![[January 8, 1970] Slow Sculpture, Fast reading (the February 1970 <i>Galaxy Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/700108galaxycover-672x372.jpg)
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
by Gideon Marcus
A little off the top
And so it begins. For eight years, NASA enjoyed an open budget spigot and, through persistence and endless shoveling of money (though a fraction of what's spent on defense, mind you), got us to the Moon. Now the tap has been cut to a trickle, and the first casualties are being announced.
Apollo manager George Low at a press conference on the 4th
Of the 190,000 people employed at the space agency, a whopping 50,000 are going to get the axe before the end of the year. Saturn V production is being halted. Lunar missions are going down to a twice-per-year cadence (as opposed to the six in thirteen months we had recently).
Apollo 20, originally scheduled to land in Tycho crater in December 1972, has been canceled. Astronauts Don Lind, Jack Lousma, and Stuart Roosa now get to cool their heels indefinitely. Apollos 13-16 will go up over the next two years followed by "Skylab", a small orbital space station built from Saturn parts. Then we'll get the last three Apollo missions.
After that… who knows? If only the Soviets had given us more competition…
Oh, and in the silly season department:
On the 6th, Columbia University's Dr. Gary V. Latham, seismologist and principal seismic investigator for Apollo program, withdrew his proposal that an atomic bomb be detonated on the Moon. You'll recall Apollo 12 sent the top half of Intrepid into the lunar surface so the seismometers Conrad and Bean had emplaced could listen to the echoes and learn about the Moon's interior.
Latham got some pretty harsh criticism of his idea, so he dialed things back, suggesting NASA should find way to hit the Moon hard enough to create strong internal reverberations. Let's hope they don't use Apollo 13…
A sampling from the upper percentiles
The news may be dour on the space front, but the latest issue of Galaxy is, in contrast, most encouraging!
by Jack Gaughan, illustrating "Slow Sculpture"
The Shaker Revival, by Gerald Jonas
In the early 1990s, America has become a hollow shell, spiritually. All of the worst elements of our modern day have amplified: the hippies have sold out to become consumers, Black Americans are confined to walled Ghettoes, kids are dropping out in growing multitudes.
Into this era, a movement is born—the New Shakers. They live the Four Noes: No hate. No war. No money. No sex.
a riff on American Gothic by Jack Gaughan
This hero of this tale, such as there is one, is a journalist who is doing a series of interviews on the movement. As time goes on, we learn that he is also tracking down his missing son, whom he believes has been inducted by the growing cult.
It's fascinating stuff, but there's no end, nor is the piece indicated as "Part One of [N]". On the other hand, it is concluded with "MORE TO COME", which is less dispositive than it might be since that phrase gets used often in the story proper.
I'm going to give it four stars on the assumption that we're going to see more stories in this world a la Silverberg's Blue Fire series. If this turns out to be a literary cul de sac, then we can drop the score retroactively.
Slow Sculpture, by Theodore Sturgeon
by Jack Gaughan
Ted Sturgeon can write.
There are some stories your read, and you just know it's going to be superlative. I've felt guilty these last few months, handing out five-star reviews so sparingly, wondering if my standards had gotten too high. And then I read something that is truly superior, and I realize that, for five stars to mean anything, it's got to be saved for the very best.
I shan't spoil things for you. It's about a man and a woman, the former an engineer, the latter a cipher, both troubled. It involves electricity and bonsai and an understated romance (no one writes romance like Ted Sturgeon), and it is the best thing I've read in a dog's age.
Five stars and a warm glow.
Sleeping Beauty, by A. Bertram Chandler
by Jack Gaughan
Another bi-month, another sequel, this one involving Lieutenant Grimes in command of the Adder courier ship. As a result of his last adventure, Grimes is (supposed to be) no longer in the passenger business. Instead, he is sent to a nearby star to meet with an insectoid Shari queen. Unfortunately, the cargo they ask him to transport is…a pupate Shari princess.
This is all fine and good, so long as the nascent queen remains in cold stasis. A power outage causes her to hatch, however, and she soon has the crew in her thrall. Worse, she has increasing interracial designs on the young Lieutenant!
Yet another pleasant but unremarkable adventure. We're definitely going to see a fix-up Ace Double half, I'm sure.
Three stars.
The Last Night of the Festival, by Dannie Plachta
by Jack Gaughan
Two archetypes, Dawn and Dusk, walk through a macabre parade filled with hedonistic and gory spectacles. Each scene is punctuated by an italicized interstitial with some oblique reference to Nazi Germany. The story is illustrated like a picture book such that the text only fills perhaps a third of the page.
Like much of Plachta's work, it's an abstract and abstruse piece. Are the two on their way to Hell? Do they represent actual people? I'd appreciate it more if I knew what he was trying to say.
Two stars.
Downward to the Earth (Part 3 of 4), by Robert Silverberg
by Jack Gaughan
Continues the journey of Edmund Gunderson toward the mist country of the planet he once administered as a mining colony. The key beats include a reunion with his lover, Seema, who stayed behind when he left. She has become enamored with the planet, surrounding her station with a garden of native life. She is also caring for her husband, Kurtz, who was horribly distorted by his attempt to participate in the Rebirth ceremonies of the elephantine indigenous Nildoror.
Another key beat is his entry into the misty cold of the temperate zone. It is implied that Rebirth involves the swapping of consciousnesses between the Nildoror and the simian Sulidoror, the other intelligent race on the planet. We learn that Gunderson plans to emulate Kurtz—to offer himself as a Rebirth candidate as a sort of expiation for his sins against the indigenes.
This section is more episodic and Heart of Darkness than the prior ones, and it left me a bit cold. I do appreciate how much time Silverberg has spent developing a truly alien world, however, and the anti-colonialist sentiment is welcome. I just have trouble relating to or even buying the characters, and that deliberate abstraction, distancing, gives the whole affair a shambling sleep-walk feel to it.
If that's your bag, you'll love it. For me, we're at three stars for this installment.
After They Took the Panama Canal, by Zane Kotker
America is conquered by the Soviets. Rape, re-education, and reduction ensue.
All this is told compellingly from the point of view of Myra, a not particularly bright (by design) woman, who is selected to be a consort to several conquerors, and to bear several of their children. In the end, she helps lead a revolt of sorts.
I cannot tell the sex of the author from the name, but the style is unlike those employed by any male authors I know. In any event, the narrative is reminiscent of 1954's A Woman in Berlin, a harrowing autobiographical account of a journalist in Germany's capital when the Russians came.
Four stars.
Sunpot (Part 1 of 4), by Vaughn Bodé
Here we've got a tongue-in-cheek space adventure starting Captain Belinda Bump, who for some reason is topless throughout the strip. Actually, it seems quite natural to go nude in space—after all, Niven's Belters are nudists. However, prurience seems intended: Bump is referred to as "Nectar Nipples" and "Wobble Boobs", and the overall style feels something like a black and white version of what fills the final pages of Playboy each month.
In this short installment, Captain Bump runs across the next Apollo mission. High jinks ensue.
The art is fun, and I want to like the characters, but Bodé needs a new letterer. Maybe he can borrow Sol Rosen from Marvel.
Three stars.
Doing the math
While nothing in this magazine quite hits the highs of Sturgeon, and Plachta keeps swinging and missing (no one I've talked to has managed to decipher Ronnie's intent), it's still a pleasant read from front to back. I have a suspicion Galaxy will outlive Apollo.
That's something, at least!
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
