ANALOG PLUS 50: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact March 1972
This March issue of Analog has stories by Frederick Pohl and Larry Niven. What more could you ask?
For anyone finding these reviews, my purpose is two-fold: enjoying some "classic" sci-fi, and looking for stories that I think could be adapted for TV broadcast since so much of what shows up on anthology shows is rough to awful. Additional Note: I do NOT work in television. I just watch it.
In this issue:
The Editorial: "Born to Lose". The Attica Prison riots occurred in September 1971. This editorial is likely a response to that. (It is referenced.) Ben argues that orgazined crime pays pretty well because professional criminals rarely go to jail. It's the amateurs that go to jail, over and over. And even though every inmate thinks of nothing before getting out, so many of them want back in as soon as they are out. This leads to jail referm without the stone walls and iron bars. Jails could be most like military bases with high-tech surveillance. And inmates could be taught to code. And more stuff that I've heard over the past 50 years. But this would be one of the earliest arguments I've encountered.
Novelette: "The Gold at the Starbow's End", by Frederick Pohl with an illustration by John Schoenherr showing a spaceship rocketing through space. The caption reads, The only way to save the world was to create a group of supermen. But supermen see things very differently from mortals.
A scientist named Knefhausen has discovered a planet named Aleph-Aleph which is orbiting Alpha Centauri. He has a government backed project to send 8 scientists on a ten-year mission to get there. To alleviate boredom along the way, they are supposed to work on math problems to keep their minds sharp. They would get tired of chess fairly quickly.
It starts off that they work on these things to the point of solving the Goldbch Conjecture (which Knefhausen isn't familiar with, but this is progress). The doctor, who apparently came over after WWII, wants the men and women to expand their minds so the universe can do so as well.
Several things go wrong with this project: first, the scientists on board seem to be more interested in sex and drugs -- they use the contraception pills along with byproducts of waste filtration to make mind-altering substances. At some point, they are amputating toes for bone dust. A second problem is that they don't have the power to append large amounts of data to the transmission, so they send an equation which would yield a huge number that is a Godel cipher, which will take twenty years to crack. Important scientific discoveries are buried in there.
The biggest problem, however, is that There Is No Planet. Knefhausen sent them to their deaths for the good of mankind. The president is aware of this. Along the way, the Constitution is amended so the president can stay in office for the entire ten years.
If reads as though the scientists are going crazy and will likely be dead before they make it there. Knefhausen, however, believes that they are advancing. In the end, the ship sends back a beam of particles that causes the ice caps to melt, on purpose. Global castrophe. The final transmission says they got there and established a new planet and will return in three days time. It appears that they have actually become superhuman.
It was interesting until it stopped being hard science fiction and made the leap to fantasy. I have read a lot of Pohl in many years, so I can't compare this to anything.
As for filming this, it has all the tension and drama you would want, with limited sets and limited CGI. Plus it has sex and drugs. The only problem is that I would think audiences would think that they "Hollywood-ed" the ending. But that would be the payoff TV audiences would want.
Short Story: "War in Our Time", by Howard L. Myers with an illustration by Vincent DiFate showing a man in the air in the foreground against a background of buildings and a night sky. The caption reads, Ever seen square gears? Or elliptical gears? They mesh just fine and for some purposes, a weirdo gear in a complex machine works wonders!
Radge Morimet is on the High Board of Trade. He's also a little insane and if he wasn't who he was, he'd have been sent for a "psych-release" long ago. Everyone in society can communicate psychically, so they can reach consensuses.
There's a war with the Lontaste Federation going on, and Radge's side is losing. They have a new creature, dubbed "Monte", who is apparently as big as a mountain.
To combat this, and even out the war, the Board enacts Morimet's idea for an Executive who can make decisions (with help from a mental suggestion that he wants to be on the winning side) to speed up decision processes. That man does a great job, until he defects.
And there's the rub, Morimet wanted him to defect because now they have the Executive and Monte, so they now have a committee, which is bad. The "good guys" now elect a new Executive with a different suggestion so he won't defect. And the war continues for our time. The next generation can deal with it in theirs.
A little too cerebreal for TV as everything is mental.
Science Fact: "when the sky falls" by Ben Bova, with an illustration of something by somebody (no name and no idea what I'm looking at -- Rorshach test). The caption reads, What goes up must come down." Whether it's a gentle little star like our Sun, or a whole galaxy.
On the nature of quasars and the Big Bang Theory vs Steady State. Quasars are either really distant objects, or they're a lot closer than we believed. I get the feeling we've learned a lot more about them in the past 50 years.
Novelette: "Cloak of Anarchy", by Larry Niven with an illustration by Jack Gaugan showing a guy swinging a large stick and two others throwing rocks at large spheres in the sky. On the facing page is someone else throwing something or possibly controlling the balls. The caption reads, TThe concep "Complete individual freedom" means, to every individual, "what I mean by right and proper freedom". But since individuals don't agree...
There's a Freedom Park where everyone is free to do as they wish. You are free to build whatever you want, but everyone else is free to take it apart. The only thing you can't do is attack someone. If you do, you and the victim will each be zapped by a flying, basketball-sized copseye.
Some people throw rocks at them, and occasionally take one down.
The Freedom Park is an abandoned stretch of California highway that's been turned into a greenway. The exits are where the old exits were. People are free to walk about fully or partially nude, if that is there choice and no one will bother them.
An anarchist who asked some guys to take down a copseye takes it apart to see what makes it tick. He's a proponent of anarchy as a form of government. He managed to shut down all the copseyes. And then mayhem ensues.
Suddenly the nude feel exposed. People can strike anyone they disagree with, including a psych major carrying a blank protest sign (which is taken and broken) for an experiment. But the exits closed at sundown and people are still inside. Folks group together, but there are idiots guarding the fountain because they are bored and won't let anyone near them.
Violence ensues until more copseyes appear. Maybe anarchy isn't a good model after all.
This is filmable. It just needs a little CGI for the flying balls. Also, it would probably be better to have skimpy outfits instead of nudity.
Short Story: "The Long Silence", by Donald Noakes with an illustration by Leo Summers showing a couple people in the foreground (to the left) yelling/arguing. In the background is a police officer with a bullhorn, standing in front of a futuristic police scooter. The caption reads, Silence is golden, eh? Always? For everyone?
Either I didn't read this or I forgot everything about it. I'll give it a (re)read and get back to you.
Science Fact: "Skylab", by Joseph Green with illustrations from NASA (I think). The caption reads, With the Salyut space station the Russians have once again beaten the United States to a "first" in space. The tragic deaths of the three cosmonauts overshadowed the technological success they achieved. But the Unitid States program will, as usual, be bigger and better!
Obviously, this article will be of interest to me because I have vague memories of Skylab going up ... and better memories of it coming down. And where it falls nobody knows. (It fell across the Pacific and Australia.)
I want to get back to this one, also, but I read the fiction first.
Novelette: "Child of the Gods", by James Schmitz with an illustration by Kelly Freas showing a woman (Telzey) from the waist up (below seems to be buried or just disappearing) with her wrists tied to two poles on either side of her. In the distance is a giant bubble (like Rover?) or sphere of some kind. The caption reads, Telzey found that being under someone else's control wasn't pleasant ... but the question was who is controlling whom?
I'm recognizing James Schmitz' name and knowing a Telzey story is coming. I've enjoyed all the ones I read, although the one that wasn't broken into two parts a little less so.
The story opens with Telzey already under someone else's influence. In today's parlance, she was conning by a phishing email of the psionic kind. A powerful psi gets hold of her and wants her to investigate something for him. He's afraid to show himself, and wants her to be his proxy. He puts safeguards on her to prevent her from using psi bolts and makes it so she will always take actions that are in his best interest.
The man's name is Alicar and he runs a small mining operation. He was mining a particular crystal when they can open djeel oil (or whatever gets refined into that). No one knows what it's good for (other than blowing things up good) but the Federation confiscates all supplies. Alicar has been stashing everything on random asteroids that only he knows about.
It turns out that only the people that know about the djeel oil remain in the area. The rest are gone. They find that those three have been converted to believe in the Soad, the Child of the Gods, who appears as a giant round blob of water, and who only comes out at night because the radiation from daylight it too much for him. Soad wants all the djeel oil, including what Alicar has taken. He needs it to get back to wherever he belongs. (Another galaxy?) Soad is also psionic in his own way.
It turns out that Soad likely influenced Alicar to pick the spot where he started mining and convinced him to start refining the djeel oil in the first place. However, whatever Alicar did after that is on him, as far as Telzey is concerned.
Telzey manages to get out from under Alicar's control when he's wounded and Soad is on the move. She is under orders to do what she needs to that's in his best interest. At the time, that meant being able to dismantle all the blocks he put on her so she would have her defenses, her offensive power, and would not be hesitant to take action while deciding what's the best course of action.
Soad is defeated at the end, and the two wake up in a hospital run by Psychological Services.
All of Telzey's stories (so far) are great source material for television (or even a series of one-shot films). This one doesn't have too many characters in it, and the CGI shouldn't be too complicated.
Short Story: "BCL 362" by Vernon W. Glasser with no illustration (the color of the title is inverted). The caption reads, How honestly just would a real race be in allowing such an experiment to continue freely?
Let me just to the end here. This is an experimental type story in the form that it is written. It's a Civil Memorandum Opinion and Order of a complaint against Bio-Chem Labs, Inc brought by Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Life Forms. The opinion contains testimony of several individuals.
This is film-ready. The opinion equates to the narration and the testimony is the dialogue. Most of this could be in a court room (of any kind), with the rest being shot in a lab or on a planet with aliens that look like humans (should be easy to cast, no?)
The story involves experimenting on a race of non-humans that was created by the labs and forced to evolve so that they are on par with humanity now. And they are being held back so they don't evolve too far too fast because then they're usefulness in predicting human behavior would be gone. The laws only apply to humans, but how close are these creatures? Is there anything significant about them that differs from actual humans?
As a written story, it's a little lacking. It's fairly obvious where it's going. The unique thing is the format (and at least it isn't told in letters). But it could be filmed very easily.
The Reference Library , by P. Schuyler Miller. Reivews include Science Fiction Story Index: 1950-1968 by Frederick Siemon, and Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch. The intro contains a long review of "A Time of Changes", which is an "inner space" story, whoever coined that term.
Brass Tacks: A letter about the movement to put John W. Campbell on a stamp. Someone brings up the ecological problmes with the ill-fated SST. (Ben says no one is certain about the effects. I remember when they wouldn't let them land in certain places. By I know they were still flying in the early 2000s because one flew over me every afternoon on the highway.) There's a letter about Kelly Freas's artwork and the science articles, and a few more about a story with a Freas illustration that contained a middle finger and a naked butt, and the readers were not amused. (Note that J.W.C. bought both the story and the artwork.)
Now onto April. I hope it's as good. I don't know if I'll read a second old magazine. I'm behind on the others.
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