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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 14, 1967] Threat level: High (October Galactoscope)

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by Gideon Marcus

We've got a triple (maybe quadruple) play for you this morning.  Dig in and enjoy the bounty!

Fail-Safe, by Eugene Burdick and Arthur Wheeler

With so many new books coming out, it's not often that we at the Journey can devote inches to older titles.  However, the original Fail-Safe has been staring me in the face for the past four years, and when I finally picked it up, I found I couldn't put it down.  Morever, the events depicted in the book are supposed to take place in 1967, so what better year to review it?

If you've seen the movie, then you know the plot of the book: mechanical malfunction causes a flight of bombers, responding to a false threat, to head irretrievably on an atomic raid of Moscow.  Indeed, the movie is in many ways a shot-for-shot rendition of the print version.  The differences pertain to the medium: we get several mini-biographies of the main characters, including the translator, the war-monger, the self-loathing SAC General, the commander of the Omaha base.  There are also occasional, Marooned-style depictions of the technology involved, in lurid detail.

But the events are the same, the dialogue is largely the same, the agony is the same.  Fail-Safe is the story of breakdown–of huge computerized networks failing for the disruption of tiny components, of people failing when confronted with clashing instructions.  Despite the fundamental tragedy of the story, it is ultimately a hopeful book.  It says that people made this death trap we live in, and only people can get us out of it.  And thankfully, there are still good people left in the positions that matter.

Indeed, the main divergence between the book and movie is that the two national leaders involved are not generic statesmen but real people: Kennedy and Khruschev.  This is a little jarring given that neither outlasted the book's publication by very long.  However, it's also fundamental to the plot.  Burdick and Wheeler ascribe a basic competence and goodness to these particular national leaders, qualities that keep the world from exploding when all factors say it should.

Were the two "K"s given too much credit?  Are LBJ and Kosygin men we can trust to steer us clear from the edge of disaster?  Those are questions that can only be answered by biographers in the first instance, and in the moment for the second.  May summits like the recent one in Glassboro ensure the latter never needs answering.

Four stars.

The Invaders, by Keith Laumer

Have you seen The Invaders?  It's a dopey riff on The Fugitive, instead of Richard Kimball running from the law for a murder he didn't commit, at the same time tracking down the real killer, it's about an architect running from alien invaders, while he also plans a counterattack.

The Fugitive was, itself, a riff on Route 66, about two hunks Kerouac-ing across the country doing odd jobs trying to find themselves.  The Fugitive works because Kimball has a reason to keep moving, but, as a doctor, a moral obligation to help people wherever he goes.  There's a reason the show lasted four years.

The Invaders doesn't work for lots of reasons — being an architect doesn't fundamendally involve protagonist David Vincent in anything.  The aliens are laughably inept, betraying themselves with crooked pinky fingers, and yet Vincent can never really get anyone to believe him.

It's a dumb show.

So, of course it has a tie-in novel.  Keith Laumer probably wrote this one in his sleep and happily pocketed the $2000 royalty to pay for his next trip to London.  It is cliché-ridden and tired, a typical potboiler with a B-movie plot and science decades out of date.

It's still better than the show.

It's better because Laumer's Vincent discovers the aliens through canny investigation rather than stumbling on them at an old diner (tracking several seemingly unrelated factory production orders; once the widgets are assembled, they make a ray gun).  It's better because Laumer is a competent action writer.  It's better because the book is highly divergent from the show, only retaining the name of the hero, the plot of invasion (even the aliens are quite different — their high temperature gives them away), and the William Conrad-esque narration that precedes and succeeds the three vignettes included in this first volume.

Three stars.  Why not?

Belmont Double B50-779

The second Belmont Double, poor imitation of the Ace Double follows a similar format to the first: one old novella combined with a newly commissioned one.

Doomsman, by Harlan Ellison

These days, Harlan's name is associated with avante garde stuff, the cutting edge of the New Wave laden with emotion and impact.

Back in the late '50s, when he was cranking out material for the profusion of SF digests, Harlan's work was of more variable quality.  Doomsman originally came out in the last issue (October 1958) of Imagination as The Assassin, and it is lesser Ellison.

A hundred years from now, the Western Hemisphere is dominated by the AmeriState, a totalitarian regime that ascended in the ashes of an atomic war.  Power is maintained by an assassin's corps, of which one Juanito Montoya, abducted from the Pampas of Argentine in his early manhood, is a typical example.  He can kill in a thousand different ways, endure most any climate, and he lacks even the rudiments of empathy or civilization.

But in one way, he is different from his peers, for he comes to learn that he is the son of Don Eskalyo, a princeling who would topple the AmeriState.  Once in possession of this knowledge, he resolves to stop at nothing to meet Eskalyo and join his forces.  Except, of course, that's just what the AmeriState wants him to do…

Doomsman is a brutal, unpleasant story, rife with torture and grossness.  In particular, I could have done without the introduction of the lone female character, the nude and violated (but still desirable, of course!) imprisoned young woman who proves the linchpin to finding Eskalyo.  Not only did I find her character a sop to the more lewd readers, but though Ellison makes it clear that she endured three months of the worst tortures without cracking, she succumbs to Montoya's techniques immediately.  And we never learn what these techniques are.  Obviously, it's an author's trick to imply how effective and monstrous these methods are, but it just comes off as implausible and a cheat.

The one thing Doomsman's favor is it is never dull.  That's not enough.  2.5 stars.

Telepower, by Lee Hoffman

Lee Hoffman is a name I've heard a lot in the fanzines, but I've never met her because she lives in Chicago.  It's always a delight to see a fan turn into a (filthy) pro, and the main reason I picked up this Double is because of her byline.

Her book takes place in and around the post-atomic ruins of Cleveland, which have settled into a sort of medieval complacency, its inhabitants placid and staid.  The defense of the city is left to the soldiers, an almost robotic breed of human, who live outside the city walls.  The main threat to Cleveland isn't other men–it's waves upon waves of rats.  The story opens up with such an attack, and we are introduced to Beldone, one of the many anonymous drones in the ranks.

Beldone, unlike his companions, develops a spark of curiosity, of individuality.  This terrifies him since such is a sign of illness, and the remedy for illness is execution.  We quickly learn that this spark is externally created: inside the city dwells the beautiful, and bored, Illyna.  In a fit of ennui, she developed the embers of a psychic power, initially telepathic in nature but ultimately controlling.  Beldone was her first contact, and through him, she seeks to learn more about the world she inhabits–and to find a way to control it.

There's a lot of disturbing stuff in this novel.  Folks who are turned off by depictions of violence, depictions of rats, and/or depictions of telepathic mind control may wish to give this piece a miss.  It's also not a happy story, even when it is triumphant.  But it is an interesting, well-written one, and I look forward to more of Hoffman's work.

3.5 stars.



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Book, Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 10, 1964] Drop The Bomb and We All Go Down (Sidney Lumet's Fail Safe)

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By Rosemary Benton

The Rogue Element

Grim and uncertain times can seemingly serve as interesting creative fuel. As the world becomes embroiled further and further in the mounting crisis between Cuba and the US, Hollywood has scheduled a list of releases this year that look both critically and comically at current world affairs. This month the much-plagued movie Fail Safe, directed by Sidney Lumet and featuring a star studded cast of actors, was released. Boy, is this one a rollercoaster.

Based on the 1962 novel of the same name (initially released as a serial for the Saturday Evening Post) by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, Fail Safe covers the topical issue of mutually assured destruction. It is supposed to be a deterrent to war — it's also the inevitable conclusion when our technology and policy fail us.

Picture this scenario: an unknown aircraft enters US air space and triggers preparations for a possible enemy attack, US bombers are sent to their holding (fail-safe) points on the Soviet borders. Everyone of importance is called in (select members of congress, the President, Air Force command and political advisors), but when Strategic Air Command in Washington learns that the craft is merely a commercial vessel off course, the situation is deescalated and the surveillance system within the Control Room is reset.

But an error causes an attack order to be sent to a group of bombers at their fail-safe point. Unaware of the error and gravely realizing the enormity of what an attack order means, the bombers nevertheless begin flying towards Moscow with the intention of razing it to the ground with their 40 megaton payloads. Back at Command, the error is spotted; all attempts are made to contact the bombers and call them back, but it's too late.

If this all sounds familiar then you have either seen Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (or read the book that inspired that film – "Red Alert" (1958) by Peter George aka Peter Bryant), or you, like me, just saw the premiere of Fail Safe. Both films are produced by Columbia Pictures, and initially both films were scheduled to be released in 1964 around the same date! The logic of this is baffling, and understandably it ruffled some feathers. The inside scoop is that Kubrick put a great deal of pressure on Columbia Pictures in order to have his film released at the beginning of the year decently spaced from the other.

Predictably, the eerily similar plots of Wheeler and Burdick's story compared to George's story resulted in a very public lawsuit – Kubrick and George vs Wheeler and Burdick, McGraw-Hill, Curtis Publishing Company, and Entertainment Corporation of America. The suit, initiated by George and Kubrick, claimed that Wheeler and Burdick lifted significant plot points from plaintiff Peter George's book. Evidently the matter was settled privately, as the American public is now able to see Fail Safe in many major theaters.

Initial Impressions

Despite their glaring story parallels, Fail Safe is a different animal entirely from Dr. Strangelove. It's hard to describe the experience of watching this film. The violence of the opening scene, wherein a veteran bomber pilot finds himself both observer and victim at a bullfight, sets the audience up with a baseline anxiety that grows and wanes, but never dissipates. The plot doesn't introduce the error (in this movie, caused by a machine rather than a person) until over 20 minutes into the movie. Prior to that we see haunting scenes that manage to capture intense raw emotions and family moments instrumental to defining our surprisingly complex and fascinating characters.

Dan O'Herlihy, Walter Matthau, 1964

The suspense as the disaster gets wildly out of control builds relentlessly. For the audience, stuck in their seats with the knowledge that this is all very relevant to our country's current situation, there's an accompanying sense of angry futility. It's a hard truth that the general public (in the theater and on the screen) is blind to the national procedures set in place, and ultimately powerless to influence the decisions being made by the ranks of command. During the film's two and a half hour runtime this fury grew intense. By the end of the film I was actually teary eyed with a kind of writhing rage in my gut. It was especially fueled by the unbearably unfair price the Soviet and American civilian populations pay. Millions of people in both countries die minutes apart, or more accurately, are murdered. All for a technical error.

The Blame Game

The issue of blame and responsibility for a crime against humanity like the deployment of nuclear weapons is central to the plot in Fail Safe. As the cast discuss their options for the impending nuclear strike, the issue of how it could have happened in the first place is intensely debated by the characters. There are numerous people who keep saying that blame can't be assigned because the whole situation is an accident. No human hand sent the mission to the bombers streaking towards Moscow. A reset error caused the order to be delivered. It was always a possibility that the machines could malfunction. It's a risk of new technology that they could fail. As such everyone can be reasonably absolved of guilt. Absolving oneself of guilt and responsibility is a natural gut reaction in everyone when they are charged with making a mistake. But a crime against humanity? Of this magnitude? Someone has to take responsibility for that.

Even though it is explained earlier that he has no direct oversight of the checks and fail safes set in place to prevent such a tech error, the U. S. President (Henry Fonda) feels that the blame must lie with those at the highest peak of authority, and the actions he takes to address the situation reflect this. He verbally underlines this point in his angry statement near the end of the film to the Soviet premier that the blame for the dead lies with both men. Both men wield the destructive force of 20 megaton bombs as part of the unspoken detente of mutually assured destruction. Their use is ultimately the responsibility of the men in power. The President implores his Soviet counterpart, and the generals and senior officials on both sides, that they all must learn from this disaster to make sure it doesn't happen again. We don't hear what the Soviets have to say to this, and are left to wonder if they feel the same way about the shared responsibility and guilt.

But can people overcome the trap technology sets for us? Early in the film we see two WWII-veteran Air Force pilots playing pool and bemoaning the studiousness and "impersonal" attitudes of the new recruits grimly reading technical manuals at the tables next to them. Their conversation foreshadows the attitudes of many other characters. This film does an extremely good job of linking the fear of technology and the heavy responsibility of those who "control" it. Nearly all of the cast express, or hold firm to, the sentiment that technology is pulling people away from one another and will ultimately replace humanity in the resolution (and creation) of conflicts.

Another example of assigning blame to technology is in the Control Room when Congressman Raskob (Sorrell Booke) is given a tour of the new tech and an update on the emergency. He is disgusted and angry that a technical failure caused the orders to be sent, describing it as as humanity losing control of its inventions.

The scene revealing his feelings on the matter is very well executed. Congressman Raskob has just been shown how American satellites can monitor submarine movements and can zoom in nearly down to street level! He's also made aware that foreign surveillance is occurring within an alarmingly close proximity to the US shoreline. What disturbs him even more than all of this highly evolved (and very plausible) surveillance technology is that no one knows who is overseeing it. When he asks who double and triple checks the fail safes set up to monitor the machines, he is given different answers simultaneously: "The President" and "No one". That is profoundly disturbing, and Raskob knows it. He replies, "The only thing that everyone can agree on is that no one's responsible".

Final Thoughts

While Fail Safe offers a horrifyingly plausible solution to address the catastrophe shown in the film, neither the movie nor the best-selling book that the movie is based on offer any answers on how such a catastrophe could be avoided. Per the film, such an attack is the ultimate avalanche of events. It is the inevitable collapse of a shaky, hastily built structure rigged with cheap materials and patched with quick-fixes. Is it already too late to stop something like this from happening? Fail Safe asks this question, but suggests that there is no answer.

May sleep come easy to you tonight…

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