[May 16, 1970) The Tocsin and The Believing Child (June 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Rime of the Recent Mariner

I always cast about the news for tidbits to head my articles.  After all, when people read my writings, say, a half-century hence, I want them to be appreciated in the context in which they were created.  Creations, and critique of those creations, cannot stand in isolation (or so I believe).

But, wow, how many times can I talk about the latest protest/riot (six killed in Atlanta last week), or Cambodia (Admiral Moorer recently assured us that the reason we can't destroy the mobile NVA base is…because it's mobile; but we did liberate 387 tons of ammunition, 125 tons of prophylactics, and 83 tons of Communist finger puppets so the Search & Destroy mission was absolutely a success), or the Warm War going on in the Middle East (2 Egyptian Mig-21s shot down the other day, 2 Syrian Mig-17s the day before, but the Israelis absolutely did not lose an F-4 over Lebanon) before it all sounds the same?  Even Governor Reagan's latest escapades into cost effectiveness and court stacking are old hat.

Photograph of a middle-aged white man in a military uniform.
This iteration of Bull Wright instills less confidence than Dan Rowan's…

To heck with it.  Today, I'm going to stick with news in my bailiwick, and nifty news to boot.

You folks surely remember Mariners 6 and 7, twin probes sent past Mars last year, returning unprecedented information and photos from The Red Planet.  Well, even now, both probes are contributing to science, long past their original mission.

JPL astronomer Dr. John D. Anderson and Cal Tech astronomer Dr. Duane O. Muhleman are using the two spacecraft to test the validity of Einstein's theory of relativity.  Per Einstein, the velocity of light slows in the presence of a gravitational field.  If that's the case, then the signals from the Mariners, as they pass the Sun, should decrease—slightly, but measurably. 

To measure this, the two scientists had to wait until Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 passed behind the Sun with respect to the Earth.  For the former, this happened on April 30; for the latter, May 10.  The precise distance-measuring system the two scientisits built in the Mohave Desert should register a slow-up of 200 millionths of a second in the spacecrafts' round trip signal.

This confirmation, should it be reported, will help put paid efforts by other scientists who say that Einstein's theories are wrong or inaccurate, by as much as 7% according to Princeton's Dr. Robert H. Dicke, who needs that to be the case for his theory of Mercury's curious orbital eccentricities.

Black-and-white photograph of a house-sized parabolic antenna. Text below the image says: The Mars Station of the Deep Space Network, with two-hundred-and-ten-foot reflector, high-power transmitter, and quick-change tri-cone feed, tracks Mariner six and Mariner seven through superior conjunction, beyond the Sun, at ranges up to two hundred and forty million miles.

In other Mariner news, New Mexico State Univ. astronomer and Mariner project scientist Bradford A. Smith has some neato news about Phobos, the larger of Mars' moons.  Mariner 7 snapped a picture of the little rock at a distance of 86,000 miles.  JPL photo-enhancement techniques indicated that Phobos was nonspherical and was larger and had a darker surface than previously thought.  It's just 11.2 by 13.7 miles in dimension, elongated along the orbital plane.  Its average visual geometric albedo is just 0.065, lower than that known for any other body in the solar system.

With its weird shape and composition, all signs point to Phobos not being a sister or daughter of its parent planet, but rather, probably a captured asteroid.

Very blurry black-and-white photograph of the Martian moon Phobos, visible only as a tiny smudge of irregular shape against a gray background.

The issue at hand

In a happy, elevated mood, now let us turn to the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction—after all, it doesn't do to review stories on an empty soul.

Cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for June 1970, announcing stories by Isaac Asimov, Ron Goulart, D. F. Jones, Harry Harrison, and Zenna Henderson. The illustration shows a man in a diving suit near a rift in the ocean floor.
cover by Jack Gaughan illustrating

Continue reading [May 16, 1970) The Tocsin and The Believing Child (June 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[May 14, 1970 Another Perfect Emergency (Saving Apollo-13)

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]

A black-and-white photo portrait of Kaye Dee. She is a white woman with long, straight dark hair worn down, looking at the camera with a smile.
by Kaye Dee

On 5 May, the Apollo-13 crew visited the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation factory in Bethpage, New York, to thank the company for its lifesaving Lunar Module, without which the recent lunar mission would have ended in disaster.

Three men holding presentation gifts of a lunar module model mounted on a plaque. They are on a stage with a crowd behind themleft to right: Apollo-13 astronauts Haise, Swigert, and Lovell during their visit to Grumman's Bethpage plant

The Grumman team’s contribution to the successful outcome of the mission – understanding the full capabilities of the vehicle they had designed so that it could be pressed into service as the astronauts’ lifeboat – is just one example of the innovativeness and dedication of the many NASA support teams working behind the scenes in the Apollo programme.

Today, I want to tell another behind-the-scenes story, one that comes “straight from the horse’s mouth”, as I’ve interviewed many of the personnel involved – the crucial role played by NASA’s space tracking networks, in particular the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN) in Australia, in saving Apollo-13. I hope it will give you some insight into the complex technical and logistical operations that were required to respond to the emergency, and a feel for the urgency with which everyone was operating.

Continue reading [May 14, 1970 Another Perfect Emergency (Saving Apollo-13)

[May 12, 1970] War and Peace (June 1970 Fantastic)

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

These are troubling times.

We are all still recovering from the shock of the killing of four students and the wounding of nine others by Ohio National Guard troops at Kent State University on May 4.  A mere four days later, construction workers and office workers clashed with anti-war protestors in New York City.

A black and white photograph of a group of white men marching down a city street.  Some are are chanting and/or holding poles.  The poles extend out of frame so we can't tell if they have signs or flags attached.  Some of the men are wearing construction outerwear and hard hats, others are wearing dress shirts and ties.
Due to the distinctive headgear worn by some of the construction workers, the incident has become known as the Hard Hat Riot.

In the chaos that ensued, with an estimated twenty thousand people in the streets near Federal Hall, the counter-protestors attacked the anti-war demonstrators while police did little to stop the violence. 

The pro-war crowd later marched up Broadway and threatened to attack City Hall.  They demanded that the building's flag, flown at half-mast in commemoration of the Kent State killings, be raised to full mast.  In an example of grim irony, the hard hats and their allies also attacked nearby Pace University, a conservative business school.

About one hundred people were injured, including seven police officers.  Six people were arrested.  Only one of them was a construction worker.

With all of this going on, it's tempting to escape from the real world and allow our imaginations to run wild.  As we'll see, however, the latest issue of Fantastic contains as much violent conflict as reality.

The cover of Fantastic magazine. The title appears near the top in yellow-green block capitals.  Above, Always the Black Knight: A new kind of Fantasy Novel by Lee Hoffman is written in orange serifed font.   Down the left of the cover are listed the short stories included, with authors in orange and titles in yellow: Into the Land of the Not-Unhappies, by David R Bunch; I of Newton, by Joe W. Haldeman; Communication by Bob Shaw; Psychivore, by Howard L. Myers; The Time, by David Mason; The Prince of New York, by Benford & Littenberg.  Underneath is written Beginning in this issue: Science Fiction in Dimension, a new column by Alexei Ranshin.  To the right of the short stories list is a picture of a the Black Knight against an orange background. He is wearing black armor and gauntlets and a face-concealing helmet that resembles an insect head with pincers at mouth level. The main part of the helmet is black. The face has red decorations in an X shape that crosses at the nose and ends in the pincers.  The eyes are also outlined in red and above the X there are two small red circles on the forehead. he is  holding a sword out toward the viewer, held upward in salute. In the bottom right corner two much smaller people are looking up toward the Black Knight as though he is on a giant poster. One is a white woman with brown curly hair wearing a short burgundy tunic and belt.  Her legs are bare.  She is holding her right hand to her mouth in surprise.  Behind her, a brown-haired white man in a short yellow tunic is staggering in shock.  His right arm is against his forehead in a fainting pose, and his left hand is clutching the upper arm of the woman in front of him.
Cover art by Gray Morrow.

Continue reading [May 12, 1970] War and Peace (June 1970 Fantastic)

[May 10, 1970] Fever Pitch (New Writings in S-F 17 & Vortex)

Black & White Photo of writer of piece Kris Vyas-Mall
By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

The World Cup starts later this month in Mexico and excitement in England is palpable. Winning four years ago at Wembley has raised expectations significantly, and there is a real hope that England can repeat the success Brazil had in the early 60s, to win two years-on-the-trot.

Possibly one of the strangest ways this has manifested is in a new album, sung by the Current World Cup Squad!

Album of Worldbeaters Sing The Worldbeaters, showing the special carboard sleeve (in the shape of a football with the england team's signatures on it) with the actual LP sitting next to it

In its special circular football sleeve, you can discover what it sounds like to have Bobby Moore singing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da or Gordon Banks covering Lovey-Dovey. (From what I have heard of it on the radio, consider my curiosity fully sated).

Off the pitch, there is once again an international competition for my attention in the anthology releases. With Carnell leading his team for another round of New Writings facing off against new fiction from the Soviet Union. Three years ago, the two countries faced off in one of my articles, now let’s see how each of these new seven stories matchup:

New Writings in SF-17

Hardback cover of New Writings in SF-17, in the usual design style, this one in blue and yellow. Listing of authors:
Joseph Green
Ernest Hill
Michael G. Coney
Lee Harding
H. A. Hargreaves
R. W. Mackelworth
L. Davison
on the front

Continue reading [May 10, 1970] Fever Pitch (New Writings in S-F 17 & Vortex)

[May 8, 1970] Tower of Glass (June 1970 Galaxy)

Be sure to tune in tonight at 7PM Pacific for a terrific Science Fiction Theater!

a panel showing the words IN COLOR, with each letter in a different color.

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

It shouldn't happen here (or anywhere)

It was a scene out of Saigon or Prague.  It shouldn't be happening in Middle America.  On May 4, Ohio National Guardsmen, shot four Kent State students dead, wounding ten more.  Here's what we know:

On April 30, President Nixon announced that U.S. troops had entered Cambodia, expanding the war in Southeast Asia.  This sparked mass May Day protests across the country.  After the Kent State ROTC building was burned down over the weekend, Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom asked Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes to dispatch the National Guard to the campus.

Clashes between students and law enforcement escalated, with several students reportedly being stabbed by guardsman bayonets.  Calls for the Guard troops to be recalled were refused.  This set the stage for Monday's tragedy.

It is not certain what triggered the firing.  Eyewitnesses said about 600 protestors surrounded a company of 100 Guardsmen and began pelting them with rocks and hunks of concrete.  A single shot rang out, whether from a guardsman's rifle or someone else's firearm, is unknown.  Without a warning, the guardsmen then began a three second volley, half of them pointing their guns into the air, the other aiming levelly—into the milling crowd of boys and girls.

Ohio National Guard members move toward students at Kent State University

Amont the dead were William K. Schroder, 19, a sophomore from Lorain, Ohio; Jeffery Miller, 19, a freshman from Plainview, New York; Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, a junior from Youngstown, Ohio; and Allison Krause, a 19-year-old freshman from Pittsburgh.  John Cleary, 19, a freshman from Scotia, New York; Dean Kahler, a 20-year-old freshman from East Canton, Ohio; and Joseph Lewis, just 18, from Massillon, Ohio, were reported in critical condition at Robinson Memorial Hospital in nearby Ravenna.  They were not all protestors—indeed, Miss Krause had just telephoned her parents to express disgust at the demonstration. 

A wave of new protests is wracking the country, now with fresh ammunition.  And it is ammunition that is at the center of this outrage, for the Guard did not use tear gas, rubber bullets, or blanks.  Never mind if they should have been on the campus at all.  At the very least, their rules of engagement should not have incurred collateral deaths on innocent students.

There are just two positive consequences of this tragedy.  The first is that if the goal of calling in the Guard was to cow protestors, it has backfired spectacularly.  The second is that, on May 5, President Nixon announced that American troops would be withdrawn from Cambodia in seven weeks.  How much this decision is in reaction to the demonstrations and how much is due to the heavier-than-expected resistance of the Communists is presently unknown.

I suppose there's one more result—I've been radicalized, and I plan to start marching.  It's something I've always supported in the abstract, but observed a modicum of restraint, recalling Tom Lehrer's sentiment, "It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against – like peace, and justice, and brotherhood, and so on."

But now we see that the audience doesn't all agree, and some of them shoot.  I know I'm in the over-30 untrustworthy set, but you'll see my grizzled mug in among the protestors in the weeks to come.

Congratulations, Dick—you managed something Lyndon couldn't.

Shards

And so I plunge into fiction, hoping for a relief from the growing madness.  I am greeted with more madness: each of the stories in The latest issue of Galaxy is broken into pieces, with their ends crammed into the latter half of the magazine, as if written like some strange BASIC program with too many GOTO commands.  Nevertheless, it's the stories that count.  How are they?

Picture of a multi-armed spacecraft sliding into a disc of blackness in front of the Moon
cover by Jack Gaughan illustrating The Moon of Thin Reality

Continue reading [May 8, 1970] Tower of Glass (June 1970 Galaxy)

[May 6, 1970] Wondrous and Astounding (The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, Part One)

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

For those who don’t know, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) was founded five years ago in what would become the first successful attempt at forming a professional writers’ association for science fiction writers—at least here in the States. With the SFWA came the Nebula, an award made to be on par with the Hugo in terms of prestige, but voted on by SFWA members rather than Worldcon attendees; in other words, an award by authors for authors. SF in the American “pulp” tradition (as differentiated from SF of the H. G. Wells sort) has been around for not quite 40 years, and those of the older generation have clearly taken on a retrospective attitude as of late. If the New Wave asks where SF might be heading, then those who’ve been in charge of the SFWA, including Damon Knight and Robert Silverberg, are now asking where SF has been.

We thus have a massive reprint anthology, published by Doubleday in a rather colorful hardcover edition, called The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One. It is, as far as I can tell, the largest SF anthology since Dangerous Visions, running 560 pages. We don’t often cover reprint anthologies at the Journey, but this one is a huge endeavor, and since most of the stories included predate the Journey it would be negligent to not cover it. It’s also such a long book that we have no choice but to split the review into multiple parts. Now, many of these stories are actually not new to me, although this knowledge does little to help me when it comes to evaluating some three decades of short SF.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, edited by Robert Silverberg

Colour photo of a dustjacket whose spine declares it to be 'The Science Fiction Hall of Fame' (Vol 1) - Edited by Robert Silverberg.  The front matter of the cover gives pride of place to the list of the 27 featured authors, with decorations of lightning projectors taking up the outer corners, and the title is set against an illustrated 'space' background with a stylized Earth, Moon, and a pink Saturn with golden rings, with a boast that the book contains 'The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time Chosen by the Members of the Science Fiction Writers of America'.
Cover art by Sagebrush.

Continue reading [May 6, 1970] Wondrous and Astounding (The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, Part One)

[May 4th, 1970] The Blue Meanies Are Coming (Doctor Who: The Ambassadors Of Death [Parts 5-7])


By Jessica Holmes

Have you ever been on a rollercoaster just to have it break down halfway through? That’s what this story is like. It was so close. It was so, so close to being a genuinely excellent serial. But tripping just before the finish line, this month’s story just comes out as ‘pretty good’. Let’s try and find out what went wrong in “The Ambassadors Of Death”.

Lennox (white, balding, middle aged) sits at a small table in a bare concrete cell. He has a dinner tray in front of him, on which is a blue plate with a metal rod on it.
Excuse me, waiter? There's some plutonium in my soup.

Continue reading [May 4th, 1970] The Blue Meanies Are Coming (Doctor Who: The Ambassadors Of Death [Parts 5-7])

[May 2, 1970] Gaudy Shadows in the Crystal Cave (May 1970 Galactoscope)


by David Levinson

The Matter of Britain

When I was a boy, someone gave me Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. For many years, I would occasionally look at the pictures, but never bothered to read it. I finally did when I was 14 or 15, and I was hooked.

All things Arthur became an obsession. I wasn’t satisfied with modern retellings and hunted long and hard for a decent modernization of Sir Thomas Malory. That led to Continental poets who wrote about Arthur, like Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chrétien de Troyes. Once I had access to a university library, I discovered the Welsh legends and then the early Medieval and Dark Age historians who mentioned him by name or indirectly. Suddenly, my obsession with King Arthur merged with my obsession with ancient history, and I was off again.

Eventually my ardor cooled due to a lack of new things to learn and the demands of being an adult, but for 15 or 20 years I lived and breathed this stuff. And now, Mary Stewart has brought it all back.

The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

Black book cover covered in a rain-like texture. The Authors name 'Mary Stewart' appears in white and the caption continues
'author of THE GABRIEL HOUNDS'
In rainbow lettering 
'THE CRYSTAL CAVE'

Continue reading [May 2, 1970] Gaudy Shadows in the Crystal Cave (May 1970 Galactoscope)

[April 30, 1970] Praise for the Resident Witch (May 1970 Analog)

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

With the inflation scare going away, national protest attendance down to the tens of thousands, and a Supreme Court on its way to being filled, not to mention a lull in space news, I can finally turn my attention where it matters: this month's science fiction magazines!

I'm always grateful when Analog turns in a decent issue to round out the month, and this month's edition has some real bright spots.

The cover of Analog; a color image, showing a Viking riding horseback through a forest. Behind him rises a ruin, and in the sky above is outlined the faces of a woman, and a wolf.
by Kelly Freas, illustrating "But Mainly by Cunning"

Continue reading [April 30, 1970] Praise for the Resident Witch (May 1970 Analog)

[April 28, 1970] A Strange Case of Vulgarity & Violence (Vision of Tomorrow #8)

Black & White Photo of writer of piece Kris Vyas-Mall
By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

There has been a steady rise in complaints about the state of current TV in the liberal society. It is commonly held up as the cause of declining moral standards and a crude form of entertainment. The Times decided to look into this and had a team watch through and analyse the 284 hours of television in the first week of April. Of these almost 60% of them contained no hint of violence, vulgarity or sexual content.

Looking at the violent content 19 of the hours are from the news, documentary or sport. And others include such broad definitions as children’s fairy tale containing a threat of “losing your head”. Among the remaining violent content, it is predominantly American films and television, in particular Westerns. If the Western was the cause of growing societal violence, it would be declining from its domination of large and small screens.

Jackanory Title Card
Jackanory, source of violence?

On the other-hand vulgarity tends to come from British comedies in later evening and these are on the milder side of expletives. It tries to make headlines out of 47 uses of the word “bloody” in one week, but this is skewed by the fact that Braden’s Week ran an episode discussing if the word was still offensive.

Braden's Week Title Card
Braden’s Week: Too vulgar for TV?

Finally, nudity and sexual content is barely present. There are a couple of bedroom scenes and double-entendres, but full nudity or sexual acts are absent. The closest is in a cigar commercial where a woman emerges from the sea in a wet t-shirt.

Mannkin Cigars TV ad still a woman in a wet top comes out of the ocean cupping her breasts
Are Manikin’s Cigars causing a breakdown of Britain’s morals?

If that is the case, then where should we look for the riding tide of sex and violence? One MP has a theory, witchcraft! Gwilym Roberts MP has been calling on the Home Secretary to introduce legislation against anyone who claims to practice witchcraft as it leads to drugs and blackmail. This will certainly be news to most of the witches I know.

Poster for Legend of the Witches documentary film with black and white images of women in shadow
Malcolm Leigh’s recent “documentary”

Whatever the cause, the panic over the current changes in society continues apace. It also seems highly present in the short SF of Britain, as its sole surviving magazine is certainly not limiting their bloodshed:

Vision of Tomorrow #8

Vision of Tomorrow May-70 illustrating the inside of a human spaceship where an astronaut has degraded to a skeleton in a suit whilst writing a note. Through the door behind the skeleton, 2 multi-armed aliens enter
Cover illustration by Kevin Cullen

Continue reading [April 28, 1970] A Strange Case of Vulgarity & Violence (Vision of Tomorrow #8)

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction