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[January 20, 1970] Jolly good Ffelowes (February 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

January 20, 2025 GalacticJourney Leave a comment

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

by Gideon Marcus

Up in the sky!

There are some intrepid women whose names are household words: Willa Brown, Jerrie Mock, Amelia Earhart. Others are not so familiar. The other day, I read the obituary for a pioneering soul I'd not known of before.

Blanche Stewart Scott was born in 1885. A native of Rochester, she was 25 when she drove a 25-horsepower Overland stock car from New York to San Francisco, her 69 hour journey marking the second time a woman had made a transcontinental drive.

This attracted the interest of aviation pioneer Glen Curtiss, who took her under his wing (so to speak) and trained her to fly. Apparently, Mrs. Scott had never seen an airplane before her coast-to-coast jaunt; she was caught in a traffic jam outside Dayton, Ohio, caused by a flying exhibition out of Wright Field.

After just three days of instruction, she made her first solo flight on September 5, 1910 from an airfield in Hammondsport—what may well be the first time an American woman piloted an aircraft.

Over the next four years, until she gave up flying, she suffered 41 broken bones in a number of crashes. She was one of the lucky ones: "Most of the early women fliers got killed," she once observed.

Scott's later career included working as a scriptwriter, film producer, and radio broadcaster in Hollywood. In 1948, she became the first woman to ever ride in a jet aircraft. During the '50s, she combed the country for vintage planes to stock the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton.

She died on January 12 at Genesee Hospital in her native town of Rochester, New York.

Down in the mud

by Michael Gilbert

Another pioneer of sorts had something of a flutter, if not yet a brush with death (I hope). The latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is pretty bad…

From the Moon, with Love, by Neil Shapiro

Who says you can't still publish Adam and Eve stories? This time, our parabolic (is that the adjective form of parable?) two are "Dorn" and "Lara", respectively the Master and Mistress of Fortress Desire and Fortress Hope. They are young clones, the last two humans alive, residing in twin, invulnerable bastions on the Moon.

Three centuries after atomic apocalypse destroyed their planet, the two beings are still conducting weekly mutual bombardments, begun ages before by their predecessors. Then the "Ezkeel", alien guardians of Earth, return to unite them so that they can repopulate their home planet. I leave it to you to decipher the thinly disguised biblical reference in their race name.

Anyway, Shapiro manages to write both in a peurile fashion and for the Playboy set (perhaps the two aren't that divergent, after all).

One star.

M-1, by Gahan Wilson

Illustrator Wilson (he gets around; I see him drawing for Playboy too) takes a stab at short story writing. In this vignette, mysterious forces have erected a thousand-foot statue of Mickey Mouse in the Nevada desert. The point of the story, aside from the feeble joke ending, is to see how long it takes the reader to realize what has happened, as the figure is obliquely described as characters ascend it like a cliff face.

I got the joke halfway through page 2. The rest seemed superfluous.

Two stars.

Books (F&SF, February 1970), by James Blish

Blish tags in for Russ this month, reviewing five classic fantasies and one new novel:

James Branch Cabell: FIGURES OF EARTH,
James Branch Cabell: THE SILVER STALLION.
Lord Dunsany: THE KING OF ELFLAND's DAUGHTER.
William Morris: THE WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD.
Fletcher Pratt: THE BLUE STAR.

All from Ballantine Books, New York, paper, 95¢: 1969.

He likes and recommends all of them. I've read none of them…

He is less effusive about Josephin Saxton's THE HIERos GAMOS OF SAM AND AN SMITH. He appreciates the surrealism of it, but he would have preferred that this odd Adam-an-Eve story had remained in its own world rather than transitioning into ours.

by Gahan Wilson

His Only Safari, by Sterling E. Lanier

Brigadier Ffelowes relates of the time he went to the Kenyan highlands and came face to face with the man-eating monster that inspired the Egyptian god Anubis.

Lanier does a good job of reviving the pulp era for modern audiences. A brisk, taut read.

Four stars.

Watching Apollo, by Barry N. Malzberg

Our astronauts may be the stalwart vanguard of humanity, but they also have to shit, sometimes.

Three stars for this cheeky poem.

Initiation, by Joanna Russ

A precious homosexual and a straight-laced starship captain escape a spacewreck, landing on an odd human colony. In contrast to their overcrowded, overconfining Earth, the new world's people are free, untechnological, and possessed of profound psionic powers. The skipper is unable to adapt or understand. The Terran civilian, unpleasant and mistrustful, eventually loses his inhibitions (and, apparently, his proclivity for men), becoming one with the outworlders.

Told in a dreamlike fashion to suggest the odd psychic phenomena and the constant wordless communication, I found this story's affected style off-putting. Sex was described obliquely, less to avoid offense, it seemed; more as if Russ was embarrassed of describing the act.

I also didn't like anyone in the story, nor did I care much what happened to them. The alienness of the colonists would have had more impact had things started with a more familiar, constrasting viewpoint.

I understand this story is also actually a detached piece of a larger novel due out later this year. Perhaps it would make more sense in context.

Two stars.

The Tracy Business, by Gene DeWeese and Robert Coulson

Fans of the fanzine Yandro know who Robert "Buck" Coulson is (Juanita Coulson's husband). He and DeWeese write Man from U.N.C.L.E. novels under the name "Thomas Stratton".

This story follows a private dick hired by a shrewish woman to find out why her husband disappears every four weeks for three days, spending a boodle of money in the process. Hint: it's not another woman, and it's not blackmail.

It's a rather obvious tale, and unpleasant to boot. Two stars.

The Multiplying Elements, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor explains those "rare earths" that have their own separate spot on the periodic table, and also how they were first isolated from their containing ores. However, we have yet to learn why they occupy their own sub-table.

Chemistry is not my strong suit, and this article is necessarily incomplete, but I'll give it four stars for now.

Dream Patrol, by Charles W. Runyon

Way back in 1952, J.T.McIntosh (when he still was calling himself M'Intosh) wrote a neat story called Hallucination Orbit. The premise was that there were these solitary garrison stations at the edge of the solar system, manned for months at a time. Eventually, the folks stationed there started having hallucinations, which was the sign they needed to be relieved. The sentry of that story dreamed a succession of increasingly convincing female companions. The tension of that tale lay in our hero's increasingly challenging attempts to distinguish fantasy from reality.

It was a warm and ultimately sweet story, and it is one of my favorites. There's a reason it got republished in the Second Galaxy Reader (1953).

Dream Patrol has the same premise, except the illusions are caused by hostile aliens, and there is no cure. There's also a streak of misogyny to the whole thing. Hell, almost 20 years ago, McIntosh had women in his space navy; that's unfathomable to Runyon.

Two stars.

Autopsy report

Given how good last month's issue was, this abyssmal 2.3-star mag is quite the surprise. Let's hope this constitutes an outlier. One prominent obituary this month is quite sufficient!

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 16, 1970] Strange Reports (Vision of Tomorrow #5 and New Writings SF-16)

January 16, 2025 Kris Vyas-Myall 2 Comments

By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

The news to start this decade seems to be unrelentingly gloomy. The crisis in Biafra is only worsening, Mainland China and the USSR are at each other’s throats, and, at home, the government appears paralyzed on how to deal with inflation or the Unions.

But I want to take a break from grim reality and talk briefly about one of my favourite new TV programmes of recent months, Strange Report.

It stars the unlikely team of Anthony Quayle (regular star of war films) as retired police detective Adam Strange; Kaz Garas (relative newcomer) as student and jack-of-all-trades Hamlyn Gynt; and Anneke Wills (Polly from Doctor Who) as model and artist Evelyn McClean.

Together the trio solve unusual crimes together. These have included such cases as a kidnapped Chinese diplomat, murders by witchcraft and the killing of a student demonstrator behind the Iron Curtain.

There are several reasons this appeals to me, and would to other SF fans I imagine. Firstly, even though it never becomes SFnal, the cases work from a viewpoint that feels very scientific. That no matter how odd things may seem, they will always have a rational explanation.

Secondly, the cases are willing to address complicated issues, without attempting to preach. Even in dealing with some clearly despicable characters, there is an attempt made to understand their point of view and give both sides of the argument. To me it feels like the writers have their own ideas but don’t want to patronise the viewer, we are encouraged to make up our own minds.

Finally, is the dynamic between our triumvirate of heroes. Much like in Star Trek, you get the sense that, in spite of their different viewpoints they all clearly care for and respect each other. It would have been easy to have Strange constantly belittling Evelyn and her trying to show that women could do things for themselves. But, instead, there is a respect and a willingness to listen. Perhaps that is what the terrible world outside our windows really needs?

Back in the pages of SF publications, we have our own strange reports. One coming in from Vision of Tomorrow and the other from New Writings:

Vision of Tomorrow #5

Cover by Gerard Alfo Quinn

The only point of interest in the introduction is it labelling itself as Britain’s only original SF magazine. I guess it is a point of debate if New Worlds still counts as science fiction or not.

Dinner of Herbs by Douglas R. Mason

Illustration by Jeeves

Fenella, a thought chandler at a dianetics lab, has gone to a villa to have a tryst with engineer Gordon Reid. Also staying with them is their domestic servant, a former psychologist android. But is three a crowd?

A darker and more complex tale than it first appeared. However, I think it would benefit from toning down the descriptive prose and upping the character work.

Three Stars

Technical Wizard by Philip E. High

Illustration by Alan Vince

Two empires in space have come into contact, the more technically advanced human empire and another larger one, populated by fox-like creatures. A single human is sent into the fox people’s empire on a broken-down old ship to warn them. A parapsychic plague has spread through the human empire almost destroying society. Gelthru and Feen have to determine if the human is telling the truth, or if it is all a magic trick to keep them from invading.

An interesting concept and I enjoyed how it made the human the other and the fox-people the protagonists. However, I feel like it needed some more editing to rise above the pack.

Three Stars

Flanagan's Law by Dan Morgan

Illustration by Jeeves

Capt. Terence Hartigan of the freighter Ladybug is finally given clearance to leave Calpryn, a planet where the main occupation, and entertainment, is lawsuits. However, five hours before blast-off O’Mara goes missing. Hartigan sets off to find him before they find themselves in more legal hot water, but the captain quickly becomes entangled in the planet’s labyrinthine bureaucracy.

I have previously failed to find Morgan’s satires either poignant or funny. This continues that trend but with the addition of some questionable Irish stereotyping.

One Star

Fantasy Review

Uncredited illustration

Kathryn Buckley reviews New Writings in SF-15, which she liked but not as much as I did, and John Foyster gives praise to The Black Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Outlaws of the Moon by Edmond Hamilton, Kavin’s World by David Mason and Needle by Hal Clement.

One of the Family by Sydney J. Bounds

Illustration by Alan Vince

Having completed the terraforming of Phoebe-Four, Richard Daniels takes his wife Jane and son Kenny to the neighboring Phoebe-Five for a holiday. Whilst it is meant to be uninhabited they find an intelligent alien, who they call Alan. He quickly becomes like one of the family, but Dick finds his presence both annoying and a cause for concern.

A bit of an old-fashioned tale, but well-told and with a reasonable twist. Wouldn’t have looked out of place as an episode of The Outer Limits.

Three Stars

On Greatgrandfather's Knee by Jack Wodhams

Illustration by Dick Howett

Six-G GFM Frank (that is Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather on your mother’s side) tells Furn tales of early space travel. But with longevity meaning all the kids having over a hundred great relatives, these tales of adventure are a dull chore.

Whilst Wodhams captures well the boredom of kids having to visit older relatives, I am not sure what the point of it all is.

Two Stars

The Impatient Dreamers: Hands Across the Sea by Walter Gillings

Insignia of Gernsbeck’s Science Fiction League, designed by Frank R. Paul

This month Gillings discusses Gernsbeck’s Science Fiction League’s branches in England, the early days of New Worlds, fanzine Scientifiction and Gillings' talks with publishers to get a new British SF magazine off the ground.

I continue to adore this series.

Five Stars

Incubation by Damien Broderick

Illustration by Eddie Jones

Clive Soame notices a strange ad in the personals and concocts a scheme to sleep with a rich woman and take her money. However, the assignation Rogel and Silver were communicating about was much more complicated than he first thought.

Whilst not revolutionary, an interesting enough take on the lecherous man and alien conspiracy genre. Surprisingly, more than the science-fictional elements, I found myself enjoying the descriptions of Sydney. Very well painted.

Three Stars

Life of the Party by William F. Temple

Illustration by Eddie Jones

In San Remo, business magnate Mannheim and reporter Don both notice a jet disappear in mid-air. Following its route, they find themselves on a strange coastline, with a giant white cube standing alone by a desert. Entering the cube, they discover a translucent liquid wall leading to a kind of theatre-cum-hotel. The missing jet passengers are there but aged and confused. Don and Manny assume it will be simple to escape, but some force is determined to keep the visitors from leaving.

Taking up over a quarter of the magazine, this is easily the longest piece here, but it makes good use of its length, creating an eerie sense of the uncanny. However, the story is a pretty old one (at times I was recalling The Odyssey) and I was disappointed with the way the women characters were written.

Evens out at Three Stars

After Ragnarok by Robert Bowden

Illustrated by Gerard Alfo Quinn

The final piece is from an author who I believe is new (at the very least I have not seen him covered by my GJ comrades). After Ragnarok, the world lays shattered. Ottar and Ragnar sail the seas in their ship powered by the ancient technology of the diesel engine. There is a rumour that long ago, some of the gods escaped across the Bifrost, also called Orbit. But could it be possible they are returning? And what will that mean for the world?

Yes, it is another piece of post-apocalyptic-medieval-futurism (try saying that after a few drinks!) However, it has a good style and I have a soft spot for this type of story. The level of cynicism involved also makes it appeal to me.

Four Stars

Tomorrow’s Disasters by Christopher Priest

Instead of our usual preview of next issue’s contents, Priest gives us a short review of Three For Tomorrow. Needless to say, he adores it.

So that is it for the relative newcomer to the scene, but what about the old hand?

New Writings in SF-16, ed. by John Carnell

Even if we accept the contention that Vision of Tomorrow is the only British SF magazine, New Writings still helps keep up the national side with its regular doses of Carnellian science fiction. According to John Carnell, all the stories in this issue deal with problems that are galactic in scope. Let us see if that makes them Galactic Star worthy.

Getaway from Getawehi by Colin Kapp

Things don't get off to a great start with the return of Colin Kapp's Unorthodox Engineers. Here they are hired to help rescue a construction crew from Getawehi, a planet with an impossible orbit, where gravity is not perpendicular to the surface and 1+1=1.5079.

At almost fifty pages, reading through this was a major slog. These tales must have their fans, but I was personally glad when they disappeared from New Writings a few years back. According to our more learned editor, the concept is very, very, broadly viable, which raises it just above rock bottom for me.

A very low Two Stars

All Done by Mirrors by Douglas R. Mason

George Exton has developed a method of producing mirror images of himself, able to independently work on multiple tasks with the same degree of knowledge and skill as the original. But what is the cost to someone of doing this?

A well-worn trail is being beaten here, and not particularly effectively either.

Two Stars

Throwback by Sydney J. Bounds

Since the Great Change all humans have had the ability to connect via ESP. All that is, except for one person who is completely opaque to all psychic phenomena. Out of pity he is made the keeper of the Museum of Language, with access to all the books and knowledge of the world. Even though he gives weekly lectures, few care about anything other than the present. But when strange lights appear in the sky, only he can save the planet from total panic.

A tightly-told little tale. A bit obvious but enjoyable nonetheless.

Three Stars

The Perihelion Man by Christopher Priest

Capt. Farrell is grounded after an accident near Venus dulls his senses. Whilst pondering what to do with his life now, he is offered a unique opportunity to go back into space. 250 old nuclear satellites have been stolen and are now orbiting the sun, and Farrell may be the only person who can get them back.

This is Priest’s most impressive work to date. He has managed to skillfully produce an exciting adventure story that also has some interesting political elements. That is not to say it is as deep as a New Worlds piece, but it is a fun ride.

Four Stars

R26/5/PSY and I by Michael G. Coney

Hugo Johnson is an agoraphobe who has not left his apartment in two months and is believed to be at risk of killing himself. As such his psychoanalyst provides him with a roommate, robot R/26/5/PSY, or Bob for short. However, Bob is not designed to make Johnson’s life easier, not at all….

An interesting little psychological short. It felt like a combination of I, Robot, a Zola story, and The Odd Couple.

Four Stars

Meatball by James White

And we finish off with the return of White's Sector General and, as the name suggests, their continued explorations of the planet Drambo, nicknamed "Meatball". With the Drambons brought to the hospital station, they must now learn to interact with the numerous other species on board. At the same time Conway has to work out how to deal with the nuclear destruction taking place on the planet below.

It is possible that my memory is cheating me, but I don’t recall other Sector General tales focusing on a single case so much before. Maybe it is planned to be a novel fix-up? This piece definitely has the feel of a staging section, it spends a lot of time recapping earlier events and ends abruptly. Still rather interesting but does not stand alone or feel complete by the end.

Three Stars

Strange Brew, Read What’s Inside Of You

Evelyn and Strange ponder what we have just read

Whether on the page or the screen, it seems that if you put a group of talented people together and ask them to deal with imaginative scenarios, they can often strike gold…or at least silver. Even if there is little here that is likely to win a Galactic Star, there is plenty worth checking out.

Here's to many more years of Vision, New Writings, and Strange Report. The seventies may not be looking much like a decade of peace and harmony, but it can at least be one of good solid entertainment.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 14, 1970] Root Rot (February 1970 Venture)

January 14, 2025 David Levinson Leave a comment

by David Levinson

A less perfect union

Unions have been a positive for workers. They’re why we have the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, paid time off, why blue collar workers are able to buy a house, not to mention not owing their soul to the company store; I’m old enough to remember when none of those things were a given. Of course, as human institutions, they are also flawed, and where money and power flows, those flaws can turn to worse things. That’s what gives many politicians—and the editor of a certain science fiction magazine—a pretext to rail against them.

One of the most important unions this century has been the United Mine Workers of America. Much of that stems from the four decades of leadership by John L. Lewis, who died last June. Lewis took a well-earned retirement in 1960 and was replaced by his vice president Thomas Kennedy. Old and in poor health, Kennedy was largely a caretaker and was soon followed by Lewis’ chosen successor, W.A. “Tough Tony” Boyle.

Lewis ran the UMWA with an iron fist, ignoring demands by the rank-and-file for a greater say in the union. He maintained his power through skill, charisma, and reputation. Boyle has run things with a similar style, but lacks most of what kept Lewis in charge. There’s even a feeling among the membership that he tends to favor the interests of the mine owners over the workers.

Enter Joseph “Jock” Yablonski. He was one of the leading figures in the opposition to Boyle’s policies. He had also been the president of the UMW’s District 5 until Boyle unilaterally stripped him of office in 1965. Last May, Yablonski announced he would challenge Boyle for the UMW presidency in the December election and was formally nominated in September. Boyle won the election on December 9th by an almost 2-to-1 margin, and Yablonski conceded. However after seeing the detailed election results, Yablonski promptly asked the Department of Labor to investigate the election. On the 18th, he also filed five civil lawsuits in federal court against the UMW over a variety of irregularities.

On January 5th, Yablonski’s older son, Kenneth, discovered the bodies of Yablonski, his wife Margaret, and their 25-year-old daughter Charlotte in their home in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. The next day 20,000 miners in West Virginia staged a one-day wildcat strike in protest against Tony Boyle, who they believe is responsible for the murders. Hours after the Yablonskis were buried, several of his supporters met with his attorney to plan further actions to reform the union.

As I write, the police have no leads. A $60,000 reward has been offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction. I don’t want to point any fingers without evidence, but an awful lot of people close to Yablonski are looking hard at Tony Boyle and the acrimony surrounding last month’s election.

Corrupt institutions

Most of this month’s Venture is given over to the new Keith Laumer novel, which spends quite a while with miners. But it and the other stories in the issue deal with corruption, both institutional and personal.

A not very representational image for Laumer’s new story. Art by Bert Tanner

The Star Treasure, by Keith Laumer

Lt. Ban Tarleton is the son of an admiral and a proud member of the United Planetary Navy. He firmly believes in the status quo and holds no truck with rebellious Hatenik philosophy. But a purge leads to his discovery of some unpleasant facts, eventually resulting in him being cashiered from the Navy and sentenced to permanent exile on a harsh Class I planet. There, he finds work as a miner and makes a discovery that may give him the power to bring the whole system down.

Ban must use his best friend’s corpse as a trap. Art by Bert Tanner

Laumer is probably best known for his comedic stories, particularly those about the interstellar diplomat Retief, but he mostly writes serious stuff. Those tales come in two flavors: two-fisted adventure and thoughtful pieces that frequently tug at “masculine” emotions like duty and sacrifice. The Star Treasure is very much in the former category, but it also differs from Laumer’s usual approach.

Laumer’s typical adventure protagonist is an old-school Competent Man writ very large. Ban, on the other hand, blunders from episode to episode, generally succeeding through dumb luck. Laumer also tends to go wildly off the rails, often to the point of the surreal, investing his protagonists with incredible powers or giving them an alien background of which the were unaware. This one goes off the rails, too, but it’s right at the end. That usually happens around the mid-point. I guess this counterbalances The Seeds of Gonyl, where it happens on page one.

Three stars.

Breaking Point, by V.N. McIntyre

An ambitious but untalented colonel is captured and tortured by the enemy. There are a number of science-fictional elements.

Looks more like Neil Diamond to me. Art by Craig Robertson

It’s hard to say much about this story without simply retelling it. There is one thing that kept me from liking it: The colonel has a cat, and the cat dies. Twice. I understand how it fits in the story, but it put me off completely.

Anyway, McIntyre seems to be new. I don’t know if that V. hides a Virginia or a Virgil and can’t make a guess based on the writing either. Either way, there are signs of some solid talent. More from this author would not be amiss—just leave the cats alone.

Objectively three stars, but only two from me for reasons already stated.

Disposal, by Ron Goulart

You probably don’t think about how much trash you and your family generate. Someone in the house takes the cans to the curb on the appointed day and brings back the empties once the truck has been by. What would happen if that didn’t happen? What if there wasn’t a nearby dump you could take the trash to yourself? Goulart asks those questions with a slight science-fictional twist.

Although the story takes place in Goulart’s old stomping grounds of San Francisco, I recall reading that he recently moved to New York City. It would have been after the great garbage strike of a couple years ago, but he may have been inspired by horror stories from the locals. His typical satirical style is fully in evidence, but he keeps the outright wackiness in check.

Three stars.

Standoff, by Robert Toomey

A human and an alien find themselves on opposite sides of an asteroid after their ships were destroyed in combat. Hostilities are extreme, and neither side takes prisoners. If they work together, the two might find a way for both to survive.

As the situation of the story became clear to me, I expected something like John Boorman’s 1968 film Hell in the Pacific (starring Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune). That might have been Toomey’s original inspiration, with a possible assist from the 1965 Frank Sinatra feature None But the Brave, but that’s not where the story goes. The ending might be darker than either of those films.

A high three stars.

Summing up

Elsewhere in the issue, we get a “super Feghoot,” which is twice the usual length at a full page. Unfortunately, the pun is extremely tortured, resulting in one of the worst Feghoots I’ve ever read. Meanwhile, Ron Goulart has finally found a book he likes. Two, in fact. One is a Doc Savage reprint, the other A Wilderness of Stars, an anthology edited by William F. Nolan. Most of the stories seem to be from the 1950s. I’m not to sure that Ron is all that keen on the modern state of science fiction, even the old fashioned stuff.

So, a rather middle-of-the-road issue. However, it’s dominated by the condensed novel, far more so than any of the previous issues. If we have to have a novel in every issue, let’s at least make it something shorter so we can have a couple more stories as well.

Wellen’s written some good stuff, so I hope this more than the pot-boiler thriller it appears to be.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 10, 1970] Time On My Hands (February 1970 Fantastic)

January 10, 2025 Victoria Silverwolf 2 Comments

by Victoria Silverwolf

What Time Is It?

That's a question that you can answer with more confidence than before, if you're willing to shell out a whole bunch of bucks. On Christmas Day the Japanese company Seiko introduced the world's first quartz wristwatch. (There have been clocks using quartz crystals, but not anything this small.)

As I understand it, quartz crystals vibrate in a precise manner when voltage is applied to them. Thus, the tiny bit of quartz inside the watch, powered by an itty-bitty battery, provides an unvarying pulse that supplies extraordinary accuracy.

The Quartz Astro 35SQ keeps time to within five seconds per month, which is said to be about one hundred times better than a mechanical watch of good quality.

The catch? You have to pay 450,000 yen for it. That's well over one thousand dollars. You can buy a nice new car for the price of two watches.

Quite a stocking stuffer.

If you like, you can use your fancy new timepiece to measure how long it takes to peruse the latest issue of Fantastic.

Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

Or maybe the publishers can measure how much time they saved by copying the cover art from yet another issue of Perry Rhodan instead of waiting for an artist to create a new one.

The title translates to The Cannons of Everblack. Note the use of English for what I presume is the name of a planet.

Editorial, by Ted White

This wordy introduction wanders all over the place. The editor states that the magazine is getting a lot more mail from readers. (See the letter column below.) He says that he doesn't like the name of the magazine, and suggests changing it to Fantastic Adventures, the name of the old pulp magazine from which reprints are often drawn. (The sound you hear is me screaming No!)

He discusses the old problem of defining science fiction as distinguished from fantasy. The essay winds up complaining about an article by Norman Spinrad that appeared in the girlie magazine Knight. Apparently Spinrad griped about SF fans and pros being hostile to the New Wave. Sounds like a tempest in a teapot to me.

No rating.

Double Whammy, by Robert Bloch

The author of Psycho leads off the issue with another shocker.

Illustration by Michael Hinger.

A guy who works at a sleazy carnival is afraid of the geek. If you don't know what a geek is, you haven't read William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel Nightmare Alley, or seen the movie adapted from it the next year.

A geek is an alcoholic who has fallen so low that the only work he can get is pretending to be a so-called wild man and biting the heads off live chickens.

Our slimy protagonist seduces a teenager. When she tells him she's pregnant, he refuses to marry her, leading to tragic results. The girl is the granddaughter of a Gypsy fortuneteller, who has a reputation for supernatural revenge.

This is an out-and-out horror story that may remind you of the 1932 film Freaks. (Like that controversial film, it features a man without arms or legs.) The author saves his final punch to the reader's gut until the last sentence. If you don't like gruesome terror tales, it may be too much for you. I thought it accomplished what it set out to do very effectively.

Four stars.

The Good Ship Lookoutworld, by Dean R. Koontz

This space opera begins with a fight to the death between a human and a weird alien, apparently just as a sporting event.

Illustration by Ralph Reese.

This violent scene is just a prelude to a yarn in which the triumphant human recruits the narrator (another human) to join him in a mission to salvage a derelict alien starship. The vessel was operated by an extinct species of extraterrestrials who seem to have been nice folks. They just traveled around the universe bringing entertainment. Too bad a disease wiped them out.

The starship turns out to contain the headless skeletons of its crew. That's mysterious and scary enough, but when our heroes journey back to their homebase in it, parts of the ship disappear, one by one. Can they survive the long voyage before the whole thing vanishes?

This is a fast-paced adventure story with a twist in its tail. Given a few clues, you might be able to figure out the surprise ending. It's a little too frenzied for me, but short enough that it doesn't wear out its welcome.

Three stars.

Learning It at Miss Rejoyy's, by David R. Bunch

The narrator has dreamed about visiting the place named in the title since childhood, when his dad told him about it. The stunningly desirable Miss Rejoyy promises him an intimate encounter with her if he can meet the requirements. He has to pay to enter a room where his reactions to pain and pleasure will be measured.

The narrative style is less eccentric than usual for this author. The content, however, is just as strange. There are some really disturbing images. The point of this weird allegory is a very pessimistic one, which is likely to turn off many readers. Still, it has an undeniable power.

Three stars.

Hasan (Part Two of Two), by Piers Anthony

Here's the conclusion of this Arabian Nights fantasy.

Illustrations by Jeff Jones.

Summing things up as simply as I can, the title hero went through many adventures before stealing away with a woman who could turn herself into a bird, hiding the bird skin that gave her this power. More or less forced to marry him, she had two sons with him. She eventually found the skin and flew off to her native land with the children.

In this installment, he sets off on an odyssey to find her. This involves a whole lot of encounters with strange people and supernatural beings. In brief, he gets involved with a magician, rides a horse that can run over water, rides on the back of a flying ifrit, meets a group of Amazon warriors, faces an evil Queen, takes part in a huge battle, and witnesses an explosive climax.

Some of the many characters in the story.

A wild ride, indeed. This half of the novel has a fair amount of humor. The magician and the ifrit are particularly amusing. The plot turns into a travelogue of sorts, as Hasan journeys from Arabia to China, then to Indochina and Malaysia, winding up in Sumatra.

A helpful map allows you to follow the hero's travels.

A lengthy afterword from the author explains how he changed the original story from One Thousand and One Nights. He also offers several references. One can admire his scholarship.

The resulting story is entertaining enough. I'm still a little disconcerted by the fact that Hasan kidnaps the bird woman, and that she eventually decides that she loves him anyway. A product of the original, I suppose.

Three stars.

Creation, by L. Sprague de Camp

This is a very short poem about various legends concerning the creation of humanity by an assortment of deities. It leads up to a wry punchline. Not bad for what it is.

Three stars.

Secret of the Stone Doll, by Don Wilcox

The March 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures supplies this tale of the South Seas.

Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

The narrator winds up on a paradisical Pacific island. He falls in love with a local beauty after rescuing her from drowning.

Illustrations by Jay Jackson.

Everything seems to be hunky-dory, but his new bride insists that she must make a journey to a part of the island kept separate from the rest by a stone wall. Because the islanders have a strong taboo against discussing fear or danger, she can't tell him what it's all about. Along the way, they meet a madman with a sword and the object mentioned in the title.

Apparently, he's a visitor to the island, just like the narrator.

I found this exotic, mysterious tale quite intriguing. The revelation about the woman's journey surprised me. (There's an editor's footnote — I assume it's from the original publication — that tries to offer a scientific explanation. This is just silly, and the story works much better as pure fantasy. The new editor's suggestion that it relates to something in Frank Herbert's Dune also stretches things to the breaking point.)

Maybe I'm rating this story higher than it might otherwise deserve because I wasn't expecting much from this issue's reprint. Unlike a lot of yarns from the pulps, it isn't padded at all, with a fairly complex plot told in a moderate number of pages. Anyway, I liked it.

Four stars.

According to You, by Various Readers

As the editorial said, there are a lot of letters. Bill Pronzini offers an amusing response to a reader who didn't like his story How Now Purple Cow in a previous issue. I didn't care for it either, so I'm glad he's a good sport about criticism.

The other letters deal with all kinds of stuff, besides talking about what kind of stories they want to see (offering proof that you can't please everybody.) One speculates about a combination of Communism and Christianity. (The editor dismisses this as unlikely.) Many react to an editorial in a previous issue about the cancellation of the Smothers Brothers TV show.

No rating.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Alexander Temple

Just like Fred Lerner did in the last issue, Leiber praises Lin Carter's Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings for its history of fantasy fiction, and condemns Understanding Tolkien by William Ready, while admitting that it has a few good insights. He praises The Quest For Arthur's Britain by Geoffrey Ashe and Isaac Asimov's The Near East: 10,000 Years of History as fine nonfiction books with subjects relating to fantasy fiction.

Temple very briefly discusses The Demons of the Upper Air, a slim little book of poems by Leiber. It's a lukewarm review, talking about his occasional careless choice of words . . . hardly to be compared with his prose and recommends it for Leiber fans only.

Worth Your Time?

This was a pretty good issue, with nothing below average in it. I imagine others will dislike some of the stories, but I was satisfied.

While admiring your new thousand dollar watch, don't forget to get a new calendar as well. I wonder how long I'll be writing 1969 on checks.

Did you make it to either of these groovy concerts?

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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[January 8, 1970] Slow Sculpture, Fast reading (the February 1970 Galaxy Science Fiction)

January 8, 2025 Gideon Marcus 2 Comments

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

by Gideon Marcus

A little off the top

And so it begins. For eight years, NASA enjoyed an open budget spigot and, through persistence and endless shoveling of money (though a fraction of what's spent on defense, mind you), got us to the Moon. Now the tap has been cut to a trickle, and the first casualties are being announced.

Apollo manager George Low at a press conference on the 4th

Of the 190,000 people employed at the space agency, a whopping 50,000 are going to get the axe before the end of the year. Saturn V production is being halted. Lunar missions are going down to a twice-per-year cadence (as opposed to the six in thirteen months we had recently).

Apollo 20, originally scheduled to land in Tycho crater in December 1972, has been canceled. Astronauts Don Lind, Jack Lousma, and Stuart Roosa now get to cool their heels indefinitely. Apollos 13-16 will go up over the next two years followed by "Skylab", a small orbital space station built from Saturn parts. Then we'll get the last three Apollo missions.

After that… who knows? If only the Soviets had given us more competition…

Oh, and in the silly season department:

On the 6th, Columbia University's Dr. Gary V. Latham, seismologist and principal seismic investigator for Apollo program, withdrew his proposal that an atomic bomb be detonated on the Moon. You'll recall Apollo 12 sent the top half of Intrepid into the lunar surface so the seismometers Conrad and Bean had emplaced could listen to the echoes and learn about the Moon's interior.

Latham got some pretty harsh criticism of his idea, so he dialed things back, suggesting NASA should find way to hit the Moon hard enough to create strong internal reverberations. Let's hope they don't use Apollo 13…

A sampling from the upper percentiles

The news may be dour on the space front, but the latest issue of Galaxy is, in contrast, most encouraging!

by Jack Gaughan, illustrating "Slow Sculpture"

The Shaker Revival, by Gerald Jonas

In the early 1990s, America has become a hollow shell, spiritually. All of the worst elements of our modern day have amplified: the hippies have sold out to become consumers, Black Americans are confined to walled Ghettoes, kids are dropping out in growing multitudes.

Into this era, a movement is born—the New Shakers. They live the Four Noes: No hate. No war. No money. No sex.

a riff on American Gothic by Jack Gaughan

This hero of this tale, such as there is one, is a journalist who is doing a series of interviews on the movement. As time goes on, we learn that he is also tracking down his missing son, whom he believes has been inducted by the growing cult.

It's fascinating stuff, but there's no end, nor is the piece indicated as "Part One of [N]". On the other hand, it is concluded with "MORE TO COME", which is less dispositive than it might be since that phrase gets used often in the story proper.

I'm going to give it four stars on the assumption that we're going to see more stories in this world a la Silverberg's Blue Fire series. If this turns out to be a literary cul de sac, then we can drop the score retroactively.

Slow Sculpture, by Theodore Sturgeon

by Jack Gaughan

Ted Sturgeon can write.

There are some stories your read, and you just know it's going to be superlative. I've felt guilty these last few months, handing out five-star reviews so sparingly, wondering if my standards had gotten too high. And then I read something that is truly superior, and I realize that, for five stars to mean anything, it's got to be saved for the very best.

I shan't spoil things for you. It's about a man and a woman, the former an engineer, the latter a cipher, both troubled. It involves electricity and bonsai and an understated romance (no one writes romance like Ted Sturgeon), and it is the best thing I've read in a dog's age.

Five stars and a warm glow.

Sleeping Beauty, by A. Bertram Chandler

by Jack Gaughan

Another bi-month, another sequel, this one involving Lieutenant Grimes in command of the Adder courier ship. As a result of his last adventure, Grimes is (supposed to be) no longer in the passenger business. Instead, he is sent to a nearby star to meet with an insectoid Shari queen. Unfortunately, the cargo they ask him to transport is…a pupate Shari princess.

This is all fine and good, so long as the nascent queen remains in cold stasis. A power outage causes her to hatch, however, and she soon has the crew in her thrall. Worse, she has increasing interracial designs on the young Lieutenant!

Yet another pleasant but unremarkable adventure. We're definitely going to see a fix-up Ace Double half, I'm sure.

Three stars.

The Last Night of the Festival, by Dannie Plachta

by Jack Gaughan

Two archetypes, Dawn and Dusk, walk through a macabre parade filled with hedonistic and gory spectacles. Each scene is punctuated by an italicized interstitial with some oblique reference to Nazi Germany. The story is illustrated like a picture book such that the text only fills perhaps a third of the page.

Like much of Plachta's work, it's an abstract and abstruse piece. Are the two on their way to Hell? Do they represent actual people? I'd appreciate it more if I knew what he was trying to say.

Two stars.

Downward to the Earth (Part 3 of 4), by Robert Silverberg

by Jack Gaughan

Continues the journey of Edmund Gunderson toward the mist country of the planet he once administered as a mining colony. The key beats include a reunion with his lover, Seema, who stayed behind when he left. She has become enamored with the planet, surrounding her station with a garden of native life. She is also caring for her husband, Kurtz, who was horribly distorted by his attempt to participate in the Rebirth ceremonies of the elephantine indigenous Nildoror.

Another key beat is his entry into the misty cold of the temperate zone. It is implied that Rebirth involves the swapping of consciousnesses between the Nildoror and the simian Sulidoror, the other intelligent race on the planet. We learn that Gunderson plans to emulate Kurtz—to offer himself as a Rebirth candidate as a sort of expiation for his sins against the indigenes.

This section is more episodic and Heart of Darkness than the prior ones, and it left me a bit cold. I do appreciate how much time Silverberg has spent developing a truly alien world, however, and the anti-colonialist sentiment is welcome. I just have trouble relating to or even buying the characters, and that deliberate abstraction, distancing, gives the whole affair a shambling sleep-walk feel to it.

If that's your bag, you'll love it. For me, we're at three stars for this installment.

After They Took the Panama Canal, by Zane Kotker

America is conquered by the Soviets. Rape, re-education, and reduction ensue.

All this is told compellingly from the point of view of Myra, a not particularly bright (by design) woman, who is selected to be a consort to several conquerors, and to bear several of their children. In the end, she helps lead a revolt of sorts.

I cannot tell the sex of the author from the name, but the style is unlike those employed by any male authors I know. In any event, the narrative is reminiscent of 1954's A Woman in Berlin, a harrowing autobiographical account of a journalist in Germany's capital when the Russians came.

Four stars.

Sunpot (Part 1 of 4), by Vaughn Bodé

Here we've got a tongue-in-cheek space adventure starting Captain Belinda Bump, who for some reason is topless throughout the strip. Actually, it seems quite natural to go nude in space—after all, Niven's Belters are nudists. However, prurience seems intended: Bump is referred to as "Nectar Nipples" and "Wobble Boobs", and the overall style feels something like a black and white version of what fills the final pages of Playboy each month.

In this short installment, Captain Bump runs across the next Apollo mission. High jinks ensue.

The art is fun, and I want to like the characters, but Bodé needs a new letterer. Maybe he can borrow Sol Rosen from Marvel.

Three stars.

Doing the math

While nothing in this magazine quite hits the highs of Sturgeon, and Plachta keeps swinging and missing (no one I've talked to has managed to decipher Ronnie's intent), it's still a pleasant read from front to back. I have a suspicion Galaxy will outlive Apollo.

That's something, at least!

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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

January 2, 2025 David Levinson Leave a comment

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.

Pressure Vessel, by Ben Bova

Robert O’Banion is second in command on a mission into the depths of Jupiter, looking for life. Grieving over the loss of his wife, he only feels truly comfortable when he is connected to the ship and its computer, flying the vessel like it’s his own body. Add in a general sense of urgency and friction between the scientific and military members of the small crew, and there’s a lot of tension.

Art by Gaughan: O’Banion hooked up to the ship.

Bova has written a couple of stories about Dr. Sidney Lee, in which humanity is desperately seeking the aliens who built the strange machines on Titan, still working after millennia or even longer. Lee doesn’t appear in this story, but the protagonist’s wife knew Lee on Titan and fell in love with him there. There are some flaws in the tale—notably the protagonist’s psychological suitability for the mission—but it’s still very strong.

Four stars.

A Matter of Recordings, by Larry Eisenberg

Another of Eisenberg’s awful Emmett Duckworth stories. This time, Duckworth has come up with a way to record memories so they can be played back to anyone. The usual nonsense follows.

Two stars.

Can recordings made in a harem stop a revolution? Art uncredited, but probably by Gaughan

Prez, by Ron Goulart

Norbert Penner is looking forward to spending the winter alone with his girlfriend on her family’s palatial estate. Unfortunately, he doesn’t like her dog, the titular Prez. Worse, thanks to cybernetic enhancements, Prez can talk and has the intelligence of a 10-year-old. He’s able to make very clear that the feeling is mutual without having to pee on Penner’s leg.

Prez recharging his batteries. Art by Gaughan

This is a fairly typical Goulart comedy, though not as wacky as some. If you like those—and I do—you’ll like this one.

Three stars.

The Cube, by C.M. Drahan

Humans and the E-tees have been at war from the moment they first made contact. The Telepath chosen as humanity’s representative for the truce talks on a remote planetoid seems remarkably unsuited for the task.

Art by Gaughan

Drahan is this month’s new author. Unfortunately, there’s no biographical information, so I don’t know anything about the person behind the initials. It’s a decent debut. Bits of the story may come across as confused with a casual reading, but careful attention should make everything clear. This is an author I’m willing to see more from.

Three stars.

A Game of Biochess, by T.J. Bass

On a layover at a space station, tramp trader Spider meets Rau Lou during a chess game (biochess refers to a game against a biological opponent, rather than a computer). The two hit it off, but not on a sexual level. When Spider has a big score that will let him upgrade his ship to a two-person crew, Olga the ship’s computer suggests Rau Lou. However, she has disappeared, so Spider and Olga go looking for her.

Spider makes his way to the wreck of Rau Lou’s ship. Art by Gaughan

Bass is shaping up to be a pretty good writer. He still needs to work on throwing around medical terminology (Bass is a doctor), but he has reined it in this time. I only had to pull down my dictionary once. Otherwise, this is a fine story with a nice twist at the end.

A high three stars.

Hired Man, by Richard C. Meredith

A human mercenary working for an alien employer is the only survivor of a raid on a human settlement. The pay is excellent, and the offer for a six-month extension will set him up for a long time.

Power armor, but this mercenary is no Johnny Rico. Art by Gaughan

All the previous Meredith stories I can think of have been brutal war tales with depth. This one is no different. The ending hits the protagonist with a question the reader has probably been asking all along.

Four stars.

Fruit of the Vine, by George C. Willick

The smuggling of flora and fauna between the worlds of the Federation is punishable with death. Somehow, grape varieties suitable for wine-making have reached almost every world. This story weaves three threads together: the official search for the smugglers, a group known as the Entertainers, and a skid row bum staggering through a winter night.

Art by Gaughan

There are a lot of flaws in this story. It’s fairly obvious how two of the three threads tie together, the whole thing is too long, and the set-up is a little hard to believe. While the desire to keep potentially hazardous plants and animals from moving between worlds is commendable, are there really 49 habitable worlds where people can and are willing to eat the local produce from the moment they arrive? But it’s told well.

Three stars.

Dry Run, by J.R. Pierce

General Devlin, D.I.A., is a special adviser to the Prime Minister on the Panda War. In this case, D.I.A. stands for Demon In Attendance, not Defense Intelligence Agency. His job seems awfully easy.

Probably not Devlin. Art by Gaughan

This is a fun, little story that proposes something I’m sure many of us have thought at times. The Vietnam analog is obvious, but not overdone. While it might be trivial, the whole thing doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Three stars.

Whipping Star (Part 2 of 4), by Frank Herbert

The alien Caleban Fanny Mae has signed an unbreakable contract with the human Mliss Abnethe, allowing herself to be whipped. The flagellations are killing Fanny Mae, and if she dies nearly every sentient being in the galaxy will die with her. It’s up to Saboteur Extraordinaire Jorj McKie to stop Mliss.

In this installment, McKie tracks Mliss to an impossibly primitive planet, where he finds himself imprisoned. We also learn that there is someone else driving Mliss to do what she’s doing. Time travel may also be involved. To be continued.

McKie favors the Bond school of defusing traps by walking into them. Art by Gaughan

I’m not sure if I really like this story, but it is keeping my interest. In many ways, this feels more like the Frank Herbert who wrote The Dragon in the Sea than the navel-gazer we’ve seen of late. There’s more action in the first chapter of this installment than in the whole of Dune Messiah. It remains to be seen how well he handles the interesting questions he’s asked so far.

Three stars.

Summing up

Elsewhere in the magazine, Lester del Rey is back in form, offering actual criticism over mere review. He might be the best reviewer in the magazines right now. I’d say his only competition is Joanna Russ over in F&SF. Meanwhile, Ejler Jakobsson’s answers in the letter column offer quite a bit of news. Philip José Farmer is working on a Riverworld novel, the promised new issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is coming soon, and there will be news about the IF First program in the near future.

All in all, not a bad issue. A couple of excellent stories and only one clunker out of nine. Jakobsson is turning out to be a fine replacement for Fred Pohl.

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[December 31, 1969] …for spacious skies (January 1970 Analog)

December 31, 2024 Gideon Marcus 2 Comments

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

by Gideon Marcus

Pan Am makes the going great!

Thousands turned out in Everett, Washington, for the roll-out of the first jumbo jet ever built. The "wide-bodied" Boeing 747 can carry a whopping 362 passengers; compare that to the 189 carried by the 707 that inaugurated the "Jet Age" a decade ago. Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) took delivery of the aircraft, which flew to Nassau, Bahamas, thenceforth to New York.

Originally scheduled for regular service on Dec. 15, things have been pushed back to January 18. That's because 28 of the world's airlines have placed orders for 186 of these monsters, including American Airlines, which has ordered 16. Since their shipment won't arrive until June, and as air travel is strictly regulated in this country by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), which ensures fairness of rates, routes, and other aspects of competition, the CAB ordered a delay until Pan Am leases American one of its fleet.

As impressive as the 747 is, it constitutes something of a bridge, aeronautically speaking. Very soon, we will have supersonic transports plying the airlanes. Eventually, we may even have hypersonic derivatives of the reusable "space shuttle", currently under development at NASA. The jumbo jet will allow for economical, subsonic flights until passenger travel goes faster than sound, at which point, the 747 will make an excellent freighter.

These are exciting times for the skies! And with that, let's see if we've also got exciting times in space…

John Campbell makes the going… hard

What Supports Apollo?, by Ben Bova and J. Russell Seitz

Apropos of the aeronautically pioneering theme, the first piece in this issue is a science article on what supports the Apollo, literally: the enormous Vehicle Assembly Building, where the three stages of the Saturn V are put together; the crawler that the rocket rides to the launch pad, and the 30-story gantry at the launch pad.

The mobile launcher (left) and the Saturn on the crawler (right)

It's a lot of numbers told in a wide-eyed fashion, but I enjoyed it. The pictures are nice, too.

Four stars.

The Wild Blue Yonder, by Robert Chilson

by Vincent diFate(right)

Engineer Ted Halsman had bought an old mine in rural Ohio and stuffed it with all kinds of advanced equipment. When the mine explodes with the force of an atomic blast, Halsman goes on the run, asserting that his discovery will warp the future of humanity if it escapes his clutches.

Told in documentary fashion, this story goes on waaaaay too long. Along the way, much speculation is made about the nature of the blast, and how it might require rewriting the laws of physics. That the speculations are patently absurd does a bit to foreshadow the joke ending. On the other hand, that ending is also rather implausible.

Beyond that, we're meant to sympathize with Halsman, who idly dreams of returning to civilization, decades after successfully escaping from it. That he murdered half a dozen people in cold blood while fleeing is glossed over.

Two stars.

The Proper Gander, by A. Bertram Chandler

by Leo Summers

A thoroughly humanoid flying-saucer pilot is reprimanded for being too showy about his jaunts to Earth. His bosses decide the best defense against discovery is hiding in plain sight: a saucer is ordered to land in front of a commuter, and out strolls a vivacious, thoroughly humanoid "Officer's Comfort Second Class" who claims she is from Venus. Since modern humans know Venus is uninhabitable, the saucer people figure that future sightings will be written off as gags or delusions.

This story is both stupid and sexist, both in spades. One star.

Curfew, by Bruce Daniels

A young Martian by the name of Matheson comes to Earth for the reading of his uncle's will. Said uncle was an inventor and a corporate spy, and his legacy includes some rather valuable patents that could be explosive in the wrong hands. Others are already after the secret, and in addition to dodging them, Matheson must meet with a shady unknown at night, outside the safety of his hotel.

Therein lines the inspiration for the story's title: as a solution to the crime problem, there is a night-long curfew enforced by mechanical beasts and aircraft. Can Matheson brave the rigors of his homeworld long enough to claim his prize?

This piece is somewhat juvenile in tone, but not bad. Three stars.

The Pyrophilic Saurian, by Howard L. Myers

by Leo Summers

This story appears to take place in the same universe as "His Master's Vice", because that's the other place we've seen Prox(y)Ad(miral)s. In this tale, we've got a prison escapee named Olivine who has made a break with four other convicts. He heads out to a planet that he knows (as a former ProxAd) has been restricted and bears a resource of great value. Of course, the suspicious ease of Olivine's escape suggests that the authorities have a reason for letting him and his band scout out this world for them…

It's cute, in a Chris Anvil sort of way, though the space patrol must have been close to prescient to anticipate all of the twists and turns the story takes. Three stars, barely.

In Our Hands, the Stars (Part 2 of 3), by Harry Harrison

by Kelly Freas

And now, Part 2 of the serial started last month, in which an Israeli scientists flees to Denmark to develop anti-gravity.

In this installment, Denmark builds a proper anti-grav spaceship, adapted from a giant hovercraft. We learn that its pilot likes to sleep around, and his wife is being leaned on by the CIA to steal secrets from the project. In all of this issue's 50 pages, the only scene that really matters is when the discoverer of the effect, Leif Holm, newly minted Minister for Space, gives a speech from the Moon. The rest is superfluous building scenes or bits with the pilot's wife, who exists solely to be weak, vulnerable, and jealous, so she can be traitorous.

"Did you read about our Mars visit?" is a line that is actually in the book, and I thought at that point, "No! But I'd have liked to!"

Also, can a diesel tractor really work on the Moon even with oxygen cylinders? And are the Danestronauts doing anything to sterilize their equipment, or are they just blithely contaminating the Moon?

I'm really not enjoying this one very much. Harrison is sleepwalking. Two stars.

The Reference Library: To Buy a Book (Analog, January 1970), by P. Schuyler Miller

Miller prefaces his book column with a fascinating piece on how books are distributed. In short, they aren't…not for very long, anyway. The titles sit on shelves for a vanishingly brief time, and unless the booksellers know they can sell a bunch, chances are they won't bother ordering any. The profit margin's just not there. This is a phenomenon I know very well as an author, and I don't imagine the paradigm will change for the next half century or so (until we all switch over to digital books, computer-delivered, as Mack Reynolds predicts).

There's also a nice plug for Bjo Trimble's Star Trek Concordance, a comprehensive encyclopedia of all topics from the show. Then Miller gushes over a trio of reprint Judith Merril novellas, Daughters of Earth, the recently novelized Leiber serial, A Specter is Haunting Texas, and the very recently novelized Silverberg serial, Up the Line. His praise is slightly muted for Alexander Key's juvenile, The Golden Enemy.

Having reservations

Thérèse Burke checks reservations for the Irish airline, Air Lingus.

Well.

It is appropriate that, on the eve of the dawn of a new era of air travel, Analog is continuing a serial about a new era of space travel. But despite that subject matter, this issue is straight out of Dullsville, continuing a flight into mediocrity that has been going on for many years now.

With a score of 2.5, this month's issue is only beaten to the bottom by the perennial stinker, Amazing (2.4). It is roughly tied with New Worlds (2.5), and exceed by IF (2.7), Vision of Tomorrow (3.2), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5).

Aside from that superlative last magazine, it's been something of a drab month: you could take all the 4-5 star stuff and you'd have less than two full magazine's worth. And women wrote just 4% of the pieces.

Is this any way to run a genre?

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[December 24, 1969] At Last The 1980 Show: New Worlds, January 1970

December 24, 2024 Fiona Moore 2 Comments

by Fiona Moore

Here it is, nearly 1970! What does the UK have to look forward to in the next decade? Already we’ve got a new Doctor Who, a new all-live-action series from the Andersons, and a new currency is coming in. I hope we’ll join the common market and help build a revived Europe. I for one am feeling optimistic.

Meanwhile, what is my favourite provocative pop artist up to? Miss Ono and her husband have launched a festive anti-war campaign, with a giant poster in Piccadilly Circus (and eleven other cities around the world) reading WAR IS OVER IF YOU WANT IT. It makes a change from adverts for American soft drinks and I appreciate the sentiment.
None of the photos I took turned out, but here's the art for the poster.

On to New Worlds. Who are making up for the last couple of issues by giving us some actual SF, with actual illustrations. There’s even a story by a woman! It’s not Pam Zoline though; she’s contributing to this issue, but as an illustrator not a writer. I’ll take what I can get.

Cover by R. Glyn Jones.

Lead-In

Saying (rightly) that the media is overwhelmed with predictions of 1970, which are becoming “as dull as the next moonshot” the editors are celebrating their theme of looking forward to 1980. How many (if any) of the stories actually follow the theme? Let’s find out!

Michael Butterworth: Concentrate 3

Illustration by Charles Platt.

A very short prose piece followed by a poem. I like the imagery of an astronaut freaking out with the feeling of stars crawling over his face but otherwise it seems to read like several opening lines mashed together. Nothing to do with 1980. Two stars.

Graham Charnock: The Suicide Machines

Illustration by R. Glyn Jones, who gets everywhere this issue.

A more developed imagining of a near-future Britain, in an Oxford which has been given fully over to tourism by dull and tedious businesspeople, with “feedies”, a sort of android, as guides and entertainers. Jaded with sex, they seek instead to force the feedies to commit suicide for their pleasure. No indication that this takes place in 1980. Three stars.

R. Glyn Jones: Two Poems, Six Letters

As the title says. Two quatrains, containing only six letters. Not sure the experiment does all that much. Nothing to do with 1980. One star.

Ed Bryant: Sending the Very Best

A fun short piece about near-future man buying a holographic sensory-stimulation greeting card, which leaves the reader wondering wickedly about the recipient and the occasion. Nothing to do with 1980. Four stars.

Hilary Bailey: Baby Watson 1936-1980

Photo by Gabi Nasemann.

This is one of the standout stories for me this issue, if one of the least SF (though one of the only ones to involve 1980). It’s a story in the Heat Death of the Universe vein, making the familiar strange by looking at the lives of ordinary women, with the same surname and born in the same year. It’s a sad story for me, highlighting the way in which the scientific and creative potential of women is squandered on a world not yet ready to accept them as equals. Five stars.

Harlan Ellison: The Glass Teat

Design by unknown artist.

Ellison saves himself some work by writing his usual TV column, but as if it were 1980. Although I wouldn’t have known that if the Lead-In hadn’t told me. It’s a 1980 where the US is at war in various developing nations, has a liar for a President, and is subject to rampant acts of terrorism at the hands of its own citizens. I suppose it’s a “if this goes on…” piece. Two stars.

John Clark: What is the Nature of the Bead-Game?

Photo by Roy Cornwall.

An experimental essay, containing 25 statements and questions the writer apparently posed at the 1969 Third International Writers’ Conference. The aim appears to be the usual New Worlds trick of juxtaposing sentences and having the reader discern meaning from the juxtaposition. Nothing to do with 1980. Three stars.

Michael Moorcock: The Nature of the Catastrophe

Nice to see Jerry Cornelius back with us, though I confess after the efforts of other writers Moorcock’s original version is a little disappointing. Too few descriptions of Jerry’s clothes, I think. There’s a brief mention of 1980 in order to keep this in with the theme, though there are also brief mentions of 1931, 1969, 1970, 1936 and many other years. Otherwise it’s just your usual Cornelius stuff. Two stars.

Thomas M. Disch: Four Crosswords of Graded Difficulty

Not really my favourite Disch (ha ha) of the year. Experimental poems; the first one made me laugh but the others seemed not very interesting. Nothing to do with 1980. One star.

J.G. Ballard: Coitus 80: A Description of the Sexual Act in 1980

Illustration by Charles Platt.

Familiar Ballard stuff this: a brief description of a sexual encounter interspersed with clinical descriptions of plastic surgery related to the genitals and breasts, in order to convey a sense of scientific alienation behind a simple, familiar act. I confess I hadn’t thought what goes into a vaginoplasty or phalloplasty before. It at least takes place in 1980. Three stars.

Brian W. Aldiss: The Secret of Holman-Hunt

A mock essay about an incredible breakthrough taking place in 1980 (yes!). The narrator discovers a way of unlocking the potential of the mind using the art of pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman-Hunt. No more implausible than The Stars My Destination, I suppose, but it failed to hold my attention. Two stars.

John T. Sladek: 198-, a Tale of ‘Tomorrow’

Illustration by Pam Zoline.

Sladek gives us a plausibly dystopian 1980s where computers can call each other up from anywhere in the world, where people’s fertility and happiness are controlled by drugs, and where everything is made of plastic. I find this vision of the future sadly compelling, though of course Sladek has to remind us that he’s Sladek through cutting the columns up and putting them out of order and sideways. Four stars.

M John Harrison, The Nostalgia Story

Another of these stories that are made up of disconnected snippets with the reader invited to make their own connections. One of these is entitled “Significant Moments of 1980” so I suppose it’s on theme. Two stars.

Joyce Churchill: Big Brother is Twenty-One

Illustration by James Cawthorn.

A short essay on Nineteen Eighty-Four, concluding that Huxley was closer to the mark than Orwell: the coming dystopia will most likely be a capitalist one in which we convince ourselves we are happy through the acquisition of material goods, rather than a socialist one based on a war footing. Not exactly looking forward to 1980, but at this point I’ll stretch the definition. Four stars.

Jack Trevor Story: The Wind in the Snottygobble Tree part 3

Photo by Roy Cornwall.

This isn’t getting any better as it goes on, though Story is making it clearer what the situation is with his protagonist (he’s not actually a secret agent, just pretending he is, however, in doing so, he’s wound up being mistaken for a genuine one). Nothing to do with 1980. One star.

Book Reviews: M John Harrison and John Clute (rendered as “John Cute” in the table of contents)

The usual suspects review the usual volumes. Nothing to do with 1980.

Obituary for James Colvin

Spoof obituary for a pseudonym of Barrington J. Bayley and Michael Moorcock. Nothing to do with 1980.

Out of 17 items, eight actually have something to do with the 1980s, broadly defined, and only five have anything to do with 1980 specifically. Nonetheless, this does feel like a more SF-related and livelier New Worlds than we’ve had in a while. Perhaps the new decade will give them a new lease on life? We can only hope!

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[December 20, 1969] Stars above, stars at hand (January 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

December 20, 2024 Gideon Marcus 5 Comments

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by Gideon Marcus

Being #2… stinks

On the scene at the launch of Apollo 12, President Nixon assured the NASA technicians that America was #1 in space, and that it wasn't just jingoism—it was true!

Well, even a stopped clock, etc. In fact, all accounts suggest the Soviet space program had some serious setbacks last year, the results of which will be felt through at least to 1971. Schedules got shifted as large rockets were earmarked for purely military service in response to the escalating (now calmed) Sino-Soviet crisis. But the biggest issue was reported in Aviation Weekly last month: apparently, the Soviets lost a Saturn-class booster on the launch pad before liftoff last summer. I hadn't even heard that such a thing was in development! The rocket's loss has set back the USSR's manned space program by at least a year, resulting in tepid non-achievements like their recent triple Soyuz mission rather than the construction of a space station or a trip to the Moon.

This is actually the rocket from the Soviet film The Sky Calls (American title: Battle Beyond the Sun)

It didn't help that the Soyuz pads were occupied during the summer as the Soviets tried to match our lunar efforts. It may well be that their Saturn was rushed to service too soon, and similar gun-jumping may have caused the loss of the Luna 15 sample-return mission.

Speaking of which, in September, the Soviets launched Kosmos 300 and 305. Both of them were heavy satellites that went into the orbit usually used for lunar Zond missions. And then they reentered shortly thereafter…in pieces. It's not certain if these were to be circumlunar flights or retries of Luna 15. Either way, they didn't work out, either.

Meanwhile, the Apollo mission moves blithely along. Apollo 13 will go to the Moon next March to Fra Mauro, a landing site photographically scouted out by the Apollo 12 folks. This chapter of the Space Race is well and truly over, won by the forces of democracy championed by such luminaries as Spiro Agnew.

That's a good rock

Speaking of Apollo 12, you may recall earlier this month I talked about analysis of the Moon rocks brought back by Apollo 11. A similar report has come out about the rocks brought back by Conrad and Bean. Dr. Oliver A. Schaeffer of New York State Univ. at Stony Brook says they are only 2.2 to 2.5 billion years old—1-2 billion years younger than the Armstrong and Aldrin's samples. This means some kind of surface activity was ongoing on the comparatively quiet Moon—meteorite strikes and/or vulcanism, we don't know yet.

NASA astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad, commander of the Apollo 12 mission, holds two moon rocks he and Alan Bean brought back to Earth. Taken last month at Manned Spacecraft Center's Lunar Receiving Laboratory.

Also, Dr. S. Ross Taylor of Australian National Univ. says the Apollo 12 samples contain about half the titanium as the Apollo 11 rocks and also more nickel, though otherwise, their chemistry is similar. Thus, the Moon is far from homogeneous, and we have just scratched the surface (so to speak) of the mystery that is the Moon. As we get more samples from more sites, a better picture will come together, but it will undoubtedly take time; imagine trying to contemplate all of Earth's geologic diversity from just two short digs?

Holiday Feast

Cover by Mel Hunter

Longtooth, by Edgar Pangborn

Ben Dane is a widower with a bad heart, stranded by a blizzard at his friend Harp's house. When the home is beset by a furry, anthropoid monster, the two give chase. Is it a crazed lunatic? An alien? The Abominable Snowman?

Pangborn really lets you live inside his characters, vividly depicting the Maine land and farmscape as well as the personalities that populate his stories. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the tale's telling, which takes its time, satisfied with the redolence of its scenery. The real problem is the uninspired ending; what we have here, aside from the liberal sprinkling of four-letter words, is a piece that could have come out in Weird Tales thirty years ago.

Three stars.

Books (F&SF, January 1970), by Joanna Russ

Ms. Russ has come into her own as a columnist—her review of Day of the Dolphin was so funny that I was compelled to read it aloud to my wife. She goes on to damn Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron with faint praise, agreeing only with the simple premise that all men have their price. Russ gives highest marks to Jack Vance's Emphyrio, which our Victoria Silverwolf enjoyed.

Indeed, Russ' opinions mirror those of our own staff, though Jason liked Dophin more than Joanna did.

Russ ends her piece with a tepid review of a tepid anthology: Best SF: 1968, edited by Harry Harrison.

A Matter of Time and Place, by Larry Eisenberg

The name "Emmett Duckworth" inevitably elicits a weary sigh, for this series following the offbeat adventures of an inventor are invariably stupid.

Such is the case here where Duckworth is pressed into service by the Pentagon to make a host of ambitious but unworkable weapons. In the end, he discovers that there is a conservation of local entropy: the more domestic disorder in America, the more peaceful the world becomes.

Every scientific assertion in the story is ludicrous. It doesn't even work as farce. One star.

by Gahan Wilson

E Pluribus Solo, by Bruce McAllister

The last bald eagle, locked inside the Smithsonian for its protection, is under attack. A mercenary with a vicious falcon sidekick has been hired to dispatch this American icon. All that stands between them is one overmatched security guard…

This is a gruesome story, and I wasn't sure if I was going to like it, but the end is redeeming.

On the edge of three and four stars. I guess I'll flip it to the latter.

Car Sinister, by Gene Wolfe

This is a genuinely funny piece. A fellow takes his Rambler American to the seedy shop in his village to be serviced. What he doesn't know until too late is that his car has been stud serviced by another vehicle…and his car is now pregnant.

The only failing to this story is that it doesn't end. It just sort of trails off, either too soon or too long after the punchline is delivered. The implied biology of cars is fascinating, though. They seem to be like Gethenians from Left Hand of Darkness: all are capable of giving birth, but they can take on either sexual role.

Four stars.

A Third Hand, by Dean R. Koontz

A genetic freak dubbed Timothy is cooked up in a DoD lab. Armless and legless, and with only one eye, he is nevertheless one of humanity's most gifted members. That's because he has an IQ of 250+ and Gil Hamilton's ability to psionically manipulate small items at close range. Eventually, he is given prosthetic arms and legs to give him a "normal" life—sort of a flip side to McCaffrey's The Ship Who… series (where deformed brains are turned into spaceship control centers).

But that's just setting up the character. The story starts when Timothy witnesses the death of his guitarist buddy over the visiphone at the hands of a notorious crime boss. The handicapped genius applies all of his resources toward bringing the fiend to justice.

Koontz throws a lot of interesting future tech into his story: home printers that reproduce daily photostatted newspapers; androids that uncannily imitate their owners; floating death machines called Hounds. What he doesn't do is anything with his protagonist. Timothy is unique in all ways except mindset, which is not only conventional, but not even particularly brilliant. In the event, his main distinction is his limited telekinesis, and if you've read Niven's "The Organleggers", then you certainly won't get much out of this.

Three stars.

Ride the Thunder, by Jack Cady

Highway 150 is haunted, and all the cargo-haulers know it. And it's because of a mean young cuss called Joe Indian, who runs an old Mack with a load of turkeys, transported in the most inhumane way possible. What's his story, and how is the spectral visitation ended? You'll have to read to the end to find out.

A fine ghost story, by a trucker for truckers, originally published in Overdrive, a trucker mag, in 1967. Four stars.

Bughouse, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Two couples at a personal soirée. One of the husbands suggests that they might all be a little mad, and he proposes to prove it by having them all eat an Oriental bug poison (which should have no effect on humans—unless they're "buggy").

A slight, but interestingly written, piece. Three stars.

The Lunar Honor-Roll, by Isaac Asimov

This month's science article has a touching book-end: Ike's dad apparently lived long enough to experience not only the flight of the first aircraft but also the first lunar mission, passing away a couple of weeks after the flight of Apollo 11. A fan of science fiction, he instilled a love of learning and educating that has served The Good Doctor well. The meat inside the reminiscence is a nice piece on the naming of the Moon's prominent features. Why are so many 16th Century, medieval, and Greek astronomers honored? Why do we have Alps and Apennines on the Moon as well as lakes, seas, and an ocean?

Worth reading. Five stars.

A Delicate Operation, by Robin Scott

Getting a brilliant doctor out of East Germany to freedom in the West is tough at the best of times. A "white" operation, where a double is sent in so the target can escape, is considered unworkable because no suitable man can be found for the job. A "black" op (smuggling out as hidden cargo) is planned, but when the latter fails, it seems all hope is lost. That is, until Dr. Celia Adams, a supremely talented British biologist, takes matters into her own hands. Can she succeed where the cynical, oversexed CIA veteran (the ostensible hero of our story) cannot?

This is a tight, fun story whose ending you'd likely only guess because you know it has to be SFnal given where it was published. Much is made of the East German doctor being gay, which turns out to be fundamental to the plot.

Four stars.

Seasons Greetings!

Well that was a fine repast (even if the two cover authors turned in the lesser works). And we're now up to a two-magazine streak. Will 1970 be the year F&SF truly deserves the Hugo it won in August? That would be something to celebrate, indeed!

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[December 12, 1969] A More Liberal Society? (Vision of Tomorrow #4)

December 12, 2024 Kris Vyas-Myall Leave a comment

By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

Just some of the many brands of sex you can enjoy at your local ~~tobacconist~~ theatre

It seems the final death knell for Capital Punishment in the UK will be sounded soon. There is a vote soon in the House of Lords, widely expected to pass, to make the trial period for the abolition of the death penalty permanent. Over the last few years we have seen a raft of reforms, removing Victorian laws and decriminalizing a number of controversial practices. At the same time, censorship is being removed so you can see nudity on the West End or watch young women discussing sex in the cinema. This would seem to be placing Britain into a more permissive society.

“Sandwiches, blimey! Whatever did I give the wife?” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

But that does not seem to be true in all areas. The crackdown on the use of illicit drugs continues apace, with heavy-handed tactics of the police being widely reported. Meanwhile, the Northern Irish MP Bernadette Devlin is currently appealing against a six-month sentence of “inciting persons unknown to commit the offence of riotous behavior” for encouraging resistance to police during the so-called Battle of the Bogside.

As such, it appears this liberalism has its limits. Actors can get their kit off in front of the public but not smoke cannabis in their own homes. Women can get access to the contraceptive pill and abortions (assuming their GP agrees) but they still cannot get a mortgage without a male guarantor. People from more different backgrounds are becoming MPs but political activity outside of official parameters is still viewed with suspicion.

This sense I have of British society also reflects what I am seeing in Visions of Tomorrow. It seems to be throwing off some of its earlier conservatism but has not become a second New Worlds either. Instead, the contents of this issue would not be out of place in Dangerous Visions.

Vision of Tomorrow #4

Cover illustration by Eddie Jones

Now back on its regular monthly schedule, the editor gives us an incredibly dull introduction, discussing whether SF has become a mainstream genre. No more insight is given than the hundred other editorials on the subject for the past 30 years.

The Ill Wind by Jack Wodhams

Illustrated by Dick Howett

Gongi Wackerman stinks and has been going through many experiments to see if he can be rid of his noxious odour. However, one such test concludes his scent has a psychedelic effect on people and they want to employ him to help mental patients.

Wodhams is not an author I have particularly enjoyed in the past and this continues that trend. It is so silly and dull, it makes his Undercover Weapon, seem like a work of high literature.

One star, only because I can’t go any lower.

Trojan Horse by E. C. Tubb

G. Alfo Quinn gives us an illustration that seems more at home in New Worlds

In the future, laws and self-censorship have been abolished. People are free to act on their own choices. Even murder is allowed, but classes are taught to ensure that people are smart with their actions as a means of self-defence.

Marlo French is contacted by Ed Whalen, High Boss of Chicago Chemicals. Whalen’s daughter Naomi has stolen their new compound and is hiding out in the impenetrable Staysafe Apartments. As a discreet freelancer, French is tasked with getting back the pills by any means necessary.

Marlo discovers that Naomi has a penchant for Mannikins, robotic male blow-up dolls, and so proposes to impersonate one in order to get inside her flat. But this case may not be as simple as he believes.

This is a much darker and more complicated tale than I expected from these pages or Ol’ Edwin. He posits a world without laws or morality but makes it feel real and vivid, not a cardboard cutout for a simple point. The case itself has a great atmosphere and consists of the kind of twists and double-crosses you would expect from hard-boiled detective fiction. I hope we get more exploration of this future, as it is more fascinating to me than Raynolds’ People’s Capitalism or Anderson’s space navy tales.

I am not sure if he is getting better, or if I am getting more tolerant as I age through my thirties, but I found this to be his second exemplary tale in as many months.

A High Four Stars

Ward 13: A Tale of the first Martian by Sydney J. Bounds

Illustrated by Dick Howett

In City Seven Hospital, Dr. Kirby is part of a team that collects on scene organ donations before they are stolen by illegal freeze-wagons. One night, on his way home, he finds one of his nurses under attack by a gang. In attempting to rescue her, he is kidnapped and put to a surprising purpose.

I don’t think it was just me grooving to a Zappa record that meant I had trouble concentrating, I found it over-described and dull. Also these kind of panicky stories about organ transplants and population explosions have become so common they already feel more cliched than ray guns and flying saucers.

A moderately interesting twist in the tail keeps it just off the bottom rating.

A Low Two Stars

Breeding Ground by Christopher Priest

Illustrated by Dick Howett

Luke Caston, a space salvager, comes across the wreck of the Merchant Princess, a lost ship fabled to carry tons of gems. However, the ship is infested with Space-Mites, three-inch hairy coils that reproduce at an extraordinary rate when they find a source of electrical energy. They also happen to be Caston’s biggest fear.

A reasonable story, reasonably told. Not revolutionary but atmospheric and enjoyable.

Three Stars

Trieste: SF Film Festival by John Carnell

Whilst much of the rest of the SF community were eagerly watching the Apollo 11 mission in July, the New Writings editor John Carnell was attending an SF film festival in Trieste, Italy. The award winners were as follows:

Best Film: The Last Man (France)
Best Actress: Taja Markus – The Time of Roses (Finland)*
Best Actor: Tobias Engel – You Imagine Robinson (France)
Animated Short Film: Cosmic Zoom (Canada)

Others he calls out of note include The Illustrated Man, Mr. Freedom and Windows of Time, whilst pouring scorn on the British entry The Body Stealers and giving a mixed review of an Italian adaptation of The Tunnel Under The World.

An interesting look at films that might otherwise pass us by. I will certainly be keeping my eyes peeled for showings at the BFI.

Four Stars

*Luna fanzine gives the winner as a different actress from the same film, Ritva Vespa. I have not been able to ascertain which report is accurate.

The Impatient Dreamers 4: Science Fiction Weakly by Walter Gillings

Reproduction of a cover from Britain’s short-lived attempt to get into the SF game. Artist unknown.

The recitations of Gillings’ memories of SF yesteryear reaches 1934. He tells us of the short-lived weekly magazine Scoops, his own early attempts to get an SF magazine off the ground, and serialisations of Burroughs and Conan-Doyle.

By this point you know what to expect from Gillings, and this untold history continues to impress me.

Five Stars

Time-Slip by Eric Harris

Illustrated by Dick Howett

Constable Paul goes with an Arunta tracker called Nungajiri to try to find a family lost in the outback. Whilst four of the party are found, the baby remains unaccounted for. Even though the rest of the police think he is crazy, Paul and Nungajiri are determined to see if they can bring the child home.

This is a strange kind of tale. It starts of as a standard mystery story and evolves into one involving geometry, nodal-points in the timestream and the concept of Dreamtime. It felt to me like a cross between Picnic at Hanging Rock and an early HP Lovecraft story. One that I am not sure I understood but I am pretty sure I am not supposed to either.

I am afraid I am not particularly familiar with depictions of aboriginal Australians (having never visited the country myself and I have no familiarity with the Arunta religion) and as such I do not feel particularly qualified to comment on it. I will say this felt somewhat cliched to me but not meanspirited, although that is only a personal sense.

A tentative Four Stars, at least until someone with more knowledge than me can fill in the gaps.

Psycho-Land by Philip E. High

Illustrated by Dick Howett

Peter Carton, a sufferer of dementia praecox, has taken control of a machine that makes people in range subject to paranoia and irrational anger. With thirty thousand lives in jeopardy, the government is forced to call on William Charles Hopwood, a noble prize-winning physicist and ardent pacifist, as possibly the only person qualified to both resist the impulses and turn off the machine.

Devices affecting brain waves have become a common feature of SF recently, but this manages to elevate itself above the pack in a few different ways. Firstly, the atmosphere. As it indeed says in the text, High makes a small city seem like an alien world. Secondly, pacificists rarely have an active role in SF stories, so it was fascinating to see how this concept could be used. Finally, the twist in the tail is a good one, I will be thinking about it for some time.

A High Four Stars

Takeover by Harold G. Nye

Illustrated by Eddie Jones

Charlie Adams is a grumpy hypochondriac who finds himself in the midst of a plan by television sets to destroy humanity.

I am reliably informed this is a pseudonym of Lee Harding, an unprolific but solid writer. As a piece of satire on modern society and religion it is more subjective than most pieces. The silliness didn’t land for me but may appeal more to others.

Two Stars

Prime Order by Peter Cave

Illustrated by Dick Howett

On a routine mining expedition, one of the team caught space fever and then proceeded to murder the crew and destroy the ship. In order to avoid another such incident, Martin Stone at Amalgamated Electronics is asked to design one of the most intelligent and powerful robots ever. It also has one significant difference to all prior models. Asimov’s first law of robotics:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Is replaced with:

The Robot must be able to protect the majority of the party at all or any cost.

The result is Robot R.E.D. 197, who appears to work perfectly in testing. However, when he and a mining crew crash land on an uncharted planet, his logic circuits are pushed to their limit.

At first glance this seems a more traditional tale that would fit snugly into Analog’s pages. However, it is lifted up by the cynicism of the people involved and the darkness of the ending.

A high three stars

Fantasy Review

Illustration by Jeeves

Ken Slater reviews John Brunner’s Quicksand, which he highly recommends, Peter Weston raves about Larry Niven’s collection Neutron Star and Kathryn Buckley praises Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight (with the caveat of allowances for being a newcomer to novels). Meanwhile, John Foyster has mixed feelings about the contents of Carr & Wollheim’s latest World’s Best SF, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and the multi-authored Conan of Cimmeria, but is full of praise for Harry Warner, Jr.’s All Our Yesterdays.

A New Era?

Preview illustration by Eddie Jones for next month’s short novel, Life of the Party

So, this marks a slight change of direction for Vision of Tomorrow. Gone are the Kenneth Bulmer swashbucklers—in their place are atmospheric tales of ambiguous morality. The kind of pieces Harlan Ellison would probably be happy with.

Whether this trend continues or reverses into the 70s will probably be a reflection of where British society heads. On the one hand, all the recent court cases and laws on censorship have been on the side of more liberality. On the other, there are prominent voices that decry the current obsession with “pills and pot” in the media.

Last night, BBC2 went with more traditional fare: This Happy Breed to celebrate Noel Coward's 70th Birthday

Anyway, there will be many years ahead to worry about that. For now, I wish you all the joy of the season and, if I don't see you sooner, a happy new year!

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Galactic Journey

Tag Archives: magazine

[January 20, 1970] Jolly good Ffelowes (February 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[January 16, 1970] Strange Reports (Vision of Tomorrow #5 and New Writings SF-16)

[January 14, 1970] Root Rot (February 1970 Venture)

[January 10, 1970] Time On My Hands (February 1970 Fantastic)

[January 8, 1970] Slow Sculpture, Fast reading (the February 1970 Galaxy Science Fiction)

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

[December 31, 1969] …for spacious skies (January 1970 Analog)

[December 24, 1969] At Last The 1980 Show: New Worlds, January 1970

[December 20, 1969] Stars above, stars at hand (January 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[December 12, 1969] A More Liberal Society? (Vision of Tomorrow #4)

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction