Hello again, it’s time for me to talk very excitedly at you about the latest Doctor Who serial: The Invasion (written by Derrick Sherwin from a story by Kit Pedler). As the programme dabbles in military sci-fi, the Doctor runs into an old friend—and an older enemy.
Yes, you're seeing correctly. He is indeed using his recorder as a telescope and Jamie's shoulder as a mount. This might be my favourite Doctor-companion pairing ever.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
So, what exotic locale has the Doctor and co. landed in this time? Uh, England. The twentieth century. And the TARDIS' circuits are in desperate need of repair. Seeing as they have friends in the 20th century, the Doctor suggests looking up Professor Travers in London (whom they met in "The Web of Fear"). Hopefully his skills resurrecting a robot Yeti will translate to repairing an immensely complex time and space machine.
Before we get to that, however, dark deeds are afoot. The Doctor picked a bad place to land, requiring the aid of a van driver to smuggle him and his friends out of a compound owned by the mysterious, ruthless and well-armed International Electromatics company.
On arriving in London, the Doctor and company find that Professor Travers and his daughter Anne are out of the country. They’ll have to settle for the suspiciously similar substitute Professor Watkins (Edward Burnham) and his niece Isobel (Sally Faulkner). Teeny problem: Professor Watkins hasn’t been seen in a week. Not since he went to work for… International Electromatics. (Dun dun duuuuuun!)
The Doctor and Jamie head to the I.E. company offices in London in an attempt to get some answers. And answers they get (of a sort) from the company director, Tobias Vaughn (Kevin Stoney). Snappy dresser. Nice office. Doesn’t blink often enough.
And he’s far too nice. He gives Jamie a free radio and offers the Doctor his workshop’s help with the TARDIS circuits, assuring him that Watkins is perfectly fine. No, of course they can’t actually see him. He’s busy.
The Doctor suspects Vaughn’s got something to hide, and he’s absolutely right. Vaughn is hiding an alien computer in his office—an alien computer that’s currently planning an invasion, and insists that the Doctor must be destroyed if their plans are to have a chance to succeed. It also tells him that the Doctor has the ability to travel between worlds, and Vaughn becomes obsessed with finding out how.
But the Doctor isn’t the only man with a distrust of Vaughn and his company, and he’s not the first to try investigating them. Say hello to the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, headed by our old friend Brigadier (formerly Colonel) Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney). They’ve made it their business to investigate the unusual and otherworldly, and they’ve been taking an interest in I.E. for quite some time. If they pool their knowledge with the Doctor, they might be able to put a stop to whatever Vaughn’s plans are. The Brigadier gives the Doctor a transceiver radio and assures him that if he needs help, U.N.I.T. will be ready to provide it.
Nice 'tache.
And he might need it sooner rather than later, because the women got tired of waiting and went to the I.E. offices to look for them—and they haven’t come out of there since. The Doctor and Jamie arrive too late to stop Vaughn’s enforcers bundling the women onto a train (in crates, no less), but Vaughn ever so kindly offers to give them a lift to the I.E. factory compound so they can search for them.
U.N.I.T. observes this with some concern, and the Brigadier has them discreetly tracked… if you call helicopters ‘discreet’.
Meanwhile, Vaughn’s head enforcer Packer (Peter Halliday) is hard at work coercing Prof. Watkins with threats to Isobel’s wellbeing. Watkins is a stubborn bloke, though, and Packer doesn’t scare him. Vaughn, on the other hand… when Vaughn turns up to make a threat, that’s another matter.
Such as when he threatens to hand Zoe over to Packer’s mercy. He’s worked out the Doctor has a machine that allows him to travel between worlds, and he wants it for himself. Hand over the TARDIS, and nobody has to get hurt. The Doctor instead makes a run for it. I’m pretty sure he couldn’t hand over the TARDIS even if he wanted to. It turned invisible when he arrived; he’s probably forgotten where he parked it.
The Doctor/Jamie method for getting through tough situations: when in doubt, grab Jamie/the Doctor and hold on for dear life.
The Doctor and Jamie make a narrow escape via the building’s lift shaft, and hide out in a train car for a little while. They find some crates, and Jamie is alarmed to discover that his is not empty. There’s something alive in there! However, he doesn’t get a chance to investigate, because they need to search for the women—and we need to tease the mystery out for one more episode.
Speaking of the mystery, how about a clue? Vaughn discusses with Packer his plans to double cross his extraterrestrial allies. Watkins is insurance against them. The machine he’s building has the potential to destroy Vaughn’s allies with the power of emotion. They’re vulnerable to it, you see. Vaughn’s happy to use their technology and strength for his own gain, but would rather they didn’t take over the world. They aren’t going to kill everybody, oh no. They’re going to convert them. Into what? Well. Take a guess.
When Vaughn demands that the Doctor and Jamie hand themselves over, the Doctor calls in his favour from the Brigadier. Cue the daring rescue! As a U.N.I.T. helicopter hovers above, Jamie helps the women escape from the compound’s main building, and the group ascend from the rooftop via a rickety rope ladder under a hail of bullets.
A furious Vaughn now must alter his plans to bring the invasion forward. He prepares to return to London, getting in contact with his inside man at the Ministry Of Defence. U.N.I.T. must be stopped.
Meanwhile, the Doctor has a burning question. What was in the crates? Out of the frying pan, he throws himself back into the fire, sneaking back to the I.E. London office to take a look at their cargo bay. This time, he’s lucky enough to get a glimpse of a crate being opened, and the thing inside is waking up. Stepping unsteadily from the crate, glinting in the dim light…is a Cyberman.
Nice earmuffs.
A Few Thoughts
I often get a bit annoyed with long serials, but I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed every episode so far. The mystery unfolds at a fair pace, new revelations revealing new questions, rather than the repetitiveness and backtracking that some serials lean on to pad their runtime. There’s a good degree of suspense, helped along by the rather good soundtrack and interesting cast of characters. Speaking of which…
Some people say a story is only as good as its villain, and if that’s true, this is shaping up to be an excellent serial. Vaughn is a great villain. He’s smooth, clever, he’s affable, but just a little bit too much. He’s smarmy, and there’s something peculiarly loathsome about smarmy people, isn’t there? And yet underneath that cool, polished surface, there’s a positively explosive temper, and a true nastiness to him. The tension between these sides of his personality is absolutely delicious.
You can't hear it, but 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic' is playing in the background of this scene. I wish I was joking.
Speaking of having hidden depths, it surprised me that Zoe chose to hang back and play fashion model with Isobel rather than investigate the office with Jamie and the Doctor. Of course, on the purely practical level it was necessary to separate the group somehow, but the method is something I find curious. I don’t really know what to make of it. On the one hand, it could be said that this is just pigeonholing Zoe and Isobel into a stereotypically feminine and frivolous activity while the men do the important stuff. And well, I don’t think that’s entirely inaccurate. And I think it is fair to point out that even when the women do show initiative in attempting to come to the rescue of the chaps, the fact they immediately get captured and need the men to save them rather undermines the whole thing.
On the other hand, Isobel is a self-employed woman making her own way in the world, and Zoe has never really had much of an opportunity to simply enjoy or explore her own femininity. She expresses in "The Dominators" a degree of discomfort in fashion that isn’t solely utilitarian, and we saw in her introductory serial how she was raised as more of a human computer than an actual teenage girl. Perhaps this is the first time in her life she’s ever been at liberty to have fun. Nothing wrong with that.
So yes, there’s nothing wrong at all with the women’s choice of activity, but there is room to criticise how the story uses that choice to reinforce traditional gender dynamics. Gender politics as they apply to storytelling can be pretty complicated. Who knew?
When confronting supervillains, it's important to wear the silliest accessory you can find. That way, they'll be too distracted to harm you.
Final Thoughts
As glad as I am to see the return of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, I haven’t yet made up my mind as to how I feel about the introduction of U.N.I.T. On the one hand, they’re cool. No denying that. They seem trustworthy enough. I like the Brigadier, and think the new facial hair suits him very well. Yet I worry about the idea of the Doctor making too much use of military allies. I only hope their answer to every alien problem won’t be to just shoot it.
Well, all that remains to be seen. And I’m very much looking forward to it.
This is the episode that fully cemented season 3 in my mind as the highest quality season so far. The special effects were impressive, the costumes were simply spiffy and the pacing and audio were smooth and well-balanced. My only frustration is that it lacked one major connecting thread in the plot, which left it with inconsistencies great enough to turn this otherwise seamless Tholian web into a loose and fraying net.
In a masterful opener, we are dropped in the thick of the action from the very beginning, with the crew staring in concern at all the viewscreens, as they are informed that they have entered a region of space "that appears to be breaking apart." I would have loved an explanation as to what readings led Spock to that conclusion, but everyone else seems to take Spock’s assessment with no further elaboration. Their attention is swiftly caught by the appearance of a marooned Federation Starship, one that Captain Kirk identifies on sight as the U.S.S. Defiant. Wasting no time, he rushes to beam onto it with nearly all the highest ranking officers (you’d think he’d learn that effectively decapitating the chain of command before even assessing the nature of the fate that befell an adrift starship is something he should be a bit more cautious about doing, but it seems he prefers learning the hard way yet again). When Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Chekov beam over to the other starship, we see that they have at least learned to take the small precaution of contamination reduction suits this time.
But they don't decontaminate them when they come back to the Enterprise—well, perhaps that's part of the transporter beaming now.
In a sequence of events that should surprise no one at this point, the danger that annihilated the Defiant's crew begins to affect the away team right away. Just as we saw just two weeks ago in “Day of the Dove,” Chekov starts being influenced by a violent murderous madness, and just as the ensign did in “The Naked Time,” he tells no one of his symptoms before bringing a contagion back to the ship with him. Meanwhile in the Defiant’s sickbay, Dr. McCoy makes an immediate and even more disturbing observation when crewmen and objects on the ship phase out of existence as he tries to touch them. Thankfully, Kirk at least treats this threat with the appropriate level of alarm, and immediately orders a retreat to the Enterprise, but it appears to be too late, as whatever forces seem to be affecting the dissolution of the Defiant cause the ship to disappear while the captain is separated from the away team, mid beaming sequence.
The chicken-soup dispenser has become a tricorder device.
The focus now shifts to the delicate dance of keeping the ship in close enough proximity to the Defiant to make another attempt at retrieving the captain while managing to keep the ship in one piece as it withstands the conditions of this volatile section of space. Confusingly, Spock attempts to explain what's happening with vague multiphasic pseudo-science. He says the computer can calculate the pattern in which our universe and the Defiant's overlap with enough regularity that he speculates that the defunct ship will reappear in two hours. Here, he muddies the waters by throwing in noncommittal statements like “the dimensions are totally dissimilar and any use of power disturbs it,” that made me so frustrated with his vagueness that I agreed with Chekov's violent outburst that interrupted it.
"The science in this episode is too confusing!"
The writers decide here that the episode needs even more tension, choosing this moment for the Tholians to zoom into view. Seeking, too late, to guard this unstable portion of space, an alien ship containing beings calling themselves the Tholians hails the Enterprise demanding an explanation for their trespassing and requesting they leave the area immediately. Spock negotiates the calculated amount of time he requires to interact with the Defiant again. When Spock’s calculations prove erroneous, the Tholians swiftly open fire on the Enterprise, feeling as if they were maliciously deceived. Following a brief fire-fight, the Enterprise and the Tholians end up disabling each other, and the Tholians retreat and enact a new strategy to defeat the Enterprise, gathering reinforcements and using several ships to slowly build a web of energy beams.
As if there wasn't enough going on with this intergalactic battle, at the same time, McCoy is engaged in a battle of his own against the interphasic space madness affecting Chekov and the crew. He sets about the monumental task of medically creating an internal shield to barely comprehensible degradative forces, much as we've seen him do in “Miri” and “The Deadly Years.”
"Physician, heal thyself!"
Spock takes this lull in the immediate external danger to officially declare Captain Kirk dead, and he holds a brief, ship-wide funeral service for him. Dr. McCoy drags Spock very reluctantly to an audience with Kirk’s recorded Will and rather unnecessarily takes an opportunity to try to bully, insult, and squeeze an emotional reaction out of Spock. It seems as if this is another one of their typical disputes, but when Kirk’s voice rings out through his tapes, counseling them to stop bickering, it feels as if he’s reaching out from beyond the grave to bring home the gravity of the situation they are in. McCoy immediately apologizes, noting, "It hurts, doesn't it?" In the tense silence where Spock replies softly "What would you have me say, Doctor?" The scene is suddenly imbued with a surprisingly beautiful tenderness that only the shared grief that the loss of a captain and dear, true friend could elicit.
"I can't leave you two alone for five minutes!"
In yet another tonal shift, we find that it's Uhura who helps solve the mystery of their still interdimensionally traveling Captain, as she is first to see his “shadow” phasing in her mirror. One by one, the crew begins sharing in what Uhura had thought to be her own personal hallucination, and they realize Kirk is still alive on a plane of existence that is erratically phasing with ours. Here, the plot seems to completely unravel for me. Apparently a phaser beam punched a hole through the dimensional veil and Kirk got through and somehow also another hole is about to open in the Tholian Web that the Enterprise can slip through while also scooping up Captain Kirk in one fluid movement. Also McCoy discovers the cure for the rabid space sickness (which, truly, why does that matter if they are all about to leave this space in 20 minutes?) and Scotty takes it to his quarters to drink it down like it’s a cocktail mixer rather than an anti-interdimensional-radiation medicine.
"Subtle, yet bold!"
The rest of the episode rushes to a “just because” conclusion, only necessary because they had loaded the story up too much in the beginning. If the SFnal concepts had been more simplistic like “colliding space eddies,” and they hadn’t re-used the space madness subplot so soon, or even if they had taken another moment to acknowledge how emotionally compassionate it was of Spock to make time for a memorial service in the midst of a crisis out of deference to his human subordinates, the episode could have come to a more settled conclusion. Instead, the final scenes collide and coalesce into a sudden messy slop.
The Enterprise escapes the Tholian web 'with a mighty leap.'
In total, the quality of this episode's elements was excellent, but could have stood to benefit from a couple more minutes of editing. Maybe a few more threads woven into web of this plot would have been enough to ensnare my full endorsement of it
4 stars.
Tangled up in Interspace
by Trini Stewart
“The Tholian Web” completely enveloped me in its tense atmosphere this week, largely because I had to watch helplessly as my favorite character, our dearly beloved Spock, faced nearly insurmountable challenges as captain. Spock had to defuse so many high-pressure situations simultaneously that were overwhelming just to imagine, and each aspect of Kirk’s complicated rescue was painfully resolved on the thinnest of ice (to no fault of Spock’s careful guidance).
Other than the strain of having to hinge everyone’s lives on multiple close calls, perhaps the most problematic facet of Spock’s predicament was McCoy’s aggressive response to Spock’s leadership. Acting as a foil to Spock’s calm and focused responses, McCoy persistently questioned and blamed their dire straits on Spock, who had to spend precious time defending his decisions as he urged that they press on. I’ll be the first to admit that, if it were anyone else besides Spock in charge of weighing the risks of Kirk’s rescue, I too would insist that we save the crew while the ship could still leave.
Spock—the best man for the job.
Still, I couldn’t tell if McCoy was just completely distraught by Kirk’s being lost, or if he was influenced by the interspace deterioration to some degree, but I was hurt to see Spock at odds with a partner he can usually trust when he needed him most. My bias will ultimately lie with Spock’s reliability to make the best decision available in any given situation, and I wish that despite the intense circumstances, McCoy had at least conceded to work together with Spock once the ship was down. It was a pretty low blow to assume Spock meant to endanger everyone to secure his captain status, especially after Spock explained his reasoning perfectly.
Thankfully for everyone, Kirk had predicted exactly how the two officers would interact, and he gave them just the sobering insight they needed to cooperate peacefully. I loved that Spock was reminded that McCoy was there to help when matters couldn’t be resolved by his best judgment alone. It was equally sweet (and satisfying) to see Kirk remind McCoy that Spock could make human mistakes too, right after McCoy made a rude remark about Spock’s Vulcan half.
All in all, I loved this entire episode with its suspenseful atmosphere, satisfying characterization, and well-earned resolution. I can only imagine how long-time fans must have enjoyed this episode knowing the characters’ history with one another!
4.5 stars.
Our Little Vulcan’s Growing Up
by Andrea Castaneda
It has been a while since I've caught an episode of Star Trek. In fact, the last episode I watched was “Amok Time”, in which we saw a glimpse of Mr. Spock’s vulnerable side. So I'm glad the show I finally found time for was “The Tholian Web”, featuring our favorite Vulcan in a leadership role. I was happy to see another glimpse of this stoic character. And indeed, compared to how he was in season one (which I got to see fairly regularly), we’ve seen a lot of character growth in how he leads a mission and communicates with his crew.
We first saw Spock’s role as a leader in season one’s “Galileo Seven”. In it, he and other crew members were sent to scout a newly discovered planet. Through twists of fate, they are left stranded, alone, and facing a hostile native species.
When one crew member dies, Spock insists they spare no time to respect their fallen comrade, focusing on finding a way home. It’s logical to him, but it sparks ire amongst the crew members, thus sowing seeds of discontent. As they search for a way back, the crew continues to be uncooperative and critical of his orders, save for Scotty. Here, it’s Spock’s lack of understanding human emotion that jeopardizes their mission. Despite the “illogical” nature of the situation, his crew members want their grief respected. And while we, the audience, understand Spock does what he thinks is best, one can understand why the crew sees him as “cold”.
By season three, he seems to have learned from this experience. In “The Tholian Web”, while he remains calm and collected when faced with Kirk's death, he chooses to spend a moment to hold a brief but effective memorial service. It is done very much in Spock's way, but it shows how the Vulcan first officer is able to empathize with his crew. And the gesture pays off. Despite one crewmember going mad during the service, it seems to solidify Spock's position as new leader. The members of the Enterprise— save for McCoy– respect his orders, call him "Captain", and do not question him, showing how much he’s earned their trust.
Spock, having learned from experience, foregoes the traditional comedy monologue.
Another stark contrast is how his attitude shifts from “saving the village above all” to “no man left behind”. In “The Galileo Seven”, after scrimping together repairs to get their shuttle into orbit, Spock states that the crew should go on without him if he is compromised. And inevitably, Spock is incapacitated right as the shuttle lifts off. The surviving crew members rescue him despite his insistence to go on. It’s a heroic act, but one that costs them their window of opportunity to leave. Because of that, he scolds them for it and they respond with frustration. (But worry not; they make it to the Enterprise in the end.)
In “The Tholian Web”, Spock seems to take the opposite approach. When faced with the prospect of losing Kirk, he risks the Enterprise’s escape window for the chance to save Kirk. I should note that one can interpret this as Spock making a special exception for their captain. But I choose to believe Kirk’s ideals have rubbed off on him. Right on cue, he receives much criticism from McCoy, who is being particularly prickly even for him. Their banter serves as a good vocalization for what the audience might be thinking. But it was interesting seeing the logical Vulcan take the riskier approach. I will say, Spock’s choice does endanger the rest of the crew–the very thing he was trying to avoid in “Galileo Seven”. But once again, I think it shows how much Kirk has influenced him.
In the end, the gamble pays off. Kirk is rescued, the Enterprise escapes, and everyone goes on to explore another day.
Indeed, this episode can be interpreted as a better evolved version of the “Galileo Seven”. The stakes were higher, there were more plot elements in play, and the alien species they faced was more threatening. The story kept me guessing and didn’t have predictable moments (despite the ending being a tad bit convenient.) It was a delight to see how Spock not only survived but thrived as a leader. I very much look forward to seeing how Spock will continue to develop, both as a leader and as a true friend to the Enterprise.
Five stars
Behind the scenes
by Gideon Marcus
Back in the first season, the Enterprise was a living, breathing entity with 430 varied souls on board. Over the course of the show, the focus has shifted sharply onto The Big Three (viz. last episode, in which the starship might as well have been the personal vehicle of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy a la Peter's woody in The Mod Squad).
This week, we saw a bit of the old Enterprise, the kind we haven't seen since "Balance of Terror", really. There were some 30-40 people at Kirk's (premature) funeral, lots of people in engineering, McCoy's lab, on the bridge. There were enough people that department heads could, rightly, not spend all of their moments doing hands-on work. Uhura got to take a few minutes off, which we haven't seen since her impromptu concert with Spock in "The Conscience of the King" (the enforced hiatus in "The Changeling" doesn't count).
Interestingly, this actually turned Lorelei off a bit, so used is she to the more-than-one-braid-on-their-sleeves stars and co-stars doing all the work. But I'll never criticize a show for getting things right. Now if they can just get some trained Marines to beam ashore instead of the ship's senior complement…
A Tholian spins its web. Note: not to scale (this is supposed to be "out of phaser range".)
Anyway, I loved this episode, from beginning to end. It took a bunch of somewhat familiar elements, mixed them with some new ones, and tied them all together with the thread of Spock's first real command. It reminded me a bit of a second-season Burke's Law episode where Captain Amos Burke goes on vacation, and the rest of his team have to solve a case without him. Kirk's absence gives "The Tholian Web" room to breathe (even as he suffocates). This enhances the poignancy of his taped final orders to Spock and Bones.
I loved getting to see Sulu cradle Chekov's head after the navigator goes mad (they do love to hear him scream). I loved seeing Uhura mourn for the Captain, seeing her in her quarters! And we see Spock's quarters again, too. Scotty, McCoy, and Spock enjoy a drink together before the engineer takes the bottle of cure away to share it with someone else—probably Kevin Riley.
And I always love getting to see another starship, even if they are inevitably in distress. Somehow, each has its own unique flavor, even though they always use the same sets. Finally, I loved meeting the Tholians, an attempt at a true alien race.
In Communist Red, no less…
Never mind the brilliant special effects, the superlative acting, the real tension, even knowing Kirk was going to live (as he must, and as we saw in the preview; this was a negative point for Lorelei, too).
Thus, I can give this episode no less than five stars. Frankly, Season 3 has been, so far, my favorite season yet.
[Come join us tonight (November 22nd) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]
Not too long ago, the FM band of the radio was mostly for classical music. Why waste high fidelity on the raucous rock and pop the kids were listening to? In the same vein, the big 33rpm LP records were for grown-ups. That's where you found your jazz, your schmaltz, your classical. The juvenile stuff was put on disposable 45 singles.
Well, it still is, but of late, really starting in earnest around 1965, a lot of Top 40 ended up on LPs, and since last year, the FM stations are playing psychedelia and fuzz more often than not. Is classical down for the count?
Not if the Trans-Electronic Music Productions (T-EMP) company has anything to say about it…
From the back cover of Switched-on Bach, the new LP by the Carlos/Folkman combo who make up the T-EMP, one would think it's yet another fusty classical album. The selections are common, the same kind of thing you've heard a million times before.
But not this way. the T-EMP has rendered all of the pieces entirely electronically. Using Moog synthesizers, many of these familiar songs take on an entirely different character. In some cases, the instrumentation chosen resembles the original harpsichords and flutes and such, and the result is just competent (even a little dry) Bach. On the other hand, you also have pieces like the Brandenburg Concerto #3, particularly the first movement, which are utterly transformed. On those pieces in particular, Carlos and Folkman have departed the natural entirely. With instruments reminiscent of the weird electronic sounds found in the British puppet show Space Patrol, or perhaps the theme of Dr. Who, Baroque becomes by turns cosmic, seductive, and menacing.
Normally, when I listen to classical music, I can imagine the orchestra. With Switched-on Bach, I imagine I'm in the cool, dark halls of a computer, maybe something like the one in Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream…before it went murderous. The artificial tones are beautiful, hard-edged, passionate, and perfectly suited to the mathematical rhythms of the King of Köthen.
I'm not the only one who thinks so. Switched-on Bach is a runaway bestseller, and not with the classical set, but with the youth. Heading toward the million mark, the Carlos/Folkman team have wrapped the vintage in a computerized cloak, and the kids are eating it up.
Including this one (I'm only 23, just like Carol Burnett). Buy yourself a copy. I promise it'll be worth it.
The last woman on Earth, the freak survivor of a worldwide artificial plague, splits herself into a thousand personas so as to shield herself from the enormity of her reality. Upon discovering a screenplay her writer persona wrote, she sees, poetically rendered, the loneliness and desperation she's been repressing for three years. Like the 5D home in Heinlein's And he built a crooked house…, all of her personas collapse into the original, leaving her bleak and alone.
Aside from plausibility issues (Edna survives in a bathysphere—presumably every submariner in the world is still alive, too), there are pacing issues. The story moves along until we get to the screenplay, which is several pages of an increasingly sunburned turtle plodding up a beach while a building makes passes at her.
Basically, cut-rate Ballard, the type we've seen in New Worlds for the past five years. We keep saying the same thing: Bruce has potential. Bruce writes pretty well for someone so young. Bruce has yet to write something we really like.
Three stars.
by Gahan Wilson
The House of Evil, Charles L. Grant
Written in quasi-archaic style, this is the would-be-droll story of a writer who is conned, by a lithe woman and her coffin-dwelling uncle, to have a brush with the unnatural that leaves him Undead.
These pastiche stories require a deft touch that Grant doesn't have. Particularly when he has his character pour rather than pore over documents ("pour what?" I always wonder).
The stories of The People continue, this time detailing the encounter between a teacher at a tiny school in the Southwest and a precocious but illiterate young telepath. When the fourth-grader begins picking up the distressed thoughts of a cosmonaut stranded in orbit, the teacher gets involved in a rescue operation that is out of this world.
This tale is a strange mix of the familiar and the unusual. We've now had more than a dozen The People stories that involve the interactions of normal humans with the alien (but human) psioinic exiles, refugees from their own exploded planet. In some ways, I feel that well has been mined out. The telling is different, this time. Instead of the pensive, dreamy mode that Henderson employs, the story has a breathless quality that reminds me of the fanfiction I read in the various trekzines coming out—that sort of, "Golly! I'm on the Enterprise with Mr. Spock!"
It's not bad, just weird, and not up to the standards of Henderson's better work. Plus, I find it strange how brazenly The People are displaying their powers these days. Surely, that should have follow-on consequences.
Three stars.
Miss Van Winkle, Stephen Barr
A girl sleeps from birth until she is 19, then awakes—beautiful, articulate (though not literate), and devoid of superego. She is unhappy until she meets Walkly, who loves her for the societal outcast she quickly becomes.
I am not sure if this story is supposed to be a satire on artificial social conventions or just cute. Either way, it's a bit clunky and wholly insubstantial. Morever, it twice tries to make clever use of the girl's surname(s), but because the author introduces them late, the reader is never let in on the joke. It'd be as if, on the last page of the mystery, Poirot pulled the heretofore unknown murder weapon out of his pocket and used it to solve the case.
Every book in the world, starting with the oldest, most neglected, and ending with even the most modest of volumes, begins to wing its way toward the Amazon. That's pretty much the story.
Sladek writes well, and he writes this well, but there's not much there to this there.
Three stars, I suppose.
The Worm Shamir, Leonard Tushnet
The best science fiction incorporates real science, allies it with human interest, and makes clever predictions regarding the application of a new discovery. This story does all of these things admirably.
Professor Zvi Ben-Ari of Israel's Rehovoth research center is hot on a Biblically inspired trail. He is convinced that the legend of King Solomon's "Shamir", a worm used to shape rocks for use in an altar, has a kernel of truth. But what truth could it be? And if such truth exists, and it could be used for war, what then?
A thoughtful, atmospheric, humorous piece. Perhaps, as an Israeli, I am biased (or, shall we say, the target audience), but I quite enjoyed it.
Five stars.
Lost, Dorothy Gilbert
Poetry: an alien pilot, scouring the Earth for some kind of Arcadia, finds instead the fleecy flocks of Scottish Skye.
It didn't move me. Two stars.
View from Amalthea, Isaac Asimov
Inspired by a scene from the movie 2001, the Good Doctor's piece this month is about how the four big "Galilean" moons of Jupiter might look to an observer on the innermost satellite, Mimas. He details their size and brightness. As a bonus section, he talks about how the many moons of Saturn would look from the innermost satellite, Janus.
He never quite comes around to confirming that the shot of Jovian moons in the movie was plausible, nor does he explain that a moon one hundredth as bright as our Moon is still 100 times brighter than Venus (though that brightness is spread over a large disk, so it would look dim to our eyes). I chalk up those omissions to space concerns. As is, it's a handy article for those who don't want to have to do the math every time.
Satirist/thriller-writer Ron Goulart offers up an "if this goes on" adventure set in The Republic of Southern California some time around the turn of the next century. Hecker, an agent of the Social Work division of the police force is tasked to make contact with Jane Kendry, head of the left-wing insurgency, and find out if she's responsible for all the riots breaking out, even among the $100,000 houses and manicured lawns of affluent Orange County.
Along the way, he runs into hippie beach bums, an erstwhile Vice President and his Secretary of Defense, running a sort of revival (continuation?) of the arch-conservative John Birch Society, and finally, The Gadget Man himself, who runs the wheels within the wheels.
In tone, it's more grounded than Bob Sheckley's whimsy, more silly than Mack Reynolds' stuff. It's eminently readable, occasionally smile-inducing, suitably riproaring, and utterly forgettable.
Three stars.
Compare and contrast
In the end, Carlos and Folkman provide a shorter-length but replayable and consistent pleasure. F&SF this month is, for the most part, forgettable—but it takes longer to get through, and the nuggets of gold shine brightly.
Both have earned permanent places on my shelves, and I guess that's all one can ask for. And here, what's this? The back of F&SF has something most interesting. We'll have to try that out, too, won't we?
When you think "outer space", you don't usually think of weather. In fact, weather in space is a bit like weather on Earth: there's wind, turbulence, a steady rain, and occasional storms. Except that the wind and rain are the sun's ceaseless spray of charged particles along with their attendant magnetic fields. The storms are the result of solar flares, those sudden unsettled periods when fiery prominences reach out from the sun's surface.
These phenomena can even be sensed by humans—as aurorae where the solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, and as the crackle of static on a shortwave radio. For satellites and space travelers, the solar radiation, particularly during flares, can damage electronics and internal organs. There are thus a lot of reasons it would be practical to have a space weather report, just as we have a daily weather report down here on Earth.
Northern Lights, 1921, by Sydney Laurence
This is why the Pioneer series of solar weather satellites, the first launched December 16, 1965 and the latest launched on November 8th of this year, was created: to serve as long-term weather sentinels in space, the interplanetary equivalent of our TIROS weather satellites.
Prior to the launch of Pioneer 6 (no relation to Pioneer 5 or its predecessors save for the name), the mapping of the solar wind had been a strictly local affair. The Interplanetary Monitoring Platform satellites, Explorers 18, 21, 28, 33, 34, and 35, have all been launched in high Earth orbits to survey the solar wind between the Earth and the moon. This is in service of the Apollo program.
The aforementioned Pioneer 5 and interplanetary probes like Mariner 2 have made preliminary forays into true interplanetary space beyond the Earth/moon region, but those missions only lasted a few months. The interplanetary Pioneers will be on station for years.
Launched on Delta rockets (the direct descendants of the Thor-Able rockets that launched the first Pioneers toward the moon), Pioneers 6-9 (and eventually #10, next year), were hurled into orbits that parallel our own, but further out in the case of Pioneers 7, 8, and 9; a little closer to the sun in the case of Pioneer 6. The outer ones orbit a little more slowly while P6 zooms a little faster. As a result, they all spread out, making a necklace of stations around the sun.
Pioneer 6 was launched in 1965 during the lull in the sun's 11 year cycle called "the solar minimum". The hope was that we would get continuous data as the sun increased in activity, flaring more and more often. We have not been disappointed. On July 7, 1966, a big shock front from a solar flare enveloped Explorer 33. 45 hours later, Pioneer 6 was hit. Interestingly, because of the time delay, even though both probes were similar distances from the sun (but far apart in orbit, of course), it is believed those might have been the result of two different flares, or perhaps two disturbances from the same one.
When the Pioneers were launched, scientists had a basic idea of that the solar wind looked like the spiral spray of a sprinkler head, this caused by the 28-day rotation of the sun. But the instruments onboard the sophisticated Pioneers afforded much more detailed analysis of these streams and fields. The Pioneers have found that the local magnetic fields will suddenly flip every so often. Their microstructure is like woven filaments, far more complicated than we had previously conceived.
High-level view of the "sprinkler" spray of the solar wind
Pioneers 7 and 8 sailed through the Earth's magnetosheath, that magnetic shadow formed as the sun's wind interacts and deflects around the Earth. Comparing their results to the closer-in Explorer 33, they found that this shadow tail gets more diffuse, more like the background interplanetary wind at greater distances, which is what one would expect.
The Earth's magnetic field (you can see the figure 8 Van Allen Belts) and the long, trailing, magnetosheath.
The Pioneer satellites are well-placed for more than just solar science. Pioneers 8 and 9 are equipped with cosmic-ray telescopes designed to measure the chemical composition and sprectra of the galactic wind—the higher-energy rain of particles from beyond our solar system. But the coolest use of the Pioneers so far (to me) is when Pioneer 7 was used to measure the lunar ionosphere. On January 20, 1967, the moon "occulted" (blocked) the space probe, as seen from Earth. Radio waves were beamed from a 150-foot dish run by Stanford past the edge of the moon. They found that the scattering that resulted can't be explained just by the physical rocks of the lunar surface. There must be a tenuous "atmosphere" above the moon, at least on the sunlit side, created at high altitudes by interactions between the solar wind and the surface of the moon.
There's actually a lot more, esoteric stuff that's way above my head. And there will be plenty more as the Pioneers will probably keep going for many more years. Though they haven't gotten much press, I think these are some of the most exciting missions to date. Stay tuned!
My, what big…rockets you have!
Three years ago, I made a brief announcement about the launch of a new Soviet probe, one so enormous that its size alone had ramifications for the future of the Communist space program. Proton, launched July 16, 1965, massed a whopping twelve tons, making it the biggest single object put in orbit until the November 1967 launch of Apollo 4. That means that the USSR has a Saturn-class rocket in its stable, which is why the concerns about an imminent moon mission have grounding.
Since Proton 1, three more Protons have been sent into orbit, the latest just two days ago on November 16th. Proton 4 weighs seventeen tons, which will beat all records—at least until Apollo 8 goes up in December.
Why are they so heavy? Because they carry heavy instruments. Protons 1 and 2 included a gamma-ray telescope, a scintillator telescope, and proportional counters. These counters were able to determine the total energy of each super-high energy cosmic particle individually, a capability no prior satellite had possessed, measuring cosmic rays with energy levels up to 100 million electron volts.
In addition to the above equipment, the fourteen ton Proton 3 was also equipped with a two-ton gas-Cerenkov-scintillator telescope. Its goal was to attempt to detect the "quark", a brand new theoretical sub-particle that, according to theory, makes up all atomic particles. Presumably, Proton 4 mounts a similar device with refinements.
Unlike most Soviet satellites, whose missions are shrouded in secrecy, data from the experiements onboard the first two Protons have produced at least five scientific papers on cosmic rays. I haven't seen anything on Proton 3, but astronauts on Gemini 11 managed to snap a picture of it in September 1966!
Will the advanced experiments on Proton 4 produce a scientific bonanza to rival that of the Pioneers? Only time will tell. For now, the papers are more obsessed with the rocket than the satellite.
A school for young wizards: What could possibly go wrong!
I wanted to like last year's City of Illusions, but the book fell flat. However, I saw the potential in Ursula K. Le Guin as a writer. Her ideas in the book were good, it was the execution that was lacking, so with her latest book out, A Wizard of Earthsea,I figured I’d give her another try.
Ged is an ambitious young wizard with a hunger for knowledge and power. The book follows his journey from childhood into adulthood, first starting when he attends a school for wizards. There he learns the basics of magic, makes friends and a rival. He also unleashes a dark being that wants him dead, but thanks to magic protection around the school, he is safe for the time being.
It isn’t until Ged graduates and becomes a practicing wizard for various villages that he really learns the hard lessons of magic. Now outside the protection of school, he is pursued by the dark being, eventually forced to turn and fight it, putting his skills to the ultimate test.
Fantasy as a genre doesn’t excite me as an adult, as it is often too whimsical and too escapist, too detached from our own world. A Wizard of Earthsea managed a careful balance, with an attention to the laws of magic and how it is able to be used. Wizards can only use so much magic at a time, and overexerting oneself or attempting a spell higher than one’s skill has physical consequences, causing wounds to appear on the body. Throughout the book, we see Ged test these limits, only to end up in lengthy recovery each time. Eventually, he does go too far and ends up permanently scarring himself.
I liked the concept of true names: learning the true name of a creature, plant, object or place is the key to all spells in this world. Even people have true names that they keep secret, instead using an alias in day to day life. While Ged is the main character’s true name, and the narrative refers to him as such, in dialogue he is called “Sparrowhawk” by other characters. I loved the intimate moments of friendship when true names were exchanged, showing a great amount of trust between characters.
Ged makes a compelling main character, with his distinctive flaw being his own hubris. Time and again, he tries magic that is way above his level only to be hurt. He attempts to raise the dead, despite knowing that it can’t be done, and suffers the consequences. It's because of his hubris that a dark creature is brought into the world who specifically hunts him, creating the main conflict of the book. But we’re shown that he has other values. He isn’t greedy. When he fights the dragon, his only motivation is duty to the town he serves. When the dragon offers him some of his treasure as a reward, he declines. Most of the time when Ged overexerts his magic, it isn’t in pursuit of fame. Ged truly wants to help people, even when it’s past his capabilities.
You know it's a good book when there's a map
With this book, I finally saw what I knew Le Guin was capable of as a writer. She's always created compelling unique worlds readers want to immerse themselves in, but now her writing can back up her ideas. Maybe because this is her first foray into juvenile fiction or perhaps she is simply growing as a writer.
I look forward to what she writes next.
Four stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
Tomorrow and Yesterday
The latest Ace Double (H-95, two quarters and a dime at your local drug store paperback rack) contains one novel looking forward in time, and one collection glancing backwards at the author's recent career.
We begin with a brilliant mathematician from California sneaking around through a remote area of Wisconsin, ready to kill a man. We cut away from this scene to find a government agent from Washington, D.C., in Los Angeles, preparing to assassinate the richest man in the world.
Why all this homicidal intent?
Flashbacks tell us what's going on. John Androki is a fellow who shows up out of nowhere. He convinces a rich guy that he can predict exactly how stocks will move up or down in the future. The millionaire sets him up with some cash in exchange for the information. Androki goes on to not only be the wealthiest person on Earth (yep, he's the intended target of the government assassin) but to wield immense political power all over the world.
Our protagonist is Bertram Kane, a brilliant mathematician (yep, he's the guy stalking a man in Wisconsin) who is working on a theory of multiple dimensions. He's a widower who's having an on-again off-again affair with Anita Weber, an art professor. His buddy is Gordon Maxon, a professor of psychology.
Maxon is convinced that Androki can perceive the future (hence the novel's title.) He calls him a downthrough, a word that's new to me. Kane isn't convinced, but when Weber dumps him for the incredibly rich and powerful Androki, he becomes suspicious.
Things get scarier when other mathematicians working on multiple dimensions are murdered. Coincidence, or is Androki arranging for their deaths? And is Kane next on the list?
You may figure out the main plot gimmick, which explains why Kane is out to kill a completely innocent man. (The government assassin's motive is less mysterious. Androki is changing America's relations with other nations in ways the United States government doesn't like.)
Basically a suspense novel with a science fiction gimmick, the plot creates a fair amount of tension, although parts of it are talky. There are quite a few murders along the way, and a pretty grim ending.
Three stars.
So Bright the Vision, by Clifford Simak
Cover art by Gray Morrow.
Four stories, dating from 1956 to 1960, by a noted author appear in this volume.
First printed in the June 1960 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, this lighthearted yarn starts with a huge agate appearing in a guy's yard, along with the tiny critters mentioned in the title. Chaos ensues.
The Noble Editor gave it a lukewarm review when it first appeared, and that's fair. It's a pleasant enough bit of gentle comedy, but hardly profound.
The April 1958 issue of Infinity Science Fiction is the source of this oddly titled (and odd) story.
An elderly fellow collects stamps from alien worlds, piling them up in his rat's nest of a home. Some of the stamps are actually made up of living microorganisms. When mixed with broth made by an overly friendly neighbor, they jump into action and start organizing the guy's messy collection.
There's a strong resemblance to the previous story, which also had tiny creatures helping folks at first, but going a little too far. This one is a lot stranger than the other one, and a little more complex. (I haven't mentioned the role played by stuff that the old man receives from an alien pen pal, or what the weird title means.) Interesting for its eccentricity, if nothing else.
The August 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe supplies the story that gives the collection its title.
At a future time when Earth is in contact with several alien worlds, the only thing of value humans can supply is fiction. Other beings don't make up things that aren't true, and they're fascinated by the concept.
The fiction is created via programmed machines, with a little human input. Writing by hand (or pencil, pen, or typewriter) is considered old-fashioned, and even vulgar.
The plot follows the misadventures of a so-called writer who has fallen on hard times. His machine is on its last legs, and he can't afford a new one. A fellow writer's secret leads to a sudden decision.
Much of the story consists of discussions of the importance of fiction. The automated fiction machines seem intended as a dark satire of uninspired hackwork. It's clearly a heartfelt work, and the author manages to convey his passion.
This yarn comes from the pages of the September 1956 issue of Science Fiction Stories.
A newspaper reporter investigates some odd events. There's the sudden, seemingly merciful death of someone suffering from a terminal illness. A scientist's papers are rearranged, giving him the clue he needs to complete his work. The reporter suggests, in a joking article, that these and other happenings might be the work of brownies. He's not too far off the mark.
Once again we have small beings helping humans. This time their efforts are entirely benign, unlike the golden bugs (who ignored people completely, and only worked for their own goals) and the microorganisms from the alien stamp (who went a little too far in their effort to organize things.) This is a sweet, simple little story, benefiting from the author's own experience as a newspaperman.
Three stars.
The title story is definitely the highlight of the collection. As a whole, that bumps the book up to three and one-half stars.
There's no question that Star Trek is a bona fide phenomenon. Now in its third season (and so far, quite a good season it is), it is a universe that has launched several dozen fan clubs, most with their own 'zines, many with Trek-fiction included. Professional tie-in merchandise is booming, too, from the AMT model kits of the ships in the show, to Stephen Whitfield's indispensable The Making of Star Trek, to Gold Key's dispensable comic book.
The latest release is the very first (that I'm aware of) professional original Trek story, Mission to Horatius by none other than SF veteran Mack Reynolds. That a familiar name should be tapped to write Trek tales is not a surprise. Episodes of the show have been written by SFnal talents Norman Spinrad, Ted Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Jerome Bixby; and James Blish has written two collections of episode novelizations (well, noveletizations).
So how does Reynolds' effort rate? First, let's look at the story:
The Enterprise has been out on patrol so long that ship's stores are low and the crew is beginning to suffer from "cafard". This malady is a kind of isolation sickness that can lead to mass insanity. Before the ship can return to starbase, however, it receives a distress call from the Horatius system just beyond the Federation.
There are three Class M planets in the system, all inhabited by pioneers who don't want to be Federated. They are the primitive society of Neolithia, which operates in bands and clans; the theological autocracy of Mythria, controlled by a happy drug called "Anodyne" (a la "Return of the Archons"); and the Prussian military state of Bavarya. This world is the most dangerous, as they have designs on conquering the Federation, and they are building an army of clones ("Dopplegangers") toward that end.
Uncertain as to from which planet the distress signal originated, Kirk leads a landing party composed of his senior officers to each planet in turn. Meanwhile, the strings on Uhura's guitar break one by one, and Sulu's pet rat gets loose. Cafard causes 40 crew members to be put in stasis. It's not a happy trip. But in the end, it's a successful one when Kirk finds the that Anna, the daughter of "Nummer Ein" on Bavarya, summoned the Enterprise to thwart her father's nefarious scheme,
Well. There's quite a lot wrong with this book. Reynolds makes serving on the Enterprise feel like the worst duty in the galaxy. Maybe this is realistic, but from what we've seen, the crew isn't this unhappy. As for "cafard", if our nuclear submarine crews don't suffer from such issues, I can't imagine a crack Starfleet crew would.
Reynolds' characterizations are only cursorily accurate. Indeed, Mission feels more like a lesser story in his Analog-published United Planets series of stories, featuring a decentralized set of worlds with every kind of government imaginable. There's an undertone of smugness as Kirk destroys one society after another—first by beaming down an anodyne-antidote into the Mythran water supply (if Scotty can manufacture ten pounds of the stuff in ten minutes, why can't he synthesize new strings for Uhura?), and then by destroying all five million dopplegangers on Bavarya…who may well have been sentient beings.
And finally, McCoy staves off cafard by making the crew believe that Sulu's rat has Bubonic Plague, and that it must be killed to save the ship. The rat does not have a happy ending.
Most eyeroll inducing passage: "Anna, womanlike, had been inspecting Janice Rand's neat uniform. Now she responded to the bows of the men from the Enterprise. She was perhaps in her mid-twenties, blond, and, save for a slight plumpness, attractive."
(emphasis added)
Even accepting that the target audience is on the younger side (given that the publisher is Whitman), this does not really excuse all the problems with Mission to Horatius. Moreover, the stirring introduction seems to have been written for an entirely different story!
There are pictures by Sparky Moore. They are adequate, but the characters don't look too much like our heroes.
Two stars.
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
In the run up to Christmas, I received a special treat through my letterbox: a second Orbit anthology for 1968. Will it do better than #3?
Orbit 4
Cover by Paul Lehr
Windsong by Kate Wilhelm
Starting with the series’ most regular contributor, Wilhelm’s story concerns Dan Thornton, an overworked executive. He is trying to solve the problem of an armored computer that should be able to act as a policeman. However, it cannot cope with the stress of unexpected situations. To get solutions he has been working with the psychologist Dr. Feldman to see if his dreams yield any ideas but, instead, he keeps dreaming about Paula. She was a free-spirited “windsong” from his teenage years, a person who could instantly analyse patterns to understand the world in ways others could not.
I have been noticing a pattern emerging with Wilhelm’s writing. She wants to experiment with form and content but rarely manages to deliver a strong balance between the two. In this case it is the style that works well, using the dream sessions in a way that would please the New Wave, but the actual plot leaves something to be desired, not really travelling anywhere fast and engaging in some obvious cliches.
Evens out at Three Stars
Probable Cause by Charles L. Harness
Harness recently returned from his parental leave and is back to writing, getting an even warmer reception this time around. Using his legal background, he brings us the discussion of a supreme court case, one where the constitutionality of a conviction depends on an interesting question. If a search warrant is granted based on a psychic reading, does this violate the fourth and\or fifth amendments?
Whilst some of the arguments here do not make much sense to me, I am neither a lawyer nor an American. As such, I am happy to bow to Harness’ knowledge of constitutional jurisprudence. What I question is the length of it all. At over 60 pages, this is the second longest story to yet grace the pages of Orbit. But it is just some justices sitting in a room discussing a piece of legal theory. This might be worth a vignette, but I needed more to justify a novella.
Two Stars
Shattered Like a Glass Goblin by Harlan Ellison
Rudy has finally gotten out of the army on medical, only to find his fiancée Kris in a marijuana-drenched squat in downtown LA. Is he just not “with it” anymore? Or is something more sinister going on?
If this was from an older writer, I would assume it was a crass attempt to be relevant. With Ellison I am willing to assume he is in earnest in writing a hippy horror story. It is not entirely clear if what we see really happened or if it just a massive drug trip, but that actually makes it work better for me.
Four Stars
This Corruptible by Jacob Transue
This is an author of which no information is given, nor one I've heard of before. Is it perhaps a pseudonym?
Thirty-five years ago, scientists Paul and Andrew departed on bad terms. Whilst the former went into seclusion, the latter became vastly wealthy. Andrew now seeks out Paul after learning of his new discovery, the ability to renew a person’s life.
This reads like a middling story from 15 years ago. Whilst some horrifying imagery raises it up, it is pulled back down by lechery.
Two Stars
Animalby Carol Emshwiller
A strange animal is kept in the city by its keepers. What could it be?
This is a stylistic piece that will depend on your tolerance for this kind of prose:
It was said, on the second day, that he did not look too unhappy. A keeper of particular sensitivity brought him both a grilled cheese sandwich and a hamburger so it might be seen what his preferences were, but still he ate nothing.
This reader was unhappy, feeling nothing.
One Star
One at a Time by R. A. Lafferty
In Barnaby’s Barn, McSkee tells tall tales. But what if they are true?
I feel about Lafferty’s writing the way Superman does about Kryptonite. As such, I struggle with him at the best of times. This one I found it impossible to read. I don’t like bar-room frames or tall tales, I was confused by the style and was generally perplexed throughout.
A subjective One Star
Passengers by Robert Silverberg
In an interesting take on the Puppet Masters concept, Earth has encountered strange creatures called passengers. They can “ride” anyone, at any time, with no way to detect or stop them. Once a Passenger leaves a person, the memory goes. Our narrator wakes up to find he slept with a woman whilst he was ridden. However, upon exercising in Central Park he believes he has found her, even though she doesn’t remember him.
Anyone who has read Silverberg of late knows of his strange recurring writings about young women, so I will not belabour the point here. Your rating will probably result from how you balance the concept against this tendency. I come down in the middle.
Three Stars
Grimm's Story by Vernor Vinge
The planet Tu is a world that contains almost no metals. Whilst some technologies, such as pharmaceuticals, hydrofoils and optics, have been able to develop, others, such as heavier than air flight, have not.
It is on this world that Astronomy student Svir Hedrigs is approached by Tatja Grimm, the science editor of Fantasie magazine. She has a dangerous mission for Hedrigs, to stop the destruction of the last complete collection of Fantasie.
In less skilled hands this could easily have been contrived and fannish. Instead, Vinge spins a fascinating intricate plot and fully imagined world, touching on a number of interesting themes with complicated characters. It stumbles a little at the very end, stopping it from gaining a full five stars, but still very good.
A high four stars
A Few Last Words by James Sallis
Hoover is beset by bad dreams. He decides to head to Doug’s coffee shop where we learn from them why the cities are now so empty.
Well written and atmospheric, appealing to this sufferer of parasomnia.
Four Stars
Continuing a steady Orbit
Once again, Orbit contains some of the best and worst of SF for me. This issue more than most, though, is going to be a subjective one. So much is based on style that it cannot help but appeal to personal taste. I know others have considered Animal among the best and Grimm’s Story among the weakest. Whatever your tastes, I think there will be something in here for you to chew on.
This completely passed me by on first release but an ad for it from the Science Fiction Book Club in last month’s New Worlds was enough to convince me to get it. But was it worth me trialing a membership from them?
The so-called “end of the universe” is an area where physical laws as we know them break down. Sometimes this abstract nothingness recedes, sometimes it expands and swallows galaxies, leaving impossible creations in its wake. The Warden Corps have been set up at its current edge to monitor and explore the strange phenomena.
Among those who come to the current planetoid of the Warden Corps is Helena Kraag. Whilst the daughter of one of the richest men in the galaxy, she has become withdrawn from people since the loss of her mother. At first, she attempts to look straight into the nothingness and loses her sense of identity. In spite of this she still travels with the rest of the crew into this impossibility.
Unfortunately, their Heisenberg shields fail as they enter. As you can probably guess, things start to get strange.
Now, you might expect this to just then be a kind of surreal trip, a la Alice in Wonderland or Phantom Tollbooth. However, what Joseph produces is a kind of fractured character exploration. As we move through these different bizarre situations we learn more about each of the members of the crew and gain understanding of what motivates them.
There are so many delicious details. Initially this looks like it is going to be some kind of 19th Century comedy of manners, but we soon learn this has been carefully set up. Rather it is a kind of conditioning, one to allow the fliers to maintain a solid form of identity. Even when it feels like I am reading the lyrics to I Am The Walrus, there is clear intent and structure behind it.
Joseph is also a master of language and you feel yourself getting knowledge and beauty within the surreality. For example:
Everything and nothing had both happened and not happened; time was as broad as it was long; space was neither here nor there; the loop of eternity threaded itself through the eye of zero.
This kind of sentence could have been gibberish. But the way he phrases it and following the scenarios we have gone through, I absolutely understand what he is getting at.
I could go through all the characters and scenarios to explore the meaning behind it, but I think it is better to take the journey yourself. As Helena says, it is “like falling through the hole in the zero.” It may not be something that is at once fathomable but it is a new experience worth having.
Although primarily known as a poet, he clearly understands science fiction well and has an affinity for it (see, for example, the poem "Mars Ascending"). Here is hoping for more such forays.
Moondust by Thomas Burnett Swann takes place in and around the ancient city of Jericho. Swann’s Jericho is a poverty-ridden city ruled by the Egyptians, its denizens apprehensive about the steady approach of the Wanderers, a flood of former slaves absconding from Egypt.
Bard ekes out a meager existence in this city with his mother and beautiful younger brother Ram. Ram is stolen one night and replaced by an unbecoming changeling. Bard accepts the fat, ugly Rahab and comes to think of her as a sister until years later when an elusive, feline creature known as a fennec arrives. Rahab then magically transforms into a beautiful woman with wings and disappears one night.
Determined to rescue Rahab, Bard enlists the aid of his friend, Zeb. Together they track Rahab down to the underground city, Honey Heart, where the fennecs rule as gods and Rahab’s kind, the People of the Sea along with beautiful human males–including the long lost Ram– are docile slaves to the fennecs. Bard and Zub must now find a way to wrest Rahab from the insidious control of the fennecs and make it out of Honey Heart alive.
Moondust is a highly imaginative and reasonably interesting story but I did not—could not bring myself to enjoy it. At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what bothered me about this novel. Then it finally occurred to me. This book has no soul, no humanity. Moondust feels like a book written from the clinical lens of a white Westerner who thinks he’s better than the people he’s writing about.
Apparently, people living in poverty must always be dirty and have very little regard for personal hygiene. If humans own slaves, those slaves must be black. What else could they possibly be? Beautiful women are nothing but whores. Fat people are ugly, and the Israelites had very big, very ugly feet.
I believe these small details were meant to add color to the story’s world, but obviously originate from a place of thinly veiled disdain.
The main character, Bard, is not one with whom I could sympathize. His little brother is stolen—kidnapped in the dead of night. Even though Bard bemoans the loss, not once does it occur to the self-absorbed nincompoop to go looking for his five-year-old sibling. Instead, he magnanimously accepts the supposedly fat, ugly changeling named Rahab left in his brother’s place as a sister and simply carries on with his life as if that makes any sense.
Years later, when Rahab literally sheds her “ugly” skin and becomes a beautiful creature of a woman, she then becomes a harlot. What else could she possibly become?
When Rahab disappears, summoned back to the underground city of Honey Heart by the fennec, Chackal, Bard immediately enlists the aid of his friend, Zeb and races off in search of his beloved sister. This raises the question of why he was so desperate to save the sibling unrelated by blood–who left voluntarily–but had possessed no inclination to go off in search of his biological brother, Ram.
Once Bard and Zeb descend into Honey Heart, the story loses all coherence for me. The contrived mish-mash of magic, ancient Eastern culture, and biblical myth falls short of a finely woven tale. Moondust merely rankled.
If I’ve learned anything from Swann it’s that you can learn the history and possess infinite academic knowledge of a culture but your words aren’t going to touch anyone if you can’t actually feel the soul—the humanity of the people.
Three Stars
by Jason Sacks
One Before Bedtime by Richard Linkroum
What an odd novel. One Before Bedtime is part mad scientist novel, part social satire, part speculative fiction, and part self-centered character rationalization.
I'm not sure this is a good book, per se, but is certainly odd.
See, in a way, this book is all about the social satire. It's about Jeff Baxter, a kid just home from Vietnam, where he's seen some stuff, man, and who has gone back to work at his a pharmacy in his small midwestern town. Jeff just has one minor problem: his skin is in rough shape and he needs for it to clear up so his girlfriend can be happy. Thankfully (perhaps), the pharmacist turns out to be a tinkerer. Cortland Pedigrew has his own set of chemicals and other tools in the basement of the pharmacy. Pedigrew invents a pill which can clear Jeff's skin.
There's just one problem. The pill somehow turns Jeff's skin from White to Black.
And there the troubles begin.
Because Jeff's girlfriend, Peggy, is a bit of a militant and freedom fighter. She walks around everywhere barefoot and speaks at rallies for Black rights and sings folk songs and reminds one of someone like Joan Baez in her steadfast commitment to the hottest social issues of the day. (She probably wouldn't have cared about Jeff's skin, either, but the poor guy was too self-deluded to notice.)
As the story goes on, Jeff, Peggy and several other characters find themselves mixed up in campus protests, urban riots, and unreasonable hatred. Along the way they're forced to see their own prejudices – often reflexive and instinctive – and, well, pretty much stay the same people they were before the events in this book start.
On top of all the oddball problems I've just described, this 168-page quickie is written from different perspectives. We get no fewer than four different approaches to this character's story, each exceeding the previous one in its banality and strange affect. I kept wondering, over and over, how dumb these characters are, how stuck in their idiotic ways they are so they can't actually see the world differently than they did before their loved one was turned black?
Of course, that's also all part of author Linkroum's goal here, I'm sure. It's clear from his approach that he's interested in exploring the idea that racism is arbitrary and simple-minded, that mere skin color is not a diffentiator of the worth of a person, and that our present great national troubles are as absurd as his chracters all act here.
If only Mr. Linkroum had been more satirical, more biting in his humor. Instead the plot of One Before Bedtime all feels a bit undercooked, a bit bland and a bit too on-the-nose for it to really work for me.
I tried looking up Richard Linkroum in my collection of science fiction mags and found no other examples of his work. This is despite the fact that the book was published in hardcover by J.P. Lippincott, a reputable publisher. Finally I was tipped that there's a TV producer who goes by Dick Linkroum who might be our author here. That makes sense because One Before Bedtime reads like a bad episode of the old Twilight Zone: a bit undercooked and way too preachy.
After several weeks in science fiction's New Wave, Star Trek returned last week to its roots—specifically, the pages of Astounding Science Fiction. Those who read Robert Heinlein's Universe when it was serialized in the 1940s or the novelized version, Orphans in the Sky in the early '50s, will be thoroughly familiar with the plot of the latest Trek episode.
We start in medias res: the Enterprise is under fire by a cluster of missiles. After dispatching them with phasers, Captain Kirk orders the ship to investigate the source. On the way, Dr. McCoy gives Kirk a bombshell announcement—McCoy is dying from a terminal disease and has one year to live.
"I'm (about to be) dead, Jim."
In short order, the Enterprise arrives at the missiles' point of origin, which turns out to be a large asteroid. It looks just like the one "The Paradise Syndrome", and the parallels do not stop there. For the asteroid is actually hollow and has engines. It's a generation ship (a sort of slower-than-light space ark on which people will live and die for centuries) called Yonada, and the people onboard have lapsed to primitivism, unaware that they are even on a mobile vessel. The ship is on a collision course with the highly inhabited world, Darin 5. Impact date: about a year hence.
For the walnut is hollow, and I have eaten the pith.
Kirk, Mr. Spock, and McCoy beam down to investigate, because, of course, it's always those three these days. They are taken prisoner by a bunch of mooks in parti-color sheets led by the beautiful Priestess/Queen Natira, and presented to The Oracle. This is a black monolith with a camera eye and a menacing voice (pretty sure it's the versatile Jimmy Doohan, once again) who zaps the Federation trio to let them know what he's capable of.
The Yonadan handshake.
When the three awaken, McCoy is the most affected thanks to his illness. Upon learning about McCoy's condition Spock grips Bones' shoulder with an intensity that belies his stoic demeanor. They are clearly very close friends, bickering aside.
"Put your hand on my shoooouldeeer…."
Queen Natira is quite taken with Bones and candidly asks if he'll be her mate. It's all very sudden, but if you reverse the sexes, it's actually not unusual for the screen—after all, James Bond seduces even more quickly. Anyway, since Bones digs Natira and he only has a year left, why not? Meanwhile, Kirk and Spock monkey around in the Oracle's room and get sentenced to death for blasphemy. They are saved by McCoy's intervention and beam back to the ship, leaving McCoy behind at his request. As part of his citizenship rite, Bones is implanted with The Instrument of Obedience, a subcutaneous pain inducer installed in a person's left temple.
Kirk and co. are about to warp away from Yonada on the direct orders of an Admiral, when Bones calls the ship on his communicator. In the Oracle room, McCoy has seen a book that contains all the knowledge of the folks who built Yonada, a super-advanced race called The Fabrini. He thinks it has the key to getting the ship back on course so it won't hit Darin 5. But as he relays this information, his Instrument begins to glow, and Bones collapses.
"Chicago Mobs of the 1920s?"
Excedrin headache #1701
Kirk and Spock beam back to Yonada, the latter extracting McCoy's Instrument, the former convincing Natira of the truth of her situation. They all confront the Oracle, who is displeased, but as we've all guessed, he's just a computer and easily deactivated. Kirk and Spock get the asteroid back on course (but the destination is still, apparently, Darin 5) and the day is saved. Natira asserts that, much as she loves Bones after the 38 minutes they've spent together, she must stay behind with her people and guide them, now that she knows the truth. But McCoy can catch up with her in a year when they reach their goal.
There's not too much to say here. I enjoyed the return to classic SFnal fare, and I particularly liked Natira, who is bold but reasonable, and there's no "a woman?" reaction to her leading her people. I guess Kirk learned his lesson from "Spock's Brain." It's a pretty episode, particularly this great through-the-stairs shot as our heroes descent into the ark proper (which, as a watcher pointed out, also saved a lot of money since the rest of the set didn't have to be shown).
But the episode sort of plods. There is a bit of padding, which the show can ill afford given how much it tries to do in 60 minutes. My biggest issue is Kirk deducing that Yonada is somehow broken. How can he tell the Oracle doesn't plan to decelerate once the ship gets to Darin 5? And, of course, the Fabrini data tapes coincidentally having the cure to McCoy's illness, cheapening the whole "Bones is dying" plot.
Three stars.
Eve's Bitten Apple is a Hollow Fruit
by Amber Dubin
With a title including the words “I have touched the sky,” I expected the the writing quality in this episode to reach a bit higher in metaphorical heights. Unfortunately, the intellectual peak of this episode is the lofty language of the title. I say this because the plot appears to be a sex-reversed version of Adam and Eve.
At first blush, Natira seems to be an original character. A strong-willed priestess/queen who is a decisive and effective leader and emissary for the authoritative voice of the Ancients. However, this illusion of originality quickly fades when she is viewed through a biblical lens as Adam, the founder of humanity and the only one entrusted with hearing the Voice of God. While it is a slightly interesting spin to cast McCoy as Eve offering her the apple of knowledge, it’s a frustratingly over-done concept. I may be biased, as I also take issue with the biblical moral being that seeking knowledge is worthy of punishment, but I don’t see why this story needs to keep being told ad nauseum. And, more importantly, how is it that even though the woman is playing Adam this time, she’s still being punished?
Adam famously pointed the finger at Eve to avoid being branded with the title of ‘original sinner,’ and yet when Natira doesn’t pluck the apple herself, she is still painted with the same brush as McCoy. Also, I am not a fan of the fact that the Ancient Ones are once again an all-powerful race with the forethought to sustain their people for 10,000 years (a la the Eye-Morgs in “Spock’s Brain” or the Creators of “The Paradise Syndrome”) and yet their grand plan to support their people is an authoritarian, theocratic government with shock collars to keep their subjects in line? Again? Can all these ancient, powerful, alien races truly be that intellectually evolved when not one so far has established a system whose fabric doesn’t completely unravel at the slightest pull on a thread tugged by a single dynamic thinker? Did they truly expect to be able to exterminate every single person who ever suggested climbing the incredibly accessible fence posts on their containment unit? Did that actually work for 10,000 years? Is a species so devoid of curiosity even worth saving at that point? I’d argue no, but that’s speaking as someone who would have been eliminated from the gene pool immediately under those parameters.
For the world's a set, and I have touched the walls.
I did like that McCoy got his moment in this episode. I’m always refreshed when Kirk isn’t seducing every woman on screen with the power of being the main character. I also enjoyed seeing a woman maintaining strong leadership when she chooses duty and responsibility to her people over love of a stranger. The love at first sight concept was slightly more tolerable being presented from the perspective of a female pursuer, and it may only have raised my hackles since I'm a bitter old maid myself.
Overall I didn’t love this episode but it wasn’t horrible. I may be harping on it so because of the motif fatigue I’m experiencing after it followed such other innovative and unique episodes in this season. Though I do think that the poetic title earned it an extra half star above average.
3.5 Stars
Why to Try Touching the Sky
by Trini Stewart
Hello, my name is Trini Stewart, and I showed up to the Star Trek party in a similar fashion to how I arrive at most parties- unreasonably late, and with no idea what’s going on at the moment. My journey with Star Trek began recently with “Is There in Truth No Beauty?,” and now I am happy to be strapped in for the ride.
As the title of this week’s episode implies, “For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky” tells a story of questioning and exploring one’s reality, and does so effectively through the frame of a conflicted leader’s pursuit of objective truth.
The Priestess and Queen of the hollow world Yonada, Natira, is introduced with no clue that Yonada was actually a vessel. Natira clearly has no intention of questioning the stern punishments and vague promises of the Oracle, that is, until the Enterprise officers challenge the queen’s understanding of her world and its fate. The initial cracks in Natira’s worldview can be attributed to lowering her guard around Bones, as she is earnestly smitten with him the moment she sees him captured, and she dares to hope that “men of…other worlds hold truth as dear as (Yonadans) do.” Subsequently, Natira seems to be more receptive to questions about the Oracle from the foreigners, and, in a show of trusting McCoy’s testimony for Kirk and Spock, she openly defies the will of the Oracle to pardon them from a death sentence.
These subtle changes within the queen are suddenly imperative when she later faces Kirk, who insists he has a warning regarding the fate of her world. For Natira to acknowledge that her world is in peril is to reject that the Oracle knows what is best, let alone how merely listening to a truth that is not “Yonada’s truth” is precarious heresy in itself. In contrast to the Oracle’s mysterious promises, Kirk’s transparency and willingness to reason appeals to Natira, and though it is incredibly difficult for the queen to withstand the Oracle’s threats, she is convinced to confront her authority for the sake of her home. Natira pleads that she listened to the outsiders because they spoke the truth, and remarks her new understanding of truth, exclaiming, “Is truth not truth for all?” Even willing to die for the safety of her people, the queen exhibits her newfound reverence for objective truth in one last, defiant plea, “I must know the truth of the world!” before collapsing at the behest of the Oracle.
The truth will set your teeth on edge…
Ultimately, Natira’s new understanding of what is true shifts her relationship with McCoy; formerly enamored by McCoy to the point of locking him into a hefty vow of obedience, she opts to honor the intended course of the Generation ship and to hope for a fulfilling life for the doctor, even when he resists. It is Natira’s receptiveness to new ideas that reveals the state of her world and saves billions of people, thus revealing the importance of both appreciating different perspectives and reforming one’s own comprehension of the world around them.
On that note, I as a viewer can truly appreciate this episode’s call to challenge ourselves, to challenge authority, and to even challenge "truth". Now, more than ever, that "Law and Order" Nixon is about to be our next President.
At the very least, I can hope that between this week’s message and the pacifist musings of “Day of the Dove,” Star Trek watchers will reflect on how we react to political discontent in our personal lives. 3.5 stars.
Short Shrift
by Janice L. Newman
The scriptwriter crammed a lot into this week’s episode, and unfortunately the episode suffered for it. While the ideas introduced were intriguing and potentially poignant, the rate at which the story had to be told to fit within the time slot left me frustrated and unsatisfied. The pacing of the episode itself was fine, that is, it didn't hit the story beats too fast. But by its very nature, the story had too much to do and not enough space to do it in, which left the beats themselves feeling shallow or curtailed.
McCoy’s illness could have been a wonderfully dramatic plot point if it had been introduced in a prior episode or at the beginning of a two or three-part story. Instead, it falls flat. The illness feels like a contrivance and the solution feels horribly pat.
The romance between Natira and McCoy feels similarly forced. The scriptwriter did their best to make it plausible. One can say that McCoy’s knowledge of the limited time he has left to live drives his choices, or that he’s mostly manipulating Natira to save his friends’ lives, just as Kirk has done on many occasions. Yet the whirlwind ‘romance’ between Spock and the Romulan Commander in The Enterprise Incident had far more emotional impact, even when we knew or guessed that Spock was ‘faking’. McCoy’s and Natira’s romance just feels weird, almost a developing relationship shown in quick cuts.
"Goodbye, sweet what's-your-name…"
The background of Natira’s race could have been fascinating, if the author had been able to do more with it than the barest sketch. A ten thousand year-old race that sent a generation ship to the stars when its sun went nova is a compelling concept deserving of some screen time. The fact that they had medical advancements sufficient to cure Dr. McCoy’s illness but that their weapons weren’t advanced enough to hurt the Enterprise is suggestive and interesting.
I imagine multi-part stories are not what a network or syndicator wants. Being forced to show certain episodes in a certain order, all the while risking pre-emption or cancellation if a sports game runs long or a political speech comes on, must be anathema to broadcasters. They must want neat, tidy stories that fit within their time slot and don’t have any connection or major changes from episode to episode; in other words, interchangeable, truly episodic pieces that they can fit into whichever slot they want without worrying about audience retaliation. (Batman and soap operas seem to be the exception to this.)
Unfortunately, limiting the story to a tidy 50-something minute block means that no matter how good the acting and direction, no matter how hard the scriptwriter tries, some kinds of stories are going to get short shrift.
This was one of those stories. Or to put it another way, great ideas, mediocre execution.
Three stars.
Spring of Hope
by Joe Reid
“For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky” was the title of this week’s episode of Star Trek. The title is a mouthful but does a decent job of giving us a feel for what we saw in this entry. The title is one that evokes hope out of despair. This episode was a tale filled with many hopeful outcomes springing out of situations heading towards tragedy. In fact, despair and hope were so perfectly bookended by this airing that it would make your local librarian proud. Let’s examine a few ways that this was accomplished.
The opening shot was that of missiles flying through space heading for the Enterprise. Granted these missiles barely caused a concern for the crew of the powerful starship as they were dispatched with a quick command from Captain Kirk. No, the real despair inducing news came in the following scene where we learned that our beloved Doctor McCoy was inflicted with an illness that would kill him within a year. That he would die a lonely bachelor. This caused a tonal shift in every scene we saw McCoy in, giving a gravity to this scene, it perhaps being the last time that we might see our favorite TV doctor.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Bones, Kirk, and Spock were soon violently attacked by a mob, electrocuted and imprisoned. After that they were scheduled for execution due to committing crimes against the creators. Shortly after that they were forced off the alien world one crewmember short as greater than 2 billion lives hung in the balance. With so many worry inducing elements coming forth in an episode, it’s a wonder that any one of these tragedies didn’t become the focus of the entire episode. No, the beauty of this episode was that no desperate situation was left without hope for very long.
After being attacked and mistreated on the alien world the inhabitants quickly changed to welcoming them as friends, granting them free access to the entirety of their world. The lonely doctor found love on the alien world, meeting and marrying the priestess and leader of the people. He was then able to save Kirk and Spock from execution, getting their lives as a gift from his new wife. The ultimate hope-filled outcome is that not only do the billions of people find salvation, but also our favorite doctor is cured from the illness plaguing him at the start of the episode.
Sadly as the episode drew to a close we witnessed the parting of McCoy and his wife as she chose to stay with her people as they were finally heading to a new homeworld for themselves. Even this scene was given a happy ending as we soon learned that the Enterprise would be present as the people found their new world and that he would be reunited with his wife.
“For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky” was a well-acted episode, with great wardrobe, and a plot that felt original. It was refreshing to see McCoy be the object of feminine attention and DeForest Kelly's performance was the standout of the show.
Next year, Natira will get to wake up to this handsome face every morning!
Four stars.
[Come join us tomorrow (November 15th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]
On the first day of this month, a new movie rating system created by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) went into effect. Although the system is voluntary, filmgoers in the USA can expect to see a letter of the alphabet accompanying almost every movie.
This is very old news to those living in the United Kingdom, where a similar system has been in place since 1912. There have been some changes over the years, but currently the British ratings are:
U for Unrestricted (everybody admitted)
A for Adult content (children under 12 must be accompanied by adults)
X for Explicit content (no one under 16 admitted)
The new American system uses different letters, although they kept the scary X.
G for General audiences (everybody admitted, no advisory warnings)
M for Mature audiences (everybody admitted, but parental guidance is advised)
R for Restricted (persons under 16 not admitted without adult parent or guardian)
X for Explicit (no one under 16 admitted)
Gee, Magazines R Xciting!
In the spirit of the MPAA, let me experiment with offering my own similar ratings for the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic, in addition to the usual one-to-five star system of judging their quality.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
As with previous issues, the cover art for this one comes from the German magazine Perry Rhodan.
Hell Dance of the Giants, or something like that.
The fine print under the table of contents reveals that former editor Harry Harrison is now the associate editor, and former associate editor Barry N. Malzberg (maybe better known under the authorial pen name K. M. O'Donnell) is now the editor. I have no idea if this swapping of job titles really means anything.
As the cover states, this is a sequel to Hamilton's famous space opera novel The Star Kings, from 1949. (I believe there have been a couple of other yarns in the series, published in Amazing.) However, it's certainly not a short novel. By my reckoning, it's a novelette, not even a novella.
I haven't read The Star Kings (mea culpa!) so it took me a while to figure out what was going on. (The fact that several paragraphs near the start are printed in the wrong order doesn't help.)
Three guys escape from a planet in a starship stolen from aliens. One fellow is the main hero, a man of our own time who somehow wound up in a far future of galactic empires and such. Another is a man of that time. So is the third one, but apparently he used to be the Bad Guy in previous adventures. Now he's working with the two Good Guys for his own self interest.
It turns out there's an alien on the ship as well. It can control human minds, but only one at a time. The trio solves this problem by crashing into a planet.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The place is inhabited by nasty winged reptile aliens, who are part of an army of various extraterrestrials being collected by a Bad Guy to invade a planet ruled by the woman our time-traveling hero loves. Can he find a way to save her? Can he trust his former enemy? And what about those pesky mind-controlling aliens? Tune in next time!
This slam-bang action yarn reads like a chapter torn out at random from a novel. Besides starting in medias res, it stops before reaching a final resolution.
Hamilton is an old hand at writing this kind of space opera (they don't call him The World Wrecker for nothing!) so it's very readable. The former Bad Guy is the most interesting character (and he seems a lot smarter than the two Good Guys.) Too bad the story doesn't stand very well on its own.
Three stars.
Rated G for Good old scientifiction.
Ball of the Centuries, by Henry Slesar
Here's a brief tale about a guy who uses a crystal ball to see into the future. He warns a couple about to get married not to go through with it. Of course, they don't listen to him. Years later, they have the argument he predicted. The husband tracks down the guy and finds out the real reason he warned them.
That sounds like a serious story, but it's really an extended joke, with a double punchline. It's OK, I suppose, but nothing special, and a very minor work from a prolific and award-winning writer of fantasy, mystery, television, and movies.
Two stars.
Rated M for Matrimonial woes.
The Mental Assassins, by Gregg Conrad
Cover art by H J. Blumenfeld.
From the pages of the May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures, this story is the work of Rog Phillips under a pseudonym.
Illustration by Harold W. McCauley.
People who have been horribly maimed in accidents are kept alive and made to experience a shared dream world. The trouble begins when three of the twenty people develop evil alternate personalities. (As usual, the story thinks that schizophrenia literally means split personality.)
The physician in charge of the project asks the hero to enter the dream world and kill these doppelgängers. (This won't actually harm the real people, just eliminate their imaginary wicked doubles.) He gives it a try, but finds the experience so unpleasant he backs out of the deal.
The story then turns into a sort of hardboiled crime yarn, as the hero gets mixed up with a couple of mysterious women, a hulking bouncer, and two cab drivers who know more than they should. A wild back-and-forth chase ensues, partly on a spaceship, followed by a double twist ending.
You may be able to tell what's really happening as soon as the hero exits the dream world, but I don't think you'll guess the other plot twist, which is rather disturbing. This yarn reminds me of Philip K. Dick's games with reality, although it's not quite as adept.
Three stars.
Rated R for Really shocking ending.
The Disenchanted, by Wallace West and John Hillyard
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
This fantasy farce comes from the January/February 1954 issue of the magazine.
Illustration by Sanford Kossin.
The ghost of Madame de Pompadour shows up at the apartment of a publisher. Present also is the author of a novel about the famed mistress of King Louis XV. The ghost objects to what the writer said about her in the book, and demands that it not be printed. When the publisher refuses, she has her ghostly buddies uninvent things, leading to chaos.
Strictly aiming for laughs, this featherweight tale ends suddenly. As a matter of fact, because the usual words THE END don't appear on the last page, I have a sneaking suspicion part of the story is missing. [Nope. It's that way in the original, too! (ed.)] Be that as it may, it provides a small amount of mildly bawdy amusement.
Two stars.
Rated R for Risqué content.
The Usurpers, by Geoff St. Reynard
Cover art by Raymon Naylor.
The January 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures is the source of this chiller by Robert W. Krepps, an American author hiding behind a very British pen name.
Illustration by Leo Summers.
The narrator is a one-armed veteran of the Second World War. An old comrade-in-arms shows up and tells him a bizarre story.
It seems the fellow recovered from a serious eye injury. When his vision was restored, he saw that about half the people around him were actually weird, horrifying monsters in human disguise. He reaches the conclusion that beings from another dimension are infiltrating our own, intent on displacing humanity.
Things go from bad to worse when some of the creatures realize the guy can perceive them. They try to kill him, while he destroys as many of them as he can, leading to the violent conclusion.
This shocker is most notable for the truly strange and creepy descriptions of the monsters, each one of which has a different form. As an ignorant American, I found it convincingly British, although somebody from the UK might disagree. Overall, a pretty effective horror story.
Three stars.
Rated R for Revolting creatures.
The Prophecy, by Bill Pronzini
Like Henry Slesar's piece, this is a miniscule bagatelle about a prediction. A prophet who is always right announces that the world will end at a certain time on a certain day. When the hour of doom arrives, the unexpected happens.
Even shorter than the other joke story, this tiny work depends entirely on its punch line. I can't say I was terribly impressed. I also wonder why the magazine printed two similar tales in the same issue.
Two stars.
Rated G for Goofy ending.
The Collectors, by Gordon Dewey
Cover art by Barye Phillips.
My research indicates that somebody named Peter Grainger is an uncredited co-author of this story from the June/July 1953 issue of Amazing Stories.
Illustration by Harry Rosenbaum.
A very methodical fellow, who keeps track of every penny, tries to figure out why a small amount of money disappears every day. He runs into a woman who experiences the same phenomenon. It seems to have something to do with a vending machine.
The editorial introduction dismissingly says this story is . . . no classic, to be sure, it isn't even a minor classic . . . which seems like an odd way to talk about something worth printing. I thought it was reasonably intriguing. In this case, the open ending seems appropriate.
Three stars.
Rated M for Mysterious conclusion.
Unrated
As I mentioned above, the MPAA rating system is voluntary. No doubt a few movies will be released without one of the four letters. In a similar way, the stuff in the magazine other than fiction isn't really appropriate for rating.
Editorial: The Magazines, The Way It Is, by A. L. Caramine
Brief discussion of the rise and fall of science fiction magazines, with an optimistic prediction that they're on the way up again. A note at the end states that A. L. Caramine is the pseudonym of a well-known science fiction author.
Digging through old magazines, the only reference I can find to A. L. Caramine is as the author of the story Weapon Master in the May 1959 issue of Science Fiction Stories.
Cover art by Ed Emshwiller.
A glance at the magazine tells me that, in addition to a story by Robert Silverberg under his own name, there are book reviews by the same fellow under his pseudonym Calvin M. Knox. Given the way that single authors often filled up magazines with multiple pen names, I suspect that the mysterious A. L. Caramine is Silverberg as well, although I don't have definite proof of this.
2001: A Space Odyssey, by Laurence Janifer
One page article that praises the film named in the title, and says that Planet of the Apes is lousy. Just one person's opinion, take it or leave it.
The Rhyme of the SF Ancient Author or Conventions and Recollections, by J. R. Pierce
Parody of the famous Coleridge poem mocked in the title. It says that science fiction writers shouldn't go chasing money by writing other kinds of stuff. Pretty much an in-joke, I guess.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber
Mostly notable for a glowing review of Picnic on Paradise by Joanna Russ. May be the best-written thing in the magazine!
Good? Mediocre? Rotten? Xcruciating?
All in all, this was a so-so issue. The two star stories weren't that bad, the three star stories weren't that good. Not a waste of time, but you might want to listen to the current smash hit Hey Jude by the Beatles instead.
David Frost introduces the Fab Four as they perform the song on his television program.
As a Captain, James T. Kirk has always been known more as a soldier than a diplomat. In the same way that Captain Kirk was forced to move past his initial, violent, problem-solving instincts in "Spectre of a Gun," here, yet another great and powerful alien species drops the crew of the Enterprise into direct contact with a combative, unreasonable opponent, making him take a "diplomatic tiger by the tail" that Captain Kirk must use every tool in his skill set to tame.
The setup is masterfully crafted from the very beginning by what appears to be a solitary alien made of pure energy that presents as a wheel of twinkling lights. Twinkling alien energy, who I will refer to from now on as TAE, is not invisible, but takes pains to silently hover just out of direct line of sight from every group of combatants it takes interest in. The Enterprise does not notice TAE on its first appearance when they beam down to an uninhabited planet, searching for what was supposed to be the ruins of a recently destroyed colony described in a distress signal. Chekov remarks, in confusion, that his readings indicate that there was no evidence of a colony nor an attack. Before the crew has time to process this information, Sulu chimes in over the communicator, warning him that a Klingon ship is approaching. Said ship immediately starts showing signs of distress, quickly becoming disabled by internal explosions to which the Enterprise made no contribution.
Commander Kang, the Klingon starship captain, makes no attempt to understand his situation; he beams down and decks Captain Kirk, yelling that since the federation has committed an act of war against the Klingons by killing 400 of his crew and disabling his ship, he is owed command of the Enterprise. TAE glows a menacing red color, apparently delighted with the increase in hostility. Thus the stage is set before the first credits roll of this episode.
The episode's opening salvo
Captain Kirk displays his newfound diplomatic skills, engaging in dialogue with someone whose assault just knocked him flat on his back. When Kang again demands that Kirk cede control of the Enterprise, our captain calmly replies, “go to the Devil.” Kang smoothly retorts “We have no Devil, Kirk, but we understand the habits of yours,“ whom he intends to emulate by torturing crewmen until Kirk hands over control of his ship.
Suddenly, a strange look comes over Chekov’s face and he jumps at the Klingon commander, practically volunteering to be first on the torture block, incoherently yelling about needing revenge for his brother, Pyotr, who had been killed on the colony they never found. In another clever manipulation, Captain Kirk gets Kang to agree to cease torturing Chekov by promising to beam the Klingons aboard the Enterprise, assuring him that there will be no tricks once they are on the ship. Of course, phrasing it like this left a loophole where he wouldn’t be lying if beaming the Klingons up was the trick—they are stuck in stasis until guards can round them up. Back on the Enterprise, Kirk quarantines the angry Klingon landing party with their distressed ship's remaining crewmen stranded.
A gaggle of steaming-mad Klingons
Before our heroes can figure out what’s going, the Enterprise crewmen start falling one by one under the same spell of violent madness that seized Chekov down on the colony site. Unlike with the Klingon crewmen, this wave of violence is very out of character for the Enterprise crew, and they turn on each other using racist, species-ist and otherwise highly offensive rhetoric against each other, the likes of which hasn’t been used on earth in centuries at this point. Chekov even goes on a slathering rampage where he outright defies Captain Kirk and goes to attack the Klingons to avenge his slain brother. This strangeness becomes particularly significant when Sulu declares that Chekov doesn’t even have a brother, as he's an only child.
Chekov disobeys a direct order.
Captain Kirk does the best job of fighting through the madness in order to refocus each crewman one by one towards finding out the root of the issue at hand. It is eventually surmised that TAE is on board, spurring the crewmen to fight and feeding off the negative emotions when its manipulations work and they get at each other’s throats. It is soon discovered that TAE is even more dangerous than originally feared, as it not only can influence the memories and emotions of its victims, but it also has the ability to warp reality itself, healing the scars of the wounded and turning nearly every object at everyone’s disposal into swords, deliberately making every weapon just inefficient enough to prolong conflict and minimize potential fatalities.
Bread and circuses, redux.
In typical Kirk fashion, the seriousness of TAE’s threat doesn’t fully hit him until a female is affected; Kang’s wife, his ship's Science Officer, gets separated from the rest of the group and is set-upon by a completely rabid Chekov. He rips her clothes, but thankfully is interrupted by Kirk and the bridge crew before he can go further. Kirk is justifiably horrified that TAE would be more than willing to push his crew towards that kind of violence. After incapacitating Chekov, Kirk entreats Kang’s wife to join him in uniting her husband and the rest of the Klingons against the real enemy; and it is with great difficulty that he does finally change Kang’s mind and get him to call the rest of the Klingons to a truce. In the end, it’s Kang’s words that finally eject TAE from the ship, as he taunts ”we need no urging to hate humans… only a fool fights in a burning house”
United in defiance.
While it is obvious to see that this episode is once again making a political commentary of our time, this one doesn't rub me the wrong way because the character foils have been fleshed out enough to be likable. Straw men have a tendency to be hollow and weak, but Kang and his wife Mara are anything but that. The Klingons may be violent and aggressive on their face, but they justify their actions with a strong moral backbone and end up proving themselves capable of being reasoned with. Michael Ansara's tremendous presence of voice and body does a phenomenal job of making Commander Kang a formidable yet worthy foe. No slouch herself, Mara shows that she is a leader in her own right, making Kirk work almost as hard to change her mind as her husband's, along the way making some very solid points about Klingon foreign policy. If anything, the Klingons are made to be anti-heroes rather than villains, and in constantly having to take their side against his own men, Kirk shows us the value of humanizing one's enemy, even when that enemy is not human at all.
5 stars.
by Janice L. Newman
When entertainment takes a stance on politics or morality, it’s often a recipe for a bad story. There are plenty of classic parables and fables, of course, but when popular television gets involved in such things sometimes the lesson feels shoehorned in or the plot feels warped around the ‘message’ the writer wanted to send. For example, The Omega Glory and A Private Little War were both attempts to make a point about current political situations, and both were subpar episodes.
“Day of the Dove”, on the other hand, does it right.
This is not a subtle story, yet it maintains a clever mystery plot and dramatic tension right up to the end. The denouement carries a powerful message that I found both shocking and welcome. Shocking, because I didn’t expect to see such blatant anti-war sentiments expressed on prime-time TV. [Janice doesn't watch the Smothers Bros. (ed)] Welcome, because I feel the same way.
There are plenty of intense moments throughout the episode, but the message can be summed up in a few lines of dialogue:
KIRK: All right. All right. In the heart. In the head. I won't stay dead. Next time I'll do the same to you. I'll kill you. And it goes on, the good old game of war, pawn against pawn! Stopping the bad guys. While somewhere, something sits back and laughs and starts it all over again.
MCCOY: Let's jump him.
SPOCK: Those who hate and fight must stop themselves, Doctor. Otherwise, it is not stopped.
MARA: Kang, I am your wife. I'm a Klingon. Would I lie for them? Listen to Kirk. He is telling the truth.
KIRK: Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier that never questions orders.
(Kang looks at the weird light, then throws down his sword.)
KANG: Klingons kill for their own purposes.
There is so much conveyed within these few lines. In the context of the rest of the episode, they inspire all sorts of thoughts and questions:
“Question orders.” “Is it wrong to participate in unjust wars?” “Who is benefitting from our wars?” “Who stands to profit and has a vested interest in keeping a war going?” “Are the people with a vested interest also in authority? Do they have control over those in authority?” “Refuse to fight if a war is wrong.” “War may always be wrong.” “Total pacifism may be a possible path.” “If we do not stop hating and fighting, the hating and fighting will not stop.”
These are messages which, if spelled out clearly in almost any other kind of television show, would be unlikely to be allowed on the air. At a time when young men who choose to flee the country rather than accept being drafted are being convicted of treason, telling people to question orders and refuse to fight is risky. Yet the futuristic setting provided by science fiction makes it possible to convey these ideas without the hidebound network pulling the plug or insisting that it be changed. I’m just stunned that Gene Roddenberry let it through, especially after his reputed heavy influence on the script for A Private Little War. I’m not saying I want Star Trek to turn into a ‘message’ show, but I wouldn’t mind a few more episodes like this.
Five stars.
A Third Party
by Lorelei Marcus
As Janice put it, “Day of the Dove” is a ‘message episode’. It’s there to tell you something about life today under the guise of the possible future. Yet unlike my compatriots who saw a cautionary tale of ceaseless fighting in Vietnam and the larger Cold War behind it, I saw a different war entirely.
Star Trek has rarely shown racial tensions between humans and aliens of the Federation. When it is done, it’s for a very specific purpose, like Kirk aggravating Spock in This Side of Paradise. Even the Federation’s disdain for the Romulans and Klingons has less to do with xenophobia and more the fact that neither will agree to reasonable peace terms. Hence why the blatant hatred between not only human and Klingon, but also human and Vulcan, is so jarringly effective in this episode.
Star Trek is the ideal, bigotry-free future—Uhura and Sulu and even Chekov on the bridge are proof of that—but “Day of the Dove” is the closest it gets to reflecting the ugliness of racial tensions in our own world. Cloaked in the veneer of alien and human terms, I saw the hostility and lack of compromise inherent to the Democratic Convention this year, the hatred from man to man over superficial traits.
A scene from the Democratic convention—taken from the Nixon ad that aired during the episode.
Most of all, I saw small prejudices being stoked and inflamed by an outside force, turning anger boiling hot until it nearly exploded into bloody violence. I know that too well. Every step towards peace and equality we take gets slid back when another Wallace or Nixon comes along. Every injustice we commit against the Black man is another reason for him to take a rifle to the streets. Every school that fails to integrate is a generation of Whites who can’t see past the color of skin. And yet, that’s just how Wallace and his ilk want it. They benefit from it.
Wallace preaching hatred from the pulpit.
Perhaps that’s the scariest part: at least in the show, the alien seems to be fomenting hatred out of a need to feed, a necessity. Our politicians do it in the complete service of self-interest. And with the results of the election, tragically, we seem to be dancing right in the palms of their hands.
I often see shades of our world reflected in Star Trek, but never so viscerally. 4 stars.
Go to the Devil
by Joe Reid
“Day of the Dove” was this week’s episode of Star Trek. On first reading that title it evoked religious themes in my mind. I wondered if Star Trek was getting preachy again, the dove being the Christian representation of the Holy Spirit. Like in “Bread and Circuses” where the crew was jubilant that the people of the planet worshiped the son of God. When TV shows try to pass on spiritual virtues, they tend to do it in a ham-fisted way. “Day of the Dove”, although not perfect, does a decent job passing on two themes that I learned in my own religious training. One from the book of Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 12. The other from First Peter, chapter 5, verse 8. So permit me to put on my chaplain's robes as I explore the religious themes I saw in “Day of the Dove”.
Ephesians 6:12 says, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The crew of the Enterprise and that of the Klingon ship were made to think that they were enemies. Expertly manipulated and set upon by another, with the intent to have them fight. The real enemy was the outside force. A powerful alien entity that understood the fears, thoughts, emotions, and technology of each side to create opportunities for conflict. This scripture I quoted explains that no flesh and blood human is your enemy; we are all victims of outside forces that use us against one another. As hard as it was for Kirk and Kang to see that they were being used, it is so much harder for all of us to see that we are literally killing ourselves when we raise arms to harm others. All that does is satisfy the real enemy, that of our very souls.
The second verse that came to mind in this episode, 1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour”. At the start of the episode, Kirk told Kang to “Go to the devil!” when Kang slapped Kirk, accusing him of crimes, claiming the Enterprise. As they left that planet, we saw that Kang didn’t have to go to the devil, because a space devil went back to the ship with them. The alien, always near the action, remained just out of sight. It stalked the crew, looking for minds to twist to meet its ends. Kirk displayed powerful sobriety, breaking free from the influence of the alien. Although he could not see the alien, he was able to know of its presence and resist its influence. The message for us is that it takes sober vigilance to prevent wrong actions that may damage other’s lives. It was awareness of the enemy that helped Kirk stay disaster; it may be awareness that people are not the enemy that may help us.
Kirk prepares to preach to the choir.
This episode read like a sermon. One that encouraged brotherhood over bitterness. Which brings us to the close of the episode and yet another verse that came to my mind watching it. That was James 4:7. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” This was the method Kirk and Kang used to get rid of the unwanted alien influence. They stopped giving it what it wanted, stopped seeing each other as the enemy and told their dancehall mirror ball devil to leave the ship. With both Kirk and Kang saying GO to their devil.
In conclusion, “Day of the Dove” was well acted. It had great costumes and good characterizations of all characters. Sadly, the dialogue at one point was filled with exposition, explaining to the audience what the alien was even though no one explained it to them, which I never love. It caused me to knock the score down a couple of points, but that is to be expected when TV shows—and reviewers—get preachy.
Three stars
Only in the movies
by Gideon Marcus
Despite being a show set in the far future of the 22nd Century, Star Trek has always employed themes from our current era. This has never been truer than in episodes involving the Klingons, the chief adversary of the Federation for which Kirk's Enterprise is employed.
In Errand of Mercy, we saw Commander Kor and Captain Kirk stand shoulder to shoulder, united in their defiance of the superpowerful Organians, who had the temerity to deprive them of their "right" to fight. The threat of the Organians to demolish both adversaries should they escalate their conflict to a general war, was very much a metaphor for the atomic bomb—specifically the newly minted concept of "Mutual Assured Destruction."
Thus, "The Trouble with Tribbles", "Friday's Child", and "A Private Little War"—the Klingons and Federation now fight proxy wars, engage in cloak and dagger exploits, and occasionally skirmish one-on-one. That last title was very much a product of last year, when it looked like we might "win" in Vietnam. Kirk asserted that the only way to prosecute the conflict on the planet of Neural was to arm the hill people so they remain at parity with the Klingon-aided townsfolks.
Contrast that to "Day of the Dove". Kirk and the Klingon commander (beautifully portrayed by "Mr. Barbara Eden", Michael Ansara) once more stand back to back, but they are resisting the urge to fight. It is a beautiful bit of synchronicity that LBJ the night before airdate announced a full bombing pause on Vietnam after three years of incessance. I watched the episode with tears in my eyes: for once, the hope matched the reality. Maybe we were going to stop the cycle of violence after all.
Would that it could always be this easy.
But Trek is science fiction, and we still live in the real world. Dick Nixon won the election this week, South Vietnam has retracted its willingness to participate in the Paris peace talks, and the beat goes on.
This is the second episode in a row (the first being "Spectre of the Gun") that has featured a new Kirk, a diplomat first and a soldier second. I like this new Kirk. I worry that he will run afoul of his superiors, increasingly conflicted, as John Drake was when working for MI6, ultimately becoming The Prisoner. But at least he's fighting for peace, a fight I can 100% get behind.
It's not a perfect episode, a little heavy-handed in parts, but boy did it resonate.
Four stars.
[Come join us tonight (November 8th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]
It really looked like it was going to be a happy Halloween. On October 31st, President Johnson made the stunning announcement that he was stopping all bombing in Vietnam. This was in service to the Paris peace talks, which subsequently got a huge shot in the arm: not only were the Soviets on board with the negotiations, but the South Vietnamese indicated that, as long as they had a seat at the table, they were in, too.
The holiday lasted all of five days. In yesterday's paper, even as folks went to the polls to choose between Herbert Humphrey and Tricky Dixon (or, I suppose, Wacky Wallace), the news was that South Vietnam had pulled out. They didn't like that the Viet Cong, the Communists in Vietnam (as distinguished from the North Vietnamese government), were going to get a representative at the talks. So they're out.
It's not clear how this will affect the election. As of this morning, it was still not certain who had won . Nevertheless, it is clear that Humphrey's chances weren't helped by the derailing of LBJ's peace plans. If a Republican victory is announced, it may well be this turn of events led to the sea change.
Well, don't blame me. My support has always been for that "common, ordinary, simple savior of America's destiny," Mr. Pat Paulsen. After all, he upped his standards—now up yours.
Respite
Once again, a tumultuous scene provided the backdrop to my SFnal reading. Did the latest issue of Galaxy prove to be balm or bother? Read on and find out:
by John Pederson Jr. illustrating One Station of the Way
Evalyth, military director of a mission to a human planet reverted to savagery after the fall of the Empire, watches with horror as her husband is murdered, then butchered by one of the planet's inhabitants. Cannibalism, it turns out, is a way of life here; indeed, it is considered essential to the rite of puberty for males.
The martial Evalyth vows to have her revenge, tracking down the murderer, Mora, and taking him and his family back to their base, where they are subjected to fearsome scientific examinations. But can she go through with executing the killer of her husband? And does Mora's motivation make any difference?
There' s so much to like about this story, from the exploration of the agony of love lost, to the examination of relative morality, to the development of the universe first introduced (to me, anyway) in last year's A Tragedy of Errors. It doesn't hurt that it stars a woman, and women are integral parts of this future society, with none of the denigrating weasel words that preface the introduction of female characters in Anderson's Analog stories (could those be editorial insertions?)
This is Anderson at his best, without his archaicisms, multi-faceted, astronomically interesting, emotionally savvy.
Five stars.
One Station of the Way by Fritz Leiber
by Holly
Three humaniforms watch on cameloids as the star descends in the east. Sure enough, at a home in the east, a divine being prepares to impregnate a local female so that she will bear a divine child.
Heard this story before? There's a reason. But the planet of Finiswar is not Earth, the aliens are not remotely human, and the white and dark duo who pilot the spaceship Inseminator are anything but gods.
A little girl is told a bedtime story about a big computer that stopped doing its job right. That's because the machine couldn't think of casualties and war statistics as simple numbers, battle strategies as abstract puzzles. The problem is its personality; if the computer's mind could be reconciled with its function, the machine could work again. But can any mind be at peace with such a frightful purpose?
A simple piece like this depends mostly on the telling. Luckily, Goldin is up to the task. Four stars.
Subway to the Stars by Raymond F. Jones
by Jack Gaughan
Harry Whiteman is a brilliant engineer with a problem: he's too much of a "free spirit" to keep a job, or a wife. Desperate, when the CIA approaches him about a singular opportunity, he takes it, though the resents being bullied into it.
In deepest, darkest Africa, the Smith Company is working on…something. Ostensibly a mining concern, it produces no gems. On the other hand, whatever it is is important enough that the Soviets have based missiles in a neighboring country—pointed right at the company site!
Whiteman is hired, for his irreverence more than his ability, and begins work as a double-agent. Once on location, he finds the true purpose of the site: it's a switching station of an intergalactic railroad station! But it turns out that the folks at the Smith Company also have multiple agendas…
A mix of Cliff Simak's Here Gather the Stars (Way Station) and Poul Anderson's Door to Anywhere, it is not as successful as either of them. It takes too long to get started, and then it wraps up all too quickly. It's genuinely thrilling as Whiteman peels back the multiple layers of the Smith operation and the factions within it, and when the missiles do find their target, the resultant chaos is compelling, indeed. But then it turns into a quick, SFnal gimmick story better suited to Analog than Galaxy.
I think I would have rather seen Simak takes this one on as a sequel to his novel. Jones just wasn't quite up to it.
Three stars.
For Your Information: The Discovery of the Solar System by Willy Ley
As it turns out, the science article in this month's issue addresses two issues on which I've had keen recent interest. The first is on the subject of solar systems, and if they can be observed around other stars. Ley discusses how the gravity of an unseen companion can cause a telltale wiggle as the star travels through space, since the two objects orbit a common center of gravity (rather than one strictly going around the other).
In the other half of the article, Ley explains how atomic rocket engines work: shooting heated hydrogen out a nozzle as opposed to burning it and shooting out the resultant water out the back end—it is apparently twice as strong a thrust.
What keeps this article from five stars is both pieces are too brief. For the first half, I'd like to know about the stellar companions discovered through astrometry. He mention's Sirius' white dwarf companion, but what about the planets Van de Kamp claims to have discovered around Barnard's Star and so on? As for the atomic article, I'd like to know what missions a nuclear engine can be used for that a conventional rocket cannot.
Four stars.
A Life Postponed by John Wyndham
by Gray Morrow
Girl falls in love with cynical jerk of a boy. Boy decides there's nothing in the world worth sticking around for, so he gets himself put in suspended animation for a century. Girl follows him there. He's still a cynical jerk, but she doesn't care because she loves him. They live happily ever after.
I'm really not sure of the point of this story, nor how it got in this month's issue other than the cachet of the author's name.
Two stars.
Jinn by Joseph Green
It is the year 2050, and aged Professor Morrison, stymied in his attempts to make food from sawdust, is approached by a brilliant young grad student. Said student is brilliant for a reason: he is a Genetically Evolved Newman or "Jinn", with a big brain and bigger ideas. The student has solved Morrison's problem. However, another Jinn wants humanity to go to the stars, and he fears if the race gets a full belly, they'll lose interest.
The conflict turns violent, the point even larger: is there room for baseline homo sapiens in a world of homo superior?
Green doesn't paint a particularly plausible future, but there are some nice touches, and the points raised are interesting ones. I'd say it's a failure as a story but a success as a thought-exercise, if that makes sense.
So, a low three stars.
Spying Season by Mack Reynolds
by Roger Brand
We return, once again, to Reynolds' world of People's Capitalism. It is the late 20th Century, and the Cold War adversaries have reached a more or less peaceful coexistence. The greater challenge is existential: ultramation has taken away most jobs, and the majority of the populace is on the dole. How, then, to avoid stagnation for humanity?
In this installment, Paul Kosloff is an American of Balkan ancestry, one of the few in the United States of the Americas who still has a steady job, in this case, that of teacher. He is tapped by the CIA to go on sabbatical in the Balkan sector of Common-Europe. Ostensibly, his job is not to spy for the USAs, but to sort of soak in the culture of the area over a twelve-month span.
Very quickly, Kosloff finds himself entagled with an underground revolutionary group, with law enforcement, and with several fellows who enjoy sapping him on the back of the head.
Suffice it to say that all questions are answered by the end, the major ones being: why an innocuous pseudo-spy should be a target, why the CIA would send him on a seemingly pointless mission in the first place. In the meantime, you get a bit more history of this world and some tourist-eye view of Yugoslavia. In other words, your typical, middle-of-the-road Reynolds story.
Three stars.
Counting the votes
While not as stellar as last month's issue, the December 1968 Galaxy still offers a more satisfying experience than, well, most anything going on in "the real world". It clocks in at a respectable 3.45, which brings the annual average to 3.23.
Compare that to the 2.81 it scored last year, and given that Galaxy is once again a monthly, I think it's safe to say that, at least in one way, "Happy days are here again."
Just over a week ago I wrote about the Apollo-7 test flight – America’s successful return to space after the tragedy of the Apollo-1 fire. Just days after Apollo-7’s safe splashdown the Soviet Union also launched its own return-to-flight mission, Soyuz-3. As the Traveller noted in his recent commentary, like Apollo-7, Soyuz-3 represents the recommencement of the Russian manned spaceflight programme following its equally tragic loss of Soyuz-1 last year.
This is reported to be the official Soyuz-3 mission patch. It was apparently intended to be worn by Cosmonaut Beregovoi or at least flown during the mission, however it ia not clear if it was actually used
As readers know, the Soviet space programme is secretive about its activities. Soyuz-3, which was launched on 26 October, has been particularly mysterious for a crewed spaceflight. The mission was preceded by the launch of the un-manned Soyuz-2, although that launch was not announced until after Soyuz-3 was in orbit. What can we make of the little we know so far about this flight, which had a duration of just a little under four days?
New Cosmonaut, New Spacecraft
We know from information released or gleaned at the time of Soyuz-1 that this new Soviet spacecraft is large, capable of carrying at least three cosmonauts – although on this mission, just as with Soyuz-1, there appears to have been only one man aboard, Colonel Georgi Beregovoi.
Although not previously known to be a member of the Soviet cosmonaut team, Col. Beregovoi is a distinguished World War Two veteran, who was awarded the decoration of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1944. After the war he became a test pilot and is said to have joined the cosmonaut team in 1964. At 47, Beregovoi now becomes the oldest person to make a spaceflight, taking the record away from 45-year-old Apollo-7 commander Capt. Wally Schirra only weeks after he achieved it.
The few images of the Soyuz spacecraft available indicate that, unlike the Apollo Command Service Module, it has three sections: a ‘service module’ containing life-support and propulsion systems; and two other modules – one roughly bell-shaped and the other, attached to it, spherical – which both seem to be crew accommodation, given that press releases from the TASS newsagency have described the spacecraft as “two-roomed”.
The bell-shaped section seems to be the part of the spacecraft in which the crew return to Earth, protected by a heatshield. Interestingly, the service module supports a solar panel on either side, which must be folded within the launch shroud and extended once in orbit. The use of solar panels suggests that the USSR does not have the same fuel cell technology as NASA. However, it is also possible that the Soyuz is intended for missions in Earth orbit with an appreciably longer duration than a short trip to the Moon and back, as solar panels would be more efficient than fuel cells for that purpose.
NASA experts assume that, like Apollo-7, Soyuz-3 has been modified and/or re-designed over the past 18 months to address whatever issues have been identified as the cause of the loss of Soyuz-1. It is generally believed that Kosmos-238, which made a four-day flight in August, was an uncrewed Soyuz test flight in advance of the first mission with a crew on board.
How Many on Board?
Speculation and rumours abound as to how many cosmonauts were actually on board Soyuz-3. Official Soviet sources give the name of only one cosmonaut, the aforementioned Col. Beregovoi. However, a report in the armed forces newspaper, Red Star, has caused speculation that more than one cosmonaut may have been intended to be involved in the mission. In referring to the “crew” of Soyuz-3 the article used the plural when it spoke of cosmonauts who were planning to fly with Beregovoi.
Colonel Beregovoi during his training at Star City
Reporting about a meeting at the cosmonaut training centre “Star City” near Moscow, to mark the end of Soyuz-3’s training period, the Red Star article described a speech to the meeting by Colonel Beregovoi then said, “Others followed him. They spoke about the great work they had done and thanked their comrades. These in their turn wished them a happy flight, a good launching and a soft landing”. While this report could be taken to imply that more than one other person was expected to accompany Beregovoi on his flight, it may be that the “others” referred to were the mission’s back-up cosmonauts, since Soviet spaceflights apparently have two back-up crews.
Cosmonaut Beregovoi on the launchpad, apparently alone
An additional vague hint that there might be more than one cosmonaut aboard came Soyuz-3 came from a TASS news agency release referring to Beregovoi as the “commander” of the ship, a term that would seem unnecessary if he was the sole occupant of the spacecraft. Rumours with a more conspiracy-minded flavour have also suggested that one of Col. Beregovoi’s live broadcasts from space was filmed in such a manner that, while an empty seat could be seen on the cosmonaut’s left side, whatever was to his right was not visible, potentially concealing the presence of another crewmember. However, the angle may simply have been the result of a fixed camera, located to give whatever the Soviet mission controllers considered to be the best view of the spacecraft interior.
More than a Rendezvous?
The pre-occupation of Western observers with the possibility that there were other, unidentified cosmonauts on board Soyuz-3 stems from the comparatively basic activities reported as being carried out during the mission. True, the flight is assumed to have been a shakedown test along the same lines as Apollo-7, but the American craft nevertheless flew with a complete crew of three, including a designated Lunar Module pilot, even though a LM was not available for the mission. Yet the large Soyuz has officially flown with only a single crewmember. Does this mean that the Russians were still uncertain about the flightworthiness of the spacecraft and did not want to risk more than one life on the test flight? Or was a more ambitious mission planned that did not eventuate?
Apollo-7 carried out a range of complex manoeuvres and experiments during its test flight, while the only significant activities reported about Soyuz-3 were that it made two rendezvous with the automated Soyuz-2. Yet, an ambitious programme of spacecraft dockings and crew transfers had supposedly been planned for Soyuz-1 had that mission not struck trouble, and since October last year the USSR has apparently perfected the techniques of automated rendezvous and docking through the flights of Kosmos-186-188 and Kosmos-212-213.
Was an actual docking between Soyuz-2 and 3 planned, in addition to the rendezvous manoeuvres, with one or two additional crew members from Soyuz-3 transferring to the automated craft to return from orbit? Did the Soviets keep the presence of additional cosmonauts on Soyuz-3 secret to save face in the event that such a docking and crew transfer failed? Even if Beregovoi was alone in Soyuz-3, was it planned for him to dock with Soyuz-2 to demonstrate that a pilot could accomplish a manual docking, similar to the capabilities demonstrated by the crew of Apollo-7? TASS press releases about the mission were ambiguously worded and extremely light on detail, so – as usual with the Soviet space programme – it may be a very long time before we have answers to these questions.
The Mission as Reported
Although not announced until after the launch of Soyuz-3 (though my friends at the WRE report that it was detected by Western space tracking networks), the automated rendezvous target Soyuz-2 was launched on Friday 25 October, the day before the manned mission. Precision launch timing then placed Soyuz-3 into an orbit within seven and a half miles of its rendezvous target.
According to TASS, during its first orbit, Soyuz-3 “approached’’ to within 656 ft of Soyuz-2 using “an automatic system”, following which Cosmonaut Beregovoi manually effected a closer rendezvous. A second rendezvous was carried out on 27 October. This has puzzled Western space experts, who have said that they could see no immediate reason for such comparatively simple manoeuvres, which do not appear to represent any appreciable advance in Soviet space capabilities.
Soyuz-2 was remotely commanded to return to Earth after just three days. In what was presumably another demonstration of the Soyuz spacecraft’s redesigned landing system, TASS reported that the spacecraft’s re-entry was slowed by parachutes and cushioned “with the use of a soft-landing system at the last stage”.
It is unclear what activities Col. Beregovoi undertook during his final two days in orbit. Official TASS bulletins said only that the cosmonaut was “going ahead with his flight programme”, which apparently included conducting “scientific, technical, medical, and biological experiments and research”. The “research” may possibly have included observations of the Earth for meteorological and intelligence gathering purposes. The cosmonaut also made live television broadcasts from Soyuz-3, during one of which he provided a brief “tour” of the spacecraft interior. In a short, three-minute broadcast, Beregovoi was also shown thumbing through his log-book and adjusting his radio communications cap.
A still from the three-minute brodcast from Soyuz-3 showing Colonel Beregovoi
The flight was repeatedly said to be “proceeding normally”, with the Colonel “feeling fine” and the spaceship “functioning normally”. We did learn that Soyuz-3 moved to a new orbit after Soyuz-2’s de-orbit, and that the cosmonaut’s daily routine included 25 minutes of morning exercise before breakfast, but whatever else the mission may have actually accomplished remains a mystery.
Back to Earth
After almost exactly four days in space, Soyuz-3 returned to Earth, landing safely on the snowy steppes of Kazakhstan near the city of Karaganda. TASS reported that “After his landing, Georgi Beregovoi feels well. Friends and correspondents met him in the area of the landing”. The cosmonaut has since been reported as saying that his landing was so easy he hardly felt the impact at all.
Following his safe return, Col. Beregovoi was flown to Moscow, where he received a red-carpet welcome, an instant promotion to Major-General and the award of the Order of Lenin. At the ceremony, the Soviet party leader, Mr Brezhnev, devoted most of his 15-minute speech to praise of the Soviet manned space programme, describing Soyuz-3 as a “complete success”. He said that the mission had brought nearer the day when “Man will not be the guest but the host of space”. He also offered a word of praise to the Apollo-7 astronauts, referring to them as “courageous”.
A Step on the Way to the Moon?
So, what was the purpose of the Soyuz-3 mission? Dr. Welsh’s recently-mentioned comment that Soyuz and Zond spacecraft are different vehicles and that the Russians are not yet ready to attempt a lunar mission, seems to be borne out by statements from Soviet academician and aerospace scientist, Prof. Leonid Sedov, during a visit to the University of Tennessee Space Institute on 31 October-1 November. Prof. Sedov has said that the USSR would reach Moon from a space station in Earth orbit but would not conduct manned lunar space operations within the next six months. He indicated that Zond-type satellites would circumnavigate other planets and return and told the university audience that Soyuz-3 was part of a “programme to develop operations around the Earth”.
Prof. Sedov on an earlier visit to the United States in 1961 at the time of the USSR's first manned spaceflight
Mastering the techniques of rendezvous and docking would certainly be necessary to establish the orbiting space station from which a Soviet Moon mission would be launched, but Sedov’s comments leave unanswered the question of why a docking between Soyuz-2 and 3 was not attempted during the mission – unless an attempted docking did fail.
Awards All Round
Despite their testiness during the flight, the overall success of the Apollo-7 mission has been recognised by the presentation of NASA’s second highest award, the Exceptional Service Medal, to the crew at a ceremony in Texas on 2 November, presided over by President Johnson. During the ceremony, the President said the United States was “ready to take that first great step out into the Solar System and on to the surface of the nearest of the many mysterious worlds that surround us in space.” He noted that Apollo-7 had logged more than 780 man-hours in space, which is more than has been logged “in all Soviet manned flights to date”.
Left: Former NASA Administrator James Webb speaking at the Apollo-7 awards event, at which he also received NASA's highest award. Right: After the formal ceremony, President Johnson
(second from left) chats with Apollo 7 astronauts Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham.
At the same ceremony, President Johnson presented the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the space agency’s highest award, to recently-retired NASA Administrator James E. Webb, for his outstanding leadership of NASA from 1961-1968.
NASA has also recently indicated that it will make a decision on the plans for the Apollo-8 mission on 11 November. The space agency has listed the alternatives for the December mission as: an Earth orbital mission deeper into space; a circumlunar fly-by; or a lunar orbit mission. These are all exciting prospects, but I'm hoping that NASA will choose the boldest option and go for a lunar orbit mission. To have human eyes see the Earth from the Moon for the very first time would be a Christmas present indeed!
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