious Revolution) and rebellions against these settlements in Ireland, the Catholic Irish’s landholding and political power was almost completely removed. As such, there ended up a situation of minority rule, somewhat equivalent to British colonies in the Caribbean.

With the removal of legal restrictions on Catholics in Britain in the 19th Century, steps were taken to attempt to ameliorate the situation in Ireland but it was slow going and regularly blocked by Unionist supporters, both through laws and with extra-legal violence. By the time the UK parliament finally passed a bill on the subject in 1920 the sides had become hardened.

Map of Ireland showing the six counties that made up Northern Ireland
Map of Partition

The solution devised was for a partition of the Island, with most of Ireland being made the independent Irish Free State (now Republic) and the majority Protestant Six Counties of Ulster remaining part of the United Kingdom with a devolved parliament in Belfast. Whilst Sinn Fein took 97% of seats in the Irish parliament unopposed, the Ulster Unionists under James Craig won 77% of the seats in the North in election under STV (the Single Transferable Vote, a system by which a voter can rank their choices).

The early years of this new situation were not peaceful, with Civil War in the South and tit-for-tat sectarian killings in the North. Craig was determined to crack down on dissent and have “a Protestant Government for a Protestant People.” The police force was militarized, the electoral system changed, seats gerrymandered, and many other measures were put in place to keep what was already a Protestant controlled region firmly in that state.

The Silence Breaks

Whilst things still remained fraught for the Catholic population, the level of violence from before the Second World War was not as visible under Craig’s successor Basil Brooke. He was a hardliner allowing for little dissent, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA)’s border campaign in the late 50s did not gain much support in either region. (More on the IRA shortly.)

Instead, it was bigger world events that began to foment change. With the Civil Rights movement in America gaining publicity, organisations were formed in Northern Ireland to highlight anti-Catholic discrimination, such as the Campaign for Social Justice and Homeless Citizen’s League. At the same time an economic downturn in the region and Brooke’s ill health led to him resigning the premiership in 1963. He was succeeded by the more moderate Captain Terence O’Neill.

Northern Irish Prime Minister Capt. Terrence O'Neill

Now, it should not be thought O’Neill is some sort of radical republican. However, he did want to improve relations between the Catholic and Protestant communities of Ulster, and between the Northern and Southern parts of the island of Ireland. He encouraged twinning between organizations of both denominations and met the Irish Taoiseachs on multiple occasions.

Civil Rights protest in Northern Ireland

Following on from the CSJ’s publicising of wide-spread discrimination, a number of more active campaign organisations formed. Two of the most important are The Northern Irish Civil Rights Association (NICRA) and The Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC). The former has been organising large scale marches calling for political reform, anti-discrimination legislation and demilitarisation of the police. DHAC is more particularly focussed on housing discrimination, taking part in sit-down protests and disrupting public meetings to get this message across.

Finally, all this took place against the backdrop of a change of British government, from Conservative to Labour. Whilst the Ulster Unionists caucus with the Conservatives in Westminster, Labour draws a significant share of its support from Catholics in Scotland and England. As such, it is much more in the interest of Wilson to encourage reform in Northern Ireland than it was for Macmillan. And with the passing of the Race Relation Acts in Britain it gave further impetus for change.

These factors have put the need for reform on the agenda, with O’Neill promising a move to one-man one vote, an ombudsman to address complaints of discrimination and the withdrawal of special police powers.

And overall, the vast majority of people had been happy with current progress. A pre-election survey at the start of the year showed 52% of Ulster voters thought improvements were being made at about the right pace (57% of Catholics and 49% of Protestants) with 62% supporting the principle of one man-one vote (92% Catholics and 48% of Protestants, with 20% in the latter group being unsure).

So, who could possibly be upset by these changes? Well, to start with, Home Affairs Minister William Craig and Rev. Ian Paisley.

The Policeman and The Priest

Photo of William Craig

William Craig was a rising star in the Ulster Unionist government. Nicknamed ‘the battering ram’, he played a big part in the election of O’Neill to the post of Prime Minister, and had been a significant ally to him, in particular in the PM’s attempts at modernization of the Irish economy. After criticism from UUP colleagues of Craig’s cavalier attitude to planning policy and the need for O’Neill to take a stronger line against Republicanism, Craig was moved to Home Affairs, making him in charge of policing Northern Ireland.

Whilst not being totally opposed to some reform, Craig’s position is that discrimination claims and the civil rights movement are actually covers for radical republican activity. Their demands are purely designed to make them seem reasonable people, whilst they secretly seek a united republic of Ireland.

Iain Paisley leading a protest rally against Catholicism including signs that say things like: "Through Christ to Glory Through Rome to Purgatory"

Outside of government, opposition to Civil Rights primarily centers around Reverend Iain Paisley. The leader of the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and close friend of Bob Jones, Jr., Paisley believes the Pope to be the Antichrist, with services commonly including the Hymn “Our Father Knew The Rome of Old and Evil is Thy Name”. Even though the actual congregation size of the Free Presbyterian Church is estimated to be small, Paisley has an outsized influence, regularly holding stunts such as heckling bishops who meet with Catholic counterparts and encouraging police to pull down Irish flags.

Paisley is no stranger to being in trouble with the law. In 1966 he was first arrested when, after contributing to a riot with a march he made through a Catholic area, he refused to be bound over to keep the peace. Then, in the same year, he was successfully sued for libel when he claimed the arresting police had committed perjury against him.

In November of last year, Craig banned all protest marches except for “customary marches”. By customary he was referring to those by Protestants like the Orange Lodge, making it seem like a discriminatory measure to stop Catholic Civil Rights marches. When DHAC and NICRA defied these orders, Paisley and his supporters showed up with counter-protestors and riots ensued. Even though Paisley was arrested for his part in this, Craig squarely put the blame on the Civil Rights movement, claiming the IRA were involved, and used special powers to call up police reinforcements. Following this and other public disagreements on policy, O’Neill called for his resignation.

What is their main problem? It is largely a slippery slope argument. They believe that Civil Rights will lead to Nationalist involvement in Government. This along with the growth of the Catholic population in recent years, may lead to one day a union of the North and South. This they see as both being a challenge to their own personal identity (as they see themselves as British rather than Irish, loyal to the Queen rather than a republic in Dublin) and a fear that they will be subject to Catholic law.

The Irish constitution states in Article 44 that the Catholic church has a “special position” in Ireland. Whilst this was an attempt to keep things secular whilst appeasing the Catholic majority, unionist critics point to the influence of the Catholic Church on policies in the republic such as the ban on divorce and birth-control. And whilst the situation is not as bad as in the North there have been cases of anti-Protestant discrimination in the South, such as the Mayo librarian controversy and the Fethard-On-Sea boycott.

But what do those on the other side want? Let us have a look at two of these groups, People’s Democracy and the Irish Republican Army.

The Grass Is Always Greener

People's Democracy sit down protest in Belfast
People's Democracy sit-down protest

Following the attacks on NICRA marches by the RUC and loyalists, People’s Democracy formed at Queen’s University Belfast at the end of last year. Whilst having a 5 point programme containing similar demands to the larger Civil Rights organizations, they believe that these can only be achieved in a united socialist republic of Ireland.

Whilst not engaging in violent activity, PD are also much less willing to back down in the face of political pressure. Whilst other civil rights agreed to a one month halting of marching in January in order to calm things down, People’s Democracy organized large scale marches throughout the North and refused to be rerouted away from Protestant areas by the police. These marches were ambushed throughout their routes by Loyalists, resulting in many injuries from protestors.

4 IRA members in 1922 in front of a tent around a camp fire.
IRA members in 1922

Of course, People’s Democracy are not even close to the level of the IRA. This force began its existence just after World War I as a guerilla force fighting the British for Irish independence. During the Civil War the organization split between the pro-treaty Irish Free-State Army and the anti-treaty group who retained the IRA monicker.

In spite of their defeat in the Civil War and the later declaration of the Irish Republic, the organization has continued to exist up to the present day and ran an armed attempt to overthrow the government of Northern Ireland at the start of the decade. And, whilst the Border Campaign failed, they do not appear to be vanishing any time soon.

As an outlawed organization, details of IRA activities are hard to come by. However, there have been reports of recruitment drives for a “new IRA”, including bomb threats being called into the London Press Association by a purported member. One thing that seems sure, they have not lost any of their radicalism, as a member said to Ulster TV recently:

“I believe the British occupation can only be terminated by physical force”

This kind of statement underlines one of the real points of tension.

Yes, much of the population considers themselves British but they have been in the country for centuries. O’Neill can trace his family line back to the medieval kings of Northern Ireland and the Paisley name has been common in the region since the 17th Century. When Republicans regularly talk about ‘getting the British out’, many unionists fear they do not just mean a change of governmental administration, but want the wholesale expulsion or murder of people whose families were living in the region before the Mayflower crossed the Atlantic.

Things Fall Apart; The Centre Cannot Hold

5 RUC officers surrounding a single protestor and beating him with truncheons.
RUC dealing with a NICRA protester

In spite of opposition from left and right, O’Neill must have felt pretty confident at the start of the year. With Craig out of Government and Paisley heading to prison, it seemed the more reactionary voices were losing ground, whilst the biggest Civil Rights groups had agreed to suspend activity temporarily, and his reforms were proceeding through the Northern Irish parliament.

The problems started coming after the aforementioned clashes during the PD marches. The RUC made a heavy-handed attempt to keep the peace in the predominantly Catholic Bogside area of Londonderry. Community activists actually managed to drive the police out and erected barricades to control the area themselves. Even a radio station was established claiming to be the voice of “Free Derry.”

With this being seen by the Unionist authorities as a direct challenge to the Ulster government, crackdowns came swiftly. The plans to end the special powers act were reversed, calling up the paramilitary b-specials and O’Neill stated that there needs to be "less talk about Civil Rights and more talk about Civil Responsibility". Needless to say, this did not go down well with many in the movement.

However, the decline in social order happening at the same time as O’Neill was pushing through reforms was seen as rewarding the mob by some in his own party. Following two high-profile resignations and some calls from many of his other MPs to resign, the NI PM decided to call an election and take his mission to the voters. Pro-O’Neill candidates were the largest winners, taking 44% of the vote and allowing him to continue as Prime Minister. But, in a sign of things to come, Anti-O’Neill Unionists and Nationalists both got around 23% of the vote each.

During the negotiations for the passing of one-man one-vote, a series of bomb explosions took place around Northern Ireland taking out a church, water, and electricity supplies. In addition, firebombs destroyed nine post offices. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, with the RUC blaming the IRA, and the IRA claiming it is the Stormont authorities trying to:

“copy Hitler’s Reichstag fire stunt to…extend coercion and suppress free speech.”

A group of ordinary people standing with homemade weapons ready to police their community
The community police in “Free Derry”

In response the government called up over 1000 B-specials and asked for British troops already stationed in Northern Ireland to guard key installations. The RUC came down heavily on anything they saw as disorder with the predictable response of barricades once again going up in Derry. Even with Paisley in prison, the loyalist response continued, with his wife declaring she was organizing loyalist volunteers to “assist” the police.

As newly elected Unity MP Bernadette Devilin told the House of Commons, it appears that Northern Ireland is at the start of a civil war. Discontent has moved past the point where it is purely about civil rights; now each side feels the other is untrustworthy and violent.

Some have posited the best solution would be to shut down the Northern Irish parliament and RUC, instead instituting a period of temporary rule from Westminster, with the British Army patrolling the streets instead. However, the lessons of fifty years ago are still foremost in many politicians’ minds, and they would no more wish to get involved directly on the island of Ireland again than they would like to send troops to Vietnam.

Another suggestion was made by the Irish government to the United Nations, to send in a peacekeeping force to administer the region. This did not get passed and probably did more harm than good. The Republic has never officially recognized the North as a separate country, and them trying to send in foreign soldiers reinforces the fears of Unionists that there is a conspiracy to annex Ulster.

And whilst O’Neill managed to get the one-man one-vote bill through the Northern Irish parliament, he was forced to resign by his party a few days later. His successor has promised to honour the former PM’s reforms, but, so far, the only response to the current crisis has been tighter laws and more police crackdowns.

The Calm, Preceding The Storm?

Chichester-Clark, the new Prime Minister of Northern Ireland
Change of direction, or just changing the drapes?

Although things have been quiet over the last month, this seems to be both sides assessing the new government. Simply replacing O’Neill with the mild-mannered Chichester-Clark is not actually resolving the underlying issues. One-Man, One Vote was only one part of the demanded reforms of the Civil Rights movement, but we see that any attempt to move further is likely to lead to strong reaction in some quarters.

Ulster Unionist MP Samuel Knox Cunningham recently told The Times that working with Nationalists was equivalent to:

“Hitler[‘s decision] to absorb Austria, the same solution was adopted and the coalition brought about the takeover of Austria. Let it be clear that the Unionists are determined to keep Ulster part of the United Kingdom and there will be no coalition with Republicans, Nationalists or another party with aims at overthrowing the constitution.”

Whilst Frank Gogharty, chairman of NICRA, stated at a recent meeting that Stormont reforms were:

“just a clever ploy by Unionists to split the movement…I expect the mailed fist to clampdown in six months…Stormont will move in and take most of the powers from local councils.”

At the same time, no measures have been put in place to placate any other underlying issues, unemployment sits a 7% in Northern Ireland, compared with 3.5% in the UK as a whole, with some predominantly Catholic areas like Derry seeing 1 in 5 working men without a job. Housing stock continues to be alarmingly short in the region. But the new regime has yet to announce any new economic schemes.

Album cover for Phil Ochs, I ain't marching anymore
Unfortunately, this looks to only be temporary

As the marching season begins, attitudes harden and the economic situation looks to be worsening, I cannot see how the sunny weather can continue. Clouds are forming on the horizon and I worry that what happened in March will look like a playground scrap when the storm breaks.






[June 12, 1969] Heavy on the Bitters (Star Trek: Turnabout Intruder)


by Janice L. Newman

The mood was bittersweet as we gathered to watch the final episode of Star Trek. It also held a hint of trepidation: would we get another instant classic, like All Our Yesterdays, or another disappointment, like the string of episodes before it?

As it turned out, the final episode of Star Trek, probably the last new one that will ever be aired, was compelling, well-acted, well-paced, well-directed…and disappointing for an entirely different reason.

Continue reading [June 12, 1969] Heavy on the Bitters (Star Trek: Turnabout Intruder)

[June 10, 1969] Points West and Above (July 1969 Galaxy)

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

The Orient

Thanks to centuries of tradition, we tend to think of the Far East as…well…east!  But for us, going to Japan means a 12-hour flight west—literally into tomorrow, as we cross the International Date Line to do it. 

This week marked the beginning of our fourteenth trip to Japan.  How things have changed since we first went back in 1948, when flying via Northwest Orient meant an entire day of travel with multiple stops.  Travel these days is practically instantaneous by comparison.

We were even able to hop on a same-day domestic flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka, which is where I'm writing this.  I've been able to develop my first roll of color film, the results of which I am happy to share:

The Alient

The latest issue of Galaxy is, like this month's IF, the first under the helm of Ejler Jakobsson, and it's also a month late.  Will it be more interesting than the rather dull IF?  Well, it's certainly different.  After all, the lead piece is one I would have expected to appear in Analog.  Why wouldn't Campbell want the sequel to the incredibly popular and presumably lucrative Dune.  Dunno… but here it is:


by Dan Adkins

Continue reading [June 10, 1969] Points West and Above (July 1969 Galaxy)

[June 8th, 1969] Dissension In The Ranks (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 5-7])


By Jessica Holmes

When I said this serial was long, I wasn’t exaggerating. We’re getting closer to the end—but we’re not there yet.

Let’s check up on how the Doctor and company are getting on in “The War Games.”

ID: The Doctor (right, dark haired middle-aged white male, baggy suit), talking to the Science Chief (middle-aged white male, balding, wearing lab coat and visor with cross shaped eye holes). Seated in front of them with his head in a metal vise is Carstairs (30s-ish white make in WW1-era British sergeant's uniform)

Continue reading [June 8th, 1969] Dissension In The Ranks (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 5-7])

[June 6, 1969] Blue Skies (July 1969 Amazing)


by John Boston

Samuel Johnson described second marriages as the triumph of hope over experience.  It is tempting to say something similar about changes of editor at Amazing.  But that impulse is at least postponed by the upbeat mien of this July issue.


by Johnny Bruck

That sky is about as blue as any I've seen on a magazine cover, and more importantly, the cover goes some way to answer the cry for a good cover by Johnny Bruck, whose hackneyed spaceships and guys with guns have become so tiresome on recent issues.  This one is a bit cartoonish, but at least it’s clever and amusing—a spaceport scene with some impressive-looking spacecraft, but the people on the ground have eyes only for the bright yellow futuristic automobile, with huge tailfins, a transparent dome over the passenger compartment, and whitewall tires.  Oh, it has side fins too.  Maybe it flies.

The magazine’s contents also lean in a promising direction.  Almost half of the magazine (70 of 144 pages, excluding the front and back covers) is devoted to the first part of Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line.  It’s rare for magazines to give that big a chunk of available space to a serial installment, but it makes sense in a bimonthly magazine. As a side benefit, it leaves less room for the reprints, which take up only 27 pages.  The book review column is back, with substantial reviews by William Atheling, Jr. (James Blish) and editor White.  The letter column is here again, and the promised fanzine review column has now appeared, nine pages worth, by John D. Berry.  White’s editorial says that the fan feature in Fantastic will be reprints of selected fanzine articles.  The guest editorials in Amazing will be gone—the editorial spot’s going to be his. It all gives a sense of an energetic editor getting a quick start at implementing his desires.

A more dubious innovation is the new typeface.  Multiple typefaces are nothing new at Amazing, but Silverberg’s serial, Leon Stover’s article, and the book and fanzine reviews and letter column are set in a tiny typeface that challenges my ill-made eyes (see the glasses in my photo?).  Microscopic type for things like letter columns is an old tradition—just check your copies of the Hugo Gernsback Amazing if the silverfish haven’t gotten to them—but for this much of the magazine it spells headache for me and I suspect many others.

Up the Line (Part 1 of 2), by Robert Silverberg

The biggest deal in this issue is of course Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line.  Silverberg, formerly a capable journeyman magazine-filler, has in recent years become a much more powerful and original writer. In just the past two years he has produced four novels that put him in a different league entirely than did his earlier work: Thorns, To Open the Sky, Hawksbill Station, and The Masks of Time, with several more out or on the way this year. 


by Dan Adkins

Per my practice, I will hold off reviewing and rating Up the Line until it is finished.  But a quick peek reveals that it is a time travel story, told in the first person by a young man at loose ends who joins the Time Couriers—not the Time Police, the Couriers’ nemesis—and that it is a considerable departure from the relatively serious recent works mentioned above.  Parts of it suggest that the author wrote with the stage in mind.  The vaudeville stage, that is.  E.g., as the protagonist explains to his new friend the Time Courier why he abandoned his budding career as law clerk to a Judge Mattachine:

“My uncle is Justice Elliott of the U.S. Higher Supreme Court.  He thought I ought to get into a decent line of work.”

“You don’t have to go to law school to be a law clerk?”

“Not any more,” I explained.  “The machines do all the data retrieval, anyway.  The clerks are just courtiers.  They congratulate the judge on his brilliance, procure for him, submit to him, and so forth.  I stuck it out for eight days and podded out.”

“You have troubles,” Sam said sagely.

“Yes.  I’ve got a simultaneous attack of restlessness, weltschmerz, tax liens, and unfocused ambition.”

“Want to try for tertiary syphilis?” Helen asked.

“Not just now.”

So Mr. Silverberg appears to be having a good time.  Reading a little further confirms that he also seems to be trying to offend everyone in sight, which may explain why this new novel by a fast-rising author is appearing in the field’s lowest-paying magazine, rather than in the more stately mansions of Pohl, Ferman, or JWC, Jr.  In any case, I look forward to completing these scabrous revels.

Only Yesterday, by Ted White

Editor White’s Only Yesterday is a more somber time travel story, in which the ill-at-ease protagonist Bob approaches a young woman as she gets off a train, asks if he can walk with her, says he’s a friend of a friend (she suggestibly supplies the friend’s name, and he agrees), and she invites him in for refreshments and to meet the family.  He hits it off with her and her brothers and her parents, and offers to tell her fortune—a futuristic vision which turns into nightmarish war.  She’s shocked and disturbed, and he quickly says he was making it up, offers a more palatable vision, and beats a hasty retreat.  Revelation of who he is and why he’s there follows.  It’s smoothly written and well visualized, but the ease with which Bob inserts himself into the family setting is too implausible to overlook.  Still, nice try, very readable, three stars. 

Hue and Cry, by Bob Shaw

Bob Shaw’s Hue and Cry is about as far as one can get from his very well received Light of Other Days.  It's a cartoonish story in which a spaceship full of humans lands among sentient carnivorous reptilians who think of them only as food, scheme to eat them all, and are thwarted with a silly gimmick.  Two stars, generously.

Poison Pen, by Milton Lesser

The reprints in this issue are a mostly malodorous batch from the doldrums of the mid-1950s.  The best that can be said for them is that they don’t take up much space.

Milton Lesser’s Poison Pen (from Amazing, December 1955) is a silly botch of a story.  For thirty years, humanity has been under the thumb of the extraterrestrial Masters.  Now they’ve left, and people are dancing in the streets.  The main thing we know about the Masters is that they made people keep diaries and read from them in neighborhood gatherings, and that practice continues.  Why?  Dr. Trillis says it’s because the Masters taught everyone “from the cradle” to be compulsive exhibitionists (how?) so they could control people, “and the older generation either had to go along with it or feel left out.” So people ought to stop with the diaries and the readings, he says.  But they don’t.  Worse, they start stealing other people’s diaries and making fake entries in them—false confessions of having been “co-operationists.” Executions begin.  Our hero helps Dr. Trillis escape and they wind up in a settlement of people “who somehow haven’t been contaminated,” in New Jersey.


by Paul Orban

If the description sounds sketchy and incoherent, that’s because the story is.  It’s an insult to the readers, pretty clearly dashed off without a thought of anything but a quick check.  One star.

No Place to Go, by Henry Slesar


by Erwin Schroeder

Henry Slesar’s No Place to Go (Amazing, July 1958), by contrast, is at least a competent piece of yard goods.  A crack team of astronauts goes to the Moon, takes a look outside, and sees Earth blow up, leaving them alive but stranded. Shortly, some of the astronauts are blowing up too.  But wait—April fool!  It was all a test!  They were drugged with a hypnotic chemical, visions planted in their heads while they slept!  The captain then tells the guy who didn’t blow up that he’s now second in command, and he’ll be going to Mars.  It's cliches wrapped around a gimmick, but unlike Lesser’s story, it doesn’t reek of contempt for the readership.  Three stars, generously.

Note that in our crude rating system, what I’ve just described as “cliches wrapped around a gimmick” gets the same grade as White’s much more capable effort.  Just remember that there’s a lot of space between 3.0 and 3.9.

Puzzle in Yellow, by Randall Garrett


by Leo R. Summers

Randall Garrett’s Puzzle in Yellow (Amazing, November 1956) is a trivial gimmick story on that ever-popular theme, the Stupid Alien.  Extra-terrestrial Ghevil is scoping out Earth for invasion and pillage by the “hordes of Archeron.” He wants to check out an isolated military installation, so he finds a remote building with big walls and turrets, and figures he’s found what he’s looking for.  He kills the first person he sees emerge from the building, and disguises himself in the man’s uniform.  He tries to enter and is shot dead.  Take a wild guess what the installation he tried to enter actually is. The yellow of the title, by the way, refers to Ghevil’s blood.  Two stars, barely.

The Pendant Spectator, by Leon E. Stover

Leon Stover’s “Science of Man” article this month is The Pendant Spectator, a phrase he got from Samuel Johnson’s novel Rasselas, which means, more or less, someone with a view from a height.  “Spaceship Earth” is also invoked.  Stover seems to have abandoned his project of educating us all about anthropology.  Here we have a protracted editorial on the necessity for humanity to get its act together and get right with the biosphere, limiting population, developing energy sources (i.e., the sun) that will neither pollute the atmosphere like fuel combustion nor overheat the place like nuclear power, engaging in international cooperation, accepting a degree of coercive regulation in these and other causes, etc.  It’s hard to argue with any of it, but it’s also hard to imagine that the SF readership is who needs to hear it, so it seems a bit pointless.  This series seems about ready to die a natural death.  Two stars.

Summing Up

So the harbingers seem to be blowing in the right direction, even if the actual fiction contents, possibly excepting Silverberg, are not much changed from the recent norm.  “Looking good” would be premature, but “looking like it might look good” would fit.  Or—as I’ve said more times than I can count about this magazine—promising.






55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction