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Book

[June 20, 1962] Half a loaf… (Ace Double F-153 – a Marion Zimmer Bradley twosome)

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by Gideon Marcus

Marion Zimmer Bradley is an odd duck.

As a writer for a niche genre (science fiction), as a woman in a male-dominated field, as an occultist mystic in a stolidly Judeo-Christian world (she founded the Aquarian Order of the Restoration), and as someone who pines for the days when the genre was more fantastic, Bradley is many times over a breed apart.

That dislocation from the mainstream of society, even the mainstreams of rarefied slivers of society, has acted as a sort of crucible on her imagination.  At the risk of engaging in unlicensed psychoanalysis, it seems that all this pent up desire to escape the real world has turned into a torrent she's focused at her writing.  In the past several years, I've marked a focus of her work toward the psychic and the pulpy.  It's hardly hidden – she said as much in the introduction to her first book:

While I was still collecting rejection slips for my early efforts, the fashion changed. Adventures on faraway worlds and strange dimensions went out of fashion, and the new look in science-fiction — emphasis on the science — came in…I think, there is a place, a wish, a need and hunger for the wonder and color of the world way out. The world beyond the stars. The world we won’t live to see.

Except her far futures don't have many futuristic trappings.  Her settings are invariably medieval in flavor, with swashbuckling sword-wielders, hot-blooded heroes and beautiful damsels.  It's pretty clear that this is the world she wants to live in, one of duels and kin-loyalty, where women, while they may be strong, also yield to a man's will. 

We saw it in A Door Through Space, and we see it in the new Ace Double, #F-153.  It's two Bradleys for the price of one (40 cents), and it, beginning to end, has Bradley's stamp upon it.

The Planet Savers

Really a long novella, The Planet Savers fleshes out the planet of Darkover, briefly mentioned in Bradley's first novel.  In an effeminate, decadent Terran Empire, red-sunned Darkover is the one hold-out of rugged virtue.  The Earthers have just one on-world trade enclave; the rest of the planet is ruled by a series of clans, descendants of colonists from a long-distant past.  They possess the secret of psychic technology using the mysterious Matrices, devices whose use is only briefly described. 

The Darkovans share their world with the Trailmen, aboriginal humanoids who live in the shadowed arboreal span of giant trees.  Their branches form a network that spans a good portion of the planet.  Whether they are a divergent group of humans or the result of convergent evolution is an open question.  Their society is an interesting mix of savage and refined, and I found them more interesting than the mundanely feudal Darkovans (who actually do not feature prominently in this book).

In fact, the star of the book is Jason Allison, a Terran who was raised by Trailmen after a boyhood crash that left him lost and parentless.  As such, he is the only one on the planet who can negotiate with the natives to obtain pints of their blood to make serum to fight the "Trailmen's Plague," a sort of Darkovan chickenpox that is deadly to non-Trailmen. 

There's only one problem, and this is the genuinely interesting crux of the short book: Jason doesn't exist. 

When Allison fell into the hands of the Trailmen, he was adopted and raised as one of the aboriginals until his maturity, at which point, they felt they needed to let the young man be with his own kind.  Allison could not reconcile the alien ways of the Trailmen with the codes of the Terrans; he thus repressed most of his childhood and a great deal of his personality, becoming the priggish Dr. Jay Allison.  This resulting persona, while respected for his competence, is a brittle and unlikable soul.  He also doesn't speak the Trailmen language.

This is why the Terrans resort to psychic techniques to tease out the younger Jason persona, carving out a new being, essentially.  During the mission, the two personas exchange positions at the fore, in a Hyde and Jekyll fashion.  This is represented to great effect by having the Jason portions in first person but the Jay portions in third.

I was surprised to discover that The Planet Savers is a story I glided over in my damning review of the November 1958 Amazing.  I suspect I never made it to the novella (which is unchanged from its original publication) after getting turned off by the earlier stories in that issue. 

In any event, I enjoyed The Planet Savers, though the relationship between Jason and the fiercely independent yet pliable Darkovan woman sherpa felt tacked on and downright Burroughsian.  Three and a half stars.

The Sword of Aldones

Sadly, I cannot say as much for the flip-side novel, a much longer piece.  Also set on Darkover, presumably around the same era, it is told from the viewpoint of Lew Aldon, a half-Terran scion of the Aldon clan – a powerful psionic family.  He is returning home after years off-planet after an exile caused by political turmoil.  He returns to face the Comyn (the council of Darkovan families…I think) to deal with the disposition of a powerful matrix called the Sharra, which he's smuggled back to Darkover in a decorative sword.

I could not finish The Sword of Aldones, throwing in the towel around page 70.  Part of it was the inexpert storytelling, with Lew consistently referring to his fraught past and then explicitly refusing to discuss it.  Part of it was the general tone of violence always simmering just under the surface (Bradley must have anger issues – it is a problem I see with all of her work).  But mostly, it was its hackneyed, humorless style.  The Sword of Aldones might appeal to the sword and spaceship crowd, but it didn't work at all for me.  One star.

And because of that, I'd recommend picking up an old copy of Amazing for the one piece in this double worth reading – it'll be cheaper.

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Conventions/Performances

[June 18, 1962] Live… in Color!  (the first Galactic Journey Tele-Conference)

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by Gideon Marcus

Miracles are afoot at the Seattle World Expo.  General Electric released its Visi-phone technology, allowing people from across the country to not only talk to each other, but to see each other as they do so.

Of course, money being no object, the cutting-edge Galactic Journey had to avail itself of this wonder immediately!  The 21st Century…is now!

Yesterday morning saw the world's first Tele-Conference, featuring several Journey notables and not a few guests.  From 11AM to 12PM, we entertained a rapt audience around the continent from our luxurious studios in San Diego.  If you've ever been to a convention panel, it was much like that – attendees submitted questions and comments via teletype, the panelists did their best to answer them, and prizes were dispatched to attendees with the best interactions.

In between, we rolled movie clips, played music, and demonstrated other marvels of current technology.  There were some technical glitches, but then, even NASA's rockets had trouble at first.  On the whole, however, we think the event went off swimmingly.

If you missed your chance to attend, or if you simply want to relive the experience, we have recorded the entire event onto video tape and will be rebroadcasting it continuously on the UHF band for the conceivable future. 

So tune in!  And if you think we should make this a regular occurrence (say, once every month or two), do let us know. 

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Magazine/Anthology

[June 10, 1962] A star shall rise (July 1962 IF Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

I've said before that IF Worlds of Science Fiction is sort of a poor sister to Galaxy Science Fiction.  Since 1959, they've been owned and run by the same team; IF pays its writers less; the quality used to be markedly lower on average (with occasional stand-outs).

We seem to be entering a new era.  The July 1962 IF was a cracking read once I got past the first story, which was short anyway.  Not only were the stories fairly original, but even where they weren't, the writing was a cut above.  And not in that arty, self-indulgent way that F&SF deems "literary," but in a real way that emphasizes characterization.  It's a departure from the mode of the 50s, particularly the lesser mags, where the focus was on the gimmick, with the actors playing second-fiddle to the plot.  Plus, Ted Sturgeon has made a permanent home here, which is always a good sign.

So read on – I think you'll enjoy the trip.

Aide Memoire, by Keith Laumer

This latest story in the Retief saga is definitely the weak point of the ish.  Our omnipotent, long-suffering interstellar diplomat is sent to resolve a violent generational gap amongst a race of turtles.  It seems that members of this long-lived race grow shells as they age.  The agile young ones have been whipped to an irreverent fervor by humanity's enemy, the Groaci.  It's paint-by-numbers satire, and the Retief shtick, when unsupported by an interesting plot, wears thin.  Two stars.

From Gustible's Planet, by Cordwainer Smith

Gluttonous, nigh-invulnerable ducks from another planet invade the Earth.  The result is not so much oppression as incessant annoyance.  I'm not sure where, or even if, it really fits into his "Instrumentality" universe, though it ostensibly is set there.  Anyway, the normally sublime Smith is reduced to offering us what is essentially a one-joke story, but it's Smith, so it's still worth reading.  Three stars.

The Chemically Pure Warriors, by Allen Kim Lang

A caste of humans have been bred to be septically pure, as clean of and as vulnerable to bacteria and viruses as any bubble baby.  Yet, they have also been trained for generations as humanity's space troopers.  Such is their indoctrination that a movement has risen amongst them that they are the superior race, and the "Stinkers" or baseline humans, must ultimately be exterminated.

Warriors takes place on the colony world of Kansas where a battalion of these sterilized soldiers are based in the midst of a Japanese-extracted group of pastoral "Indigenous Humanoids."  When one of the troopers attempts to go native, this proves the catalyst for a short-lived but terrible conflict between the two groups. 

IF experiments not only with writers and concepts, but with story lengths.  The novella just isn't that common a format, but it works nicely here.  There is enough time to portray the spit-and-polish roboticism of the soldiers, the gentle Buddhism of the Japanese (the culture and language of whom is reasonably accurately portrayed – I have to wonder if Mr. Lang has spent some time overseas).  Warriors owes much to Dickson's Naked to the Stars, or perhaps the time is simply due for a pacifistic sf movement.  My favorite passage:

"The ultimate breakdown in communication is silencing one side of the dialogue…  That's why killing a man is the ultimate sin; it removes forever the hope of understanding him."

Four stars.

Uncle Sam's Time Machine, by Theodore Sturgeon

Seems old Ted was hosting a bunch of Scouts at his house, and their clocks had run down.  All were agog when he dialed into 2500 Khz on his radio and the ticking of the time station, WWV, filled the house.  Within 60 seconds, they knew exactly what time it was – to the billionth of a second!  Sturgeon was so pleased with the reaction of the boys that he decided to write in to the government to find more about the broadcaster.  The goldmine of information they sent him astounded and delighted him, so he passed it onto us.

Now you may feel differently about this article, but I loved it.  It doesn't hurt that I am a Ham Radio fanatic, Morse-code fluent, and I tune into WWV (and its Hawaiian counterpart, WWVH) at least weekly.  But anyone can appreciate the sheer volume of information the Bureau of Weights and Measures squeezes into those clicks, tones, and messages you can hear if you tune in.  And they're improving on the signal all the time.  A fine example of our taxpayer dollars at work, and a fun Sturgeon piece to boot.  Five stars.

The Recruit, by Bryce Walton

In the near future, a young punk is drafted into a government police force.  He swaggers through his role until the time comes to conclude his mission, a mission which is not clearly spelled out until the end.  The "teener's" duty is a tantalizing mystery, and the conclusion is well set up.  It's a brutal, vivid story by a fellow best known for his decades of pulp tales.  Recruit feels kind of like Sheckley on a dark day.  Four stars.

All That Earthly Remains, by C. C. MacApp

Amid the turmoil of a recent right-wing revolution in an Andean nation, a half-Hispanic American scientist is dispatched to the mountains to investigate a mysterious explosion.  The blast has exposed an underground complex, home to fantastic technologies.  Are its builders demons?  Aliens?  Or something more?

Ten years ago, this would have been a simple "gotcha" tale.  In MacApp's hands, it's a carrier wave for the interpersonal drama of a handful of the opposing personalities sent to explore the tunnels.  The enduring question they are presented – if there is concrete proof of God, will that make us all Atheists?  Four stars.

A Bad Town for Spacemen, by Robert Scott

A short, effective piece whose only failing is the rather clumsy expositional bit near the end.  But I like the sentiment, the double-meaning, and the otherwise strong implementation.  Four stars.

***

So there you have it.  An excellent 3.7 star issue, which is only really marred by the truly awful illos, which I suspect are mostly padding for length.  Definitely worth subscribing, as Editor Fred Pohl exhorts you to do at the magazine's conclusion.  What are you waiting for?

(And don't miss your chance to see the Traveler LIVE via visi-phone, June 17 at 11 AM!  A virtual panel, with Q&A, show and tell, and prizes!)

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TV

[June 5, 1962] Into the Sunset (the End of The Twilight Zone, Season 3)

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by Lorelei Marcus

You hear that? That's the last school bell ringing, signifying the end of the school year. That means the beginning of summer break, and with it the end of another season of The Twilight Zone. However, unlike the previous seasons of The Twilight Zone, I hear this may be the last. I am both sad, and a bit relieved. I have very much enjoyed reviewing this series with my father, and I am very sad to see it go. However, I believe its also time for it to go. It had a very good first season, and progressively got worse over time as Serling strained for more ideas. It was obvious that by the end, Serling was out of inspiration. Still, rather than focus on all the many mediocre episodes, I'd like to go back and appreciate the really stand-out episodes of The Twilight Zone.

The first ones I would like to honor, of course, were the two recent five star rated episodes, Little Girl Lost and The Fugitive. Truly spectacular works that were the perfect balance of peculiar, creepy, and heartwarming. Next I would like to honor The Mirror in its complete awfulness. It was really terrible, in a "so bad it's good" kind of way. Finally, I would like to say something about Time Enough at Last and It's a Good Life, because I know people are going to be asking about them. Time Enough had an interesting setup and conflict, however I didn't like the ending at all. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for happy endings, but just having his glasses break seemed like a cheap cop-out rather than an actual twist. It's a Good Life also had an interesting setup, however from there it just went downhill for me. There wasn't really a message I got out of it other than "don't spoil your kids," which I assume was not the intended theme. At least I don't have to babysit the kid. If you'd like to see full reviews of all the episodes I just mentioned, and more, just peruse past articles of Galactic Journey with The Twilight Zone in the title.

Alright, enough talk about episodes I've already reviewed; let's talk about the last four episodes. Which just so happen to be the literal last four episodes of The Twilight Zone:

Young Man's Fancy, by Richard Matheson

We start off with a more Season One style episode. A newlywed couple goes to the husband's dead mother's house to pack and get ready to sell it. It becomes clear fairly quickly that the husband is still clinging to the house and the memory of his mother. The wife, on the other hand, is the polar opposite, relieved she can finally have her husband all to herself. Throughout the episode, certain strange things keep happening around the wife, such as a broken clock starting to work again, and a modern vacuum magically changing into a much older one. It seems as if the ghost of the husband's mother is malicious and trying to scare the wife off. The episode ends with a twist that neither me nor my father predicted for once, so that was a nice surprise. However I am still a little confused by the ending as well, and haven't really been able to decide what it means. I'd love to hear some feedback of what you think. I give this 3 stars.

I sing the Body Electric, by Ray Bradbury

This second episode was a bit of a contrast to the first one. It was very touching and I found it very enjoyable to watch. It's about a single father struggling to raise three unhappy children. Everyone misses the mother of the family very much. Luckily, they're just so happens to be a company that makes robotic caretakers that are perfect for a lonely household! Of course the family heads over to check them out. From this point until near the end of the episode, I was convinced the twist would be that something terrible was going to happen. This idea was only reinforced by the infinitely creepy salesman and his "create your own person" type product. Still, the episode proved me wrong and ended very sweetly. I would highly recommend that you would watch this episode on a bad day, it has a very happy ending and theme, that I think will cheer you up. I give this episode a whopping 4.5 stars!

[Gwyn, our fashion columnist felt similarly (ED)]

Cavender is Coming, by Rod Serling

The third episode was about a clumsy but charming woman who couldn't keep a job if her life depended on it, and her 24-hour guardian angel, who isn't so great himself. The Angel tries to make the woman happy by giving her lots of money, but in the end, of course she wants to go back to her old, silly life. Hmmm, this plot sounds awfully familiar doesn't it? That's probably because it's the exact same plot as Mr. Bevis except done worse. I won't bother to go into detail about my opinions on this episode, since it would be the same as my father's review of Mr. Bevis. I give it 2.5 stars.

Changing of the Guard, by Rod Serling

Unfortunately, this final episode is not the big awesome finale I think some of us were hoping for. In fact, I was actually having trouble remembering the episode when sitting down to write this review! The entire plot can be summarized to about two sentences. Teacher gets fired and is depressed. Gets told he's done a lot for the world, and becomes no longer depressed. Now imagine that, but drawn out into 22, very slow minutes. However, I did realize while writing this article, that this final episode had a deeper meaning. The teacher realizes at the end that, it is his time to retire and let a new teacher in. He has left a great mark on the world and will not be forgotten, however he is also done and it is his time to step out of the light. In a way, this is a metaphor for The Twilight Zone. It has had a long, good run, and I imagine it will not be forgotten anytime soon. However, it is time for it to end, as all things must do, and give room for new amazing shows to come. I will still only give this episode 2 stars, because it was incredibly boring, but it did give this for me to think about.

I have the final average of 3 stars. A nice middle to end on. Not particularly good, but at least not too bad either. I will miss you Twilight Zone, but I'm also glad it's over. Besides, I need to make room for all the fantastic summer blockbusters yet to come. Until then,

This is the Young Traveler, signing off.


by Gideon Marcus

And here's the Old Traveler..er..the Just Plain Traveler signing in.  My two-and-a-half cents:

Young Man's Fancy was tedious, though the final twist was somewhat interesting.  Two stars.

I liked I sing the Body Electric less that my youthful counterpart.  It's a fantasy, not science fiction, and perhaps would been better framed in that context.  But David White (the father) is quite an excellent actor, and young Veronica Cartwright (the eldest sibling) did a fine job.  Josephine Hutchinson, in the Mary Poppins role, somehow left me cold.  Three stars.

Cavender is Coming fell incredibly flat, some of the blame I must lay at Jesse White's (Cavender) feet.  Two stars.

Changing of the Guard features an excellent performance by British actor, Donald Pleasence, but the soliloquies are all 20% too long, and the "twist" broadly telegraphed.  2.5 stars.

Thus, for me, The Twilight Zone ends with a whimper, and I suspect there is truth to the rumor that the show has failed to get a sponsor for next season.  Nevertheless, however spotty this final run has been, we must still give Serling his due for creating a revolutionary anthology show, one which will rightly be remembered (and hopefully imitated) for years to come.

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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[June 2, 1962] War and… more War (What's new in gaming: 1962)

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by Gideon Marcus

When we think of the word "invention," the big-ticket items come to mind: rockets, nuclear reactors, jet planes, penicillin, nylon.  But innovation happens in all fields.  Take entertainment, for example.  A hundred years ago, music could only be heard live.  Now we have phonographs, wire recordings, tape cassettes.  A century past, and plays were strictly a live event.  In the present, we can enjoy television and films, too. 

Board games have evolved tremendously in the last century.  From the old standards of chess, checkers and backgammon, the rise of the boxed game has provided a profusion of diversions.  You've probably played some of the more famous ones like Scrabble, Monopoly, or Cluedo.  These are abstract games, fairly divorced from reality (though Monopoly's property names are taken from real streets in Atlantic City).

Now, imagine there was a type of game that immersed you right in the action, putting you in the role of a general or a President.  There is a new class of games that simulate historical conflict (which I covered a couple of years ago) called "wargames."  They put you in the seat of a battle leader, pitting your strategic wits against an adversary.  Unlike Chess (which is the spiritual granddaddy of the field), the units at your disposal represent actual divisions and brigades.

Well, sort of.  There is a wide range.  Take Stratego, for instance.  This new game from Milton Bradley is unlike any I've played before in that you have no idea how the enemy's forces are deployed.  Both sides start with forty units of varying strength.  At the top is your Field Marshal; at the bottom, your fleet-of-foot Scouts.  In between, you've got a descending array of officers, from the General to a horde of Sergeants.  Each unit has a number attached to it, and they can defeat any piece with a higher value (for instance, the Lieutenant, rank 6, is defeated by the Captain, rank 5, or the Major, rank 4, and so on).  In addition, there are immobile bombs, that destroy all attackers save the Miner (rank 8), and there is the Spy, which can destroy the Marshal, but only on the offense. 

The goal is to take the others' flag – but where is it?  It's a fun, chess-like game that will take about 30-40 minutes.  I must report that I was ignominiously defeated in my first game by The Young Traveler.

At the other end of the scale is just-released Waterloo, from the company that has become virtually synonomous with wargames: Avalon Hill.  Waterloo is an elaborate rendition of Napoleon's last campaign, his desperate attempt to defeat the Allied armies in detail in the fields of Belgium.  The actual units that fought on those late spring days of 1815 are represented with cardboard chits with combat strengths and movement factors printed upon then.

Unlike as in chess or checkers, the map is the actual battlefield overlaid with an ingenious hex grid that allows movement in all directions.  Rivers and forests hinder movement; slopes and rivers affect combat.  Battle is engaged when units become adjacent, whereupon a die is rolled and the "Combat Results Table" (CRT) referred to.  Fights at even or even two-to-one odds are chancy affairs.  Success is only reasonably likely at three-to-one, and that chance is drastically increased if you can cut off the enemy's avenue of retreat.

The combination of the CRT and terrain make Waterloo a fascinating and taut game of maneuver.  As the Allies, you try to take defensible positions while you wait for reinforcements to arrive in time for you to take on the superior French forces before they reach the road to Brussels.  As the French, you try to use your initially superior numbers and your fast-moving cavalry to defeat the Allies piecemeal.

It's highly immersive, but the time commitment may be more than you're used to – plan on spending five hours locked in mortal, 19th Century combat.  Best accompanied by a glass of brandy and some period-appropriate records from the Vanguard Bach Guild collection. 

My wife and I are still knee-deep in our first game.  I'll be sure to let you know how the conflict ends when it happens.  Perhaps the First Empire will survive beyond The Hundred Days following Napoleon I's return from Elban exile…

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Magazine/Anthology

[May 31, 1962] Rounding Out (June 1962 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Ah, and at last we come to the end of the month.  That time that used to be much awaited before Avram Davidson took over F&SF, but which is now just an opportunity to finish compiling my statistics for the best magazines and stories for the month.  Between F&SF's gentle decline and the inclusion of Amazing and Fantastic in the regular review schedule, you're in for some surprises.

But first, let's peruse the June 1962 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and see if, despite the new editor's best efforts, we get some winners this month (oh, perhaps I'm being too harsh – Editor is a hard job, and one is limited to the pieces one gets.)

Such Stuff, by John Brunner

Thanks to recent experiments, we now know what people cannot survive long when deprived of the ability to dream.  But what about that bedeviled fellow who enjoys an escape from nightmares?  And what if your mind becomes the vessel for his repressed fantasies?  A promising premise, but this Serling-esque piece takes a bit too much time to get to its point.  Three stars.

Daughter of Eve, by Djinn Faine

After an interstellar diaspora, there are but two remaining groups of humans on a colony world.  One is a large population of radiation-sterilized people; the other comprises just one man and his young daughter, the mother having died upon planetfall.  From the title of the story, you can likely guess the quandary the sole fertile man is faced with.  The childlike language of the viewpoint character (the daughter) is a bit tedious, but this first story by Virginia Faine (nee Dickson – yes, that Dickson) isn't bad.  It stayed with me, and that's something.  Three stars.

The Scarecrow of Tomorrow, by Will Stanton

Reading more like a George C. Edmondson tale than anything else, this pleasantly oblique tale describes the encounter between two farmers and a murder of crows…with a partiality for things Martian.  I reread the ending a half-dozen times, but I'm still not quite sure what it all means.  Nicely put together, though.  Three stars.

The Xeenemuende Half-Wit, by Josef Nesvadba

During the War, a prominent German rocket scientist is stumped by a thorny guidance problem.  Can his savant son help him out?  And is it worth the price?  Another moody, readable piece from Nesvadba.  I'm sure there's a point, but I'm not quite sure what it is.  Three stars.

The Transit of Venus, by Miriam Allen deFord

I don't usually go for expositional stories, but deFord makes this one work, particularly with the story's short length.  In a world of regimentedly liberal mores, one prude dares to turn society on its ear with a scandalous go at winning the Miss Solar System beauty pageant.  A fun piece from a reliable veteran.  Three stars.

Power in the Blood, by Kris Neville

I didn't much like this story when it was It's a Good Life on The Twilight Zone, and I like it less here.  Some addled old woman with the power to destroy slowly deteriorates the world until there's naught left but wreckage.  Disjointed, unpleasant, and just not good.  One star.

The Troubled Makers, by Charles Foster

About the reality-challenged psychic who bends reality to his will, and the Watusi Chief who helps him around.  You've seen versions of this story a dozen times or more in this magazine over the years, but it's not a bad variation on the theme.  An assiduous copy of the mold from a brand new writer.  Three stars.

The Egg and Wee, by Isaac Asimov

I normally enjoy the Good Doctor's essays, and this one, comparing the ovae of various creatures and then segueing to a discussion of the smallest of biological creatures, isn't bad.  But it misses the sublimity that his work can sometimes achieve.  Three stars.

Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: LI, by Grendel Briarton

Mr. Bretnor's latest is much worse than normal, perhaps in Garrett territory.  But, I've never included these puns in my ratings, so I shan't now.  Lucky for F&SF.

The Fifteenth Wind of March, by Frederick Bland

Penultimately, we've got the jewel of the issue.  As magical winds scour the Earth with increasing frequency and intensity, one thoroughly ordinary British family attempts to find shelter before it's too late.  Both extraordinary and humdrum at once (no mean feat), it's a poignant slice of unnatural life.  Four stars.

The Diadem, by Ethan Ayer

Mr. Ayer's first printed story involves two women and the goddess that connects them.  It tries hard to be literary, but is just unnecessarily hard to read.  Two stars.

It should be clear to one with any facility with math (and who read every article this month) that the June 1962 F&SF was not the prize-winner this month.  In fact, the Goldsmith mags took surprising first and second place slots with 3.4 and 3 stars for Fantastic and Amazing, respectively.  Galaxy and Analog tied at 2.7 stars.  F&SF rated a middlin' 2.8, but it may have had the best story, though some will argue that Fantastic's The Star Fisherman earned that accolade.  It also had the laudable achievement of featuring the most woman authors…though two is hardly an Earth-shattering number. 

Speaking of women, the next article will feature women in the army.  And on that progressive note…ta ta for now!

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Science / Space Race

[May 24, 1962] Adrift in Two Oceans (The Flight of Aurora 7)

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by Gideon Marcus

They say things get tedious in repetition.  Well, I can assure you that at no point during Scott Carpenter's three-orbit flight, planned to be a duplicate of predecessor John Glenn's, was I in the least bit bored.  In fact, of the six manned space shots, this was the most moving for me.  Since the launch this morning from the East coast of Florida, a couple of hours after dawn, I've been hooked to the television and radio, engaged to a greater degree than ever before.

Perhaps it's the thoughtful, enigmatic nature of Carpenter, a contrast to the gung ho Glenn, the taciturn Shepard, the consummate test pilot Grissom.  Maybe it's the fact that Carpenter's flight had its fair share of drama (but then, so did Glenn's).  It could well be that, now that Glenn has set the template for space travel, I could spend time contemplating what it all meant.

Certainly, NASA wanted to get the most out of the flight out of Aurora 7.  Its pilot was smothered with tasks, each of them taking longer than scheduled.  First, there were the pictures to take.  Carpenter, cramped into a cockpit barely larger than that of the navy planes he used to fly for a living, fumbled to load film of the special space camera.  Then he had to make haste to spin the little Mercury spacecraft around so as to get good pictures of the horizon and ground features of interest.  By the end of Orbit One, half of the ship's fuel was gone.

During the second orbit, Carpenter's suit began to overheat.  Sweat dripping into his eyes, the astronaut deployed a parti-colored beachball.  It was supposed to trail behind the Mercury, providing data on the density of the rarefied atmosphere at that height, as well as the reflectivity of light in orbit.  Well, it never quite inflated.  The wilted thing followed along dispiritedly behind Aurora 7 for the next few hours.

This is not to say that Carpenter was having a bad time.  From his first exuberant exclamation upon becoming weightless, it was clear the astronaut was enjoying himself.  He got to eat the first full meal in space…from tubes: one of peaches, and one of beef and vegetables.  And, for a blessed four-and-a-half hours, the heavy space suit weighed nothing at all.  Even overtasked, Carpenter felt free as a bird, even in his tiny, spacecraft-shaped cage.  The dark sky framed three sunrises and three sunsets, punctuated by flurries of the same fireflies that accompanied Glenn in his flight (the astronaut believes they are ice particles shaken from the capsule). 

Fun, to be sure, but at the end of the third orbit, Carpenter was in a pickle.  Almost out of fuel, the ship misaligned thanks to a balky thruster, and the window for firing his retrorockets sliver-thin, the astronaut fired his braking thrusters a few seconds late.  For half an hour, first in the shuddering initial reentry, and then in the chest crushing crashing through the atmosphere, culminating in the gentle sway beneath parachutes before splashdown in the Atlantic, Carpenter had no idea where he would end up.

Neither did the recovery fleet.  In fact, Carpenter landed some 250 miles away from where he was supposed to.  This did not bother the philosophical spaceman, who spent the next hours relaxing on his inflatable raft, sitting in pleasant companionship with a little black fish nearby.  When the boats of the U.S.S. Intrepid finally arrived, hours later, Carpenter was completely calm.  In fact, like a good guest, he offered them some of his food. 

Aside from a little dehydration (he'd lost seven pounds in space!) Carpenter was in tip-top shape.  He has since been whisked off to Grand Turk island for extensive post-flight evaluation, and it is my understanding he got quite the hug from Glenn upon arrival.  There he will stay for a couple of days before he gets to make a tour of his home town of Boulder, Colorado. 

The folks there must be proud of their native son who has ascended far beyond the lofty Rockies.  I know I am.

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Magazine/Anthology

[May 17, 1962] Not as bad as it looks (June 1962 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

A wise fellow once opined that the problem with a one-dimensional rating system (in my case, 1-5 Galactic Stars) is that there is little differentiating the flawed jewel from the moderately amusing.  That had not really been an issue for me until this month's issue of Analog.  With the exception of the opening story, which though it provides excellent subject matter for the cover's striking picture, is a pretty unimpressive piece, the rest of the tales have much to recommend them.  They just aren't quite brilliant for one reason or another. 

So you're about to encounter a bunch of titles that got three-star ratings, but don't let that deter you if the summaries pique your interest:

The Weather Man, by Theodore L. Thomas

"Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," so the old saw goes.  But in Thomas' future, the Earth's weather is completely under the control of the all-powerful Weather Bureau; and it follows that the associated Weather Council is ruler of the world.  One councilor decides to stake his political future on the odd request of a resident of Holtville, California whose dying wish is to see snow before he dies…in July.

A couple of notable points: We seem increasingly confident that weather will be a trivial problem to solve.  That's reassuring given the threat of global warming.  Another is the featuring of Holtville, a tiny farm town in the middle of the country's richest farmland: the Imperial Valley.  I know the place fairly well – it's the next town over from my hometown of El Centro, the county seat.  Aside from its healthy Future Farmers of America chapter, its surprisingly able High School Speech Team, and that it was the residence of a brief ex-girlfriend, it has no outstanding qualities.  Just another stinky, buggy, windy settlement in an irrigated hot desert.

Anyway, Weatherman is a dull, plodding piece, and in contrast to the later stories in this issue, has very few trappings of a far, or even near, future.  Aside from the boats that sail over the sun, that is.  I'm not sure how pinpoint weather modification is somehow easier by tampering with a star rather than its planet.  I couldn't swallow it.  Two stars.

Three-Part Puzzle, by Gordon R. Dickson

In galaxy where the races divide neatly into Conquerers, Submissives, and Invulnerables (the last uninterested in conquering and incapable of beating into submission), what do you do when you discover humanity fits into none of these categories?  A cute tale no longer than it needs to be.  Three stars.

Anything You Can Do! (Part 2 of 2), by Randall Garrett

This latter installment depicting the battle of superhuman Stanton brothers vs. the frighteningly alien Nipe (begun last month) ends satisfactorily.  In fact, Garrett weaves together a number of plot threads with some fair skill, explaining the weird psychology of the shipwrecked ET; resolving the mysterious situation of the twin Stantons, one of whom had been crippled from birth and yet no longer has any physical ailments; and concluding the Nipe menace without resorting to bloodshed.  I am shocked, myself, to admit that I liked a Garrett story from start to finish, without qualifications.  Could the Randy fellow have turned a corner?  Three stars for this part, three-and-a-half in aggregate.

Interstellar Passenger Capsule, by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Dr. Hall takes on the currently popular topic of panspermia, the idea that life is spread around the cosmos by interstellar meteors.  It's overlong, a bit meandery, and I don't believe for a second that meteorites have been found with spores in them (at least, spores that were there before their carrier hit the Earth).  It reads like something submitted for a high school paper.  In that context, it might get a 'B.'  Here, it barely rates two stars.

The Sound of Silence, by Barbara Constant

An interesting, almost F&SFish piece about a young mind-reader who struggles to come to grips with her powers.  Lonely is the existence of a telepath with no one to send thoughts to.  I've never heard of Ms. Constant, but this was a solid piece, and a somewhat unique take on a hoary topic.  Three stars.

Novice, by James H. Schmitz

Young Telzey Amberdon has got quite a task ahead of her!  Can this second-year law student prove the sentience of an extraterrestrial race of giant cats while thwarting the nefarious schemes, upon Telzey and the kitties, of her evil aunt?  Here's an interesting story that combines telepathy, a female protagonist, and felines.  We also see progressive details like a Galactic Federation Councilwoman and a wallet-sized law library.  Its demerits are a slightly disjointed narrative style and a coda that is a bit creepy in its implications.  Nevertheless, I'd love more in this vein, please.  Three stars. 

***

That tallies up to an average of 2.7 – not very promising on the surface, but if you take out the leading novelette and the lackluster science fact article, you're left with some very readable, if not astonishing, stuff.  I'm not sorry I read this ish, which is more than I can say for some of the prior ones.

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Book, Magazine/Anthology

[May 11, 1962] Unfixed in the Heavens (The Seed of Earth, by Robert Silverberg)

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by Gideon Marcus

A hundred and fifty years from now, the stars are finally attainable.  With the invention of a reliable and quick interstellar drive, the galaxy is now ripe for colonization.  But humanity is too fat and happy to leave the nest; the world government is forced to conscript candidates to become unwilling pioneers.  Six thousand men and women are sent on sixty starships every day toward some farflung world.  The goal: to ensure that the human race can be spread as widely as possible.

This is the premise of Robert Silverberg's newest piece, a short novel published in the :June 1962 Galaxy called The Seed of Earth.  It's really two novellas in one, the first half dealing with the lives of four conscriptees as they are selected and prepared for departure, and the second half about what happens to them once they reach their destination. 

Seed has an interesting, complicated history.  The second part originally appeared in the May 1957 issue of Venture as The Winds of Siros.  In this story, two newlywed colonist couples are abducted from their settlement by voyeuristic aliens who lock them in a cave and watch the emotional drama ensue.  After the four escape, the women determine that they were with the wrong men and change partners.  It's all supposed to be rather daring and progressive.

Venture was a short-lived companion to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, designed to be a "more adult" alternative to F&SF.  What this really meant was more stories about sex, and since the stories were almost exclusively written by men (and modern society being what it is), there were a lot of demeaning, disturbing pieces in Venture. 

The example that turned me off of the magazine was, in fact, also by Robert Silverberg.  Called Eve and the Twenty-three Adams (March 1958), it featured an all-stag starship crew and the lone woman included on the roster to "service" them.  When she expressed reluctance at her role, she was drugged into submission for the duration of the flight.  It was all very light-hearted, just a rollicking tale.  Like Garrett's Queen Bee.

Silverberg's difficulty with the concept of feminine agency was also evident in Siros (and thus, in Seed).  The male colonists get to choose whom they want to marry from among the female colonists, and while the women have the right of refusal for the first few rounds, all of them must end up with someone, ultimately.  Now, as Siros plays out, we see that the system is not particularly rigid and, in the end, the woman colonists do have some choice in the matter.  But it's informal, and it's at the sufferance of the men.  Hardly an equal situation.

In fact, there is a strong streak of puritanical prudishness in Seed.  At one point, a woman's pregnancy is described as "a lapse in virtue."  I recognize that Silverberg's intent was to show that our current (late 50's/early 60's) morality is antiquated and needs to be shaken up.  Hence, the laudable plot elements of wife-swapping and polyamory that form the core of Siros/Seed Part 2.  But it just doesn't seem plausible that Earth of 2117 would be exactly as, if not more, conservative as modern day, and that only by unleashing humans on a raw world can they undo the straitjacket. 

Seed's first part was added to Siros to make the piece long enough for publication as a stand-alone novel.  Ballantine and Doubleday, the "respectable" s-f publishers, rejected it.  H.L. Gold, Galaxy's editor, accepted Seed for its paperback series (I reviewed one of them: the excellent The City in the Sea), but the series was discontinued before Seed saw print.  Ultimately, it ended up in the magazine proper.

Part One of Seed isn't bad: a quartet of reasonably interesting character portraits with a bonus view through the eyes of the fellow tasked with finalizing the crew selections.  The characterization is better in this half, which makes sense – the Silverberg writing Part One was older than the one who wrote Part Two.  The problem here isn't so much the writing or the flow.  It's the flaws in the fundamental premise.  In Seed, forced emigration has gone on for a generation.  Are there really hundreds of thousands of habitable planets within 30 light years of Earth ripe for colonization without any need for protective technology or planetary engineering?  Are there even that many planets?  Does it make sense to invest just one hundred strangers in a colony rather than shipping more than one load to a promising destination? 

And how is it plausible that a draft for colonization is even required?  To all accounts, Silverberg's world is no utopia – in fact, it seems hardly different from our current one, societally and technologically.  Surely there would be 2,190,000 immigrant candidates out of billions every year.  Contrast Seed with Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky – there, one was lucky if one could leave Earth. 

The Seed of Earth is ultimately a rather unsuccessful "fix-up" story.  The beginning doesn't flow well into the end, and neither portion rings very true.  I'd charitably give three stars to the first part and two to the second, for an aggregate of 2.5 stars.  That's probably overgenerous, but I can give Silverberg credit for the effort, at least.

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Science / Space Race

[May 9, 1962] The Chilly Frontier (Uranus, the Seventh Planet)

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by Gideon Marcus

Every so often, serendipity chooses what I write about.  Last month, the Traveler family Journeyed to the Seventh Planet in film.  Then, the Good Doctor wrote about the giant planet in his science fact article in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  And now, in this month's Galaxy, Willy Ley tells of the origin of the the names of our celestial neighbors, Uranus included. 

And there's a 7th Planet-sized gap in my series on the planets of the solar system.  Who am I to fight fate?


Uranus from a telescope

How much could we know about a world that is twice as far away from us as Saturn?  The answer is at once "more than you'd think" and "less than we'd like."

Uranus is a small green disc when viewed through a telescope.  In fact, the planet is technically visible with the naked eye, but it is so small that it is no surprise that it wasn't discovered until 1781.  Over the course of several late-Winter nights, a German expatriate living in England named William Herschel saw the fuzzy circle of Uranus slowly travel among the fixed tableau of the stars.  He thought he'd found a comet.  But its orbit and characteristics made it apparent that it was, in fact, the first new planet discovered in thousands of years.

Herschel tried to name the planet after his King, George III, just as Galileo had tried to name the Jovian moons he had discovered after his sovereigns, the De Medici family.  Others tried to name the planet after Herschel, himself!  In the end, a name of classical derivation won out – and what more fitting name than the father of Saturn, who was, himself, father of Jupiter, who was father of Mercury, Venus, and Mars?

Uranus hugs the ecliptic, the plane of the solar system, more closely than any of the other planets.  Using older observations of Uranus from before the object was recognized as a planet, astronomers quickly determined the new planet's year: 84 years.  We are fortunate that Uranus has moons (five of them, the latest discovered just 14 years ago), for we are able to determine the mass of the planet from the length of time it takes for the moons to orbit their parent.  There are 15 Earths of mass in the planet, the least of the four giant planets.  Nevertheless, you could fit 60 Earths inside Uranus.  That makes it the second-smallest in volume (Neptune has a volume of 40 Earths). 

You can tell how long the day of a planet is using a spectroscope, which breaks up light into its component wavelengths.  The waves of light coming from the side of a planet rotating toward us are compressed and made bluer.  The side going away reflects redder light.  This is the Doppler Effect – the same phenomenon that makes train whistles seem to rise and fall as the locomotives approach and recede. Uranus' day is just under 11 hours long.  This is slightly longer than Saturn's, and shorter than Neptune's.

So in terms of raw physical characteristics, Uranus is kind of a middlin' gas giant.  But there is one feature that makes it absolutely unique among the planets.  Thanks again to the trek of Uranus' moons, we know that the planet is tipped way over on its side with respect to the ecliptic – a whopping 98 degrees!  Compare that to Earth's slightly wobbled 23 degrees.  As you may know, this tilt is responsible for our planet's seasons; imagine what kind of severe seasons Uranus must have!  The Poles of the seventh planet are in perpetual sunlight for 21 years, in darkness for the same amount of time. 


Exploring the Planets, 1958, Roy A. Gallant

An observer on the surface of Uranus, if such a thing exists, probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference.  There is a 3000 mile thick atmosphere that we know contains methane, thanks again to the spectroscope.  Below that is an ocean of increasingly slushy hydrogen some 6000 miles thick.  By the time you get to solid ground, whatever that be made of, you can be sure that no light penetrates.  As at the bottom of terrestrial oceans, the surface of Uranus must be seasonless.

Now, while the edge of Uranus' atmosphere is a chilly 300 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit), it is certain that things heat up as one goes deeper into the pressure cooker of the planet's gaseous envelope.  It is even possible that an ocean of water floats at some level of the giant's composition, though we'll never know until we go there.


Exploring the Planets, 1958, Roy A. Gallant

The last bit we know about Uranus is a piece of negative information.  Over the last decade or so, we have turned the giant dishes pf radio telescopes toward the heavens and discovered all sorts of staticy emanations, some associated with things we can see, and some appearing to radiate from nowhere.  Jupiter, it turns out, is a chatty subject on the radio.  Uranus, however, is not. 

By the way, my favorite aspect of Uranus is the naming of its moons.  They are (closest in to farthest out) Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon.  Unlike Jove's mistresses that orbit Jupiter and the elder Titans that circle Saturn, Uranus' moons are named after the literary creations of Shakespeare and Pope.  The most ancient of Gods is thus attended by some of humanity's more recent fairies.


Uranus from a telescope

There you have it: virtually the entire sum of knowledge we have about the 7th planet.  Not a whole lot for nearly 200 years of observation.  However, I suspect that, with powerful rockets like the Saturn at our disposal, it won't be long before Uranus gets a new moon, one with a NASA sticker (or perhaps, a Sickle and Hammer) on the side.  Then we'll truly learn about this mysterious, grand, tipped-over world.


Classics Illustrated. Illustrated by Torres, Angelo, Kirby, Jack, and Glanzman, Sam. To the Stars!

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