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Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 20, 1970] Fun-nee enough… (OSCAR 5 and the March 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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Be sure to tune in tonight for a very special episode of Science Fiction Theater at 7:30pm Pacific!

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]

A black-and-white photo portrait of Kaye Dee. She is a white woman with long, straight dark hair worn down, looking at the camera with a smile.

by Kaye Dee

Recently, The Traveller covered the launch of the TIROS-M weather satellite, noting that the rocket’s payload also included a small Australian-made ham radio satellite, OSCAR-5 (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio), also known as OSCAR-A.

Photograph of the cover of Goddard News depicting a rocket staged for launchCover of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre's in-house magazine, marking the launch of ITOS-1/TIROS-M and Australis-OSCAR-5

A New Star in the Southern Cross

It was exciting to be in “Mission Control” at the University of Melbourne when the satellite was launched in the evening (Australian time) on 23 January. You should have heard the cheers! After all, Australis-OSCAR-5 (AO-5), as we call it, is Australia’s second satellite. It’s also the first amateur radio satellite built outside the United States and the first OSCAR satellite constructed by university students – in this case, members of the Melbourne University Astronautical Society (MUAS).

Photograph of seven suited white men with exuberant expressions standing in an alley presenting the model satelliteThe MUAS student team with the engineering model of Australia's first amateur radio satellite

Radio Hams and Satellite Trackers

Commencing in 1961, the first OSCAR satellite was constructed by a group of American amateur radio enthusiasts. Cross-over membership between MUAS and the Melbourne University Radio Club (MURC) encouraged the students to begin tracking OSCAR satellites, moving quickly on to tracking and receiving signals from many other US and Soviet satellites.

Satellite photograph of cloud fronts moving over the continentNimbus satellite image of the western half of Australia received by MUAS for the weather bureau

One of MUAS’ achievements was the first regular reception in Australia of images from TIROS and Nimbus meteorological satellites. By 1964, they were supplying satellite weather images daily to the Bureau of Meteorology, before it established its own receiving facilities.

"How Do We Build a Satellite?"

After tracking OSCARs 3 and 4 in 1965, the MUAS students decided to try building their own satellite. “No one told us it couldn’t be done, and we were too naive to realise how complex it would be to get the satellite launched!”, an AO-5 team member told me at the launch party. MUAS decided to build a small ‘beacon’ satellite which would transmit telemetry data back to Earth on fixed frequencies.

Even before Australia’s first-launched satellite, WRESAT-1, was on the drawing board, the Australis satellite project commenced in March 1966. Volunteers from MUAS, MURC and university staff worked together to design and build the satellite, with technical and financial assistance from the Wireless Institute of Australia and a tiny budget of $600. The Australian NASA representative also gave the project invaluable support. The students acquired electronic and other components through donations from suppliers where possible: the springs used to push the satellite away from the launcher were generously made by a mattress manufacturer in Melbourne. Any other expenses came out of their own pockets!

Picture of AO-5 in launch configuration, somewhat resembling a metal-wrapped gift bound up twine holding the furled antennae down as 'the ribbon'Carpenter's steel tape was used to make AO-5's flexible antennae, seen here folded in launch configuration. Notice the inch markings on the tape!

AO-5 is a fantastic example of Aussie ‘make-do’ ingenuity. A flexible steel measuring tape from a hardware shop was cut up to make the antennae. The oven at the share house of one team member served to test the satellite’s heat tolerance, and a freezer in the university's glaciology lab was unofficially used for the cold soak. Copper circuit boards were etched with a technique using nail varnish, and a rifle-sight was used to help tune the antennae! Various components, including the transmitters and command system, were flight-tested on the university’s high altitude research balloon flights.

Colour photograph of the bare circuit-boards set up in a freezer
Colour photograph of a payload collection staged at the back of a truck in preparation for balloon flight
A university lab freezer and hitching a ride with university experiments on US HiBal high altitude balloon flights in Australia used to test the ruggedness of AO-5 components

A Long Wait for Launch

Australis was completed and delivered to Project OSCAR headquarters in June 1967, well before WRESAT’s launch in November that year. Unfortunately, AO-5 then had to wait a few years for a launch to be arranged by the Amateur Radio Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), which now operates the OSCAR project. However, it is surely appropriate that, as OSCAR-5, it finally made it into orbit with a weather satellite.

Colour photographs of the launch vehicle staged at Vandenberg Air Force Base, both before and during ignition

After launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, AO-5 was placed into a 115-minute orbit, varying in altitude between 880 – 910 miles. This means it will be in orbit for hundreds of years – unlike the short-lived WRESAT.

In Orbit at Last!

Battery-powered, Australis-OSCAR-5 weighs only 39 pounds and carries two transmitters, beaming out the same telemetry signal on the two-metre and 10-metre amateur radio bands. Its telemetry system is sophisticated but designed for simple decoding without expensive equipment. The start of a telemetry sequence is indicated by the letters HI in Morse code, followed by data on battery voltage, current, and the temperature of the satellite at two points as well as information on the satellite's orientation in space from three horizon sensors.

Colour photograph of the Australis OSCAR 5 (a rectangular box) with metal antennae extended

AO-5 includes the first use in an amateur satellite of innovations such as a passive magnetic attitude stabilisation system (which helps reduce signal fading), and a command system to switch it on and off to conserve power. Observations are recorded on special standardised reporting forms that are suitable for computer analysis.

Photograph of a telemetry coding form noting that the satellite is spinning at four rotations per minute

Just 66 minutes after launch, the first signal was detected in Madagascar and soon other hams reported receiving both the two and 10-metre signals on the satellite's first orbit. At “Mission Control” in Melbourne, we were thrilled when MURC members managed to pick up the satellite’s signals!  By the end of Australis’ first day of operation, AMSAT headquarters had already received more than 100 tracking, telemetry and reception reports.

Photograph of news clippings from The Australian (and other publications).  They provide a photograph of the satellite in pre-launch attitude (with furled metal antennae) and photographs (including a portrait of Richard Tonkin) of members of the Melbourne team who designed and built it.A selection of local newspaper cuttings following AO-5's launch. There was plenty of interest here in Australia.

The two-metre signal failed on 14 February, but the 10-metre transmission continues for now. How much longer AO-5’s batteries will last is anybody’s guess, but the satellite has proven itself to be a successful demonstration of the MUAS students’ technical capabilities, and the team is already contemplating a more advanced follow-on satellite project.

Picture of a post-card (posted Jan 23 1970, with an Apollo 8 stamp) with an illustration of a satellite over what appears to be a map of weather fronts. Above the illustration it reads 'ITOS-1 Day-Night Weather Eye', and to the side it reads 'Oscar 5' and 'Australis'
This philatelic cover for the ITOS-1/TIROS-M launch, includes mention of AO-5, but the satellite depicted is actually OSCAR-1

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Fantastic emanations on Earth

And now that you've had a chance to digest the latest space news, here's some less exciting (but no less necessary) coverage of the latest issue of F&SF.

Cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction's March issue-- the cover illustration is a square wrapped wrapped in digits with the top sequence running from 1-17, and the others presenting variations on the sequence.  The inside of the square appears to show four mirrored illustrations of men laying under blankets as though awaiting surgery.  Extending from the crowns of their heads to the center of the square are matching banded gradients from pale to dark blue.
by Ronald Walotsky

The Fatal Fulfillment, by Poul Anderson

Well, this is very interesting.  You remember that Ellison story that impressed me so much this month?  The Region Between, it was called. Well, it has an intriguing genesis.  I'll let editor Ed Ferman explain:

Five of science fiction's best storytellers were asked to write a novella beginning from a common prologue (written by Keith Laumer), to be combined in a book called Five Fates.  The Anderson story and one by Frank Herbert (coming up soon) will be published in F&SF.  We suggest that you look for the book (out in August from Doubleday) in order to catch up with the others: by Keith Laumer, Gordon Dickson and Harlan Ellison.

The prologue, as you may recall, involves a fellow named Douglas Bailey being euthanized.  We don't know why he goes there, but he ends up very much dead.  In the Ellison story, he goes on to have his soul stuffed in a series of different bodies (five of them described in detail) until he rebels against his puppetmaster and becomes God.

Anderson's story is different.

Bailey in his tale is suffering from insanity brought on by the burgeoning population, stifling technology, and all the other bugaboos of modern society.  Each of his fates (five of them!  I see a motif developing) involves a different "cure" for his malady.  The first was obviously destruction.  The second involves radical therapy.  A third involves government subsidy.  Number four takes place in a post-pandemic world where the remaining 5% of humanity is enlightened to a degree that precludes craziness.

The fifth, well… that explains what's going on.  Anderson lays the crumbs such that, if you don't figure it out by the end, you'll at least find the conclusion well set up.

It's not a bad piece, though not nearly as gripping as Ellison's.  Moreover, it's one of those that makes you go "why bother" for too long before you realize Poul's actually got a point to his meanderings.

Three stars.

Books , by Gahan Wilson

Banner reading 'Books' with an illustration of a shelf of books bracketed on the one side by a miniature of a rocket staged for liftoff, and on the other with a diorama of an astronaut having landed on a book acting as a book-end

F&SF's (and Playboy's, and who knows how many other magazine's) illustrator returns to host the book review column.  All are collections/anthologies, and none are SFnal (being either horror or mystery in genre).  He does spent a good page expressing discomfort at how universally misogynistic the stories in Splinters: A New Anthology of Macabre Modern Fiction are, noting that virtually all the tales feature evil women who get their gruesome comeuppance.  He concludes the review by conceding that many of the stories are excellent, and that readers of the macabre will enjoy the volume, but suggests that the next such volume should be misandrist to compensate.

I bring this up because time and again (and again, and again) the Journey has been criticized for just this sort of column—daring to impugn the worth of a work simply because it treats women badly.  Indeed, we are often told that "no one cares" about such things.

We do, and obviously others do, too.

An inked cartoon labeled 'The Dark Corner' which depicts a shadowy blotch with two eyes and a smile in the corner of a room underneath a cobweb

The Night of the Eye, by Dennis Etchison

A fellow is driven off the road by Death in a Car.  He survives, but upon being driven home from the hospital by his harridan wife, Death reappears.

A nothing story.  Not even frightening.  One star.

Harvest, by Leo P. Kelley

If you read Joanna Russ' Initiation in last month's issue, then you already know the premise for this similar story: humans from Earth are making planetfall on a remote colony where the settlers' descendants have widely diverged from the original stock.

In this case, the colonists were involuntary emigrés from an overpopulated Earth, and the incoming ship holds the last vestiges of humanity fleeing from an exploded Sun.

I spent the whole time waiting for the author to drop the other shoe—the way humanity on this new world had changed such that they would be repugnant to the newcomers.

It wasn't worth the wait.  Two stars.

The Falls of Troy, by L. Sprague de Camp

A table where the column headers read 'Schliemann', 'Dorpfeld', and 'Blegen', with the rows indicating the different ways that they classified the various sites from newest (Classical/Roman/Roman & Hellenistic) to oldest (Trojan) and by which cultures they believed to be dominant.

Did the Troy of The Iliad exist?  The answer is a maddening mix of "yes", "no", and "not exactly"—for there were no fewer than nine Troys, all with their unique history and character.  F&SF writer and historian, De Camp, offers up a fascinating, if all-to-brief, summary of what we know about the history of the hill towns on Hissarlik.

Invaluable stuff to the amateur classicist.  Five stars.

Fun-Nee, by Miriam Allen deFord

Sort of a children's tale, it's all about the importance of tolerance, especially on an alien world where the two races are just different enough to elicit physical revulsion, but close enough to be good friends anyway.

A little simple, and perhaps mawkish, but then, I like happy endings.

Three stars.

The Chameleon, by Larry Eisenberg

A politician with a talent for exactly meeting expectations runs afoul of a focus group with too many conflicting desires.

Short, fun, and to the point.

Three stars.

Bridging the Gaps, by Isaac Asimov

Banner reading 'Science' with inset illustrations of an atom (in the style of Bohr), an optical microscope's view of microorganisms, an oscilloscope's view of a sawtooth wave, a satellite in orbit, and a spiral galaxy

The Good Doctor explains how elements fit in the Periodic Table… without really explaining why.  I just don't get chemistry, and he's not making it any easier.

Three stars.

Ink editorial cartoon with a werewolf wearing a spacesuit seated at a cockpit simulator with the moon filling the screen.  In the foreground, one lab-coated scientist relates to the other 'I'm afraid this simulator test indicates Commodore Brent would be a poor choice for the lunar expedition'
by Gahan Wilson

The Tangled Web of Neil Weaver, by Charles Miller

Pretty typical Satanism/voodoo tale about a college kid on the make who crosses a co-ed coven leader when he tries to bed a young witch.  There are no heroes in this admittedly well-told story.

Three stars.

Tuning in

All in all, this is one of those issues that sounds worse than it was.  It was diverting enough, just not stellar.  Given the low lows we've had, this is perfectly acceptable.  Let's just try to up the average next month!

Back cover of March 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine sharing readership demographics (they're overwhelming young with 84% under 45, and 62% have attended college) and advertising the availability of French, Spanish, and German language editions.

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 18, 1970] Time Trap, This Perfect Day, Whisper from the Stars, and The Incredible Tide

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[We've saved the best for last this month—one of these books is sure to be a pick for the Galactic Stars.  Read on about this remarkable quartet of science fiction tales…]

BW photo of Jason Sacks. He's a white man, with short light hair, rectangular glasses, and headphones.
by Jason Sacks

Time Trap, by Keith Laumer

Sometimes a back cover blurb sells a book. “ABE LINCOLN IN AFRICA?” the cover reads in breathless bold sans-serif type. “He was seen – and photographed – in a Tunisian bazaar.” Hooked yet? How about the mention on the cover of “an ancient Spanish galleon, fully crewed with ancient Spaniards, was taken in tow off Tampa by the Coast Guard…”

Yeah, you probably thought, take my 75¢ plus tax, because that’s a book I have to read. Especially if it’s scribed by the always delightful Keith Laumer, he of the wildly satirical Retief series. At the very least, Time Trap has to be readable, right?

Well, yes, Time Trap is readable, very much so in fact. I flew through its 143 pages in near lightspeed. But there’s just no there there. Time Trap is like a Big Mac: enjoyable at the time but utterly devoid of any nutrition.

Laumer’s latest is fun, sure, but maybe it’s too much fun. Because the novel is just too silly, too whimsical, too full of absurd wordplay and pointless tangents and the sense that Laumer was scripting little bits of this story between partying with friends and warming up for his next, more serious novel.

A BERKLEY SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL KEITH LAUMER author of the 'Rebel
cover by Richard Powers

You know those kind of classic Twilight Zone episodes where a character leaves a place to go on a journey, only to end up at the same place they left? Laumer starts Time Trap with a scene similar to that, and I was initially intrigued. My receptors came up, the same way they do when I flick on channel 11 at 6:30 and spend some time with ol’ Rod. But Serling always gives us a twist in the tail that lays a moral lesson on us, gives us something to think about. Laumer, on the other hand, just never really builds on the idea time loop.

Instead the book turns its focus on a different guy, Roger Tyson. His crappy car breaks down on the side of a dark country road on a wretched, rainy night. When a motorist, impossibly, happens to drive down the remote road, Tyson wildly waves his hands to beckon them to stop. The driver turns out to be a girl riding alone on a powerful motorcycle. But, oh no, the cycle crashes into a heap of destruction on the side of the road. The girl is dead… but with her last words, she passes an earpiece over to Tyson.

And there his adventure begins.

It’s a wild and wooly adventure as Tyson and his pals (including the girl, Q’nell, who’s not actually dead but kind of is actually dead– it’s complicated) journey from the deep past of Earth to the far future, all over the world, dodging dinosaurs and armies and molten lava and all manner of obstacles along the way. There’s a body swap and some crazy weapons and an alien who’s a higher level being and all kinds of over-the-top silliness. And all along the way Tyson plays the fool: frightened, confused, acting like a Doctor Who companion who traveled without the Doctor.

The adventure is fun enough read episodically, one chapter per night or something. Reading it all at once was a dive into a short attention span I found exhausting. It all would have been worth it if the destination was entertaining.

But Laumer doesn’t quite nail the landing in any sort of thrilling way; instead, the book ends like one of those human- Meets-God moments which grew so tiresome on Trek (to mix my TV metaphors). The threats to wipe out all life on Earth seem a bit breathy and unconvincing, too much connected to the cliches and not quite as wackily transcendent as Laumer clearly wants them to be.

So, yeah. Time Trap. It’s goofy, silly fun. But where most of Laumer’s other comedic works are smart while also being silly, this is pure silliness. It’s a good book to read to clear your head after watching images from Vietnam on the 6:00 News, but this book probably won’t keep looping in your mind. It will likely be forgotten by the time the Twilight Zone comes on tomorrow.

3 stars.

photo of a dark-haired woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

Seems Familiar

Blue book cover of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, adorned with a globe and a small plane in the forefront. White waves radiate throughout.

Back in 1958, Aldous Huxley published a nonfiction book that took a look back at his 1932 novel Brave New World.

A Light yellow and blue stroped book cover entitled BRAVE NEW WORLD REVISITED, Aldous Huxley

Why do I bother to mention this fact, which is familiar to science fiction fans and literary mavens alike?  Because a new novel by a bestselling author reminds me so much of Huxley's classic satiric dystopia that it, too, might have been called Brave New World Revisited.

This Perfect Day, by Ira Levin

Tan book cover depicting a bisected face. One eye green, the other blue. The face only has half an upper lip on the righthand side. The caption reads IRA LEVIN THIS PERFECT DAY A NEW NOVEL BY THE AUTHOR OF ROSEMARY'S BABY
Cover art by Paul Bacon.

Levin is, of course, best known for his popular novel Rosemary's Baby and the smash hit film adapted from it.  Can he handle science fiction as successfully as he did horror fiction?

Some centuries from now, the world is inhabited by people who all look very much alike, with a few minor exceptions.  The central authority tells folks where to live, what kind of work to do, who they should marry, and whether or not they should have children. 

The populace is kept under control through the mandatory administration of drugs that keep them calm and unaggressive.  Words like hate and fight are profanities.  Starting at adolescence, people have sex once a week. 

Television viewing, apparently for the purpose of propaganda, is a daily ritual.  Everything is planned by a huge computer.
Everybody wears a bracelet that is difficult, if not impossible, to remove, and which much be scanned everywhere they go.

Our protagonist is Li RM35M4419, known as Chip.  That's because his grandfather, who isn't quite as much a conformist as younger folks, thinks he resembles his great-great-grandfather, and calls him a chip off the old block.

I might note here that there are only four first names for women and an equal number for men.  That symbolizes the rigidness of the society, I suppose, but it also seems like a pointless restriction.

Chip is an oddball because he has one green eye and one brown eye.  Grandpa takes him to see the real computer, hidden underneath a false facade that is meant to satisfy tourists.  This becomes a plot point much later in the book.

We see a lot of Chip's childhood and teen years.  Suffice to say that he eventually joins up with a small group of rebels.  It turns out to be really easy to avoid the constant bracelet scanning, which makes me wonder why there aren't a lot more rebels.  Quite a bit later, Chip discovers a way to avoid the tranquilizing drugs.  This is almost as simple as skipping the scanners.  Not the most efficient totalitarian dystopia ever imagined!

There's a lot of back and forth running around, but let's sum up.  Chip falls in love with one of the rebels, who has gone back to her old tranquilized ways.  He kidnaps her and takes off for an island of rebels.  Again, this is remarkably easy to do, but at least this time there's a reason, revealed in a plot twist.

I have to mention that Chip rapes the woman he supposedly loves.  When she comes out of her drugged state, she accepts this as natural, and their romance continues.  Sorry, I'm not buying it.

Long and somewhat tedious climax short, Chip leads an attack on the computer, leading up to a surprising revelation as to what's really been going on.  This part of the novel is very melodramatic, in sharp contrast to the rest, which is often as bland as the world in which it's set.

Neither original nor plausible, this simply isn't a very good book.  It could benefit from some serious editing.  Keith Laumer would have told the same story in one-third the length.  Robert Sheckley would have made it more satiric.  Stick to the scary stuff, Ira.

Two stars.

A photo portrait of Winona Menezes. She is a woman with light-brown skin, long black curly hair and dark eyes. She is smiling at the camera.
by Winona Menezes

Whisper from the Stars, by Jeff Sutton

Book cover of a dark haired man on a red planet covered in sprawling tower architecture a large string of beads comes from the foreground and passes behind his right shoulder. The caption reads He wrenched open the door to strange, multiple worlds WHISPER FROM THE STARS BY JEFF SUTTON.
cover by Paul Lehr

The year is 2231, and jet-setting science journalist Joel Blake is at the top of his field. His glamorous job has him rubbing shoulders with the brightest minds of his age, and affords him a level of comfort that rarely has him challenging the technological utopia that Earth has become thanks to the control of a world government determined to maintain peace and progress… at any cost. His easy complacency is rattled for the first time when he meets the brilliant astrophysicist Ann Willett at a party she doesn’t want to be at; her aloofness betrays a discontent with the world that he finds fascinating. All his probing yields from her is a frustration at the government’s unwillingness to fund research into any field without an immediate profit motive, leaving her feeling like a great discovery lies just beyond her reach. He’s never met a mind like hers, and he doesn't meet another until work assigns him an interview with the visionary polymath Mark Randall.

Randall’s scientific work spans multiple fields, with seemingly nothing beyond the grasp of his prodigious mind. Feeling as though he has conquered the known world of science, he has turned his attention to the unknown: dimensions beyond human perception, elongation and reversal of the passage of time. Randall and Willett immediately find kindred spirits in each other, leaving Blake to feel insignificant under the shadows of their intellects. But when the tyrannical rulers of their gilded world discover their attempts to liberate mankind from the order they’ve imposed, both scientists are forced to flee into the cosmos, and Blake is left behind to piece together their radical vision for the future of humanity.

Now, I don’t feel that this book did anything I haven’t seen before: the oppressive government, the predictable utopia, the geniuses turned space-fugitives. Randall is very much a stock genius character, as though Sutton wished to rely heavily on our shared cultural knowledge of the Sci-Fi Genius to fill in the gaps left by his sparse characterization. It's all familiar, but familiar in the way my favorite blanket is familiar. If I didn’t like this genre with all its conventions, I wouldn’t be here. No, the reason I connected with this book lay in its smaller details.

The character of Ann Willett was so interesting to me, and though she could (and should!) have been explored in greater depth, I did also get the sense that the tantalizingly sparse but dense scenes centering her character contributed to the air of mystery, the self-imposed isolation that so intrigued Blake and drew him to her. Sutton’s intimate descriptions of spaceflight were scattered with those delightfully technical imaginative flourishes that always betray a writer’s engineering background. Blake’s charmed life as a high-society journalist is simply everything I’ve ever wanted, and I brimmed with envy the entire novel.

My absolute favorite detail was Willett’s violin motif. I’ve always found it hard to put into words the way that the sound of a violin can sound so haunting to me, so profoundly lonely. It fills a room with sorrow and longing in a way to which no other sound compares, and this is the motif through which Sutton conveys Ann Willett’s loneliness. She expresses her solitude in the melodies she plays on her violin, and the invocation of violin music had such a visceral sensory effect on me that she instantly became one of the more unforgettable characters I’ve read. I was so enchanted to read Sutton put into words the lonely beauty of violin song and to know the feeling is more universal than I thought.

It was the details in Whisper From the Stars that appealed to me, minutiae small enough to pass by a reader unnoticed but which felt tailor-made to suit my sensibilities. On its face it's a good, solid, unremarkable book, but it’s so rare and wonderful to recognize so much of your own eccentricities in a book that I’m going to have to give this one four stars.

Society's Fears Made Uncannily Manifest


by Amber Dubin

The Incredible Tide, by Alexander Key

A red book cover depicting a red ten Winged bird in front of a face. The caption reads THE INCREDIBLE TIDE by ALEXANDER KEY
by Davis Meltzer

I cannot think of a more fitting name for Alexander Key's stunning piece of fiction than The Incredible Tide. This fast moving ride of a story immerses the reader immediately with a forcefully aggressive pace and doesn't release one's attention until it has crashed upon the shores of its abrupt conclusion. It takes what appears to be a fantastical hero in a uniquely broken world and anchors to a coming of age anti-fascistic message so masterfully that the reader truly feels the author’s societal warning.

In order to dispel all doubt that the story within is meant as a warning, Alexander Key begins The Incredible Tide with the ominous dedication “To a people unknown, of a land long lost – for surely what is written here has happened before. It depends upon us alone whether it is a reflection or a prophecy.” It is thusly that the reader embarks on the plot like a scavenger unearthing a sandy message in a bottle. Like a freshly unburied treasure, the remarkable 17 year old castaway, Conan of Orme, shakes himself loose of his seemingly unsurvivable circumstances, marooned alone on a tiny cluster of rocks with only birds as companions. It is revealed that he has endured in this solitary state for five years after a catastrophe coined “the incredible tide” drowned a previously Earth-like environment in endless water.

He is “rescued” involuntarily by elderly, frail representatives of one of the fascist factions responsible for plunging the world into this regrettable state. Once taken prisoner, it is revealed to Conan that the New World Order, an Axis-powers-like force, is still greedily fighting over the scraps of this decimated planet, clinging to the totalitarian, short-sighted ways that caused its own destruction. Thankfully, all hope is not lost because Conan and his ilk possess certain super human abilities of perception and telepathy, and they use these powers along with the sometimes equally powerful and very human capacity to love, empathize, and connect with each other and a very strong spiritual source. Conan and all his allies will need to use every opportunity they can to be able to survive and ultimately overthrow the oppressive, greedy and powerful government whose obsession with clinging to its own past threatens to doom the entire future of humanity.

In my experience of dystopian world creation, The Incredible Tide's is vague and as enshrouded in mists as their planet is presently, but I don't think this takes away from the story. I felt like the story could have been longer and the character development and relationships could have had more room to take wing, but there was also something beautiful in the story's conciseness. The way Alexander Key was able to somehow balance a Lord of the Flies-esqe uprising on one shore with a colliding tsunami of Animal Farm oppressive governmental takeover was particularly masterfully done in a short amount of pages. I was also impressed by the way he was able to communicate the absurdity of maintaining an Orwellian Big Brother police state (a la 1984) on the remains of an actively rotting planet. Intriguing too, is a moment very much reminiscent of the unheard warnings that Superman's parents conveyed to the stubborn oligarchs on the planet Krypton before their willful self-destruction; though I felt the way it was communicated here was much more gritty and frustratingly human than the comic book version.

Overall I found The Incredible Tide to be an awe-inspiring, page-turning, and unique adventure that deserves a singular place alongside many other powerful works of dystopian fiction, and I'm rather pleased to see another heavy-hitting ominous warning make it into the 70s, as it has been decades since we've seen such cautionary tales as were more commonplace in the 40s and 50s.

5 stars

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 16, 1970] Unassailable Fortresses? A Full-Five pair of issues: (Vision of Tomorrow #6)

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By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

We are only in the second month of the new decade, but one thing seems to be clear. Women are no longer willing to be silent.

A group of women standing outside Benjamin Simon, cheering at the camera

In Leeds, hundreds of women textile workers have walked out on unofficial strike. They are opposing the pay deal struck between their union and employer, claiming it is unfair that women will be getting smaller pay increases than their male co-workers.

Women's Weekend Programme flyer saying: Women's Weekend to be held at Buxton Hall, Ruskin College, Oxford on February 27th, 28th, March 1st. Fee 10s for the weekend. Programme Papers to be discussed on Saturday and Sunday morning will be distributed on Friday. Friday Evening - 8PM: Brief reports from existing groups and organisations. Accounts of activities and projects. Discussion. (This session is closed to men). Saturday - 10am-1PM: The Social Role of Women (3 Papers) 1) What is the Family? 2) What is the Mother's Role? 3) Changing Patterns of Delinquency Amonst Women Discussion Saturday - 2PM-6PM: Women and the Economy (4 Papers) 1) Women under capitalism (including the housewife and advertising). 2) What is 'Women's Work'? 3) Equal Pay 4) Women's Role in Industrial Militancy and in Trade Unions. Discussion Saturday - 8PM: Informal Discussion: Possibility of convening small workshops of particular interest to groups of individuals. One suggestion is "Different ways of living together", the kibbutz, etc. Sunday - 10am-1PM: Women and Revolution (3 Papers) 1) The Myth of Inactivity: Women in historic struggles. 2) Women and the working class. 3) Political Perspectives on Women's Struggles. Sunday - PM: Where are we going? (This session is closed to men). Free discussion to include work of local groups, forthcoming actions, national/international co-ordination, further meetings. Groups and organisations are asked to contribute brief papers summarising their present work. Please try and duplicate these yourselves. If this is not possible send a gestener foolscap stencil to Juliet Mitchell, 4, Cardozo rd., London N7. There will be a literature stall. Bring my stuff you or your group has produced on the position of women. Free accommodation (bring sleeping bags) and limited creche facilities will be available. No hot meals. Application for accomodation and creche facitilties must be made by Feb 4th. All people making their own arrangements must register for the weekend by Feb 15th. Fees payable at the door. Please send donations. Please circularise this information among all women you know,

At the other end of the social scale, the hallowed halls of Oxford is set to host the “Women’s Weekend”. Tired of being ignored and shouted down by men at other meetings, this will be an all-women conference to discuss women’s history and their current position in the world.

Annie Nightingale in 1970 wearing headphones and holding two records above her head in each hand.

In a more literal sense, a woman’s voice can now be heard on British Pop Radio. After hiring an all-male team from Pirate Radio and Radio Luxembourg to start Radio 1, the BBC have finally branched out and employed their first woman DJ. Annie Nightingale is only thirty but has already had an impressive career, including working as a journalist, presenting numerous music television programmes, having a modelling career and running her own fashion boutique.

Whether this will lead to changes in British science fiction publishing remains to be seen. The Current Issue of Vision of Tomorrow’s only female representation is in its review columnists. Maybe we need to organize our own flying pickets?

However, maybe some of this atmosphere is affecting our writers, as all these stories are, in one way or another, about people trying to break out of their social circumstances. So, let’s walk through the stench of cigar smoke in this gentleman’s club and check out the contents:

Vision of Tomorrow #6

Cover Vision of Tomorrow #6 showing a ringed planet illuminted by a red sun against a starfield. Caption says: The Phoenix People Brunner - Tubb - Broderick
Cover Art by David A. Hardy

Whither SF? by Rev. John Clay

I would like to thank Philip Harbottle for realizing that he has run out of things to say and inviting in guest writers to open the magazine. Take note American publishers!

I was quite taken with this first installment, with the Reverend John Clay discussing the theological underpinnings of recent SF, q.v. Sheckley & Leiber, and going on to talk about how imagination is undervalued in our modern society.

Full-Five by E.C. Tubb

Black and white ink drawing with a face formed of flames, with the contents of an open pill poured into the brain.
Illustrated by Eddie Jones

In the 21st Century there exists an incredibly powerful illicit drug called full-five. This has the power to give a sense of perfection to all five senses, for a short period of time. It is not chemically addictive, but it makes the real world seem like a nightmare in comparison.

When a chemist secretly making the drug is murdered, we follow how this impacts four different groups of people: his criminal associates; a rich customer and his dealer; a prize fighter; and the police investigating the case.

Given how well received his other works in Vision have been (including by yours truly) it is perhaps unsurprising Tubb would be allowed to take up a large portion of this month’s magazine. And he puts it to great use. Even with 16 pages at his disposal, it is not easy to create a fully visualized world, populated with solid characters. A lot of writers cannot even manage it in a novel.

I was worried at times it was going to be a case of an old man yelling at the young kids, but it is actually quite measured. It does get a touch didactic at points but this is necessary to give the different perspectives on full-five’s effect on society.

Even though I imagine others will question if I am taking something myself. I am giving this story a Full-Five Stars.

The Impatient Dreamers: Blast-Off

Reproduction of Issue 1 of Tales of Wonder showing Superman with two giant robots shooting lasers over London. To the side planes fly through the air as they are shot at by anti-aircraft guns.
Reproduction of Issue 1 of Tales of Wonder. Cover by Nick

As the title suggests we now get into the real meat of things. With the British market finally starting to get its own specialist magazine titles in the mid-30s, there were some willing to take a chance on SF.  This piece primarily focuses on the publication of Gillings’ Tales of Wonder and publisher Newnes’ plans for Fantasy.

Once again full of great detail, even more enhanced by the fact that he is now directly involved behind the scenes of both magazines. Possibly the most interesting part for me was the original guidelines Newnes put out for soliciting stories for Fantasy:

– No implausible flights of fancy, no weird fiction, no spiritual or ghost stories, no gore or sex, no animals with human attributes, no interplanetary travel, no medical or biological themes, and no time travel

– Stories particularly welcome are those envisaging new developments of existing technology, such as flight and television, or on future developments in warfare.

As you can probably imagine, Gillings was unimpressed by these limitations.

Continuing to cruise high at Five Stars

Fifth Commandment by John Brunner

Black and white illustration of a man looks out at a towered city with spaceships whizzing around.
Illustrated by Eddie Jones

The prolific John Brunner seems to have generally moved away from short fiction to the more lucrative book market, this being only his second new short story in the last 12 months.

Grumman lives in Retirement, a self-contained community providing all the needs of the elderly. But why does that make him feel so dissatisfied? And why does no one in Retirement have any children?

Not the most original story but fulfills its purpose well.

Three Stars

The Phoenix People by Richard A. Gordon

Black and White Illustration of a suited monkey in a glass cabinet with eyes closed and helmet attached. In the background is a spaceship flying past a planet into a bright light.
Illustrated by Eddie Jones

An expedition comes to visit an ancient planet called by its inhabitants “Earth”. The sentient population represent the longest recorded continual chain of evolution in the known universe, yet they seem to lack technological progress and are unresponsive to any queries. Just as the expedition is close to giving up, they discover an ancient buried spaceship, more advanced than any they have seen anywhere. What is it doing here?

I found this a fairly obvious tale, padded out with a level of verbosity that puts even me to shame. It is not bad as such, just rather dull and pointless.

Two Stars

The Visitors by Frank Bryning

Black and white ink illustration of a galley surrounded by the a starfield and a strange item peeking out of the sea.
Illustrated by Eddie Jones

Alien visitors are watching a galley sail across an inland sea. When one of the passengers goes overboard, they pick him up to investigate the species further.

Vision Vignette logo with Vision in an ellipse and vignette underneath

This comes with a special “Vision Vignette” logo. Unfortunately, the contents are lacking in any superlative qualities. It is the kind of tale that would have been considered old hat a decade ago. However, it is short and reasonably written, which saves it from the bottom rung of the ranking ladder.

Two Stars

The Star-Mutants by Damien Broderick

Black and White Illustration of Lady Violence with a hand on hip and holding a flame thrower in front of a wall of flames.
Illustrated by Eddie Jones, who I believe has excelled himself in this issue

The generation starship Man’s Dream set off from Earth a century ago. Fifteen years into the voyage, an outbreak of psychosis infected those born on Earth, whilst the children born on the ship were unaffected. With the help of the computer system, the space-born quarantine the Earth-born and try to provide them with help. However, space radiation mutates their children and a conflict between the two emerges.

Now, a hundred years later, the Space-Born are being slowly pushed back to a smaller section of the ship. The Space-Mutants live in a jungle (an outgrowth of untended hydroponics plants) where they raid into the Space-Born territory. Captain Van of the Space-Born realizes the time has come to make a decision that is contrary to their programming. Either forgo their mission and integrate into Space-Mutant society, or wipe out the mutants completely.

At first glance this may seem to be just another variation on Aldiss’ Non-Stop, but it possesses some elements that raise it up. Firstly, this is quite a dark, mature story where our narrator is faced with an unwinnable scenario, whatever he does something will be lost. Secondly, it is very fast paced and action-packed, making it a very easy read in spite of the heavy subject matter.

Whilst there may be more mention of breasts than is strictly necessary in the story, women are present throughout and have varied pivotal roles. Lady Violence in particular lives up to her name and I would willingly read a novel of her future adventures.

Four Stars

Fantasy Review

Katheryn Buckley reviews Barefoot in the Head by Brian W. Aldiss and has more praise for it than we had for the original short stories in New Worlds. Don Malcolm spends some time covering the innumerable flaws in Chariot of the Gods? by Erich von Daniken but still advises readers to try it and make up their own minds.

Finally, Robert Conquest writes another attempt to take down the new wave in his “review” of The New SF. The quote marks are mine as he barely mentions the stories inside, instead choosing to decry experimentation, get angry that the initials “SF” can mean something other than science fiction, and making rambling references to the 1920s.

Readers' Reaction E. C. Tubb emerged as the winner in our second issue, as determined by reader response, and wins our bonus of £10. The reader whose votes most near tallied with the final result was Mr. A. G. Prior, of Balham. the final voting was: 1. Quarry by EC Tubb 2. Moonchip by John Rankine 3. A Judge of Men by Michael G. Coney 4. Dancing Gerontius by Lee Harding 5. Echo by William F. Temple 6. Minos by Maurice Whitta 7. Frozen Assets by Dan Morgan 8. Undercover Weapon by Jack Wodhams 9. Strictly Legal by Douglas Fulthorpe
The belated poll results for issue #2. Apart from the high positioning of Moonchip I don’t particularly disagree with these rankings.

A Great Escape

Shot from Girl on a Motorcycle of Marianne Faithful riding along a forested road on a motorcycle.
Marianne Faithful in Girl on a Motorcycle. Not quite as good a role as Steve McQueen got.

So, overall a pretty good selection of tales in this issue of Vision of Tomorrow, and a worthy diversion from your troubles for an hour or so. No stories are truly bad and a couple are very good indeed.

Just like the characters above, let us hope that society progresses enough that women can break out of their social confines and allow their voices to be heard just as loudly as men. Imagine if one day we could pick up a magazine to be surprised to find there are no women featured in an issue, rather than when one turns up.

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 14, 1970] Spock must Die!, Starbreed, Seed of the Dreamers, and The Blind Worm

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[For this first Galactoscope of the month, please enjoy this quartet of diverting reviews…which are probably more entertaining than the books in question!]

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Spock Must Die!, by James Blish

Star Trek is dead. Long live Star Trek!

No sooner had Trek left the air at the end of last year's rerun season than it reentered the airwaves in syndication. And not just at home, but abroad: the BBC are playing Trek weekly, exposing yet more potential fans to the first real science fiction show on TV.

While new episodes may not be airing on television, new stories are being created. I am subscribed to a number of fanzines devoted to Trek. There aren't quite so many these days as once there were, but there's also been something of a distillation of quality. For instance, I receive Spockanalia and T-Negative with almost montly regularity. These are quality pubs with some real heavy hitters involved. They are crammed with articles and fiction. As to the latter, a lot of it is proposed fourth season scripts turned into stories—by people who really know the show. The stories by such Big Name Fans as Ruth Berman, Dorothy Jones, and Astrid Anderson (of Karen/Poul Anderson lineage) are always excellent.

There have been few commercial Trek books to date. You had Gene Roddenberry/Stephen Whitfield's indispensible reference, The Making of Star Trek, released between the 2nd and 3rd seasons, and Bantam has published three collections of Trek episodes turned into short stories by James Blish (rather sketchily, and not overly faithfully). There was Mack Reynolds' juvenile Mission to Horatius, which wasn't very good.

Cover of an orange novel featuring two converging Spocks. The caption reads A STAR TREK NOVEL SPOCK MUST DIE! BY JAMES BLISH AN EXCITING NEW NOVEL OF ITERPLANETARY ADVENTURE INSPIRED BY THE CHARACTERS OF GENE RODDENBERRY CREATED FOR THE FAMOUS TELEVISION SERIES

Now Bantam has released the first "real" Trek novel, one aimed at adults. It is also by James Blish, who liberally sprinkles footnote references to prior episodes he has novelized. The basic premises are two-fold:

The Enterprise is on a farflung star-charting mission on the backside of the Klingon Empire, which is in a grudging armistice with the Federation enforced by the mind-being Organians (q.v. the excellent episode, Errand of Mercy) . Lieutenant Uhura reports to Captain Kirk that the Klingons have somehow managed to neutralize Organia and launch a surprise attack that knocks the Feds back on their heels.

Chief Engineer "Scotty" bungs together a long-range transporter that will allow Mr. Spock to reconnoiter Organia and report back his findings. However, the journey has an unexpected consequence: the first officer is duplicated—and the replica is irretrievably evil. Can Kirk and his crew resolve the Organia issue before the bad Spock destroys them all?

Put like that, the story seems awfully juvenile, but the slim novel (just 115 pages) is actually quite a good read.

Characterization is weak, relying on the reader's knowledge of the show, but it is rather truer to the cast than prior Trek novelizations. Everyone is a bit more technically savvy and erudite than normal: Star Trek as an Analog hard SF story. Scotty's accent is lovingly, if not quite accurately (to Doohan's variety) transliterated. Uhura and Sulu are given some good "screen time". Spock (both incarnations) are particularly well-rendered. Kirk is a bit of a cipher, and McCoy is more logical than usual. Also, the captain keeps calling him "Doc" rather than "Bones", which is a little jarring (though true to early 1st season Kirk). I did appreciate when Kirk mused, early on, "What was the source of the oddly overt response that women of all ages and degrees of experience seemed to feel toward Spock?" Blish certainly has kept up with the fandom!

As for the plot, well, it's a series of short chapters that read like episode scenes, the novel as a whole divided (informally) into a series of acts. It's a bit overlong for a TV show, but it would make a decent movie. Technical solutions are hatched out of nowhere, implemented, and moved past. One gets the impression that the Enterprise is responsible for half of the Federation's scientific innovations; it's a pity that most are forgotten about after they are developed.

The novel's climax is suitably exciting, and it's quite momentous. The Trek universe is substantially changed as a result…so much so that Blish has probably pinched off his own parallel continuum. Read it, and you'll see why.

I liked it. It's not literature for the ages, but it is at least as good as the best fanfiction (not a slur), and I think it sets a standard going forward.

3.5 stars.

[We were very excited to get this next review from someone who has worked behind the scenes at the Journey for a long time—please welcome Frida Singer to the team!]

photo of a fair-complected woman with long red hair in a plaid dress
by Frida Singer

Starbreed, by MARTHA deMEY CLOW

A book cover depicting an orb of humanoid faces of all colors shapes and sizes. The caption reads MARTHA deMEY CLOW HE WAS A HYBRID- STRONGER, CLEVERER, FASTER, THAN ANY HUMAN- AND FAR MORE DEADLY STARBREED .
cover by Steele Savage

Starbreed begins with a port-side interlude when a frustrated Centaurian merchantman (cross-fertile with other hominids, somehow) exercises his resentment by raping a pubescent prostitute. On discovering the consequent pregnancy, the never-named girl seeks refuge in a local convent. There, nuns present us an America where parentage is a licensed privilege (thanks to the problems postulated by that old dastard Malthus), where the 'defects' of crime mandate sterilisation, and where remote towns have euthanasia clinics.  The Soviet Union and China both remain, but the promise of communism has never truly flowered again, while American capital trips gaily forward, with bigotry her bold escort.  Eighteen years have passed since Centaurian traders first made contact, and thus far they have exploited their contracts, plying a colonial trade monopoly across the seas of space.

The child is raised in the shelter of the convent after his mother dies in childbirth. Thanks to his mixed parentage, by the age of 14 he's already a bizarre demigod of self-sufficiency, and so flees across the border of the American trade zone to Guayaquil.  Taking the alias ‘Roger’ after the slur ‘rojo’ which the border guards used, there he and a cohort of other half-Centaurian teens play at larceny, revolution and revenge. He conceives the idea that, through the time dilation of Centaurians superluminal transport (20 years in a few weeks subjective), he may evade the capital crime of being a child of miscegenation—by being older than would allow for his existence. With stolen money, he invests in a new identity and a working berth on a Centaurian trade vessel, burning to discover the secrets of their design.

Not a soul seems happy, and few afford one another grace. The story reads like something written by Ellison were he smidgen less misanthropic.  Imagine, if you will, Vogt's Slan, but the antagonist is our protagonist.  A Khan of the Eugenics Wars, but molded out of the pain of rejection rather than to the designs of some military-industrial complex.  Books, in the end, are Roger’s only solace, and he bitterly resents his social isolation, fixing on attaining power to secure for himself that which he feels he has been denied.  Women all seem to be playing to scripts which evoke John Norman: prizes to be conquered into obedient adoration, mothers to be outgrown, and artifacts of abjection.  Often it feels as though they’re only set-dressing for the quintet of rational, hale, golden-eyed men who scheme to seize the future as continental hegemons.

This is a bitterly comic, almost Wildean novel where every patronizing impulse seems bound to erupt with the pus of profound condescension, framed within a nesting-doll of layered imperialist exploitation, where the genocide of the Watusi is but a historical footnote. It strives to be a warning klaxon against the simmering of the dispossessed, and fails most profoundly where it relies on racial caricature, or lacks follow-through. I don't expect to re-read it, but I might refer it to others with a taste for maror, willing to subject themselves to stories about eugenics for reasons other than enjoyment.

3 out of 5

photo of a man with short dark hair and goatee
by Brian Collins

With the latest Ace Double (or at least the latest one to fall into my hands), we have two original short novels—although one of them is closer to a novella than a true novel. The shorter (and better) piece is by Emil Petaja, a veteran of the field, who seems to be as productive as ever. The other is (I believe) the second novel by a very young Englishman (he's only 21, so let's take it easy on him) named Brian Stableford. Stableford was apparently sending letters to New Worlds and the dearly missed SF Impulse years ago, when he was a snot-nosed teenager; more recently he's tried his hand at writing professionally.

Ace Double 06707

Double book covers, the first featuring the head of a man and a robot with the caption Emil Petaja Seed of the Dreamers The heroes of the Earth must live again! The second book cover depicts a long sharp green, blue and purple abstract figure with an eye atop, with small humanoids weilding swords below. the caption reads. Brian M. Stableford THE BLIND WORM Complete the Quadrilateral -and the universe is yours
Cover art by Gray Morrow and Jack Gaughan.

Seed of the Dreamers, by Emil Petaja

Brad Mantee is a tough and hard-nosed enforcer for Star Control, an intergalactic empire which Petaja, in his narration, explicitly calls fascist. Brad is here to take one Dr. Milton Lloyd to prison, for the doctor, while undoubtedly brilliant, is also responsible for an experiment gone wrong, killing over a dozen people. The journey goes wrong, however, when, upon landing, Brad meets a beautiful young woman who, unbeknownst to him, is Dr. Lloyd's daughter. Harriet Lloyd, the heroine of the novella, is bright like her old man, but what makes her different is twofold: that she works for TUFF, a league of what seem to be space-hippies, undermining Star Control's tyranny in subtle ways; and two, she has psi powers, these being more or less responsible for the rest of the plot. While Harriet is distracting Brad, Dr. Lloyd hijacks Brad's ship and takes off for what turns out to be a seemingly uninhabited planet, which Harriet christens as Virgo (she's interested in astrology).

The rest of the novella (it really is a lightning-quick hundred pages) is concerned with Brad and Harriet having to cooperate with each other once it becomes apparent Dr. Lloyd has crash-landed on Virgo, and may or may not be dead. This would all be a pretty derivative planetary adventure, and indeed during the opening stretch I was worried that Petaja had not put any effort into this one; but the good news is that Seed of the Dreamers has a neat little trick up its sleeve. It soon dawns on Brad and Harriet that they are not the only people on this planet—the only problem then being that said people have apparently spawned from the old adventure books Brad is fond of reading (secretly and illegally, since Star Control has long since outlawed fiction books). They meet and nearly get killed by some tribal folks out of the pages of King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard, and really it's off to the races from there.

Seed of the Dreamers reads as a sort of reversal of L. Ron Hubbard's Typewriter in the Sky, since whereas that novel involves a real person getting thrown into a world of fiction, in Petaja's novella the fictitious characters have decided to bring the party to the real world. Virgo is thus strangely populated with characters from different real-world books, including but not limited to King Solomon's Mines, The Time Machine, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and more. There's even a Tarzan lookalike named Zartan (I assume for legal reasons Petaja cannot use "Tarzan" as a name), who appears in one scene. These characters from books all live by what they call "the Word," which is clearly a joke about the Bible, but it's also in reference to each character's programming, or rather their characterization according to each's source material.

Petaja has a lot of fun with his premise, although Seed of the Dreamers is, if anything, too short. Brad and Harriet coming across one fictitious character after another makes the adventure feel almost like a theme park ride, and most of the supporting cast (excepting Tsung, a Chinese mythological figure) only get a chapter or two before Petaja quickly becomes bored of them, like a bratty child throwing away his toys. It's also mind-numbingly stupid, between the planetary adventure aspect, Brad and Harriet's fast-moving (and thoroughly unconvincing) romance, and Petaja's attempts at explaining scientifically a world that seems more aligned with fantasy. But most of it is good fun.

A hearty three stars.

The Blind Worm, by Brian Stableford

Stableford's novel is much longer than Petaja's, and unfortunately much worse. Indeed, this might be the first time I've reviewed a book for the Journey where I've loathed it simply due to how poorly it's written. The Blind Worm is a far-future science-fantasy action romp, in which humanity has all but died out, with only a tiny number of people living in Ylle, "the City of Sorrow," surrounded by the Wildland, a vast forest front that for humans is almost impossible to traverse. John Tamerlane is known as the black king, being black of both skin and clothing. He seeks to solve the Quadrilateral, a puzzle that seems to connect parallel universes, and which could provide a new beginning for mankind. Unfortunately, the black king and his cohorts must contend with Sum, an alien hive-mind with godlike powers, and a synthetic humanoid cyclops called the Blind Worm. Both the black king and Sum want to solve the Quadrilateral, but only the black king has the "key," in the form of Swallow, one of his aforementioned cohorts.

I would describe this novel, which mercifully clocks in at just under 150 pages, as like a more SFnal take on The Lord of the Rings, but only a fraction of that trilogy in both quantity and quality (I say this already not being terribly fond of Professor Tolkien's magnum opus). There is a big existential battle between good and evil, in a landscape that feels somehow both desolate and overgrown with vegetation; and then there's the Blind Worm, who acts as a third party and a sort of walking plot device. The Blind Worm is the invention of one Jose Dragon (yes, that is his name), a nigh-immortal human who had created the Blind Worm as a way to combat Sum and the Wildland. This is all conveyed in some of the clunkiest and most pseudo-philosophical dialogue I've ever had to read in an SF novel, which does make me wonder if Stableford had intended his characters to talk this way. It doesn't help that he mostly gives these characters, who are generally lacking in life and individual personality, some of the worst-sounding names you can imagine.

Given Stableford's age, I was inclined to grade The Blind Worm on a curve—but it took me four days to get through when it really should have only taken two. The dialogue and attempts at describing action scenes border on the embarrassing. Of the strangely large cast of characters, maybe the most conspicuously lacking is Zea, the single woman of the bunch. Clearly Stableford has certain ideas as to what to do with Zea, as a symbol with arms and legs, but as a character she does and says next to nothing. This is not active woman-hating like one would see in a Harlan Ellison or Robert Silverberg story, but rather it descends from a long literary tradition of contextualizing women as ways for the (presumably male) writer to work in some symbolism, as opposed to giving them Shakespearean humanity. The issues I have with Zea, more specifically with her emptiness as a character, feel like a microcosm for this novel's apparent deficiencies.

The shame of all this is that I would recommend Seed of the Dreamers, albeit tepidly, but it's conjoined to a much longer and much less entertaining piece of work.

One star.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 12, 1970] Up Front (March 1970 Amazing)

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A black-and-white photo portrait of John Boston. He is a clean-shaven white man with close-cropped brown hair. He wears glasses, a jacket, shirt, and tie, and is looking at the camera with a neutral expression.
by John Boston

Let’s be up front.  That is, the front of the March 1970 Amazing, depicting a space-suited person with outstretched arms following or yearning after or paying homage to an apparently departing spacecraft.  The contents page says it’s by Willis, illustrating a story called “Breaking Point.” However, Ted White’s editorial says, first, that he’s contacted some “promising young artists” whose work will appear on future covers, but right now they’re “sifting” the European covers that they apparently buy in bulk and having stories written around them “whenever possible,” like Greg Benford’s “Sons of Man” a couple of issues ago.  And this issue’s “Breaking Point” was written around the present cover, so the story illustrates the cover rather than vice versa.

Cover of Amazing magazine showing a silver space vessel skimming a rocky surface and seemingly poised to hurtle along a fiery path traced in the orbit above a planet daubed in yellows, with traces of red and mottled greens.  In the foreground a space-suited figure trails in its wake, arms outstretched
by Willis

And now that we have that straight, who’s this Willis guy?  Well, informed rumor has it that the cover is actually by our very familiar friend Johnny Bruck, from the German Perry Rhodan #201 from 1965.  The style and subject matter certainly look like Bruck’s.

Moving on to more straightforward matters: the contents look much like the previous White issues, with a serial installment, several new short stories plus a reprint, editorial, book reviews, fanzine reviews, and letter column. 

White’s editorial is mostly devoted to the tortuous history of his novel By Furies Possessed, serialized starting in this issue. This is another of his commendable efforts to educate the readership about How Publishing Works.  And he says it in black and white!  “It helps to Know Somebody, to Have Friends.” Well worth reading.  White also notes the addition of Arnold Katz, Arnie to fandom, who as Associate Editor “will have the task of pouring [sic, I hope] through all those smouldering [ditto] old issues” looking for Classic Reprints.  He also announces a new program of Reader Feedback: since he gets more letters than he can print, he will forward unprinted letters to the authors on whose work they comment, cutting up the letters concerning multiple stories.  I wonder how long that laborious task can be maintained.

The book review column is its usually slightly incestuous but quite readable pool of contention, with editor White praising Ursula LeGuin’s new juvenile A Wizard of Earthsea as not at all juvenile, and Greg Benford praising White’s new juvenile No Time Like Tomorrow only a bit less fulsomely.  Dennis O’Neil responds lukewarmly to The Andromeda Strain, Richard Lupoff offers qualified praise to Michael Moorcock’s The Black Corridor (“doesn’t quite make it, but it was a worthwhile effort . . . and will be equally worthwhile for serious readers of science fiction”), and—whoa!  What’s this?  Speaking of incestuous, or maybe recursive, Hank Stine is here to refute Richard Delap’s mild praise last issue of Harry Harrison’s Captive Universe: “This book is a crime.  If it is as common a crime as the smoking of marijuana, it is no matter; the offense is the same. . . .  There was simply no reason for this book to have been written and no reason to read it. . . . It could have been written twenty years ago”—and it was, “at least once a year since then.” (Sounds about right.)

And here’s Delap, pounding away at Josephine Saxton’s The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith.  He praises the earlier, shorter version “The Consciousness Machine” published in F&SF, but . . . “In discarding the concept used in the shorter version—an emblematic fantasy of the subconscious recorded pictorially by a machine used in psychoanalysis—the author has left her tale stranded in a hazy, directionless waste, discarding all the original sf elements in favor of unnecessarily extended feminine symbolism.” (Actually, I liked it pretty well, though maybe that makes me hazy and directionless too.) Oh, and I see I skipped over Alexei Panshin’s very succinct praise of R.A. Lafferty’s Fourth Mansions, which concludes: “It’s a wild book full of prodigious lies, and I’ll probably read it again.”

The letter column is the usual mix of the inane and the intelligent, with some apparent self-parody (“The November Amazing is a groove! . . . The first installment of the Philip K. Dick novel was a trip! . . . Dick must be stoned out of his mind—on talent!  And Ray Russell . . . came through with a mind-blower. . . .”).  Or maybe it’s just part of the inane.  Rocks are thrown at John J. Pierce’s anti-New Wave comments.  The only news here about the magazine’s functioning is that its artists must be near at hand because its deadlines are too short, so mailing stories to the West Coast and receiving art by return mail is not feasible.  The fanzine review column is full of fanzines, some analyzed with more nuance than I suspect goes into their production.

As for the fiction . . . it’s still a frustratingly mixed bag. 

By Furies Possessed (Part 1 of 2), by Ted White

Halftone ink illustration of a well-groomed taller man dressed in tights, a robe, and a tie, shaking the hand of a shorter person (facing away from the viewer) who carries a satchel and appears to be wearing a suit
by Gray Morrow

White’s serial novel By Furies Possessed comes with a celebrity blurb.  On the cover: “Big and powerful, gut-hard stuff!—Philip K. Dick.” Inside the magazine, there’s more, equally fulsome, from PKD.  I will as usual withhold comment until the serial is complete.  But looking through the first few pages, I see that White has rung a change on Tuckerization, Wilson Tucker's practice of giving his characters the names of prominent SF figures.  White, the sometime jazz critic, has named his protagonist Tad Dameron.  Tadd Dameron—birth name Tadley—was a respected jazz pianist, composer, and arranger who died young (1917-1965).

Breaking Point, by William C. Johnstone

Did I say straightforward above?  Let me take that back.  Breaking Point is blurbed as “Story Behind the Cover,” though the Cover is actually Behind the Story, as White’s editorial discloses.  The author, William C. Johnstone, is there said to be “a writer new to SF and these pages, but he’s somewhat better known in Hollywood, where he has accumulated numerous TV and screen credits.  He originally queried us about a novel he wanted to write, and the cover-story commission grew out of this.  ‘Breaking Point’ is actually the opening story in a projected book-length series.  You’ll be reading the rest of the stories here as fast as they’re written and we can publish them.” However, plausible gossip has it that Johnstone is actually a pseudonym of White, and the style is noticeably similar to White’s.

In any case, this introductory story is not actually a story.  It is an introduction, or maybe a first chapter.  A spaceship full of colonists-to-be, dormant in the Sleep of the Long Moment, malfunctions and breaks up into component modules.  A crew member caught in a corridor outside the modules hangs onto one of them and dies when it hits atmosphere.  (That must be what the cover is alleged to depict.) The module lands on an Earth-type planet (the four occupants are out breathing the air almost immediately).  The viewpoint character, Aaron, awakes to discover that one of the others, Chaimon, is hysterical because his girlfriend was in a different module and now he’ll never see her again.  Aaron, a psychotherapist, divines that their acquaintance was only a matter of days and Chaimon’s disturbance results from a vivid Dream of the Long Moment, and talks him down.  Then they see a headlight racing across the valley below.  There are people here!  And that’s it, after seven pages.  Stay tuned for the next thrilling installment, if any.  Two stars, subject to revision.

Trial by Silk, by Christopher Anvil

Christopher Anvil’s Trial by Silk begins with a demonstration of the moral hazard of payment by the word.  The good ship Starlight has been directed to an unnamed planet for shore leave, and Captain Engstrom is warning the crew of its perils—but he can’t explain them.  He begins: “Men—ah—This is very difficult.  I don’t quite know how—But it’s my duty to tell you, as a captain, that the—er—women—ah—on this planet—are . . . not—quite the way they seem.” And he goes on for some time in this vein, mentioning the food and drink, and concluding, “Whatever you do, don’t enjoy yourself.  –I mean—You know what I mean! –Anyway—That’s it.” This spiel, and the description of the crew laughing during it and after it, and everybody talking and joking about it before they actually manage to get off the spaceship, goes on for four and a half pages.

Halftone ink illustration of a man (wearing a vest, trousers, and calf-height motorcycle boots) and woman (wearing a short dress, necklace, and heels) in front of a sign reading 'sizzle palace'. The woman, is talking and and gesturing with her hands, while the man's head appears bowed in consideration.
by Ralph Reese

At that point, the story actually begins, and proves to be a discourse on other sorts of moral hazard.  Upon entering the nearby city, the spacemen are met by beautiful women offering to show them the sights—the “fountains, pools, lakes, theatres, wine shops, a communal feast and barbecue center, free communal dwellings, drug shops, fume dispensaries, sizzle palaces.” The narrator, the ship’s first officer, asks what’s a sizzle palace? His guide says “It’s terrible.  I can’t talk about it.” The sizzle palace has a skull and crossbones logo on it—as does, he notices, his guide’s hair clip, and the small bottle of highly captivating scent that she keeps applying.  They go to a public feast site where food (mainly meat) and drink are constantly replenished, and people including crew members are compulsively stuffing their faces.  He sees a cook seasoning meat from a box with the label Addicteen, also with skull and crossbones. 

The narrator bails on this G-rated orgy and says to a doctor who is treating its casualties, “I’m from off-planet.  What’s the purpose of this pleasure set-up?” The doctor responds with a bolus of Anvillean philosophy (i.e., Campbellian, but cruder): “Why, to let the unfit pleasure-lovers eliminate themselves!  If you let them have their own way, they will wreck any civilization ever built—unless you make allowance to get rid of them. . . .  Yes, you see, rot and corruption set into every civilization ever built, unless an iron discipline is imposed or some means is provided to exterminate the hedonists who spread the corruption.  The best way to get rid of them, obviously, is to provide them with exactly what they want.  It is the genius of our planet that we have worked out how to do it.  The expense is really very modest, as long as you let them finish themselves off fast, so their numbers don’t become too great.”

So why couldn’t the captain, who has been to this planet before, explain that to the crew in just that many words?  Because if he had, there wouldn’t be much of a story at all, let alone those delicious four and a half pages of remunerative surplusage at the beginning.

Speaking of philosophy, there’s an earlier exchange with the narrator’s alluring guide when he asks her why there’s hardly anybody around who looks older than 35.  She explains that when people are worn out, they “take a recoup”—i.e., go into the recuperator, which renews them.  Forever?  No, most last until 28 or 29; 35 is “frightfully old.” She giggled.  “Who would want to live that long?” So the recoup wears them out?  “No, silly.  Man was made for pleasure, and it’s the pleasure that wears him out, not the recoup.” The narrator protests that in this system, people lose half their lives.  She says, “But shouldn’t a life be measured by the total amount of pleasure received; not by the years it lasts?” Narrator responds, “What about accomplishment?” and she says, “You belong up there with them!”—referring to the people who actually do the work of keeping the society going, who pass by above the fray on overhead walkways with disapproving looks—and she walks away.

So why didn’t this appear in Analog?  Too unsubtle even for Campbell, maybe.  It's a toss-up whether it is more tedious than offensive, or vice versa.  Either way, one star.

I'm Too Big but I Love to Play, by James Tiptree, Jr.

Psychedelic ink illustration of a solitary suited figure piloting a car-sized vessel.  The turbulence of the ship's passage and the interior shadows of the cockpit create a woman's 'hair', flowing back from the woman's face which is silhouetted across the vehicle's nose.
by Michael Hinge

Matters are somewhat redeemed by the next item, James Tiptree, Jr.’s “I’m Too Big But I Love to Play,” which is a little reminiscent of A.E. van Vogt, or what van Vogt might be like if he had a sense of humor and his writing were less ponderous.  The protagonist is an energy being who spends his life (Tiptree’s pronoun usage) sailing around the universe on energy currents, until the day he discovers Earth and the subtle energy exchanges of human communication and interaction.  What fun!  He tries to join in but can’t get it right, causing havoc wherever he goes.  This Tiptree guy loves to play and he seems to be about the right size, though he, like his protagonist, needs to get a little more practice.  Three stars.

The Tree Terror, by David H. Keller, M.D.

The “Amazing Classic” this issue is David H. Keller’s “The Tree Terror,” from the October 1933 Amazing, and it is actually a charming relic, unlike some of its decidedly un-charming predecessors.  Keller is back on his usual theme—people mess with the natural order of things and disaster results.  President Tompkins of Cellulose Consolidated needs more cellulose, because it’s essential to making “a thousand synthetic products.” And he needs lots of it, and cheap, and near to his factories.  Horticulturist Simcox is ordered to do it or be fired.

So Simcox goes to work, consulting a paleo-botanist who tells him about club mosses, which (supported by stems) grew a hundred feet high during the Carboniferous and which we are now burning as coal.  Then he talks to a biologist who is irradiating ferns, and figures out how to return club moss to its ancestral glory, and bingo!  We’re in Sorceror’s Apprentice territory, starting with a test plantation in rural Nebraska and proceeding straightway to dense forests of club moss with roots so deep they can grow almost anywhere, and do.  “Their falling trunks began to block the highways, arteries of commerce.  Only by constant vigilance were the railroads kept open and safe.” Food crops are crowded out.  Everyone flees to the cities to starve.  (At least the club moss doesn’t grow in concrete.)

Now Simcox returns to confront Tompkins and demands that this captain of industry rise to the occasion.  He’s brought with him an eccentric genius who has invented a machine that costs three dollars to make and will grind up club moss and turn it into food.  Simcox tells Tompkins he’d better crank up his company to distribute these machines nationwide so the starving millions can go out and eat the club moss out of existence.  “Broadcast it!  Put food into the stomach and hope into the soul of the desperate men of the nation!” And you don’t have to pay the inventor, he’s too busy on his next invention.  Harmlessly amusing, three stars.

Is Anybody Out There?, by Greg Benford and David Book

Greg Benford and David Book continue their “Science in Science Fiction” series with “Is Anybody Out There?,” which as you might suspect is about the prospects of intelligent life elsewhere than Earth.  They lay out plainly and methodically the numerous questions that have to be answered en route to getting the big answer, and the current state of knowledge about each, and they don’t obscure the fact that most of their answers are essentially pulled out of the air, er, are very gross estimates.  This lucid presentation is a pleasure to read compared with the run of SF mag science articles.  Four stars.

Summing Up

Uneven.  Promising.  Disappointing.  Have patience.  The same things I said for years about the Goldsmith/Lalli version of the magazine, punctuated by transitory bursts of excellence.  I am tempted to get a rubber stamp made.  Meanwhile, how about one of those transitory bursts?

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 10, 1970] Thirty Years To Go (The Year 2000, a science fiction anthology by Harry Harrison)

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photo of a dark-haired woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

Clarke and Kubrick Minus One

A recent film has made many of us aware of the first year of the next century.  But what about the last year of this century?

(You do know that 2000 will be the last year of the twentieth century and not the first year of the twenty-first century, right?  I thought so.)

A new anthology of original science fiction stories attempts to offer a glimpse of that evocative year to come. 

The Year 2000, edited by Harry Harrison

Cover of the book The Year 2000, An Anthology Edited by Harry Harrison. The cover illustration is a lustrous white surface with half a crater visible at the top.
Cover art by Pat Steir.

Obviously, all the stories take place three decades from now.  Other than that, they have a wide range of themes and styles, from old-fashioned tales of adventure to commentary on social issues to New Wave experimentation.  Let's take a look.

America the Beautiful, by Fritz Leiber

The narrator is a poet and scholar who travels to the United States on an academic tour.  He stays with a typical American family and has an affair with the adult daughter of his hosts.  Despite the fact that pollution has been eliminated and racism is no longer a problem, there's something about the place that makes him uneasy.  Part of it has to do with the fact that the USA is still involved in small scale wars, similar to the current conflict in Vietnam. 

Although there is a fair amount of futuristic content (rocket transportation between North America and Europe, for example), this reads almost like a mainstream story, something that might be published in a future issue of The New Yorker.  It's impressionistic and introspective.  Given that it's by Leiber, it's no surprise that it's very well written.  Perhaps it's a bit too subtle for me.

Three stars.

Prometheus Rebound, by Daniel F. Galouye

An aircraft that uses the Earth's magnetic field gets in trouble.  The huge plane, which looks like a flying saucer, keeps gaining altitude, beyond the control of the pilots.  Can an elderly veteran flyer of World War Two help the crew save the lives of all aboard?

There's a ton of technical jargon throughout the story, the vast majority of which went way over my head.  The plot depends on a character doing something really foolish. 

Two stars.

Far from This Earth, by Chad Oliver

In Kenya, an area formerly used for raising cattle now serves as a wildlife preserve.  The main character is a warden who has to prevent elderly people from following their traditional ways by tending cattle in the region.  Part of the preserve is an amusement park, something like an African Disneyland.  The protagonist visits the space-themed part of the park, which offers hope for his son's future.

The story offers a thoughtful look at culture change.  The warden bitterly regrets what has been lost, but also welcomes improvements.  He's an ambiguous sort, not always sympathetic, which adds depth of characterization.  The author obviously knows the area and its culture very well, and depicts them vividly.

Four stars.

After the Accident, by Naomi Mitchison

The title disaster contaminated the Earth with radiation.  Genetic testing is used to find out which persons would be likely to produce offspring without mutations.  The narrator, a biologist and historian, meets a man who plans to send colonists to another world.  She becomes pregnant with their child, who will have mutations that will allow it to survive on the planet.

This is a quietly disturbing story.  The narrator's calm acceptance of the situation and decision to bear a mutant baby are the most chilling aspects of it.  The speculative biology is convincing, the stuff about colonizing another planet less so.

Three stars.

Utopian, By Mack Reynolds

A social activist who was in suspended animation wakes up to find that the world has become the kind of paradise he imagined.  There's no money, because everybody has everything they need.  The folks who revived him tell him what they need from him.

The fellow went into suspended animation only because the people in the year 2000 used a sort of mental time travel to take over his mind and make him abscond with funds from his organization and then freeze himself.  I found this aspect of the story gimmicky and implausible compared to the rest.  The impact of the piece depends entirely on its punchline.

Two stars.

Orgy of the Living and the Dying, by Brian W. Aldiss

A man leaves his wife in England to work for a United Nations famine relief agency in India.  He has an affair with a physician.  When the facility is attacked by bandits, he battles them in an unusual way.

This synopsis makes the story sound like mainstream fiction, without futuristic elements.  The main speculative premise is that the man hears voices, some of them seemingly precognitive.  Excerpts of what he hears alternate with the narrative portion of the text, giving the work a touch of New Wave. 

The author creates an evocative setting, if one that could easily be set today rather than in the year 2000.  The man's lust for the doctor causes him to force himself on her at one point.  It's hard to accept him as a hero later, when he comes up with a technological way to defeat the bandits.  (This technique, by the way, is the part of the story that most evokes the feeling of science fiction, even if there is nothing futuristic about it.)

Three stars.

Sea Change, by A. Bertram Chandler

(The book just calls the author Bertram Chandler, but we know better than that, don't we?  It's also no surprise at all that it's a sea story.)

A sea captain (of course!) who went into suspended animation for medical reasons gets thawed out, cured, and given a job commanding a gigantic, automated cargo ship.  When things go wrong, he has to make use of his experience with sailing ships to save the day.

Chandler can't be beat when it comes to describing nautical stuff, and in this case he doesn't even have to pretend that his vessel is a starship.  It may be hard to believe that a guy whose experience with ships is thirty years out of date would be given command of a futuristic vessel.  It may also raise a few hackles to learn that the ship's troubles are caused by a female member of the crew, who messes everything up.

Three stars.

Black is Beautiful, by Robert Silverberg

New York City is populated almost entirely by Black persons, with only a few White commuters and tourists.  The main character is an angry teenager who sees the mayor of the city as an Uncle Tom.  He stalks a White teenager out of a sense of injustice and seeks revenge.

A White author writing from the point of view of a Black radical is taking a big chance, I think, and could be accused of depicting Black stereotypes.  In this case, the gamble pays off pretty well.  The teenager is passionate but naive, the Mayor cynical but effective.  The story might be read as a debate between two styles of Black activism.

Four stars.

Take It or Leave It, by David I. Masson

Two sections of text alternate, both featuring the same characters.  In one, they face challenges like local crime bosses and being forced to move in a technologically advanced society.  In the other, they struggle to survive in a world devastated by a plague.

This reads almost like two different stories.  The first one is full of futuristic slang and nouns used as verbs.  (The word visited is replaced by visitationed, for example.) The second one has more direct language, but is very grim.  People hunt cats to eat them, for one thing. 

The tricks with language make the story difficult to read.  Given the title, I wonder if the author is saying that an imperfect future is a lot better than a horrible one.  This is one for New Wave fans.

Three stars.

The Lawgiver, by Keith Laumer

As a way to fight overpopulation in the United States, a controversial law makes it mandatory to terminate pregnancies unless the mother-to-be has a birth permit. (There's also the implication that she has to be married.) The Senator who pushed this law through Congress, against much opposition, confronts a woman made pregnant by his son. 

Given the fact that abortion is only legal under certain circumstances in a handful of states, it seems unlikely that it would often be mandatory a mere thirty years from now.  (And the story makes it clear that the procedure has to take place even if birth is imminent.)

The author doesn't seem to be making a case for or against abortion, as far as I can tell.  The plot is melodramatic, throwing in a car crash to add excitement (and maybe some dark irony.) Still, I have to admit that it held my attention throughout.

Three stars.

To Be a Man, by J. J. Coupling

A fellow is seriously injured in battle and has almost all of his body except brain, eyes, and part of his spinal cord replaced by artificial parts, indistinguishable from the original.  He returns from the war to confront his lover.

Much of the story consists of exposition, as the man explains in great detail how his new body works.  This makes for dry reading.  In sharp contrast to this is the sexual content: it seems that the fellow can be programmed to be a tireless sex partner.  This results in an outrageous scene in which all the nurses in a battleground medical facility have an orgy with the guy.  Pure male fantasy.

Two stars.

Judas Fish, by Thomas N. Scortia

A man works in a deep sea facility, altering the genetics of fish so that they will lead members of their species into the facility's chambers, to be processed into food for a starving world.  Squid-like beings, having intelligence at least as great as humans, steal the fish away.  The man's capture of one of the creatures leads to a strange transformation.

This is probably the most speculative story in the book, with a common science fiction theme that goes far beyond just extrapolating the next few decades.  Not overly plausible, but readable enough if you're willing to suspend your disbelief.

Three stars.

American Dead, by Harry Harrison

Black guerrillas wage open warfare against the United States government, making use of weapons stolen from the military.  An Italian journalist observes an assault by one of the Black commanders. 

This is a gruesome vision of the worst possible outcome of current racial tensions in the USA.  The manner in which the rebels fight is clearly based on tactics used by the Viet Cong.  A powerful and disturbing tale.

Four stars.

Worth Waiting Thirty Years?

Overall, the book is OK, if not great.  Some low points, some high points, mostly decent stories if not outstanding ones.  Worth reading once, but don't expect it to be in print three decades from now.




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Book, Conventions/Performances, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 8, 1970] Boldly going to the Region Between (March 1970 Galaxy)

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[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

A pleasant Escapade

Little fan conventions are popping up all over the place, perhaps thanks to the popularity of Star Trek.  The first adult science fiction show on the small screen, Trek not only thrilled existing fans (who have been putting on conclaves since the '30s), but has also galvanized millions of newfen who previously had lived outside the mainstream of fandom.

Last weekend, I went to a gathering of Los Angeles fans called "Escapade".  It differs from most fan conventions in that it focuses almost exclusively on science fiction and fantasy on the screen rather than in print.  Moreover, the emphasis is not on the SFnality of the works, but on the relationships and interactions of the characters.  This is the in-person culmination of the phenomenon we've seen in the Trekzines, where the stories and essays are about Spock or Kirk or Scotty—the people, not so much the adventures they go on.

Another distinction is that most of the attendees were women.  Most SF conventions, while not stag parties, are male-dominated.  The main difference I noted was that panels were less formal, more collaborative.  Instead of folks sitting behind a table and gabbing with each other, they were more like discussion groups…fannish teach-ins, if you will.  I really dug it.

If Escapade represents the future of fandom, then beam me up.  I'm sold!

And since the photos are back from the Fotomat, here's a sample of what I snapped:

Photo of a bearded man in glasses and a paisley shirt holding up a copy of a fanzine next to a tall woman in a Trek gold tunic flashing the Vulcan salute
That's David, holding up the latest issue of The Tricorder (#4) and Melody dressed as a Starfleet lieutenant

Photo of a dark-haired woman in a blue Star Trek uniform, smiling at the camera. She is carrying books in one arm, and behind her are tables of fannish items for sale.
And here's Melody again in sciences blue—who says you can't make a Vulcan smile?

A picture of a smiling brunette woman in a ribbed white sweater, sitting on the floor with an equally smiling baby about one year old.
If you can't recruit a fan…make one!  (this one isn't Lorelei's…but it's probably giving her ideas)

An image projected onto a wall, showing an image from the Star Trek episode 'The Enemy Within', where Kirk is drinking, faced by a Security woman in a beehive hairdo.
Lincoln Enterprises had a stall in the Huckster Hall—I got this clip from The Enemy Within!

The New Thing in America

It's been eight years since folks like Ballard and Aldiss started the New Wave in the UK.  It's leaked out across the Pond for a while, but this is the first time an issue of a Yank mag has so embraced the revolutionary ethos.  The latest issue of Galaxy was a surprise and delight that filled my spare moments (not many!) at the aforementioned convention.  Let's take a look.

Cover of Galaxy magazine featuring a ghostly male figure half-submerged in a multi-hued representation of the universe, dozens of planets swirling near him
cover by Jack Gaughan

The Galaxy Bookshelf, by Algis Budrys

A black-and-white ink image of the article's title in a bubble, surrounded by stars
illustration by Jack Gaughan

Budrys' focus is on fandom this month.  He notes that SF fandom differs from all others (that of James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Conan, etc.) in that we are omnivorous.  We contain multitudes, digging all of the above and much, much more.

We also are directly responsible for the plaudits of our passion—whereas the Oscars, Edgars, and Silver Spurs (and Nebulas, for that matter) are given out by organizations, the Hugos are awarded by the fans themselves (well, those that have the $2-3 to shell out for a World Science Fiction Society membership).  Which means that all the nominations that Galactic Journey (hasn't) got are really worth something!

After a lengthy and entertaining discussion of what fandom means to Budrys, he goes on to review the indispensable The Index of Science Fiction Magazines 1951-1965, compiled by Norman Metcalf.  It's not only a useful reference, but it's fun to read what all your favorite authors have produced, and also to see the commonalities and differences of stories that end up next to each other when ordered alphabetically.

He also recommends Adventures in Discovery, an anthology of science fact articles by science fictioneers (including reliables like Asimov, Ley, and de Camp, but also unusuals like Silverberg and Poul Anderson).  It's put together by my dear friend, Tom Purdom, and you can bet we'll be reviewing it soon, too.

Now on to the fiction!

The Region Between, by Harlan Ellison

A three-panel image, showing a burst of white, raylike lines against a black background. The title is also in white letters, with the smaller legend 'Death came merely as a hyphen. For it was only when Bailey died that he began to live'. The third panel is black ink on a white background, showing a man in a circle, surrounded by astrological lines and symbols. The circle and man are upside down, set on top of framing black lines, emphasizing chaotic disruption.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

In Ellison's story, the universe is filled with warring factions: beings, societies, and races that play God with the lesser forces in an endless struggle for dominance.  The other truth of Region: the soul is immortal, and death merely a transition.  Your essence is also poachable, in death and in life—and a whole gaggle of Thieves has sprung up to take advantage of this.  When the soul that is snatched from a still-living being is too valuable to one of the squabbling tin pot deities, that's when it calls in the Succubus.  The Succubus deals in souls, too, thwarting the Thieves by replacing snitched spirits with ones from his collection.

One such is William Bailey, late of Earth, so tired of the pointlessness of it all that he picks euthanasia over enduring, but possessed of such anger at his lousy universe that he proves a true son-of-a-bitch.  A real Excedrin headache.  A turis.  A pain in the ass.  (Sound like any diminutive titans we know?)

Every body he inhabits, every pawn in every war, game, conquest, he subverts.  Through logic and sheer force of will, he convinces the shell personality of his host to allow him control, enough to stick it to the Man who pulls the strings of His minions.  And after each successful wrenching of the gears, the Succubus, too busy to note the peccadilloes of a single errant soul, tosses him off to his next assignment to wreak havoc.

It's the ultimate implementation of hubris and nemesis, an eye-stick against solipsism.  Not only are you not God, but watch out: your dicking around with creation may be just the thing that causes your uncreation.

The New Wave has all kinds of literary and typographical tricks—if you read New Worlds, you've seen them all.  This is the first time I've really seen them used fully in service of the story rather than being fripperous illumination.  They are special effects for the printed page, as impressive as any Kubrick rendered in his 2001 for the cinema.  I wouldn't want all of my stories to look like this, and Ghod help us if Ellison inspires a new New Wave of copycats who absorb the style and not the subtance.

But, my goodness, five stars.

The Propheteer, by Leo P. Kelley

A black-and-white sketch, briefly rendered, of a twisted robot sitting in a futuristic hammock, facing a wall of screens. The legend reads 'The Propheteer's people smiled for their lives -- or lost them!'
illustration by Jack Gaughan

"We can predict crime with absolute precision.  We can tell who will commit a crime and when.  We can even predict the exact nature of the crime."

Sounds like Dick's story, The Minority Report, though in Kelley's piece, what keeps crime from happening isn't a trio of precogs, but one man who monitors and controls the chemical balance of every human on Earth, ensuring tranquility and crimelessness throughout the planet.

Except, that man twiddles meaningless knobs and dummy switches.  Another man is in control of humanity, and he wields a stick, not an endocrine carrot…

It's a little too histrionic and pat, and less effective than the stories which preceded it (including an Analog story from 1962 by R. C. Fitzpatrick)

Two stars.

A Place of Strange, by George C. Willick

A pencil drawing of a knapped stone item, looking both like a knife and a deity. Above it reads the legend 'What would you call a place where men planned war?'

Humans teach primitive beings to hate, to fight.  The moral, like something from a less than effective Star Trek episode is stated: "There must be a way for simple survival to change into civilization without war.  There must be."

Indeed, there must be.

Two stars.

Downward to the Earth (Part 4 of 4), by Robert Silverberg

A pencil illustration showing the alien elephants, called the Nildoror, spattered in black goo.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

Silverbob wraps up his latest serial, detailing the end of Gunderson's quest toward redemption on the colony he once administrated.  Of course, it ends with the unveiling of the mystery of Rebirth, which is revealed in the dreamy, avant-garde style that typifies the rest of the story.  We also learn the relationship between the two sapient races of Belzegor, the elephantine Nildoror and the apelike Sulidor.  It is both fascinating and also a little disappointing.  Without giving anything away, I suppose I was most interested in the concept of a world with two intelligent species sharing a planet; in Silverberg's story, it turns out they are less a pair of distinct beings and more two sides of the same coin.

There is a fascinating, hopeful note to the conclusion that elevates the story above a personal salvation story, even if the whole thing is more an exercise in building a setting than presenting an actual narrative.

I'd say four stars for this installment, three-and-a-half for the whole.  It may get consideration for the Hugo, but the year is young, and I imagine there is better to come—probably from Silverberg, himself.

Sunpot (Part 2 of 4), by Vaughn Bodé

A cartoon panel, primarily showing a spaceship in orbit. The caption reads, 'The giant Sunpot complex hangs high above the Russian side of the Moon...it hangs like a bloated Siamese bowling pin in the afternoon motionlessness of space...'. The lettering, kerning, and bolding are all disastrous.
illustration by Vaughn Bodé

The adventures of the Sunpot continue, as does the illegible lettering.  I was dismayed to see Belind Bump, who had appeared to be an intrepid heroine, reduced to a host for boobies.  Fake boobies at that (as we are reminded multiple times throughout the strip).

A waste of space.  One star.

Reflections, by Robert F. Young

Last up is this sentimental tale of two humans of the far future teleporting to Earth for a tour of the cradle of their race.  Evolved far beyond our ability to ken, they are incorporeal beings of nostalgia and love.

Pleasant, but eminently forgettable.  It's that style (the type is interestingly arranged in reflecting columns and meandering rivers) over substance thing I just worried about above.

Three stars.

Summing up

That's that for this experiment in printing.  There were unfortunate casualties: the Silverberg was printed with compressed carriage returns between lines, which made it harder to read.  Also, with all the illustrations and text tricks (not to mention the comic), we probably got about 80% of the usual content—the Silverberg compression notwithstanding.

The stuff that isn't the Ellison or the Silverberg (or the Budrys) is also pretty disposable.  That said, the Ellison and the Silverberg comprise 80% of the issue, so who's complaining?

I definitely won't quit now… unlike Tony Curtis.

An advertisement showing a man in a doctor's uniform. The ad copy says, 'I got sick and tired of coughing and wheezing and hacking. So I quit. I quit smoking cigarettes. Which wasn't easy. I'd been a pack-a-day man for about 8 years. Still, I quit. And, after a while, I also quit coughing and wheezing and hacking. Now, the American Cancer Society offers every quitter an I.Q. button. To tell everyone you've got what it takes to say not quitting.' In smaller letters, there is an additional message: 'Get your I.Q. button from your local Unit of the American Cancer Society.'"/>
This campaign is everywhere—commercials, Laugh-In, the back inside cover of Galaxy…

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Uncategorized

[February 6, 1970] All We Are Saying Is Give The Peace Game A Chance (The Peace Game, AKA The Gladiators)

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A black-and-white author's photo of a young white person with light hair.  They are wearing a striped scarf around their neck and smiling enigmatically at the camera.
By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

When reading my morning paper, it can feel like the whole world is determined to blow itself up.

A black-and-white photograph of a field in Vietnam.  A helicopter is either landing or taking off, its rotor blurred and its body tilted upward.  A group of 7-10 soldiers in camouflage uniforms and helmets are moving toward the right, not quite in single file.  They have backpacks on and carry rifles in one hand, not in firing position.

Vietnamese peace talks are going nowhere, with American “help” possibly reaching its nadir when a US helicopter killed friendly South Vietnamese forces by mistake. Israel is once again fighting its Arab neighbours with both Communists and Capitalist countries pouring in military aid to their favoured sides. There is not even goodwill within their respective camps, with the Soviets and Communist China continuing to sabre rattle over the border. And this doesn’t even count the civil wars going on in places like Rhodesia.

A color photograph of a street in Northern Ireland.  Brick buildings with arched doorways are in the background.  A line of soldiers in camouflage uniforms and red berets stand facing toward the left behind a stretched-out roll of barbed wire.  The soldiers are carrying batons and some are carrying heavier helmets.

Closer to home, British troops in Northern Ireland’s attempts to keep the peace so far seem to be counter-productive. Whilst we are also learning more of the atrocities committed by British troops during the so-called “Malayan Emergency” from the official enquiry.

With all this violence going on, it makes you wonder if there could be another way. Well Peter Watkins has come up with one, albeit not necessarily the most pleasant option:

Peace in Our Time

A black and white film poster for The War Game. Across the top the words "Academy Award Winner" in all capitals with a black and white image of an Oscar statue.  Beneath that are three positive reviews, reading: "It may be the most important film ever made." Kenneth Tynan, London Observer "An extraordinary film." The New York Times "Extraordinary. I urge you to see The War Game." The New Yorker The War Game Directed by Peter Watkins A British Broadcasting Production Presented in association with the British Film Institute A pathe contemporary films release At the bottom the movie title, The War Game, is in large all capitals with two screaming faces superimposed on each other but slightly offset, such that there are three eyes and two mouths. Behind the heads is a white mushroom cloud.

Even if it only got a limited film-run instead of the planned television broadcast, Peter Watkins’ The War Game still had a massive impact on British popular culture. As well as getting a Galactic Star, it won both a BAFTA and an Academy Award. At the same time, it gave a big shot in the arm to the peace movement.

One interesting crystallization of that can be seen in an interview with John Lennon on his Bed In for Peace:

a letter we got from a guy called Peter Watkins who made a film called The War Game. It was a very long letter stating just what's happening – how the media is really controlled, how it's all run, and everything else that people really know deep down. He said 'People in your position have a responsibility to use the media for world peace'.

It seems he was already thinking about putting these ideas on film, because this is really going to form the basis of his pseudo-sequel to The War Game, The Peace Game (called The Gladiators in some other countries).

Year of the Peace Olympics

A color still from the movie The Peace Game, showing ten people in military uniforms standing to attention facing away from the camera.  They are outside on a gravel surface with a body of water in the background.  They are facing a line of international flags, including France, Greece, Italy China, Nigeria, Norway, the United States, and Sweden.

Not long-ago, the United Nations and Communist Countries agreed to the creation of The International Peace Games, based on the gladiatorial combat of Ancient Rome. In doing so they would divert the natural aggressive nature of humanity and ensure the survival of the human race.

Ten participants are chosen for each side, all young people in their twenties.  The actual game we see has a simple format. The Western team has two hours to capture the control room, which leads to their instant victory. The red team have to stop them, getting rid of all opponents, by any means they so choose, which leads to their instant victory. If neither is completed in the two hours, points are awarded based on “strength” (e.g. taking prisoners) and deducted for “weakness” (e.g. hesitation). They are even given paths of different difficulty they can choose to take, as if they are on a ski slope.

A color still from the movie The Peace Game of two white men , the controllers, in blue button down shirts and black ties.  The man on the left is sitting up and reading a document on a desk in front of him and reaching for a button on the control panel, while the man on the right slouches back in his chair, staring blankly.

Today’s Peace Game, #256 in the current series, is played in a castle near Stockholm. It seems to be being held between USSR, Communist China, East Germany and North Vietnam on the one side, and UK, France, West Germany & USA on the other. (There are Nigerian and Indian generals present but they appear to be there purely as observers).

This is not just a private affair between the participants involved. It has in fact become the most popular programme on television in NATO countries. This is broadcast for 2 hours on a Saturday in a regular slot, so they need to work on a schedule to keep the sponsors happy. Remember this point, as it is going to be important for understanding what happens later.

Let the games begin

A color still from the movie The Peace Game showing of a group of men in military uniforms from different countries looking in different directions, some only partially visible.  In the foreground a hand emerging from a servant's black suit and white shirt is serving tea.

It opens in Peter Watkins’ documentarian style, with musicless shots of little details of the various scenes. Generals walk to the ceremony silently, whilst the soldiers are interviewed about the game. We hear different people talking about the different reasons they come here. Volunteers and draftees. True believers and those without purpose.

Right from the start, we are encouraged to see the gap between the generals and controllers, and the ordinary people forced to participate in the system. The twenty-something soldiers are all sitting in the cold, whilst old generals are in a mansion in good spirits sipping tea and joking with their opposite numbers. As the Western team hides in a hole from an artillery barrage, one general says to another, "We will be able to enjoy ourselves like chess players, no matter the outcome".

In fact, it goes even further. If things get boring the generals can start to fire artillery on their own teams to get them moving. And whilst the teams have phones to call up support, these are only dummy phones and do not connect at all.

There is also a third player in all of this. The Machine. This is a giant computer, which analyzes and awards points throughout the game. Yet there seems a kind of masochistic nature to it. When ordered to put in more violence it thanks the generals for it. In addition, it constantly broadcasts a signal beyond human hearing, to increase the pressure on the participants.

A dimly-lit color still from the movie The Peace Game. A woman in a Red Army uniform and cap faces slightly to the right of the viewer, her hands held up in surrender.

We predominantly follow the Western team as they attempt to proceed to the command center. Going through the various traps we see them constantly forced into doing whatever the system wants. Even when a Black American soldier gets sick of the condescension of his teammates and declares he is leaving, the general is able to convince him to “use his hate” and keep going (shortly after which he is killed).

What the system cannot account for, though, is basic human decency. When a Communist Chinese soldier is captured, one of the British soldiers takes pity on her and they talk. This action is seen as “collaboration”; this does not mean fighting to destroy the system, but basic empathy. The game is declared a tie so both teams can “eliminate these two subversive young perverts” together. Attempting to avoid their fate, the two young people decide to escape, in spite of the fact that both sides, The Machine and the Swedish police are after them. Needless to say, it does not end well. Our final scene is the generals posing for a picture to celebrate a successful game, as the two aforementioned soldiers are seen being bloodily beaten in a series of black and white photographs.

Journey to the Near Side of the Sun

A color still from the Peace Game.  A line of soldiers in camouflage uniforms and helmets hold their rifles over their heads as they wade through chest-deep muddy water.  A concrete wall to the left suggests that they are in a sewer.

There are many delicious elements that can be analysed from this film but I will just touch on a couple.

One complaint I can imagine emerging from some in the SF community is that it doesn’t try to update the technology and fashion for the future, But I believe this actually makes it more powerful. This is meant to be a microcosm of our world. Shots of the teams regularly look like images I have seen from Vietnam, only inside of a building instead of a jungle.

At the same time, we are given statistics related to our current world. For example, during the World Wars, it costs $60,000 to kill one man. With the use of nuclear weapons, it costs $50 to kill one man. During the 1960s the world spent on their arms system £23 million pounds each second.

As such, we are called on to ask two questions:

1. How far away is our reality from this?
2. Is this better or worse than our current system?

The second point particularly is an interesting one. It feels horrific watching this play out but that is because it is controlled and sanitized. Is it better to send hundreds of young people across the world to decide someone else’s system of government? Or to have a few people die for televisual entertainment?

The Not-So Great Society

A dimly-lit color still from the movie The Peace Game.  A group of women wearing only panties and bras are giving flowers to men in various military uniforms.

Another interesting element is that we see how everyone is coopted into this system, even those who are ostensibly against this. In neutral Sweden, those who cannot be convinced of the value of the system are used in their own way. They are kept in a kind of hippy camp to tempt the attacking team away from their purpose and lose points.

We also have a French Student who has come to provide his thoughts but does not fight. As the unnamed documentarian says “Do you not think the system is using you?”. Even though he actually makes it further than anyone else, as he learns more he elects to join the machine’s controllers.

During these sections, it should be noted, it all takes place in Swedish and French. From context and my mid-level French I believe I have understood what is happening but there is probably some more detail I have missed.

After the Guns Have Stopped

A movie poster for The Peace Game, printed in black and white with red accents on a red and white striped background. Across the top is written: After his sensational 'The War Game' Now from Peter Watkins' The Peace Game. (The Gladiators) Below is a different photograph of a woman in a Red Army uniform holding her hands up in surrender.  There is a man in front facing her and a man behind her watching her back.

This is the best piece of SF cinema I have seen since, well, The War Game. I don’t know if this is where we are headed but it does what truly great science fiction is meant to do: Present a picture of the now through a speculation of what could be whilst still making it feel disturbingly believable.

So, watch out Doctor Who! The Peace Game Olympics may soon supplant you as the nation’s favourite Saturday evening family television show.

Five stars.




 

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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[February 4, 1970] To Rome, with love (SPI's wargame, Anzio Beachhead)

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[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

When you talk about destruction…

Two months ago, Jim Dunnigan started a revolution.  He took over the wargame fanzine, Strategy and Tactics, and not only worked to revitalize it, he started the novel practice of releasing a new wargame in it every issue!  Avalon Hill, the previous, undisputed king of the wargame publishers, comes out with one or two new games a year, whereas S&T plans to put out six to twelve (there are two in the current issue) of these magazine inserts in the same time—plus a whole line of regular releases.  In fact, a number of them are already out as limited series test prototypes, which some of my friends are playing.  Once they get through this round of testing, we should see some or all of them in a more finished form on our hobby store shelves.

Wow!

The copyright page and table of contents for the magazine Strategy & Tactics.  The table of contents reads: In This Issue... The Luftwaffe Land Army, by Victor Madeja; Bastogne, by James F. Dunnigan; Anzio Beachhead, by Dave Williams; Outgoing Mail; If Looks Could Kill, by Redmond Simonsen; Games, by Sid Sackson; Pass in Review, by Albert Nofi; Diplomacy, by Rod Walker; Wargamers Notebook, by Ed Mohrmann; Incoming Mail.

Last issue's wargame was Crete, which I was well pleased with.  The two games in this issue are Bastogne, which looks very cumbersome, and a cutey called Anzio Beachhead, which we've had a lot of fun with.  Let's take a look.

Reconnaissance

If the name strikes a chord, it's because we've already played a game with "Anzio" in the title—namely Anzio, which billed itself as "A Realistic Strategy Game of Forces in Italy… 1944"!

Which is funny because the game actually covers from the Salerno landings in September 1943.  Anzio is a strategic game that covers the entire Italian campaign in WW2, with invasions treated very abstractly.  The invasion of Anzio in January 1944 was planned as a flank of the Germany "Gustav Line", against which the Allies had stalled.  The hope was that the Allies could pierce through at a weak point and destabilize the German front.  Instead, the Allies were bottled up for four long months.  The front didn't move again until the Allies bashed headlong into the Gustav Line, and General Mark Clark took the Anzio forces to Rome, claiming the Italian capital concurrently with the invasion of Normandy.

(This was the wrong move, strategically—by going for glory instead of providing an anvil for the Allied hammer, against which the retreating Germans would be smashed, it meant that the Italian campaign remained an agonizing meatgrinder until the end of the war.)

A black and white map of Italy. Parts of Switzerland, Austria, Yugoslavia, and Tunisia are also shown. Cities and regions relevant to the Italian Campaign of 1943-45 are marked.

But that's neither here nor there.  Anzio Beachhead depicts the landings and initial expansion at an operational level, covering the early part of the campaign.  In fact, it's by the same fellow who designed Anzio, Dave Williams.  Here's what Jim Dunnigan has to say about it:

"Anzio Beachhead was seen as another situation like the Bulge, where the attacker had a rapidly declining edge.  The original American commander was not bold, and lost.  So the idea with Anzio Beachhead was to explore the what if's.  At that time, I had been working on designing games for about eight years (since I first discovered the Avalon Hill games.) Before that, I was always interested in the details of history, and how they were connected.  Avalon Hill wargames were the first time I saw someone else thinking the same way, and doing it in a novel way. I was always building on that."

"I had been designing a similar game, called Italy, which incorporated the rest of the Italian theater, with a smaller scale map of the Anzio area (ie, two interrelated games, one strategic and the other operational).  But when Dave's game came in I thought it did a better job of the Anzio section.  We had come up with some of the same solutions, and his game was more compact and suitable for the magazine."

Vital Statistics

The title page of the Anzio Beachhead game. In the upper left corner it reads: Dave Williams designed Avalon Hill's latest effort, Anzio, and, you will soon discover, a great deal more.  The Anzio Beachhead game is but a part of the additional design effort that went into Anzio but never saw publication. In the center of the page is a black and white illustration of Anzio Beachhead.  A tank is on the left and a military ship labeled US 21 is docked to the right.  A small group of soldiers stands between them. The title of the game is written in white capitals across the bottom of the image.

Anzio Beachhead seats two players and is seven turns long.  A complete game takes about 6 hours.  The map is black and white (I made a color version tinted with pastels).

The whole game takes two pages of rules, almost half of which are "optional rules", which we always played with. 

Instead of the traditional "Player one moves, then fights; Player two moves, then fights" sequence, each turn is divided into six impulses.  Each side gets two moves, while the other side gets a half-move inbetween, during which they can't move into an enemy's "zone of control" (the six hexes surrounding a unit).  Zones of Control (ZOCs) are really sticky.  You can't move from one to another, and if you move out, you can only move one space.  Thus, it's easy to slow an enemy unit down just by parking next to it.

Combat is pretty typical, adding combat factors of attackers and dividing them by the combat factors of the defenders, determining a ratio, rolling a die, and finding the result on the Combar Results Table.  Unlike Crete, but like most wargames, good results don't really happen for the attacker until 3-1. 1-1 isn't generally worth it.

There are some fiddly rules which allow the Allies to use naval guns and fighters to add strength to their troop stacks during one impulse per turn.  This becomes a fun game of trying to outthink the other.  The Allies cannot defend all of their pieces, but the German player can never know which defender is augmented.  A miscalculation can result in losing a lot of attackers!

If the Germans engage units with 30 or more strength factors on turns 4 and 5, there is the chance that the Allies will break morale, allowing the Germans to swarm the lines.  You can bet that those two turns will see a lot of action—sometimes desperate action.

The Germans win if they slaughter lots of Allies or if they manage to park units next to Anzio. The Allies win if they avoid that.

How does it play?!

After the initial irruption onto the map, which may not see a single combat, it's all defense for the Allies, setting up a defensive perimeter using rivers and cities as barriers. The Germans are looking for weak points in the line. Both sides have reinforcements come in, the Allies get most of them earlier, the Germans getting more later.

Photo of the Anzio Beachhead map, hand-colored with pastels. It is the size of four regular 8.5 inch by 11 inch sheets of paper.

Allied play is fairly simple, if unforgiving.  Keep your lines strong and counterattack where appropriate.  German strategy is tougher.  A lot depends on understanding how to use the two movement turns, as there is no advance after combat rule.  The allies can break their lines to hit bad guys one hex away and then get back in line in phase 2, which is nice.  Indeed, as the Allies, many is the time I pounced south of the Asturia River to preemptively break up Germany attacks.

A good Allied player will not let the Germans have more than 2-1 odds at any point, to ensure that the Germans have to risk ugly exchanges.  Both the Germans and Allies have a few very powerful units, and those serve as anchors for defense, linchpins for assault.

Experience

I've played four games of Anzio Beachhead, and each was a different experience.  I lost as the Allies quickly in the first game because the rules say that the Germans can show up behind enemy lines at the Asturia River line unless you block it with your units' ZOCs.  I won as the Germans as quickly the second time, piercing the Allied line such that they never regained cohesion.

Gideon, wearing a Shakey's faux straw hat, points at the Anzio Beachhead map in this photo, taken in a diner.

The last two games went down to the wire.  I was the Allies both times, winning the first game (the Germans couldn't quite collapse me fast enough) and losing the second game (bad luck, mostly).

There are some games where you can be pretty free-wheeling with your strategy.  Crete for instance.  Sure, throw yourself at the enemy at 1:1 and see what happens!  You might open up a hole.

Not so, Anzio Beachhead.  With two skilled players, every unit, every hex feels like the most critical, and a single wrong move could lose the game.  I know I played almost perfectly as the Allies except for abandoning Corroceto Station too early; this was barely balanced out by a less than optimal German placement early in the game.  Otherwise, it was like a rigorous chess match.

Perfect John, a white man with a pensive expression, contemplates the Anzio Beachhead map in this photo. He is seated in the corner of a diner.

That kind of game can be exhausting, and it takes a long time.  There's no room for 85% thinking.  On the other hand… boy, it sure is rewarding when it all pays off!

Final thoughts

As Dunnigan said, wargames are all about "what if"s.  What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo?  What if the Germans had won the Battle of the Bulge?  The interesting thing about Anzio Beachhead is that the what if is not "what if the Allies have broken through to Rome or crushed the Germany Wehrmacht in Italy?" because that was flatly impossible, no matter how well they'd done at Anzio.  As one person put it, "a corps was given an army's job."

I suppose the hypothetical is actually "what if the Germans had utterly crushed the Italian invasion?"  It would have given German forces more freedom of movement and been valuable for morale and propaganda purposes, but the long-term results would have been the same.  Either way, the ramifications are beyond the scope of the game.

But taken as a primer in operational invasions, it's a lot of fun, whether you're the Allies trying to make a bigger pimple in the Germany side, or the Germans trying to hurl the Allies back into the sea.  It's a taut game with a lot of interesting new mechanics, very evenly balanced.  Its only drawback is that it's a bit lengthy for what you get.

3.5 stars.

Photo of ships and men of the American Fifth Army landing at Anzio beach

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 31, 1970] Both sides now (February 1970 Analog)

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[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

All night long

Woody Allen likes to quip that being "bi-sexual" (liking both men and women) doubles of your chance of getting a date on the weekend.

NASA has just doubled the amount of weather they can look at in a single launch.  TIROS-M (does the "M" stand for "Mature"?) was launched from California on January 23rd into a two-hour orbit over the poles.  12 times a day, it circles the Earth, which rotates underneath.  Unlike the last 19 TIROS satellites, TIROS-M can see in the dark.  That means it gets and transmits a worldwide view of the weather twice a day rather than once.

More than that, the satellite is called the "space bus" because it carries a number of other experiments, measuring the heat of the Earth as well as solar proton radiation.  Launched "pickaback" with TIROS-M was Oscar 5, an Aussie satellite that broadcasts on a couple of bands so ham radio fans can track signals from orbit.  Maybe Kaye Dee will write more about that one in her next piece!

Clouds got in my way

If the distinctive feature of the Earth as viewed from space is its swaddling blanket of clouds, then perhaps the salient characteristic of this month's Analog is its conspicuous degree of padding.  Almost all of the stories are longer than they need to be, at least if their purpose be readability and conveying of point.  Of course, more words means more four-cent rate…


by Kelly Freas, illustrating "Birthright"

Birthright, by Poul Anderson

Emil Darmody is the manager for the terran trading station on the planet of Suleiman, a sub-jovian hulk of a world with a thick hydrogen atmosphere, primitive alien inhabitants, and a rare and valuable spice.  When Burbites, an off-world alien race who are the main purchasers of the spice, drop robots to harvest the spice themselves, Darmody must find an ingenious way to stop them without inciting an interstellar incident.  In doing so, he attracts the attention of trade magnate Nicholas Van Rijn, who likes the adventurous sort.


by Kelly Freas

If someone were to ask for a generic example of a story set in the Polesotechnic League, you could do worse than to pick this one.  It has all the usual features: compelling astronomy and sufficiently alien beings; a bold, if naive, hero; women as competent professionals; daring-do; and a cameo by the corpulent and lusty Van Rijn.

Three stars.

Dali, for Instance, by Jack Wodhams


by Peter Skirka

And now, the padding begins.  Golec is a truly alien being who wakes up one day in the form of a human on present-day Earth.  Eventually, he recalls that the mind transference was intentional, a form of reconnaissance.  The problem is, it's not reversible, and he finds his new body disgusting.  Knowing that there may be others of his race on the planet in the same predicament, he seeks them out.  Golec is told that he might as well go native.  Things could be worse.

All of this should have been a one-page prelude to an actual story.

Two stars.

The Wind from a Star, by Margaret L. Silbar

I'm very happy to see Ms. Silbar back, as her last piece, on quarks, was excellent.  This time, she talks about a topic near and dear to my heart: the solar wind.

I've actually just given a talk on this very subject, so most of what she says is familiar.  It's nicely laid out, very interesting, and with some details that are new to me.  Newcomers may find it a little abstruse, and as with her last piece, an extra page or two of explanation, or splitting things up into two, simpler articles, might have been in order.  Asimov would have taken three or four (though, to be fair, he has half the space).

Four stars.

The Fifth Ace, by Robert Chilson


by Kelly Freas

The planet of Hyperica is the outpost of the Realm of Humanity closest to the "Empire", a separate polity of unknown constitution.  One day, a liaison between the two governments brings a gift from the Empire: several giant cat-creatures in cages.  They break out of confinement at the same time an Imperial spy-craft crashlands on Hyperica.  The local Hypericans attempt to deal with both.

This one took me two reads to grasp for some reason.  Much of the story is told from the point of view from the felinoids, who are intelligent and the real invasion, the spy ship being a decoy.  There is a lot of description of the stratified human culture, a host of characters, and a great deal of lovingly depicted gore. 

A lot of pages for not a lot of story.  I did appreciate the portrayal of actual aliens, but I didn't need a page of explanation of how their retractable claws work.

Two stars.

In Our Hands, the Stars (Part 3 of 3), by Harry Harrison


by Kelly Freas

In this installment, the Daleth-drive equipped Galathea, takes off for Mars with an international contingent of observers.  Shortly into the flight, both Soviet and American agents vie for control of the ship.  The ending is not at all what I expected.

This is such a curious book, in some ways just a vessel for delivering polemics.  Worthy polemics, perhaps, on the nobility and folly of national pride.  Nevertheless, it's definitely not one of Harrison's best, with none of his New Wave flourishes, nor any of the progressive brilliance of, say, Deathworld.  His characters are bland—Martha a particular travesty—and there's not much in the way of story.  In fact, I think the whole thing could have been a compelling, four-star novella… forty or fifty pages, tops.

As is, the final installment keeps things from falling below three stars, but no more.

The Biggest Oil Disaster, by Hayden Howard


by Leo Summers

A man named Sirbuh ('hubris' backwards) has a penchant for wildcatting oil wells in the deep sea.  When one of his digs creates the biggest oil spill in history, blackening California's beaches, Sibrah doubles down and calls for the use of a nuke to both seal it and create an undersea storage cavern.  Sibrah's son, devastated by the environmental catastrophe and sickened by Sibrah's cold calculations, can only watch as the inevitable unfolds. 

I assume this is a parable on the excesses of capitalism, though editor Campbell probably enjoyed it as an endorsement of the casual use of atomic weapons.  Either way, it goes on far too long and repetitiously.

Two stars.

The Reference Library (Analog, February 1970), by P. Schuyler Miller

Miller is a great book reviewer; even though he's been writing for decades, and despite writing for the most conservative of the SF mags, he keeps an open mind.  I'm afraid this year might have broken him, though.  The New Wave claimed the Hugos, and so Schuy is trying to wrap his head around the New Wave.  The result is a column that's a bit more scattered and less engaging than most.

He does have fun moments, though, particularly his review of Moorcock's The Final Programme:

"[Jerry Cornelius] is the Cthulhu mythos of the New Wave.  Michael Moorcock..originated him in his "novel" but other authors are making him the antihero of their "stories" just as a group of authors did with the assumptions and beings created by H.P. Lovecraft..

May all of Lovecraft's most powerful entities help the poor befuddled soul who tries to fit all the Cornelius stories together."

Miller also reviews Asimov's Opus 100, which he liked better than Algis Budrys did.  Perhaps Mrs. Miller hasn't had her posterior pinched by the Good Doctor.

Reading the data

It's not so much that Analog is bad these days, it's just that it isn't very good.  The Star-O-Meter for this one pegged at 2.6.  That's worse than virtually all the other mags/anthologies this month:

  • Fantastic (3.3)
  • Galaxy (3.3)
  • IF (3.1)
  • New Worlds (3.1)
  • New Writings #16 (3)
  • Vision of Tomorrow (3)
  • Venture (2.8)

    Only Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.3) was worse, a most unusual state of affairs.

    In the spirit of TIROS-M, here are some other vital figures for the month: ten magazines/anthologies were released this month (though Crime Prevention in the 30th Century only had two new stories).  The four and five star stuff would fill three magazines, which I suppose is a normal distribution.

    Women wrote 5% of new fiction.  On the other hand, Silbar's piece means 33% of the nonfiction is by a woman.  Progress!

    Like NASA, the Journey is expanding its capacity to review the flood of new material.  Let's pray for more stuff in the greater-than-three-star territory.

    It's more fun to review "the day side" of fiction!

    [New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]


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