ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Feb 1971

ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Feb 1971

The second issue in my ANALOG PLUS 50.

I was neither bored nor disappointed by my first foray in the Analog vault, as it were. So I decided to continue with this venture. As a reminder, I read these with an eye toward televising the stories. No, I'm not a producer. I'm a fan that sees so much poorly-written sci-fi developed for TV (particularly anthology shows), when there are so many existing stories that can mined, and, if necesary, updated for the science and technology, or to make the cast more diverse.

In this issue:

The Editorial: "Traditioanl Values", by John. W. Campbell. It starts with "Any fundamentally sound idea can be carried too far and become a fanaticism -- and the essense of any fanaticism is, simply, that there is One One Right Way and We've Got It." I can hear echoes of current events in the background even though this is 50 years old.

Applied to science, a researcher who works solely in a lab might start to believe that only labratory evidence is sound data. But this is really limiting is some fields of study.

Serial: "The World Menders" by Lloyd Biggle, Jr., with an illustration byKelly Freas, showing a man seated in a chair, showing a long curved whip, a naked man holding a skull, and a backdrop of pyramids, the Sphinx and buildings of various architectural styles. The caption reads, That a planet's culture had problems was obvious -- but finding out what the root nature of the problem was, so it could be cured, was NOT easy!

This Part 1 of 3, so I chose to wait to read this. I may do a separate entry for two or three serials.

The Analytical Library: The top five stories from November 1970. Apparently, lower values are better? I may have misunderstood this last month. Two of them are Gordon Dickson and Vernor Vinge. The other names I don't recognize.

Short Story: "Wrong Attitude" by Joseph Green, with an illustration by Vincent di Fate, showing a man in full spacesuit, carrying a briefcase or box, on a lunar (or similar) landscape. A ship is resting behind him, along with something that looks like a helicopter, without an overhead propeller. The caption reads, Many a time, it's what a man knows that keeps him from learning!

Buzz Baxter is the physicist, and Ed Alderman is the commander and back-up physicist. They're onboard a crashed spaceship belonging to a race that was thinner and taller than humans. Buzz is examining a fusion engine that's smaller than they thought could be possible, but he can't get it to work

This is the first instellar mission to Alpha Centauri, which has been going on for six years, and it'll be another before they get home. They investigated the wreck, hoping to find something. It was deviod of any lifeforms. However, the fusion drive got there attention. The problem is that it's too big to be taken back with them, so they have to figure out how it works now, with only the supplies avialable in the shuttle (that includes food) because there's only enough fuel for this one trip. And they want to bring back something, or this first interstellar trip may be the last.

Despite personality profile matches, Buzz and Ed don't get along well.

Working with Ed is his wife Jan. (There are six altogether on this mission, and another rocket is mentioned.) It is Jan that eventually stumbles onto a clue that gives Ed the answer he's been looking for. Since Ed "knows" how things should work, he doesn't seem how other things might work. Jan, on the other hand, not knowing how an engine should operate, is free to observe other things in the engine room.

This could make a good TV story visually, but it's basically people talking inside a box. There's a puzzle to work out. With the right script, it could be made, but it wouldn't be one of my top picks to adapt.

Novelette: "Polywater Doodle" by Howard L. Myers, with an illustration by Vincent di Fate, showing a star/planetary map, the backs of two men along with a woman facing the reader. The man in the foreground seems to have a shield or turtle shell on his back, and could be kneeling before the woman. The caption reads, Sometimes a man doesn't know what's good for him -- like being marooned by a couple of crooks on a desert planet. But you can learn some useful things that way . . .

Around the time this story was published -- possibly even more likely around the time it was written -- I might've found myself singing the words "polly waddle doodle", as my age was in the mid-single digits. That's what the title evokes to me now. In actuality, through an online search, I discovered that "polywater" is a thing (which the spell-checker acknowledges), and was big in the late 60s. It was the idea that water polymers could be formed, joining water molecules together into something with unusual properties. In reality, it turned out that the samples were contaminated, but that discovered probably happened after this story was published.

The story opens with escaped prisoners on a patrol ship, one of whom is a former "proxad", and it was half the story before I discovered that meant "Proxy Admiral". Events that happened prior to the open include their jailbreak, their trip to a pot planet to get some "super-pot" to feed their habits and to sell at the Dusty Roost, a region of space controlled by outlaws or all kinds, in competition with each other, and an onboard fire caused by faulty circuits which destroyed all the super-pot. It's at this point that Omar Olivine realizes that his psychological profile in the Patrol computers could've predicted all of his moves, and this escape was a set-up, an excuse to raid the pot planet, Douthit Three. Olivine is frozen to the point of inaction wondering how many steps ahead the Patrol computers have thought. He finally releases command of the ship to fellow fugitive Icy Lingrad, who decides to get some sleep before making a decision.

Olivine climbs into a sleep pod himself, and wakes up marooned on the planet Flandna, which isn't very hospitable. Settlements probably wouldn't last long. He believes rescue is likely as long as he survives, so he needs to find some food and water. He was left with survival gear because the third criminal, Holbien, insisted. The main item is an improved rationmaker, which can take animal or vegetable matter and convert it to edible proteins and carbohydrates. Plus it purifies water, but also separates out the polywater. After being attacked by a shrub with tentacle-like vines that only ensnare prey, waiting for it to rot and enrich the soil, Olvine defeats it by shoving the vines piece by piece into the ratiomaker until finally stump and all has been converted. At a later time, when he has a chance to open the polywater compartment, he discovers that the polywater is somewhat sentient and moves around like a plant tentacle. This is one thing that could not be predicted, and it becomes a bit of a wild card.

How he goes about training it isn't exactly clean to me, even in a scene where he's actually trying. If this were made into a TV show, I would hope the writers make some kind of mental connection between him and the plant, and then the diddle. He refers to the thing as a diddle, and it's made of polywater. Thus the title. Olivine gets arrested by another Patrol officer whom he knows and who is someone who doesn't care for him in the slightest. He's brought aboard a cargo ship that will eventually bring him back to prison. But before then, he and the diddle have to make a plan.

There are a total of five people in the story, four male, one female, but a couple of these can be switched for casting. Plus many bit parts by people flying ships that will get "blowed up real good". It's a good story, and could fill a half or full hour of television.

Science Fact: "Ptolemy's Red Sirius", by Robert S. Richardson. One of the great difficulties in astrophysics is that we have such a short time-span of observation. Even the ephemeral stars -- the super-giants that last only a million years or so -- last far longer than human history. But it my be that some phenomena have been observed and misunderstood--

This article may have influenced the editorial.

In Ptolemy's great work, the Almagest, published about A.D. 140, he refers to Sirius as blood red, not as a diamond in the night sky. What might have caused this? Did it look different then, or maybe he had vision problems. You can check the latter by noting how he described other stars, remembering that no color at all would mean it appeared white. But rainbow flashing colors could be explained by light rays passing through the atmosphere like a prism, which happens with stars viewed near the horizon.

The earliest evidence that is was Not red came in the tenth century, by a Persian astronomer.

This discussion leads into one about "brightness" of stars and their "apparent magnitude" (as opposed their absolute magnitude.)

Ptolemy classified the brightest stars he could see as magnitude 1 and the faintest one as magnitude 6. Each magnitude is 2.512 brighter than the next one, which comes from the fifth root of 100. (Seriously.) Why this gives Sirius -1.42, I'm not sure. I understand the negative values for the Moon (-12.5), Venus(-4.2) and the Sun(-26.5).

To get the Absolute Brightness, you would have to consider how bright an object appears at the same distance, using the Sun as Brightness of 1 for convenience.

The article next gets into stellar evolution from birth to red superiants and white dwarfs. The universe isn't old enough for there to be a black dwarf, but if there was one, it would be hard to find. Side-note: look up Herschel's "Loch im Himmel". Something about the space between stars have more matter than the stars themselves, and instead holes, there are vast obscuring clouds.

Could Sirius B have evolved from red giant to white dwarf? Is it possible that the companion star itself has a companion star?

Some interesting information if I ever wanted to write something with more science in the fiction.

Short Story: "The Claw and the Clock" by Christopher Anvil, with an illustration by Leo Summers, showing a large crab-like creature talking to another on a viewscreen on the control panel in front of him (it). The caption reads, So many people confuse "He doesn't!..." with "He can't..." And that can be Step One to a total disaster. ...

The crab race (or they could be lobsters) is introduced to us as having rescued a merchant ship and then killing its crew, and blaming the deaths on the crew. Had the met the crabs wearing armor, the crab's kill instinct would not have kicked in, becuase no one wants to break a claw. However, the humans assumed the rescue craft was friendly because it gave a Ursoid call signal. From the brief interrogation, they learned of a planet called "Faith", that Earthmen called "Storehouse".

Faith was founded by a religious sect that managed to wipe out violent tendencies from their race, on that planet, which is independent of the Earth Federation. It's refered to Storehouse because they've achieve a method of storing privisions for long periods with zero loss.

Iadrubel Vire, head crab, plans to establish contact in the hopes of being slighted enough to claim provocation, which would necessitate retaliation against a peaceful world.

There are numerous back and forth messages, with Elder Hugh Phillips trying to be as diplomatic as possible. Naturally, the crabs continue to escalate until they are in a state of war. Faith announces that they will not tolerate war above or around the planet.

It doesn't end well for the crabs. There's more to it, but that means spoilers.

This would have to be an entire hour of television. First, there's the expanse of the Crab/Lobster race, the space ships and the invasion and the end result. There is enough story here, complete with the B story (not mentioned here) that is actually essential to the narrative.

Short Story: "The Pickle Barrel" by Jack Wodhams, with an illustration by Leo Summers, showing three men apparently floating weightlessly inside a ship. There's a console and a window. The caption reads, There is a difference between taking care of every known hazard -- and taking care of every hazard . . .

This line sums up the story "This vessel is a stagnant pool, filtrated ever more perniciously by the accumuation of contaminat juices." Filters working at 98% aren't going to be sufficient. And cleaning up contanimants, like expected an fungus, require using solvents that might add to a smell that won't go away completely for the next 15 months.

This story is basically a series of unfortunate events that compound every time the system recycles the reserve tanks. Simple organisms, such as the plants they're eating, will start to adapt and not be as useful. This would be a little too depressing for TV, particularly since it's just three people sharing 100 cubic feet of space, more of a larger 1970s capsule than recent sci-fi TV. Side note: it would have to be 3 guys, or 3 women, on this first trip to swing around Mars. A co-ed trip would just add extra problems that aren't in the story. If filmed, this would have to be played for laughs, right up to the conclusion, and then an off-screen character at mission control, could fill in for the story's narrator.

Filler: Deadly Poisons A half-page post-script (I don't think it's related to the story) that docuents that useful things can be dangerous and deadly at certain times in certain quantities.

The Reference Library , by P. Schuyler Miller. There's a long discussion about how hard it was to find good sci-fi films in 1970, aside from 2001 and Planet of the Apes. Part of this is because back then in towns like Philadelphia, a hit move would play for a few weeks, and be replaced with another. In smaller towns, films might come and go every few days. But there was another problem there. Sometimes they'd change the titles or advertise them as something they weren't, so potential viewers might've been turned away.

Another problem is that the general movie-going audience feels the same way about sci-fi movies told as a sci-fi story as sci-fi fans feels about sci-fi movies that aren't told that way.

Next is a list of the 1970 Hugo winners, and I've heard of most of the stuff that mentioned (yay!) but haven't read much of them (aw!).

Books reviewed: Time And Again by Jack Finney (set in 1882 New York), The Organ Bank Farm by John Boyd, And Chaos Died by Joanna Russ, and a couple of fan-made bibliographies for sale. Also mentioned are four Arthur C. Clarke novels, which were rereleased to libraries after "2001": Reach for Tomorrow, Prelude to Space, Expedition to Earth, and Tales from the White Hart. I've read none of those. (I think I've read three Clarke books: Fountains of Paradise, Imperial Earth and 3001.)

Brass Tacks: Again, I'm reading the letters to the editor because they're fun, or at least interesting. And because I read them every issue back when I had a subscription, even before I read some of the stories. And what could be more interesting than a letter from L. Sprague deCamp, complete with a home address, asking readers if they know the whereabouts of groups of original letters of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, which are not at Brown University. Side note: on my one trip to Brown, I took an excursion to the cemetery and stopped at H.P.'s grave. "I Am Providence." A response to a population/pollution editorial states "If we're lucky, those dirty, messy old power plants which will 'fuel' our electric cars will be replaced by fusion-powered stations, following a major breakthrough." There's a claim, which Campbell agrees with, that Mozart's Cosi fan tutte ("And So Do They All", they meaning women) rates as science fiction because the speculation that a huge horeshoe magnet could revive the dead. And a reader elaborates on V.P. Spiro Agnew "giving expression to the feeling that something is wrong with the information conveyed by our news media."

On to March, and a couple other things.