Tag Archives: 1967

Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 31, 1967] I wouldn't send a knight out on a dog like this… (September 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Reversed metaphors

As we speak, I am packing for my trip to this year's Worldcon.  I'm not sure what to expect other than I understand I'll be on a lot of panels.  I'm mostly looking forward to seeing friends like Tom Purdom, Larry Niven, Ted White, and more.

My excitement is somewhat alloyed by the most recent magazine I've just finished.  After reading this month's Analog, I find myself asking, "Is this the state of science fiction?"


by Kelly Freas

The King's Legions, by Christopher Anvil

This month in Science Fiction Times, Norm Spinrad talked about how every editor has their pet authors.  Chris Anvil is the one who panders the most to Campbell's sensibilities, producing story after story of farcical garbage.  Legions continues the tale in which three planetary exploiters, who dealt with a planet controlled by robotic overlords by developing a emotional control nerve agent. 


by Kelly Freas

Last installment, said trio dealt with the collapse of society that ensued by assuming the roles of agents of competing feudal overlords, creating the illusion of a threat too big to contest by the planet's ragged revolutionaries.

This time around, a cadre of pirates, lured by the treasure said planet might offer (as well as the representatives' ships) have arrived bent on conquest. 

I'll be honest.  I got about four pages into this, flipped through to see that the damned thing is nearly 70 pages, and decided for once I would abrogate my responsibilities.  To quote Buck Coulson in this month's Yandro, "I can't read all this crap, and this seemed to be a good one to miss."

Two stars.

The Pearly Gates of Hell, by Jack Wodhams


by Rudolph Palais

Lurid account of a man's endless attempts at suicide, thwarted by a society that really wants its members to stay alive–forever.

Of course, even if one is successful, that doesn't mean surcease…

Bit of a tired one-note, this one.  Two stars.

The Usefulness of Nicotine, by Professor J. Harold Burn, FRS

This month's science article is a reprint, cacklingly presented by John W. Campbell, inveterate smoker.  Oh sure, the article writer concedes, smoking might kill you, but look how happy and productive you'll be before cancer does you in!  And here are all the gruesome details of the cats and rats vivisected to prove our point.

No thanks.  One star.

Fiesta Brava, by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

The misadventures of Section G, whose task is to ensure none of the United Planets gets too backwards lest they be easy prey for the (yet unmet) alien menace, continue.  This time, the agents sent by Director Sid Jakes are a botanist from a heavy gee planet, a cordon bleu chef with a talent for object throwing, a colorless matron with a photographic memory, and a diminutive 25 year-old who looks like she's eight.

This quartet is sent off to Falange, a colony of Spanish emigrants who have elected to preserve the police state of Francisco Franco long after his passing.  High jinks ensue.

Fiesta reads like Heinlein writing a Retief story, with Reynolds' patented history lessons thrown in.  To wit, this time we learn about bullfights (which Mack presumably saw when he was in Spain), the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, and why slaves really are happier than we give them credit for. After all–it's not as if there were ever any slave revolts.

I guess Reynolds' travels never took him to Haiti.

Anyway, it's not very good, but if you go for this sort of thing, it is readable.  I guess I'll give it a three.  I'm trying to be nicer these days.

Important Difference, by E. G. Von Wald


by Kelly Freas

Humanity has been at peace for 500 years, but this tranquility is disturbed when (putatively) bug-eyed aliens appear and start shooting.  One three-man scout becomes the first recon ship to successfully engage the enemy…and discover their true shape.

The "twist" is telegraphed as loudly as "What hath God wrought?" but I did appreciate how our race might evolve to the point that, even if our enemy looks like us, we could find a warlike nature so repellent as to mark a drastically different species.

Another low three star.

Lost Calling, by Verge Foray


by Leo Summers

Ingenuous young Dalton Mirni is picked up by a tramp freighter after being (so he says) in the captivity of aliens for 16 years of his life.  The problem is there are no aliens, at least that humanity knows of.  Not only that, but there is a big blank in his memory.  He knows he was being trained for a singular profession, but he has no idea what it was.

Still, he looks on the bright side.  After all, he is universally liked, by the crew that picks him up, the planet of Fingal (enemy of Earth), and the Earth people themselves.  And Mirni has the uncanny ability to solve people's interpersonal problems.

Of course, there can't be any connection between this skill and his lost memories…

I appreciated the tone of this story, and it's also pretty well done.  Definitely the best thing in the magazine, though I don't think I'd give it a fourth star.

Bad data

All in all, pretty grim.  Even being generous with my ratings, Analog clocks in at a dismal 2.3 stars, beaten by every other magazine and short story collection this month.  In order of decreasing badness, we have Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.8), IF (2.9), Orbit 2 (3), Fantastic (3), New Worlds (3.2), and The Devil His Due (3.2).

You could take all the four and five star stories and fill two digests (or thin books), which is pretty bad given we had seven to choose from.  It was a bright spot for women, though, as they contributed nearly 16% of the new stories published.

So is all hope lost?  Not necessarily.  I've already started on next month's Galaxy, and Budrys' book column discusses how the New Wave of authors (Aldiss, Ballard, Zelazny, Delany, et. al.) are revolutionizing the field.

They just aren't doing it in the pages of Analog.  So long as Campbell remains in the editorial chair, I suppose the revolution will remain untelevised.

We'll see how long that lasts.  Even Alabama integrated…




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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[August 28, 1967] NYC–the Days are Vacuum-Packed

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[Please enjoy this next installment of the travels of the Journey's resident aesthete, Vicki Lucas. I can't think of a better way to tour our American land in 1967 than her articles…]


by Victoria Lucas

No Time!

I’m just starting to get used to the pace. New York is not San Francisco or Berkeley. I feel as if Alice’s rabbit is screaming “No time! No time.” We are on the go all the time, except for an hour or two hanging with friends.



Alice's rabbit

Like last weekend. It was too hot to stay in NYC, so we made our way to New Jersey, where our VW bus is garaged. We brought some things but had planned to do a little shopping on the way, partly because it would have been too much trouble to carry very much with us on public transportation. We can cook on our little camp stove, and we thought we would check out a couple places as we drove to Mel’s folks’s summer home in Maine, overnighting there before returning. It’s about a 6-hour drive from where our bus is parked.

We stopped briefly in New Hampshire. Wow! What we found there!


Shaker houses

Have you ever heard of the Shakers? A sort of cult of “Mother Ann,” a British woman who prophesied that her religious organization would die out, and it is clear that is happening. After nearly 200 years in the United States, and a peak of around 6,000 Shakers in 21 communities, the streets of these celibate communities are empty, and the few remaining members are sustaining themselves mainly by selling handmade furniture and some of their other first-ever products, such as seeds! I was fascinated to learn that their group was the first to package and sell seeds! They are also the authors of the Shaker spiritual “‘Tis the Gift to Be Simple,” appropriated in Aaron Copland’s “Simple Gifts,” and used in his “Appalachian Spring.” We stopped and toured one of the communities briefly, like a sort of living museum, finding out that they adopted orphans to carry on their traditions, but too many of these adopted sons and daughters decided not to stay.


A smoking mother-in-law

It was weird seeing Mel’s parents. I will never forget waking up the next morning in the sofabed on their lower level, noticing that Mel was up–and that his mother was sitting by herself on a hard armless chair, smoking and looking at me. All I could think of to say was, “Good morning.” (Does it have anything to do with the fact that I’m his 3rd wife? Or that I’m 19 years younger than he?)


Abbie Hoffman

Oh! I almost forgot to tell you. Among the meetings with places and dates emblazoned on mimeographed sheets handed out on the streets of the Lower East Side was one back in July during the Newark riots. We spent 2 days going to meetings to decide how to help the people trapped behind barricades without water and food. But the meetings were anarchic, and everyone had a different opinion and was willing to let the meetings drag on and on as no decisions were made. Finally, after enduring meetings starting Friday at 6 pm and continuing on Saturday, Abbie Hoffman stood up to his full height (quite intimidating, actually) and announced that he had a plan and he was going to carry it out and anyone who was willing to help was welcome. He was going to get a truck, stuff it with food and water and other necessities for those in need and drive it to Newark, going as far as he could into needy neighborhoods. He would only want a few people to distribute the goods, but he would need money. We gave him a few bucks and gratefully departed. Thank goodness someone is willing to step up! The two of us had had no idea how to help.


Aspen, no. 5+6

My man Mel works full time, and I am only part time at Phillis’s place but loving it! When she finally releases the new Aspen “magazine” (culture in a box in the form of a film on a reel and many other bits and pieces) issue (numbers 5 and 6 combined) it will be a square white box with only a little printing on it–in fact, just like the picture above. I had never worked for anyone before whose office was in her bedroom. It’s like this, as far as I can tell: Phyllis (Johnson Glick, but she seldom uses her married name) works as a journalist and editor for Nebraska State Journal, Women’s Wear Daily, Advertising Age, and American Home Magazine (and probably others), so when she is not working at a publisher's office, she works from home. So she gets up, makes her bed, and immediately starts using it as a desk as she finishes her coffee. She does have a little hard writing surface on a bedside table with a lamp, when she needs to write something. She calls me when she is going to work on her new creation, has set up her paper piles on the bed, and is nearly ready to start telling me what to do. I've never met her husband–he is probably gone long before I get there.

About the stapled, wholly paper "magazine" we are used to, Phyllis wrote this in 1966: "Last year, a group of us enjoying the sun, skiing and unique cultural climate of Aspen Colorado, asked ourselves, ‘Why?’" So she started creating something completely different, a magazine in a box with every piece (including ads) separate. Mostly I work the telephone or do the typing at a typing table with a (I think) dining-room chair–she dictates or tells me what needs to be said. If she has dictated it she signs it. There is a lot of telephoning and mailing to do to get the writers to write, the musicians to record, the recording studios to send recordings, and the film people to get their stuff to the copiers and then to us, etc. At the end of the day, Phyllis begins stacking the papers on her bed with sets perpendicular to one another, so she can tell where the different sets begin and should be in a different location in the morning. The stacks are put away off the bed. She tells me when she’s done, and I leave then. She pays me regularly (we both keep track), but I think that if I could afford it I would work for her for nothing–it's such fun to work for such an innovator!

John Cage

Since Mel is not particularly into music, I went by myself to a concert of John Cage’s music in a church. It was free. That is, it was free to me, because I stayed the whole 4 hours. The longer you stayed, you see, the less you paid. If you left immediately, it was pretty expensive. A few people did. There were a lot of silences.

Ed Sanders's Peace Eye Bookstore

And we went to the Peace Eye Bookstore on the lower East Side, Ed Sanders’s place. We met Sanders there but never saw anybody else famous whom we recognized, like Tuli Kupferberg or Peter Orlovsky. We did see an art piece from Allen Ginsberg: a large jar of cold cream, mostly empty. It swung in a small wooden frame from a rafter in the store, which was on the other side of Tompkins Square Park from our place on 3rd Street.

The Tompkins Square Park "Massacre"

We enjoyed the park and went there as often as we could manage. Once when we were passing through, we noticed a large number of hippies with their dogs and children sitting on grass labeled “Do not walk on the grass” (or thereabouts), and as we continued to walk we saw police engaging with some of the people on the grass. Whatever was happening appeared to be escalating. Voices were raised. We decided it would be a good time to go back to our apartment and have some dinner.

When we came back to the park, it was empty, there was debris where the hippies had been, and in a minute there was suddenly a young man handing out mimeographed news sheets, perhaps from the Peace Eye, which had a mimeograph. There had been a large number of arrests, and our presence was invited outside the police station at a given address. It was within walking distance, and we hied ourselves over there, joining a crowd from whom we heard the story: the police brought a van to the park and started arresting people and throwing them into the van. A pregnant woman protested and received the same treatment–everyone was afraid she might have miscarried. Some who didn’t cooperate received blows to the head and were bleeding. As part of the crowd we demanded the release of these peaceful people. We were there about an hour as it got darker and darker. Finally the battered and bloody “criminals” were released, and there was rejoicing. We went back home.

Simon and Garfunkel

As bad as NYC gets sometimes-–the trash, the crime (not hippie protest crime), the police, the subway, the homeless–-there are moments when I feel as if I’m in the right place. Like last evening when we had been visiting Central Park and were headed to our bus stop not far from the East River before going home. Someone had a radio on as the twilight descended. As we neared the 59th Street Bridge, guess what song was playing. Yes, it was. It was “The 59th Street Bridge Song.” And we were "kicking down the cobblestones.” And we were “feeling groovy.” Thank you, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 26, 1967] The Shock of the New II – Sex and the Modern British SF Reader New Worlds, September 1967

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

The strange evolution of the ‘new’ New Worlds continues this month. Be warned – it’s not an issue to loan to minors!


Cover by Peter Phillips

Let’s go to the issue!

This month’s “Leading Article” looks at our fascination with predicting the future – relevant to science fiction, of course! – but then uses this idea to analyse and review a book named The Art of Conjecture by French writer Bernard de Jouvenal. The future is less known than the past and is therefore more uncertain. Usual food for thought, but this seems less a thought experiment and more an editorial review.

Illustration by Zoline

Camp Concentration (Part 3 of 4) by Thomas M. Disch

In this third part, the fact that Louis Sacchetti is now fully infected with the Pallidine bug, and as it has been known to cause madness before death, leads to more madness and “ramblings”, as Louis puts it. Result: lots of religious iconography and internal ponderings in very short extracts ensue. Questions posed such as “Who is there to answer to the sky?” and vivid descriptions such as “My entrails are trodden down in the mire” may give you a clue where we’re going here.

The clever part is that there is a purpose to the madness. Much of the enjoyment here is in reading Disch’s well-constructed paragraphs and trying to determine what the meaning of it all is. It is very Ballardian, in that try-and-connect-the-deliberately-disjointed-paragraphs-together kind of way.

And yes, also in that Ballardian way, it is all starting to fall apart. More prisoners die. Sacchetti is both sicker and scoring higher than ever on the psychometric tests. Dr Busk seems to have run away from Camp Archimedes, and is replaced by Bobby Fredgren, who conducts more tests on Louis. We are also introduced to Skilliman, a person who seems like they’re straight out of Doctor Strangelove and on whom most of the story is spent describing and making up strange fictions about. I suspect that the reasons for this may become more important and more obvious next time. However, the omens are not good for a happy ending next month. 4 out of 5.

Still Trajectories by Brian W. Aldiss

Another month, another Aldiss, still telling us of a near-future Europe that has experienced psychedelic drugs as a result of Russia dropping hallucinogenic bombs in the Acid Head War. Last time it was about Charteris’s travelling around the English Midlands and becoming Saint Charteris, a god-like personality that is worshipped and adored. This time, we begin in Holland with Speed Supervisor Jan Koninkrijk, who describes the kind of decaying place Colin Charteris did in Multi Value Motorway last month. Lots of talk of cars and highways and speed, because we’re still channelling J G Ballard, but also with its talk of a depressed wife with no personality and the presence of ‘omnivision’ I think there’s a little bit of an homage to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

The story steps up a gear (motoring analogy!) when it is revealed that Colin Charteris, the Mad Messiah last seen in England, is due to visit Jan’s home town of Aalter, on what could be seen as a Crusade in a convoy of cars. In his capacity as future-traffic-cop, Koninkrijk picks up Charteris and his girlfriend Angeline. Strange poetry ensues. Jan is affected by what he hears, and at the end abandons his mundane, routine life. The crusade rumbles on.

Like before in previous stories, there’s lots of vivid imagery and wordplay, not to mention things that are meant to mean a lot. Allegories of cars, speed, and crashing abound, although the poetry lost me a bit. Memorable though this story is, these Charteris stories do feel like little more than cut-up sections of a book, a serial in disguise. 3 out of 5.

Article: Psychological Streamlining by Christopher Finch

This month’s ‘artycle’ (I’ll keep saying it because I like it) examines the work of Peter Phillips, which combines Pop Art sensibilities with technical method. Lots of customisation and American imagery as a result.

I’m still not sure whether these articles are mind-blowing or just self-obsessed clap-trap with delusions of grandeur. Some of the sentences here are just ripe for parody. And yet I must admit that they’re showing me things I had never considered before, which I guess is partly the purpose of art. 3 out of 5.

Masterton and the Clerks by John T. Sladek

Here’s that story delayed from last month.

A sort of Kafka-esque satire which seems to be about the mindless routines and meaningless existence of bureaucracy in the modern office as seen through the observations of Henry on his fellow workers and in particular his boss, Mr. Masterton. As is now de rigueur for much of the New Wave stuff, it’s written in that cut-up style, with diagrams, memos and the like. It’s meant to be amusing, but feels also rather pointless and depressing, filled with people that you wouldn’t want to spend time with, never mind reading about in a far-too-long story. But that may be its point.

Unfortunately, or perhaps appropriately for a story set in an office, it reads like a copy of something else or something that we’ve seen before. It almost feels like Disch has written it. Not convinced that this one was worth the wait, to be honest. File in the “Life’s dull and then you die” filing cabinet, albeit perhaps with a faint smile on your face. 2 out of 5.

Article: A New Look at Vision by Christopher Evans

The return of Dr. Evans, who to me still feels a little like a British version of The Good Doctor Asimov. This month he’s looking at new developments in optics, a much-needed development for those of us who are short-of-sight. (I’m tempted to throw in the joke about “If only I could read the small print”, but I shall refrain.) It begins with facts I didn’t know about the eye, before discussing how contact lenses work, and finally explains the experiments on pattern, form and process that allow us a greater understanding of how our brain works. Another informative article on something I didn’t realise I needed to read about. 4 out of 5.

Book Reviews

You may have noticed, like I have, that there seems to be a trend in New Worlds at the moment about stories involving religion. Not sure why, but I am noticing many stories about God/Gods, religious icons, theology and all the rest of it. Perhaps they’ve always been there and I’m only just noticing them? Anyway, the detailed review this month by C. C. Shackleton is of a book by Alex Comfort, The Anxiety Makers, which initially examines the concepts of  New Theology and New Mysticism.

All well and good. The article then links these concepts to Dr. Comfort's book to make the point (I think) that many of today's anxieties are related to ideas from Victorian times that doctors  are obsessed with dealing with. It then goes into some detail on the origins of these anxieties, referred to as the “four horses of the nineteenth-century apocalypse” – masturbation, sexual intercourse, birth control and constipation. I can safely say that these are topics I would never have expected to read of in New Worlds, although to be fair it examines these issues in a rather matter-of-fact manner.

Some of the ideas examined here are quite complex. I'm not even sure that I got them, as there seems to be an assumption that I know something about the topic already. (I do not.) As a result, I'm not really sure of its relevance here, although as an article perhaps meant to shock, I guess it might sell a few more copies. Personally, though, it makes me feel like my copy of New Worlds should be hidden behind the newsagent’s counter… can’t see it being widely promoted on the shelves of my local W H Smiths.

The other reviews this month by James Cawthorn are less titillating and more genre based. Keith Laumer’s A Plague of Demons “moves along briskly, achieves some neat lines of hard-boiled humour and is, above all, entertainment.” Brief mention is also made of Robert Silverberg’s To Open the Sky (religion, again), but this is mainly descriptive rather than analytical.

Summing up New Worlds

Another wide-ranging issue, some of which is on topics I didn’t expect. I feel that the fiction is a minor part of the magazine this month, although it can’t be denied that the magazine seems to be going all out to broaden its readership. The Disch is becoming more obtuse, John Sladek’s Masterton and the Clerks was a disappointment, although I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting.

In short, a solid issue, but not an outstanding one. With the emphasis on articles, I have a feeling that whilst trying to gain new reader’s interest, the staff may be losing their traditional readership. I do wonder what the New Worlds readers of the 1950’s would make of this issue. There’s no denying that there’s science, but where’s the science fiction? Even the fiction seems more literary and less science-fictional than what has gone before.

And I realise that that may be the point.

In this brave new world of New Worlds there may be less space for spaceships and more room for sex – or at least adult topics. This fits in with the brief that Moorcock made his intent years ago, to modernise and adult-ise science fiction, and what the Arts Council want their grant to be used for, but based on what I’m seeing here I’m not sure that it means the magazine has found, or will find, a bigger, more interested audience.


A 21st anniversary issue – has it really been around that long?

Until the next!



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Science / Space Race, Uncategorized

[August 24, 1967] Up and Around (Lunar Orbiter)

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by Gideon Marcus

Wall to Wall Coverage

When President John F. Kennedy, on May 4, 1961, commited the United States to "achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth," he initiated not one, but several parallel endeavors.

To land a man on the Moon requires not just a spaceship, a rocket, and the infrastructure to support them, it requires reconnaissance.  When the President made that speech, the closest photographs of the lunar surface had been taken from 250,000 miles away.  The smallest details our 'scopes could make out at the time were about a quarter mile wide.  This is fundamentally useless when trying to determine whether a given site is flat enough to be suitable for landing a spacecraft.  Guessing the height of lunar mountains from their shadows at such resolution was similarly impossible.  Who knew how many hidden peaks lurked to snag Apollo astronauts on their way down?

Project Ranger was NASA's first major lunar project, each spacecraft taking pictures of the Moon before crashing into it. Three successful missions achieved resolutions as sharp as a foot and a half.  Good enough, resolution-wise, but can you imagine having to send a Ranger for any one of dozens of potential landing sites?  The cost would be prohibitive.  Ranger's follow-up, the soft-landing Surveyor was able to determine if the lunar surface could be landed on, but it was no better at mapping the Moon than Ranger.


Potential Apollo site areas

As early as 1960, NASA knew it would need an orbiting spacecraft if it was ever to thoroughly map the Moon.  There was Earthly precedent — the Discoverer spy satellite was at that time already taking high resolution photographs of the Earth for military surveillance purposes.  But getting a spacecraft all the way to the Moon, and it being able to provide footage of 99% of the lunar surface?  That was another kettle of fish.  That required a big rocket to carry a big satellite that could carry a big imaging system.  TV imaging was quickly discarded as being too bulky and low resolution.

In 1962, Space Technology Laboratories put forth an orbiter proposal that used a film system, with each frame to be imaged and transmitted back to Earth.  This was the first workable design, and combined with elements of an RCA proposal, NASA was able to officially solicit contractors for the project in mid-1963.  Ultimately, Boeing won the contract, in large part because of their design's use of Eastman Kodak's new dry film development system.  Their camera would be more reliable, lighter, and less susceptible to solar flares ruining the photos.

Like Scales Falling from the Eyes

It took more than two years of development, but by 1966, the 850 pound Lunar Orbiter was ready.  Using the same Atlas Agena as Ranger, the first spacecraft roared off to the Moon on August 10.  Despite some navigational failures and a bit of overheating, Lunar Orbiter 1 braked into lunar orbit on August 14.  The next day, the spacecraft began sending back pictures–not of the Moon, but of previously developed images, to test the system.

Issues plagued the high-resolution camera system throughout the mission, smearing many of the photos.  But by August 29, Lunar Orbiter 1 was able to take 205 pictures of the Moon at altitudes ranging from 1000 to just 30 miles (no air means an orbit can be as low as you like), readout of which began August 30 and finished September 16.  All of the major Apollo landing sites were photographed, and at high contrast.  The cherry on top of the lunar sundae was this photograph of the Earth, the first taken from the vicinity of the Moon, and the longest distance snapshot of our home planet:

This did not mark the end of the first Lunar Orbiter's mission.  For the next six weeks, NASA continued to receive telemetry and data from the probe's micrometeor detectors (no hits recorded).  But by October 28, Lunar Orbiter was a sick ship, indeed, running low on stabilizing jet fuel, overheating, and losing power.  It was starting to broadcast erratically, which threatened to interfere with communications with the upcoming Lunar Orbiter 2.  So, on October 29, during its 577th orbit, Lunar Orbiter 1 was directed to impact with the Far Side of the Moon.

Two for Two

Just eight days later, on November 6, Lunar Orbiter 2 headed for the Moon.  Much of it had been painted black, which addressed the navigation issues (glare blotting out the guide star Canopus).  Overheating was avoided by frequent maneuvers to minimize exposure of heat-absorbing surfaces to the sun.  By November 18, the spacecraft was snapping perfect medium resolution (for broad range) and high res (for potential landing site) pictures of the Moon from a 30 mile orbit.  Mapping was done by the 26th and readout by December 7.  Among the most significant shots included one of the Ranger 8 impact site and another dramatic photograph of Copernicus crater:


(C1 is Ranger's impact crater)


Copernicus from the side

817 pictures were taken in all, only six of which were lost due a glitch in an amplifier on the final day of readout.  Lunar Orbiter 2 is still in orbit, returning data.  In fact, it was hit three times by micrometeors back in November, probably by the same cometary fragments that give us our annual Leonids meteor display.

Following Up

Lunar Orbiter 3, launched February 7, 1967, had a more refined mission than its predecessors.  Its job was to focus on promising sites its sisters had found rather than mapping willy nilly.  NASA engineers planned to closely study its orbit around the Moon for gravitational wiggles, thus making a map of the Moon's insides as well as its surface.

Unfortunately, while the spacecraft was shooting pictures, the film advance mechanism started to balk.  NASA terminated photography on February 23 after just 211 pictures.  On March 4, with 72 photos still left to be transmitted back to Earth, the film advance motor burned out.  Still, had NASA not stopped shooting pictures earlier, it is likely they would have lost all of the photos.

The shots they did get were unprecedentedly good, including this shot of the Surveyor 1 landing site:

Gilding the lily

At this point, the Lunar Orbiter program had already fulfilled its main requirement: documenting all possible Apollo landing sites.  Now it was time to push the system to its limits.  Lunar Orbiter 4 went up on May 4, 1967, beginning photography on the 11th.  The spacecraft immediately ran into trouble.  The thermal door that regulated camera temperature wasn't closing properly, letting light leak through.  This led to a scramble to test the problem on the ground.  Engineers were able to keep the door partially open, threading the needle between too much glare and dropping the temperature such that condensation fogged the film.  The readout encoder started going, too.  NASA cut off photography atfter 163 shots, but because the encoder was bleating erroneous signals, engineers had to work out a tedious, manual system for film advance and readout.  Still, they got it done by June 1, resulting in 99% coverage of the Moon's near side at ten times the resolution possible from Earth.  This revealed a bonanza of selenological detail.  Plus, 80% of the Moon's Far Side had now been mapped, too.

The last Lunar Orbiter went up on August 1 with a primarily scientific mission.  Shooting began August 6, and on August 8, the spacecraft took an historic shot of the full Earth:

All of the planned 212 shots were taken by August 18 covering five Apollo sites, 36 science sites, and 23 previously unphotographed sites on the lunar Far Side.  An unqualified success, the spacecraft will enter the next phase of its life this week, returning data on the lunar environment and gravitational field along with the still orbiting Lunar Orbiters 2 and 3 (contact with #4 was lost July 17).

Unprecedented

It was just a few years ago that it seemed the Moon was a curse.  Most of the early Pioneer probes failed, with only Pioneer 4 a real success.  Three our of nine Rangers were duds.  Along comes Lunar Orbiter, every mission of which was more or less a triumph.  The way has been paved for the first human beings to set foot on another world in a year or two.

But beyond that, real science has been done.  A few years back, my sister gave me a lovely 1963 map of the Moon, the most detailed possible at the time.  I can't wait for a new map, based on Lunar Orbiter pictures, to come out.

I know what I want for Hannukah this year!




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Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[August 22, 1967] Boldly Going Down Under (Star Trek, Spies and space in Australia)

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by Kaye Dee

Since Star Trek debuted in the US last year, I’ve been eagerly awaiting its appearance Down Under after reading all the fascinating episode reviews that my fellow writers have produced for the Journey.

As I’ve mentioned before , the arrival of overseas television programmes onto Australian screens can vary wildly, from a few months to several years after premiering in their home country, so I had no idea how long I might have to wait. Thankfully, this time it’s only taken about ten months for the adventures of the crew of the USS Enterprise to reach our shores, with the series premiering in Sydney on TCN-9, the flagship station of the Nine Network, on Thursday 6 July.

Who’s Watching Out for the Watchers?
Like the introduction of Doctor Who in Australia, Star Trek’s presence on our screens has had to pass the scrutiny of the Australian Film Censorship Board (AFCB), which reviews all foreign content for television broadcast in Australia – and like Doctor Who, it has not escaped unscathed. The good Doctor’s Australian premiere was delayed by the AFCB considering its early episodes not suitable for broadcast in a “children’s” timeslot. Other episodes have experienced censorship cuts of scenes considered scary for children, and the entire Dalek Masterplan story was even banned for being too terrifying! (I really must write a future article on the curious censorship of Doctor Who in Australia).

Similarly, The Man Trap , screened as the first episode in the US, has also been banned here, deemed unsuitable for the show’s 8.30pm timeslot due to its themes of vampirism! Apparently, the ACFB thinks Australian adults can’t handle a good, suspenseful horror-themed story at a decent viewing hour, even though it permits B-grade (or should that be Z-grade?) vampire and other horror movies to be screened after 10.30pm, as part of the Awful Movies show hosted by Deadly Earnest (the nom-de-screen of local television personality Ian Bannerman, seen above in character). However, that show plays on another network, so it is unlikely that we’ll see The Man Trap turn up there any time soon.

Meanwhile, the AFCB is still reviewing some of the first series episodes, but hopefully they won’t ban any more from screening in the normal Star Trek timeslot. However, the review process seems to have thrown any adherence to the US screening order out the window and the seven episodes shown so far have appeared in quite a different sequence. Commencing with The Corbomite Manoeuvre as the first episode, we’ve now seen Menagerie (parts 1 and 2), Arena, This Side of Paradise, A Taste of Armageddon and Tomorrow is Yesterday. Galileo Seven is scheduled for this coming Thursday. My favourite so far? Tomorrow is Yesterday : I'm always up for a time travel story.

This order may be at least partly based on what TCN-9 has available while the AFCB completes its reviews. But it could also be that the television station staff have been indulging in the apparently common practice (so I’m told by my friend at the Australian Broadcasting Commission) of picking episodes at random off the shelf, when no specific screening order has been defined. Still, as long as we get to see the rest of the episodes, in whatever order, I’ll be happy, even if we will only be watching them in black and white (as we’re not likely to get colour TV in Australia until the mid-1970s on current government planning).

A Sydney Exclusive For Now
Star Trek is only screening in Sydney at the moment, although it will be shown nationally later in the year on other Nine Network capital city stations. The reason for this broadcast strategy is not clear, but perhaps Nine is waiting to see how popular the series is in Australia’s largest market before scheduling it elsewhere? Even though the various Irwin Allen productions have had reasonable ratings on Australian television, science fiction is still seen as something of a gamble by Australian commercial broadcasters and Nine may not be as confident in its purchase of the series as it seems.

On the other hand, rumour has it that Mr. Kerry Packer, the son of the Nine Network’s chief shareholder, media baron Sir Frank Packer, is something of a science fiction fan – I do have it on good authority that he’s a fan of that wonderfully quirky British series The Avengers. Maybe Mr. Packer wants to enjoy Star Trek in his home market of Sydney first, before sharing it with the rest of the country?


Everyone Loves Mr. Spock
While the arrival of Star Trek hasn’t had a huge promotional campaign attached to it – unlike the debut of Mission:Impossible (see below) – Sir Frank has certainly made use of the resources of his Australian Consolidated Press magazines and newspapers to plug the series. The Australian Women’s Weekly, the country’s most popular women’s magazine, is rather conservative and not exactly known for embracing “out there” interests like science fiction. Yet its television critic, Nan Musgrove, gave Star Trek a very positive review in her column (and it does feel like a genuinely positive review, not just a promotion for a Packer interest).

A full page colour spread about Star Trek (above) has recently appeared in the 2 August issue and a further article about Mr. Nimoy’s Emmy nomination in the 9 August issue. Articles about Star Trek have also appeared in the Packer-owned TV Week magazine and Daily Telegraph newspaper.

The television critics of other newspapers and television guides have also generally reviewed the series favourably, although one did dismiss it rather scathingly (but then, I think he dislikes science fiction as a matter of principle!) Mr. Spock certainly stands out as the most intriguing and popular character to the reviewers, and to letter writers to the newspapers and magazines. Several have also commented very favourably on the multi-national nature of the Enterprise crew and the lack of racial prejudice in the series – these latter comments undoubtedly influenced by the racial unrest we’ve seen in the US in recent times.

Who's Watching?
I’ve not been able to obtain any ratings figures yet for these early Star Trek episodes, so it’s hard to really judge the show’s popularity with the viewing audience. But if what I’m hearing at the university is anything to go by, and what my sister and her husband tell me they are hearing at the hairdresser and at work, people who would not consider themselves science fiction fans (or even interested in science fiction) are watching Star Trek and enjoying it.

And it’s not just the adults that are watching Star Trek, either. My niece Vickie, who recently turned 10, asked to be allowed to stay up and watch Star Trek for her birthday (as her normal bedtime is 8.30pm). Her first episode was Arena – and she was so taken by it that she refused to go to bed at the usual time the following week, insisting that now she is a "big girl", she's old enough to stay up an extra hour one night a week! Well, how could we refuse a budding fan? So now she joins her parents and I in our new Thursday night routine of watching Hunter at 7.30, followed by Star Trek at 8.30pm.


Spies are All the Rage
Hunter, which precedes Star Trek (and commenced on the same evening that Star Trek premiered), is a new Australian-made spy drama from the Crawford Productions stable. Better known for its radio dramas and police show Homicide, Crawfords has decided to cash in on the current popularity of the espionage genre by producing a very slick, American-style spy drama based around the exploits of John Hunter, a Bond-like intelligence agent for an Australian security organisation, COSMIC (Commonwealth Office of Security & Military Intelligence Co-ordination).

Being on the Nine Network, Hunter has also been heavily promoted in the Packer-owned press, but nothing like the way in which the 0-10 Network has promoted the debut of its prize overseas spy-drama purchase, Mission: Impossible. Ahead of that show’s first screening at the end of June, TEN-10 in Sydney flew 50 journalists and celebrities down to Canberra on a specially chartered flight. The station’s guests were treated to an in-flight meal of champagne, fillet mignon and “super spy cocktails” (served by silver-mini-skirted hostesses), before enjoying an exclusive preview of the first episode, screened at the museum within the Royal Australian Mint! The 0-10 network must be expecting great things from Mission: Impossible, to spend so lavishly on its promotion. 

Crawfords has preferred to spend its Hunter budget, not on promotion, but on extensive location filming. This has included segments of its first six-part story, The Tolhurst File, being shot on location at the Woomera Rocket Range. Hunter is the first commercial television programme to receive permission to film at Woomera, and it’s rumoured that Hector Crawford himself made use of his high-level political connections to obtain the clearances – because right now Woomera is a very busy place indeed!

ELDO Launches at Woomera
Of course, I wouldn't let a piece on science fiction go by without a bit on actual science as well–and there is plenty to report.

It’s been over twelve months since I wrote an update on the activities of the ELDO programme. After the Europa F-4 launch was un-necessarily terminated by the Range Safety Officer in May last year, a replacement flight to test the all-up configuration of the three-stage vehicle had to be arranged. This took place on 15 November 1966, with an active Blue Streak first stage and inert dummies of the French second stage and West German third stage. The rocket’s dummy test satellite also carried instrumentation to measure the conditions that a real satellite would experience during launch.

Fortunately, this test flight was a complete success, reaching a height of over 60 miles. The dummy upper stages separated successfully from the active first stage, with all the vehicle’s components falling, as planned, into the upper region of the Simpson Desert, south-east of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

Not so successful, however, was the flight of Europa F-6, launched just a couple of weeks ago on 4 August. This mission was intended to be the first trial flight with active first and second stages (the third stage and satellite still being dummies). Initially planned for 11 July, the flight experienced 10 aborts and launch delays over more than two weeks due to systems problems and weather.

When the mission finally launched, while the first stage once again performed as planned, the French second stage failed to ignite. The cause of this failure is not yet known, but as many components of the French Coralie stage were reaching the end of their operational life due to the launch delays, investigations of the failure are focussed on this aspect. A reflight, already dubbed F6/2 is being scheduled for later this year, possibly November.

An "Australian" Astronaut
And Australia now has its "own" astronaut, in the person of Dr Phillip K Chapman, just this month selected as part of NASA's second group of 11 scientist-astronauts. Although Chapman, who is now an American citizen (as he had to be, in order to be eligible for the astronaut programme), will not fly as an astronaut wearing an Australian flag on his shoulder, we are all excited that he will probably participate in the Apollo Applications Program, which is planned to follow-on from the initial Apollo lunar landing program: maybe he will even get to walk on the Moon as the Apollo programme expands?

Originally from Melbourne, Chapman (seen here in the back row, extreme right) is one of the first two naturalised US citizens to be selected as an astronaut. A physicist and engineer, specialising in instrumentation, Chapman studied at the University of Sydney and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), from which he obtained a degree in aeronautics and astronautics.

Prior to his astronaut selection, Chapman's career has included studying aurorae in Antarctica, as part of the Australian expedition there during the International Geophysical Year. He also worked on aviation electronics in Canada before joining MIT as a staff physicist in 1961. Prior to his selection as an astronaut, Chapman has most recently been employed in MIT’s Experimental Astronomy Laboratory, where he worked on several satellites. I hope I'll have the opportuntiy to meet Dr Chapman some time soon, and I look forward to reporting on his future astronaut career. 

And while I wait for a real life Australian astronaut to make his first flight, I can at last enjoy the adventures of the crew of the USS Enterprise for myself – and hope that one day they'll add an Australian to its crew as well!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 18, 1967] The Best and the Brightest? (September 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Inside baseball

In the latest issue of Science Fiction Times, author Norman Spinrad complains that with just four science fiction magazines left, under the helm of three editors, it is impossible for the 250 members of the newly formed Science Fiction Writers of America to make a living at short story writing.  Spinrad also says that the editors have their chosen pet authors (Spinrad calls them "whores"), and because they are gauranteed slots, other writers are left in the cold. This, Spinrad maintains, is why so many folks are turning to novels or TV to make ends meet.  He feels this is a shame since you can do things with short stories and novelettes you can't do with novel-length pieces.  Spinrad notes that we'll never get another Sturgeon, Bradbury, or Cordwainer Smith under the current situation (I note with some amusement that Cordwainer Smith was one of Pohl's so-called "pets", which I guess makes him a brilliant "whore", according to Spinrad's definition).

Spinrad ends his piece urging that writers demand that Amazing and Fantastic end their mainly-reprint policy (they don't pay for them, which has provoked an SFWA boycott) and that Pohl be fired from at least one of his magazines.  This, Spinrad asserts, will create more slots, which will encourage more writers, which will generate audience demand, which will promote the creation of more short length outlets, whether magazines or paperbacks.

A name Spinrad does not specifically mention as having a pet policy is Ed Ferman, editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Ferman is fairly new to the job, and F&SF has typically cast a wider net to gather its stories.  There are also more slots per issue, as F&SF tends toward shorter pieces.

I would thus conclude that, if any place in science fiction would still offer a quality selection of stories, it would be F&SF.  They can, after all, print the best of the best that the 250 SFWAers can offer.

Let's open up this month's F&SF and see if that be the case.

Off the slush pile


by Richard Corben

Out of Time, Out of Place, by George Collyn

The lead piece is by a fellow we normally see in mags on the other side of the pond (Spinrad did not mention the UK mags as potential markets, but to be fair, there's only one left).  Collyn's tale features a spaceman returned from a fifty year voyage to find the world completely changed.  He is but ten years aged thanks to relativity, and so he is a young, lonely man utterly divorced from society.

But one day, he finds the most extraordinary woman, and they marry and live in bliss.  Until he discovers what she does for a living, and how it relates to an advance in mass media technology called "altrigo"…

The problem with this story, aside from the disturbing ending, is that it's just been done by Kate Wilhem in her piece, Baby, you were great!, which just appeared in Orbit 2.  Thus, I knew what was coming miles early.  Very distracting.

Three stars.

The Cyclops Juju, by I. Shamus Frazer

The next two stories involve African magic clashing with Westerners.  I'm always leery of such tales.  They smack of parochialism and usually hinge on a pretty narrow idea of what goes on in the vast continent that straddles the equator.  Neither of these pieces disabused me of this view.

Juju takes place in an English boarding school.  One of the students has brought a wooden statue of a cyclops, apparently modeled on the prow of an old slaver ship and worshiped as a totem by an African tribe.  All of the students who sleep in the same room with it begin experiencing a sequential dream, that they are captive slaves on the ship who break free and land on an island with the slaver crew as captives.  Over time, the totem exerts greater and greater control over the students until it is uncertain what is dream and what is reality.

Of course, stories like this depend on willful ignorance on the part of the authority figures so things can get sufficiently out of hand.  In the end, this is a reasonably well told horror/fantasy that feels like it would have done well in a prior decade.  It feels out of touch here.

Three stars.

Night of the Leopard, by William Sambrot

Faring worse is this piece, involving missionaries sent to Sierra Leone on a peace-corps-esque endeavor.  Opposing them is a witch doctor with a draconian control over a starving village and the putative ability to turn into a leopard.  The linchpin to defeating him is Eunice Gantly, an American of African extraction (specifically Masai).  The witch doctor's attempts to seduce and subvert Eunice end up backlashing.  The result is pure Twilight Zone corn.

The problems with this story are several-fold.  For one, it was done before, and better, by Richard Matheson in 1960.  For this same magazine.  Moreover, I take umbrage at the idea that people have these racial memories that can be unlocked.  And even then, Eunice and the witch doctor are as related as me (Eastern European Jew) and my wife (Western European mutt).  That is to say, we might be the same color, but I doubt our genetics have been within a thousand miles of each other.  The idea that all Africans, or even all Sub-Saharan Africans, belong to a single society is laughable and a bit offensive.

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson — I think his feature does not better this magazine

The Saw and the Carpenter, by J. T. McIntosh

SF veteran McIntosh offers up this serviceable murder mystery: the son of a space station commander is murdered by a robot.  Since robots must be programmed, the culprit must be human.  A robot expert is sent to investigate.

The story is reasonably executed, even if the characters all have exotic names like "Bob" and "John" and "Lucy" (one wonders if they were placeholders the author forgot to modify).  The ending is…interesting.  Apparently, Asimov's Three "Laws" don't always apply.

Anyway, three stars.

A Thousand Deaths, by Jack London

Because there are so many writers submitting pieces to F&SF, it follows that the editor would run…a 70 year old reprint.  This early London tale is about a seaman who is subject to a hideous series of experiments in resurrection.  Captive of a mad scientist, said sailor is murdered again and again, only to be brought back by a wonder process.  But is a life of dying really what you'd call living?

It's all very breathless and pre-pulp, and while fun to an extent, and valuable historically, I'm not sure I'd rather have it than a new story.

Three stars.

Donny Baby, by Susan Trott

A married couple, part of the avocado tree crowd, have a baby the same day their seed finally sprouts.  The sapling and the infant seem to have intertwined lives.

Had I read this as I was putting together Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1953-1957), I might have given it three stars.  Ten years after the fact, I'm afraid it merits just two.

The Great Borning, by Isaac Asimov

The science article by Dr. A is something of a highlight.  I had grown up with all of the names of the geological eras, periods, epochs, etc., but I'd never grasped their meaning.  This is an informative etymological piece.

Four stars.

A Secret from Hellas, by I. Yefremov

Finally, another reprint, though it is probably more accurate to call it an import.  A sculptor feels compelled to make a particular kind of statue, though he is hampered by an injury to his hand sustained in the war.  This piece bears some kinship with the African duo earlier in the piece, although the dreamscape and racial memories in this tale are of Greek origin rather than African.

It is the definition of forgettable but inoffensive.  Three stars.

Throw it back

One of Spinrad's points was not only that writers can't find enough short story slots to make a living, but that writers are so discouraged that they aren't even trying to write SF short stories anymore.  I suppose that could be the explanation why the once proud Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is reduced to publishing tired clichés and reprints.

But it's a chicken and egg thing, right?  If there's no supply of good stories, demand wanes.  Once demand wanes, how do you build it back up?  Maybe Damon Knight has found the answer with his Orbit series.  It may well be time to think about new media for shorter pieces.  I think I'd rather have several paperbacks of excellent stuff than a dozen issues of mediocrity.  Sure, I'll miss the attendant quirks of each publication — the science articles, the lettercols, the editorial comments, etc., but I think I'd rather just have the good stories and save the auxilary stuff for fanzines and Scientific American.

What do you think?

Better stories from the heyday of science fiction magazines can be found in the two Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women volumes.  Highly recommended!




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Science / Space Race

[August 16, 1967] Boxes, Big Steel Boxes: The Rise of the Shipping Container

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by Cora Buhlert

A Strangely Familiar Monk

Poster The Monk with the Whip

A few days ago, Der Mönch mit der Peitsche (The Monk with the Whip), the latest movie in the Edgar Wallace series, premiered in West German cinemas. Director Alfred Vohrer delivers the best colour film in the Wallace series to date (the series switched to colour last year) and creates striking visuals as a scarlet robed monk stalks the fog-shrouded grounds of an exclusive girls' school. The organ-heavy score by Martin Böttcher contributes to the eerie atmosphere

Monk with the Whip
The Monk with the Whip is engaging in murder and villainy in the fog-shrouded woods.

However, the plot seems strangely familiar, probably because we've already seen this very same film one and a half years ago under the title Der unheimliche Mönch (The Sinister Monk). Star Uschi Glas even played a supporting role in the earlier movie.

Monk with the Whip: Uschi Glass
Sir John (Siegfried Schürenberg) and Inspector Higgins (Joachim Fuchsberger) comfort Ann Portland (Uschi Glas) after a run-in with the monk.

So has it finally happened? Has the Edgar Wallace series run out of ideas after a stunning twenty-nine movies in the past eight years? On the other hand, Edgar Wallace was a very prolific writer and much of his work remains unadapted. So maybe there is life in the old warhorse yet?

However, not just the Edgar Wallace movies have switched to colour. West German television will begin broadcasting in colour later this month to coincide with the Internationale Funkausstellung (International Radio Exhibition) in Berlin.

Magic Boxes

Meanwhile, a revolution just as significant as the switch from black and white to colour is quietly happening in a completely different sector. At the centre of this revolution is an unassuming 20 x 8 x 8.5 foot box of aluminium or corrugated steel: the shipping container.

Cargo ships may not be as glamorous as the big ocean liners and cruise ships or as impressive as a Navy destroyer or aircraft carrier, but they are the backbone of international trade. Pretty much every product from overseas, whether it's cars from Japan, import paperbacks and comic books from the US, coffee from Brazil, tea from India, canned pineapples from Hawaii or even that fanzine mailed from America, comes to you by cargo ship, because air freight is much too expensive and only reserved for the most urgent of cargos.

However, shipping cargo from one port to another takes time. Now unless there is a revolution in engine technology, which is currently not in sight, the speed of a modern ship has reached a maximum. The SS United States set The Blue Riband record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic fifteen years ago, and this achievement is not likely to be broken anytime soon.

But the actual sea voyage is only a part of cargo transport. Freighters spend a large chunk of time in ports, because loading and unloading the cargo takes a lot of time and manpower (roughly twenty longshoremen are needed to load or unload a single freighter). Hereby, a large part of the problem is that cargo comes in all shapes and sizes. Cars are different from sacks of coffee, which are different from cans of pineapples, which are different from bales of cotton, which are different from boxes of books, which are different from bags of mail. All of these differently sized cargos must be individually unloaded, with the help of cranes, where necessary.

Loading the MV Rothenstein in Port of Sudan
Longshoremen are loading bags aboard the MV Rothenstein in Port of Sudan in 1960.
Bags being unloaded in the port of Bremen
Bagged cargo is being unloaded in the port of Bremen.
Cotton bales being unloaded in the port of Bremen
Bales of cotton are being unloaded in the port of Bremen.
Damaged coffee bag
Another drawback of breakbulk cargo is that the cargo can get damaged, such as these coffee beans spilling out of a bag in the cargo hold of a freighter.

Father of the Modern Shipping Container

The slow loading and unloading process is a constant source of frustration for shipping companies. Among the frustrated was a man named Malcom McLean, co-owner of a trucking company from North Carolina. Some thirty years ago, McLean had the brilliant idea that instead of the current time-consuming process, it would be much quicker to just load a trailer with the cargo onto a ship and then unload trailer and cargo at the destination and connect it to a tractor unit.

Eventually McLean refined his idea to load not entire truck trailers onto a ship, but simply transport the cargo in boxes of the same size that are easy to load, unload and stack, whether they contain books or shoes or sacks of coffee or bales of cotton or canned pineapples or bags of mail. And thus, the shipping container was born.

Malcom McLean
Malcom McLean overlooks his empire in Newark in 1957.

Initially, the shipping industry was sceptical about McLean's idea – after all, a box would add extra weight and reduce the available payload – and he had problems finding backers. So in 1955, he sold his share in his trucking company, bought a steamship company he named Sea-Land Corporation Ltd. and two decommissioned US Navy tankers, which he had converted for transporting containers. The first of these two ships, the SS Ideal X, disembarked on its first voyage from Newark to Houston on April 26, 1956.

Container aboard the Ideal X
Containers being loaded aboard the Ideal X for its first voyage in 1956.

The breakthrough for the shipping container and a lucrative contract for Sea-Land finally came with the Vietnam War, because McLean's containers turned out to be ideal for transporting supplies to the US troops in Vietnam.

The Container Comes to Bremen

But while McLean and Sea-Land were slowly revolutionising cargo shipping in the US, European and particularly West German shipping companies remained sceptical of this new-fangled container idea. And so it took until May of last year for Sea-Land to start a regular transatlantic cargo service and for the first container vessel, the MV Fairland, to come to Europe.

The Fairland's first port of call was Rotterdam. Her second port of call was my hometown of Bremen and this is why I was lucky enough to see the Fairland and her cargo of miracle boxes in person. A friend of mine works as an engineer at the AG Weser shipyard and was asked to stand by with a team of technicians and electricians in case there were any problems while unloading the Fairland's cargo of containers. He invited me along to serve as an interpreter in case of language issues.

Fairland in Bremen port
The MV Fairland moored in the port of Bremen last year.

And there definitely were problems unloading the Fairland, because the port of Bremen is not set up for the handling of containers and German trucks turned out to be not all that well equipped for transporting containers with American dimensions. And because containers are still very new in Europe, things like corner castings and twist-locks, which keep the container in place aboard a ship or on a truck bed, are unknown here.

MV Fairland in the port of Bremen
Another look at the MV Fairland in the port of Bremen last year. Note the containers on deck.

The first of the 226 containers on board was unloaded without a hitch. However, disaster struck when the second container, a refrigerated unit called a "reefer container", carrying frozen chicken legs from Virginia, slipped from the hook of the on-board cargo crane of the Fairland and crashed down onto the driver's cab of a brand-new truck waiting below. Thankfully, the driver was not seriously injured. The container survived the fall as well, as did the chicken legs, though the truck did not.

While the Fairland was being unloaded, several Bremen merchants and representatives of West German shipping companies were watching the proceedings with great interest. Initially, the merchants and shipping companies were highly sceptical and the accident during the unloading of the second container did not help matters. However, when the Fairland was fully unloaded after only sixteen hours and two shifts rather than the customary several days or even weeks, depending on the size of the ship and the type of cargo, the gentlemen were intrigued.

The Container Revolution

The Fairland would not remain the only container freighter to moor at the port of Bremen. But while there was still a lot of scepticism towards the metal box, Bremen senator of harbours Georg Bortscheller (nicknamed "Container Schorse" for his championing of container shipping) and Gerhard Beier, head of the Bremer Lagerhaus Gesellschaft, the company which manages the loading, unloading and storage of cargo in the harbours of Bremen and Bremerhaven, were both convinced by Malcom McLean's idea and also saw great potential for Bremen's harbours in the introduction of the shipping container. Because if Bremen's harbour was better set up to handle containers than competing harbours like Hamburg, Rotterdam or Antwerp, container ships and the resulting business would go here. And indeed, the United States Line and the Container Marines Lines now have a regular container service to Bremen in addition to Sea-Land.

Senator Bortscheller
George Bortscheller a.k.a. "Container Schorse", Bremen's senator of harbours.

As a result, the first specialised container bridge was installed in Bremen harbour in October 1966, only five months after the arrival of the Fairland. Now container vessels could be unloaded even faster than before. Last months, the 100,000th container was unloaded in Bremen harbour, a remarkable number considering that the first 100 containers were unloaded from the Fairland only a little more than a year ago.

First container bridge in the harbour of Bremen
The first container bridge in the port of Bremen began operations in October of last year.

But West German shipping companies were also taking note. The first container vessel built in West Germany, the Bell Vanguard, was launched in March 1966 in Hamburg, two months before the Fairland arrived in Bremen. But though the Bell Vanguard was commissioned by the West German shipping company Jürgen Heinrich Breuer of Hamburg, it was chartered out to the Irish shipping company Bell Lines and it currently in service between Ireland and continental Europe.

Bell Vanguard
The MV Bell Vanguard, the first container vessel built in West Germany.

Meanwhile, two of the biggest West German shipping companies, the Hamburg-Amerika-Linie a.k.a. Hapag of Hamburg and the Norddeutscher Lloyd of Bremen are also getting into the container business. Initially, Hapag had some of its fast freighters of the Westfalia und Nürnberg classes converted to be able to transport containers in addition to regular breakbulk cargos, while the Norddeutscher Lloyd is doing the same with Burgenstein class vessels and the brand-new fast freighters of Friesenstein class. My friend, who works at the AG Weser shipyard, is in charge of these conversions and is currently overseeing the freighters being outfitted with twist locks, plugs for reefer containers and rails to allow for moving and storing containers on deck.

MV Alemannia
HAPAG's MV Alemannia, retrofitted for container transport.
MV Bayernstein
The Norddeutscher Lloyd's MV Bayernstein, retrofitted for container transport.
MV Birkenstein
The Norddeutscher Lolyd's MV Buntenstein, retrofitted for container transport.

But both companies have even bigger plans and the long-time rivals are cooperating to make them a reality. For Hapag and the Norddeutscher Lloyd are planning to order four dedicated container vessels of their own and will jointly operate them under the name Hapag-Lloyd. The first two of these ships, the MV Weser Express and MV Elbe Express, are expected to go into service next year. This is good news, particularly for the troubled Hapag, since one of their ships, the freighter MV Münsterland, is currently stuck in the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal due to the Six Day War. It is unknown when the Münsterland will be able to return to Hamburg.

Freighters trapped in the Suez Canal due to the Six Days War
Hapag's MV Münsterland and several other freighters stuck in the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal due to the Six Days War.

Will the container revolution continue or will it fizzle out? So far, the future is still up in the air. However, the rapid growth of container turnover in the harbour of Bremen, the fact that Senator Bortscheller has announced that a brand-new container terminal will be built in the harbour of Bremerhaven as well as the fact that big shipping companies such as Hapag and the Norddeutscher Lloyd are jumping into the container business indicate that the shipping container is not a passing fad, but here to stay.

The container does have its drawbacks. For example it endangers the jobs of many longshoremen, but overall the world will profit from the rise of the container and the faster turnover times it makes possible, because it means that goods from overseas, whether coffee, tobacco, cotton, canned pineapples, Japanese cars and radios, frozen chicken legs from Virginia, books and magazines, and yes, even the postage for that fanzine mailed from the US, will become more plentiful and cheaper. And this is something that will benefit us all.

MV Europa
Freighters may be the backbone of the shipping industry, but the glamour still plays a role as well, as exemplified by the Norddeutscher Lloyd's flagship, the beautiful MV Europa, which is offering both liner service between Bremerhaven and New York as well as cruises.
MV Europa in the foggy outer Weser
The MV Europa on the foggy outer Weser. However, she'll soon reach sunnier climes.
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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 14, 1967] She Does Everything For Me (Orbit 2 by Damon Knight)

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by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

After a mammoth twenty-four-and-a-half-hour Parliamentary session (the longest in 16 years) the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill, more commonly called “The Abortion Act”, proceeded through its third reading before the summer recess. Meaning it will be going for final vote in the autumn.

This has been a change that has been long campaigned for and fiercely fought over. The existing law in the UK is over 100 years old and states:

Every woman, being with child, who, with intent to procure her own miscarriage… [or] of any woman, whether she be or be not with child, [by any] means whatsoever…shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof shall be liable… to be kept in penal servitude for life

This extremely restrictive law allows only where a medical professional considers the mother’s life to be in immediate danger or a risk of severe mental and physical impairment.

This is a very high bar has forced numbers of women to be stuck between to choosing to keep unwanted and\or dangerous pregnancies to term, or make use of an illegal “backstreet abortion” which can also be hazardous, without trained medical professionals around

These have been featured as plots in many major works of fiction lately, such as Ken Loach’s adaptation of Neil Dunn’s Up The Junction or big screen hit Alfie.

Still from Alfie of pain from backstreet abortion
Still from Alfie of a relevant scene

There are many objectors to reform, with objections to the new law including claims it will give Doctor’s a carte-blanche to euthanize infants, women claiming rape later as a means to have promiscuous sex without birth control, a method for genocide of the disabled by the back door, and other extreme claims.

The most dramatic moment in the debate came where the Bill’s sponsor David Steel brought out a seven-week-old half-inch fetus and said:

To talk of this in terms of crying, wriggling or anything like that is quite misleading. This is what we are weighing against the life and welfare of the mother and her family.

This was a direct refutation of the claim of The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children where Prof. Donald claimed at their conference that, at 28 days:

You have a live baby and it kicks, and goes on kicking for a long time.

Whilst there have been some amendments made in The House of Lords which will have to be debated when the Bill returns to The Commons in October, it looks set for there to be an expansion of abortion available on the NHS coming. And I myself am very glad of this. It has been a long time coming and represents a real move towards a women’s rights.

Perhaps this spirit of change is in the air, for in the latest anthology I am reviewing Orbit 2, the best stories are about the treatment of women in societies past and yet to come:

Orbit 2

Orbit 2 Cover

The Doctor, by Ted Thomas

Dr. Gant takes part in a time-travel experiment and finds himself back in the stone age. There he attempts to continue his practice and medically help the early humans.

That is it. I came out of it saying “…and?” If there is some kind of moral in it, it is that savage people don’t appreciate modern science and don’t know what’s good for them.

A low two stars

Baby You Were Great!, by Kate Wilhelm

In the future a new kind of entertainment has been developed where you can feel the emotions of another. The most popular is A Day in the Life of Anne Beaumont, eight hours of programming where they get to experience wealthy actress Anne Beaumont’s life.

Anne wants to break the contract as she is sick of the contrived situations they put her in and has fallen in love. However, at this point what is real and what is fiction?

This quite a terrifying story about the development of television as people seek out more shocking entertainment in the style of Candid Camera. The scenes of rape auditions are particularly striking, but in a way that I am sure was intended. It makes very fascinating points and is one of the most interesting pieces in this collection.

I do have a bit of trouble imagining why anyone would want to experience the edited highlights of the life of a rich starlet, but then I also don’t understand why so many people tune in to Crossroads or Peyton Place each week, so maybe these future TV producers are on to something.

Four Stars

Fiddler’s Green, by Richard McKenna

In an unpublished story from the late author, a group of different people are stuck in a lifeboat adrift in the Ocean. To survive, Krueger gets them to believe in another world they can access, one they call Fiddler’s Green. At first it is just them there, but soon more people begin to enter.

The longest piece in the anthology and, my word, does it need editing! There are diversions, huge sections of extraneous detail and filled with the most horrendous stereotypes. The entire thing was a real struggle to get through. It feels like a cross between A Voyage to Arcturus and Farmer’s Riverworld tales, but considerably inferior to either.

One Star

Trip, Trap, by Gene Wolfe

This is a multiple narrative piece where we see events from different letters describing the events. On the one hand we get a fantastical narrative between Garth, son of Garth, and The Protector. On the other, a more scientific narrative between Dr. Finch and Professor Beaty, both chronicling the events on planet Carson III.

Honestly, like the two prior stories by Wolfe I have read, this one failed to work for me. An interesting idea that just seemed to be stretched beyond my interest. I was regularly checking how many pages I had left.

Two Stars

The Dimple in Draco, by Philip Latham

A strange object has appeared on a photographic plate at the Institute of Cosmological Physics. Its spectrum is unlike anything else seen, exhibiting a huge Red Shift. It is up to Bill and MacCready to work out what it is. However, there is also the small matter of organizing a party…

We are told in the introduction the author is an astronomer and it shows here, although not in a good way. Most of this is just people discussing in dull technical detail the observations they have made. But, for some reason, the story also includes points that seem intended for children, such as a footnote:

Stars do not have points sticking out of them. Stars are spherical.

Maybe it works for others but this, along with the regular disparaging comments about women, put me badly off this piece.

One Star (a spherical one)

I Gave Her Sack and Sherry, by Joanna Russ

The first of two adventures from Russ following the same character, the swashbuckling Alyx. Although we are only told her name at the end of this tale, I will use it instead of “she” for the sake of ease.

"Many years ago,” Alyx is a seventeen-year-old woman married to an abusive husband who expects obedience. Sick of the beatings she receives she cuts her hair, escapes and joins the ship of Captain Blackbeard.

This is predominantly setup, consisting of situations of men underestimating Alyx and her then defeating them for their trouble. However, as entertaining as this is on its own, there are many fascinating elements Russ employs to raise this tail up.

As I noted at the start Alyx isn’t given a name until the end of the story, before being referred to as she. This really reflects the nature of this tale, with her finding herself and going through a metamorphosis on this journey.

Russ also doesn’t make use of the common tactic of trying to suggesting age by writing this in an aged manner, such as cod-Shakespearean. It instead combines an ironic narrative voice with modern speech patterns. For example:

SHE: I wouldn’t do it if you were a —
(Here follows something very unpleasant)
HE: Woman go back with those pails. Someone is coming tonight.
SHE: Who?
HE: That’s not your business
SHE: Smugglers.
HE: Go!
SHE: Go to hell.
Perhaps he was somewhat afraid of his tough little wife. She watched him from the stairs or the doorway, always with unvarying hatred; that is what comes of marrying a wild hill girl without a proper education. Beatings made her sullen. She went to the water and back, dissecting every step of the way, separating blond hair from blond hair and cracking and sorting his long limbs. She loved that.

This is very different from what we would get from Howard or Leiber, pointing to something more contemporary. A new kind of tale rather than just attempts to recreate the works of the 30s and 40s.

Four Stars

The Adventuress, by Joanna Russ

This story takes place significantly later in Alyx’s life. When she was 23, she had gone down to the city of Orudh as part of a mission to convert people to the Hill God Yp. Alyx grew disillusioned with the religion quickly, so when the mission was chased out of Orudh by the authorities, she took up as a lockpick.

Seven years later, Alyx is employed by Lady Edarra to help her escape from Orudh. Whilst originally uncertain about taking on this role, the rewards convince her, even if Alyx is unsure due to how naïve and proper Edarra is.

This represents an older and more confident Alyx, one who is experienced in the world and now able to take charge of her own destiny. Yet it does not sacrifice the stylistic elements and clever touches that made the previous installment so enjoyable.

Five Stars

The Hole on the Corner, by R. A. Lafferty

Homer Hoose comes home to his wife, but she realizes he is not the person she knows as her husband, and he proceeds to eat her. Another Homer comes home and retrieves his wife from the version that just ate her. They then need to work out why there are two different versions of himself in the same house.

In case you cannot tell, this is a darkly comic tale. Your enjoyment of it will probably depend on how much you like Lafferty’s shtick as all his usual tricks are on display. Unfortunately, it does not work for me–one for his fans I imagine.

Two Stars

The Food Farm, by Kit Reed

Nelly likes eating and enjoys being fat. Her parents want a thin daughter. Both are willing to go to extreme lengths to get what they want.

This is a delicious take on our current thinness obsessed culture. It is full of great lines providing clever commentary on people’s attitudes such as:

Her mother used to like to take the children into hotels and casinos, wearing thin daughters like a garland of jewels.

Sublime work

Five Stars

Full Sun, by Brian W. Aldiss

In a The Machine Stops style future, machines have become incredibly advanced and now take care of all human needs. People only leave their home cities for either specific reasons or if they are “abnormal”. Balank travels out with a trundler to hunt werewolves that inhabit the countryside. But after meeting a strange Timber Officer, Balank begins to wonder if the machines are the real danger to humanity.

This is more traditional Aldiss in the mode of Hothouse rather than his recent Ballard-esque Charteris tales. But that is no bad thing, it is a science fiction fantasy blend with great style and concept that showcases why he is one of the best people writing today.

Four Stars

Whither The Future?

In my previous article I asked whether these kinds of anthologies are the new magazines. I would say that whilst I do not want the magazines to completely disappear, both these show the way forward.

Last month 9% of the magazine fiction was written by women. In these anthologies it is one third. They also manage to get in a balance of new writers, old hands, hard to obtain reprints and ongoing series.

True they lack the factual articles, but can TV not provide those through programmes like Horizon and Tomorrow’s World? And is the fan community not more enriched these days by conventions and fanzines than by the letter pages of Analog?

Whilst there may be some kinks still to work out, I say “Long Live the Paperback!”

Paperback covers of Orbit One New Writings in SF 9 and Pan Horror 8
Orbit, New Writings and Pan Horror, all out now in paperback!




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[August 12, 1967] Planetary Adventures (August 1967 Galactoscope)

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by Gideon Marcus

Five against Arlane, by Tom Purdom

As you may know, I am a big fan of Tom Purdom.  He's a very nice fellow, and his first book, I Want the Stars, was a stand-out.  Thus, I was quite excited to see that the new Ace Double at the local bookstore featured my writer friend.

The first two chapters do not disappoint.  We are thrown into the action as Migel Lassamba (explicitly of African descent; no lily-white casts in Tom's books) holds up a rich man and his personal doctor.  His goal: to get an artificial heart for his companion and love, Anata.  Why doesn't he just get one for free from the government hospitals?  Because Migel, Anata, and three others are rebels whose goal is to topple Jammett, dictator of the planet Arlane.  Five against Arlane, you see?

Thus ensues a ever-widening conflict between the outnumbered but canny rebel troops and Jammett, who resorts to increasingly draconian methods to retain control.  His biggest ace in the hole is his ability to slap mind-control devices onto citizens.  These "controllees" are fully conscious, but their bodies belong to the dictator, obeying his every whim.  As Migel's cadre begins to turn the tide against Arlane's leader, the abuse of the controllees gets pretty grim.

There's a lot to like about this book.  Arlane is a nicely drawn world, mostly tidally locked so its days last forever and only the pole is inhabitable.  The descriptions of technology and society are largely timeless.  Purdom is excellent at conveying material that will not be dated in a decade.  As in Tom's other stories, we have intimations of free love and even polygamy/andry, and there is no real distinction between sex or race.

Sadly, where the book falls down is the execution.  After those exciting first chapters, the chess-like contest between the rebels and Jammett feels perfunctorily written, as if Tom had to get from A to C, and he wasn't particularly interested in writing B.  It almost reads like a chronicle of a homebrew wargame (ah, what a wargame this novel would make!) If I'd been the editor, I'd have sent it back and asked for…more.  More emotion.  More characterization.  More reason to feel invested.  And a more fleshed out ending (but perhaps that was a fault of the editing, not the writing).

I noted that the weakest parts of I Want the Stars and Tom's latest short story, Reduction in Arms, were the curiously detached combat scenes.  Where Tom excels is the thinky bits.  I suggest he either work harder on the fighting pits, or stick to thinky bit stories (like his excellent Courting Time).

Three stars.

Lord of the Green Planet, by Emil Petaja

Emil Petaja is a new writer perhaps best known for his science fiction sagas based on the Karevala, the Finnish body of mythological work.  Now, Petaja plumbs Irish myth for this truly strange, but also rather conventional science fantasy.

Diarmid Patrick O'Dowd (a fine Jewish name) is a scout captain for X-Plor, Magellanic Division.  His flights of exploration frequently take him close to a mysterious, green-shrouded object.  Finally unable to resist, he becomes the first of his corps to pierce the viridian veil.  His ship crashes and disintegrates, leaving him stranded in a Celtic nightmare.  On one side, the towers of the islands, inhabited by Irish lords whose beautiful works are created on the backs and tears of countless generations of peasants.  On the other, the fetid swamps of the Snae–froglike magicians who seem to predate the human colonists.  And up in the tower of T'yeer-Na-N-Oge resides the Deel, Himself, who rules over the world with a song whose lyrics none can deviate from, enforced by a panoply of beasts, flying, swimming, and creeping.

Of course, there is a personal element as well.  The beautiful but utterly rotten-hearted Lord Flann plans to unite the islands and lead a crusade against the Nords.  But first, he would marry his fair and kind cousin, Fianna.  Fianna, on the other hand, has other designs.  After rescuing Diarmid upon his arrival, she falls for the fellow, teaches him swordplay, and helps him fulfill his geassa to save the planet from the domination of the Deel.  Along the way, there is plenty of swashbuckling, mellifluously articulate sentences, weird foes, and a twist.

It's pure fantasy, more akin to Three Hearts and Three Lions than anything else.  But it's fun.  And it has warcat steeds (Purdom's book has watchcats–I guess oversized felines are in this year).

Three and a half stars — and I'll wager Cora and/or Kris would give it four.

Triads


by Victoria Silverwolf

Two new science fiction novels deal with the relationships among three characters. As we'll see, in one of these the trio is very intimately connected. First of all, however, let's take a look at the latest book from an author known for prolificity.

Thorns, by Robert Silverberg


Cover art by Robert Foster.

The novel begins and ends with the same words, spoken by two very different characters and having different implications.

Pain is instructive.

In this way, the author announces his theme from the very start. Thorns is all about suffering. Physical pain, to some extent, but, more importantly, emotional pain.

Duncan Chalk is a grotesquely obese, incredibly rich man who controls just about all forms of entertainment throughout the solar system. Secretly, he is also a kind of psychic vampire, feeding off the misery of others.

Minner Burris is a space explorer who, against his will, was surgically transformed by aliens. His two companions died during the procedure and he barely survived, monstrously changed outside and in. As a result, he is a loner, seen as a freak by other people.

Lona Kelvin is a teenage girl who had a large number of her ova removed and fertilized outside her body. The resulting babies were developed inside other women, or in artificial wombs. Although her physical appearance remains unchanged, the resulting publicity made her as much of an outsider as Minner.

Duncan's plan is to bring these two miserable people together, both as a form of voyeuristic entertainment for an audience of millions and to feed on their suffering. To win their cooperation, he promises to give Minner a new body and to allow Lona to raise two of the infants produced from her eggs as her own children.

At first, the pair simply share their mutual pain, sympathizing with each other. As Duncan sends them on a luxurious vacation to all the pleasure spots in the solar system, they become lovers. As he predicted, however, their differences soon lead to ferocious arguments. Minner sees Lona as an ignorant child, and Lona comes to hate Minner's bitterness and anger. Can they escape from Duncan's scheme, and find some kind of peace?

Reading this book is an intense, almost overpowering experience. It is the most uncompromising work of science fiction dealing with human suffering since Harlan Ellison's story Paingod. Although set in a semi-utopian future, the settings — a cactus garden, Antarctica, the Moon, Saturn's satellite Titan — are almost all stark and bleak. There are other characters I have not mentioned — an idiot savant, abused by his family; the widow of one of Minner's fellow astronauts, obsessed with him in a masochistic way — who offer more examples of the varieties of pain.

In addition to offering a vividly described, detailed future, Silverberg writes in a highly polished style, full of metaphors and literary allusions. I believe this is his finest work since the outstanding story To See the Invisible Man. With this novel, and his highly praised novella Hawksbill Station, I think we're seeing a new Silverberg, adding greater sophistication and more serious themes to his inarguable ability to produce an unending stream of fiction.

Five stars.

The Werewolf Principle, by Clifford D. Simak


Cover art by Richard Powers.

Andrew Blake is a man with a problem. First of all, that's not even his real name. He picked it at random.

You see, Andrew (as we'll call him in this review) was discovered in deep space, after having been in suspended animation for a couple of centuries. He has no memory of his past, although he is familiar with Earth the way it was two hundred years ago.

In order to discuss this novel at all, I need to talk about something that the author reveals about one-third of the way into the book. I don't think that gives too much away, but if you'd rather dive into it without knowing anything about the plot you should stop reading here.

Still with me? Good.

Andrew is actually an android, an artificially grown human being with a mind taken from another person. He was designed to copy the mental and physical forms of aliens he encountered while exploring other star systems. The idea is that he would record this information, then revert to his previous condition. It didn't quite work out that way.

Andrew shares his mind with two other beings. One is a wolf-like alien, although it has arms that allow it to carry things and manipulate objects. The other is a sort of biological computer, a relentlessly logical entity that often takes the form of a pyramid.

Andrew's body changes shape, depending on which mind has control. After a brief period of confusion, during which these alterations happen at random, Andrew recovers some of his memory. The three minds and bodies work together, evading the folks who think he's some kind of monster.

There's a lot more to this book than the basic plot. Simak throws in a lot of futuristic details. Notable among these are talking, flying houses, and aliens who are essentially the same as the brownies of folklore.

Not all of these concepts mesh together smoothly, although they provide proof of a great deal of imagination. The overly solicitous robot house offers some comic relief, and the so-called brownies may seem too whimsical for some readers. Otherwise, the novel is quite serious, even offering a mystical vision of the unity of all life in the universe.

My major complaint is a plot twist late in the book, revealing the true nature of a character I haven't even mentioned. It comes out of nowhere, depends on a wild coincidence, and creates an artificial happy ending.

Despite these serious reservations, I actually liked the novel quite a bit. It's not a classic, but it's well worth reading.

Three and one-half stars.




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[August 10, 1967] Badger Books: A Farewell and an Introduction

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by Fiona Moore

The great British pulp imprint Badger Books ceased trading earlier this year. This is a mixed blessing, but nevertheless a significant event. So it seems like a good time to provide a brief introduction for people who, like me, have a taste for schlocky and pulpy science fiction. Stuff which can make you wince and laugh by turns, but which has its heart, broadly speaking, in the right place.

This is what we're losing.

Badger Books was an imprint of publisher John Spencer and Co., which started off publishing pulp magazines in a variety of genres including SF, but branched out in the 1950s to publishing pulp novels. Badger Books are cheap as chips; they have no copyright pages, and they do have two to three pages of advertisements salted through the text, usually for items like good luck charms, muscle building systems or creams that magically affect your body in some way (cheekily, bust enhancement and reduction creams are usually advertised on the same page).

Badger’s output covers all popular genres, but the two lines most of interest to Galactic Journey readers are the science fiction and paranormal ranges, which are almost entirely written by a single person under a variety of pseudonyms. That person is Lionel Fanthorpe, schoolteacher, mystic and general eccentric, also known as Pel Torro, Leo Brett, Bron Fane, Robert Lionel Fanhope, Mel Jay, Marston Johns, Victor La Salle, Oben Lerteth, Robert Lionel, John E. Muller, Elton T. Neef(e), Phil Nobel, Peter O'Flinn, Peter O'Flynn, John Raymond, Lionel Roberts, Rene Rolant, Deutero Spartacus, Trebor Thorpe, and Karl Ziegfreid.

Even Mr Fanthorpe isn't always sure who he is

Fanthorpe has written as many as 250 books, by some estimates, for Badger between the early 1950s and 1967 (though some credible sources indicate his wife deserves some of the credit). Exact numbers are hard to tell, because other writers share the same pseudonyms, but he is estimated to have written one 158-page book every twelve days at the height of his productivity. Another reported detail is that the books are generated by the publisher sending Fanthorpe a copy of some cover art and asking him to write a story based on the images: sometimes, also, these images come from previously-published Ace or Avon books.

Knowledgeable readers may be able to identify the source.

Sometimes these inspirations make more sense than others: Exit Humanity, for instance, is based on the cover of John Brunner’s The World Swappers, which depicts a crowd of humans going into a giant spaceship; Fanthorpe’s story involves a race of aliens deceiving humanity into thinking that the sun is about to go nova, and enticing them into what the humans think is a rescue ship that will take them to a new home. Sometimes the connection is more opaque: Space Trap, a story where two alien spaceships crash-land in medieval China, for instance, has a cover featuring a caveman and a man in an iron lung.

Yes, this really says "medieval China" to me too.

Reportedly Fanthorpe dictates his stories onto tape and sends them out to be typed, though this only partly explains the lackadaisical nature of his work. Character names change from page to page; subplots are abandoned or introduced depending on the needs of the word count; books change focus and plot without warning. World of Tomorrow, for instance, which opens with a pitched space battle, goes on to have the Earth stricken with plague courtesy of a misfired missile from the space battle, and then shifts to the story of an Earth astronaut who comes aboard one of the space ships and has to find his way back. The titles are often only tangentially related to the story inside the covers.

Don't expect it to make sense.

Ethnic stereotypes regrettably abound. For instance, there are the long, painful sections of Exit Humanity which feature a stereotypical Englishman, Irishman, Welshman and Scotsman musing in embarrassing dialect about the abandonment of the Earth by humanity. Arguably even worse is the homicidally excitable Chinese scientist in World of Tomorrow (named, I am very sorry to report, Hi Mi Fun), and the frequent use of the word “yellow” to describe East Asian characters in Space Trap. Asteroid Man features a Barsoom-like society divided into Black, Red, Green and White members, but the essentialism by which these are described is a little too reminiscent of the less enlightened literature of our time.

And yes, Fang Guy really *is* in the story.

However, Fanthorpe is not your typical dreadful pulp writer. He is also literate, imaginative, possessed of a distinct sense of morality, and seemingly determined to have fun. There’s a lot to like in Space Trap, for instance: two sets of combatants from a galactic war between a species that look more or less like humans and a tiny insect species are stranded in medieval China. The first one deceives a local peasant boy, one Aladdin, into trying to retrieve the spaceship of the second, which looks surprisingly like an oil lamp, and whose denizens are able to win Aladdin over by seemingly doing miracles. Familiar hijinks ensue.

In Micro Infinity, a story about the human race encountering an intelligent species of bacteria with a gestalt mind, all the characters are based on ones from The Canterbury Tales, and the reader can have great fun spotting the references. At an exciting point in The In-World, Fanthorpe ratchets up the tension with, erm, a historical geography of the city of Amsterdam. For the fans, he’ll throw in mentions of the likes of Quatermass and the Pit when you least expect it. Fanthorpe will also work ideas from paranormal research even into his SF novels, for instance in Exit Humanity, where a plot point revolves around the Fortean idea that humans are naturally telekinetic.

The stories can also have a strong, and generally positive, moral streak. Despite the lurid Orientalism of the cover of The Face of Fear, for instance, the story itself features an ecumenical and diverse group of paranormal researchers—- including a Church of England vicar, an Irish Catholic priest, a Buddhist, an implied-to-be-Jewish woman secretary and a Black boxer—- coming together to defeat a villain who is not, in fact, Oriental, but faking his identity. The good aliens in The Space Trap briefly provide a lecture on the evils of slavery and advise Aladdin to purchase slaves in order to free them. In World of Tomorrow, only smokers are affected by the alien plague, and humanity can be saved by people giving up that filthy habit.

He's a fake fakir.

On the one hand, a lot of these stories would be improved with an editor, or two, or three. On the other hand, part of what makes Fanthorpe’s work so irresistible is its spontaneity, its sense of someone throwing down words in a way that gives them pleasure, sharing jokes with readers in the know, not caring if it makes sense in the final analysis. For all their awfulness, Badger Books will definitely be missed.

Postscript: The copy of World of Tomorrow which I purchased from Porcupine Books arrived with an advertisement for family planning services tucked into the pages. Perhaps Fanthorpe readers really do have more fun?

Yes, this really happened.



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