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Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 20, 1970] Here comes the sun (April 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Out, damn spot!

A couple of weeks ago, Victoria Silverwolf offered us a tidbit on the latest solar eclipse.  I've since read a bit more about the scientific side of things and thought I'd share what I've learned with you.

It was the first total solar eclipse to be seen over heavily populated areas of U.S. since 1925, greeted by millions of viewers who crowded the beaches, towns, and islands where viewing was most favorable.  The eclipse cut a nearly 100 mile wide swath through Mexico, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and Nantucket Island, Mass.  It was 96% total in New York City and 95% in the nation's capital.

A black and white collage of several photographs of a partial solar eclipse over a college building. Below the image, the headline reads Partial Eclipse as seen in North County.  The caption reads The partial eclipse seen by teh North County Saturday morning is superimposed over the Palomar College Dome Gym in this collage by staff photographer Dan Rios.  The maximum ecliplse in this area was roughly 30 per cent at 9am as shown in the fourth sun from the left.  Seven states were treated to a full eclipse.
a clipping from Escondido's Times-Advocate

But ground viewing was only the beginning.  NASA employed a flotilla of platforms to observe the eclipse from an unprecedented variety of vantages.  A barrage of sounding rockets (suborbital science probes) were launched during the eclipse to take measurements of the Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere.

In space, radio signals from Mars probe Mariner 6, currently on the far side of Sun, were measured to determine how the eclipse affected communications and to study changes in charged particles in earth’s atmosphere.

Two Orbiting Solar Observatories, #5 and #6, pointed their instruments at the Sun to gather data on the solar atmosphere, while Advanced Test Satellite #3 took pictures of the Moon's shadow on the Earth from more than 20,000 miles above the surface.  Three American-Canadian satellites, Alouette 1, Alouette 2, and Isis 1, all examined the change the eclipse caused in the Earth's ionosphere.

Earthside telescopes got into the mix, too: Observers from three universities and four NASA centers at sites in Virginia and Mexico not only got great shots of the solar corona, but also of faint comets normally washed out in the glare of the Sun.

I can't imagine anyone in 1925 but maybe Hugo Gernsback could have foreseen how much attention, and from how many angles such attention would be applied, during the 1970 eclipse.  It's just one more example of how science fiction has become science.

Waiting for the dawn

The last two months of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction weren't too hot.  Does the latest issue mark a return of the light or continued darkness?  Let's find out…

The cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction April edition. At the center of the dark cover, a bright swirl suggesting a star or sun is surrounded by darker wisps emanating in spirals from it.  Below it is an alien landscape with craggy mountains in teh distance and black-streaked hills in the foreground, in muted shades of blue and brown.
cover by Chesley Bonestell

Ill Met in Lankhmar, by Fritz Leiber

Because I didn't get into science fiction and fantasy in a big way until the early '50s, there are glaring gaps in my literacy.  One big hole is Leiber's Fahfrd and Gray Mouser stories, which were were hits in the '40s (I still need to crack into my complete set of Unknown) and were revived at Fantastic editor Cele Goldsmith's request in 1959.  I've read one or two, and I've enjoyed them, but mostly I know about the contents of the score or so stories set in Lankhmar only second-hand from the reviews of other Journeyers.

So I was quite delighted that the lead novelette in the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction not only features the hulking northman and his slate-swaddled companion, but details their first meeting!

On a dingy avenue in Lankhmar (is there any other kind), the two lay in wait, separately, to waylay a pair of thieves returning from a successful burglary.  They are handily successful and find that they are immediately compatible, both being fond of drink, both new to the city, both with comely and vivacious lady loves.  At a wine-fueled bash, we learn that Fahfrd's lady, Vlana, was roughly treated by Krovas, head of the local Thieves' Guild.  Ivrian, the Mouser's current flame, accuses Fahfrd of cowardice for not taking the robber lord's head, and with that, our newly united duo decide to sally forth tipsily and do just that.

Of course, taking on the entire Guild—and its rat-man sorcerer bodyguard—is not a task to be undertaken lightly…

There's a certain forced quality to this tale, as if Leiber is consciously trying to return to a pulpy histrionic style he has since grown out of.  I also take issue with having love interests introduced only to meet a gruesome fate so as to provide dramatic impetus for the heroes.

That said, boy can Leiber paint a lurid picture of a lived-in fantasy world, somewhere in sophistication between the rude settings of Conan and the rarefied towers of Tolkien.  His battle scenes are vivid and well drawn, his monsters fresh and intriguing.  There's no question but that I raced through the story without pause, eager to find how it resolved.

Four stars.

Books, by James Blish

Banner reading 'Books' with an illustration of a shelf of books bracketed on the one side by a miniature of a rocket staged for liftoff, and on the other with a diorama of an astronaut having landed on a book acting as a book-end

The books covered this time around include a book of SF poetry, Holding your eight hands, about which Blish says: "If you like poetry and know something about it, this volume will be a pleasant surprise…or perhaps even an unexpected doorway into the art."

Creatures of Light and Darkness, an SFnal rework of Egyptian myth by Roger Zelazny, gets a sour review.  "…the displacements from the world of experience involved in myth attempt to explain a world in terms of eternal forces which are changeless; the attempt is antithetical to the suppositions of science fiction, which center around the potentialities of continuous change."

George MacDonald's 1895 book, Lilith has gotten a Ballantine reprint, and Blish says it's worth reading for its influence on Lewis' "Narnia" and Carroll's Alice.

Dan Morgan's The New Minds is the latest in a series, which is essentially bad rehash of good Sturgeon.  Blish doesn't like this installment either.

Soulmate, by Charles W. Runyon

What could make Anne, an aging, but still lovely Black Widow, have such an emptiness at the center of her heart?  And when she consummates with marriage her seduction of a perfect, wealthy young man, fully intending to murder him for his money, just who is the hunter, and who the prey?

This is a beautifully dark story that, like The Graduate, manages to make an unpraiseworthy character somehow sympathetic.  I particularly liked the line: "Each disappointment is the end of an illusion.  I thank you, Anne, for a truly educational experience."

Four stars.

In Black of Many Colors, by Neil Shapiro

Cinnabar is Earth's only telepath, kept in cold sleep as a precious tool to be used only in case of emergency.  One has come up—the aliens of Beta Lyrae Three are implacably hostile and on the verge of developing spaceflight.  Only Cinnabar could possibly make contact and establish a peaceful rapport.

Cinnabar loathes the sharp-edged thoughts of humanity, and she thus has developed a strong death wish.  This is mitigated for the first time when she falls in love with the captain of the vessel taking her to Beta Lyrae.

What will win?  Her sense of duty (and desire for this to be her fatal swansong) or her desire for companionship?  And are the two mutually exclusive?

This really is a lovely tale.  In plot, it is not dissimilar to Silverberg's excellent novel, The Man in the Maze, but the execution, story, and cast are quite divergent.  The main room for improvement would be to get rid of the somewhat fairy-tale narration that accompanies the first half.  It's not necessary, and the story of a telepath should be internal, vivid and alien.  I think Shapiro had the skills to write that story (as evidenced by the latter half of the piece, which is better), but perhaps not the confidence.

Four stars.

The Brief, Swinging Career of Dan and Judy Smythe, by Carter Wilson

A handsome young California couple decides to answer an ad for swingers.  What seems to be a version of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice ends in supernatural horror.

It reads like something written for Playboy.  Perhaps Hugh rejected it.  After all, his magazine is meant to promote, not dissuade, this lifestyle.

Three stars.

The Wizard of Atala, by Richard A. Lupoff

The naval superpower of Atala is threatened by the invincible airships of Catayuna.  Only the might of Atala's wizard can stop them; only the pride of that nation's chief admiral, general, and strategist can thwart the sorcerer's mission.

I mostly know Dick Lupoff from his fanzine work (he and his wife won the Hugo in '63.  This story takes place either in the far past or the far future—it's one of those tales where the names of familiar places are distorted, but not so much as to be unrecognizable: Yorpa and Afric, for example.  Atala may be Atlantis or the Atlantic coast.

It's all kind of fantasy rote with traditional olde-type language, and it's a little tedious in the repetitious telling, but it's not bad.

Three stars.

Banner reading 'Science' with inset illustrations of an atom (in the style of Bohr), an optical microscope's view of microorganisms, an oscilloscope's view of a sawtooth wave, a satellite in orbit, and a spiral galaxy

The Nobel Prize That Wasn't, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor, after regaling us with a tale of the day he seduced a buxom 18-year-old co-ed (apparently sometime last year), finishes explaining how the Periodic Table of Elements was solidified.  A fellow named Mosely determined the last piece of the puzzle that was the atomic interior: atomic weight.  Using x-rays, he was able to find out exactly how many protons any element's nucleus had (though he didn't know anything about the particles, just that there was something with positive charge inside) and that this number was the unique identifying factor for each atom.

What I find so fascinating about all this is how recent it was.  When I was going to high school in the '30s, this fundament of chemistry was taken as read.  And yet, just thirty years prior, there was as yet no real proof for the order the elements should be in.  It is tremendous what a sea change subatomic theory and Einstein were at the beginning of this century.  Will the 21st see such radical changes in understanding of the universe?

Four stars.

They All Ran After the Farmer's Wife, by Raylyn Moore

A down-on-his luck preacher from Ohio ends up as a laborer on a Kansas farm.  His only social contacts are the Bible-thumping farmer, his fantastically ugly wife, Bep, and their other employee, a swarthy fellow named Aza who never takes off his socks.  When the preacher and the farmer's wife begin an illicit relationship, it turns out that more than a little Scripture is involved in the proceedings.

While Christian myth generally leaves me cold as the basis for a tale, I did appreciate that this story hews away from the horrific, actually concluding with gentleness and redemption.  Even the greatest of sinners can be saved with kindness by the honest, is the message.

Four stars.

Here comes the sun

As it turns out, the eclipse is over, and the stellar magazine that is F&SF has returned ablaze.  Glad tidings for all.  The question now is how long the sun will keep shining.

Is there a literary equivalent of Stonehenge to pray at?

A cartoon depicting a man leaning out of an upper window in his house, looking up at a poorly-made antenna on his roof which is listing to the right.  The moon is just above the antenna, and stars fill the rest of the dark sky.  Through the other window of the house the man's television is visible, showing a screen full of static.
by Gahan Wilson

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


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Science / Space Race

[August 8, 1969] Two by Four (Mariners 6 and 7 go to Mars)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Into the Wild Black Yonder

Ten years ago, when we started our planetary series of articles, none of other worlds in our solar system had been explored.  Since then, five intrepid spacecraft have toured two planets.  Mariner 2 and Mariner 5 probed Venus, returning the revelation that the shrouded world is a seething cauldron.  Mariner 4 returned the first pictures of the Red Planet, shocking humanity with images of Moonlike craters and reports of a vanishingly thin atmosphere, dashing forever the vivid, science fictional conception of Mars as an inhabitable world.

Now, twin Mariners 6 and 7 have flown by Mars, dramatically increasing what we know about the fourth planet.  While we'll never get back that fantasy so elegantly woven by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett, the new Mars is also not a blasted husk either.


Distant views of Mars, as seen by Mariner 7 as it approached the planet

The Next Generation

Despite the blow to morale given by Mariner 4, Mars still seemed like the most hospitable place for life to have arisen apart from Earth.  After all, are there not microorganisms living in the harsh environments of Antarctica and at the bottom of the sea?  Even though the Martian atmosphere is just 1% as thick as that of Earth, this is still plenty dense compared to, say, the Moon.  Moreover, Earth's atmosphere is just 1% that of Venus.  Who's to say when an atmosphere is "thick enough"?

So, just a few months after Mariner 4 flew past Mars, Mariners 6 and 7 were authorized.  At first glance, they look a lot like their predecessor, but the differences are profound—both internally and externally.


From top to bottom: Mariners 2, 4, 5, and 6/7 (note the family resemblance of the last three—Mariner 5 was actually a modified Mariner 3/4 backup!)

First, the insides: the new Mariners are the first spacecraft made only to examine their target planet.  All of the prior Mariners had experiments for monitoring the interplanetary environment—solar wind, magnetic fields, that sort of thing.  Mariners 6 and 7 carry two TV cameras (one narrow, one wide-angle), an infrared radiometer (to measure the temperature of Mars), and ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers (to determine the chemical makeup of the Martian atmosphere and surface).  That's it.

As for the outsides, since 1965, when Mariner 4 passed by the Red Planet, there has been a revolution in communications technology.  Not only do the new Mariners carry more powerful transmitters and antennas, but with the construction of the new 210 foot antenna at Goldstone, supplementing the old 85 footers, data can be transferred between the spacecraft and Earth at a rate more than 2000 times the 8.33 bits per second speed of Mariner 4.  It also helps that Mars is closer to Earth this time around, and that the rocket carrying Mariners 6 and 7 is the beefy new Atlas Centaur, which can loft more weight than the old Atlas Agena so the onboard electronics can be heftier and thus more capable.


The 210' "Mars Dish" at Goldstone, California

What this means for us on the ground is that instead of sending back just 22 images of Mars, the new Mariners could transmit hundreds of pictures, all while returning real-time spectrographic and radiometer data.  All of this aided by the installation of the first computer equipped on an interstellar probe, capable of remembering 128 "words" some 22 characters in length.  And that computer can be reprogrammed on the fly from Earth!

On their Way

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the same folks who built the other Mariners, assembled four spacecraft for the mission.  The first was a stay-at-home test model, the second a source of spare parts.  The other two were redundant probes—an understandable precaution given the loss of Mariners 1 and 3.  However, the twin ships weren't entirely redundant; Mariner 6 was targeted to fly over the Martian North Pole while #7 was aimed over the South Pole.

Problems with the spacecraft began before liftoff.  Mariner 6's Atlas rocket, which maintains its structure through internal fuel pressure, sprung a leak and began to deflate like a balloon.  It had to be replaced with Mariner 7's rocket, and a new one ordered from Convair.  This did not delay the launch, however (which had to go at a set time to reach Mars with a minimum of fuel use), and Mariner 6 blasted off on February 24th.  Mariner 7 took off on March 27, but because of its course, was set to reach Mars just five days after its sister.


The launch of Mariner 7

Both rockets performed beautifully, requiring only minor mid-course corrections early in the flight to ensure they zoomed close by the fourth planet.  There were some minor technical problems: The radio on Mariner 6, used to determine range from Earth, kept locking on its own signal rather than Earth's, making it useless.  It fixed itself later in the flight, however.

Similarly, the star tracker designed to keep Mariner positioned properly lost sight of Canopus.  After weeks of engineers scrambling to find an alternative guiding star (they even tried the Large Magellanic Cloud, but the galaxy was too diffuse to be useful), that system fixed itself, too.  Finally, the onboard solar sensors that told how much sunlight was hitting Mariner 6's power panels, began reading too low.  Was the Sun going out?  No.  The sensors had just drifted out of calibration.

Mariner 7's only issue was a radio receiver that dropped to about 20% of its sensitivity, apparently due to cold.  Ground controllers switched it to high power, which warmed the thing up and fixed it.

Thus, its vexing teething pains dealt with, NASA now had, for the first time, two fully operating probes with which to explore Mars.

The Great Galactic Ghoul

On July 29, even as Mariner 6 was finishing the transmission of 33 low-resolution approach images, Mariner 7 suddenly began spinning wildly, all of its scientific data telemetry channels scrambled.  Had an asteroid hit the spacecraft?  Had there been an instrument explosion or some kind of short circuit?  Was there some kind of Great Galactic Ghoul guarding the Red Planet?  No answer was quickly forthcoming.


Collage of Mariner 6 images as it approached Mars

Nevertheless, engineers raced to salvage the mission—with Mariner 7 arriving shortly after its sister, and from a more favorable angle, the JPL science team wanted the spacecraft's experiments all in working order. 

Cautiously, computer engineers went over every bit of code and methodically tested all of Mariner 7's instruments.  They were in working order, but because of the accident, uncalibrated and useless.  How to get real data points to use to base the radiometer and spectrometer data against?


Engineers at the Mariner control center at JPL

As it turned out, the two TV cameras on board were in good order and unaffected.  By pointing them at Martian targets and using the data they returned, it was possible to calibrate the other experiments.  And so, just in the nick of time, Mariner 7 was ready, come close encounter time, to do some real science.

Exploring Barsoom

So what did the two probes find as they whizzed past Mars, almost grazing it from a scant few thousand miles away?

Well, at first they seemed to confirm Mariner 4's findings.  There were all the craters in stark detail.  There was no evidence that there had ever been widespread water—absent was the erosion one would expect from oceans or even rivers.


A lunar landscape, courtesy of Mariner 7

On the other hand, if Mars wasn't Earth's twin, neither was it sister to the Moon.  As each Mariner went behind the planet, beaming radio signals through the Martian atmosphere, it was confirmed that surface pressure was around 7 millibar—a refinement rather than a revelation.  But they did determine that carbon dioxide makes up a greater percentage of the air than even on Venus.  Nitrogen was completely absent, which was a surprise.  So was ozone, which means that the surface is fairly baked by ultraviolet—again, a strike against life on the planet.

The Red Planet is not quite geologically moribund, however.  The vast Hellas region, smooth of craters, and a region of convoluted terrain akin to the American Badlands, suggests some kind of volcanic activity in comparatively recent times.

Unlike the Moon, clouds scud across the Martian sky, mostly composed of dry ice.  While it may not rain on the planet, it does frost, and maybe even snow ice and carbon dioxide.  The climate changes with the seasons, with polar (dry?) ice caps spreading and receding.  The tropical highs soar to a balmy 60 degrees, but the polar lows plunge to 240 degrees below zero.


A view of the Martian North Pole, snapped by Mariner 6—note the ice cap

Thus, Mars is an inhospitable place…but it if it lacks biological life, it is nevertheless an interesting living, breathing planet in its own right.

What's next?

Mariners 6 and 7 are still functioning, and their onboard systems should work until at least 1971.  Not only might they return pictures of any asteroids or comets that drift by, they will also constitute an experiment in and of themselves.  As they drift through the solar system, terrestrial scientists will measure variations in the timing of their telemetry signals and use them to prove General Relativity—something that requires great distances to detect subtle theoretical variations.

As for successors, a Martian orbiter is already in the works for the 1971 alignment, and in 1973, a probe will use the gravity of Venus to enable a probe to fly by and then visit, for the first time, Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun.

And also in 1973, the Viking orbiter/lander combo, successor to the overlarge Voyager project, will give Mars a real look.


The 1971 Mars Orbiter

If the 1960s were the dawn of interplanetary science, the 1970s will see its maturity.  I find this as momentous an achievement as footprints on the Moon.

I can't wait to rewrite all of the articles in our solar system series!




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