John R. Pierce Archives - Galactic Journey

by David Levinson

Pressure Cooker

Every December, the American Geophysical Union holds its Fall Meeting in San Francisco. There, a number of papers are presented on a wide variety of topics in fields such as geology, oceanography, meteorology, space, and many more. Usually, it might produce a paragraph or two in the back pages of your newspaper on an attempt to predict earthquakes or some new information about the Moon, but this year’s meeting garnered headlines (hardly front page news, but more than just filler). Most of attention went to the proposal to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon to build up a seismological picture of our neighbor and the news that Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice as it rose into the skies above Florida. However, it was another article that caught my eye.

Most of the column inches went to a presentation by Dr. E.D. Goldberg of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. He spoke of the “complex ecological questions” raised by the amount of toxic substances we’re dumping into the ocean. The use of lead in gasoline results in 250,000 tons winding up in the ocean every year, over and above the 150,000 tons that are washed there naturally. Oil tankers and other ships discharge a million tons of oil into the sea annually, with the result that there are “cases of fish tasting of petroleum.” Mackerel had to be taken off the market in Los Angeles due to unacceptable levels of DDT, while in Japan 200 people were poisoned and 40 died before authorities traced the cause to mercury discharged into Minimata Bay by a chemical company. Dr. Goldberg asked, “Will [pollution] alter the ocean as a resource? Will we lose the ocean?”

Dr. Edward D. Goldberg of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California

That seems like the sort of pollution we can do something about. Perhaps more concerning is the warning provided by J.O. Fletcher of the Rand Corporation. Fletcher is a retired Air Force Colonel, best known for being part of the crew that landed a plane at the North Pole and for establishing a weather station on tabular iceberg T-3 (now known as Fletcher’s Ice Island), which is still in use. He called carbon dioxide the most important atmospheric pollutant today. It is responsible for one-third to one-half of the warming thus far in the 20th century. The human contribution may surpass that of nature within a few decades. Global warming could increase the melting of the polar ice caps and change the Earth’s climate.

Col. Fletcher (r.) on his ice island in 1952. This was the most recent photo of him I could find.

Fletcher’s warning was underscored by Dr. William W. Kellogg of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who stressed the need to educate people that “man has got to change his way.” He added that global climate is going to have to become a problem that can be managed.

Dr. William W. Kellogg of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado

If the warnings of Fletcher and Kellogg sound familiar, that’s because you read it in IF first. Back in the April, 1968 issue, Poul Anderson had a guest editorial talking about the dangers of increased warming. In the August issue of the same year, Fred Pohl had an editorial warning about increasing levels of carbon dioxide. [And Isaac Asimov wrote about it back in 1958! (ed.)] An article from UPI has a much wider reach than IF, and people are more likely to take working scientists more seriously than a couple of science fiction writers. Let’s hope they pay attention.

Pressure Tests

It’s not uncommon for authors to put their characters through the wringer, pushing them to or even past their breaking point. Some would argue it’s the best way to get a story out of a setting and characters. Several of the stories in this month’s IF have taken that approach, though one subject has an awfully low tolerance for stress.

Cover by Gaughan. Supposedly suggested by Whipping Star, but it looks more like it illustrates Pressure Vessel to me.

Continue reading [January 2, 1970] Under Pressure (February 1970 IF) →

by Gideon Marcus

Mudslides

Winter is the wet season for Southern California, and we've been just drenched these past weeks. I understand seven inches of rain fell in the Los Angeles area, causing terrible mudslides, property damage, and injury. Apparently, things were made worse by a spate of arson last year that got rid of the stabilizing undergrowth.

Ontario's Foothill Boulevard looking west toward Red Hill Country Club Drive, flooded. (Daily Report photo)

I've had many friends ask if we're alright, afraid we might have been swept downstream in the torrent. Rest assured that Vista is disaster-proof (knock on wood), and our house is at the top of a hill. We had some deep pools of water in the backyard, but they've since drained. Our neighbors have gotten invaded by bugs seeking refuge from the storm, though.

A man runs past a station wagon that was washed two blocks down Carnelian Avenue, along with part of the road surface. (Daily Report photo)

Ups and Downs

If the physical world is getting washed away, one edifice that manages to stand firmly, if not always proudly, is Analog, science fiction's most popular magazine. Has this month's issue slid at all, or is it holding fast? let's see:

A Womanly Talent, by Anne McCaffrey

by Kelly Freas

We're back in the world of psionic talents, perhaps related to the stories that involve ladies in towers. A pair of politicians want to pass a law protecting and enabling the psionically adept, legitimizing things like professional prognosticators and psychic manipulators. A Luddite strawman, name of Zeusman, is against it.

Meanwhile. Ruth is the wife of Lajos, a precog. She is frustrated because she has an unidentified talent, and also because she really wants to be a mom. Eventually, the latter frustration is relieved, and her daughter ends up demonstrating what Ruth's power really is.

Aside from the tale beginning with ten pages of conversation that reads more like a Socratic dialogue than a story, I just find McCaffrey's writing so flat and amateur. I'm sure all the psi stuff was music to editor Campbell's ears, including lines like "Those who truly understand psionic power need no explanation. Those who need explanation will never understand," but it doesn't work for me. Beyond that, McCaffrey's attitudes on the relations of the sexes is so atavistic, although I suppose she gets points for talking about sex at all. Maybe Campbell likes that, too.

Two stars.

You'll Love the Past, by J. R. Pierce

by Leo Summers

A time traveler from the 21st Century takes a trip in a time machine to the 24th Century. A war has transformed society: America is now largely mixed race, with the whitest of the population an inbred and stupid group. Socially, the continent is organized into placid socialist cooperatives run by religious Brothers, advanced technology provided by the Japanese. It's the sort of world one can be happy in…provided one is favored by the status quo. Every so often, one of the non-favored tries to escape.

Not a bad story, even if it seems to be obliquely casting aspersions on Communists of darker hue.

Three stars.

The Man Who Makes Planets, by G. Harry Stine

by Leo Summers

Yet another piece set in the (anti-) Utopian future of People's Capitalism, where North America has become a stratified welfare state, and money is a thing of the past.

Rex, last of the private dicks, is engaged by a government minister to find out who stole the plans for a miniaturized nuclear bomb, and why said criminal is blackmailing him, threatening to distribute the plans should a ransom not be paid promptly.

The solution to this mystery is actually trivial, and the story isn't quite long enough for what it's trying to do. Nevertheless, I always find this setting interesting. And perhaps prescient. There was piece in last week's newspaper about the National Urban League's proposal for a universal income…

Three stars.

Wolfling (Part 2 of 3), by Gordon R. Dickson

by Kelly Freas

Back in part one, Jim Kiel was sent from Earth to study the intergalactic empire whose fringes were discovered when a Terran probe made it to Alpha Centauri. An anthropologist and ubermensch, Jim is essentially a spy, though the High Born of the empire don't know that—they think that he's an interesting curiosity, favored for his bullfighting skills and independent thinking.

This installment begins just after Jim's first encounter with the Emperor, a genial, capable man who, nevertheless, seemed to suffer a stroke. A stroke that no one but Jim noticed. Much of this middle installment is devoted to Jim's navigation of High Born society, attempting to master the reading machines to determine if Earth really is a long-lost colony of the empire or something else, and also how he discovers and foils an insurrection attempt with designs on incapacitating the empire's leader. In the last portion, Jim is promoted to the equivalent of a Brigadier General and sent to quell a rebellion. This is actually a trap designed to kill him, but he neatly sidesteps it. Now he wants to know why he's marked for death.

The pot continues to boil. There's a lot of the flavor of Dickson's Dorsai series, but with a different, perhaps even more interesting, setting.

Four stars.

A Chair of Comparative Leisure, by Robin Scott

by Leo Summers

A stammering professor somehow manages to be the most magnetic, as well as effective at conveying information. Does his technique go beyond the verbal?

(Yes. He has the power of psychic projection. Whoopee. Two stars.)

Calculating the damage

You win some, you lose some, and this month's issue clocks in at exactly three stars. While nothing could compare with the superlative four-star Fantasy and Science Fiction, three stars is still lower than New Worlds (3.3) and Galaxy (3.2). It does beat out IF (2.8) and Fantastic (2.2), however.

You could fill as many as three issues with good stuff out of the six that were put out—in large part thanks to how great F&SF was this month. Nevertheless, women contributed very little of that, with only 6.67% of new fiction written by female writers, most of that Anne McCaffrey's drudge of a story.

Still, in an uncertain world, I can't complain too much. Especially since, mudslides or no, the Post Office still manages to get me my magazines on time!

Galactic Journey

Tag Archives: John R. Pierce

[January 2, 1970] Under Pressure (February 1970 IF)

[January 28, 1969] Slidin' (February 1969 Analog)

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction