[MAY 26, 1968] EUROPA AD ASTRA (EUROPEAN SPACE UPDATE)

May 26, 2023 Kaye Dee Leave a comment

by Kaye Dee

The recent launch of the ESRO 2B scientific satellite on 17 May (more on that below) reminds me that it has been a while since I wrote anything about the European launcher development programme being carried out in Australia. There have also been major developments in Europe’s space plans over the past few months, which look like they will significantly change the future of the European space programme.

For readers in the United States and other parts of the world, who may not be familiar with the European space programme, let me take a few moments to introduce the major players and provide a bit of background before talking about recent developments.

Cousins Rather Than Siblings: ELDO, ESRO and CETS
The two most important space bodies in Europe are the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) and the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO). ESRO’s focus is on developing scientific satellites for space research. ELDO looks to develop an independent satellite launch capability for Europe through the Europa rocket, conducting its test flights from the Woomera Rocket Range in Australia.

The French acronym CERS stands for Conseil Européen de Recherche Spatiale

These roles would appear to be complementary, and I have occasionally referred to ELDO and ESRO as “sister” institutions in previous articles, since they have grown up in parallel and have several member states in common. However, I’ve come to think that they are perhaps best considered as “cousins”, as they operate and forward plan quite separately from each other, resulting in a lack of co-ordination across Europe's space activities. While ELDO was established with an assumption that ESRO would be one of the customers for its launch services, ESRO has not waited for a European launcher to become available from ELDO: ESRO 2B has been launched under NASA’s auspices on a Scout vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base and for the foreseeable future all planned ESRO satellite launches will be on US rockets.

The French acronym CECLES stands for Conseil européen pour la construction de lanceurs d'engins spatiaux

Mention also needs to be made of the European Conference on Telecommunications by Satellites (CETS), the third space organisation in Europe, which is playing a role in pushing for some of the proposed changes in Europe’s space plans. Unlike ESRO and ELDO, CETS is not active in developing space technologies and vehicles, but provides a forum for European Post, Telegraph and Telecommunications agencies (PTTs) to consider the role of communication satellites and discuss the European role in the INTELSAT global telecommunications satellite system.

ESRO and ELDO: Parallel Lives
Stemming from initiatives taken in 1959 and 1960 by a small group of scientists, led by Italian Prof. Edoardo Amaldi and French physicist Prof. Pierre Victor Auger, ESRO was set up in the early 1960s. Like ELDO, it formally came into existence in 1964. ESRO’s member countries are Belgium, Denmark, West Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, and Britain, and the organisation’s focus has been on strictly civil scientific research. Four ESRO members (Britain, France, Italy and West Germany) also have their own national space programmes.

ESRO has already developed a number of technical facilities: the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, is the newest, opened on 3 April. ESRO has also begun to establish its own space tracking network, ESTRACK, and has its own sounding rocket launch facility, ESRANGE (established in 1964), near Kiruna, Sweden.

The opening of ESTEC on 3 April by HRH Princess Beatrix and her husband Prince Claus included the royal couple being presented with a model of the ESRO 2B satellite

ELDO, on the other hand, was very much a British initiative in 1960-61, seeking partners in Europe for the development of an independent satellite launcher that would use as its first stage the UK’s then-recently cancelled Blue Streak missile. ELDO’s member states are Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. Australia, despite being a non-European country, is also an ELDO member because of its role providing the test launch facilities at Woomera.

The first Blue Streak launch from Woomera in 1964, designated as ELDO F-1, the inaugural test flight of the Europa rocket's first stage

Both organisations operate with a policy of “juste retour” – allocating work to industry in member countries in proportion to their share of financial contribution to the organisation.

So you can see that, unlike the US civilian space programme, under the control of NASA, and the Soviet programme, under central control from the Politburo, there are many fingers in the European space pie, with many complementary and yet competing interests and national agendas.

Not Going Up from Down Under
When I last reported on the ELDO programme, it was to cover the loss of the ELDO F-6 launch in August last year. At the time, I mentioned that a reflight – designated as F-6/2 – was already in planning. Scheduled for December 5, 1967, the first attempt to launch F-6/2 was aborted just 12 seconds before lift-off due to a power failure.

Although successfully launched at 6 a.m. the following morning, the second stage failed to ignite after separation from the first stage. The vehicle then crashed down into the upper reaches of the Simpson Desert, repeating the failure of Europa F-6/1. This was the second failure of an active French Coralie second stage, and an investigation is still underway to determine the cause.

Despite this failure, the next Europa launch – designated F-7 – is still planned for October or November this year as the first test flight with three active stages. Let’s hope that the issues with the second stage have been resolved by then!

Has Britain Lost Its Way in Space?
Since coming to power in the October 1964, the Wilson Labour Government has shown itself to be considerably less enthusiastic about European space activities than its Conservative predecessor. This would appear to be in large part due to the struggling UK economy, but also a response to the lack of success of Britain’s attempts to join the European Economic Community in 1963 and 67, for which UK participation in European space was supposed to be a sweetener.

In 1965, when the cost of completing the original ELDO programme had already climbed to twice the early estimates, France began to call for a revised – and more expensive – programme to develop the Europa vehicle into a launcher capable of placing satellites into geostationary orbit. Calling the Europa I launcher “obsolete”, as it can only place satellites into polar orbit, France has proposed a more sophisticated and powerful Europa II vehicle that would enable Europe to launch communications and other applications satellites without reliance on the United States (which has already given indications that it will take measures to protect its monopoly on the use of geostationary satellites).

Applications satellites, especially for international communications (as demonstrated by INTELSAT), are almost certainly the way of the future in space developments outside human spaceflight, and West Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have agreed with the French view. This resulted in a July 1966 proposal to complete ELDO’s Europa I programme and add a Europa II development programme.

The British Government, however, began to express severe doubts about the “technological use and the economic viability” of the ELDO programme and opposed the French-led changes. In 1966, it signalled that Britain would not participate in any further financing of ELDO programmes after present projects were completed. Britain also reduced its financial contributions to ELDO from 38.79% (the largest contribution to ELDO’s budget) to 27%, with the difference being made up by the other four paying members (Australia being a non-paying member, on the basis of providing the Woomera facilities).

The reduction in the British financial clout within ELDO, and the desire for an equatorial launch facility, has been a factor in ELDO planning to move away from Woomera to France’s national launch facility in Kourou, French Guiana, at the completion of the ELDO I programme, anticipated in 1970. This has greatly disappointed my friends at the WRE, who spent considerable effort in preparing plans for a launch facility near Darwin, in the Northern Territory, to support an equatorial launch capability in Australia for the Europa II programme.

The first launch from France's Kourou facility, the future home of the ELDO programme, took place on 9 April this year, with the firing of a Veronique sounding rocket

British Space Industry Weighs In!
In November last year, a report from the National Industrial Space Committee, which represents the space interests of British industry, recommended that the British Government should not reduce, but expand its spending on space research and development, in order to stop the brain drain from the UK and obtain a share in what is already being seen as the lucrative space technology business. It recommended that spending on space-related R&D should be increased by around a 25% increase from the present $A60 million to between $A75 million and $A87.5 million said the committee.

Comments at the time from Mr Kenneth Gatland, vice president of the British Interplanetary Society, indicated that a major row was looming between industry and Government over Britain's failure to lead Europe into the commercial field of communication satellites. Although the Post Office, which controls British telecommunications, has expressed “severe doubts” about the commercial benefits of space-communication, this seems a bit strange when the Post Office is also the British signatory to INTELSAT, and the UK is the consortium’s second largest shareholder. “Government advisers”, Mr. Gatland said, “were being accused of leaving Britain high and dry through inept policies, allowing France and West Germany to benefit at Britain's expense.” Instead of the “national scandal” of Britain having spent an estimated $A124,707,500 on ELDO without any tangible end project in view, Mr. Gatland has suggested that Britain should give ELDO a target which would bring a return for the large capital investment.

A European Symphonie?
Whatever Britain’s misgivings regarding satellite communications, France and Germany are eager to move into the field of communications satellites to break INTELSAT’s monopoly on international satellite telecommunications. They have embarked on their own joint communications satellite project, known as Symphonie. As this project has taken options on two Europa II launches for its two satellites, it is, at present, ELDO's only customers! Mr Gatland has urged Britain to join France and Germany in the Symphonie project, which will promise a satellite in three to five years.

An early design for the Symphonie communications satellite, which is intended to be three-axis stabilised

Italy has decided to go it alone on the development of a telecommunications satellite known as Project Sirio. The design will apparently be based on the experimental telecommunications satellite that Italy was originally going to develop for ELDO, before that aspect of the programme was cut to reduce overall costs.

ESRO is also reported to be interested in moving beyond scientific satellites into the applications satellite area, in conjunction with CETS, which has expressed interest in the development of a satellite for television distribution.

Whither or Wither, Europe?
With all this history in mind, Europe’s space plans for the future have undergone considerable change in the past few months. According to a report released in March, Europe's space club has mapped out an ambitious programme for the next 10 years that would include telecommunications satellites for television, broadcasting and telephone calls, meteorological, air traffic control and Earth resources satellites, and large numbers of astronomical and other scientific satellites. This programme, which involves a 10 per cent annual increase of expenditure on European space projects, is intended to be discussed when Science Ministers from the 17 member states of ELDO, ESRO and CETS, meet in Bonn, West Germany, in June.

However, the ambitious proposals released in March evolving as originally anticipated is now unlikely, given the most recent events. On 18 April, Britain's Labour Government announced cuts in spending on space research and cast further doubts on the future of ELDO. Although the Government indicated that it would maintain its contribution to the current ELDO programme at the existing level, it could “see no economic justification for undertaking further financial commitments to ELDO after the present programme,” which is due to conclude in 1970.

This (not totally unexpected news) was followed by an announcement from ESRO on 26 April that it was cancelling its plans for its two largest satellites scientific satellites – a major blow for European space co-operation. The two massive TD 1 and TD 2 satellites (the TD stands for Thor Delta, the intended launch vehicle), each weighing 990 lbs, were to have been built under a 100 million franc (about Aus$17,800,000) contract by an international consortium including Hawker Siddeley Dynamics of Britain, the French firm Matra, the West German group ERNO, and Saab of Sweden.

TD1, scheduled for launch in 1970, was designed to study the relationship between earth and sun. TD2, planned for launch the following year, was focused on research into solar ultra-violet radiation and electromagnetic phenomena in the upper atmosphere. The reason for the satellites’ cancellation seems to be connected with disagreements within ESRO in regard to the juste retour allocation of work for the project.

ESRO’s First satellite in Orbit!

Despite the uncertainties about its future space plans, Europe is currently celebrating the launch of the first ESRO satellite to make it to orbit! ESRO-2B was launched 17 May from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on a Scout B rocket.

This flight occurred almost exactly one year after the loss of its predecessor ESRO 2A on 29 May, 1967. Also launched from Vandenberg on a Scout B, ESRO 2A was lost due to a malfunction of the rocket’s fourth stage, which prevented the satellite from reaching orbit. These first European satellites were launched on Scout vehicles due to an offer from NASA to launch the ESRO's first two satellites free of charge as a ‘christening gift’ for the organisation (and no doubt to woo ESRO towards continuing with US launchers even when ELDO's Europa rockets become operational!)

ESRO 2B, also known as Iris (International Radiation Investigation Satellite), Iris 2 and ESRO 2, is an astrophysical research satellite developed to study solar and cosmic radiation and their interaction with the Earth and its magnetosphere. This will provide continuity to the solar radiation observations of earlier satellites and continue similar particle measurements carried out by the UK’s Ariel 1 satellite. It is the first mission controlled by teams at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.

ESRO 2B being prepared for launch

Placed into a highly elliptical near-polar orbit, with an orbital period of 98.9 minutes, ESRO-2B is about 33.5 inches in length, with a diameter just on 30 inches. It weighs 196 lb and is spin-stabilised, with a spin rate of approximately 40 rpm. The satellite is powered by 3456 solar cells on the outer body panels, supplemented by a nickel/cadmium battery. The satellite carries the same seven instruments as its lost predecessor: to detect high-energy cosmic rays, determine the total flux of solar X-rays, measure trapped radiation, investigate Van Allen belt protons and cosmic ray protons. And if you’re wondering why ESRO 2B is the first European satellite and what happened to ESRO 1, the simple answer is that ESRO 1 has yet to be launched! Difficulties in the development of the payload for the polar ionospheric satellite ESRO 1, designed to study how the auroral zones responded to geomagnetic and solar activity, meant that it was eventually agreed to launch ESRO-2 ahead of it. ESRO 1 is due for launch around October this year, so we here at Galactic Journey will cover its story soon.

ESRO 2B being tracked at the ESOC mission control centre

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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 24, 1968] How Low Can You Go? (Battle Beneath the Earth and The Astro-Zombies)

May 24, 2023 Victoria Silverwolf 1 Comment

by Victoria Silverwolf

Notes From Underground

The English have a great hunger for desolate places.
— Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia

And I have a great hunger for the desolation of cinematic wastelands.

Need evidence? Consider my interest in things like Teenagers From Outer Space, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, and Women of the Prehistoric Planet.

I rest my case, although I could name many more.

I recently dived deep down into the abyss of Z-grade filmmaking with a pair of inept science fiction films. Grab your flashlight and come spelunking with me into the bottomless cavern of movie malfeasance.

Dig We Must

And it can stay there!

Battle Beneath the Earth

This subterranean smorgasbord of silliness begins with stock footage of the casinos in Las Vegas. Two cops drive by and get a call to investigate a listening disturbance [sic]. That's a situation I don't recall ever appearing on Dragnet.

"Be sure not to help this guy, everybody! Just stand around and stare at him!"

In what is very clearly a set, and not Las Vegas, we see a fellow with his ear to the ground. He's raving about something that sounds like ants underground. Understandably, the cops drag him away as a kook, and he winds up in a mental hospital.

(By the way, the sanitarium has slot machines, for use by compulsive gamblers. At this point, I had to wonder if the film was a deliberate spoof. Unfortunately, I don't think so.)

Then they tell you what movie you're watching, in case you wandered into the theater by accident.

Our hero is a naval officer, recently assigned to lab duty on land after an experimental underwater habitat was destroyed in an earthquake. (Hint: It wasn't a natural disaster.) The sister of the listening guy happens to be his assistant. She tells him that her brother keeps asking to talk to him.

Peter Arne, as Arnold Kramer, in bathrobe, and Kerwin Mathews, as Commander Jonathan Shaw, in uniform. "Before I listen to your crazy story, allow me to remind you that I was the star of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which was a much better film."

It turns out that the guy isn't a paranoid nut, but a seismologist who has figured out that (wait for it) a Chinese general and his minions have dug their way under the Pacific Ocean and most of the way across the United States. The plan is to fill the tunnels with atomic bombs and, I don't know, rule the world, I guess. (We find out he's planted similar bombs under Peking, so he's working on his own, like any proper megalomaniac.)

A minion inside a Chinese digging machine. "Peek-a-boo!"

After a few skirmishes underground (excuse me, I mean a battle beneath the Earth), the good guys figure out that the general's supplies are coming from some place in the middle of the Pacific. They use their own digging machine to raid the place.

Carefully labeled, in case some swabby thinks it's a tank or something.

Along for the fun is our Good Girl, a Hawaiian geologist. She doesn't do much, really, except look pretty and fall into the arms of our hero.

"Gee, Miss Yung, you're beautiful without your glasses!" The character has a Chinese last name, but is played by Viviane Ventura, a British/Colombian actress. A small hint of casting problems to come.

The raid is a fiasco, with a bunch of Marines getting killed. Our hero gets captured by the bad guys.

Martin Benson as General Chan Lu. "Before I explain my sinister plan, in the proper manner of any James Bond villain, allow me to remind you that I had a small role in Goldfinger, which was a much better film."

At this point, our movie's Bad Girl enters. She hypnotizes our hero, using what is very obviously one of those little battery-operated handheld fans you use to cool yourself off on a hot day. She recites this bit of doggerel over and over, in order to wash the hero's brain thoroughly.

Red is green
Green is red
The East is sunrise
The West is dead

I don't think Robert Frost has any competition to worry about.

"I will control your mind through the power of a refreshing breeze!"

I should note that this character (Dr. Arnn) is played by Paula Li Shiu, a Chinese actress. All the other Chinese characters (except a few minor nonspeaking roles) are played by Occidentals. This kind of casting is embarrassing, but if Christopher Lee can play Fu Manchu, I guess anything goes.

The general in the tube gizmo he uses to descend to the underground tunnels. "The next wise guy who says 'Beam me up, Scotty' is going to get it!"

The bad guy has all kinds of supposedly Chinese stuff decorating his underground headquarters, just in case you forget what nationality he's supposed to be. He also has a pet hawk, just to show you how evil he is.

"The next wise guy who says 'This movie is for the birds' is going to get it!"

Will the good guys win? Oh, come on, you know the answer to that already.

Nothing like an atomic bomb for a happy ending.

Quality of film: Two stars.
Level of derisive amusement: Four stars.

All the Way Down to the Bottom

What happened to the word "The" and the hyphen between "Astro" and "Zombies"?

The Astro-Zombies

This cheapskate epic begins with a woman driving down the road. Get used to this kind of thing, because we'll have plenty of scenes that go on and on where people do ordinary things. Eventually, she winds up in her garage, where she's killed by a guy in a skull mask.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is an astro-zombie.

We then get our opening titles, oddly filmed over scenes of toy robots.

Nothing says quality like dime store special effects.

Cut to some science types and some government types talking in an office. Long and confusing story short, it seems there was a project to transmit thoughts from folks on Earth to brains in artificial bodies in spacecraft.

Government guy, played by Wendell Corey, looks concerned. He had a similar role in Agent For H.A.R.M.

It seems that one of the scientists working on the project got kicked out, and is now on his own. He's played by John Carradine, of course.

"You want me to play another Mad Scientist? How much does it pay?"

Naturally, Carradine has a hunchback for an assistant. Believe it or not, his name is Franchot.

"My parents could have named me 'Fritz' or 'Ygor,' but no . . ."

Franchot grabs a dead guy out of a car wreck and drags him back to the lab. If I've managed to follow the plot correctly, he wants to put a brain into his body and create another astro-zombie. Apparently, the previous one had a murder's brain and went on a killing rampage.

There's also a woman in a bikini strapped down on a table in the lab. She has nothing to do with the plot.

Meanwhile, foreign spies are after Carradine's secret. A lot of the running time is spent with the good guy spies and the bad guy spies fighting each other. The leader of the bad guys is played by the amazing Tura Satana, so memorable in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Tura and one of her minions.

I have to say something about Tura's appearance here. She wears tons of makeup, including gigantic false eyelashes. Her fingernails look like daggers. There's a special credit for her costume designer, who really did an interesting job.

Tura in pink. Is she auditioning for Star Trek?

No opportunity is lost to put her remarkable body on display.

A little something for the leg men in the audience.

Anyway, let me get back to the plot. We've got a couple of heroes, of a sort, as well as a heroine/potential victim.

Here they are, in a time-killing scene at a nightclub in which they watch a topless dancer covered in body paint. Is it really cricket for a guy to take a woman out to see a stripper?

They come up with a plan to have the heroine act as bait for the astro-zombie who's slaughtering women left and right.

"Uh, guys? I don't think that's such a good idea. And which one of you is supposed to be my boyfriend, anyway?"

Stuff happens. The funniest scene is when the astro-zombie runs out of energy, and has to hold a flashlight to his head in order to charge his photoelectric cells.

"Thanks, Eveready!"

Boy, this is a dreary little movie. Only the presence of Tura Satana makes it watchable.

One more cheesecake shot for the road.

Quality of film: One star.
Level of derisive amusement: Five stars.

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Movies

[May 22, 1968] Finding a New Way: Witchfinder General

May 22, 2023 Fiona Moore 3 Comments

by Fiona Moore

Witchfinder General is a real game-changer not just for British horror but for horror films in general. This is a movie without monsters, ghosts, psychopathic killers or, even, witches (at least real ones). The terror comes from people’s belief in witches, and what that belief makes them do to other people, and, in making that change, this film is an artistic statement that transcends genre.

The story is set, as a clunky (and rather unnecessary, since the same information is conveyed in the first few scenes) voiceover at the start tells us, in 1645, the height of the English Civil War. It is ostensibly based on the life of a genuine historical figure of the time, Matthew Hopkins, the so-called “Witchfinder General”. He is a minor landowner who made his career travelling around Southeastern England identifying witches using bogus techniques and confessions extracted under duress. In fact, the story bears almost no resemblance at all to the known facts of Hopkins’ life, barring his name, that of his assistant Stearne (in real life their roles were reversed), the location (East Anglia) and the methods used to extract confessions from witches. This is a minor complaint, however—and might not even be a complaint, as the story the movie tells is possibly more disturbing than Hopkins’ actual biography.

The film’s main positive figure, at least at the outset, is Richard Marshall, a young Roundhead soldier engaged to Sarah Lowes, the niece of a small-town Church of England priest. Sarah’s uncle is accused of witchcraft by his neighbours (we never learn the specific reason for this, which chillingly suggests that it’s a fairly banal local conflict that escalates to horrific extremes) and Hopkins and Stearne arrive, arrest and torture the accused. Sarah, desperate to save her uncle, sleeps with Hopkins; when Stearne, envious and sadistic, rapes her, Hopkins discards his promises to Sarah and has her uncle executed. Richard, hearing of the tragedy but arriving too late to stop it, marries Sarah and swears vengeance on Hopkins. Matters escalate, leading eventually to a bloody confrontation which clearly brings home that violence only begets more violence, and that no one in this story is going to escape without severe damage.

The civil war backdrop is sketched in matter-of-factly. Perhaps surprisingly, given that subsequent British popular culture tends to dislike the Parliamentarians (in Sellars and Yeatman’s phrase, the Cavaliers were Wrong but Wromantic, and the Roundheads Right but Repulsive), the film resists the temptation to lay the blame for the witch hysteria at Cromwell’s door. Richard and his men are more or less positively portrayed, as is Cromwell himself when he turns up for a brief cameo after a successful military campaign. Some of the film’s power arguably lies in the fact that they, and Hopkins, are all ostensibly on the same side, and, while we see very little of the atrocities of the war itself, it is clearly part of what is fueling the communities’ drive to turn on their own. The viewer is also left to fill in some details themselves: for instance, the absence of a lord of the manor in the village where Sarah and her uncle live suggests he was a Royalist, possibly also hinting at why relationships have broken down between the villagers and why Sarah’s uncle is now accused of heresy.

In casting terms, Vincent Price is credibly chilling as Hopkins, largely because of the way he underplays his role: he talks about torture and murder in the same banal tones as one might discuss a land boundary dispute, and he pretends hypocritically to be serving the public interest. Robert Russell as Sterne is a much more familiar figure from horror films, loathsome and sadistic, but provides a necessary contrast to Price, acting as a kind of expression of Hopkins’ id. Newcomers Ian Ogilvy and Hilary Dwyer, as Richard and Sarah, are very pretty to look at, but they also have the acting chops to handle their characters’ descent as they are subjected to increasing torment and degradation.

Michael Reeves’ direction works well, contrasting the beautiful scenery of Southeast England with the awful behaviour of its inhabitants. His best, albeit hardest to watch, efforts come in the film’s climactic scene. In it, Hopkins escalates his method of execution from simply hanging witches to burning them—not at the stake, but strapped to a ladder slowly lowered into the fire. As this takes place, the camera turns its pitiless gaze around the crowd, showing a variety of different reactions: from religious rapture, to horror, to fear, to pleasure. Most horrifyingly, it also shows children absorbing the violence around them. We later see the same children roasting baked potatoes in the execution fire, a detail that is terrifying in its matter-of-fact presentation.

The story’s contemporary relevance is also clear. Sexism visibly fuels the witch-hunting activities, and prejudice against women and fear of their sexuality in the wider culture allows the likes of Hopkins and Stearne to flourish. Desensitisation to war, as we are seeing in America and elsewhere, allows people to condone and commit acts of violence in their own communities. Revelations after the collapse of the Nazi regime, and reports from behind the Iron Curtain, show clearly how petty grievances between neighbours can, under totalitarian rule, lead to arrests and torture. The viewer can’t leave the cinema thinking it could never happen here: clearly it not only can–it has.

The film makes the most of its economical 86 minutes, and is definitely not for the faint-hearted. By mining British folk culture and history, and by focusing on human evil itself rather than monsters and spirits, Reeves has opened up the possibilities of a whole new kind of horror movie and paved the ground for a new, artistic subgenre; I can’t wait to see what this new pioneer of British cinema will come up with next. Five out of five stars.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 20, 1968] Dying, deflating, and deorbiting (June 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

May 20, 2023 Gideon Marcus 6 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Fading Echoes

It sometimes astounds me how long Galactic Journey has been around. Eight years ago, we covered the launch of Echo 1, a big balloon shot into orbit so that NASA eggheads could use it as a cosmic message relay. More importantly, it was an artificial beacon, proof at a time when the Americans were losing the Space Race, that we had established a visible presence in outer space.

In just a few days, Echo 1 will be no more. Though the air at Echo's altitude is, to terrestrial standards, a fine vacuum, there is enough there to pull at the satellite. For the past eight years, the tug has slowed down Echo, and this month, it will fall out of orbit, plunging into the atmosphere, where it will burn up.

All things must pass, and Echo had a good run, but still, it's a little sad.

Which brings us to this month's issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Last month, we lost Anthony Boucher, who helmed F&SF for much of the '50s. His term was excellent, and he also wrote some great stories, too, my favorite being The Quest for St. Aquin He was only 56.

Since Boucher's tenure, F&SF has been an inconsistent magazine. There have been good issues of F&SF, and there have been less than good ones. The latest is one of the latter kind, and its underwhelming quality serves only to make us pine all the more for what we've lost.

by Ronald Walotsky

The Consciousness Machine, by Josephine Saxton

Zona Gambier is a mental technician, proficient in the usage of WAWWAR, a device that has revolutionized psychotherapy. It dredges the animus of one's mental dysfunction, bares it to the possessor, and in doing so, cures the ailing person of any psychological malady. It is thus a matter of great consternation when she finds that her patient, Thurston Maxwell's, animus does not seem to correspond to his condition–namely a predilection for sexual assault.

The imagery WAWWAR produces is the story of a teenage boy living ferally, hiding from all of humanity, until he comes across a newborn, still attached to her just-dead mother. He raises the child, somehow providing for it, until she is old enough to be an adoptive sister. Later, as an adult, they become lovers. Finally, they have a child together, completing a kind of circle.

Ultimately, we find out what this story means, and whose animus it actually is. The writing is rather nice, but the explanation at the end is ad hoc, and I certainly wouldn't call the piece science fiction. Science-esque, perhaps.

Three stars.

Of Time and Us, by David R. Bunch

Better poetry than some, worse than others. I'm not sure I care for the sentiment, espousing the futility of humanity against the infinity of chronology.

Three stars.

by Gahan Wilson

The People Trap, by Robert Sheckley

Overpopulation stories have been de rigeur for more than a decade now, to the point where the genre is a bit overripe. Especially given that, according to articles I've been reading lately, the population growth rate has been steadily declining in the First World for most of the '60s. Now, will that continue? There are an awful lot of Baby Boomers coming of age, and perhaps the trend will reverse itself. But it does seem that large families, at least in the West and other developed areas, are falling out of fashion.

Which is why Sheckley's satire of overpopulation stories, in which a mild-mannered father, tired of sharing his one-room flat with five others (with five more on the way), enters a deadly competition, is a breath of fresh air. Along with 60 other participants, he must complete a foot-race through the wilds of New York City, populated by the lowest forms of humanity. His prize: one of the last free-standing acres of land on the continent.

Very quickly, you see that the thing is a lampoon, and as such, it's quite tolerable. Indeed, it's the closest thing to an old-style Sheckley story I've read in a long time, and old-style Sheckley is one of my favorites.

Four stars.

Settle, by Ann MacLeod

A couple buys a fixer-upper. Soon, the man of the house starts losing pieces of himself. First a toe, then a foot, onto his leg and torso, until he is just a head. Still, he goes on repairing elements of the home, determined to make it livable. Eventually, he is just a set of teeth and a bit of brain, mowing the lawn by mouth, until he is crushed under the knee of his toddler son. The end.

Per the editor's preface, this story is about how a money pit takes its toll in flesh from its owners. I'm glad that was explained to me, because otherwise, I'd have no idea.

One star.

Backtracked, by Burt Filer

Author Burt Filer is apparently married to Settle's author, Ann MacLeod. His tale is the superior of the two.

A man in his mid-30s wakes up to find his body ten years older. Apparently, he has "backtracked"–a decade from then, he swapped physical forms with his younger self (which apparently destroys the future incarnation so as to prevent paradoxes). He has no memory of the next ten years, nor why he chose this particular date to come back to.

All he knows is that his polio-crippled leg is now reasonably robust, and that his wife is not altogether happy with his new, somewhat weathered, appearance.

Eventually we do find out what would motivate a man to give up a decade of life, and it's a reasonable justification.

Three stars.

At the Heart of It, by Michael Harrison

This is both an old tale and an old-fashioned tale. It details the tragic story of a bookseller who discovers a profane book, one that teaches the reader the art of transferring one's soul into an inanimate object.

There are no surprises, and the kicker comes at the end, like all its Weird Tales brethren. I imagine this would have been humdrum in the 30s and it certainly doesn't cut the mustard now.

Two stars.

Counting Chromosomes, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor explains the relatively new science of genetics and the role chromosomes, which are essentially punch cards that govern cell reproduction, have in them. He spends a good deal of time on sex chromosomes, and the effects that mutated sex chromosomes have on human beings.

Fascinating stuff, but there is an air of eugenics about his discussion, particularly in calling chromosomally abnormal human beings "defectives" and describing the recent exclusion of Ewa Klobukowska from women's sports on the basis of an extra Y chromosome as a positive development, ensuring competitions remain "sportsmanlike", rubbed me the wrong way.

Three stars.

The Secret of Stonehenge, by Harry Harrison

In this vignette, archaeologists armed with a time-traveling camera send it back to find out why and when Stonehenge was created. Turns out that the camera leaves chronological echoes, afterimages that last long after the camera has departed. Of course, it is these images, that, to primitive Britons, could only have been a sign of the gods, that spurred the creation of Stonehenge.

Harry should know better. We've known since 1963 that Stonehenge was an astronomical calculator, able to predict eclipses and solstices. It was built where it was because it needed to be to function properly.

In any event, the far more exciting (and dangerous) discovery is that long-range time travel can be used to communicate with the past, but this was not touched upon.

Two stars.

Sea Home, by William M. Lee

The first long-term permanent underwater residence has been completed. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Sea Home has a problem: its five long-term crew, already at depth, are undergoing physiological changes. It appears to be linked to the special air mixture they're breathing to alleviate pressure issues; their blend includes oxygen, helium, and sodium hexaflouride–the latter two ingredients serving as a kind of buffer, one very light, and one very heavy.

There's a lot wrong with this story. For one, it's a novelette for a one-gimmick story. Lee tries to add color and reasonably competent writing to hide the fact, but there are simply no mysteries to keep you intrigued beyond the central one.

And the central one is stupid. The premise is that the absence of nitrogen triggers all sorts of biological miracles. Free from the shackles of nitrogen, our bodies become more efficient, our brains get smarter, our skin sprouts tiny fields of gills fer Chrissakes. It reminds me of the early stories about long-term weightlessness, when, because we had no data, sf writers filled in the blanks any way they wanted.

Except we do have data. Gemini 7 was in space for 14 days, its crew breathing a pure, 5psi oxygen atmosphere. None of them got any smarter or developed vacuum-breathing gills or what-have-you.

Dumb. Two stars.

Cithaeronion farewell

As you can see, this issue is sort of like the work of a taxidermist. It looks like F&SF, many of its contents are familiar, but the breath of life is missing. Would that someone new could come along and instill the esteemed publication with the vigor it enjoyed under its past master.

Lest all we have left is fading echoes…

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 18, 1968] Four Out of Six Ain't Bad (May 1968 Galactoscope)

May 18, 2023 Victoria Silverwolf 8 Comments

by Victoria Silverwolf

Stranger in a Strange Time

I was greatly impressed by Robert Silverberg's recent novel Thorns. It seemed to mark a new direction for a prolific author of competent, if undistinguished, science fiction. Will his new book reach the same level of quality? Let's find out.

The Masks of Time, by Robert Silverberg

Cover art by Robert Foster.

Christmas Day, 1998. A naked man appears out of nowhere, floating down from the sky. This fellow calls himself Vornan-19, and he claims to come from the year 2999.

With the year 2000 approaching, members of a worldwide apocalyptic cult fill the streets with wild orgies of sex and destruction. As you'd expect, the arrival of Vornan-19 changes things. Is he a fraud? A sign of the impending end of the world? Or proof that Earth will survive for many years to come?

Let's slow down a bit, in the same way the novel does at this point, and introduce some important characters.

The narrator is Leo, a physicist. He's working on time reversal. So far, all he's been able to do is transform a particle into an antiparticle, sending it backwards in time, but also causing it to be instantly destroyed. He's convinced that honest-to-gosh time travel is impossible, and therefore he thinks Vornan-19 is a phony.

Jack is a brilliant graduate student. He's been working on the theory of obtaining all energy from an atom (without the pesky side effect of a nuclear explosion), but he's not interested in any practical applications. For unclear reasons, he drops out and goes to live with his stunningly beautiful wife Shirley in a remote part of the Arizona desert.

The United States government sends Leo and a few other scientists to act as tour guides for Vornan-19, of a sort. They really want these geniuses to figure out if he's truly from the future. (Even if he isn't, he could be useful in convincing the cultists that the world isn't going to end in the year 2000.)

What follows is an episodic account of Vornan-19's encounters with people of the twentieth century. He causes chaos at a billionaire's party, in a mansion that keeps changing shape. He seduces men and women. Vornan-19 remains a mystery, revealing very little about himself or the world one thousand years from now. He becomes an object of religious devotion, leading to the book's dramatic but enigmatic conclusion.

After the intensity of Thorns, this is a surprisingly leisurely book. (I believe it is also the author's longest novel, at about two hundred and fifty pages.) We spend a lot of time with Leo, Jack, and Shirley before the narrator goes off with Vornan-19.

There's also quite a bit of sex. Jack and Shirley are nudists, and pretty soon Leo joins in. The group of scientists following Vornan-19 around includes both women and men, and we get to learn who's sleeping with whom, and who wants to sleep with whom, and who isn't sleeping with whom. Leo spends time with two prostitutes, one supplied by a grateful U.S. government, the other working at a legal, automated brothel.

(I've heard that Silverberg writes a lot of so-called adult novels under various pseudonyms, so maybe he's gotten into the habit of including this sort of thing.)

There's even a sex scene that serves as the book's climax. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the obvious pun.) We also find out why Jack ended his research, and what that has to do with Vornan-19.

This is an elegantly written novel that held my attention throughout. As I've indicated, it's hardly a thriller; the reader needs to be patient to fully appreciate it. There's a touch of satire and some interesting speculation about the technology of the near future.

Four stars.

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The Programmed Man by Jeff and Jean Sutton

I sometimes like to read books by authors I know nothing about, in the hope of getting a nice surprise. Well, this one certainly is not nice!

What is there to like about this?
The plot? No, dull plodding sub-Reynolds spy nonsense.
The characters? Paper-thin, laden with racist stereotypes.
The style? Long run-on sentences and expository dialogue which are about as exciting as drying paint.

Feel free to miss out on such writing as:

"Are you talking about the Alphans or spacemen in general?"

"Spacemen in general." The Doctor lifted his eyes. "I'll have to admit, I often think the Alphans are more complicated than others."

"In what way?" asked York.

"They're rather inscrutable," Bendbow explained. "As a psychomedician, I realize they don't wear their emotions or thoughts as transparently as most of us. But that's a racial characteristic."

Don’t buy it. Don’t read it. Don’t even acknowledge it. See it coming down the street, run the other way.

Save yourself!

Indeed, so bad, so offensive is this book, with enough off-handed bigotry to make even John Campbell blush to publish it, that with the blessing of the Journey staff, we've inaugurated a brand new award for badness. If the Queen Bee is bestowed for conspicuous sexism (thank goodness we have a word for the phenomenon now!) then there is only one name for the "honor" The Programmed Man deserves:

The Grand Wizard.

Close up face from Invasion of the Bodysnatchers — You have been warned.

by Robin Rose Graves

The Reproductive System by John Sladek

Is it an anatomical textbook? No, it's the debut novel of John Sladek.

Scientists want to create a self-replicating machine. Why? To get a government funded grant of course.

Quickly this invention gets out of hand, with robots consuming large quantities of metal and electricity, multiplying and converting other machines into robots, displacing humans from their homes, and even killing them.

The story follows a large cast of characters, ranging from scientists to soldiers, love interests, foreign spies, reporters, et cetera. At times, it’s difficult to follow, particularly in one fast paced section of the book where nearly every paragraph hops to another character’s perspective. With a number of names to follow, characters are best distinguished by their quirks, and while sometimes they feel more like caricatures than characters, it makes for a funny read.

The tone of this book reminds me of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 or Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Speaking of the latter, I can’t help but think this is a also response to the creation of the atomic bomb. The plot revolves around the negligent nature of scientific discovery without consideration of the consequences. Much like the atomic bomb, the reproductive system might solve a more immediate problem, but the lasting effects continue to hurt civilians who had nothing to do with the creation or any say in whether something like that should exist.

Possibly this is a response to Karel Capek’s play "R.U.R." a work that is referenced in the story. To spoil a forty year old play, the fatal flaw in the robot’s revolution is their dependency on humans to make more robots. I can see this being the inspiration for Sladek’s main conflict.

Though an American writer, Mr. Sladek is currently publishing overseas, and were it not for the hilarious title, my sister probably would not have bought this book as joke on her latest trip abroad. Hopefully it will come to the states soon.

I enjoyed reading this and it earned quite a few laughs from me. While lighter on the science side, The Reproductive System clearly comes from a love of science fiction, referencing many works that came before it. The ending is perhaps appropriately happy, though a bit too convenient for my taste, but I think that was intentional on Sladek’s part, ending on one last humorous critique of the genre.

I look forward to what Sladek will write next.

4 stars.

by Gideon Marcus

After Some Tomorrow, by Mack Reynolds

Are you a Mack Reynolds fan? Then you'll like this book because it is the essence of Mack Reynolds from top to bottom, incorporating all of his strengths and few of his weaknesses.

In brief: The time is the late 20th Century. The setting is the United American States. If you've read Reynolds' Joe Mauser stories, then you know this future Earth is both a utopia and a dead end. The Cold War still simmers, but the People's Capitalism of the UAS and the Communism of the SovWorld are now two sides of the same coin: automation has put most people out of work, and wealth is concentrated with the elite while everyone else is stuck in fairly rigid castes, most living on the dole and watching telly while tranked up on free drugs. Common Europe and the few neutral countries aren't much better off.

Mick Grant and Anna Enesco are scholarship students, awarded their grant from the Joshua Porsenna endowment for a very specific reason–both seem to have the talent of precognition. The plot thickens when the mysterious and (in most places) illegal Monad Foundation also offers both of them exorbitant grants. All the Monads want is for the two to study socio-economic texts, from Anarchism to Zapata, Communism to Technocracy. Throw in the involvement of both military and government intelligence, and you've got the makings for quite an exciting time! But Reynolds manages to throw in yet another twist before finishing this slim novel, revealing the identity of the mysterious Porsenna.

The pacing for this book is excellent. Not a single chapter concluded that didn't tempt me to move on to the next. The setting is fascinating and also disturbingly plausible, and the motivation of the Monadians makes a depressing amount of sense. Of course, this being Reynolds, the book is peppered with historical essays with subjects like the anarchist Bakunin and the Greek colony of Cumae. Somehow, Reynolds makes it work. Maybe it's because the subject material was germane or simply well-presented, but it never turned me off.

The only real disappointment I had was the Anna Enesco's evolution into a caricature. She is at first played for frigid but independent. Over time, she falls for Mick, but there's never really a pay-off scene that sells the attraction. It's just accepted as having happened. By the end, her dialogue is stilted in the extreme.

I think dialogue has always been Reynolds' weak point. The man has traveled the world and has a broad knowledge of things. He knows how to plot, how to pace, how to build a world, but his characters are simply pieces in that world (though Mick isn't badly drawn, if a bit dense).

Unfortunately, this book came out November of last year; I only got to it now. As a result, though I'm giving it four stars, it's too late to make last year's Galactic Stars. Still, I recommend it.

by Blue Cathey-Thiele

Ace Double H-59

The Time Mercenaries, by Phillip E. High

Captain Randall and his crew have been preserved inside their submarine for over a thousand years. When an alien species refuses all compromise and sets out to destroy human life to make space for their own ever-growing population, these men are revived. They find humanity has genetically suppressed aggression and can't fight back, even in self defense against the Nerne.

Randall is physically outmatched, but future technology defends against future threats, and using old tricks and weapons they are able to sneak attacks under the radar. He is assigned eager robots who join his crew. After one of his men accidentally discovers how to unlock aggression – in one of my least favorite segments, when he hits a woman who insults him after they have sex, after which they… fall in love immediately and decide to get married – Randall recruits more humans. An unanticipated ally comes in the Revain, who have been fending off the Nerne for centuries. These alien allies bring their advanced tech, ships, and pills that work just as well to unlock aggression.

In the end, what ends the war isn't overwhelming force or superior firepower – it's social disruption. Using the computing of the robots, and the methods of the past, they undermine the highest ranking Nerne and cause the population to question the waves of existing lives sacrificed for potential future life.

The Nerne aren't alone in upheaval. Humans have also had a shift. With aggression, passion was also suppressed. Visible violence was removed, but other insidious forms remained – the crew had been used as a sort of nearly-alive wax museum for years before revival as a grim reminder, the government overruled the people's say, sent political opponents to become aggressive "deviants", and tasked robots – who were capable of feeling – with fighting and "dying" for them. Randall is disgusted by modern humanity's hands-off approach that still puts others in the line of fire and at the callous disregard of life by the Nerne. He doesn't delight in war, but recognizes when violence is called for to stop more death.

High makes clever use of the change in times and thinking. They didn't swoop in and do more damage, they were simply unexpected. How did they make humans violent again? Punching them in the face! It sounds absurd, and it is! But in a society without aggression, no one would be able to take that first swing.

While the whole book is set in a theater of war it explores what it means to be peaceable and how that can, and can't be achieved. It also makes a compelling case for contraceptives, and against eugenics.

4 1/2 stars

Anthropol, by Louis Trimble

Anthropol member Vernay is sent on an undercover assignment to a planet that his organization recently made and lost contact with when their scout team was killed. He is conditioned to fit in with the people, once from Earth, who live on Ujvila. It's a society strictly ordered by sex and rank, with men as subservient. He joins up with resistance fighters, helping facilitate change through the planet's own people and systems. Vernay must work around the Galactic Military (Gal-Mil) who have the same end goal but use force. He is captured and tortured, then meets the political and spiritual leader, the Kalauz. She confirms the existence of an alien presence that Anthropol had previously thought only metaphorical. These small aliens operated replicated human-forms but are no longer a threat as planetary defense scans for them.

Lori, the Captain of the Gal-Mil presence, is captured and sent to a "joy-labor camp" where prisoners rarely live past two years. Vernay volunteers himself to the camp to break her out or die trying. They escape with rebel help.

Vernay puts together odd hints he has noticed through his time on the planet, and brings it to a head when he calls to see Rosid, a resistance leader. Many of the rebels are, in fact, Ngign aliens posing as Ujvilans. Trisk, an Ujvilan rebel and cousin to the Kalauz, is horrified to discover that her people's minds were destroyed to create duplicates for the aliens. Vernay finds the one weak spot on the constructed body, the Ngignians dying in moments without a means to filter the atmosphere. They reach the Kalauz, but she too has been replaced. Trisk destroys her body, and takes over as Kalauz, starting social reform.

The epilogue calls Vernay and Lori back to the planet, as Trisk had spent four years improving the world, only to regress it to the original state, spurring new revolutionaries.

Anthropol went from a political revolution plot to an alien takeover in the last moments of the book. Although clues lead up to it, the plot turned so many times in the final chapters that it seemed there was another book's worth of material that hadn't been fully incorporated. Since so much time was spent exploring alternative methods, having the ultimate defeat come by physically attacking and killing the aliens instead of using Anthropol tactics was a let down. Also, Trimble recreated a female/male style system among the women, with feminine, "pretty" women as leaders, and masculine women given the roles usually assigned to men. As a commentary on the treatment of the sexes, it fell short.

3 stars

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Movies

[May 16, 1968] Counting down, and a blast from the Past (Countdown (1967) and The Time Travelers (1964))

May 16, 2023 Janice L. Newman 3 Comments

by Janice L. Newman

When we learned that last year’s Countdown was playing in San Diego theaters, The Traveler and I decided to make a night of it and drive down to watch it. The Traveler is a space buff, of course, so it was a natural fit. Would I recommend it? Well, it depends.

The story is simple and straightforward, with few surprises. When the Russians send up a civilian astronaut to circumnavigate the moon, with three more astronauts presumably soon to follow and actually land, NASA implements an emergency plan to get a man on the moon at any cost. He’ll be stuck there for a year, provided he can find and enter a previously-sent shelter pod before his oxygen runs out. Public relations concerns force NASA to tap the less-qualified civilian Lee for the role rather than their first choice, Colonel Chiz. After many conversations, discussions, arguments, and training sequences, Lee is sent to the moon to land a few days after the Russians. What happens next is, shall we say, narratively predictable, but I'll let you watch the movie to see for yourself.

Lee and Chiz in the modified Gemini that will go to the moon–it's clear NASA helped Warner Bros. make this film.

The movie feels grounded in realism in a way that few modern space movies do. This is a story of the ‘here and now’, with current technology, fashion, and language. It’s a bold choice, and a risky one. With technology changing so quickly, it seems likely that the movie will soon feel dated and possibly even silly. Within a couple of years, it’s highly likely that either the Russians or the Americans will succeed in landing on the moon, and what then? The story will simply be a ‘could have been’, perhaps interesting in its time, but quickly forgotten as it is eclipsed by true events. Unless the movie ends up being prescient. Who knows?

While the story and visuals are deeply entrenched in the ‘now’, however, certain aspects of the movie feel groundbreaking: specifically, the way sound is handled, both the conversations between characters and the music. I’ve never seen a movie or play where characters talk over each other so much. It’s confusing and sometimes frustrating, trying to follow the thread of a conversation as other characters are shouting. It feels more like ‘real life’ in some ways; after all, real conversations are often filled with interruptions, stops and starts which almost never show up on screen or stage. The technique was used a bit too much, perhaps, as sometimes I thought that it continued to an unrealistic degree. The actors seemed a bit uncomfortable with it as well, a few times starting or stopping in an artificial way. I imagine after training in one kind of acting, to do something so different must have been disconcerting. This is not to say that the actors did a poor job. Duvall in particular impressed me, turning in a powerful performance as the bitter passed-over Colonel Chiz.

Everyone talking at once–Altman's invention.

The real star of the movie, though, was the music. Atonal and dissonant music is not new. Arnold Schoenberg, for example, spent the first half of the century writing music that sounds strange to Classically-trained ears. What is new, at least to me, is the use of dissonance in a mainstream movie soundtrack, and not just for a moment or two, but for most of the movie. The soundtrack eschews the Romantic-style orchestral music which is standard in most films, and instead uses eerie, unsettling themes that swell and fade with high-pitched notes and low groans, punctuated by the occasional pounding of timpani. Still orchestral, but not sweet. Not predictable in its progressions, but rather filled with deliberately clashing chords. It’s not quite to the level of atonality that Schoenburg ended up writing, but it’s unusual and fresh, and it does an amazing job of building tension even absent of every other factor. In some ways, the soundtrack might have been more suited to a horror movie! Is this the beginning of a new trend in movie music? I understand that Planet of the Apes, which came out after this film, uses similar dissonant themes. On the other hand, I understand that 2001 features The Blue Danube and Also Sprach Zarathustra, which are both undeniably fine pieces of music, but hardly ‘modern’. So I guess we’ll see!

It's the music that really sells the scene as Lee struggles with the lunar simulator.

So do I recommend the movie? For space buffs, yes, absolutely. The grounding in modern technology and the efforts at realism will be appreciated by people who know what they’re looking at (even if, as The Traveler pointed out to me, they used footage of the wrong rockets). For everyone else? The plot is paint-by-numbers. The fate of the Russian astronauts didn’t come as a surprise. Nor did Lee’s. The conflicts of the movie—with Chiz, between Lee and his wife, between the surgeon and the head of the project—are all more or less resolved by the end. Everything is tied up neatly, and that’s that.

But even if space isn't your bag, if you love music, especially modern and unusual music, this film may well be worth the price of entry!

Three stars.

by Gideon Marcus

What an interesting beast Countdown is. Like the novel, Marooned, it is very much of its time. As Janice notes, it's instantly dated. But the test of the plot isn't whether or not it could happen now, but whether or not it was plausible at a certain time.

There is clearly a point of divergence from our universe in this movie. In the chronology of Countdown, a back-up "Gemini to the moon" plan was prepared. The Soviets had more luck with their program, and, indeed, a completely different program (no mention is made of Soyuz in the film; it must have been written before April 1967.) With those facts as a given, the events of the movie make sense, and indeed, make a fascinating counterfactual.

The Soviet craft is exclusively referred to as a "Voskhod" (with varying degrees of mangling in the mouths of American actors)

The basic thrust of the movie is still relevant, even if the facts are dated. As we speak, Apollo 8 is being planned for a circumlunar flight toward the end of the year. We know the Soviets have been planning for such an endeavor, too, linking up their Soyuz craft in orbit in preparation. That flight around the moon wasn't in the cards until we were worried the Communists might beat us to the punch. What corners are we cutting to make it possible?

This is the movie's mission, but it's also Apoll 8's trajectory.

There's a lot to like about this movie. The acting is excellent. I recognize Robert Duvall from his endless TV roles (including "The Inheritors" and "The Chameleon" episodes of The Outer Limits and "Miniature", an episode of The Twilight Zone), and James Caan from the episode of Hitchcock, penned by Harlan Ellison, with Walter Koenig. The direction is innovative, naturalistic and tight. Newcomer Robert Altman does a lot with a little: this is clearly a low budget film, using flagrantly inaccurate stock-footage rockets (Atlas Agena for the first Pilgrim flight; a Titan II for the second) instead of a Saturn. I'm kind of surprised they didn't use Saturn 1 footage, honestly.

Ted Knight as a Shorty Powers type describes the mission. Note the Saturn V in the drawings.

But this is what we actually see–a Titan-Gemini launch.

There are two main motifs that run through this film. The first is difficulties in communication. Altman has his actors constantly talking over each other, often failing to listen to each other. This manifests itself technically when Stegler's radio gives out, punctuating conversation with frequent drop-outs.

Reacting to a failure to communicate.

The second is, of course, countdowns. Robert Duvall recites the numbers from ten to zero a dozen times in the film. Altman knows there is suspense in that little trick, and despite its frequent use, it isn't really overdone.

Duvall counting down.

If there's a problem with the film, it's that, despite all the flurry and tension and concerns, there are really no decisions to be made. Like a spaceflight mission, the movie completes its pre-planned trajectory with little input from the characters along for the ride.

So I think I give it 3.5 stars. The execution deserves five; as a narrative, it's barely a two. On the other hand, let's be honest–were these events to play out in real life, with astronauts in peril on the way to the moon, we'd be absolutely riveted. Of course, in that case, we wouldn't necessarily know everything was going to be all right in the end…

But there's more! Enjoy this bonus review of a…lesser Sci-fi movie.

by Gideon Marcus

There was no "Love Machine" in the movie I saw. I have no idea what it's talking about.

I shoulda run when I saw the "American International Pictures" logo.

Alright, it's true that AIP doesn't always make shlock, but this time, they indubitably did. 1964's The Time Travelers, directed (sort of) by Ib Melchior and also co-written by him is an hour and a half you'll never get back.

But is that really so bad?

We open up on a "lab" where an "experiment" in time travel is taking place. Three scientists and a dopey electrician occupy the far left side of the room. A screen, positioned clearly for our benefit rather than the scientists', occupies the middle of the room, showing where the time window is currently focused.

When the screen refuses to show the future, Steve, the headstrong beefcakey one, decides to push the circuits to their maximum. The result is as expected: things spark and catch fire. But serendipitously, the screen becomes more than a window–it's now a portal! The dopey electrician goes through to investigate, the bohunk and the goateed elder scientist (made of wood or some other unmoving substance) go after him. When weird humanoid mutants show up and menace Carol, the remaining scientist, she clobbers them with fire extinguisher exhaust. Then the portal starts to collapse. She goes through to warn bohunk and goatee…but it's too late. They're all trapped.

107 years in the future!

Thus ensues a chase that pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the film, because it goes on for what feels like a good five minutes. Here's where I realized that there was no budget for retakes or second unit work. What they shot, they had, and if they were going to fill a movie's run-time, they were going to use every last bit of it.

What's really funny is the four of them hold off about a dozen mutants, armed with spears, by throwing rocks at them. For some reason, the mutants never think to throw their spears… or rocks.

Anyway, they stumble upon a cave complex guarded by an electric gate. An attractive older woman in form-fitting trousers (there's a lot of form-fitting trousers in this flick) greets them, accompanied by a bunch of creepy, but not ineffective androids, and brings them to their council chamber. Turns out that only most of humanity died in an atomic calamity (depicted in stock footage narrated by the council leader, none other than John Hoyt, who is in everything, including the original Star Trek pilot).

But though the mutants increase their attacks every day, there is hope. The future humans have discovered an inhabitable world around Alpha Centauri (which Alpha Centauri, they don't say…) and have built a starship to get there called… "Starship". I'm amazed there are no British actors in the cast because that's a British name if I ever heard one.

John Hoyt and… Starship.

1964's finest.

It's all very When Worlds Collide, up to and including the extreme caucasianicity.

At first, the four time travelers are offered a berth on Starship. This is great because dopey electrician (you can see the impact he had on me–I don't remember his name) has fallen in love with the assertive beauty in form-fitting trousers, Reena (none other than Miss Delores Wells, Playmate of the Month for June 1960; don't ask me how I know this).

Ahem. Form-fitting trousers.

I do like that about this film–men and women seem to share power pretty equally in this future. Except when it comes to fighting. Then it's all up to the menfolk and androids.

Anyway, Councilman Willard, a real jerk, insists that Starship can't accommodate any more people, so the time travelers have but one option–build a time portal back to the past.

"I don't wanna take 'em with us!

It's finished at the same time Starship is ready, and also when the mutants make their final attack. Starship launches but then explodes, killing all on board. The mutants fight their way to the time portal room, slaughtering many men in form-fitting trousers as well as androids. We get to see one android catch fire and burn. For about a full minute. Because, after all, they shot it, so it's gonna get shown.

"So much for being a real boy…"

The portal is finished in time, the time travelers jump through, along with Reena, John Hoyt, and a few other trouser people, and they find themselves back in the lab at the moment of their fateful experiment. But they find that time has frozen for them. Their only hope is to jump through the screen, currently focused on the far future. They emerge onto a landscape reminiscent of the end of When Worlds Collide…hmmm.

Then, because run-time was short, they recapped the entire movie at an accelerated (or speeded up) rate, I guess to indicate a time loop. In fact, they do it twice before rolling credits.

Things that are bad:

The acting: even John Hoyt is bad.
The cinematography: "Hey, I set up the camera–you want I should move it?"
The pacing.
The science (Lord, the science).

Things that are good:

The score: sure, it doesn't always fit the action, but there is a groovy number that clearly influenced the theme of a certain show we all know and love…
The scene with the half-mutant refugee that Carol saves from Willard–but nothing more is done with this wasted opportunity.

You can't see that his hands are deformed claws of flesh–I wanted to see more of this kid.
Delores Wells: look, I make it a point not to be a lech, but… vavavoom.
The magic tricks: several times, they lift stunts straight from Harry Blackstone's repertoire–they take off an android's head and put it back on; dopey electrician is "teleported" from a magic box. It's like Vegas, but on film!
Superfan Forrest Ackerman has a cameo.

Hey 4-E!

Two stars. Don't fail to miss, even if it's tonight's Late Late Movie…unless you want a laugh and/or an eyeful of form-fitting trousers.

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Movies

[May 14, 1968] Bad Girls On Bikes (The Hellcats, The Mini-Skirt Mob, and She-Devils On Wheels)

May 14, 2023 Victoria Silverwolf 2 Comments

by Victoria Silverwolf

Three For The Road

I've previously confessed my inexplicable enjoyment of beach movies. A similar vice to which I am addicted is my passion for films about motorcycle gangs.

This particular kind of cheap drive-in feature has exploded ever since the success of The Wild Angels last year.

There are already a bunch of these movies out there, all featuring guys on big bikes riding around, drinking beer, making out with chicks, getting into fights, and generally raising Cain.

But what if they weren't guys?

Three films I saw recently raised my hopes that I'd see the distaff side of things for a change. Not all of them met my expectations. Let's take a look.

The Hellcats

The poster for this low budget cycle flick certainly emphasizes the women in the cast. The trailer does the same thing, putting the names of five of the female characters right up there on the screen for all to see. But is that really what we get?

The movie starts with the funeral of one of the gang. The plot is both simple and difficult to follow, but let me do my best to explain it.

The dead member of the Hellcats was working with the cops. It seems that the cyclists are helping some gangsters push drugs, and he was informing on the crooks. The gangsters killed him, I guess. This isn't the most coherent movie in the world.

Anyway, they also kill one of the cops. The dead man's brother and girlfriend are our protagonists. They manage to join the Hellcats. Eventually, after a lot of random stuff happens, the Hellcats blame the gangsters for the death of one of their members and a big fight breaks out.

So where are all the tough biker chicks we're expecting? Well, they're around, but they don't do very much. Even the one-eyed blonde shown on the poster is a minor character. (You can see what she really looks like in the scene shown above. Not as scary as the poster.)

Not a good movie. Read a book instead.

Maybe not this one.

Quality of film: Two stars.
Bad Girl content: One star.

The Mini-Skirt Mob

The trailer for this somewhat more professionally made film makes it clear who the villainess is, and even features a knockdown, drag-out fight between the Bad Girl and the Good Girl. More false promises?

During the opening credits, I thought I had walked into the wrong theater and was watching a Western. Horses in a motorcycle movie? Well, it turns out the hero is a champion rodeo rider, although that has nothing to do with the story.

The cowboy has just married our Good Girl, played by Sherry Jackson. Hey, she was on Star Trek!

This makes our Bad Girl, played by Diane McBain, very mad. It seems she had a relationship with the cowboy some time ago, and doesn't want to let him go. Together with a few male sidekicks, she and the other members of a female gang called the Mini-Skirts give the newlyweds a hard time.

(Truth in advertising. The gang members really do wear miniskirts, as impractical as that may be on motorcycles. I'd hardly call them a mob, however, as there are only four of them. One of them, the leader's little sister, turns out to be not so bad after all.)

It all leads up to an out-and-out war, with rifles and Molotov cocktails as the weapons. People get killed. There's one death scene that's pretty darn gruesome.

The movie manages to create some suspense, and there are a lot of visually impressive scenes of the desert, courtesy of the state of Arizona.

Quality of film: Three stars.
Bad Girl content: Three stars.

She-Devils on Wheels

The trailer for this Florida-filmed epic reveals two things. It's got a bunch of Bad Girls, and it's really, really cheap.

The opening credits feature a painting of a screaming woman on a cycle. I hope you like it, because it shows up a lot. Between scenes, the same thing appears, spinning around like a record.

The Man-Eaters motorcycle club (their symbol is more cute than scary) have races to determine who has first pick from a bunch of men who are, apparently, just waiting around to be chosen as intimate companions for the night. When one member chooses the same guy too often, the others accuse her of being in love, which is against the rules. She has to drag the fellow behind her bike, leaving him a bloody mess, to prove her loyalty to the gang.

(There's a lot of fake blood in this thing. Director Herschell Gordon Lewis also gave the world extremely gory films such as Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!,Color Me Blood Red, and A Taste of Blood.)

The two most interesting Man-Eaters are Queenie, the leader, and Whitey. The latter is — how should I put it? — zaftig? Rubenesque? Anyway, she's not your typical Hollywood starlet trying to look tough.

There's also Honeypot, a new member. She gets the plot going.

After the Man-Eaters have a fight with a male gang, defeating the boys easily, the guys get their revenge by kidnapping Honeypot and returning her a bloody mess. (Do you sense a pattern here?) The Man-Eaters set a trap for the leader of the men, leading to our big shock scene (which you may have spotted in the trailer.)

Make no mistake. This is a terrible movie. The acting is atrocious. (I understand that women who could ride motorcycles were hired, rather than women who could act.) But it delivers the goods. These are very Bad Girls indeed.

Quality of film: One star.
Bad Girl content: Five stars.

Overall, not very good movies. Sometimes you just have to go back to the classics.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[May 12, 1968] Slow And Steady… (Doctor Who: The Wheel In Space [Part One])

May 12, 2023 Jessica Holmes 2 Comments

By Jessica Holmes

We approach the end of another series of Doctor Who, and it’s been a bit of a rough one, hasn’t it? Other than the occasional standout, I feel that I’ve ended up finding every other story terribly repetitive. As I began to watch the last serial of the current run, I had hope that my faith in the series would be rewarded. After all, when Doctor Who is good, it’s really, really good, and this latest serial was scripted by David Whittaker (who wrote The Enemy Of The World, possibly my favourite story) based on a story by Kit Pedler (who is to the Cybermen as Terry Nation was to the Daleks). With a writing duo like that, things looked very promising for the serial. Was my faith rewarded? Let’s mull it over as I give you a quick rundown of The Wheel In Space.

EPISODE ONE

With Jamie still a bit sulky over Victoria’s exit from the TARDIS, things go from bad to worse for the lad as the time machine breaks down, leaving him and the Doctor stranded. To be on the safe side until he can get the TARDIS working again, the Doctor removes the doohickey that makes it appear bigger on the inside, the Time Vector Generator. The pair then split to search the rocketship for any crew or mercury for the TARDIS’ battery. They spend the better part of the episode doing this, with a break for lunch. That’s just what the kids want to watch: a couple of blokes operating a vending machine. The scene of them actually obtaining lunch is about as interesting as it sounds, but they do have a nice little discussion on how they think Victoria is getting on back on Earth.

They’re unable to find any mercury for the TARDIS, although the one place they haven’t searched is the rocketship’s control room. Unbeknownst to them, there is a countdown timer in there. But counting down to what? Out of ideas, and having at least confirmed that they’re safe for now, Jamie settles down for a nap.

Yes, it seems the ship is abandoned, drifting aimlessly…just like this serial.

There is however a robot making the rounds, and while the Doctor and Jamie are in the crew cabin, it seals shut their section of the ship.

This serial has slower pacing than 2001 (at least from what I've read), and that’s saying something.

With only a couple minutes left in the episode, something resembling action finally happens. The countdown in the control room hits zero. The ship lurches as it releases a number of silver spheres into space. The jolt wakes Jamie up and knocks the Doctor over, resulting in a nasty crack on the head. A dazed Doctor uses the Time Vector Generator to unseal the door (it apparently works sort of like a high powered laser beam) and Jamie helps him escape the robot and run back to the cabin, again employing the TVG to see the robot off.

They’re safe for now, but the Doctor passes out from his injury.

Meanwhile, the crew of a nearby space station have discovered the drifting rocket ship. This is the Wheel, so called because it looks a bit like a wagon wheel from above. It’s an Earth vessel, observing deep space phenomena and warning spacecraft of potential hazards. They attempt to get in contact, and as they do so, something hits their outer hull. They don’t realise it yet, but it’s the silver spheres from the rocket ship.

Unable to hail the rocket on the radio, the crew of the Wheel are faced with a choice: should they leave the ship be, or blow it up on the off-chance that its autopilot is still active and may drive it into the station?

EPISODE TWO

Fortunately for the Doctor and Jamie, they have the Time Vector Generator, which Jamie flashes out the porthole in an attempt to get the attention of the space station. The Wheel detects the unusual signal, and sends some men over to investigate the rocket, soon finding the Doctor and Jamie and bringing them back to the Wheel.

Now we’re all together, let’s go over the crew of the Wheel. We’ve got Jarvis Bennett (Michael Turner), the station’s controller, who is quite high-strung and prone to stressing out. There’s also Dr. Gemma Corwyn (Anne Ridler), the medic and resident voice of reason, and the astrophysicist-librarian-maths-genius-wunderkind Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury). Filling out the cast are a few more or less interchangeable crewmembers of various nationalities portrayed with varying degrees of sensitivity.

Corwyn gives the Doctor and Jamie a thorough medical examination, finding that Jamie is perfectly fine but the Doctor, unsurprisingly, has a concussion.

With how long he’s been unconscious I’m surprised it’s not worse than that.

While the Doctor recovers, Zoe shows Jamie around the Wheeel, and the two don’t exactly hit it off. She laughs at his kilt, and he threatens her with a spanking. She seems quite delighted by the prospect. Make of that what you will.

For her part, though she likes him well enough, Corwyn is suspicious of Jamie’s story. He’s not exactly a good liar. Case in point: when asked, he told her that the Doctor’s name is ‘John Smith’, a name that is somehow conspicuously generic. Corwyn and Bennett start to suspect that the Doctor and Jamie might be saboteurs. There has been growing opposition to the space program back on Earth.

Zoe and Jamie arrive at the Wheel’s control room just as Bennett is about to go ahead with blowing up the rocketship. Uh-oh, the TARDIS!

Meanwhile aboard said rocketship, the timer begins to count up. There’s something strange in the room, a couple of large…eggs? They begin to glow, and humanoid shapes become visible inside. They stir, and a silver-gloved hand punches its way out of the shell.

Could it be… the Cybermen?

EPISODE THREE

Wanting to delay the destruction of the rocket for obvious reasons, Jamie grabs some conveniently located spray-on quick-set plastic and sabotages the Wheel’s laser-gun. Bennett catches him in the act. Jamie couldn’t have picked a worse time to disable the gun.

Why? Because…well…because of a load of absolute poppycock, even by the lax standards of the programme. A star in the Hercules Cluster is about to go nova, and the radiation flux will fling asteroids and any other space flotsam right at the Wheel.

Science fiction writers, I’ve noticed, often have difficulties with understanding just how big space is. The cluster in question, formally designated Messier 13, is twenty-two thousand light-years away. Assuming the Wheel is situated at the edge of the solar system (its precise location isn’t made explicit, but given its stated purpose as an early warning system, observatory and halfway house for spacecraft heading into deep space, I think that makes the most sense), any nova in Messier 13 would pose about as much threat to it as farting ant in the Sahara.

I’m nit-picking, but only because I’m bored.

Because they don’t have enough problems already, some stowaways have weaseled their way aboard the station. Cybermats! One of the crew encounters one. Thinking it’s some sort of space bug, he hides it in a cupboard. While left to its own devices, it goes ahead and tucks into the entire ship’s stock of the material needed to repair the laser.

Meanwhile, the Cybermen are preparing the next phase of their plan. It seems that (somehow) they triggered the nova, and another that occurred the previous week. They are trying to lure the crew of the Wheel to board their rocket in search of more material with which to repair the laser. Pity they didn’t wake up earlier, they could have saved themselves a bit of bother.

The star in Messier 13 goes nova. As tempted as I am to go off on a tangent about the speed of light, I shall restrain myself and take off my insufferable know-it-all hat.

Zoe cheerfully informs the others of the danger they’re in. She’s not quite as good at tact as she is at reciting facts and figures. ‘All brain and no heart’, as one of the men describes her. Seems a little harsh if you ask me.

One of the hapless crew runs afoul of a swarm of cybermats. He doesn’t appear to have twigged that these things are about the size of a football. Just punt them! He encases one of them in quick-set plastic, but the others overwhelm and kill him in a spectacle of truly glorious over-acting. Poor fellow, choked to death on all that scenery he chewed.

Corwyn finds his body, though by then the cybermats have fled. She presents the encased cybermat to the Doctor, who x-rays it and discovers the true nature of the threat to the station.

Alas, it’s too late. A pair of men from the Wheel have already arrived on the rocket. They immediately run into the Cybermen, who swiftly bring them under the influence of a mind-control ray. Their first command? To take the Cybermen to the Wheel.

Final Thoughts

Doctor Who is a teatime show, but I almost nodded off a couple of times while watching the first couple of episodes. I’m genuinely surprised by this, given the track record of the writers and how much I usually enjoy the Cybermen. There’s just so much padding! The whole thing drags terribly, turning any potential for suspense into a slog.

The Cybermen themselves have had another design update. They're mostly the same as their previous appearance, but have now got a little notch at the corner of each eye that looks a bit like a teardrop, as well as a notch at the bottom of the mouth slit. I don't know, i think the entirely utilitarian, featureless design of the previous iterations was creepier. The mouth notch just looks a bit awkward.

Will the later half of the serial improve on things? Perhaps, now that the antagonists have deigned to show up.

We will have to wait and see.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 10, 1968] Horse race (June 1968 Galaxy)

May 10, 2023 Gideon Marcus 1 Comment

by Gideon Marcus

Three and Two make Two

I imagine Vegas bookies are tearing their hair out trying to predict the Presidential race this year. On January 1, the hard money would have been on President Johnson beating Governor George Romney in a fairly easy race. Then McCarthy and Nixon won in New Hampshire. The former sent LBJ announcing his resignation and the latter gave the former Vice-President the first victory of his own since 1950.

Then Bobby Kennedy jumped in, trying to steal McCarthy's lunch. Inevitably, Vice President Humphrey threw his hat in the ring, instantly commanding the loyalty of most democratic party bosses. Meanwhile, Romney's dropped out, but Nelson Rockefeller, who said he wasn't going to play this year, has jumped in.

So, who will face each other come Labor Day? It's anyone's guess, especially since both McCarthy and Kennedy just won recent primaries. I guess we'll have to see if the New York Governor's campaign has legs, and if Humphrey's position translates to delegates at the convention.

Stay tuned…

Nine to Rule Them All

It's similarly a horse race with the latest issue of Galaxy, which presents a solid batch of stories. Which one is the best? That's a hard choice, too!

by Paul E. Wenzel

But first, the editorial. Remember a few months ago F&SF ran competing ads from SF authors for and against the war in Vietnam?

Well, now Pohl's mags are doing it.

Pohl (Galaxy's editor) says it's not just enough to bitch about it. Someone needs to come up with a solution. He figures SF fans are about the smartest people around, so why don't we try our hand at it?

So now there's a contest, first prize $1,000, details at the bottom of this article. Of course, given that you can't devote more than 100 words to the issue, and given that the war has been going on since 1945, in one way or another, and given that a lot of smart people have been trying to fix this thing…I somehow feel 100 words is not enough.

Or as my friend the divorce lawyer likes to say: "Imagine trying to fix a car. Now try to imagine fixing that car while another party is actively trying to dismantle it."

Yeah. Lots of luck, Pohl.

On to the stories!

The Beast That Shouted Love, by Harlan Ellison

by Jack Gaughan

Ever wonder why all people seem to go psycho all of sudden? Why a race with countless religious texts devoted to peace, harmony, and brotherhood just goes buggy every so often?

What if some other planet, in order to preserve their peace, harmony, and brotherhood, is beaming all their psycho energy to us? Sort of a bad emotions disposal process.

This is one of Ellison's lesser pieces. It probably means a lot to him, but it's rather disjointed and vague and not as profound as he wants it to be.

Three stars.

How We Banned the Bombs, by Mack Reynolds

by Vaughn Bodé

Right now, the world population is 3.5 billion and rising. Naturally, this has been the cause of concern and the topic of more than a few science fiction stories. Bombs is one of the lesser efforts.

Reynolds posits a Reunited Nations government so powerful that, in response to the Population Explosion, it can enforce a ten-year ban on childbirth through mandatory provision of contraceptives to women. At the end of the ban, it turns out that the contraceptive drug's effect was permanent, and all human women are completely sterile.

This, by the way, is the end of the story. The rest of it involves characters talking to each other, telling tales they all know about how the world ended up in this predicament (which doesn't make for much of a story).

The whole premise is silly. The population in this projected, not-too-distant future is 3.5 billion, same as it is now, yet resources are so scarce, they're banning the production of alcohol so as to husband their grain crops. Somehow, the ReUN can sterilize EVERY woman on Earth, none slipping through the cracks. And then, no one foresees or predetermines that the universal contraception has adverse effects.

In the words of Laugh-In's Joanne Worley: "Dummmmmb!"

One star.

Detour to Space, by Robin Scott Wilson

(uncredited artist)

Object 3574 is circling the Earth in a polar orbit. Unannounced, the General is convinced it's a secret Russkie bomb. NASA's long-hair thinks otherwise. The majority decides to send up an Apollo to check it out. The object is covered in green slime and pebbled with tektites, suggesting extraterrestrial origin…

There's a lot to like about this tale, especially the sting at the end of it. Scott convincingly describes the apprehension with which we Americans greet the arrival of a new star in the heavens. I know I scour the papers and call my Vandenberg buddies whenever anything goes up to get some insight into otherwise classified launches.

Where the story beggars credibility is the use of Apollo spacecraft, launched from Vandenberg, to intercept 3574. You just can't do it–there's no way to get a Saturn there. Much more likely would be to send up an Air Force Gemini (they're making them for the planned Manned Orbiting Laboratory). But that would have killed the story.

This is what happens when you know too much about a subject, reviewing a story by someone who doesn't quite know enough… three stars.

Daisies Yet Ungrown, by Ross Rocklynne

Joe Wehrle, Jr.

After the big bombs created the time-space Rift, God told Rickert to jump through with Sears catalog robots and claim a new world 350,000 trillion light years from Earth. But this is so far away that God's grace cannot reach, and Lucifer's tool, the newcomer Dorothy, has arrived to take his planet away from him.

This is an odd, poetic story that you, at first, think is going to be satirical, sort of a cross between Sheckley and Bunch. Instead, it's kind of pretty and sweet, way different than I was expecting.

Three stars.

For Your Information: Jules Verne, Busy Lizzy and Hitler, by Willy Ley

This is a pretty interesting piece on attempts using a gun rather than a rocket to fire a projectile, if not into space, at least a terrific distance. Essentially, it's like a rocket, but with the propellant on the outside.

Long story short: rockets are better. Four stars.

Waiting Place, by Harry Harrison

(uncredited artist)

A man taking the matter transmitter home finds himself in the future version of Devil's Island, a colony for hardened criminals. Surely, there has been some kind of malfunction, for he can remember no crime. But the wheels of justice never make a mistake, or do they?

This would be a fairly slight tale if not for the execution. Luckily, Harrison (who I understand has just retired from the editor helm of Fantastic and Amazing) is a master of execution.

Four stars.

The Garden of Ease, by Damon Knight

by Jack Gaughan

As expected, the first adventure of Thorinn, a human raised by trolls in a Nordic nightmare, has a sequel. Last time, the resourceful Thorinn had been tossed into a deep well as an offering to the gods to end a ceaseless winter. Making his way through the caves he found, Thorinn discovered a hatch that opened not onto but above a new world. This story details what he finds below.

In an almost Oz-like setting, the people of the Vale enjoy a life of complete ease. The grasshopper men and the doughwomen and the fancymen and the children, they eat the food that grows on trees and bushes, they frolic, they discuss, and when they want adventure, they seal themselves up in the pleasure pods for the night…or sometimes an eternity.

Thorinn is the snake in the garden, slowly poisoning the place with his foreignness and his willingness to kill. Ultimately, he hatches an escape plan, but not before leaving his mark.

This is an interesting episode, but not as compelling or as clever as the first one. Three stars.

Booth 13, by John Lutz

Here's a new author, or at least, new to me. John paints a grim future in which populational ennui has settled in. All that's left is war, the tranquilizer lysogene, and the death booths. If life gets just a bit too monotonous, there's always a quick and easy exit–and now, people are taking it in ever-increasing numbers.

It's not badly done, but my biggest issue is not enough explanation is given as to why everyone is so melancholy. Perhaps that's the point–if you give everyone an easy out, even the mildest inconveniences can trigger a snap decision. Or maybe the author is simply extrapolating from the current, profound American despondency.

At the very least, I liked it better than Sales of a Deathman.

Three stars.

Goblin Reservation (Part 2 of 2), by Clifford D. Simak

by Gray Morrow

Last time, if you recall, Pete Maxwell has gone off to do research at the crystal planet, a world with the accumulated knowledge of two universes (it had lived through the last Big Crunch). The fading intelligences of the planet offered all of its wisdom in exchange for The Artifact, a featureless black object dating back to the Jurassic period. When Maxwell got back to Earth, he found that he'd already come back, duplicated by some quirk of matter transfer, and died.

This datum takes a back seat to bigger concerns–the Wheelers, bags of insect colonies bent on acquiring the lore of the crystal planet, have already purchased The Artifact, and once it is in their possession, plan to take over the universe. It is up to Maxwell, his tentative ally Carol, her sabre-tooth tiger Sylvester, their Neanderthal pal Alley Oop, the Ghost, William Shakespeare, the librarian who sold The Artifact, the goblin O' Toole, and several bridge-dwelling trolls to somehow stop the transaction before it's too late.

I must say, Simak pulls off a large set of emotional tones very well. You feel the sense of impending dread when it seems the Wheelers have clinched the deal. The comedic scenes are genuinely amusing. Yet, there is a grounding to the story that keeps it from being Laumerian or Anvilian lampoon. The revelations of the true nature of the fairies, little people, banshees, and whatnot are pretty good, too, though a bit abrupt. Perhaps they'll have more time to breathe in the novel version.

The only bit I had trouble with was The Wheelers, for whom I felt sympathy once I learned their motivation. There's an undertone of unconscious racism where they're concerned–they're bad because they're icky, different. When you learn what their status had been vis-à-vis the crystal planet, it all becomes a bit more unsettling.

Nevertheless, pleasant reading by a master. Four stars.

Picking a Winner

Well. It's obvious which story was the loser here (let's just call the Reynolds tale 'Harold Stassen'). But as to a winner, well that's a little harder. Several of the three-stars are quite nice; my four-star to the Harrison may be arbitrary. We can exclude the Simak because it's a serial, but it anchors this and the last issue well.

I suppose in an issue where (all but one of) the stories are good, the real winner is…us.

Happy reading! And don't forget to write to Pohl…

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Conventions/Performances

[May 8, 1968] A Visit to Thirdmancon, the 1968 British Science Fiction Convention

May 8, 2023 Alison Scott 2 Comments

by Alison Scott

A report of the Thirdmancon, Eastercon 1968

It’s hard to overstate the anticipation I had for Eastercon 1968. It was going to be the largest national convention ever, with over 200 fans expected! In the end I understand that something like 150 people turned up; still the largest British national convention yet.

Still Riding the Slow Train

I set off from Hoe Street station on Good Friday morning in a state of considerable expectation. My journey was quite tedious, involving travelling into the city, crossing town on the Metropolitan line, taking the express train, but only as far as Stockport, and then finally changing to a beautiful but majestically slow branch line down to Buxton. The convention had originally been planned for a town with a mainline station, something I considered frequently while stopping at stations with names like Hazel Grove, Disley, Dove Holes, and Chapel-en-le-Frith.

Authentic Georgian Piles

Buxton is a beautiful spa town that has perhaps seen slightly better days. That was certainly true of St. Ann’s Hotel, situated at one end of the once glorious but now dilapidated Georgian Crescent. I arrived to find someone waving a sword through his car window. This set the scene for a very vibrant but perhaps rather disorderly con.

I was in the overflow hotel, at the other end of the terrace, and there were a lot of fans milling around. It turned out that the hotel had misplaced their booking, and mine. Fortunately they quickly realised I was a lone female traveller and sorted me out with a tiny single room that I suspected might have previously been used to store laundry. The hotel appears to have retained many original features, like the plumbing, the lino, and the bedlinen. Ah well, all I’d be doing here was sleeping.

After I picked up my badge and programme book, I was a bit overwhelmed at how many fans were there. I was later told it was nearly 150; a huge number for an S-F convention! Quite a lot were local to the northwest, but there were fans from Ireland and several from America. This year the convention was being run by the Delta film group from Manchester, and so there was a lot of film-themed programming, including some of their own films, other films, and film related items. So some of the influx of fans was other film buffs. But not all by any means. Luckily I spotted Ella Parker, who had magisterially formed a one-woman tea salon in the lounge, having noticed that everyone would pass through that point. I was just happy to see a friendly face and fellow London Circle member.

Ella introduced me to a group of German fans. My German is terrible, but their English was quite good. They’re bidding to hold Germancon, the World SF Convention, in Heidelberg, West Germany in 1970; that will be quite the event I’m sure. The decision will be made at this year’s Worldcon in America. They were drumming up support but most fans were pretty supportive anyway and in fact the convention passed a motion of support for the bid. I spoke to some of the US fans about it, and they think that US fans are also enthusiastic about the idea of Worldcon going to a non-English speaking country for the first time.

After a little while, we all moved into the convention hall. It was very striking! Eddie Jones had painted a huge backdrop featuring an alien landscape and a giant red star; a fitting setting for our weekend conventioning.

Films and even more Films

After the opening ceremonies, horror film buff John Ramsey Campbell gave a talk accompanied by films. I myself am not a horror film buff, but John Ramsey is very entertaining. I hear he is a promising writer, but I’m not a horror fiction buff either.

John Ramsey Campbell in his Knight of St Fantony regalia (Photo credit: Stan Nicholls)

This led naturally into a film show, featuring the work of the Delta film club and promising an X-rated film! I think it was probably a humorous rather than a scandalous one, but I returned to my room to save my energy for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday Morning: Fully Charged

I arose on Saturday in good time for the panel about starting fan clubs. I have no plans to leave London, and surely London will always have the London Circle? But it was interesting to hear about other cities and their clubs.

I then spent some time milling about with other fans. Most people at the convention were wearing ordinary working clothes, but some were dressed in jeans and other trendy gear. But on Saturday morning I encountered what I think might have been the most extraordinarily dressed man I’ve ever met in my life. I checked my wristwatch but the Fancy Dress was not due for several more hours. He was wearing bright pink trousers, an orange Chinese silk jacket with dragons on it, and a rather odd hat that looked a bit like a fez. “Oh, meet Peter Roberts!” said Beryl Mercer. “He thinks this is stylish, but I’d say he’s just an exhibitionist.”

As I was travelling by train, I had no desire to pick up books or mags at the auction, and I took the opportunity to have a walk around Buxton. It’s a very lovely spa town, though it has rather fallen on hard times. The hot thermal baths closed a few years ago, and the natural spa bath is now a public swimming pool. Saturday lunchtime is never a great time to visit such a place, so a swim will have to wait for another visit.

What is this Solar System Thing Anyway?

I returned to the convention in time for the talk by a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, Alan Whittaker, “Life in the Solar System”. I think Mr Whittaker had judged his audience poorly; his talk was clearly aimed at people who had never heard anything of the planets rather than an audience who were deeply familiar with all nine of them. He could perhaps have altered his tone or content, given this, but chose not to.

By this time the con was running very late, and Ken Bulmer, giving his Guest of Honour speech, made great play of this. His speech was long but he delivered it at a furious pace. It was terrifically entertaining and we were all held spellbound. I didn’t take proper notes but Peter Weston told me later smugly that he had already made plans with Ken to republish his speech in the pages of his fanzine Speculation. Speculation is perhaps the best and most famous of current British fanzines. A small chunk of it was available to all at Thirdmancon in the form of the 'combozine', where samples of several current fanzines are bound together for distribution to convention members. This year’s combozine also featured Ethel Lindsay’s Scottische, the Bristol and District group’s Badinage, and Gothique.

After a second auction, the people who’d booked full board went off to dinner and some of the rest of us went out to explore alternatives in Buxton. There were not so many of these! But I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat as much dinner as the full board would be. When we returned, however, we discovered that the portion sizes on the set dinner were so small that some of the unhappy fans went out for a second dinner. According to Keith Freeman, the hotel manager was as unhappy as we were and swore he would never entertain the possibility of a science fiction convention again.

Nevertheless, our dinnertime woes were forgotten as soon as Eric Bentcliffe started his hilarious ‘Fandom Exposed’ slideshow. We were not sure what to expect, but of course this was a set of mostly funny and some fascinating slides from previous conventions, all narrated with great glee by Eric. This was followed by the Fancy Dress, won by Tony Walsh as “The Black Cloud”. I thought that Doreen Parker should have won for her turn as the girl from Cordwainer Smith’s “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell”.

Late Night Mayhem

Before we could all go and party, there was a grand jousting tourney, where Brian Burgess and Ted Tubb bashed each other with swords quite a lot. None of this had any noticeable effect on their very well-built suits of armour and eventually the entire thing was declared a draw.

I have no idea if this was Ted Tubb, Brian Burgess, or another challenging knight

Although there had been amiable parties on the Friday night, it was Saturday when they really got going. They were often very crowded; the rooms in this hotel were not large, and in some cases the siren call of free booze was enough to draw large numbers of fans, even if the free booze was the most questionable of home brews.

Ted Tubb had apparently brought a hogshead of home brewed wine, but I rather preferred the idea of Bill Pettit’s party with crates of perfectly good commercial beer. Oddly, so did everyone else, and I couldn’t get near it. The parties were spilling out into corridors and even staircases.

A stair party. Dave Kyle is in the centre here, and Bill Burns is to his right. Other fans are unidentified. (Photo credit: Howard Rosenblum)

Some of the more established femme fans took me under their wing. Although they insisted that all the fans were perfect gentlemen, it was clear that some of them might occasionally forget this fact after having a few drinks.

Eventually after far too much fun, I went to bed, glad that the first item on Sunday morning was the eminently skippable Annual General Meeting of the British Science Fiction Association

I did not feel quite so well on Sunday

I emerged a bit later for the second pro panel, which featured Christopher Priest, John Brunner, Ken Bulmer and Tom Disch, discussing “the difference between real life and fictional speculation.” You would expect it to be quite easy for these science-fiction professionals to spot the difference, really.

Christopher Priest, John Brunner, Ken Bulmer, Tom Disch (showing the Eddie Jones backdrop)

The fan guest of honour was the winner of the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund, Steve Stiles. I was pleased to get a chance to chat to him over the weekend. I learnt of his shock at the recent news from America that has been covered so well in the Journey. It had quite discouraged him at the very start of his trip, but he was determined to make the best of it. His talk was very good, but was interrupted by hecklers! I later learnt that they had been set up by Stiles himself; a jolly jape but perhaps a slightly embarrassing one?

Art from the Thirdmancon programme book

Assorted Ceremonies

The evening session on Sunday was a presentation of “This is your fan life” by Eric Bentcliffe to convention chair Harry Nadler. This used audio tape, film, slides, personal reminiscences, and a rambunctious high-kick dance by what appeared to be the entire Liverpool SF group.

That was followed by the presentation of the Doc Weir Award, which is a cup, held for one year, given to ‘a fan who deserves a bit of public recognition’, and a certificate. This year it went to Mary Reed. She was clearly a popular choice, and delighted and overwhelmed with the award.

Mary Reed with her Doc Weir certificate (Photo credit: Stan Nicholls

Messages from the Future

Dave Kyle told us all about his recent viewing of Stanley Kubrick’s new film, “Year 2001, a Space Odyssey”. It was based, apparently, on a short story by Arthur C Clarke, but is very different now. Clarke is expanding his short story into a novel and I will be very interested to both read it and see the film. Apparently it is opening in the West End in just a couple of weeks. I do hope the London Circle will organise a visit!

Finally we had the mysterious, and perhaps slightly bizarre, Knights of St Fantony ceremony, in which three new knights were invested in the order – Beryl Mercer, Doreen Parker and Ken McIntyre. Phil Rogers became the new Noble Master. That concluded the formal proceedings, but there was still a lot of partying to be done.

We carried on carousing long into the night. I was encouraged to try some more of Ted Tubb’s home-brew wine but I have resolved never to make the same mistake twice. Nevertheless, I only just managed to get up in time for breakfast and to catch my train home.

The convention had some problems with cancelled and late running items, and a hotel that bordered on the hostile. However, I had a splendid time and would like to thank all the Delta Group for putting on the con.

Thanks to Sandra Bond, Claire Brialey, Bill Burns (both in person and here), FANAC, Rob Hansen, and Dave Langford for help with this article.

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction