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.”
Continue reading [June 8th, 1969] Dissension In The Ranks (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 5-7])
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.
by Erica Frank
I'm back to review more issues of Playboy, and I'm still not looking at the pictures. Well. I have looked, in passing. But I am honestly not reading the magazine for the pictures, because as pleasant as some of them are, they get monotonous. They are all very pretty young women, but there is a sameness to them; they are all young, all slender, all devoid of anything that would make them stand out in a crowd, were they wearing clothing suitable for office work or shopping. So I am not here for the unclad ladies, who always have faintly mysterious smiles but look like they've been told to look sexy rather than happy.
Playboy's March 1969 cover–the only one in this set where the woman looks like she's having fun.
I am here because it's widely known in the science fiction industry that Playboy has much higher rates than any of the officially-science-fiction magazines, and that means they sometimes publish gems that bypass the other magazines. However, to find those gems, I have to wade through a lot of stories that are maybe science fiction, perhaps, if you squint, and some that are apparently what the mainstream public thinks science fiction should be.
Continue reading [June 4, 1969] Death and Dating (January–June 1969 Playboy)
by David Levinson
A change is gonna come
Regular readers of Galactic Journey or of SF magazines in general may have noticed that neither Galaxy nor IF published last month. With a bit of detective work, I’ve put together what happened.
The clues are on the masthead. Editor Fred Pohl is now listed as Editor Emeritus, while the editor is Ejler Jakobsson. The publisher is no longer Robert M. Guinn, but Arnold E. Abramson, and Galaxy Publishing has been replaced by Universal Publishing. (That last worried me for a moment, but I quickly remembered that Amazing and Fantastic are put out by Ultimate Publishing under Sol Cohen.)
There’s also an editorial from Fred, talking about the changes. Most importantly, he’s stepping back to focus more on writing. That and the fact that he’s sticking around to look over the new editor’s shoulder (Fred’s words) for a while suggests his departure is voluntary and doesn’t suggest any misgivings about the new ownership on his part. Plus, we should be getting new stuff from him more often.
Who is Ejler Jakobsson? He had a few horror stories back in the late 30s, cowritten with his wife Edith, but if his name sounds familiar, it’s most likely because he was the editor for the revival of Super Science Stories from 1949-1951. Coincidentally, that magazine had been edited by Fred Pohl before it was shut down by wartime paper shortages.
What changes can we expect? Fred prefers to let us see them as they happen, but the promo for next month hints at some. IF is getting a book review column by Lester del Rey. That may or may not mean the end of his “If… and When” column. We’re also getting a twelve part series by Willy Ley, “The Story of Our Earth.” That might suggest some changes over at Galaxy.
Of course, the biggest question is what sort of stories Jakobsson will buy. It will be a while before we get a good feel for that, since there’s bound to be a backlog of stories selected by Pohl. It took several months for the Fermans over at Fantasy and Science Fiction to change the course set by Avram Davidson, but Ted White has wrestled Amazing and Fantastic into a new direction almost immediately. We’ll see, but we should have a good idea by the time we start the new decade.
A bang or a whimper?
Since this is the last issue under Fred Pohl’s leadership, it’s fair to ask what sort of note he goes out on. Will he put out a strong issue, go out on a high note and remind us why this magazine has won three straight Hugos? Or will it be utterly awful and make us glad he’s gone? Not to ruin the suspense, but the July issue is really just another typical, middle-of-the-road example. There’s some good stuff and some not so good. Let’s start with the cover.
Art credited only as couresy of Three Lions, Inc. but actually by German artist Johnny Bruck.
Continue reading [June 2, 1969] The ever-whirling wheel (July 1969 IF)
by Gideon Marcus
Huzzah!
It's hard to believe it was just six years ago that the Renaissance Pleasure Faire started in the suburbs of Los Angeles:
"Counterculture" didn't even have a name yet (I think we were calling it "contraculture"), but already, there were folks weary of the modern age, casting their eyes back to a simpler time. You know, when there were far more things that could kill you, and much fewer opportunities to escape drudgery…
Anyway, I reported on our last foray into the past a couple of years ago. These days, the back-to-then movement is stronger than ever, with the Society for Creative Anachronism exploding (do they have a thousand members now?) and Renaissance Faires catching on. They are a good fit for the Pagans and hippies and folks looking for an escape.
We're not immune to the lure. Here are some scenes from this month's event:
You may recognize the fellow in blue
What really makes the Faire such a delight is the attention to detail. Everywhere you go, there are actors and actress really playing a part, making the whole thing an exercise in living history. Of course, as my "character" styles himself a member of the Habsburg clan, you can bet I razzed the Queen when she paraded by with her foppish retinue.
Nevertheless, I hope the Faire retains its purity, prioritizing the spirit of the event rather than descending into a kind of cynical capitalism. Though, I suppose, that's what the original faires were all about…
Alas!
Speaking of cynical capitalism, I feel that Analog editor stays on the job these days just for a paycheck (and a podium for his irrascible editorials—which he then compiles and sells in book form!) While the latest issue isn't terrible, it certainly doesn't scrape the heights it achieved "back in the day."
by Leo Summers
Artifact, by J. B. Clarke
The name of J. B. Clarke is unknown to me. Perhaps he's Arthur Clarke's little brother (sister?) His writing isn't bad, nor even is the premise, but the execution of this first tale of his…
by Leo Summers
A beach ball-sized orb appears in interplanetary space. When an Earth spaceship tries to pick it up, it zips away at faster-than-light speeds a couple of times, as if to demonstrate that it can, and then becomes docile. After it is picked up, the humans assessing the artifact determine that it was deliberately sent to jump-start our technology. But was the rationale benevolent or otherwise?
This would have been a great story had not Clarke explained from the very beginning that the scheme was a plot by the evil Imperium to instigate a diplomatic incident a la the Nazis asserting a Polish attack against the Germans on September 1, 1939. This would give the rapacious aliens legal precedent to annex our planet. Moreover, we learn that an agent of the "Web", the galactic federation of which the Imperium constitutes a small portion, is already on Earth, guiding our assessment of the artifact.
As a result, there's no tension. We know everything will turn out fine. Indeed, it's a strangely un-Campbellian story in that humans aren't the smart ones in the end. But because there are no decisions to be made, no suspense to the outcome, the story falls flat.
Two stars.
Zozzl, by Jackson Burrows
by Leo Summers
This one gets closer to the mark. It stars a big game hunter whose quarry is a telepathic beast. The creature's natural defense is to access your fears and throw pursuers into a nightmare world, repelling them. It's a neat concept, and Burrows (another name with which I am unacquainted), renders the dream sequences quite effectively.
While we learn a bit about our hero's past and motivations, he never really has to solve any puzzles to win his prize. He just wins in the end. There needs to be more.
Still, I really dug the idea, and there's definitely potential for Jackson. Three stars.
Dramatic Mission, by Anne McCaffrey
by Leo Summers
Here's the latest installment of the The Ship Who. This series stars Helva, a profoundly disabled woman who, at a young age, was turned into a cybernetic brain for a starship. Together with a series of "brawns", the human component of the ship's crew, she has been on all kinds of adventures.
In this story, we learn that brain-ships can earn their independence (paying off the debt of their construction) and fly without brawns, and that many vessels strive for this status. But Helva prefers to ride with company—indeed, she insists on it.
Well, her wish is granted. Short-listed for a priority mission to Beta Corvi, Helva is tasked to transport a troupe of actors to a gas giant in that system, where they will perform Romeo and Juliet for a bunch of alien jellyfish in exchange for an important chemical process.
The problem is the drama that unfolds before the drama: Solar Prane, the star, is dying from chronic use of a memory-enhancing drug. His nurse is deeply in love with him. His co-star and ex-lover is jealous and stubbornly insists on sabotaging the production. It is up to Helva to be the grown-up in the room and save the day.
There is so much to like about this story, so many neat, unique things about the setting and characters, that it's a shame McCaffrey can't help getting in her own way. She loves writing waspish, unlikeable characters, and her penchant for including casual, off-putting violence reminds me of what I don't like about Marion Zimmer Bradley.
This is one of those pieces I'd like to see redone by someone more talented and sensitive. Zenna Henderson, maybe, if I wanted to see the soft tones enhanced, or Rosel George Brown (RIP) if I wanted something a little lighter and funnier.
Three stars.
The Nitrocellulose Doormat, by Christopher Anvil
by Peter Skirmat
The planet of Terex has turned into a death trap for the terran Space Force. Invited in to deal with an insurgency problem, a combination of religious proscriptions against advanced technology and a flourishing black market that loots what munitions are allowed in, the human troops are not only made into sitting ducks but laughing stocks.
Enter a canny colonel of the Interstellar Corps, whose bright idea is to suffuse all incoming logistics with explosives so that, when they are stolen, they explode. Deterrent and humiliation, all in one.
It may seem that I've given away the plot…and I have. It's given away fairly early on, and the rest of the story is simply an explication of the plan's success.
I should have liked the story less than I did, but it reads pretty well. Three stars.
The Ghoul Squad, by Harry Harrison
by Leo Summers
A rural sheriff digs in his heels at the notion of government agencies harvesting the organs of newly dead victims of traffic accidents in his jurisdiction. He sticks to his principles even at the cost of his own life, decades later.
This story doesn't say anything Niven hasn't said (much) better in The Organleggers, The Jigsaw Man, and A Gift from Earth.
Two stars.
Jackal's Meal, by Gordon R. Dickson
by Leo Summers
The human sphere of stars has begun to brush against the part of the galaxy claimed by the loosely knit Morah, aliens with a talent for profound modification of bodies, internally and externally. In the middle of sensitive negotiations between the two empires over a contested bit of space, a bipedal creature runs amok at the space dock. It is impossible to determine if the being is a Morah made to look like a human or a human made to look like a Morah. Ultimately, the fate of the two empires rests on this hapless person.
Easily the best story in the issue, both interesting and well written, though it still rates no more than four stars.
Give me the past
Short story SF appears to be on the decline in general, with only four magazines out this month. Of them, Fantasy and Science Fiction was by far the best, garnering 3.4 stars, but Fantastic and New Worlds both barely made three stars, and Mark, who covers the last mag, has been grumbling about all the newfangled, outré stuff.
As a result, you could fill just one digest-sized magazine with all the good stuff that came out this month. In other statistical news, women produced just 8% of all the new fiction this month.
It's enough to make you long for the (romanticized) good ol' days…but who knows what the future holds?
by Kaye Dee
May has been an exciting month for space exploration, with two Soviet space probes arriving at Venus and Apollo-10 safely returning just days ago from its epic lunar voyage, which has constituted a full-dress rehearsal for the first manned Moon landing. 
A philatelic cover referring to Apollo-10 as "the Big One before the BIG One"! (Meaning Apollo-11, of course)
The Bridesmaid, not the Bride
Before Apollo-10 lifted off on its big mission as NASA’s final test flight ahead of the planned landing of Apollo-11 in July, for a while there was the possibility that the landing attempt might actually be made on this flight, to ensure that American astronauts reached the Moon before any Soviet cosmonauts! 
I’m told by my friends at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, that there was considerable discussion within NASA about accelerating the lunar landing programme. As early as February, even before the launch of Apollo-9, there were suggestions that, if the Earth orbit test of the Lunar Module (LM) was successful, Apollo-10 might go for the first manned lunar landing. George Mueller, Head of NASA’s Office of Manned Space Flight (left), supported this approach. He may not look it, but Dr. Mueller has been described as someone who “always shoots from both hips”, and he strongly pushed for the Apollo-10 landing scenario.
However, a dress rehearsal mission had been planned since June 1967, and the consensus was that the programme was not quite ready to safely achieve a landing with Apollo-10, with more work needed on different docking techniques, as well as more experience with communications and tracking capabilities at lunar distances.
There were concerns that not enough is known about the effect on planned lunar orbit manoeuvres of the Mascons (gravity peaks caused by heavy material under the lunar surface) discovered by Apollo-8. In addition, the lunar landing computer software wasn’t quite ready, and the LM allocated to the Apollo-10 mission was one that had been planned for use in an Earth orbit flight test. Since it was heavier than a LM intended for a lunar landing, its greater weight might have caused problems lifting off the lunar surface. 
LM-4 being prepared for the Apollo-10 mission at Kennedy Space Centre
Thus, on 26 March, with the Saturn-V for its mission already on the launchpad, senior NASA officials finally announced that Apollo-10 would remain the bridesmaid and not become the bride, performing the final full-dress rehearsal for a Moon landing with Apollo-11, rather than itself attempting the historic first lunar touchdown. “With the exception of the actual landing of the Lunar Module on the lunar surface, the mission planned is the same as for the [Apollo-11] lunar mission”, NASA’s announcement of the decision said. 
Dr. Paine (right) with Mr. Robert Gilruth, Director of the Manned Spacecraft Centre, celebrating the safe return of Apollo-10
Perhaps Dr. Thomas O. Paine, only confirmed as NASA's third Administrator on 20 March – and a Democrat in the Republican Nixon Administration, which has yet to demonstrate strong enthusiasm for continuing the spaceflight programme of the previous Administration – preferred to err on the side of caution, rather than take another bold gamble like Apollo-8 at such a late stage in the Moon landing programme.
Seasoned Crew
Whether Apollo-10 remained the lunar landing dress rehearsal, or if it had become the first mission to land on the Moon, its crew were well-qualified for either mission scenario, as seasoned veterans of Gemini spaceflights. 
Mission Commander Colonel Thomas Stafford previously flew as Pilot of the Gemini-VI mission, and then as Commander of Gemini-IX. On the latter flight, his Pilot was Commander Eugene “Gene” Cernan, assigned as LM Pilot for Apollo-10. The third member of the Apollo-10 crew, Command Module (CM) Pilot Commander John Young, made his first spaceflight as Pilot of Gemini-III, before becoming Commander of Gemini-X. I think NASA would have been hard-pressed to assemble a more experienced crew for this crucial flight.
A Mission Patch with Mission Heritage
North American Rockwell artist Allen Stevens, who has previously collaborated with the crews to design the mission patches for Apollo-1 , 7, and 9, apparently wanted to break away from the circular shape used for so many previous missions. He initially offered the Apollo-10 crew some concepts based on polygonal patch shapes, but these did not appeal. 
Instead, US Navy officers Cernan and Young primarily developed the patch, which Stevens then illustrated. Their concept drew heavily on the design of Stafford and Cernan’s Gemini-IX mission patch, especially using the shape of a shield. 
Astronaut Cernan has said that the mission patch was based on the mechanics and goals of the mission, and this is exemplified in the dominance of the spacecraft and the mission number represented by a large Roman numeral in the middle of the design. 
The final version of the Apollo-10 patch depicts the CM circling the Moon as the LM makes its low pass over the surface, with the Earth in the background. The three-dimensional rendering of the Roman ‘X’ gives the impression that it is sitting on the Moon, its prominence in the illustration indicating the mission’s significance in furthering the Apollo programme. The crew names appear around the rim of the shield.
A Mascot Namesake
With two spacecraft operating independently around the Moon, the CM and LM would need their own individual callsigns, as was the case with Apollo-9. For their historic mission, the Apollo-10 crew looked to the popular “Peanuts” comic strip, injecting a light-hearted note into a critical mission by designating the Command Module “Charlie Brown” and the Lunar Module “Snoopy”. It seems that NASA executives were once again unhappy with the crew’s choice of names, being particularly concerned about the perception of the hapless Charlie Brown as a born loser. 
But the two characters, particularly Snoopy, have been associated with spaceflight since last year, when the lovable beagle was adopted as the mascot for NASA’s Manned Spaceflight Awareness programme. This safety campaign, begun in 1963, focuses on encouraging the workforce constructing spacecraft and equipment for NASA to remember that astronaut lives, and mission success, depend upon the quality and reliability of their work: a message that has taken on new meaning and urgency following the Apollo-1 fire. Snoopy, with his daring imaginary adventures (as a World War 1 flying ace, Olympic skater and other action roles), seemed an ideal choice for a mascot to raise morale and increase visibility for the renewed effort.
In 1968, with the permission and participation of “Peanuts” creator Charles Schultz, Snoopy became not only the mascot for this programme, but the symbol of its special achievement award, the “Silver Snoopy”. The award recognises individuals within the NASA workforce and contractors who have made valuable contributions to safety and mission assurance. Recipients receive a silver lapel pin which depicts a spacesuited Snoopy doing his famous “happy dance”. 
A batch of Silver Snoopy pins was carried to the Moon on Apollo-8, and each award pin is presented to its recipient by an astronaut. As a person can only be honoured once with a Silver Snoopy award, it has already become a highly-coveted form of recognition.
Snoopy-ing Around
In March this year, Snoopy beat the Apollo-11 crew to a Moon landing in his comic strip fantasies, but he and Charlie Brown are turning up in many guises across the space agency, frequently featuring on motivational posters. 
Small models of the boy and his dauntless dog are found in the Apollo spacecraft simulator area, where the astronauts spend much of their time in training. The astronauts have also taken to calling their communications headgear “Snoopy caps”, because of their resemblance to the flying helmet Snoopy wears in his daydreams of battling the Red Baron. The black-and-white design of the caps also recalls Snoopy's white head and black ears. Toy models of Charlie Brown and astronaut Snoopy also graced the consoles in Mission Control while Apollo-10 was in flight. 
In an interview in April, Col. Stafford explained why the astronauts adopted the Snoopy and Charlie Brown callsigns. “Since we're going to the Moon to find all these facts and kind of snoop around, we decided that the Lunar Module is going to be called Snoopy. Snoopy is a comic character that’s a favourite, I know, of many people in the United States and around the world, and to go with it, we'll call the Command Module Charlie Brown”. In the same interview Commander Cernan also referenced the Silver Snoopy as a reason for the name choice, saying “Snoopy is a sort of champion of the space programme, anyway”. 
Getting Ready
Despite not landing on the Moon, Apollo-10 was still going to be a big mission, with its flight plan closely following that of Apollo-11. To enable detailed photography of the designated Apollo-11 landing site at the Sun angle planned for the July mission, the launch was postponed from 16 to 17 May. In March, it was delayed again to 18 May, to allow for a better view of the backup landing site. An extra day in lunar orbit was also added to the mission to provide time for additional testing of the LM’s systems and photography of possible future Apollo landing sites. 
Col. Stafford and Commander Cernan training for their flight in the LM simulator
The Apollo-10 crew’s intensive mission training schedule saw them putting in five hours of formal training for every hour of their mission’s eight-day duration. This included more than 300 hours each in the CM or LM simulators, and centrifuge training to prepare for the high-acceleration conditions they would endure during re-entry.
An accidental fuel spillage from the first stage of the Saturn V at the end of April fortunately caused no damage, and countdown preparations went ahead as planned, with no major delays. On 14 May, the astronauts received their final lunar topography briefing from scientist-astronaut, geologist Dr. Harrison Schmidt, and were pronounced fit and ready for lunar flight in their final medical checks. Everything was ready for the full-dress rehearsal of a manned lunar landing! 
Mission Commander Stafford pats a giant Snoopy plush toy for luck, as the crew walk out to the Astronaut Transfer Van. Snoopy is being held by Cernan's secretary, Jamye Flowers
Lift Off!
Due to mission scheduling requirements, Apollo-10 was slated to lift off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Centre, the first Apollo mission to use that pad. (LC 39A, used for Apollo-8 and 9 is being used for Apollo-11, whose Saturn V vehicle was rolled out to the pad just a few days before the Apollo-10 launch). Firing Room 3, at Kennedy Space Centre’s Launch Control Centre was also used for the first time on Apollo-10’s launch.
Mission Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton and other NASA officials in Firing Room-3 during Apollo 10's pre-flight preparations
Apollo-10 lifted off exactly on time at 16.49 GMT on 18 May. Although pogo effects gave the astronauts something of a rough ride into orbit, this fortunately had no impact on the mission. However, during Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) burn, shuddering vibrations caused by the S-IVB stage pressure relief valves blurred the astronauts’ vision, to the point that they feared that the mission might have to be aborted. Fortunately, after five minutes the burn ended satisfactorily, with Apollo-10 safely on the way to the Moon.
The TLI burn occurred about 100 miles above outback Queensland, witnessed on the ground by thousands of people thanks to perfect observing conditions. A local official in the town of Cloncurry gave an interview to NBC News, which I understand was broadcast live in the US, describing what they saw: “The veil surrounding the relatively large white spot of the rocket’s rear end could best be described as resembling a mercury vapor street light seen through thick fog, although it was of a tenuous nature.”
I've not yet seen a picture of the Apollo TLI burn from Queensland, but this photo of the Apollo-8 TLI burn above Hawaii will give some idea of the amazing sight seen by many in remote Queensland towns
Coming to You in Living Colour
The Apollo-10 Westinghouse colour television camera and its custom-made viewing monitor for onboard use in the CM
Apollo 10 has seen the first use of a compact colour television camera, developed by Westinghouse. Installed in the CM, the camera was first used to show mission controllers in Houston the complex transposition, docking, and extraction manoeuvre performed by CM Pilot John Young, to extract the LM from the S-IVB stage, attaching it to the nose of the Command Module for the journey to the Moon. 
Soon after the special LM extraction transmission, the first public broadcast on the way to the Moon treated the audience to live colour vistas of the Earth from 25,000 miles away in a thirteen-minute show. 
This was followed, before the crew's first sleep period, with a 24-minute TV transmission, that began with views from 36,300 nautical miles in space, showing the Earth floating in the black void of the cosmos. The scene moved LM Pilot Cernan to say: "It's just sitting out there in the middle of nowhere. It's unbelievable…it's just incredible".
The camera was then turned inside the the CM showing the astronauts themselves. Capcom Bruce McCandless commented, “It’s really great. The colours are fantastic.”
Images of the Apollo-10 crew captured during one of the broadcasts from the CM. Stafford (top), Cernan (middle), Young (bottom)
The Apollo-10 crew must have thought their colour camera was a great new toy, as they treated Earth audiences to nineteen colour television transmissions, totalling 5 hours 52 minutes across the entire mission. In one of the early broadcasts, the crew displayed colour illustrations of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, produced by a NASA illustrator, which I understand were intended as colour calibration checks. 
During another broadcast on the way to the Moon, Astronauts Stafford and Young were shown side by side, with Young upside down to demonstrate the weightless environment. Col. Stafford, using just a light touch, moved his CM pilot up and down, as Young joked “I do everything he tells me.”
Monitors in Mission Control show the Stafford-Young broadcast from the CM demonstrating the weightless environment
The first broadcast after Trans-Earth Injection was initially received in Australia and distributed to the local television networks (albeit in black and white, since we don't yet have colour television), prior to transmission back to the United States and on to the rest of the world. This functioned as a test for the systems that have been put in place to handle Australia's potential role as the prime receiver for Apollo-11's lunar surface transmissions.
Amusingly, the normally laconic Cernan and Stafford gushed like schoolboys on an outing, clearly excited to be floating in weightlessness, on their way to the Moon. Speaking of which, it was just shortly before this flight that NASA determined what was causing some astronauts to get "space sick" during missions. It wasn't a cold or food-related; it was weightlessness, itself, affecting the inner ear adversely.
Eating Out
Food for the astronauts is being continually improved, and new items were added to the menu on this mission, such as small sandwiches with real bread, and ham, chicken and tuna salad. I've heard that this expanded menu was a real boost to the crew's morale as they travelled to the Moon – although looking at pictures of some space foods, I'm not so sure that they are appetising, even if they are nutritious. 
(above) Some of the new menu items available to the Apollo-10 crew. (below) I'm not so sure about the new dehydrated chicken salad! 
Another innovation for Apollo-10 has been the introduction of the "wet pack" or "spoon bowl" packaging, allowing the astronauts to eat many meals with a spoon! To reduce the risk of food floating away and becoming a nuisance and potential hazard to electronic equipment, the spoon-eatable wet pack food is mixed with just enough water to make it sticky, so that it clings to the inside of the container and sticks on the spoon.
(above) A spoon-bowl container with a beef and vegetable meal. It looks a lot more enjoyable to eat than that chicken salad
Unfortunately, some food on Apollo-10 was not so morale-boosting, as Col. Stafford apparently put too much chlorine in the drinking water used to rehydrate the meals, making the dehydrated foods taste strange.
Cruising Along
The astronauts had a relatively light workload on the way to the Moon, with only one slight course correction to place Apollo-10 on the trajectory Apollo-11 is expected to take. The only real problem they encountered was that the mylar cover of the CM’s hatch pulled loose, spreading shreds of fibreglass insulation into the docking tunnel, CM and LM. 
Photograph of the Earth from 100,000 miles, showing parts of Africa, Europe and the Middle East
About 62 hours after launch, Apollo-10 crossed into the Moon’s gravitational sphere of influence, passing about 10 hours later into the darkness of the lunar shadow. Just on 76 hours into the mission, Apollo-10 passed behind the Moon, with the Lunar Orbit Insertion burn occurring out of radio contact with the Earth. Fortunately, this manoeuvre experienced no issues and Apollo-10, now safely in lunar orbit, emerged from the behind the Moon to begin the real work of the mission. “You can tell the world that we have arrived,” Col. Stafford announced.
The Real Work Begins
Almost as soon as they were back in contact with the Earth, the crew began describing the lunar terrain they were flying over, with Commander Cernan saying, “It might sound corny, but the view is really out of this world.” Within the first couple of hours at the Moon, after circularising their orbit at approximately 60 nautical miles above the Moon, the crew began planned observations of lunar surface landmarks. This included photographing three of the proposed Apollo-11 landing sites (which the astronauts would also photograph at a lower altitude from LM Snoopy), as well as many craters and other surface features. 
(top) A view of the prime Apollo-11 landing site. (bottom) Crater Necho on the far side of the Moon
For their first telecast from lunar orbit, the Apollo-10 crew described the lunar terrain speeding below them, which included the approach to the Apollo-11 landing site in the Sea of Tranquillity. I could only see this broadcast in black and white, but I understand that for viewers in the US and other parts of the world, the colour and quality of the television images was quite breathtaking: these stills made available to me by the Australian NASA representative certainly suggest that! 
(top) Colour view of craters Messier and Messier-A (bottom) Crater Maskelyne
Waking Up Snoopy
When Commander Cernan opened Snoopy’s hatch for the first time, to be engulfed in fibreglass particles from the earlier damage to the CM hatch, bits got into his hair and eyebrows. Col. Stafford helped remove some of these particles, remarking that the LM Pilot “looked like he just came out of a chicken coop”. Though the astronauts used a vacuum cleaner to remove as much of the fibreglass particles as possible, tiny flecks annoyingly continued to circulate in the spacecraft, making the astronauts itch. They got into the air conditioning system and had to be constantly scraped from the CM’s filter screens for the rest of the mission.
Despite the fibreglass nuisance, Cernan partially activated the LM, conducted communications checks, and prepared the vehicle for its test flight. “I’m personally very happy with the fellow”, the LM Pilot later reported to Mission Control, saying in reference to the next day’s flight “We’ll take him out for a walk and let him stretch his legs in the morning.”
A spectacular Earthrise image captured during Apollo-10's first orbit of the Moon
Taking Snoopy for a Walk
Apollo-10’s first full day in lunar orbit was going to be its busiest, with the critical eight-hour sequence of manoeuvres in lunar orbit to simulate all aspects of Apollo-11 mission operations except the landing itself. Stafford and Cernan transferred to Snoopy, while Young remained in Charlie Brown. Despite some issues with the docking tunnel, Mission Control assured the astronauts that it was safe to undock, and the two craft separated while they were out of contact behind the Moon. 
Returning to contact with Earth, Commander Young made a visual inspection of the LM and then fired the CM’s thrusters to separate from Snoopy. With a GO from Mission Control, Snoopy commenced its Descent Orbit Insertion burn while on the lunar farside, to lower itself to about 50,000 feet. This critical manoeuvre took place behind the Moon, so that the low point of its orbit would be reached on the nearside near the Apollo-11 landing area in the Sea of Tranquillity. As they looped back around to the nearside of the Moon, Cernan reported to Capcom Charles Duke, “We is down among them, Charlie,” referring to their low altitude over the lunar landscape. 
A low-altitude view of the Apollo-11 prime landing site, focussed towards the upper right of the image
Snoopy successfully tested the landing radar, a particularly critical test in advance of the actual landing mission, as the crew maintained a running commentary describing the landscape below them, including all the landmarks leading up to the planned Apollo 11 landing site. This was followed by a firing of the LM’s Descent Propulsion System to set up the right orbital geometry for a simulated liftoff from the Moon during the next orbit.
Crisis averted
As Snoopy’s crew prepared to separate the LM’s ascent stage from the lower stage, the vehicle began to gyrate and tumble out of control, causing Cernan to utter a shocked expletive that was broadcast live, bringing some complaints about his language (though I think his outburst was perfectly understandable in the circumstances).
Col. Stafford quickly discarded the descent stage and fought to manually regain control of the LM, suspecting a thruster stuck firing. Fortunately, after about eight seconds Snoopy was brought back under control and the Ascent Stage, was able to safely climb to orbit, mimicking the orbital insertion manoeuvre after launch from the lunar surface that Apollo-11 would have to conduct.
For a tense hour, it looked as if the Apollo-11 mission was in jeopardy. If the ascent stage always subjected its crew to "wild gyrations" upon firing, that was a problem that had to be solved, and pronto. Fortunately, the actual cause of the problem was determined quickly: it seems that a switch controlling the mode of the abort guidance system, a sort of back-up computer, has been left on, conflicting with the main guidance computer. That issue is easily resolved with a better checklist!
Blue Moon
There are rumours that NASA deliberately did not load Snoopy with enough propellant to safely land on the Moon and return to orbit, in order to dissuade Stafford and Cernan from unofficially attempting the first lunar landing. However, I’m told that, since Snoopy was overall too heavy to attempt a safe return from the lunar surface, the ascent stage was loaded with the equivalent quantity of propellant that it would have had remaining if it had lifted off from the lunar surface and reached the altitude at which the Apollo-10 ascent stage was fired. 
After coasting for about an hour, Snoopy performed manoeuvres to bring it close to Charlie Brown, while the two craft were behind the Moon. Just after they returned to contact with the Earth, Commander Young completed the CM-LM docking, with Stafford joking that “Snoopy and Charlie Brown are hugging each other.” During its independent flight of 8 hours 10 minutes, Snoopy met all planned objectives for the Lunar Module flight tests. 
The scene in Mission Control as the LM and CM are safely docked together
With all the astronauts safely back in the CM, Snoopy was cut free from Charlie Brown. To prevent any further contact between the two spacecraft, Snoopy’s ascent engine was automatically fired to fuel depletion, sending it safely out of lunar orbit and into an orbit around the Sun. LM Pilot Cernan said sadly, “I feel sort of bad about that, because he’s a pretty nice guy; he treated us pretty well today.”
On Their Way Home
During their final day in lunar orbit, the Apollo-10 crew took stereo images of the Apollo-11 landing site, gave another 24-minute colour TV broadcast, and prepared the spacecraft for its critical Trans Earth Injection manoeuvre, that would send the CM out of lunar orbit and on its way back to Earth. Just as with Apollo-8, this critical engine firing occurred while the spacecraft was behind the Moon and out of radio communications with Earth.
With extra fuel left over from the lunar activities, Apollo-10 burnt it off to accelerate the spacecraft back to Earth, the return trajectory taking only 42 hours rather than the normal 56. By the time it reached re-entry, the CM was travelling at 24,791 mph relative to Earth on re-entry, making the crew of Apollo 10 the fastest humans in history!
During their relatively lazy return to Earth, the Apollo-10 astronauts indulged themselves with the first shave in space. Using safety razors, a thick shaving gel and a wet cloth to wipe away gel and whiskers, the crew displayed freshly shaven visages during their final broadcast from space. 
Eight days after launch (with a mission elapsed time of 192:03:23), Apollo-10 splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean on 26 May, about 400 nautical miles east of American Samoa and just a couple of miles from the recovery ship USS Princeton. The carrier crew witnessed the spectacular sight of the Service Module streaking across the pre-dawn sky in a blazing fireball as it burned up, followed by the Command Module silhouetted against the brightening sky under its three big parachutes. 
When the astronauts, waiting in their “rubber-ducky” to be retrieved, looked up at the recovery helicopter hovering above they saw “Hello there Charlie Brown” written across the underside of the fuselage! 
After taking a congratulatory phone call from President Richard Nixon, the crew were flown to Pago Pago and then on to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston, where they are now undergoing medical checks, debriefing and, of course, re-union with their families.
Apollo-10 has completed an epic voyage that has in many ways surpassed even Apollo-8. Its completion of a successful full-dress rehearsal, means that nothing now stands in the way of the first manned landing taking place in July 1969, with Apollo-11 – that will be the BIG one, to stand on the shoulders of this big test-flight mission. I can't wait! 
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by Mark Yon
Scenes from England
Hello again!
The continuing voyage of the new-new-new New Worlds continues apace. (Apologies – I’m still recovering from being told that it looks like the BBC are finally – finally! – going to show Star Trek over here starting in the Summer!)
Anyway, on to this month’s issue.
Cover by Mal Dean
Well, that’s better!! After the succession of frankly dull covers with faces on, this is a breath of fresh air – scarily dark, vivid, startling – never has Jerry Cornelius looked more frightening. Should get casual readers interested!
Lead-In by The Publishers
The fact that we have two stories of Jerry Cornelius this month is heralded by the Lead-In, as it should.
A Cure for Cancer (Part 4 of 4) by Michael Moorcock
Drawing by Mal Dean
As we reach the end of the story things begin to make some sense, although to some extent the point of the story is to be confusing, I think!
It is still non-linear, almost dadaist in its narrative structure. This is a story less about plot and more about the little vignettes, scattered across different times and different universes. At times the contradictory nature of these elements add to the confusion.
Keeping it simple, Jerry manages to retrieve the gizmo he has been chasing over the last three parts and we now know that it is important because it allows the user to control multiple universes and see all the alternatives at once. As a result, characters we thought had gone now reappear – Bishop Beesley, Jerry’s brother Frank, Mitzi, and most important to Jerry, his sister Catherine.
The Cure for Cancer is perhaps most important for being an indicator of the times. It is the sort of story I think you need to read with Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced? or the Beatles’ White Album playing in the background – both artists have been mentioned in the narrative. Its thoughts on race, war (deliberately satirising Vietnam) and sexual freedom are indicative of being made for an angry, disillusioned and, perhaps most of all, young readership. 4 out of 5.
Three Events of the Same View by John G. Chapman
Another one of those anti-religious stories New Worlds likes. In the first part, Pope Honorius is imprisoned in a castle by the cardinals after declaring there is no God. In the second, a domestic scene involving a garden shed and a request to store cadavers there before an Undertakers Convention. In the third, the view is from a Commandant in a concentration camp. Nice prose, but if there’s a connection, I couldn’t see it. 3 out of 5.
Playback by Granville Hawkins
An un-named narrator uses illegal equipment to play back a recording of sex. It unfolds that the recording is of his wife, who with their children has been killed in a destroyed London by the moralistic "Calvs". As a final act of defiance, our narrator shows the unlawful recording to the public by projecting it onto a chapel wall. It doesn’t end well. An odd yet memorable story, well written, graphically depicting a dystopian future – rather like Orwell’s 1984 meets the Night of the Long Knives, with racist hangings, castrations and sex. 3 out of 5.
Babel by Alan Burns
Drawing by Mal Dean
An author on his debut here. This is a story that has paragraphs, each a different story. In other words, this is Ballard-type pastiche, which could be good, but this is filled with such stream of consciousness nonsense that it feels like a bad hallucinogenic drug trip. For example: “Men are opening the Moon. Streams of wheels have springs of space.” 2 out of 5.
Between the Tracks by Ron Pagett and Tom Veich
A story with the same events repeated over and over, but slightly different each time. Most begin with a ‘boy’ travelling along ‘the tracks’ but things are not what they seem. Allegorical tale, with nods to Bradbury’s Martian stories, I noticed. Nicely done, but I’m not sure I ‘got it’. 3 out of 5.
Spoor by Alan Passes
Photograph by Gabi Nasemann
A story about a man searching for Jayne in a Royal Park. Along the way a number of people around him are suddenly eaten by dangerous animals – a lion, an alligator. At the end he finds Jayne fornicating with a gorilla. I get the impression that all this is meant to be funny (“Me Tarzan, you Jane”, perhaps?), but I just found it unpleasant and meaningless. Another dream-state tale. 2 out of 5.
Flower Gathering by Langdon Jones
Langdon Jones’s latest piece, text written out in pretty patterns (which is rapidly becoming a prose-thing that I hate) to say THE GARLANDS OF LOVE WEAVE FOR US – or is that WEAVE FOR US THE GARLANDS OF LOVE? I guess this is an attempt to give prose a new form, but for me pretty meaningless. 1 out of 5.
Sub-Entropic Evening by Graham Charnock
Photograph by Gabi Nasemann
We’re back in Graham’s CRIM-world for this one. (The first was in New Worlds in November 1968, the last in the March issue three months ago.) This is a story where nothing is what it seems, another set of descriptions written as if the people are in a drug-induced, dream-like state. Jones, Dragon, Velma, and Cat live near an Arena where people seen as enemies of the state are routinely incinerated, and there’s a music concert played by musicians which can cause blindness and death in some sort of suicide pact. It’s all vivid but odd and rather unpleasant. Not a place I’d want to live in, but I guess that is the point. 3 out of 5.
The Fermament Theorem by Brian W Aldiss
Drawing by Mal Dean
In which Brian Aldiss takes up the mantle to write a Jerry Cornelius story. Earlier in the year Mike Moorcock did say that the sharing of the Jerry Cornelius character was about to happen. Is it any good? It is such a confused mess of satire, social commentary and sex that readers will either think of it as a work of genius or be horrified by the unstructured elements claiming to be a story.
Drawing by Mal Dean
I enjoyed it, even if I’m not sure I understood it all. There’s a story in there about the origin of the solar system being allied to the Moon and sex, comments on popularism and culture, not to mention lots of obscure references to people such as astronomer and science fiction writer Fred Hoyle, the Archbishop of Canterbury and author Robert Graves. In summary, Aldiss manages to take the key characteristics of a JC story – fluid sexuality, references to culture, fashion and society – and turn them into a satirical commentary – I think. What I found most interesting was that although Cornelius barely appears in the story, Aldiss has managed to write a Jerry Cornelius story in Moorcock’s style. It doesn’t feel out of place in the Jerry Cornelius series, although lighter in tone than A Cure for Cancer. I’ll give it 4 out of 5, although I accept that it could score anywhere between 2 (unstructured mess) – and 5 (work of genius!) depending on the person reading it.
Book Reviews: Use Your Vagina by J. G. Ballard
Advertisement from the back cover for the reviewed book.
In which J. G. Ballard reviews in detail a “sexual handbook.” Wouldn’t happen in Analog!
Book Reviews: The Boy from Vietnam by M. John Harrison
More relevant, perhaps, Harrison reviews a collection of two stories, one by Aldiss and one by Ballard in a book entitled The Inner Landscape, with varying degrees of success. Harrison then claims that Aldiss is “on better form” with his collection of five novellas in Intangibles, Inc. Eric Burdick’s Old Rag Bone is a non-genre book seemingly dealing with Catholic guilt.
Lastly and in keeping with contemporary themes, Harrison reviews Norman Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam? reminding me that the magazine is sold in the US as well as England. The book was reviewed in more detail by Douglas Hill in the March 1968 issue of New Worlds.
Book Reviews: The Comrade from Ploor by James Cawthorn
James Cawthorn generously reviews E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Subspace Explorers as a book that “offers the kind of entertainment that made the good old days of sf what they were” (ie: not the sort of story found in New Worlds today!), Brother Assassin by Fred Saberhagen which “stretches credibility just a little” and John Brunner’s Double! Double! which has “no credibility whatsoever”. There’s also an Ace Double with Code Duello by Mack Reynolds and The Age of Ruin by John M. Faucett, a review of a new biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs by Richard A. Lupoff, World of the Starwolves—a space opera by Edmond Hamilton, and positive reviews of James H. Schmitz’s This Demon Breed and Hal Clement’s story collection, Small Changes. I was pleased to see some more traditional sf get some positive comments.
Book Reviews: The Machiavellian Method by R. Glynn Jones
R. Glynn Jones reviews a book on tyranny, which is most disconcerting for having photographs of Hitler’s teeth.
Book Reviews: Woman’s Realm by D. R. Boardman
Lastly, D. R. Boardman reviews The Tunnel by Maureen Lawrence, a “competent first novel”. Was mildly pleased to see that it has been written by an ex-academic who is local to me, but not really my sort of thing, being the story of “a bored lonely woman living a boring life”.
Summing up New Worlds
Good news: although the scores may not reflect it, this is a better issue than the last. Although not perfect, the magazine scores with the conclusion of the Moorcock serial and Brian Aldiss’s take on the character. They are recognisably similar yet different, both confusing and subversive. New readers will not have a clue, regular readers will appreciate the word play and anti-establishment satire.
On the other side of the coin, there is also lots of material by relative unknowns, the new lifeblood of the magazine. Most of it is acceptable, though rarely outstanding. For example, the Hawkins was OK, but like Obtuowicz’s story last month really was another unpleasant story without anything really new to offer, Alan Passes’ Spoor was just dreadful.
Anyway, that’s it, until next time.
by Fiona Moore
It’s exam time here at Royal Holloway College, and there’s nothing better than a bad movie to burn off the stress whether you’re studying or marking. As a break from examining sociology papers, I’ve taken in a double bill of new American movies to check out the state of the low-budget horror world in, well, the States.
Poster for Blood of Dracula's Castle
A young couple (Gene O’Shane and Barbara Bishop) inherit a castle somewhere in Arizona (yes, really). Upon arrival, they find out that the tenants are Dracula (Alexander D’Arcy), his wife (Paula Raymond), his pagan priest butler (John Carradine and probably the best thing in the movie), a shambling moronic manservant named, for some reason, Mango (Ray Young), and a werewolf (Robert Dix). At this point the viewer should be wondering if this is, in fact, a spoof along the lines of The Addams Family or Carry on Screaming, but no, apparently it’s being done straight. It continues on in the same grab-bag-of-horror-cliches vein (pun intended), echoing the Mad Libs feel of the title, up to an ending which I think is a cargo-cult version of the climax of Witchfinder General.
The Draculas: they're just regular folks.
Which is a pity, because I think there could be genuine satirical potential in a modern-day Dracula. He and his wife are living an affluent and luxurious Southwestern socialite lifestyle; rather than biting their victims to death, they have a cellar full of young women whose blood they periodically extract and drink from wine-glasses. It’s not too far a stretch to view this as a metaphor for the movie world, where the old and established prey on the young and naïve, and get away with it thanks to a permissive social environment. Their relationship with the werewolf, Johnny, is also one that could have been more interestingly explored, as they use him to do their dirty work so as to maintain plausible deniability. But this isn’t that movie.
I never like to be totally negative about a film, so I will say that the landscape is beautiful and is shot to its best advantage. The castle scenes were filmed at the real-life Shea’s Castle, a 1920s folly in the California (not Arizona) desert, and I’d like to see more of it. The opening features a groovy theme tune that really ought to make it into the charts.
There's also a human sacrifice scene, because you have to have one of those for some reason.
However, the acting is wooden, the script appears to be a first draft, there are a lot of time-wasting filler sequences and inexplicable character actions. For instance, the girls that the Draculas have chained up in the cellar apparently just hang there, not bothering to attempt escape or even conversation. A human sacrifice to the god (sic) Luna takes place right in front of our protagonists and neither of them do anything to stop it or even raise an objection. The horror is surprisingly chaste and bloodless (particularly given the movie’s title) so there isn’t even the benefit of titillation or a good cathartic wallow in gore. The opening section is a long and seemingly pointless advertisement for an aquatic theme park named Marineland.
One star, mostly for the castle.
Poster for Nightmare in Wax
Vincent Renard (Cameron Mitchell), a brilliant Hollywood makeup artist and lover of the beautiful actress Marie Morgan (Anne Helm), is disfigured when the studio head Max Block (Berry Kroeger), who has designs on Marie himself, throws a glass of wine at Renard just as the latter lights a cigarette. Some time later, Vincent is working at a Hollywood-themed wax museum; Marie’s boyfriends seem to have a habit of disappearing, and tribute mannequins of them winding up in Vincent’s wax museum. You can see where this is going, particularly as one can assume his revenge plan for Max is a bit more complicated than simple murder, though there’s a twist at the end which could have been better handled.
How to get a head in Hollywood.
The performances are at least better than in Blood of Dracula’s Castle, with two weary policemen (Scott Brady and Johnny Cardos) trying their best to investigate the goings-on and Victoria Carroll providing some humour as Theresa, a mercenary blonde trying to get onto Max’s casting couch. There’s some knowing humour about Hollywood and its incestuous, venal culture, and, once again, there’s a groovy psychedelic dance number, albeit in the middle of the movie rather than the start.
We get a little more motivation for the main character than in the previous movie, through the interesting, if not terribly original, idea which comes in towards the end of the story, that Vincent is convinced everyone else is laughing at him and yet we also see that the other characters, in fact, respect his genius as an artist even if they think he’s a bit weird as a person. His turn towards misogyny is also credibly introduced, as his experiences with Hollywood cause him to believe that all women are simply interested in trading sex for career advancement.
I hope I wasn't the only one who shouted "Frying tonight!" at the sight of the boiling vat of wax.
Again, though, it’s all a bit tedious and bloodless, and the cliché of the bitter, scarred artist has been done, well, to death. This is another movie where the script could definitely have done with another draft: plot threads are left hanging, and the motivations of secondary characters left unexplained. The idea that Vincent is deeply insecure really ought to have been brought into the story earlier than it is. A movie director who is something of a Hitchcock figure, but young and handsome, is introduced with great fanfare, leading one to assume that he will be Marie’s new love interest and the one who saves her from Vincent’s twisted affections, but then he vanishes from the story with no explanation.
Two stars.
One conclusion I’m drawing from this slate of films is that the traditional horror genre is, for the moment at least, played out. Vampires, werewolves, twisted scarred genisues and imperiled ingenues don’t have much to offer these days. The future, on both sides of the Atlantic, is clearly with the folk horror movement.
by Victoria Lucas
!NEWS BULLETIN!
Since those of you reading this might not be familiar with events in Berkeley, California, I thought I should report here the death of James Rector, a 25-year-old man shot by a sheriff deputy while on a roof watching the protest against the destruction of community improvements to a vacant lot belonging to the University of California, otherwise known as "People's Park."
Shot on May 15, he died on the 19th after several surgical attempts to repair vital abdominal organs damaged by the load of buckshot. A similar volley blinded another man, Alan Blanchard, on the same roof on the same day. If you have an urge to climb onto a roof to view a protest, suppress it. Law enforcement authorities do not recognize buckshot as lethal and are allergic to perceived threats from above. (I am quite opinionated about events like this. You may wish to seek other reports to obtain other views of the same events.) Below is a poem printed as a flyer, circulating on the streets now.
Michael McClure, "For James Rector"
We now return you to your regularly scheduled article
Cover of Ubik by Philip K. Dick
A Marathon Start
Beginning to read Philip K. Dick’s new book Ubik (1969, Doubleday) is like starting a marathon in the middle. Seeing other runners rushing by, you try to keep up, faster and faster, fearing to trip up. Not only does the book start in the middle of a crisis in what appears to be an important US company, but it also has a vocabulary full of made up words of which the meaning can only be inferred: “psis,” “teeps,” “bichannel circuits”; and the dead (if their relatives can afford it) are kept in “moratoriums” instead of crematoria or cemetaries. How can you keep up with things you can’t understand in a future you can only glimpse as felt by unfamiliar characters?
Author Philip K. Dick
Wondering if all Dick’s books are like this, I picked up library copies of his Eye in the Sky and The Cosmic Puppets (both 1957). The latter begins with a quiet, bucolic scene of children playing beside a porch. No rush. The former begins with an accident that causes injury, involving something called a “bevatron” and a “proton beam deflector.” No rush even there. For the most part, the vocabulary is ordinary in at least the beginning of these two. A little research turns up the fact that Dick first used the word “teep” (for telepath), for instance, in his story “The Hood Maker,” said to have been written in 1953, published in 1955, a year in which he used the same invented abbreviation in Solar Lottery.
Why is Ubik so different from other s-f books, even his own? Well, I had to persist to find out, and maybe you will too. I bet you’ll never guess where I found this book. I did not buy it. I found myself in a hand made hippie pad in the woods, dropped off by my husband Mel while he and one of the owners of the place went off to (I think) get wood for the winter. The other owner left with them or for some other errand, and I was alone in their kerosene-smelling dwelling, without anything to do. Wandering upstairs, I found bedding and pillows, and this book.
Not the actual house, but close
Since I hadn’t finished it by the time they returned, I borrowed it. This was the first really “science-fictiony” book I ever read. (I don’t count Flowers for Algernon, which I reviewed here on January 28, 1966, because that book has no assumptions out of the ordinary save one: that an experimental drug exists that can increase intelligence—no rocket ships, no bug-eyed monsters, no “vidphones.”)
Maybe Science Fiction Is Experimental Writing?
Anyway, persisting, I find myself in a future in which all the paranormal phenomena we humans have imagined are real and the foundation of industrial espionage and security, and the dead have a “half-life,” their brains wired into "consultation rooms" as their frozen bodies stand in caskets in a “moratorium," as above. The head of Runciter Associates, the company in crisis as above, must consult his dead wife Ella about the crisis. The “half-life” phenomenon, it is stated, “was real and it had made theologians out of” everyone. The citizens of this future are understandably prone to panic, to anxiety, to uncertainty.
Epigraphs for each chapter appear to be advertising for Ubik, which is variously represented as a “silent, electric” vehicle, a beer, a type of coffee, a salad dressing, a plastic wrap, etc. What is Ubik and where does it come from? No one knows. (Read the last epigraph in which it reveals its own nature to the extent it can.) Soon Runciter’s employees run into Pat, an “anti-precog.” It seems that she is an unusual practitioner of anti-precog[nition] in that she neither time-travels nor appears to do anything at all. But she changes the present and future by changing the past, leaving the affected people with little but (only sometimes) a trace memory of any previous present they have just experienced. Is all that strange enough for you? Wait! There's more.
There's Jory, dead at 15 years of age, who is on the wrong side of the struggle in the book between light, intelligence, and kindness, and greed, ignorance, and darkness. Keep an eye on him. His parents pay to keep his casket in the same areas as other "half-lifers," although his strong "hetero-psychic infusion" is clearly disturbing Ella Runciter and others.
Science-fiction satire?
Also keep in mind that in the previous year Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater was published with a helmeted pig riding a unicycle on the cover and has been described as satire. Satire is seldom funny-ha-ha, but it is often funny. This book is occasionally funny-ha-ha, especially in the ridiculous clothing that appears to be popular in this dystopian future (1992).
For instance take this passage, in which an important space mogul enters wearing ”fuscia pedal-pushers, pink yakfur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse, and a ribbon in his waist-length dyed white hair.” OK, maybe that isn’t so far from what you might see now on Haight Street. But if this book were made into a movie, retaining Dick’s careful costuming would ensure it would be laughed off the screen.
The Cryonics Connections
Robert Ettinger in World War II uniform
Also notice that in 1967 the first person had been frozen, Professor James Bedford, preceded in 1962 by Robert Ettinger's book The Prospect of Immortality, in which he introduces the idea of cryonic suspension. Attempted cryopreservation of human beings was a real thing from then on. Which is part of what suggests that this book is satire as well as science fiction. And compare the plot of this book with that of Robert A. Heinlein's A Door into Summer, serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in October, November, and December of 1956 (published as a book a year later). In Heinlein's book a company executive is outmaneuvered and winds up in "cold sleep," waking up in the year 2000.
Mum's the Word
But anything more I write about the plot beyond what I’ve already written could well give away the plot. I can give you this hint, though, asked by the above-mentioned anti-precog (Pat) after most of the characters have experienced a bomb blast on Earth's moon: “Are we dead, or aren’t we?” And this one: the book makes it clear that human beings are so constituted that we can only know what our brains tell us (and, by the way, who is "us"?), which interpret what our senses (or in this book also our extra senses) send to it.
Oh, and one more thing. Oddly enough the last sentence in the book does not give anything away: "This was just the beginning." In any case I give it 5 stars out of 5 and recommend that you at least peek into it and see if it makes you crazy.
And Now for Something Completely Different
I'm going to tell you the truth about why my husband Mel and I spend so much time commuting between Humboldt County and San Francisco/Berkeley. It's The Book.
Good thing I've got a Selectric
The Book is dominating my life right now. I've spent many nights, holidays, any days I'm not working as a temp for Humboldt County, transcribing and writing as well as interviewing. For perhaps a year now I have been working with John Jefferson Poland, Jr., otherwise known (by his preference) as "F**k" Poland (or "Jeff"). After founding a sexual freedom "league" in New York City, he moved to Berkeley and founded similar groups there and in San Francisco, but insisting that a woman take up the cause and run the San Francisco group.
He wanted to produce a book on women in the sexual freedom movement–every variety from those who were brought all unwary to an SFL ("Sexual Freedom League") meeting or party to those who were/are leaders and spokeswomen for the cause.
I had done both interviewing and transcribing (the latter for a living), so it was mainly a matter of pointing me in the right direction and saying something like "go to it!" Jeff has been present at some of the interviews, in some cases commanded to be quiet so the women could speak for themselves.
"Meetings" are informational affairs in which leaders of the movement talk about the politics behind the parties and how they are conducted. "Parties" are what might be called orgies, with cheap red wine, a raised thermostat, and mattresses almost covering the floor of a Berkeley house. No man or men who seek entry without female companion(s) are admitted. It's heterosexual couples or single women only allowed. (Gays are excluded because two men could couple up and then only reveal themselves as straight predators of women when they are inside in the semi-dark and difficult to roust.)
And then there's me with my tape recorder, microphone, notebook, and voice, talking with women, making dates for interviews elsewhere and elsewhen. Real names are not used, except for one leader of the movement, Ina Saslow, who was arrested with Jeff during a nude demonstration on a public beach, then jailed, has her own chapter in her own words.
Empty theater, full stage
One night in San Francisco recently there was a party in an empty auditorium. The only celebrity attending was Paul Krassner, and he must have come with a woman, given the rules. Did he come with me? I'm so tired and busy right now I can't pull up the full memory. I mainly recollect standing with him behind a phalanx of mostly empty seats and watching the stage, on which were at least a dozen writhing couples. We agreed that it was an extraordinary sight. Oddly, I do not remember specifically whether he or I was wearing a full set of clothes at the time, but I think we were.
The Book is still in process. I will report progress when there is any, if desired. By the way, the book bears Jeff's name and my pseudonym as authors and is due to be published by The Olympia Press, Inc. (New York). Initial plans are to publish a hardback book with pictures of both authors/editors. Who wants to review my book when it comes out?
Ubik – A Second View
by Jason Sacks
Our dear editor has asked me to tack on a small response to Vicki’s review of Ubik, because I’m a huge fan of Mr. Dick’s work. I’ve read nearly everything he has written, and I feel that Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney and especially Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are some of the finest science fiction novels of the '60s thus far.
On display in Ubik are all the elements which make Dick's work so transcendent and meaningful for me. We get miserable lead characters and subjective takes on reality; we get petulant children and time shifts and a weird, uncanny type of emotional resonance which only PKD can deliver.
I’m not going to dwell on the plot here, partially because my brilliant colleague has already done a great job summarizing this singular novel. And I’m also not going to dwell on plot because, well, this book has a plot, yeah it has a plot, but Ubik also has many plots, or no plots, or subtle plots, or infinitely recursive plots, or just some plotting that’s very particularly Phil Dick.
Am I making sense? I don't think I’m making sense….
And my lack of real coherence at this point is kind of appropriate, too. Because, like so many of Dick’s novels, Ubik has an incredible density of story; he presents layers and layers of events which build character and environment and plot and perceptions and problems, all tumbling and cascading upon itself in a kind of shambolic construction which constantly threatens to fall down upon itself. But all the while, as he seemingly casually is creating these seeming arbitrary events and twists, Dick gives readers these incredible moments, these flashes of insight, which reveal he has been managing his story well all along, until we amble to an ending which feels tremendously satisfying.
Ubik has a lot to do with psychics and psychic warfare between corporations who all aim to dominate each other. An attentive reader of Dick is well aware of his passion for both psychics and bizarre faceless corporations, but in Ubik he has created an elaborate, complex idea structure around the psychics – there are scales of precogs, and people who can cancel out precogs, and the literal rewriting of reality based on the work of the precogs, and a constant sense that nothing, absolutely nothing we see, is real — at the same time all of it is real.
Again Mr. Dick’s writings always make me sound like a madman when I try to describe them. The reviewer’s dilemma!
But that’s the transcendent mindset the author puts you in with Ubik. He grounds readers in reality and then just as quickly yanks reality away from readers. One minute he’s depicting home appliances which demand dimes to open a fridge and 50 cents to use the bathroom faucet. The next he’s describing a prosaic journey to the moon, no big deal just a regular day at the office. The next minute we are following the results of a human-shaped bomb and tracking survival, and we suddenly start seeing entropy appearing everywhere, and the whole thing just moves at the speed of an SST, though perhaps the pilot of the plane is going from New York to London by way of Shanghai.
Is this review vague enough? I apologize, reader. As Vicki points out, I could be more specific, but seriously, if this sounds at all up your alley, Ubik will be a tremendously memorable read for you.
Which leaves the very tough question of a rating for this book. If Androids Dream is the absolute apex of science fiction (and I think it is), this book is one rung slightly below that level – if only because no character is quite as vivid as that book’s complicated and completely memorable Rick Deckard. That is a five star book, which means I give Ubik…
4½ stars
by Gideon Marcus
To the Stars
Venus has gotten a lot of attention from Earth's superpowers. Part of it is its tremendous similarity to our home in some ways: similar mass, similar composition, similar distance from the Sun (as such things go). But the biggest reason why so many probes have been dispatched to the Solar System's second world (to wit: Mariner 2, Mariner 5, Venera 1, Veneras 2 and 3, and Venera 4) is because it's the closest planet to Earth. Every 19 months, Earth and Venus are aligned such that a minimum of rocket is required to send a maximum of scientific payload toward the Planet of Love. Since 1961, every opportunity has seen missions launched from at least one side of the Pole.
This year's was no exception: on January 5 and 10, the USSR launched Venera (Venus) 5 and 6 toward the second planet, and this month (the 16th and the 18th), they arrived.
Our conception of Venus has changed radically since spaceships started probing the world. Just read our article on the planet, written back in 1959, before the world had been analyzed with radar and close-up instruments. Now we know that the planet's surface is the hottest place in the Solar System outside the Sun: perhaps 980 degrees Fahrenheit! The largely carbon dioxide and nitrogen atmosphere crushes the ground at up to 100 atmospheres of pressure. The planet rotates very slowly backward, but there is virtually no difference between temperatures on the day and night sides due to the thick atmosphere. There is no appreciable magnetic field (probably because the planet spins so slowly) so no equivalent to our Van Allen Belts or aurorae.
This is all information returned from outside the Venusian atmosphere. Inference. To get the full dope, one has to plunge through the air. Venera 4 did that, returning lower temperatures and air pressures. This was curious, but it makes sense if you don't believe the Soviet claim that the probe's instruments worked all the way to the ground—a dubious assertion given the incredibly hostile environment. No, Venera 4 probably stopped working long before it touched down.
The same may be true of Veneras 5 and 6. TASS has not released data yet, but while the two probes were successfully delivered onto Venus' surface, we have no way of knowing that they returned telemetry all the way down. Indeed, the Soviet reports are rather terse and highlight the delivery of medals and a portrait of Lenin to Venus, eschewing any mention of soft landing. The news does spend a lot of time talking about solar wind measurements on the way to Venus—useful information, to be sure, but beside the point.
The Venera spacecraft and lander capsule
Anyway, at the very least, we can probably hope to get some clarity on what goes on in the Venusian air. It may have to wait until next time before we learn just what's happening on the ground, however.
To Hell
I bitched last month about the lousy issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Well, I am happy to say that the May issue is more than redeemed by this June 1969 issue, which, if not stellar throughout, has sufficient high points to impress and delight.
by Gray Morrow
Continue reading [May 20, 1969] Ad Astra et Infernum (June 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)
![[June 8th, 1969] Dissension In The Ranks (<i>Doctor Who</i>: The War Games [Parts 5-7])](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/690608nobodyinthisshothasacluewhattheyredoing-672x372.jpg)
![[June 6, 1969] Blue Skies (July 1969 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/amz-0768-civer-490x372.png)
![[June 2, 1969] The ever-whirling wheel (July 1969 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/IF-1969-07-Cover-495x372.jpg)
![[May 31, 1969] When eras collide (June 1969 <i>Analog</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/690531analogcover-665x372.jpg)
![[May 28, 1969], The Big One Before the Big One (Apollo-10)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Apollo-10-Snoopy-ascent-stage-672x372.png)
![[May 26, 1969] Cornelius Overload! <i>New Worlds</i>, June 1969](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/New-Worlds-mag-June-1969-672x372.jpg)
![[May 24, 1969] Cinemascope: The [NOUN] of [PROPER NAME]’s [NOUN]: Blood of Dracula's Castle and Nightmare in Wax](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/690524posters-672x372.jpg)
![[May 22, 1969] News / Beginnings (Review of Ubik) / My Book (Preview)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/690522ubikcover2.jpg)
![[May 20, 1969] Ad Astra et Infernum (June 1969 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/690520coverfsf-652x372.jpg)