[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)

[April 26, 1970] Red stars in space (Communist China and the USSR make leaps)

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

It's likely you missed the other big news in space given how much the flight of Apollo 13 dominated the air waves.  But while we were busy ensuring that Lovell, Swigert, and Haise made it back home, the ChiComs and the Russkies were accomplishing some space spectaculars of their own:

If you look up in the sky, you'll see nine new stars, all of them Red!

Colour photograph from an elevated vantage of large crowds of people gathered in Tien An Men Square, illuminated from above by brilliant lamps

Continue reading [April 26, 1970] Red stars in space (Communist China and the USSR make leaps)

[April 24, 1970] Save Our Ailing Planet (Earth Day: April 22)

Tune in tonight at 7PM Pacific for a very funny and excellent episode of Science Fiction Theater!

Overdramatic closeup of William Shatner as Captain Kirk in Star Trek.



by Erica Frank

Timothy Leary's exhortations to "turn on, tune in, drop out" have found their limits:

You can't turn on if your every breath is filled with poison.
You can't tune in if you are surrounded by industrial cacophony.
You can't drop out of living on Earth: Science fiction plans notwithstanding, it's the only planet we have.

Before we can live in harmony with nature and each other, we need to address the damage we have done and undo the harms to the land, the sea, the sky that sustain us.

That's what Earth Day is about: A day of protest against industrial waste and environmental toxins. A day of celebration of the world we share and the peace we hope to build in the future. A day of education and cooperation, of hard truths and hopeful plans, of turning fear and anger into new relationships and useful actions.

Poster saying War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things, with a drawn flower on a bright yellow background.

Smog is also not healthy for children and other living things. Part of the goal of Earth Day is to bring the energy of anti-war protests to protecting our environment.
Image by Another Mother for Peace (AMP), an anti-war activist group.

Continue reading [April 24, 1970] Save Our Ailing Planet (Earth Day: April 22)

[April 22, 1970] “Houston, We’ve had a Problem Here!” (Apollo-13 emergency in space)

[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

Philatelic envelope with coloured line drawings relating to the Apollo-13 space mission.

We all breathed a sigh of relief when the astronauts of Apollo-13 returned to Earth safely a few days ago, after the Apollo programmes’ first (and hopefully last) inflight emergency, but superstitious people are claiming that Apollo-13 was unlucky because of a prevalence of “13s”! After all, the mission was launched at 13:13 Houston time (but somewhere in the world there will always be a place where the time is 13: something!) and the explosion that caused its inflight emergency occurred on 13 April (but only in certain timezones – it was already 14 April in Australia and most of the world east of the United States).

Don’t tell me the Apollo-13 crew were “unlucky”; in fact, they were immensely lucky that when something did go wrong they were a team with the right skills for the situation. As seasoned test pilots, the crew were experienced at working in critical situations with their lives on the line, and their professional skills as astronauts were matched by the “tough and competent” (to quote Flight Director Mr. Gene Kranz) Mission Control teams, backed by highly trained engineers and scientists – all determined to “return them safely to the Earth”, just as President Kennedy committed NASA to do when he set the goal of a manned lunar landing by 1970!

Diagram timeline of major mission events during Apollo-13Timeline of major mission events during Apollo-13

Continue reading [April 22, 1970] “Houston, We’ve had a Problem Here!” (Apollo-13 emergency in space)

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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)

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction