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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 24, 1970] Sex and the Single Writer: New Worlds, March 1970

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by Fiona Moore

This month has seen a few positive developments. In news of the former British Empire, the world welcomes the new Cooperative Republic of Guyana. Guyana (formerly British Guyana) had achieved independence in 1966, but now the country has completely severed governing ties with the U.K., exchanging a Governor General for a ceremonial President.  The South American nation is also officially pursuing a somewhat socialistic path, introducing cooperative elements to the economy.  May she continue to be a leading member of the Commonwealth!

Black-and-white photograph of a Black man speaking in front of an audience outdoors.
Former President Forbes Burnham addresses a crowd regarding his plan for a Cooperative Republic in 1969

Meanwhile, Miss Ono is back in the news, as the owner of the London Arts Gallery has been charged with corrupting morals for exhibiting John Lennon’s etchings, which include lithographs of himself and his wife in coitus. I suppose we’ll get to see just how far the Permissive Society goes.

Black-and-white photograph of people standing in front of framed drawings.
A crowd at the Gallery examines Lennon's art

Which brings us neatly to New Worlds, who seem to be courting similar controversy, or attempting to, anyway. The front cover this month is a file-box of erotic pictures with the heading Does Sex Have A Future? This gives the impression that New Worlds are trying to restore their flagging fortunes by going back to basics: shock the Tories by talking about sex.

Cover of New Worlds, March 1970. Title text white on red background, with three headers in black text. A photograph of a file box of documents on sexual subjects.
Artist/designer uncredited

My immediate fear is, of course, that it will be New Worlds business as usual, full of Philip Roth pastiches and wish fulfilment fantasies on the part of frustrated young white men. Fortunately the resulting issue is better than that. Most of the stories are light on the titillation (if indeed any is present), and heavy on the use of SF to explore the more complex and disturbing aspects of sex.

Lead-In

Mostly highlighting the Sex! theme of the issue, and promoting the Ballard story, so pretty much as usual.

The Sex Machine by Ian Watson

Image from Ian Watson's "The Sex Machine" showing a horizontal female mannequin with cylindrical breasts.
Artist uncredited

Watson is emerging as the new darling of New Worlds. However, I don’t really mind the recent overexposure, as his work has thus far been refreshing and exciting. This one is a really disturbing story about a sentient vending machine for sex, casually used and vandalised in misogynous ways. Five stars.

Agatha Blue by Hilary Bailey

Art for "Agatha Blue" by Hilary Bailey, showing a collage of shop-fronts advertising Durex condoms
Artist uncredited

Another standout story and another one exploring the misogyny of everyday life. An alien being, curious about human life, inhabits the body of a mentally ill woman; the alien is from an implied-to-be-gender-egalitarian society and finds what she discovers on Earth to be shocking and frustrating. Also five stars.

Princess Margaret’s Facelift by JG Ballard

Art for "Princess Margaret's Facelift" by JG Ballard, showing a female face made up of a collage of photographs of facial features
Art by Charles Platt

Fairly standard Ballard fare, using the clinical description of a facelift to criticise the beauty industry and our attractiveness standards for famous (and non-famous) women. I found it a bit too similar to his story "Coitus 1980" a couple of issues ago, however. Two stars.

Does Sex Have A Future? By John Landau

Image for "Does Sex Have a Future" by John Landau, a collage of newspaper advertisements and headlines about sex.
Artist uncredited

Clearly the answer is “yes”, or we're doomed as a species, but Landau argues that it will become increasingly commodified and solipsistic, due to the combination of technological advances and increasing permissiveness. He imagines a future where a man might never physically meet his partner, but have sex with her through videophones and customised artificial genital-substitutes. It doesn’t sound to me like it’ll catch on. Three stars.

Cinnabar Balloon Tautology by Bob Franklin

A surrealist/absurdist piece, where the unnamed narrator takes a balloon trip with a man and some chickens. They eat eggs and play chess. I suppose it could be about the banality and absurdity of daily life. Two stars.

High in Sierra by Reg Moore

Art for High in Sierra by Reg Moore, a photograph of a jungle
Art by Gabi Naseman

A short vignette. A traveller on an island visits an Indian reservation and is implored to stay, but leaves and regrets it, seeing the reservation as the future. I suppose it’s saying that we should aim for a happy multicultural society that doesn’t depend on capitalism or technology, and yet we fail to achieve it? Anyway, two stars.

Front and Centaur by James Sallis

Art for "Front and Centaur" by James Sallis, a line drawing of a unicorn standing in front of a stand of rushes which conceals a walrus. It makes sense if you read the story.
Art by R. Glyn Jones

Surrealist humour. Two American writers come to London and have a relationship with a woman named Berenice who leaves them for a unicorn. A bit sophomoric. Two stars.

Computer 70: Dreams and Lovepoems by D.M. Thomas

Art for Computer 70: Dreams and Lovepoems by D.M. Thomas. A blurred image of a white smiling human face.
Art by Gabi Naseman

As the title indicates, this is advanced and experimental poetry by Thomas, on the themes of love, sex and/or technology. Some of them are really very good but the whole thing went on a little too long for me. Three stars.

The Terminal by Michael Butterworth

Art for The Terminal by Michael Butterworth. A line drawing of a body in a smashed car.
Art by Allan Stephanson

Short vignette/prose poem about a car accident. I think Ballard might have started a trend. I do like Butterworth’s imagery though. Three stars.

Edward at Breakfast by Yannick Storm

Short modernist piece about a man drinking coffee and ruminating on his unsatisfactory relationship, and I suspect his wife leaves him in the end. Didn’t really stick with me. Two stars.

Nest Egg by Sandra Dorman

Art for Nest Egg by Sandra Dorman. A line drawing of a chicken contemplating an egg with a bow around it and the legend HAPPY on it, while another chicken dances in the background.
Art by Ivor Latto

Good heavens, a second woman in the magazine! And one who appears to be actually a woman and not a pseudonym for one of the male regulars! It’s a rather good short story, satirising domestic and consumer culture through paralleling the life of a suburban woman with that of a battery hen. I’m still not entirely enthralled with the way women writers for New Worlds tend to be pigeonholed into the domestic satire/critique genre, but this was a good enough story. Four stars.

Books

William Barclay complains that bad books sell better than good ones; Michael Dempsey gets sarcastic about a volume of art criticism; Joyce (Not Actually A Woman) Churchill reads some nonfiction; John T. Sladek thinks about voting and Peter White finds a social-breakdown novel a little unoriginal.

Music

Ralph T. Castle likes the new album by the Mothers of Invention, but is pretty scathing about everything else that comes out this month. Having recently been subjected, along with the entire campus, to the debut album of Black Sabbath courtesy of an undergraduate playing it at top volume on the fourth floor of Founders Building, I share his disapproval. We should never have let the college go co-educational.

Next month I’m off for a fieldwork trip to the Republic of China (Formosa), where I can update you all on the latest exciting developments in the lives of Chiang Kai-Shek and Madame Chiang! The next issue of New Worlds will be its 200th, and I’m interested to see what they will do to celebrate this milestone.

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


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 24, 1969] The Wind That Shakes The Snottygobbles O: New Worlds December 1969

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Tune in at 12:45 pm Pacific for LIVE splashdown coverage of Apollo 12!

Photo portrait of Fiona Moore. She is a white woman with long curly dark blonde hair. She has glasses and is wearing a light blue blouse under a sleeveless green velvet vest.
by Fiona Moore

Once again, greetings from London. The big news this month is that Britain is now a space power! Yes, thanks to the launch of the Skynet 1-A satellite, we now have our very own presence in orbit. Can regular rocket launches from Woomera be far behind?

BW photograph of Skynet 1A satellite. It is cylindrical with solar panels making out all of its visible shape.
Skynet 1-A is GO!

In news that’s closer to home, Royal Holloway College has acquired a colour television for the student lounge, and I’ve been taking advantage of my position as Staff Advisor to the Film Club to make use of it. The students’ new favourite programme is a delightfully surreal children’s stop-motion SF tale called The Clangers, featuring aliens that look like pink mice and live on an asteroid. I much prefer it to Monty Python, myself. One of my more enterprising students has worked out a knitting pattern to make her own; I’m sure an official one will be not long in coming. I shall keep an eye on the Radio Times.

Photo from the show. Standing on a desert grey ground, pink mice-shaped aliens with red and gold vests are looking up and raising their arms. There are a few stars visible in the sly. The aliens seems to be made out of fabric.The Clangers, I love them all

On to this month’s, sadly rather thin, issue of New Worlds. Sadly, Britain’s new space-faring ways are not reflected in the magazine’s content. I tend to like New Worlds best when it’s being a SF magazine with a literary sensibility, but this month it is thinking of itself as a literary magazine with a few weird or surreal touches, so I found this issue disappointing. I even found myself missing the Jerry Cornelius segment!

Cover of New Worlds for December 1969. There is the shape of a person with unkempt hair in black on yellow. The cover reads: New Worlds Number 196 3s 6d Special new writers issue Plus: Ballard on Hitler Sladek on God Harrison on Pot Moorcock on Neophiliacs Platt on the Underground & more!Cover of New Worlds for December 1969

Although it is advertised as a “new writers’ issue”, only two new writers are actually included. Once again, book reviews take up almost a third of the publication. There is no art this issue, only photographs, and by only two photographers, which makes me wonder if they’re saving money by not commissioning drawings.

Their 1970 preview advert suggests they should be back in more SF territory with the next issue, which purports to “look ahead to 1980”, and I hope that’s not wrong.

Lead-in

A short one this issue, mostly highlighting the two new writers, C.R. Clive and Michael Biggs, and encouraging people to buy the abovementioned 1970 first issue, promising us Brian W. Aldiss, Pam Zoline and Thomas M. Disch as well as the usual suspects. We all know how well that went last time, so I’m not holding my breath.

Rise and Fall by Marek Obtulowicz

BW photograph of a man with closed eyes. He seems to be sleeping.Photo by Gabi Nasemann

A man named Lykke goes on a few dates with his neighbour, Janet. They have sex and a lot of rather pretentious conversations about autumn leaves. It’s all really rather banal. I struggled to see the point of it all. Two stars.

Hemingway by Michael Biggs

As the title suggests, a Hemingway pastiche about a reporter going to Vietnam. It’s a skilful enough evocation of Hemingway’s style and fairly exciting, and I suppose it’s got the subtext of comparing the current ongoing, seemingly neverending, conflict with the wars Hemingway himself covered. I’m not a huge Hemingway fan but it at least held my attention. No illustrations. Three stars.

Graphics and Collages by Ian Breakwell

Illustration by Ian Breakwell A collage with patterned paper, BW photographs and a text in capital letters covering the whole piece. The text reads: Follow my lead said the old electrician have a stake in the wrecked roomOne of the better collages

As the title suggests: collages of text and pictures forming illustrated short-short stories or prose poems. A portrait of squalor, a joke about an electrician, something about sports and physical culture, a factual article about skin grafts juxtaposed with images of radios and televisions, a piece of what looks like found poetry about business. As with a lot of these things it didn’t really appeal to me, though apparently it appeals to the editors of New Worlds. Two stars.

The Last Awakening by C.R. Clive

Photo by Gabi Naseman BW photograph of a white man. He's looking down to the left of the picture.Photo by Gabi Nasemann

This is the only story this issue that could really be described as SF, a postapocalyptic narrative mostly involving a forty-four-year-old man leching over a teenage girl with the excuse that they’re the only ones left alive. If I didn’t know the author was 27 I would have put it down to wish fulfilment. The prose is pretty good, with some nicely evocative touches about the postapocalyptic landscape, but I wish it had been put in the service of something less predictable. Two stars.

The Wind in the Snottygobble Tree Part II (a Jack Trevor Story)

Photo by Roy Cornwall BW photograph of a street. There are houses and vehicles. A pedestrian is crossing the street in the background.Photo by Roy Cornwall

Not much of an improvement on part I, really, other than that there’s less improbable sex and more time devoted to making it ambiguous whether our protagonist, Marchmont, is a secret agent or just an innocent caught in the crossfire. Apparently it’s to be continued next month. I can’t say I’m terribly looking forward to it. One star.

Book Reviews

Our esteemed editor has told me that I don’t need to review the book reviews, so I won’t go into too much detail about these. However, there are a couple this issue that are worth checking out. J.G. Ballard reviews Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, treating it as a psychological portrait of a man obsessed with hygiene and pseudo-biology. Elsewhere, John T. Sladek reviews Erich von Daaniken’s Chariots of the Gods, getting more and more scathing as he gets further and further into the weeds; as someone who absolutely loathes that book and rues the impact it has had on some of our more impressionable undergraduates, I giggled all the way through it. Finally, Michael Moorcock has a go at The Neophiliacs, which is somewhat more long-winded than Sladek’s review of von Daaniken but no less scathing.

Advert for John and Yoko's Wedding Album. BW purple tinted photograph of Ono and Lennon in front of a flight of stairs. They are looking at the camera and surrounded by people in suits.Advert for John and Yoko's Wedding Album, because I can.

In closing, I shall torment the Yoko Ono anti-fan club in my audience by revealing that the last page is an advert for her and John Lennon’s Wedding Album. Sorry, people; she’s here to stay. I understand that her husband is handing back his MBE in protest at the British government’s positions on Biafra and Vietnam. Sadly, I don’t think it’ll make much difference.

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


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