Hello again! Another year draws to a close, and so too does the latest Doctor Who serial, "The Invasion". Last time, we saw the Doctor try his hand at espionage in an attempt to uncover the villain Vaughn's wicked plans. Now that it's revealed that Vaughn is working with the Cybermen, can the Doctor and UNIT put an end to their plot, or is it curtains for the human race?
Let's check it out.
In Case You Missed It
Having borne witness to the birth of a new Cyber-menace, Jamie and the Doctor hurry back to UNIT. They report their findings to the Brigadier, who laments that thanks to Vaughn’s mind control, he’s lost the backing of the Ministry of Defence. To get help from UNIT command in Geneva, he’s going to need actual proof of the Cybermen.
It’s handy that there’s a photographer on hand then, isn’t it? However, the Brigadier rebuffs Isobel’s offer to go down into the sewers and photograph the Cybermen. Why? Old-fashioned sexism. Ugh. It doesn’t stop Isobel going down into the sewers with Jamie and Zoe to prove him wrong– though given the attempt ends in disaster, with two dead men and no decent pictures to show for it, I’m not sure she proved her point.
Meanwhile, Vaughn tests his secret weapon on one of the newly awakened Cybermen, driving it mad with pure fear. I actually felt a little bit bad for it. And scared of it. Those modulated screams will have given plenty of kiddos nightmares, I guarantee it.
He’ll need it soon, because the Cybermen have every intention of converting a small selection of humanity and then slaughtering the rest. And Vaughn can’t have that. He’s no great humanitarian but ruling the world doesn’t mean much if everyone’s too dead to follow your orders.
As for the Doctor, he’s trying to find out the particulars of the Cybermen’s plans for invasion. He suspects that the mysterious electrical circuits hidden in every piece of IE equipment have something to do with it, but how?
Not even Prof. Watkins (rescued offscreen) can enlighten him, but he can tell him about the secret weapon Vaughn made him build, which leads the Doctor to realise that the mysterious circuits could be used to produce a hypnotic signal. It’s like the hypnosis the Cybermen used back in "The Wheel In Space", but on a much grander scale.
The Doctor and UNIT can’t make enough signal-blocking devices to protect everyone in the world before the invasion begins; they can barely cobble enough together to protect themselves. And then the signal begins to transmit, and everyone who hears it loses consciousness. And then Cybermen come pouring forth from the sewers in their hundreds. It’s a terrific sight, Cybermen marching down the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s one of my favourite shots in all of Doctor Who, right up there with the parade of Daleks outside Parliament. And there’s nobody who can stop them.
Nobody except the Doctor and a couple dozen UNIT soldiers, that is.
Already starting to butt heads with the Cybermen over control of the invasion force, Vaughn dispatches Packer to try and retrieve the Professor in hopes of forcing him to mass-produce more of his secret weapon. Packer uses his characteristic restraint in doing so, both failing to retrieve the Professor and injuring him in the process. And Jamie, too.
Finding themselves alone against the world-ending threat, the Brigadier and the Doctor start brainstorming ideas for resistance. The main problem is that the hypnotic signal is being broadcast from the Cybermen’s ship, which is currently sitting somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. Not exactly within reach of missiles, and they don’t have a rocket handy. Or do they? The Russians had been on the verge of a rocket launch when the signal went out. If UNIT were to commandeer the rocket and replace the manned capsule with a warhead, they could use it to knock out the ship. I can’t imagine the Kremlin would be terribly happy about that, but they’re asleep right now.
Mind made up, the Brigadier sends a squad to Russia to take care of the rocket. Meanwhile, the Doctor decides to confront Vaughn. He tries to appeal to Vaughn’s better nature, but the unfortunate fact is that Vaughn doesn’t really have one.
More Cyberman ships are rapidly approaching Earth, but with Zoe’s help computing a tactical launch pattern, UNIT are able to intercept them with ground-based missiles. This loss leads the Cybermen to blame Vaughn for his failure to fully subdue the human populace, and they change their minds about their plans for humanity. They aren’t going to keep any of us around after all, converted or not. They’re going to deploy a bomb to wipe out all life on Earth.
Furious at his allies for betraying him before he got the chance to do the same to them, Vaughn agrees to help the Doctor. They need to switch off the Earth-based radio beam which the Cybermen will use to guide their bomb. I’d have thought that if a single bomb was powerful enough to destroy all life on Earth, it doesn’t really need a precise guidance system, but hey-ho.
Forming an unlikely alliance, Vaughn and the Doctor infiltrate the IE factory compound, slipping past hordes of Cybermen to reach the radio controls. As they advance, UNIT brings up the rear, engaging the Cybermen in a firefight from which UNIT emerges victorious.
And a good thing, too, because Vaughn doesn’t make it all the way to the radio controls. The Cybermen catch him and the Doctor in an ambush, and the Doctor has a very narrow escape as Vaughn perishes. To his credit, Vaughn takes a few of the Cybermen with him.
UNIT take care of the radio controls, saving the world from the bomb… for now. However, the world is still fast asleep, and the Cybermen are moving their ship to deliver the bomb at close range. The survival of humanity depends on the Russian rocket hitting its target.
A nail-biting few minutes ends in a mighty explosion—in space!
All’s well that ends well. By daylight, Isobel manages to get some very nice snaps of the Cybermen (and the Doctor, too) which land her a job in photojournalism. The Professor and Jamie recover from their injuries, and as for the Doctor, he finally manages to get those TARDIS circuits fixed.
Now, if only he could remember exactly where he parked it…
"Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up!"
A Few Thoughts
The Cybermen are back! And they have a new design. Again. They do change quite a bit, don’t they? A Dalek is a Dalek is a Dalek but Cybermen never seem to settle. We’ve done away with the droopy notches at the edge of the mouth in favour of a more straight-faced look, and added a headpiece. It looks a bit like a bulky headset, like they’ve just come down from the Abbey Road Studios.
There’s been another change to their vocal design, a little heavier on the modulation. It sounds absolutely marvellous on the mad Cyberman. The warbling screams are positively haunting.
However, I am worried that they’re starting to get a little bit too robotic. If we lose sight of the fact that the Cybermen were once very much human, we lose what makes them special as villains. There’s a billion evil murder-robots. They’re fun, and I like them. The Cybermen, however, are horrific, and that’s why I love them.
I can’t think of an elegant way to segue from talking about the Cybermen to talking about women's lib, so let’s just lurch over there, shall we?
There was an attempt, of sorts, to inject some feminist messaging into the serial. At least, I hope it was a good-faith attempt, because it really didn’t work.
As mentioned earlier, the Brigadier was reluctant to let Isobel go and photograph the Cybermen, on the grounds that she’s just a young girl and this is a job for his men. Isobel rightly enough tells him off, and when Jamie agrees with the Brigadier (he at least has the excuse of literally being from the 18th century), she and Zoe swan off to prove the men wrong, dragging Jamie with them. A win for women’s lib, you’d think. And you’d be wrong. The expedition to the sewers results in the completely avoidable deaths of two men, and to add insult to injury, Zoe’s pictures are dismissed by the Brigadier as useless. The messaging is loud and clear: the silly little girl should have just listened to the men and let them handle things.
After this point, Isobel spends the rest of the story flirting back and forth with one of the UNIT men. While their banter is cute, don’t get me wrong, it also feels like she’s being shunted back into the standard role for all pretty girls in stories: something for the men to flirt with.
At least Zoe does get due credit for her maths genius. Thanks to her calculations, UNIT are able to take out 90% of the incoming Cyber-ships. The UNIT chaps are quite keen to keep her around. After all, she’s much prettier than a computer. Insert weary sigh here. Well, at least they admitted that she saved their bacon.
Speaking of UNIT, they’re quite an interesting addition to the world of Doctor Who. Having been established as a permanent fixture on contemporary(ish) Earth, I wonder if we’ll see them again the next time the Doctor and company wind up round our neck of the woods. I’m not averse to that, they’re fun to have around. It is important to me, however, that they don’t turn into a tool the Doctor can call on to simply run in and shoot the problem. That wouldn’t be Doctor Who to me. Cleverness and ingenuity should be what wins the day, not a greater force of arms.
Final Thoughts
Now that I’m done sounding like a total wet blanket, I have to say I really enjoyed this serial. It’s tremendous fun, very exciting, and I loved the cast of side characters.
On the heroic side, the Brigadier, old-fashioned sexism aside, is just plain cool. I’m sure I said the same when he was first introduced as a Colonel, but it still applies. This is a man who is utterly unflappable. Give him a job to do, and he’ll get on with it, efficiently and without a hair of his moustache out of place.
The narrative didn’t do her any favours, but I really did like Isobel and how she stood up to the men. Her uncle the Professor is also very interesting to me. He doesn’t meekly go along with Vaughn’s plans, but fights him every step of the way. There’s a moment late on in the serial where he tells Vaughn that though he has no choice but to serve him, given half the opportunity he would kill him. And (this is my favourite Vaughn moment) Vaughn gives him that opportunity, handing him a loaded gun.
You might expect that the Professor would find himself unable to follow through on his threat, but he really goes for it, firing on Vaughn three times at point blank range. Unfortunately it turns out that Vaughn is bulletproof thanks to his cybernetically augmented body, but still, he tried. I have to give him credit for that.
I can’t overstate how much I enjoyed Vaughn. He’s an absolute delight to watch; a total slimeball, utterly despicable, absolutely captivating. We get to see him at the height of his strength, cool and smug and in control, and at the depths of wretchedness when all his plans come to nothing. What a great character.
The Invasion isn’t without its flaws, but it’s a jolly good time, and that’s what we’re here for.
Few things excite the imagination more than adventures in space. In particular, we love to hear about doings in the cosmos that can't be done on Earth. And one of the main things we can't do on Earth is see the sky.
Oh sure, when you look out at the starry night, you think you're witnessing infinity. In fact, your eyes barely apprehend a tiny fraction of the electro-magnetic spectrum. We are blind to radio waves, to ultra violet, to X-rays, to infrared. Our sophisticated telescopes are similarly handicapped. Even the mighty 200 inch telescope on Mount Palomar can't see in most of light's wavelengths, for they are blocked by the Earth's atmosphere. In the X-ray, ultraviolet, infrared, and cosmic ray bands, the glass seeing-eye tubes are as sightless as we are.
Which is why the launch of the Orbiting Astronomy Observatory (OAO) on December 7, 1968, was such an exciting event. Dubbed "Stargazer", it is the very first space telescope.
Well, technically, it's the second. The first one went up on April 8, 1966, but its power supply short circuited shortly after launch, and it never returned any data. This is a shame, as there were some nifty experiments on board, including a gamma ray experiment similar to the one carried on Explorer 11, another gamma ray counter supplied by NASA's Goddard center, and a Lockheed-made X-ray counter. But, the main experiment, a set of seven telescopes designed to look in the ultraviolet spectrum, provided by the University of Wisconsin, was duplicated for OAO-2.
This telescope cluster will be used for long-term observation of individual stars, something that only recently became possible with the perfection of star tracking technology. In addition, the Smithsonian has provided an additional package of four telescopes for the investigation of large masses of stars, up to 700 per day, to get an overall UV map of the sky.
Think of how revolutionary it was when the first radio observatories began mapping the heavens. We learned about the existence of quasars and weird storms on Jupiter and also a lot more about the stars we had been observing visually for centuries. Stargazer is about to give us a whole new view of the universe.
That's exciting—truly science fiction made fact!
Jeepers Creepers
While we wait to see what excitement OAO 2 returns from the heavens, let's turn to the latest F&SF to see what terrestrial treasures await us this month.
We return to the world of "The Lady in the Tower", one of my favorite McCaffrey stories, for the lead story this issue.
Damia, the daughter of that first story's protagonist, is 20 and humanity's strongest telepath. As tempestuous as she is beautiful and brilliant, she has refused the attentions of men, holding out for something…better.
That's when she meets Sodan, an alien inexorably approaching the Terran sphere from far, intragalactic space. Thus ensues a completely mental courtship, and Damia becomes infatuated with the foreign entity. But Afra, an experienced mentalist, who has been secretly in love with Damia for ages, is suspicious. What if the being is simply manipulating Damia so that Earth's greatest defense will be neutralized?
The stage is set for a cosmic battle, and a realignment of Damia's priorities.
I really wanted to like this story. I was anticipating an "Is There in Truth no Beauty?" romance where two beings find love despite fundamental physical differences. Instead, the viewpoint shifts from Damia's to Afra's early on, and all we get is his certainty that Sodan is up to no good, which is vindicated. Then, after the battle, Damia realizes the worthy that's been under her nose this entire time and, of course, gives him her love.
Of late, there has been a shallowness to the emotion displayed in McCaffrey's writing that just puts me off. Also, a sort of petty volatility. All of her characters snipe at each other constantly. But the real nadir of the story comes at the end:
Shyly, her fingers plucking nervously at her blanket, Damia was unable to look away from an Afra who had altered disturbingly. Damia tried to contemplate the startling change. Unable to resort to a mental touch, she saw Afra for the first time with only physical sight. And he was suddenly a very different man. A man! That was it. He was so excessively masculine.
How could she have blundered around so, looking for a mind that was superior to hers, completely overlooking the fact that a woman's primary function in life begins with physical submission?
I feel like if Piers Anthony had written that, we'd have given him the Queen Bee. Two stars.
A Brook in Vermont, by L. Sprague de Camp
De Camp muses poetically on the Carboniferous, and what future beings, millions of years hence, will burn the coal being formed today.
I think the author missed a real opportunity to imply that we would be the anthracite mined in the far future, suggesting that we run the very real risk of leaving nothing to the ages but our combustibility.
Three stars as is.
by Gahan Wilson
Black Snowstorm, by D. F. Jones
This is nothing more, nothing less, than an extremely well-told story of a plague of locusts. There's no satire, no metaphor, no literary experiments. Both shoes drop simultaneously, though slowly, gradually, rivetingly.
Five stars.
Unidentified Fallen Object, by Sydney Van Scyoc
One day, a small UFO falls with the snow, and a precocious teen boy picks it up to examine. As he handles the small craft, flakes of it come off, perhaps sliding into his very pores. Soon, he begins to radiate a frightful miasma, inciting hatred in all approach him.
Including his teacher, who has also touched the fell ship…
"Object" is a chilling, effectively written little horror. It's not particularly to my taste, and it's a bit one-note, so it's just a three-star story for me. Others may find more to like (for those who enjoy a sense of dread).
How I Take Their Measure , by K. M. O'Donnell
In the future, everybody's on relief…or administering it. This is a little slice-of-life story about a sadistic relief worker, who gets off on the tenterhooks he hangs his relief applicants on. No Brock, George C. Scott's kindhearted social worker from East-Side, West-Side; this guy is a real bastard.
This is my favorite story about terminal unemployment that I've read since one in IF a decade ago (the one about the guy who gets a job tightening all the screws on the buildings in the cities—which have been systematically unscrewed by some other schnook the night before…).
Here's St. Nick like you've never seen him before. In the style of Ian Fleming's James Bond series (though not Edward S. Aaron's Sam Durrell, Harlan offers up Agent Kris Kringle, a hard-stomached, oversexed, lean killer whose red suit is filled with every lethal device known to Elfkind. His nemesis is S.P.I.D.E.R., an international organization devoted to evil. This time, their nefarious scheme involves mind control: they have brainwashed LBJ, HHH, Nixon, Daley, Reagan, and Wallace into doing the most horrid deeds, and only the jolly agent from the North Pole can defeat them.
Okay, it's a bunch of silly fluff, probably written between bonafide adventure yarns Ellison probably writes under another name like "Rod Richards" or "Length Peters". I did appreciate how every cruddy thing in the world is ultimately attributable to S.P.I.D.E.R.—humanity is basically good and cuddly. Only the nefarious "them" subvert our goodness.
I've often noted that comic books and spy novels offer an easy way out for readers. It's tough to deal with everyday problems, with economic malaise, with systemic issues that cause crime and misery. How much easier to topple the goon of the week to get our cathartic kicks. Ellison lets us know he understands the flavor of his own cheek with the subtlety within the broadness.
That said, it's a one-note joke, and once you've gotten the punchline, I don't think the story bears much rereading, especially since it is so very much of a very specific moment in our history (as Judith Merril notes in her book column, August 1968 already feels like an age ago).
Three stars.
The Dance of the Satellites, by Isaac Asimov
The Good Doctor continues his examination (see last month's piece) of what the Galilean moons of Jupiter might look like from the innermost moon, Amalthea. This time, he focuses on eclipses, the appearance of the moons in Jupiter-shine, and more.
Interesting cosmic data, of use to writers and laymen alike. Four stars.
The Legend and the Chemistry, by Arthur Sellings
The 3607th (or was it 3608th) interstellar exploration mission from Earth seems like it will be yet another humdrum operation. In all the expeditions, though many aliens have been found (most humanoid), all have been planetbound, none of them having reached our space traveling level of technology.
This latest planet is no exception, its humaniform denizens possessing a primitive tribal culture. But they have no less pride than any other race. What happens when the very existence of far superior beings constitutes an unpardonable affront? And who is responsible for the catastrophe that ensues?
A decent, moralistic yarn from the late, great Arthur Sellers. This may well be his last work published (unless he has a posthumous career like Richard McKenna) as he died recently. While Legend is not the best thing he's ever written, it has its own kind of power.
Three stars.
Wild ride
There are a lot of vicissitudes in this first F&SF of the year. The strong points cancel the weak points, and the magazine ends in positive territory, but because the lack of consistency makes things a bit sloggish.
Well, that's why I do this, right? To be your guide to ensure you only get the highlights!
This week's episode, “The Empath”, gave Star Trek fans some wonderful interactions from our crew on a rescue mission, but also had them running on a vaguely-guided track throughout the episode.
At the start, the Enterprise is tasked with evacuating a research station before the star it was studying goes nova, but when Kirk, Spock and McCoy arrive at the station, there is no one left to rescue. An enormous solar flare threatens the Enterprise during the search, so the ship leaves to safety just before a record tape reveals where the former inhabitants went. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy watch as the station researchers suddenly disappear while a strange noise shrills on tape, and the three distressed crew members are almost immediately teleported away by the same noise.
Where Kirk was…a very effective effect!
They find themselves in a dark area with a mysteriously mute woman, whom they nickname Gem. While the crew attempts to ask Gem about how they got there, two large-headed figures, the Vians, bluntly introduce themselves and refuse to tell Kirk what is going on. The crew is easily overpowered, the Vians collect data from Gem, and they vanish with the crew’s weapons. A small cut on Kirk’s head is suddenly healed when he checks on Gem, and McCoy realizes that Gem communicates through her highly responsive nervous system; all of Kirk’s feelings and ailments can become hers from just a touch.
The healing power of interpretive dance
Spock then locates a sophisticated lab, where they discover the Vians preparing large perspex tubes for the crew members, and the missing inhabitants of the station dead in tubes of their own. The three officers learn that they are meant to be subjected to deadly tests for reasons unknown, and they flee with Gem through a cave mouth. The Vians trick the escapees with a mirage of a search party to test their wills, and capture Kirk once they observe the crew’s perseverance. Kirk sacrifices himself by insisting he be the one specimen the Vians want for their cruel torture, after which Gem reluctantly heals his potentially deadly wounds at McCoy’s behest.
Shatner is devastated that he's not in the spotlight…
While Spock works out how to attune the Vians’ instrument to allow their escape, the aliens come back to reveal that they plan to gravely injure either Spock or McCoy next, and that the trio must choose the victim when they return. This leads to one of the most endearing displays of the crew’s dynamic I have seen in the show: both officers insist they be the test subject without hesitation, and antics ensue. The two begin to argue that the other is more valuable to leave with the captain, but Kirk insists he will be the one to decide, only to be rendered unconscious by McCoy’s treatment. Spock then notes his approval of the treatment, as it relieved Kirk of a rough decision and put Spock in charge as second-in-command. McCoy punctuates that sentiment by ambush-sedating Spock, saving the critical Vulcan the only way he could. Gem sheds a single tear as McCoy is taken away, since she has now emotionally connected with both Kirk and Spock and feels the depth of their affinity for him.
A single tear—Gem's race has not had time to be acquainted with clichés
The two remaining officers eventually awaken and begin to configure the Vians’ device, acknowledging that the aliens likely wanted them to escape and leave McCoy behind. Instead, Spock transports Gem and them to the lab, where McCoy is found with multiple fatal injuries, and he tries to make light for everyone’s sake. The two realize their only hope for McCoy is for Gem to help him despite the risk, and the Vians restrict them in their force field to prevent their interference. The aliens begin to explain that they must see how Gem reacts on her own, because she is being judged of her worth on behalf of her whole species; Gem’s choice to save McCoy would determine whether the Vians use their limited resources to save Gem’s species. Spock and Kirk escape the force field, and Kirk indicates that the Vians do not know the value of the compassion they claim to idolize. The aliens, humbled all too quickly, mend McCoy and whisk Gem away with a short farewell. The episode ends with the crew appreciating Gem as an entity, and Spock delivering a fun riposte to Scotty in response to his joke at the Vulcan's expense.
"There. All better. No hard feelings?"
The episode did a great job at highlighting the main characters, but left the intentions of the new ones blurry in execution. It is unclear why the Vians specifically found compassion to be the only trait worth preserving, especially when they didn’t practice it. It is generally accepted that self sacrifice is the ultimate show of love, but the weight that carries as a theme is undermined by how dubious the whole experiment is.
The crew’s interactions give a good taste of what the impact should have been, but the incomplete understanding of the threat ultimately caused the intense stakes built up for the captives to fall flat. Moreover, the Vians were presented as an overwhelming force, yet they hardly understood why they were conducting experiments, to the extent that insults from Kirk immediately caused them to question their motives. Not to mention that they conveniently and inexplicably had the means to save one of the races in the solar system. The crew’s roles in this episode outshone the disappointing parts, so I still consider this a good episode as far as enjoyment goes.
3.5 stars.
Amateur work
by Gideon Marcus
Joyce Muskat's name is probably new to you. It wasn't to me—she's a N3FFer (member of the National Fantasy Fan Federation. Also, a few months ago, her name was mentioned in one of the Trekzines. I can't remember which one it was, but the author was pleased that her fan friend, Joyce Muskat, had sold a script to Trek on the slush pile. This was remarkable since Trek officially doesn't take unsolicited manuscripts. So, good for her. I love that Trek has opened the door to new talent, particularly women.
I'd really like to know if the inconsistencies in the episode were the result of a spotty understanding of the material or revisions after submission. I suspect the latter. No true fan (he said hopefully) would write the Federation as inhuman monsters who would let the sundry races of Minar die when the sun went nova. No sf aficionado would make the boner mistake of having a planet's atmosphere protect the surface from cosmic rays, but not the Enterprise's shields, not to mention having cosmic rays cause earthquakes.
It's never even made clear whether or not Gem (Jem?) comes from a race of empaths or if she was unique among them. The latter seems more likely; I find it hard to believe that a race of empaths could fail to feel compassion. I could see telepaths walling themselves off to avoid a confusion of the psyches ("where do I stop and you begin?") but given that Gem cannot verbally communicate at all, an empathic race would have to rely on its mental powers to relate. And as Heinlein pointed out, no beings have more compassion than those who "grok" each other.
There's much to like about the episode, from the performances of the leads to the creative use of set and costume (the Vians have excellent Outer Limits-style make-up, though it is strange seeing such in color). On the other hand, the unremitting score, the odd pacing (Shatner slo-mo-ing to the ground for about a minute springs to mind), the nonsensical motivations for the Vians' experiment, and frankly, the directorial decision to keep focusing on Gem's facial expressions, which made her look somewhat clownish, all drag the episode down to average territory.
If only Harlan Ellison had written this episode of Outer Limits…
Three stars.
Substitutionary Theology
by Joe Reid
“The Empath” is this week’s episode of Star Trek. In it the crew of the Enterprise explore another strange new world. Yet again they face forces that are overwhelming. Yet again they find a way to pull their fat out of the fire and yet again the writers of this show chose to lace in overt theology into their story. Not only were these salutes to God and the Bible poorly executed, they sought to teach biblical morals without delivering the substance of the message through the narrative of the story, but through imagery and exposition only. This practice proved to be utter folly.
In one of the opening scenes we witnessed a recording of two missing scientists going about their work when a quake happened. This prompted the scientist named Ozaba to quote the first part of Psalm 95, verse 4, “In his hand are the deep places of the earth;…” A verse that when looked at by itself means nothing, but surrounded by the other verses in Psalm 95 that speak of the grandeur and majesty of God. Ozaba quoting this added nothing to the scene nor did it make his sudden disappearance meaningful. It was as if the writers desired to open the episode with a random scripture and blindly opened a Bible and picked the first verse they saw.
At the very end of the episode this time Scotty delivered the references to scripture, without quoting it this time. It was Mathew 13:45-46, where Jesus speaks about the kingdom of heaven being like a pearl of great price—it being worth selling everything that one has in order to obtain it. Although closer related to the something in the story, (Gem) this scripture like the previous one was a bad fit for the message that the story was attempting to deliver: sacrificing oneself for the benefit of another.
Strange use of scripture aside, the troubling part for me was in the main story of the episode: the imagery of Kirk as he was tortured by the aliens. His hands were bound and his arms were stretched wide as if he were on a cross. A nearly impossible position to hold as his wrists were bound with two ropes. It was done intentionally so as to place Kirk in a crucified posture. Conversely when McCoy was bound in a similar way his hands were above him.
Shatner's double is dying for the episode's sins
The combination of the out of place scriptural references and imagery used for both Kirk and the girl (in particular, the Pietà at the end as she is draped in a Vian's arms) muddy the waters of what this episode is attempting to say. A much more effective method would be to keep the moral message and the story only based in the environment of an alien world and deliver the message without the forced and uninspired asides to scripture. I’m fine with teaching morality tales using other mediums. I’m not fine with the poor application of scripture. It has the potential to cause more harm than good if misused—as we’ve seen done throughout the centuries.
Lest I be misunderstood, it's not so much that I found the episode offensive; rather it was too shallow and ineffective to deliver its message faithfully and respectfully.
One star
Staging a Comeback
by Janice L. Newman
When movies and television became widespread, early directors and producers treated them much like stage plays. There’s a static quality to shows, noticeable all the way up through the fifties and early sixties.
Eventually creators began to innovate, finally realizing that they could do things that weren’t possible on a stage. We began to see more creativity in how things were filmed, and particularly in how things were staged. In Star Trek we’ve seen both styles. Some episodes have had more traditional, static staging with actors carefully lined up in staggered and visible rows, while other episodes have pushed the boundaries of what can be done with a camera (the moving shots from Nomad’s point-of-view in Changeling come to mind).
“The Empath” is an interesting hybrid. There are a few scenes on the surface of the planet, and a couple on the Enterprise, but most of it is shot in a dark, empty space with minimal props. This makes it feel like a stage play, but more like a modern production than a traditional play. Gem’s interpretive dance-style form of communication strengthens this impression as well. It’s interesting to see how we’ve come full circle, from techniques drawn from the stage, to more dynamic shots made possible by modern filmmaking techniques, and now returning to a stage play, this time deliberately, to get a particular tone and feeling.
There was much I liked in this episode: the interactions between Spock, McCoy, and Kirk were excellent, and I loved the idea of Gem’s special ability. Unfortunately, rest of the story made no sense, with important or dramatic information revealed late and then ignored in ways that were entirely uncharacteristic. I found myself wondering, as Gideon did, how many of the inconsistencies were due to the original script and how much to modifications made by others (certainly Roddenberry never hesitated to cut up or re-write a script, as Harlan Ellison will bitterly tell you). The bright spots and dark spots canceled each other out, leaving me with a somewhat disappointing three star episode and a lot of questions.
A Familiar Song
by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele
The Talosians are back! Oh wait, these are different beings with bulbous skulls, silver robes, illusory abilities, and a penchant for experimenting on humanoids. Supposedly the Vians have the power to save an entire planet (but only one!) from the imminent nova, and are deciding the fate of said planet by coercing an empath to absorb injuries to the point of death. Are there representatives from other planets being tested elsewhere? If Gem “fails" will the Vians save their own planet? Why does an entire world need to reach a certain standard of “compassion” to deserve being rescued from annihilation? Pay too much attention and you will start to wonder if the Vians are making it up as they go along. Note the dead scientists stored in macabre tube displays! Nothing says good intentions like having three more tubes ready and labeled for when the landing party eventually dies!
"The Red Cross is getting overambitious with their blood drives…"
The Talosians- sorry, the Vians pay strangely little attention to Gem, for all their claims. It's hard to tell if Gem was left on the sidelines more from being a woman, or from what translated in human terms as a disability. Captain Pike is one of the few men who have been equally dismissed by an episode at large, and it's very clear that his role in The Menagerie was impacted by his limited means of communication. Despite clearly being able to comprehend what was happening, his binary Yes/No indicator left him largely out of the conversation. Even when he did express an opinion, it wasn't always respected. Gem had a more interpretive means of communication, but she too was often overlooked. In a future with translators that can talk to glowing clouds, and in the company of Spock, a touch telepath who has expressed a growing willingness to meld with aliens he encounters, it's beyond me how the crew ever opts not to try to communicate.
Upon first finding Gem, Kirk wants to know what is wrong, why she won't speak. Most aliens they've met have compatible languages, after all. McCoy's analysis: “She appears to be perfectly healthy. As for the other, her lack of vocal cords could be physiologically normal for her species, whatever that is,” provides a good reminder about human norms and poses the question, is a being “mute” if their species doesn't speak to start with? If her entire civilization uses empathy to connect, then the landing party likely seems just as restricted to Gem as she does to them. Being an alien, she doesn't nod or shake her head, but she does press McCoy's tricorder into Kirk's hands when the question of where to go arises. Given the option of escape, she votes to rescue the doctor.
Katheryn Hays brought a lot to her role as Gem, when the episode remembered she was there at all. Her performance, the set, and some choice scenes between the landing party couldn't make up for the surrounding episode, though.
3 stars
[Come join us tonight (December 20th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it… Plus early coverage of the Apollo 8 launch!]
Much as I enjoy the jollity of the festive season, I’m also firmly of the opinion that there is nothing better than a ghost story—or, failing that, a horror story—at Christmas. So I was quite delighted to learn my local cinema would be showing the latest British horror movie, Curse of the Crimson Altar.
Curse follows in the footsteps of this summer’s Witchfinder General in being a film where the horror is not supernatural but psychological, suggesting that this genre may be coming into fashion. Although the biggest creative obstacle Curse has to overcome is that someone behind the scenes, or possibly in the censor’s office, has meant that the actual catalyst for the horror remains subtextual throughout.
At the start of the movie, we get a quote from an unnamed “medical journal” about the influence of psychedelic drugs on the human brain: “drugs of this group can produce the most complex hallucinations and under their influence it is possible by hypnosis to induce the subject to perform actions he would not normally commit.” Thereafter, we get no reference to drugs at all, but it should be fairly clear to the viewer how we should interpret the proceedings.
The plot involves an antique dealer, Robert Manning (Mark Eden), going in search of his brother Peter, who has disappeared on an expedition to hunt for salable stock, sending Manning a single candlestick, a witchfinders’ bodkin, and a cryptic note on notepaper from a country estate, Craxted Lodge in the town of Greymarsh. Arriving at the estate, Manning finds Lord Morley (Christopher Lee) and his niece Eve (Virginia Wetherell) gearing up for a local Bonfire Night-type holiday, celebrating the anniversary of the burning of a local witch, Lavinia Morley (Barbara Steele), the Black Witch of Greymarsh. They claim never to have met Manning’s brother, but invite him to stay with them while he investigates. Manning begins suffering from strange erotic dreams about Lavinia Morley and sleepwalking episodes, and, with the help of a local historian and occult enthusiast, Professor Marsh (Boris Karloff), discovers he is descended from one of the people who sentenced Lavinia to death. Someone is out for revenge, but who, and how, and why?
Lascivious Lavinia as played by Barbara Steele
The movie boasts a lot of familiar names behind and in front of the camera, being scripted by Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman, creators of Doctor Who’s Great Intelligence and Yeti, and featuring Roger Avon, Michael Gough and scream-queen Barbara Steele in supporting roles. Gough in particular does a great turn as a manservant who is either under the influence of malign spirits, or else doped to the eyeballs, at all times. The casting of Lee and Karloff, both seasoned horror veterans who usually play villains but have turned their hand to more benign roles, keeps the suspense going as to who is behind the sinister events, and there's a cute nod to Karloff's role when Manning remarks that he feels “like Boris Karloff might pop up at any moment” shortly before, in fact, he does.
Michael Gough as a zombie manservant.
In many ways the story feels a little like an episode of The Prisoner or The Avengers, involving as it does a villain who is using psychedelic drugs and mind games to wear down an unsuspecting victim. The fact that the script can’t directly say that drugs are involved also helps to make the events more ambiguous, suggesting for most of the movie that Manning might really be haunted by the vengeful spirit of Lavinia Morley. The imagery of the dream sequences is very much drawn from British folk culture, with sinister figures in animal masks and references to the witch-hunts of the 17th century.
Unfortunately, the story is also a little uneven, with a long prurient episode featuring Eve having a debauched party with her young artist friends apparently going nowhere; presumably the intention was to suggest that Eve might be behind, or at least complicit in, the implicitly drug-fueled activities which follow, but it mostly seems to be included to cater to the crowd of people who like to tut about modern youth going wild while secretly enjoying the orgy scenes. Similarly I found the dream sequences more laughable than erotic, with supposed demons and witches walking around clad in strips of imitation leatherette. There are also some gaps in the narrative, which I won’t detail in order not to give away the denouement, and the ending felt rather rushed to me.
Another tedious sex party, ho hum.
All in all, I’d say this is a solid if uneven horror story that keeps the viewer guessing for a long time, and suggests that the non-supernatural horror based in British folk mythology is here to stay.
Three and a half stars.
I’d also like to devote a little time to the B feature on the night I saw Curse of the Crimson Altar, a short and cheap SF-horror from 1964 entitled The Earth Dies Screaming, directed by the supremely talented Terence Fisher. The scenario is straight out of John Wyndham: a test pilot, returning from a high altitude flight, discovers that almost everyone else on Earth has been killed—apparently through some kind of gas attack, as the few survivors are people who, for one reason or another, were not breathing the atmosphere at that point. Less Wyndham-esque are the eerie, silent robots now stalking around the deserted Earth, who bear such a strong resemblance to Cybermen that one wonders if it is simply coincidence or if Doctor Who’s design team had been at the movies before working on “The Tenth Planet”. The robots also have the ability to turn anyone they shoot into grey-eyed, mindless creatures who do their bidding.
See what I mean? That's a Cyberman, that is.
Our hero joins a band of survivors seemingly calculated to provide optimum drama (society woman; hedonistic good-time couple; sinister man in a mac; teddy-boy mistrustful of anyone over 30 and his heavily pregnant young wife) and collectively they attempt to figure out how to survive and to stop the robots, despite the conflicting agendas in the group.
While suffering a little from uneven pacing and characterisation (the teddy boy, for instance, suddenly overcomes his suspicions of the establishment for no reason other than plot convenience), this is a pleasingly eerie 62 minutes. I quite like the sub-genre of apocalypse stories that just focus on a small group of people trying to cope with their changed circumstances, and the parallels with the aftermath of a nuclear war are clear without being didactic.
Arthur Sellings Double Feature
I was sad to read in last month’s Science Fiction Times of the death of Arthur Sellings at only 47. His is a name not well known enough outside of the UK.
Just some of the markets from the early-mid 50s publishing Sellings
His story follows the standard pattern of many of the current crop of great SF writers. He began at the start of the 50s magazine boom, being published first in the British magazine Authentic in 1953. He then became a regular contributor to H. L. Gold’s Galaxy, going on to appear in many of the major US publications.
He continued to be published in the 3 major UK magazines as well as starting on his own novels
As the magazine market contracted, he was concentrated largely in the British publications of Carnell and Moorcock, but also branched out into paperback novels.
In spite of getting well reviewed works coming out of Ballantine and occasional appearances in Pohl’s various periodicals, most SF fans across the pond would probably have no recollection of the fellow. His death marks a double shame as he was as prolific as ever and British writers, finally, seem to be getting more acceptance in America.
Yet it should not be thought he was a Moorcockian New Waver. Seven months before Ballard published his famous Which Way to Inner Space? in New Worlds, Sellings used the same editorial column to suggest his own vision to save SF, entitled Where Now?. Here is an extract:
The Next Revolution…is a return to roots…I am certainly not advocating a return to the rudimentary kind of s-f in which a professor holds up everything for two or three pages, while he explains it all to his idiot daughter…But a story should be intelligible – in itself – without reference to any other…Science fiction has become too glib. That sense of wonder is the prime thing which s-f can offer to the new-comer. If it doesn’t that is one more reason for him to turn away.
….Earth Abides, a ‘simple’ story on a theme as old as Noah. Yet it was new – and just as compelling for the fan as for the general reader…All the basic themes can similarly and profitably be investigated.
So, what has that meant in practice? Well, his best works have often dealt with familiar ideas but trying to consider *how* this might play out to an ordinary person. Silent Speakers looks at how having some limited telepathy could affect an individual, much in the manner of Wells’ Invisible Man, whilst The Last Time Around, uses the time dilation effect to look at how the traveller into the future would struggle to adjust to social changes and maintain relationships.
This year he released two of his best works, a short story collection and a novel. So, let's pour one out for Arthur and dive into his books:
The Power of X by Arthur Sellings
Cover by Richard Weaver
In 2014 “Plying” was developed, the ability to duplicate an object exactly by taking it out of the fourth dimension. Although it could not be done infinitely, this created a large secondary market for Plied paintings, where someone may pay higher amounts for an original in order to make their money back via Plying twelve copies. Of course, the process is expensive and highly regulated.
Four years later, Max Afford, the new owner of Gallery O, discovers he has the unusual ability to detect whether or not a painting is Plied by touch. This would have turned out to be little more than a curiosity if it wasn’t for him being invited to meet the President of Europe…only to discover he is just a Plied copy of the original.
Everyone tells Max that it is not scientifically possible, yet he can sense it has been done. Who could do such a thing? And why?
Around 30 years ago Walter Benjamin wrote The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Last year, Andy Warhol created 10 portraits of Marilyn Monroe through mechanical printing. So, whilst “Plying” may not be quite available today, the questions being grappled with are contemporary ones.
This work touches on the nature of reality, what is lost when something is duplicated and the aura that we have around certain objects. These are heady subjects, but Sellings displays his usual skill to make them understandable and fit them into a science fictional framework without it descending into a word salad of gobbledygook.
At the same time, it is a well-paced conspiracy thriller that does a wonderful job creating the world of a 21st century united European republic. As you are quickly going on with the plot, someone will give away they are from London by using the metric system in East Anglia, where the locals generally do not. The feel is closer to The Great Escape than 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It should also not go unnoticed that Sellings has a wonderful turn of phrase, and some parts are deliciously funny such as:
The ‘package’ must be something special, or she would have simply brought it in to me. What was it? A three-ton hunk of concrete by Harold Bleckstein? He was in the middle of a three-ton concrete period just then and had an artist’s fine disregard for such small details as phoning to let you know the latest was on the way.
Or
‘Not a patch on that brewery, was it, Ada?’ I don’t know what they had expected. Free samples?
Add into this multiple fleshed-out women characters and some very progressive attitudes on display and I am more than happy to give this a full five stars.
The Long Eureka by Arthur Sellings
Cover by Richard Weaver
His second short story collection covers from where the last one left off, in 1956, going up to 1964, along with a couple of originals.
Blank Form
Illustration by Martinez, from Galaxy
Originally published in July 1958 Galaxy, Sellings tells of Fletcher, a psychologist who believes he has run down a man with his car. It turns out that the victim is not only uninjured, but is actually an amnesiac shape-shifter. Being a psychologist, Fletcher does not wish to hurt or profit by this fellow, but to help him.
This is a perfect example of what Sellings does so well. Take a standard SFnal concept and bring it into a much more ordinary mode, looking at how different people might react in an uncliched manner. The ending feels a bit incomplete but still a strong tale.
Four Stars
The Scene Shifter
Cover Artist Unknown
Possibly the high point of his American career. This story was published in Star Science Fiction #5, between Daniel F. Galouye & Rosel George Brown.
When actor Boyd Corry goes to see one of his films, he finds it has been changed from a drama to a broad comedy. Soon it happens again, where an ordinary romantic comedy is changed to pornography. These shots were not filmed and the reels themselves have not been tampered with. What could be causing this?
At first this seems like a slight tale about the movie industry, something of a piece with The Time-Machined Saga, but it evolves into something deeper. It looks at the relationship between the audience and the picture, asking who really has control of a story.
Four Stars
One Across
Illustration by Cal, from Galaxy
Jumping back to earlier in Selling’s career, One Across was originally published in May 1956’s Galaxy.
Norman is addicted to crosswords, doing more and more challenging puzzles. In the most fiendish puzzle yet, he discovers it can only be solved by utilizing four dimensions. This realization causes him to be transported to another dimension, a desert plain inhabited by people who have solved complex problems. They are building a utopia and need him for one purpose, breeding.
This does feel like it is from a writer’s earlier career, more what you might see turn up in an If First. It has a good style and some interesting ideas but none of them are properly explored.
Two Stars
The Well-Trained Heroes
Illustration by Jack Gaughan, from Galaxy
Now for a more recent piece, covered by the Journey in the review of Galaxy June 1964. Our esteemed editor synopsized it well , so I am not going to be repetitious.
We are also in agreement in our thoughts on the story. The central concept, a kind of reverse The Space Merchants, is a good one, but the story is too long and rambling, with the decision to make it told predominantly through dialogue making it all far too expository.
A low Three Stars
Homecoming
In this previously unpublished work, Sellings once again makes use of an amnesiac. Sam Bishop wakes up after a car smash with only the vaguest memories of his life. Having lost his legs in the accident, Sam finds himself growing restless without a job. And, in spite of how nice everyone in Greenville seems, he can’t help but feel something is wrong.
Whilst using what would seem to be a Twilight Zone style of setup, we get a much deeper exploration of a host of ideas such as, how we treat the disabled, what the difference is between reality and illusion, what really is a home?
A high Four Stars
The Long Eureka
Cover Art by Brian Lewis
Back to reprints, where the titular piece comes from August 1959’s Science Fantasy.
In 1820, Issac Reeves believes he has discovered the Elixir of Life. Unfortunately, no one believes him, in spite of the fact that he doesn’t seem to age. Convincing anyone else is going to take a very, very, very long time.
I have a soft spot for longitudinal tales of immortals, so this fitted right into my wheelhouse. Also, it manages to be both funny and tragic as Isaac struggles in vain to get anyone to believe him, with each successive generation having a new explanation for his claims.
Four Stars
Verbal Agreement
Illustration by Dick Francis, from Galaxy
Returning to Galaxy once more, with this story from September 1956.
Humphrey Spink is a poet in the 22nd Century, struggling to come up with something new to say. Seeking to broaden his horizons, he accepts a very curious job offer from Cosmic Developments Inc.: to try to find out how to purchase from the Vernans, a telepathic species that only have disdain for Earth’s technological progress.
This one of the many tales of the time trying to demonstrate an alien race totally different from our own, but it is a good example of the theme. Not a classic but enjoyable.
Four Stars
Trade-In
The other original tale in this collection is Sellings taking on robotics. When a newer robot model comes along to replace them, each robot has twenty-one days to find a new owner. The problem is, who wants an outdated creation?
This is a very affecting story giving real humanity to our creations. These armies of unemployed robots remind me of the great depression, where so many people needed work but could never find any. It brings the metaphor right back to its earliest roots and gives us a fascinating solution for Davie by the end.
Four Stars
Birthright
Illustration by Eddie Jones, from New Worlds
And finally, one of his first stories for New Worlds, from November 1956.
Farr finds himself in a white room tended by gods of metal. At first, he is hostile towards them but, eventually, he agrees to learn from them. Following his educational journey, we learn of his people’s origin and the purpose the gods have for him.
This is definitely a more experimental and controversial piece, with lines such as:
I anger again. God is evil god I hate god. I smash god face again.
At the same time, it touches on a number of thorny issues and delicious concepts. By the end I am not sure where I stood on any of the character’s choices, and it is all the better for it.
Five Stars
Hic jacet Arthurus, auctor quondam et auctor futurus*
So, there you have it. I hope I have shown he was a brilliant writer who has yet to have the full appreciation he deserves. Hopefully, like his legendary namesake, his reputation will rise in SF’s hour of need.
Awakened from his sleep by a nightmare, Jahalazar of the purple hair yet hears the cry of his kind:
Help us, Jahalazar, your people are dying.
So, Jahalazar, a warrior without peer, armed with Chernak, the Throwing Sword, and Lil Chernak, the Slitting Knife, he bids farewell to his adoptive home. The crude realm of Clan Chevy in the bowl of Bomb Valley is like a paradise compared to the the lands Jahalazar must travel—first to Sea City, where the fish-headed people fight off the rubber-suited Zharks and their fearsome weapons that project flesh-devouring Diss. Thence over mountains. Further over higher mountains on the back of friendly, giant spiders. Across the endless plains on which two mechanized armies are locked in eternal conflict.
And on and on, past volcanic and mutated horrors, into domains ruled by sadists, to others dominated by distorted but good souls, and always with the ever-evolving Diss, now sentient and bent on world conquest, nipping at his heels.
Ever in the background: what caused the Age of Ruin, and can humanity rebound from it?
Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? This is yet another "after the apocalypse" novels, of which Spawn of the Death machine and Omha Abides are fine examples from just this year. Unfortunately, The Age of Ruin is not up to their caliber.
Oh, the writing's not bad, in a sort of derivative, pulpy style. The monsters, scenery, and scenes are pretty interesting. The problem is there's nothing holding them all together. Each chapter is a self-contained story, and ultimately, Jahalazar is a sort of sight-seer. It's almost like Danté's Inferno.
The other issue is that Faucette, the author, throws out all of these monstrosities and weird human nations without any thought of logistics. Here we have the equivalent of Harry Harrison's Deathworld in terms of lethal environment, yet somehow humans are growing food and supporting realms. Given that Jahalazar rarely has the opportunity to sleep, I'm not sure how people manage to do the mundane things that running a civilization requires.
This is Faucette's second book, his first being another Ace Double half, Crown of Infinity, released earlier this year. I haven't read that one so I can't compare, but now I'm mildly tempted.
If you wanted to see more of Helen, the 26-year old acrobatic agent who goes undercover as an 8-year old (first seen in" Fiesta Brava"), then this is your chance. Code Duello is the latest in Mack Reynolds' saga of the United Planets, a future setting in which humanity has spread to the stars, and each planet has the freedom to pursue whichever socioeconomic path it chooses. Usually, it's something modeled on Earth history, and it's often pretty extreme. Mostly, it's a chance for Reynolds to show off his knowledge of history and politics and take real-life societies to absurd extremes.
It's also an opportunity for spy high jinks. There is a race of aliens who inhabit the "Dawnworlds". They don't communicate with humans, but they possess far more power than humanity, and they have been known to destroy perceived competitors if they get too threatening. This is why Earth has set up Section G, a supersecret spy organization whose job is to subtly ensure that all of the planets, despite ostensibly being free from interference, are never allowed to backslide technologically or productively. The idea is that, if we are to have a chance against the Dawnworlders, we must always be progressing rather than sitting on our laurels.
The planet of the week is Firenze, a world based on Florence (of course). Its salient features are that everyone likes to resolve conflicts by dueling (and everyone is quick to want to duel) and the supposedly democratic world is actually a rigidly controlled dictatorship. There is supposedly an "Engelist" underground, always on the verge of taking over, yet no one, not even the government officials, know who the Engelists are, what they stand for, or if any have even been seen in the wild.
The agents who have been sent to Firenze to investigate the situation (actually, explicitly to help the current government against the rebels…which seems like jumping the gun since obviously little was known about the Florentine government or its supposed insurgency) are as follows: Helen, as mentioned above; Dorn, a brilliant algae biologist who also happens to be the strongest man in the galaxy; Zorro, who is a demon with a whip; and Jerry, whose signature feature is his unbeatable luck. Once again, we have the setup for a Retief-style zany adventure, and it is mildly amusing…for a little while. Additional mystery is added when Zorro finds that the Florentines seem to have knowledge of the Dawnworlds, which was supposed to be a carefully controlled United Planets state secret.
But eventually, I got tired of Helen snorting/sneering/smirking through every line, the historical screeds that would flow incongruously from the mouths of various characters (always with relevance to, say, someone who had traveled the world circa 1960), and the slapstick nature of the book. I finished, because I wanted to know how the mysteries ended, but it was definitely a story written on autopilot.
Two and a half stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
Young and Old
Two new novels deal with the elderly and the young. Other than that, they could not be more different.
The first novel from this comic writer is a greatly expanded version of a story that appeared in the November 1967 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Cover art by Gray Morrow.
The Noble Editor didn't care for the novelette when it first appeared. Will the long version be any better or worse?
Cover art by Seymour Chwast.
Ben Jolson is an interplanetary secret agent. As a member of the Chameleon Corps, he has the ability to change his appearance at will. He can look like anybody or anything. He's had a couple of other misadventures prior to this one.
Military officers have vanished. It seems that so-called pacifists are trying to prevent the Barnum system of planets from conquering Earth. Ben's job is to find out who's responsible and stop them.
(I guess this explains the otherwise obscure title. Making a sword disappear is kind of like making a soldier disappear, I suppose.)
At this point, I expected a satire of militarism, given the fact that the bad guys are pacifists and the good guys are attacking Earth with deadly force. It didn't quite work out that way.
Ben disguises himself as a very old man and sets out for a rejuvenation center on a planet that also serves as a gigantic cemetery. He gets mixed up with a female secret agent who is on his side, but who isn't part of the Chameleon Corps.
Following the clue he finds there, he changes into a young person and infiltrates a group of beatnik/hippie/folk singer types. From there, he goes to the huge cemetery to confront the guy behind the disappearances. Along the way he has to rescue the female agent.
That's the plot of the novelette, as well as the beginning and end of the novel. What's been added to increase the word length is Ben's involvement with a computer that acts as a crime boss. There's some other stuff, too.
The book didn't amuse me. If you think it's funny that Ben beats the computer at Monopoly, you may get a kick out of it.
It doesn't work as action/adventure/suspense, because Ben immediately gets out of trouble every time the bad guys get the upper hand, either by changing his shape or just by using his fists.
It fails as satire for a couple of reasons. The supposed pacifists turn out to be intent on arming Earth against the invaders. That undermines any Orwellian War is Peace theme. The portraits of the elderly and the young are just silly rather than biting.
The best I can say about the novel is that it's a very fast, easy read. The breakneck pace is similar to one of Keith Laumer's yarns.
As far as I can tell, the only other work of fiction by this author is a novel that came out twenty years ago. (There may be some short stories of which I am not aware.) She's much better known for nonfiction, and has a reputation for being an acerbic social critic.
Cover art by Robert Hallock.
Her first novel was a ghost story, in which a dead woman looks back on her life. Maybe she'll publish another one in 1988. For now, we've got a dark vision of the near future.
Photograph of the author by Alex Gotfryd.
The fact that the cover depicts the author is our first hint that this isn't a typical science fiction novel. That seems more appropriate for a book of essays or some such. Her warm smile doesn't fit with the mood of the book either.
Not many years from now, people who are fifty years old are forced to retire and live in segregated communities, cut off from contact of any kind with younger folks. At the age of sixty, they have to pass a physical exam or else be forced to choose between suicide or execution by the government. At sixty-five, not even a clean bill of health can save them from mandatory death.
(Shades of Wild in the Streets, with its concentration camps for people over thirty-five years of age! Despite similar themes, that movie and this novel are quite different experiences.)
The narrator is one of five people living in a house by the sea. (As a special privilege, the government allows these creative types to dwell there instead of the usual ghetto for old folks. The house used to belong to the narrator and her husband, who killed himself when the youth movement seized power.)
Besides the narrator, who was a journalist, we have a painter, his model, a composer of classical music, and a writer of popular songs. The latter is also the narrator's current lover. The composer had a much younger wife who lived with the others for a while, but soon left to be with folks in her own age group.
I should also mention the narrator's dog, the composer's cat, and the bird that belongs to the painter and the model, because they are important characters as well.
Besides providing the reader with exposition, the narrator records the philosophical discussions and arguments among the five, often quoting them at length.
(The author does a fine job of making their voices distinct. The painter is angry and bitter, his speech full of profanity. The model speaks simply and emotionally. The composer is elegant and intellectual. The songwriter is witty and satiric.)
As you might be able to tell, much of the book consists of talk. The characters discuss what went wrong with society, and how it might be cured. Don't expect a lot of action.
An odd plot twist occurs late in the book. A beautiful, dark-skinned young man shows up, apparently washed up by the ocean. He doesn't speak, and his origin remains a mystery. The novel ends with a group decision by the five elders.
Besides dealing with the youth movement and attacking the way it disregards the past, the book also raises a lot of other issues. Art, music, politics, and education are discussed at length.
In addition to this rather dry material, there's some beautiful writing about the seashore, which the author obviously loves.
Not for all tastes, to be sure! I suspect a lot of readers will be bored to tears by all the talk, and find the unexplained arrival of the young man baffling.
Young Heintje followed up the success of "Mama" with a Christmas album entitled Weihnachten mit Heintje (Christmas with Heintje) where he sings traditional German Christmas carols. He also has a new single out called "Heidschi Bumbeidschi", which is even more painfully saccharine than "Mama", if that's possible. It is not a Christmas song, but a traditional Bohemian lullaby, which unfortunately does not stop West German radio stations from playing "Heidschi Bumbeidschi" in continuous rotation in the run-up to the holidays.
Hein Simons is clearly a very talented young man. I just hope that he eventually gets to sing songs that are more appropriate to a modern teenager.
Off With His Head
During the latest visit to my trusty import bookstore, I spotted a familiar name in the paperback spinner rack, namely L. Sprague De Camp, who has been editing and tinkering with the Conan reprints for Lancer Books. However, this time around, it wasn't another Conan book, but an original fantasy novel by L. Sprague De Camp called The Goblin Tower. The striking cover by J. Jones, probably the most talented new artist to emerge in recent times, drew me in and the blurb on the back sounded intriguing as well, so I picked the book up as a St. Nicholas Day present to myself. So let's see how L. Sprague De Camp does when he is not messing with Conan…
After a dedication to De Camp's fellow swashbuckler Lin Carter and a map of Novaria, the setting of the tale, The Goblin Tower certainly starts off with a bang or rather a chop, since Jorian, the current king of the city of Xylar, is about to be executed in front of the city gates. For in Xylar, it is custom to publicly behead the king every five years. Whoever catches the severed head shall become the new king, until it is his turn to mount the scaffold.
As methods of selecting a government go, this one is rather bloody and not particularly efficient, though it does prevent the establishment of tyranny, because every ruler comes with a built-in expiration date, as well as bloody wars of succession. Also kudos to L. Sprague De Camp for remembering that a monarchy is not necessarily hereditary; for example the Holy Roman Empire initially was not.
Jorian seems resigned to his fate and sanguine enough, even though he never desired to be king in the first place. Nor has he any intention to lose his head and so Jorian tricks the executioner and assembled populace of Xylar and escapes his own beheading with the aid of the wizard Karadur and his magical rope trick, which allows Jorian to climb away from the scaffold into what his people view as the afterlife.
This Never Happened to Conan
The "afterlife" in which Jorian briefly finds himself turns out to be our modern world. Worse, poor Jorian materialises in the grassy median strip of a highway and almost gets run over by a car – not that Jorian knows what a car is; he initially thinks it's a monster before realising that it is a vehicle. Jorian also meets a police officer in his brief sojourn in the modern world, though he mistakes the man for a carpenter, since Jorian has never seen a gun before, but finds that it looks like a carpenter's tool.
L. Sprague De Camp is a more humorous and satirical writer than Robert E. Howard was (though Howard could be very funny as well, e.g. in his Sailor Steve Costigan stories), which means that their styles don't always mesh well in the posthumous Conan collaborations. However, the brief interlude of our modern world seen through the eyes of a Barbarian king from a fantasy world plays to De Camp's strengths. The scene is hilarious, though De Camp can't resist adding some of his own opinions about the shortcomings of our world. It's also impossible to imagine anything like this ever happening to Conan.
L. Sprague De Camp
A Quest and a Roadtrip
Alas, Jorian's sojourn in the modern world is short-lived, before he returns to his own world to meet up with Karadur. He also learns that the wizard didn't just save Jorian's life out of the goodness of his heart. No, there is a price. Karadur wants Jorian to help him retrieve a chest full of magical manuscripts called the Kist of Arvlen and bring it to a conclave of wizards at the titular Goblin Tower.
So Jorian and Karadur set off on their quest and now we learn the reason for the map at the beginning of the book, 'cause the pair will visit every single location marked thereon, have adventures and get entangled with beautiful women, vile wizards, and treacherous nobles, all the while pursued by Xylarian soldiers who want to recapture their errant king for his beheading. Along the way, Jorian rescues twelve slave girls from a brotherhood of retired executioners, once he realises that the executioners want to use them for practice to keep their skills sharp, and steals the Kist of Arvlen from the bedchamber of a shape-shifting serpent princess. He narrowly escapes being sacrificed to a jungle god and takes part in a heist to steal the statue of a frog god, replacing it with a real frog, much to the confusion of the worshippers.
Finally, Jorian and Karadur and the Kist of Arvlen make it to the conclave of wizards at the Goblin Tower, which turns out to be an edifice constructed from real goblins, who have been turned to stone by magic. What could possibly go wrong with holding a wizard symposium in such a place?
A Meandering Tale
Jorian and Karadur's adventures are a lot of fun, but they are also meandering and episodic to the point that every chapter seems more like a standalone short story than part of a greater whole. The fact that Jorian, who is more Sheherazade than Conan, frequently regales the people he meets by telling stories reinforces that episodic and picaresque feel of the novel.
However, this fault is not unique to The Goblin Tower, but appears to be a structural issue with the entire genre that Fritz Leiber dubbed "sword and sorcery". Born in the pages of Weird Tales almost forty years ago, sword and sorcery is a genre of short, fast adventures. Whether it's Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan the Cimmerian or Kull of Atlantis, Fritz Leiber's stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or the dreamlike adventures of C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry, all of these characters initially appeared in short stories and novellas, and modern heroes in the same mode such as Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné, Roger Zelazny's Dilvish the Damned or John Jakes' Brak the Barbarian follow suit.
However, the genre landscape has changed since the heyday of the pulps and the dominant form – particularly for fantasy – is now the novel. Of course, there are sword and sorcery novels, from Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon a.k.a. Conan the Conqueror via Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, Björn Nyberg's The Return of Conan a.k.a. Conan the Avenger, Michael Moorcock's Stormbringerand Lin Carter's A Wizard of Lemuria all the way to Fritz Leiber's Swords of Lankhmar, Joanna Russ' Picnic on Paradise and De Camp and Carter's Conan of the Isles. Having read and enjoyed several of these novels, it's notable that many of them tend to be very episodic and feel like fix-ups, even if they aren't. This makes sense in the case of The Hour of the Dragon, which was after all serialised in Weird Tales, or Swords of Lankhmar, the first part of which appeared as a standalone novella in Fantastic. But The Goblin Tower is a paperback original that was never serialised anywhere, so why is it structured like a serial?
Nonetheless, The Goblin Tower is a highly enjoyable novel, which allows De Camp to show off his humorous side, something he rarely has the opportunity to do with the Conan stories. Furthermore, the open ending is very much begging for a sequel and I for one will certainly pick it up.
Four stars
This year's collectible Christmas plate by the china manufacturer Rosenthal depicts Bremen's market place in the snow – a rare sight indeed.
The Emperor's New Clothes by Harry Clarke, inspired by the fashions of the Lucknow Court in present day India and Turkish fashions, a fitting comparison for this article.
A strange thing is occurring in American menswear this winter. A peculiar, most invisible thing. Invisible not because no one talks about it or buys it or advertises it… In fact, everyone from Playboy to J. C. Penny has brandished their bugle horn, lining up their bets behind this most fascinating fad.
No, it is invisible because although men are buying it, they simply aren’t wearing it.
It’s no surprise that men today yearn to move on from the somber three-piece suits and restrictive neckties that inspire discussions of Beau Brummel, Henry Poole, and two-hundred years of legacy. As the definition of American culture expands to include members of the Youth, Hippie, Women's Rights, and Civil Rights movements, just to name a few, young men have realized that they too can expand their own identities. Strangely enough, this ardent wish has manifested as the Nehru jacket.
Sammy Davis Jr in Fall 1968 wearing the new Nehru jacket trend with silk turtlenecks.
Named for Jahawarhal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, the Nehru jacket embodies many of the ideals of American youth. He was an anti-colonialist and social democrat determined to free his country from Western rule, a sentiment young people share against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Like many other revolutionaries and thinkers from colonized cultures around the world, he chose to wear a traditional Indian coat called the achkan as a way of reclaiming India’s cultural autonomy by rejecting Western rules of business dress. Namely, the three-piece suit and the necktie.
Nehru met with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Deutsche Bank Chairman Hermann Josef Abs during a visit to West Germany in June 1956. He looks at ease next to the others with his top button undone, embodying a working class confidence that's defiantly attractive for a generation that distrusts establishment wealth and power, and searches for their own generational identity.
The Beatles wore Nehru jackets for their Shea Stadium concert in August of 1965, less than a year after the prime minister died in May of 1964. As we’ve discussed previously the article "Sgt. Pepper's Anti-War Military Rock Uniform," The Beatles have been an unstoppable force in shaping the fashions, and therefore the identities, of young people in the West through their mop haircuts, peacockish military designs, and bold color palettes. Others such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Lord Snowdon also donned the achkan-inspired look before Pierre Cardin introduced it to the American public last year.
The Beatles perform at Shea Stadium in matching putty Nehru jackets in 1965. Nehru's jackets were also grey and tawny colors. Sammy Davis Jr. often favors this utilitarian color palette in his Nehru jackets this winter.
The first James Bond film, Dr. No, mirrors the hero and villain through the Nehru jacket. Both jackets are made of silk, but Bond's walnut brown jacket is a rough-hewn shantung while the doctor's appears to be a granite silk suiting. The contrast of the fabrics and the fit of the collars both indicate a struggle between the people (Bond) and power (Dr. No).
From there, gossip and excitement over the look has spread like wildfire among experts and celebrities. Esquire went so far as to suggest that the Nehru would be the talk of the winter. But where has it gone? Why have we seen so few of them?
The rather complicated answer is comfort.
Inspired by the total rejection of Western ideals, the Nehru jacket is largely comfortable only to those who also heavily criticize the sum of our mainstream society. However, most consumers are average by default. As a result, such bold shifts are too adventuresome for their everyday lives. These kinds of trends, which often come with great excitement, are bright but brief flashes in the pan.
So what do these emperor’s robes suggest, if they’re bought then stuffed at the backs of closets and into the bottoms of trunks? Bold shifts that make it to retailers and mainstream entertainment, no matter how brief, are indicative of a great yearning in society. And the revolution is happening—it is just taking on a different form.
Rather than rehaul the rules of their workplaces and ceremonies with the Nehru jacket, men are turning to designers like Bill Blass and Ralph Lauren, who are introducing wider, bolder ties and more athletic country tweeds that speak to America’s love of working class leisurewear.
James Coburn in Bill Blass fashions as of November this year for Vogue. Though the fabrics are bold, the shapes are familiar, sporting collars and cuffs with an expeditionary style that calls back to Western expansionism. This, perhaps, is a much more comfortable avenue for change in mainstream menswear than inspirations such as the Nehru that wholly reject the Western lifestyle. Photographed by Henry Clarke.
I agree deeply with the critic Marshall McLuhan in his opinion that after centuries of division, the great tectonic shift of equality in the West is pushing men and women to connect culturally in a way we simply haven’t before. While women are chasing educational and societal inclusion, men are chasing freedom of expression.
We can see this clearly in the rising popularity of Blass and Lauren, for example. The necktie is softer and brighter, but still a necktie. The turtleneck is less structured but still paired with a blazer for daytime events. The Norfolk jacket is slimmer and more youthful, but still made of traditional houndstooth wool. Does this not mirror the advancements of women in our society? Women may attend universities, but they must still wear stockings and skirts. They may work in offices but must maintain a certain figure.
Having donned the uniforms of war and business for as long as women have worn their gowns and corsets, the suggestion that Western men are decolonizing their own fashions, through styles such as Nehru’s achkan, is a hopeful sign of the future. Even if permanent change is slow. Only time will tell if the Western or the Eastern collar will ultimately be the victor…
Today’s title is a result of having two reports and a book review to present to you, dear readers. There is no common theme except for me as narrator. I am inviting you to assist in performing a silent(?) version of a musical piece, “Tropical Fish Opera,” by Ramon Sender. I first experienced it at the Tape Music Center in San Francisco a few years ago. Picture three musicians sitting with their instruments around an aquarium, with another person standing at a microphone. The score is simple, and they have easily memorized it. The person at the microphone has a list of apparently random words that he or she recites as the musicians play. Each musician has been assigned a particular fish that must be followed as a guide for how to improvise in collaboration with the other musicians. The fish in this aquarium are swimming below, and I will act as a narrator who is trying to string words together in an understandable way, so that your silent(?) experience can have some meaning. Think of your voice as your instrument, although if you improvise drums or other means of making sound you can of course add to my silent voice.
The DSV Alvin
The Sinking of the Alvin submersible (Fish No. 1)
If you have never heard of the Alvin, you haven’t been keeping an eye on your fish. The Alvin is the most recent and innovative submersible paid for by the US Navy, assigned to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Commissioned in 1964, it was named after the mover and shaker who pushed for its creation, Allyn Vine. The Alvin is essentially a large steel sphere (holds 3 people) with plexiglass windows, using syntactic foam for flotation, with weights, hung with cameras, sample containers, and a mechanical arm, and certified for dives of 6,000 feet.
On October 16 the Alvin made an unscheduled dive to almost 5,000 feet, from which it has not been recovered. Yet. It seems the hatch was still open when the chains holding its cradle snapped, and the submersible slid down its usual course into the ocean, with the pilot and two observers leaving their workday lunch behind in the sphere as they scrambled to safety. Water poured into the hatch, and the Alvin quickly sank to almost 5,000 feet as the crew of its tender, Lulu, threw everything that would float overboard to try to mark the spot. Although the Navy bought the argument that Woods Hole (WHOI) made that no recovery had yet been made from that depth, and backed the experiment of finding and raising the submersible, storms have so far prevented the consummation of the plan. Stay tuned to this story. I think they will succeed.
New Digs, New Job (Fish No. 2)
Ah, a California winter!
I’m also the performer keeping my eye on this fish. My husband Mel and I moved from Fortuna, California, where we had rented a house, to the non-metropolis of Rio Dell nearby, pooling our money to buy a piece of land. We have fruit trees, a walnut tree, and a small garden, and interesting phenomena like different weather visible from windows on every side of the house except one. I’m happy there are no windows on the 4th side, because I only know 3 general kinds of weather: rain (including fog, drizzle, etc.), snow (including sleet), and sun. I don’t want to know about that 4th side. We also have a neighbor, a teenager, who received our permission to hunt deer in our backyard with a bow and arrow. We can sometimes see him up in the walnut tree, waiting patiently. He lets us know when he will be hunting. Just in case he mistakes one of us for a deer. In the meantime, both of us are temporary workers for the County of Humboldt, Mel at the airport, and me in different office gigs. Sometimes we wave to each other as he drives home in the morning in the Jeep from his shift at the airport, at the same time I’m leaving in our car to start my day wherever the County sends me. Wish us luck. We’ll need it as we head into winter weather and knee-deep mud.
Book Review: The Unholy City (and) The Magician Out of Manchuria (Fish no. 3)
Great book!
This is your fabulous fish. I think you will find it delish. I do. Charles Finney (author of The Circus of Dr. Lao) saw the first publication of The Unholy City, in 1937 but this paperback edition (Pyramid Books) published last January combines that irreverent and self-referential story with the delightful Magician Out of Manchuria, which is my favorite of the writings of this Arizona Daily Star editor. Finney is not as prolific as some authors, although he has written many short stories and a couple of articles published in magazines aside from the occasional book. However, when away from his desk at the Tucson newspaper, he has the opportunity to take as few words as possible and place them carefully to weave weird tales, and he seizes that opportunity with both hands. These two yarns are very different from one another, and The Unholy City is not to everyone’s taste, dealing cynically not just with excesses of the consumer society, but (as the “plot demands”) with poor impulse control involving large “zellums of szelack” that seem to have an intoxicating influence. Nevertheless, I find the “Magician” with his manipulative ways, along with the woman he discovers and enhances, and his poor young servant who keeps (literally) losing his head, to be utterly irresistible. Only one of the two has a happy ending. (Guess which one.) I award this fish 5 stars out of 5.
Applause?
I once heard one musician say to another during a lecture and demonstration of the original Opera, “You’re not playing your fish right.” So if you and I were playing our fish right (right for you, that is), perhaps you enjoyed our little experiment. I hope you did.
There will be further adventures of Mel and Vicki. Where will they keep their Jeep while they wade through the mud to their home in the mountains? Will Vicki be able to work in an office where the regular secretary (on vacation) has locked up all her work? Will Mel be able to get along with his temporary boss as the airport enters a study of how it copes with the fog that envelops it every morning?
The French economy has been rocky ever since the wave of strikes and protests in May. As a result, France has been getting more and more goods from its industrial neighbor, West Germany. The problem is France has to buy German goods in francs, which means that, more and more, francs are ending up in West German hands. Franc reserves, at $6.9 billion in April 1968, are now down to $4 billion and plummeting.
To forestall a devaluation of the franc (reducing its value, thus making imports more expensive and exports more affordable to other nations, but playing hell with international economic relations in the process), DeGaulle's government is evaluating all sorts of Hail Mary options to stabilize the economy. One that was rejected was the West German offer to invest directly in the French economy, which would leave them too in control of French assets (including the dwindling franc supply!) A proposal that was adopted was an increase in vehicle fuel costs; I gather fuel production is nationalized, and the government can't afford to sell it so cheaply.
But a sadder development involves the French post office-letters written to Santa Claus will no longer be answered. Previously, kids who wrote to St. Nick got a colorful postcard with a message of Christmas cheer. A West German offer to donate Elven postal braceros has been rejected.
Merry Christmas, indeed. Maybe DeGaulle should convert to Judaism. Then he can pray a great miracle will happen in Paris for Hannukah, and the franc reserve will last eight years instead of one…
Flickering candles
Here in the good old U.S. of A., we don't have such economic woes (though inflation is kicking in). All I have to worry about is whether the first Galaxy of the year is any good. In other words, has the value of the magazine been devalued? Let's find out!
On Titan, the alien machines (first seen six years ago in "The Towers of Titan") rumble on, their purpose unknown, as they have for millennia. Humanity, terrified of their implications, begins searching the stars for their creator. And so, one ship, the Carl Sagan, makes the 15 year trip to Sirius A-2, a barren but Earthlike world orbiting the blazing blue sun.
Sid Lee, an anthropologist onboard, is convinced that Earth once warred with the aliens who build the machines of Titan, and that humans lost, reverting to savagery. The crew of the Sagan are surprised not only to find a group of intelligent beings on the alien world, but that they are indistinguishable from Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Lee volunteers to live among them, hiding his extraterrestrial origin, to learn the truth of the Sirians, and how they fit into the ancient, hypothetical war.
by Reese
There's a lot to like about this piece, especially the methodical, painfully slow, expedition protocols. The crew wear suits when they go outside. Extreme caution is taken in scouting. It takes months before Lee is even allowed to infilitrate the aliens.
Bova reminds me a bit of Niven in his weaving together hard science fiction and a compelling story. However, the author does not have Niven's mastery of the craft, and the story feels a bit clunky. Moreover, the "revelations" of the tale are telegraphed, and the red herrings Bova throws in to keep the mystery going are not convincing.
I enjoyed the story, but it's difficult to decide if it's a high 3 or a low 4. I think I will go with the latter because it's clear this novella is only part of a bigger story, one that looks like it will be fascinating to read.
The Thing-of-the-Month Clubs, by John Brunner
In what looks like the final entry in the Galactic Consumer Report series, the editor of the fictional magazine reviews various [THING]-of-the-Month Clubs. Specifically, the editor is looking for high cost and ephemeral items for worlds with >100% income tax.
A fellow named Christmas runs the premier racing planet in the galaxy: Raceworld! He deals with a number of headaches including various attempts to fix the games by a number of different species. The thing reads breezily, shallowly, in a style I was sure I'd read before…and sure enough, looking through back reviews, I found the story I was thinking of ("Birth of a Salesman") was, indeed, written by one James Tiptree Jr.
I found this story even less compelling. One star.
Dunderbird, by Harlan Ellison and Keith Laumer
by Jack Gaughan
I'm not sure how Harlan Ellison ends up bylining with so many different authors these days: Sheckley, Delany, and now Laumer.
The premise: a giant pteranodon falls out of the sky onto the streets of New York, crushing 83 people under its unnaturally heavy corpse. The rest of the story is a detailing of the many odd characters who come across the flying lizard and their reactions to it.
Pointless and unfunny, I have to wonder if Ellison attaches his name to things just to get them published for friends. It's not doing the brand any favors.
One star.
For Your Information: The Written Word, by Willy Ley
This is a nice piece on the history of writing materials (which is, by definition, the history of history) from Greek times to modern day.
Ley wraps up with a primer on how to send and decode interstellar messages, which I quite enjoyed.
Interestingly, though he talks about microfiche and microfilm, he does not mention the possibility of more-or-less permanent documents within the memory banks of computers. I know it may seem frivolous to store the written word on such expensive media as the Direct Access Storage Devices (DASD) used by IBM 360 computers, but in fact, such is being done as we speak. I have used time share systems to send frivolous messages to others on home-grown "mail" systems, and also created data sets that were text files, both as memos and as "documents" for other users to read. And, of course, there are data sets that are programs that, once loaded into permanent memory via punch card or teletype, are there to stay. At least until an electrical pulse fries the whole thing.
Of course, that's a pretty rarefied use, but it's still interesting and relevant for those in the biz.
Gil Hamilton, an agent of the the United Nations police force —Amalgamated Regional Militias (ARM)—is called regarding a death. Not because he's a cop, but because he's next of kin of the deceased, a Belter named Owen Jennison. The spaceman's demise looks like a particularly elaborate suicide: he is in a chair hooked up to a device that uses electric current to stimulate the pleasure center of one's brain, and he apparently starved, quite happily, to death.
But as Gil puts the pieces together, he comes to the conclusion that Jennison must have been murdered. Which means there's a murderer. Which means there are clues. And since it's Niven's Earth in the 22nd Century, organleggers are probably involved.
Did I mention that Gil also has psychic powers? He has a third, telekinetic arm, which comes in very handy. It's also the first time that I've seen this particular idea. It breathes new life into a hoary subject.
As does all of the story, honestly. Niven is simply a master of organically conveying information, letting you live in his universe, absorbing details as they become pertinent. There's nothing of the New Wave to his work save that his writing is qualitatively different from what we saw in prior eras.
He's also written a gripping fusion of the science fiction and detective genres, perhaps the best yet.
Five stars.
Welcome Centaurians, by Ted Thomas
Aliens arrive from Proxima Centauri. Though they make contact with many of Earth's nations while cautiously assaying us from orbit, their captain forms a bond with Colonel Lee Nessing of NORAD. After a long conversation, the aliens agree to land in New York, whereupon friendly relations are established.
This is a cute, nothing story whose charm comes mostly from the chummy relationship between Lee and "Mat", the Proximan that looks like a floor rug. My biggest issue is the gimmick ending, in which it is revealed that ancient Proximans caused the death of the dinosaurs by seeding the Earth with food animals—which turned out to be early mammals.
The problem: mammals evolved from reptiles 200 million years ago. That event is well documented in the fossil record and is referenced in my copy of The Meaning of Evolution (1949) by George Gaylord Simpson. This sort of basic evolutionary mistake seems pretty common in science fiction, where writers try to ascribe extraterrestrial origin to obviously terrestrial creatures (humans are the most frequent example).
Three stars.
Value for money
If there's anything the January 1969 issue of Galaxy proves, it's that even good money can't guarantee a return. Editor Fred Pohl paid 4 cents a word for all of the pieces in this issue, and to his credit, more than half the words are in four/five star pieces. On the other hand, two of the stories are mediocre, and two are absolutely awful. It's like Pohl got his tales from a mystery bag and had to take what he got, good or bad.
Well, the superior stuff would fill an ordinary sized magazine, so I shan't complain. Read the Bova, the Ley, and the Niven. Then put the issue under your tree for others to discover Christmas morning…
I have once again dipped into the magazine of "entertainment for men" who want to feel intellectually superior while they browse photos of mostly-naked women they like to imagine are sexually available to them.
There are some good stories. Some good political commentary. Some funny cartoons. And a whole lot of self-aggrandizing pontification, and a lot of wealthy white men insisting they know what's best for everyone, especially women.
Our protagonist, Henry Keanridge, has a wife, a mistress, and two girlfriends; he manages the scheduling for this complex arrangement of obligations and secret-keeping via a computer. That's our science fiction aspect. He works at a trucking company, and he has fed his own name into the system as a truck, and the four women as "stops" on his route, and it manages his schedule, reminds him of birthdays and holidays, and so on.
Hyman Roth's art led me to believe this story had more substance than it does.
Here's a quote: "Before their affair, Dee had been a girl of impeccable virtue. She would no more have thought of having a love affair than of, say, not wearing a hat to church." That tells you everything you need to know about both Dee and Henry.
As a story: Two stars, providing you can tolerate Henry's male chauvinist perspective on life.
As science fiction: One. I read it so you don't have to.
Masks by Damon Knight (July)
This one, unlike many of Playboy's stories, is unquestionably science fiction. Medical technology, full-body prosthesis, what happens to a human when you put his brain in a robot body? They can't get the robot to look fully human, can't give it a full range of facial expressions–that's okay, though; he can wear a mask.
But the project's funding is uncertain, so our protagonist–unnamed for the first half of the story–may have to justify his right to "two hundred million a year" in medical expenses, when normal full disability support is $30,000.
Two stars. Probably would've been three if it weren't for the sudden gratuitously violent twist.
Silverstein Among the Hippies by Shel Silverstein (July)
Shel Silverstein comments on the Hashbury community, mostly by drawing cartoons of hippies. They're clever and often insightful.
Why indeed? Headlines include: Detroit Burning, Kill 720 Viet Cong, Sniper Kills Six, Self, New Fallout Danger Warned, Girl Raped, Alabama Riot, War in Sinai…
The Trouble with Machines by Ron Goulart (August)
Maximo is a machine, a robot designed to hunt and kill the reporter who keeps criticizing technology companies. Maximo is disguised as a refrigerator which will be delivered to the reporter's house. …Maximo has, or acquires, some interests of its own, and runs off before it reaches its assigned destination.
This one had a plot twist I didn't see coming (wow, the sexy lady is actually a person! She is part of the plot!) and a story resolution that, while not groundbreaking, doesn't leave confusing loose ends.
"It was supposed to say 'LEGALIZE DRUGS'… but E is out trying to score, A and I are on an acid trip, the other E just got busted, and U was simply too strung out to show up!"
Playboy Interview: Stanley Kubrik (September)
This is not just an interview; it begins with a few pages of biography and background information showing how Kubrick got his start in film: "He quit his job at Look, raised $20,000–mostly from his father and his uncle–and began shooting 'Fear and Desire'… Though rejected by all major distributors, 'Fear and Desire' toured the art-house circuit and eventually broke even."
On the one hand: It's got some solid information about how his career led up to 2001. On the other: Four pages in all-italics is hard on the eyes. Next time, Playboy, consider using a scene divider of some sort and leaving the introduction more readable.
For the actual interview, Kubrick is very full of himself. 2001: A Space Odyssey showcases his VISION!!! It has a MESSAGE!!!… which he is not going to explain, of course, because he is an artist–would we better appreciate La Gioconda (that's "the Mona Lisa" to us plebes) if Leonardo had explained why she was smiling? (I wish that were a made-up example. It is not; he directly compared his film to the Mona Lisa.)
Some words and phrases he throws around in the interview: Cosmos, man's destiny, the lumpen literati (he's not fond of his critics), grandeur of space, chrysalis of matter, tendrils of their consciousness… he does like to talk about his grand ideas. Much of the interview is him saying "What if…?" and the interviewer politely feeding him the next question. He did manage to say a few things I agreed with, including, "Why should a vastly superior race bother to harm or destroy us?"
Two and a half stars. I am neither a film buff nor an arts buff, so much of this is tedious to me. If you like rich guys with an interest in science fiction showing off their education, there's 16 pages of it here.
Fortitude by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
This is a story in teleplay script format, beginning with a discussion between the esteemed Dr. Norbert Frankenstein and his guest, Dr. Little. Frankenstein's assistant, Tom Swift, occasionally comments with details. His patient, Sylvia Lovejoy, is now only a head attached to a machine–apparently a popular concept in Playboy these days; new writers should consider submitting stories with similar themes as it seems like they're buying.
Sylvia's every mood is controlled by complex machinery, except occasionally a small spark of her former self begs to be allowed to die. Dr. Frankenstein has foreseen this desire, and has programmed her robot arms to be unable to point a gun at herself or bring poison to her lips.
Four stars; the reader is left wondering if Sylvia has any possible route to escape, even after the circumstances of her vigil have changed.
Here Comes John Henry! by Ray Russell (September)
John Henry is the first man on the moon–or rather, the first man to land on the moon and come back. The first lunar landing mission is a Black man teamed up with a Russian as a show of international cooperation. The media have a field day making corny slogans about the duo, often playing on tacky racial slurs. John Henry is not bothered by tacky media coverage; he's just thrilled to be going to the moon.
The two guys have a lot in common, it turns out, starting with their names. The other fellow is Ivan "Vanya" Genrikhovich–"John, son of Henry" in Russian. Both are from Georgia, just from different parts of the globe. Both are from the capital city. Both are descendants of slaves. ("My father's father was a serf," Vanya says.) They are becoming great friends, bonding over their shared joy of space, taking pictures on the moon… until they notice that their fuel measurement is a bit low.
Not a lot low. Not low enough that the ship can't make it back. It just… can't carry both of them back. They quickly realize they have been set up: this mission has been calculated down to the last ounce, the last paperclip's worth of mass. Someone decided that only one of them should come home, and didn't bother to tell either of the pilots.
I won't spoil the solution they find, because it's worth reading; it's so much better than the one proposed in Godwin's "The Cold Equations." Five stars.
Mr. Swift and His Remarkable Thing by Jeremiah McMahon (October)
Two modern hippies, Mommababy and Daddybaby, have settled down to suburban life after the unplanned arrival of Frankenbaby five years ago. They try to be properly hip and permissive, but Mommababy does not like their neighbor, Mr. Smith, who is making some kind of sculpture-thing in his back yard. It's ugly, and Mr. Smith is always walking around muttering things like "Is the missing factor X?"
She doesn't want Frankenbaby playing in Mr. Smith's yard. Frankenbaby, however, has his freedom: after he's sent to his room, his parents spend the evening focusing on the "good things–flowers, beards, sideburns and beads." Mommababy considers checking on Frankie at bedtime, but Daddybaby warns her against being overprotective, so Frankie manages to slip out of the house. They discover him missing after the great explosive blasts from next door rock the house.
It turns out the weird sculpture was a rocket ship, and Mr. Smith and Frankenbaby have blasted off. It's unclear if they have a destination or are just going on a joyride.
Another solid three stars: This is an enjoyable read; it just doesn't really have a point—much like Mommababy and Daddybaby.
What's Your SQ (Sexual Quotient)? (October)
"A man's love life—whether he be single or married—is intimately related to his business career, to his social pastimes and even to the car he drives."
This is a 54-question personality quiz; each question has 3 options, with a key provided at the end for interpreting the results. It tells readers that, if none of the answers seems to apply, just pick the one that seems least unlikely.
It is, of course, expecting all participants to be heterosexual men of reasonable wealth in 1968 America. "You" own a car, have a job, have an active sex life with women (which will usually be called "girls"), and so on. These biases are visible throughout the quiz.
Moreover, it is assumed that you perceive sex as something you do for personal reasons only, not a shared activity of mutual pleasure.
You are not, of course, concerned with whether your partner is enjoying herself.
The end result: Men's personalities can be sorted into three categories, although most men will have a blend of all three. Type A: "a Don Juan or a 'phallic narcissist'; a ladykiller." Type B: "his sense of security is strongly dependent upon being loved, cared for, and emotionally supported by others; he feels unworthy of this attention." Type C: "dedicated to fighting intemperance and immorality in all its forms; inflexible in both body and mind."
I can't figure out how to give this stars. I can say: If you're not a heterosexual man with the common mundane biases of current late-1960s America, the "analysis" after the quiz isn't going to be useful to you.
Colorless in Limestone Caverns by Allan Seager (November)
Our protagonist, Reinhart, is a dislikeable sort of fellow who tortures animals in the name of science and gets himself acclaim and tenure for it. He orders some blind cave fish on a whim, planning on researching their feeding habits, but instead, a change comes over him: From the first day he acquires them, he spends all day in the lab staring at them, and he becomes quiet and unresponsive at home. He feels a great kinship with the fish.
His wife worries. His mother worries. He thinks about fish. His wife and mother call in psychiatrists. He snaps out of his lethargic funk, speaks blithely of the research he's going to do, apologizes about worrying his family, and goes back to normal.
Two stars. I kept waiting for the story to start, and then it was over.
Scrutable Japanese Fare by Thomas Mario (November)
This article has nothing remotely science-fictional about it, and it is not related to the new-trending cultural shifts of which I am so fond. It's about dining in Japan, and since Gideon visits there occasionally, I thought I'd read it. It's one page of actual article followed by 10 recipes.
It mentions sukiyaki, shabu shabu–which it claims is a great food for dinner parties; host and guests share preparation activities–and tempura with random ingredients, "gleefully scattered over the tray in no fixed pattern." It talks about Japanese steakhouses that cook on a metal slab at the dining table, and describes how to prepare warm rice wine for best enjoyment.
It includes several recipes: Broccoli salad with golden dressing, cabbage salad with soy dressing, sesame dipping sauce, scallion dipping sauce, chicken yakitori, shrimp tempura, (which it insists should be eaten hot rather than prepared in advance; "One device for party service is to hire a domestic geisha who will fry and deliver it in large batches"), tempura batter & sauce, Japanese steak dinner and the shabu shabu the article begins by praising.
I found myself mildly disappointed by the lack of pictures of any of the food, and that the recipes aren't clear about how many servings they make–the "Japanese steak dinner" wants 4 lbs of steak, cut into ¾" cubes! That's not dinner for two or even for a family–that's the whole dinner party's meal. The recipes also don't list which cooking implements they need; that's folded into the narrative instructions.
Not rating for stars. It's a pleasant enough read, and the recipes are nice, although they lack a few details from being well-made.
Coming soon to a theatre near you! Finally, you can see the actual scenes from the pictorial review earlier this year.
The Mind of the Machine by Arthur C. Clarke (December)
Clarke discusses whether computers can be said to truly think (…no, despite a few radical fanatics here and there), and what it might mean to society if they could, or they gain the ability in the future. He takes it as a foregone conclusion that they will:
…[T]he fact that today's computers are very obviously not "intellectually superior" has given a false sense of security—like that felt by the 1900 buggy-whip manufacturer every time he saw a broken-down automobile by the wayside."
He also has a very narrow view of how the future needs to play out:
The problem that has to be tackled within the next 50 years is to bring the entire human race, without exception, up to the level of semiliteracy of the average college graduate. This represents what may be called the minimum survival level; only if we reach it will we have a sporting chance of seeing the year 2200.
Although there's some obvious pandering to those who believe themselves the intellectual elite, he does cover a lot of the current trends in computer development, and a reasonable amount of speculation about possible future ones, albeit with, like the SQ test above, a lot of unmentioned biases.
Three stars; a nice review of the current state of scientific development and good suggestions about what might come next.
Alan Watts is neither a science fiction writer nor a scientist; he is a philosopher and zen buddhist guru. However, his article begins with an emphatic statement that the United States of America will cease to exist by the year 2000–which puts it firmly in the realm of fantastic speculation, as much as any of the stories I've reviewed.
He points out that a nation has two definitions: One, its geography, biology, and acknowledged physical boundaries; the other, its culture and sovereignty as recognized by its people and others. He points out that this second aspect of the USA is on the verge of destroying the first, and that much of this problem is caused by the conflation of money and wealth.
Money is assigned by the government. It is a deliberately limited resource. Wealth is a matter of valuable resources that has nothing to do with numbers written on slips of paper. Money is a measurement—purportedly of wealth, but as with any measurement, it can be applied in multiple ways.
"[T]rue wealth is the sum of energy, technical intelligence, and raw materials," he says. And he continues to point out that mankind is not separate from the world around us, but part of it—"like a whirlpool is to a river"—we cannot "conquer" or "invade" our own home, and our best chance of survival in the future is to recognize the value of leisure and enjoy the wealth that surrounds us.
Four stars (although I am likely biased in this rating); I have a great fondness for anything that can make Playboy—an overtly libertarian, capitalistic publication—recognize other approaches to life.
Star Trek has occasionally been dabbling in New Wave-style science fiction in the third season, but what we got last week was an episode based on solid traditional SF concepts. But if you're going to write a hard-SF story, you need to make sure the science backs it up. When the story you write isn’t even internally consistent—when it doesn’t play by its own rules—it’s not good storytelling and it’s not good SF.
The story opens with Kirk and a team investigating a distress signal. Strangely enough, even when they stand right where the signal is coming from, there’s no sign of the distressed parties. Even more strangely, one of the team vanishes before their eyes after sampling the local water.
A victim of post-production editing…
After they return to the ship, the Enterprise suffers a series of mysterious malfunctions, each corrected almost immediately, but nevertheless concerning. This sequence isn’t bad, as it builds the mystery of what’s going on. By the time Captain Kirk concludes, “Something has invaded the ship,” we are fully ready to agree. When Kirk and Spock discover that an alien device has been connected to the ship’s life support system, they have tangible proof of the invasion, though they cannot touch, disconnect, or destroy the device.
"Have these been put in all of the restrooms, Spock?"
Kirk returns to the bridge. He touches his mouth as though puzzled, and when he isn’t looking, his coffee bubbles for a moment. He takes a sip and everything and everyone around him seems to slow to a stop. Suddenly he’s on the bridge with a bunch of statues—and a beautiful woman who wasn’t there before.
"Again with the kissing!"
This is where the episode begins to fall apart. Deela, the woman, explains to Kirk that he’s been ‘accelerated’. She and her fellow Scalosians were exposed to a substance that caused them to live at a speeded up rate relative to humans. They’re so fast that humans can’t see them at all, and can only perceive them as an insect-like buzzing.
Kirk tries to shoot her with a phaser and she casually steps out of the way of the slow-moving beam. Wait, don’t phaser beams move at the speed of light? Does this mean that she’s moving faster than the speed of light? There are quite a few reasons that shouldn’t and can’t work. For one, the Scalosians wouldn’t be perceptible as a high-pitched whine. Wouldn’t they be followed by sonic booms everywhere they moved? How would they even touch anything without crushing it?
Well, let’s set that aside. Maybe phaser beams don’t actually travel at the speed of light. Maybe they fire some glowing plasma substance.
"Missed me! Now you have to kiss me!"
Moving on, Deela tells Kirk that he will soon grow docile and happy with the situation. When they encounter the missing crewman, Compton, this appears to be true. Compton declares that Kirk is no longer his commander and that he’s working for the Scalosians now.
"That's mutiny, Mister!" "Yes sir. It is." "NOT ON MY SHIP!"
This effect of the acceleration is never explained. Perhaps rather than docile and accepting, the people who have been captured and enslaved become hopeless and filled with despair. Not only are those who’ve been accelerated prone to die after the slightest injury—as we see when Compton dies and his body ages rapidly—but after being held by the Scalosians for a time they would realize that their friends and family must be aging and dying without them.
But no such poignant explanation is forthcoming.
Instead Deela details a horrific plan that will turn Captain Kirk into breeding stock and keep the rest of the crew of the Enterprise in suspended animation until such time as they will be used as breeding stock as well (at least, the men will. It’s not clear what will happen to the female crewmembers).
As all this is going on, the crew begin working to discover what happened to Captain Kirk, correctly deducing that it had something to do with the coffee he drank.
"Some sort of Benzedrine derivative is indicated…"
Kirk manages to leave an explanatory message tape in the medical lab. Then, stalling for time, he sabotages the transporter and seduces Deela (or perhaps more accurately, agrees to be seduced by her). To show the passage of time and, er, other activities, Kirk is shown pulling his boots on afterward. Quite suggestive for television!
"Sure glad to get that rock out of my shoe!"
Meanwhile Spock figures out what the ‘whine’ they keep hearing is by speeding up the message tape of the distress call until the images are a blur and the sound nothing but a high-pitched buzz. McCoy discovers Kirk’s message tape and brings it to the bridge where the bridge crew watch it together.
Rael, Deela’s subordinate, finds her with Kirk and takes a swing at the captain. Deela stuns him before he can hurt Kirk. Up until this point her behavior has come across as childish, but she delivers the next lines with a maturity and a gravity that earn the episode a whole extra star from me:
I don't care what your feelings are. I don't want to know that aspect of it. What I do is necessary, and you have no right to question it. Allow me the dignity of liking the man I select.
"And grow up, or I'll shoot you again."
After Rael leaves, Kirk pretends to be docile, then manages to steal Deela’s weapon.
In the lab, Spock and McCoy have apparently been working together amicably to craft a ‘cure’ for the acceleration—something Deela claimed was impossible. (Maybe she was lying? McCoy had to have come up with it incredibly quickly given the time scale of this episode.) Once Spock is relatively sure the cure will work, he drinks the Scalosian water and accelerates himself.
Kirk and Spock encounter each other on the way to the Life Support section of the ship. It’s a nice moment, as neither of them seem surprised. Together they destroy the unit that would have turned the Enterprise into a giant deep freeze. Then they send the Scalosians back to their planet, presumably soon to die out as a race, or at least, so Deela thinks. Once the invaders are safely off the ship, Kirk drinks the ‘cure’, which fortunately works. Spock stays accelerated a little longer in order to effect repairs and fix all the things the Scalosians changed. The bridge crew reacts with startlement and awe as their equipment almost seems to magically repair itself.
"Did Spock take care of my leaky faucet, too?"
After Spock returns to normal time, Uhura accidentally presses the button to display the distress call they received. Kirk bids goodbye to the Deela on the screen.
Written out like this, it sounds like an exciting episode. The problem was, the time scale never quite lined up, either visually or in terms of plot. His crew were completely frozen from Kirk’s perspective. Scotty is perpetually in the doorway of the transporter room across multiple scenes, apparently not having moved at all. (This could have been solved by having him standing behind the console, as though waiting for orders. By having him perpetually in transit, it ruined the illusion entirely.) Even if we arbitrarily say that one minute passes in normal time for each hour that passes for the Scalosians (a 1:60 ratio), either the crew had to have worked very, very fast or the Scalosians spent a lot more time on the ship than was shown or implied. Even if all of the bridge scenes, receiving Kirk’s message, and the development of the ‘cure’ took place over the course of only a single hour, that’s still 60 hours, or two and a half days, of accelerated time.
In the end, we're left with more questions than answers: Why didn't the transporter detect an anomaly when it beamed up at least four extra people (Deela, Rael, Compton, and the girl Compton fell for)? How did the Scalosians time the sending of their distress call such that they weren't years older by the time the Enterprise received and responded to it?
A lot of the same plot effects could have been accomplished by simply having the Scalosians as ‘out of phase’ with our reality, able to affect it but not be affected by it. This would have allowed things like Kirk and Spock getting shoved away from the deep freeze device without the audience asking, “why didn’t they smash into the wall?” (Think of shoving a person standing still while you’re on a speeding car and you’ll see what I mean.)
I could say even more about why the episode just doesn’t quite work, but I need to leave some room for my fellow contributors.
2 stars.
By Any Other Name
by Gideon Marcus
A lot of folks have complained about the reusing of plots this season. That doesn't really bother me as often the "remakes" are better than the originals (viz. "…and the Children Shall Lead" vs. "Miri"; "Day of the Dove" vs. "Wolf in the Fold.") This time around, we've got a remake of "By Any Other Name", which wasn't terrific to begin with, and this one does not do the theme justice.
Sure, there are cosmetic differences, but ultimately, it boils down to five people (three men and two women, one of them a blonde who romances Kirk). We have jealousy between the blonde and the head man. We have a takeover of the Enterprise, and I think there was an indestructible gizmo in "By Any Other Name", too. Maybe the episodes are just so similar that I'm conflating them. We have the same empty hallways, but the dodecahedronizer was a much more chilling method of accomplishing that than time shift. And really, the corridors should have been filled with frozen crew that Kirk and the Scalosians had to dodge around.
The tape Uhura was tracking must have been about a month long for it to be going all the way from discovery through the beam down of the landing party. How she couldn't tell it was a recording is beyond me and a bit insulting.
There's plenty of nonsense in this episode, which my colleagues are covering, but the worst is that, for a story that deals with super-speed, it sure moves awfully slow. When Kirk started narrating what we'd just learned five minutes before, taking about five minutes to do it (I recognize the narrative necessity, but that scene could have been three seconds long), I began pounding the floor in frustration.
"Captain's Log, supplemental: in lieu of a formal report, I will simply read the script again from the beginning… 'These are the voyages of the…'"
I did enjoy two scenes, however. When Deela confronts Kirk after the latter has broken the Transporter, Shatner plays it cute and coy, which was a lot of fun. Also (as with Janice), when Deela tells Rael to stop being a prude and ordering her around; she's a grown woman, a queen no less, and she at least should get the privilege of liking the person she chooses for breeding stock.
Other than that, though, the direction is pretty feeble. Nimoy speaks too loudly and woodenly, particularly in the first scene. Shatner hams it up for the first time this season (except for the other Jud Taylor story, "The Paradise Syndrome". Everyone else is given precious little to do, particularly Scotty, who gets to stand in a doorway for three days.
Two stars.
Blink a few times—it'll still be there
by Lorelei Marcus
Rarely does an episode start with so much promise and then fails to deliver so badly. "Wink of an Eye" wastes no time jumping into action, a new technique of Season 3 episodes I'm enjoying a lot, and it continues at a breakneck speed. Some of the setup information is thrown around so fast, it really is blink and you'll miss it. Respite comes at the point of beam-back to the Enterprise, which would be fine, except, like the incessant buzzing in the crew's ears, it never ends.
I don't mind an episode that likes to take its time, but this show just drags on and on. I think partly it's a psychological thing: the time dilation causing the characters to move through time slowly also makes us perceive the slow moments of the show more acutely. The length of an exchange between Kirk and Deela is quite exacerbated when Scotty is stuck stock-still in the background. How are we supposed to expect the plot to move when the characters themselves can't?
Madame Toussaud would like her Doohan back.
This episode also suffers from a bit of the Land of the Giants syndrome, where the special effects take precedence over every other aspect, to the overall detriment of the show. I suspect some of the stiff, uninteresting staging and poor pacing are symptoms of trying to stimulate the time dilation. Scenes could not easily be shot on a rolling camera or from multiple angles for fear of slowed crewmen jumping around to slightly different spots in editing. Even with all the care, the effect is still internally inconsistent as anyone's speed is relative to whichever scene they're in.
I think I've also given director Jud Taylor too much credit. Between "Paradise Syndrome" and "Wink", it's clear he has trouble reining in Shatner's eccentricities, and he consistently has difficulty with pacing. I suspect "Wink" would have been a much more compelling episode with someone like Ralph Senensky directing it. Imagine a rolling camera leading Kirk as he marches briskly through the hall, crewmen stock-still in comparison all around him. Then, more static, but creatively staged dialogy shots, where Kirk always remains in front of a slow-moving crewman who is doing the same three motions such that, in post, the actions are seamless and consistent. I think with a little more vision, it could have worked. [They actually do this in the scenes on the bridge and in the confrontation with Compton, but the corridor walk would have quite effective, similar to what they did in "By Any Other Name" (ed)]
Sadly, this is the version we received.
Two stars.
Brief Lives
by Joe Reid
“Wink of an Eye” is the latest episode of Star Trek from the good people at NBC. I have a few thoughts on what I just witnessed, and I feel it is best this week to lay my cards on the table before I explain how I arrived at my conclusions. First, it was intelligently written up to the point that intelligence became inconvenient to the narrative. It had intelligent characters up to the point that the desired conclusion was endangered. Lastly, it had a credible threat that lost all credibility when examined. If I were to provide a one sentence summary for this entry, it would be “Pride, lust, and expedience bring ruin”.
The episode started with a mystery. Kirk, McCoy, and Spock, along with some others are on an uninhabited alien world, where they expected to find people who were in distress and in need of help. There were no people to be found, but plenty of invisible insects. The insects turned out to be the baddies of the week: a small group of people that move so fast that they are invisible to those moving at normal speeds. After capturing and converting a sole crewman to their side, the beautiful queen of the aliens, Deela, captured Kirk because she was enamored with him. Speeding him up to her own speed, she traps him in her accelerated world while she and her countrymen carry out a plot against the crew.
Also, who could compete with these stylish outfits?
At the beginning this plot and the thinking behind it seemed smart and inscrutable. How in the world could Spock and the others defeat an enemy that moved a hundred times faster than them? As the episode progressed the narrative kept switching back and forth between the people moving at accelerated speed and the people moving at normal speed, and that is where the problem lay. An advanced alien race moving so fast that they rendered normal people as statues would always have the advantage. Spock and crew would never be able to mount a defense against a threat from them. The notion that the crew of the Enterprise would be able to fight back against such a threat, to provide a way for the good guys to win, weakened the story.
My second thought was regarding Deela and her people. She was prideful and calculating. She had every right to be. Deela possessed an overwhelming advantage over the crew, and she reveled in it. She even allowed Kirk to shoot at her with his phaser to prove the utter futility of his situation. She loves that Kirk, fighting as he did, could not overcome her well-thought-out plan. A plan which was short circuited not only by the aforementioned plot device which allowed the crew to fight back against a much faster enemy, but also by Deela’s lust and desire for Kirk. She kissed him repeatedly before he even started moving at her speed and kissed him passionately at their first meeting. Her irrational feelings for Kirk allowed him to manipulate and sabotage her plans to the degree that it allowed the crew the months of subjective time needed to mount a defense against them.
Lastly, there was the credible threat posed by Deela to the crew: that they would be frozen to be used at human chattel for the aliens when needed. The device that was installed on the Enterprise was unable to be touched when defended in person by the aliens but was easily blown to smithereens when Kirk and Spock shot it with their space guns. This third and final failure of this story to save the narrative left a story that started so strong and intelligent as a sad, weak, and uninspired tale turning Deela from a prideful and powerful queen to a horny teen that let a boy trick her into a tryst that ultimately defeated her people.
At the end of the day, the crew should never have been able to outrun an enemy moving a hundred times their speed. Also, the aliens should have lived such brief lives that they would have never met in the first place.
Two stars
[Come join us tonight (December 6th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]
![[December 24, 1968] We Shall Fight Them In The Streets (<i>Doctor Who</i>: The Invasion [Episodes 5-8])](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/681224stepsofstpauls-672x372.jpg)
![[December 22, 1968] What wonders await? (January 1969 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/681222cover-672x372.jpg)
![[December 20, 1968] A failure to communicate (<i>Star Trek</i>: "The Empath")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/681220title-672x372.jpg)
![[December 18, 1968] Sex, Drugs and Boris Karloff: Curse of the Crimson Altar](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Curse_of_the_crimson_altar_poster.jpg)
Another tedious sex party, ho hum.
![[December 16, 1968] Adventure and eulogies (December Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/681216scope-672x372.jpg)
![[December 14, 1968] The Emperor's New Nehru](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Cardin-600x372.jpg)
![[December 10, 1968] Back and forth (January 1969 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/681210cover-671x372.jpg)
![[December 8, 1968] Hippies and Robots (July-December 1968 Playboy)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/681212covere-672x372.jpg)
![[December 6, 1968] Wince of an audience (<i>Star Trek</i>: "Wink of an Eye")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/681206title-672x372.jpg)
