We have a fine sextet of science fiction books for you this month: largely readable, with two clunkers and one superior read…
by Gideon Marcus
Ace Double 66160
Earthrim, by Nick Kamin
Continue reading [December 16, 1969] Holiday haul (Black Corridor and the December Galactoscope)
By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall
Just some of the many brands of sex you can enjoy at your local tobacconist theatre
It seems the final death knell for Capital Punishment in the UK will be sounded soon. There is a vote soon in the House of Lords, widely expected to pass, to make the trial period for the abolition of the death penalty permanent. Over the last few years we have seen a raft of reforms, removing Victorian laws and decriminalizing a number of controversial practices. At the same time, censorship is being removed so you can see nudity on the West End or watch young women discussing sex in the cinema. This would seem to be placing Britain into a more permissive society.
“Sandwiches, blimey! Whatever did I give the wife?” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus
But that does not seem to be true in all areas. The crackdown on the use of illicit drugs continues apace, with heavy-handed tactics of the police being widely reported. Meanwhile, the Northern Irish MP Bernadette Devlin is currently appealing against a six-month sentence of “inciting persons unknown to commit the offence of riotous behavior” for encouraging resistance to police during the so-called Battle of the Bogside.
As such, it appears this liberalism has its limits. Actors can get their kit off in front of the public but not smoke cannabis in their own homes. Women can get access to the contraceptive pill and abortions (assuming their GP agrees) but they still cannot get a mortgage without a male guarantor. People from more different backgrounds are becoming MPs but political activity outside of official parameters is still viewed with suspicion.
This sense I have of British society also reflects what I am seeing in Visions of Tomorrow. It seems to be throwing off some of its earlier conservatism but has not become a second New Worlds either. Instead, the contents of this issue would not be out of place in Dangerous Visions.
Cover illustration by Eddie Jones
Now back on its regular monthly schedule, the editor gives us an incredibly dull introduction, discussing whether SF has become a mainstream genre. No more insight is given than the hundred other editorials on the subject for the past 30 years.
The Ill Wind by Jack Wodhams
Illustrated by Dick Howett
Gongi Wackerman stinks and has been going through many experiments to see if he can be rid of his noxious odour. However, one such test concludes his scent has a psychedelic effect on people and they want to employ him to help mental patients.
Wodhams is not an author I have particularly enjoyed in the past and this continues that trend. It is so silly and dull, it makes his Undercover Weapon, seem like a work of high literature.
One star, only because I can’t go any lower.
Trojan Horse by E. C. Tubb
G. Alfo Quinn gives us an illustration that seems more at home in New Worlds
In the future, laws and self-censorship have been abolished. People are free to act on their own choices. Even murder is allowed, but classes are taught to ensure that people are smart with their actions as a means of self-defence.
Marlo French is contacted by Ed Whalen, High Boss of Chicago Chemicals. Whalen’s daughter Naomi has stolen their new compound and is hiding out in the impenetrable Staysafe Apartments. As a discreet freelancer, French is tasked with getting back the pills by any means necessary.
Marlo discovers that Naomi has a penchant for Mannikins, robotic male blow-up dolls, and so proposes to impersonate one in order to get inside her flat. But this case may not be as simple as he believes.
This is a much darker and more complicated tale than I expected from these pages or Ol’ Edwin. He posits a world without laws or morality but makes it feel real and vivid, not a cardboard cutout for a simple point. The case itself has a great atmosphere and consists of the kind of twists and double-crosses you would expect from hard-boiled detective fiction. I hope we get more exploration of this future, as it is more fascinating to me than Raynolds’ People’s Capitalism or Anderson’s space navy tales.
I am not sure if he is getting better, or if I am getting more tolerant as I age through my thirties, but I found this to be his second exemplary tale in as many months.
A High Four Stars
Ward 13: A Tale of the first Martian by Sydney J. Bounds
Illustrated by Dick Howett
In City Seven Hospital, Dr. Kirby is part of a team that collects on scene organ donations before they are stolen by illegal freeze-wagons. One night, on his way home, he finds one of his nurses under attack by a gang. In attempting to rescue her, he is kidnapped and put to a surprising purpose.
I don’t think it was just me grooving to a Zappa record that meant I had trouble concentrating, I found it over-described and dull. Also these kind of panicky stories about organ transplants and population explosions have become so common they already feel more cliched than ray guns and flying saucers.
A moderately interesting twist in the tail keeps it just off the bottom rating.
A Low Two Stars
Breeding Ground by Christopher Priest
Illustrated by Dick Howett
Luke Caston, a space salvager, comes across the wreck of the Merchant Princess, a lost ship fabled to carry tons of gems. However, the ship is infested with Space-Mites, three-inch hairy coils that reproduce at an extraordinary rate when they find a source of electrical energy. They also happen to be Caston’s biggest fear.
A reasonable story, reasonably told. Not revolutionary but atmospheric and enjoyable.
Three Stars
Trieste: SF Film Festival by John Carnell
Whilst much of the rest of the SF community were eagerly watching the Apollo 11 mission in July, the New Writings editor John Carnell was attending an SF film festival in Trieste, Italy. The award winners were as follows:
Best Film: The Last Man (France)
Best Actress: Taja Markus – The Time of Roses (Finland)*
Best Actor: Tobias Engel – You Imagine Robinson (France)
Animated Short Film: Cosmic Zoom (Canada)
Others he calls out of note include The Illustrated Man, Mr. Freedom and Windows of Time, whilst pouring scorn on the British entry The Body Stealers and giving a mixed review of an Italian adaptation of The Tunnel Under The World.
An interesting look at films that might otherwise pass us by. I will certainly be keeping my eyes peeled for showings at the BFI.
Four Stars
*Luna fanzine gives the winner as a different actress from the same film, Ritva Vespa. I have not been able to ascertain which report is accurate.
The Impatient Dreamers 4: Science Fiction Weakly by Walter Gillings
Reproduction of a cover from Britain’s short-lived attempt to get into the SF game. Artist unknown.
The recitations of Gillings’ memories of SF yesteryear reaches 1934. He tells us of the short-lived weekly magazine Scoops, his own early attempts to get an SF magazine off the ground, and serialisations of Burroughs and Conan-Doyle.
By this point you know what to expect from Gillings, and this untold history continues to impress me.
Five Stars
Time-Slip by Eric Harris
Illustrated by Dick Howett
Constable Paul goes with an Arunta tracker called Nungajiri to try to find a family lost in the outback. Whilst four of the party are found, the baby remains unaccounted for. Even though the rest of the police think he is crazy, Paul and Nungajiri are determined to see if they can bring the child home.
This is a strange kind of tale. It starts of as a standard mystery story and evolves into one involving geometry, nodal-points in the timestream and the concept of Dreamtime. It felt to me like a cross between Picnic at Hanging Rock and an early HP Lovecraft story. One that I am not sure I understood but I am pretty sure I am not supposed to either.
I am afraid I am not particularly familiar with depictions of aboriginal Australians (having never visited the country myself and I have no familiarity with the Arunta religion) and as such I do not feel particularly qualified to comment on it. I will say this felt somewhat cliched to me but not meanspirited, although that is only a personal sense.
A tentative Four Stars, at least until someone with more knowledge than me can fill in the gaps.
Psycho-Land by Philip E. High
Illustrated by Dick Howett
Peter Carton, a sufferer of dementia praecox, has taken control of a machine that makes people in range subject to paranoia and irrational anger. With thirty thousand lives in jeopardy, the government is forced to call on William Charles Hopwood, a noble prize-winning physicist and ardent pacifist, as possibly the only person qualified to both resist the impulses and turn off the machine.
Devices affecting brain waves have become a common feature of SF recently, but this manages to elevate itself above the pack in a few different ways. Firstly, the atmosphere. As it indeed says in the text, High makes a small city seem like an alien world. Secondly, pacificists rarely have an active role in SF stories, so it was fascinating to see how this concept could be used. Finally, the twist in the tail is a good one, I will be thinking about it for some time.
A High Four Stars
Takeover by Harold G. Nye
Illustrated by Eddie Jones
Charlie Adams is a grumpy hypochondriac who finds himself in the midst of a plan by television sets to destroy humanity.
I am reliably informed this is a pseudonym of Lee Harding, an unprolific but solid writer. As a piece of satire on modern society and religion it is more subjective than most pieces. The silliness didn’t land for me but may appeal more to others.
Two Stars
Prime Order by Peter Cave
Illustrated by Dick Howett
On a routine mining expedition, one of the team caught space fever and then proceeded to murder the crew and destroy the ship. In order to avoid another such incident, Martin Stone at Amalgamated Electronics is asked to design one of the most intelligent and powerful robots ever. It also has one significant difference to all prior models. Asimov’s first law of robotics:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Is replaced with:
The Robot must be able to protect the majority of the party at all or any cost.
The result is Robot R.E.D. 197, who appears to work perfectly in testing. However, when he and a mining crew crash land on an uncharted planet, his logic circuits are pushed to their limit.
At first glance this seems a more traditional tale that would fit snugly into Analog’s pages. However, it is lifted up by the cynicism of the people involved and the darkness of the ending.
A high three stars
Fantasy Review
Illustration by Jeeves
Ken Slater reviews John Brunner’s Quicksand, which he highly recommends, Peter Weston raves about Larry Niven’s collection Neutron Star and Kathryn Buckley praises Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight (with the caveat of allowances for being a newcomer to novels). Meanwhile, John Foyster has mixed feelings about the contents of Carr & Wollheim’s latest World’s Best SF, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and the multi-authored Conan of Cimmeria, but is full of praise for Harry Warner, Jr.’s All Our Yesterdays.
A New Era?
Preview illustration by Eddie Jones for next month’s short novel, Life of the Party
So, this marks a slight change of direction for Vision of Tomorrow. Gone are the Kenneth Bulmer swashbucklers—in their place are atmospheric tales of ambiguous morality. The kind of pieces Harlan Ellison would probably be happy with.
Whether this trend continues or reverses into the 70s will probably be a reflection of where British society heads. On the one hand, all the recent court cases and laws on censorship have been on the side of more liberality. On the other, there are prominent voices that decry the current obsession with “pills and pot” in the media.
Last night, BBC2 went with more traditional fare: This Happy Breed to celebrate Noel Coward's 70th Birthday
Anyway, there will be many years ahead to worry about that. For now, I wish you all the joy of the season and, if I don't see you sooner, a happy new year!
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
by Amber Dubin
As we close in on the end of the final year of the 60s, it seems the lengthening nights are seeping into my psyche more than usual. I find myself wishing I were more hopeful for the coming of a new decade, and maybe if I paid less attention to politics or the state of the world I could retain more resistance to the gloomy morale of our divided and unrested country. Thankfully, a timely distraction arose: just think how pleasantly surprised I was to discover that there was to be a diverting new work from Rod Sterling to grace our airwaves November 8, 1969!
I was a step beyond devastated when Twilight Zone left the air, as it remains one of my all-time favorite science fiction pieces to date. To know that Rod Sterling would once again be on my television just before the dawn of a new decade sparked a hope in me that’s just enough to disrupt the gloom I’m feeling at the end of this one.
Rod Serling's "Night Gallery", shown on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies
Given the climate of our cultural atmosphere, however, I am not surprised that although the work that Rod Sterling chose to create is star-studded in cast, it is otherwise physically and emotionally dark. The macabre tone sets in right away as an eerie opening theme tinnily whines from the upper register of a harpsichord. The audience is led down a black and white drawing of a hallway, interrupted regularly by the chalky outlines of featured actors, not unlike how it would feel if one were to walk through a series of taped off crime scenes with final resting places similarly marked in each. This tense opening sequence maintains stress on the audience as the illustration gives way to the darkly enshrouded silhouette of the show’s host and final name featured in the credit sequence, Rod Serling.
Serling returns to the small screen, six years after he left it, in the resolute and deliberate fashion we’ve come to expect from him. Ever our guide through the mysterious and strange, he acts as curator of the mysterious in a black void of a presentation room featuring nothing but three portraits, their faces glamorously shrouded in red velvet curtains. He describes each of these covered works of art as suspended “in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare.”
Entering the scene associated with the first painting, "The Cemetery," this description is immediately validated as we are confronted with a room occupied by a once wealthy patriarch, bound both by a wheelchair and the living death that is the cognitive and physical decline of age. The elderly man, Mr. Hendrix, is waited on with care by famed film and TV veteran Ossie Davis (Mr. Ruby Dee), playing the sharply dressed and precise butler Osmond Portifoy. In a heartbreakingly relatable way, the rich and ailing painter is depicted as incapable of speaking, walking, or even holding a paint brush as he barely clings to life in his old-monied estate home. By contrast, we are confronted by his shiftless rapscallion of a nephew downstairs, who we are made to immediately dislike as he twitters about the house, disrespectfully upsetting its previous order and chirping our patient butler’s name in mockery as he puts his cigarettes out on the tray of discarded food he is carrying away from Mr. Hendrix’s room.
Portifoy is not amused
The obnoxious youth wastes no time in murdering his uncle once he has confirmed his inheritance of his estate, brazenly directing his uncle’s view to the window overlooking the family cemetery so the poor man can ‘view his future residence’ as he is slowly poisoned by the cold air from the purposely opened window that his frail body is unable to withstand. The greedy nephew makes no attempt to hide his disrespectful glee when the man dies, and he rudely directs the responding home-doctor and estate manager to hastily clear away as many traces as possible of the deceased man’s control over his wealthy home. Condescendingly, he allows Butler Portifoy to stay on staff, despite their obvious and open distaste for one another. However, Portifoy finds it almost more curse than blessing that he is allowed to continue to serve the Hendrix Estate under new management.
Just when it appears nothing could stop the young man’s wonton disrespect for all things dignified, his drunken carrying on hitches on a disturbing detail he notices in one of his uncle’s paintings hanging over the hallway stairs. When his uncle is interred in the family cemetery, it appears that the estate painting changes to depict an open grave in the corresponding area of the portrait. At first, he tries to brush off this change as a trick of the light, or his faulty memory, but the more time he spends in the home, the more fixated he becomes on the painting. When his paranoia grows to the point of inducing sleeplessness, he lashes out, ripping it off the wall and throwing it into the fireplace, only to find it back on the wall where it was before. He responds with violence to Portifoy’s insistence that there is nothing wrong with the painting and burns the man, finally breaking the man’s tolerance for his behavior. Portifoy quits on the spot, leaving the younger man to continue swiftly losing his mind alone in this apparently haunted house.
A rather satisfyingly contentious dynamic
In predictable fashion, the man fares poorly on his own, and he eventually succumbs to the battle with the paranormal forces at play, launching himself off the staircase entangled in the canvas of his dead uncle’s likeness. To my surprise, however, this is not where the story ends, and it appears that the doomed youth was not the only man in the house compelled by greed and willing to play with paranormal forces he did not understand. It's a twist too good to spoil here.
The second story, “Eyes,” features the fascinating combination of a winning performance by storied actress Joan Crawford and the professional debut of a young director named Steven Spielberg. Although it was rumored that this segment’s veteran star was originally reluctant to take a chance working with the inexperienced director, it appears her fears were unfounded. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the direction of this segment was Rod Serling’s best choice of the featured three. From the elevator door closing on Joan’s character’s disgruntled employee as we open the scene, to the acrobatic shots we get from the ceiling looking through chandelier crystals, the cinematography and dynamic story telling are movie-quality.
An ambitious shot that inverts the surgeon as he has inverted his moral code.
The story in question revolves around the aging debutant Miss Claudia Menlo, played by Joan Crawford, whose nightmare appears to be the life-long curse of blindness. It seems as if the finery she surrounds herself with and the technology with which she’s been able to make her life self-sufficient has steadily transformed into bars of a gilded cage. She has become so obsessed with the idea of the sight that she has been robbed of, that she interprets it as a cruelty that she must turn into a weapon to settle the score. It is from this space that she discovers an opportunity to right the universal wrong, and she stops at nothing to seize it.
Through the perspective of the conscripted surgeon, we discover that Miss Menlo has bribed, extorted and blackmailed enough professionals and poor slobs to direct a procedure to take place where one man will lose his vision forever to give her but twelve hours of precious sight. It’s clear we are meant to condemn Joan Crawford's character’s actions, and to be sure her victim is pathetic enough to deserve all of one’s compassion, but I cannot help but understand her desperation. Yes, her vanity, decadence and aggressive way of tearing through everything that gets in her way is indefensible, but it’s hard to say if given the same circumstances I wouldn’t make similar choices. As a senescent ice queen of an empty decaying palace, the woman that life has made of her is twisted into an unlovable shape now, but I cannot help but imagine what torture it must have been to live a whole life of such beauty without the ability to see any of it.
No matter how thoroughly we are meant to have shut her out, I cannot help but feel a pang of ache when she screams about color, while decorated in such fine examples of the same. I understand the bad intentions she paved to her own destruction, but when the irony she earned comes to call, I cannot fully say it would have been a doom I could have avoided myself.
I am always hesitant to call a woman a nightmare, but when the shoe fits…
The last story for me is the weakest of the three. “Escape Route” features an ex Nazi officer from a concentration camp hiding out in Buenos Aires after the end of World War II. As many men with this description did (do?) in real life, he is haunted by paranoia of being found and held responsible for his cruelty and past actions as he lives a life of poverty and insignificance in a foreign country he does not seem to enjoy any aspect of. I felt like this had the least compelling premise because even if he wasn’t a war criminal, the protagonist seems to be a completely irredeemable, unlikable nightmare. While he is haunted, he appears remorseless and even defensive of his past behavior. It also seems to have turned him into a miserable, belligerent drunk who verbally abuses the only person in his life that knows his secret: his consistently drunk, lady-of-the-night neighbor. Even though she is the only one who seems to tolerate him, she still uses his secret to twist the knife of insults she slings right back at him.
A well-deserved haunting
One day, in hiding from the detectives attempting to get him to answer for his crimes, he seeks refuge inside a closing museum and is unexpectedly moved by a painting of a fisherman who he hallucinates as having his face. It is here that his personal moment is interrupted by an elderly Jewish man emotionally connecting with another painting that expresses the agony of a holocaust victim. Based on how often he is drunk and/or hallucinating, I am not entirely convinced that the other man, Herr Bleum, isn’t a physical manifestation of the ex-Nazi’s guilty conscience.
In fighting against the web of his own weaving, he predictably hangs himself, using the thread of magic he has discovered in his story to yoke himself to a punishment far worse than any he could have received at the hands of real-life avengers.
Rod Serling, in all his glory
Whatever unevenness exists in this trio of stories is overwhelmed by the sheer quality of production, and also the joy at having an old master back at the game. The gilded tapestry Rod Serling has woven with The Night Gallery is a welcome masterpiece capable of warming my heart in these cold and dark winter months. The papers say that Serling is uninterested in serialized television work after Twilight Zone, and that these three episodes were a one-off set. However, after turning out such well-crafted, well-acted and well-directed gems as these, I cannot imagine this vignette not inspiring a sequel or two in the coming decade, either penned by Serling or a successor he designates. That hope alone gives me something to look forward to as the curtain draws this year to a close.
5 stars
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
by Gideon Marcus
With the Apollo missions taking so much of our attention (there were four flights this year), it is understandable that unmanned missions and science have gotten short shrift. I'm going to try to address this oversight now.
Far out!
Do you remember Pioneer 6 (launched Dec. 16, 1965) and Pioneer 7 (launched Aug. 17, 1966)? They are deep space probes designed to observe the Sun from widely different vantage points. In fact, we've been a bit remiss: since '66, two more identical Pioneers have gone up: Pioneer 8 (December 13, 1967) and Pioneer 9 (November 8, 1968). A fifth and final Pioneer was launched August 27, 1969, but its carrier rocket exploded. The loss of that one is pretty bad; whereas the others are all spread out fairly equidistantly around the Sun, more or less as far away from it as the Earth, Pioneer "E" was going to be put in an orbit that kept it close to Earth, where it would be used to give as much as a two-week warning of dangerous flare activity.
Nevertheless, NASA is blazing along with four satellites. Indeed, thanks to the longevity and spread-out positions of Pioneers 6 and 7, they were able to perform an unique experiment. On Nov. 6, the two satellites were 175 million miles apart on a common line with the Sun, and scientists observed the difference in behavior of solar wind particles due to their passage through space in opposite directions. In a similar vein, on Dec. 2, when the spacecraft reached points on a common spiral line leading out from the Sun (the star rotates, so it flings out particles in a spiral rather than linear fashion), scientists measured different kinds of solar particles coming from the same events on the Sun.
We'll have to wait for the journals to publish any papers, but this is the kind of large-scale, long-term science made possible by the Pioneer probes!
Another cool example of Pioneer science
by Erica Frank
The science fiction haul at Playboy has gotten smaller, although this half-year batch is fairly good.
Playboy's October 1969 cover–the trick with the cord is cute.
Slaves or Masters? by David Rorvik (July)
This is an article about the future of robotics. The word robot comes from the 1921 science-fiction play R.U.R. (Rossum´s Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek; it's derived from a word that means "worker."
This article gives an overview of the history of robots (dreams of robot workers go back to the Iliad and the "mechanical golden girls" serving Hephaestus), discusses what separates them from mere machines — and goes on to assign them human emotions.
Machinery does not have "nervous breakdowns," and nervous breakdowns are not fixed by circuit changes.
Robot emotions aside, they are a welcome addition to the labor force, as they can be assigned tasks that are too dangerous or difficult for humans. They can lift heavier objects and be designed to reach into places that human hands cannot. So despite the worries of some fiction, they’re not “stealing human jobs” – they’re reducing human risk and allowing precision that humans can’t get.
However, the author seems to think that, in 15 years or so, we'll have a Jetson's-style Rosie-the-Robot in every household. Three stars; the writing is good and the details are solid, but the conclusions don’t match the data available. Four stars, if you really like robots.
A Breath of Lucifer by R. K. Narayan (July)
Sam the nurse is helping our nameless protagonist recover from eye surgery by being his 24/7 attendant and eyes. He gets paid 8 rupees a day… a little more than one dollar, with which he supports a wife, 8 children, two sisters, and a niece. Sam talks of his past in wartime, on campaigns, but does not mention which war, which locations. Sam integrates himself in family visits and seems oddly jealous of the other nurses, and keeps returning to his story of portraying Lucifer in a play.
Like many Playboy stories, this is pleasant to read and goes nowhere. It is unclear if there are any fantastic elements in this other than Sam's exotic stories. Three stars.
Can You Feel Anything When I Do This? by Robert Sheckley (August)
A middle-class housewife gets a surprise delivery from Stern’s Department Store. She is upset that someone bought her a (boring) vacuum cleaner when she already has one. She plugs it in and it announces its identity and abilities.
In the future, vacuum cleaners will wash dishes, sew buttons, iron your clothes, and take out the trash.
After removing a stain on her clothing, the vacuum notices Melisande was tense, and gives her a massage with several attachments directed at different muscle groups. She is grateful for the assistance, but concerned about how it feels… “Should it feel so good?” The robot tells her it’s a side effect of the treatment. “Pleasure is sometimes unavoidable in the pursuit of health.” It proceeds to… address her health… at great length.
She demands to know who sent him, and he says he sent himself, that he saw her shopping and fell in love. "And now we have found each other, despite inconceivabilities…. We must make plans."
The ending has a nice twist — Melisande is no man's toy — and I think only the not-quite-declared robot-enhanced orgasm earlier allowed this story to work its way into Playboy, because it doesn’t normally carry much in the way of feminist themes. Four stars.
Illustration by Hy Roth
The Dannold Cheque by Ken W. Purdy (September)
A dealer of antiquities combines “autograph, artifact, photograph” to sell for very high prices. (One piece: a holograph of a 1938 letter by Winston Churchill mentioning a drought; a small clipping of grass from the area, and a photo of the man himself.) He discusses a project with Mr. Dannold: Dannold once chanced to thwart an assassination attempt against the Prime Minister, and has a voided £250,000 cheque to commemorate the event.
He was going to receive the hefty award, but before it got to him, he admitted that he didn’t vote for the prime minister and considered his election an “unmitigated disaster.” The cheque was cancelled before he could reach a bank; it was a worthless novelty he carried for decades before he found the antiques dealer. He sold it for 50,000 francs. (About $10,000 – quite a lot of money, enough to buy several new cars, but nothing compared to the almost $600,000 value of the original!)
This is a fascinating example of a science fiction setting with no science fiction themes at all. A sprinkling of technological terminology is scattered throughout the story; a mention of a painter from 2068… but the story is a bog-standard “sold an interesting curio to a pawn shop” tale. And it was rather difficult to put the timeline of events together, possibly because I kept waiting for something science-fictional other than “this is set in the future.” Two stars.
Alice & Ray & Yesterday's Flowers by Saul Braun (October)
This is the story about the people behind the song Alices’s Restaurant, which shot Arlo Guthrie into fame. Apparently the song takes some artistic license with the story… there weren’t any handcuffs. And the second half of the song – Arlo vs the Draft Board – was pure fiction when the song was written, and did not become fact later, even if parts of it were used as inspiration. The movie takes even more license with the story.
The article here is about life with Alice & Ray in their church-converted-to-a-residence, a hippie haven that sounds very colorful and festive:
The radical activists are the same old noise, but the others are new, and, friends, they are turning. Only from within is it possible even to find them— and to know that are witnessing here is a major turning. While our astronauts fly to the moon, these other pioneers fly to a place of altered perceptions and altered relations, of altered being, of extreme presentness, virtually without past or future.
It’s a nice blend of exposition and contemplation, taking the personal experiences of a handful of people and using it as a showcase of a broader movement and shift in cultural awareness. Three stars.
Pot: A Rational Approach by Joel Fort, MD (October)
On May 19, 1969, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act was unconstitutional. Notably, it’s unconstitutional to require people to incriminate themselves, and the MTA did exactly that.
The article makes a strong argument that marijuana should be legalized: that its health benefits are certainly no worse than alcohol, that the penalties for it are often excessive (rape can get a person five years in prison; selling a matchbox of weed can be 50 years), that there is no solid evidence that its use leads to harder drugs, and so on. It’s extensive and well-written, and it will convince nobody but its carefully selected audience of wealthy men who like to think themselves intellectuals. Three stars.
1970 Jazz and Pop Poll (October)
This is provided just for fun; we are long past the deadline for the actual poll. Please avail yourself of a copy of this ballot, complete with a stunning cover page starring Janis Joplin, and discuss your choices with your friends.
Nine Lives by Ursula K. Le Guin (November)
A pair of interstellar miners, after searching and working alone for years, have found their target planet and their support crew arrives – a tenclone of five males, five females, all with the same beautiful bronze body and attractive face and genius mind. Ten identical twins whose entire lives are focused only on each other.
Until a mining accident kills nine of them, and the one who’s left has to try to figure out how to be a person without the only family – the only sense of self – he’s ever known. A fascinating and haunting story that explores the nature of identity and companionship. Five stars.
They’re all John Chow, but they need a way to identify each other. The men were Aleph, Kaph, Yod, Gimel and Samekh; the women Sadhe, Daleth, Zayin, Beth and Resh.
Cordle to Onion to Carrot by Robert Sheckley (December)
Howard Cordle was a milquetoast sort of man who got pushed around a lot, until he met the god Thoth-Hermes (definitely a god, not a hallucination, not a stoned hitchhiker) who told him that “the Stew” (metaphor for all reality) needs both “carrots” (aggressive bullies) and “onions” (passive victims like himself). After a moment of enlightenment, he decides to try his hand at carrothood.
Cordle is polite, friendly, and accommodating – until he faces discrimination because he doesn’t seem high-class enough for whatever venue he is visiting, at which point, Cordle invokes his inner carrot and becomes what is colloquially known as an “obnoxious asshole.” He does wind up with better service this way, but almost drives away the woman he loves, who thought he was not like that. When they are married, he takes his vacations alone.
There is almost no science fiction here, although Sheckley is an accomplished SF writer and the tone and style come through. The story is enjoyable but has no real resolution, with a potential message of “being an asshole can get you what you want; the cost is… being an asshole.” Three stars.
Episode & Postscript by Timothy Leary (December)
This is a memoir, of sorts, recounting some of the events following his & his family’s 1965 arrest for less than an ounce of marijuana. (The ultimate result of this case was the Supreme Court ruling that nullified the MTA.) He begins not by focusing on the legal hassles involved, but on the concept of pleasure vs reward.
The first several pages are decorated with flowers and mushrooms.
He does not denounce the sense of accomplishment that goes with rewards, but wants people to be more in tune with the natural sense of pleasure of just being themselves, not requiring external stimuli and game-systems to feel at peace.
This is an engaging read, although he shows the racism expected of a white man with an elite education: He praises black people for being more in tune with “natural fleshly pleasures.”
His understanding of the laws around psychedelics is interesting, and his accounting of the events make it clear that he believes everyone is playing out their roles, which he intends to disrupt.
In between his philosophical meanderings, he manages to tell the story of his arrest, and how he made the decision to challenge the constitutionality of the marijuana laws rather than accept a plea bargain and get off with a few years of probation. They had a system, you see, and Leary declined to go along with it. He got a 30-year sentence that was put on hold while he challenged the law itself.
Four stars if you have an interest in drug laws or hippie philosophy; three stars otherwise.
I think I'm done reviewing Playboy. They're very expensive for so little science fiction, and I'm not fond of most of the interviews and the humor. I am glad I read this set, though; the Le Guin story was wonderful, and both the Sheckley stories were fun.
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
by David Levinson
Free press
American readers and those who follow American politics are no doubt well aware of President Nixon’s speech on the “Vietnamization” of the war in Indo-China. All three national networks carried the speech, of course, and followed it up with analysis and commentary. This apparently didn’t sit well with the White House.
On November 13th, Vice President Spiro Agnew addressed a regional Republican committee in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he attacked the networks, accusing them of political bias in their news coverage. He complained that the president’s speech had been subjected to “instant analysis and querulous criticism” without giving the American people time to digest the speech for themselves. Agnew accused “a small and unelected elite” of exerting undue influence on public opinion without any check on their power. He even called it a form of censorship.
Vice President Spiro Agnew addressing the Midwest Regional Republican Committee.
Some television executives accused Agnew of attempting to undermine the freedom of the press and intimidate a form of journalism that requires a government license in order to broadcast. I’d say the intimidation was at least partly successful, since all three networks carried the Vice President's speech. However, the networks are also fighting back. The CBS news magazine 60 Minutes devoted a full hour to rebutting Agnew’s charges.
When asked if anyone in the administration had an advance look at the speech, White House press secretary Ron Ziegler denied it. He also said that the White House would have no reaction to statements by other members of the administration and that Nixon and Agnew had not discussed the speech. That’s nonsense. A speech like this would never be made without approval at the highest levels, and if it had been, the White House would have promptly issued a statement distancing Nixon from the remarks or at least trying to soften them. I’d say the administration has fired a shot across the bows of the news media.
White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler
Continue reading [December 2, 1969] Communication Breakdown (January 1970 IF)
by Gideon Marcus
Atrocities in Vietnam
The news has been brewing for a while, and now it's on the front page: 1st Lieutenant William J. Calley Jr., a 26-year-old platoon leader stationed in Vietnam, has been "life or death" court martialed for the murder of 109 South Vietnamese civilians "of various ages and sexes."
This so-called "My Lai incident" took place northeast of Quang Ngai city on March 16, 1968 in a village called Song My—code-named "Pinkville". Calley, enraged at the death of his chief sergeant, appears to have ordered his unit to eliminate everyone in the hamlet. Several of his men went on a bloody spree; others did what they could to avoid involvement. One even shot himself in the foot so he could be medivaced out. A number came forward with the story, which was investigated and then dismissed by the 11th Infrantry Brigade. Letters to Congress have prompted the reopening of the case and investigation into the original investigation.
If Calley is convicted, he faces no less than life imprisonment, and death by firing squad is on the table.
The court martial comes on the heels of the July 21, 1969 charge of Green Beret commander, Col. Robert Rheault, and six of his officers with murder and conspiracy for the secret execution of a Vietnamese spy suspect. Those charges were dropped two months later when the CIA, whose operatives were key witnesses, refused to cooperate. Whether the government's tacit support of brutality increases or decreases the odds of Calley facing the music remains to be seen.
Mediocrities in Print
by Kelly Freas
December's final magazine is Analog. Let's hope this makes for pleasanter reading that the newspapers.
Continue reading [November 30, 1969] Capstone to a decade (December 1969 Analog)
[We are proud to introduce our newest associate, late of Texas and now a confirmed Golden Stater. Don't let her self-effacing first paragraph mislead you—Winona is not only a brilliant young engineer, but she has a talent for prose, as you will soon see…]
by Winona Menezes
Several weeks ago, I was plucked from obscurity off the streets of San Diego by the Traveller himself. He was quite taken to hear that I was a long-time fan of the same books and magazines, and I had quite a lot of thoughts on them, if only anyone cared to listen. Wasn’t it fortunate, then, that he did know lots of people who might care? You can call it a chance encounter, serendipity, dumb luck–but me personally? I think somebody up there likes me.
He invited me to cut my teeth on something easy, something that was near and dear to my heart. And so, I’d like to start with one of my favorites, a satirist’s take on religion, morality, and free will. This one is not a recent publication but I do find myself going back to it, clinging to it when it feels the world is spinning a little too fast.
The Sirens of Titan is the second of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, first published in 1959. It is a convoluted interplanetary melodrama centered on the life of Malachi Constant, the richest man in America through no merit of his own. Having inherited and further amassed a staggering fortune through sheer luck, he finds himself enjoying a hedonistic lifestyle while quietly, passively longing for a lightning-bolt of fate to give his life a higher purpose. This lightning-bolt does come – from the apparition of New England billionaire Winston Rumfoord, whose pleasure-seeking space expeditions have turned him and his faithful dog into incorporeal, semi-omniscient wavelengths and sent them undulating throughout the solar system.
The plot unfurls erratically, as though Vonnegut himself is along for the ride as much as his characters. Constant is invited by Rumfoord on a planet-hopping journey through space, promising him adventure and treasure and women of incomparable beauty. But when Constant declines, already not being in want of anything on Earth, he is told that he will have no say in the matter. His fate has been decided for him, and his life will culminate in a meeting with Rumfoord on Titan regardless of any actions he takes to the contrary–all that remains to be seen is the in-between.
Malachi, along with the cast of characters whose stories entwine with his, are plucked from their lives and scattered like chess pieces across the solar system. Our spoiled, iniquitous protagonist with the world at his feet is suddenly a hapless pawn in a cosmic journey so sprawling and incomprehensible that each move from one place to the next feels chosen at random. As a result, the culmination of each loose end being gathered up one-by-one and woven seamlessly back together in the ending is masterfully executed. Any disorientation felt by the reader as unwitting characters are flung through spacetime by the narrative is replaced by a deeper, longer-lasting discomfort as the machinations of fate are slowly unveiled to be much more deliberate, though no less insipid.
Still, the novel is dotted with moments of lucidity on the parts of the characters, whose determination to understand and derive meaning from their lives only grows as it becomes increasingly clear how little control they have over their own destiny. These moments are as stars in a sky of absurd nihilism, and it is left to Constant and company—and the reader—to string them together into constellations of meaning.
Vonnegut’s satirical voice, whetted on his first novel (Player Piano, 1952), is wielded now with the skill and precision of a scalpel. Darkly ironic humor disarms the reader just enough for them to be thrown full off-kilter by a constant subversion of expectations. The ridiculously circuitous route the novel takes to find its conclusion seems fitting; the answers to the questions the book raises are even more elusive and slippery in real life. It’s a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless to read our own struggle for meaning through the lens of a protagonist whose comical shortcomings as a self-absorbed chauvinist make him a difficult character to like, at least in the beginning. If the illusion of free will must give way to an existential nightmare against which we must find our own meaning, it may as well be funny.
Sirens of Titan is over a decade old by now, but there’s never a wrong time to come to terms with the futility of your own existence. Maybe, like me, it can help you find your footing in an ever-changing world. Five stars.
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
by Gideon Marcus
Just four months ago, men first set foot on the Moon, fulfilling a millennia-long dream of humanity as well as culminating a decade-long Space Race between the superpowers. And the question on everyone's lips: how do you top that?
It's important to remember that the flight of Apollo 11 was not the end, but only a beginning—just as John Glenn's orbital flight, Gus Grissom's mission in Gemini 3, Wally Schirra's in Apollo 7 were all beginnings. The Moon Port is open, and it is time to start the exploration of the cosmos in earnest.
Appropriately, the flight of Apollo 12 was planned to mark an incremental expansion upon the prior mission's success. Scheduled for a November 14 launch at 11:22AM Eastern time months in advance, the second lunar mission would include the following improvements:
In all, Apollo 12 promised to be only slightly more ambitious than its predecessor, but how much more ambitious than a flight to the Moon do you need?
Continue reading [November 26, 1969] From the Earth to the Moon…and back (Apollo 12)
Tune in at 12:45 pm Pacific for LIVE splashdown coverage of Apollo 12!
by Fiona Moore
Once again, greetings from London. The big news this month is that Britain is now a space power! Yes, thanks to the launch of the Skynet 1-A satellite, we now have our very own presence in orbit. Can regular rocket launches from Woomera be far behind?
Skynet 1-A is GO!
In news that’s closer to home, Royal Holloway College has acquired a colour television for the student lounge, and I’ve been taking advantage of my position as Staff Advisor to the Film Club to make use of it. The students’ new favourite programme is a delightfully surreal children’s stop-motion SF tale called The Clangers, featuring aliens that look like pink mice and live on an asteroid. I much prefer it to Monty Python, myself. One of my more enterprising students has worked out a knitting pattern to make her own; I’m sure an official one will be not long in coming. I shall keep an eye on the Radio Times.
The Clangers, I love them all
On to this month’s, sadly rather thin, issue of New Worlds. Sadly, Britain’s new space-faring ways are not reflected in the magazine’s content. I tend to like New Worlds best when it’s being a SF magazine with a literary sensibility, but this month it is thinking of itself as a literary magazine with a few weird or surreal touches, so I found this issue disappointing. I even found myself missing the Jerry Cornelius segment!
Cover of New Worlds for December 1969
Although it is advertised as a “new writers’ issue”, only two new writers are actually included. Once again, book reviews take up almost a third of the publication. There is no art this issue, only photographs, and by only two photographers, which makes me wonder if they’re saving money by not commissioning drawings.
Their 1970 preview advert suggests they should be back in more SF territory with the next issue, which purports to “look ahead to 1980”, and I hope that’s not wrong.
Lead-in
A short one this issue, mostly highlighting the two new writers, C.R. Clive and Michael Biggs, and encouraging people to buy the abovementioned 1970 first issue, promising us Brian W. Aldiss, Pam Zoline and Thomas M. Disch as well as the usual suspects. We all know how well that went last time, so I’m not holding my breath.
Rise and Fall by Marek Obtulowicz
Photo by Gabi Nasemann
A man named Lykke goes on a few dates with his neighbour, Janet. They have sex and a lot of rather pretentious conversations about autumn leaves. It’s all really rather banal. I struggled to see the point of it all. Two stars.
Hemingway by Michael Biggs
As the title suggests, a Hemingway pastiche about a reporter going to Vietnam. It’s a skilful enough evocation of Hemingway’s style and fairly exciting, and I suppose it’s got the subtext of comparing the current ongoing, seemingly neverending, conflict with the wars Hemingway himself covered. I’m not a huge Hemingway fan but it at least held my attention. No illustrations. Three stars.
Graphics and Collages by Ian Breakwell
One of the better collages
As the title suggests: collages of text and pictures forming illustrated short-short stories or prose poems. A portrait of squalor, a joke about an electrician, something about sports and physical culture, a factual article about skin grafts juxtaposed with images of radios and televisions, a piece of what looks like found poetry about business. As with a lot of these things it didn’t really appeal to me, though apparently it appeals to the editors of New Worlds. Two stars.
The Last Awakening by C.R. Clive
Photo by Gabi Nasemann
This is the only story this issue that could really be described as SF, a postapocalyptic narrative mostly involving a forty-four-year-old man leching over a teenage girl with the excuse that they’re the only ones left alive. If I didn’t know the author was 27 I would have put it down to wish fulfilment. The prose is pretty good, with some nicely evocative touches about the postapocalyptic landscape, but I wish it had been put in the service of something less predictable. Two stars.
The Wind in the Snottygobble Tree Part II (a Jack Trevor Story)
Photo by Roy Cornwall
Not much of an improvement on part I, really, other than that there’s less improbable sex and more time devoted to making it ambiguous whether our protagonist, Marchmont, is a secret agent or just an innocent caught in the crossfire. Apparently it’s to be continued next month. I can’t say I’m terribly looking forward to it. One star.
Book Reviews
Our esteemed editor has told me that I don’t need to review the book reviews, so I won’t go into too much detail about these. However, there are a couple this issue that are worth checking out. J.G. Ballard reviews Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, treating it as a psychological portrait of a man obsessed with hygiene and pseudo-biology. Elsewhere, John T. Sladek reviews Erich von Daaniken’s Chariots of the Gods, getting more and more scathing as he gets further and further into the weeds; as someone who absolutely loathes that book and rues the impact it has had on some of our more impressionable undergraduates, I giggled all the way through it. Finally, Michael Moorcock has a go at The Neophiliacs, which is somewhat more long-winded than Sladek’s review of von Daaniken but no less scathing.
Advert for John and Yoko's Wedding Album, because I can.
In closing, I shall torment the Yoko Ono anti-fan club in my audience by revealing that the last page is an advert for her and John Lennon’s Wedding Album. Sorry, people; she’s here to stay. I understand that her husband is handing back his MBE in protest at the British government’s positions on Biafra and Vietnam. Sadly, I don’t think it’ll make much difference.
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
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