Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 20, 1970] Not the final quarry (May 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Tunnel light

There have been a lot of happy endings recently.  The postal strike is over, thanks to the government agreeing to an 8% raise for federal employees.  Ditto the air traffic control strike.  Nixon's third nominee to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court, 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Harry Blackmun, isn't somewhere to the right of Ghengis Khan.  The Apollo 13 astronauts made it back home by the skin of their teeth.

Newspaper photo of Harry Blackmun

But of course, the old stories go on.  The Vietnam war has grown to include Cambodia—if Domino Theory is to be believed, we'll soon be fighting in the streets of Canberra.  Teachers are on strike in California; Governor Reagan says they're "against the children".  And actor Michael Strong says you can't walk the streets of the nation's capital without a good chance of getting mugged.

And so, it is appropriate that the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is a mixed bag.  Some of it will thrill you, some of it will leave you cold.  On the other hand, none of it will mug you.

The Issue at Hand

A robot sits on a nighttime apocalyptic desert reading a trail of issues of Fantasy and Science Fiction
by Mel Hunter

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[April 18th, 1970] The Spaceman Who Came In From The Cold (Doctor Who: The Ambassadors Of Death [Parts 1-4])

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a white woman with auburn hair and glasses
By Jessica Holmes

The name’s Who… Doctor Who. In the latest adventure, our favourite double-hearted space alien finds himself embroiled in a spy thriller with all the trappings: cool car, wacky gadgetry, and an espionage plot I need a diagram to keep track of. Let’s take a peek under the bonnet of David Whitaker’s most recent contribution to Doctor Who, “The Ambassadors Of Death”.

The space centre. Cornish communicates with an astronaut, who appears on a big screen.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 16, 1970] Junk Day for Ice Crowns (April 1970 Galactoscope)

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Tune in tomorrow morning (April 17) for FULL APOLLO 13 SPLASHDOWN COVERAGE!!!

black and white photo of a dark-haired white woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

Six-Gun Planet, by John Jakes

The author is better known around these parts for his sword-and-sorcery yarns about Brak the Barbarian, firmly in the tradition of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan. This new novel is a horse of a different color.

The cover of Six-Gun Planet.  The title is written in red block capitals across the top.  Beneath, the story summary reads: This is the story of the planet Missouri, whose revolutionary goals were to duplicate in the 23rd century the Terrafirman Old West, even if they had to use robot pintos for special effects.  Below the text, three images are superimposed over a background of psychedelic swirls in bright primary colors.  The first, at the top left, shows the planet Jupiter with its storm spot, encircled by a bright yellow aura.  In the center, a rope noose descends from the top of the image.  Inside the loop, an orange sunset sky surrounds a cowboy drawn in black and white in the foreground.  He is wearing a tall hat, gun belt, and cowboy boots.  His legs are bowed and his hands appear to be reaching for his gun as he stares malevolently at the viewer from under his hat brim.  In the background, two smaller cowboys, also black and white, appear far in the distance. On the right, three sandstone mountains in shades of yellow and orange appear to be blasting off into space supported by rockets shooting fire beneath them.
Cover art by Richard Powers

The planet Missouri had a revolution some time before the story begins. Advanced technology and a bureaucratic form of government were replaced by nineteenth century ways of doing things and fierce individualism.

In other words, the place now resembles Hollywood's fantasy of the Old West. There are some so-called savages who play the role of American Indians. Towns are full of outlaws and dance hall girls. There are sheriffs around, supposedly to maintain law and order, but they aren't very effective.

Our long-suffering hero is Zak Randolph, a minor government worker who ekes out a living by supplying souvenirs (such as miniature outhouses) to tourists and staging phony shootouts to entertain visitors from other worlds. He also arranges to have local badmen sent to more civilized planets to amuse those who hire them.

This latter function gets him in trouble. One of the leased gunfighters heads back to Missouri before his contract runs out. Zak has to track him down or risk losing his position. (What keeps him on the wild-and-wooly planet at all are his girlfriend and the presence of native plants that supply minerals that can be made into jewelry. Otherwise, he's a peaceable sort who hates the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later culture of the place.)

Along the way, he has to deal with ruffians who despise him as a coward. There's also the mystery of a legendary gunfighter called Buffalo Yung. Zak isn't sure this terrifying figure really exists. Then he gets reports from various places that he's been shot dead, apparently more than once. And what does this have to do with the disappearing bodies of lawmen killed by Yung?

Continue reading [April 16, 1970] Junk Day for Ice Crowns (April 1970 Galactoscope) →

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 14, 1970] Take this spaceship to Alpha Centauri (May 1970 Venture)

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Coverage of the Apollo 13 crisis continues!

TUNE IN!


by David Levinson

Skyjacked

Until recently, it seemed like there was at least one major airplane crash every month. That’s one of the reasons almost every airport has a place where you can buy short-term life insurance for your flight. But crashes seem to be giving way to a new risk: hijacking (or skyjacking as headlines writers would have it; the term will never stick). Last year alone, there were roughly 100 incidents around the world. That’s worse than crashes ever were.

In the U.S., the hijacker usually demands to be taken to Cuba. It’s mostly an inconvenience for the passengers, who get to their destination much later than planned and don’t even get to see any of Cuba. It’s become so common that it’s the subject of jokes and skits. But these incidents are taking on a more violent turn.

My colleague Cora recently reported on two failed hijacking attempts in Munich, one of which left one dead and ten injured. Not long after that, Swissair Flight 330 was destroyed by a bomb. Those three attacks have been attributed to a Palestinian terrorist organization. On March 1st, a bomb was found on board an Ethiopian Airlines flight before it left Rome. On the 17th, a gunman aboard an Eastern Airlines shuttle flight wounded the pilot and fatally wounded the co-pilot after being told the plane had to refuel in Boston. Fortunately, the co-pilot was able to wrest the gun away from the hijacker before succumbing to his wounds, allowing the pilot to land the plane safely. To date, this is the only airplane hijacking in America to end with a fatality.

On March 31st, a Japanese group calling themselves the Red Army Faction hijacked a flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka and demanded they be flown to Cuba. After being told the plane was incapable of flying that far, they demanded they be flown to North Korea instead. While refueling in Fukuoka, they released 23 passengers, mostly children and the elderly. An attempt was made to land the plane in South Korea and trick the hijackers into believing they’d reached Pyongyang. Unfortunately, they realized what was going on after the plane landed. Following some tense negotiations, the Japanese Vice Minister for Transportation, Shinjiro Yamamura, traded himself for the rest of the passengers and the plane flew on to North Korea. The hijackers were granted asylum and the plane and crew were allowed to return to Japan (not necessarily a given with North Korea) a few days later, arriving in Tokyo on the morning of April 5th.

That’s a lot in less than two months. But in the midst of all that, airplane hijackings and bombings also made it to the movies. March 5th saw the premiere of Airport. Depending on who you ask, it’s either a disaster or a hit; either way it’s star-studded. Take a look at the poster.

Promotional poster for the movie Airport. It shows the faces of twelve actors around a prominent list of their names: Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy, Helen Hayes, Van Heflin, Maureen Stapleton, Barry Nelson, Lloyd Nolan, Dana Wynter, Barbara Hale.You probably know who most of these people are.

Based on the 1968 novel by Arthur Hailey, the film is about the operations of an airport crippled by a blizzard and dealing with a wrecked plane on the tarmac and an inbound flight with a suicide bomber aboard, plus lots of soap opera stuff. While critics almost universally panned the book, it spent 64 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, 30 at #1, and was the biggest selling novel of 1968. The critics are no kinder to the film (“dull” seems to be one of the nicer things they say), but once it went to wider release, it promptly spent two weeks as number one at the box office and is still in the top five. There must be something in the water. Or the air.

Spacejacked

The hijacking theme continues in this month’s Venture, which is dominated by Edward Wellen’s new novel. It’s normal for Venture to give most of its space to a condensed novel, but it feels like more space than usual is taken up this time.

Cover of Venture Science Fiction. It announces Hijack, a novel by Edward Wellen. The illustration is a handful of humanoid figures running while rockets lift off and a gigantic sun burns in the background. The figures are highly stylized and the colors are angry red and yellow.I’m still not sold on Tanner’s covers, but this one is better than most. Art by Bert Tanner

Continue reading [April 14, 1970] Take this spaceship to Alpha Centauri (May 1970 Venture) →

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Movies

[April 12, 1970] And What Happens When the Machines Take Over? (Colossus: the Forbin Project)

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BW photo of Jason Sacks. He's a white man, with short light hair, rectangular glasses, and headphones.
by Jason Sacks

1970 has been a bit of a tough year for us in Seattle.

Our major local company, Boeing, has suffered the worst year in its history. The Boeing Bust keeps continuing, as the 1969 layoffs have grown into a full-scale decimation. Unemployment is up around 10% now, the worst since the Great Depression, and my family and I are starting to panic. Of course, the fall of Boeing hits many other local industries, so places like restaurants, bookstores and movie theatres are especially hard hit by this. And many of my friends have either moved or contemplated moving – even if they will lose money on their fancy $50,000 homes in the suburbs.

Black and White photo of the interior of a wide-body passenger jet, apparently taken while in service.  The passengers are seated while the cabin stewardesses travel the aisles.
Sales of this widebody jet have been declining

To make matters worse, we’ve also lost our pro baseball team, which I wrote about last summer. The Seattle Pilots premiered in ’69, in a minor league park and with the worst uniforms in the Majors. But after just one season, the team is gone—relocated to Milwaukee, of all places, leaving behind a community that embraced them despite the challenges. For my friends and family, it wasn’t just about losing a baseball team; it was about losing a piece of the city’s identity. Just as we gained a second sports team to join our beloved SuperSonics, they were wrenched away from us.

Their home park, Sick’s Stadium, had its flaws. But it was our flawed park. Fans showed up, hopeful that the Pilots would grow into something more. Their financial struggles were well-known, reported faithfully in our local Times and P-I, but few expected the team to vanish overnight. When the sale was finalized on April 1, 1970, it felt like an April Fools’ joke—except it was real. The Pilots were rebranded as the Brewers, and we were left without a Major League Baseball team.

Black and White photograph from April 3rd 1970 taken in Tempe Arizona depicting baseball manager Dave Bristol modelling the Milwaukee Brewers' (formerly Seattle Pilots) new team uniform while flanked by catcher Jerry McNertney who is wearing the club's old uniform.

In fact, the Pilots trained in Spring Training as the Pilots before a chaotic moment as they traveled north from Arizona. Equipment trucks were redirected from highway pay phones, as the team learned they would be playing in Wisconsin rather than Washington. The new Brewers played their first game this week at Milwaukee County Stadium. The Pilots are no more.

Of course, the lawyers are getting involved and we may get a team in the future – but a city that deserved some good news has received some devastating news instead. We are like mariners without a destination as far as baseball goes.

The Machines Live

And in the midst of all that frustration comes a film that’s ultimately about mankind’s frustrating hubris.

Colossus: The Forbin Project, adapted from the 1966 novel, is claustrophobic, unsettling, and uncomfortably plausible. If Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey made us marvel at the potential of artificial intelligence, Colossus comes along and shakes us out of our dreamy optimism. This isn’t a sleek, cool machine with a calm voice and vague philosophical musings. This is cold, unrelenting domination, and there’s no arguing with it.

Continue reading [April 12, 1970] And What Happens When the Machines Take Over? (Colossus: the Forbin Project) →

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 10, 1970] A Style in Treason (May 1970 Galaxy)

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[Be sure to tune in tonight at 7PM PDT for Science Fiction Theater!  It's Nimoytacular—plus Apollo 13 pre-launch coverage!]

A color photograph of Leonard Nimoy and a white woman standing together in front of a curtain.  He is looking down and to the right of the frame and the woman's eyes are closed as she leans on his shoulder.

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

Backlash in D.C.

50,000 people marched on Washington last week protesting the course of the Vietnam War.  Sure, you think, another day ending in "y", right?

Except these kooks were protesting for the war!

A black and white photograph of a pro-war protest outdoors in Washington DC.  Government buildings are in the background.  In the foreground a group of white women are holding up a long banner which reads Let's Demand Victory in Vietnam. The woman at the center of the banner is holding two American flags crossed over her chest.  Behind them a crowd of people are holding up signs.  The only one legible reads In God We Trust.
Photo taken by Tom Norpell

Organized by a fundamentalist coalition, religious fervor dominated the gathering.  That said, there were plenty of Birchers and Nazis in attendance, too, making this a truly ecumenical demonstration.

A black and white photograph of white men marching down a city street while carrying banners on long poles.  At the top of each pole is a symbol of a lightning bolt inside a circle.  Beneath that a sign reads NSRP, the acronym for the National States Rights Party.  The banner extending down from the sign also has the circle-and-lightning-bolt motif, with God Bless America written above and below it. A crowd of onlookers is in the background.
Photo taken by Tom Norpell

There were even counter-counter protestors.

A black and white photograph of a white man with chin length dark hair standing outdoors.  He is wearing a knit cap and leather jacket and smoking a cigarette. He has his hands in his pockets and is frowning.  Over his jacket he is wearing a pillowcase with arm and head holes cut in the seams.  On it is painted Thou Shalt Not Kill. -God.  The center of the O in Not has a button attached to it showing a hand making a peace sign. A woman in an overcoat and rain hood is standing behind him.
Photo taken by Tom Norpell

Which poses the question: can Nixon still call them a "silent" majority?

A black and white photograph from a newspaper showing more of the people attending the pro-war protest.  In the center front is a man in a wheelchair holding an Merican flag, with another man standing behind him guiding the chair.  A woman to his left is holding a sign with multiple slogans pasted on it, including Stand Up for America and Wallace 72. In the background other protesters are carrying American flags as well as other signs, mostly reading In God We Trust or Victory in Vietnam. The newspaper caption reads: March for Victory: Some of the estimated 50,000 people who took part in the parade advocating victory in Vietnam as they assembled in Washington yesterday.

Calm after the storm

There's really nothing to protest in the latest issue of Galaxy, which offers, in the main, a pleasant reading experience.

A color photograph of the cover of the May 1970 edition of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine Along the left side are listed stories by David Gerrold, James Blish, Avram Davidson, and Arthur C. Clarke.  The image shows a blue and black blob-like shape with multiple eye-like orbs embedded in it, against a yellow background.  Other orbs extend upwards from the blob, attached by black threads.  Parts of the blob seem to have been pulled up like pieces of dough around these upper orbs. The upper orbs have, from left to right, a green-cast image of half of a man's face (the other half is in shadow); A red-cast image of a man standing and looking outward; and a star or galaxy against a backdrop of outer space.
by Jack Gaughan for A Style in Treason

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 8, 1970] All Too Finite (Infinity One, edited by Robert Hoskins)

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A young white man with short hair wearing a navy P-coat, blue polo collar, and green t-shirt.
by Brian Collins

There must be a growing demand for original anthologies of science fiction, because they keep coming—both standalone titles and series. Infinity One is, going by its title, the first in yet another series of these, although notably there is one reprint between its covers (really two reprints, as you'll see), a story that many readers will already be familiar with. Robert Hoskins is an occasional author-turned-agent-turned-editor, whose high position at Lancer Books has apparently resulted in Infinity One. Will there be future installments? Does it really matter? We shall see.

The tagline for Infinity One is “a magazine of speculative fiction in book form,” which strikes me as a sequence of words only fit to come from the mouth of a clinically insane person. This is a paperback anthology and nothing more nor less. I mentioned in my review of Nova 1 last month that Harry Harrison claimed that he simply wanted to put together an anthology of “good” SF, although I’m not sure if Hoskins had even such a basic goal in mind.

Infinity One, edited by Robert Hoskins

Cover of Infinity One. Against a black background, an bubble-helmeted astronaut in silver dances in front of a stylized circuit board, flowing into the shape of a rocket above, and a red planet below. Beside this illustration, in an all-lowercase font, reads the following legend: 'introduction by isaac asimov/a short novel by poul anderson/infinity one/new writings in/speculative/fiction/edited by/robert hoskins/plus/anne mccaffery/robert silverberg/gordon r. dickson/r.a. lafferty/kris neville/k.m. o'donnell/ron goulart/katherine maclean/miriam allen deford/featuring/arthur c. clarke'. Clarke's name, and the title, are in yellow. The other names are in pink, red, and turquoise.
Cover art by Jim Steranko.

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Book, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 6, 1970] Uncovered (May 1970 Amazing)

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Apollo 13 coverage starts tonight and goes on for the next two weeks!  Don't miss a minute.  Check local listings for broadcast times.

A black-and-white photo portrait of John Boston. He is a clean-shaven white man with close-cropped brown hair. He wears glasses, a jacket, shirt, and tie, and is looking at the camera with a neutral expression.
by John Boston

Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye

The May Amazing presents a new face to the world.  That is, the cover was actually painted for the magazine, as opposed to being recycled from the German Perry Rhodan.  It’s not by one of the new artists editor White was talking up in the last issue, but rather by John Pederson, Jr., who has been doing covers on and off for the SF magazines since the late 1950s.  Ditching the second-hand Europeans is a step forward in itself, though this particular cover is not much improvement: a slightly stylized picture of a guy sitting in a spacesuit on a flying chair with a disgruntled expression on his face, against an improbable astronomical background.

Cover of May 1970 issue of Amazing magazine, featuring a painting of what appears to be a spaceship (made for maneuvering within an atmosphere a la a contemporary jet plane) flying away from a pair of planets.  Overlaid over that space scene, there is a picture of an aging white man in a space-suit seated in what appears to be a command chair with lap controls.
by John Pederson, Jr.

But it is an interesting development for a couple of reasons.  First, in the letter column, White goes into more detail than previously about the European connection, in response to a question about why the covers are not attributed.  White says: “The situation is this: an agency known as Three Lions has been marketing transparencies of covers from Italian and German sf magazines and has sold them to a variety of book and magazine publishers in this country, including ourselves.  These transparencies were unsigned.  One of our competitors credited its reprint covers to ‘Three Lions;’ we felt that was less than no credit at all.  Therefore, unless the artist’s signature was visible, we omitted the contents-page credit.  As of this issue, however, Amazing returns to the use of original cover paintings by known U.S. artists.”

So much, then, for Johnny Bruck, and a hat tip to the diligent investigators who have identified all his uncredited reprint covers as they were published.  In addition to Pederson, White says, he’s obtained covers from Jeff Jones and Gray Morrow, and in fact a Jones cover is already on last month’s Fantastic.  Further: “I might add that, beginning with our last issue, the art direction, typography and graphics for the covers of both magazines has been by yours truly.” So White has pried one more aspect of control of the magazine from the grip of Sol Cohen, presumably all to the good, though the visible effect to date is limited.

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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[April 4, 1970] Twixt Scylla and Charybdis (S&T's The Flight of the Goeben)

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

A little over half a century ago, the actions of two ships changed the entire course of human events.

Black-and-white photograph of a warship.
SMS Goeben and SMS Breslau bombarding Phillipeville on the French-Algerian coast (W. Malchin, 1915)

In 1912, two warships of the German Kriegsmarine were stationed in the Mediterranean.  The battlecruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau, in the event of war, were to raid French shipping between Africa and Europa.  When war broke out between Austria-Hungary and Serbia on July 28, 1914, the vessels were in the Adriatic port of Pola.  Admiral Souchon, commander of the German duo, decided he didn't want to be bottled up, so he took his ships to the central Mediterranean and waited for orders.

They arrived: head east for the Aegean Sea and ultimately the Dardanelles, the strait on which Turkish Istanbul was situated.  There, Souchon was to offer the two modern vessels to the aging and inefficient Ottomans.  In return, the Sultan would bring Turkey into The Great War on the side of the Central Powers.

Thus ensued a grand chase, which the British lost.  The rest is history.

But what if Souchon had been given different orders?  What if the British had had different priorities?  Such are the What Ifs that compelling parallel universes are made of—and the subject of the newest game to arrive in the magazine Strategy & Tactics.

The Game

Promotional logo for the game The Flight of the Goeben.

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

[April 2, 1970] Being Human (May-June 1970 IF)

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A white man with short gray hair poses in front of a wooden wall. He is wearing a gray blazer, yellow shirt, and black necktie, and is smiling toward the left of the viewer.
by David Levinson

Counting coups

March saw not one, but two attempts to overthrow the established government in smaller countries. One failed, but the other looks like it may have succeeded.

A color geographic and political map of the Mediterranean basin, showing the island of Cyprus in the middle of the image.
Cyprus is the island south of Turkey, west of Syria, north of Egypt

Cyprus is a troubled nation. The populace is divided between those of Greek and Turkish decent, and the long-running hostility between Greece and Turkey spilled over to Cyprus. When the island sought independence from the United Kingdom, Greek Cypriots hoped for eventual union with Greece, which was not acceptable to Turkish Cypriots. The British were able to block annexation (or enosis, as it is called in Cyprus) as a condition for independence, but relationships within the island are so rocky that UN peacekeepers had to be brought in to keep the two populations from each other’s throats.

A major figure in the independence movement was Orthodox Archbishop Makarios III, who has led the country ever since. Before independence, he was a strong supporter of enosis, but was persuaded to accept that it would have to be put off as a hoped for future event. Makarios isn’t terribly popular with western leaders; he’s been a major voice in the Non-aligned Movement. Some in Washington have taken to calling him “the Castro of the Mediterranean.” In the last few years, he’s made himself unpopular at home as well. He’s taken away guarantees of Turkish representation in government and has also moved away from the idea of enosis. His justification is the Greek military coup of 1967, stating that joining Cyprus to Greece under a dictatorship would be a disservice to all Cypriots.

A white man with short gray hair poses in front of a wooden wall. He is wearing a gray blazer, yellow shirt, and black necktie, and is smiling toward the left of the viewer.Archbishop Makarios III visiting the Greek royal family in exile in Rome earlier this year.

On March 8th, somebody tried to kill Makarios. His helicopter was brought down by withering, high-powered fire. Makarios was uninjured, but the pilot was severely wounded. Fortunately, nobody else was on board. At least 11 people have been arrested, all of Greek heritage and strong supporters of enosis. Given the military nature of the weapons used, some are also accusing the Greek Junta of involvement.

Meanwhile in south-east Asia, Prince Norodom Sihanouk is out as the leader of Cambodia. Like Makarios, he hasn’t been popular in the west, due to his cozy relations with both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. He’s also allowed Cambodian ports to be used for bringing in supplies for the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong, while also ignoring the use of Cambodian territory as part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

A color geographic and political map of the southeast Asian peninsula, with Cambodia in the center of the image.

Sihanouk was out of the country when anti-North Vietnamese riots erupted both in the east of the country and in Phnom Penh. Things quickly got out of hand, with the North Vietnamese embassy being sacked. By the 12th, the government canceled trade agreements with North Vietnam, closed the port of Sihanoukville to them, and issued an ultimatum that all North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong forces were to leave the country within 72 hours. When the demand wasn’t met, 30,000 protesters rallied outside the National Assembly against the Vietnamese.

On the 18th, The Assembly met and voted unanimously (except for one member who walked out in protest) to depose Sihanouk as the head of state. Prime Minister Lon Nol has assumed the head-of-state powers on an emergency basis. On the 23rd, Sihanouk, speaking by radio from Peking, called for an uprising against Lon Nol, and large demonstrations followed. A few days later, two National Assembly deputies were killed by the protesters. The demonstrations were then put down with extreme violence.

Two black and white photos.  On the left, Prince Sihanouk stands outside in front of several other men.  He has black hair and a concerned expression.  He is wearing a suit and tie and an overcoat, and is gesticulating with one hand while looking to the right of the photographer.  On the right, a head shot of Prime Minister Lon Nol.  He has gray hair and is wearing a black suit and tie.  He looks directly at the camera with a neutral expression.l: Prince Sihanouk in Paris shortly before his ouster. R: Prime Minister Lon Nol.

Where this will lead is anybody’s guess. The new government (it should be noted that the removal of Sihanouk appears to have been completely legal) has clearly abandoned the policy of neutrality and threatened North Vietnam with military action. Hanoi isn’t going to take that lying down; if the war spreads to Cambodia, will the Nixon administration expand American involvement? Add in Sihanouk urging resistance to Lon Nol and the deep reverence for the royal family held by many Cambodians, and it all looks like a recipe for chaos.

What is man

Some of the stories in this month’s IF deal directly or tangentially with what it is that makes humans human. The front cover also raises a question that we don’t have an answer to. We’ll get to that at the end; let’s look at the issue first.

The cover of the May-June 1970 edition of Worlds of If science fiction magazine. The magazine name and edition date are written in yellow across the top of the cover, except the word IF which appears in large white letters over a red rectangle.  Below this is a color painting of a white man's head staring directly out at the viewer. At the top of his head there are black lava-rock-like shapes that appear to be exploding out from his forehead.  The head appears to be emerging from a red and yellow pool of lava which is surrounded by dark swirls around the edge of the pool. At the bottom of the cover titles are listed: Novelette The Piecemakers, by Kieth Laumer; The Reality Trip by Robert Silverberg; Zon by Avram Davidson; Troubleshooter by Michael G. Coney. To the right the tagline of the magazine reads: If, the magazine of alternatives.Suggested by Troubleshooter. Art by Gaughan

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction