Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 16, 1968] Siriusly? (October 1968 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Summertime, and the living ain't easy

Our longest, hottest summer began early with the shooting of Bobby Kennedy.  It heated up to the sound of Soviet bullets and tank treads in Czechoslovakia and reached a crescendo with the fiasco of a Democratic Convention in Chicago, shuddering in synchronicity with the quake in eastern Iran that killed 10,000.  Meanwhile, radioactive rain from the French H-bomb test soaks Japan, Pete Seeger's daughter, Mika, has been in a Mexico City jail for two months (for participating in anti-police protests), and the 82 crew of the U.S.S. Pueblo are still locked up in North Korea (for participating in unauthorized offshore fishing exercises).

But, hey, thanks to the war in Vietnam, unemployment is at its lowest rate since Korea.  And America has a new Queen, Miss Judith Ford, formerly Queen of Illinois.

Her "subjects" demonstrated a properly American sentiment toward the coronation.  Spurred by a collective called the New York Radical Women, several hundred protesters tossed "beauty" accoutrements into the "freedom trash can": bras, girdles, high-heeled shoes, fake eyelashes, etc.  So there was a bright spot, of sorts.

I wouldn't sent a knight out on a dog like this…

I apologize for coming off sour.  It's not just the season.  I've got a humdinger of a virus, and the latest issue of Galaxy is only making me feel worse.


by Douglas Chaffee

The Villains from Vega IV, by E. J. Gold and H. L. Gold


by Jack Gaughan

Fred Pohl, editor for Galaxy, likes to talk about how Gold, the founding editor for the magazine, was legendarily zealous with his red pen.  Not a single story made it through the slush pile (or any other) without looking like it had been through a Prussian duel.  Now, one could argue that there was merit to this approach: much of vintage Galaxy is superlative.

However, when Gold first submitted a story for an anthology Pohl was putting together, Fred could not help taking delight in a bit of revenge.  He contrived to mark everything, even innocuous conjunctions and prepositions.  When it was done, there was more red than black and white.  The dedication this must have taken!

Reportedly, Gold called Pohl up, and said something to the effect of, "Fred, you're the editor, and I'll defer to your judgment, of course, but…Jesus!"

In any event, it couldn't be this story to which Fred was referring since Villains was co-written by both Gold and his son, Eugene (but not, as I initially thought from the initials, his wife, Evelyn).  It's the silly story of Robert E. Li, President of Vega IV, who comes to Earth to find his young bride, who has run off to be in pictures.  Andytec, a diffident young android, is dispatched to accompany him as bodyguard and detective.

There are some interesting concepts, like the Vegan tradition of 36 year olds marrying 18 year olds, who themselves find new partners upon reaching 36.  At 54, one is then free to marry whomever one likes.  And there's the Bird of Perdition, a chimerical creature biologically rooted into the heads of former criminals (including, surprisingly, the Vegan President).  Semi-intelligent, they spout Poe-derivative prose when alarmed.

But all in all, the story is not funny enough, nor does it break enough ground (indeed, it feels vaguely like a washed out A Specter is Haunting Texas) to sustain its novelet length.  One good bit, however:

"Turn that bloody thing off!" he shouted at me.

"Off, sir?" I said vacantly.  "You can change channels and make it louder, but you can't turn it off.  With the 3V off, what would there be to do?  And it would be so lonely."

Two stars.

All the Myriad Ways, by Larry Niven


by Joe Wehrle, Jr.

Things look up a bit, as they always do, with Niven's latest.  An L.A. cop is trying to decode the recent rash of murders and suicides, all spontaneous, few logically motivated.  The timing suggests a connection with Crosstime, the company that just began producing vehicles that can transit parallel time tracks.  In addition to bringing back marvels from other histories—worlds where the Confederacy won the Civil War, or where the planet has been bombed into searing radioactivity—it has also discovered a philosophical crisis.  If everything that could ever be does exist somewhen, does anything you do really matter?

And would you kill/die to find out?

As usual, the value of the tale is in Niven's crisp telling.  I particularly liked the revelation that the world our detective inhabits is not our Earth.  There's not quite enough to the story to make it truly memorable.  It's more of an idea-piece (or, per the author, an anti-idea piece; he doesn't buy the idea of parallel universes, nor does he appreciate their implications.  This is the ad absurdum extension of the concept.)

Of course, I think there is a middle ground: probabilities do exist.  Just because there are two options doesn't mean their chance of occurring is 50/50.  Or as I tell folks, if I flip a coin, it's 50% likely it comes up heads or tails.  But it's 100% likely the coin falls down rather than up.

So while there may be an infinity of universes, it would seem they would all remain confined to the possible, and the preponderance tend toward the probable.  I could also see timelines sort of merging back together if they were close enough.

Anyway, a good story, and thought-provoking.  Four stars.

Thyre Planet, by Kris Neville


by Dan Adkins

One day, an alien race called the Thyres all, suddenly, disappeared.  They left behind an inhabitable world and a working, planetary teleportation booth grid.  Of course, humans jumped at the chance to settle the planet.

The hitch: each use of the booth has an infinitesimal but non-zero chance of killing the traveler.  Hundreds die each year.  A Terran scientist is dispatched to solve the problem.  Convinced it is tied to some abstruse physical law, he secures billions in funding to crash-start a Manhattan Project to rewrite cosmic law.  The endeavor takes on a life of its own, ultimately eclipsing the original problem.  Said problem remains unresolved until the end, and it turns out to be caused by something completely different.

I found this a deeply frustrating story.  Is it a satire of scientific institutions?  A cautionary tale advising us to look for simple explanations before complex ones?  A screed against hasty colonization?  it all muddles together without a satisfactory payoff.  Maybe I read it wrong.

Two stars.

Homespinner, by Jack Wodhams


by Joe Wehrle, Jr.

Boy, this was a hard one to rate.  It's about a fellow who lives in a future where houses can be done up in a day, rooms completely redecorated as quickly as one might, today, swap out a picture on the wall.  Said fellow is annoyed that his wife keeps changing his home on a weekly basis.  All he wants is some consistency in his life.  Indeed, you can't help wondering why the couple are together at all, so incompatible they seem.  The husband also seems awfully sexist, expecting his wife to stay at home and do virtually nothing but greet him cheerfully after work.

Of course, you'll figure out what's up with their relationship before it's revealed, and that bit is reasonably clever.  The problem is, the getting there is repetitive and unpleasant.  I get why, but I feel a more skilled author could have put it together better.

For some reason, however, I appreciate it enough to give it three stars.

Criminal in Utopia, by Mack Reynolds


by Brand

In yet another story exploring "People's Capitalism", the American welfare state of the 1980s, a citizen embarks on a crime spree to improve his lot.  After all, in a system where everyone is supposed to be equal, the only way to get ahead is to cheat.

The question is: in an economy where income is strictly tied to each person, and all transactions are electronicized and trackable, can a person get more than he deserves?

As usual for Reynolds, a mildly diverting story and some very interesting technologies.  Three stars.

For Your Information: The Orbit of Explorer-1, by Willy Ley

Despite the sexy subject matter (I dig space stuff), this piece on…well…the orbit of Explorer-1…is pretty dull stuff.  I think Ley's heart just isn't in these articles very often anymore.

Three stars.

I Bring You Hands, by Colin Kapp


by Virgil Finlay

A rather amoral fellow is a Hands merchant.  These are tape-programmable, robotic hands that can do a physical task an infinite number of times.  Perfect for replacing assembly line workers, tailors, cooks, you name it.  Along the way, the salesman has an affair with one of the workers whose job he causes to be roboticized.  The end is not a pleasant one for the Hands dealer.

I had a lot of hopes for this story.  I thought it was going to make some sort of statement about mechanization, the ensuing unemployment, and how society adapts to change.  Instead, it was all thrown away for a cheap, obvious, macabre finish.

Two stars.

A Visit to Cleveland General, by Sydney J. Van Scyoc


by Jack Gaughan

Two brothers were in an air-car accident.  Just one emerged.  So why does Albin have trouble distinguishing himself from the deceased Deon?  Why does he need to take a pill every morning "for memory"?  And what are those aerosols Miss Kling, the nurse at Cleveland General, keeps spraying to affect everyone's mood and recollection?  Particularly in surgery, where body parts are shuffled into various people, muddling the identifies of donor and recipient?

Visit is a decent enough piece, thematically and literally, though you'll guess what's going on very quickly.  Scientifically, it makes no lick of sense.

Three stars.

The Warbots, by Larry S. Todd


by Todd

You'd think I would be quite keen on a fictional history of legged assault vehicles.  This one, however, is both too goofy and far too long to scratch that itch.

Two stars.

Behind the Sandrat Hoax, by Christopher Anvil


by Safrani

My first thought upon reaching this final piece was, "Oh, great—a Chris Anvil epistolary story."

And that thought was justified.

It's about how a prospector on New Venus discovers that eating the raw stomach of a desert rat allows the consumer to digest water from grass, but the proud scientific community doesn't like the way the research is done and impedes progress.  All of the scientists are made of straw, you see.

I was surprised not to find this in Analog—I guess sometimes things are too lousy even for Campbell.  On the other hand, Campbell gets the credit for tainting Anvil so that he's now worthless wherever he publishes.

One star.

Dimmer than a thousand squibs

2.4 stars.  Not only is that dismal, but recall that an issue of Galaxy is half-again as long as a normal mag.

There's a reason I paused for breath halfway to tear through The Weathermonger (and that is a good read!) Anyway, all things pass, and summer's only got five days left to it.  Surely next season will see an improvement, yes?




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 14, 1968] Half a Loaf is Better Than None (October 1968 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

You don't have to be a sociologist to realize that the past few years have been one of cultural upheaval. The hippies, the struggle for civil rights, protests against the war in Vietnam; I could go on and on.

An example happened one week ago, when hundreds of women protested at the Miss America pageant. They asked to be treated as human beings, not as stereotyped images of artificial standards of beauty.


Members of the emerging Women's Liberation movement toss things like stiletto heels, makeup, and copies of Playboy magazine into a symbolic garbage can.

A recurring theme of these social changes is the desire for freedom. It can even be seen in popular culture. For nearly a month, for example, the number one song in the USA has been People Got to be Free by the Rascals.


They seem very serious about it.

This is a laudable goal, of course, and there's a long way to go before we can truly say that oppressed groups are liberated. An optimist might say we're halfway there.

Speaking of halfway . . .

Four of One, Half an Octad of the Other

I've been griping for quite a while about Fantastic filling its pages with reprints, along with one or two new stories per issue. Maybe somebody at the magazine heard me. Of the eight stories in the latest issue, only half are reprinted. That's progress!


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

You can see the cover screaming New at you. Ironically, the cover art is old. It served as the back cover of the March 1945 issue of Amazing Stories.


As you can see, they reversed it, covered up a pretty big part of it, and just generally made it look worse.

Did I say halfway? The four new stories take up somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the magazine. They're all clustered together at the front.

The Sound of Space, by Ross Rocklynne

A spaceman returns from a two-year voyage to Alpha Centauri. He shows up at Triton, a moon of Neptune, where his fiancée is waiting for him.


Illustration by Jeff Jones.

She's upset because he hasn't aged at all. (This is supposedly an effect of weightlessness, which seems unlikely to me.) She also doesn't like the fact that space travelers are notorious for being irreligious. She takes him to church, and tells him that she's going to marry the pastor unless he goes back to Earth and ages in its gravity. The spaceman comes up with a wild scheme to show the woman and the pastor what deep space is really like.

The premise of gravity being the cause of aging isn't exactly plausible, to say the least. The story is written in an odd style, with verbal quirks. The woman inserts a fair amount of French into her speech. People often talk in flowery language that doesn't sound like anything anybody would really say. Folks are often referred to as Sir So-and-So (such as Sir Preacher); the spaceman even calls mortality Sir Death.

Two stars.

The Dragons of Telsa, by Arthur Porges

As an example of the care with which the magazine is put together, the cover and the table of contents call this yarn The Dragons of Tesla (note the change in spelling.)

Anyway, this is the latest in a series of science lessons disguised as fiction featuring the clever Ensign De Ruyter. In this tale, he and his captain explore the planet Telsa (not Tesla). It's hot and has an atmosphere without oxygen. There are a huge number of dangerous reptilian predators around.

(Herds of hundreds and hundreds of predators? That seems unlikely, given the typical predator-to-prey ratio you'd expect.)

After wiping out a whole bunch of the beasts with their ray guns, the unlucky pair run out of the energy that powers their weapons. They go hide in a cave, which just happens to have exactly the stuff that De Ruyter needs to save the day.

As I may have suggested above, the plot depends on a pretty outrageous coincidence. (Gosh, the cave has a pool of liquid rubidium and an object that's shaped like a shallow bowl! Just what we need to play Mister Wizard!)

It's like minor league Hal Clement.

Two stars.

Oaten, by K. M. O'Donnell

It's not a big secret that K. M. O'Donnell is actually Barry Malzberg, the magazine's new assistant editor. He's had a few New Wave stories published here and there.

This epistolary tale relates the misadventures of a sort of social psychologist, for lack of a better term, among aliens. He goes through a ritual, not understanding what's going on, leading to a bizarre climax.

I've supplied a pretty bad synopsis, because it's not easy to figure out what's going on. The nature of the so-called Oaten, for example, is particularly puzzling. Then there's that ending . . .

I really don't know what to make of this thing.

Two stars.

Where Is Mrs. Malcolmn?, by Susan A. Lewin

The magazine proudly announces that this is a first publication. That's not always a good sign. In another example of careful editing, the table of contents spells the character's name Malcolm, which looks more normal to me. The text makes it clear that it's really the less likely Malcolmn.


Uncredited photograph, one of three accompanying the story that pretty much all show the same thing.

A woman recovering from a heart attack investigates what she thinks is a water tower that appears out of nowhere. If you've ever read any science fiction before, you'll know exactly what happens.

There's not really much to say about this extremely predictable first story. Was it written just to go with the photographs? Lots of room for improvement, I suppose.

One star.

So much for new stuff. On to the reprints.

Lords of the Underworld, by L. Taylor Hansen

The April 1941 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this yarn.


Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

Three guys are fooling around in the California desert, doing archeological stuff. One of them very casually mentions that he's built a time machine. The main character (the other two disappear from the story quickly) sends himself back thousands of years.


Illustration by St. John also.

This leads to a rip-roaring adventure, as the hero defeats an evil empire nearly by himself. There's a beautiful princess to help him, a sinister cultist to destroy, vampire bats, a saber-toothed tiger, and, yes, a dinosaur. Lots of stuff goes on.

It's all nonsense, of course. There are some nice descriptions, but the whole thing is pretty darn goofy. The open-ended conclusion suggests a sequel, but I don't think there was one.

Two stars.

Between Two Worlds, by Milton Lesser

The December 1955 issue of the magazine is the source of this fantasy story.


Cover art by Edward Valigursky.

A meek fellow has dreams about being Jason from mythology. Of course, he really is living as the legendary hero. He falls in love with the warrior maiden Atalanta, fights with Hercules, wins the golden fleece, and so forth. If you've seen the nifty movie Jason and the Argonauts, you know what to expect. There's a surprise ending that's not surprising.


Illustration by Louis Priscilla.

This piece comes from a brief, odd period in the history of Fantastic when it was dedicated to wish fulfillment stories. Or, as you can tell from the cover, male fantasies. It's not as openly voyeuristic as the other stories seem to be, judging by their descriptions, although Atalanta is stark naked at one point.

As a retelling of an old story, it's OK. Otherwise, there's not much to it.

Two stars.

Bandits of Time, by Ray Cummings

This wild and wooly adventure comes from the December 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Rod Ruth.

A mysterious fellow approaches a reporter and his blind girlfriend. He promises them a wonderful life if they'll meet him at a certain place in the middle of the night. He also says he'll restore the woman's sight.


Illustration by Ruth as well.

Understandably, the reporter is suspicious. He takes his girlfriend home and shows up at the designated place with a fellow newsman, hoping for a big story. Instead, he discovers that the woman has been kidnapped. She and the two reporters are sent two million years into the future.

The weird man who approached them has a mad scheme to set up his own private empire in a distant future when humanity has devolved to a primitive state. He takes along male criminals from all periods of history, as well as kidnapped women to mate with them.

Can the two heroes escape being executed by the insane dictator? Will the woman regain her sight? Will the seductive would-be empress prove to be an enemy or a friend?

Two time travel yarns from 1941, both of them full of nonstop action. This one isn't quite as wacky as the first one, although there's a revelation about the madman's identity that comes out of nowhere.

Two stars.

The Monument, by Henry Slesar

We finish up with a mood piece from the July 1956 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

A small group of tourists are on a spaceship headed for the Moon. A couple of them complain a lot. The captain opens the observation window to show them something.


Illustration by William Llewellyn.

The plot is very simple. The story accomplishes what it sets out to do. Maybe that's enough.

Three stars.

Half Empty or Half Full?

Either I'm in a bad mood or this was a very weak issue. Maybe I should have given out some three star ratings to some of the stories, maybe not. My time might have been better spent making a sandwich.


A full loaf of diet bread counts as half a loaf of regular bread, doesn't it?




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Comics

[September 12, 1968] I’ll See You In My Dreams: Valérian, Agent Spatio-Temporel

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by Fiona Moore

I have been spending a lot of time lately at the Institut Français, both for their interesting lectures and films, and because they have a comfortable reading room which is handy for the universities and museums. This means I have been perusing more than a few copies of the comic magazine Pilote when I’m in town for a lecture.

While Pilote, edited by René Goscinny of Asterix fame, has an excellent variety of styles and artists from Francophone Europe, it’s very rare for it to venture into science fiction.

However, this seems to be changing, with the introduction late last year of a new series, written by Pierre Christin and drawn by Jean-Claude Mézières: Valérian, Agent Spatio-Temporel. Although possibly it ought to be called Valérian et Laureline, for reasons I’ll explain below. So far we’ve had one complete story and one nearly-completed: Les Mauvais Rêves (Bad Dreams) serialised from 9 November 1967 to 15 February 1968, and La Cité des Eaux Mouvants (The City of the Shifting Waters), which began on 25 July this year and is clearly moving towards a climax.

There's robots. Did I mention the robots?
There's robots. Did I mention the robots?

Les Mauvais Rêves is more loosely sketched, in all senses of the word, than its sequel. The story takes place in the year 2720, when the instantaneous teleportation of matter through time and space has been achieved. The result is that that the inhabitants of Galaxity, the planet-spanning empire, have no need to work, except for a small cadre of bureaucrats and agents who are mostly charged with protecting society from time-traveling pirates and scouting for new resources on distant worlds. Everyone else entertains themselves through dreaming.

When people start having nightmares, it transpires that the former head of the dream service, Xombul, has sabotaged the dream computers and fled to medieval France in the year 1000. Agent Valérian pursues him there, where he finds that Xombul is disgusted by humanity’s softness and addiction to dreams. Having learned a set of spells from a medieval magician that will turn humans into monsters and make them follow him blindly (this is, shall we say, not a historically accurate representation of eleventh-century France), Xombul plans to return to the future and take over as emperor of Galaxity. With the aid of a local young woman, Laureline, Valérian must thwart his plans.

Valerian and Laureline enjoying the benefits of the leisure society.
Valerian and Laureline enjoying the benefits of the leisure society.

In the second story, Xombul escapes from custody and flees again into the past, but this time, more cleverly, he has gone into the “Forbidden Zone” of 1986. We learn that the explosion of a hydrogen bomb in that year led to a four-century-long dark age on Earth, which the spatio-temporal agents are not supposed to visit. Valérian and Laureline, the latter of whom has now become a fully-fledged space-time agent, pursue him, of course, to a flooded mid-Eighties New York ruled by looter gang leader and free jazz enthusiast Sun Rae, but what Xombul is doing with his army of robots in the former UN headquarters remains a mystery so far.

Sun Rae in apocalyptic New York.
Sun Rae in apocalyptic New York.

The series as it currently stands shows a lot of promise. Unusually for a European comic, Galaxity is populated by people of all ethnicities who are represented without caricaturing or stereotypes: the same is also true of 1986 New York. There’s an explicit nod to the emerging sub-genre of African and African-American SF and fantasy in the character of Sun Rae, who is based on jazz musician and SF creator Sun Ra. He is portrayed as a shrewd political leader, who is possibly the only one in New York to have realised that the most valuable thing in the city is not the jewels and precious metals, but information and scientific knowledge.

The treatment of women is also exceptional: while there are only two women with speaking roles in the story, and while Laureline does tend to wear figure-hugging costumes, she is never a passive or helpless victim, and so far she has rescued Valérian from danger more times than he has rescued her. The relationship between the two, while affectionate, is also clearly professional, hence why I suggested that they might be regarded as co-protagonists rather than the male agent taking the most prominent position.

Laureline serving dinner with a soupçon of sarcasm.
Laureline serving dinner with a soupçon of sarcasm.

There are also some interesting hints at the way in which the story might develop. Galaxity is plainly not the utopia it claims to be, if most of the population are simply dreaming their lives away: totalitarian though Xombul is, one can see why he finds it so frustrating. It also appears to be governed by small, petty bureaucrats with whom it’s difficult to sympathise. We have not seen any aliens so far, and one wonders if this is a universe with only humans, or if their absence hints at something darker. I’m not quite sure what to make of the apparently unproblematic existence of magic in the story, where medieval France is apparently full of wizards and monsters: whether it’s a confusing mixture of genres or a clever, New Wave, challenging of what we interpret as science.

The story also has a pleasing wit, for instance a rather delightful sequence in La Cité des Eaux Mouvants where Laureline explains how she got from Brasilia, where she arrived in the past, to New York, where her lighthearted narrative of borrowing a plane from the President and hiding it in the suburbs, is belied by the cartoon panels showing her stealing the craft and crashing it into a barn.

Sun Rae's first appearance...
Sun Rae's first appearance…

So far, the most problematic aspect is the variable character art. While Mézières’ landscapes and cityscapes are beautifully rendered, whether a luxury pleasure-garden on Venus or an apocalyptic New York bleakly studded with advertisements, the characters are strange, often grotesque, and change shape from panel to panel. Sun Rae, for instance, gains a bewildering amount of weight between his first and second appearance in the comic. The writing, also, seems on firmer footing in the second story than the first, with Les Mauvaises Rêves involving a lot of plot conveniences and contrivances.

...and Sun Rae's second appearance.
…and Sun Rae's second appearance.

Despite this, I certainly plan to keep following the series, and I hope an English translation will soon be forthcoming, to bring it to a wider international audience. Comics aren’t just for kids, and Valérian shows how the graphic medium can be used to build a sprawling spatio-temporal SF epic.

Four stars.



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 10, 1968] Across time and space… (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time)

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[With Takumi Shibano the first Trans-Pacific guest of honor at a Worldcon (Baycon, this year), it is appropriate that we at long last present our first Japanese correspondent: science fiction fan and jazz enthusiast, Yo Aoyama!]


by Yo Aoyama

Hello!  Yo Aoyama here: 26 and a lifelong resident of Japan.  As a lover of music, novels and movies, I am honored to be able to participate in this journey from the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

When Gideon told me about his fanzine the last time he and his wife were in Japan, I knew I had to join the Journey. Japanese movies and science fiction have already been featured many times, but now you've got a home-grown correspondent to tell you the latest information about Japanese science fiction movies, novels, comics, and more!


The rice field near my home.

It is relatively recently that the genre of science fiction has been recognized in Japan, but it has been booming in recent years. "UchūJin ("Cosmic Dust")" by Takumi Shibano, mentioned in Alison's article last month, was launched in 1957, and "SF Magazine" was launched by Hayakawa Shobo in 1959. At first, "SF Magazine" mainly introduced overseas works, but since 1961, they have held contests for new writers in Japan and have been discovering many talents. In 1963, the Japanese Science Fiction Writers Club was also established, and now science fiction is becoming a major genre in Japan.

For this installment, I want to tell you about The Girl Who Leapt Through Time from the short collection of the same name released in March last year by Yasutaka Tsutsui, who was selected as an honorable mention in the second SF contest and is also active in publishing a fanzine himself.


The cover for The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

When you think of time travel, what works come to mind? Wells' Time Machine? Or is it the hit movie Planet of the Apes that came out earlier this year? Unlike those workers, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was initially announced as a children's literature for junior high and high school students, but adults are beginning to realize its charm, and it is a work everyone on the Journey should know about!

The star of this work is Kazuko Yoshiyama, a girl in her third year of junior high school (9th grade). One day, while cleaning the science room with two of her classmates, the scent of lavender drifting from the laboratory test tube causes her to faint. Three days later, Kazuko discovers her ability to jump through time after almost being hit by a truck, finding herself exactly 24 hours before the incident.  How did she gain this power?  How is it related to the scent of lavender?  And if it is all the result of a suspicious experiment, who is responsible?  Moreover, how does it connect to the string of mysterious events happening around her, including a terrific local earthquake.  Initially confused by the ability she has suddenly gained, she is determined to solve the mystery by making full use of it.

"The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" blends many genres beyond science fiction: romance, mystery, children's literature, but the charm of this work is that deep knowledge of (and utilization of the elements in) the science fiction genre.  This is largely conveyed through the character of Fukushima-sensei, Kazuo's science teacher. 

Fukushima-sensei describes himself as "a person who collects and researches mysterious phenomena…not a scientist, but a researcher, just recording what happened as it is."  Interestingly, when describing the phenomenon, he references a David Lang, who suddenly disappeared in front of his wife, two children and two friends, as described in the book, "Mysteries of the Supernatural", by Frank Edwards, published in Japanese by Hayakawa Publishing in 1963.  Clearly Fukushima-sensei (and Leapt author Tsutsui) have a firm grounding in both contemporary science fiction and 'weird' books.


"Mysteries of the Supernatural—BUT THAT HAPPENED!"

In this way, Fukushima-sensei plays a commentary role while also moving the story along by hinting at the true nature of Kazuko's mystery.  He explains the phenomenon using the terms "teleportation" and "timeleap".  I have not seen the word "timeleap" elsewhere, and it is likely a sort of author-coined 'Japanglish'.  Compared to the common term "time travel", it is a perfect expression for the events of this work, which mainly involve travel in short periods of time without using tools such as time machines.

"The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" is published as the 5th book in the ten-volume "Junior SF" series published by the Tsuru Shobo company, many of which I have read.  These 'children's books' have a charm that is anything but childish.  Science fiction is no longer just for adults.  And with books like these, the boys and girls who read them will be inspired to one day create a reality that mirrors the stories they read in their youth.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[September 8, 1968] Those Darn Space-Hippies (Doctor Who: The Dominators)

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By Jessica Holmes

We’re beginning a brand new series of Doctor Who, and you know what that means. I get to ramble at length about it! The Dominators is our opening serial, coming from the pen of Norman Ashby, who I don’t believe has written for Doctor Who before, nor, as far as I can gather, anywhere else. How very curious.

Is this debut the start of greater things, or an omen of troubles to come? Let’s take a look at Doctor Who: The Dominators. (Note: this review covers four episodes in one go, so it's a little bit of a departure from earlier formats).

In Case You Missed It

The Dominators begins with the arrival of a couple of blokes with terrible fashion sense to the peaceful-to-a-fault world of Dulkis. No, it’s not the Doctor and Jamie, but the Dominators, Rago (Ronald Allen) and Toba (Kenneth Ives). They’ve popped in to refuel their ship, and perhaps also conquer this world and enslave its people. Nice blokes.

The Doctor and company (including new companion Zoe) arrive and soon encounter a team of local surveyors (the Dulceans) who are very surprised to find them here on this island, which until about five minutes ago was positively swimming in radiation. It turns out the Doctor’s choice of location for a beach holiday was a nuclear test site.

They’re soon joined by Cully (Arthur Cox). He's the sole person on the island who has seen the Dominators and lived to tell the tale. He tells them of how he and his friends crash-landed on the island, and approached the Dominators for help only to be slaughtered.

The Doctor and Jamie rush off to investigate these interlopers while Cully and Zoe travel to the planet’s capital to beg for help. Jamie and the Doctor get themselves captured (of course). Cully and Zoe can’t get anyone to listen to them, much less lift a finger to help them deal with the invaders.

The Doctor and Jamie fool the Dominators into thinking they’re too stupid to be worth any notice, or to even be useful as slave labour. The same can’t be said of the survey team, who end up as the Dominators’ slaves.

Zoe and Cully get captured on their return to the island. Unlike the survey team, they have the gumption to do something about it. They manage to get their hands on a weapon and attempt to take out the Dominators’ (frankly adorable) robot servants, but the plan goes awry thanks to the untimely intervention of the Doctor and Jamie. Cully and Jamie end up trapped in an underground bunker, separated from the rest of the group, while the Doctor and Zoe fall back into the Dominators’ hands.

Jamie and Cully don’t stay trapped for long, however.  They turn out to be rather good at disabling the robots, which creates enough of a distraction for the Dominators that the Doctor gets a chance to look around their ship and work out their plan. All this time, the Dominators have been drilling for something, but for what? The island has no mineral resources or oil. However, it is on a thin area of the planet’s crust, making it the ideal place to access the mantle. They’re making a volcano, and plan to blow up a nuclear device inside. The plan is all kinds of daft, but the bottom line is that they’re planning to reduce the planet to irradiated slag to provide fuel for their fleet.

Cully and Jamie rescue the others (the robots are really quite useless at being killing machines) and the Doctor cooks up a plan (and some homemade bombs) for them to continue distracting the Dominators. Meanwhile the rest of the group digs a tunnel to intercept the Dominators’ nuclear device (that part was Jamie’s idea).

They manage to get through in the nick of time, but unable to disarm the nuclear device, the Doctor has no choice but to take it out of harm’s way. By which I mean he smuggles it onto the Dominators’ ship, killing them when it goes off.

The day saved, the Dulceans depart back to the capital, and the Doctor and company had better get going themselves before the Dominators’ man-made volcano blows them all to kingdom come.

Thoughts And Rambles

For me, the most interesting source of tension in this serial is that between the Dominators Rago and Toba. They really, truly cannot stand one another. Both are equally unpleasant, but they have completely incompatible approaches to villainy. Rago’s the cold one. He passes up plenty of opportunities to just kill everyone and have done with it, not out of any compassion but because he would rather not waste resources. Toba, on the other hand, is a volcano in shoulderpads. Just look at him funny and he’ll set his cute little robots on you. I had wondered (and was a bit disappointed when this did not happen) if they would end up killing each other, their cruelty and ambition being their undoing. It would feel more appropriate to the general tone and messaging of Doctor Who than… well, I will get to that in a moment.

The funny thing is that if Rago had listened to Toba and just killed the Doctor in the first place, his plan would have gone off without a hitch. Take note, future villains.

Oh, and speaking of which. The plan. I think there is someone at the BBC who lives to think up new ways of annoying anybody with an O-Level in science. My inner know-it-all simply cannot let it be. There is a deep lack of understanding of how harnessing nuclear energy works. The Dominators use nuclear fuel, but have no reactor, just using the passive radiation from the raw fuel to power their ship. Not exactly efficient. Without a reactor you’ve just got a load of hot rocks. And if you have a lot of them all in one place…well, now you DO have a reactor, don’t you? One which you can’t control.

So the Dominators’ plan to get more fuel for their nuclear-disaster-waiting-to-happen is to dig holes into the planet’s crust, fire rockets into them to trigger an upwelling of magma, then drop a small nuclear device into the base of the resulting volcano. And then it'll spew radioactive lava. Which, for some reason, will cover the whole world. The planet basically becomes a petrol station for the fleet. One: That’s not how volcanoes work. Two: That is not how radiation works. Three: That’s not how… planets work.

The incredibly peaceful Dulceans have this atomic test island, by the way, because a couple of hundred years ago they decided to do research into nuclear energy. As part of their research, they built a bomb (for some reason), set it off, and panicked when it did exactly what bombs are supposed to do. And then they swore off nuclear research altogether. I am going to have a migraine.

It’s one thing to make up daft science about stuff far beyond our scope of knowledge but this is just a bit silly.

However. I can let bad science slide. If it’s a fun idea, who am I to rain on everybody’s parade? What I’m not sure I can let slide is the much more serious issue with this serial.

For all these years, Doctor Who has been quite strictly pacifistic in its philosophy. When the guns come out, the Doctor is in the thick of things trying to persuade everyone to put them away and talk. However, in this serial he spends much of his time trying to persuade the Dulceans in the opposite direction. Now, I’m all for nuanced critique of the limitations of pacifism, but that’s not what this is. It’s the narrative equivalent of having an argument with yourself in the shower.

The Dulceans are pacifist to a degree that goes beyond absurdity. Pacifist does not mean ‘doormat’. Yet the Dulceans are willing to just give up and give their invaders whatever they want. They’re a parody of hippies (sans the free love, but you can’t really show that sort of thing on teatime television), and a bad one at that. They’re very rigid thinkers, the youth accepting the word of their elders as gospel. And they lack curiosity, the council seeing no need to investigate the arrival of the Dominators. Though they might have two hearts, they don't have the slightest ember of rebellion in either of them. Not exactly counter-cultural icons, are they? Nice people, sure, but not a fair representation of pacifists, hippie or otherwise, and their problems would have been over a lot sooner if they’d just been willing to attack the Dominators as soon as they’d started causing trouble.

And that’s a weird message for Doctor Who, isn’t it? Not that it’s a lesson that the Dulceans would even have learned. In the end, the Doctor took care of the threat for them.

Oh, yes. The Doctor killed the Dominators, and I am pretty certain he did not actually have to. If he had time to go and plant the nuclear device aboard the Dominators’ ship, he had time to hop into the TARDIS. He could have flung the device out into space or dropped it on some lifeless moon. It would probably have been quicker; I’m pretty sure the TARDIS was actually the closest ship to the bunker. He had to go out of his way to dispatch the Dominators. That doesn’t seem like a very Doctorish thing to do. Sure, the Doctor might not step in if a villain is about to get themselves killed through their own foolishness, but I wouldn’t say that he makes a habit of making sure they meet a sticky end.

And just to top it all off, this act was ultimately pointless. It was an act of revenge, not one that served to actually ensure the continued safety of the Dulceans. The Dominators mention many times that they are just a small part of a vast fleet bent on conquering the galaxy, and yet the serial ends without any consideration for said fleet. The planet Dulkis may have been spared for now, but do you think it will last long against the full onslaught of the Dominators’ empire?

The Bottom Line

It’s not that this is a bad story, per se. I quite enjoyed it. The Dominators were fairly fun to watch, the Quarks were far too cute to be scary but ultimately quite charming, and I developed a fondness for Cully. He’s a bit of a boy in a man's body, but he’s good in a crisis and possesses a degree of backbone and curiosity not seen in the rest of his people. Plot-wise, it’s not the most exciting or inventive fare, but I am just so glad it wasn’t another base-under-siege.

The problem is the messaging. Ultimately, whether intentional or not, the moral is clear: resisting oppression and pacifism are mutually exclusive. That runs counter to every Doctor Who story I can remember. More often than not the villains are the architects of their own destruction. The heroes win the day with their wits and the strength of their convictions, not through blowing stuff up or slaying a retreating foe.

All in all, it’s a decent story. It just misses the entire point of Doctor Who.

3 stars out of 5 for The Dominators.




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Book, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 6, 1968] Adventures for a Dime: Science Fiction and Horror Dime Novels in West Germany

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by Cora Buhlert

Interesting Times

"May you live in interesting times" is supposedly an ancient Chinese curse, even though the proverb is completely unknown in China.

But be that as it may, we are certainly living in very interesting times, because it has been a long, hot summer of protests and violence here in Europe as well as abroad. Whether in Paris, Prague, Zurich, Rome, Warsaw, Bonn or West Berlin, whether on the western or eastern side of the iron curtain, it seems as if every single day there is another protest, another riot and the violent response of the authorities in the news.

Priests protesting against the West German emergency power act
The massive protests against West Germany's new emergency powers act did not just attract university students. Here we have a group of priests protesting the new law.
Former concentration camp inmates protest the West German emergency laws
Former concentration camp prisoners donned their old prisoner uniforms to protest the West German emergency measures act. A similar law was abused in the 1930s and paved Hitler's way to power.
Soviet tanks crush protests in Prague, Czecheslovakia
Soviet tanks crush protests in Prague, Czecheslovakia
Protests in Paris
Massive protests in Paris on May 1.
Police versus protesters in Paris
Student protesters clash with the police in Paris.
Burned out bus in Mexico city
A burned out bus during students protests in Mexico City.
Sit-in in Zurich
A sit-in in Zurich where protesters took over an empty department store.

Burning Streets and Sappy Songs

Maybe the fact that this has been such a violent year is the reason why the pop songs dominating the West German charts are so extremely saccharine. Songs by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones regularly hit the West German charts, but the breakout star of 1968 in West Germany is a young Dutch singer known as Heintje (real name Hein Simons) who just celebrated his thirteenth birthday last month.

Now young Heintje has a beautiful voice – at least for now, because puberty will eventually hit. However, the songs he is made to sing are painfully saccharine. His breakout hit was "Mama", a song that's already thirty years old and was originally written for Beniamino Gigli. His follow-up "Du sollst nicht weinen" (You shall not cry), a version of "La Golondrina", a Mexican song that is already more than a hundred years old, is currently topping the West German charts. And Heintje (or rather his manager) have even more plans. A new song called "Oma so lieb" (Grandma so kind) is coming out soon and Heintje will also appear in the movie Zum Teufel mit der Penne (To Hell With School).

Meanwhile, enjoy this performance of his breakout hit "Mama":

Escape at the Newsstand

While some are seeking escape from the violence on the news in sappy pop songs, others head for the spinner rack at their local newsstand to peruse the offerings and lose themselves in fantastic worlds.

West German newsstand 1960s
A typical West German newsstand.
Typical West German newsstand
Another example of a typical West German newsstand.

I've written before about the so-called “Heftromane”, digest-sized 64-page fiction magazines sold at newsstands, gas stations, grocery stores and wherever magazines are sold. West German newsstands carry a bewildering array of "Heftromane" in variety of genres. Westerns, crime novels, war novels and romance novels with subgenres such as aristocratic romance, Alpine romance and medical romance are still the most popular, but there are also a number of science fiction series to be found.

The State of the United Galactic Empire

The eight hundred pound gorilla of West German science fiction is still Perry Rhodan. The series launched in September 1961 and is still going strong seven years later. In fact, I just picked up issue No. 366 today.

Perry Rhodan 366
The latest issue of Perry Rhodan.

It has been almost four years, since I last checked in on Perry Rhodan's adventures in these pages, and a lot has happened since then.

Perry Rhodan's own Solar Empire and the Great Empire of Perry's Arkonian allies joined forces to form the United Galactic Empire. However, this new Empire continues to be beset by crises from within and without. And so Perry Rhodan and friends have been travelling to distant galaxies and also tangling with time cops.

A major internal crisis facing the United Galactic Empire was the revolt of the planet Plophos. Under the rule of the tyrannical Iratio Hondro, the Plophosians managed to shoot down Perry Rhodan's flagship Crest, imprisoned the crew and tried to poison them. However, Perry Rhodan managed to escape with the aid of Mory Abro, daughter of a Plophosian opposition leader.

Perry Rhodan
Perry Rhodan's future wife Mory Abro is caught in the embrace of a bug-eyed monster on Jonny Bruck's cover for issue 186.

Initially, Mory and Perry disliked each other intensely, but during their perilous flight they fell in love. Eventually, Perry Rhodan and Mory Abro were married and had twins, a girl named Suzan Betty and a boy named Michael Reginald. So Perry Rhodan finally found some happiness after losing his first wife Thora all the way back in issue 78.

Since Perry Rhodan and most of his supporting cast are near immortal due to their cellular activators, time moves fast in the series and so the twins are already adults in the current issues. Suzan Betty studied mathematics, founded a chain of banks and eventually married the brilliant but scatterbrained scientist Geoffry Abel Waringer, initially against her parents' wishes.

Perry Rhodan 302
Suzan Betty Rhodan poses with Gucky the telepathic Mousebeaver and Gucky's son Jumpy on the cover of issue 302.

Unlike his sister, Michael Reginald Rhodan chafed against finding himself in the shadow of his father. He ran away from home several times as a boy and finally left for good at age twenty-four. Fascinated by the French Revolution, he took the name Roi Danton, started dressing in eighteenth century garb for reasons best known to himself and joined the Free Traders, eventually rising to their king.

Perry Rhodan 300
Michael Reginald Rhodan a.k.a. Roi Danton displays his rather unusual sense of style on the cover of issue 300.

Since the death of Thora, Perry Rhodan was sorely lacking in regular female characters, so Mory Abro and Suzan Betty Rhodan are welcome additions to the series. Even more welcome would be women authors, for the writing staff of Perry Rhodan is still all male. Which is a massive oversight, especially since West Germany does have female science fiction writers such as Lore Matthaey, prolific writer, translator and editor of the Utopia Zukunftsroman series, or the writer behind the pseudonym Garry McDunn, who I have on good authority is actually a woman.

Perry Rhodan's Rivals

Success breeds imitators and so other "Heftroman" publishers launched their own science fiction series, all inspired by Perry Rhodan and all inevitably starring square-jawed spacemen.

I already wrote about Ren Dhark, the Martin Kelter publishing company's foray into the science fiction genre. The brainchild of Perry Rhodan writer Kurt Brand, the saga about Terran colonists who crash-landed on the planet Hope is still going strong two years later. By now, the Terrans and their leader Ren Dhark have found not only traces of intelligent aliens they've named the Mysterious (because no one knows what they look like) but also a giant spaceship called Point of Interrogation. Ren Dhark and his crew repaired and launched the Point of Interrogation and are currently searching for both the Mysterious and Earth, which Ren Dhark, who was born in space aboard the colony ship Galaxis, has never seen.

Ren Dhark

Ren Dhark is enjoyable enough and has gradually also established its own identity as more than just a Perry Rhodan copy. The mystery behind the mysterious Mysterious is certainly compelling, though I hope the resolution, when it eventually comes, lives up to the mystery.

In November 1966, Bastei Verlag entered the science fiction arena with Rex Corda – Der Retter der Erde (Rex Corda – Saviour of the Earth). The brainchild of West German science fiction author H.G. Francis (real name Hans Gerhard Franciskowsky), the series finds Earth first near destroyed in a nuclear war and then caught in the middle of an intergalactic conflict between the Laktones and the Orathones, which has lasted for millennia. The titular characters Rex Corda is a US senator who tries to save the Earth from getting destroyed by the two warring factions.

Rex Corda No. 1
The cover for the first issue of Rex Corda.

Rex Corda is a lot more political than either Perry Rhodan or Ren Dhark and the parallels to the war in Vietnam are more than obvious. Maybe this is why Rex Corda only lasted for thirty-eight issues, ending last year.

Rex Corda
Don't worry, the attractive woman Rex Corda is protecting from an intergalactic petrodactyl is his sister.

The End of Utopia

After the cancellation of Rex Corda, H.G. Francis and his writing team launched a new science fiction series in the pages of the long-running science fiction anthology series Utopia Zukunfsroman.

Ad Astra – Chet Morrows Weg zu den Sternen (Ad Astra – Chet Morrow's Way to the Stars) started last year. The series is set in a solar system not unlike what could be found in the pages of pulp magazines like Planet Stories twenty years ago. Chet Morrow serves as an ensign aboard the interplanetary spaceship Dyna-Carrier, which is beset by saboteurs. After unmasking the saboteurs, Chet Morrow is promoted to Second Lieutenant and has many adventures around the solar system, while finding traces of alien visitors. Eventually, Chet Morrow becomes commander of the interstellar spaceship Sword of Terra and heads the first expedition to Alpha Centauri, which not only turns out to be inhabited, but also houses a human colony consisting of the descendants of ancient Romans who were abducted by aliens.

Ad Astra 1
The cover for the first Ad Astra novel "Sabotage at the Dyna-Carrier" looks very much like a Perry Rhodan cover.

Ad Astra

Ad Astra was certainly thrilling, and indeed the quality of the two H.G. Francis science fiction series Rex Corda and Ad Astra was higher than the average Perry Rhodan clone. Alas, Ad Astra was prematurely cut short, when Utopia Zukunftsroman was cancelled earlier this year after fifteen years. Worse, Ad Astra ended on a down note with the Earth and much of the solar system seemingly destroyed by a rogue comet.

Utopia Zukunftsroman may be history, but its competitor Terra Science Fiction is still being published, though the anthology series was rebranded as Terra Nova this year. The publisher Zauberkreis Verlag also entered the science fiction anthology market with Zauberkreis SF two years ago.

Utopia Zukunftsroman
The final issue of Utopia Zukunftsroman featured a German translation of "Objectif Tamax" by French science fiction author Peter Randa.

But even if the West German "Heftroman" market does not look too promising for any science fiction series not named Perry Rhodan, a very interesting series in another genre just launched.

Things Get Spooky

Silber-Krimi (Silver Mystery) is a long-running crime fiction anthology series which started in 1952. Over the years, several recurring sleuths popped up in the pages of Silber-Krimi, the best known of them FBI Agent Jeff Conter and the crime-solving Butler Parker. But while the crimes in Silber-Krimi may occasionally seem far-fetched, they are still happening in our world.

Silber Grusel Krimi 747

This changed with issue 747 in July, when the regular Silber-Krimi bore the subtitle "Silber Grusel Krimi – Ein Roman für starke Nerven" (Silver Spooky Mystery – a novel for readers with strong nerves). Intrigued, I picked up the issue and was treated to "Das Grauen schleicht durch Bonnards Haus" (Horror creeps through Bonnard's house) by the appropriately named Dan Shocker.

After a spooky opening with a young man being pursued by beings unknown, the novel introduces us to Larry Brent, an FBI agent on holiday in France. FBI agents are popular protagonists in West German crime fiction, likely due to the enormous success of the "Heftroman" series G-Man Jerry Cotton.

However, it's very much a busman's holiday for Larry Brent, for no sooner has he arrived in France than he finds a body, completely drained of blood. Regular readers of spooky stories will find this quite ominous. And indeed, Larry Brent is attacked by a bona fide vampire soon thereafter. He vows to stop the bloodsucking fiend and finds that he is not the only one who is investigating the vampire killings. No, an agent of a mysterious organisation named PSA (short for Psychoanalytische Spezialabteilung, i.e. Psychoanalytic Special Unit) is also on the case. The story ends with the vampires vanquished and Larry Brent becoming on agent of the PSA himself.

"Das Grauen schleicht durch Bonnards Haus" is a satisfying horror novel, though the author clearly has no idea what psychoanalysis is and that it has nothing to do with investigating paranormal phenomena and everything with Sigmund Freud. Nonetheless, the novel proved popular enough that Larry Brent is getting a second outing this month.

But who is the author behind the outlandish pseudonym Dan Shocker? Well, it turns out that he is Jürgen Grasmück. Though only twenty-eight years old and using a wheelchair since his teens, Grasmück has already had a lengthy career. He started writing science fiction novels at sixteen and was a staff writer on both Ad Astra and Rex Corda. Grasmück tended to include horror elements into his science fiction novels and has clearly found his calling with the Larry Brent novels.

Quo Vadis, Heftroman?

Even though Perry Rhodan continues to be popular, other science fiction series have had a hard time in the West German "Heftroman" market. Will we eventually see another challenger to Perry Rhodan arise or was Ad Astra the last attempt to establish an ongoing science fiction series?

Meanwhile, occult investigator Larry Brent is an intriguing new character to arrive in the pages of the rather staid Silber-Krimi. Will his adventures continue, or will Larry Brent's second case also be his last?

We'll find out… at the newsstand.

West German newsstand




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Conventions/Performances

[September 4, 1968] Open your Golden Gate (Baycon: Worldcon 1968)

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by Gideon Marcus

Goodness, what a show!

After eight days of the GOP and then the Democratic conventions, it was sure nice to go to a place where everyone was normal…at least, per our definition of normal.


Baycon program.  From Fanac

Worldcon exploded in attendance last year, in part thanks to the influence of Star Trek, and it shows no sign of fading.  Nearly 1500 people came to the Claremont Hotel in placid, undramatic Berkeley, California for a weekend of fan interaction.

Just lookit all the faces!


From Calisphere


Anne McCaffrey, Leigh Brackett, Blanche Williamson, Edmond Hamilton, Jack Williamson.  From Fanac

There was an auction: Philip José Farmer got $210 for his Esperanto translation of Tarzan of the Apes while Kelly Freas got $160 for his painting, "The Royal Road"—the second highest art price in Worldcon history.

Also, Harlan Ellison auctioned David Gerrold, the newcomer who wrote "The Trouble with Tribbles"


From Fanac

Harlan was, in turn, auctioned by Bob Silverberg.


From Fanac

The Masquerade Ball was a tremendous success.  Here's a sampling of costumes:


Best SF: Bruce Pelz as Heavy Trooper from The Dragon Masters From Fanac


Most Beautiful: Lin Carter as Elric From Fanac


Most Humorous: Cory Seidman as a bottle of Cor(rection) Flu(id).  From Fanac

Contemporaneous with the Baycon was a Medieval event held by the Society for Creative Anachronism.  This Bay Area organization has a lot of cross-over with the science fiction community, with a lot of fen sporting Middle Ages alter egos.


from Calisphere

Aiding the…otherworldly attitude of the convention was the infusion of mind-altering substances.  While at Nycon, there was some partaking of grass, Baycon marked the arrival of magic little pills from Los Angeles sold at 50¢ a pop.  Everyone was trying them, including Philip K. Dick.  Supposedly, they were filled with THC—turns out it was actually PCP!  This tidbit courtesy of Ted White.


I think Dick has had enough.  From Calisphere

But, of course, the main event was the Fanquet, and the Hugo Awards handed out therein.  Let's take a look:

Best Novel

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny [Doubleday (and F&SF)]

Nominees

The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany [Ace]
Chthon by Piers Anthony [Ballantine]
The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson [Pyramid]
Thorns by Robert Silverberg [Ballantine]

I'm not sorry Lord got the top spot, though reviews have been more mixed of Zelazny's work than of Delany's.  As for the others, Thorns was a bit too unpleasant for me, though Vic Silverwolf liked it, The Butterfly Kid was fine…as a bit of Greenwich Village fanfiction, and the less said about Chthon, the better.

This is one of the worst years for alignment between The Galactic Stars and the Hugos.  Let's hope future history looks to us for guidance rather than Worldcon voters.

Best Novella

Co-Winner: “Riders of the Purple Wage ” by Philip José Farmer [Dangerous Visions]

Co-Winner: “Weyr Search” by Anne McCaffrey [Analog]

Nominees

“Damnation Alley” by Roger Zelazny [Galaxy]
“The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany [Worlds of Tomorrow]
“Hawksbill Station ” by Robert Silverberg [Galaxy]

Here, we end up in much closer alignment between Stars and Hugos. I am quite surprised that "Damnation" ended up here; I can only assume Zelazy has knee-jerk support from his fans.  Also, "Purple Wage", while Victoria Silverwolf loved it, she did not love it enough to nominate it for the Star…and neither did anyone else.

C'est la Gernsback.

Best Novelette

“Gonna Roll the Bones” by Fritz Leiber [Dangerous Visions]


Leiber accepting his award.  From Fanac

Nominees

“Wizard’s World” by Andre Norton [If Jun 1967]
“Faith of Our Fathers” by Philip K. Dick [Dangerous Visions, 1967]
“Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” by Harlan Ellison [Knight May 1967]

What a divergence here!  Only Leiber made the Stars list (and there was debate behind the scenes on that one), although the Dick made it as an Honorable Mention.  Still, it's nice to see Norton on the ballot, even if that's not the work I would have chosen as her best from 1967 (Moon of Three Rings)

Short Fiction

Winner: “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison [If]

Nominees

“The Jigsaw Man” by Larry Niven [Dangerous Visions]
“Aye, and Gomorrah" by Samuel R. Delany [Dangerous Visions]

Last year, we had, what?  Seven entries to choose from?  Only having three short story nominees (for comparison, the Stars had thirteen just in the Novelet category) really does the field a disservice.

As for the choices, well, Harlan's story is certainly memorable, and we've no complaints about the Gomorrah.  There's nothing wrong with "The Jigsaw Man", but it's not one of the best stories of 1967.  Indeed, per Larry, it wasn't even a final draft.  He wanted to polish it before sending it on to a magazine, but Harlan, soliciting stories for Dangerous Visions, said he'd liked it raw.

If there's one thing the Hugos show, though, it's that Ellison has an outsized influence on the Hugo nominators.  Nearly half of the sub-novel nominees came from DV, and two more pieces were penned by the man (and see below…).

"Harlan's ego grew three sizes that day…"

Best Dramatic Presentation

Winner: Star Trek – “The City on the Edge of Forever” [Desilu] Directed by Joseph Pevney; Written (sort of) by Harlan Ellison

Nominees

Star Trek – “The Trouble with Tribbles” [Desilu] Directed by Joseph Pevney; Written by David Gerrold

Star Trek – “Mirror, Mirror” [Desilu] Directed by Marc Daniels; Written by Jerome Bixby

Star Trek – “The Doomsday Machine” [Desilu] Directed by Marc Daniels; Written by Norman Spinrad

Star Trek – “Amok Time” [Desilu] Directed by Joseph Pevney; Written by Theodore Sturgeon

Talk about outsized influence!  Last year, there was a lot of worry in the community that Trek wouldn't win since there were five nominees, three of which were Trek episodes.  The concern was that the Trek vote would get split such that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or Fahrenheit 451 would win.

No such trouble this year!  City would not have been my top choice, however.  It wasn't even in the top five for me.  I'd have picked Doomsday Machine as it is both stellarly SFnal and quite good.  Mirror, Mirror is even better, but it requires a knowledge of Trek to fully appreciate, whereas Spinrad's script does not.

I do appreciate all the big SF names in this line-up.  Trek really is our show.

Best Professional Magazine

Winner: IF Science Fiction ed. Fred Pohl

Nominees

Analog Science Fiction and Fact ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr.
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction ed. by Edward L. Ferman
Galaxy ed. by Fred Pohl
New Worlds ed. by Michael Moorcock

This is, with the exception of the addition of F&SF, an exact duplicate of last year's slate.  IF seems to be floating on inertia since last year marked the beginning of its decline.  On the other hand, 1967 was a pretty middlin' year for mags anyway, so I suppose any pick is a fair one.

I'm just glad Amazing didn't make the cut…

Best Professional Artist

Winner: Jack Gaughan

Nominees

Frank Kelly Freas
Chesley Bonestell
Frank Frazetta
Gray Morrow
John Schoenherr

I'm not sure why Jack won–he's not bad, but he's easily my least favorite of this group (Schoenherr is my favorite, but Freas, being #2, tries harder–there are whole issues of Analog that only have his art in them!)

Frazetta does't do magazines, but he does do a lot of high profile book covers.  Gray Morrow's work is always consistent, always pretty good.  I'm surprised not to see Virgil Finlay here, but I suppose his comeback didn't start until later last year.

Best Fanzine

Winner: Amra ed. by George H. Scithers

Nominees

Australian Science Fiction Review ed. by John Bangsund
Lighthouse ed. by Terry Carr
Yandro ed. by Robert Coulson and Juanita Coulson
Odd ed. by Raymond D. Fisher
Psychotic ed. by Richard E. Geis

Sadly, Lighthouse is no more (though its final issue had an hysterical piece by Ellison, the last word in Adam & Eve stories).  Yandro remains consistent, and a good source of Trek news.  I like ASFR when I can get a copy.

Offhand, I'm not familiar with the rest.  I do note the conspicuous absence of Galactic Journey…again!

Best Fan Writer


From Calisphere

Winner: Ted White

Nominees

Ruth Berman
Harry Warner, Jr

I'm quite excited about this list.  Ted, of course, is a polarizing figure, but he's never boring.  He is also quite friendly to fellow fen, even if he is now also a "filthy pro", and we have had a long and enjoyable correspondence for years.

Ruth Berman, of course, is both a superfan AND a big Trek booster.  She practically wrote Inside Star Trek.  We became acquainted this year, and she is a delight.

Harry Warner has been around since the dawn of time, and I always look forward to his FAPA (Fantasy Amateur Press Association, natch) contribution (Horizon).  He lives in Hagerstown, not far from my mother-in-law.  I should visit him someday…

Best Fan Artist

Winner: George Barr

Nominees

Bjo Trimble
Johnny Chambers
Steve Stiles
Arthur “ATom” Thomson

Barr, in addition to being a prolific cover artist, does the comic "Broken Sword", which appears in the fanzine, Trumpet.  I've seen Trimble's art in various zines, clean and cute lineart.  Johnny Chambers does the 'zine Ymir, Steve Stiles' work appeared in Cry of the Nameless (which just got revived!), and you probably know UK artist ATom from Hyphen.

Where next?

One of the most important items of business at any Worldcon is the determination of where the next Worldcon will be held.  The one bid I'd heard advanced as an alternative to St. Louis was Columbus, Ohio.  In the end, St. Louis trounced Columbus 393 to 5 (with a few votes going to such places as Tel Aviv, Leningrad, and Deer Knuckles, British Columbia, etc.—maybe year after next).

Incidentally, it was also decided that Worldcons would happen overseas every fifth year.  For those waiting eagerly for a West Berlin convention (unless you want Berlin, Maryland), it'll be a while.

Anyway, we already have a Guest of Honor for '69: artist Jack Gaughan.  Fan Guest of Honor will be Ted White.  Two fan/pros.  Interesting.

Hope to see you there, but if you can't make it, remember that a supporting membership is just $2 (enjoy it while you can—they're gonna vote to raise it to an outrageous $3 next year…)


From Fanac




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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 2, 1968] What might have been (October 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

From spring straight into the fall

Back in April, I reported on the early days of the “Prague Spring,” First Secretary Alexander Dubček’s effort to reform Czechoslovakian communism and create “socialism with a human face.” Dubček managed to keep his plans afloat through the spring and much of the summer, but—as anyone who has been following the news is aware—the Soviet bear has flexed its claws and put an end to ideas of openness and freedom of speech. But not without creating a few cracks in the Warsaw Pact.


A Soviet armored vehicle comes to a fiery end.

The first sign of trouble came in June. Military maneuvers by Warsaw Pact forces took place in Czechoslovakia as scheduled, but Soviet troops were slow to leave the country after the conclusion. A number of communist leaders visited Prague over the course of a week in early August; some, like East Germany’s Walter Ulbricht and Hungary’s János Kádár, probably trying to bring Dubček to heel, while Yugoslavia’s Tito and Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu were no doubt more encouraging. Ceaușescu certainly was, since he signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with Czechoslovakia and has loudly condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the last few days.

It’s not clear what straw broke the camel’s back, though the announcement that Czechoslovakia was considering loans from the World Bank might have accelerated things. In any case, at 11:00 PM on August 20th Warsaw Pact forces rolled across the border in numbers not seen in Europe since the end of World War II. Dubček and other reformist leaders were arrested, and the Soviets tried to install a puppet government, but the people of Czechoslovakia weren’t having it. On the 22nd, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia met hastily and elected a new central committee and presidium, which then unanimously re-elected Dubček as First Secretary.


Somewhat more peaceful resistance.

The invasion triggered protests around the world, even by some Communist parties in western and neutral countries. In Czechoslovakia, although the military was never ordered to oppose Warsaw Pact forces, the invaders have been met with protests and violence. Alas, it was not enough. The arrested leaders signed an agreement to roll back their reforms on the 26th, and after returning to Prague on the 27th, Dubček gave a tearful radio address, asking Czechoslovakians to end their resistance as well as for their forgiveness for his surrender. As I write, that is where things stand, and like Hungary a dozen years ago, Czechoslovakia has been brought back into the fold.

Lost in the fog

A couple of the protagonists in this month’s IF spend their stories wandering in a daze. Unfortunately, the far less successful of the tales takes up nearly a third of the magazine and feels like a lot more, overwhelming an otherwise decent issue.

Scientists on Mars make an unexpected find. Art by Chaffee

High Weir, by Samuel R. Delany

A group of scientists investigate an ancient Martian temple and discover that the jeweled eyes of the sculptures contain moving holographic images. Meanwhile one of their number, linguist Rimkin, suffers a severe mental breakdown.

Art by Gaughan

Normally, I’d complain about the idea of an ancient Martian temple, but Delany’s writing is just so gorgeous I don’t care. He also has the skill to keep the viewpoint entirely with a man slowly losing his mind, keep the story coherent and include a discussion of information storage that ties the whole thing together. Not his best work, but still excellent.

Four stars.

Report on Japanese Science Fiction, by Takumi Shibano

Top Japanese fan Takumi Shibano (for more on him see last month’s article by my colleague Alison Scott) tells us about the state of science fiction in Japan. The first half of the article offers a brief history of the genre in Japan, from the inter-war years to today; the second half is a run-down of the authors in the field today and the sort of things they write. The history is very good, while the second half is a bit dry. But maybe something in there will catch a publisher’s eye and prompt a translation or two.

A high three stars.

Deathchild, by Sterling Lanier

A baby named Joseph is the ultimate weapon; anyone who comes into unprotected contact with him dies horribly. Is he enough to keep a surging communist China from conquering all of Asia and bring them to the negotiation table?

Feeding time. Art by Virgil Finlay

After a slow start under John Campbell’s tutelage, Lanier seems to have come into his own as an author. There’s certainly some good writing here, however it’s too long. Worse, the concept behind Project Inside Straight is utterly absurd. The quality of the line-by-line writing is just enough to keep the story’s head above water.

Three propped-up stars.

Paddlewheel on the Styx, by Lohr Miller

From the title, I was expecting something in the mode of John Kendrick Bangs or Riverworld. Instead, we have the tale of an attempt to rescue a crashed spaceship on the shore of a river of molten metal on Mercury. It’s beautifully poetic, but it falters a bit right at the end. I will forgive the lapse, though, because this month’s new author is very new indeed: he won’t be 14 until sometime in November. This is very well done for someone so young, and I hope we see more from master Miller in the future.

A solid three stars.

The Proxy Intelligence, by A.E. van Vogt

Space vampires and some nonsense about intelligence. ‘Nuff said.

The head vampire meets the scientist and his beautiful daughter. Art by Gaughan

This unasked-for sequel to Asylum (Astounding, May 1942) is a confused mess. The protagonist wanders through the story in a daze due to his exposure a vastly superior intelligence, but unlike with Delany’s story the reader comes away knowing even less than the “hero.” In desperation, I tracked down the original story. While it did clarify who all the characters are, I can’t say it helped otherwise.

Barely two stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey looks at what is coming to be known as materials science, the study of improving the materials we use to make things and developing entirely new ones. He covers a wide variety of topics, such as building materials that can be eaten in a pinch, metals that dampen impacts, materials that can be induced to return to a given shape, and many more ideas. This was all inspired by The New Materials by David Fishlock, which he makes sound very interesting indeed. But then, this is a field I’ve long had something of an interest in.

Four stars for me, maybe slightly less if your interests are different.

Or Battle’s Sound, by Harry Harrison

Dom Priego is a university student doing a hitch in the military. His unit is tasked with boarding an enemy spaceship carrying a matter transmitter and keeping them from sending through a huge mass of men and equipment.

Dom fights his way through the enemy ship. Art by Adkins

On the surface, Harrison has given us an entertaining space opera, but underneath it is the philosophical question of why we fight. Overall, this is very well done, but I think it’s the wrong length. Either the combat scenes need to be tightened up, reducing the story by a couple of pages, or it needs to be a lot longer, so we can get to know Dom better, say some stuff from before he signed up and why he did so.

A high three stars.

Pupa Knows Best, by James Tiptree, Jr.

In this sequel to The Mother Ship, more aliens come to Earth. First some blue lizards who leave behind some mysterious missile-like objects, followed by the Siggies, who everybody likes. Earth people start picking up aspects of the alien culture, and then things start to go wrong.

Siggie religion features quaint rituals. Art by Brand

I liked this one a bit more than the first story. Maybe that’s because I have an easier time accepting the underlying premise. In any case, it’s a pithy tale dealing with both religion and the effects of colonization.

Three stars.

Summing up

This could have been a pretty good issue. All but one story are average to very good. Even the low score for “Deathchild” is mostly due to the highly unbelievable premise; up until that is revealed, it’s a good read. But then there’s van Vogt. A “complete novel condensation in a special section” it says on the cover. As I said, if it’s condensed, they took out too much. As for the special section, the magazine is the same length it always is; the story just squats right in the middle like some sort of unpleasant toad. Can we please go back to serials?

Three out of the four have potential, but I’d rather have the whole Zelazny.




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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 31, 1968] The Sound and the Fury (September 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

In the backround (and sometimes the foreground) of my reading of this month's issue of Analog was the Democratic National Convention held over four tumultuous days in the Windy City.  This was not four days of politicians patting themselves on the back, as we saw in Miami Beach for the GOP Convention—amid the citywide busdrivers and telephone workers strike, there was tumult, walk-outs, protests, and a general breakdown of the democratic process.


Il Duce, Mayor Daley, intent on turning his town into a police state in the pursuit of Law and Order: 12,000 cops plus a contingent of National Guard were on hand last weekend.

The writing was on the wall that first day when Julian Bond arrived with his alternate set of Georgia delegates, the group that broadly represented the demographic makeup of the Georgia Democratic Party.  First, they were not even allowed in; then they were grudglingly placed in the cheap seats of the balcony.  All while Daniel Inouye, Senator from Hawaii, gave a stirring, unprecedented keynote speech in which he decried the anarchy and violence occurring outside the convention halls, but nevertheless put on the assembly the responsibility of rectifying the racial injustice that led to such agitation.

Eventually, the delegates prepared to vote on the certification of the Georgia delegation that had been approved by the party—the less integrated one.  Actually, first they voted on if they were going to vote on it that evening.  It was during this battle that the Michigan delegation offered their seats to the alternate Georgia delegation, a move that enraged members of the "official" delegation.

With regard to who was going to get the Presidential nomination, by the end of the first night, it was clear McCarthy was a dead duck, and few were mentioning McGovern.  However, there was a rising "draft Kennedy" movement that peaked on Day 2 despite Ted repeatedly saying he wasn't interested.  More dramatically, Day 2 marked the day police evicted 1,000 protesters from nearby Lincoln Park, CBS correspondent Dan Rather got punched by plainclothes security for not wearing his credentials prominently, dozens of delegates, mostly Black, walked out, and Georgia Governor Lester Maddox took his ball and went home, saying he was going to stump for segregationalist independent candidate, George Wallace.


Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out…

And that night, I'm pretty sure they still hadn't certified the Georgia delegation.

On the third day, 10,000 protesters gathered at Grant Park, a terrific anti-War demonstration broke out on the floor of the convention, and the minority position tried in vain to make an end to bombing North Vietnam a part of the party plank.  By the time Humphrey was anointed the candidate (a foregone conclusion by that point), it was an anti-climax and anything but a triumphant coronation.  And what a change twenty years has wrought: the Southern delegations that walked out on the convention in '48 are now behind Humphrey, where the liberals who admired the fiery populist now reject the man they view as Johnson's stooge.

Discontent was rampant.  Delegates were frustrated that they were not listened to, that the motions they were voting on were not sufficiently explained, and that Mayor Daley was strong-arming them into voting the way he wanted them to.  Not to mention that there wasn't enough food to feed everyone in the convention's vicinity, and the hot dogs on site were terrible. Many said 1968 marked the death of the party convention, at least in its current incarnation.

But the political strife was as nothing compared to the rivers of blood that were shed as blue-helmeted cops clashed with protestors.  "The Whole World is Watching" and "Fuck LBJ" intertwined with shouts and screams, and all of it was televised in full color (but not live, as that was impossible due to the strikes and Daley's security efforts).

The only bright spot of that third evening was the nomination of D.C. and Black native son the Rev. Channing Phillips, the first American of African descent to be nominated by a major political party for President.

By the fourth day, I was exhausted, yet I tuned in anyway.  I'm glad I did.  That evening, the convention played a retrospective on RFK.  It was too hagiographic, and frankly, the wounds too fresh to bear close watching, at least for me.  But when it was over, something amazing happened.  Virtually the entire audience of delegates, excluding just the groups from Texas and Illinois, rose to its feet and began clapping.  Louder and louder, and then they started singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."  Over and over, "Glory Glory Hallelujah, His truth is marching on."  Daley's henchmen tried to impose order.  They gaveled.  They called out the Sergeants-in-Arms.  Nothing deterred the delegates.  All of the anger, all the discontent, all of the frustrated might-have-beens boiled over in that moment into this display of singing, of shouting, of clapping.

It was only defused when a moment of silence was called for the memory of Dr. King, and then the convention could continue.  The business of the moment was the nomination of a Vice President.  That morning Humphrey had already tapped Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, and there was no serious opposition.

Yet, and in a truly touching moment, Julian Bond's name was advanced as a candidate (so, the first Black VP nominee of a major party in history), and he garnered 27 and a half votes before voluntarily withdrawing his name.  Humbly, self-effacingly, he noted that he was too young to accept.


Bond withdraws his name from consideration.

Muskey and Humphrey gave their acceptance speeches that night.  There was a lot on their shoulders—the need to deliver speeches that thread the needle, knitting the party back together, both addressing and condemning what had happened in Chicago.

That didn't happen.  What we got was a limp flatness of platitudes.  When I woke up, I learned that 20 delegates, supporters of McCarthy, had been beaten up in their hotel and arrested.  The charge pelting the cops with sardines.  McCarthy pointedly did not congratulate Humphrey that morning; the Vice President, now the newly christened candidate, had made no comment on the incident, tacitly endorsing it.

So that's that.  HHH is our bulwark against Nixon.  Muskie is his backstop.  Wallace just got a shot in the arm, and I can only think that's a blow against Democratic hopes.  Americans are disunited as we have not been for many decades.

It is hard to go on with my assigned task after all that, but the job remains, and I'm the one who has to do it.  The convention was four days of Hell.  Accordingly, the September 1968 issue of Analog was a slog, too, though of a different kind.


by John Schoenherr

The Tuvela (Part 1 of 2), by James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

The ocean planet of Nandy-Cline is in the sights of the Parahuans, a rapacious race of aliens that was beaten back by the Federation seventy years ago, and wants another try at the apple.  They're being cautious.  The humans beat them once, which is almost heresy to the arrogant Parahuans.  To justify losing to the inferior homo sapiens, they decide there must be a secret cabal of superhumans that leads and coordinates our species.  They must know more in order to sway political power from those supporting the Voice of Caution to those in favor of the Voice of Action.

To that end, they have set up a submarine base on the planet and abducted the human, Ticos Cay.  Why?  Because he is nearly 200 years old and seems to have found the secret of immortality.  It is clear to the Parahuans that he must be in the employ of the "Tuvelas", our putative ubermenschen.  They torture him, at length, but he resists because the same disciplines that have extended his life also grant him the ability to blot out pain.  Nevertheless, he will succumb—unless he can get outside help.

Enter Nile Etland, a young biologist living on Nandy-Cline.  She and her two giant mutant otters, sapient and clever, are looking for Cay, who has disappeared from the floating island where he was doing research.  Cay's only hope is that the Parahuans will take Etland for a Tuvela and treat her with comparative kid gloves, testing her abilities, rather than killing her outright.

Etland, to her credit, is up to the challenge…

The premise for this one is excellent, and something I love about James H. Schmitz is his ability with (indeed preference for) featuring heroines over heroes.  That said, the writing in this piece is often plodding and explanatory, and I found my momentum frequently flagging.

So, three stars for this installment.  Now that all the pieces have been set up, perhaps the next half will be more exciting.

The Powers of Observation, by Harry Harrison


by Leo Summers

The Soviets have developed a new kind of super spy.  He looks just like a man, but for some reason weighs over 400 pounds.  If that leads you to guess that he's the Communist version of Hymie the robot from Get Smart, give yourself a cigar.

But the American agent tasked to pursue him through the back roads of Yugoslavia has a few gimmicks up his sleeve, too…

Well-written, but nothing spectactular.  Three stars.

Steamer Time?, by Wallace West

As America grapples with its oppressive smog situation, some are calling for a return to the good ol' days—the days of the Stanley Steamer.  I'm just a little too young to remember when steam cars battled internal combustion vehicles for supremacy, so I don't have the nostalgia for them that Wallace West infuses his piece with.  The arguments for steam are largely that it burns clean, with its only waste gas being carbon dioxide (of course, while not strictly a "pollutant", there are other problems with it; viz. our 1958 article on the potential for industry-caused global heating).  Steam engines were also more fuel-efficient, though I don't know if that's still the case.

The arguments against steam, to me, would be the long time to develop a head of steam.  In the old days, waiting for your boiler to heat up was acceptable since the alternative was cranking up your IC car, and risking breaking an arm when the crank snapped back.  With the invention of the electric starter, that became a non-issue.  Perhaps the steam folks have a plan, too.

Anyway, the piece is readable, if a bit gushing.  I'm sure the auto industry will never allow an IC competitor to emerge, although as we speak, two electric cars are racing across the nation, so who knows?

Three stars.

Hi Diddle Diddle, by Peter E. Abresch


by Leo Summers

A harried reserve USAF captain, assigned to the UFO division, gets tired of all the cranks and reporters and spins a yarn for them: the cigar-shaped "ships" are really space cows feeding on the gasses of our upper atmosphere.  His creation is recounted credulously, and hysteria sweeps the nation.  Eventually, even Soviet agents are involved.

But what if the captain actually guessed too close to the mark?

This is a tedious story, and it just goes on and on.  Analog rarely does humor well.

Two stars.

A Flash of Darkness, by Stanley Schmidt


by Leo Summers

Mars Rover (MR) Robot is having a bit of trouble on Mars.  The autonomous machine uses a holographic laser rather than a camera for navigation (apparently it's lighter; I don't buy it).  When night falls, the rover finds its vision fogged and then blinded by something beyond its ken.  It's up to the technicians back on Earth, and maybe a little intuition in MR Robot's mechanical brain, to solve the problem.

This could have been an interesting piece, but I felt the ending was a let-down.  You'll see why.

Two stars.

Parasike, by Michael Chandler


by Leo Summers

A fellow pretending to use numerology to make guaranteed stock picks turns out to be a quack of a different duck.  He is promptly recruited by America's super-secret psi corps.

A lot of talking, a lot of fatuous acceptance of psi as science—in short, the perfect Campbell story.

Two stars.

Counting off

August has been one of the roughest months of one of the roughest years in recent history.  Analog finished at 2.5, which is lousy, but not that far removed from the rest: Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.5), Amazing (2.6), If (2.9).  Only Galaxy finished above the three-star barrier (3.1)

You could take all the 4/5 star stuff, and you wouldn't even fill a single issue.  That's awful.  Women were down to their usual publication rate, producing 6.5% of all new fiction this month.

It's going to take bold new leadership to change that trend, just as it will take bold new leadership to fix the country.  That new leadership doesn't seem to be near in coming.  I just hope we can withstand another Long Hot Summer…




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Movies

[August 30, 1968] TV or Not TV, That is The Question (They Saved Hitler's Brain and Mars Needs Women)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Big Screen, Small Screen, and Somewhere Between

Not all movies show up in theaters. Movies made for television began a few years ago, at least here in the USA, with a thriller called See How They Run. There have been quite a few since then.

A similar phenomenon is the fact that theatrical movies are frequently altered for television. Of course, films are often cut for broadcast, either to reduce the running time or to remove material deemed inappropriate for the tender sensibilities of American viewers.

But did you know that new footage is sometimes added to movies before they show up on TV? That's because they're too short to fill up the time slot allotted to them.

An example is Roger Corman's cheap little monster movie The Wasp Woman. In theaters, it ran just over an hour. On television, new scenes increased the length by about ten minutes.

Wasting time in front of the TV screen recently, I came across such an elongated theatrical film, as well as one made for television only. Let's take a look at both.

They Saved Hitler's Brain

This thing began life in 1963 under the a much less laughable title.


Anybody who went to see this movie pushed the panic button.

The Madmen of Mandoras (somehow they lost the word The on the poster) was a low budget flick that lasted about an hour (although it probably seemed a lot longer than that if you were stuck watching it.)


Dramatic lettering, dramatic clouds.

New stuff was added to the beginning of the film to make it long enough to show up on TV. Unlike The Wasp Woman, they gave it a new title.


Apparently, the American television audience needs everything spelled out for them.

That gives away the movie's only plot twist, but at least it's truth in advertising.

Let's get the new stuff out of the way. We begin with a scientist carrying some important papers out of a lab.


Secure scientific facility or local high school?

The guy is almost immediately killed when his car blows up.


Exploding car number one.

The fellow was carrying the formula for an antidote to a deadly gas. Somebody doesn't want that information to get out.


Big news!

This event draws the attention of some kind of intelligence agency. The boss (who turns out to be working with the bad guys, although that doesn't really have much to do with the plot) assigns a couple of operatives to investigate the incident.


Secret agents or college students?

The man's long hair and mustache and the woman's short skirt provide evidence that we're not in 1963. Don't get too attached to these characters, because pretty soon the woman is shot dead and the man is killed another way.


Exploding car number two.

At this point, we go back to the original movie. After demonstrating the deadly power of the gas by showing a film of an elephant lying down, the scientist who knows the antidote for the stuff and his young beatnik daughter are kidnapped.


It's quite obviously just taking a nap.

Our nominal hero is the husband of the scientist's older daughter. Some guy reveals enough information to the married couple to send them off to the fictional Latin American nation of Mandoras (you know, the place where they have madmen) before getting shot dead. The protagonists deal with the problem of his corpse by stuffing it in a phone booth.


"When in Mandoras, stay at the luxurious Mandoras Hotel."

Another guy shows up and provides exposition. It seems that a team of Nazi doctors worked to preserve the Führer for future use at the end of the war. (In other words, They Saved Hitler's Brain.)


"We must save Charlie Chaplin's life!"

The two lovebirds act like ordinary tourists despite this remarkable bit of information. They happen to run across the younger daughter in a local nightclub. The kidnappers gave her some money and told her to have a good time, as long as she didn't contact anybody at home. She seems perfectly fine with this arrangement, despite the fact that her father is still in the hands of the bad guys.


Little sister doing the Twist, proof that we're in 1963.

Since we're in a nightclub, we have to kill time with a dance act. After all, we have a whole hour of movie to fill.


A little something for the leg men in the audience.

Somehow or other our heroes wind up in the secret headquarters of the Madmen of Mandoras. Dad is being tortured with bright lights and loud noises in an attempt to get him to reveal the secret of the antidote. Like a lot of other things in the film, this doesn't make much sense, since the bad guys just want to stop the antidote from being used.


"Let me out of this movie! I can't stand it any more!"

Then we get our big shock scene, which might have been surprising if the title didn't give it away.


As an example of the film's close attention to detail, note that the swastika is backwards.

Obviously the bad guys are familiar with The Brain That Wouldn't Die.


A jarring scene (sorry.)

Adolph isn't very expressive throughout the movie, but once in a while he shows some emotion.


"I am amused by your consternation."

After a lot of running around, the bad guys are defeated.


Car explosion number three.

So much for the Fourth Reich.


Adolph turns into a wax dummy when he burns up.

A dreary little spy movie, notable only for its silly premise.

One star.

Mars Needs Women

Director Larry Buchanan made some very cheap films during the past few years. Starting last year, he's been responsible for extremely low budget color remakes — uncredited, of course — of old black-and-white science fiction and horror films. These are intended to be sold directly to television. Zontar, the Thing From Venus, for example, is obviously based on Roger Corman's 1956 flick It Conquered the World.

His latest effort in this vein is, in my opinion, very loosely inspired by the beach movie Pajama Party (which doesn't actually take place on the beach, but you know what I mean.)

Don't believe me? I don't blame you, but I'll provide some evidence in a bit. Let's get started.


Even the titles are cheap.

We start with a few scenes of women suddenly disappearing, whether they're playing tennis, at a restaurant, or taking a shower. Don't pay any attention to this, as it never comes up again.

The plot really starts at a government facility.


Does NASA really need a lot of decoding?

They get a message from outer space that says — you guessed it — Mars Need Women. Thanks for reminding me what movie I'm watching!

A Martian appears from nowhere, without even the shimmering effect seen on Star Trek. His name is Dop, and he's played by Tommy Kirk, star of some Disney movies. He also played a Martian named Go Go in — a-ha! — Pajama Party. Coincidence? I think not.


"Make fun of my name and I'll disintegrate you."

Dop explains that some kind of problem with the Martian Y chromosome has resulted in men outnumbering women by one hundred to one. (That's a lot worse than Five to Twelve.)

The Martians would like to have five Earth women volunteer to journey to the red planet to solve the problem. (I'm not a geneticist or a mathematician, but that seems like an awfully small number to repopulate a whole planet.)

No dice, so we get some scenes of military types communicating on the radio.


This speaker gets so much screen time it's practically a guest star.

There's also a bunch of stock footage of planes flying around.


"I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth . . ."

This accomplishes nothing. The Martians decide to land on Earth and grab five women themselves. (Like I said, forget about their ability to just make women vanish.)


The Martian spaceship, not to be confused with the Enterprise.

Five Martians hide out in an abandoned ice factory and make plans.


"We will conquer these puny Earthlings with the advanced technology of flashlights and headphones."

First they have to disguise themselves as Earthlings. This requires some criminal activity. A gas station supplies cash and a map of the city. (I would have thought the Martians would be advanced enough to find their way around, but I guess not.)


"I sure hope this place has a men's room."

Next is borrowing a car. So much for using their power of teleportation for getting from point A to point B.


"Oh, cool, it's got AM/FM radio."

Then they need some clothes. This leads to a scene in which they reveal that Martians gave up wearing ties fifty years ago.


"Would this be too dressy for a kidnapping?"

Dop and one of his buddies spot an announcement for a lecture by a brilliant scientist. We're told that her book Space Genetics won a Pulitzer Prize.


A lecture on sex in space? Must be a science fiction convention.

Doctor Marjorie Bolen is played by Yvonne Craig, best known for playing Batgirl on the popular Batman TV show. So the audience can tell she's a genius, she sometimes wears spectacles.


"Why Doctor Bolen, you're beautiful without your glasses!"

Pretty soon Dop and Bolen (sounds like a law firm) are on a date at a local planetarium. Guess what's on display.


Irony!

Meanwhile, the other Martians stalk their intended targets. The first is an exotic dancer.


A guy far away from home? Of course he goes to a strip club!

Next is an airline stewardess.


"Coffee, tea, or me?" (Yeah, I stole that from the title of a recent book. Sue me.)

Third is a homecoming queen.


"Two, Four, Six, Eight, Who Will We Repopulate?"

Last is a painter. That doesn't quite fit with the other three, who are typical male fantasies of desirable women, but I guess they needed some variety.


"I call this one Portrait of the Artist as an Impending Victim of Abduction."

Naturally, the disappearances are big news.


"Oh, look what's showing on TV tonight."

The authorities seem powerless to stop them.


"Martians, Shmartians, let's see what Little Orphan Annie is up to."

Suffice to say that romance blooms between Dop and Bolen, even though we're told Martians gave up love long before they gave up ties. The kidnapped women are rescued and the Martians go home, apparently to face the extinction of their species.


"Let's see, Mrs. Marjorie Dop. Nah, it would never work."

A very silly film indeed.

One star.

Surely there's something better on television than these two losers.


Maybe not.




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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction