I’m a bad-news-first type of person, so I’ll get this out of the way: this is the last serial of the current series of Doctor Who. And, per the Radio Times, that makes this serial Patrick Troughton’s last as the titular Doctor. But here’s the good news:
We’ve got a good while to go yet, because this is a very long serial.
And better still, “The War Games” is brilliant.
In Case You Missed It
From the moment the TARDIS lands in the middle of a sodden battlefield, the crew within are in terrible danger. Emerging to find themselves caught in the midst of the First World War, it’s not long before the team are captured under suspicion of being German spies.
However, it soon starts to become apparent that there’s something rather wrong here. Other than, you know, the total war and unimaginable horrors and all that. No, it’s a bit weirder than that. It certainly looks like we’re in France in 1917, and everyone is talking as if that’s the case, but the personnel have no backstories. Not in the ‘these people are badly written’ sense, but in the sense that when they ask one another about where they’ve been or what they’ve been doing, they have absolutely no idea.
It’s all to do with General Smythe (Noel Coleman) at the local British base, and the decidedly anachronistic communication device in his office. It soon becomes apparent that he’s collaborating with forces far beyond British high command, using mind control to manipulate the men and women under his command towards his own ends.
The new arrivals threaten to upset his control, and he wastes little time in court-marshalling the travellers. They don’t get a chance to defend themselves, and Smythe pronounces all three guilty. Jamie’s sent to a military prison to await trial on further charges of desertion from the highland regiment, Zoe is placed in the custody of a WVR until she can be sent to a civilian prison, and as for the ringleader of their little ‘spy ring’? The Doctor is sentenced to death.
This is treated with more gravity than we’ve usually come to expect from Doctor Who. Sure, everyone’s been in mortal peril plenty of times, but we get the feeling that the characters believe they’ll get out of it in one piece. That’s not the case here. If it were, the Doctor would have told his friends ‘see you soon’ rather than ‘goodbye’. And it’s played by all involved with real sincerity.
After a damp squib of an escape attempt that only succeeds in delivering the Doctor into the hands of his executioners, a surprise German attack grants Zoe and the Doctor an opportunity to flee.
Elsewhere languishing in military prison, Jamie’s very surprised when a Redcoat is thrown into the cell with him. Yes, a Redcoat. This chap seems to think that the year is 1745—and just like the WWI soldiers, he can’t remember how he got here.
We now arrive at a delightful sequence: the Doctor’s method of breaking into a prison. Does he go for brute force? Of course not. The stealthy approach? You’d think, but no. What he goes for is pure cheek. He flags a car down, berates the driver, and demands to be driven through the front gates.
Upon arriving, he pretends to be an examiner from the War Office, and goes on the opposite of the charm offensive. The offence offensive, you could say. He is very, very cross and hell-bent on making it everyone else’s problem. It’s adorable. And funny. Like being yelled at by the world’s angriest penguin.
You see it too, right?
And it works! Not only does the warden buy the ruse, he shows the Doctor layouts of the prison, the logbook, and is about to approve of a visit to a particular Scottish prisoner when a phonecall comes in. Unfortunately, said Scottish prisoner has just tried to escape, aided by his unlikely Redcoat accomplice, who ended up shot in the attempt.
Thinking fast, the Doctor demands that the guards bring him the escaped prisoner. However, his bluster is starting to wear thin, and the warden grows suspicious of the pair of them. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, let alone off-the-cuff schemes that run on pure chutzpah.
Recaptured, it looks like the three are back where they started. However, two of the General’s subordinates, Lt. Carstairs (David Savile) and WVR Lady Jennifer Buckingham (Jane Sherwin), have started to become suspicious of the General’s conduct. Realising that they both have a sense of missing time, they’re a little more willing to listen to the ‘spies’ side of the story.
Having discovered it earlier in the unsuccessful escape attempt, Zoe shows the group the communication device in Smythe’s quarters. Smythe for his part isn’t around. He departed some time ago for a conference, travelling via a strange transportation pod that fades in and out of existence with a somewhat familiar sound.
Convinced by the evidence presented (which they couldn’t even see until they concentrated), Carstairs and Lady Jennifer agree to help. The group escape together in an ambulance moments before the General’s return, soon disappearing into a sea of fog… and reappearing on a Roman battlefield.
This is the moment where I fell in love with the serial.
Reversing away from the oncoming onslaught, they find themselves back (ostensibly) in 1917. The Doctor surmises that they crossed the boundary into another time zone. Two thousand years is quite a long way to wind your watch, to say nothing of the jet lag.
It turns out that what seemed to be northern France in 1917 is nothing more than a small part of a greater patchwork of historical periods and places. In one zone, it’s the 1640s in England. The next, 1860s America. The one thing all have in common is that in each zone, there’s a war on.
In the middle of all these warzones is an empty space. Logically, that must be the domain of whoever is orchestrating all this.
Their attempt to reach this central zone gets off to an inauspicious start with the group being captured by the Germans before very long (if I did have to complain about anything in this serial, it would be how often everyone gets captured), though they do escape quite quickly through some quick talking, the assistance of the sonic screwdriver, and perhaps most importantly, a gun.
Next stop: the American Civil War.
Their escape garners the attention of Smythe’s superior, the War Chief, a man of bad character and worse facial hair choices. Soon, all the armies of all the zones are under instructions to capture the time travellers.
The ambulance has a narrow escape from an ambush, with Lt. Carstairs staying behind to aid the others’ escape. The War Chief notes his loyalty with approval, and arranges to have him brought back to the central hub for re-processing. The War Chief (and the as-yet-unseen War Lord who commands him) have a great interest in the warriors of Earth, but to what end? It’d be funny if they were in some sort of futuristic unethical historical reenactment society.
Soon running out of petrol, the group take shelter for the night in a barn. The familiar electronic sound comes back, a travel pod fading into existence before their eyes. A band of soldiers emerge, but how did they all fit? Well, the pod must be bigger on the inside.
Once the soldiers have departed, the Doctor can’t help but take a look inside. As the sound of gunfire approaches, Zoe follows him in, the door suddenly shutting behind her. The pod de-materialises, separating Zoe and the Doctor from Jamie and Lady Jennifer.
The pod is indeed bigger on the inside—much bigger. There are multiple rooms filled with hypnotised soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder (try saying that five times when you’re drunk), all waiting to disembark at their appropriate time zones.
A gang of Union soldiers meanwhile arrest Jamie and Lady Jennifer, accusing them (much to Jamie’s frustration) of spying. It seems they’re to be granted a reprieve when a bunch of Confederates assault the Union troops, freeing them in the process. They’re even quite friendly. However, their leader, who we previously saw as the German commander in the 1917 zone, hypnotises them into believing that Jamie and Lady Jennifer are spies.
To their surprise, a man in the uniform of a Union soldier comes to their rescue. However, Harper (Rudolph Walker) is no Union solider: he’s one of a growing number of soldiers who have learned to resist the War Chief’s brainwashing. Together, they’re mounting a resistance. Recognising them as being from another time zone, he tries to help. It’s a noble effort, but doesn’t pan out, all three ending up in the Confederates’ clutches. Harper tries to win the Confederates over and break their brainwashing, but being a Black Union soldier, historical context is not on his side.
Fortunately for them, the rest of the Resistance aren’t far behind, but to Jamie’s distress they don’t plan on taking any prisoners.
The Doctor and Zoe eventually end up at the travel pod’s origin point, and emerge to explore the sprawling facility. There are dozens of people working to keep this whole system going, and the pair disguise themselves as part of their number to sit in on a lecture given by the chief scientist.
Keeping thousands of people fighting perpetual fake wars takes quite a bit of brainwashing to accomplish, and it’s no good if people keep resisting the process. As such, he’s been working on improving the mental conditioning device. Lt. Carstairs is the guinea pig, and once the process is complete, he’s entirely willing to accept the reality presented to him. The year is 1917, he’s among his fellow officers, and the two strangers sitting in the front row are German spies.
You could make a drinking game out of this. Take a shot every time the Doctor and company get accused of being spies. Finish your glass if someone gets sentenced to death. You might need to get your stomach pumped afterwards.
Thinking he’s just got a bit carried away in the fantasy, the lecturer doesn’t believe Carstairs and has him wheeled away for further examination. The Doctor takes the opportunity to critique the mental conditioning device, and thereby learn how it works and how it might be used to de-condition a subject.
As he’s about to leave, the War Chief turns up, immediately realising that the Doctor and Zoe don’t belong. They have to run for it, getting separated in the chase. In all the chaos, Carstairs gets loose, and so does what he thinks he’s right: he goes after the ‘spies’. He soon catches Zoe, and there’s only one way to deal with a spy in the field. He’s going to have to shoot her.
It's called fashion, darling.
The Mystery Box
This is an adventure that is yet to fully unfold, but the slivers we’ve uncovered thus far are a delight. “The War Games” invites curiosity, and rewards us for it with even more to be curious about.
The TARDIS team getting caught in a wartime spy drama was already rather exciting, but throw in all these different time periods clashing with each other and we’re really cooking on gas. It’s imaginative, it’s thrilling, it’s exactly what Doctor Who should be.
Who are the War Chief and War Master? I get the sense that what we’ve seen so far is part of a grander and more sinister scheme. Whatever it is, it’s far from benign. Looking at how many untold thousands (likely more) of people they’ve abducted and fed into these endless wars and the level of technology they possess, one gets the sense that these people, whoever they are, are far more formidable than your average foe.
Special offer: brainwash and mental conditioning now offered free with your cut and blow-dry!
Final Thoughts
“The War Games” is off to a terrific start.
It’s got a good pace to it, lingering a moment to let the emotional beats resonate, keeping up a steady rhythm when the action gets going. As such, despite the recurring plot point of the group getting captured, it doesn’t feel padded out. I like the characters, particularly the smart and self-assured Lady Jennifer. With all the different time periods, this feels like a properly big and sprawling adventure—an adventure I’m excited to see more of.
[We've got another wonderful haul of books for you this month, many of which are well worth you're time. Be sure to read on 'til the end—you'll definitely catch the reading bug!]
By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall
The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith by Josephine Saxton
Josephine Saxton is British author so, of course, her first book is about apocalypses and sexual awakening. However, it's a particularly skilled one.
The story: an unnamed teenage boy is wandering across the desolated British landscape alone, after an unexplained event has killed off all the other people. He comes across a baby girl and decides to bring her up. Together they try to understand the world that was left behind and what it means to be an adult.
You might assume this is either the usual “New Adam and Eve” story, or some kind of shock piece. However, Saxton manages to negotiate between these two paths skillfully. She describes the sexual emergences of both of them in matter-of-fact terms, which grounds the story within the dream-like atmosphere they inhabit.
As we go through, their comprehension of the world changes from child-like to a clear understanding of the facts of life. Even though their eventual relations could come across as disturbing given the age difference between the two, and the fact The Boy brought her up like a little sister, Saxton manages to largely negate this. She is able to show the passage of time well and, more importantly, give us the thought processes of both our leads to show they have free-will and are fully in control of their choices. For example:
She studied this for some time, and came to the conclusion that this was a drawing of a penis, and at what she had read and seen, she became hot all over, and in an excitable state.
There is also a clear sense throughout the text about the importance of symbolism. The Boy is constantly dismissing the importance of words and symbols but The Girl slowly shows him that deeper meaning is important.
For me, the key message that is brought out here is that they need to wipe away the sins of the past. The things that brought this world into being. When The Girl is bathing she sings about washing away her troubles in the River Jordan. And, when she gives birth, she insists on doing it in a place of death “to eradicate the source of evil here”. There is a central concept that simply them growing up and continuing the human race is not enough. Things have to change.
I picked up this novel as I knew it was related to The Consciousness Machine, one of my favourite novellas of last year. The connection raises significant questions. However, to discuss this requires mentions of later revelations of both works. As such, if you want to avoid knowing these facts, please feel free to skip to the next review.
As the name suggests, the novella is about a machine, WAWWAR, that can take the images of the unconscious mind and display them on a screen. The technician Zona is trying to decipher the meaning of The Boy and The Girl’s journey. There is also another piece of material relating to the hunt for a wild animal. These secondary and tertiary narratives are completely absent from the novel, which only contains The Boy and Girl’s tale in its totality.
As such, the conclusion of the book version is not about Zona learning the nature of the Animus, but The Boy, The Girl and The Baby deciding it is time to go home. So, they get on a bus, pay the conductor and go back to a fully furnished suburban house. The Girl then decides to get an early night as there is nothing on television on Tuesdays and puts the baby to sleep.
Now, a simple explanation for this could be we are literally seeing the film that was recorded by the WAWWAR. However, no hint of that is given and I think that is too large a leap to expect the average reader to make.
But to read it purely as a science fiction tale causes just as many problems. This sharp turn is nowhere hinted at in the text and in fact contradicts several core points created. Even if you could somehow accept the idea that The Boy went to live in a town that has been uninhabited, how does he have a house? How has he never seen a fully grown adult woman before? How does The Girl know about contemporary television schedules? How is the home not only still available to them after decades away, but with the utilities on?
So, what are we to make of this strange choice? There is no reason I could imagine that would force Saxton to expunge this frame from the longer book form. And the novel is indeed a good bit more explicit than the novella. So, a choice we must assume it is.
I like to believe it is opening us up to the freedom to understand the text in our own way. Zona’s meta-commentary on the events is merely one way of understanding a dream. You could also just as easily contend that the explosion in the chemist, shortly before they leave the town of Thingy, actually killed them all, suburbia representing the afterlife and Zona being like the angels in 40s cinema, discussing their existence.
Or, perhaps, the Town of Thingy really does exist and is a time displaced retreat. Something akin to Hawksbill Station. Where couples facing marital difficulties can be de-aged, grow-up together, and learn how to become one unit again, before being brought back at the same moment they left. And then The Consciousness Machine is actually just a dream The Girl has after she goes to bed.
I don’t know what Saxton intended, but I also do not think it matters. The journey and feel of the novel is excellent and how you choose to view it is just as valid as those watching the WAWWAR.
Humanity has made its first steps into interstellar space, settling the worlds of the Pleiades. In so doing, they have brushed across the domain of the mysterious Moldaug—a frustratingly humanoid but not quite human alien race with a fleet strength comparably to Terra's. After decades of peaceful coexistence, the Moldaug suddenly make claim to all the Pleiades. The Old Worlds of Earth, Mars, and Venus, reeling from a kind of space phobia, offer to relinquish their own claims to the Frontier. This only makes things worse for two reasons: 1) the Moldaug inexplicably find the offer offensive, and 2) the Frontier is not Earth's to give, for they had fought and won independence a dozen years prior! (For more on this story, see the novelette Hilifter.)
by Jack Gaughan (and cribbed from the novelization of Three Worlds to Conquer, as I learned from my friend, Joachim Boaz—the art makes much more sense for the original title)
Enter Cully O'Rourke When, the man most responsible for the Frontier's independence. When the veteran spacejacker returns to Earth to treat with the Old World's government, he is thrown into a floating prison with hundreds of other Frontiersmen, rendered impotent to cause more mischief. But in that very prison, he learns from an imprisoned anthropologist the explosive secret that foretells Armageddon between humans and the Moldaug…unless someone can bring the two races into true understanding.
Thus begins a tale that involves Cully's jailbreak, piracy on high space, and political turmoil in three realms.
This is a frustrating book because it has such potential, and there are many things to like in it. The gripping beginning, the well-realized triune nature of the Moldaug (each being-unit comprises three tri-bonded individuals), the subtle difference in morality between the two species (Right/not-Right vs. Respectable/not-Respectable—though one could argue that this is a thinly guised variation of the Japanese concept of "Face"), the rich setting, the final confrontation between Cully and the Moldaug Admiral Ruhn…these are all compelling.
But Dickson falls into the issues he had with his Dorsai series: one mastermind (our hero) knows every move and countermove, and everything breaks his way. As a result, the only drama comes in seeing the master plan unfold, not how said hero responds to adversity. In stories like this, one can see the author laying out the stepping stones, guiding a path so that the protagonist never makes a misstep.
The other issue is the virtual absence of women. I know people have given me grief for harping on this issue since I started this 'zine in 1958, but come on, people—it's 1969. We have women leading Israel and India. On Star Trek, a third of the crew of the Enterprise is female. A few years back, Rydra Wong led a crew of misfits to save the galaxy. So when the only human female character in all of the Frontier and the Old Worlds serves just to be a romantic foil (and to be ignored at the one juncture that she has critical information!), and she is the sole woman amongst a cast of dozens of men, the world Dickson builds starts to feel a little hollow.
Edmund Cooper is a British writer who has been active since the '50s, and up until recently I've not had the pleasure to read any of his work. He put out a novel just a month or two ago, and now here he is again, with a short collection called News from Elsewhere, featuring eight stories, only one of which is original to the collection. It was published in Britain last year but only just now got an American edition, courtesy of Berkley Medallion. Overall it's a mixed bag, since it looks like Cooper likes to repeat himself (there are three or four stories here about space expeditions), but the strongest material does make me curious for more. Let's take a look.
This is the only story to be first published in News from Elsewhere, and it’s… fine. It’s basically a fable, set in an icy and desolate world, about a young woman and her infant son as they travel with “the People of the Spur,” on a religious pilgrimage. The problem is that the woman’s son is a half-breed, a child-by-rape whose father is a “Changeling,” of a fellow humanoid race that whose members have hairy and thorny ridges on their backs. The woman tries to keep her son’s racial status a secret, but in trying to evade her people she literally falls into a chasm—and certain death. Cooper’s style here is almost childlike; there is barely any dialogue, and by the end it becomes clear what message we’re supposed to take from what is admittedly a harrowing adventure narrative. Cooper also saves the answer to the question “Is this science fiction or fantasy?” for the end, although I’m not sure why he treats it like a twist.
We jump from the newest story to one of the oldest, first published as “The End of the Journey” in the February 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe. “M 81: Ursa Major” is a space opera that asks a rather troubling question: “How do we know when we’re dead?” Or, to phrase it less threateningly: “How can we tell the difference, subjectively speaking, between being dead and being unconscious?” An experimental ship uses scientific mumbo jumbo to skirt the fact that it’s impossible to travel at the speed of light. The results are tragic, but also very strange—not least for the deeply jaded captain, who has a hunch that things will go wrong indeed. This is a story with a loose plot and only one genuine character to speak of, but it’s anchored by a strong idea. It’s the kind of story that was commonplace a decade and a half ago, but which now strikes me as a bit refreshing. I almost feel nostalgic about this sort of thing.
Four stars, but I understand if someone reads it and is not as impressed.
The Enlightened Ones
This one originally appeared in Cooper’s first collection, Tomorrow’s Gift. It’s the longest in the collection, and frankly, I’m not sure the length was justified. Long story short, a team of space explorers makes first contact with a race of hominids, who at first seem like primitive humans but who turn out to have a major advantage over the humans—only the humans are too concerned with what to do with the hominids at first to notice anything amiss. It’s a trite premise, even by the standards of a decade ago, that’s elevated by Cooper’s acute pessimism with regards to the notion of human supremacy. In this distant future it’s said that the Eskimos, Polynesians, and some other indigenous groups on Earth have been driven to extinction. Certainly the Campbellian protagonists do not come off well for the most part, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that “The Enlightened Ones” (such an immediately ironic title) was printed in Fantastic Universe and not Astounding/Analog.
First published in the 1963 collection Tomorrow Came, which may sound unfamiliar because it never got an American printing. “Judgment Day” is the most British-sounding of the lot so far, to the point where it reads like the late John Wyndham at a hefty discount. At first it doesn’t even register as SF. The narrator and his wife are in the park one day when people around them start having violent seizures—too many in one place for this to be a random occurrence. Soon the narrator’s wife falls victim as well, and for much of the story we may be wondering about not just the cause, but the context for all this. What does any of this mean? The narrator meets a soldier who promptly feeds him enough information to stun an elephant, the result being that we’re told about something important that basically happens outside the confines of the page and which has already come to an end by the time the narrator hears about it. It’s rather inelegant, never mind that the SFnal element already feels outdated somehow.
Two stars.
The Intruders
Cover art by Virgil Finlay.
This one first appeared as “Intruders on the Moon” in the April 1957 issue of Fantastic Universe. Yes, this surely does read like an SF adventure story from a dozen years ago. A team of explorers land on our moon to investigate the massive crater that is Tycho, for mining as well as the slim possibility of discovering intelligent life. (Something I wish to make clear at this point is that Cooper’s characters are not usually “characters” in the Shakespearian sense; they do not tend to have distinguishable personalities.) Miraculously, however, one of the crew discovers footprints in the sand near Tycho—rather large footprints with very long strides, indeed too much to be a human’s. The explorers go looking for this “Man Friday” of theirs, but they soon learn to regret it. “The Intruders” is pretty straightforward for how long it is, and while its quaint vision of man’s landing on the moon would have been acceptable last decade, I can’t imagine there being much interest in a story of its sort now.
One of Cooper’s earliest stories, and a hand-me-down from Tomorrow’s Gift. A team of space explorers (oh God, not again) lands on “Planet Five,” where there doesn’t seem to be any organic life—save for a species of butterfly. The butterflies have a power over the human explorers they remain unaware of until it’s too late. But it’s not all bad: the explorers also have with them a smartass robot named Whizbang, who emerges as the story’s single genuine character. The autonomous robot comes off more human than the actual humans, although this may be Cooper’s intention, as he uses this disparity at the end of the story to somewhat chilling effect. I’m sensing repetition in the story selection, but I do tepidly recommend this one. If nothing else it comes close to “M 81: Ursa Major” in conveying Cooper’s thesis on the strenuous nature between human rationality and things in our universe which may be beyond human understanding.
A strong three stars.
The Lizard of Woz
Cover art by Virgil Finlay.
This one first appeared in the August 1958 issue of Fantastic Universe, and it’s the crown jewel of the collection. “The Lizard of Woz,” aside from having an incredible title, is different from the others in that it is an outright comedy (albeit of a morbid hue), but it also is told from an alien’s perspective. Ynky is a member of a highly advanced race of alien lizards, who has been sent to Earth so as to determine if it is fit for “fumigation,” i.e., genocide on a planetary scale. The people Ynky comes into contact with (an American, then a Russian, then a third I would prefer to keep a secret) are caricatures, which is all well and good. Cooper pokes fun at both sides of the Iron Curtain, but overall this is a story about the absurdity of the notion of racial supremacy. We’re told constantly that the lizards of Woz are a superior race, yet they also have slave labor and are casually murderous with other sentient races, not to mention Ynky himself is rather slow-witted. Since this is a comedy, and a pretty silly one to boot, some people will be irritated by the antics, but I laughed several times over the span of its mere ten pages.
Finally we have “Welcome Home,” which first appeared in Tomorrow Came and so this marks its first American appearance. Looking back at that time, it seems now like the early ‘60s were simply an extension (or the semi-stale leftovers) of the ‘50s, at least with regards to SF, because this story reads as a few years older than it is. A team of explorers (for the last time, we swear it) land on Mars, which is suspected of possibly hosting life, but if so life on Mars would be far down on the evolutionary ladder. As it turns out, a mysterious pyramid, a sophisticated structure, has drawn the explorers’ attention. This is a first-contact story—of a sort. The twist, which I won’t say here (although you can safely guess it), seemed oddly familiar to me. As with a few other stories in the collection, “Welcome Home” is about the conflict between the West and the Soviets, although it’s not of a ham-fisted sort. It’s fine, but nothing special or surprising.
Three stars.
by Jason Sacks
The Sky is Filled with Ships by Richard C. Meredith
It's the year 979 of the Federation, or the year 3493 in the old calendar. Captain Robert T. Janas of the Solar Trading Company, Terran by birth and starman by occupation, is journeying back to his home planet at a time Terra is in great peril.
The Federation, long bloated and often brutal, is facing a massive rebellion among its vast and angry colonies. A truly titanic armada of thousands of warships from hundreds of solar systems is streaming to Earth via subspace wormholes to gain freedom for the colonies. Janas knows the defense of his home planet will be a futile gesture. There is no possible way even the enormous Terran space fleet can overcome the overwhelming odds and passions of the furious rebels and their massively armed fleet.
Janas knows, too, that a victory by the rebels will spiral mankind down to a new dark ages, just as brutal and destructive as that of Europe after the fall of Rome. Only Janas has the insight and plan to preserve a smidgen of the wisdom — not by saving Terra but by making the Solar Trading Company one of the few institutions to survive and preserve galactic knowledge.
I'm not familiar with the fiction of Richard C. Meredith, but I'm curious to read more by him based on this book. I was pretty intrigued by lead character Janas, who has a nice kind of fish-out-of-water feel to him as he wanders around Earth. That alienation presents a clever, illuminating aspect of the character. I enjoyed having a protagonist who is both a highly self-assured man and who also feels uncomfortable at times due to certain aspects of Earth's culture.
For instance, there's a slightly poignant feel to his annoyance at Earth fashions- like a colonial returned to his home only to find it dramatically different from the place he left. Janas is a stiff military man on a planet where the men dress like harlequins and the women wear fashions which leave them bare-breasted and proud.
But all that discomfort contrasts with the depiction of Janas as a man of action. Like a classic sci-fi hero, Janas brings his own plans and friends to the office of Al Franken, leader of the STC but too blinded by his own hubris to understand he is the problem. Captain Janas literally drags Franken into a plot which will ensure the fall of the ruling Franken family and the survival of Janas's beloved STC.
Meredith adroitly alternates chapters of this palace intrigue with scenes of the armada flying through subspace and showing the massive devastation which the rebel fleet creates on its journey. Those invasion scenes have a breathless, telegraphical quality to them which convey a massive sense of urgency.
As the book winds up, Meredith also does a clever thing: in late chapters he shows brief snippets of events all around the planet Earth as the reality of the Terran apocalypse become clear. In East Asia an angry mob kills their governor and his whole family; in Australia, a cult climb a mountain and await their ends; a rural farmer stands at his barn door, shotgun in hand, waiting to do his small part.
Mr Meredith in his younger days
Mr. Meredith, just over the age of 30, has created a clever and fun novel. There are points in which The Sky is Filled with Ships reads like a pretty standard potboiler sci-fi actioner, with square-chinned heroes fighting for noble causes. In that way it feels a bit of a throwback to the golden John W. Campbell days.
But I appreciated how the actions of our hero were focused on preserving society, which gave him a nobility which stood out on the page. As well, the scenes of oncoming invasion are exciting and had me quickly turning the pages.
I finished this relatively slim novel in one night. And though Meredith is no John Brunner, Philip K. Dick, or Harlan Ellison, he makes no effort to create literary science fiction with this novel. The Sky is Filled with Ships achieves what Meredith set out to create: an intriguing, exciting novel which will make me seek out some of his shorter fiction while I wait for the next thrilling novel by him.
This is the fifth in a series of novels under the collective title of Children of Violence. The others are Martha Quest (1952), A Proper Marriage (1954), A Ripple from the Storm (1958), and Landlocked (1965). I haven't read the others.
A little research reveals that they all deal with Martha, the child of British parents working on a farm in colonial Africa. She's born in about 1920. The four novels all take place in southern Africa. As a teenager, Martha leaves home to work in a city. As the years go by, she is married and divorced and married again. She has a daughter whom she leaves in the care of others. She becomes involved in leftwing politics.
None of the earlier books have speculative elements. The newest one is different. At well over six hundred pages, it's also roughly twice as long as any of the previous volumes.
The sheer length and the very large number of characters and incidents make it difficult to offer a brief summary. I'll do what I can. Keep in mind that I'm leaving out the vast majority of the content of this massive novel.
Martha is now in London in about 1950. She gets a job as a secretary/housekeeper for a man who is married to a woman who is in and out of mental hospitals. She winds up living in the same household for many years, becoming involved with many other members of his family and their acquaintances.
Just to pick one example out of dozens, the man's brother is a scientist who defects to the Soviet Union. He leaves behind his wife and young son. The woman is a Jewish refugee from the Holocaust. When her husband leaves, she kills herself.
That's enough of a dramatic plot for a complete novel, but it only takes up a small portion of the book. Rather than attempt to relate any other events of equal importance, let me try to give you some idea of what the novel is like as a whole. Taking my inspiration from its title, I'll consider it as four different kinds of book in one.
Psychological Novel
Much of the text consists of Martha's interior monologues. She often looks at herself as if she were an outsider. At times, she withdraws from the rest of the world and spends time in a meditative, introspective state.
Novel of Character
Although Martha is the most important character, we also spend a great deal of time with lots of other people. In one section, the point of view shifts to Martha's elderly mother, who leaves Africa in order to visit her daughter. All the secondary characters are described in detail. There are so many of them that I sometimes lost track of who was related to whom. A dramatis personae for this book would take up several pages.
Social Novel
A large number of social and political issues come up in the novel. Just off the top of my head, these include Communism and anti-Communism, psychiatry, post-war austerity evolving into 1960's hedonism, the youth movement, the relationship between the sexes, the media, the environment, the military, espionage, homosexuality, colonialism and anti-colonialism, and economics. At times the novel resembles a series of debates.
Science Fiction Novel
You were wondering when I'd get to that! They take a while to show up, but speculative themes eventually make an appearance. The novel suggests that people diagnosed as schizophrenic are actually clairvoyant and telepathic. They are treated as mentally ill because they have visions and hear voices.
More to the point, the book's lengthy appendix consists of documents, mostly letters from Martha and other characters, describing how the United Kingdom and other parts of the world are devastated by what seems to be a combination of pollution, accidental release of nerve gas, plague, and radiation from nuclear weapons. Martha ends up with a small number of survivors on a tiny island. In true science fiction fashion, children born there have highly developed psychic powers.
Giving this book a rating is very difficult. Some people are going to hate it, and find slogging through very long sentences and paragraphs that go on for a page or more not worth the effort. Others will consider it to be a major literary achievement of great ambition.
I have very mixed feelings. At times I found it highly insightful; at other times I found it tedious.
Three stars, for lack of a better way to rate it.
by Cora Buhlert
A Five and Dime James Bond: Zero Cool by John Lange
This weekend, I attended a convention in the city of Neuss in the Rhineland. Luckily, West Germany has an excellent network of highways, the famous Autobahnen, so the three and a half hour trip was quite pleasant.
I left at dawn and took the opportunity to have breakfast at the brand-new service station Dammer Berge. Service stations are not exactly uncommon – you can find them roughly every fifty to sixty kilometers along the Germany's Autobahnen. There's always a parking lot, a gas station, a small shop, a restaurant and sometimes a motel, housed in fairly unremarkable buildings on either side of the highway.
Dammer Berge, however, is different. Billed as the service station of the future, the restaurant is a concrete bridge which spans the highway, held up by two steel pylons. The structure is spectacular, a beacon of modernism, though sadly the food itself was rather lacklustre: a cup of coffee that tasted of the soap used to clean the machine and a slice of stale apple cake.
But I'm not here to talk about architecture or food, but about books. Now the trusty paperback spinner rack at my local import bookstore does not hold solely science fiction and fantasy. There is also a motley mix of gothic romances, murder mysteries and thrillers available. And whenever the science fiction and fantasy selection on offer does not seem promising, I reach for one of those other genres. This is how I discovered John Lange, a thriller author whose novel Easy Go I read last year and enjoyed very much. So when I spotted a new John Lange novel named Zero Cool in that spinner rack, I of course picked it up.
Zero Cool starts with Peter Ross, an American radiologist who's supposed to present a paper at a medical conference in Barcelona. And since he's already in Spain, Ross plans to take the opportunity for a holiday on the nearby Costa Brava in the seaside resort of Tossa de Mar.
One of John Lange's greatest strengths is his atmospheric descriptions. His skills are on full display in Zero Cool in the descriptions of the rugged Costa Brava with its picturesque fishing villages turned holiday destination for package tourists from all over Europe. It's obvious that Lange has visited Spain in general and the Costa Brava in particular.
That doesn't mean that Lange doesn't take poetic licence. And so his protagonist Peter Ross notes that the beaches of the Costa Brava are full of beautiful women in bikinis with nary a man in sight. As someone who has actually visited said beaches, I can assure you that this isn't true. Like anywhere on the Mediterranean coast, the beaches of Tossa de Mar contain a motley mix of old and young, of men, women and children, of attractive and not so attractive bodies. And yes, there are women in bikinis, too. Ross has holiday fling with one of them, a British stewardess named Angela.
But in spite of what the cover may imply, Zero Cool is not a romance set in an exotic location, but a thriller. And so Ross finds himself accosted on the beach by a man who begs him not to do the autopsy or he will surely die. Ross is bemused—what autopsy? In any event, he is on vacation and besides, he's a radiologist, not a pathologist, dammit.
Not long after this encounter, Ross is approached by four men in black suits who could not seem more like gangsters if they wore signs saying "The Mob" 'round their necks. The men want Ross to perform – you guessed it – an autopsy on their deceased brother, so his body can be repatriated to the US. Ross protests that he is a radiologist, not a pathologist, but the men are very insistent. They offer Ross a lot of money and also threaten to kill him if he refuses.
In the end, Ross does perform the autopsy – not that he has any choice, because he is abducted at gunpoint. To no one's surprise, the four gangsters from central casting are not all that interested in how their alleged brother died, but want Ross to hide a package inside the body. Once again, Ross complies, since finding himself on the wrong end of a gun is very persuasive.
Up to now, Zero Cool seems to be a fairly routine thriller about an everyman who gets entangled in a criminal enterprise. But the novel takes a turn for the weird, when the body vanishes and people start dying horribly, mutilated beyond recognition. Ross not only finds himself a murder suspect – in a country which still garrottes convicted criminals – but other parties also show an interest in the missing body and the mysterious package inside. These other parties include Tex, a cartoonish Texan in a ten gallon hat, the Professor, a bald man who uses mathematics to predict the future and is basically Hari Seldon, if Hari had applied his skills to crime rather than to trying to save humanity from the dark ages, and – last but not least – the Count, a Spanish nobleman with dwarfism, who collects perfume bottles and lives in a castle with a mute butler, a flock of murderous falcons and a Doberman named Franco.
With its exotic locales (well, for Americans at least, since for West Germans the Costa Brava no longer feels all that exotic, when you can book a flight there via the Neckermann mail order catalogue), beautiful but duplicitous women and colourful villains, Zero Cool feels more like a James Bond adventure than a serious thriller. As for the mystery package, it doesn't contain anything as mundane as drugs (which was my initial suspicion), but a priceless emerald stolen by the Spanish conquistadores in Mexico. It all culminates in a showdown at the Alhambra palace in Granada, where Ross finds himself dodging bullets, poison gas and the razor-sharp talons of the Count's murder falcons.
It's all a lot of fun, though it still pales in comparison to the James Bond novels and films, which Zero Cool is clearly trying to emulate. Because unlike the suave agent on her majesty's secret service, Peter Ross just isn't very interesting. He literally is an everyman, an American doctor – and note that John Lange is the pen name used by a student at Harvard medical school who is financing his studies by writing thrillers – bouncing around Spain and France. In fact, Ross is probably the least interesting character in the whole novel. Furthermore, the fact that Ross is a radiologist, though constantly brought up, contributes nothing to the resolution. He might just as well have been a paediatrician or a gynaecologist or any other type of doctor for all it matters.
But even a lesser effort by John Lange is still better than most other thrillers in the paperback spinner rack. If John Lange becomes as good a doctor as he's a writer, his patients will be very lucky indeed.
An outrageous adventure. Three and a half stars.
(As mentioned above, John Lange is a pen name. However, I have it on good authority that his real name is "Michael Crichton" and that he has just published a science fiction novel under that byline. I haven't yet read it, but my colleague Joe has, so check out his review.)
The story begins in the town of Piedmont, Arizona, in the United States. It’s a pretty unremarkable town, with one small exception: just about everyone in the town is lying dead in the street, all except for two men who traveled to Piedmont to recover some lost government property and an odd figure in the town of corpses who happens to be walking their way. Upon the apparent death of the two men, an investigation gets underway, ultimately led by a clandestine government group called Project Wildfire.
Project Wildfire is the brainchild of Dr. Jeremy Stone, a bacteriologist possessing so many awards and degrees that the story paints him as a modern-day Da Vinci, a man above men. His team includes Dr. Charles Burton, a pathologist; Dr. Mark Hall, a surgeon, and the only unmarried man on the team—the odd man as the story puts it; and lastly, Dr. Peter Leavitt, a microbiologist. The four men quickly fall into their roles as they uncover the cause of whatever killed an entire town full of people in one night and try to prevent it from spreading.
They do this working out of a secure, state-of-the-art research facility with a list of protocols to prevent the escape of diseases, viruses, and other deadly pathogens, longer than a football field. Part of the appeal of the story is the detailed descriptions of all the computers, machines, and medical facilities that the four doctors use in their quest. Crichton’s depiction of even the smallest details of the workings of every inch of the Wildfire facility give a grounded feel not only to the base but to the descriptions he provides of the microorganism at the heart of this story: the Andromeda Strain itself. Crichton beautifully has his characters follow the scientific method we all learned in grade school, as Stone and the others start with observation, then move to hypothesis, then experimentation. Every solution in the book is arrived at through the efforts of brilliant men under tremendous pressure. It is truly exciting to witness them work as each discovery and dead end leads to new discoveries and new dangers.
The pacing of The Andromeda Strain felt fitting to me. I never felt as if I was waiting for something to happen. Each scene in every chapter was packed with purpose and direction, each page wasted no space. Every character had a job to do, and each was one of the best in the world at that job. Regarding the characterizations, although the story is set in modern times, these men often felt as if they were the stoic men of bronze from 1950’s serials. The characters felt dated, but the problems they tackled were quite modern.
By the end of the book, the characters and the circumstances reached a good stopping point. The object of worry, the Andromeda Strain itself, proved a challenge that had taxed the heroes of the story to their very limits. Some issues are addressed, and others are left unresolved. In my own zeal for the story, I’ve taken great pains to avoid revealing too much of the plot. It is best experienced in real time. All I can say is that the journey this book takes you on is worth the time investment. It’s a stellar read.
But not a perfect one. This is a story that begins with the end in mind. With all the truly amazing events that unfold in the book, what stands out most are the constant reminders from the narrator that the story was already over. This was my first time reading a book written by Mr. Crichton. I don’t know if he employs this technique in his other works, but I would have preferred that he kept his internal monologuing to himself. In one instance, a character forgets to replicate an action that he had performed on some lab rats. Narrator: “Later we learned that was a mistake.” In another, a character makes assumptions about a biological process. Narrator: “That action wasted days of our time.” The narrator frequently shares tidbits of the future, a narrative tool I would call “Poor Man's Foreshadowing.” The Andromeda Strain is such an engaging and suspenseful tale that I wished to remain in the present throughout my reading without Crichton yanking me out of it, offering glimpses of a future I wanted to reach without shortcuts.
That minor gripe aside, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton is a thrilling mystery with high stakes. It is the kind of fact-based science fiction that I enjoy the most.
Yesterday the Vatican announced that more than forty saints have been removed from the official liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church. How come? Because there's some serious doubt that these holy folks ever existed.
The most famous of these former saints is Christopher, patron of travelers. There are plenty of people with Saint Christopher medals hanging from the rear view mirrors of their cars, hoping for safe journeys.
A typical Saint Christopher medal. Note the infant Jesus carried on his back.
The story goes that Christopher (whose name, appropriately, means Bearer of Christ) carried the baby Messiah across a river. I guess we'll never know now how He made it. Perhaps He crawled on water.
Long Hair Music
I'm sure that ex-Saint Christopher will continue to be associated with a divine youth. In this modern age, what could be more associated with secular youth than the hippie movement? The popularity of the musical Hair is proof of the cultural importance of these groovy young people.
Further evidence, if any be needed, is the fact that Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, a medley of two songs from Hair performed by The 5th Dimension, has been Number One in the USA since the middle of April, and shows no signs of leaving that position anytime soon.
Maybe I'm prejudiced in the song's favor because I'm an Aquarius.
Bildungsroman
Fittingly, the latest issue of Fantastic is dominated by the first half of a new novel in which we see the main character develop from a child to a young adult.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
The cover is, as usual, borrowed from an issue of the German magazine Perry Rhodan.
What happened to the green halo around the sphere in the upper right corner?
Editorial: Don't, by Laurence M. Janifer
The associate editor tells us why writing is a bad career choice. Although the piece is intended to be humorous, I can't help feeling that there's a trace of true bitterness to it.
No rating.
Emphyrio (Part One of Two), by Jack Vance
Illustrations by Bruce Jones.
Taking up half the magazine, this initial segment begins with a bang. We witness our protagonist, Ghyl Tarvoke, held prisoner in a tower. His skull is cut open and his brain attached to a sinister device. His captors manipulate his mind, bringing him from a vegetative state to one where he is able to answer questions, but lacks the imagination to lie. The torturers want to know why he committed serious crimes before they kill him.
After this dramatic opening we go into a flashback. Ghyl is the son of a woodworker. They live on a planet that was colonized so long ago that Earth is just a legend. Centuries ago, a war devastated the place where they live. Wealthy and powerful people restored basic services and now rule as lords, collecting taxes from their underlings.
Ghyl and a friend sneak into the spaceport where the aristocrats keep their private starships.
Ghyl's father engages in the forbidden activity of duplication; that is, he builds his own device that allows him to make copies of old manuscripts. (Other forms of duplication are also illegal; everything has to be made by hand.) He eventually pays a very heavy price for his crime.
In what starts as a joke, Ghyl runs for mayor (a purely symbolic office, but one that might offer the possibility of changing the oppressive laws of the lords) under the nom de guerre of Emphyrio. This half of the novel ends just as the election is about to take place.
Vance is a master at describing exotic settings and strange cultures, and his latest work is a particularly shining example. I have failed to give you any idea of the novel's complex and detailed background. (Vance is the only SF author I know who can get away with the copious use of footnotes to explain the worlds he creates.) Ghyl and the other characters are very real, and their world seems like a place with millennia of history.
If I have to have a few minor quibbles, I might say that the novel (with the exception of the shocking opening scene) is very leisurely and episodic. Readers expecting an action-packed plot may be a bit disappointed. Personally, I found Ghyl's world fascinating.
Four stars (and maybe even leaning toward five.)
The Big Boy, by Bruce McAllister
The only other original work of fiction in this issue is a blend of science fiction and religious fantasy. Space travelers, including clergy, discover a galaxy-size, vaguely humanoid being deep in the cosmos. It manipulates stars and planets. An attempt to communicate with it yields a garbled message that seems to indicate that it is God. A clearer version of the message reveals something else.
I didn't really see the point of this story. The second version of the message isn't some big, shocking twist, but rather a slight modification of the original. (That's how I saw it, anyway, although the characters react wildly to it.)
Two stars.
On to the reprints! They all come from old issues of Fantastic, instead of the usual yellowing copies of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures.
Time Bum, by C. M. Kornbluth
The January/February 1953 issue of the magazine supplies this comedy.
Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.
A con artist rents a bungalow from a married couple. He drops hints that he's from centuries in the future. Revealing his identity as a time traveler would be a capital offense in his future world, or so he convinces them. The plan is to have them bring him a fortune in diamonds that he can supposedly duplicate for them.
Illustration by David Stone.
This is an amusing little jape. The author has a good time making fun of time travel stories and science fiction in general. (The wife is a reader of SF magazines, tearing off the covers with their scantily clad space women.) It's a minor work, and you'll see the ending coming a mile away, but it's worth a chuckle or two.
Three stars.
The Opal Necklace, by Kris Neville
The very first issue of the magazine (Summer 1952) is the source of this horror story.
Cover art by Barye Phillips and Leo Summers.
The daughter of a witch living way back in the swamp marries a man from New York City. The witch warns her that she will always be a part of the swamp. She gives her daughter a string of opals, each one of which contains one of the husband's joys.
Illustration by Leo Summers.
When the marriage inevitably falls apart, the woman turning to booze and cheap affairs, she destroys the opals, one by one. The first time, this causes the death of the man's pet dog. It all leads up to a tragic ending.
Besides being an effective chiller, this is a very well-written story with a great deal of emotional power. The woman is both victim and villain. The reader is able to empathize with her, no matter how reprehensible her actions may be.
Four stars.
The Sin of Hyacinth Peuch, by Eric Frank Russell
This grimly comic tale comes from the Fall 1952 issue.
Cover art by Leo Summers.
A series of gruesome deaths occurs in a small town in France. They all happen near a place where a meteorite fell. Only the village idiot knows what is responsible.
Illustration by Leo Summers also.
Does that sound like a comedy to you? Me neither. The basic plot is a typical science fiction horror story, but the author treats it with dry humor. Frankly, I found it in questionable taste, and not very funny.
Two stars.
Root of Evil, by Shirley Jackson
A tale from a truly great writer comes from the March/April issue.
Cover art by Richard Powers.
A man places an ad in the newspaper offering to send money to anybody who writes to him. Sure enough, folks who send in a request get the cash. We see several people react to this strange ad in different ways. At last, we learn about the fellow giving away all this loot.
Illustration by Virgil Finlay.
I was expecting a lot from the author of the superb short stories The Lottery and One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts as well as the excellent novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I didn't get it. The initial premise is interesting, but the story fizzles out at the end.
Two stars.
What If, by Isaac Asimov
The same premiere issue that gave us Kris Neville's dark story of an unhappy marriage offers this sentimental tale from the Good Doctor about a happy one.
Illustration by David Stone.
A lovey-dovey couple are on a train. A strange little man sits across from them with a box that says WHAT IF in big letters. He doesn't say a word, but he shows them a glass panel that allows them to see what would have happened if they had not met the way they did.
This isn't the most profound story ever written, but it makes for very pleasant reading. The message seems to be that some people are truly meant for each other, and that things tend to work out for the best. An optimistic point of view, to be sure, but it will probably appeal to the old softy inside all of us.
Three stars.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Hank Stine
Leiber has high praise for the dark fantasy novel Black Easter by James Blish (I agree; it's very good) and the story collection A Glass of Stars by Robert F. Young, particularly noting the latter's skill with love stories. (I agree with that also.)
Although it's not a book, the column includes an appreciation of the supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows by Hank Stine.
No rating.
Worth Spending Your Youth On?
This was a pretty good issue, despite a couple of disappointments. The Jack Vance novel is clearly the highlight. If you'd rather skip the rest of the magazine, you can always read an old literary classic.
If you're anything like me, Peyton Place is something that happened to other people. After all, last season, the first primetime soap opera was scheduled opposite Laugh In, and before that, the 9:30 PM slot in the midst of ABC's insipid Tuesday-night line-up.
But now I feel a little bad that the groundbreaking show is being taken off the air. Based on the 1956 book of the same name by Grace Metalious, the Massachusetts-set serial was salacious for the time, involving as it did a lot of S-E-X, divorce, blackmail, murder, and more. Jack Paar called it "Television's first situation orgy." Johnny Carson quipped that it was "the first TV series delivered in a plain wrapper."
Stars Diana Hyland (standing), Pat Morrow (in can), and Tippy Walker
At one point a few years ago, some 60 million folks tuned in each week for the fun. But nowadays, when the local theater is going blue/stag, and Candy is a mainstream hit ("Is Candy faithful? Only to the book!"), Peyton Place all seems a bit staid. They tried to mix things up by bringing in more teen storylines and also integrating the cast by hiring Percy Rodrigues (Star Trek's Commodore Stone) as the local doctor.
with Ryan O'Neal
Still, you can't beat Dick and Dan, and the series plummetted in the ratings (really—what were they thinking, scheduling it across from Rowan and Martin?) After 514 episodes, the show is going off the air. Which, of course, just means we'll see it endlessly in morning reruns opposite the regular soaps—and you can bet we'll get a revival sometime in the future. In the meantime…
"Goodnight, Lucy. Goodnight, Marshall Dillon. And goodnight to all you kooks on Peyton Place."
Goodnight, Johnny
by Kelly Freas
ABC at least knew when to pull the plug on its sinking stone. Analog editor John Campbell, while he did some brilliant work in the '30s and '40s, seems content to stuff his magazine with the dullest dreck that science fiction has to offer. The latest issue is Exhibit 1 for the prosecution:
Dragon's Teeth, by M. R. Anver
by Kelly Freas
A peace conference on a neutral asteroid promises to end a brutal war between humanity and the alien Cadosians. But a faction of extraterrestrials has plans to distrupt the summit by introducing a deadly virus. The question is how they'll smuggle it in…or in whom?
This is a competently put together adventure/mystery—no more, and no less. As such, it's a fine first effort from Mr. Anver, but nothing to write home about.
Three stars.
The Chemistry of a Coral Reef, by Theodore L. Thomas
Science writer and fictioneer Ted Thomas offers up a long piece on coral reefs and how they're made. For an article on stuff that takes place in our oceans, it's awfully dry. Well, at least I know now what they're made of: calcium carbonate. Good for all those fish with indigestion, I guess.
Two stars.
Operation M. I., by R. Hamblen
by Leo Summers
Three weeks of hyperspace are crushingly dull, and the intergalactic service is worried about the morale of their solo couriers, who have to endure the period without diversion. Apparently, books and booze aren't enough.
So the ship's computer on the latest FTL ship is programmed to act like a nagging mother-in-law so each pilot is more irritated than bored.
Terrible piece. One star.
Persistence, by Joseph P. Martino
by Kelly Freas
This is a sequel to the story Secret Weapon. The Terrans have now got a leg up on their war with the Arcani, now destroying 3-4x as many vessels as they are losing. However, this proportion is still below what the Big Brains in military intelligence expected. Our hero, Commander William Marshall, is certain that the aliens have developed Faster Than Light ("C+") communications and are using them to thwart our patrols.
The story is devoted to the reverse engineering of a captured Arcani corvette, tediously going through each electronic gizmo to see how it is wired and what it is wired to. Eventually, the existence (or lack) of a C+ radio will be proven.
Once again, the story is dull as dirt, and worse, poorly edited. There's an art to writing successive paragraphs using different words. Martino will repeat set phrases several times in a row, the sign of an unfiltered brain-to-typewriter stream of consciousness.
Also, women of the future still remain in the 1950's, socially.
As we saw last month, Rex Bader, last of the private dicks in the People's Capitalism of America's late 20th Century, had been tapped by no fewer than five organizations to spy on each other as Bader went off to Eastern Europe and make contacts. This passage explains it all:
He stared at the screen in disbelief.
This whole thing was developing into a farce. Roget wanted him to make an ultra-hush-hush trip into the Soviet Complex to contact his equal numbers with the eventual aim of creating a world government based on the international corporations.
Sophia Anastasis, of International Diversified industries, thought such a world government would upset the status quo to the detriment of what was once called the Mafia, and wanted all details.
John Coolidge and his group [the successor to the FBI] were afraid such changes would upset the governmental bureaucracy and the military machine and wanted to prevent it from happening.
Colonel Simonov felt the same from the Soviet viewpoint, and wanted to maintain the status quo.
Dave Zimmerman was all in favor of world government but wanted the Meritocracy which would run it to be elected from the bottom up in each corporation, rather than being appointed.
And every damned one of them thought that their part of the operation was a secret.
Once Bader gets to Czechslovakia and Romania, the book reads like typical Reynolds: historical parallels (none after 1969, of course), tourism (we learn about the national drinks of the Warsaw Pact), and mildly droll high jinks. It seems that Bader's cover is blown wherever he goes, suggesting a traitor somewhere in the works among his five employers.
There could have been a good mystery here, but it's all thrown in too little, too late. Moreover, it's clear that this two-part serial is really just the first half of a longer book.
As a result, the whole is lesser than the sum of its parts. I give this segment three stars, and three stars for the book as a whole (so far).
The Eridanians are coming! Responding from signals broadcast by Project Ozma, an alien ship has been dispatched from Epsilon Eridani. After twelve years at near light speed, the vessel is about to arrive—and the press is filled with concerns of an impending alien takeover.
It all stems from a mistranslation of their latest message, suggesting their intent is conquest rather than coexistence. In the meantime, there is a lot of Keystone Copping as the head of the Ozma IX project tries to tamp down on the paranoia.
by Kelly Freas
The best part of the story is the "universal message" broadcast by the Eridanians, hatched up by author Chapdelaine. He explains it in the story—see if you can figure it out yourself.
But in the end, the story is rather pointless and forgettable. Two stars.
Goodnight May
Doing the math, I find that April (postmarked May on the magazines) was a dreadful month for short science fiction. Not a single magazine topped 3 stars, and Analog came in at a dismal 2.3. For posterity, the rest were New Worlds (2.7), Venture (2.7), Amazing (2), Galaxy (3), and IF (3), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.7)
Even more disheartening: you could take all the 4-star works (nothing hit 5 stars this month) and barely fill a Galaxy-sized thick digest. Women wrote 20% of all the new pieces published in April, which sounds impressive until you realize that six of the works were short poems in New Worlds, all by Libby Houston.
I am already hearing rumblings about Galaxy and IF's editor Fred Pohl getting the heave-ho, and Amazing's editorial musical chairs is legendary. ABC dumped Peyton Place—is it time for someone to cancel John Campbell?
The folk-horror movement shows signs of becoming a craze, and now the Americans are in on the game. The Witchmaker is a movie that makes a virtue of its low budget, though it’s let down by some low-level misogyny and a surprising degree of prudishness.
Poster for The Witchmaker
The story involves a professor who studies psychic phenomena (Alvy Moore) and, since psychic powers are apparently vulnerable to interference by things like radio and electricity, takes a research team including himself, a reporter, his research assistant and a few students out to the backwoods of Louisiana. Their aim is to test the abilities of Anastasia, or “Tasha” (Thordis Brandt), a pretty blonde with witches in her ancestry, and apparently genuine psychic powers. They are also undeterred by the fact that someone in the area has been killing young women and draining them of their blood, which would seem a good reason to postpone the trip, but never mind. This turns out to be the work of Luther the Berserk (John Lodge), acolyte of a two-hundred-year-old witch (Helene Winston and Warrene Ott—she rejuvenates at one point in the film, hence the change in actress). Upon learning about the research team and Tasha’s powers, they resolve to add Tasha to the coven and sacrifice the rest of the researchers. The story ends with a twist which, while not unpredictable, was still fairly satisfying.
The aptly named Luther The Berserk
While the twist has caused a lot of early reviewers to compare the film to Rosemary’s Baby, I think a better comparator is actually The Devil Rides Out, given that we have a pair of older men who genuinely believe in psychic phenomena, attempting to rescue a vulnerable young person from a suspiciously international coven (the only non-White person in the story is one of the witches). Which also marks an interesting culture shift of recent years: a decade ago, this would have been a story of Science Versus Superstition, where older male authority figures would expose the “real” answer behind the witchcraft. Now, however, everyone’s a believer and witches are very real. I think people today are taking a more critical view of science and a more positive view of folk culture, and whether or not that’s a good or bad thing remains to be seen.
The main sticking point is an unexpected one. The film apparently wants to imitate British and European horror movies not just in terms of folk culture themes and making the most of a small budget, but in terms of prurient and gratuitous nudity and kinkiness. However, it also seems to be afraid of upsetting the censors too much, so we get scenes like a naked blonde running through the woods with her hands firmly clamped over her breasts so you can’t see the nipples, or the world’s tamest orgy with all whippings and rogerings taking place off-camera. There’s also a little bit of sexism in that the women in the movie are fairly obviously divided between Maggie (Shelby Grant), the Good Girl, who is “plain”, intelligent, and conservatively dressed, and Sharon (Robyn Millan) and Tasha, the Bad Girls, who frolic around in unsuitable nightwear and swimming costumes (in a swamp, in February?) and who both get stalked and punished for their sexual forwardness.
No tits please, we're Americans
In any case, I would say that this isn’t an instant classic like Witchfinder General or The Devil Rides Out, nor is it a schlocky piece aimed only at titillation and diversion. What it is, is an interesting take on folk horror from an American perspective, and worth spending a couple of shillings on. Three and a half stars.
Elsewhere in cinema, the latest offering from Tigon is, despite the presence of Hilary Dwyer as the leading lady, definitely no Witchfinder General. The Body Stealers is a tedious alien-invasion story with an unlikeable protagonist that might have made a reasonable episode of an ITC adventure series if it were half its length.
Poster for The Body Stealers
The story begins with the mysterious disappearance of eleven paratroopers while skydiving. All of them have had training for space flight, a mysterious electrical discharge happens before each disappearance, and yet it isn’t until more than halfway through the movie that someone even suggests aliens might be responsible. One paratrooper turns up but with his biology changed so that he’s not human, and a mysterious blonde named Lorna (Lorna Wilde) is wandering the local beaches late at night and distracting the chief investigator, Bob Megan (Patrick Allen)—- but she also doesn’t seem to be human. After far too much time we eventually get an explanation by a very long expository speech, which I won’t reveal too much about except to say that if you’ve seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers you’ll have worked out what was going on much earlier. Lorna takes off in the Dalek spaceship from Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 AD (no, really), and the whole thing is a waste of everyone’s time.
Bob Megan: rugged, sexy and a knitwear aficionado
This is the sort of story that, a decade earlier, might have been helmed by a Quatermass-figure scientist, but, times having changed, we now get a rugged James Bond type who chases literally anything in a skirt and uses harassment as a means of courtship, and for some reason this succeeds rather than getting him slapped and told off. There are a few witty lines in it (for instance, when Megan is asked what he wants, and he says: “A room at the Hilton”. “Try something smaller.” “Okay, a smaller room at the Hilton”). George Sanders has a rather delightful turn as a general and the cast are generally solid.
Recognise this? You should
Unfortunately, as well as the story being slow and drawn-out, the characterisation is rather difficult to believe, and motivations are opaque or contradictory. There is, for instance, a surprising amount of resistance to the logical suggestion of grounding all parachute drops until they have a decent idea of what’s happening, and the ending requires the perpetrators of the kidnappings to do a 180 degree reversal of strategy for no good plot or character reason. One secondary character (played by Neil Connery, brother of the more famous Sean) dies offscreen and no one, not even his supposed best friend, seems inclined to pursue the matter. I could have forgiven at least some of this if the movie was any fun, but it wasn’t.
One star because I am fine with schlock but not boredom.
The end may be near for the nascent would-be-state of Biafra. For two years, the Nigerian breakaway has seen its land systematically (re)taken, and the eight million Biafrans, mostly Ibo people, have been crammed into ever small regions under Biafran control—just 3,000 out of an original 29,000 square miles.
Starvation rages, killing more than gunfire. Yet the Biafrans remain unbowed, converting diesel generators to run on crude petroleum, keeping churches open (at night, anyway), and getting food via threatened air strips.
But on the 22nd, the capital and last Biafran city, Umuahia, fell to Nigerian forces. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, President of Biafra, has vowed he will continue the struggle in guerrilla fashion. Only Gabon, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Zambia have recognized the secessionist state, although tacit assistance has been provided by such diverse states as France, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and Czechoslovakia.
At this point, it's hard to imagine the Biafran experiment succeeding. But surely there must be more that we can do apart from watch helplessly. I wish I knew what it was. Support the Red Cross, I suppose.
Impending mediocrity
I don't have a great segue from that bummer of a news item. All I have is the lastest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. While it's not entirely unworthy (the opening serial is pretty good), the rest offers little respite from the bleakness of the real world:
Back in the '50s, Poul had a great series that took place on a parallel Earth. Its history was not dissimilar to ours, but wizardry replaces technology in many regards. It's a bit like Garrett's Lord D'Arcy series, but a touch sillier. The stars of the series are a magical duo comprising a werewolf and a magic-using dragoon Captain. In the latest story (a decade ago!) the two had gotten married. In the latest installment, Ginny and Steve are the proud parents of a beautiful little girl.
Unfortunately, Valeria Victrix has been born into a difficult time. Adherents of St. John, whose outwardly clement brand of Christianity hides disturbing cultist elements, are waging a war against authority and the military-industrial complex—including the defense contractor that employs Steve. The Johnnites are essentially stand-ins for the current peace movements, albeit more sinister.
The conflict with the less-than-civil resisters recedes in importance, however, when on her third birthday, Valeria is abducted by no less than the demonic forces of Hell. It is now up to Steve and Ginny to rescue their little girl before she is incurably corrupted…and to determine if the Johnnites are at all responsible!
Anderson has three main modes: crunchy, compelling science fiction; crunchy, dull-as-dirt science fiction; and lightish fantasy. This short novel, despite the dark subject matter, promises to be the most fun romp since Three Hearts and Three Lions.
Four stars so far.
The Beast of Mouryessa, by William C. Abeel
A French sculptor is commissioned to create a replica of an obscene, demonic figure, unearthed recently in the Avignon region. The original stone creature has a history of causing catastrophe to those who behold it, but the lovely matron who wants the copy seems unperturbed. Of course, the sculptor has all sorts of ill feelings and second thoughts, but he does nothing about them. In the end, he is possessed by the spirit of the thing, and awful stuff ensues.
Aside from all the sex and frequent references to the statue's enormous dong, this story is pretty old hat. Lovecraft did this kind of thing better.
Two stars.
by Gahan Wilson
London Melancholy, by M. John Harrison
A host of eerie mutants roam post-apocalyptic London in this absolutely impenetrable, unreadably purple piece.
One star.
For the Sake of Grace, by Suzette Haden Elgin
Thousands of years from now, Earth and its solar colonies have organized into a patriarchal, caste-based system. The Kadilh ban-Harihn has much cause for joy: four sons who have all passed the stringent test to become 4th degree members of the Poet caste. But he also has a hidden pain; his sister was one of the rare women to dare entry into the coveted ranks of the Poets. Her fate for failing was that of all women who fail—eternal solitary confinement.
'Unfair!' you cry? Well, at least it keeps women from trying such a foolhardy endeavor. Which is why it hits the Kadilh all the harder when he learns his youngest child, his only daughter, also has decided to try to be a Poet, a task of which she is most certainly incapable…
This is a scathing piece, a refreshing attack on sexism. I'd give it higher marks if it had included even one poem, given the theme, but I still quite liked it.
Four stars.
The Power of Progression, by Isaac Asimov
The Good Doctor explains why our current rate of population growth cannot go on—even if we manage to get off planet, that just means the universe will be clogged with humanity within the millennium.
I appreciate the doomsaying sentiment, but there comes a point when exponents become specious, a masturbatory effort in mathematics.
Three stars.
Copstate, by Ron Goulart
I used to like the tales of Ben Jolson, lead agent of the shapechanging Chameleon Corps, but they've gotten pretty tired of late. This last entry is the least. Ben is tapped to infiltrate a tightly controlled security state to retrieve a revolutionary polemic.
Goulart is capable of writing funny, light, riproaring stuff, but this one is just a bust.
Two stars.
The Flower Kid Cashes In, by George Malko
Item two in the cavalcade of anti-utopian incomprehensibility. Per a conversation I recently had with David and Kris:
Me: Can anyone explain the last story in this month's F&SF to me?
David: Not really. Aging hippie survives after the Bomb falls and sort of commits suicide by staying true to his priniciples? I think it was too concerned with being literary to mean something or be about anything.
Kris: I am not even sure if it is trying to be literary so much as "with it". But either way it seems very hollow.
Your guess is as good as mine. At least it's short. Two stars.
The Body Count
Comparing the lastest F&SF to the Biafran tragedy is probably beyond the realm of good taste. I'll just note that 2.7 stars is an inauspicious sign. However, given that the first few issues of the year were significantly better, I don't think this lapse foretells a permanent downturn.
At least some things are salvageable. See you next month.
For three years we have been entertained and informed by the finest Australian fanzine of our age, the Australian Science Fiction Review (ASFR). Edited by John Bangsund, it started with a remit to explore Australian SF but of course it has cast its net far wider than that.
Cover, ASFR 15, John Bangsund
Bangsund prints articles by some of the most thoughtful and erudite writers from Australia and worldwide, and features fascinating letters from interesting correspondents on a range of subjects. The content, whether tending to the serious or fannish, sparkles; a testament to Bangsund’s close and careful editing. ASFR has been nominated for a Hugo in each of the last two years, and its influence is felt globally.
A Fanzine Editor is a Proud, Lonely and Impoverished Thing
Now, however, Bangsund is clearly finding the fanzine not merely a financial drain, but also a personal one. It has many subscribers and agents in several countries (including Ethel Lindsay for the UK, from whom I got these copies). In Issue 18, December 1968, he features an editorial explaining that the high cost and low level of feedback he receives on the fanzine is discouraging him from continuing. But the quality of material he publishes remains very high. That same issue features an essay by Australian author George Turner on the business of writing about science fiction that I think is well worth a read by anyone who is interested in criticism.
With a Little Help from his Friends
The latest issue, #19, dated March 1969, has been edited exceptionally by John Foyster, who writes, a little peevishly:
“Although I (John Foyster) am named as editor of this issue of ASFR, it should be noted that the issue has been partly edited by John Bangsund in that his policy prevented the publication of some material I should have liked to use. Further, the size of the issue has been limited to the extent that I cannot include some articles I felt were worthwhile (over and beyond the previously-mentioned censorship). But let's not get maudlin.”
This issue is still the largest for some while, and features a smaller typeface so as to cram in more material.
Will ASFR continue? It’s clear that Bangsund is unpersuaded of the value of publishing such a serious sf-focused fanzine as ASFR has become, and would prefer the freedom of a more general title. However, two of his associates appear to be picking up the mantle. These fanzines could not be more different from each other, but both show a link to ASFR beyond just being written by regular contributors to that fanzine.
Some Like it Sercon
The first, SF Commentary, comes from Bruce Gillespie. This is issue one, and apparently Gillespie’s first fanzine! He has clearly sprung fully formed from Bangsund’s rib. This fanzine is, to be fair, rather hard to read. I don’t think he has used the best typewriter, and there are no illustrations at all!. So it is quite a struggle to read the fascinating analysis of Kurt Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titan and Cat’s Cradle by Damien Broderick, or Gillespie’s own analysis of several recent novels by Philip K. Dick. It’s well worth it though.
Cover, SF Commentary 1, Bruce Gillespie
The first issue is over sixty pages in total (a letter column is promised next issue, and I am sure he will get good letters to put in it) and features a wealth of serious science-fiction criticism. This is explained in the acknowledgements; most of the articles here were originally planned for ASFR, but the reduced frequency of that fanzine has put them here instead. Gillespie is planning to publish nine times a year; quite an ambitious schedule. You would think he would have learnt from Bangsund’s example.
But what of Fannish Nonsense? We have a Rataplan for that!
Rataplan, meanwhile, comes from Leigh Edmonds, another of the ’ASFR gang’ – and this time there is a photo of Edmonds with the other people who work on ASFR.
The 'ASFR gang' pictured in 1967 – (l-r) John Bangsund, Leigh Edmonds, Lee Hardin, John Foyster, Tony Thomas, Merv Binns and Paul J Stevens. Photographer believed to be Diane Bangsund.
This is a very much better-produced affair than SF Commentary. Leigh is not rash enough to commit to a publishing schedule but says “I intend to concern myself with fandom… If I can get quality and fannishness I will be happy.” But while the major article here is a consideration of fantasy films of the thirties, the items I enjoyed most were the satirical pieces poking fun at, in turn, Melbourne SF fandom, ASFR, and science fiction magazines. That last came via a John Foyster ‘editorial’ for ‘Stupefying Stories’, a magazine which feels like many we have all read.
Cover, Rataplan 1, John Bangsund
John Bangsund has already suggested that these two fanzines are the heirs to ASFR. They are both very different and you will need to seek them both out to be convinced, as I am, that Australian fanzine writing is in safe hands.
I warn you all that I am not the most up-to-date person when it comes to SFF. But a friend recommended this book after seeing I had a dragon-shaped object d’art, and thought I might like this. Soon after, I encountered the Traveller, who has kindly granted me a space here.
Far from our mutual friend’s reviews of its Analog run [q.v. for the plot synopsis], I found it an extremely engaging story, able to play in the waters of both science fiction and fantasy. I have occasionally run across McCaffrey’s work before, it seems—going back through reviews indicates I have indeed read one or two of the Helva stories in the past, though I have not revisited them. Not because they were bad, but like so many stories, they ended in a way that seemed comfortably complete.
In Dragonflight, not only was I engaged and fascinated the whole way through, but I wanted to reread it immediately upon finishing it. One of my favorite things was that there were so many stories, interlocking and existing beside each other. That was something that frustrated me about Dune: the characters seemed to not exist off of the page. It reminds me of a professor I had in college, pure Boasian, and he said that no people are truly illogical, but they work from a specific logic of their own. The rules that are there are not truly arbitrary, but are created for a reason, and once we understand that reasoning, we can move into asking whether the rule should be kept or not.
The author seems to be doing this as well, adding what works as need be, and removing what doesn’t. Depending on your feelings, this can be either exciting and intriguing, seeing what’s kept on versus scattered to the winds. This is a warning to the reader—Dragonflight has a variety of continuity errors, most notably between the first two sections. At least one off-page character switches gender, for instance. The threat and impact of perpetual violence comes up in the first section, but afterwards, there is a stronger emphasis on peaceful (or at least nonviolent) solutions. If you enjoyed Andre Norton’s Star Man’s Son / Daybreak – 2250 AD, I think you will enjoy this book very much.
In my opinion, what makes Dragonflight more of an SF novel than a fantasy one is how essential problems are solved. What SF truly is or is not will always be debated, but one of the main differences between SF and fantasy is based on the way things are solved. Fantasy tends to rely on outside intervention to carry the day, while SF relies on knowing how things work in order to experiment and negotiate a solution — in other words, applying the scientific method. What does it matter, then, if the characters wear tunics rather than spacesuits?
Beyond the dragons (and the watch wehrs), my favorite thing about Dragonflight was actually the various songs included in the story, and that things are largely taught through poems recited or sung. In my time, I have read many, many terrible poems crowbarred into stories, and I assure you, these are not bad at all. In fact, I have found myself singing many of the Dragonflight songs to myself since I started reading the book (to melodies of my own devise.)
Our mutual friend has made it clear what he dislikes about Dragonflight in his reviews of the Analog series, and I hope I have shed some light on what I loved about it. In the same way that the often disagreeing characters of Dragonflight compare and contrast the information that they have to contribute to the common good of their planet, I believe that our differing reviews can combine to provide a more complete picture of the book. In addition, it is my understanding that the serial omitted some of the book's material, and it's for certain that Campbell added a few editorial touches of his own—so if you're going to try Dragonflight out, please read the original!
The last we left the Doctor and company, they were at the mercy of a gang of not-particularly-swashbuckling space pirates. The first half of this serial was a rather bland affair—let’s see if the second half improves things.
In Case You Missed It
Having just been chased down a hole, the Doctor and his friends are dismayed to discover that they have not in fact found a cunning escape route from the pirates, but the entrance to a prison cell. A prison cell they’re now trapped within. And they’re not alone. The sole survivor from the beacon attack, Sorba, is in there with them. One might think that he’s going to become pivotal to the plot and their survival, but—well, you’ll see soon enough.
Meanwhile, the leader of the pirates, Caven, is beset by dissension in his crew. His subordinate, Dervish, is hesitant to travel to collect the beacon segments, fearing the Space Corps, who are also en-route. However, he’s more afraid of Caven, who has placed a remote control on his ship, and could kill him with the push of a button.
Dervish arrives at the beacon debris to find that one of the sections is missing, and remembering that Sorba had said something about intruders, Caven sends a couple of men to collect Sorba for interrogation.
These men arrive at the prison cell just in time to find the Doctor and his friends escaping with the assistance of Milo Clancey. He shoots one of them, but the other escapes, and soon the whole base is searching for the missing captives as they flee through the tunnels.
The Doctor and company make it to Madeleine Issigri’s office, where they beg for her to call the General—only to realise too late that not only is she aware of the pirates living right under her, she’s in league with them. Caven arrives to collect his captives, and Sorba attacks him. It doesn’t go well for Sorba.
Madeleine intervenes before Caven can kill the others, as she’s only in this for a little space theft, not outright murder.
Caven throws the prisoners into Madeleine’s father’s old office, and who should they find there but…Madeleine’s father, Dom Issigri. It turns out that Caven has been holding him captive all this time to use as leverage against his daughter. Who doesn’t know he’s down there. But was helping him anyway. I have to wonder if Caven fully understands the point of taking a hostage.
Having had enough of Caven’s cruelty, Madeleine appeals to Dervish, who turns out to be too much of a coward to turn against Caven and help her. She instead attempts to contact Hermack to ask for help, but Caven catches her in the act. It’s only then that he reveals to her that her father is alive and at his mercy.
And he’s escaping, with the Doctor’s help. And a little arson. There are many ways to trick a guard into entering one’s cell so you can tackle him and escape, but setting a small fire is probably the most dramatic.
Little do they realise that this time the pirates aren’t going to chase them. Caven has laid a trap, a scheme that will deal with his enemies and shake the Space Corps off his tail. The pirates have planted a remote control device on Milo’s ship, so that they can pilot him towards the stolen beacon, allowing the Space Corps to catch him ‘red-handed’. And he won’t be able to tell the Space Corps that he isn’t in control of the ship, because by the time they’re close enough to see him, he’ll be already dead, because they can remotely cut off the oxygen supply.
That’s the plan, anyway. But Jamie and Zoe lag behind, and when the Doctor doubles back for them, the ship takes off without him, almost burning him to a crisp in the exhaust. Jamie and Zoe catch up to find him lightly toasted and talking like he just gargled a tub of gravel.
Realising that his trap has failed to snare all the intended victims, Caven takes off to search the tunnels, leaving Madeleine alone with Dervish. She tries to convince him to turn against Caven as she has, but he’s in too deep and he’s too much of a coward to try.
The Doctor and company find their way to Madeleine, Jamie successfully subduing Dervish— but not without a little accident. In the scuffle, Dervish’s gun goes off, fusing the wires on the remote control unit. The Doctor manages to repair it enough to get the ship’s oxygen supply back online, but as for disabling the auto-pilot, that’s down to Clancey. Thankfully he’s good at following the Doctor’s instructions, and is soon on his way back to Tar to rescue the Doctor and company.
Drawing near, Hermack radios Clancey’s ship, and Milo gets the chance to tell him what’s really going on, that Dom Issigri is alive, and that the real villain is Caven. Hermack assures him and Madeleine that he’s coming to help.
But they’re not safe yet. If Caven can’t have access to Madeleine’s mines, nobody can. He’s setting charges on the atomic fuel stores. The moment he’s clear of the planet, he’s going to blow Madeleine’s base sky-high—and Milo’s ship won’t be fast enough to get them to safety in time.
Hermack tries to intervene to stop Caven before he can get far enough away to detonate the device, but Caven, seeing the approach of Hermack’s attack ships, threatens to detonate the bomb early and take them with him.
For the people stuck down on the planet, their only hope is for the Doctor to defuse the bomb. All they can do is watch from outside the radiation room as the Doctor slowly, methodically, sets about his work. Hitchcock, it is not.
The Doctor succeeds just as Caven pulls the trigger on the detonator, and then the serial is very abruptly over. Hermack’s ships blow up Caven, Madeleine reunites with her father off-screen, and Milo offers the Doctor and company a ride back to the TARDIS. Considering his driving, Jamie would rather walk.
A Lack Of Flavour
There are two fundamentals missing from this story, two things which should have reinforced one another and the story itself: tension and an emotional core. The ingredients for both are all there, but feel like an afterthought.
Madeleine’s separation from her father should be a lot more emotionally impactful than it actually is. I feel like we do feel the pain of the separation from his perspective, but not from hers. Perhaps because the first time we learn of the separation, it’s part of a dispassionate information dump between Madeleine and Hermack. As far as she’s concerned, he’s dead and has been for years. There’s a lot more emotional distance for her. Yet for Dom, the trauma is ongoing. This mismatch could be played for tragedy, but the narrative doesn’t do anything with it. Worst of all, we don’t even get to see their reunion, for what little catharsis they might have been able to wring out of it. And if the serial doesn’t care enough to show them being reunited, why should I care that they were?
As for the lack of tension, it’s harder to put my finger on. I think this might be more of a directorial issue than a writing issue. Or perhaps a bit of both. There’s something dispassionate about the entire story, possibly caused by the heavy, characterless exposition in the first half. I just don’t feel what the serial wants me to feel.
A prime example is the climactic scene where the Doctor has to defuse the bomb. Sure, we know they’re not actually going to blow up the entire main cast, but other stories have managed to deliver ample tension despite that. I’m told that time is running out but I don’t feel it, that’s the difference. It’s all about the feeling. Bomb disposal scenes should be positively nail-biting but this one just…isn’t. It’s dry.
That’s it. That’s why I don’t like this serial: it’s the television equivalent of bran flakes.
Final Thoughts
How can something with a title as promising as "THE SPACE PIRATES" (Pirates! In SPACE!!!) be such a dull affair? The most it has going for it are a few cute moments between the Doctor and Jamie. They’re basically an old married couple at this point. At least, they certainly bicker like one.
I do hope that the next serial is better. It’s not just the last in the current series. It’s Mr. Troughton’s last spin in the TARDIS as the current Doctor.
Here’s the May Amazing, the latest installment of the dreary soap opera that this magazine has become. The well-qualified Ted White is the new editor, the fourth in ten issues. Though he’s listed as Managing Editor, and Sol Cohen as Editor and Publisher, White’s editorial makes it clear that he will be running the magazine—within the constraints of Cohen’s policies, of course, most notably the reprint policy.
by Johnny Bruck
As a debut issue, this one does not impress, but that’s probably not a fair judgment. Given the abrupt departure of White’s predecessor Barry Malzberg, it was likely a scramble to get any issue at all together from available parts. The fiction contents include an Edmond Hamilton story in a series that has run in Amazing and Fantastic for several years, publication no doubt foreordained; one very short new story; and the usual heavy load of reprints, all from the 1950s consistent with recent practice. The non-fiction includes, as usual of late, a Laurence Janifer movie review (Barbarella—he likes it!) and a Leon Stover “Science of Man” article. The only identifiable change is a letter column. The book review department is missing, one hopes temporarily, since it has been one of the magazine’s brighter aspects.
As for future plans, White provides a rather carefully argued editorial, which starts by analogizing the “New Thing” in science fiction to the ongoing innovations in popular music, noting that despite the “sudden flowering” of rock music, it isn’t forgetting its roots. After some commentary on the New Thing, sympathetic but cautionary (“One J.G. Ballard can be important, but ten little Ballards?”), White asserts that most of the “New Wave” writers have not neglected their predecessors, citing Zelazny and Delany, noting particularly that Delany has absorbed and transformed old Planet Stories-style space opera plots. “It is my conviction that the science fiction field needs a magazine in which the old and the new can exist side by side, each thriving from its proximity to the other. And that is what I intend for Amazing: Something of the old (the reprints) and of the new (the best of the new writers). . . .” And he concludes by adding that this issue’s “Star Kings” novelet by Edmond Hamilton exemplifies exploration of the genre’s roots—but next issue we can expect a “new and very different novel by Robert Silverberg.”
It’s all gracefully done, touching the necessary bases with plausible conviction, and starkly contrasting with Harry Harrison’s pandering editorial of February 1968, which made essentially the same substantive points but which struck me as “a disappointingly smarmy exercise in having it both ways.”
The letter column is divided among sober commentary on current SF, the pleasures of letter columns and fanzine reviews, and a quite long letter contesting Stover’s “Science of Man” article War and Peace, which White says he cut down from 14 pages. Shades of Brass Tacks! This feature will require some tightening up but White clearly takes it seriously. As for the reference to fanzine reviews, White promises “fan features” in both Amazing and Fantastic.
And up front—though looking backward—is another cliched cover illustration by Johnny Bruck. Last issue, fellow Journeyer Cora Buhlert wished that Amazing would use the good Bruck covers rather than the dull ones. Yes! If there are any.
The lead story is Edmond Hamilton’s “short novel” (33 pages), The Horror from the Magellanic, latest in his series of sequels to his 1947 novel The Star Kings. I won’t repeat my previous jaundiced comments on the whole enterprise, but will leave it at a couple of samples:
“ ‘Highness, they’ve come out of the Marches. The Counts’ fleet. They’re more than twice as strong as we expected . . . and they’re coming full speed toward Fomalhaut!’
“Chapter Two
“Gordon felt a chilling dismay. The Counts of the Marches were throwing everything they had into this. And whether their gamble succeeded or not, in the dark background brooded the unguessable purposes and menace of the H’harn.”
And:
“. . . Gordon sat for a long time looking past the moving lights and the uproar and clamorous confusion of the great city, toward the starry sky. A star kingdom might fall, Narath might realize his ambition and sit on the throne of Fomalhaut, and he, John Gordon, and Lianna might be sent to their deaths. And that would be a world tragedy as well as tragedy for them.
“But if the H’harn succeeded, that would be tragedy for the whole galaxy, a catastrophe of cosmic dimension. Thousands of years before they had come from the outer void, bent on conquest, and only the power of the Disruptor, unloosed by Brenn Bir, had driven them back . Out there in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud they had brooded all this time, never giving up their purpose, filtering back gradually in secret plotting with the Counts, plotting with Narath, making ready some new tremendous stroke.
“Doomsday had come again, after those thousands of years.”
by Dan Adkins
To my taste, this is all an idea whose time has passed. No disrespect to Hamilton—a working professional writing in a mode he virtually invented—especially since he has shown he can work quite capably in styles other than this bombastic costume drama (see his 1960 novel The Haunted Stars). Three stars, acknowledging the craft involved, even if I can’t get interested.
Yesterdays, by Ray Russell
The new short story (very short), Ray Russell’s Yesterdays, couples two ancient themes, time running backwards and mad scientists; it’s clever and facile, as one would expect from the long-time fiction editor of Playboy, but no more. Three stars.
The longest story in the issue is Murray Leinster’s The Invaders, from the April/May 1953 issue of Amazing, the first in its short-lived experiment in paying more in order to get better material from more well-known authors. Leinster shared the contents page with Heinlein, Sturgeon, and Bradbury. Unfortunately his story begins well but undermines itself, unusually for this professional of decades’ standing.
Uncredited
The scene is set in terms of purest Cold War paranoia. The protagonist, surveying in Greece, flees an unacknowledged incursion by Bulgarian soldiers, and the author observes:
“It was not the time for full-scale war. Bulgaria and the other countries in its satellite status were under orders to put a strain upon the outside world. They were building up border incidents and turmoil for the benefit of their masters. Turkey was on a war footing, after a number of incidents like this. Indo-China was at war. Korea was an old story. Now Greece. It always takes more men to guard against criminal actions than to commit them. . . This was cold war.”
In the midst of this covert crisis, the protagonist discovers powerful evidence of infiltration by extraterrestrials in human guise—but what to do? Who will believe him? Leinster builds an atmosphere of suspense and suspicion at first, but it is quickly dissipated by hints that something different and more benign is going on, and by the end there’s no suspense or surprise. Three stars, barely; it’s at least slickly readable, as usual for Leinster.
King of the Black Sunrise, by Milton Lesser
Milton Lesser’s King of the Black Sunrise is an entirely more rancid kettle of fish. It’s from Amazing, May 1955, in the midst of the Howard Browne/Paul Fairman era of calculated formulaic mediocrity, and shows it. It reads like the result of a barroom bet over how many egregious cliches the author could cram into a single story.
Kent Taggert, fugitive from justice on murder charges (but of course he’s innocent), is tracked down on the obscure planet Argiv by a woman who wants to hire him for a dangerous assignment. “I looked at her for the first time. She was beautiful. So damned beautiful and so damned sure of herself. I felt like poking her one.” A bit later: “I could smell her perfume, not the kind that slams two sexy fists into your nostrils but the subtle kind, like the girls can buy only on Earth.”
Uncredited
The woman (named Helen, we later learn) discloses that the World Bureau of Investigation is on his trail, and like clockwork, a guy “who was trying too hard not to look like law” shows up at the bar where this conversation is occurring. Taggert decides he’d better take Helen’s proposition—to guide her party to find and plunder the treasure of the Black Sunrise.
See, Argiv has three suns—per the natives, the Green God, the Yellow God, and (“greatest of all”) the Purple God. They all rise and set at different times, but occasionally they are all below the horizon at the same time. That’s the Black Sunrise, even though it’s really a sunset. During the Black Sunrise, the barrier to the natives’ treasure cave opens up, and new offerings are deposited to make sure the three Gods come back. No one who has sought to steal this treasure has emerged alive.
So our freebooters hire some native bearers (“big flabby purple-skinned Argivians”) and march into the jungle (“King Solomon’s Mines, a hundred parsecs out in deep space,” muses Cotton, the hotheaded jerk of the party). But soon enough the bearers become fearful and desert, and the humans must push on without much of their equipment.
It goes on in similar vein, but recounting it is even more tedious than reading it. One star.
Wish It Away, by Frank Freeman
Frank Freeman’s Wish It Away (Fantastic, January-February 1954) is a jokey vignette so inane it almost hurts to describe it. Protagonist Mervin sees a monster every night, psychiatrist tells him to “wish it away,” next night the psychiatrist sees the monster, who says, “Mervin sent me. I hope it’s all right.” Now nobody else has to read it. One star.
Race-Zoology and Politics, by Leon E. Stover
The “Science of Man” article by Leon E. Stover suffers the faults of its predecessors, magnified. Race-Zoology and Politics is an outright polemic, with Stover taking up the cause of Carleton S. Coon, author of The Origin of the Races, who was denounced as a racist a few years ago by the president of the American Anthropological Association. Stover says Coon “has simply become a ‘non-person’ to the profession,” but: “It is a dead certainty that Coon sometime in the future will be rehabilitated and recognized for the great work he has done, which has been to complete the uncompleted work of Darwin.”
Well, maybe. Stover proceeds to argue Coon’s case about the evolution of human physical types in his familiar assertively dogmatic fashion. This one-sided partisan presentation concerning what is apparently a hot ongoing argument in the profession is of little use to the lay reader trying to understand more about the underlying science. Not rated—it’s just out of place here.
Summing Up
This is the most discouraging issue of Amazing in recent memory. The magazine continues to limp along under the weight of the reprint policy, and this issue’s batch of them is the worst in some time. Notably, the original notion of reacquainting the current SF readership with forgotten classics of the field—or at least interesting period pieces—has largely been lost as the reprints have come more frequently from Amazing’s more recent periods of outright mediocrity, mostly ranging from routine to awful. Will yet another new editor be allowed to make it better?
![[May 18, 1969] Whirr Hum Bang Bang (Doctor Who: The War Games [Parts 1-4])](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/690518deathsentence.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[May 16, 1969] Strange Dreams (May Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/690516covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[May 10, 1969] Youth (June 1969 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/COVERSMALL.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[April 30, 1969] Eulogies (May 1969 <i>Analog</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/690430analogcover.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[April 28, 1969] Cinemascope: Witchmaker, Witchmaker, Make Me A Witch: "The Witchmaker" (a movie) and "The Body Stealers" (a flick)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/690428posters.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
Poster for The Witchmaker
No tits please, we're Americans
Poster for The Body Stealers
Bob Megan: rugged, sexy and a knitwear aficionado
Recognise this? You should![[April 26, 1969] Downbeat (May 1969 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/690424coverfsf.jpg?resize=667%2C372&ssl=1)
![[Apr. 20, 1969] Are Phoenixes Rising from ASFR's Ashes?](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/690418coverasfr15.png?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[April 18, 1969] A new look at dragons… (Anne McCaffrey's <i>Dragonflight</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/690418coverdragonflight.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[April 14, 1969] My Least Favourite Kind Of Cereal (<i>Doctor Who</i>: The Space Pirates [Parts 4-6])](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/690414justuseyourimagination.jpg?resize=672%2C372&ssl=1)
![[April 10, 1969] Low (May 1969 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/amz-0569-cover.png?resize=490%2C372&ssl=1)
