by Gideon Marcus
When you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out
250,000 miles from Earth, the astronauts of Apollo 12 are circling the Moon, photographing Earth's neighbor for future landing sites before coming home. And in the nation's capital, the city is still reeling from the footsteps of 250,000 protesters who marched on Washington in the largest anti-war event in American history.
This second "Vietnam Moratorium Day" followed on the heels of last month's nationwide protests, to which President Nixon responded with apathy and his November 4th speech, in which he touted his secret timetable for "Vietnamesation"—the turning over of defense of South Vietnam to President Thieu's government, and also played up his support from "The Silent Majority" of Americans.
The protest movements have still fallen short of the planned nationwide strike, and this latest one has been eclipsed by the Moon landings. Nevertheless, they are making waves. In addition to the quarter million in Washington D.C., 100,000 marched in San Francisco in the West Coast's largest peace demonstration in history.
That demonstration was, in fact, peaceful. Not so the march on Washington, where extremists, protesting the trial of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and six "Yippies" for allegedly inspiring the Chicago Democratic Convention riots last year, clashed with police and were driven back by tear gas.
There is no word, as yet, if there will be a third Moratorium march in time for the Holidays, but one can probably expect more such outbursts from the Unsilent Minority so long as there is no end in sight to the Vietnam War, which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Americans so far.
The say that it's the institution
Last year, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction won the Hugo for Best Science Fiction Magazine. It was a bit of a surprise since 1968 was hardly one of the magazine's best years—but then, 1968 wasn't a consistently great year for any magazine. However, if one were to judge F&SF's 1969 output solely on the basis of this month's issue, one's estimation of the magazine would, indeed, be justifiably high! Read on with pleasure:
by Ed Emshwiller