Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 31, 1970] Both sides now (February 1970 Analog)

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

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

Rows and floes of angel's hair

Woody Allen likes to quip that being "bi-sexual" (liking both men and women) doubles of your chance of getting a date on the weekend.

NASA has just doubled the amount of weather they can look at in a single launch.  TIROS-M (does the "M" stand for "Mature"?) was launched from California on January 23rd into a two-hour orbit over the poles.  12 times a day, it circles the Earth, which rotates underneath.  Unlike the last 19 TIROS satellites, TIROS-M can see in the dark.  That means it gets and transmits a worldwide view of the weather twice a day rather than once.

More than that, the satellite is called the "space bus" because it carries a number of other experiments, measuring the heat of the Earth as well as solar proton radiation.  Launched "pickaback" with TIROS-M was Oscar 5, an Aussie satellite that broadcasts on a couple of bands so ham radio fans can track signals from orbit.  Maybe Kaye Dee will write more about that one in her next piece!

Clouds got in my way

If the distinctive feature of the Earth as viewed from space is its swaddling blanket of clouds, then perhaps the salient characteristic of this month's Analog is its conspicuous degree of padding.  Almost all of the stories are longer than they need to be, at least if their purpose be readability and conveying of point.  Of course, more words means more four-cent rate…


by Kelly Freas, illustrating "Birthright"

Continue reading [January 31, 1970] Both sides now (February 1970 Analog) →

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Horror, Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 28, 1970] Cinemascope: Just a Poe Boy (An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe, The Moebius Flip, Sole Survivor, and The Dunwich Horror)

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An author's headshot of a white woman with blonde pigtails.  She is wearing black glasses, a pale blue button-down shirt, a dark green vest, and a pendant on a chain necklace.
by Fiona Moore

An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe

An evening of Edgar Allan Poe is written across the top of the poster in yellow capitals on a black background.  The initial A and the word 'Poe' are written in a fancier, medieval-looking font.  The A and the P are superimposed over red squares.  The O in Poe has a drawing of a skull in it. Beneath the title, a color photograph of Vincent Price looking at the camera, cut off at the forehead where it intersects the title . A clock's hands are floating in front of his face.  The Roman numeral XII is projected across his forehead.  In the background there is the ghostly silhouette of what might either be a castle or some pine trees.Theatrical poster for An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe

An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe is an hour-long film in which four Edgar Allan Poe stories are recited by Vincent Price. Originally made as a television play (and in a way which suggests it was based on a theatrical production, albeit with the addition of some new visual effects), it’s reminiscent of the BBC’s A Ghost Story For Christmas segment, and I was recently asked to view it as a possible acquisition as a teaching tool by my university’s English Literature department.

A color film still of Vincent Price, wearing a white bow tie and black tails,and made up to look older with white hair and beard.  He is seated at a high-class dining table with a white tablecloth.  The room is dim and only the table and Price are clearly visible.  In front of Price there are a variety of bowls and dishes stacked up, and past them at the front of the frame is a fruit basket with grapes and bananas visible.  Two candelabra with three candles each sit one on either side of the fruit basket. Price appears to be gesticulating while speaking.
The Cask of Amontillado

The programme is split into four segments, in each of which Price recites a different Poe short story. Fairly predictably, these are “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Sphinx”, “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Pit and the Pendulum”. Each segment is performed with Price in character as the narrator of each story, with appropriate costuming and sets. Although Price does show a decent range in playing different characters, they’re all very much within Price’s repertoire as an actor, so, although none of the performances are bad, there are no real surprises to be had here.

A film still of Vincent Price, this time with dark fluffy hair and a van dyke beard. He is wearing a brown sport jacket over a brown plaid waistcoat with matching brown plaid trousers and necktie. He is sitting in a brown leather wingback armchair with his hands gripping the ends of the chair arms, looking at the viewer.  The chair sits in front of a round side table with glassware on it.  In the background is a pair of diamond lattice windows, of which three diamonds have colored glass instead of clear.The Sphinx

I felt the best segment was “The Cask of Amontillado”. Price really seems to relish the role of Montressor and plays him with a wicked twinkle in his eye, surrounded by luxurious draperies and furniture and a banquet-table of food. The weakest for me was “The Sphinx,” which struggled to hold my attention, though it did have an effective use of special effects when we briefly see a skull overlaid over Price’s face at a crucial moment.

A blurry film still of Vincent Price sitting on a bench at the bottom of the pit, looking up at the viewer.  There is a large support column behind him and straw covering the floor. A blurry line that may be the pendulum is to the right of the frame, as though it had just swung past Price's face.The Pit and the Pendulum

By contrast, “The Pit and the Pendulum” was a good enough dramatization of an exciting story, but the problem was that the producer seemed to feel it needed jazzing up with effects shots of Price falling into the pit, Price helpless before the pendulum, Price faced with colour separation overlay ("chroma-key" to yanks) flames, and so forth. The rats were far too cute, with inquisitive little faces and glossy fur, for me to find them horrific.

Finally, “The Tell-Tale Heart” was a good choice as the opening story, told simply with the set a bare garret, with Price steadily ramping up the hysteria as the narrator follows his path into murder and madness.

A color film still of a sparsely furnished 19th century room.  A chair and threadbare carpet are in the foreground, a basin and towel on a stand in front of a window to the left, and a bed or table with rumpled white fabric on it to the right. Vincent Price stands facing the carpet, looking down at it.  He is wearing a white shirt with black waistcoat and black trousers.  His hands are stretched out toward the carpet as if spasming or gesticulating.The Tell-Tale Heart

One great benefit I can see from this production is a chance to show audiences who may just know Poe from the cinematic productions loosely based on his work, just how skilled a horror writer Poe was in real life. The issue with something like “The Pit and the Pendulum” is that one can’t really get an entire 90-minute film out of it without adding a lot of material, which, while it can work as a movie, means you lose the terrifying economy of the original story (although if anyone wants to adapt “The Cask of Amontillado”, I think one could spend at least 90 minutes exploring the buildup of resentment in the two characters’ relationships that led up to the final murder). For this reason, I’m recommending that the English Literature department acquires a copy, and would also say that, if it turns up on TV in your region, it’s worth a watch.

3 out of 5 stars.

A black-and-white headshot of a white woman with dark hair, dramatically arched eyebrows, and dark lipstick. She is looking at the camera with an unreadable expression.
by Victoria Silverwolf

There's A Signpost Up Ahead . . .

Two films I caught recently reminded me of Rod Serling's late, lamented television series Twilight Zone.  Let's take a look.

The Moebius Flip

The title card from the film

Less than half an hour long, this skiing film is the sort of thing that might be shown at a college campus, before the main feature in a movie theater, or to fill up time on television in the wee hours of the morning.  The brief running time isn't the only thing that reminds me of Serling's creation.

We begin with scenes of people skiing, edited in a jumpy way.  Jazz, rock, and folk music fill up the soundtrack.  The skiers also fool around in the snow, eat some fruit, and so forth.

Suddenly, we see a news announcer.  He tells us that scientists have determined that every subatomic particle in the universe has reversed polarity.  I'm not sure what that means, but let's see what happens.

A color film still of a white man with brown hair wearing a plaid suit and red tie sitting in front of a red background with brown acoustic tile on the right side.  He is holding a stack of papers from which he is reading into a black microphone.

Somehow, this is supposed to change the way people perceive things.  That means the film turns into a negative of itself.

A negative image of a color still.  A man in a top hat wearing a cardigan is standing in front of an orange background gesticulating at the screen.  The hat is white instead of black, the man's face green, and the cardigan a bright teal with black +s.

This goes on for a while, then the movie goes back to normal.  Once in a while, it turns back into a negative.  I guess that's a Moebius Flip.  Along with more skiing, we get folks at an amusement park and eating in a restaurant.  This part of the film features some pretty impressive and scary scenes of dangerous winter sports.  People ski over huge crevasses, wind up on top of a tower of snow, and hang from cliffs.

A color still of a person hanging from the underside of a cliff overhang. The person is supported by several ropes and a rope ladder.

Is it worth twenty-odd minutes of your time?  Well, if you like psychedelic images or are a big fan of skiing, it could be.  The science fiction premise is just an excuse to reverse the colors of the film, and there's no real plot at all.  I've never been on a pair of skis, so I can only appreciate the athleticism on display here as an outsider.

Two stars.

Sole Survivor

The title card of the movie SOLE SURVIVOR, written in black capitals with white shadows in a stencil font.  The title is superimposed over a photograph of the silhouette of a wrecked airplane against an orange sky, with the low sun just touching the top of the plane.

This is a made-for-TV movie that aired on CBS stations in the USA earlier this month.  It begins with five men in World War Two uniforms standing around a wrecked American bomber of the time.  They seem to be in pretty good shape, given that they're in a desert wasteland.  Things get weird when we find out they've been waiting to be rescued for seventeen years.

A color film still of five white men in World War II era military bomber jackets. They are standing in front of pieces of wrecked airplane.  The man on the left wears a flight helmet. The man next to him wears a baseball cap.  The third and fourth men are wearing officers' caps. All four look at the fifth man on the far right of the frame, who is facing them and appears to be speaking.
The crew of the Home Run.

It quickly becomes clear that they are ghosts, waiting for their bodies to be found so they can stop haunting the wreck. 

I should note here that the premise is inspired by the case of the Lady Be Good, a bomber that crashed in the Libyan desert in 1943 and was not discovered until 1958.

A color photograph of the wreck of the bomber 'Lady Be Good' as it lays on the sand in the Libyan desert. The back half of the plane lies at right angles to the front half, and there are several small items scattered around the main wreck.
The real wreck.

Fans of Twilight Zone will remember the episode King Nine Will Not Return, which was also inspired by the fate of the Lady Be Good.  That tale goes in a different direction, however.

Two men in an airplane discover the wreck.  (By the way, the fact that the ghosts have been waiting for seventeen years means that the movie takes place in 1960 or so.  There's no other indication that it's set a decade ago.)

Two white men sitting in the tan interior of a small plane.  The passenger wears a tan hat, a white shirt, and dark jacket, and is adjusting a camera. The driver wears sunglasses, a pink shirt, and a brown jacket.
The discoverers, who look more 1970 to me.

This leads to an official investigation by the United States Army.  (Remember that the Air Force was part of the Army, and not a separate branch of the service, until a few years after World War Two.) Two officers are in charge of the mission.

Two white men in black army dress uniforms and hats sitting in the back of a car and having a conversation. They are looking out the front of the car rather than at each other.
William Shatner, fresh from Star Trek, as Lieutenant Colonel Josef Gronke and Vince Edwards, best known as Ben Casey, as Major Michael Devlin.

They pay a visit to the sole survivor of the Home Run.  This fellow parachuted out of the plane and landed in the Mediterranean Sea, managing to make it out alive to continue his military career.  (More details of what happened later.)

A blonde white man in general's dress uniform stands in front of window with a flower-print curtain.  The man looks pensive.  The view outside the window is dark and rainy.
Brigadier General Russell Hamner, as played by Richard Basehart, recently the star of the TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Hamner agrees to accompany the two officers to the North African desert.  He claims that all of the crew of the Home Run bailed out into the ocean, so the plane must have continued without them for several hundred miles before it crashed.  Unlikely, but possible.  Flashbacks tell us the real story.

A white man, the top of his face obscured by his hat, sitting scrunched up in the bomber. He is wearing a communication headset and appears to be speaking urgently.
Hamner as the navigator of the Home Run during the war.

The bomber was damaged in an attack by the enemy.  The captain ordered Hamner to plot a course back to base, but he panicked and bailed out against orders.  Without a navigator, the crew went off course and the plane crashed. 

Tension builds as Devlin casts doubt on Hamner's story, and Gronke tells him not to make waves, lest he ruin his career.  Both officers have their own concerns about their pasts, adding depth of character.  Without giving too much away, let's just say that the truth comes out because of a harmonica, a rubber raft, and Hamner's guilty conscience.  There's a powerful and poignant conclusion.

A white man with brown hair and a bomber jacket (the fifth man from the second photo from this segment) holds a baseball in one hand and a baseball glove in the other.  He is standing in front of the airplane.
The last ghost faces an eternity playing baseball alone.

This is quite a good movie, particularly for one made for TV.  I like the fact that the ghosts appear as ordinary men, rather than being transparent or something.  The actors all do a good job.  You'll never hear the song Take Me Out To The Ball Game again without having an eerie feeling.

Four stars.

A white man with dark short hair and a dark van dyke beard sits on a yellow couch reading a fantasy periodical.  A window in the background shows an empty suburban street.
by Brian Collins

Over the past several years, AIP has adapted stories by H. P. Lovecraft for the big screen—or at least the drive-in. The results have been mixed, but they could certainly be much worse. The first and still the best of these was The Haunted Palace (adapted from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward) back in '63, directed by Roger Corman, with a script by the late Charles Beaumont, and starring an especially tormented Vincent Price. It was a very fine picture. Now we have the latest entry in this "series," The Dunwich Horror, taken from the Lovecraft story of the same name, although it's a pretty loose adaptation.

The Dunwich Horror

The title card from 'The Dunwich Horror.' The title is written in white capitals, and includes the quotation marks. behind the title are abstract silhouettes of trees with short, spiky branches stand against a dark blue background.

One warning I want to give about this movie, one which has nothing to do with sex or violence, is that, aside from being generally a pretty strange film, there are several scenes featuring flashing lights, or a color filter changing rapidly to give one the impression of a strobing light. Some people (thankfully not many) are susceptible to epileptic fits if subjected to such stimuli.

Now, as for the film itself, once we get past what I was surprised to find is an animated (as in a cartoon) opening credits sequence, we start with what seems to be a flashback of a woman giving birth, surrounded by two elderly sisters and an old man. We then flash forward to Miskatonic University, that college of the occult and Lovecraft's making, in Arkham. Nancy Wagner (Sandra Dee) is a student who, in the college's library, meets a good-looking but unusual young man named Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell), who is terribly interested in the Necronomicon. I'm sure his interest in the accursed book and his strange deadpan way of talking are perfectly innocuous. A certain professor at Miskatonic, Henry Armitage (Ed Begley), gets a bit of a hunch that Wilbur is up to no good, but for now does nothing about it.

A color film still. A man in a black shirt, his face visible only from the mouth down because of the camera angle.  He reaches into a glass case to gently lift out a large black hardbound book with metal fittings and a lock on the pages. The label at the top of the case reads 'The 'Necronomicon' ' in white capitals. A woman in a white shirt stands behind the man, her hands raised, watching what he is doing.  Her face is visible only from the eyes down.
The Necronomicon, kept in a cozy glass case.

"The Dunwich Horror" is one of Lovecraft's most celebrated stories, but it's also one of his trickiest. As with "the Call of Cthulhu," Lovecraft wrote "The Dunwich Horror" as if it were a report or an essay, a work of journalism or academia, rather than a fiction narrative. There's no protagonist, properly speaking, although Wilbur is certainly the story's nucleus. This remains sort of the case with the film, although Nancy and Armitage now serve as our eyes and ears, or rather as normal people in what becomes an extraordinary situation. However, it's not Sandra Dee or Ed Begley who caught my attention, but Dean Stockwell as Wilbur, who gives almost what could be considered a star-making role (to my knowledge his most high-profile roles up to now were film adaptations of Sons and Lovers and Long Day's Journey into Night), if not for the movie that surrounds him. Unlike his short story counterpart Wilbur here is not physically deformed, but instead talks in a strangely deadened tone, as if human emotions are foreign to him. Stockwell as Wilbur manages to be uncanny simply through how he talks and acts, which is a major point of praise.

A color film still of a young white man with brown curly hair and a mustache and a young white woman with blonde hair.  They are staring to the left of the viewer with apprehensive looks on their faces.  The man wears a blue shirt, dark tie, and brown jacket.  The woman wears a black blouse and tan jacket.  Some dark wooden furniture is behind them, along with teal wallpaper.
Dean Stockwell as Wilbur Whateley and Sandra Dee as Nancy Wagner.

Director Daniel Haller and his team of screenwriters have opted to streamline Lovecraft's story while giving it a sort of romance plot, as well as a dose of sex and violence. Sex and Lovecraft have always been uneasy bedfellows, even in something like "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" which explicitly involves sex in its plot. Wilbur is one of two twins, the other having supposedly died in childbirth, with the father being unknown, and his mother having been kept in an asylum for the past two decades. Wilbur lives with his grandfather, Old Man Whateley (Sam Jaffe, who some may recognize as that one scientist in the now-classic The Day the Earth Stood Still), who seems convinced his grandson is also up to no good, but arbitrarily (the film does nothing to explain this) does nothing about Wilbur being a scoundrel. For his part, Wilbur sees Nancy as a pretty fine girl—for a dark ritual, that is. The idea is that if he can steal the Necronomicon and impregnate Nancy (the implication, via a mind-bending scene, is that he rapes her), he can bring one of "the Old Ones" into the human world.

Two older white men stand in front of a house with dark wooden siding and a four-paned window.  The man on the left has curly hair and a beard and wears a white shirt with blue stripes and a bugundy smoking jacket.  The man on the right wears a fedora, a black suit, and a dark gray overcoat.  They both look to the right offscreen with disturbed expressions.
Sam Jaffe as Old Man Whateley and Ed Begley as Professor Henry Armitage.

As this point the plot splits in two, with one half focusing on Wilbur and Nancy's "romance" while the other sees Armitage tracking down the mystery of Wilbur's birth, since it becomes apparent the young man and the Necronomicon are somehow connected. One of the strangest (sorry, "far-out") scenes in the whole movie is when Armitage goes to see Wilbur's mother (Joanne Moore Jordan), who apparently had lost her mind many years ago upon giving birth to Wilbur and his dead twin. When it comes to this movie, there are two types of strange: that of the unnerving sort, and that of the cheesy sort. There are parts (sometimes moments within a single scene) of this movie that do a good job of spooking the audience, and others where it's rather silly. With that said, the nightmarish effect of Jordan's performance combined with the changing color tints in this scene make it one of the most effective. This is a movie that generally shines brightest when it focuses on Stockwell's performance and/or the Gothic cliches (including a creepy old house) that clearly also influenced Lovecraft's writing. Maybe it's because they didn't have the budget for it, but the lack of an on-screen monster for the vast majority of the film's runtime also works in its favor.

An old woman with unkempt white hair and a blue one-piece hospital gown huddles in the corner of a padded cell looking upward with a frightened expression.  The buttons of the padding - like on a mattress - are visible on the walls and floor. The metal frame and springs of a bed are in the foreground.
Joanne Moore Jordan as Wilbur's mother, who's spent the past two decades as a mental patient.

When Old Man Whateley finally decides to take action, Wilbur kills him for his troubles, along with imprisoning one of Nancy's friends and turning her into some kind of abomination. Meanwhile Wilbur gives his grandfather a heathen burial and in so doing provokes the wrath of the Dunwich townspeople, who never liked the Whateleys anyway. It's revealed, or rather speculated, that Wilbur's twin may not have died after all, but instead gone to the realm of the Old Ones while Wilbur got stuck on Earth as a human. Armitage and the townsfolk succeed in stopping Wilbur from completing his ritual with the unconscious Nancy, Armitage being well-versed enough in the Necronomicon to use the book against Wilbur, killing him with a blast of lightning. So the last of the Whateley men is dead. Unfortunately, the final shot, eerily showing a fetus growing inside Nancy (which is odd, because she's probably only been pregnant a day or two), implying an Old One may be born after all.

A white man with brown curly hair - the same one from the earlier photo - stands among trees at night.  He looks off to the left, seemingly in concentration.  He is wearing a black cultist robe and rests his hand on top of a metal wine goblet which is standing on a wooden board.  A hand, presumably attached to a body lying on the board, is visible at the bottom of the screen.
Dean Stockwell at his most devilish.

Lovecraft purists will surely be much disappointed with this movie, and even as someone who is not exactly a Lovecraft fan, I have to admit it's by no means perfect. Even at 90 minutes it feels a bit overlong, and it tries desperately to contort one of Lovecraft's more unconventional stories into having a three-act structure. I also get the impression that the addition of blood and breasts was to appease those (people my age and younger) who are suckers for AIP schlock. Not too long ago we had Roger Corman's so-called Poe cycle, which for the most part did Edgar Allan Poe's (and in one case Lovecraft's) fiction justice on modest budgets. I would say The Dunwich Horror is on par with one of the lesser of Corman's Poe movies.

A high three stars.

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


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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 26, 1970] Over The Rainbow (Doctor Who: Spearhead From Space)

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By Jessica Holmes

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? It’s all change in the new season of Doctor Who: new Doctor, new companion, new visuals. And it's now in colour!

But is it worth the increased rent on my new television set? Let’s catch up on “Spearhead From Space”.

Doctor Who title card—new font on a swirly, coloured background

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 25, 1970] Alien Island, Enchantress from the Stars, The Winds of Darkover, and The Anything Tree

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

A photo portrait of Brian Collins. He is a casually dressed white man with closely cropped dark hair, moustache, and beard (both kempt). He is casually dressed and reading an issue of 'Fantasy and Science Fiction'.
by Brian Collins

You may look at the byline for today's book of mine and wonder if your eyes are deceiving you; but no, that really is T. L. Sherred, who some older readers may remember as having written a few SF stories more than 15 years ago. Indeed, it has been so long since Sherred last appeared that it seems as if JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF had been born and then crucified in the interim, what with how much the field has changed since 1955. Now Sherred comes to us with what is apparently his debut novel.

Alien Island, by T. L. Sherred

Book cover, featuring a psychedelic illustration juxtaposing the round earth (with autumn trees and clouds inset) against a warped cube of space featuring a landscape of white peaks and pink shadows.  Large artificial structures of the same white material dominate the space proximal to the earth
Cover art by Carol Inouye.

The gist of it is that humanoid aliens, called the Regans, have come to Earth, in the name of a kind of cultural exchange; it just so happens that they've landed in Sherred's home state of Michigan. Dana Iverson holds part-time jobs as a barmaid and cafeteria worker, but secretly she works for the CIA, thus acting as our eyes and ears for the story that unfolds. A barfly buddy of Iverson's, Ken Jordan, gets randomly (or at least it seems random) selected as Earth's ambassador for the meeting with the Regans. For the Regans' part, they've provided the unrealistically gorgeous space captain Lee Kay Lukkari. The idea is that Jordan and Lukkari merge personalities and memories, quite literally, such that they learn of each other's cultures in about as direct and intimate a way as one can imagine. The neutral ground, which Jordan soon enough transforms into a kind of Xanadu, is the island of the book's title, positioned on the US-Canada border, just outside Michigan.

What could possibly go wrong? Actually, quite a lot.

Readers with good memories may recall a very good story of Sherred's from a very long time ago, "E for Effort," which involves a seemingly innocuous invention (a time-viewer that the characters use to their economic advantage) but which soon comes to have apocalyptic consequences. I have to say I'm a bit confused as to why Sherred, who for all I know has spent the past 15 years selling used cars, should suddenly emerge from hibernation with this specific novel. It's not that Alien Island is a bad novel exactly, but rather that while it follows a similar trajectory to that minor classic of Sherred's that I mentioned, and while it seems to come from the same place of pessimism regarding humanity's future in the wake of the atomic bomb, this is a narrative that doesn't benefit whatsoever from being rendered a novel. Certainly it would have worked better as a novella, given the small cast of main characters, the claustrophobic setting, and the single-mindedness of its message. The sad part is that it's by no means a bad message.

The other question I have to ask is why Sherred waited until, say, the past few years to write this novel of his. True, there are passages wherein the characters discuss sex, in a pretty inoffensive fashion (those expecting steamy human-on-space-babe intimacy will come away disappointed), but the language is more or less clean. I will say, it's not often you read an SF novel by one of "the old guard" these days and have the protagonist/narrator be a woman; that much of Iverson's conflict comes from her jealousy of Lukkari and her ill-hidden affection for Jordan is not as steep a price to pay as it sounds. Another thing to its credit is that Alien Island is a satire with a point to make, which I understand is going off of a low bar, but it still distresses me how many alleged satires strike me as utterly vacuous. Similarly to "E for Effort," this is basically a story about the pinhead humanity stands on, between nuclear annihilation and possibly ascending to a higher place. With "E for Effort" it was a time-viewer, whereas with Alien Island it's intervention on the part of some benign, if hard-to-read aliens.

One more thing: Without giving away specifics, I was worried that Sherred's novel would repeat the black hole of nuclear doom that "E for Effort" headed for by its end; but this novel's ending, which has a strangely biblical resonance, could be considered cautiously optimistic. Incidentally, "cautiously optimistic" is how I also feel about Sherred returning to the field after so long.

Three stars, but I was hoping for more.

A photo portrait of Winona Menezes. She is a woman with light-brown skin, long black curly hair and dark eyes. She is smiling at the camera.
by Winona Menezes

Ace Double 89250

The Winds of Darkover, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Book cover, featuring a painted illustration of a snow-swept landscape with a walled city in the background, its towers just catching the light of a crepuscular red sky.  In the close foreground, separated from the city by a great distance, we see four figures with trousers, knee-high boots, tunics, metallic helmets and sleeves, gauntlets, and brightly colored capes.  Red, yellow, and green are running in a line with swords drawn towards blue in the middle distance
by Kelly Freas

This month’s Ace Double gives us the fifth story set in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover universe. A standalone story, The Winds of Darkover requires no prior knowledge of the series.

Generations removed from the colonists from whom they descended, the people of Darkover, a little waystation planet, live in an archaic feudal society lorded over by a ruling class with psychic abilities. Deep in the mountains, one of these noble families is thrust into turmoil when a bandit tribe lays siege to Storn Castle, and to save her family Lady Melitta of Storn is forced to flee in search of aid.

Seemingly unrelated, high above the planet a disgraced spaceport dispatcher named Dan Barron is unceremoniously relieved of his position after a paralyzing psychic vision renders him useless in an emergency and endangers the lives of several pilots. To salvage his employment he is sent on a humiliating planet-side mission at the request of the Darkovan Lord Valdir to instruct his men in the construction of lenses used in telescopes. Barron agrees reluctantly, but the psychic visions that cost him his job continue to plague his mind and body.

Bradley’s setting is dazzling; Darkover is unmistakably reminiscent of the Middle Ages, but filled with enough alien wonders and ancient history to give the impression that this world is much bigger than the little story it contains. The story, unfortunately, does its world little justice. Each event feels cobbled together out of necessity, and the sum of the parts is a story that jerks from one scene to the next with little regard for cohesion. The third act is so brief that the resolution feels unearned. My biggest issue, however, was the baffling choice to write one of its main characters out of importance.

Melitta of Storn is driven from her besieged home with the fate of her family entirely dependent on her wit and bravery, and seems like the obvious candidate for the heroine of a pulp fantasy. Rather than do the obvious, however, Bradley is apparently content to allow Melitta to gradually fade into the background with little impact on the plot. Until, of course, it is time for her to be the milquetoast half of a romance with Barron so under-baked I found myself checking to make sure I hadn’t accidentally skipped any pages.

The Winds of Darkover is a serviceable but ultimately skippable installment in the Darkover saga. It is buoyed only by its fantastical setting, and the story a disappointingly uninspired patchwork of genre fantasy staples. Two stars.

The Anything Tree, by John Rackham

Book cover, featuring a surreal illustration of a brown tree with neither ground nor sky, against a background of green leaves.  The lower part of the tree is shaped as a great and solemn mask, and limbs like arms rise from the convolutions of the bark
by John Schoenherr

The other half of this Ace Double is The Anything Tree by John Rackham, and I found myself enjoying this one a lot more than I thought I would upon reading the opening pages. The first few paragraphs describe the heroine flippantly enough that I thought the rest of the book was going to be dismissive of her, but once the plot picked up I was pleasantly surprised.

Selena Ash is a covert agent sent on a mission by her father’s company to locate the planet of a tree with miraculous properties, and she does so under the guise of a thrill-seeking socialite who enjoys interplanetary racing. A mysterious sabotage sends her ship crash-landing onto a lush forest planet that she believes to be uninhabited… until she runs into Joe, a fellow explorer who has inexplicably “gone native” and made this planet his home, loincloth and all. Joe acts as Selena’s guide as they traverse this obscure planet to escape her adversaries, and she slowly begins to understand that Joe has a certain kinship with the plant life that populates this planet. As she grows to share his affinity for the friendly alien flora, she realizes that his solitary existence might be less lonely than she had initially believed.

Some of the inciting incidents of the plot feel a little contrived, but I was more than willing to suspend my disbelief and enjoy this fantastically verdant paradise of a planet. Selena’s awareness of the existence of a kind of sapience possessed by the plants, not so much intelligence as base creature instinct, grows gradually enough to coax the reader along into an unwitting empathy with vegetation. Even the romance feels earnest and sweet, as the two protagonists are brought mentally and spiritually into togetherness by willingly joining the plants in their blissful existence. This unfamiliar way of existing is joyful in its inhumanity, compelling enough for me to ignore any plot contrivance or cliché and just be one with the greenery.

Maybe the contempt at the beginning of this story was justified, by Selena and all of humanity, me included. Rackham’s reverent wonder for the criminally unappreciated plant rings clear as a bell, compelling enough for me to set aside my dumb human logic and be reminded by the flowers of the joy of existing as a living creature. Four stars.

A photo portrait of Jessica Dickinson Goodman. She is a white woman with straight dark hair pulled back behind her head.  She wears a zipped up jacket, and is smiling at the camera.
by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

Enchantress From the Stars, by Sylvia Louise Engdahl

Today, 230 young women are undergraduates beginning their Spring semester at Yale where this time a year ago, none were. The education of women is a profession as old as learning, but has only recently been taken up by a range of our nation's institutions of higher learning. Stories about young women's minds, as opposed to their bodies or the uses men find for them, are as welcome and necessary as air.

Book cover, printed in yellow with black accents, featuring what appears to be a background pattern of clouds in half-tone with the title in an otherwise emptied circle above a triptych of circular prints in the lower-half of the cover, overlapping in a triangle.  Each of the circles bears a different image of a person, printed three times at horizontal offsets.

Enchantress from the Stars is a story of a young woman's exploration of her world through the worlds – and worldviews – of others. This story has three alternating perspectives but Elana's view is the central one, with scenes through Jarel and Georyn's eyes weaving around it but never overwhelming the forthright and careful way Elana approaches her story.

This is a story fans of Star Trek would deeply enjoy, with its Federation and moral imperatives not to interfere, its mix of timelines and technologies, and most of all, its earnest heart. It brings a duty-bound respect for and curiosity about all living things that fans of Nurse Chapel and Lieutenant Uhura – as well as Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, and Chekov – might enjoy.

Elana's world is divided into thirds, with her society at the top, as those who have control over the power of both machines and minds. Jeral's society is second tier, with control over mechanicals like space ships and mining engines and laser weapons, but no psychic powers. Georyn's world languishes in the bottom third of the power hierarchy, medieval with no machines and no mental powers, but he does hold a belief in magic that allows him to understand the world around him in some ways that are initially lost on Jeral.

The "dragon" that appears early in this story shows the deep potential for this tripartite frame. First, we hear of a dragon from Georyn and the number of people who have gone to fight it and never returned. Then we see through Jarel's eyes it is a fire-breathing forest clearing machine from the empire he serves in a junior capacity, and that the people Georyn has lost to the "dragon" are actually imprisoned by Jeral's colonizers. Finally, and most complexly, we understand the dragon through Elana's eyes, as both the monster of myth and of man, its terribleness and terror flowing from both wellsprings.

Enchantress from the Stars invites readers to engage in the kind of profound and transformative empathy that the best of science fiction and fantasy can draw from us. We see events from our own views as readers, from hers, from those of her father and coworker and the people she seeks to protect and those whose aggression she seeks to defuse. As I read, I found myself reinterpreting everything Georyn and Jeral said through Elana's view, a pleasant mental and emotional stretch that only grew more satisfying the more practice I had at it.

That juxtaposition between science fiction and fantasy is in a way at the heart of what makes Enchantress from the Stars so magical and remarkable, because the genre shifts depending on who is telling the story. Georyn's fantasy is Jeral's horror is Elana's science fiction. Most books ask us to walk in one stranger's shoes, and leave us better off for doing it; Enchantress from the Stars invites us to several views and gives us the tools to truly understand them.

In this moment where professors are having to learn to address their students as "ladies and gentlemen" and not merely "gentlemen," I believe we could all use as much practice expanding our worldviews as possible, to include new genders, new perspectives, and as many new ways of being as we can in a never ending effort to fully understand what it means to be human.

Americans today live under a constitution that does not once include the word "she" or "woman" or "girl." It has been nearly 50 years since the Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced and it still, still has not passed. Maybe some of those young women at Yale will get it passed or their colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley, which is celebrating its 100 year anniversary of admitting women this year, will see it through.

Like Elana's world, ours is unequal. It is full of dangers and arbitrary death, patriarchies that bind and urge conformity and restrict human potential. It is also full of girls like Elana, boys like Georyn and Jeral, young people who are willing to challenge what they can see with their own eyes is wrong in the world. Who are willing to take what they are given by their fathers, older brothers, commanders, and societies and say: no, this is not for me; for me, I choose another way.

Enchantress from the Stars gives them and us the time and space to question, to discern what our worlds are and should be and can be. It is a novel that gives us readers a breath of time, a bare string of moments, to consider: what have we received today that we will reject, reform, and remake tomorrow? Who will we teach ourselves and others to be? Who will we become?

Who do we want to be?

(Four stars)

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


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[January 24, 1970] War: Individualism and Insubordination (Patton and M*A*S*H)

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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

War is on everybody’s minds these days as the controversies around the Vietnam War rage on.

Two new films, Patton and M*A*S*H, provide complex and nuanced views of war. These two films contrast strikingly, overlapping with some ideas, but dramatically far from each other with others.

The two films also present a complete contrast in look and feel. Patton has a traditional roadhouse production look and feel. But the film isn't stiff – it celebrates the quirkiness and depth of its lead character, making it a surprisingly complex film whose revolution rests with General Patton, himself. M*A*S*H focuses on the eccentricities of its lead characters but is surprisingly conservative in terms of gender roles and expectations. In its filming and style, however, M*A*S*H is like nothing we've seen before.

Following the General

A movie poster for Patton, with positive quotes from both Cosmopolitan and The New York Times

Patton, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, stands as an epic portrayal of one of the most controversial and enigmatic military figures of World War II, General George S. Patton. The film not only delivers a stunning performance by George C. Scott but also delves into deeper themes that reflect the complexity of war and the man who seemingly thrived in it.

General George S. Patton, a larger-than-life figure with an unyielding belief in his destiny to lead and conquer, appears almost mythic in his determination and ferocity. Yet, within this portrayal, there's an underlying tragedy – Patton is depicted as a man out of his time, someone whose ideals and mannerisms belong to an era long past.

Patton: A Man Out of Time

Patton’s character is deeply rooted in the ethos of classical warfare, where personal glory and valor were the hallmarks of a military hero. He draws inspiration from historical military figures and battles, often romanticizing the past and seeing himself as a continuation of a warrior tradition. This is evident from his astounding opening speech, where he declares, "Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser."

Throughout the film, Patton’s anachronistic views are at odds with the modern world. His reverence for discipline, his belief in reincarnation, and his disdain for weakness are portrayed as attributes of a bygone era. In a poignant scene, he compares himself to a gladiator, reflecting his belief that he is fighting not just a modern war but a timeless battle of wills.

Patton’s rigid adherence to these antiquated ideals often puts him at odds with his contemporaries. His confrontational and abrasive leadership style contrasts sharply with the more politically astute and strategic approaches of his peers. This tension culminates in moments where his actions, though tactically brilliant, are questioned for their diplomatic and ethical implications.

Color picture of Patton, standing in the deep grass within Italian ruinsGeneral Patton at home in some Italian military ruins

Pro-War Elements in Patton

The film does not shy away from showcasing the pro-war elements that define Patton's character. His speeches and actions glorify the warrior spirit and the thrill of battle. He revels in the chaos of war, viewing the battlefield as the ultimate test of character and leadership. Patton’s relentless pursuit of victory, his insistence on pushing his troops beyond their limits, and his disdain for those who falter, all underscore a pro-war narrative that valorizes aggression and tenacity.

A significant pro-war element is the depiction of Patton’s belief in destiny and divine guidance. He sees himself as an instrument of fate, chosen to lead and conquer. This almost messianic conviction drives him to extraordinary feats of leadership, inspiring his troops to achieve seemingly impossible victories. His charisma and unwavering confidence create a sense of inevitability about his success, reinforcing the idea that war, for him, is a stage where great men prove their worth.

two white men standing on either side of a film cameraDirector Schaffner with actor Scott

Anti-War Elements in Patton

Yet, the film is not a one-dimensional glorification of war. Director Schaffner and writers Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North present a nuanced view that also highlights the anti-war elements intrinsic to Patton’s story. The personal costs of Patton’s relentless drive for victory are evident in the toll it takes on those around him. His relationships are strained, his subordinates are pushed to their breaking points, and his superiors are often exasperated by his unyielding nature.

The film also critiques the destructive consequences of Patton’s actions. His obsession with glory and his impatience often leads to reckless decisions that jeopardize lives and missions. He is a man who hates what he sees as cowardice. He refuses to believe in battle fatigue. In fact, one of the most infamous incidents in Pattton’s career – and in this film – happens when he strikes a shell-shocked soldier. Victory is the crucial goal, no matter that a victory without human honor is disgraceful.

Patton standing in the snow with his binoculars, infantry behind himPatton has the long view of any military adventure.

Moreover, the film portrays the political and moral dilemmas of warfare. Patton’s disdain for diplomacy and his confrontational attitude often clash with the broader strategic goals of the Allies. His near-dismissal for insubordination highlights the tensions between individual heroism and collective responsibility. The film underscores the notion that war is not just a series of battles but a complex interplay of politics, ethics, and human cost.

This film’s portrayal of Patton raises important questions about the nature of leadership and the morality of war. It invites viewers to consider whether greatness in war justifies the personal and ethical compromises that come with it. Patton’s character serves as a lens through which the audience can explore the dualities of war: its capacity to elevate and destroy, to inspire and to devastate.

Patton’s presentation

Patton was filmed in a process called Dimension 150, similar to the old Todd A-O process which allowed extreme widescreen films (with a ratio of 2.25:1) to be shown with standard projectors. But as you know if you live in a big city, Patton is being marketed as a roadshow experience like The Sound of Music or Lawrence of Arabia.

A wide, chaotic battle scene in a desert city, with Patton firing into itJust look at that glorious widescreen image!

This results in Patton having a true epic feel: battle scenes feel titanic and powerful, filled from edge to edge with soldiers struggling through the mud or firing their rifles. It’s a powerful effect, though a dramatic contrast to our national character at the dawn of this decade. This approach reinforces the “great man” feeling of George Patton as a titan astride the fights he unleashes. It also helps to make him feel like a dinosaur.

Suicide is Painless

poster with the legend

M*A*S*H, on the other hand, feels as fresh as this week’s underground newspaper—irreverent and dismissive, full of tangents and wild moments. Patton may feel like a dinosaur, but Hawkeye, Trapper John, Painless Dentist, Nurse Hot Lips and the rest feel like people who just walked off the street in your home town.

There are acres of mud in Patton, but the world of M*A*S*H feels even muddier. Set in a military unit during the Korean War but clearly paralleling the Vietnam War, director Robert Altman delivers a film which feels like a revolution – even if its characters sometimes reinforce conservative values.

The Revolutionary Approach

M*A*S*H has rightly been celebrated for its unconventional and groundbreaking approach to filmmaking. One of the most striking features is Altman’s use of overlapping dialogue and improvisation. This technique not only adds a layer of realism but also enhances the chaotic and unpredictable nature of life in a wartime medical unit. The characters speak over each other, conversations blend together, and the audience is plunged into the midst of the chaos. Patton allows characters to make speeches. M*A*S*H doesn’t want speeches.

A word here about the script: Ring Lardner Jr. is credited as the scriptwriter, adapting Richard Hooker’s novel. As I mentioned in a recent review, Lardner was one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of screenwriters who were blacklisted by the Hollywood system for their alleged involvement with the Communist Party. It’s an act of heroism to give Lardner work today, and a great sign of the changes to American politics. I do wonder how much of this film Lardner actually scripted – M*A*S*H feels thoroughly improvised – but I welcome seeing his name again.

six white men sitting at a table, arranged in a way that echoes the Last Supper

Appropriately, M*A*S*H shuns the typical heroic combat narrative. Instead of glorifying war, M*A*S*H presents it as absurd and grotesque. The surgeons, led by the irreverent Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John (Elliott Gould), cope with the horrors of war through dark humor, practical jokes, and general insubordination. The anti-establishment sentiment that runs through the film mirrors our own countercultural movements of the 1960s, making it resonant. Patton’s insubordination is internal; the insubordination in M*A*S*H is societal.

This insubordination makes M*A*S*H feel thoroughly contemporary. Everybody hates the army, its inflexibility, command structure, even its jeeps and the terrible movies it provides to the troops. Not even the intercom works as expected (the intercom also serves as a kind of Greek chorus for the film, an unexpected bit of meta-humor). I also found the insubordination to be thoroughly hilarious.

Altman’s use of non-linear storytelling and episodic structure further sets M*A*S*H apart. The film lacks a traditional plot, instead unfolding as a series of vignettes that illustrate the day-to-day lives of the characters. This approach allows for a more nuanced and multifaceted exploration of the war’s impact on individuals, eschewing the neat resolutions and moral clarity often found in war films.

Four white men standing facing each other. Three of the men are dressed in Army green, while the second from the left is wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and aviator glassesTrapper John and Hawkeye conning and confusing a helicopter pilot

Individualism is at the center of everything Altman creates with his cast. None of these people are simple grunts manning their job. Instead, all the characters in the film, even those on the edges of the frame, feel like unique human beings. It even feels as if the movie could focus on those characters without sacrificing what makes this movie unique.

Revolution in Style, not Society

Despite its innovative approach, M*A*S*H is deeply conservative in its portrayal of the sexes. The film’s treatment of its female characters is troublesome. Women in M*A*S*H are largely depicted as objects of desire or sources of comic relief, reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes rather than challenging them.

Take, for example, the character of Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, played by Sally Kellerman (Star Trek and Outer Limits). She is portrayed as a rigid, by-the-book officer who becomes the target of the male characters’ ridicule and pranks. The already-infamous shower scene, where her tent is lifted to expose her naked body to the entire camp, is a particularly glaring instance of the film’s sexist undertones. This scene is played for laughs, reducing Houlihan to a mere object of male amusement and stripping her of dignity.

a faintly blurry wide shot of various camp members, men and women alikeThe entire camp of the MASH unit mocks Major Houlihan

Furthermore, the film’s male characters frequently objectify and demean their female counterparts. Nurse Lt. Dish, for instance, is referred to more by her physical attributes than by her professional capabilities. The interactions between male and female characters often revolve around sexual innuendo or outright harassment, reflecting a chauvinistic attitude all too common in both the military and society then (and, of course, now).

This presents an interesting paradox for director Altman. Many reviewers rightly lauded Altman for his complex and nuanced portrayal of a female lead in his previous film, That Cold Day in the Park. M*A*S*H critiques many aspects of military life and the absurdity of war but does little to challenge the status quo regarding gender dynamics.

The only defense I can muster to that attack is to note how M*A*S*H shows a mostly male world at the hospital. Nearly all the officers are men, and all the injured are all men. Therefore, a male attitude prevailed at camp. M*A*S*H takes place in the early 1950s, when women had recently been sent back from factories and battlefields to the kitchen and motherhood. It was a conservative era in terms of gender roles, and male chauvinism was pervasive. Surely M*A*S*H would feel strange if women, even well-trained nurses, were treated as equals.

A white man wearing glasses and a silly expression, next to a blonde woman with a stuck-up, disgusted expressionCol. Blake is the only one who treats Houlihan as even slightly equal to him – but he is an ineffectual goof.

The film’s humor, often at the expense of its female characters, underscores a broader societal acceptance of sexist behavior. In this sense, M*A*S*H may be revolutionary in its approach to storytelling and its anti-war message, but it remains entrenched in conservative views on gender roles.

Which is the conservative film?

M*A*S*H is a reminder of the limitations of our era’s progressive movement. While the film challenges many societal norms and offered a fresh perspective on war, it offers a discordant view in its representation of women, reflecting the broader struggles of the feminist movement as we enter the 1970s.

In fact, I adore M*A*S*H. I walked out of the theatre on an emotional high from seeing the film much like the high I get after seeing a great rock concert (I still think about that Blind Faith/Delaney & Bonnie show at the Seattle Center Coliseum last fall!) M*A*S*H feels like the revolution. It feels like the future. It feels like a new generation of film and I can’t wait to see what Robert Altman delivers next.

a small wide man in sunglasses is speaking to two taller actors in army fatiguesAltman directing Gould and Sutherland

But Patton was also a movie that really shook me, particularly the oddly naïve ways General Patton strove for glory. General Patton may have been a figure from my parents’ generation, but his attitudes and life philosophy were surprisingly nuanced in the hands of George C. Scott, Franklin J. Schaffner and the writers.

The characters in M*A*S*H could come of the streets of any American town. George Patton was one of those men who seemed like he could only succeed in war.

Both films provided me experiences I’ve never had before in a movie theatre.

Five stars for each.

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


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 22, 1970] Sergeant Pepper's New Wave Writers' Club Band: New Worlds, February 1970

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by Fiona Moore

February’s rain and sleet freeze the toes right off the feet, as Flanders and Swann once sang. Still, there’s reason to celebrate: the Family Law Reform Act has come into effect, reducing the age of majority from 21 to 18 for most purposes, homosexual sex being a notable exception. Decimalisation continues apace, with the half-crown coin being taken out of circulation (don’t worry, you can exchange it at most banks).

Term has resumed at Royal Holloway College and my students are attacking the writings of Margaret Mead with their usual enthusiasm. However, there is also widespread unease among our Nigerian foreign student community over the capitulation of Biafra: many of them have had no news of their families, and are also concerned about when they will be able to go home. The university is rallying round to make sure everyone is housed, and there are jobs aplenty in Southwest London if they need to stay a while, but it is still an anxious situation for them.


Jubilant street scene in Lagos upon the news of surrender, January 12, 1970

No news of Yoko Ono after December’s festive anti-war campaign. Rumour has it she and her husband have gone off to New York for some reason, so I expect I’ll be covering her activities less often. What all this means for her husband’s band, I’m not sure.

On to New Worlds, which continues its trajectory back to being an SFF magazine, but unfortunately almost every story is suffering from a lack of originality this month.

Cover of New Worlds, February 1970. The text is red, the background is black. In the centre is a black and white image of a car running over a nude female torso.Cover by Roy Cornwall

Lead-In

Mostly introducing new writers and illustrators to the magazine, as well as showcasing the pieces by Ballard and Watson, and drawing the reader’s attention to a new, presumably ongoing, feature of the publication—of which, more later.

Journey Across a Crater by J.G. Ballard

A black and white image of the left side of a White androgynous face photographed through distorted glass.

A piece about a crash-landed astronaut finding his way to civilisation. There are resonances with Ballard’s earlier story “You and Me and The Continuum” (Impulse Magazine 1:1, 1966), and also some vivid sexual imagery about car crashes, which makes sense given that the Lead-In tells us Ballard is currently working on a novel about these. Interesting enough as a revisitation of familiar Ballard themes but no new ground broken. Three stars.

Soul Fast by Gwyneth Cravens

A black and white photocollage of kitchen utensils.Illustration, artist uncredited (possibly Charles Platt)

A story by a woman in New Worlds is always worth remarking on, particularly a woman who is a current editor of the New Yorker. However, I can’t help but notice that women writers in New Worlds always seem to get pigeonholed into writing about domestic or otherwise nurturing themes. This one, for instance, is about food and the role it plays in relationships. There are some interesting satirical commentaries on race and how over-privileged White Americans with superficial attitudes towards spirituality crib from Black and Asian cultures, which makes it worth checking out. Four stars.

Japan by Ian Watson

A series of black and white cartoons depicting impressions of Japan
Illustration by Judy Watson

This is the standout piece of the issue. Watson, a Tokyo resident, introduces Japan to English readers in a surreal, outré travelogue emphasising the weird SF-ness of living in a country where the atmosphere isn’t breathable, earthquakes and fires are endemic, sexual fetishes are catered to in the mainstream media, and consumerism takes on the status of art. The illustrations are by Watson’s wife Judy. It’s beautifully written, though, having been to Japan once or twice myself, I worry that it’s over-emphasising the strangeness of the country to a point where it might simply confirm Europeans’ stereotype that the East is a bizarre and hostile place. Nonetheless, five stars.

Apocrypha by D.M. Thomas

A poem about the life of Jesus. It’s not terribly original, but I did find it engaging and nicely written. Three stars.

6B 4C DD1 22 by Michael Butterworth

A black and white illustration depicting a face with tentacles emerging from the forehead and cranium.Illustration by Alan Stephanson

Another not-terribly-original piece in the vein of “let’s drop acid and describe the resulting trip as an SFF story.” The mind-altered protagonist lurches back and forth between several different realities, some more surreal than others, with recurring characters playing different roles. I like Butterworth’s way with prose, and some of the metaphors and descriptions are genuinely arresting, but I’d like to declare a moratorium on anyone using Alice in Wonderland as an acid trip metaphor; it’s been done to death. Similarly, while I really like the accompanying art, it looks exactly the same as every other set of illustrations intended to show an acid trip (see above). Four stars.

A Spot in the Oxidised Desert by Paul Green

A black and white line drawing of a rust patchIllustration by John Bayley

A short prose poem from the point of view of a dying sentient tank in a future desert battlefield. Possibly the most innovative piece this issue. Four stars.

The Bait Principle by M John Harrison

A black and white illustration of a small stylised human figure menaced by giant, but very cute, cats.Illustration by Ivor Latto

Patients in an asylum begin to share each other’s delusions, and, in doing so, bring them into reality, leading to an ailurophobe being tormented by human-sized cats. This is an amusing twist on the familiar crazy-people-are-actually-seeing-the-truth genre, but at the end of the day that’s all it is. Two stars.

The Wind in the Snottygobble Tree: Conclusion by Jack Trevor Story

Black and white photograph of a double decker bus in an urban streetIllustration by Roy Cornwall

Finally this serial lurches to an end, with some heavy-handed satire about the Catholic and Scientologist churches, spies and the police. I have the feeling that the story-so-far summary is in fact retroactively adding elements, but I’m not interested enough to go back and find out. The eponymous tree finally appears (it's a species of yew, apparently), but I don’t think it’s got much to do with the story apart from being a bit gross. One star.

A Vid by James Sallis

A short poem which didn’t really do much for me. Two stars.

Books

By Mike Walters, John T. Sladek and Douglas Hill. There’s a delightfully excruciating pun on the first page, although Walters has to contort his review in order to fit it.

Music

As regards the new feature I mentioned above: New Worlds now has a music column! This is certainly a welcome innovation, and I look forward to seeing whether the New Wave has a particularly distinctive take on album reviews.

Overall, I’d say the magazine is suffering this month from a lack of originality. Everything is competently written at worst and sometimes really beautiful, but most of it is things that have been done before. Even the music column is something we see over and over in other magazines, and whether the fact that the reviewers are from the usual New Worlds crowd will make a difference is uncertain.

Is the New Wave played out? Can it (and Mr. Yoko Ono’s musical career) survive into the new decade? Time will tell.

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


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[January 20, 1970] Jolly good Ffelowes (February 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

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

Up in the sky!

There are some intrepid women whose names are household words: Willa Brown, Jerrie Mock, Amelia Earhart.  Others are not so familiar.  The other day, I read the obituary for a pioneering soul I'd not known of before.

Blanche Stewart Scott was born in 1885.  A native of Rochester, she was 25 when she drove a 25-horsepower Overland stock car from New York to San Francisco, her 69 hour journey marking the second time a woman had made a transcontinental drive.

This attracted the interest of aviation pioneer Glen Curtiss, who took her under his wing (so to speak) and trained her to fly.  Apparently, Mrs. Scott had never seen an airplane before her coast-to-coast jaunt; she was caught in a traffic jam outside Dayton, Ohio, caused by a flying exhibition out of Wright Field. 

After just three days of instruction, she made her first solo flight on September 5, 1910, from an airfield in Hammondsport—what may well be the first time an American woman piloted an aircraft.

Photo of a cold-weather suited young woman behind the wheel of a Curtiss Model D, open-air biplane

Over the next four years, until she gave up flying, she suffered 41 broken bones in a number of crashes.  She was one of the lucky ones: "Most of the early women fliers got killed," she once observed.

Scott's later career included working as a scriptwriter, film producer, and radio broadcaster in Hollywood.  In 1948, she became the first woman to ever ride in a jet aircraft.  During the '50s, she combed the country for vintage planes to stock the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton.

She died on January 12 at Genesee Hospital in her native town of Rochester, New York.

Down in the mud

full cover spread depicting two conventional, space-suited astronauts meeting a pair of tall, thin, bipedal aliens with pointed heads, also in space suits, their spindly blue and yellow spaceship/base on the lunar horizon
by Michael Gilbert

Another pioneer of sorts had something of a flutter, if not yet a brush with death (I hope).  The latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is pretty bad…

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[January 18, 1970] Below par (The Long Loud Silence, Sex and the High Command, Beachhead Planet, and Taurus Four)

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

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

The Long Loud Silence, by Wilson Tucker

Book cover, featuring a posterised illustration of a middle-aged white man with dark hair and sun-glasses looking down in the foreground, while in the background there appears to be a distant nighttime inferno, with four great faces appearing to partially emerge molded in the smoke plume

It's been a while since we've heard from Wilson Tucker, fan-turned-pro-but-still-very-much-a-fan. Hence, I was delighted to see that he had a new book out last month. Except, of course, it's not new at all, as I soon found out.

Continue reading [January 18, 1970] Below par (The Long Loud Silence, Sex and the High Command, Beachhead Planet, and Taurus Four) →

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[January 16, 1970] Strange Reports (Vision of Tomorrow #5 and New Writings SF-16)

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By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

The news to start this decade seems to be unrelentingly gloomy. The crisis in Biafra is only worsening, Mainland China and the USSR are at each other’s throats, and, at home, the government appears paralyzed on how to deal with inflation or the Unions.

But I want to take a break from grim reality and talk briefly about one of my favourite new TV programmes of recent months, Strange Report.

Strange Report Title image featuring the three main characters smiling together with the words strange report across them as if on an ink stamp.

It stars the unlikely team of Anthony Quayle (regular star of war films) as retired police detective Adam Strange; Kaz Garas (relative newcomer) as student and jack-of-all-trades Hamlyn Gynt; and Anneke Wills (Polly from Doctor Who) as model and artist Evelyn McClean.

Image from the Strange Report where Evelyn is standing at the doors looking at Ham conducting scientific examination in the makeshift lab in Strange's flat.

Together the trio solve unusual crimes together. These have included such cases as a kidnapped Chinese diplomat, murders by witchcraft and the killing of a student demonstrator behind the Iron Curtain.

There are several reasons this appeals to me, and would to other SF fans I imagine. Firstly, even though it never becomes SFnal, the cases work from a viewpoint that feels very scientific. That no matter how odd things may seem, they will always have a rational explanation.

Secondly, the cases are willing to address complicated issues, without attempting to preach. Even in dealing with some clearly despicable characters, there is an attempt made to understand their point of view and give both sides of the argument. To me it feels like the writers have their own ideas but don’t want to patronise the viewer, we are encouraged to make up our own minds.

Image from Strange Report where Evelyn and Strange sit on a comfortable corner sofa in a fashionable flat discussing the case

Finally, is the dynamic between our triumvirate of heroes. Much like in Star Trek, you get the sense that, in spite of their different viewpoints they all clearly care for and respect each other. It would have been easy to have Strange constantly belittling Evelyn and her trying to show that women could do things for themselves. But, instead, there is a respect and a willingness to listen. Perhaps that is what the terrible world outside our windows really needs?

Back in the pages of SF publications, we have our own strange reports. One coming in from Vision of Tomorrow and the other from New Writings:

Vision of Tomorrow #5

Cover of Vision of Tomorrow #5, a painted colour image illustrating After Ragnarok showing vikings on a glacier approaching a recently landed spaceship.
Cover by Gerard Alfo Quinn

The only point of interest in the introduction is it labelling itself as Britain’s only original SF magazine. I guess it is a point of debate if New Worlds still counts as science fiction or not.

Dinner of Herbs by Douglas R. Mason

Black and white ink drawing of a robot sitting at a control panel, adjusting switches as it observes a rocket in flight.
Illustration by Jeeves

Fenella, a thought chandler at a dianetics lab, has gone to a villa to have a tryst with engineer Gordon Reid. Also staying with them is their domestic servant, a former psychologist android. But is three a crowd?

A darker and more complex tale than it first appeared. However, I think it would benefit from toning down the descriptive prose and upping the character work.

Three Stars

Technical Wizard by Philip E. High

Black and White ink drawing of a fleet of spaceships against a stellar background. Imposed behind them in the massive figure of a man in a spacesuit standing with arms folded and helmet off, looking into the distance.
Illustration by Alan Vince

Two empires in space have come into contact, the more technically advanced human empire and another larger one, populated by fox-like creatures. A single human is sent into the fox people’s empire on a broken-down old ship to warn them. A parapsychic plague has spread through the human empire almost destroying society. Gelthru and Feen have to determine if the human is telling the truth, or if it is all a magic trick to keep them from invading.

An interesting concept and I enjoyed how it made the human the other and the fox-people the protagonists. However, I feel like it needed some more editing to rise above the pack.

Three Stars

Flanagan's Law by Dan Morgan

Black and white ink illustration of a futuristic vehicle zooming across a desert landscape. It appears to be hovering and kicking up dust as it flies along.
Illustration by Jeeves

Capt. Terence Hartigan of the freighter Ladybug is finally given clearance to leave Calpryn, a planet where the main occupation, and entertainment, is lawsuits. However, five hours before blast-off O’Mara goes missing. Hartigan sets off to find him before they find themselves in more legal hot water, but the captain quickly becomes entangled in the planet’s labyrinthine bureaucracy.

I have previously failed to find Morgan’s satires either poignant or funny. This continues that trend but with the addition of some questionable Irish stereotyping.

One Star

Fantasy Review

Black and White illustration of an alien life form in a loin cloth and long boots holding a futuristic gun and old fashioned shield. Behind the sheild is a planet with swirling storms. To one side is the outline of a rocket and other futuristic equipment, to the other is desolate mountain and glistening stars.
Uncredited illustration

Kathryn Buckley reviews New Writings in SF-15, which she liked but not as much as I did, and John Foyster gives praise to The Black Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Outlaws of the Moon by Edmond Hamilton, Kavin’s World by David Mason and Needle by Hal Clement.

One of the Family by Sydney J. Bounds

Black & White ink illustration of a man staring at a small rocket that looks to be rather worse for wear. Around them to one side are alien plants and the other is a cliff face.
Illustration by Alan Vince

Having completed the terraforming of Phoebe-Four, Richard Daniels takes his wife Jane and son Kenny to the neighboring Phoebe-Five for a holiday. Whilst it is meant to be uninhabited they find an intelligent alien, who they call Alan. He quickly becomes like one of the family, but Dick finds his presence both annoying and a cause for concern.

A bit of an old-fashioned tale, but well-told and with a reasonable twist. Wouldn’t have looked out of place as an episode of The Outer Limits.

Three Stars

On Greatgrandfather's Knee by Jack Wodhams

A black and white ink illustration where the tile wends around the figure of a bored child on an old man's knee and an infinite queue of other old people extend into the far distance. Behind them are starfields where different types of rockets fly about.
Illustration by Dick Howett

Six-G GFM Frank (that is Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather on your mother’s side) tells Furn tales of early space travel. But with longevity meaning all the kids having over a hundred great relatives, these tales of adventure are a dull chore.

Whilst Wodhams captures well the boredom of kids having to visit older relatives, I am not sure what the point of it all is.

Two Stars

The Impatient Dreamers: Hands Across the Sea by Walter Gillings

Black and white ink illustration of the logo of Hugo Gernsbeck's science fiction league showing a small stout rocket ship flying through space with a small Earth in the distance, the name wrapped around the outside in a circle.
Insignia of Gernsbeck’s Science Fiction League, designed by Frank R. Paul

This month Gillings discusses Gernsbeck’s Science Fiction League’s branches in England, the early days of New Worlds, fanzine Scientifiction and Gillings' talks with publishers to get a new British SF magazine off the ground.

I continue to adore this series.

Five Stars

Incubation by Damien Broderick

Black and White ink illustration of a man in a shirt and trousers facing front as a woman stands behind clasping his shoulders in an embrace. Behind them is a starfield where an ominous black egg like object is coming in from the right hand side.
Illustration by Eddie Jones

Clive Soame notices a strange ad in the personals and concocts a scheme to sleep with a rich woman and take her money. However, the assignation Rogel and Silver were communicating about was much more complicated than he first thought.

Whilst not revolutionary, an interesting enough take on the lecherous man and alien conspiracy genre. Surprisingly, more than the science-fictional elements, I found myself enjoying the descriptions of Sydney. Very well painted.

Three Stars

Life of the Party by William F. Temple

Black and White ink illustration showing two men in shirt and ties in the midst of battle with a tentacle coming from the ceiling. One of them has sprayed it with paint to make it partly visible to the the human eye whilst the other has a tight grip on the tentacle. Behind them is the grey outline of a square tilted slightly to the side.
Illustration by Eddie Jones

In San Remo, business magnate Mannheim and reporter Don both notice a jet disappear in mid-air. Following its route, they find themselves on a strange coastline, with a giant white cube standing alone by a desert. Entering the cube, they discover a translucent liquid wall leading to a kind of theatre-cum-hotel. The missing jet passengers are there but aged and confused. Don and Manny assume it will be simple to escape, but some force is determined to keep the visitors from leaving.

Taking up over a quarter of the magazine, this is easily the longest piece here, but it makes good use of its length, creating an eerie sense of the uncanny. However, the story is a pretty old one (at times I was recalling The Odyssey) and I was disappointed with the way the women characters were written.

Evens out at Three Stars

After Ragnarok by Robert Bowden

A black and white ink illustration in an oval shape where a distant Earth is being orbited by a space station with two rotating wheels with four spokes to a central shaft.
Illustrated by Gerard Alfo Quinn

The final piece is from an author who I believe is new (at the very least I have not seen him covered by my GJ comrades). After Ragnarok, the world lays shattered. Ottar and Ragnar sail the seas in their ship powered by the ancient technology of the diesel engine. There is a rumour that long ago, some of the gods escaped across the Bifrost, also called Orbit. But could it be possible they are returning? And what will that mean for the world?

Yes, it is another piece of post-apocalyptic-medieval-futurism (try saying that after a few drinks!) However, it has a good style and I have a soft spot for this type of story. The level of cynicism involved also makes it appeal to me.

Four Stars

Tomorrow’s Disasters by Christopher Priest

Instead of our usual preview of next issue’s contents, Priest gives us a short review of Three For Tomorrow. Needless to say, he adores it.

So that is it for the relative newcomer to the scene, but what about the old hand?

New Writings in SF-16, ed. by John Carnell

Hardcover cover image of New Writings in SF-16, with an orange and white abstract image with a red square overlayed saying: Colin Kapp Christopher Priest Michael G. Coney Douglas T. Mason James White Sydney J. Bounds Edited by John Carnell Dobson Science Fiction

Even if we accept the contention that Vision of Tomorrow is the only British SF magazine, New Writings still helps keep up the national side with its regular doses of Carnellian science fiction. According to John Carnell, all the stories in this issue deal with problems that are galactic in scope. Let us see if that makes them Galactic Star worthy.

Getaway from Getawehi by Colin Kapp

Things don't get off to a great start with the return of Colin Kapp's Unorthodox Engineers. Here they are hired to help rescue a construction crew from Getawehi, a planet with an impossible orbit, where gravity is not perpendicular to the surface and 1+1=1.5079.

At almost fifty pages, reading through this was a major slog. These tales must have their fans, but I was personally glad when they disappeared from New Writings a few years back. According to our more learned editor, the concept is very, very, broadly viable, which raises it just above rock bottom for me.

A very low Two Stars

All Done by Mirrors by Douglas R. Mason

George Exton has developed a method of producing mirror images of himself, able to independently work on multiple tasks with the same degree of knowledge and skill as the original. But what is the cost to someone of doing this?

A well-worn trail is being beaten here, and not particularly effectively either.

Two Stars

Throwback by Sydney J. Bounds

Since the Great Change all humans have had the ability to connect via ESP. All that is, except for one person who is completely opaque to all psychic phenomena. Out of pity he is made the keeper of the Museum of Language, with access to all the books and knowledge of the world. Even though he gives weekly lectures, few care about anything other than the present. But when strange lights appear in the sky, only he can save the planet from total panic.

A tightly-told little tale. A bit obvious but enjoyable nonetheless.

Three Stars

The Perihelion Man by Christopher Priest

Capt. Farrell is grounded after an accident near Venus dulls his senses. Whilst pondering what to do with his life now, he is offered a unique opportunity to go back into space. 250 old nuclear satellites have been stolen and are now orbiting the sun, and Farrell may be the only person who can get them back.

This is Priest’s most impressive work to date. He has managed to skillfully produce an exciting adventure story that also has some interesting political elements. That is not to say it is as deep as a New Worlds piece, but it is a fun ride.

Four Stars

R26/5/PSY and I by Michael G. Coney

Hugo Johnson is an agoraphobe who has not left his apartment in two months and is believed to be at risk of killing himself. As such his psychoanalyst provides him with a roommate, robot R/26/5/PSY, or Bob for short. However, Bob is not designed to make Johnson’s life easier, not at all….

An interesting little psychological short. It felt like a combination of I, Robot, a Zola story, and The Odd Couple.

Four Stars

Meatball by James White

And we finish off with the return of White's Sector General and, as the name suggests, their continued explorations of the planet Drambo, nicknamed "Meatball". With the Drambons brought to the hospital station, they must now learn to interact with the numerous other species on board. At the same time Conway has to work out how to deal with the nuclear destruction taking place on the planet below.

It is possible that my memory is cheating me, but I don’t recall other Sector General tales focusing on a single case so much before. Maybe it is planned to be a novel fix-up? This piece definitely has the feel of a staging section, it spends a lot of time recapping earlier events and ends abruptly. Still rather interesting but does not stand alone or feel complete by the end.

Three Stars

Strange Brew, Read What’s Inside Of You

Evelyn and Strange sitting close to each other as they look at a piece of paper. Evelyn is in deep concentration as Strange looks at her.
Evelyn and Strange ponder what we have just read

Whether on the page or the screen, it seems that if you put a group of talented people together and ask them to deal with imaginative scenarios, they can often strike gold…or at least silver. Even if there is little here that is likely to win a Galactic Star, there is plenty worth checking out.

Here's to many more years of Vision, New Writings, and Strange Report. The seventies may not be looking much like a decade of peace and harmony, but it can at least be one of good solid entertainment.

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


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[January 14, 1970] Root Rot (February 1970 Venture)

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by David Levinson

A less perfect union

Unions have been a positive for workers. They’re why we have the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, paid time off, why blue collar workers are able to buy a house, not to mention not owing their soul to the company store; I’m old enough to remember when none of those things were a given. Of course, as human institutions, they are also flawed, and where money and power flows, those flaws can turn to worse things. That’s what gives many politicians—and the editor of a certain science fiction magazine—a pretext to rail against them.

One of the most important unions this century has been the United Mine Workers of America. Much of that stems from the four decades of leadership by John L. Lewis, who died last June. Lewis took a well-earned retirement in 1960 and was replaced by his vice president Thomas Kennedy. Old and in poor health, Kennedy was largely a caretaker and was soon followed by Lewis’ chosen successor, W.A. “Tough Tony” Boyle.

Lewis ran the UMWA with an iron fist, ignoring demands by the rank-and-file for a greater say in the union. He maintained his power through skill, charisma, and reputation. Boyle has run things with a similar style, but lacks most of what kept Lewis in charge. There’s even a feeling among the membership that he tends to favor the interests of the mine owners over the workers.

Enter Joseph “Jock” Yablonski. He was one of the leading figures in the opposition to Boyle’s policies. He had also been the president of the UMW’s District 5 until Boyle unilaterally stripped him of office in 1965. Last May, Yablonski announced he would challenge Boyle for the UMW presidency in the December election and was formally nominated in September. Boyle won the election on December 9th by an almost 2-to-1 margin, and Yablonski conceded. However after seeing the detailed election results, Yablonski promptly asked the Department of Labor to investigate the election. On the 18th, he also filed five civil lawsuits in federal court against the UMW over a variety of irregularities.

On January 5th, Yablonski’s older son, Kenneth, discovered the bodies of Yablonski, his wife Margaret, and their 25-year-old daughter Charlotte in their home in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. The next day 20,000 miners in West Virginia staged a one-day wildcat strike in protest against Tony Boyle, who they believe is responsible for the murders. Hours after the Yablonskis were buried, several of his supporters met with his attorney to plan further actions to reform the union.

Three black and white headshot photographs with names and captions underneath each. On the left, Mrs. Margaret Yablonski, a middle-aged white woman with dark hair.  She is smiling and wearing a dark jacket. Under her name the caption reads 'Bled to death.' In the center, Joseph A. Yablonski, a middle-aged white man with gray or white hair. He has a neutral expression and is wearing a neutral colored suit with a dark tie.  Under his name the caption reads 'Murder a mystery.' On the right, Charlotte Yablonski, a young white woman with dark hair. She is smiling and wearing a dark blouse. Under her name the caption reads 'Shot twice in head.'

As I write, the police have no leads. A $60,000 reward has been offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction. I don’t want to point any fingers without evidence, but an awful lot of people close to Yablonski are looking hard at Tony Boyle and the acrimony surrounding last month’s election.

Corrupt institutions

Most of this month’s Venture is given over to the new Keith Laumer novel, which spends quite a while with miners. But it and the other stories in the issue deal with corruption, both institutional and personal.

The February 1970 cover of Venture Science Fiction magazine.  A drawing in pen and marker.  The outlines are in black ink. The shadows are filled in with lines of magenta marker, and the highlights similarly in orange. At the bottom there is a man's head with a boxy hexagonal helmet over it.  It covers his eyes and extends down nearly to the end of his nose. Two conical extensions stick out from the sides.  Over his head a narrow white disc is hanging - it could be the top of a mine shaft or a floating UFO.  Two outsized human hands frame the image, palms facing inward as if about to grasp something.A not very representational image for Laumer’s new story. Art by Bert Tanner

The Star Treasure, by Keith Laumer

Lt. Ban Tarleton is the son of an admiral and a proud member of the United Planetary Navy. He firmly believes in the status quo and holds no truck with rebellious Hatenik philosophy. But a purge leads to his discovery of some unpleasant facts, eventually resulting in him being cashiered from the Navy and sentenced to permanent exile on a harsh Class I planet. There, he finds work as a miner and makes a discovery that may give him the power to bring the whole system down.

A black-and-white pen and ink drawing.  The hilly surface of a planet tilts diagonally up from the left. A body in a space suit lies horizontally across the top of the frame, apparently being carried by another person in a space suit who is floating nearly parallel with the ground.  In the background there is another fuzzy figure standing on the planet, but it's impossible to tell whether facing toward or away from the viewer. Ban must use his best friend’s corpse as a trap. Art by Bert Tanner

Laumer is probably best known for his comedic stories, particularly those about the interstellar diplomat Retief, but he mostly writes serious stuff. Those tales come in two flavors: two-fisted adventure and thoughtful pieces that frequently tug at “masculine” emotions like duty and sacrifice. The Star Treasure is very much in the former category, but it also differs from Laumer’s usual approach.

Laumer’s typical adventure protagonist is an old-school Competent Man writ very large. Ban, on the other hand, blunders from episode to episode, generally succeeding through dumb luck. Laumer also tends to go wildly off the rails, often to the point of the surreal, investing his protagonists with incredible powers or giving them an alien background of which the were unaware. This one goes off the rails, too, but it’s right at the end. That usually happens around the mid-point. I guess this counterbalances The Seeds of Gonyl, where it happens on page one.

Three stars.

Breaking Point, by V.N. McIntyre

An ambitious but untalented colonel is captured and tortured by the enemy. There are a number of science-fictional elements.

A black-and-white cross-hatched pen drawing of a man's face, fading out above the eyebrows. The face has some wrinkles and the man appears to be squinting toward the viewer as if the light were in his eyes.Looks more like Neil Diamond to me. Art by Craig Robertson

It’s hard to say much about this story without simply retelling it. There is one thing that kept me from liking it: The colonel has a cat, and the cat dies. Twice. I understand how it fits in the story, but it put me off completely.

Anyway, McIntyre seems to be new. I don’t know if that V. hides a Virginia or a Virgil and can’t make a guess based on the writing either. Either way, there are signs of some solid talent. More from this author would not be amiss—just leave the cats alone.

Objectively three stars, but only two from me for reasons already stated.

Disposal, by Ron Goulart

You probably don’t think about how much trash you and your family generate. Someone in the house takes the cans to the curb on the appointed day and brings back the empties once the truck has been by. What would happen if that didn’t happen? What if there wasn’t a nearby dump you could take the trash to yourself? Goulart asks those questions with a slight science-fictional twist.

Although the story takes place in Goulart’s old stomping grounds of San Francisco, I recall reading that he recently moved to New York City. It would have been after the great garbage strike of a couple years ago, but he may have been inspired by horror stories from the locals. His typical satirical style is fully in evidence, but he keeps the outright wackiness in check.

Three stars.

Standoff, by Robert Toomey

A human and an alien find themselves on opposite sides of an asteroid after their ships were destroyed in combat. Hostilities are extreme, and neither side takes prisoners. If they work together, the two might find a way for both to survive.

As the situation of the story became clear to me, I expected something like John Boorman’s 1968 film Hell in the Pacific (starring Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune). That might have been Toomey’s original inspiration, with a possible assist from the 1965 Frank Sinatra feature None But the Brave, but that’s not where the story goes. The ending might be darker than either of those films.

A high three stars.

Summing up

Elsewhere in the issue, we get a “super Feghoot,” which is twice the usual length at a full page. Unfortunately, the pun is extremely tortured, resulting in one of the worst Feghoots I’ve ever read. Meanwhile, Ron Goulart has finally found a book he likes. Two, in fact. One is a Doc Savage reprint, the other A Wilderness of Stars, an anthology edited by William F. Nolan. Most of the stories seem to be from the 1950s. I’m not to sure that Ron is all that keen on the modern state of science fiction, even the old fashioned stuff.

So, a rather middle-of-the-road issue. However, it’s dominated by the condensed novel, far more so than any of the previous issues. If we have to have a novel in every issue, let’s at least make it something shorter so we can have a couple more stories as well.

The note from the end of the current issue of VENTURE.  It is titled 'Coming in the next issue of VENTURE Science Fiction'.  It reads: 'The feature novel in the next issue of VENTURE is something special, a novel that is on the one hand contemporary and, on the other, as inventive and adventurous a book to come along (in the sf field or out of it) in some time.  It's a hard story to describe without revealing several surprises, but it begins with several very colorful members of the Mafia getting wind of an incredible project that is underway at Cape Kennedy.  it is a story that you will not want to miss.  Its tile is HIJACK!; its author is Edward Wellen, who has written with distinction in the sf and mystery field for many years.'Wellen’s written some good stuff, so I hope this more than the pot-boiler thriller it appears to be.




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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction