Sense of Wonder Stories 3, December 2009 (13 months late) is edited and published by Rich Coad, 2132 Berkeley Drive, Santa Rosa, CA 95401. e-mail: [email protected] Wondertorial...... page 3 Editorial natterings by Rich Coad

The Super Scientifiction of Homer Eon Flint...... page 7 Randy Byers on a seminal SF figure

H.G. Wellsʼ Forgotten Novelette: ʻThe Croquet Playerʼ...... page 11 Graham Charnock on obscure Wells

B.E.M.S, Babes and Brushes: Chesley Bonestell ...... page 13 Bruce Townley has a new column about great SF artists

Call Him Mr. Nice Guy: The Stories of Dean McLaughlin...... page 18 Art: Peter Weston on an underrated SF author Front and Back Cover: Nikola Teslaʼs Wardenclyffe Tower...... page 23 Steve Stiles Bill Burns on technology that might have been Page 13: The Readers Write...... page 28 Jay Kinney To get SF fans talking SF simply mention Heinlein Page 18: Forward To The Past: A Report to Shareholders...... page 37 Photo by Andrew I. Porter; Roy Kettle, OBE, on the mighty SoWS publishing empire all rights reserved.

Great Science Fiction Editors...... inside back cover Page 37: Ted White: Amazing & Fantastic Collage by Stacy Scott WONDERTORIAL

Like many Science Fiction fans I have issues It was at Helicon II, an Eastercon in Jersey, that with that other genre with which SF is eternally I noticed an oddly named book.* The 13 1/2 bound in the public mind and the bookstore Lives of Captain Bluebear. Flipping through the shelves: Fantasy. The very word itself conjures book I was immediately struck by the up revolting pictures of appallingly cute unicorns typographical tricks that had words gaining size and elves in their forest green shifts with slightly as volume increased, the illustrations of odd pointy ears and pointy-toed shoes. Thereʼs large hairy monsters and multi,-brained almost bound to be some faux-medieval professors, the side-bar text that provided a political structure with kings and aristocrats running index of the work, and chapters with abounding. Dwarves will be rough and tumble titles like “My Life in the Dimensional Hiatus”. Falstaffian figures - eager to drink and fight and Hell, it was only a couple of pounds, and it stay altogether rather dim. Magic will figure looked intriguing, so why not give it a try? prominently and provide an easy out for authors who have written themselves into a corner. And When I finally got around to reading it I found yet it wasnʼt always this way. Fantasy used to that a German writer named Walter Moers had produce works like Gormenghast, The Worm created a wholly captivating continent named Ouroboros, Alice In Wonderland. It was, in fact, Zamonia, which somehow takes up much of the a genre limited only by the imagination of the space between North America and Europe without us noticing, filled with all manner of nonsensical but intelligent lifeforms none of whom are in any way archetypal or representative of some imagined ideal way of life. These are lifeforms like the titular Captain Bluebear, perhaps the only Bluebear alive anywhere, who finds himself not born so much as thrust into the midst of a first adventure by becoming aware he is at sea, in a walnut shell, approaching a fierce maelstrom which will surely end his days pretty soon. But bluebears, it develops, have 27 lives and in this book, this demi-autobiography, Captain Bluebear relates his first 13 1/2. Rescued from the Malmstrom (actually somewhat worse than a maelstrom) by mini-pirates, who find the walnut-shell ensconced bear large, our hero gets to relate his further lives with hob-goblins, escaping a giant spider, dealing with rickshaw demons, author, a far broader field than the seemingly sailing on a ship with 1,000 funnels, sinking into circumscribed pasture that is permitted these cogitating quicksand, and crossing the Valley of days. So it was with some delight that I came Discarded Ideas. Well, thatʼs a small sample, at across the German author Walter Moers, an out any rate, of what Bluebear encounters in the and out fantasy author who is published as first half of his lives. Needless to say, he hopes “literature” and will be found away from those fervently for the next 13 1/2 lives to be quiet, shelved marked “Fantasy and Science Fiction”. interrupted by nothing more exciting than supper. looking for rare TRUE FIRSTS to sell to the I wasnʼt sure, even after finishing the book, rabid collectors; and critics available for-hire. In whether this was intended to be a childrenʼs short, a city of fandom, more or less. Naturally book or not. At 702 pages, it certainly seemed one of the sneaky, underhanded, back-biting large for a childrenʼs book and there were some agents drugs our hero (using a toxic tome) and genuinely scary bits in those pages. But JK strands him in the catacombs where he is Rowling writes books as lengthy and Diana pursued by bookhunters and encounters many Wynne Jones can be as frightening. Perhaps whimsical an frightening creatures, not least the Moersʼ natural audience is teenagers who enjoy Fearsome Booklings, each of whom spends Rowling and Jones, yet he is stocked in the their life memorizing and studying a single General Fiction section of bookstores, not over book. Wordplay abounds throughout this there with the young adult fiction. exuberant novel and the names of many of the literary canon find themselves anagramized into Despite the peripatetic nature of Captain funnier names of Zamonian authors. Bluebear, Moers was not through with exploring Zamonia. Three additional volumes have been Itʼs so refreshing that fantasy hasnʼt been published which, in addition to location, share entirely drained of imagination. some characters such as the four-brained Professor Nightingale and the grub-shark (basically a cross between a shark and a maggot) Volzotan Smyke. Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures is the tale of a young Wolpertingʼs (more or less a dog with antlers and VERY sharp teeth) coming of age and his ultimate rescue of all his ilk from the dark forces of the netherworld, led by an insane king who cannot relate either to the common folk or their common speech: “The nommoc flok? Since when have I neeb esterinted in the nommoc flokʼs iponions?” By turns funny and bloody this is a tour-de-farce of quest adventures.

But the book that most fans are likely to appreciate the most is The City of Dreaming Books. Optimus Yarnspinner is a young dinosaur with literary aspirations. When I say young, I mean about 80, and when I say dinosaur, I mean the last living descendants of the dinosaurs that roamed the Earth in the Jurassic age. Intelligent, industrious, and, above all, literate dinosaurs. Anyways, this young dino inherits a manuscript of such masterful prose, each sentence a pearl, every paragraph a diamond, that he sets off for Bookholm, the City of Dreaming Books, to find the author and anything else he may have written. In Bookholm he encounters not so much the refined, elegant, literary aesthetes of his imagination but rabid collectors of first editions; slimy, sneaky, back-stabbing literary agents; bookhunters who trawl the catacombs The fantasy field lost one of its best current I have to say that I am really pleased with this practitioners on November 29, 2009. Robert issue of SoWS. Itʼs got the mix of contents I Holdstock is surely best known for Mythago was hoping to get from the initial issue: a bit of Wood a novel for which he won the World odd technology, some historical perspective, an Fantasy Award. Amongst fans in Britain, appreciation of an under-appreciated author, an though, he may be even better known for his article on one of the best illustrators the field ebullient personality, friendliness, and general has produced, and some excellent artwork from love of life. This is easily seen in the many Messrs. Stiles and Kinney. Of course it has photos that have been appearing on various taken far too long to get the actual production web sites since his death - thereʼs always a completed. I have taken steps, though, and smile, a genuine smile full of happiness and next year THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT. See, zest that is never forced, and a twinkle in the right there, at the very tippy top of my New eye that the camera cannot fail to catch. Years resolution list, before even the perennial favorite of lose weight, is produce at least two I only really knew Rob socially for about a year, issues of Sense of Wonder Stories. and that was 35 years ago, but he made a great impression. I can only imagine how those who One of the necessary ingredients for producing have been close to Rob for many years must fanzines is, of course, material. I have on hand feel. 61 is far too young an age for such a a good piece from Ned Brooks about working wonderful writer and wonderful human being to as a test engineer for NASA through its glory die. days. But I need more. So if youʼre feeling like writing that analysis of socio-cultural groups in Alastair Reynoldsʼ Revelation Space universe, or an in-depth look at the final works of Thomas M. Disch, reviews of Mike Ashleyʼs multi-volume The Hugo Awards, especially the Fan Hugos, history of SF magazines, or a review of are something that the fanzine fan community Spacehounds of the IPC, please do so and loves to gripe about each year as news of the send it my way. results appears on web sites, in blogs, and posted to mailing lists. Now,as I did in Montreal, we can tweet from the ceremony and get an almost instant responding groan. This * Stacy claims that it was she, and not I, that past year likely caused more groans than usual discovered and bought Captain Bluebear. In as Electric Velocipede, while meeting the strict the interests of marital accord I am prepared to definition of a fanzine, certainly does not appear attest that the clear memory I have of seeing to most fanzine fans to actually be one. the book, itʼs blue spine facing up, embedded in a table packed, literally edge to edge, with used But thatʼs in the past. Next year is coming soon hardcover books from exotic UK publishing and we can moan about the Hugos awarded in houses is entirely false and was almost Melbourne or we can vote for: certainly implanted when I was abducted by space aliens after drinking too much whiskey Bruce Gillespie - Best Fan Writer and dancing with Peter Weston. Dick Jensen (Ditmar) - Best Fan Artist Steam Engine Time - Best Fanzine

If, by some chance, you are unfamiliar with these fine folks and publications you may find lots to look at on eFanzines: http://efanzines.com/SFC/#set The Super-Scientifiction of Homer Eon Flint by Randy Byers

To begin with it must be said that Homer Eon of which calls it, “The most famous novel of Flint is the greatest name for a science fiction all time.” (When I bought my copy at a used writer ever. It’s the Eon that really does it — bookstore, the woman who rang it up said, clearly the inspiration for Greg Bear’s cosmic “That makes me want to read it. Why have I hard SF novel — but in the first and last never heard of it?”) Like A. Merritt in The names you get epic poetry and a material for Moon Pool (1919), Flint and Hall seem to be tools or weapons, and that’s space opera in a interested in rationalizing the occult. One nutshell. That said, despite the name — it was problem, it must be said, is that Hall is just as actually originally Flindt — he was not one of ignorant of the occult as he is of science. the greatest science fiction writers ever. However, it’s easy to imagine that early readers However, he’s still an interesting transitional of the novel were wowed by the idea of a figure between the scientific romance and parallel world, sitting side-by-side with our scientifiction — one of the stable of writers own but completely invisible to us. Unlike that editor Bob Davis gathered at the Munsey Merritt or Edgar Rice Burroughs, their alien magazines in the Teens of the last century world is not derived from lost world literature. who began to solidify the still inchoate genre Instead, it seems to come from Utopian as a commercial category. literature (Flint was apparently a big fan of Edward Bellamy), and it is the visit to this Thanks to some Ace paperback reprints in the highly advanced and yet simultaneously mid-‘60s, Flint is remembered now, when he is archaic, complex and conflicted society that is remembered at all, for the four Dr Kinney the most interesting about it. We see novellas reprinted in two volumes as The Lord unexplained pieces of advanced technology, of Death and the Queen of Life and The for example, that are reminiscent of the visit Devolutionist and the Emancipatrix and for the to the Overlord’s planet in Clarke’s Childhood’s novel The Blind Spot, which he co-wrote with End. This is prime sense of wonder material. Austin Hall. He’s also remembered for damon knight’s withering attack on that novel, The Dr Kinney stories, first published in All- although Flint comes off slightly better than Story in 1919 (“The Lord of Death” and “The Hall in knight’s estimation: “Flint’s nine Queen of Life”) and in Argosy-All-Story in 1921 chapters, written in a gushing, mock-hearty (“The Devolutionist” and “The style which is an immeasurable relief after Emancipatrix”), are about a team of scientists Hall’s illiteracy, do inject some bustle into the who explore alien planets, starting in the solar story and contribute a good deal of common system on Mercury and Venus in the first two sense.” novellas, and then advancing to other stars via a form of astral travel in the latter two It’s true that The Blind Spot isn’t very good, yet novellas. Here Flint is interested in examining it appears to have been very popular in its day social ideas as much as scientific ones. In “The (first serialized in 1921) and was reprinted Lord of Death” he follows social Darwinism frequently up until the Ace edition, the cover to one logical extreme, and in “The Queen of features a scene where a character crawls over the edge of the world and onto the other side. Also of interest is the method of traveling to these planets, which involves a telepathic projection into the minds of local inhabitants. Flint’s description of the process, which requires the characters to “concentrate upon some definite mental quality, some particular characteristic of [your] own mind, which [you] wish to find” in an inhabitant of the other planet and “exert your imagination a little,” sounds remarkably like an approach to writing science fiction. Think of a characteristic you want to explore and then imagine how it might exist in an alien context — as opposed to imagining the alien as something that is in no way familiar or comprehensible, as defying what you want to find or imagine (which is an Life” he examines problems of Utopia. The approach I associate with Eastern European latter story is fascinating for its conflicted view writers such as Lem or the Strugatskis). On of women. The middle bogs down with a fairly that same front, these are also some of the standard and soporific presentation of a earliest stories I’ve encountered that move Utopian society on Venus, but suddenly in the outside the solar system, and it’s interesting end there is in unexpectedly violent intrusion that to do so Flint is forced to fall back on a of serpentine sex into this garden of Eden. fancy form of what amounts to astral One can almost imagine Bob Davis saying, projection, not too different from how Edgar “Homer, nothing happens in this story. This is Rice Burroughs got John Carter to Mars. The an adventure magazine. Give us some action!” stefnal imagination has not yet struck on the The calm surface of the story is abruptly enabling device of an FTL drive. convulsed by two new scientific developments that have been precipitated (in less than a day) None of these novellas feature the kind of by the arrival of the explorers from Earth. The super science that is reputed to have tickled the first is essentially a form of eternal life, but young Edmond Hamilton’s sense of wonder, only for males, and the second is the ability of although “The Lord of Death” does give us a females to become pregnant without the “male giant magnet used as a weapon, and there are germ.” We witness a savage war explode mechanical plants on the Venus of “The between the sexes as the curtain falls and the Queen of Life” that quarry minerals explorers flee. underground (the surface is completely covered with human habitation) and convert The other two Dr Kinney stories, “The them into foodstuff — “starch, sugar, and Emancipatrix” and “The Devolutionist”, are proteids” — using artificial leaves and mostly interesting for their oddball planets. manufactured chlorophyll. It wasn’t until I read One a binary planetary system in which the “The Planeteer,” however, that I finally two planets are close enough that their understood Flint’s reputation as a Big Idea atmospheres are in contact and can be crossed man. Originally published in All-Story Weekly in via airplane. The other is a toroid planet and March 1918, it was his second published story. There’s a lot going on in the perhaps over- complicated story. It’s set in something of a machines to disappear in a pinkish cloud of socialist utopia a few hundred years in the smoke, leading to a near escape. Yet Flint’s future. Earth is heavily populated, and the clumsiness as a writer is evident from the story begins with the announcement that an beginning, and his handling of the romantic earthquake in California has caused the triangle, for example, is crude. (Not an unusual Sacramento Valley to be flooded by the sea, failing in pulp writers, it’s true.) Yet one of the raising the specter of starvation unless some interesting aspects of his clumsiness is that the way of compensating for the loss of now rare narrator of the story, who is one of the two cropland can be found. The three main scientists, does not win the girl, and actually characters are two scientists who pursue ends up taking a fairly subservient attitude separate solutions, and a world-famous singer toward his competition for her hand. I can’t who loves them both and tells them she'll imagine that Hamilton or Doc Smith would marry the one who solves the food problem. have gone for this unheroic pose, but it makes the story more human in a way. The scientist So, early on we get a glimpse of the marvels of who comes out on top is also interesting for the far-flung future while this central situation showing qualms toward the destruction of the is being set up. After that we get a brief tour of Martians that he causes — an echo, perhaps, of the solar system that’s reminiscent of earlier the regretful massacre that concludes Garrett scientific romances such as John Jacob Astor’s P. Serviss’ jingoistic Edison’s Conquest of Mars A Journey in Other Worlds (1894) and George (1898). (American always regret the need to Griffith’s A Honeymoon in Space (1901). One of massacre.) the scientists invents a spaceship which is used to first explore the dead moon, then a Mars Flint was also a big fan of H.G. Wells, and it’s inhabited by hostile aliens, and finally a Jupiter possible to see the influence of Wells’ story that is like Earth before humans evolved — a “The Star” (1897) on the “The Planeteer”. In verdant, uninhabited paradise. All of this is “The Star,” a planetoid is detected just before complicated by a wandering planetoid that it collides with Neptune, causing both bodies crashes into Saturn, igniting its atmosphere and to head sunward in a flaming mass ... and driving it sunward, pulling Jupiter in its wake. directly toward Earth! However, Wells is The solution to the food problem that the examining human helplessness in the face of space scientist therefore proposes is to pull the an indifferent universe, whereas for Flint there Earth out of its own orbit and bring it within doesn’t seem to be anything the universe can the atmosphere of the newly-nearby Jupiter, throw at humans that they can’t handle. The where humans could use airplanes to migrate contrast between the two stories might be an to the surface and colonize the vast swaths of effective example of the difference between fertile territory. We’re definitely in Big Idea scientific romance and science fiction. Wells is territory here. dispassionate and philosophical, while Flint’s story is plot-driven and solution-focused. “The Planeteer” has some impressively Wells’ story is a far more effective literary dramatic, if not very realistic scenes, too, as construction. Flint’s story is perhaps aimed at a when the wandering planetoid is slung past the different social class entirely — one that Earth and comes within 90 miles of the doesn’t care so much about literary values, for surface, as our protagonists watch from the one thing. deck of a ship and then have to survive a huge tsunami. On the space exploration front, the Flint wrote a sequel to “The Planeteer” called Martians are discovered to have developed a “The King of Conserve Island” that disintegrator weapon that causes whole flying apparently follows the humans to surface of Jupiter. I hope I can track it down at some point. As far as I can tell, I’ve exhausted all of the Flint stories that have been reprinted, and everything else will have to be tracked back to their original publication in the Munsey magazines (or in Amazing in the case of his posthumously published novel, The Nth Man). This includes “Out of the Moon,” where apparently evidence of alien life is found on the moon. This is a sequel to “The Man in the Moon,” in which the moon begins to fall toward the Earth and then … well, let’s just say that Edmond Hamilton wasn’t the first planet buster. At some point I'd like to put together a collection of Flint's stories, because it does seem to me that he was a key transitional figure between the scientific romance and scientifiction. He and Garrett P. Serviss are the key figures amongst the nearly-forgotten writers I've sampled from the pre-Amazing era of American SF.

It’s true, as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says A bizarre story worthy of the greatest name in about Flint, that his “writing style and pulp- “Different” stories, as the developing genre magazine habits did not always adequately was called in the pages of the Munsey express his deep interest in the emergence of magazines. It’s a shame he died so young, behavioral and historical patterns from various because it would have been interesting to see political and social philosophies,” but it’s also how his writing developed over time and in true that his writing got better over time. He league with other emerging talents in the field didn’t have much time, however, as he died he helped to shape. under mysterious circumstances in 1924. According to his granddaughter, Vella Munn, Flint’s broken body was found under a wrecked car at the bottom of a ravine. A man named E.L. Handley, whose car it was, claimed that he’d picked up the hitch-hiking Flint, who then pulled a gun on him, forced him out of the car, and drove off. The police found a black suitcase full of money in the car, and it may have been from an earlier bank robbery in Fresno. While Flint owned guns, the one found near the car was not one of his. Handley himself was a “known gangster” who was later convicted of another crime, so quite possibly his story is not trustworthy. Certainly Flint showed no other early warning signs of becoming a car-jacking bank-robber! H.G. Wells’ Forgotten Novella:

‘The Croquet Player’ by Graham Charnock

This novella was written in 1936, as one of and taking it in the same matter-of-course Wells’ experiments with a shorter story-form fashion.’ than the novels which had established his reputation. Although not dealing with hard Whilst staying in a French resort he meets science it certainly qualifies as psychological Dr Finchatton, who appears to be recuperating science fiction, incorporating prophetic from some kind of nervous breakdown at a metaphors, as we would recognize the form local sanatorium. It is Finchatton who unfolds today. the main story. He tells the croquet player how as a young doctor he set up a small practice in The story has a ‘story within a story’ form, an isolated and for all intents and purposes and is told by an effete and ineffectual croquet unremarkable area called Cainsmarsh. He tells player, a self-confessed ‘sissy’, who enjoys an of how he gradually became aware of a vague easygoing and trouble free life as the and indefinable sense of fear which seemed to companion to a rich aunt. He admits he is not not only inhabit the area’s residents but the concerned with politics or world affairs or with landscape itself. social involvement on any level for that matter: There is no tangible reason or immediate explanation for this brooding sense of ‘Like most well-born, well-off people, we foreboding, although his experience of it bears have taken inferiors for granted, servants for much of the qualities we might recognize in granted, and the general good behaviour of many irrational phobias, most notably the world towards us. I suppose there are still agoraphobia. Eventually the prospect of even hundreds of thousands of people in the world going outdoors instils a sense of terror in him. as sure of all the material best of life as we are He becomes aware those not only do most disorder, rising suddenly and spreading into a of the inhabitants of the area share this sense world epidemic.’ He chides the croquet player of fearful terror, but sometimes manifest it in for his inability to recognize this. acts of extreme and casual cruelty and Norbert eventually becomes so wrapped up callousness. in his exposition that his turns of phrase gradually become almost messianic and He makes the acquaintance of a local cleric grandiose, and a sense of his own delusions of who also recognizes the fear, and unfolds his power is revealed as he exhorts the croquet theories that the landscape itself is somehow player to ‘do as I have done and shape your haunted, not only by the ghosts of generation mind to a new scale. Only giants can save the upon generation of previous residents, but world from complete relapse – and so we – we more sinister and elementally evil past who care for civilization – have to become denizens. He tells of how the local people giants. We have to bind a harder, stronger working the land turn up strange bones and civilization like steel around the world.’ artefacts not only barely recognizable as His rants finally prove too much for the human, but as distinctly alien. croquet player who retreats into complete In the second part of the novella, rejection, true to his established character: ‘I Finchatton visits a local museum where some looked him in the face, firmly but politely. I of these relics have ended up, including an said ‘I don’t care. The world may be going to ancient primitive skull. The curator propounds pieces. The Stone Age may be returning. This a theory which refutes the cleric’s anti- may, as you say, be the sunset of civilization. Darwinism in that the land is not only haunted I’m sorry but I can’t help it this morning. I by human dead but by their sub-human have other engagements. All the same – laws progenitors and ancestors. Finchatton’s of the Medes and Persian – I am going to play condition continues to worsen as he confronts croquet with my aunt at half-past twelve further incidents of mindless and irrational today.’’ savagery (a dead dog beaten to a pulp and the Cleric himself who sets about his wife and Wells had been a friend and associate of attempts to murder her). Finchatton eventually Joseph Conrad for many years and admired retreats to seek medical help from a Conrad’s grasp of the shorter form. There are psychotherapist called Dr Norbert, obvious thematic parallels between The Croquet recommended to him by the museum curator. Player and Heart of Darkness. In both, a The final section of the novella is told somewhat naïve and unworldly narrator is directly by the croquet player himself, relating forced to confront the terrors that lie at the how Dr Norbert (The Intolerable Psychiatrist heart of a human nature that has evolved from as the croquet player calls him) comes to primitive bestiality. But Wells takes the notion confront him and solicit his ideas and opinions slightly further in psychological terms: the on Finchatton’s story. Dr Norbert, a gloomy, manifestations of the human psyche, the cadaverous man, broadens the issue of haunting that plagues Cainsmarsh and its folk, Finchatton’s malaise by suggesting it is not are fairly obviously derived from Jung and his only confined to Cainsmarsh but seems to be theories of primitive archetypes residing in the creeping slowly across the whole of deep unconscious. civilization. He calls it ‘a new plague – of the soul. A distress of the mind that has long lurked in odd corners of the mind, an endemic amongst the more privileged classes at the time. Rarely for Wells’ work, the novella was never reprinted subsequent to its original

Herbert George Wells

Joseph Conrad

For all the chillingly recognizable psychic publication. Its prophetic scope, with the war phenomenon that Wells describes, with breaking out only a few years later, was obvious relish, and in graphic and readable perhaps deemed too short-term to be of on- detail, however, he was first and foremost a going interest. political philosopher, in a way Conrad wasn’t. Thus the framework of the story written when -- an obvious ‘plague’ of perverted nationalism Graham Charnock based in fear and terror seemed to be 1/3/08 marshalling itself across Europe, is an obvious and hardly understated metaphor, especially when it focuses on Dr Norbert’s bombastic and supremacist rants, which echo a rhetoric that pretty much matches that of Oswald Moseley and other obvious pedagogues. The croquet player’s own final refusal to even contemplate such issues, is an obvious warning shot across the bows of what Wells obviously saw as a general public complacency, especially Chesley Bonestell

I remember the Moon. millennial rain of space-stuff. The craters are intensely sharp-edged too. Don’t get too close. You’d Sure, I’ve seen the photos shot on the various Apollo cut yourself. missions as well as those sent by the Soviet Luna craft. I’ve even seen the surprisingly colorful One such lunar image I can recollect is more or less paintings by astronaut Alan Bean who has been centered on the craft that the voyagers travelled in. there. Unlike NASA’s bumpy, bug-like Lunar Entry Module it is a tall, slender, streamlined rocketship. It perches gracefully on its finned tail on a rock-strewn plain which is surrounded by the inevitable impressive mountains. The ship seems eager to dart up once again into space, poised as it is. There’s an opening about a third of the way up the ship’s shiny skin. Warm light spills from this hatch. A suited astronaut is standing in the entrance. On the lunar surface, surrounding the ship, others are going about their lunar business. A pair of them is determinedly operating what looks like an outsized surveyor’s transit though the thing’s actual purpose is unclear. Hanging overhead is a cloudy orb. It is our Earth.

That’s about the only thing that is unclear in this picture. It was, of course, painted by the space artist Chesley Bonestell. This painting was originally But the image of Earth’s satellite that I both have in published in the magazine, ASTOUNDING my head and hold in my heart doesn’t come from a SCIENCE FICTION. It also appeared in the 1949 photograph. Also, it doesn’t show the rounded book, THE CONQUEST OF SPACE, which was mounds of hillocks that one sees in some of Bean’s written by the space-travel and cryptozoology very fine paintings. No, the image of the Moon that popularizer Willie Ley. Ley and Bonestell’s book no endures for me is rimmed by mountains. Soaring, doubt had a wider audience than Campbell’s genre rugged, Alpine things, uneroded by the multi- defining magazine. It brought the dream of space flight to a more general readership that had already been exposed to the power of ballistic rocketry by Nazi vengeance weapons, the V-1 and V-2 (the Bonestell moon rocket that I describe above looks rather like the German A-4b model). These rained down terrifying destruction on England and other parts of Europe during World War II. Now that the war was over and it was time in the United States, at least, retrofit such impressive weapons into plowshares.

Bonestell himself admitted that he probably should have realized that the lunar features weren’t so rugged. He, after all, was an avid amateur astronomer and peered at our planet’s companion many times through his own telescopes over the years. Apparently one can determine from examining the shadows cast by features on certain This image has been called the painting that segments of the moon’s surface just what their “launched a thousand careers”. That is, many people general shape or height is. The dean of the space who then aspired to become astronomers, scientists artists got it right when he pointed out that in terms and space artists themselves were given their of his art it was the inherent drama that made the motivation by this otherworldly yet exactingly painting. The lunar peaks wanted to be that tall and rendered painting. Looking at it you both felt like you serrated. could get there and that you were already on the surface of a distant moon. I think the first time that I was exposed to Chesley Bonestell’s artwork was on the covers of FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION. A version of his “Saturn as Seen from Titan” appeared on the cover In November of 1980 the Voyager 1 spacecraft flew of this magazine in 1969. This one had some space- by the ringed giant and its cluster of moons. Titan, suited figures perched on the various crags that the largest moon of Saturn, was of particular rimmed the unearthly view of the ringed gas giant. interest. Photographs transmitted back to Earth The earlier versions of this scene he painted had no revealed a dense, hazy atmosphere, possibly similar people in them. Adding the little explorers appears to to those of the rocky, inner Solar System worlds. The have been the small change that put this image into Cassini–Huygens mission in 2004 in fact showed that the category of “science fiction” rather than that of there were such fabulous features as hydrocarbon “space art”. lakes there and what may even be ice spewing cryovolcanoes. These images show a place not that The most well known version of “Saturn” is similar to the seemingly Alpine one that Bonestell so probably the one without the astronauts. A spectral concisely depicts. Sure, the sharply defined rocky gray crescent is all that is seen of the body of the gas outcroppings in Bonestell’s painting probably don’t giant, hovering in that distant, crystalline sky. For actually exist on Titan but as Bonestell renders them, that additional, extraterrestrial touch this sun-lit they’re entirely credible. Such a point of view also segment of Saturn is, of course, encircled by its makes certain of us want to go there. To go see it for mighty ring. The orb hangs in a deep blue sky that ourselves. Excites our sense of wonder. gradually shades to black. A frame is provided by the now familiar jagged alien crags. Here and there amongst the rocks are scattered white patches that, if this scene was set on Earth, would be water-based snow. On Titan such ground cover is doubtless some frozen gas. This frigid fluffy stuff covers the ground entirely. MOON, of the impact that made Mare Imbrium on Earth’s satellite looks something like a scaled up atomic explosion.

Bonestell’s father wanted young Chesley to do something practical when it became apparent that he wouldn’t continue in the family’s paper importing business. Both Bonestell’s father and grandfather disdained the bohemian lifestyle of artists. Architecture was a no-nonsense application of the boy’s formidable artistic skills. Bonestell’s grandfather knew several architects and so it doesn’t hurt to have such access to a lucrative and respected profession. His father agreed that Bonestell should go to New York, to study architecture at Columbia. The senior Bonestell’s reasoning was apparently that this was about as far as his son could get away from the alluring arty drinking establishments in San Again, it doesn’t really matter whether those rocky Francisco and still be on the same continent. What crags are there or not. Bonestell had no way of he didn’t realize was that New York had its own vast knowing when he first created these paintings what selection of bars, saloons and watering holes to the composition and opacity was of Titan’s choose from. Apparently the student was carried atmosphere. Again, drama plays a role. Of course, it back to his digs out cold from his revels on his seems just a little ironic that he would go for an drawing board at least once. image that created the most intense feeling in the viewer, given his logical approach otherwise. But Bonestell spent three years at Columbia but did not that’s what is at the core of any great painting, this get a degree there. In the end, it was the required, ability to grab the viewer of the artist’s creation. In demanding math courses that defeated him. He Bonestell’s case it is to communicate the artist’s own became a renderer and designer for several leading joy in discovering and sharing the wonders of the New York architectural firms. While with William high frontier of outer space. van Alen, he worked on the façade for the Chrysler Building, that archetypal skyscraper. In 1910 he Bonestell was born in San Francisco, California in moved back to San Francisco. While there he passed 1888. His first space painting, of Saturn, was the State Board of Architects exam and qualified for completed in 1905, after his earliest viewing the membership American Institute of Architects. He outer planet through the 12 inch telescope at San soon joined the highly regarded firm of Willis Polk. Jose’s Lick Observatory. This painting was destroyed He then became Chief Designer when he was 24 in the fire following the massive San Francisco years old. earthquake and fire of 1906, along with his family’s house. Young Chesley, himself, got out OK, Willis Polk’s firm was largely responsible for the fortunately. redesigning and reconstruction of San Francisco. The disastrous earthquake and resulting fire in 1906 Perhaps this early experience with large scale gave them a blank, if rubble-strewn, slate to work destruction led him to create a series of paintings of with. Bonestell, in fact, saw Navy demolition teams catastrophes, both natural (Manhattan punctured at work during the 1906 fire setting dynamite charges and set ablaze by a large meteor – as seen in a 1947 in buildings near his home. The idea was to create issue of the magazine, CORONET) and artificial firebreaks to snuff out the conflagration. It’s now (the same bit of prime real estate with believed that this destruction did very little to stop thermonuclear mushroom clouds budding from it – the fire and, in fact, only added to the cost of as seen in COLLIERS in 1948). A painting he did, reconstruction. which appeared in 1961’s MAN AND THE In 1913 Bonestell was assigned to survey prospective Bonestell’s architectural work was sound preparation sites in and around San Francisco for the 1915 for his years in Hollywood. One of his first job titles Panama-Pacific International Exposition (what we’d was “renderer”. He would be given technical call now a World’s Fair). He chose a spot near Fort drawings and it was his assignment to render same in Mason. The city government then approved the a realistic, eye-catching painting or illustration. draining of this marshy area and the construction of These accurate and easy to understand graphics the Exposition there. It was a popular success and could then be used to sell the project to prospective signified, once again, San Francisco’s phoenix-like investors. Even though Bonestell was stymied by rebirth from fire. He also created illustrations to Columbia’s math requirements the skills he learned explain William Strauss’, the chief engineer for the in the precise and accurate rendering of perspective Golden Gate Bridge, intentions to prospective while an architect served him well during his investors. Bonestell also worked on posters and other Hollywood days. You could say it was by the illustrations to ballyhoo 1938–39 Golden Gate numbers. He even got to breathe life into building International Exposition. facades that didn’t exist anymore, like he did with the scenes set in early 1900s New York for CITIZEN Bonestell then went to England, finding work KANE, and buildings that have never existed as in illustrating architectural articles for the 1949 architectural drama, THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS. FOUNTAINHEAD.

By the late 1930s he’d moved to Hollywood, California. It was here that he found work at various s t u d i o s , including Warner B r o t h e r s , Columbia and Pa r a m o u n t . What he did at these studios was matte painting. This is an area of special effects in which, in the days before Bonestell also worked on the George Pal film, computer graphics, skilled artists depicted distant or DESTINATION MOON, providing, among other otherwise difficult (or impossible in the case of images, a panorama of the lunar landing site and a wholly imaginary settings) to photograph scenes in view of a receding Earth through the ship’s porthole. such a way that they matched the original camera He also painted astronomical art for Pal’s WAR OF angles that the director wanted to shoot. Typically, THE WORLDS and even 1953’s CAT-WOMEN matte paintings were painted by artists on glass lined OF THE MOON. up to match the live film footage. Film of the matte painting and the bits with the actors in them were Matte painting sharpened his skills in oil painting. then combined into a single print. While doing architectural illustrations he used pen and ink and water colors. He liked the ability to rework his images that the slow to dry oil paints gave him. With watercolors, if you aren’t keen on how it’s SCIENCE FICTION and ASTOUNDING/ coming out, you have to start all over again. His ANALOG. And he even pointed out that he made matte painting work familiarized him with taking a rational approach to solving perspective and other technical problems. Such skills then, in turn, served him well in creating his later space art.

In 1944 there were published in the slick and high profile LIFE magazine a series of views by Bonestell of Saturn from its several moons. Nothing so compellingly portrayed had ever been seen before. Such work combined his training and skills angles of perspective, the precision required for matte painting work, skills in miniature modeling and his life-long love of astronomy. His magazine work was then collected in the book he did with Ley, THE CONQUEST OF SPACE. This title was a best- seller.

In the early 1950s Werner Von Braun, Ley, Bonestell and others contributed to a series of articles in COLLIERS magazine entitled “Man Will Conquer Space Soon!” These articles served to give a kick- start to the US space program. Von Braun showed that it was possible to get to the moon using existing technology. A ferry rocket would carry the moon travelers to a large, circular space station in near Earth orbit. Reconnaissance and passenger ships would be assembled in orbit and then make the trip to our natural satellite. This array of transport made so much sense that it is more or less duplicated in the children’s book SPACESHIP TO THE MOON, a Rand McNally “Book-Elf ” book published in 1952. good money from these publications, being the practical type that he was. According Ron Miller’s The ships in this series weren’t the slippery winged and Frederick Durant III’s THE ART OF beauties that Bonestell himself favored. Still, they CHESLEY BONESTELL, these paintings were had their own authority. When NASA actually went typically submitted to the magazines publishers on to the moon in 1969, the lander was a cousin of the spec. This was done in the hope of getting them Von Braun’s spidery, long-legged craft. published, not on an already agreed to commission. He showed in them a ready familiarity with the The true origin of Bonestell’s streamlined spaceships science-fictional concepts. A 1967 cover for is foreshadowed, I expect, in his renderings of New FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION portrays, for York skyscrapers. They both seem to surge upward, example, the tragedy of the first burial of a human even while nominally at rest. in the ochre soil of Mars. It’s a scene filled with quiet dignity as well as Bonestell’s unbounded desire for The renowned space artist would, at times, appear to extraterrestrial places. When he did science fiction, scorn science fiction, claiming that “truth was he got it right. stranger than fiction”. He was quite successful, both critically and artistically, with his work in Hollywood --Bruce Townley and his various astronomical book projects. He didn’t shun science fiction especially, as evidenced by his several appearances on the covers of FANTASY & CALL HIM MR NICE GUY – The stories of Dean McLaughlin By Peter Weston

A few months ago I asked Rich if he’d like an essay mentioned this source, saying that “I constructed the on Dean McLaughlin, a name that’s not often story’s argument from known facts, having seen mentioned, which is exactly the reason I wanted to published views of a few ‘problem’ features caught write this piece. McLaughlin has never been prolific by Mars orbiters and thinking, well, just maybe.” – in fact he’s published less than one story per year since his debut in 1951, but (and for an old-time SF So there could be a lot of the black stuff on Mars, fan like me this is important), he’s reliable. He’s an even though it would be impossibly expensive to author who comes up with good ideas and treats extract…. wouldn’t it? But if you add a few bits of them properly, working out their implications technology like ‘skyhook’ cables to both Mars and without wandering off into fairy-land fantasy. To see Earth orbits and electro-magnetically-driven ships, what I mean take a look at his latest novella, then it starts to make economic sense. What a great ‘Tenbrook of Mars’ (Analog July/August 2008). rationale for a Mars colony – except this is only a mining station, and when the cable skein falls down The story is based on the possibility that petroleum it causes the Mars Petro company to go bankrupt deposits aren’t fossilised plant remains at all, but and six or seven hundred men are marooned up were instead formed in the coalescing solar nebula. there with no way home. It isn’t an entirely new concept – I remember it being suggested by Fred Hoyle in his brilliant astrophysics The story itself is about our protagonist’s efforts to book FRONTIERS OF ASTRONOMY (1955), keep them alive, with no miracles, no magic, just although McLaughlin said he was ‘startled’ when I hard work and good management. It’s a very human tale and Tenbrook is something of a Heinlein character – the capable man – although a great deal more modest about his achievements and all the more likeable for it.

It’s the sort of near-future tale that McLaughlin does so well. Take, for instance, a much earlier effort, ‘The Last Thousand Miles’ (ASF, Feb 56) in which an expedition returns from Jupiter after seven years to find the space station has been abandoned and the shuttles scrapped. And in a sequel, ‘Welcome Home’ (Infinity, Oct 57) the pilot of the Jove has to take down a ship never built for re-entry.

McLaughlin admits he failed to realise that a deep- space mission could be in continuous radio communication with home, although who at the time would have expected that to be possible? But he conscientiously tried to think about the details – for example, he saw the need to coat the hull of the Jove with anti-ablative paint to protect against the heat of re-entry.

He added a completely new section in the 1965 book version, THE MAN WHO WANTED STARS, which uncannily foreshadows our own era where both public and politicians have lost interest in space travel and only a few idealists try to keep the dream alive. The book also contains some novel concepts, including what I think must be the first SF mention of the Bussard-type hydrogen-burning ram-jet as a means of propulsion. One scene is particularly interesting in showing how Antarctica can be exploited for valuable mineral deposits, and another McLaughlin had two more classic stories in Analog is set in a mining dome, two miles deep beneath the during the sixties, the first being ‘The Permanent Atlantic Ocean. Implosion’ (Feb 64) a perfect little gem which again took the cover illo. It’s about a technological disaster This must have been an idea that was already in and another capable man, though Mick Candido is a McLaughlin’s mind when he wrote ‘The Man on the lot more hard-boiled than Tenbrook. (A sequel, ‘The Bottom’ (ASF, March 58), about a mining dome Eternal Juice Machine’, appeared in Analog, Feb 82 which is threatened with destruction because surface and explored just how a disaster can be turned into a nations have started to squabble over mineral rights. wonderful opportunity). It was the lead-story of the month and took the cover illustration, perhaps as Campbell’s recognition that here was an author to watch. McLaughlin added a But the one everyone remembers is ‘Hawk Among much longer section which greatly expanded on the the Sparrows’ (July 68), which was short-listed for basic idea of colonising the deep sea-bed, something both Hugo and Nebula Awards. It takes a well- which I don’t think has realistically been done worn SF theme – modern man gets thrown back in elsewhere, and the book appeared as DOME time (here, in a 1985 jet-fighter) – but the interest is WORLD in 1962. in the details, and how a supersonic aircraft turns out to be almost completely useless in a WWI dog-fight. Freas did a superb cover for this one, which was also There’s only one paragraph on McLaughlin in THE used for the dust-jacket on the 1976 Scribners ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SF, with John Clute’s slightly collection of the same name (with ‘Implosion’ and enigmatic verdict, ‘these straightforward adventures ‘The Brotherhood of Keepers’, to which I’ll return are densely written’. That’s praise of a kind, though, later). if by that he means ‘no stylistic tricks’ and ‘solid So who is Dean McLaughlin? Looking for help I development’! In fact, McLaughlin’s style reminds wrote to Earl Kemp who knows almost everyone and me more than a little of H. Beam Piper, another said, ‘I visualise Dean as some sort of engineering painstakingly reliable writer who developed under type, very practical, feet-on-floor, no pretensions.’ Campbell’s tutelage. The early sixties were a good time for McLaughlin Earl replied, “Close but no Bingo! Dean was a very and in 1963 a stand-alone novel appeared, THE active member of the Midwest Nomads, mostly FURY FROM EARTH (Pyramid). This one was driven to be so by Howard DeVore. Not an never serialised but went straight into book-form engineer. During the '50s when I knew him best he although I had assumed it would have first been worked in a bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a submitted to Analog. However, the genesis of the college town. He was very quiet, soft spoken, story is more complicated, as Dean explained to me: reluctant to engage, maybe too much a loner. The last time I talked with Dean was about a year before “Your presumption that THE FURY FROM Howard DeVore died. Howard and Dean were EARTH (not my original title, by the way; a together somewhere and, on a lark, phoned me and ‘marketing’ compromise) would have been submitted we chatted for a while about old times.” to Campbell is not correct. It was an expansion of a novelette which he (and everyone else) had rejected; In correspondence Dean McLaughlin elaborated on in Campbell’s case – so dim memory tells me – his that. “I was employed in one of the several rejection expressed dislike of the central thought. To bookstores serving the University of Michigan’s submit the whole critter, therefore, would have been community for twenty years, ending in 1972. dumb and a waste of time.” Subsequently I opened and managed a store of my own, oriented to a more general audience, in a With this background in mind I was able to put my shopping mall at the edge of town. In that I was finger on something which had been bothering me moderately successful but when, in 1988, the mall’s about the novel. Presumably the original story owner wanted to triple-plus the rent, I looked at the revolved around the ‘Fury’ itself – a clever twist on numbers, saw his and mine didn’t work together and an SF staple idea – in which McLaughlin shows that quickly shut down. In view of events since I’ve not an FTL ship is a terrible weapon when aimed at a regretted my decision.” planet. But in the novel I’d noted that the concept wasn’t developed quite as much as it could have been So I was wrong about the engineering background – and the descriptions of the weapon seemed oddly let’s say instead that McLaughlin bluffs very well, low-key. which perhaps in some ways is the essential skill of a science fiction writer! His father was a distinguished Now I think I understand why; instead of turning astronomer and I suppose that helped, though Dean this into a full-blown account of the war between himself took a degree in literature. But he gives the Earth and its Venus colony, McLaughlin let his key to his method of story-development in the narrative go off in an entirely different direction. At ‘Hawk Among The Sparrows’ collection, where he the time he’d apparently been reading commentaries says, “given the ‘what if ?’ situation, certain on the impact of the then-new contraceptive pill, consequences would follow.” And that exploration of which had prompted him to bring in a great deal of consequences is what I find so attractive, especially social extrapolation; his future Earth society is totally when it involves extrapolation of social, as well as sexually liberated. “Being naked in public was technological change. nothing to them, and they slept together as if sex was as normal as eating or going to class. A girl’s social standing was determined by how many beds she’d been invited to share.” the minor imprints, was actually a ground-breaking piece of science fiction – especially when it started life as something entirely different! McLaughlin published another novel, DAWN, serialised in Analog (April-July 81) which was very different from anything he’d written before, because it re-examined the central idea behind Asimov’s ‘Nightfall’. What, I wondered, had made him want to tackle one of the ‘classics’ from the Golden Age?

In response, Dean commented, “though I had a question about how deep the dark [would be], my foremost thought was, what else happens? Who does what? What else is achieved? Even more basic, in any case, was my having noticed that almost no-one had seriously addressed Emerson’s question since Asimov, as if he’d said it all. Not by a long shot.”

Well, I can see what he means; Asimov was a young writer at the time and he didn’t fully work out the details of ‘Nightfall’. So we have a technological, city-building society which has no experience of darkness (but hadn’t they ever been down a cellar or in an attic?). They had telephones, thus electricity, so why no electric lighting? Why would they build an observatory (shown on the original Astounding cover) with nothing but six suns to look at? And, of course, a big Moon would be perfectly visible in their sky.

McLaughlin takes an entirely different view of the situation – he suggests that the suns would be Coming as he does from a much more repressed regarded as Gods – but despite some fast footwork colonial society our young protagonist naturally finds we all know what the ending has to be, and I think this a bit difficult to accept, and he is especially that’s the fundamental problem with DAWN; all mortified after spending the night with a 16-year-old along, it was someone else’s idea! virgin and having to confess to her father the next day. But to his amazement her dad is pleased. And another problem; his protagonist is just too “Good,” he said, “I’m glad to hear it. We were damned humble, something which is also true about beginning to worry about her.” ‘Tenbrook’ and is mildly irritating in ‘Ode to Joy’ (Analog, July 91), an otherwise uplifting story in In 1963 I thought this was pretty hot stuff. While which the hero finds a way to turn radioactive we may now be well along the road towards the materials into harmless isotopes. Now, I don’t have sexual freedom portrayed in FURY, back then this to spell-out what a breakthrough like that would was a genuinely revolutionary piece of social mean for the world, and yet the hero is so speculation. I can think of few other SF stories unbelievably self-effacing that he apologises for (other than BRAVE NEW WORLD, perhaps, which taking equipment without permission! Could this be is in a class of its own) that dared to go anywhere a reflection, an over-statement, of Dean near this theme. How ironic that this little McLaughlin’s own ‘quiet, soft-spoken’ personality, I paperback, appearing without fanfare from one of wonder? The last story I want to mention is ‘Brotherhood of Keepers’ (ASF, July 1960) which impressed me by exploring an ethical question I’ve never seen considered elsewhere. It’s set in a star-travelling future where an alien race at about the level of Australopithecus has been discovered, living in a terribly harsh environment. We can help them – but should we? They’re being driven to evolve by the sheer struggle for survival and if we give them food and shelter, as one of the characters wants to do, it will prevent them from ever becoming truly intelligent.

McLaughlin himself calls this one of his most ambitious pieces, says it was hard to write and that he was dissatisfied with the result; “I will admit to this day it was a story I did not finish so much as give up on, unable to do more.”

He’s right, it’s not perfect, the characters are stereotyped, especially the professional ‘do-gooder’ who can’t understand, won’t even try to understand the argument. I think the story would have been stronger if he had been more sympathetically depicted, if he had grasped the situation and had made a better argument to reject the ‘hands-off ’ approach. It isn’t so much about evolution as about the moral dilemma facing the protagonists; a humanitarian desire to help the less-fortunate coming up against the brick-wall of Darwinian Natural Selection. It’s the sort of thing that makes me proud to read science fiction, and I’d love to put it in front of someone like Richard Dawkins. The story was a long way ahead of its time and all credit to the author for tackling such a difficult theme.

So, I’ve only looked at some of Dean McLaughlin’s more important stories, mostly in Astounding/ Analog, but I think you get the general idea. He’s never written a lot, in over fifty years producing just four published novels and 34 stories at shorter- length, but almost all of them have been high- quality, thoughtful science fiction. I think he is overdue for some recognition.

- Peter Weston, 2009

Nikola Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower by Bill Burns

TANSTAAFL: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A another, but the total amount of energy remains Free Lunch. Popularized by Heinlein in “The Moon constant. Is a Harsh Mistress”, this can be read as a succinct summary of the laws of thermodynamics. These Now you may well be asking, what’s all this got to basic tenets of classical physics were established in do with Nikola Tesla’s Tower at Wardenclyffe, Long the 19th century by scientists such as Joule and Island, and the answer should be, absolutely nothing, Carnot and Clausius and Kelvin, and, outside of as Tesla’s intention was to use the tower for trans- quantum physics, remain valid today in describing Atlantic radio telephony, and to demonstrate the properties of the real world. transmission of electrical power without wires. But there are plenty of people today who’d like you to These laws have also been stated as: think that Tesla had found a way to generate limitless You can’t win free energy. You can’t even break even You can’t get out of the game. I expect most SoWS readers will agree that there’s no such thing as free energy – the car that runs on In more formal terms, the first law of water; the device that turns water into hydrogen and thermodynamics embodies the law of conservation oxygen, then re-combines them to produce free of energy, which states that energy can neither be electricity; and the many other perpetual motion created nor destroyed, it can only be changed from machines in disguise that have found new life (and one form to another or transferred from one body to funding) through the Internet. And as far as I can tell from reading the biographies of Nikola Tesla (the notes identify the photo as such: “To give an idea of first of them was published in 1944, the year after the magnitude of the discharge the experimenter is his death), there’s nothing to suggest that he sitting slightly behind the "extra coil". I did not like personally believed in any of these scams or their this idea but some people find such photographs many cousins. But even that 1944 biography interesting. Of course, the discharge was not playing elevated Tesla to technical sainthood, attributing when the experimenter was photographed, as might powers to him far beyond reality, and he has become be imagined!” the patron saint of the present-day “over unity” crowd, who believe you really can get something for In what might be considered a foreshadowing of his nothing. future experiments, it’s reported that Tesla ran through $100,000 in eight months in Colorado In fact, while certainly quite eccentric (particularly Springs, and when he left at the beginning of 1900, in later life), Tesla was for many years a prominent the lab was torn down and its contents sold to pay and well-respected electrical engineer, whose debts. inventions laid the foundation for the modern power distribution industry, and who made important Tesla returned to New York and sought more discoveries in many related fields. One of Tesla’s financing. He raised $150,000, 51% of it coming goals, which he worked on for many years, was to from J Pierpont Morgan, and began construction of a distribute power worldwide without the use of wires, new facility at Wardenclyffe, where he intended to but he did not suggest that this electrical energy experiment both with transatlantic radio would come from nowhere. Perhaps his co-option communication, using a 200 kilowatt transmitter, by the free-energy enthusiasts is from a mistaken and with broadcast power transmission. belief that Tesla’s distribution system, with its promise of unlimited power anywhere in the world, The location was not chosen by Tesla; quite the was in fact a free-power generation system. reverse. No doubt hoping for good publicity from Tesla’s exploits, lawyer and banker James S Warden So now at last we come to Wardenclyffe on eastern offered Tesla 200 acres of land at his new resort Long Island - after a brief detour to Colorado community, Wardenclyffe-On-Sound, near Springs, the site of Tesla’s first spectacular high Shoreham on the north shore of Long Island, about voltage experiments and the predecessor to sixty miles from Manhattan. In 1901 construction Wardenclyffe. Anyone who has seen the film of began, the main building being designed by noted Chris Priest’s novel The Prestige will remember the architect Stanford White, and the tower by his fabulous set of David Bowie Nikola Tesla’s associate W.D. Crow. In the style of the Italian laboratory in Colorado Springs, in reality his Renaissance, the building included offices, library, Experimental Station, established in 1899. The machine shop, generator room, instrument room, and equipment here was designed to test Tesla’s theories laboratory, with facilities for glass blowing. of long distance power transmission using high Wardenclyffe was planned to be the first of many voltages at high frequencies, produced by what came such installations around the world. to be know as the Tesla coil. He was able to transmit power wirelessly to remote light bulbs, although an Impressive as the Colorado Springs station had been, analysis of the results shows that he used an awful to Tesla it was merely a step along the way: “The lot of source power to create a small amount of Colorado plant I have used in determining the received power. construction of the various parts, and the experiments which were carried on there were for It’s interesting to note that the famous photograph of the practical purpose of enabling me to design the Tesla sitting calmly in a chair surrounded by high- transmitters and receivers which I was to employ in voltage discharges is actually a double-exposure the large commercial plant subsequently erected...” publicity photograph. Tesla's own Colorado Springs Tesla intended his “World System” of transmitters Tesla’s key patents expired and his royalty payments ceased, and funding for the tower dried up almost completely. Employees were laid off in 1906, although parts of the building remained in use, and in 1908 the property was foreclosed. Despite his obtaining further funding, Tesla’s financial state continued to deteriorate, and by 1915, when his investors wanted to know their prospects of any return, Tesla was unable to answer them. Ownership of the by now derelict property was transferred to one of Tesla’s creditors that year, and in 1917 the tower was dynamited.

With the tower gone the property passed through a number of hands, the main building miraculously remaining relatively intact, although it stood vacant until 1939 when it was taken over by a photo processing company. The present owner is Agfa- Gevaert, which is paying for the remediation of toxic waste contamination caused by the previous owners. While the Town of Brookhaven and Tesla enthusiasts everywhere would like the site to be designated as a historical landmark, this requires the approval of the owners, which is not forthcoming. The best they have achieved so far is the placing of a plaque near the building in 1976:

IN THIS BUILDING DESIGNED BY STANFORD and receivers to provide global broadcasting, secure WHITE, ARCHITECT telecommunications, long range navigational aids, NIKOLA TESLA and ultimately industrial power transmission. BORN SMILJAN, YUGOSLAVIA 1856, DIED NEW YORK, U.S.A. 1943 In June 1902 Tesla moved his laboratory from CONSTRUCTED IN 1901-1905 Manhattan to Wardenclyffe, but a year later the WARDENCLYFFE, HUGE RADIO STATION tower standing behind the main building was still not WITH quite completed, and not yet functional, although it ANTENNA TOWER 187 FT. HIGH (DESTROYED was by now an impressive 187 feet tall and 68 feet in 1917), WHICH WAS TO SERVE diameter, of wood construction, with plans for a 55- AS HIS FIRST WORLD COMMUNICATIONS ton metal hemispherical structure at the top. Under SYSTEM. the tower, a shaft was sunk 120 feet into the ground, IN MEMORY OF 120TH ANNIVERSARY OF and below this were placed iron pipes to a total TESLA'S BIRTH AND 200TH length of a further 300 feet. Tesla wanted the ANNIVERSARY OF U.S.A. INDEPENDENCE — machine "to have a grip on the earth so the whole of July 10, 1976 this globe can quiver," - but this was not to happen. I’ll close with one final quote from Tesla, which Eventually realizing that Tesla would never achieve shows what a visionary he was: commercial success, Morgan and the other investors withdrew their support in 1904. In 1905 some of "As soon as [the Wardenclyffe facility is] completed, transferred from one to another place ..." - Nikola it will be possible for a business man in New York to Tesla, "The Future of the Wireless Art", Wireless dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear Telegraphy and Telephony, 1908, pg. 67-71. in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An Further reading: inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will An excellent and detailed article on Wardenclyffe enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, appeared in Long Island Forum in 1968, and is music or song, the speech of a political leader, the reproduced on the website of the Tesla Society at address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon http://www.teslasociety.com/dream.htm of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be Plan would create Suffolk museum for physicist Tesla BY RICK BRAND | [email protected] January 28, 2009

Advocates who want to create a science museum and learning center at the former lab of famed physicist Nikola Tesla, the father of alternating current, moved a step closer as a legislative committee approved appraisals of the 13-acre Shoreham site.

However, aides to County Executive Steve Levy, citing economic woes, warned the county cannot afford a new museum, when existing ones are facing fiscal woes.

The measure, approved unanimously Monday, goes to the county legislature Tuesday where sponsor Legis. Daniel Losquadro (R-Shoreham), minority leader, said he expects wide support.

"This is clearly a very important historic site," said Losquadro, saying it could easily qualify as a national landmark and has attracted international interest. He also believes the site could attract naming rights funding from major communications companies.

Backers say the lab is historically important because the 10,000-square-foot brownstone is the last remaining research facility used by Tesla, a scientific giant at the turn of the century. Tesla built power generators at Niagara Falls, invented radio and did far-reaching research on energy and robotics. The site also has the remains of a 187-foot high tower used for radio wave experiments, that goes 120 feet deep into the ground.

"If we were talking about the last laboratory of Thomas Edison, people would be all over this," said Jane Alcorn, president of Tesla Science Center. She said Tesla is just as important, and his work is now undergoing a revival. Alcorn added that his alternating current electric power made Edison's electric light practical, allowing power to be sent long distances.

But Levy aide Ben Zwirn warned, "Acquiring the site would be the easiest part. The problem is once you have it what do you do now." Reached later, Suffolk parks commissioner John Pavacic echoed concerns, saying a new complex would stress park resources, noting the Vanderbilt Museum and Maritime Museum in Sayville are having fiscal woes.

But Losquadro said the county needs only to act as a catalyst for purchase and the Tesla organization that has long advocated for the science center would be responsible for fundraising and operating the site. But he added it is crucial to have the county initiate talks to compete with other buyers. He also hoped the county might get land for a tax write-off because pollution problems limit its use.

The property, located on Route 25A, is owned by Agfa Corp., a Belgium-based imaging company, but the complex has been closed since 1987, when technology at the site became obsolete. The parcel is also a state Superfund site that has undergone a cleanup for heavy photographic metals that is virtually complete. Bill Bosmann, an Agfa official, said the parcel is now for sale but declined further comment. James Bacon Dear Mr Editor, Maybe I am more sensitive to blanket descriptions, perhaps itʼs because terms Croydon, UK I understand your applied in this manner are normally the remit of tacit support of those who feel empowered and wish to refer to what Geoff others making it clear they are inferior. Bullyʼs Ryman says he is trying to do, letʼs be honest and others who want to target a defined section he is a dead good bloke himself. I loved 253 of society, without any understanding or such is my profession and I really liked “Pol comprehension of what the target is really Pot's Beautiful Daughter”, which he read some about. Doesnʼt sound so good suddenly, but of, at the launch of The Mammoth Book of New even though geek may be fashionable now, I Horror. He was Guest of Honour at my first have an attitude that calling people who are Octocon, in 1991, I was seventeen, although I perceived as non SF fans, mundane, is had met him when I was sixteen and drunk, at derogatory. another con. And what does it mean, well the OED says: Making science fiction the best it can be is an adjective admirable task, but surely thatʼs down to writers, editors and the such. Is creating a 1. lacking interest or excitement. movement, for people to cling to haplessly, 2. of this earthly world rather than a heavenly really the best method? I can understand if we or spiritual one. have a clutch of books that seem to exist in a similar sub genre within science fiction, Well I worry that one is what we will end up Blaylock, Jeter and Powers spring to mind, as with, and to be honest, although I can see how an example, suddenly all being published at a science fiction based on this earthly world fits, relatively similar time. To me that is potentially a just about, no heavenly gazing at all? movement, although it could be just the creation of a sub genre. But Mundanism? Even if one is to forget about the historical use, itʼs still not a clearly defined or easy to use word First off as, for the term, well I dislike it and for a movement. And yet, Geoff uses the term. I rarely use it. I can remember the first time I say this, as he gave a reading of a mundane heard Mundane being used, it was at a UK piece at the British Science Fiction Associations convention around 2000 or so – I never heard it AGM. It was not to my liking, set in an off world used in Irish or fun con circles, despite its use in scenario, it was about anthropomorphic animals The Enchanted Duplicator. I can vividly sharing a deep memory. Yeah, I know, talking remember when it was used, a non fan family animals, such a trope and to be honest, I didnʼt were passing through the open area of a con, really enjoy it. Thatʼs a ONE then. and someone shouts out ʻmundanesʼ and a few others repeated it. It felt, odd. Those who The mundane manifesto business pops up and shouted chortled and snorted in self then disappears. I think it first came up in 2002 congratulatory glee, but I just felt like it was at a Clarion West course. I have a lot of time for unnecessary and also, demeaning. these courses, as a friend of mine went on one and she loved it and has since gone on to good things, they are very serious, and she was lucky she was able to go. The manifesto grew and it I found most of Trent Walters article a piffling seemed to come about in 2004 and early in exercise in self justification and sycophantic 2005 there was much about it, with much aggrandisement, the Irish fela appealed to my discussion started by the esteemed SF author cynical and sceptical senses, which I think SF Ian McDonald and then it slipped away. Then in fans are well gifted with at times. 2006 The BSFA had a superb series of articles in an issue of Vector, talking about it and again Is this the sort of deep thinking that Geoff it slid off the radar screen. Ryman wants to create from the mundane manifesto, or is it just that he is actually trying to Then this year Interzone decides to go with create a self fulfilling prophecy that involves a mundane SF as a theme, giving some sort of whole genre, and in the blind hope that if he recognition to the whole lark. I have only seen throws enough shit, it may just stick, he will be one other review of that issue, and it mirrored recognised as the man who was key to a new your own Rich. Overall, not very good really and science fictional movement. lacking interest and excitement. Or is Geoff really laughing up his sleeve, as I Two years ago when Geoff Ryman, Trent am made out to be a misunderstanding Walters and Ian McDonald all had articles about unintelligent loser who has missed out on the mundane manifesto in Vector, it felt iffy. The something really important, as the laughing man more one reads about it, the more one seems basks in the self gratification of provoking a to find it all very doubtful. Itʼs easy to say – well response. Is that what itʼs about, a response. Ryman writes some mundane science fiction, no one would argue, but itʼs the closer I wonder why the Mundane Manifesto is so investigation, something that I as a mere reader purposefully contradictory, in a way that not so might do, given the seriousness of the much thought provoking but rather irritating and manifesto, well it all looks a bit wankey when annoying. one looks at the meat on the bone. The article defending the manifesto felt wrong. From the moment I read the manifest, and It was reminiscent of teachers explaining subsequently the above mentioned articles, religion to me, and meanwhile I am pretty sure something just didnʼt clique with me. I wasnʼt they are talking rubbish, and they avoid true excited or to be honest that impressed and the light or questioning of the zealous and more I read the Geoff Rymen article in Vector, unmoveable statements that they would spout. the more I actually wondered what he is trying It was reminiscent, but on this occasion my own to achieve. experience and knowledge shouted out at me, in a confident manner. This is not just Trent Walters and Ian McDonald then went on questioning, I knew that statements being made to both discuss the ʻmundaneʼ manifesto, Trent in the manifesto are not correct. as if it actually mattered. The argument began immediately: Of course, just like some priest, we have a “the novels closest to MSF that I have seen sacrastant all ready in the vestry to confirm that are.. and Geoff Rymens Air (2004).” Said Trent everything his beloved father announces is true, Walters. and just in case, hereʼs why.

And is if on queue, we have Ian saying: “But That really instills confidence. Of course what is the central conceit of AIR itself, a kind of worse, is that a Brentford Griffin scenario has telepathic internet should have any manifesto been created. raising an eyebrow. Likely technology, I donʼt think so.” A situation where something that is a joke, a bit of charlatanism is taken for real by others, and of course, getting someone to believe in a false may not actually work and as of yet seems to truth is a fairly nasty thing. have been pretty barren.

Agitating people is all very well, but the Have these hapless trierʼs been misguided by inaccuracies these guys make in the defence of their attachment to mundanism as those that the manifesto are beyond me. For instance, debate and prophesise about it hold the tongue 1984 with a dystopian future, an oppressed up a check. working class, with a moustached socialist leader is mundane SF, but Hitler isnʼt Where are the books? acceptable. Where is the actual movement? The conventions? The gatherings? Hello?, whatʼs the exact different between the One issue of Interzone, does not a movement evils of National Socialism totalitarianism and make! the extension of totalitarianism that Orwell portrayed based on his experience of seeing I donʼt see it. I donʼt understand why anyone communism in action? The lack of a swastika? would want to limit what we know as SF. I love it all. I have the greatest respect for SF writers, I may also have been reading different books, but for me, to embrace this mundanism, is in book surely colonies on other planets, such as itself to insult the great efforts of SF authors and in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep also readers, who have brilliantly grown a whole makes the assumption of Phillip K. Dick into genre and explored wonderful aspects through Mundanism a bit questionable. Itʼs a pitiful effort their literature. to apply integrity to something that is full of holes, by bolting on retrospectively the good Am I just too much of a working man, too name of a science fiction author. plebianastic to comprehend. Is it an attack of the old spaslexicness that induces a naïve lack Are these inaccuracies and errors on purpose? of understanding? Am I just uneducated and its The reference to tongue in check is made by being put to the point where itʼs bluntly obvious. the acolyte Trent. So am I know taking it all too seriously, should I laugh and hope to get the in What am I missing here, and which point of joke, the clique thing, where those in the know, mundanism is it that I am missing, some of it, all know and those that donʼt are just stupid little of it, none of it. idiots, who can of course continue to buy the books though. Of course now I have written, now I have been provoked to actually think about the new wave Then again at the time that the manifesto hit, of Mundanism, I wait anxiously in apprehension around 2005 there was a UK Clarion group, of this new tidal wave of creativity that is The and I understand they all made an undertaking Best SF can be. I have been waiting two years to produce work, following the edicts of now. Still waiting. mundane SF, it would imply that some were taking it very seriously. If nothing else, mundane SF has at least provoked you to write a brilliant letter of Well they would sort of have to really; even the comment, James. highest of academics succumb to manipulation through praise. Before your letter arrived, and the issue of Vector you sent along, I had not realized But such a group of budding intelligent and one that the Mundane Manifesto had been would hope, potentially great writers falling in kicking around for quite so long. Long line just ads to my questing mind, is this a joke gone horribly wrong as a bunch of unpublished enough that it does indeed seem a lot like a authors blunder with a manifesto in mind, which manifesto in search of a movement. If Ian McDonald had signed himself up and cited Hal Clementʼs Mission Of Gravity is the great- River Of Gods as an example of mundane grandaddy of the new hard sf. Itʼs every bit as SF, which criteria it surely meets, then the brittle as some of the writing of Peter F. movement might be said to exist. His Hamilton, Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, or reluctance to identify himself as part of any Alastair Reynolds, all of whom I like, but they group, though, bodes ill for Ryman getting can be like chewing ice (though I admit Clement wouldnʼt have stooped to transmigration along the most talented to claim they are the star paths!). But Iʼm willing to slog through mundane. frigid prose and idiot ideas and cliches to get to the good parts, just like any good pornographer. By the way, I would not put that telepathic My brother Sutton calls these writers The connection to the internet too far into the Impossible Technology Boys, and that about fantasy column given some of the sums it up. As with sf fans down through the technologies that have thoughts control ages, Iʼm willing to put up with a certain amount computers. It would be a hard sell for of dreck if a writer can otherwise whisk me governments to get people to agree to tiny away to another place of savory sense of little implants in their brains that won’t wonder. If Ryman is able to wake up a few hurt a bit, I grant. writers and start a moveable feast like Moorcockʼs protean push itʼs all to the good. Now on to someone who is a bit more, well, ambivalent, about mundanity. I certainly agree with your last point, William, but as James has pointed out there does not appear to be the upwelling of new William Breiding New Wave is the Morgantown, WV obvious touchstone authors, or established ones seeking to (?) for Rymanʼs appear hip, tossing their manuscripts into Mundane Manifesto. the mundane circle. This may be a pity as Since we are now over a decade into the three of the four impossible technology “renaissance” of wild and wacky hard sf and ga- boys you mention have led me to tossing jillion word space operas, history dictates that books. But what books do you tend to toss, Ryman manifest to keep balance in this time William? line. You capped your editorial with this observation, and while noting Dischʼs suicide I understand your throw-the-book-across-the- mention that Disch was an ancient precursor to room-in-disgust impulse. A revelatory moment Mundane sf (not really fair since he was around came for me with two books that found different for the New Wave). I was thinking: as usual, ideologues: William Gibsonʼs Neuromancer Bruce Sterling go there first and then quietly and Kim Stanley Robinsonʼs The Wild Shore. moved on, with such stories as “Green Days In Both were infuriating, and I finished neither. Brunei”(canʼt be lumped in with cyberpunk as it Pissed at Gibson because he was just one is way too pastoral and contemplative). blustering glossy cliche after another, while just yawningly bored with Robinsonʼs hippie Your breakdown of the Manifesto in its first glow dystopia. More recently, I should have thrown was shocking: one could never live without all China Mievilleʼs Perdido Street Station across those classics. And Iʼm sure Ryman would the room in disgust but forced myself to agree with you. The bulleted list of things you completion to gain understanding of why a liked about Simmonsʼ Ilium does look stupid, crudely written, structured, and paced (if vivid) and thatʼs a point worth noting; if itʼs done well novel could be considered such a milestone. It the rankest cliche can appear to make didnʼt happen. Hartwellʼs claim that its marvelous emotional sense. importance lies in the bookʼs blur between sf and fantasy is hogwash - thatʼs been called science-fantasy for about seventy years now. Ned Brooks Can't say I care much for Dave Hicks Firstly, it's a strange and Lilburn, GA Ryman's "mundanity" - Leicester, UK pleasing feeling to be sounds like a retread of receiving fanzines the old Victorian notion directly from one my all that Dickens mocked in HARD TIMES, that time faned heroes. The thick end of thirty years children should be taught only verifiable facts ago, Greg Pickersgill was tending the nascent and all fantasy and speculation suppressed. Memory Hole in Ealing and hosting parties at which he'd been unable to expel various slack- I knew about the steam-powered airplane that jawed newcomers to fandom, so he thrust upon Townley mentions - there's a photo in Floyd us Good Works that we might do some service Clymer's STEAM CAR SCRAPBOOK. It flew for The Cause. once, quite successfully, and then the standard engine was put back in it and that was the end One of these splendid volumes was on unusual of that. It was a successful experiment that led sized grey paper and had a picture of a rat nowhere - probably because, for the same masturbating on the back cover. A very good power, the steam engine is heavier than the picture I must say, probably one of the ten best internal combustion engine; and there are no wanking rat pictures ever. It was one of a bunch water spigots in the sky. The steam in a steam of SPACE JUNK from some madman in engine escapes, and water must be added California with Anglophile punk/ratfandom back. Attempts at a fully regenerative steam tendencies. I thought it was brilliant. engine that would use the same water over and over were made, but the recondensation So, here we are in 2008 and what do I see on equipment made it even heavier, and it was the back cover? I see a warm-hearted tribute to already too heavy to compete with the internal an editor of GALAXY. What's the matter? Run compustion engine except in applications where out of wanking rat pictures? weight was not critical. Pace James B's letter on Heinlein and your The Bruce Townley cover is nice - but why no response: for me the key critical piece is Delany more art? With the good printing you could run in the back of TRITON. All us white folks tend to any sort of line art as easily as print. focus on Heinlein and gender, but for Chip the revelation was a couple of lines buried deep in I’d like to run more artwork but I am not a STARSHIP TROOPERS that Jon Rico is black, big fan of adding illoes just to break up the and the experience of reading a novel with such text or to fill a bit of white space. I a protagonist in early 60s Harlem. It highlighted definitely prefer to use illustrations that how many different meanings to different people are specifically intended to enhance the a work could have. article. And that entails a level of In terms of women, for whatever reason his organization and a history of meeting characterisations are so risible that I don't see deadlines that I have not yet achieved. misogyny but a profound incapacity to Once I feel I can request a set of understand and, more significantly, to write illustrations from a fanartist that they about half the human race. His writing about believe will see the light of day within a women in his later books is so wretched that it's reasonable period then I will try to get like ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE, the 19th some. As it is, SoWS 4 may well be picture century English-Portuguese phrase book written free with a cover modeled on a later issue by a man who spoke no English. of Unknown. Mind you, the young women/old codgers Other comments about the lack of art material is plain creepy. Though strangely, with focussed more on previous triumphs: each passing year, less so. Might revisit that stuff in another decade. reasons, including that Delany described the My point, such as it is, is that Heinlein doesn't main character as suffering from a "logical have a single core meaning or agenda. I spent perversion." "How can a perversion be 'logical'," a load of time in art college writing essays asked George. "Easy," I replied. "A sexual arguing this position. Instead, his work remains perversion is a perversion of sex. A logical valid precisely because (some of) it is perversion is a perversion of logic." I was even sufficiently universal to resonate with the forceful, very unusual for me. thoughts and feelings of different people at different times. At the fan auction held at Anticipation I acquired George Turner, A Life by Judith This is remarkably difficult with SF, because Raphael Buckrich which I fully intend to most of it is, if anything, more rooted in its time read, along with some of Turner’s SF before than much mainstream work. Aussiecon 4. It contains some photos of Australian fan luminaries like Bruce Doesn't mean NUMBER OF THE BEAST isn't Gillespie, John Foyster, and John Bangsund. utter, utter shite, mind.

If my memory, mercifully clouded, of November has come Farnham’s Freehold is anything to go by, Gary Mattingly Dublin, CA and gone and I haven't then Heinlein’s understanding of race seen Sense of Wonder relations was pretty poor as well. Stories 3. Assuming I didn't miss it, I will then also assume Other writers also mention RAH. that is what you are feverishly working on now for Corflu. Did you know that Sense of Wonder I want to stress a point Stories 2 isn't on efanzines? Jerry Kaufman for James Bacon. People Seattle, WA have argued about Sad to say that is November of 2008 you Heinlein, and with refer to and November 2009 has now gone Heinlein, for decades by. Once this is out my next project is to before his death. I saw the arguments going on get all issues of SoWS web-ready and even in 1966, when I got into fandom. His available. I’ve been quite impressed with books polarized people even then, and several the pdf layouts that Chris Garcia has been writers wrote books that were essentially using for The Drink Tank and will attempt responses, during Heinlein's lifetime. The fact that we still argue over whether he was to emulate it. misogynistic and so forth, just proves how powerful his work was, whether at its best or its Marvelous front cover by Bruce Townley! worst. (I read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for the first time last year. I was disappointed that I don't think I've read any of the new Mundane there wasn't more specific detail about "line SF. Based upon your editorial it doesn't look marriages" but on the whole was glad I'd finally like I've missed anything. I must admit to not gotten around to this classic work.) having a problem with stories leaping into mysticism. Actually I have a greater problem I enjoyed reading about George Turner, flying with stories that dwell on science almost to the machines, Rogue Moon, and JG Ballard: all exclusion of the story. I'm afraid I'm not one of things I've enjoyed at one time or another. I those people who want to hear the author go on never have read any of George's fiction, but I and on about how he or she can explain the always read his criticism when Bruce published possibility of the science in the story and how it it. I had a pretty good argument with him about has come into existence. With respect to your Delany, too - he slammed Triton for various description of mundane SF I'm sure there are some stories that can fit into that category and are quite marvelous, such as the works by that happens, obviously. I'm not a big fan of the Thomas Disch. I'm not sure an author young girl love thing but I guess I sort of missed simply working to hit that mark will necessarily thinking about that very much as I read his come up with something good though. stories. I'll try to keep it in mind to see what I observe if I do ever go back to read his books. The Good Soldier by Bruce Gillespie was All things considered I'll probably be dead enjoyable and interesting. I greatly before I finish the books on the current enjoyed the thought "of Australia as a land to-be-read shelves so don't hold your breath oveflowing with kangaroos and SF critics." It waiting for future comments on that. would have been marvelous if you could have found someone to do an illustration for that. It To re-read or not to re-read that is a would seem that Mr. Turner would be a question I have trouble with myself. Lately proponent of mundane SF whereas Mr. I have been re-reading some books on the Gillespie seems to hold an opinion similar to basis that I last read them so long ago that mine that science fiction is not "fundamentally a I have few specific memories of them. In realistic literature about the future". I do not some cases this has not turned out to be a recall ever reading anything by George Turner good experience but in others, particularly but now I have a desire to find something, even the Heinlein juveniles and the Ballard though I might not enjoy it in the end. disaster novels, the re-read has been quite Bruce Townley's "A Dream of Flight" was also rewarding even though, like you and entertaining and enjoyable (I need to find and probably most other fans, my shelves are use more adjectives.) I give thanks to Mr. full of enough unread volumes to last me Townley for bringing this information to my many years. attention. I would like to see a steam-powered airplane. It is too bad that those who at such Jim Linwood now points out some problems early times were interested in flight gave up the with writing based on memories 40 years idea with such seeming ease. old:

I was intrigued by Graham Charnock's well- written article on J.G. Ballard (except for Jim Linwood Grahamʼs piece was possibly the slurps). It is amazing that he wrote Islesworth, UK marred by his apparently this on memories of books read 40 years ago. not having read Ballardʼs Obviously his memory is far better than mine recent novels and his since I forgot much of what I've read several autobiography, Miracles of Life. It reads like months in the past (well, weeks occasionally). I something written before the publication of do remember enjoying Ballard's books and now Crash in 1973 and makes many false must obviously re-read them since I have assumptions. practically no other memory of them at this point. Graham is wrong about JGB being influenced by Wells, Shaw, Forster and pulp magazines. I'm a bit late to add notes on Heinlein but I Ballard first encountered non-comic book SF probably read all of the juveniles/young adult aged 23 in 1954 when he was serving in the novels he wrote and many, maybe even most, RAF at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. He disliked of his "adult" novels. I grew weary of the last the Star Trek imagery of ASF and found Galaxy half dozen or so he wrote. I should go off and and F&SF more to his liking. His previous re-read all those early novels I remember with reading matter seemed to be Kafka, Sartre, fond memories but I have hundreds of other Mann and Hemingway. In a recent list of his ten books sitting on the shelves so who knows favourite novels, the only “SF” given is Nineteen when I'll do that. I'm not much for re-reading Eighty-Four and Brave New World (unless you books so it could be a long time before also count Kafkaʼs The Trial). live in a “dilapidated bungalow” as described by Although JGB recognises Mike Moorcock as a Tom Disch but a small, shabby semi with an art- great friend and influence, he credits Ted deco frontage about the same size and layout Carnell with wanting SF to change and urging as my own house. Reading his autobiography, I him to concentrate on “inner space” found an amazing coincidence: Before he psychological tales “close to the spirit of the moved to Shepperton in 1960, JGB lived in surrealists”. It was Carnell, not Mike, who Heathcote Road, St Margarets, just down the published The Terminal Beach, The Drowned road from my present home. The Twickenham World and other experimental stories that doctor who became infatuated with Ballard's established JGBʼs reputation. wife, Mary, is almost certainly the one became our family doctor over a decade later. His was “Ballard is psychologically suspect and warped” the closest surgery to the Ballards and Iʼve claims Dr Charnock and points to an early story heard stories about him that fit JGBʼs to prove this, although it would be possible to description. He died a few years ago. Not do this with most major writers (and film mentioned in the book is the fact that the St directors like Hitchcock) of the 20th century. Margaretsʼ flat was close to the Twickenham Ballard has said that his childhood experiences Film Studios. encouraged him to think that the human race was quite dangerous and capable of terrible In an interview JGB said that modern things. When he moved to England, he sensed Shepperton “…is part of what I call the that beneath the Ealing Comedy and Dadʼs television suburbs; its culture is electronic, Army view of the world there was underlying dominated by the television and the video aggression and unease that could spill over into recorder. It's also pretty classless around here: violence and madness. Perhaps thatʼs all we the people are well travelled, they lead very need to know about Ballardʼs motivations, active lives devoted to leisure pursuits; they except that the death of his wife was also a learn to fly, or take up abseiling, or buy a boat defining moment. and keep it in a marina. I like that; I think that's where the future is going: a suburban calm Graham wonders why JGB choose to live in coexisting with terrific volatility, as when the “such a dead zone as Shepperton other than local shopping centre is suddenly destroyed by the simple truth that he was a disassociated a maniac with a mail-order Kalashnikov. After personality from an early age”. Shepperton is all, this kind of lifestyle is what I've been writing far from being a “dead zone”: itʼs a pleasant about all these years, it's what I've been Surrey town on the banks of the Thames where predicting would arrive." JGB and his wife almost certainly decided to settle because it was an ideal place to bring up Some “dead zone”. their family. Some have speculated that the flooded gravel pits and reservoirs in the area BTW, your end note to Grahamʼs piece is reminding him of his childhood are his reason wrong. Ballardʼs wife, Mary, is buried in Alicante, for living there but these are on the outskirts of Spain not France. Shepperton, not visible from JGBʼs house. Similarly, pundits point to the nearby M3 Thanks for this, Jim. I should move motorway and Heathrow; but the motorway Miracles of Life up higher on my to be hadnʼt been built and the airport only had one read list (honestly, I’m getting a bit bored terminal building in 1960 when JGB moved to by the new Stephen King so maybe I should Shepperton. An avid cinemagoer (and film-noir just make the jump now). By 1954 F&SF fan) he thinks he chose it because of the film and Galaxy were definitely at least as good studios which gave it a “slightly raffish air”. as Astounding, if not superior. It’s not too surprising that Ballard preferred them but Iʼve never met JGB but, living in Ballardland, Iʼve passed his house a few times. He doesnʼt he may have missed a few good stories in nothing much except suspicion of 'something', I ASF, as well. admit) and probably by the time I have re-read Bruce's article I will have had to admit I was I am surprised that you never met Ballard just being as old and farty as I suspected Turner as I know you are a big fan and live of being myself. nearby. Was Ballard never an attendee of I liked Bruce Townley's piece too, but then I am British fan events? always fascinated by pioneer aeronauts. Especially steam-powered ones... I almost don't I am further surprised that Ted Carnell was believe this is all true. I WILL check. I have the the editor who published Ballard’s early right books! What a wonderful world it might fiction. He’s become so much the icon of have been to have these aerial wonderments “new wave”, along with Moorcock, that I above with Goldsworthy Gurney's steam drags tended to naturally assume that he was racing across the landscape below. (Maybe I Mike’s discovery. should do you a piece on Bill Frost, our own local pioneer aeronaut, who actually features in Is The Trial science fiction? Recent events a Stephen Baxter short story.) in the USA and other democratic nations around the world tend to make it seem Certainly a piece on Bill Frost, or any other more like a realistic novel, unfortunately. early aeronauts, would fit right in with the themes I hope this fanzine is developing. Greg Pickersgill Thanks for the copy Haverfordwest, UK of SENSE OF WAHF: WONDER STORIES. Very nice product Bruce Gillespie: I should have asked you to indeed. I get very few fanzines these days (and add that the Turner article appeared in the want less, I could special Australian edition of Foundation, No 54, almost say), and there aren't many of them in 2000, but has not appeared in any fanzine. I (actually just PROLAPSE, BW and other was going to use it as the introduction to the Bananas material, and anything by Bruce second volume of Turner's critical works, but Gillespie) that I actually read with any attention that edition still does not exist. or pleasure. SWS is certainly readable, interesting, and a keeper, and is added to that Earl Kemp: Good tribute to Horace Gold, flake short list now. that he was....

Very attractive fanzine too, I must say. I can't Hmm... not too many letters, about a 10% help wondering whether it would have been a return on investment, but good ones for bit cheaper to produce if you'd reduced those that did bother to write which I hope the font size and had less pages, but there will be a much higher percentage this time again it does have a genuine elegance to it. or else maybe I should just start adding those checkboxes that once were so popular I was very taken with Peter's piece which of course I remembered sort-of from the original on fanzines about how this is the last issue exchange, but transfers as even-better to you will receive unless you respond except the fanzine. It's amazing now that for years we that is kind of futile if these will all didn't realise what a bloody good fanwriter he is. ultimately end up on the web anyway it’s How stupid we must seem in retrospect. Or like saying we won’t let you read any of the how young and foolish, one wonders. Bruce G public domain books on Project Gutenberg is very good too, and I almost overcome my or something. La la la la. End of page...... vague antipathy to George Turner (based on Forward to the Past A Report to Shareholders

Roy Kettle

Here at Sense Of Wonder Stories (UK) plc, things through our dusty old corridors like a new have been pretty hectic. We were established only a Electrovacuulating Cyclonomatic Turbulative few months ago as RichCo’s major UK subsidiary in Vortexile Suctionizer®. Not least in this way, he has order to facilitate a public-private partnership with shown himself to be the sort of truly inspirational the British Department of Inward Investment and leader up to whom our employees can really look, as Outward Revenue. he has also proved himself to be in his spare time as a lay pastor in the Church of the Wholly Right. Since then, we haven’t really known what’s hit us. And, to tell the truth, it’s been a challenge to which So, no longer are we the boring old Royal and our young workforce has risen. Ancient Society for the Promotion of Scientifiction and Fantastical Literature but a bold consumer- Our recently appointed chairman, Albert Q facing, shareholder-orientated, employee-focused, Nepotism III - who, as luck would have it, is the son stakeholder-responsive, web-enabled, profit- of RichCo’s CEO - flew straight in from the good maximising, eco-sensitive, (responsible) risk-taking, old US of A having voluntarily given up his high socially-aware, cyber-technological, people-friendly, flying job in Lehman Brothers. And, as he said at a quasi-nationalised, bonus-restricting* organisation recent incentivisation event, he has already swept responsible for promoting true sci-fi values, with you, our shareholders, bearing the risk on all but the 95% will result in the book being non-published and de- of our core funding which comes from the UK Amazonised. Authors would, of course, still be able taxpayer. A small fee of 20% of advance and to print their own work via Lulu and sell it through royalties, payable for every sci-fi and fantasy book the UK’s fine network of local bookshops run by published in the UK, will ensure a revenue stream Oxfam and Help the Aged. for SOWS (UK) plc as well as post-dividend profits which will be safely held And the Division’s in the Cayman Islands Fangs, Horns, Talons, (subject to ongoing tax Wings, Fins and haven status) on behalf Tentacles team have of RichCo. already established a wide-ranging set of Our e-mission performance targets for statement reflects our sci-fi and fantasy position as a seminal authors who want to be organisation for the published in the UK. coming high-tech Every author will generation: receive additional funding under the “To boldly public lending rights improve the scheme for: sense of wonderment in •each abomination speculative with a slavering mouth literature and that contains 3% more other related ichor-covered teeth imaginative than average; media, especially •every Dreadful Thing through use of with between two and the interweb six slimy tendrils over whenever we 15 feet long, at least one are logged on.” of which bears mouth- like suckers which are This 21st century vision capable of leaving is underpinned by a set mysterious inflamed of corporate values saucer-like impressions which clearly stress our on human flesh; purposive intentions and can readily be •one large or two small actuated as a high-end action plan to encourage horns per beast with at least half capable of practical process-driven motivations. A range of being torn off by the hero for use in quaffing performance targets developed in accordance with mead, or a mead-like substance of the guidelines from Her Majesty’s Treasury help us author’s own invention; and implement these values. Of course, I only have time to report on a few of our many initiatives. • each wretched creature of fearsome aspect with 10 or more green, razor-sharp talons For example, over in Aliens, Beasts and Monsters dripping gore appearing in no less than three Division, they have ensured that failure to include at different chapters. least one attack from a horde of creatures set to enslave humanity or cast it into the fiery pits of hell New targets for bat-like and leathery wings are under be available for every author who incorporates one development. Discussions are also ongoing with the or more into their work. Loathsome Orifice unit as to responsibility for swamp-like breath and foul oral odours generally. Members of the executive are working closely on this We are working ceaselessly to develop procedures for with a number of teams in Villains Directorate, reducing the unexpected 100% absentee rate within notably those dealing with Mad and Misguided Scientists as well as two of our most hard-working Global Domination units, the Far Eastern Stereotypes team (Yellow Peril sub-unit) and the Nazi Resurgence Kommissariat (Hollow Earth Occult Zombie Gruppe).

The Huge and Tiny Action Plan that we have developed takes this on board, of course, as well as other ideas for extremes of size that we would like writers to freely consider using if their houses are to continue to receive power from national utilities companies, such as the discovery that the human race is living in the rectum of an alien microbe and how one man built a spaceship much larger than the universe just using some things he bought in a car boot sale, the urine of an enraged radioactive weasel, copies of pulp magazines and a very big strange thing that we haven’t yet decided upon.

Of course, not all our work is devoted to the written word itself. Here at SOWS (UK) plc we are well aware that a key factor in getting troubled young males, and even more troubled 50-somethings, to buy more sci-fi and fantasy is to draw them in with appealing cover art. Mr Nepotism III is clear that we can longer rely on covers where spaceships are simply poorly copied renditions of deodorant cans, toilet plungers and long-life lightbulbs, or amorphous the Nightmarish Arthropods group. anyone-can-see-they’re-not-really-very-practical interstellar vessels which could be travelling in either Meanwhile, the Robots, Androids and Cyborgs direction. As he said so forcefully at the executive are currently looking into promoting incentivisation event “Look, guys, it’s pretty simple. gigantism. There is a clear public demand for huge Our spaceships should look exactly like Big mechanical humanoid constructs which is largely Dicks.” (By this, I assume he meant like the galactic unfilled by the insipid “character-driven” oh-so- rockets under development by that giant of English science fiction we find all around us, with entrepeneurism, Sir Richard Branson.) As for a heroes who have “emotional insecurities”, “personal target, we will obviously need one that is very hard, problems”, “relationship issues” and “premature and work to firm this up is currently in hand. We education”. Colossal rampaging metal creatures will be making an interactive tool available to artists running amok, crushing crowds of panicking people and, whenever there is a significant rise in the and bringing buildings crashing to the ground while readership, the artist will be eligible for free NHS eye incinerating squadrons of military planes with tests every six months. blazing laser beams streaming from their jet-black eye-slots are in notably short supply. Tax credits will Meanwhile, at the Hero and Heroine Advisory Board (Maidens in Distress working group), the development of artistic targets is well under way to double the number of glistening metallic bras, halve the skirt-skimpiness factor and increase the panty- revelation ratio. They have asked me to say that it is more like “uncover” art.

Oh well, moving on….

All that said, our chairman feels strongly that there is too much blatant and, it has to be admitted, unprotected sex between those very covers, often involving unmarried people and occasionally extremely unappealing and ungodly creatures or even particularly rude mechanicals, sometimes merely beings from other dimensions, but frequently demonic, and generally with appendages and organs that do not bear thinking about yet often bear foul and evil offspring. Ambitious plans for the appalling enslavement and torture of humanity by a wide range of obnoxious fiends and monsters is something we would all wish to see more of in our literature, of course, but not when any kind of immorality is involved. Authors guilty of writing scenes that Jesus would have wished to avoid will not be eligible for the Government’s Christmas cold weather bonus for people on low incomes.

The Awesome Weapons and Sundry Strange Devices Unit has just received a demand from the US Government to ensure that, in any novel in which there is a war on Terra, the evil aliens must be The Time Travel team has come up with the idea of described as “in possession of illegal weapons of a humorous agency called the Para Docs, who travel Mars destruction” and “being in league with Hal to eras where plagues were rife, cure them using Qaeda 9000”. We do not anticipate authors taking profitable health care plans developed by Kaiser more than 45 minutes to respond to this. Permanente (previously known as the National Health Service), then return to the present to help In addition, the Unit is holding a competition to add deal with the resultant overcrowding etc. Authors to its extensive library of new descriptive noises for wishing to use this highly amusing scenario will be use with weaponery, which currently consists of eligible for support from the European Union’s Skrak, Pnning and Thub. Winners will be able to JOCULAR fund. meet an author of their choice at the nearest outlet of Mr MacDonald’s very excellent hamburger The GM Protectorate is encouraging authors to franchise, but unfortunately will be unable to discuss create stories using cuddly and edible mutant cod- their winning entry as it will be © SOWS (UK) plc. rabbits and publicly acceptable behemoths cross- My apologies, lady and gentlemen, I can see from cloned from whales and Stephen Fry, as well as bio- the frantic signals that I am receiving from the engineered plants which are resistant to financial Director of the Unit that I appear to have loss. Inclusion of monstrous, deviant, deformed mispronounced one of the sounds they have abnormal horrors of modern genetic technology developed. It should be Thubb. causing disease, disaster and death will be subject to either an unreasonable fine or slaughter of the firstborn, whichever is least convenient. The novel to be dialogue free. There is significant Protectorate is out-sourced to Monsanto UK. flexibility, however, for more extensive dialogue involving scientific exposition or where characters are resisting diabolical torture. There will also be generous bonuses* for masculine terseness and for typically incoherent and ineffectual feminine screaming;

• no more than 1000 words per book which the Characterisation Scrutiny Commissioner certifies as being necessary to character development or emotional subtexts, unless genuinely amusing or just plain evil;

• a range of financial incentives* is available for lengthy descriptions of amazing planetary landscapes, vast ancient unoccupied alien buildings, mind-boggling interstellar battles and attacks by ravening hordes generally.

Spot checks may be made by the Genre Protection Inspectorate and we have also established a whistle- blowers’ hotline for neighbours who see a writer watching television, nipping down the pub or having a bath during creative hours.

Working with the Government’s Political Correctness Unit, we have improved on a variety of important phrases which will attract loyalty points when used. These include:

• There are some things man, woman or any I am pleased to announce that the Sci-Fi and Fantasy person of indeterminate gender is not meant Language, Characterisation and Description to know; Development Agency has established a very straightforward creativity system for any new • That way a severe mental illness lies; and speculative and fantastical fiction written in the UK. New work will not be allowed to be published unless • We have ways of making you respond to us authors meet the following requirements: either verbally or non-verbally but will be tolerant if you suffer from Tourette’s • at least 92 words per working day which syndrome, have a hearing impairment or are result in phrases or sentences guaranteed to experiencing intermittent repetitive instill a sense of wonder in the reader; articulation dysfunction. • at least 350 words per working day of Loyalty points can be used to subscribe to a wide exciting narrative; range of quality publications in the Rupert Murdoch media conglomerate via the weblink • no dialogue to be of more than three www.thelabourgovernmentssaystheSunisagreatbritish sentences per character per double page bnewspaper.com spread, with at least half the pages in the . Under the Agency’s Unearthly Nomenclature Scheme funding is available for the use of the following letters in alien names: V, K, X, Z, Q and J, with enhanced terms for consecutive usage and a special vowel reduction bonus*.

A special bonus* is also available for all authors who use the SOWS (UK) plc’s patented new low-carbon system for interstellar travel. We are currently seeking to promote this method in articles in newspapers and magazines nationwide and our publicity team is keenly looking for any media person who is prepared to insert a Bionic Universal Teleportation Transit plug.

Authors who, for private and possibly perverse reasons, choose to write mainstream fiction as well as sci-fi or fantasy, and who wish to continue with their speculative literary ambitions, will henceforth be under a legal obligation to include in each mainstream novel one scene which involves either an eons-old artifact discovered on the Galactic rim, a huge sentient vegetable spaceship, three killer claw- bots or an alien assassin called Sidney. Failure to do so will result in the author’s sci-fi output being available only in Gaelic.

Finally, I am very pleased to report that next month sees the opening of the SOWS (UK) plc Cinematographic and Televisual Consortium and I hope to be able speak about their achievements at the next shareholders meeting. Thank you for your attention.

*All authors’ bonuses and financial incentives will be subject to a 99% post-financial apocalypse tax regime, the outcome of which will be ring-fenced by the Government for use in funding SOWS executives’ self-motivating share options and other cash-replacement, productivity-encouraging, salary- enhancement schemes as approved by the shareholders. Stock dividend payments will in future be directly linked to the successful approval of these schemes. Great Science Fiction Editors Number 3 in a Series Ted White

• Editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic March 1969 – February 1979

• Born February 4, 1938

• Credited with raising standards of Amazing and Fantastic to top level magazines. Redesigned magazines with a clean modern look.

• Despite extremely limited budget and concomitant low word rate, White was able to attract excellent authors, established and developing.

• Superb cover art by Mike Hinge, Jeff Jones, Larry Todd, Vaughan Bodé and others was a • Hugo nominee as Best Professional Editor feature of both magazines. 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, and 1977 • Amazing Stories received Hugo nominations • First publication of The Lathe of Heaven by for Best Professional Magazine in 1970, 1971, Ursula K. LeGuin and 1972. • Fantastic received a Hugo nomination for Best • Reprinted The Enchanted Duplicator by Walt Professional Magazine in 1972. Willis and Bob Shaw

• Reduced publishers dependence on cheap reprints from Amazing archive.

• Restored professional science fictionʼs ties with fandom with columns like “The Club House” which included fanzine reviews introducing many readers (including yours truly) to the idea of a fanzine.

Although Amazing and Fantastic may not have had the very best stories of the 70s, during Whiteʼs tenure they were without doubt the most engaging and perhaps the only pro SF magazines to have a real personality.