Tag Archives: 1966

Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 12, 1966] Inside Out (Star Trek's "The Enemy Within")

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Two for the Price of One


by Janice L. Newman

Some stories become seminal. They are told and re-told, with additions and variations, but always at heart recognizable. The heartwarming tale of A Christmas Carol, the story of Frankenstein, the great, sweeping drama of Romeo and Juliet – elements of each of these have become embedded in our culture and our consciousness.

Tonight’s Star Trek episode drew from one such cultural touchstone: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You can already guess, just from knowing that much, what it’s about. But is it well done?

The episode begins with the transporter being used to ‘beam up’ one of the ubiquitous extras from a planet which, we are told, gets very cold at night. There’s some sort of malfunction with the transporter, and when Captain Kirk is beamed up next, he sways as though faint. Scotty escorts him to sick bay, leaving the transporter room empty when it activates again and beams in…another Captain Kirk?

It’s immediately apparent that something is off about the second Kirk. He rushes over to Sick Bay to demand alcohol from Doctor McCoy, yells at crewmates, and in a deeply disturbing scene, menaces and attacks Yeoman Rand. (Is it just me, or does it feel like Yeoman Rand’s only purpose aboard the ship is to be menaced and attacked? We’ve seen it happen in the past three episodes: Charlie in "Charlie X", a random infected crewperson in "The Naked Time", and now the captain himself.)

Fortunately, Rand manages to get away, and afterward the ‘good’ Captain Kirk insists that he didn’t attack her. Particularly interesting to me was Rand’s reactions as the captain and Mr. Spock talk to her about what happened. She is far more traumatized than in previous episodes, weeping and saying, “I didn’t know what to do…He is the captain.” When she says that she scratched her attacker and Kirk points out that he has no scratches, she begins to second-guess herself. “I was frightened…maybe…” In a particularly poignant moment, she adds, “I can understand. I don’t want to get you into trouble. I wouldn’t have even mentioned it.”

There is a wealth of meaning in those few lines. In the futuristic society of "Star Trek" women may have something closer to equality than we have now, but a crewmember is still afraid to tell her captain ‘no’, and even after an attempted rape, says that she wouldn’t have said anything about it to avoid getting him into trouble. It says a lot about their society, and also about our world here in 1966, that those lines feel shockingly real and believable.

The ‘bad’ Kirk is eventually caught, but something interesting happens to the ‘good’ Kirk. At first, he seemed mostly unaffected by the transporter incident, but as the episode goes on, we see him beginning to waver, distracted and nervous. He increasingly has difficulty making judgement calls, until it culminates in a moment where he begs, “Someone make the decision.”

It turns out that the two Kirks aren’t ‘bad’ Kirk and ‘good’ Kirk, so much as the one driven by passion, lust, and the baser emotions, versus one motivated by compassion and logic. Both sides are necessary for Kirk to function as a full person and an effective leader.

This was a really interesting take on the Jekyll and Hyde cliché. As with several of the episodes preceding it, there wasn’t a clear-cut ‘bad guy’. And the solution wasn’t to kill a monster but to heal one, to comfort the fears and soothe the rage of Kirk’s id until he agreed to rejoin with his other half, even at the risk of his life. For all that it’s a premise we’ve seen before, the story was fresh, interesting, and very well-told indeed.

Five stars.

The Flip Side


by Gideon Marcus

It's always nice to see Richard Matheson's credits on a show (well, except for The Twilight Zone's "Third from the Sun", where it was a disappointment.) "The Enemy Within" is a beautifully crafted exploration of humanity's noble and bestial qualities, well portrayed by William Shatner as Captain Kirk.

Indeed, while the episode mostly focused on "Good Kirk" and his mission to be reunited with his other self, I found myself increasingly interested in "Evil Kirk" as a character.  After all, he's as much "the real" Kirk as his other half.  We got to see Spock fall apart last episode, and here we get to delve into what makes Kirk tick.

In "The Naked Time", Kirk lamented that he could never get away from his command, "no beach to walk on…" The first time we see "Evil Kirk" after he steps off the transporter, he runs to the transporter, grinning with glee.  I think I understand what's going on in his mind — no more pesky conscience to restrain him.  He's utterly free for the first time in his life.  Of course he runs off to indulge in his basest desires: drunkennness, rape, violence. 

Here's a question: are these desires always tempting Kirk, just as Spock is always wrestling with his human side?  Or would any person with his superego removed develop the same urges?  Are there people for whom splitting in two would result in less dramatically altered personalities?

Obviously, it's not an experiment that can be ethically run, but it is fascinating.  And if I seem insensitive to what Kirk went through, understand, it's the way I am.

I will say that the assault on Janice was particularly difficult to watch.  The betrayal she must have felt, particularly by someone she trusted, admired, and possibly has (had?) a romantic interest in, cuts deep and resonates with a situation so many women deal with.  Spock's comment at the end, indicating he is aware of Rand's feelings for Kirk, and that she might have, deep down, enjoyed the assault was almost as painful as the assault itself, though perhaps it is consistent with his earlier insensitivity.  Perhaps they'll cut that bit in the summer reruns.  It really doesn't need to be there.

Four stars.

A Color Theory of Good and Evil


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

Like I did last week, I’d like to zoom in on one particular detail of The Enemy Within: the set design. Specifically, how the comparative dominance of blood red lighting or jade green uniforms give us hints as to which incarnation of Captain Kirk holds the upper hand in a given scene.

These colors are what Bauhaus artist Johannes Itten would call complementary, since they they appear on opposite sides of his 1961 color wheel:

Near the middle of the episode we see the lower decks where red lights glow through jade green filigree screens as the violent part of Captain Kirk hunts Spock and his jade-shirted other self. Contrast this with the touching final moment on the transporter pad, where the peaceful Captain Kirk holds his counterpart close, their green uniform shirts filling the medium shot, with only a hint of red in the ceiling lights just before they are recombined:

These complementary thematic colors add a layer to Commander Spock’s assessment of Captain Kirk:

“[W]hat is it that makes one man an exceptional leader? We see indications that it's his negative side which makes him strong, that his evil side, if you will, properly controlled and disciplined, is vital to his strength.”

Complementary colors, when combined with artistic discipline, are greater than the sum of their parts. There is a buzz to the places where they touch, a neon inner life. Pop art leaders like Miriam Laufer, Sister Corita Kent, Marisol Escobar, Evelyne Axell, Sturtevant, and the recently late Pauline Boty wield that intense, almost painful complementary contrast, to produce strong, commanding statements about the world as they see it.


Pauline Boty, Colour Her Gone (1962)

In this episode, the contrast between Captain Kirk’s two selves is also intense and painful, particularly to those who his violent side hurts or his peaceful side fails to protect. But for Kirk, his good and evil sides are complementary: they allow him to be greater than the sum of his parts.

Director of Photography Jerry Finnerman, Art Directors Roland M. Brooks and Walter M. Jefferies, Set Decorator Carl F. Biddiscombe, Costumer William Theiss, and their team members represented by the I.A.T.S.E. labor union must have worked together tirelessly to provide us this episode’s visual metaphor; I look forward to continuing to enjoy their teams’ skillful use of color theory to mirror and elevate the stories of these familiar, far-off characters.

Four stars.

In the picture


by Tam Phan (Secret Asian Man)

Spotlighting Shatner’s double-faced role in "The Enemy Within" was a bold move, especially after Nimoy’s "Naked Time" performance. Shatner's turn might have been less nuanced than Nimoy's; nevertheless, if the writing continues to be this good, this show might propel itself into the history books.

Contrasting "Charlie X" in pacing, this week’s episode moved when the scene was over. I was on the edge of my seat hoping for them to resolve the transporter issue so they could save Sulu and his crew of scientists. As for Takei, after last week’s exciting display, his role in "The Enemy Within" might have been small, but it was powerful.

As much as I appreciate proper pacing, ambience and music were the heroes of "The Enemy Within". Kirk’s sadness and despair are my own and the music confirms it. The soundscape transports me to the Enterprise: The soft beating of the monitor in Sick Bay, the beeping of the consoles on the bridge, and even the trill of the transporter are such distinct sounds that there’s no mistaking where I am. The whooshing of the sliding doors tells me I’m about to leave a room. The sounds and ambience make me feel like I’m part of the crew. The music draws me into the scene so seamlessly that at times, I don’t just hear it, but feel it. I can’t wait to familiarize myself with new parts of the ship. With what I’ve heard so far, it should be a delightful experience.

4 Stars

(You too can be in the picture: join us tomorrow night at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) for the next episode of Star Trek!)

Here's the invitation!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 10, 1966] Let's Take A Trip (November 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

The Acid Test

I believe that certain young people — hippies is the term, I think — are using the word trip to refer to something other than hopping on a bus, train, or airplane. In particular, they often mean taking a dose of lysergic acid diethylamide, understandably shortened to LSD, and known informally as acid.


A poster for an event held in Vancouver earlier this year.
Note the name of the festival, and the psychedelic art.
I'll bet lots of attendees took a trip to Canada in order to take a trip elsewhere.

Until this month, this hallucinogenic drug was legal everywhere in the USA. On October 6, it became illegal in the state of California. In response to the new law, on the same day thousands of people showed up for a so-called Love Pageant Rally in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. They enjoyed music from local artists, and many took doses of LSD in defiance of the law.


Some guys calling themselves the Grateful Dead entertain the crowd. There was also a young blues singer from Texas named Janis Joplin.

Way, Way Out

Even if you live in California, you can enjoy a trip deep into your imagination in a perfectly legal manner, simply by opening the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow. Fittingly, almost all the fiction takes place in the far reaches of interstellar space.


Cover art by Sol Dember.

Crown of Stars, by Lin Carter


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

Here's a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek adventure yarn featuring an ultra-competent protagonist. The editor's blurb compares him to James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, but he reminds me more of Derek Flint.


Our hero and his pet dragon.

Mister Quicksilver is a professional, legal thief. (There's some nonsense about how crime is legal and legal activity is outlawed, but forget about that. This isn't the most logical story in the world.) He lives in a castle on an asteroid, hidden among other chunks of rock orbiting a distant star. This method of concealing his location — which doesn't seem to prevent folks from finding him — offers the opportunity for the reader to enjoy the first of several bits of doggerel that present Quicksilver's philosophy in poetic form.


Home Sweet Home.

Three people show up, one at a time, each wanting to hire Quicksilver to steal a jeweled crown, a relic of an ancient, extinct race of reptilian aliens. The prize is guarded by a sect of fanatical cultists. The three clients include a scholar who turns out to be an imposter, an aristocrat, and a government agent. The latter is a woman who is in love with him. For his part, Quicksilver prefers women who (unsuccessfully) resist his charms.

The quest involves a trip to a planet of criminals, to learn the current whereabouts of the only thief who escaped from the cultists with his life. A clue leads Quicksilver to Earth, where the fellow resides. Meanwhile, multiple assassins make attempts on our hero's life.

Eventually, with the help of the government agent, Quicksilver arrives on the planet of the cultists, where a surprise awaits him. Is there any doubt that Quicksilver will prevail, and that the woman will fall into his arms?


The reptilian aliens, who don't actually show up in the story.

The author revels in the clichés of space adventure, offering tons of odd names and exotic details. Although it's not an out-and-out comedy, there are silly jokes along the way. (There's a reference to various folk heroes from the local religion of far future Earth: Abe Lincoln, Mickey Mouse, Fidel Castro, and Joan Blondell.) These quips tend to take the reader out of the story, which is pretty hard to take seriously anyway.

Quicksilver is an arrogant son-of-a-gun, and the way he forces a kiss on the protesting heroine at the end isn't very pleasant. The whole thing is like a great big bowl of whipped cream; tasty at first, maybe, but you'll soon wish for something more substantial.

Two stars.

The 1991 Draftee, by Joseph Wesley

The author has written about the future of the military several times for the magazine. This latest article includes letters from a young guy serving in the army a quarter of a century from now. It's a pretty depressing picture.

The military secretly induces hypnotic suggestions into the minds of its recruits. There's also some discussion of small robotic weapons that crawl like spiders or fly like insects. Nonlethal but debilitating gases fill the battlefield, so the soldiers wear protective, air-conditioned suits.

It's all highly speculative, particularly the idea that young men of the future will want to shave their heads bald, so the army has to give them regulation haircuts by applying hair-growing treatments! (A wry comment on today's fad for long hair on male hippies?)

Two stars.

Frost Planet, by C. C. MacApp


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

With the permission of the bear-like aliens who inhabit the place, humans have set up mining facilities and a colony under the ice of a frozen world. A crisis threatens to upset the uneasy relationship between the two species when a man is found stabbed to death with an alien knife. A military officer investigates the crime.

Things get even worse when small atomic heating devices go missing. It turns out that several of them have been placed in the ice near the human outpost, intended to destroy the colony. Later, an alien is killed by a human rifle, leading to open conflict. Can our hero prevent disaster?


Firing at a mysterious enemy.

This is a pretty decent science fiction suspense story, which develops quite a bit of tension. You may be able to figure out the whodunit aspect of the plot. The aliens are intriguing, but not enough is done with them.


A duel to the death.

I had to wonder why people are here in the first place. The extreme cold (effectively conveyed, by the way) is hardly conducive to human habitation, and we never find out what the mines produce.

As in many SF stories, the assumption seems to be that future folks will inhabit lots and lots of alien worlds, even those with their own native population. In any case, it's a lot better than the author's seemingly endless Gree series.

Three stars.

Report on the Slow Freeze, by R. C. W. Ettinger

From fictional cold to (possibly) factual cold. The magazine has discussed the possibility of freezing people at the time of death and then reviving them in the future a couple of times before. In this current variation on the theme, the author offers a history of the idea, and speculates about why it has failed to catch on.

A lot of this is going over old ground. The most interesting aspect of the article may be that the author seems to believe that appealing to the emotions, rather than the intellect, is the most effective way to promote the technique.

Two stars.

To the War is Gone, by Richard C. Meredith


Illustrations by Burns. I have been unable to discover the artist's first name.

There's a war going on between ordinary humans and those who have become attached to alien symbiotes that give them a single group mind. After a space battle that destroyed both ships, a lone human survivor with a broken leg waits for death, stranded in a detached segment of the vessel. There's an intact lifeboat not too far away, but he has no way to get to it.


The man. That buzz is goofy.

The only living inhabitant of the enemy ship shows up, floating through the void in a spacesuit. She can reach the lifeboat, but can't operate it. The two can communicate through radio, but can they work together to survive? More importantly, can they trust each other?


The woman, apparently producing the buzz.

I was reminded both of Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Puppet Masters (1951) and Tom Godwin's story The Cold Equations (1954) when I read this piece. Unfortunately, although it was compelling at first, it collapsed into melodrama by the end.

One interesting aspect of the story is the fact that the protagonist is a musician, and the text includes excerpts from real folk songs, as well as fictional ones of the future. Less enjoyable was making the other character a member of a group of women noted for their erotic appeal. This makes the man's decision to help her a matter of sheer lust. (Many of his folk songs are pretty bawdy, too.)

Two stars.

Until Armageddon, by Dannie Plachta

As a break from all this deep space stuff, we have a tiny story set on good old Mother Earth. The Pope and the Premier of Israel (sounds like the start of a joke) meet to ask a super-computer how to achieve world peace. The response is unexpected.

I said a joke, and this thing ends with a punch line, but it's not intended to be funny, as far as I can tell. I don't really know what to think about the twist the author throws at me.

One star.

The Jew in Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

Starting with an analysis of the 1959 novel A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., the author delves into the way that science fiction has depicted the Chosen People. With a few exceptions, it's a depressing account of virulent antisemitism. The article includes a discussion of the many talented Jewish writers and editors in the field, noting that they have produced hardly any works relating to the topic.

This was much more interesting than the author's previous scholarly but lifeless articles. I suspect this is because he cares passionately for the subject. The conclusion serves as something as an indictment of the supposedly progressive genre of science fiction, which Moskowitz sees as less enlightened than mainstream fiction.

Three stars.

Seventy Light-Years From Sol, by Stephen Hall


Illustrations by Dan Adkins

Back to voyages to faraway worlds. A team of experts explore an Earth-like but very strange planet. The only form of life seems to be plants resembling lettuce covering the ground. While investigating holes in the dirt, they discover what appear to be millstones.

That's weird enough, but things really get odd when big cubes of various colors show up out of nowhere. (They're actually quite a bit larger than shown in the illustrations.)


The team's biologist, surrounded by cubes.

It seems that the cubes are alive, and are able to communicate, to some extent, with the humans telepathically. The millstones are predators of the cubes, spewing out a substance — which turns out to be aspirin! — that dissolves their prey so they can absorb them.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the planet's other continent is inhabited by gray, imperfect cubes, that threaten to invade the land of the perfect, colorful cubes.

As you can see, this is a really nutty plot, almost like something out of one of Lafferty's tall tales. What makes it work reasonably well is the fact that the human characters are a likable bunch, each with their own quirks. I particularly like the fact that the crew includes a painter, an eccentric older woman. She's a refreshing change from the scientists, officers, and technicians aboard the exploratory starship.

Three stars.

Down to Earth

Coming back home after this imaginary voyage to other star systems was something like returning from a disappointing LSD trip. Some of the pieces were moderately diverting, but nothing was outstanding. Maybe it's time to turn to some other form of entertainment.


A recent children's book. It might be a safer way to travel than acid.




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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[October 8, 1966] Martial Law in San Francisco (Hunters Point riots)

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by Victoria Lucas

Matthew Johnson. That was his name. A kid who died because he went joy-riding with his buddies. The last I knew that was not a capital crime. But clearly running from a policeman can be. 

It was this time.


Where "Peanut" was shot

How odd that his murderer had the same last name, Alvin Johnson, the police officer who shot him on September 27. He was 16 and his buddies were 15 and 14. They found the car outside Portola Junior High, and the owner had not even reported it stolen yet. Stories about why the policeman fired and how many times at this kid people called “Peanut” vary. Whatever people were saying, rioting broke out in Hunters Point the same evening. 


The Mayor meets with the people

The Mayor Is Stoned

After meeting with the commanding officer at the Potrero police station, desperate and grieving people went into the streets and began breaking windows. When Mayor Shelley came out to meet them, people threw rocks and a brick, and the lone Negro county supervisor, Francois, got the same treatment. These were people who were extremely frustrated by their treatment by the City and County of SF, and they could contain it no longer. The unrest was declared a riot around 7 pm. 

The National Guard Lands on City Hall

Later in the evening the mayor called Governor Brown to request 2,000 National Guardsmen, who used Candlestick Park and Kezar Stadium for their staging areas. A curfew was drawn around Negro neighborhoods from midnight until morning.  I didn’t hear about any of this until about 6 or 7. September 27 was a Tuesday, and I was at work. I caught a bus home, and I guess then I might have heard something I didn’t understand until I got home and was able to hear some kind of coherent account on one of the NPR stations. Now I have a copy of the SF Oracle, hot off the press, and already there are tear stains on it–mine. “Peanut’s” funeral was October 3, and there were 1,000 mourners. 

We could still be in custody


The SF Oracle's 2nd issue, 1st page

In the Oracle there are further accounts of police cars bristling with guns and bayonets, and the break up of a peaceful protest in the Haight. It could have been my boy friend Mel & me caught up in a singing, happy mob that was herded into police vans by trapping the crowd with roadblocks and armed force. Many nights we go over to the Haight to pick up the Oracle or the Berkeley Barb, buy some tchotchke and dig the scene. This night, an unpublicized curfew started at 8 pm. 

A Poet's Take on Things


Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The first missive on the “Letters” page of this Oracle (page 2) was from Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Here is most of what he wrote: “It looks like the Mayor realizes that the only answer to Black Power is not White Power at the end of a gun. The Mayor didn't do so badly the first day after the riots at Hunter's Point, considering the general spiritual bankruptcy of the Establishment . . . . But if the Mayor had gone on TV and declared that he was withdrawing every armed policeman and National Guardsman from the Hunter's Point area and was instead inviting every minister of every church in the city to come and walk the streets there and talk with everyone in sight, things might be different today. However, we are as far from such soul-action as we are from the Ascension of Buddha on the White House lawn . . . .”

When Will They Ever Learn?

Better than martial law, which we had from September 27 until October 1, with the state of emergency ending Sunday the second–but, as far as I can tell, the curfews, state of emergency and martial law were only for the Negros, hippies, and students. 

Maybe I should repeat that, in case it got by you. Only for the Negros, hippies, and students. Now I ask you, will they ever learn? And who is it who should do the learning?



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 6, 1966] One Trek, neat (The Naked Time)

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by Erica Frank

We return to our weekly adventures aboard the Enterprise, in the first episode that does not feature the dangers of psychic powers gone mad. We're still dealing with madness, of a sort — "The Naked Time" features people who have lost their self-control and run wild throughout the ship, endangering everyone on board.

The episode began with a trip to a planet on the verge of destruction; the Enterprise planned to record the event, collecting rare scientific data while avoiding being caught in its implosion. When they arrived, they found the on-planet base crew dead of mysterious causes. One bright fellow – we'll call him "Ensign Stupid" – takes off his gloves to scratch his nose while poking around the base, and he gets a scratch.


Ensign Stupid in his very fashionable orange-and-silver safety gear, completely undermining whatever protection it offered.

He catches a mysterious alien disease that eventually kills him, but first he manages to share it with several other crew members. One of them, Riley, starts singing old Irish ballads, takes over the engineering department, and locks the captain out of both control and communications. This would be funny if the ship weren't on a deadline: if the ship doesn't leave orbit before the implosion, the Enterprise will become part of the rubble.

Oh, and while that's going on, the disease is spreading: we see wild swashbuckling from Sulu, a heartfelt confession of love from Nurse Chapel, a tearful breakdown from the normally stoic Spock, and various drunken-seeming shenanigans from random crewmembers.


Nurse Chapel declares her love for Spock while clutching his hands in hers.

By the time the Captain regains control of the ship, it's too late for a safe departure; Riley's turned the warp engines completely off and they need to warm up. Scotty, the chief engineer, warns him: "I can't change the laws of physics. We've got to have thirty minutes." (They have eight minutes.) But Kirk has an idea: maybe they can jump-start them using antimatter… but for that, they need Spock sober enough to run the calculations for them.

In the end, Dr. McCoy figures out the problem – something on the planet converts water to "a complex chain of molecules" that acts like alcohol; it's transmitted through sweat. He injects people with a cure in time for Spock to manage the math for the risky maneuver; somehow, Kirk is the only person whose shirt gets torn during the vaccination.


Is this how vaccines are normally administered in the future? Or does the Federation just issue Kirk shirts with tear-away sleeves?

By the end of the episode:

We all hated Riley and his singing.
We all cheered for shirtless Sulu, even if he was being disruptive.
We were all fascinated by Spock's emotional outburst.

As usual, some details needed a bit of hand-waving to accept, but I will forgive quite a bit of "instant alien disease" and "having to remind security not to use lethal force on their crewmate" if it means I get to see dashing young men leap around with swords and without shirts.

I may start keeping a tally. Shirtless men in this episode: 1.25 (counting Kirk's torn shirt).

Five stars: the story moved fast and kept me engaged. I only noticed flaws later as I was trying to write up notes about it.

A Shocking Scene


by Janice L. Newman

This week’s episode was a departure, not only from the kinds of episodes we’ve seen from Star Trek so far, but from the kind of science fiction we’ve seen on television in general. There was no monster to fight, no human with special powers bent on taking over, no alien menace. The enemy, such as it was, came from within. (Which, coincidentally enough, sounds like next week’s episode title.)

A lot of interesting and character-revealing things happened during the show, but one moment stands out in my memory with a sharp clarity: the moment when science officer Mr. Spock, under the influence of a virus, breaks down. Although we don’t know Mr. Spock very well as a character yet, the scene was incredibly powerful. When was the last time you saw a man cry in a movie or TV show? I’m not talking about camera-friendly ‘manly’ tears when a comrade dies in a war flick, or the sniveling of a villain. I’m talking about a main character sitting down and sobbing, all while desperately trying not to.

Mr. Spock, as we learned this episode, is a half-human, half-alien person who fits into neither culture and has had to spend his whole life suppressing his emotions. He speaks of how he couldn’t tell his mother that he loved her, of his shame at his inability to control his feelings.

And yet, is this so very alien? Men are not supposed to cry, after all. Which was why it was so shocking to see Leonard Nimoy sit down and bawl onscreen, made even more compelling by his obvious struggle for control. Everyone has had that moment when they’re fighting back tears. Ironically, the ‘half-alien’ felt the most relatable and human of everyone in the episode.

It looks like I have a new favorite character. I’m looking forward to seeing more of “Mr. Spock” in future episodes.

Four and a half stars.

The Crew Stripped Bare

by Robin Rose Graves

This episode was an emotional whirlwind. I couldn’t help but laugh as Sulu rampaged the halls, sword in hand (as fun to watch as I imagine the actor had while filming it), and be irritated by Mr. Riley’s incessant singing.

Yet these moments are juxtaposed with two exceptionally serious and jarring scenes. Lt. Tormolen, the first to contract the disease, has a breakdown in which he questions humanity’s presence in space – wondering if they are doing more bad than good – quickly spiraling into taking his own life. This scene is emotionally impactful, despite the audience’s lack of familiarity with this character (though it seems to be a common pattern, introducing a new character who dies that episode) and raises a question I wish the episode, or series overall, took time to explore:

I am in favor of scientific discovery and am thrilled by the space travel depicted in the show. Yet I can’t help but question the consequences of such a journey. While Tormolen focused mostly on its impact on humanity, I wonder about the effect on alien lifeforms. Could our common cold be potentially lethal to other species? What if we accidentally introduce an invasive species on an alien world, dramatically changing their climate and causing it to be uninhabitable for its native species? Beyond physical issues, there's the possibility of destroying an alien culture just by contacting it.

But I digress.

It’s Spock’s breakdown that stood out most about this episode and led to significant revelations about his character. He’s half-human! Up until this point, Spock’s character has been entirely defined by his alien biology. As exemplified in the episode, during a medical exam he assures the doctor that the bizarre readings are perfectly normal for his species (though you’d hope medical staff on a ship like this would be well versed in the alien biology of its occupants). While some answers are given, more questions arise. Are interspecies relationships common? And judging by Spock’s revealed shame about his mixed identity, is Spock a Vulcan outcast? That would explain how he is the only Vulcan (and alien, for that matter) among a crew of all humans.

Despite how much I enjoyed this episode I can’t help but think it came too early in the season. This episode has grand revelations for characters we are meeting for the first time (i.e. Sulu, Scott, Chapel…even Tormolen). The episode would have been more impactful had we had a chance to know these characters before their deep secrets were revealed. Spock’s breakdown would have been all the more moving had we had more than three episodes with his character beforehand.

This episode would have been the perfect season finale, rewarding long time viewers with new details about the characters they’ve come to love and setting up promising new plots to explore within the next season. Even the unexpected (to the crew and viewers alike) time jump suggested an ending. It left me with a sense of peace, the opportunity for much needed healing after a particularly trying adventure and emotions rubbed raw. I have to wonder if this episode was moved up in the schedule for some reason.

Four stars…though easily could have been five.

Questioning Boldly Going


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

I'd like to expand on an excellent point Robin brings up. Zoom in with me for a moment on just one line from this moving episode:

Lt. Tormolen: We bring pain and trouble with us, leave men and women stuck out on freezing planets until they die. What are we doing out here in space? Good? What good? We're polluting it, destroying it. We've got no business being out here. No business.

Lt. Tormolen’s monologue begs us to question the underpinnings of the Federation. We do not currently know if his nihilistic view of space exploration is accurate, though my optimistic heart hopes it is not. But his focus on the evils of expansionism felt particularly poignant to me today as I read of Botswana declaring independence. Last week, that hilly country joined 28 other nations who have declared themselves independent from the United Kingdom since the end of the Second World War. (Lest my friends across the pond complain that I am picking on them, below are the names of each imperial power, and the number of countries who have declared independence from them since September 2, 1945: France (26), Belgium (3), Japan (2), Italy (2), Spain (1), New Zealand (1), Malaysia (1), Saudi Arabia (1), and the Netherlands (1)).


Independence ceremony for Botswana

Were there people on Psi 2000 who could have declared independence from the Federation? Did they survive great wars too, before succumbing to frost and madness? Captain Kirk calls Psi 2000 “a wasteland” and perhaps the worlds in the universe of Star Trek are often barren of locally-evolved cultures.

I hope not. I loved watching Captain Kirk treat with the Thasians as equals in Charlie X and like other reviewers, was deeply affected by the half-Vulcan Commander Spock’s breakdown. The best moments of Star Trek so far have been when the crew strives to understand the vast diversity of the universe around them using what academics might call “cultural relativism” and I might call “voracious curiosity.”

Or, to quote Nigerian author Chinua Achebe’s powerful anti-colonial novel Things Fall Apart (1958):

“The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”

I hope that, in Star Trek the worlds will have no end, and we will continue to explore both the stars and our reasons for reaching for them.

Five stars.

Score One for Star Trek


by Gideon Marcus

The latest Star Trek adventure takes us where some men have been before — the crew has settled into a consistent ensemble (though the second pilot, "Where No Man has Gone Before", was shown last week and must have been bewildering to folks tuning in); the fine director of "The Man Trap", Marc Daniels, returned as well.

But we got to see new sides of many characters, particularly Spock and Sulu, to a lesser degree Kirk. We were introduced to Nurse Chapel, who has an implied depth to her history that suggests this is not her first filmed episode even if it is her first appearance.

There are pacing issues.  I felt the second half of the episode was more riveting than the first.  There were scientific issues, particularly the collapsing planet.  The casual introduction of time travel was shocking — is Star Trek about to become Time Tunnel?


"My chronometer…it's running…backward!"

A few things stood out to me as truly superlative, though.  Janice mentioned Nimoy's tour de force portraying Spock's breakdown (which Robin notes came a little too early in the season for full impact).  What thoroughly impressed me was the scoring for the episode: The Irish-tinged phrases for Riley.  The "disease theme", punctuated with snake rattles that indicated transmission.  The entire suite from when Kirk reenters the bridge at the end, all the way to the end of the episode.  I wish I'd taped it on reel-to-reel for later listening as I have with the music from Secret Agent.  I'll have to do that during the summer reruns.  Or perhaps they'll release a soundtrack album a la Victory at Sea.

I liked that all of the bridge crew were cross-trained.  Both Uhura and Rand took the important navigation and helm stations, reinforcing that women are not just auxiliary crew in the future, but full-braid officers.  I wonder if we'll see female ship captains in future episodes.

And it's a small thing, but I really appreciated the exchange between Kirk and Uhura when, tempers frayed, they snap at one another.  Kirk then apologizes, and Uhura smiles in forgiveness.  It was a very human, very professional interaction.

Four stars.

(P.S. Has anyone else noticed that one of the themes in this episode's soundtrack sounds a lot like a common refrain in Twelve O' Clock High? I think I heard it in "The Cage" as well.)

(Join us tonight at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) for the next episode of Star Trek!)

Here's the invitation!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 4, 1966] The Real Treasure Was The Friends We Made Along The Way (Doctor Who: The Smugglers)

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By Jessica Holmes

It’s been a long couple of months, but Doctor Who is back, and so am I! Did you miss me?

I had heard rumours that William Hartnell was thinking about hanging up the TARDIS keys, but with a new series I think we can safely say those rumours are a load of tosh. I for one am very pleased– both because I enjoy the show, and because I'd be out of a job!

Though I do appreciate them, a pure historical story is an odd choice to start off a new series. Let’s be honest. Kids are not watching Doctor Who for the often fairly dry historicals. They’re watching for the bug-eyed monsters. Still, this story by Brian Hayles has pirates in it, and what kind of kid doesn’t like pirates? What's more, for the first time ever we have a woman in the director's chair, Julia Smith. Well, the kids might not care much about that, but I do.

Last time we saw the Doctor, we said a rather abrupt goodbye to companion Dodo, and said hello to Ben (Michael Craze) and Polly (Anneke Wills). Let’s see how they got along on their first adventure: The Smugglers.

EPISODE ONE

For heaven’s sake, I thought to myself when sitting down to watch this episode. My first story back, and the flipping telly’s on the fritz. Again.

Following the Doctor’s discovery of his two stowaways (he has a bit of a temper tantrum) and the obligatory expositional rundown of what the TARDIS is, the Doctor and company arrive in a cave in Cornwall in the 17th century. The BBC has seen fit to allow the cast and crew some fresh air and sunlight, filming much of the serial on location on the Cornish coast.

Exiting the cave, the trio make their way up to a nearby church, where they meet the warden, a suspicious fellow by the name of Longfoot (Terence De Marney).  Longfoot is wary of the three. He's guarding a secret: the true location of Captain Henry Avery’s buried treasure. The Doctor soon earns his trust with a little free medical aid. With the tide coming in, the trio intend to find a nearby inn. Before they depart, Longfoot warns them to be on their guard. He then says something quite peculiar to the Doctor: “This is Dead Man’s secret key: Smallwood, Ringwood, Gurney.”

Unseen by anyone, a bald man watches them from the bushes. After the Doctor and friends depart, the man emerges and follows Longfoot into the church, taking out a large knife.

The Doctor and company get a room at the inn, finding that the patrons are as rough as Lightfoot warned them. For Polly’s own safety, she pretends to be a young man. I suppose there weren’t many opticians in the 17th century, as nobody calls her paper-thin disguise into question. Maybe men were just prettier back then.

Back at the church the bald bloke, Cherub (George A. Cooper), confronts Longfoot. He demands to know where Avery’s gold is hidden. Longfoot refuses to talk, and in anger Cherub buries a knife in his back. You’d think a pirate would know that dead men tell no tales. Nor do they give you tips on where to look for buried treasure.

Longfoot’s body is discovered some time later, and the innkeeper, Kewper (David Blake Kelly), sends for the local Squire to come and act as magistrate. Cherub then arrives at the inn with a bunch of ruffians and demands to speak to the Doctor, having witnessed him talking to Longfoot. Though Ben and Polly try to defend him, Cherub and his ruffians manage to knock the Doctor unconscious and cart him off (literally).

Cherub’s long gone by the time the Squire (Paul Whitsun-Jones) and his stupid wig arrive. With no other likely suspects around, and Ben and Polly refusing to tell him who they are, he has the pair arrested for the murder of Longfoot.

Meanwhile, Cherub brings the Doctor aboard a ship, where he makes the acquaintance of one Captain Samuel Pike (Michael Godfrey) — a real pirate! He's got a hook for a hand and everything.

So far, the story is a perfectly decent but by-the-numbers pirate story. I keep expecting Long John Silver to limp in at any moment.

EPISODE TWO

The Doctor’s gift of the gab gets him out of a pickle when Pike and Cherub threaten to torture the secret of Avery’s treasure out of him. Laying the flattery on thick, he bargains for a share of the treasure in return for information.

Meanwhile, Polly comes up with a plan to get out of jail, but Ben has to help because there’s a rat between her and the hay she needs for the plan, and she’s scared of rats. We can’t have the womenfolk appearing to be too competent, can we? They might start getting ideas. To be fair, there’s a non-zero chance that it might be carrying the plague, so maybe she’s just being smart.

Ben and Polly trick their guard Tom (Mike Lucas) into believing they’re apprentices of the powerful wizard, the Doctor. Unless he lets them go, they’ll use a magical effigy to do some rather unpleasant things to him. It’s a superstitious time, so he actually falls for it.

The pair return to the church, where they subdue an intruder emerging from a secret tunnel in the crypt. Thinking this is the true murderer, Polly runs off to inform the Squire. It turns out that this man, Blake (John Ringham, who also played Tlotoxl back in The Aztecs), is actually a revenue officer investigating the local smuggling ring.

Kewper gets himself captured by Pike while trying to make a business deal with him, which gives Pike an idea. Donning his best Captain Hook costume, he and Cherub go to meet with the Squire. Their intention is to learn all they can about the smuggling operation, and rob them for everything they've got.

However, Polly arrives at the Squire’s house and immediately identifies Cherub as the man who kidnapped the Doctor. The Squire doubts her story, blinded by the magnificence of Pike’s luscious wig.

Still, the revenue officer might pose a real problem. The men head off to the church, dragging Polly with them.

This episode was a rather dull affair, I’m sorry to say. I often found my concentration slipping, though I did get a good laugh out of Pike’s ridiculous outfit.

EPISODE THREE

The group arrive at the crypt only for Ben to also point out that these are the pirates who abducted the Doctor, but the Squire still won’t have it. He has Cherub release the revenue officer, and orders Blake to arrest Ben and Polly.

Blake complies, only to immediately release Ben and Polly once they’re away from the rogues. Unlike the Squire, Blake has two brain cells to rub together. He makes plans to summon a militia so that he can intercept and detain the smugglers.

Meanwhile on the ship, the Doctor and Kewper realise they have to escape and warn the village of the impending pirate raid. The Doctor comes up with a cunning plan. It involves deception, reading ominous fortunes in a pack of cards, and Kewper hitting their guard Jamaica on the back of the head when he’s not looking. It's not subtle, but if it works, it works.

I think it's worth mentioning that Jamaica, played by Elroy Josephs, is the first black actor to appear on Doctor Who in a speaking role. It’s not a big part, but perhaps it is a sign of progress given the programme’s previous habit of slathering white actors in dodgy makeup.

He’s not around for long though, as once Pike finds out the prisoners are gone, he slays Jamaica in a fit of rage.

The Squire shows his pirate friends a little surprise at the church: he has a cache of valuable goods hidden in one of the tombs. Why he chooses to show this to the pirates I don’t know, because he wants them to drop their goods down on the beach. Methinks this chap is too trusting for his own good.

Having made his way back to the shore, the Doctor reunites with his friends, with Kewper accompanying him. However, upon seeing Blake he thinks the Doctor has led him into a trap. He flees, heading to the Squire’s house, where he is finally able to convince him that his new associates are untrustworthy pirates. They also realise that the pirates are after Avery’s treasure. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for profit?

Though Ben wants to go back to the TARDIS, the Doctor decides to stay, having a sense of obligation to prevent the pirates raiding the village. The group head up to the graveyard, reasoning that the smugglers will be coming through there. Ben and Polly start examining the old graves. Hearing some of the odd names scattered throughout the graveyard, the Doctor has a sudden realisation: ‘Dead Man’s Secret’… the treasure must be somewhere in the crypt!

Before they can make much progress in finding the treasure, the Squire arrives with Kewper. Kewper threatens the lives of Ben and Polly in an effort to force the Doctor to help him. The Squire intervenes, aghast at the idea of cold-blooded murder. While they’re bickering, Cherub arrives unseen and flings a knife into Kewper’s back.

The schemes are really starting to pile up at this point, and the serial is finally getting fun to watch. Shame it’s almost over.

EPISODE FOUR

A shot rings out. The Squire falls back, clutching his shoulder, injured but not dead, and very much regretting his involvement in the treasure hunt. Holding Polly at gunpoint, Cherub orders the Doctor to tell him where the treasure is.

The Doctor repeats the riddle for him, but there’s a discrepancy. Rather than Smallwood, one of the names they need to find is actually Smallbeer. The riddle we heard in the first episode was actually flubbed. I am surprised that nobody apparently caught this mistake earlier on. Perhaps there was no time or budget for a reshoot or over-dubbing the line.

Cherub recognises the names, and informs the Doctor that there’s another name hidden in the riddle, Deadman. The names belonged to members of Avery’s crew, and are hidden around the crypt.

Pike arrives with his band of pirates and shows them the cache hidden in the tomb. I couldn't think of when else to mention this note of trivia, so I'll put it here: one of the pirates, the Spaniard, is played by Doctor Who's stuntman and fight coordinator, Derek Ware.

While the crew are plundering the cache, Pike goes to the church to find Cherub. Discovering him in the crypt with the others, Pike thinks Cherub means to double-cross him– and he’s right. Cherub attempts to shoot his captain, but misses, leading the pair to start fighting. Meanwhile, Blake and his militia hurry to the village. Everything’s kicking off now.

The Doctor urges Ben and Polly to make a break down the tunnel to the TARDIS. Pike wins his duel with Cherub, dealing him a slow and apparently very painful death. The deaths in this serial, of which there are a lot, do seem rather more drawn out than is typical for Doctor Who. I can’t imagine being run through tickles, but it’s a bit grim for teatime television.

The Doctor makes Pike a new offer. He’ll give up his share of the gold and tell him where to look for it, as long as Pike keeps his crew away from the village.

Ben and Polly run into some trouble as they head back to the TARDIS, with Ben knocking out one pirate and the two struggling to subdue another, until Blake arrives to shoot the blaggard dead.

Following the clues, the Doctor and Pike find the treasure! Shame Pike will never get a chance to enjoy it. Blake’s militia has arrived. They begin to clash with the pirates, the crash of steel echoing off the stone walls of the crypt.

Pike tries to escape, only to find his egress cut off by Blake and Ben. The Squire finds his backbone and grapples Pike, holding him in place long enough for Blake to finish him off.

The Doctor and Ben slip back to the TARDIS. There’s quite a lot of bodies to clean up, and who can be bothered with all that? With the group back together, they note that everyone who sought after the treasure is now dead. All except for the Squire, who renounced his greed for the gold. Perhaps there really was something to that curse after all… or perhaps it’s more of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The TARDIS departs, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be back in London any time soon. As the temperature begins to plummet, the Doctor checks his scanner. They’ve landed in the coldest place in the world! I assume he means Antarctica.

Final Thoughts

Though the final episode was actually rather good and exciting, this serial suffers from something I’ve noticed in a lot of Doctor Who serials: a rather dull second act. It happens again and again. There’s one interesting episode followed by a bunch of rather dull ones. These sluggish episodes do a fine job of setting up the final episode, but fail to offer entertaining television in their own right. As adults, we can push through, but four weeks is an eternity to a child. I don’t think serials like this are able to hold their attention for that long.

As suspected from the first episode, the plot is a perfectly serviceable pirate story. There’s nothing wrong with it, per se. But I think even those with only a passing knowledge of pirate-related literature will find it all too familiar. There's a distinctive whiff of Treasure Island hanging over the whole thing.

On the bright side, I have taken a bit of a shine to the Doctor’s new companions Ben and Polly. Polly’s bright and resourceful, and Ben seems sweet, if a little rough around the edges. The important thing is that he’s got a good, brave heart. I think I’ll enjoy having these two around.

3 out of 5 stars



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 2, 1966] At Heart (November 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

Throughout the millennia in every human culture, the heart has been a key symbol. From the center of the body to the seat of life, emotion, mind or soul, its meaning varies, but it is always important. These days, it’s mostly a symbol of love, but it’s also connected with courage and desires of other kinds. It can also mean the center of something, from arguments to artichokes. Whatever it may mean, you gotta have it.

Hearts of darkness and light

It’s been a rough month for the civil rights movement. On September 2nd, Alabama governor George Wallace signed a bill refusing Federal education funds, believing that will prevent the integration of Alabama schools. Two days later, the Congress of Racial Equality marched in Cicero, Illinois and was met by a mob hurling rocks and bottles. By the end, 14 were injured and nearly 40 people (mostly white) had been arrested. But the ugliest scenes were in Grenada, Mississippi.

Back in June, the March Against Fear passed through Grenada, and marchers spent about a week there. Town officials appeared cooperative. They gave police protection to the marchers, six Black voter registrars were hired and 1,000 Black voters were registered. But it was all for show. Once the country’s attention moved on, the registrars were fired, and it was discovered that none of the voters were actually registered. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference set up shop in town and went to work.

In August, a Federal judge ordered Grenada to allow Black students to enroll in previously all white schools. Many parents took advantage of this, but a campaign of intimidation caused many to change their children’s enrollment to Black schools. School started on the 12th, and things went smoothly at one elementary school, but it was very different at the local high school. A white mob prevented Black students from entering the school, chasing Black children through the streets and beating them with chains and pipes. They even attacked reporters. And the police turned a blind eye to the whole thing. Federal protection finally arrived for the children on the 17th.


Martin Luther King walking children to school in Grenada, Mississippi. Photo by Bob Fitch

A few days earlier, a car carrying Martin Luther King and some other SCLC leaders was stopped at a red light in Grenada. A man at a nearby gas station recognized him, ran over, stuck a gun in Dr. King’s face and threatened to blow his brains out. Dr. King simply looked the man in the eye and said, “Brother, I love you.” Stunned, the man lowered his gun and walked away. That is a heart full of courage and love.

Hearts of men and robots

From the heart of battle to the heart of the galaxy, this month’s IF is full of action. Let’s dive right in.


Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots dispute the best way to care for humans. Art by Adkins

Truce or Consequences, by Keith Laumer

The Terran embassy on Plushnik I has been built in that most neutral of territories: no-man’s land. Now, the invaders from Plushnik II are planning an all-out offensive this evening, leading right through the embassy. Worse yet, CDT inspectors are due to arrive in the morning. If they find a state of war, everyone’s career is in jeopardy. Once again, it’s up to Retief to save the day.


Retief proposes peace talks. Art by Gaughan

It’s been a while since we last heard from Retief, and I noted at the time that the series had grown stale. The break seems to have done Laumer good. The only thing new here is the introduction of formal diplomatic maneuvers – such as Kindly Indulgence with Latent Firmness or Reluctant Admonition with overtones of Gracious Condescension – but that alone wouldn’t be enough to lift things out of the doldrums. The real difference is that Laumer seems to be having fun with his super-diplomat again.

Three stars.

At the Core, by Larry Niven

Four years after his daring flyby of a neutron star, Beowulf Schaeffer is again out of money. The puppeteers of General Products approach him for something less dangerous. They’ve developed a new faster-than-light drive, capable of traveling at nearly one light-year per minute. The problem is that it’s huge. Installed in the largest cargo hull available, there’s barely room for a cockpit and a tiny cabin for one person. In order to get wealthy investors interested in the project, they want Schaeffer for a publicity stunt. Fly to the galactic core, return and write an article. He jumps at the chance. Schaeffer encounters serious problems along the way, but what he finds at the core will have consequences for all of known space in both the short and very long terms.


Beowulf Schaeffer in the cockpit of the Long Shot. Art by Adkins

This is a solid story. There’s a bit of handwaving about why the mass detector can’t be automated, but get past that it’s good. And at the end, Niven waxes a little philosophical and elevates the story.

Four stars.

Science-Fiction Fanways, by Lin Carter

This month, Our Man in Fandom looks at some more bits of fan slang. He starts off with “future slang” from early novels, moves on to nonsense words and acronyms, and thence to a few more words like Neohood and Completism. He then wraps it up with tales of the Great Staple War of the 30s and the Great Stationery Duel, which may be going on to this day. Mildly entertaining, but not as informative as some of the earlier articles.

A low three stars.

The Sign of Gree, by C. C. MacApp

A mysterious enemy has been attacking Gree ships with devastating effect. Hoping that the enemy of his enemy might be his friend and that he might find out what happened to Fazool, Steve Duke infiltrates the survivors of an attack in order to be captured. Taken to a prison camp operated by the Remm, catlike centaurs, he finds Fazool. Together, they hatch a plot to gain the attention of these new aliens and win them over as allies against Gree.


Steve Duke meets the Remm. Art by Gray Morrow

What can I say that I haven’t already said about the Gree stories? This is a fairly typical example of the series. It’s marginally entertaining, but too many things happen because the plot needs them, rather than following logically, and once again the story ends with the feeling that the anti-Gree forces have more than enough to end the war. It’s long past time for this series to end.

A very low three stars.

A Code for Sam, by Lester del Rey

Sam is a robot assisting the Gregg Archaeological Expedition on the planet Anubis. Dr. Gregg and everybody else treat him like just another person. Recently arrived are Dr. Dickson and the experimental robot Pete. Robots are rare on Earth, and people are wary of them, so Dickson has come up with new programming based on “the three laws of Asenion robots” from old science-fiction stories. Unfortunately, they work about as well as they did in the stories, and that intersects badly with the natives’ uneasiness with what the archaeologists are digging up.


Sam and Pete have different motivations. Art by Lutjens

Del Rey is clearly basing this on Asimov’s robot stories, but I’m not sure if he’s taking a poke at them or trying to sum them up into a more important message than the Good Doctor ever intended. One member of the expedition dismisses the three laws as “slavery and racism,” while Dr. Gregg says they were just a bit of fun to make a good story. I’m torn in my assessment. The story raises some interesting philosophical questions, but it also sags a bit in the middle. The questions are probably enough.

A low four stars.

The Babe in the Oven, by John T. Sladek

Honestly, I don’t think I can summarize this surreal tale of suburbia. Let me quote the editorial blurb. “Tough day! The baby was a spy, and the friendly parish priest was his accomplice!” If Phil Dick, R. A. Lafferty and David Bunch collaborated on a story, it wouldn’t be half this strange. I think Sladek is trying to say something about suburban life, but I couldn’t find it.

A high two stars for me, might be three for somebody else.

Halfway House, by Robert Silverberg

Wealthy and brilliant industrialist Franco Alfieri is dying of cancer. Luckily for him, he can afford to enter the Fold, the place where all the universes meet. There, he is judged to determine if he is worthy of being saved. He is found to be, but he will have to give five years of his life in service to the halfway house. Alfieri jumps at the chance, but is the price higher than he thought?

This is Silverberg at his best. It’s an excellent character piece, following the protagonist through arrogance and desperation to his final understanding of the price he pays. This is the best thing he’s written since To See the Invisible Man.

A high four stars.

Snow White and the Giants (Part 2 of 4), by J. T. McIntosh

During the hottest summer in memory, the English town of Shuteley is visited by a strange band of young people. At the end of the first installment, narrator Val Mathers and his old friend Jota decided to investigate the strangers’ camp. There, they are forced to duel the giants. Jota is killed and Val barely manages to stay alive. Suddenly, Val and Jota are entering the camp once again. Jota talks his way into staying, while Val heads home.

There, he encounters Miranda – the Snow White of the title. Val works out that the gang are from the future. Miranda learns that Val is reluctant to have children, because he fears that his mother’s madness and sister’s mental handicap are congenital. She offers to find out, but having sex with her is part of that. He doesn’t hesitate. She informs him that all his children will be normal, and he realizes he really wants them. This could repair his marriage to Sheila.

Later, Val and Sheila head out of town on a date, partly at Jota’s urging, partly because Miranda said they would stay home that night. Their romance seems to be rekindled, but on the way home they see a fire. Shuteley is burning. The fire is so intense the only bridge in town has buckled. The fire brigade is trapped on the side away from the center of town and can’t find enough water to defend the small bit on their side of the river. Val organizes the defense, finding water and getting civilians to safety. Did the giants have something to do with the low water level in the river? To be continued.


Val fights for his life. Art by Gaughan

I wasn’t too keen on the first installment, noting particularly McIntosh’s handling of the female characters. While that doesn’t get much better, the rest is much improved. This feels like the McIntosh from several years ago. There’s obviously a lot more going on here than just some time-travelers come to watch a disastrous fire (shades of Vintage Season by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner). I’m actually interested in seeing where this is going now.

Three stars.

Hairry, by Mike Hill

Jake explains how he first met Hairry. He was working on a geological survey team hunting for oil on some planet (presumably Mars, but never named). When his scout car falls into a deep canyon, he runs into gigantic ten-legged spiders. The only thing keeping him from being dinner is his love of jazz.

Hill is this month’s first time author. He gives us an old-fashioned bar tale on an old-fashioned Mars, and we can all see where things are going several pages before the end. On top of that, the jazz slang feels at least a decade old, which is positively ancient.

Two stars.

The Boat in the Bottle, by Thurlow Weed

The Boat is the grandest passenger ship ever built. In an act of hubris, the owners send its maiden voyage through the Bahama Abyss. And hubris always has a price.

Thurlow Weed may or may not be a first time author. Perhaps the author is a descendant of the man who helped found both the Whig and Republican parties. He or she certainly has reason not to want their name associated with this story. It’s dull and has no redeeming features.

One star.

Summing up

This is an issue of highs and lows. We have some of the best stories IF has had in quite a while, and some of the worst. But the highs are very high. Silverberg came very close to a fifth star, and del Rey might have gotten there with a bit more polishing. There’s life in the old mag yet.


Can Niven knock it out of the park again?




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 30, 1966] Return to Base (October 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Comfort of Old Friends

One of the brilliant things about the new show, Star Trek, is that it combines the storytelling breadth of a science fiction anthology show (a la The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits with the anchoring of a returning ensemble cast.  This has never really been done before (at least in the United States — the UK has Doctor Who and the various marionette shows).  In addition to the exciting new situations that arise every week, we can also enjoy watching our favorite characters grow over time.

Many science fiction magazines are like the older anthology shows, offering a brand new cast of characters and new ideas with every montly set of stories.  Others, like Analog, and in particular this month's issue, are like Star Trek, bringing us back to familiar territory for further explorations of a known universe.

I think both are valid formats, particularly if the established properties are successful.  Analog did a pretty good job this month.  Let's dive in…

The Issue at Hand


by John Schoenherr

Strangers to Paradise, by Christopher Anvil

Chris Anvil is an author who has occasionally shown flashes of promise — but always in other magazines.  In Analog, he has dug himself a rut with an anvil-weighted plow and happily buried himself in it.


by John Schoenherr

Strangers is yet another story that takes place in his galactic trade universe.  This one involves a ship whose gravitor has broken down, and whose crew has made planetfall to seek repairs.  Unfortunately, though the Michelin guide said there was a Class II repair facility on the colony world, it was never actually built.  Instead, the colonists proved so unruly that the computer running the outpost established draconian control.  The technicians who could override the machine exiled themselves rather than deal with either the colonists or the computer!

To fix their ship, the traders need help from the city dwellers.  But to get the help, they need the technicians back.  How do they repair the impasse?

I thought this might be setting up a Deathworld scenario, where the immigrants are the key to restoring harmony.  But this is Chris Anvil in Campbell's mag.  Instead, they accidentally develop a psychic projector, able to instill any emotion into any human at any range.  Over the course of many pages, they manipulate the entire planetary population in a haphazard fashion, ultimately getting what they need.  In the end, they consider dismantling the device as an unethical abomination…but decide to keep it.  Just too useful to destroy, you know.

I found this story quite distasteful.  Less glib than Anvil's other tales, but callous in a way that suggests support rather than condemnation for the actions of the shipwrecked crew.

Two stars.

The Sons of Prometheus, by Alexei Panshin


by Leo Summers

Sons sees the return of a fine new author who you've not only seen before, but who has even written a guest article for the Journey!  (the line between fan and pro in the 'zines is a blurry one.) This new tale appears to be set in the compelling timeline set up in What Size are Giants? and the amazing Down to the Worlds of Men.

The premise: on the brink of atomic self-destruction, Earth sends out more than a hundred colonies.  Fifteen years later, Earth is a radiated wasteland.  The only humans left live either in struggling settlements or rather comfortably as crew and passengers on starships.  This sets up a haves and have-nots situation.  The planeteers are primitive, suspicious folks.  The ship dwellers have limited resources to assist.

This particular tale involves a fellow named Tansman, who embeds himself on a plague-infested colony to conduct anthropological research.  His ultimate dilemma: does he offer what limited medicine he can to save a few, revealing himself, putting his mission and possibly his person in danger?  Or does he watch as the colonists die in droves?

It's a vivid story, though I feel it doesn't do quite enough with the setup.  It also stacks the deck a bit toward a certain outcome.  I also could have done without the extremely graphic, drawn out scene in which Tansman puts a suffering colonist out of his misery (warning: it's in the last third of the tale).

So, three stars, but I wouldn't mind seeing more in this setting.

Challenge: The Insurgent vs. the Counterinsurgent (Part 2), by Joe Poyer

With the non-fiction column, we return to last month's topic — namely counterinsurgency.  Poyer notes the great strides that have been made in tracking insurgents, using infrared, electronic bugs, even scent.  He correlates this increase in counterinsurgency effectiveness with the decline in successful insurgencies since 1956.  He makes the hopeful prediction that the golden age of guerrilas may be at an end.

The problem, of course, is that better counterinsurgents only addresses one prong of the problem.  As even Poyer notes, until the populace's needs are addressed, insurgency will thrive.  Moreover, I was reading in the latest diplomatic journals that few expect the United States to be successful in Vietnam, our latest counterinsurgent operation.  That is because the issue is an Asian problem, and the US has limited ability to project force and influence in another continent.  Vietnam is not a colony.  It is a sovereign country riven with civil war.  One way or another, they're going to have to solve their own issues.  Our presence is an ephemeral condition, and it is arguable that it is making the situation any better.

Three stars for an interesting read and lots of pretty charts, but I doubt the author's conclusion.

Romp, by Mack Reynolds


by Leo Summers

Back to the world of Joe Mauser, where the Earth of the 1980s is divided into four camps: the free countries of Latin America and Africa, Common Europe, the somewhat democratic SovWorld, and the "People's Capitalism" of the West.  The United States has calcified into economic castes, and upward mobility is virtually impossible.

Enter Rosy Porras, born into the long-dead job of pretzel twister.  He has figured out how to live a life of crime in an ostensibly crimeless world.  When his latest "romp" goes sour, he has to make a run for the border.  Can he make it in time?

I find the Mauser setting fascinating if based on increasingly unlikely premises.  This story is a bit too pat, but it's a competent thriller.  Three stars.

Too Many Magicians (Part 3 of 4), by Randall Garrett


by John Schoenherr

And now we return to the world of Lord Darcy, a timeline in which magic has displaced science, the Angevin Empire is squared against the Polish Confederation, and a Holmes analog is tasked with solving two murders.  We learned in the last installment that both were secret agents in the employ of HRM, and that their deaths are connected with a super secret magical confusion ray.

What we don't know is how one succumbed in a locked room, how Demoiselle Tia Einzig (accused of dealing in the Black Arts) of a southern slavic state was involved, or how certain was the loyalty of the murdered agents.

This continues to be a fun novel, and the setting is positively lavish.  If there's just one thing that's mildly unconvincing, it's the development of modern-style military ranks, as well as English colloquialisms, in a timeline that diverged from ours nearly a millennium ago.

Also, it can be a little tough to keep track of an intricate mystery spread out over four months of reading.  Nevertheless, four stars for another fine installment, and high hopes for a satistfying ending in October!

Reading the Results

It's a shame about the Anvil, as it drags the issue down to a straight 3 stars.  The issue feels better than that because it improves as it goes along.  Ah well. 3 still puts Analog alongside Alien Worlds (3.0) and just below Galaxy (rounds to 3 but was slightly above).

This makes Campbell's mag better than New Writings #9 (2.9),
Amazing (2.5), and IF (2.5) this month, and not as good as Impulse (3.2), New Worlds (3.3), or Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.3).

Worthy stuff (four and five stars) could easily fill two magazine's worth, but women wrote just 7.5% of the new fiction this month.  So much for the renaissance I predicted last month.

That wraps up the October 1966 magazines.  In two days, the November crop comes in!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 28, 1966] Garbage and Aliens (October 1966 New Worlds and SF Impulse)

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

After last month’s changes, I must admit that I was really looking forward to this month’s issues. I was intrigued – would the change of editor at SF Impulse be noticeable yet? And could editor Mike Moorcock over at New Worlds manage to produce another stellar issue of the same standard as last month?

I’ll start with New Worlds.

Mike Moorcock’s Editorial is not-an-Editorial. Instead Mike extolls a writer, reviewing some of their work. This is usually something that I feel belongs in the reviews section of the magazine.

However, Mike this time tells us of the work of J G Ballard, last seen here last month (and will appear again, later). The Editorial is typically enthusiastic, claiming that Ballard is the “first clear voice” of a new movement in science fiction. To which I mused that his voice is clearly different, whilst his plots are rather obscure.

To the stories!


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Garbage World (Part 1 of 2), by Charles Platt

The cover story first. Platt tells of a future where Kopra, a world used by the rest of the Belt to dump its waste, has become increasingly unstable on account of the amount of waste dumped upon it. The people there strive to survive in a world with pollutive skies and garbage-covered landscapes.

However, the arrival of an official with a construction team to build a gravity generator, and deal with the problem before it becomes a hazard to others in the Belt, is greeted with suspicion. The general feeling is that the real motive is to get the locals off the planet and then steal their hoards of accumulated “wealth”.

This is made worse when Isaac Gaylord, the mayor of Kopra, has his wealth stolen and as his stockpile is a sign of his authority, he is deposed. Although suspicion immediately falls upon the construction team, Gaylord blames the nomads from outside of the village for taking advantage of the new situation. The work of the space constructors is also slowed by attacks on them, determined to stop the work. Lucian Roach, a Recorder for the Belt party, and Gaylord and his daughter Juliette go to meet the outsiders to get them to allow a restart of the gravity generator construction but also to get his hoard back and regain his status. Whilst travelling around a mud lake, their tractor breaks down and their radio is stolen, leaving us with a cliffhanger until next issue.

I quite liked the premise of this one. The story makes use of a valid environmental issue – with a growing population, what should we do with our litter in the future? Unfortunately, whilst the idea is interesting, the characterisation is poor and the plot unoriginal. In particular, the mayor, Isaac Gaylord, comes across rather like Ralph Richardson’s Boss of Everytown in the film Things to Come – a man of the people, yet ill-mannered and decidedly small-minded. There’s a weak love story begun here too. Reminiscent of an old-school “planetary explorer” story, this was readable, but won’t win any prizes for its telling. 3 out of 5.

To the Pure , by Damon Knight

An appearance of an American author here, who rather like James Blish I seem to know more for his criticism than his fiction. I enjoyed this one. It is a story of human-Antarian relationships, a boy-meets-girl-meets-alien kind of story. When Mr. Nellith, a big bird-like Antarian, arrives to fix the hyper-radio, human technician Jeff Gorman is aggrieved and does everything he can to make the alien’s life horrible. Despite all of Gorman’s boorish antics and general unpleasantness, Nellith completes the job and leaves the planet, taking Gorman’s wife in the process. Although this may sound unreasonable, Gorman is particularly nasty, which gives the reader the feeling that in the end justice was served. Another that is quite readable, though totally predictable. 3 out of 5.

The Squirrel Cage, by Thomas M. Disch

And no sooner do we have one story from this promising young writer, but we have another. I was impressed by Thomas’s debut here in last month’s New Worlds. As for this month, you know the idea that with enough time, monkeys could type out the works of Shakespeare? Well, here’s a slightly different version. This time it is the story of a man named Disch and a typewriter, locked in a lighted room. The man has no idea why he is there – is it an experiment or an observation? – and without knowing what day or time it is, is reduced to copying out or making up dreadful poetry and stories to pass the time. The writer eventually produces the theory that he is in a squirrel cage, where the typing is purely exercise for him, and he is perhaps entertainment in a zoo.

Almost but not quite as good as last month’s effort, I think. Still readable. The trains of thought throughout are logical and there is a faintly amusing tone throughout to give the impression that the writer is in on the joke as well as part of the joke. The attempts at poetry and short stories are deliberately awful. Are we to make fun of the writer or sympathise with him? Not sure – but this confirms my idea last month that Disch is an author to watch. 4 out of 5.

Be Good Sweet Man, by Hilary Bayley

Hilary’s return to fiction after some time as a book reviewer. Whilst the setting is science fiction, this is really a story of sexual politics: on Mars the Conservative and Reform Party has dared to replace its previous candidate with a man! The main idea of the plot is that, after the Third World War, it is felt that it is time to let women run the place – the men made such a mess, after all.

It is amusing to read what can happen with gender stereotypes reversed, although the story makes the mistake, in my opinion, of simply swapping the genders and then letting the women behave like the stereotype of men and presumably the men more like the original stereotype of women. It lacks complexity and depth. 3 out of 5.

Crab Apple Crisis, by George Macbeth (for Martin Bell)

Mike continues his determination to foist poetry upon the readers. I know that there are many who like it, but generally it is not my thing. Having said that, this is a poem of war: of how an accumulation of minor events, namely the stealing of crab-apples, can lead to a major incident. 3 out of 5.

Divine Madness, by Roger Zelazny

Another American big-hitter. Roger’s latest is about a person experiencing time going backwards. The result? Lots of things in reverse – drinking, smoking – and sentences as speech written backwards. The attention is held by knowing that the narrator is about to repeat something that was unpleasant in reverse. It’s a nice idea, though rather impractical, and the reason for this happening is not entirely clear. However, this is pleasingly different from what we’ve seen from Roger so far – a sign of a talent, I think. Not his best, but good. 4 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Steel Corkscrew, by Michael Butterworth

Michael is a relatively new talent that we’ve met before with Girl in the May issue of New Worlds. Eight outcasts return to land on a dusty deserted Earth. A strange corkscrew spire is all that remains. Lots of discussion about what it is and where it came from, before the crew find a way in. Death and strange things happen. All seems a bit pointless, although that may be the point. All is death and pain, it seems. 3 out of 5.

The Greatest Car in the World, by Harry Harrison

Just in case you haven’t realised, here’s Harry to remind us that he’s not just an editor and a critic over at SF Impulse, but also a writer. A story for petrol-heads, though you do not have to be one to like it: American Ernest Haroway visits in Italy the Maestro Bellini, the reclusive elderly creator of Bellini sports cars. Haroway returns an item from a Bellini car involved in a previous motor race crash and is given a prototype to drive home in, Bellini’s last ever effort. The ending describes the modifications Haroway will have to make to adapt the car for the US market, in other words to turn the genius of a once-in-a-lifetime car into an inferior mass-production model. Lots of technical talk, which sounds real, although it may not be. 3 out of 5.

Three Days in Summer, by George Collyn

George is now probably a veteran of these here pages, being a regular essay writer, reviewer and story writer at New Worlds. This one’s relatively minor, a re-tread of Orwell’s 1984. A Whitehall romance in a future despotic state, combining bureaucracy and public hangings with a horribly humid Summer. Very similar initially to A Hot Summer’s Day by John Bell in the July issue of Impulse, but this one is perhaps a little more restrained. Like Bell’s story, 3 out of 5.

Prisoners of Paradise, by David Redd

A new writer, I think. Shaamon is an artist who can change form and creates art with light. She finds and merges with a dying creature in a spaceship. The knowledge she experiences she takes back to her Nest mind pool to add to the group consciousness. The group decides to try and find more like this creature, who is clearly human. The purpose of the story seems to be that even in paradise, you should not stop pushing boundaries and acquiring new experiences for the greater good. Whilst this is a debut story, the lyrical writing and vivid imagery suggests that this is a writer with promise. 4 out of 5.

Notes from Nowhere, by J. G. Ballard

No doubt to go with Moorcock’s glowing recommendation in this month’s Editorial, here we have J G’s article "to produce these notes explaining some of his current ideas."

I am of a mind that if an author has to explain himself then I question the validity of their work. Nevertheless, Ballard does try to capture the impossible here. Interesting reading, although I suspect it will leave some readers as confused as ever. Some nice name-checking, though.

Book Reviews

This month James Cawthorn covers a pile of Jack Vance stories now available here in Britain: the stories in The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph, and the novels The Languages of Pao, and The Blue World. All are generally liked, although there are some weaker stories in the story collection.

Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 also deals with languages, and is highly regarded, which ”only occasionally trips over its hyperbole”.

Frank Herbert, he of Dune fame, has two books reviewed this month. Destination: Void and The Green Brain seem to cover all the bases here – "Journeys also figure prominently… as do giant brains, highly-sexed heroines, religion and characters who endlessly analyse each other’s motives.” And if you didn’t want to read those books before, now you do!

No Letters pages again this month.

Summing up New Worlds

This is another one of those odd issues of New Worlds where I found a lot to like but not to love. Compared with last month’s issue, this is weaker and yet I can’t say I disliked it. Moorcock is using a broad range here and trying to introduce more relatively new writers alongside the established favourites. Will an article by Ballard be enough to persuade readers to buy? Or a story from promising new writer Disch? Not sure.

The Second Issue At Hand

And now to SF Impulse, under the rule of its new editor Harry Harrison.

With the feeling that there’s a sign saying “Under New Management” hanging off it, Harry in his Editorial sets out his stall. He acknowledges the work of previous editor Kyril and present Managing Editor Keith Roberts, promising much, calming troubled waters, and being positive about the future.

Day Million by Frederik Pohl

Another author who is also an editor. This one is a bit odd, as is perhaps befitting the New Wave. A story of genetics and boys not being boys and girls not being girls in a far future. It is also a love story, though Dora is seven feet tall and Don is a cybernetic man. The style is interesting – a story that is written in a conversational style and raises your expectations before contradicting them. I liked it: it doesn’t take itself too seriously, although it is however another reprint, from Rogue Magazine in the US. I guess that this might be where the sexual content was first suited. 4 out of 5.

The Inheritors by Ernest Hill

Ernest’s a New Worlds regular, last seen in the June issue with the not-great Sub-liminal. This time around, we are set in a future where food is processed and much of the work is automated. The overly stressed manager of this world spends most of his time on the verge of a mental breakdown. His attempt to escape the rat race is futile, leading to an inevitable, weak ending. Over-excited and yet predictable, this is another one that seems to be doing little but filling space. 2 out of 5.

Book Review, by Brian W Aldiss

And it would of course not be right to have a Harrison production without some input via Mr Aldiss. Just to make it clear, this is not a story named “Book Review”, but a book review of The Clone by Theodore L Thomas and Kate Wilhelm. Whilst the book under review seems to be nothing new, Aldiss’s review is entertaining , as usual.

Breakdown by Alistair Bevan

Keith Roberts’ nom-de-plume returns with another story set in Bill Frederick’s garage – you know, the one with the demonised car back in the August issue. This time Bill’s mechanical skills are put to the test when he is asked by a local to slow his car down as it has become too fast for him. Investigating further, we discover that the car, having broken down, was tuned up by an on-the-road mechanic to be better than ever before. The twist in the story is that the roadside rescuer is an alien, and Bill has to come to his rescue to fix his alien spaceship. It is all as silly as it sounds, but I liked the pleasingly breezy style to this story.

What is it with all the motor car stories, though? 3 out of 5.

Fantasy and the Nightmare by G. D. Doherty

G. D. Doherty is an academic who has written for the analytical fanzine SF Horizons before.

Here he discusses the point made by Ballard that the most important aspects of SF are really just Fantasy. Doherty unpacks the idea of what Fantasy is – or isn’t – and refers to Ballard, James Blish, Brian Aldiss, as well as non-genre works to make this point. Quite dense stuff that is different in tone and depth to the rest of the work in the magazine, although it is worth comparing to Ballard’s notes in New Worlds.

The Boiler by C. F. Hoffman

Following on from a discussion of Fantasy, we now have a reprint of a classic Fantasy story, first published in 1842. One of those creepy Weird Tales type of stories about Ben Blower, a seaman trapped in a boat’s boiler room during a heavy storm. Its style is quite out of step with the modern material in the magazine, and its olde prose quite jarring in comparison also. Effectively claustrophobic. 3 out of 5.

The Man Who Came Back by Brian Stableford

You might remember Brian for his illuminating attempt to define science fiction in the November 1965 issue of Science Fantasy, or his promising story in the same issue, Beyond Time’s Aegis co-written as “Brian Craig” with Craig A. Mackintosh. This time we look at the idea of identity through William Jason, a space pilot who wakes up in the form of something else. The big debate is whether he is still William or not. Short – I rarely say these things, but actually this one feels like it could do with being longer. 3 out of 5.

The Experiment by Chris Hebron

A new writer. Alfred is a child that like many others has been born with esper powers. The Race Purity League see this as a threat and are determined to destroy the mutants or at least limit them. Scientists try to investigate the matter further. Lots of talk about the importance of the espers' rights and their need to survive follows. Shades of Slan from over 25 years ago, or even John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos from 1957 show that this idea never goes out of fashion. 3 out of 5.

The Unsung Martyrdom of Abel Clough by Robert J. Tilley

This is basically a cowboy western in space. Alien Vat on his first solo Hunt crashes on an alien planet. He hopes to make good his error by capturing some of the human inhabitants of a village and attempts to disguise himself before going to the local bar. He fails. The humans, straight out of the Old West, manage to see through this. A weak ending. 3 out of 5.

Make Room! Make Room! (Part 3 of 3), by Harry Harrison

The last part of this serial novel has a lot to live up to. In this last part New York’s Summer has given way to Winter. Where it was once a heatwave, it is now freezing. Sol, the friend of Police Detective Andy Rusch has broken his hip and is now recuperating in their shared flat, being looked after by Andy’s now-girlfriend Shirl.

The killer of crime boss “Big Mike” O Brien, Billy Chung, is forced to leave the Brooklyn Shipyards where he has been hiding with his vagrant-friend Peter.

The unremitting misery continues, even though there’s a change in the weather. (How do people in New York cope with this?) The story is still bleak. There’s much talk, especially from Sol, of a need for family planning and how uncontrolled births have led to the world as it is today.

I was interested to see if the story caught the murderer in the final part. I’m pleased to say that the ending is quite satisfying, although the demise of the killer is rather quickly wrapped up. It seems that that part of the story is not that important; the setting is most significant. Whilst it is enjoyable, I think that this part was not quite as good as the initial set up or last month’s part, so 4 out of 5. Nevertheless, this has been a notable story and one I’ll remember for a while.

Summing up SF Impulse

The first issue of a new regime, although with assistant editor Keith Roberts still doing much of the work. I can’t see that much of a difference, at least at the moment. Like this month’s New Worlds, there are a lot of stories here, and the issue gains by range if not really in depth. The Harrison finishes fairly well, but there’s a lot of filler here, including reprints. The introduction of more sf criticism is an interesting move, but the use of “classic” stories to fill space a negative one.

Summing up overall

A tougher decision to choose this month. Both issues are fair, and both have gone for range rather than depth. But with nothing particularly strong in New Worlds, though I quite liked Disch’s story, the winner this month for me is, I think, SF Impulse [the Editor's averaging of Mark's star ratings be damned! (ed.)]. It’s not perfect by any means, but it just shows that the magazine is going to keep on fighting – at least for now.

Until the next…

(Join us tomorrow at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) for the next episode of Star Trek!)

Here's the invitation!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 26, 1966] All that glitters: in praise of Cele Goldsmith Lalli

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by John Boston

Gone but not Forgotten

SF editors come in highly assorted makes and models and evoke equally varied reactions. Some are revered as movers and shakers (though not always unanimously); a few are reviled as debasers of the field; some are barely noticed at all. A few have earned sympathetic respect for making something out of nothing, or close to it. Before World War II, Frederik Pohl edited several pulp magazines with a budget of zero, and he had to beg for stories from his friends. Robert Lowndes had little more than zero to work with, but managed to publish three at-least-readable magazines through the 1950s, occasionally coming up with something excellent. (And he’s at it again with Magazine of Horror.)

Another in this mode was Cele Goldsmith, later Lalli, who joined Ziff-Davis in 1955, straight out of Vassar. First, she was editorial assistant to Howard Browne, then to Paul Fairman when Browne left, with promotions along the way to associate editor and managing editor. At the time she was hired, she had read no SF beyond Verne and Wells. When Fairman left at the end of 1958, she inherited the editor’s mantle. During that time, the magazines were firmly, and intentionally, stuck in a rut of formulaic stories. Most of them were produced almost literally by the yard by a small number of regulars (among them Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett, Stephen Marlowe (nee Milton Lesser), and Howard Browne, joined in midflight by Harlan Ellison and Henry Slesar) under various pseudonyms and house names as well as their own names. Though more outright fantasy did appear in Fantastic than in Amazing, overall there was not much difference between their contents, and in fact the label Science Fiction appeared on Fantastic at times.

Things changed quickly under the new editor. (Hints of these changes were already apparent in the last months under Fairman, when Goldsmith was assuming progressively more responsibility). The contents pages gradually became more various, with respectable middle-grade writers from outside the regular crew appearing more and more frequently—some of whom, like Cordwainer Smith and Kate Wilhelm, became much more prominent later. Though some of the regulars—Silverberg, Garrett, Slesar, Ellison—continued to appear, the pseudonyms vanished.

Goldsmith’s most audacious coup in her first year as editor was the November 1959 Fantastic, which consisted entirely of five stories by Fritz Leiber. No SF magazine had previously devoted an entire issue to one author (though some issues of Amazing and Fantastic had probably come close, with authors’ identities obscured by pseudonyms.) Most notable among the stories was "Lean Times in Lankhmar," the first new entry in a number of years in Leiber’s sword-and-sorcery series featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, which signaled a revival of a style of fantasy that had fallen badly out of favor.

Fantastic November 1959

By 1960, the magazines had been reestablished as having some claim to merit, a welcome counter-trend to the rapid disappearance of other SF magazines. (No fewer than 15 magazines ceased publication from 1958 to mid-1960.) Amazing’s and Fantastic’s roster of contributors quickly became more impressive. Frank Herbert, James Blish, James E. Gunn, Damon Knight, and Clifford Simak all appeared during 1960, and Fritz Leiber made multiple contributions to both magazines. Other signs of an enterprising editor included the resumption in Fantastic of Sam Moskowitz’s articles on early figures in SF and fantasy, which had been running in Satellite when it folded; pieces on Lovecraft, Stapledon, Capek, M.P. Shiel and H.F.Heard, and Philip Wylie appeared in 1960. (The series was later continued in Amazing with more recent writers as subjects.) Amazing began a selection of reprints from its earliest days, selected and introduced by Moskowitz. Fantastic published a “round robin” story titled "The Covenant", with chapters by Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Robert Sheckley, Murray Leinster, and Robert Bloch, modelled on similar stories published in the 1930s. On the outside as well, the magazines improved, with the covers of Fantastic in particular becoming steadily less cheesy and more imaginative.

Goldsmith’s most often recognized achievement is the significant number of excellent writers whom she discovered and who went on to considerable success. The list speaks for itself: Keith Laumer, Neal Barrett, Jr., Roger Zelazny, Sonya Dorman, Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Phyllis Gotlieb, Piers Anthony. She also provided a home for David R. Bunch, who had been publishing in semi-professional and local markets throughout the ‘50s, but who became a regular in Amazing and Fantastic, albeit to decidedly mixed reception. Similarly, she was the first American editor to publish J.G. Ballard, who had made a substantial reputation in the British SF magazines but had not previously cracked the US magazines. Lalli’s lack of background in SF before she came to Ziff-Davis may have served her well by leaving her more open than other editors to departures from genre business as usual.

That’s the good news—the straw-into-gold part. But the magazines were not all gold by any means. Being at the bottom of the market in terms of pay rates meant that the stories Goldsmith received from the most prominent writers would be those that had been rejected everywhere else. She could (and had to) take a chance on new writers who might or might not pan out, and in some cases she had to take work that she probably would rather have avoided. Many of the serialized novels were quite weak. Jack Sharkey’s disastrous Amazing serial The Programmed People comes to mind. Overall, the bag was especially mixed in Amazing. Most issues of the magazine included some stories that were variously crude, inane, or otherwise barely readable. Reading Amazing month by month was a perpetual bait-and-switch game, with expectations raised by impressive issues and dashed the following month.

Nevertheless, by the end of the Ziff-Davis era, the Goldsmith/Lalli Amazing had put up an enviable score of memorable stories. There are too many to list here, but the highlights include Arthur C. Clarke’s Before Eden (June 1961); J.G. Ballard’s startling run including The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista (March 1962), Thirteen to Centaurus (April 1962), and The Encounter (June 1963); Mark Clifton’s scarifying Hang Head, Vandal! (April 1962); Roger Zelazny’s Moonless in Byzantium (December 1962); Keith Laumer’s It Could Be Anything (January 1963) and The Walls (1963); and Philip K. Dick’s The Days of Perky Pat (December 1963). The last half-dozen issues amounted to a crescendo towards oblivion, featuring Zelazny’s serial He Who Shapes (January-February 1965), Frank Herbert’s Greenslaves (March 1965), Clifford D. Simak’s brief and elegant Over the River and Through the Woods (May 1965), and Zelazny’s exuberantly shameless performance The Furies (June 1965). Fantastic offered among others Jack Vance's The Kragen (July 1964), Thomas M. Disch's chilly Descending (the same issue!), Ursula Le Guin's April in Paris (her first story!), and the renewed series of Gray Mouser/Fafhrd stories by Leiber.

It’s not clear whether Lalli had the option of staying with Amazing and Fantastic when they were sold, but if so, it’s just as well she didn’t take it. Life under the Sol Cohen almost-all-reprints, negligible-budget regime, shortly to be compounded by a boycott by the Science Fiction Writers of America when Cohen refused to pay for reprints, could scarcely have been anything but miserable. She wisely slipped sideways into Ziff-Davis’s Modern Bride, there to purvey a different sort of fantastic literature, while the Sol Cohen magazines’ editorials and letter columns rang with surly bad-mouthing of her time at the helm of Amazing and Fantastic. Something tells me that her decade’s foray into SF and fantasy will be well remembered long after her successor is forgotten.

Cele Goldsmith and the Sword and Sorcery Revival


by Cora Buhlert

When Cele Goldsmith took over editing duties at Amazing and Fantastic in 1958, sword and sorcery was not just dead – no, the type of historically flavoured adventure fantasy with a good dose of horror that was pioneered by writers like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner or Nictzin Dyalhis in the pages of Weird Tales some thirty years ago did not even have a name. A few stalwarts were holding up the flame in the fanzine Amra, but commercially the subgenre was dead and those who'd written it during its brief flourishing in the 1930s had either passed away (Howard, Kuttner, Dyalhis) or had retired from writing (Moore and Smith).

One of the few writers from the genre's heyday who was still around and still writing was Fritz Leiber, who had published several stories about a pair of adventurers called Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in Unknown and other magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. The last Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story "The Seven Black Priests" appeared in Other Worlds Science Stories in 1953. For all intents and purposes, the two rogues from the city Lankhmar, though dear to Leiber's heart, were permanently retired, as the market had moved away from the sort of swashbuckling fantasy that characterized their adventures.

Enter Cele Goldsmith and the Fritz Leiber Special Issue of Fantastic in November 1959. Of the five stories Leiber wrote for that issue, two were part of his Change War series (a novel in that series, The Big Time, had just won the 1959 Hugo Award for Best Novel), two were standalones and one, "Lean Times in Lankhmar", was the first new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story in six years.

Fantastic May 1961
The May 1961 issue of Fantastic, illustrating a memorable scene from Fritz Leiber's "Scylla's Daughter". There's also a reprint of a Robert E. Howard story.

 

"Lean Times in Lankhmar" is one of the best and definitely the funniest story in the entire series, a satire of organized religion that manages to be sharp but not offensive. The story must have struck a chord both with Cele Goldsmith and the readers of Fantastic, for over the next six years eight new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories appeared in Fantastic, more than had been published in Unknown, where the series originated in 1939.

Fantastic October 1962
Ed Emshwiller's striking cover illustration for Fritz Leiber's "The Unholy Grail".

In 1961, the still nameless genre that was about to undergo a revival finally got a name, when Fritz Leiber proposed "sword and sorcery" in an exchange with Michael Moorcock in the pages of the fanzines Amra and Ancalgon. The alliterative term stuck, so now there was finally a name for stories like the adventure of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Robert E. Howard's Conan.

Fantastic May 1964
Ed Emshwiller's portrait of Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, patron wizard of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, adorns the cover of the May 1964 issue of Fantastic, which reprinted Fritz Leiber's "Adept's Gambit".

Cele Goldsmith had only just been born during sword and sorcery's first heyday in the 1930s and certainly did not read Weird Tales in the crib, but she knew a rising genre when she saw one. So she began publishing more sword and sorcery stories by other authors.

Roger Zelazny is one of Cele Goldsmith's great discoveries. His first professional story "Horseman!", which appeared in the August 1962 issue of Fantastic, was a sword and sorcery story. It wasn't even the only sword and sorcery story in that issue. The title story "Sword of Flowers" by Larry M. Harris a.k.a. Laurence M. Janifer as well as "The Titan," a reprint of a 1934 story by P. Schuyler Miller, were sword and sorcery as well.

Fantastic August 1962
Roger Zelazny debuted in the August 1962 issue of Fantastic which also featured sword and sorcery by Laurence M. Janifer and P. Schuyler Henstrom. The cover is by Vernon Kramer.

Zelazny has since branched out, but he keeps returning to sword and sorcery once in a while, for example in the haunting Lord Dunsany-inspired stories of Dilvish the Damned, three of which have appeared in Fantastic to date.

Fantastic June 1965
Roger Zelazny's Dilvish the Damned story "Thelinde's Song" is the cover story of the June 1965 issue of Fantastic, which was also the last issue edited by Cele Goldsmith-Lalli.

Though only in his thirties, John Jakes is already a veteran writer who has been publishing across various genres since 1950. An admitted fan of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories from the 1930s, Jakes created his own Conan-like character in Brak the Barbarian, who has appeared in four stories in Fantastic between 1963 and 1965.

January 1965 Fantastic
Ed Emshwiller's iillsutration for "The Girl in the Gem" by John Jakes.
Fantastic March 1965
Gray Morrow's cover for the March 1965 issue of Fantastic illustrates "The Pillars of Cambalor" by John Jakes.

 

British writer and editor Michael Moorcock has been a prolific contributor to the fanzine Amra and also pushed the sword and the sorcery genre into new directions with the adventures of Elric of Melniboné, an albino elven warrior who depends on drugs to survive and fights evil with his cursed sword Stormbringer. The majority of Elric's adventures have appeared in the pages of Science Fantasy, but "Master of Chaos" appeared in the May 1964 issue of Fantastic alongside a reprint of Fritz Leiber's 1947 Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story "Adept's Gambit."

Since Amazing and Fantastic were sold to Sol Cohen and Cele Goldsmith Lalli left for the greener pastures of Modern Bride, the appearances of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Dilvish the Damned and Brak the Barbarian have become rare in the pages of Fantastic (and what stories there did appear were likely leftover from Goldsmith's tenure). However, the sword and sorcery revival is still in full swing and Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, which started it all back in 1932, are set to be reprinted later this year.

One day in the future, when the history of sword and sorcery is written, Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock and John Jakes will be remembered as pivotal figures in the revival of the genre in the sixties. However, I hope that any history of sword and sorcery will also make room for Cele Goldsmith, who championed the genre when it had neither a name nor a market and without whom the sword and sorcery revival may well have been strangled in the crib.

Modern Bride, December 1965
No more mighty muscles in Cele Goldsmith Lalli's new stomping grounds, though at least the gothic castles and maidens in white gowns remain.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[September 24, 1966] Science Fiction TV from West Germany: Space Patrol: The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion: Episode 1: Attack From Space

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by Cora Buhlert

Through the Wall with a Bulldozer

Bulldozer breaks through Berlin wall
The aftermath of the daring bulldozer escape

Five years after the Berlin Wall was built, East Germans are still trying to overcome it and escape to the West, often with lethal consequences.

A particularly daring escape attempt happened last week in Staaken just outside Berlin. Four adults and a three-year-old child broke through the East German border fortifications – the so-called "death strip" – in a stolen bulldozer armoured with steel plates. The bulldozer flattened fences, concrete and barbed wire, until stopped by a tree.

Luckily for the five refugees, the tree was on the western side of the Wall, where the two families were rescued by western border guards.

Attack from Space

Meanwhile, on Saturday, September 17, West Germany's first science fiction TV series debuted on the broadcaster ARD.

The series has the unwieldy title Raumpatrouille – Die Phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffs Orion (Space Patrol – The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion), which viewers have already shortened to Raumpatrouille Orion or just plain Orion.

Like the new US series Star Trek, Space Patrol Orion starts with an opening narration, courtesy of veteran actor Claus Biederstaedt, which promises us a fairy tale from the future. In the year 3000 AD, nation states have been abolished. Humanity has settled the ocean floor and colonised far-flung worlds. Starships, including the titular Orion, hurtle through space at unimaginable speeds.

An impressive title sequence and a spacy and very groovy theme tune follow, courtesy of Peter Thomas, who also supplies the music for the Edgar Wallace and Jerry Cotton movies.

Then the show plunges us directly in medias res aboard the fast cruiser Orion 7 and introduces the five person crew: Commander Cliff Allister McLane (Austrian actor Dietmar Schönherr, who is the German dubbing voice of both James Dean and Sidney Poitier), chief engineer Hasso Sigbjörnson (Claus Holm), weapons officer Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz, who's best known for comic roles), astrogator (that's Orion speak for navigator) Atan Shubashi (F.G. Beckhaus) and space control officer Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig). As the names and the opening narration indicate, the series is set in a multicultural, postnational future, though so far, all characters are played by white actors.

Orion crew
The Orion crew at work on the command bridge

When we first encounter the Orion crew, they are trying to land on the Saturn moon Rhea, while orders telling McLane to stop and return to base echo from the communication system. McLane, however, chooses to ignore those orders.

Most dialogue in the opening scene is gadget speak (and not even regular gadget speak, but a lot of Orion-specific terms), yet it tells us a lot about the characters. Right away we learn that McLane is a Maverick who views orders as strictly optional suggestions. We also learn that his crew trusts him and that they are very competent at what they do.

Where Clothes Irons Control Space Ships

Orion take off
The Orion 7 rises from the ocean in an impressive special effects sequence

This is as good a time as any to talk about the Orion herself. Unlike the silver rocketships that still abound in visual science fiction, the Orion designers decided to go with a saucer shape, enhanced with fins and a transparent dome.

Orion command bridge
The Orion command bridge set on the soundstage of Atelier Bavaria.

The Orion has an impressive command bridge – courtesy of set designer Rolf Zehetbauer – with boldly curved control stands, flashing lights, beeping oscilloscopes and a massive, egg-shaped computer. Every available surface is covered with futuristic looking bits and bobs. If you look closely, some of those bits and bobs seem oddly familiar, since they are repurposed household objects such as pencil sharpeners, bathroom tabs, plastic cups and in one memorable moment, a Rowenta clothes iron.

Orion clothes iron
Is this clothes iron truly a part of the Orion's engineering control stand or does Hasso simply use it to iron his uniform pants?

Zehetbauer also makes copious use of the kind of modern furniture I discussed in my article on interior design last year. In fact, you can spot several of the pieces featured in that article in the show.

Women in Command

The scene shifts to an anonymous office, where one General Wamsler (Benno Sterzenbach) is expecting a fellow general, General van Dyke of the Fast Space Fleet Command. I'm sure I'm not the only one who did a double-take when General van Dyke entered, because the General is a woman, portrayed by theatre actress Charlotte Kerr.

Generals van Dyke and Wamsler
General van Dyke (Charlotte Kerr) confronts General Wamsler (Benno Sterzenbach) and his swarmy aide Lieutenant Spring-Brauner (Thomas Reiner)

We still see way too many all-male spaceship crews and all-male future militaries, so the presence of a female general was a breath of fresh air. Nor is General van Dyke the only female character of note in this episode. Indeed, there are four named and one unnamed women with speaking parts in this episode alone. Alas, all the women in the future have the exact same beehive hairstyle, only in different colours.

We already met Lieutenant Helga Legrelle, the sole female member of the Orion crew, though so far the script doesn't give her much to do. In this scene, we meet another female character, Lieutenant Tamara Jagellovsk (Eva Plug) of the Galactic Security Service, who promises to play a prominent role in the series.

Tamara Jagellovsk
Tamara Jagellovsk (Eva Pflug)

McLane's flagrant disregard for orders has caught up with him, so General Wamsler demotes him and the Orion to space patrol service – against the wishes of McLane's direct superior General van Dyke. There are hints that McLane and General van Dyke have history – on professional and private level.

McLane and the crew
The disgraced Orion crew reports to be demoted. From left to right: Helga Legrelle (Ursula Lillig), Mario de Monti (Wolfgang Völz),Commander Cliff Allister McLane (Dietmar Schönherr), Atan Shubashi (F.G. Beckhaus) and Hasso Sigbjörnson (Claus Holm)

As if being demoted isn't humiliation enough, McLane is also assigned a watchdog, the above-mentioned Tamara Jagellovsk. Based on the first episode, the interaction between those two promises to be very interesting.

Dancing under the Sea

Before the Orion and her crew set off on space patrol duty, they relax in the grooviest nightspot in town, the Starlight Casino. The name is something of a misnomer, because the Starlight Casino is located on the ocean floor and instead of stars, oversized fish can be seen swimming beyond the transparent ceiling dome.

Starlight Casino
The impressive Starlight Casino

The Starlight Casino is a stunning set and I have no idea how Bavaria Atelier was able to build something like this on a West German TV budget. The set is not really underwater, but on a soundstage, while the fish are swimming in the aquarium of the Munich zoo and were copied into the scene via the magic of bluescreen technology.

McLane and Hasso
McLane and Hasso share a drink, while some very unique dancing is going on in the background

The nightclub scene also adds some characterisation and worldbuilding. We learn that astrogator Atan Shubashi is worried about his dog 264, one of the last 376 poodles on Earth. We also learn that chief engineer Hasso Sigbjörnson has promised his wife Ingrid (Lieselotte Quillig) to retire, but wants to go on one last mission and ropes McLane into breaking the news to Ingrid.

Ingrid Sigbjörnson
Ingrid, Hasso's long-suffering wife (Lieselotte Quillig)

During all this, extras are performing a fascinating dance routine to electronic music in the background. Science fiction tends to assume that people in the future will dance the same way we do and probably to the same music, too, but Orion does not make this mistake. And so the background extras perform an oddly formal dance (created by choreographer William Millié), where couples dance back to back. I suspect this dance will be a big hit in dance classes throughout West Germany.

One thing that impressed me about Raumpatrouille Orion are the many little worldbuilding hints dropped into the story. Why exactly do people in the year 3000 AD dance like that? Why are poodles almost extinct? What was the Second Interstellar War and for that matter, what was the first? When did people of European origin start eating with chopsticks, as many of the characters do, when using chopsticks in present day West Germany will have people staring at you as if you were a unicorn?

A lot of science fiction worlds end at the bulkheads of a spaceship or the atmosphere of a planet, but in Orion, there clearly is a world and culture beyond the little slice that we see. I hope that future episodes will explore that.

Trouble in Space

Once the Orion takes off and emerges from the ocean in a stunning special effects sequence, trouble soon find McLane and his crew.

McLane and Tamara
McLane steadfastly ignores Tamara.

For starters, McLane and his watchdog Tamara Jagellovsk don't get along at all. McLane alternately ignores Tamara, sends her to her cabin like a naughty child and snipes at her. Tamara, however, is no pushover and gives as good as she gets, while Hasso and weapons officer Mario de Monti watch in amusement. Mario, who's something of a womanizer, clumsily attempts to flirt with Tamara – without success. Meanwhile, Hasso wonders whether Tamara is actually a robot. Considering that there are references to robots being more efficient than humans scattered throughout the episode, I wonder whether this isn't foreshadowing a later revelation.

Helga, Atan and Tamara
Helga Legrelle and Atan Shubashi explain Orion technology to Tamara.
Mario and Tamara
Mario de Monti unsuccessfully attempts to flirt with Tamara.

But whether she's human or a sophisticated android, I really like Tamara, especially when she dresses McLane down for his patronising behaviour such as calling her "My dear child".

The Orion runs into a solar storm (another impressive effect) and then into a dead satellite. McLane wants to blow up the satellite, because it's a hazard to space traffic. Tamara countermands him in what will become a pattern.

Atan Shubashi reports that he cannot raise the satellite relay station MZ-4 on the radio and only receives nonsense code. McLane wants to investigate, because the MZ-4 crew are friends. Tamara tries to override McLane again, but McLane points out that if they don't fix the transmitter problem, an automated space cruiser will crash into MZ-4. And no, they cannot contact the cruiser themselves, because the dead satellite that Tamara would not let McLane to blow up is disrupting communications in the region. "Shall I send them a postcard?" an impatient McLane snaps.

So Hasso and Atan get into a Lancet, a spherical shuttle that looks very much like a modern lamp, to investigate. McLane also orders Hasso and Atan to wear space suits, because when a transmitter fails, a life support system may fail as well.

Lancet
The Lancet shuttle looks a little like a designer kitchen lamp.
Atan and Hasso
Atan and Hasso in their bulky space suits

If a character announces they will retire after "one last mission" like Hasso did, this is often a death sentence. And Atan is the only other crewmember who has someone waiting for him at home, so I became seriously worried about those two.

The Mystery of MZ-4

Atan and Hasso
Atan and Hasso explore MZ-4

And not without reason, for once Atan and Hasso reach MZ-4, they find the station without power and oxygen. The crew is dead, frozen in mid movement, and the transmitter is set to a frequency not used by humans.

The scenes of Atan and Hasso exploring the darkened station, their heavy footsteps echoing on the metal floors, are genuinely spooky. Though the discovery of the dead crewmen is marred by the fact that one actor blinks at the crucial moment.

Atan, Hasso and Clarence
Atan and Hasso find MZ-4 commander Clarence dead, frozen in mid movement.
Two dead MZ-4 crewmembers
Two more MZ-4 crewmembers frozen in mid movement. The guy on the right blinks.

Atan and Hasso are still trying to figure out what the hell happened, when they spot a curiously glittering, elongated humanoid shadow. Aliens – or "exo-terrists" in Orion speak – have taken over MZ-4 and they turn out to be immune to rayguns.

Frog alien
One of the "exo-terrists" that have taken over MZ-4.
Frog alien
Another "exo-terrist".

In filmic science fiction, aliens are all too often humans in rubber masks. However, Orion's exo-terrists – or Frogs, as Hasso and Atan nickname them – look truly alien. The glittering shadows were created via bluescreen technology.

Hasso and Atan call McLane who orders them to get the hell out of there. However, more trouble is coming, for Helga Legrelle detects seven unknown spaceships heading for the Orion. Worse, Hasso and Atan find that their Lancet has been sabotaged and cannot take off.

Space Battles and Moral Dilemmas

McLane promises to come back for them and goes off to fight the alien ships, only to find that the Orion's weapons are as ineffective as Hasso's raygun. The only course of action left is to return to Earth and warn everybody of the impending invasion.

However, Hasso and Atan are still stuck on MZ-4. McLane doesn't want to leave his friends behind. Tamara points out that Atan and Hasso are most likely already dead and the station is in the hands of the aliens. She orders McLane to destroy the station. McLane grudgingly agrees, but can't bring himself to press the button that will kill his friends. Not that it matters much, because the Orion has no firepower left after the encounter with the alien ships.

McLane may be a Maverick who ignores orders, but his first priority is to save lives. Therefore, I was disappointed that the convenient power failure took the decision whether to kill his friends and potentially save humanity out of his hands.

A Good Old Astounding Solution

But Atan and Hasso are still very much alive, though about to be overrun by aliens. They figure out that reason the aliens shut down the life support system is that oxygen is toxic to them. So Hasso uses the oxygen cartridge from his spacesuit to kill the aliens.

Hasso and Atan
Hasso and Atan wait for the aliens to enter, so they can flood the station with oxygen.

As solutions to cosmic mysteries go, this one was pretty clever. It feels like something that John W. Campbell might have published in Astounding twenty years ago. And indeed, the entire MZ-4 sequence with its try and fail cycles feels very Campbellian.

Hasso's cunning plan works. The aliens are overcome by oxygen and reduced to a pile of glitter on the floor. However, there's still the automated cruiser Challenger, which is headed straight for MZ-4 and will crash into the station, if not given a course correction. And Atan and Hasso can't hail the cruiser. What saves them in the end is ironically the aliens, who have placed a forceshield around MZ-4, blowing up the Challenger before she can hit the station.

A Meeting of Generals

The episode concludes at a conference table, where several military men – and this time around, they're all men; General van Dyke is presumably away on a mission – discuss what has just transpired.

General Wamsler, whom we already met, as well as the delightfully named Marshal Kublai Krim (Hans Cossy) and commander-in-chief Sir Arthur (Franz Schafheitlin) want to blow up MZ-4 in a pre-emptive strike against the aliens (at this point, they don't yet know that Hasso and Atan managed to take them out). The lone dissenting voice is Colonel Villa (Friedrich Joloff), head of the Galactic Security Service and Tamara's boss, who points out that maybe it would be better to find out what the aliens want first. Joloff is best known for playing villains, so it was nice to see him in a more nuanced role.

Generals
General Wamsler, Marshal Kublai Krim (Hans Cossy) and Sir Arthur (Franz Schafheitlin) have a meeting.
Colonel Villa
Colonel Villa (Friedrich Joloff), head of the Galactic Security Service and the lone sensible military man.

The "shoot first and ask questions later" policy very much matches postwar West Germany's view of unscrupulous generals who will do anything to eliminate a perceived threat, regardless of the loss of life.

The reunited Orion crew heads to the Starlight Casino to celebrate, including Tamara who has made peace of sorts with McLane and the rest of the crew. Tamara also reveals that she knows that McLane lied about the dead satellite disrupting communications and tells him never to lie to her again.

"This was just a nightmare, wasn't it?" Hasso, who's still shaken from his ordeal, asks Atan.

"Worse," Atan replies, "That was science fiction."

Science Fiction for Grown-ups

When my fellow Travellers here at the Journey raved about the new American show Star Trek, I was jealous, because Star Trek seems to be exactly what filmic science fiction so rarely offers, namely serious stories for adults that can compete with written science fiction. Little did I know that I would get my wish fulfilled only nine days later in the form of Space Patrol Orion.

Because Orion is exactly that: a serious science fiction story for adults and one that looks amazing, too. The beginning is a little slow and the MZ-4 plot is taken straight from a 1940s issue of Astounding. But comparing Raumpatrouille Orion to stuff like Familie Hesselbach (The Hesselbach Family), Stahlnetz (Steel Web) or Hafenpolizei (Harbour Police), which dominates the West German airwaves, is like comparing a Volkswagen to a Mercedes. Honestly, I had no idea that West Germany was even capable of producing something like Orion.

I hope that writers Rolf Honold and W.G. Larsen (a joint pseudonym used by Hans Gottschalk, Helmut Krapp, Oliver Storz, Theo Mezger and Michael Braun) will lay off the gadget speak, which is sure to scare away the mundanes, and focus more on the characters and their interactions. Because Orion has intriguing characters played by some of our best actors, so let's make use of them.

Episode 2 will air in two weeks and I for one can't wait.

Four and a half stars.

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