![[January 31, 1970] Both sides now (February 1970 <i>Analog</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/700131analogcover-631x372.jpg)
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
by Gideon Marcus
All night long
Woody Allen likes to quip that being "bi-sexual" (liking both men and women) doubles of your chance of getting a date on the weekend.
NASA has just doubled the amount of weather they can look at in a single launch. TIROS-M (does the "M" stand for "Mature"?) was launched from California on January 23rd into a two-hour orbit over the poles. 12 times a day, it circles the Earth, which rotates underneath. Unlike the last 19 TIROS satellites, TIROS-M can see in the dark. That means it gets and transmits a worldwide view of the weather twice a day rather than once.
More than that, the satellite is called the "space bus" because it carries a number of other experiments, measuring the heat of the Earth as well as solar proton radiation. Launched "pickaback" with TIROS-M was Oscar 5, an Aussie satellite that broadcasts on a couple of bands so ham radio fans can track signals from orbit. Maybe Kaye Dee will write more about that one in her next piece!
Clouds got in my way
If the distinctive feature of the Earth as viewed from space is its swaddling blanket of clouds, then perhaps the salient characteristic of this month's Analog is its conspicuous degree of padding. Almost all of the stories are longer than they need to be, at least if their purpose be readability and conveying of point. Of course, more words means more four-cent rate…
by Kelly Freas, illustrating "Birthright"
Birthright, by Poul Anderson
Emil Darmody is the manager for the terran trading station on the planet of Suleiman, a sub-jovian hulk of a world with a thick hydrogen atmosphere, primitive alien inhabitants, and a rare and valuable spice. When Burbites, an off-world alien race who are the main purchasers of the spice, drop robots to harvest the spice themselves, Darmody must find an ingenious way to stop them without inciting an interstellar incident. In doing so, he attracts the attention of trade magnate Nicholas Van Rijn, who likes the adventurous sort.
by Kelly Freas
If someone were to ask for a generic example of a story set in the Polesotechnic League, you could do worse than to pick this one. It has all the usual features: compelling astronomy and sufficiently alien beings; a bold, if naive, hero; women as competent professionals; daring-do; and a cameo by the corpulent and lusty Van Rijn.
Three stars.
Dali, for Instance, by Jack Wodhams
by Peter Skirka
And now, the padding begins. Golec is a truly alien being who wakes up one day in the form of a human on present-day Earth. Eventually, he recalls that the mind transference was intentional, a form of reconnaissance. The problem is, it's not reversible, and he finds his new body disgusting. Knowing that there may be others of his race on the planet in the same predicament, he seeks them out. Golec is told that he might as well go native. Things could be worse.
All of this should have been a one-page prelude to an actual story.
Two stars.
The Wind from a Star, by Margaret L. Silbar
I'm very happy to see Ms. Silbar back, as her last piece, on quarks, was excellent. This time, she talks about a topic near and dear to my heart: the solar wind.
I've actually just given a talk on this very subject, so most of what she says is familiar. It's nicely laid out, very interesting, and with some details that are new to me. Newcomers may find it a little abstruse, and as with her last piece, an extra page or two of explanation, or splitting things up into two, simpler articles, might have been in order. Asimov would have taken three or four (though, to be fair, he has half the space).
Four stars.
The Fifth Ace, by Robert Chilson
by Kelly Freas
The planet of Hyperica is the outpost of the Realm of Humanity closest to the "Empire", a separate polity of unknown constitution. One day, a liaison between the two governments brings a gift from the Empire: several giant cat-creatures in cages. They break out of confinement at the same time an Imperial spy-craft crashlands on Hyperica. The local Hypericans attempt to deal with both.
This one took me two reads to grasp for some reason. Much of the story is told from the point of view from the felinoids, who are intelligent and the real invasion, the spy ship being a decoy. There is a lot of description of the stratified human culture, a host of characters, and a great deal of lovingly depicted gore.
A lot of pages for not a lot of story. I did appreciate the portrayal of actual aliens, but I didn't need a page of explanation of how their retractable claws work.
Two stars.
In Our Hands, the Stars (Part 3 of 3), by Harry Harrison
by Kelly Freas
In this installment, the Daleth-drive equipped Galathea, takes off for Mars with an international contingent of observers. Shortly into the flight, both Soviet and American agents vie for control of the ship. The ending is not at all what I expected.
This is such a curious book, in some ways just a vessel for delivering polemics. Worthy polemics, perhaps, on the nobility and folly of national pride. Nevertheless, it's definitely not one of Harrison's best, with none of his New Wave flourishes, nor any of the progressive brilliance of, say, Deathworld. His characters are bland—Martha a particular travesty—and there's not much in the way of story. In fact, I think the whole thing could have been a compelling, four-star novella… forty or fifty pages, tops.
As is, the final installment keeps things from falling below three stars, but no more.
The Biggest Oil Disaster, by Hayden Howard
by Leo Summers
A man named Sirbuh ('hubris' backwards) has a penchant for wildcatting oil wells in the deep sea. When one of his digs creates the biggest oil spill in history, blackening California's beaches, Sibrah doubles down and calls for the use of a nuke to both seal it and create an undersea storage cavern. Sibrah's son, devastated by the environmental catastrophe and sickened by Sibrah's cold calculations, can only watch as the inevitable unfolds.
I assume this is a parable on the excesses of capitalism, though editor Campbell probably enjoyed it as an endorsement of the casual use of atomic weapons. Either way, it goes on far too long and repetitiously.
Two stars.
The Reference Library (Analog, February 1970), by P. Schuyler Miller
Miller is a great book reviewer; even though he's been writing for decades, and despite writing for the most conservative of the SF mags, he keeps an open mind. I'm afraid this year might have broken him, though. The New Wave claimed the Hugos, and so Schuy is trying to wrap his head around the New Wave. The result is a column that's a bit more scattered and less engaging than most.
He does have fun moments, though, particularly his review of Moorcock's The Final Programme:
"[Jerry Cornelius] is the Cthulhu mythos of the New Wave. Michael Moorcock..originated him in his "novel" but other authors are making him the antihero of their "stories" just as a group of authors did with the assumptions and beings created by H.P. Lovecraft..
May all of Lovecraft's most powerful entities help the poor befuddled soul who tries to fit all the Cornelius stories together."
Miller also reviews Asimov's Opus 100, which he liked better than Algis Budrys did. Perhaps Mrs. Miller hasn't had her posterior pinched by the Good Doctor.
Reading the data
It's not so much that Analog is bad these days, it's just that it isn't very good. The Star-O-Meter for this one pegged at 2.6. That's worse than virtually all the other mags/anthologies this month:
- Fantastic (3.3)
- Galaxy (3.3)
- IF (3.1)
- New Worlds (3.1)
- New Writings #16 (3)
- Vision of Tomorrow (3)
- Venture (2.8)
Only Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.3) was worse, a most unusual state of affairs.
In the spirit of TIROS-M, here are some other vital figures for the month: ten magazines/anthologies were released this month (though Crime Prevention in the 30th Century only had two new stories). The four and five star stuff would fill three magazines, which I suppose is a normal distribution.
Women wrote 5% of new fiction. On the other hand, Silbar's piece means 33% of the nonfiction is by a woman. Progress!
Like NASA, the Journey is expanding its capacity to review the flood of new material. Let's pray for more stuff in the greater-than-three-star territory.
It's more fun to review "the day side" of fiction!
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
