Remember the early days of the Space Race, when launches came about once a month, and there was plenty of time to ruminate over the significance of each one?
Those days are long past, my friends. Like every other aspect of this crazy modern world we live in, the pace of space missions is only accelerating. Just look at this grab bag of space headlines, any one of which might have been front page news just a few years ago:
Staring at the Sun
Three years ago, NASA launched the first of its "Observatory Class" satellites, the 200 kg Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO). Its mission was unprecedented: to get the first long-term observations of the Sun in all of the frequencies of the electro-magnetic spectrum, not just the narrow windows visible from the Earth's surface.
For two years, OSO gazed at the Sun with its thirteen instruments, dutifully reporting its findings to the ground. The observatory revolutionized our understanding of our neighborhood star, particularly in finding the correlation between solar flares and the little microflares that precede them.
OSO 1 went silent last May. Like nature, NASA abhors a vacuum — at least one without satellites floating through it! So on February 3, 1965, OSO 2 sailed into orbit to pick up where its predecessor had left off.
The new observatory only has eight instruments, but given that the weight of the craft is similar to that of OSO 1, I have to believe the new load-out is intentional. Moreover, OSO 2 has some neat developments. Its Ultraviolet spectrometer, Solar x-ray and UV telescope, and White-light coronagraph are all mounted on the "sail" of the spacecraft, and they can scan the disk of the sun from end to end, like a TV camera. That should allow for more precision in the measurements.
Also, OSO 2 has a digital telemetry system rather than the analog FM system of OSO 1. Digital systems are far less prone to error, and more information can be sent over any given length of time. The new system can dump 3 million bits of data in just 5.5 minutes.
Finally, OSO 2 is smarter — it can accept some 70 commands from the ground instead of just 8. Just what NASA scientists do with those commands, I don't know. Maybe OSO brews great coffee.
The most important thing about OSO 2 is the timing of its launch. Every 11 years, the Sun completes an output cycle, warbling from active to inactive status. 1965 is the Solar minimum, and this year marks a concerted international effort to watch the Sun from many different vantage points to take advantage of the opportunity.
You can bet OSO 2 will have some interesting data for us come 1966!
Requiem for a Vanguard
Hands over hearts, folks. On February 12, NASA announced that Vanguard 1 had gone silent, and the agency was finally turning off its 108 Mhz ground transceivers, set up during the International Geophysical Year. The grapefruit-sized satellite, launched March 17, 1958, was the fourth satellite to be orbited. It had been designed as a minimum space probe and, had its rocket worked in December 1957, would have been America's first satellite rather than its second. Nevertheless, rugged little Vanguard 1 beat all of its successors for lifespan. Sputniks and Explorers came and went. Vanguards 2 and 3 shut off long ago. Yet the grapefruit that the Naval Research Laboratory made kept going beep-beep, helping scientists on the ground measure the shape of the Earth from the wiggle and decay of Vanguard's orbit.
The satellite's cry had slowly become weaker as its solar cell-charged batteries failed. Finally, some time last year, Vanguard could be heard no more, though NASA kept listening for several more months. It's not all sad news, however: Vanguard 1 will remain in orbit for hundreds of years more, and it can still be optically tracked. That means it still has a long, useful life ahead of it, even now that it is mute.
Whole World in its Eyes
Here's a little TIROS tidbit. Remember TIROS 9? The first weather satellite launched into a polar orbit so it can see the whole Earth once a day as the planet rotates underneath?
We now have the very first picture of the world's weather. It won't be the last:
The joys of being regular
There was a time when space was a hit-and-miss affair. Seemed every time I opened the paper, there was news of yet another rocket blowing up. These days, we can practically take success for granted. Ranger 7 broke a six mission losing streak, the first two Gemini launches went swimmingly, TIROS has gone nine for nine.
Similarly, the Saturn 1 rocket, the biggest booster ever made, has had an impeccable launch record. The lift-off on February 16 kept the streak going; the eight engine monstrosity delivered what I believe is the biggest satellite ever to be put into orbit.
Called Pegasus, it is an enormous cylinder with giant panels affixed to either side. The panels occupy some 2300 square feet, and their job is to measure the density of micrometeoroids in orbit over the course of a many-year lifespan.
It sounds pretty mundane when you reduce the mission to its bare essentials. Pegasus is like a big fly-catcher, spending its orbit running into space rocks. But it's not the experiment that's so exciting, but the idea that we can now loft giant structures with a single launch. Imagine that Pegasus was actually a space station module, and that it's wings were solar panels. Now imagine assembling a few of them together using a maneuverable spacecraft, perhaps a Gemini derivative…
Yes, America is just on the edge of being in the space construction business.
Scenes to Come
Yesterday (February 17, 1965), the eighth Ranger blasted off from Cape Kennedy, destination: Moon. If we've truly reached an era of reliability, we can expect the craft to hit its target on the morning of the 20th. Stay tuned — you'll read about it here first!
In the twenty years since the beginning of the Cold War, there have been many potential flashpoints between East and West. In 1950, Chinese-backed North Koreans almost took the entire Korean peninsula in a see-saw, later stalemated, conflict that lasted until 1953. Berlin twice became the hot spot — during the 1948 blockade and after the building of the Wall in 1961. Cuba, too, has been a fraught locale, with the 1959 Communist takeover followed by the disastrous American-backed invasion in 1961 and then the near-calamitous Missile Crisis of 1962.
And then there's Vietnam.
Formerly part of French Indochina, the region has been divided into two roughly equal halves since 1954, when Ho Chi Minh's Viet Cong threw off the colonial yoke in 1954. Since then, the Communist North has engaged in both insurgent and conventional tactics against the South.
Of course, the United States has backed South Vietnam despite it being a rather corrupt and authoritarian state that, for the past two years, has seen a revolving door of junta leaders running the country. American involvement included air support and "military advisers", our presence including about 20,000 troops, all told.
And then came the Gulf of Tonkin incident last August, in which American naval vessels reportedly were attacked off the coast of North Vietnam. That opened the door for a flood of American air strikes, including into neutral Laos to bomb the "Ho Chi Minh" supply trail.
It was perhaps inevitable that the Viet Cong would hit back, first with a bombing of an American billet in Saigon last month, and now, on February 6, with a mortar attack on Camp Holloway, near Pleiku in central South Vietnam.
8 soldiers died in that attack, more than 100 were injured, and there was extensive damage to American equipment. In retaliation, the U.S. launched Operation Flaming Dart, yet further intensifying the air war. Wives and children of American personnel were ordered to leave Vietnam, Hawk surface to air missile batteries were set up at the airbase in Da Nang, and a general escalation of the conflict appears inevitable. Publications, from the conservative Chicago Tribune to liberal LIFE Magazine, are clamoring for direct involvement.
That means American troops abroad, and anyone between 18-25 not currently enlisted in the military better start reconsidering their plans for the next few years. People like my nephew, David, who just turned 23. He's married, has a young son, and goes to UCLA, so perhaps he's safe. For now.
In any event, the papers are full of Vietnam news these days, and the voices against escalation are being drowned out by the hawks.
It looks like we're about to slide, slow-motion-wise, into another Korea. Call me an iconoclast peacenik, but I'm registering my protest early. This won't end well.
No Relief in Sight
For those hoping that the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction would offer a respite from the world's glum news, I'm afraid I have to disappoint you. The return to form we rejoiced in last month quickly fizzled. This month's mag is a dud:
In the sultry oceans of Venus resides a leviathan of a fish, a kind of mammoth angler called "Ikki". Bane to boaters, menace to fisheries, Ikki has been the target of big game hunters and professional exterminators. None have succeeded.
Rich dilettante Jean Lucarich is willing to pick up where others have left off, driving a 10-acre raft equipped with tranquilizer harpoons and giant cages off in search of the modern day Moby Dick. So keen is her desire that she has hired her old flame, a deep sea adventurer, to be a baiter. His job is to lure the Ikki in range of Jean's craft…and capture.
Persons who are more familiar with literary fiction can probably tell me what style Zelazny (the author) is going for. I found it overwrought and, in places, difficult to parse. But what bugged me the most was the utterly archaic (virtually Burroughsian) rendition of Venus. Zelazny's version of the Planet of Love is kinda warm, rather than 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Its day is roughly like an Earth's day, rather than 250 days long. The air is breathable, the water potable.
I nitpick because there's no way that the author doesn't know his Venus is wrong. Mariner 2, first interplanetary probe, finished its mission two years ago. It was in all the papers. Indeed, the story would have been more palatable had it taken place on Earth, say, in some remote corner of the Indian Ocean. It might even have been so, originally — some reject planned for Collier's or some other mainstream mag.
Anyway, it's not bad, but it's not really SF, and I found it too consciously literary. One Bradbury is quite enough.
Three stars.
Final Appeal, by J. H. Brennan
This first piece by the Ulsterian Brennan involves the quest for justice when the judges are all automated. It's one of those pieces that requires such an implausible development of technology (in this case, no human involvement at all in the rendering of judgment) that the "clever" solution falls flat.
It doesn't help that the solution, itself, while it may appeal to the mainstream of society, will be distasteful to a more free-thinking sort.
Two stars, and only because it kept me along for the ride until the inevitable disappointment (which came about a page too late).
Essentials Only, by Jack Sharkey
An absent-minded professor accidentally opens up a portal to a virgin alternate-Earth. He invites his friend to join him for a lifetime of simple pleasures, but of course, they need to bring their girlfriends. And their girlfriends insist on some modicum of civilization. And that includes certain, essential people. And their possessions. And more luxuries, just in case. And so on.
Jack Sharkey varies between mildly impressive to (more often) rather dreadful. But this story is pleasantly droll, inoffsenive.
Three stars.
The End of Eternity, by Ernesto Gastaldi
According to F&SF's new editor, Joseph Ferman, the state of Italian SF is pretty poor: mostly send-ups of cliches we abandoned in the Pulp Era. But, Ferman promises, this imported tale (translated by Harry Harrison) is something different.
He's wrong. End takes place in modern day Rome on the eve of its nuclear destruction. The bomb that will destroy it, scientists say, is so powerful that the space-time continuum might be ruptured. By the way, the protagonist is named "Romulo", and the story is redolent with reminders of the antiquity of the city. Can you guess what will happen?
Two stars for this Italian version of the creation myth.
Tripsych, by Ron Smith
Ferman praises Smith for his satirically broad rendition of three hoary SF ideas in as many vignettes. However, the world doesn't need more bad stories, even if their badness is intentional.
Two stars.
Illusion, by Walter H. Kerr
In 1951, J. T. McIntosh wrote Hallucination Orbit, the definitive tale on cracking up while on solitary assignment in space. Kerr's poem is on the same topic and compares unfavorably in all respects.
One star.
Better Than Ever, by Alex Kirs
There's a movie playing "over there". It takes a month to watch, and no one can tell you what it's about. But those who see it come back…changed. More mature, no longer plagued with their frailties and foibles. Better, one might say. An adman named Clinton is one of the last, stubborn holdouts, increasingly alienated as everyone he knows, one by one, goes to see this movie.
This is his story.
Well, sort of. Nothing much happens in this short piece, mostly just a portrait of social isolation — an isolation Clinton refuses to remedy with the obvious solution. Can you blame him?
Anyway, it's a fair piece, I guess. Probably some kind of metaphor. I don't know.
Three stars, sure.
Oh, East is East and West is East, by Isaac Asimov
In a recent Analog, editor Campbell included a geographical quiz: which states of the U.S.A. are the farthest North, South, East, and West? It's kind of a trick question since it hinges on the fact that Alaska straddles the 180th meridian and, thus, is both the farthest East and West (and North, but that's obvious to anyone who's read the paper since 1959, when Alaska became a state).
I got the answer right, but then, my first book was an atlas. The Good Dr. A. got it wrong, and thus produced an article to explain why he was really right. It's cute, but it doesn't tell you any more than a decent map would.
Three stars.
Ado About Nothing, by Bob Ottum, Jr.
There is a wall at the end of the universe posted with a sign that says that nothing exists beyond the wall. If you don't believe it, put a quarter in the wall and look through the peephole for yourself.
It's a silly vignette, but it appealed to the former editor, Avram Davidson, whose collected materials Ferman is apparently still depending on.
If 50 million monkeys at 50 million typewriters could eventually produce the works of William Shakespeare, what could a computing machine with infinite monkeys worth of random creative capacity produce?
Lin Carter has been around for a while, at least in SFF and Lovecraftian fandom circles, but this is the first story of his I've run across. Told from the perspective of an old literary critic, given to sentimental verbosity, it's a charming piece. It doesn't make a lick of sense, but it's charming. I feel like a little more thought could have made the scientific conceit more plausible, which would have then made the story more effective.
Three stars, anyway.
Maiden Voyage, by J. W. Schutz
Thankfully, the end of the issue is the bright spot. Schutz, currently American Consul General in Tangiers (Morocco), offers up this novelette in epistolary, detailing a scientific mission to Mars in the mid 2030s. Refreshingly, it stars a woman, and in a chatty, engaging style, describes the rigorous training, arduous journey, and perilous events that she endures.
It's straight science fiction, more what I'd expect from Analog than F&SF these days, and I enjoyed it. Bravo, especially for a first effort.
Four stars.
War Report
Both Vietnam and F&SF have been troubled spots for some time, with only isolated moments of hope to keep us going. I guess the question is this: do we continue to throw good money after bad? Maybe we should stick both out for another year and see what happens. If neither improves, maybe it's time to pull out, at last…
[The current "in" thing is Op Art, the manipulation of our visual sense in the two-dimensional plane. Perhaps no artist is more representative of this movement than M. C. Escher, and no day is more appropriate for a love letter to said artist than Valentine's Day…]
by Victoria Lucas
A Fine Romance
It was simple. I walked into a room and there was this man. Well, not exactly the man himself, but there are self portraits. It was still love at first sight.
Maurits Cornelis Escher
I think I wrote about working on Battery Street in San Francisco, 633, as a matter of fact, for the capitalist taskmasters U.S. Leasing Corp. (I'm kidding–I'm not that far left. But I don't like what they do to people who can't make payments on their rented cash registers.) From that debt factory, just a 7-minute walk up (north on) Battery takes me to 1168 and a little gallery established in 1962.
The Vorpal Gallery
Named after the "vorpal" blade in Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky," Vorpal Gallery represents many artists, but I have eyes only for M. C. Escher. Well, maybe I do glance at the other artists represented–occasionally, after I've had my fill of the master after work or at lunch break. I pounce on any new work and gulp it in, forgetting about food.
Another Kind of Relativity
To introduce you to this man's work, here, for instance, is "Relativity," about which the artist wrote, "In this picture three gravitational forces operate perpendicularly to one another. Men are walking crisscross together on the floor and the stairs. Some of them, though belonging to different worlds, come very close together but can't be aware of each other's existence."
Relativity, by M. C,. Escher
Going Dutch
Born in the Netherlands, Escher became a graphic artist who made mainly lithographs, mezzotints, and woodcuts, but also carved three-dimensional objects. (See below.)
Escher's Sphere with Reptiles, from 1949
Escher's work is mathematics made visible. No formulas, just breathtaking elegance, beauty, simplicity. He works with space-filling forms, like his spheres and tessellations. He loved Italy for its landscapes and warmth, lived and worked there for many years. However, although he had no politics to speak of, he felt forced to leave Italy when, after meeting and marrying a woman in Siena, and having a son, he couldn't stand the sight of his son wearing a school-mandated fascist uniform in the 1930s. (They moved to be near his wife's family in Switzerland.)
Transforming the World
No subject is too humble or too fantastic for this man. No matter how you orient this image of a puddle, it works to reflect and refract the world.
Escher's puddle, 1952
I want to continue to see the world through his eyes. I'm not sure one lifetime is enough for that.
Find Your Own Puddle
In any case, whether you want to fall in love or not, I suggest you find a room or a book or a card with images by this Maurits Cornelis Escher who was fascinated by repeating patterns and impossible views. I've found mine.
This March issue opens with Frank Herbert’s novelet Greenslaves, a rather startling, if not entirely amazing, performance. In the future, Brazil and other countries are making war against insect life, since it’s a disgusting reservoir of disease and a source of damage to crops. (The U.S. is an exception, owing to the influence of the radical Carsonists; the reference is presumably to Rachel, not Kit or Johnny.) But the campaign seems to be backfiring, with insects mutating, and epidemics. The events of the plot are cheerfully bizarre, but the message is similar to that of the more ponderous Dune epic: attend to ecology. Things work together and if you mess with the balance, you may harm yourselves.
by Gray Morrow
Unlike the more dense and turgid Dune serials, though, this story is crisply told and moves along quickly and vividly to its point. It also recalls Wells’s story The Empire of the Ants—not a follow-up or a rejoinder, but a very different angle on the premise of that classic story. Four stars for this striking departure both from Herbert’s and from Amazing’s ordinary course.
The ground gained by Herbert is quickly given up by Christopher Anvil’s The Plateau, which if it were an LP would have to be called Chris Anvil’s Greatest Dull Thuds. Actually, my first thought was that it should be retitled The Abyss, but then I realized it is over 50 pages long. Maybe—following our host’s example in discussing Analog—it should instead be called The Endless Desert. It’s yet another story about stupid and comically rigid aliens bested by clever humans, which no doubt came back from Analog with a rejection slip reading “You’ve sold me this story six times already and it gets worse every time!”
by Robert Adragna
The premise: “Earth was conquered. . . . At no place on the globe was there a well-equipped body of human combat troops larger than a platoon.” Except these platoons seem to have an ample supply of mini-hydrogen bombs and reliable communications among numerous redoubts at least around the US, as they bamboozle the aliens in multiple ways, including a cover of one of Eric Frank Russell’s greatest hits: making the aliens believe the humans have powerful unseen allies on their side. The whole is rambling, hackneyed, and sloppy (late in the story there are several references to the aliens as “Bugs,” though they are apparently humanoid, and then that usage disappears for the rest of the story). Towards the end, a sort-of-interesting idea about the nature of the aliens’ stupidity emerges, leading to a moderately clever end, though it’s hardly worth the slog to get there: it’s the same sort of schematic thinking that Anvil typically accomplishes in Analog at a fifth the length or less. So, barely, two stars.
Be Yourself, by Robert Rohrer
Robert Rohrer’s Be Yourself is a little hackneyed, too, but at six pages is much more neatly turned and much less exasperating and wearying than the Anvil story. Alien invaders have figured out how to duplicate us precisely; how do we know which Joe Blow is the real one? No one who has read SF for more than a week will be surprised by the twists, but one can admire their execution. Three stars.
Ron Goulart’s Calling Dr. Clockwork is business as usual for him, an outrageous lampoon, this time of hospitals and the medical profession. The protagonist goes to visit someone in the hospital, faints when he sees a patient in bad condition, and wakes up in a hospital bed, attended by various caricatures including the eponymous and dysfunctional robot doctor, and it looks like he’s never going to get out. Three stars for an amusing farce, no longer than it needs to be.
Wheeler Dealer, by Arthur Porges
The difference between an amusing farce and a tedious one is limned to perfection by Arthur Porges’s Wheeler Dealer, in which his series character Ensign De Ruyter and company are stranded on a nearly airless planet inhabited by quasi-Buddhist humanoids with giant lungs who can’t spare time to help the Earthfolk mine the beryllium they need to repair their ship before they run out of air. Why no help? Because the locals are too busy spinning their prayer wheels. So De Ruyter shows them how to make the wheels spin on their own and thereby gets the mining labor they need. Porges, unlike Goulart, is, tragically, not funny. The story (like the previous De Ruyter item, Urned Reprieve in last October’s issue) is essentially a jumped-up version of a squib on Fascinating Scientific Facts that you might find as filler at the bottom of a column in another sort of magazine. It does not help that the plot amounts to the simple-minded offspring of Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God. Two stars.
The Man Who Discovered Atlantis, by Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg provides another smoothly readable and informative entry in his Scientific Hoaxes series, The Man Who Discovered Atlantis, about Paul Schliemann, grandson of Heinrich Schliemann, discoverer of the buried city (cities) of Troy. The younger Schliemann wasn’t able to accomplish much on his own, so he exploited the fame of his grandfather to perpetrate a hoax about the discovery of Atlantis, or at least of its location and confirmation of its existence. Silverberg succinctly recounts the origin and history of the Atlantis myth as well as the charlatanry over it that preceded Paul Schliemann’s, and suggests that had Plato known what would come of his references to Atlantis, he probably wouldn’t have brought it up. Four stars.
Summing Up
So . . . two pretty decent issues of this magazine in a row! One very good story, two acceptable ones, and quite a good article, and the other contents are merely inadequate and not affirmatively noxious. Do we have a trend? One hopes so, but . . . promised for next month is another of Edmond Hamilton’s nostalgia operas about the Star Kings. We shall see.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
As I've been looking into news and literature sources away from the beaten path, I've run across several magazines that aren't likely to show up on your local newsrack: They're published by homophile organizations. They face tremendous prejudice and sometimes outright bigotry, despite their focus on nothing more objectionable than human relationships.
The term "homophile" was first proposed by Harry Hay, one of the founders of the Mattachine Society. It is widely used by gay rights groups to indicate that their identity is not centered around sex. However, the terms homophile, homosexual, gay, and lesbian are all used frequently throughout the periodicals.
ONE was created by members of the Mattachine Society and has been published since 1958. The Ladder is from the Daughters of Bilitiis, a lesbian organization; it's been around almost as long. Drum is the newcomer that began only last year, published by the Janus Society; it has a less serious approach, with more light-hearted content. All three have a letters section and book reviews, which I will cover at the end.
ONE: The Homosexual Viewpoint
One Incorporated is "A non-profit corporation formed to publish a magazine dealing primarily with homosexuality from the scientific, historical and critical point of view." A few years ago, it won a landmark lawsuit, establishing it as not obscene material, and therefore legal to send through the mail.
ONE has the highest production values of the three magazines I found. The text is neatly set in two columns for main articles and it has both photographs and line art. It has a mix of content types: interview article, fiction, poetry, news, and essays. It also has book reviews. All of them have news and book review sections, as any misunderstood and often-persecuted group needs both an awareness of how society treats them and an understanding of their own communities.
Interview with Elmer Gage, Mohave Indian
Mr. Gage is known as a homosexual in his local community, and they accept him. His photo, instead of showing him making the beaded belts he sells to tourists, or at home with his grandmother, is a publicity picture of him in his Bird Dancer outfit. He wears it for ceremonial dances and sometimes for lectures at universities, but it's not what he wears at home. (Of course not. Shakespearean actors may be portraying traditional British cultural entertainments, but nobody expects them to wear Renaissance-era garb all the time.) Despite the hardships he faces, he is at peace with himself; he says life is "too short to spend your time being something you don't want to be… I'm true to myself and my own nature."
Uncomfortable Fiction, Poetry
The short story, "Somebody Else All of a Sudden, Somebody New," by K. O. Neal, is short, and not an easy read. It involves Jeffy–probably a teenager–and a man called "Old Rocker," who pays him for sex: usually a silver dollar, but two dollars this time. (There are no prurient details in the story.) I'm left wondering if Old Rocker would seek other partners if doing so didn't risk arrest or even murder.
The poem that follows the story, "Lines for the almost gone," is not any less distressing. It's directed to either someone dying or someone on the edge of suicide. The other poem in this issue, "frankincense: three letters to c" by Abel Jones, reminds me of both e.e. cummings' style, with few capital letters and broken lines arranged carefully on the page, and Ginsberg's "Howl," with a mix of evocative imagery and coarse irreverence.
I'm sure this poem is deeply meaningful to someone, but that someone is not me.
Transvestites: Not the same as gay
The article "Silks and Satins" by Charles Elkins is a plea for understanding. Men who wear traditionally women's clothing are not a unified group, nor are they all either gay or straight. Some would prefer to wear dresses and heels in public and be accepted as women; others only want them for bedroom activities. They are often very lonely, rejected even by other fringe communities, and told by psychiatrists that they should repress their harmless interest in looking and feeling feminine. I say: if someone wants to wear a silk dress and heels in public, let them. As Jefferson said, "it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
This and That
It also has a "news and views" column, "Tangents," which is a roundup of short synposes: Homosexuals in the media (a British tv show about lesbians on January 7th, Macleans magazine planning an article about them in the future); cops falsely accusing political candidates of homosexuality in California; one of Freud's theories about Leonardo da Vinci's homosexuality has been debunked. (Whether da Vinci was homosexual is unknown, but if so, it wasn't proven by a childhood memory of a vulture.)
Is that Puss in Boots?
The Ladder: A Lesbian Review
The Daughters of Bilitis is "a women's organization for the purpose of promoting the integration of the homosexula into society" by education, participation in research, and promotion of changes to the penal code."
The Ladder's production quality is the lowest of the trio. Most of it is typed, and the text isn't always aligned evenly with the headings. There are no photographs and no line art. Still, it contains solid news articles (impressive, as it does not rely on a clippings service) and thoughtful essays.
Homophile Activists
This issue has several articles about public events. One called "After the Ball…" about the police raid on a New Year's Eve costume ball organized by the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, comprised of members of six homophile organizations. The police harassed attendees and photographed most of the 600 guests, and when they were told they needed a warrant to enter, they arrested the four people trying to stop them.
While the police were attempting to intimidate, they did capture some amazing pictures. Picture from Lewd & Lascivious.
The other activism news was not as well covered in newspapers: Last December in New York, Dr. Paul R. Dince gave a lecture entitled "Homosexuality, A Disesase." Four picketers showed up to protest, handing out free homophile literature and holding signs saying "WE REQUEST 10 MINUTES REBUTTAL TIME." They made their request to the chairman of the forum – and it was granted!
After the lecture, during open questions, one of the picketers was allowed 10 minutes with a microphone. He pointed out that "experts" have contradictory theories about homosexulity. He mentioned they mostly study unhappy individuals, and they start with the assumption that homosexuality is a disease. (It's easy to "prove" something you already believe.) He also noted that most people in the "disease" camp say little against scams that charge ridiculous fees, claiming they will "cure" homosexuality. After the protesters received great applause, Dr. Dince conceded some of their points.
The E.C.H.O. (East Coast Homophile Organizations) report is five pages about the recent conference in Washington, D.C. This issue holds Part Four: "Act or Teach," based on recordings of the event. In this part, Dr. Franklin Kameny pointed out the flaws in approaching the public with information instead of demands for change. He said it is naive to assume information will overcome prejudice, but that when new laws establish civil rights, "public sentiment has then attempted to accommodate itself to the new situation."
Dr. Koneitzko disagreed with him, saying that acceptance from communities and churches is more important than technical legal rights. Kameny does not disagree, but he says that the acceptance will come after the laws change, not before.
Dr. Franklin Kameny, a WWII veteran who was fired from his post-war job in the Army Map Service because of his orientation. Photo circa 1956.
Essays and Poetry
"I Hate Women: A Diatribe by an Unreconstructed Feminist" is a rant about the repulsiveness of meek, timid, compliant femininity. The compelling title is rather tongue-in-cheek: The author, of course, does not hate women, since she is a lesbian. She hates, however, the notion that all women are destined to be servile wives and mothers, and decries that those who want a different path are often sent to a psychiatrist to "Find Out Why she Rejects the Feminine Role."
She goes on to talk about the risks of over-population, and quotes Arthur C. Clarke from the 1958 Harper's Magazine article, "Standing Room Only":
…the time may yet come when homosexuality is practically compulsory, and not merely fashionable. It will indeed be a piquant paradox if— in the long run and taking the survival of humanity as a whole as our criterion— this controversial instinct turns out to have a greater survival value than the urge to reproduce.
The other essay is considerably less angry. "To Tell or Not To Tell," by Vern Niven, is a short article about wrestling with secrecy, about the choice of whether homosexuals should tell their parents about who they love, or could love. The author says most parents can be accepting, but it may take some effort to prepare them for the truth. She encourages readers to be honest with their families. This can bring support and welcome for both themselves and partners, especially important when they consider their relationship a marriage.
The essays, while subjective, are directed to a broad audience. The four short poems seem more targeted in their appeal. Two have strong nature imagery; one is religious; one relates to music. None of them are overtly lesbian: they do not mention gender at all. But they are lyrical and intense, with hints of secrets being shared between the authors and readers.
And you, my subtle friend Come counterpoint, Offer me softly of your melodic Talents.
The tone of The Ladder is down-to-earth and almost wistful; the articles are laced with hope and perseverance. Not all of the homophile magazines are so sober.
Drum: Sex in Perspective
The name is inspired by a quote by Thoreau: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away."
I saved the fun one for last. Drum has more lively content than the others: the longest article is the 12-page "Beginner's Guide to Cruising," which is as much playful as informative. Indeed, its very first news article includes a picture of Tony Sabella kissing Robert Kennedy.
The caption reads: "A group of New York lawyers is studing the possibility of having sodomy charges brought against Senator-elect Robert Kennedy for allegedly committing a public indecent act in the Fulton Fish Market to demonstrate the importance of Penal Law reform."
Is a public kiss between men acceptable as long as neither of them is believed to be gay?
Dating Guide
The feature article, "The Beginner's Guide to Cruising" by George Marshall, bypasses any question of inner speculation or the gay identity within a heterosexual community. It is focused on a single goal: sexual conquest. While the methods described border on predatory, it is clear that the purpose is great fun for both men involved; this is not a primer for seducing people who aren't interested.
It spends some time discussing which men should not be pursued: Those who are "superbly dressed," as they are more interested in themselves than you; those wearing very tight slacks, indicating bitterness and a lack of feeling; those with white shirts and pastel pants, who will take you to court if things go badly; those with political causes, who will involve you in their mania; those who are drunk or drug addicts, who are, at best, walking complications.
It gives several possible approaches to avoid clichés like, "Care for a coffee?" It then goes on to discuss socializing after an introduction at a party, how to convince him you are a clever conversationalist (mostly by agreeing with him), and the importance of setting a future meeting date. While the tips in the article are very much focused on gay men who are seeking other gay men, they are the same methods used by salesmen and politicians: know your target, make yourself interesting, follow through with more contact.
Spy Stories
"I Was a Homosexual for the FBI" (by P. Arody) is a short article crammed full of hilarious stereotypes. It is ostensibly by someone who saved the country from "the deadliest conspiracy ever to rock the United States": To convince straight people that gays are really no different from their neighbors. The author had access to the FBI's extensive resources, including the Homo-o-dors that smell "suspected perverts" and flash a lavender light on detection. His "training" included "how to talk with a lisp" and "how to swish when walking, drink like an alcoholic, and organize orgies." (If the FBI knows how to organize orgies, I demand it release that information to taxpayers!) The result of all that hard work: "we caught every homosexual in the entire country and now all twelve of them were on trial!"
In keeping with this month's unstated "super spy" theme, we have several pages of artwork showing Harry Chess, that man from A.U.N.T.I.E ("Agents' Undercover Network To Investigate Evil) and his team. This is an an obvious play on the new Man from U.N.C.L.E spy-thriller tv show.
Not shown here: his sidekick "Mickey Muscle," their informant Big Bennie, girl bartender, and villain Lewd Leather, the leader of M.U.C.K. (Maniacal Underworld Control Corp).
The puzzle is probably not connected to the spying, since one was included last month, and another will be shared next month. The "cryptogayme" cipher is a nice stretch-your-mind exercise in a magazine mostly devoted to casual enjoyment.
The solution will be in next month's issue.
Pretty as a Picture
Speaking of casual enjoyment… the "Portfolio" covers four pages of the magazine: Full-page photos of young men wearing very little clothing. The portfolio is accompanied by ads from the photographers: $6 sent to an address in Germany will get you 8 black and white photos of two models, or 6 color slides. Alternately, $1 sent to a post office box in Detroit will get you "samples," which presumably will contain information on how to order more.
"More like this" is a recurring theme in all three magazines. Each contains contact information, mentions of homophile organizations (Drum has a full page listing more than 20 of them), and letters from the community.
The letters columns are compelling. Over and over, they say: Thank you. Thank you for helping me understand myself, my community. Thank you for helping me understand the truth about my loved ones. Thank you for showing me we can fight for better acceptance, for the rights our heterosexual neighbors take for granted.
The book reviews, while useful enough on their own, showcase one of the problems all homosexuals face: There is so little representation of them in literature and movies that they must accept any depictions of their existence as other than "evil" or "perverted" as a benefit. Books that draw on stereotypes are approved if they are not too inaccurate. Those that are well-written, in which the only homosexuals are background characters, are still recommended. This is a community eager to see their reality in print, and each of the magazines provides that to its audience.
Not So Different
The real truth shown by these magazines is this: These people are not so different from everyone else. Some gay men, like some straight men, go "cruising" for casual partners. Some gay men, like some straight men, would rather find a single person for a long-term committed relationship. Lesbians, like straight women, chafe under legal and social constraints. Lesbians, like straight women, fall in love and hope their trust will not be betrayed. Homosexuals, like heterosexuals, worry about what their families think of their career choices, their hobbies, and their partners.
With all these revelations of homophile lives and interests, the biggest discovery is that they are just people: some shallow, some passionate, some thoughtful, some clever, some angry, some shy. If they have an agenda, it's to be allowed to live and love in peace, just like their neighbors.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
This month, we’ve got a bit of a surprise in Doctor Who: comedy. Yes, comedy. Do not adjust your television set. We’ve got Dennis Spooner back in the writer’s chair, and it seems that Mr. Spooner is having a little experiment with the format. Does it work, or like the reign of so many emperors, does it fall apart and die an undignified death? Let’s find out.
We're at a bit of a lull here in early February. Not that things haven't been exciting, but they've been familiar headlines. For instance, Sheriff Clark and his merry men locked up nearly 3000 Afro-American demonstrators who were marching in Selma, Alabama for their voting rights.
In Laos, one of the two right-wing factions supporting the neutralist government tried to coup the neutralist government. It was defeated by the other right-wing faction. Meanwhile, the Pathet Lao Communists continue to fester in the margins.
And China, a new member of the nuclear club, maintains its fracture with its Communist brethren to the north, the USSR (although the current meeting of Soviet Foreign Minister Kosygin and Chinese Head of State Zhou Enlai may thaw things).
Similarly, the March 1965 IF offers nothing particularly outstanding, as has been the case for several months now. I really think editor Fred Pohl should consider returning IF to a bimonthly schedule. Or perhaps Worlds of Tomorrow needs to be retired so that IF can get choicer stories.
First up is the latest in Saberhagen's Berserker tales. If you've been reading IF for a while, you know that this series involves enormous, sentient battleships that hate life, destroying human fleets and colonies wherever they can. The author has done a good job developing the unearthly logic of the alien destroyers as well as written good yarns about the victories Terrans have managed to pull off against them.
Stone Place is the final battle. The Berserkers have pulled together all two hundred of their ships scattered throughout the galaxy. In counter, the Terrans have assembled a nearly equivalent armada. The problem is that the human ships do not all owe allegiance to a central government, and there is friction aplenty. Can humanity unite for long enough to defeat a threat to the entire species?
by Jack Gaughan
A few things make this latest outing a comparative disappointment: the beginning is slow, the politics are frustrating, and the cruelty of the Berserkers shockingly lurid. Moreover, the tactics employed against the Berserkers are somewhat glossed over, making the ultimate result feel informed rather than earned. I wish such a momentous chapter in the saga had been given a novel's worth of development. Without the nuance and cleverness of the prior stories, and because of the heightened nastiness, three stars is all I can award Stone Place.
On an interstellar cruise liner, one of the veteran ship's officers makes the acquaintance of a grizzled, cantankerous marine. Conversation ensues.
And that's about it. I'm not sure what the point was. Two stars.
All We Unemployed, by Bryce Walton
Written as half screenplay, half epistolary, All We Unemployed details the horrors of being the last employees in a automated factory that has decided that human elements are undesirable. It's a pretty dumb story, saying nothing new (and in fact, feeling queerly familiar).
One star.
Of One Mind, by James Durham
by Gray Morrow
James Durham is the novice writer of the issue. He offers up a piece in which humanity discovers barrier-less telepathy before it is ready, with disastrous results. Very few survive the ensuing massacre, including the protagonist, an astronaut on his way to Mars.
There are some nice bits in Mind, particularly its realistic portrayal of space travel. But on the whole, it doesn't hang together well at all. It might make a decent novel, if the writer develops his chops some more.
Three stars
Million-Mile Hunt, by Emil Petaja
By contrast, Petaja is an old hand, a veteran of the pulp era. However, he's been on hiatus for more than a decade…and it shows. Hunt, about an ornery space prospector and the odd alien who dogs him mercilessly, just trying to help, is outdated stuff. The solar system is home to half a dozen alien species, and people zip from setting to setting as if driving from block to block of a city. The revelation at the end is weird and not particularly well-joined with the narrative.
Two stars.
Starchild (Part 3 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson
by Gray Morrow
And finally, we come to the end of this three-part serial, sequel to The Reefs of Space. At last, we will find out who the mysterious Star Child is, and how the rebels living in the reefs that gird our solar system have been able to subvert Earth's authoritarian Planning Machine and even blink out the Sun.
Except, we don't. Instead, we're treated to forty pages of exposition that tell us that the ultimatum made to Earth (by whom? some mystical stellar force centered about the star, Deneb? it's not clear) to overthrow the Plan of Man involved dozens of years of perfect timing that indicate the outcome was predestined. See, before the Sun went out, all of the nearby stars winked in succession. Since light travels at a finite rate, that meant the scheme required not only synchronization of efforts on a galactic scale, but also knowledge that it would work (since they only made plans to do it once).
Plus, it was apparently child's play for the Denebians(?) to take over not only the Planning Machine on Earth, but its copy that was sent to the reefs on the Earth vessel, Togethership. In any event, none of the characters are given anything to do but watch. Not Boysie Gann, the putative protagonist. Not the stubborn Earth general bent on recovering the Togethership. Not Quarla, the young woman from the reefs who sails from plot point to plot point on her seal-like fusorian, as the story requires.
It's the worst kind of pulp space opera. Not even the settings are interesting, and setting is all we have at this point. The first story of the series was fair, with an exciting middle. This second installment had promise but quickly went to the dogs.
One star, and please let's not have another.
Summing Up
Wow, that was a stinker. It's clear Pohl is shoving all of his junk into one drawer, including the stuff he probably couldn't sell anywhere else (Starchild). And Pohl is touting that we've got novels from Schmitz and Doc Smith to look forward to. Given that those two produce stuff in the same vein as Starchild, I am really not looking forward to the next several months.
Perhaps it's time I passed on the mantle. Any volunteers?
Please enjoy this duet of stories by a pair of veterans (both the authors and the reviewers!)
by Cora Buhlert
The Escape Orbit by James White
When I spotted The Escape Orbit by James White in the spinner rack at my local import store, what first attracted me was the cover, showing two humans fighting a tusked and tentacled monstrosity. But what made me pick up the book was the tagline "Marooned on a Prison Planet". Because stories about space prisons are like catnip to me.
Though the space prison in The Escape Orbit is rather unconventional, housing human prisoners-of-war in the sixty-one year war with an alien race called "Bugs", because nobody can pronounce their real name.
At the beginning of the novel, the surviving officers of the battlecruiser Victorious ("erroneously named," the narrator Warren muses) are taken prisoner and dumped on what they assume is an uninhabited world. They are proven wrong, when one Lieutenant Kelso appears. Kelso informs the newcomers that the Bugs have dropped off half a million human prisoners-of-war on the planet with only scant supplies. Escape is supposed to be impossible. If the humans manage to flee anyway, there is a guardship in orbit. Kelso also insists that the newcomers are in danger.
It turns out that the human prisoners on the planet are divided into two groups. The Escape Committee, led by Kelso, who focus all their efforts on escaping, and the Civilians, led by one Fleet Commander Peters, who have resigned themselves to their fate and set up villages. The Civilians and the Committee are hostile towards each other and on the verge of fighting. The newcomers are expected to side with one group. But before making a decision, Warren wants to listen to both sides. And since he was Sector Marshall before he was captured, that makes him the highest ranking officer on the planet.
Warren and psychologist Ruth Fielding realise that the situation on the prison planet is volatile. The Committee is losing members, so those who remain become ever more fanatical. Ruth points out that the Committee are chauvinists, because most female prisoners join the Civilians and then seduce Committee members. Warren fears that as the Committee becomes more fanatical, they may try to take over the planet and cause a civil war. To prevent this, Warren decides to use his position to keep things calm. He joins the Escape Committee as a counterweight to Fleet Commander Peters and the Civilians.
The Great Escape… in Space
Warren takes over the Committee, learns about the escape plan and schedules the escape for three years in the future. He starts a good will initiative towards the Civilians to persuade them to help. Warren also tries to squash the not so latent male-centered prejudice among the Committee and appoints Ruth Fielding to his staff.
Warren may be no chauvinist, but he doesn't know much about women and people in general. And so he is surprised that the Civilians are forming families and having children. At this point, one suspects Warren needs a crash course in human biology. Furthermore, Warren also manages to bungle the chance at a relationship with Ruth Fielding – twice.
Once Warren succeeds in winning many Civilians over, the bulk of the novel focusses on the preparations for the escape. However, Warren also furthers the progress of technology, improves the communication network as well as the distribution and preservation of knowledge and even organises the colonisation of another continent.
As the escape draws closer, tensions erupt both between Civilians and Committee members as well as within the Committee itself. Things come to a head when a new group of prisoners arrives a few days before the escape. Hubbard, one of the new prisoners, reports that the war is over, because humans and Bugs have managed to battle each other to a standstill and both civilisations are falling apart. Even if the escape succeeds, it will be futile, because there is no military to return to.
Warren imprisons Hubbard and goes ahead with the escape anyway. The attempt succeeds and Committee commandos manage to hijack both the enemy shuttle and the guardship. The surviving Bugs are taken prisoner and sent to the planet, while their ship is crewed by the most loyal Committee members.
Warren returns to the planet once more to explain his true plan. For he had realised even before the arrival of Hubbard that the human military would collapse and that there was little hope of rescue. Warren also realised the prison planet was on the verge of civil war and would regress to savagery within a few generations.
By giving everybody a shared purpose, Warren managed to smooth over the tensions, preserve knowledge and create a stable society. Furthermore, he also used the escape to separate potentially violent Committee members from the general population. Warren announces that he will take off with the Committee members deemed unsuited to peaceful life and leave the rest of the former prisoners behind to rebuild civilisation. He also admonishes them to communicate and cooperate with the Bug prisoners, so future wars can be avoided.
I'm usually pretty good at gauging where novels are headed, but The Escape Orbit surprised me. Initially, the book seemed like a science fiction version of the WWII prisoner-of-war escape tales that have proliferated in both the German and English speaking world in recent years. The best known English language example is The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill from 1950, which was turned into a Hollywood movie two years ago. Meanwhile, in West Germany there is a flood of POW novels such as So weit die Füße tragen (As far as the feet will go, 1955) by J.M. Bauer or Der Arzt von Stalingrad (The Doctor of Stalingrad, 1956) by Heinz G. Konsalik, who specialises in such tales and also penned Strafbataillon 999 (Penal battalion 999, 1959), where the twist is that prisoners and guards are nominally on the same side. All of these novels were huge bestsellers and turned into successful movies and TV series.
Not actually Sector Marshall Warren and Major Ruth Fielding, but O.E. Hasse and Eva Bartok in the 1959 film adaption of Heinz G. Konsalik's bestselling novel "The Doctor of Stalingrad"
In The Great Escape and the various West German novels, escaping from the terrible conditions of a POW camp is a matter of survival. However, the conditions on the prison planet in The Escape Orbit are far from terrible. And so I quickly sided with the Civilians and wondered why Warren and the Committee were so eager to escape, when they were better off on the planet than wasting their lives in what was clearly a pointless war. For a time, I even had the sinking feeling that I had accidentally purchased a military science fiction novel akin to Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 Starship Troopers, which I disliked immensely, once I realised I was not in fact reading about a dystopia, but about a society the author considered admirable.
But White tricked me, for Warren was on the side of the Civilians all along and the escape plan was a way to occupy the Committee fanatics and keep them from interfering with the establishment of a peaceful society. Of course, military (science) fiction can be both pro- and anti-war. The Escape Orbit comes down firmly on the anti-war side. I was surprised to see a high ranking officer like Warren portrayed sympathetically, because in West German postwar literature and film, any officer with a rank higher than captain is usually portrayed as a blustering idiot or bloodthirsty warmonger, probably inspired by real world experiences with both types during WWII.
I knew nothing about James White before picking up this novel. Turns out White is a long-time science fiction fan and author best known for his Sector General stories about a hospital space station. White hails from Belfast (Andersontown, the city in the novel, is named after the suburb where he lives) in Northern Ireland, where religious tensions run high. Thus, White knows how easily hostilities between opposing groups can escalate into violence.
The Escape Orbit is not quite as brand-new as I assumed, since the novel was serialised, almost identically, as Open Prison (a more appropriate title in my opinion) in New Worlds last year, reviewed by our own Mark Yon.
The Escape Orbit is very much an anti-Analog novel, where humans are not superior to the aliens, where war is pointless and cooperation, both between humans and aliens and opposing groups of humans, is preferable to fighting. This is certainly a message for our times, as the spectre of war raises its ugly face again in South East Asia.
Jack Vance is a gifted writer who has received a lot of attention in the last year. He has rightfully been awarded praise for his world building in Ace Double F-265 and "The Star King", but thus far has proven to be somewhat inconsistent in the pacing of his stories. This is not to say that he hasn't been rapidly improving his writing. At times his storytelling has been spot on, such as in "The Kragen".
Thankfully, with "Space Opera" he does not fall short in either department. The pacing and world building are both excellent, but with Vance's latest release there still remain issues that prevent his works from rising beyond "entertaining", or even "ambitious". He has yet to become "timeless", but by God does he come close sometimes.
"Space Opera" is Vance's newest novel. In it he tells the story of humanity's pride, and how fragile it is. In the far future, Earth's high society is still very much preoccupied with its perceived perfection of music as an art form and humanity's generally superior understanding of music as a universal concept. Dame Isabel, a patron of the operatic arts, takes it upon herself to honor a promise made to a troupe of visiting musicians from the elusive planet Rlaru. As they sent a troupe to visit Earth, so will she bring some of Earth's finest music to their planet. In preparation for this she gathers an exclusive selection of singers and musicians, she brings the world's foremost musicologist aboard the good ship Phoebus, and sets off to Rlaru with missionary zeal. On the way they will of course stop to educate other alien races on the magnificence of Earth's musical accomplishments. The success of the undertaking is… complicated.
What Makes Something High Art?
Our cast of protagonists begin their journey with a very well defined and well researched mindset. The first few chapters of "Space Opera" are lousy with musical terms, phrases and theories that are absolutely esoteric for general audiences. Intentionally, Vance is setting up a practically aristocratic 19th century approach to how culture should be defined: if a culture's art is too accessible, then it's not sophisticated. If it's not sophisticated, then it's inferior.
Exclusivity is a prime ingredient to make a culture great in their eyes. Exclusivity of musical theory, exclusivity of musical venues, exclusivity of the language of music (in this case favoritism of German and French language operas on Dame Isabel's expedition), everything about an advanced musical sensibility in a culture should speak to exclusivity. Which of course also translates to the most desirable audience being comprised solely of wealthy patrons. The favored company of Dame Isabel is academic specialists, and the audiences she most voraciously seeks at each stop along her tour are the alien societies' elite.
The best parts of Vance's story are when these very human expectations are subverted. On Sirius the company is unable to make sufficient adjustments for the cultural norms of the native population and the performance fails spectacularly. On Zade they are vetted by a native music critic who mirror's Earth's own narrow minded music specialists. He judges the performance of Dame Isabel's troupe by applying his own culture's standards against Earth's operas, and finding them deficient dismisses them and then asks for monetary compensation for his time. On Skylark the troupe finds that just because the people planet-side express appreciation for operatic craft does not mean that such appreciation is meant truthfully – it turns out that their attempts to keep Dame Isabel's people on for more performances is just so that the convict population can begin switching out the crew's musicians for physically altered convicts with comparable musical proficiency.
Music's Greatest Power
The emotional resonances of music are the pinnacle of Vance's exploration of music's power. On Yan, Earth's operas are interpreted to represent that which has been lost by the planet's people. The response is one of violence from the spectral remnants of the native population. On fabled Rlaru, Earth's operas are too dry for the natives to become interested in. Their culture already achieved the highest levels of artistic perfection, so seeing another people's comparatively primitive attempt at high art is boring and uninspired. However, a passionate performance held in back of the ship by a ragtag, informal group of the performers draws a massive, appreciative crowd.
"Space Opera" is a novel of massive potential, but Vance tries to compress the issue of human beings' cultural superiority complex in too short a time. The setup is exceptional. We know exactly where Dame Isabel, Roger Wool, and Bernard Bickel are coming from in terms of background, personality, and motivation. They go through a harrowing ordeal in the process of reaching Rlaru, and their time on Rlaru is extremely memorable. The fall of the plot is that there is not sufficient time given for the characters to reflect on their experiences. Because of this "Space Opera" ultimately falls short on its final satirical delivery.
Dame Isabel, the character whom I would argue is the central protagonist of the story, concludes her expedition to spread Earth's "highest" cultural medium by returning to Earth and holding a brief press conference reflecting on her and the crew's experiences. She starts the story as an elitist and remains one by the end of the novella. Roger Wool, her bumbling nephew, returns to Earth with his on-again, off-again fiance Madoc Roswyn, and some vague promise of a forthcoming book about the Phoebus' adventure. He begins as the naive, clueless, kept relative of Dame Isabel, and concludes the story as such.
The one character who has the largest arc was Bernard Bickel, Earth's premier musicologist. Despite being relegated to the role of a world building tool and Dame Isabel's consultant, his dialogue in the last few pages at least hints at growth. At the press conference mentioned earlier he comments in a round about way that the expedition gave him an appreciation for the varied reactions Earth's music got on the different planets they visited. But the story's detachment to his experiences relegates any development of his character, and more importantly what he represents, to the background.
At the best he seems like an anthropologist accompanying an invading fleet. Along the way he watches the Earth musical missionaries meet disaster after disaster on their blind quest to prove humanity's superior grasp of music. At worst he could be seen as a character who should have been the primary protagonist, but was swept under the ornate, oriental rug of Dame Isabel's sponsorship and her nephew's charming fumbling.
The Curtain Call
"Space Opera"'s concept would make a great full length novel. But as nearly a novella, it's just doesn't go deep enough. I thoroughly believe that Vance has something really special here, but unless he expands the story in the future it's a piece that will fade into the background of science fiction in time. Perhaps Vance will come to see "Space Opera" as a practice piece for writing satire, but as it stands right now it's merely a three star story.
Although the snowy blanket of winter is still upon us, fashion has already moved on to the vigor of spring! I just received my Vogue for February 1st, 1965 and opened its crisp pages with delight. With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, I was expecting to see flouncy romanticism. What I found instead was fun, youthful, and quirky.
It seems the quirky attitude of the Valentine’s Day cards I plan to send out, featuring Wednesday Addams with a sweet little toy spider on her face, are more appropriate to the mood of the upcoming spring season than I’d anticipated.
Our decade, which has been defined so far with the sleek mod look of the Space Age, is getting a childlike update in 1965. The beautiful cocoons and narrow dresses of the early sixties are starting to blossom, quite literally. The stiff, boxy skirts and bodices are relaxing at the waist and necklines.
Note below (left), the beautiful narrow dress and its soft drape, cinched at the waist with a bold tape bow. All topped with the quizzical tall-domed cap. Beside her (right), sophisticated Town and Travel suedes complete with a sailor’s collar and a box pleat skirt back reminiscent of a school uniform. The effect of these combinations is perfectly summed up by the models’ expressions: curious and beguiling women, regardless of their age, will reign supreme this year.
February 1st, 1965 issue of Vogue
Ingenue, a fashion magazine for sophisticated teens, gives excellent insight for fashion to come. The iconic narrow coat, a staple in every woman’s wardrobe, is starting to soften around the neckline, leaving space for the column of the neck. Paired with slender bows about the jaw and felt hats to match the shoes (but not the coat), this early spring ensemble is at the height of this year’s fashion.
But perhaps most telling are the graphic shapes of flowers, stars, polka dots, and honeycomb in the accessories to the right. These large, simple symbols are what bridge the gap between the sophistication and playfulness I expect we’ll see in the months to come.
If Ingenue’s bold colors and simple motifs aren’t enough to convey the quirk of this year’s fashion, perhaps Vogue’s spotlight on “American Legs – Sweaters to Match” will convince you. These daring sweater and legging sets with contrast skirts and hats are gutsy and imbued with personality. Any woman sporting these fresh styles will certainly draw the eye.
The paillette theatre suit (left) is not only richly detailed, but relaxed by comparison to evening wear of the past couple years. Note the contrasting accessories as well as the slender, gathered waistband. The Trifari pins (right) are also bold, and a refreshing departure from adornment of the last few years.
Both professional women and aspiring girls feel emboldened to share their energetic personalities as a part of their fashion, rather than adorn themselves in chic geometry alone. We are seeing sophistication and youthful wonder coming together as our age defines itself as separate from the fifties. As the decade tips towards the seventies, I can’t wait to see what youthful inspirations we’ll discover. As the editor of Vogue wrote in their letter this issue, "Spring is a state of mind."
[This is your chance to nominate Galactic Journey for Best Fanzine Hugo! We feel that 1964…er…2019 was our best year yet, and appearing on the ballot is the greatest reward we could ask for. Please help make it happen again!]
by Gideon Marcus
Facing the Future, Honoring the Past
January (likely) takes its name from Janus, the Roman god of new beginnings, and there have been few Januaries so worthy of this legacy than the latest one.
On January 20, Lyndon Baines Johnson took the oath of office of the President of the United States. He had done so once before, on that tragic afternoon in November 1963. This time, LBJ was sworn in on his own merit, having won the last general election in one of the biggest trouncings in history. He has already outlined a bold agenda, expanding his Great Society with proposals to expand medicare and social security, combat poverty and joblessness, and further equalize the rights of all Americans. Along with the Democratic supermajority in Congress, we are going to see legislative movement the likes of which have not been seen in more than twenty years.
Just four days later, Sir Winston Churchill, the United Kingdom's leader through most of World War 2, was felled by a brain hemorrhage at the age of 90. His state funeral on the 29th was appropriately tremendous, and flags were lowered to half-mast throughout the world. The Left seem to be on the move in Britain, too, with the Liberals winning their first victory in over a decade. Have we arrived at an unfettered age of progress?
In the eddies of time
Not within the pages of John W. Campbell's Analog, which plugs along this month with the same combination of hard science fiction and workmanlike writing. Moreover, Frank Herbert's Prophet of Dune neither begins nor concludes; it merely plods on. Well, to be fair, the cover date is February 1965…
by Walter Hortens
Program for Lunar Landings by Joe Poyer
We are now four years on since President Kennedy's momentous declaration, to send Americans to the Moon and back before decade's end. Joe Poyer's article outlines the phases of lunar exploration that will succeed Project Apollo's first missions.
Fascinating topic. Rather dull execution. Three stars.
The Mailman Cometh, by Rick Raphael
by Walter Hortens
The fellow who gave us depictions of government employed sewer rats and tales of high speed highway patrol is back with a story of far future mail delivery. Centuries from now, automated mail drones will transport packages across the stars. But it's up to the sweaty, stinky folk in orbiting stations to sort the stuff onto its final destination.
I don't know that I buy the setup, and this is more of "a day in the life" than something with an actual plot. That said, Raphael always writes pleasantly, and he's not shy about writing good women characters.
Three stars.
Photojournalist, by Mack Reynolds
by Robert Swanson
It's a terrible thing to be a cameraman and miss the big scoop. But how much worse must it be to be at all the right places at all the right times and never have your pictures published?
No one in modern day has ever seen Jerry Scott's shots, and he's been spotted everywhere, from Mussolini's hanging to the latest riots. Is he unlucky? Or does he have an entirely different audience?
Pretty good story, though with a page more in the middle than is necessary. Plus, it gives Reynolds a chance to use some of his lingo from his Joe Mauser stories (which will instantly tip you off as to what's going on).
What ill could possibly be spoken of the trees of Maccadon? All parts of them are edible. They obligingly create hollows in themselves as shelters for animals and people alike. Not one offensive characteristic has been cataloged.
Is there such a concept as too much of a good thing?
This story has a lot in common with Norman Spinrad's recent Child of Mind, though without the offensive bits. And also the particularly interesting ones.
Three stars.
Coincidence Day, by John Brunner
by Leo Summers
In the NASEEZ (North American South Eastern Extraterrestrial Zoo), the most exciting time to visit is Coincidence Day, when all of the biorhythms of the assembled creatures line up, and they can all be viewed active at once. The most sought-out resident is a tripodal alien dubbed Chuckaluck, a charming, easy-going soul.
But is he the attraction, or the observer?
A whimsical, multilayered piece. It almost feels like a story Sheckley would write were he British.
Finally, a short installment of Part 2 of Book 2 of the Dune franchise. Young Paul Atreides and his mother, Lady Jessica, have made it across the deadly desert of Arrakis to what counts for local civilization. But do the still-suited, spice-addicted Fremen offer succor or peril?
This was actually one of the better spans of the story, though Frank Herbert still employs third person omniscient italic as his perspective. Three stars.
What a happy surprise to find Analog near the top of the magazine pack this month, clocking in at 3.2 stars. In fact, it was a rather stellar month in general, Galaxy getting an impressive 3.5 stars, BOTH Fantastic and Amazing earning 3.3 stars, Fantasy and Science Fiction returning to form with 3.2 stars, and the British New Worlds achieving 3.1 while Science Fantasy scored 3.
Only IF and Worlds of Tomorrow came over par, at 2.7 and 2.5 stars, respectively (though the latter did have the excellent Niven novella, Planet/World of Ptavvs).
On the other hand, out of a whopping 55 pieces of fiction, women only wrote four of them. The ratio is getting worse, folks.
Meanwhile, speaking of endings, it appears Analog will be a slick for just one more month before returning to the rack with all the other digest sizes. Apparently, there just wasn't enough advertising to sustain the bedsheet format. I guess the Venn diagram of science fiction readers and cognac drinkers didn't intersect much…
I honestly won't miss the big magazine. It fit awkwardly on my shelf. What do y'all think?
![[February 18, 1965] OSO Exciting! (February 1965 Space Roundup)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/650218oso2-576x372.jpg)
![[February 16, 1965] Return to a Quagmire (March 1965 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/650214cover-672x372.jpg)
![[February 14, 1965] How I Found Love in the Vorpal Gallery (A Valentine for M. C. Escher)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Eschers_Relativity.jpg)
![[February 12, 1965] Mirabile Dictu, Sotto Voce (March 1965 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/amz-0365-cover-524x372.png)
![[February 10, 1965] A Gay Old Time (March 1965 <i>ONE</i>, February-March 1965 <i>The Ladder</i>, March 1965 <i>Drum</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/650210_Drum_Cover-604x372.png)
![[February 8, 1965] Roman Holiday (<i>Doctor Who</i>: The Romans)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/650208novaromainferno-672x372.jpg)
![[February 6, 1965] Too much of a… thing (March 1965 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/650204cover-672x372.jpg)
![[February 4, 1965] Space Prison of Opera (February Galactoscope #1)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/650206covers-672x372.jpg)
![[February 2nd, 1965] Spring is a State of Mind.](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/02-672x372.jpg)
![[January 31, 1965] Janus, Facing Both Ways (February 1965 <i>Analog</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/650131cover-672x372.jpg)
