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[January 4, 1969] Not following through (February 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

The misrule of law

You may recall that Brazil underwent a military coup back in the spring of 1964. The reasons were the usual ones, and the U.S. response can be characterized, at best, as “turning a blind eye,” because then-president João Goulart (popularly known as Jango) was leaning a little too far to the left. The military junta which has ruled Brazil since prefers to call it a revolution, not a coup, but whatever you call it, the result is the same.

Seeking to give themselves more legitimacy, the military instituted a two-party system in 1966. The National Renewal Alliance (ARENA) officially represents the military dictatorship, while the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) gets to make speeches against and vote no on things that are going to happen anyway. That way, the legislature doesn’t look like the rubber stamp it is.

Or was. Unrest has been growing, particularly among the young. Arbitrary arrests and the torture of politcal prisoners has been ongoing. In March, a teenager who was leading a protest against rising food prices was shot point-blank by military police. This murder sparked further unrest, to the point that officials felt they had no choice but to allow a large protest march, hoping it would let the students blow off steam. The March of the One Hundred Thousand in June saw little violence, as the protestors demanded an end to the military government.

The March of the One Hundred Thousand. The banner reads “Down with dictatorship. People in power.”

Enter Márcio Moreira Alves. He started out as a journalist and opposed the Goulart government. After initially supporting the coup, he soon began to oppose it as well, with his primary cause being an end to the torture of political prisoners. He was elected as a Federal Deputy in 1966 and has continued his fight. In September, he called for a boycott of Brazil’s Independence Day celebrations on September 7th, and urged young women not to dance with military officers (or perhaps not date them, I have seen both mentioned in reports).

That was too much. The Justice Department asked the legislature to lift Alves’s immunity so that he could be tried for treason.  On December 12th, a joint session of the Federal Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate resoundingly refused to do so with a vote of 216-141.

Márcio Moreira Alves delivering the speech that got him into trouble.

The very next day, President Arturo da Costa e Silva issued Institutional Act Number 5. This act, which is not subject to judicial review or legislative oversight, allows the president to rule by decree, eliminates habeas corpus for political crimes, establishes censorship, and lets the government suspend any public servant who is found to be subversive or uncooperative, along with a number of other heavy-handed measures. Costa e Silva ordered hundreds of arrests of government critics the very next day.

There is strong opposition even within ARENA, the party founded to support the junta. Whether this is merely a crackdown or the beginning of cracks in the foundation of the dictatorship remains to be seen.

Passing judgment

If last month’s issue was about forgetting, this month’s IF is about the law and judgment. There’s something else that ties almost all the fiction here together, but we’ll get to that at the end.

Time travelers on their way to meet their ancestor. Art by Vaughn Bodé

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[December 2, 1968] Forget It (January 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

Forget the future

It’s official. As if it weren’t already clear from the events in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia over the summer, the Soviet Union has now openly declared that no communist nation in the Soviet sphere of influence will be allowed to go its own way or engage in any sort of reforms not approved by Moscow. Addressing the Congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party on November 13th, Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev stated, “When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.” That’s the justification for military intervention wherever the U.S.S.R. feels like, especially within the Warsaw Pact. We all know who will get to decide if something is a move towards capitalism.

Leonid Brezhnev after addressing the Soviet Central Committee earlier this year.

The backlash has already begun. After years of strained relations, Albania formally withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in protest over the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Of course, they have Yugoslavia as a buffer state, and the close proximity of Greece and Italy probably also offer a deterrent. As we go to press, Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu has publicly condemned this new doctrine as a violation of the Warsaw Treaty. Only time will tell how this shakes out.

Forget the past

Forgetfulness seems to be the theme of this month’s IF. The issue is book-ended with stories featuring protagonists with amnesia, while two of the remaining three stories offer a man who doesn’t know his name and an entire year blotted from everybody’s memory.

Just some random art not associated with any of the stories. Art by Chaffee

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[November 2, 1968] Role Models (December 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

The passing of a great

As I sat down to write this article, I heard the news of the death of Lise Meitner. If that name isn’t familiar to you, it should be. Einstein once called her “the German Marie Curie,” which might be understating things. She is arguably the most important woman physicist of the 20th century and possibly one of the most important theoretical physicists, period.

Born in Vienna in 1878, she became only the second woman to earn a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna in 1905. She later moved to Germany and worked at the University of Berlin. There, she and Otto Hahn discovered the most stable isotope of the element protactinium, which she dubbed protoactinium before dropping the second “o.” In 1939, she and Hahn, along with Otto Robert Frisch and Fritz Strassmann, discovered and explained nuclear fission. There are also at least two nuclear phenomena which bear her name.

Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner circa 1912.

Meitner was able to escape Nazi Germany in 1938 with the help of Niels Bohr. She settled in Sweden, where she spent the rest of her professional life. Her role in the discovery of nuclear fission garnered her a lot of celebrity after the end of the War; she was even interviewed by Eleanor Roosevelt on her radio show. She was a popular speaker and instructor and traveled extensively to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

She received numerous accolades throughout her career, and the institute that oversees Germany’s first research nuclear reactor bears her and Hahn’s names. But the Nobel eluded her. Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944 for the discovery of nuclear fission (ignoring not only Meitner, but also Frisch and Strassmann). The Nobel committee plays things pretty close to the vest, but word is that Lise Meitner was nominated many times in the fields of physicist and chemistry. In 1966, President Johnson honored her with the Enrico Fermi Award.

After retiring in 1960, she moved to the United Kingdom to be closer to family and continued giving lectures. She was in poor health in recent years, unable to attend the Fermi Award ceremony. She died in her sleep at the age of 89.

Lise Meitner in 1963.

Stereotypes

As Lise Meitner’s life shows, women play an active and important role in science, and ought to do so in science fiction as well. Unfortunately, there seem to be fewer women writing SF than there were a decade ago, and there don’t seem to be all that many as key characters in stories either. Two of the stories in this month’s IF don’t have any, two offer mothers, two more femmes fatale, and as far as the first story goes, the less said the better.

A previously unknown piece by the late Hannes Bok, probably the last new Bok cover ever.

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[October 2, 1968] Future History Lessons (November 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

Saving the past

Around the turn of the century, the British in Egypt set out to regulate the flooding of the Nile by building a dam at Aswan, near the First Cataract, a little under 150 miles north of what is today the border between Egypt and Sudan. They limited the height of the dam in order to prevent the submergence of the island of Philae and the many monuments there, but still raised the height twice by the mid-1930s. The reservoir nearly overflowed the top in 1946, and it became increasingly clear that the dam’s storage capabilities were insufficient for modern Egypt.

King Farouk favored the construction of dams in Sudan and Ethiopia, where cooler temperatures would mean less loss of water due to evaporation, but when he was overthrown, the new government under Nasser preferred a larger dam at Aswan under Egyptian control. One of the reasons for the nationalization of the Suez Canal was that shipping fees would pay for the new dam. The change in plans alarmed archaeologists, who pointed out that the entirety of the ancient province of Nubia would be flooded, inundating numerous ancient monuments and sites. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan appealed to UNESCO for help, and thus was born the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia.

The most impressive of the monuments to be rescued are the temples of Abu Simbel, built by Ramses II in the mid-13th century B.C. to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. Best known is the Great Temple, dedicated to Amun, Ra-Horakty, Ptah and the deified Ramses himself. The entrance is flanked by four statues of the pharaoh, each over 65 feet tall. Nearby is a temple dedicated to Hathor and Ramses’ favorite wife Nefertari.

Ramses gets a face lift.

But how do you rescue something like that? A freestanding temple can be taken apart stone by stone and rebuilt elsewhere. This was done with the temple of Kalabsha, in work funded and supervised by West Germany. The Ramesseum was carved into sandstone cliffs. One suggestion was to build a clear freshwater dam around the temples and create underwater viewing chambers. Instead, an international team of archaeologists, engineers, and heavy construction experts have spent the last four years carefully carving the entire site into enormous blocks with an average weight of 20 tons and moving the whole thing to a new site some 650 feet back from the Nile and over 200 feet higher. The work is finished, and on September 22nd the reconstructed Ramesseum was opened to the public. Let’s hope that the many other rescue projects are just as successful.

Optimists and pessimists

This has been a rough year all around the world, and so it’s natural to turn to our entertainment to make us feel better. Unfortunately, the trend in science fiction seems to be toward unhappy endings, and this month’s IF seems to lean more to the pessimistic side. It also takes us to Ancient Egypt in the far future.

The Waw is bored. Art by Vaughn Bodé

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[September 2, 1968] What might have been (October 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

From spring straight into the fall

Back in April, I reported on the early days of the “Prague Spring,” First Secretary Alexander Dubček’s effort to reform Czechoslovakian communism and create “socialism with a human face.” Dubček managed to keep his plans afloat through the spring and much of the summer, but—as anyone who has been following the news is aware—the Soviet bear has flexed its claws and put an end to ideas of openness and freedom of speech. But not without creating a few cracks in the Warsaw Pact.


A Soviet armored vehicle comes to a fiery end.

The first sign of trouble came in June. Military maneuvers by Warsaw Pact forces took place in Czechoslovakia as scheduled, but Soviet troops were slow to leave the country after the conclusion. A number of communist leaders visited Prague over the course of a week in early August; some, like East Germany’s Walter Ulbricht and Hungary’s János Kádár, probably trying to bring Dubček to heel, while Yugoslavia’s Tito and Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu were no doubt more encouraging. Ceaușescu certainly was, since he signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with Czechoslovakia and has loudly condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the last few days.

It’s not clear what straw broke the camel’s back, though the announcement that Czechoslovakia was considering loans from the World Bank might have accelerated things. In any case, at 11:00 PM on August 20th Warsaw Pact forces rolled across the border in numbers not seen in Europe since the end of World War II. Dubček and other reformist leaders were arrested, and the Soviets tried to install a puppet government, but the people of Czechoslovakia weren’t having it. On the 22nd, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia met hastily and elected a new central committee and presidium, which then unanimously re-elected Dubček as First Secretary.


Somewhat more peaceful resistance.

The invasion triggered protests around the world, even by some Communist parties in western and neutral countries. In Czechoslovakia, although the military was never ordered to oppose Warsaw Pact forces, the invaders have been met with protests and violence. Alas, it was not enough. The arrested leaders signed an agreement to roll back their reforms on the 26th, and after returning to Prague on the 27th, Dubček gave a tearful radio address, asking Czechoslovakians to end their resistance as well as for their forgiveness for his surrender. As I write, that is where things stand, and like Hungary a dozen years ago, Czechoslovakia has been brought back into the fold.

Lost in the fog

A couple of the protagonists in this month’s IF spend their stories wandering in a daze. Unfortunately, the far less successful of the tales takes up nearly a third of the magazine and feels like a lot more, overwhelming an otherwise decent issue.

Scientists on Mars make an unexpected find. Art by Chaffee

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[August 2, 1968] Dreams and Nightmares (September 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

Is the nightmare ending?

I’ve written a few times about the turmoil in communist China brought on by Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s efforts to reassert his power after being sidelined. The most dangerous of Mao’s tools has been the explosive, violent fanaticism of the country’s young people. Calling themselves Red Guards, they came boiling out of the universities and high schools, enforcing a strict adherence to “Mao Tse-tung thought” with humiliation, beatings, and even death.

That was the situation when I last covered the “Cultural Revolution” in February of last year. Since then, the Red Guards have split into factions almost everywhere, generally with one side being more fanatical and the other more willing to work within the system. There are rumors of massacres in Canton Province last year and Kwangshi Province this spring. Clashes in Peking over the last three months have involved not only batons and stones, but landmines, improvised armored vehicles and Molotov cocktails.

Red Guard rebels march in Shanghai last year.

Enough is enough. On July 3rd, the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a public notice aimed at the violence in Kwangshi. China watchers say this is a sign Mao and the other leaders have decided it’s time to rein in the Red Guards. Results so far have been minimal, so on the 27th Mao dispatched thousands of “worker-peasant thought propaganda teams” to Tsinghua University, the birthplace of the Red Guard movement. The next day, he summoned five of the most influential Red Guard leaders to a meeting. Word is that he strongly reprimanded them, but any news out of China is uncertain. Time will tell if the violence will finally ebb.

Dream a little dream

This month’s IF features several stories that involve dreams and hallucinations. It’s also missing something, but we’ll talk about that later.

Those are supposed to be radiators, not rocket thrusters. Art by McKenna

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[July 2, 1968] What’s the Point? (August 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

The appearance of doing something

One of the German Empire’s colonies before the First World War was German South West Africa, nestled between what are today South Africa, Angola, and Botswana. After the war, South Africa was granted a mandate over the colony by the League of Nations, similar to Britain’s control over Palestine or France’s over Lebanon and Syria. The League was dissolved in 1946 and replaced by the United Nations. In general, mandates were intended to be replaced by United Nations Trusteeship, and the General Assembly recommended that South West Africa be one of those, however South Africa refused. In 1949, South Africa declared that it was no longer subject to U.N. oversight where South West Africa was concerned, as they began to extend their apartheid system into the former colony. The following year, the International Court ruled that the U.N. should exercise supervision in the administration of the territory in place of the League, but South Africa rejected the Court’s opinion and has refused any involvement by the U.N.

A political cartoon from after the First World War.

Independence movements have swept through Africa over the last decade, and as I noted in January of last year, South West Africa is not immune. The predominant organization is the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), and they have been lobbying the U.N. for several years. In 1966, the General Assembly terminated the mandate, giving the U.N. direct supervision of the territory. Last year, they established the United Nations Council for South West Africa to administer the territory until independence. South Africa remains recalcitrant. And so, on June 12th, the Assembly approved Resolution 2372, which, in accordance with the wishes of the people as represented by SWAPO, changed the name to Namibia. Well, that, some finger-wagging at South Africa and the nations supporting the illegal occupation of Namibia, and a request that the Security Council do something to get South Africa out. Don’t hold your breath.

Sam Nujoma (r.), President of SWAPO, shakes hands with Mostafa Rateb Abdel-Wahab, President of the Council for Namibia

Noir, nonsense, and the blatantly obvious

The stories in this month’s IF range from the patently obvious to those that leave the reader wondering why the author bothered. There are a couple of mildly entertaining stops along the way, and the high point may surprise you (even if it is more molehill than mountain).

Supposedly for Rogue Star, which doesn’t have a starship crash. Or this many characters. Art by Chaffee

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[June 2, 1968] Necessary Evils (July 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

The Baltimore Nine

You may recall one of the more spectacular draft protests last October when Father Philip Berrigan and three other men forced their way in a Selective Service office in Baltimore, Maryland and poured blood into filing cabinets containing draft records. Father Berrigan has acted again, this time along with eight others. The group included Tom Lewis, who was also part of the earlier protest, Berrigan’s brother Daniel, also a priest, and two women.

The Baltimore Nine shortly after their arrest. Fr. Philip Berrigan is 2nd from the left in the back row.

On Friday May 17th, the group entered the Selective Service office in Catonsville, Maryland and began stuffing several hundred A-1 draft records into wire incinerator baskets. Clerk Mary Murphy tried to stop them, but was restrained by one of the protestors. They then made their way back outside and set fire to the records using home-made napalm while quietly reciting the Lord’s Prayer. A short time later, they were arrested, and firefighters extinguished the fire. The following Monday, they sent flowers and a letter of apology signed “The Baltimore Nine” to Mrs. Murphy and the other clerks.

On one hand, the escalation to fire is concerning. Imitators may be less inclined to ensure that no one is harmed. On the other hand, the sight of a group including two priests and a monk defying what they call an unjust war and an unjust law may make people think, especially Catholics. These aren’t a bunch of hippies and long-haired college students who just don’t want to fight in a war.

Of war and women

Two themes run through this month’s IF: war as a necessary evil and female characters who are present solely as motivation for male characters. To be fair, there are as many female protagonists as there are plot pawns, but the latter outweigh the former.

Abbott and his men are the first to reach the Sleeper’s chamber. Art by Gray Morrow

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[May 2, 1968] The Thing with Feathers (June 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

Hope, according to Emily Dickinson, is “the thing with feathers” which sings and never stops. Perhaps, but there are times when it becomes very hard to hear its song. After the devastating murder of Dr. King, with the war in Indo-China seemingly going nowhere, and with unrest growing in the streets of the Western world (Germany is only one example; France, Belgium, and Italy are all seeing similar problems), hope does seem to have fallen silent.

A glimmer of hope

Just over a year ago, I reported on a military coup and counter-coup in Sierra Leone which prevented the first peaceful transition of power between rival political parties in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, the National Reform Council led by Brigadier Andrew Juxon-Smith has been overthrown in turn. Calling themselves the Anti-Corruption Revolutionary Movement, a group of non-commissioned officers staged another coup, arresting Juxon-Smith and his deputy on April 19th and promptly named Colonel John Amadu Bangura Governor-General. He promised a quick return to civilian rule and followed through with the promise. Only three days later, Bangura stepped down, naming Siaka Stevens, who had been declared the winner of the election last year, as Prime Minister. At the same time, Banja Tejan Sie, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, became Governor-General. Stevens was sworn in (again) on April 26th. The restoration of civilian government is a promising sign.

l. New Governor-General Banja Tejan Sie. r. New Prime Minister Siaka Stevens.

Bleak House

While this month’s IF may not be the Slough of Despond, the two best stories in it are dark indeed. Perhaps to make up for the bleakness, Fred Pohl also goes looking for a bit of optimism. After running the ads for and against continuing participation in the war in Vietnam last seen in the March issue of F&SF (on facing pages, which is much more editorially balanced), Fred announces a contest looking for the best answers on what to do about Vietnam. They’re offering $100 each for the five best responses. That’s a nice chunk of change, but don’t hold out your hopes for solutions that won’t start World War III and/or are politically feasible.

No one has ever seen the prison of Brass from the outside. Art by Vaughn Bodé

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[April 2, 1968] Asking the big questions (May 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

A spring thaw?

Change appears to be coming to Czechoslovakia. Faced with growing dissatisfaction last year, First Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party Antonín Novatný invited Leonid Brezhnev to visit Prague last December in the hope of shoring up his position. Instead, Brezhnev was shocked by Novatný’s unpopularity and pushed him to resign as Party Secretary (he remained President).

Alexander Dubček was elected as the new First Secretary on January 5th and soon began on a course of reforms. On February 22nd, in the presence of Brezhnev, Dubček announced that steps would be taken to bring about “the widest possible democratization of the entire socio-political system.” A few days later, the Party adopted the first draft of an action program which allows greater freedom of speech (much of the resistance to Novatný came from the Writer’s Union) and more autonomy for Slovakia (the Czech Novatný had tried to curb Slovakian culture and language; Dubček is Slovakian). February ended with the release of the first uncensored magazine by the Writer’s Union.

Alexander Dubček addresses the nation after taking office.

On March 4th, the Party Presidium voted to dismantle press censorship, and by the end of the week the papers were calling for Novatný to step down as President. On the 14th, the Party voted to politically rehabilitate party members who had been purged in the 1950s. By the 22nd, the pressure was too much for Novatný and he reluctantly resigned as President. He will be replaced by Ludvík Svoboda, who had been purged, but rehabilitated at the request of Khrushchev.

The reaction in the East Bloc has been as might be expected. A Warsaw Pact meeting was hastily called for the 23rd in Dresden. The Poles, in particular, seemed unhappy with Dubček’s reforms. They may be nervous due to the student protests in Warsaw and elsewhere in the country. The word “counterrevolution” was mentioned and the specter of Hungary was raised. Dubček seems to have calmed fears for now.

Can Dubček keep the Soviets at arm’s length and bring about his reforms? Tito managed it, but Yugoslavia isn’t in the Warsaw Pact and doesn’t have a border with the Soviet Union. Only time will tell.

Seeking answers

The stories in this month’s IF grapple with deep questions. Some are big, such as expedience versus morality or the meaning of bravery and sacrifice; others are more personal. And Poul Anderson calls everything we think about the future into question.

Supposedly for Dismal Light, which doesn’t even have two male characters. Generic art by Pederson

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