Vol. 19 No. 2 April 2020 ALEXIAD (!7+=3!G) $2.00 I have been remiss in staying active and in late January The 145th Running of the Preakness Stakes will be at a later date. resumed exercising because my clothes were starting to get The 151st Running of the Belmont Stakes will be June 6, 2020. tight. I have worked too hard to lose the weight just to gain it back again and so I have resumed walking. I started with four blocks and set myself the goal of adding four blocks every January 28, 2020 marked the anniversary of the Chal- month. It is March and I have just added a third lap of four lenger explosion and the death of all her crew. blocks each. This third lap is requiring no little discipline to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I have set myself April 4, 2020 marks the anniversary of the sinking of my the ultimate goal of walking the more than two mile pedes- father’s ship, U.S.S. Bush. trian bridge separating Louisville from Indiana. Truly — LTM ultimate crazy goal, the Appalachian Trail. I am also bent on losing fourteen pounds this year. It seems unlikely to me that Trivia: ...... 20 I will see the scales say 149. something on January 1, 2021 but then I never thought I could lose nearly fifty pounds Art: either. Sheryl Birkhead ...... 13 — Lisa Alexis A. Gilliland...... 7 Trinlay Khadro ...... 2, 14 Table of Contents Marc Schirmeister ...... 15 Editorial...... 1 Reviewer’s Notes ...... 1 Printed on April 10, 2020 Deadline is June 7, 2020 The Bulge Remembered ...... 6 Evicting a Tenant ...... 6 Reviewer’s Notes Horse News ...... 7 Hugo News ...... 11 Well, the Hugo nominees are out. And what is the most common Isaac Asimov Signs an Autograph...... 9 comment? The Joy of High Tech ...... 7 “Who are these people?” Nebula News ...... 10 Darrell Schweitzer pointed out how “Vox Day” had set out to leave Pets ...... 7 a smoking hole where the Hugos had been. This began, though, as an The Pursuit of the Pankera ...... 2 effort to promote books that were not being considered — not “Vox Rogue Moon ...... 9 Day’s” Rabid Puppies, but the “Sad Puppies”, which died eventually. The Unicorn’s Secret...... 3 I think no one was looking at their books, and the presumed association was not beneficial. Book Reviews Now influence had happened before: there was the trick by Caz JTM West/Roberts, SNOW...... 6 Cazedessus that got ERB-dom the Best Fanzine Hugo (he printed a JTM Cambias, The Initiate...... 4 ballot in the zine). Then the author of Battlefield Earth, unable to buy JTM Jenne, Blue Darker than Black ...... 5 himself a Nobel Peace Prize, tried to get a Hugo Award. That didn’t JTM Jenne, Blue Gemini ...... 5 work. And then there was the unfortunate event of 1989, complete with JTM Jenne, Pale Blue...... 5 implausible explanation (what con would let twenty-five non-members JTM Parker, Humble Pi ...... 6 into its Art Show?). But “Vox Day” managed to get his list nominated. This provoked Random Jottings ...... 2 a reaction, which provoked a counter-reaction, down to a Rabid Puppies list that included a gay dinosaur porn story (don’t ask). And Letters ...... 14 now the nominees have shifted, though I think that part of it is that Sue Burke, Lloyd G. Daub, John Hertz, Robert S. Kennedy, Trinlay book editors aren’t SF people any more, but English Lit grads, who buy Khadro, Timothy Lane, Lloyd Penney, George W. Price, John what they read, and what is read is what is nominated. Purcell, Joy V. Smith Add to this that often, the “Hugo Award Winning Author” got the award for a blog, and we have a devaluation of the award. Perhaps it’s Comments are by JTM or LTM another phase of the fall. Cyril Kornbluth said it: Pascha is April 19, 2020. We do not come again. We do not come. Ever again. The 146th Running of the Kentucky Derby will be September 5, 2020. — Joe Page 2 April 2020 Alexiad

January 2021. Written submissions must be 1962. More recently he published eI (available RANDOM JOTTINGS sent electronically, in MSWord format, to: on efanzines.com), with historical items about by Joe SF and fandom, including a reissue of Who [email protected] Killed Science Fiction?. Outside the field, Earl was a publisher of Items for review should be sent to: porno novels, climaxing er ending with an illustrated version of the Presidential Report of The Sherlock Holmes Review the Commission on Obscenity and Pornogra- Attn: Steven Doyle phy, which got him a jail term. 9 Calumet Court He was an eager and enthusiastic recipient Zionsville, IN 46077-1934 and a historic figure in fannish history, and we will miss him. Hugh Lupus has published An Extra Knot Part V (2020, APS Books, ISBN 978- 1789961485; $9.99; Amazon.com Services MONARCHICAL NEWS (Kindle); $4.99), the latest episode in his alter- nate World War II. The Hood goes in for a refit The Prince of Wales has tested positive for in the Boston Navy Yard, having a chat with the coronavirus, and is remaining in isolation. USS Constitution; the latest Rifleman Dodd Reports further indicate that neither the Queen Buy my books. (All available on goes into action in Greece (dealing Death to the nor the Duchess of Cornwall is so infected. Amazon.com for quite reasonable prices, Germans, no doubt), and an agent traverses Prince Albert II of Monaco is also in- except the Hugo-nominated Heinlein’s Chil- Vichy France on a covert rescue mission. The fected. dren, which can be bought from NESFA for a war goes on in different ways. Also infected are Archduke Karl of Aus- reasonable price.) tria, Prince Antonio of Orleans-Bragança, The Arctic cruise ship RCGS Resolute was Prince Francicso of Orleans-Bragança, https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B01BMIC4M at sea off the coast of Venezuela on March 30, Prince Pedro de Alcâtra of Orleans- U?ref_=pe_1724030_132998070 2020 when the Bolivaran Navy of Venezuela Bragança, his wife Princess Maria da Fá- — Advt. coast guard ship GC-23 Naiguatá ordered her to tima of Orleans-Bragança, Prince Alberto of stop, fired a warning shot, and then attempted to Orleans-Bragança, and his wife Princess Sony Pictures Television has announced divert the ship into Venezuelan waters. The Maritza of Orleans-Bragança. that they are bringing out a Doc Savage series, Venezuelans said the ship was engaged in Princess Marie-Thérèse Cécile Zita based on the popular pulp novels by “Kenneth “terrorism and piracy” and was transporting Charlotte of Bourbon-Parma died of Robeson” (Lester Dent, mostly), about a mercenaries. When the Naiguatá rammed the coronavirus at Paris on March 26, 2020. She super-talented, trained from birth, scientific Resolute, the coast guard patrol vessel capsized had been born there on July 28, 1933 to Prince crime fighter. If they keep it a period piece and sank. Xavier of Bourbon-Parma and Madeline de (the books were of the thirties) and stay away The Naiguatá was a Guaicamacuto-class Bourbon-Busset (i.e. she was a descendant of from “this is all kiddy stuff” and “let’s show littoral surveillance ship (Buque de Vigilancia Cesare Borgia!), and studied philosphy at his relationships to all the other pulp heroes” de Litoral), with a displacement of 1453 tons, a Oxford and political science at the Sorbonne. it might be interesting. top speed of 22 knots, armed with one 76-mm Because of her liberal political ideas, she was gun, one 35-mm gun, and two 12.7-mm guns, known as the “Red Princess”. As a follow-up to the The Man In the High with a crew of 34. The Resolute displaces 8378 Castle series, HBO is adapting The Plot tons and has a maximum speed of 15 knots. ¿ÄÅ ¹ ÓÏØÉÁ ÅGÔÉÍ Against America as a mini-series. (Reading And an ice-strengthened hull. [HERE IS WISDOM] the cast list, I notice by its absence the name Commentary by Joseph T Major on of “William S. Stephenson”.) We regret to report the death of Alfred THE PURSUIT OF THE PANKERA: Merrill “Al” Worden on March 18, 2020. A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9308346/ Born February 7, 1932, Al was a pilot in the by Robert A. Heinlein (NHOL G.183) U.S. Air Force, being selected in NASA Astro- (2020; CAEZIK SF & Fantasy; Martin Morse Wooster calls our attention naut Group 5 in 1966. He was Command ISBN 978-1647100018; $26.99; to the publication of the first of a set of ad- Module Pilot for the Apollo 15 mission, orbiting CAEZIK SF & Fantasy (Kindle); $9.99) ventures of a mild-mannered customs agent the moon in the Endeavour while Dave Scott who in midlife becomes a daring action hero: and James Irwin landed in the LM Falcon. Heinlein had an idea for a novel. He wrote Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of He is survived by his daughters Tamara, a first draft, but his first reader, Virginia, Harlem by Gary Phillips (2020; Agora Books; Merrill, and Alison. Another moon mission thought it was less than his best, and so he laid ISBN 978-1947993860; $15.00). Anauakaq veteran has passed away. All too soon there it aside. This was during one of his less heal- would be proud of his daddy. will be none left, and those who believe it was thy periods, and indeed he had a Transient all a hoax will be more empowered. Ischemic Attack shortly thereafter. When he Steve Doyle has announced the resumption was feeling better after the surgery, he returned of The Sherlock Holmes Review, which has OBITS to the text, struck off in a different direction, been called “the last great Sherlockian jour- and produced The Number of the Beast (1979; nal”. He is calling for a wide range of solici- We regret to report the death of Earl Kemp, NHOL G.189). tations: “traditional Sherlockian scholarship; notorious and active fan, on February 6, 2020, This is not a new thing. H. G. Wells be- Arthur Conan Doyle; Sherlockian film, televi- at home. Born November 24, 1929, Earl was came dissatisfied with When the Sleeper Wakes sion, stage, and radio; original artwork; and active in Chicago fandom, publishing the Best (1899) and revised it as The Sleeper Awakes short pieces for our standing department, Fanzine Hugo winning fanzine Who Killed (1910). Sir Arthur C. Clarke had second ‘Collector’s Corner.’” Science Fiction?, a survey of the state of affairs thoughts about Against the Fall of Night (1948, The magazine will be an annual, with the then by many leading figures of the field. He 1953) and revised it as The City and the first issue of the new series coming out in went from there to be chairman of ChiCon III in Stars (1956). Alexiad April 2020 Page 3

There is a market for Last New Heinlein. Kormor. marry!” he called. “Did you not hear For example, when it was mentioned that And when they get there . . . they are at- me, maid? A hogshead of fine wine!” there existed notes for a proposed but unwrit- tacked by a Thark, only he quits once he finds He pinched her lightly and took her to ten juvenile, another writer offered to write it. out they speak English (having used all sorts of bed, after which she brought the wine, The resulting book read more like the actual exotic battle cries). He takes them to Helium. her eyes tender and moist with devo- writer’s work, down to the protagonist being They know they are there by the sign put up by tion. like him, and had an ending that was not in the the Helium Chamber of Commerce. — Ira Wallach, “The Keeper of the Gelded original notes (he claimed that the notes did Unicorn” not include the final part). In spite of this, he Many of the flaws observed in The Number lobbied for “another Hugo for the Admiral”. of the Beast are here, and worse. The intermin- Wallach’s parody of swashbuckling tales This is sounding eerily like ElRon, except that able explanations of the programming of the throws in half the famous names of a dozen he apparently actually did write all the million aircar Gay Deceiver to perform a specific evo- eras, setting a panorama against which Warren words of the Mission Earth books (he was lution, for example. There was a reason Gene of Hastings, the Keeper of the Gelded Unicorn, known for his productivity). Roddenberry cut out that two-page explanation struggles with his eternal foe, Guise, Earl of But, the beginnings are the same, albeit of the Enterprise reversing course and replaced Essence, for the salvation of the Kingdom. It there have been some textual revisions. Zeb it with “Reverse course!”; going through detail might have been better if he had been the Carter dances with Deety Burroughs, falls for detail’s sake is basically padding. keeper of the ungelded Unicorn, for then there passionately in love with her before the first Other past questionables of Heinlein turn up. would have been someone to chastize the guy number is over, and proposes copulation One of the women reveals herself naked to the for his offenses against fair ladies. immediately and marriage after. Then they “park ranger” and he doesn’t respond, an up- Ira Samuel Einhorn of Philadelphia, the have to escape in his flying car with her father graded version of Mary’s act in The Puppet “Unicorn”, knew a vast number of influential and a equally passionate female friend when a Masters (1951, 1990; NHOL G.091). That he people. And others, such as Philip K. Dick. bomb goes off. might be gay, professional, or just not looking He cruised through the Age of Aquarius, pre- They escape to a remote mountain strong- doesn’t seem to have been considered but fortu- serving the model of Hippie long beyond its hold with a stop along the way to pledge their nately he’s not a human. expiration date, inspiring connections among troth. It turns out that they all have wealth Bill Patterson explained in the biography the most scattered and diverse sorts of people. and Oscar Gordon’s attitude towards society that Heinlein’s standard for whether someone He was a living internet node before ever it (“I believe in not obeying any law I don’t was worth being a friend with, in earlier days, came into being. like.”), as well as being cool with nudism. was whether they liked Vincent McHugh’s Serving a sentence of life without parole, in Not to mention that the women both passion- Caleb Catlum’s America (1936). This says as the Pennsylvania prison system, he died April ately desire to get pregnant right away and do much about him as about the book. The prob- 3, 2020. He had been so much, but what so. Perhaps this is not the most advisable lem of fan fiction, of writing about another’s brought him down was a darkness in his life- thing to do before setting out on a wild adven- characters, is that it is so easy to rewrite the style. ture, much less while being assaulted by characters as the new author likes. determined, skilled, and nasty foes. There seem to have been a number of diff- Ira was born in 1940 in Philadelphia to a Oh yes, a fake park ranger comes by and erent titles for this book. In the New Heinlein normal Jewish family. However, he was any- because he doesn’t quite follow procedure, Opus List it has the alternative title of The thing but. His intellect outreached his school they kill him. Fortunately for the plot it turns Galleons of God (from the mention of Sinclair grade level, leaving him terribly bored and as out that he is actually an alien in human dis- Lewis’s The Galleon of God in For Us, the a result gaining him a reputation for disobedi- guise. Someone is out to get them. Living (NHOL G.004, 1937, 2003). According ence. So, to show that he wasn’t a geek, he Doctor Jake Burroughs, it turns out, is to Bill Patterson’s biography, the book was to bulked up and became a football star. skilled in a wide range of specialties (Doc be called The Panki-Barsoom Number of the Universities somehow didn’t agree with Brown, call your office!), and has been work- Beast. When the book was first announced, the him. He started at a course of study, but then ing on a means to travel to alternative worlds. title was Six-Six-Six. bailed out. Then came the hippie era, and Ira Harold Shea never had anyone going after him There is a point where it is clear that a writer found himself a slot. He tuned in and turned with bombs, and one would hope that Com- has lost it. Virginia was probably right that this on, becoming a guru of spiritual expansion. He missioner Verkan Vall would quickly sack should not have been published. also became something of a polymath. And in any Paratimer who was so dramatically ineffi- spite of his unpreposessing personality and cient. THE KEEPER OF THE GELDED appearance, somehow he managed to charm He also repeats the mathematical explana- UNICORN people of power and influence. When he did a tion of “666" — six to the sixth power to the Commentary by Joseph T Major on fanzine, it got published by Pennsylvania Bell. sixth power. The original, though, was THE UNICORN’S SECRET: He would prepare a list of comments and a list “gîáêïóéïé gîçêïíôá gî” [hexakosioi Murder in the Age of Aquarius of people he wanted it sent to, deliver it to a hexçkonta hex], “six hundred sixty-six” writ- by Steven Levy (1990) telephone executive and it would get mimeo- ten out. graphed and mailed at their expense. And their They modify Zeb’s air car so that any of “A hogshead of fine wine!” gain, too, for Ira networked among the thinkers them can command it, and more to the point, The barmaid, her eyes wide with and the doers. He was a major organizer and they install the timeline traveling device. That admiration, looked at the man who had participant in Philadelphia’s first Earth Day, done, they begin an expedition to a safe space, shouted his order with such an air of though he exaggerated his importance. like the next planet over. Being fanatic fans confident gaiety. He was tall, lean, with He wrote a book and tried to have it pub- of the professor’s namesake, they end up on broad shoulders, slender hips, eyes that lished without a title. Not being Raymond one of his worlds. No, not Laythe, with blazed like live coals, dark unruly hair, Smullyan (who wrote a book titled This Book Kalkars waiting to take over their vehicle in and a twinkle in the corner of a mouth Needs No Title (1980)), he couldn’t pull it off, the name of the People. Not even the Thorists which could, at times, be stern enough to so he settled for the book having the title of its of Amtor (one wonders how this debate-prone strike terror into the hearts of the great- Library of Congress number, 78-187880 bunch would fare in the Room of the Seven est swordsmen on the Continent and in (1972). (The book’s ISBN is 0-385-06387-3. Doors), much less the Zanis of Korva, the very England itself. Now I expect someone will do that for a title.) eugenicists of Havatoo, or the zombies of “Come, maid, God wot, ‘sblood, Not that all of his associates were quite so Page 4 April 2020 Alexiad savory. For example, he became entwined When his trial came up, in 1981, it was the Roses!” with Andrija Puharich, and the man Puharich without him. Ira Einhorn jumped bail and fled Her eyes filled with tears. “Honor championed, Uri Geller. (Somehow Ira never to Ireland, because it did not have an extradition will always take thee further afoot than ran into James Randi.) Ira dipped into the treaty with the U.S. at that time. Back in Penn- love,” she sighed. paranormal as he did into the technological. sylvania he was tried in absentia, and convicted. “God wot,” he replied, bowing his His path crossed that of Helen “Holly” He lived under a pseudonym, with his latest head. Through the window the sun rose Maddux of Tyler, Texas. Holly was in many woman (a Swedish woman, this time) until he on the battlements and on the trium- ways a typical Texas girl — as when she was outed in 1987. Since by then it was possi- phant standards of the Queen. entered the cheerleading competition of her ble to extradite him, formally or not, he van- Warren of Hastings silently arose school and won handily. Cheerleaders are a ished again. from bed and removed his hat. big thing in Texas. Holly had intellectual England was safe. ambitions, but never quite seemed to fit in. Seven years after Levy’s book was pub- — Ira Wallach, “The Keeper of the Gelded Then in 1972 she met the Unicorn. lished, Ira Einhorn was finally run to ground, in Unicorn” Ira’s and Holly’s relationship was ambigu- France. It took four years to get him extradited, ous. There would be times when they seemed because of the tangled web of legal ploys he A CONSPIRACY SO IMMENSE in perfect spiritual harmony and times when spread to avoid extradition. He appealed to Review by Joseph T Major of they were quarreling and split apart — but human-rights associations, and to the French THE INITIATE then they would get back together again. President and Premier. One of his claims was by James L. Cambias And in September of 1977, Holly came that if he were tried in Pennsylvania, he would (2020; Baen; ISBN 978-1982124359; back to get her things. She stayed for a day or face the death penalty, which was not the case. $25.00; Baen (Kindle); $9.99) two, then went out to go shopping and never John Walsh, in his book Public Enemies (2001), came back. describes the finale of Einhorn’s efforts (and his Sometimes power forces itself upon you In spite of their less than harmonius rela- own confrontation with the Unicorn). Finally, whether you plan for it or not. Sam Arquero tionship with their daughter’s squeeze, the finally, in 2001, he was extradited to the U.S. thought he had an ordinary life, but then his Madduxes tolerated Ira. But when they didn’t His defense was . . . well, not forgery by wife and child were killed and he nearly joined hear from Holly for a couple of months, they typewriter, but about as plausible. He claimed them. Not by anything so mundane as a storm had concerns, Ira said she had walked out and that Holly had been murdered by the CIA, or a semi or something like that, but by a never come back, and this indifference should which had planted her body in his apartment in demon which entered his house and shredded have been a cause for concern in itself. (For order to discredit his findings in Tesla physics. his family. example, apparently she had not taken her The jury considered the little things, such as the Shortly thereafter, he was encountered by medicines with her.) The Madduxes launched air fresheners placed in the trunk in a vain effort someone who knew the sender of the demon. an investigation, which led only to discoveries to kill the stench, or the two neighbors who had Not that he knew who among his circle of that no one knew where Holly was. been asked to help him dump a trunk, and found associates had done it, but one of them did. The standard of cleanliness in the apart- his defense less than plausible. The Unicorn They were the Apkallu, a council of sorcerers ment house where Ira lived was not the high- would be caged for the rest of his physical who had wielded power over humanity since est, but the neighbors began to notice an even existence, life without parole, and there he was time immemorial. And this man Lucas who more rank smell than usual. In March of 1979 until he died. reached out and touched Sam was offering the police got a warrant and searched Ira’s help. apartment. They found a locked closet. He Whittaker Chambers once complained that It would be infiltration. Sam would take on allowed them to open it, and there was a large his case would have been lost when one respect- a new identity and join the lower ranks of the trunk in there. Opening that, they found — able notable could say to another one that of conspiracy; but he would be free of any Holly Maddux’s body. course someone as upstanding and distinguished committment to anyone. He could find out Apparently Ira thought he was smarter and as Alger Hiss could not possibly have been a who had exterminated his family and return the better than those stupid cops and didn’t need Communist conspirator and Soviet spy. And favor. a lawyer, as he made some statements that many respectable people were quite willing to This meant, though, exterminating the local were extremely detrimental to his case. But put themselves on the public record as reso- leaders of the Apkallu. (This is set in New when the time came to set bail, he had so lutely declaring that someone as life-affirming York City, by the way.) They have the many persons of probity and influence testify- as Ira Einhorn could not possibly have commit- strangenesses and the distortions of great ing on his behalf that he was released on ted a brutal murder. power and long life. Whether it is the living $40,000 bail, of which he (or rather one of his The image that one gets of Einhorn is of mummy who possesses his attendants in order many supporters) only had to put up $4000. someone who considered himself so outstanding to go out and have a good time on their tab (so That was when the darker side of his that ordinary rules did not apply to himself. to speak), the prim and proper lady who has an personality came out — and when you realize This attitude was particularly dangerous when orphanage as a source for blood, or the re- this is someone who answers the door naked, combined with his intellect and persuasiveness. searcher who uses Satanic groups as recruiting never bothers with bathing, and beyond that Had he not been so outré, he might have had a grounds, they are a bizarre and repulsive lot. acts domineering, it has to be pretty bad. Ira far more destructive career. At least Ira no Sam exploits their weaknesses to their ending. drew women to him, but then drove them longer has champions, dying unheralded and But he makes new connections along the away by being abusive. (He liked blue-eyed unmourned. way. Some are useful, as the helper who turns blonde WASP girls. This is a job for Harley out to be closer than Sam thought. Or the new Quinn.) It was a gay and lighthearted Warren girlfriend, for whom he lives a second life. Financially, he lived off others. He only of Hastings who brought the jewels to And when the final devastating revelations made enough to pay income tax in one year. the Queen’s chamber. Although she had come out about Lucas and his plans, Sam He sponged in various ways, great and small. lost neither whit nor tittle of her regal makes a strange and powerful choice . . . His parents remembered how he would order bearing, her eyes spoke for her as she There is a depth to this. The Apkallu are books through the mail and never pay for said, “You may kiss me, Warren of distorted, cruel and arbitrary. Even those with them because he was a minor and couldn’t Hastings.” a semblance of sympathy have a grim and evil legally sign contracts, and he kept up that “And now, beloved lady,” cried darkness beneath. Similarly, Cambias knows attitude of the law only applying to others. Warren of Hastings, “on to the War of his methods; for the purpose of his plot he has Alexiad April 2020 Page 5 it that a lot (not all) of that mystic stuff is oping space plans, some of which require steal- Meanwhile, what seems like an utter aber- basically true. ing actual space gear from the Main Enemy’s ration, an Air Force officer sent to Naval Reac- This isn’t a romp. There are no sensitive used spacecraft. And setting something up for tor School, turns out to have its use. (And you emo vampires, sexy witches, misunderstood future volumes, the training of a very special thought an Army Engineer (Rog Healey of I demons, or the like. The theme is the corrupt- and covert recovery agent, named of all things Dream of Jeanie) being an astronaut in the ion of power; how long possession of it warps Matthew Henson (and nobody ever ever asks sixties was bad!) But the Navy MOL suffers a the psyche. The sleep of reason produces him, “You related?” — yes, he’s black). And disaster, and the tired duo of Blue Gemini get monsters. then there was the guy who needed to pay off a sent up to execute a rescue. loan shark, so he tried to sell stories of UFOs at Jenne shows a deep familiarity with pro- AUTOPSY FOR A COSMONAUT Wright-Pat . . . posed but canceled space programs, realizing Review by Joseph T Major of Some of the training seems out of Harry them with great technical plausibilty. One can BLUE GEMINI: Harrison’s “Space Rats of the CCC” (Final question the organization and financing, but A Thriller Stage, 1974) if not Achilles’ Choice (by Steven these are “black” operations done as cheaply as by Mike Jenne Barnes and Larry Niven, 1991), deliberately possible. Think of the moon landing project in (2015; Yucca; ISBN 978-1631580475; designed to kill off the candidates. Or at least Kornbluth’s Takeoff (1952). $24.99; 2015; Simon & Schuster (Kindle); the “impossible standards” of Galactic Patrol Similarly, he shows an awareness of the $1.99) (Astounding Stories, 9/1937-2/1938; 1950) and late sixties culture, and a devastating picture of Book 1 of “Blue Gemini” Space Cadet (1948; NHOL G.070). Or it might the strains that can come in a marriage. be setting up someone by failing him, as in Ourecky may win the skies but lose his hap- In Autopsy for a Cosmonaut (1969) [al- Cyril Kornbluth’s Takeoff (1952; reviewed in piness, his future, when this story is . . . [To Be ternative title Death of a Cosmonaut], a secret Alexiad V. 9 #4). Continued]. Gemini mission is launched to investigate a So it looks like Major Ourecky (promotion failed Soviet Voskhod space mission. This came fast) will have more turbulence to come in THE RED DOVE involves making a rendezvous with the cap- the next two volumes when this is . . . [To Be Review by Joseph T Major of sule and a spacewalk to investigate. Continued] PALE BLUE: A Thriller Blue Gemini was a real program, though by Mike Jenne like all the other Air Force space programs, it MAROONED (2016; Yucca; ISBN 978-1631580840; was cancelled by Robert McNamara after Review by Joseph T Major of $24.99; 2016; Simon & Schuster (Kindle); years of development and expenditure. The BLUE DARKER THAN BLACK: $12.99) Blue Gemini would have had surveillance A Thriller Book 3 of “Blue Gemini” equipment and be configured for specifically by Mike Jenne military missions. (2016; Yucca; ISBN 978-1631580666; Derek Lambert’s The Red Dove (1983) Scott Ourecky doesn’t know about this. $24.99; 2016; Simon & Schuster (Kindle); features a disturbing use of a space shuttle. He wants to be a NASA astronaut — but he $12.99) The mission profile for the Soviet space shuttle keeps on making goofs in his flight training, Book 2 of “Blue Gemini” Dove-1 [Ãîëóáü-1 (Golubka-1)] features an and will never get his wings. Nevertheless, he unusual payload. The plan is to carry a high- persisted, becoming an engineer. In the movie version of Marooned (1969), yield nuclear weapon into orbit, then detonate The Blue Gemini project is very marginal; the X-RV is launched on its rescue mission in it above the Main Enemy, destroying their they are relegated to facilities at Wright- the eye of a hurricane. The Blue Gemini rescue communications systems and computers with Patterson AFB, run by a comparatively low- mission here is not quite so finicky but there is an electromagnetic pulse. ranking officer and a retired one, both rather still a rescue and a hurricane, both of which This new triumph of Soviet Space just colorful and not very technical officers, and have their own problems. drops the bomb. There are problems, one of having to work without backup pilots, and Scott Ourecky has survived a bit of insubor- the cosmonauts gets a infected ingrown toenail with the leavings of the various NASA techs. dination in space, mostly because the on the and has to be replaced, the space station is Including Lieutenant Scott Ourecky, taking scene decision produced wildly positive results. breaking down, and oh yes, one of the officers regular flights to Dayton. But the colorful, covert, and on-the-cheap Blue in charge is passing information to the Main Then, one pilot refuses to tolerate his Gemini program continues to launch him into Enemy. (He uses a piece of CIA gadgetry that fellow crew member. They are so short of space, to the point where he and his teammate is just like the sort of thing they would use, personnel that Ourecky is pressed into taking have more time in orbit than any NASA astro- except that it just might well work!) part in the Blue Gemini testing as the un- naut. And some very dramatic disasters (that Across the ocean, Scott Ourecky is still wanted man’s replacement. rescue guy Matt Henson finally proves his concerned about his marriage, though his wife They get a functioning capsule. Again, the worth, in an exotic and grimly-described set- has a valid reason for being out of the house. project is using whatever they can get, inclu- ting). His partner Drew Carson is champing at the bit ding about-to-be-decommissioned Titan II Which puts strain on his marriage. Add to to get a few combat missions in ‘Nam on his nuclear missiles. Which causes problems this chasm between him and his wife the con- record, so he can get promotion later. (The when a rocket explodes due to a component cern that their child might be well born dead or Blue Gemini is TOP SECRET SENSITIVE that was good enough to launch H-bombs, but nonviable, and it is clear that this is not a less- NODIS so it will never never get into his not good enough to launch people. stressed family. records, in spite of several in-orbit kills.) So Ourecky gets press-ganged into being Meanwhile, the Navigators (the GRU) Finally, under a false name, Carson gets his an astronaut. Somehow that doesn’t seem to continue to unriddle this riddle of a second wish, becoming a Naval Aviator in the process. bother him. And when he and his partner are American space program. Looking at the de- Then things begin to come apart. The launched — more malfunctions. Nevertheless scription of their investigation, it can be seen Soviet bomb station is falling to bits, one of the they persisted (and against orders). And what that often intelligence is misled and off-course. cosmonauts gets ill, and the agent gets caught they found . . . Oh, and the guy who was in hock to loan through some exhaustive work by the GRU Jenne interleaves this with a number of sharks and tried to get cash by telling the story internal security. Carson gets into some very side-plots, such as Ourecky’s wooing and of captured alien spaceships at Wright-Pat- heavy fighting over North Vietnam, bringing winnng of a stewardess. Farther afield, a terson? He suffers the fate of a man ahead of him down to earth. The program is winding maimed Soviet space official works on devel- his time. And of a chronic gambler, too. down except they may have to have one more Page 6 April 2020 Alexiad flight. At least Bea Ourecky is coming back Theodore Tyler. is a confused description of GARBO (Juan to her marital bed. Sun Microsystems had more advanced Pujol Garcia). But the beginning, that is the Then, when the prisoners of war were systems than the Hollerith card that got Arthur story of Arthur Graham Owens (SNOW). And returned, Carson fell through the cracks, being fired. (As you know, Bob, the famous computer unlike the other prominent Double-Cross “sheepdipped” as a Naval Aviator without punch card had eighty spaces.) However, their agents, SNOW was out for himself, instead of records. And he does not do well. Although employee Steve had problems. He kept on being against the Nazis. his fate is tragic, it does include a touching disappearing from the employee database. Owens was a businessman; he made bat- example of one to whom mercy was shown, Steve did not have a long double-barreled teries and sold them to any customer who and who showed mercy. The GRU interroga- last name. In fact, it was only four characters would buy — including the Kriegsmarine. He tors were amazed, but not surprised. long. Yet he was regularly and dutifully entered began supplying information to the SIS, and Meanwhile, the man on the doomed Soviet into the employee database, only to just as then to the Germans. This got him into trouble, nuclear-weapons space station is helped to regularly disappear. until war broke out, when he became a useful escape. It never happened and no one was His name was Steve Null. An entry of courier of misinformation. involved (unlike The Red Dove where the NULL in any field of the Sun Microsystems HR Indeed, one of the useful parts of his double Soviet space shuttle, complete with nuclear database meant that that record was invalid, to agency was quite interesting. The Abwehr weapon in the cargo bay, landed at JFK Inter- be deleted. Instead of firing Steve (perhaps they would rebroadcast his messages without para- national Airport1). were concerned about what he could do to them phrasing, because they were using the unbreak- And Ourecky gets a unique reward for in retaliation), they fixed the database system. able Enigma machine. Right, the codebreak- having saved the life of the MOL pilot. Car- Humble Pi is the story of how little ers at the GC&CS now had a plaintext to son too, but his is posthumous. mathematical errors can become big disasters. compare the message against, and so they In a coda, the surviving people of the story Parker describes the engineering failures of such would have every day’s Enigma keys for the assemble for the funeral of Drew Carson. notorious incidents as the Tacoma Narrows Abwehr. Their subsequent lives are laid out and there is Bridge and the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Some of his other connections were gran- reconciliation. walkway. He points out how the drawings of diose. There was the attempt to capture his Given all the extra spaceflights involved in footballs [soccer balls] on London Transport Abwehr contact officer, which involved a this, I have to wonder how it was kept secret. signs are mathematically impossible. He de- trawler and a dramatic boarding plan. This The spatial combat between the first and scribes how a chain of errors, none significant in never came about. second men in space in Allen Steele’s V-S itself, led to a dramatic air disaster. He explains But Owens finally became a liability. His Day (2014; reviewed in Alexiad V. 13 #2) was how Michael Larson won $110,237 on Press agency was wound up, he was temporarily heard over every ham radio in the eastern U.S. Your Luck. sequestered until they could be sure he was not There are people who listen in on spacecraft The most trivial of errors can create disas- going to make trouble, and then he was set frequencies and the like. And think of what ters. A typo in a Unix command can, for exam- free. He changed his name to “Arthur White” would the Judica-Cordiglia Brothers would ple, lead to ALL the data on the computer being and continued in his chaotic life until he died in make of this abundant fodder for their Dead erased. Don’t do this at home. (A modern Ireland in 1957. Obligatory SF connection: his Cosmonauts stories. Carrington-Chickering could use this on the daughter Patricia played the female lead, system server at work.) Microsoft does this too, Helene Delambre, in The Fly (1958). 1. Lambert messed up the orbital parameters, with this frustrating loading error: Roberts was interested and researched the having the Dove in a low-inclination orbit, sad life of this conflicted man. Then he and instead of the high-inclination orbits used Keyboard error or no keyboard present Allason wrote the book. This is another small by Soviet orbiting missions. Since his Press F1 to continue, DEL to enter SETUP. part of a grand scheme, rendered in its dramatic cosmonaut defector was trying to land the and dull scope. Dove at Cape Kennedy, it would make Humble Pi is a reminder of how even the more sense to have the re-entry delayed most well-designed of systems can contain fatal THE BULGE REMEMBERED and changing the landing site, instead of errors — and how trivial errors can expand to by Lisa the orbital plane shift he has. fatal results. Recently I read Ardennes 1944 by Antony THE MAN WHOSE NAME OF SECRETS AND SPIES Beevor. In it there is a picture of a young SS WOULDN’T FIT Review by Joseph T Major of soldier taken prisoner. The caption says he Review by Joseph T Major of SNOW: was lucky not to be shot out of hand. I looked HUMBLE PI: The Double Life of a World War II Spy at the American guarding him, blinked, looked A Comedy of Maths Errors by Nigel West [Rupert Allason] again. I found what I was seeing strange and by Matt Parker and Madoc Roberts disturbing. Captor and captive looked alike (2019; Penguin; ISBN 978-0593084687; (2011; Biteback Publishing; enough to have been brothers. It was eerie. It $27.00; Penguin (Kindle); $13.99) ISBN 978-1849540933; $29.95) has been more than 75 years. It is likely both the German and his American lookalike are Arthur Duane Carrington-Chickering was Dr. Stanley P. Lovell was the technical dead even if they survived the war. . Did the a humble employee. Some organisations had director for the Organization for Strategic Ser- American spare the German because of that trouble with his long double-barrelled name, vices. Afterwards, he wrote his memoirs: Of resemblance? Did he perhaps see a kid but he managed. Then the company installed Secrets and Spies (1963). In them, he described brother’s face on an enemy and hold his fire for a new computer system — and he was fired. how the British had taken over the entire Ger- that reason? I will probably never know and yet The employee records in the system were man spy network in Britain. They had co-opted I wonder. limited by the available resources. The the first agent, and as others were sent over they NAME field, for example, had twenty char- were caught and turned. Finally, they set up an EVICTING A TENANT acters. You will notice that “Carrington- entirely phony network, which successfully by Lisa Chickering” has twenty-one. Somewhat put hoodwinked the German spy apparatus. out over the arbitrary nature of his firing, This, you note, is nine years before the The cage we had proves ineffective at Arthur took his revenge. Thus the story of publication of J. C. Masterman’s The Double- detaining mice. I go to Feeder’s Supply and get The Man Whose Name Wouldn’t Fit (1968) by Cross System. The description of the latter part what is hopefully a better one. That night I Alexiad April 2020 Page 7 throw a peanut butter cracker into the cage. It 2020 lutions. does not take long before a mouse comes The telescope was probably invented searching for the delicious smell. I lie very Son of Seattle Slew. Grandson of Secretar- around 1608, most likely in the Netherlands, still and waiting. Joe does not. He shifts and iat. Winner of the Belmont Stakes. Sire of actual creator unknown. Just a year later it was makes noises that send the mouse into retreat. Bernardini, the horse who raced into my heart in greatly improved by science and engineering Fortunately for me, unfortunately for the the 2006 Preakness. I got to meet Indy once. tutor Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaulti de Galilei, mouse, it does not realize my stillness is much He was gentle enough for strangers to pet. who designed a better lens arrangement using more dangerous than Joe’s sleep noises or that mathematical modeling of light rays. Appar- I am very much awake. The mouse comes to War Emblem February 20, 1999 — March ently, without actually seeing a telescope first, the edge of the cage several times and retreats. 11, 2020 but just from reading about the concept. Gali- It must really want the cracker. After several leo was the first person on record to turn a minutes temptation wins out and the mouse War Emblem won the Derby and Preakness telescope towards the heavens. (As often hap- goes into the cage. I slam the door shut and in 2002. He failed to win the Triple Crown after pens in science, it seems that many people the mouse goes into panic mode. Its behavior stumbling at the start of the Belmont and a bad were doing similar things at the same time. makes me think it has escaped from the inef- trip during the race. After his racing career he Thomas Harriot, a British ethnographer and fective cage. Joe remarks that it behaves like was sold to Japan and returned when he was mathematician, also used a spyglass to observe a mechanical mouse. He suggests putting pensioned. He ended up at Old Friends in the Moon. His August 1609 drawings of the something on top of the door to make it more Lexington, Kentucky where Joe and I saw him Moon predate Galileo’s, but were not pub- secure. It’s a good idea and I do so. Its frantic several times. Unlike A.P. Indy, he was not safe lished at the time, so Galileo gets the credit.) bouncing around the cage keep me from to approach and there were two sets of fences Regardless of who first directed a telescope sleeping. I move the cage further from the between visitors and War Emblem. upwards, ever since then astronomers have bed. It doesn’t work. I can still hear the mouse been trying to preserve what they see, in part to struggling to get out. Finally I get up, go tap The Joy of High Tech show others. (Galileo was obsessive about the cage and growl at the mouse that if it isn’t by Rodford Edmiston having others look through his telescopes, quiet I will eat it myself. The bluff works and which is probably how he got multiple eye the mouse is quiet for at least as long as it infections. Most likely because of these, he was takes me to go back to sleep nor does it wake effectively blind for his last few years.) me again. Morning comes and we complete As a method to record what the telescope the eviction of the mouse. revealed, drawings of course came first. That was all the early observers had available. PETS Astronomers had to make do with that method by Lisa of recording what they saw for centuries. Even when photography finally became available in Under the virus lockdown I have yielded the early Nineteenth Century, the images to the temptation to keep pets. I am still suf- through a telescope were generally too faint for fering burnout from mammal pets so I chose practical photography using the early methods. to make a little terrarium in a plastic box and The first known successful photographic re- install roly polys in said box. I have learned cording of a telescopic image was a Daguerreo- that they too breed possessions in their care. type of a particularly bright object: the full They require regular mistings and so I have a Being the occasionally interesting ramblings of Moon. This process used activated silver on a tiny watering container for them. I have also a major-league technophile. prepared copper surface (tintypes came later; bought food for them. Unfortunately buying they used a different process on treated iron food from the pet stores involves temptation. What the Telescope Sees (not tin) and were somewhat more light sensi- The local Feeder’s Supply has adoptable tive; ambrotypes came between, using a wet cats. One of them has a sad dignity that made These columns have repeatedly pointed out emulsion process on glass). Daguerre himself me long to pick it up and try to cuddle the how technological requirements have spurred is believed to be the first person to take a sadness away. I was saved from that by the developments (sorry about that) in our under- photograph of the Moon, on January 2, 1839. corona quarantine. The quarantine did not standing of the universe. Likewise, the quest Unfortunately, in March of that same year his save me from temptation with the rats the for a better understanding of the universe has entire laboratory burnt to the ground, destroy- store had for sale. There were two kinds there, repeatedly driven developments in technology ing all his written records and much of his fancy companion rats which behaved in enter- and science. As noted below, these are also early experimental work. Including that histori- taining ways and feeder rats. connected with the pursuit of artistic expression. cal image of the Moon. A year later, John And yes, it was the feeder rats which The challenge of accurately recording new William Draper, an American doctor and tempted me. They could be had for eight scientific discoveries is a fascinating topic. One chemist, took his own Daguerreotype of the dollars apiece. What stopped me was the small branch of how that challenge was ad- Moon. This resulted in a beautiful — though thought that they would require large, costly dressed is discussed in brief below. small — image of the Moon in silver. In 1850 cages and vet care. I was also not sure about Before the telescope, what was known of the Draper collaborated with astronomer William the ethics of buying from pet stores or my heavens was, of course, limited to what could be Cranch Bond to produce a Daguerreotype of ability to care well for said rats. The question seen by someone with good, unaided vision. the star Vega. of ethics would not have arisen from the cat. This was recorded in drawings, but also in the The event of photographing the Moon on a In regards to cats, Feeder’s Supply deals constructs made to aid observation. Cultures Daguerreotype was recreated by modern as- strictly in animals from rescue groups, not around the world at the very least built struc- tronomers using a period telescope in the late kitten mills. The rats, however, were not tures aligned to astronomical events. Some Twentieth Century. The result was again an guaranteed to be the same. I cannot help created actual observatories, with references exquisitely beautiful image of the Moon in seeing cosmic injustice in the eventual fate of built in to help locate what was seen in the sky. delicate silver. (Anyone who denies there are the two kinds of rat. Much important work was done with these aids. links between art and science doesn’t know However, telescopic examination of the skies enough about both. As mentioned above, art AP Indy March 31, 1989 — February 21, provided multiple revelations. As well as revo- has repeatedly driven the development of Page 8 April 2020 Alexiad science and technology, and those have pro- ongoing sky surveys) typically have very fine was to photograph the image on the TV tube. vided new media for artistic expression.) grain, and are frequently treated (“hypoed”) to The poor resolution and difficulty in recording As photography improved, its use for increase sensitivity. (This increase in sensitivity the image made electronic images uncommon astronomy increased. However, even towards can also be performed on film negatives.) in astronomy for most of the Twentieth Cen- the end of the use of photography for astron- One trick used in hypoing is to cool the tury. However, because the contrast on such omy (in some cases this use actually continues emulsion to reduce noise. This is still necessary images could actually be better than direct as this is written) more sensitivity and resolu- for modern, electronic detectors. Some of which astrophotography such work continued, though tion were desperately sought. The problem is need to be cooled with liquid helium for best it was uncommon. Even in 1973, the National that there is a tradeoff between sensitivity and performance. Heat — or thermal — noise is the Academy of Sciences noted that astronomers resolution. All other factors being equal, bane of sensitivity. did not yet have a suitable electronic device to greater sensitivity means larger photographic As part of the drive (sorry about that) to replace chemical photography. Part of the grain size, which reduces resolution. As well, record ever fainter objects, the mechanical delay was due to development of electronic chemical photographic media are subject to tracking mechanisms used on telescopes im- devices being taken over for military use dur- what is known as reciprocity failure. That is, proved concurrently. These mechanisms were ing the Second World War. below a certain light level photons will go originally driven by clockwork, and for the most One interesting hybrid technology com- unrecorded, regardless of exposure time. Still, part did very well for direct viewing. However, bined electronic amplification with chemical chemical photography improved markedly as photography improved and the need to record photography. In 1934 André Lallemand began through the decades and became vastly capa- dimmer bodies for longer periods increased, work on photomultipliers, soon producing a ble. There are also multiple methods of in- astronomers often had to ride close herd on the type of electronic camera which would soon be creasing the sensitivity of existing chemical telescopes. This included making frequent, fine named after him. This, indeed, produced an negatives with little or no effect on resolution. adjustments to keep the telescope pointed at the electronically amplified image on a photo- These sensitizing techniques are generally precise part of the sky being recorded as the graphic medium. Unfortunately, preparation lumped together under “hypoing.” Earth turned. Later means of doing this involved was complicated, and this device was limited to One improvement more essential to scien- electric motors and precise location sensors on one exposure per setup. This was due to putting tific photography — especially astrophotogra- the mount. Yet that was not enough. Even the all the works of the device — including the phy — than to portraits or even landscapes is mighty Hale 200" often required someone to sit electron-sensitive emulsion — in a vacuum, uniformity in the emulsion. When photograph- in the prime focus cage at the top of the tele- inside a single, glass container. After exposure, ing stars and planets you want all of the emul- scope for hours, despite all the work put into the device was broken open to retrieve and sion — whether on glass or film — to have giving it the finest guidance systems of the time. process the emulsion. Despite the shortcom- the same response. Otherwise you might find Today, of course, important astronomical instru- ings, some observatories used variations on this yourself declaring light or dark spots as signif- ments are digitally guided, with far better results process into the Sixties. icant, when they’re actually due to flaws in than even the finest eyeball and most delicate The Orthicon camera tube was one early the emulsion. Naturally, the techniques devel- fingers of old. Much to the relief of the astrono- type of electronic image detector, in use for oped to improve scientific emulsions found mers and telescope technicians, I’d like to point television from 1946 to 1968. While it was also their way into commercial and personal use, out! Observatories are often built on mountain- used in astronomy, purpose-made devices were greatly improving the quality of all photo- tops and have to be at ambient temperature soon more common. graphs. during use to prevent air currents from causing In the Fifties the Carnegie Institute even Note that, regardless of the specific mech- distortions. It gets cold, sitting there for hours, formed the Carnegie Image Tube Committee, anism used to record such faint light, the staring through an eyepiece to make sure the which was intended to produce an image tube optics must be clean. Otherwise the astrono- telescope stays pointed at the right spot! specifically for observing. While they device mer will be spending a lot of time eliminating Speaking of the Hale, its robust design has they created — with considerable help from the recorded dust specks. made — and still makes — it a favorite for private industry — was used in many observa- One of the many tradeoffs of chemical trying out heavy, bulky prototype detectors of tories, it still did not completely replace chemi- photography — for whatever purpose — is all sorts. Whether historic glass plate cameras or cal photography. However, these instruments that, all other factors being equal, the the modern detectors which count each photon, just were used. Among other ground-breaking larger the negative, the less light which strikes bolt it on and go! applications, a Carnegie image tube was used any particular portion of the emulsion. This is Astronomers are constantly seeking some- by Vera Rubin to gather strong evidence that because the camera is literally spreading the thing better when it comes to detectors, just as the outer parts of the Andromeda Galaxy was light out over a larger surface. For this reason, they have for over a century. Some tried using spinning faster than expected from the amount medium and large format cameras often have electronic methods of recording what a tele- of visible mass. This was a major step in con- much larger lens apertures than smaller format scope showed as early as 1910. However, those firming Fritz Zwicky’s proposed “dunkle cameras. Telescopes, of course, have very primitive devices did little more than provide materie” or dark matter. large apertures in comparison with the lenses methods for standard measurements of how For the past several decades solid state used on any conventional camera. bright a particular body was. Still, early on there image recording equipment — such as the However, they are taking images of very was great hope for the future of electronic Charge Coupled Device or CCD — has in- faint objects. Also, many astrophotos were astronomical observing. At the 1933 annual creasingly replaced chemical photography. made on fairly large glass plate negatives. The meeting of the Association for the Advancement Anyone who has switched from a film camera idea was to photograph as much of the sky as of Science, one talk was on how the rapidly to a digital understands why. Modern solid was practical per observing session. In part advancing technology behind television might state imaging devices have greater resolution this was due to the expense of observing time; soon replace chemical photography. This devel- than even professional grade film, and greater in part due to the optical limits of the tele- opment turned out to be longer in coming than sensitivity than even the best hypoing can scopes themselves (above a certain magnifica- some expected. Many observatories and re- provide. Another advantage of modern imaging tion the images are just larger blurs); and in searchers indeed experimented with various is that, since the image is digitized, what a part due to the realization that anything which types of video tubes during the following years. telescope reveals can be viewed anywhere in appeared interesting on these plates could be However, even when those had an output which the world with an Internet connection. In fact, photographed in more detail later. Astrophoto was considered adequate, there remained the most professional observing these days is done negative plates (there is still some use of glass problem of recording what they revealed. In remotely. An astronomer will get time on some plate negatives, mainly for consistency in many cases, the only way to preserve that image large telescope and run it from his office or Alexiad April 2020 Page 9 home, perhaps thousands of miles away. Even head, they wouldn’t have gotten into profes- nist noises, are we to give him a pass on his the directing of the instrument is done re- sional observing, would they?) Also, even the actual behavior toward women? What do you motely, with technicians on site rarely having best current computer reviews of data some- think? to help. However, chemical photography — times miss things. This is where volunteers specialized film and even glass plate nega- come in; they often find new discoveries missed A STORY THAT FAILED TO tives, as mentioned above — is still used for even by the best supercomputers and search ESCAPE some purposes. The flat plane of a glass plate algorithms. Regardless of how it is found, when Review by Sue Burke of is much better suited to some types of preci- something new is discovered, somebody has to ROGUE MOON sion photography than flexible film. Of check and decide what it means. Modern digital by Algis Budrys course, sometimes large sheets of film are imaging makes this far more easy and conve- (1960; Gold Medal Books paperback; no carefully fitted to curved backings for certain nient, besides revealing information invisible to ISBN; bought used for $2 from a dealer at other types of photography. even the trained eye or best chemical photo- Capricon) The real current value of chemical photog- graph. Small wonder so many interesting dis- raphy, though, is for the record it provides. Do coveries are being made in the sky these days. Although this novel was praised by Alfred not dismiss the previous use of photography in Bester as “one of the finest flashes of heat recording what was detected by telescopes. By ISAAC ASIMOV SIGNS AN AUTO- lightning to dazzle us this year” (that is, the the early Twentieth Century the emulsions on GRAPH year 1960), and John Clute in the Encyclopedia dry plate glass negatives had enormous resolu- by Taras Wolansky of Science Fiction called it “now widely re- tion, and both that and sensitivity continued garded as an sf classic,” I respectfully disagree. — and continue — to improve. By the middle The January, 2020 issue of the Mensa Bulle- I think there was a great SF story in there of the century there was photographic proof of tin includes several letters recalling encounters trying to get out, but it stood as much chance as multiple theories about stars and groupings of with Isaac Asimov, who had been Mensa Interna- an escape from Alcatraz. The author also stars. As well, those old photographic plates tional’s Honorary Vice President for many seemed to be trying to write a different story have far more than historical significance. years. than the SF one, and he failed at that, too. There are currently multiple projects under- The longest letter, by a long-time member Clute said the “perfectly competent surface way by observatories and college astronomy named Betty Claire, describes how she met narration deals with a hard-SF solution to the departments to perform high-resolution digital Asimov in New York in the early 1980’s, fol- problem of an alien labyrinth, discovered on scanning of existing photographic plates. This lowing a presentation he gave on the thennovel the Moon, which kills anyone who tries to pass serves multiple purposes, including creating a theory that an asteroid impact had caused the through it.” Well, it aspired to being compe- computerized library of standardized images extinction of the dinosaurs. tent. Readers are shown some technology about of the same objects, going back many de- the means to reach the Moon, or rather, the cades. This library of images can be examined I ... handed him the little 3x5 spi- reader must wade through long monologues by volunteers or computers to find changes ral-bound notebook I carried with me. about the technology. This could have been a which have previously gone unnoticed, or to He took it and in 10 seconds had written story with a lot of action. Instead it’s largely a provide history for changes which have only a quite dirty limerick based on my name. collection of windy speeches: a lot of telling, lately been noticed. Several announcements of As he handed the notebook back to me, not much showing. discoveries made by such comparisons of old I felt a sharp tweak of my left nipple. In addition, the alien labyrinth on the Moon data with new have been made in recent years. The notebook had covered his hand, and is a piece of nonsense once we get on the Moreover, these scans are often bringing out I could not at the moment fathom what it inside. Passing through it added no more mean- details previously missed, perhaps by being happened to my nipple. … There was no ing to the story than swimming through an too small or faint for the Mark I Eyeball which expression on his face; his wife was alligator-filled moat. It’s a lost opportunity to originally scanned the negatives. right there by his side. How could he do create a transcendent story about an alien Moving away from optical observations what I thought if he were also holding artifact that tells us something about our uni- for a moment, modern astronomy of every- the notebook? I couldn’t believe what verse. thing from Gamma rays to UV to IR to radio he had done. It was against all common Clute also says, not unreasonably, that the waves has also repeatedly revolutionized our sense that this famous man should tweak means to get to the Moon, which involves understanding of the heavens. We’re even my nipple. I was in shock. creating two copies of a person, then killing detecting cosmic gravity waves now! All of The audacity of his act should have one of them, “is a sustained rite de passage, a this data is recorded and analyzed digitally, been met with a swift smack across his doppelgänger conundrum about the mind-body but often presented visually. face. What if I was wrong, I thought, split, a death-pean.” Well, it aspired to being Some of the gravity wave discoveries have and my nipple pinched itself? I did that, too. The idea isn’t really explored, how- been presented audibly. Sound also has been nothing. ever. Instead, various characters deliver long used to portray things such as recordings of monologues about life, death, courage, and magnetic and electrical and other data de- Evidently Asimov had developed consider- what it means to be a man (to be macho mascu- tected by probes around Jupiter and Saturn. able sleight-of-hand skills in pursuit of his line, that is, not a human being). For example: There are a few other examples. The develop- avocation. Comparing notes with other women ment of analogue sound recordings came after who were there, Claire discovered she was only “A man should fight, Hawks,” early photography, but that doesn’t seem to be the first among several victims: “Surreptitious Barker said, his eyes distant. “A man the reason astronomical data is far more often pats on the behind, with no expression on his should show he is never afraid to die. visually. Most astronomical data simply fits face ...” He should go into the midst of his ene- better with visual representations. Something In light of the defenestration of H.P. Love- mies, singing his death song, and he to be expected from the type of data. craft and John W. Campbell, merely for saying should kill or be killed; he must never We are well into the Big Data era of as- what are now, long after their deaths, considered be afraid to die; he must never be afraid tronomy. Professional astronomers rarely look the wrong things, should Asimov’s name con- to meet the tests of his manhood. A through telescopes with their own eyes these tinue to reside on the cover of the leading SF man who turns his back – who lurks at days, unless it’s for their own entertainment. magazine? the edge of the battle, and pushes others Of course, many still do just that. (If they Because, like Harvey Weinstein, Asimov in to face his enemies –” Barker looked weren’t interested in what they can see over- would occasionally make the appropriate femi- suddenly and obviously at Hawks. Page 10 April 2020 Alexiad

“That’s not a man. That’s some kind of “A Strange Uncertain Light”, G.V. Ander- Teen) crawling, wriggling thing.” son (F&SF 7-8/19) Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee (Disney “For He Can Creep”, Siobhan Carroll Hyperion) The reader will also find long, sometimes (Tor.com 7/10/19) Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions, shouty, monologues in which men jostle over “His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Henry Lien (Holt) who is the sexually dominant alpha male. Light”, Mimi Mondal (Tor.com Cog, Greg van Eekhout (Harper) (What does this have to do with an alien 1/23/19) Riverland, Fran Wilde (Amulet) artifact on the Moon?) “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye”, In addition, although Budrys gives us Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny 7-8/19) SHORT AND UNEVEN strong characterizations, those characters are Carpe Glitter, Cat Rambo (Meerkat) Review by Sue Burke of deeply emotionally troubled, disturbingly self- “The Archronology of Love”, Caroline M. Nebula Award finalists for Short Story and destructive, and some of them might be socio- Yoachim (Lightspeed 4/19) Novelette paths. They spend a lot of time (and speechi- fying) trying to hurt each other emotionally Short Story Usually the Science Fiction and Fantasy and sometimes physically in a vicious psycho- Writers of America presents its annual Nebula drama that is a pointless sideshow to the “Give the Family My Love”, A.T. Awards at a gala ceremony. This year, for actual SF story. Edward Albee could have Greenblatt (Clarkesworld 2/19) obvious reasons, the award presentation will be written it, and probably less tediously. “The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable live-streamed at 8 p.m. EDT on May 30 with- Carl Sagan, in a 1978 article for the New Power”, Karen Osborne (Uncanny out a ballroom full of people. York Times, called Rogue Moon one of the 3-4/19) As a diligent SFWA member, I’ve read all “rare few science fiction novels [that] com- “And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, six of the finalist short stories. Overall, I think bine a standard science fiction theme with a Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons 9/9/19) they’re all worth reading. Unlike the Hugo deep human sensitivity.” He seems to have “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibli- Awards, there’s no ranked voting; I only get to read it as a boy, and I think children have such ography on the Cannibal Women of vote for one, but I’ve ranked them here anyway an intense, sensible hunger for big ideas that Ratnabar Island”, Nibedita Sen from my least favorite (as I said, they’re all they can be willing to overlook big ideas that (Nightmare 5/19) good) to the one I’ll vote for. Of course, my are poorly presented. An adult might think “A Catalog of Storms”, Fran Wilde (Un- ranking is subjective and even a bit arbitrary, otherwise: this is a could-have-been-good SF canny 1-2/19) and your opinions may vary. story that gets obscured by a different story, “How the Trick Is Done”, A.C. Wise (Un- “Give the Family My Love” by A.T. and both are badly told. canny 7-8/19) Greenblatt (Clarkesworld 2/19). In a series of letters to her family back home, an explorer NEBULA AWARD NEWS Game Writing searches in an alien library for information that would help Earth. The voice is compelling, but 2019 Nebula Award Finalists Outer Wilds, Kelsey Beachum (Mobius the overall story reveals no big surprises, and Digital) the tale ends on a defeatist and depressing note. Novel The Outer Worlds, Leonard Boyarsky, “A Catalog of Storms” by Fran Wilde Megan Starks, Kate Dollarhyde, Chris (Uncanny 1-2/19). As storms become sentient, Marque of Caine, Charles E. Gannon L’Etoile (Obsidian Entertainment) a small town’s children fight back. The writing (Baen) The Magician’s Workshop, Kate Heartfield evokes a timeless dreamlike quality and creates The Ten Thousand Doors of January, (Choice of Games) sharp characters: pathos abounds. The point of Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK) Disco Elysium, Robert Kurvitz (ZA/UM) view character is a child, however, which traps A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Fate Accessibility Toolkit, Elsa us in a limited horizon that is both claustropho- Martine (Tor) Sjunneson-Henry (Evil Hat Productions) bic and kind of a cheat, since the larger picture Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia can go unexplained. In the end, nothing in the Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey; Jo Fletcher) The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding story transcends narrow personal interests. Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Dramatic Presentation “And Now His Lordship Is Laughing” by Publishing) Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons 9/9/19). This A Song for a New Day, Sarah Pinsker Avengers: Endgame, Christopher Markus & classic-style horror story involves a dollmaker (Berkley) Stephen McFeely (Marvel Studios) in India during the British Raj – so classic that Captain Marvel, Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck the ending can be guessed less than halfway Novella & Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Marvel through the story. Cultural anger animates the Studios) story, but the conventional plot weakens it. “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, Good Omens: “Hard Times”, Neil Gaiman “How the Trick Is Done” by A.C. Wise Ted Chiang (Exhalation) (Amazon Studios/BBC Studios) (Uncanny 7-8/19). Jilted lovers get revenge The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djèlí The Mandalorian: “The Child”, Jon through magic. The narration and characters Clark (Tor.com Publishing) Favreau (Disney+) show self-awareness and self-reflection, which This Is How You Lose the Time War, Russian Doll: “The Way Out”, Allison gives the story a sober, solemn, literary Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone Silverman and Leslye Headland strength. No one winds up happy, but they do (Saga) (Netflix) wind up wiser. Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water, Vylar Watchmen: “A God Walks into Abar”, Jeff “The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Kaftan (Tor.com Publishing) Jensen & Damon Lindelof (HBO) Power” by Karen Osborne (Uncanny The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed 3-4/19). Mutiny, death, and blood on a genera- Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan The Andre Norton Award for Outstanding tion ship. The savage story manages to find a Snipes (Saga) Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book happy ending. For me, it had the intensity and Catfish Lullaby, A.C. Wise (Broken Eye) velocity of a television show, and since we live Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, Carlos in a golden age of television, that’s a good Novelette Hernandez (Disney Hyperion) thing indeed. Catfishing on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer (Tor My vote: “Ten Excerpts from an Anno- Alexiad April 2020 Page 11 tated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women with old stuff, and she finds the unexpected. “Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, of Ratnabar Island” by Nibedita Sen The first half explores the fractured family by Rivers Solomon (Tor.com, 24 July (Nightmare 5/19). In 1891, something tragic relationships without haste, and the second half 2019) happened, and we’re still living with the speeds to a climax as the pieces fit together. “A Catalog of Storms”, by Fran Wilde consequences. This very short story smacks (Uncanny Magazine, January/February the reader upside the head with nuance, ambi- HUGO AWARD NEWS 2019) guity, and pitiless social criticism. Its densely “Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, by Alix packed details make it hard to read and irre- 2020 Hugo Award Nominees E. Harrow (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, sistible to re-read: very much a story of our January 2019) moment, and I mean that as high praise. I also Best Novel “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibli- value the unconventional storytelling style: I ography on the Cannibal Women of think the Nebula should reward attempts to The City in the Middle of the Night, by Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen expand the genre in one way or another. Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan) (Nightmare Magazine, May 2019) As for the novelettes, although every one Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir was competently written and received enough (Tor.com Publishing) Best Series votes to become a finalist, I’m a little disap- The Light Brigade, by Kameron Hurley pointed with this year’s selection. Good, yes, (Saga; Angry Robot UK) The Expanse, by James S. A. Corey (Orbit but great? I don’t think so. Some of the stories A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady US; Orbit UK) seemed formulaic: the characters worked Martine (Tor; Tor UK) InCryptid, by Seanan McGuire (DAW) themselves into a situation with a problem, Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Luna, by Ian McDonald (Tor; Gollancz) which they solved, and the story ended with- Publishing) Planetfall series, by Emma Newman (Ace; out further ado. No wisdom was wrested at The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Gollancz) great price, no storytelling technique pushed Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK) Winternight Trilogy, by Katherine Arden the genre or displayed exceptional skill, big (Del Rey; Del Rey UK) ideas and wrenching changes weren’t ex- Best Novella Wormwood, by Tade Thompson (Orbit US; plored, and the plot moved along well enough Orbit UK) but without gripping urgency – the story did “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, by not become greater than the sum of its words. Ted Chiang (Exhalation (Borzoi/Alfred Best Related Work Of course, your opinions may vary. A. Knopf; Picador)) “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye” The Deep, by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Becoming Superman: My Journey from by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny 7-8/19). A Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Poverty to Hollywood, by J. Michael mystery writer finds a man dead, apparently in Snipes (Saga Press/Gallery) Straczynski (Harper Voyager US) an accident, and learns the truth. The story The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Joanna Russ, by Gwyneth Jones (Univer- never develops much tension, and it’s re- Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing) sity of Illinois Press (Modern Masters solved too easily. In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire of Science Fiction)) “His Footsteps, Through Darkness and (Tor.com Publishing) The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Holly- Light” by Mimi Mondal (Tor.com 1/23/19). This Is How You Lose the Time War, by wood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of A kind-hearted circus performer rescues a Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone Milicent Patrick, by Mallory O’Meara slave and angers a goddess. This turns out to (Saga Press; Jo Fletcher Books) (Hanover Square) be a simple, straightforward, sentimental story To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. of loyalty, responsibility, and love, but noth- Chambers (Harper Voyager; Hodder & Heinlein, by Farah Mendlesohn (Un- ing more. Stoughton) bound) “For He Can Creep” by Siobhan “2019 John W. Campbell Award Accep- Carroll (Tor.com 7/10/19). A cat battles Best Novelette tance Speech”, by Jeannette Ng Satan for the soul of a poet. Light and humor- Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, produced ous, this is the most stylish of the stories on “The Archronology of Love”, by Caroline and directed by Arwen Curry the ballot, and perfect for cat lovers. M. Yoachim (Lightspeed, April 2019) “The Archronology of Love” by Caro- “Away With the Wolves”, by Sarah Gailey Best Graphic Story or Comic line M. Yoachim (Lightspeed 4/19). Every- (Uncanny Magazine: Disabled People one in a colony on a distant planet died while Destroy Fantasy Special Issue, Septem- Die, Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, by investigating strange alien technology, and ber/October 2019) Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, researchers have come to find out why. Some “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye”, by letters by Clayton Cowles (Image) of the dead were loved ones. In a way, the Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, LaGuardia, written by Nnedi Okorafor, art story is one long, slow goodbye – or rather, July-August 2019) by Tana Ford, colours by James Devlin the search for a way to say goodbye. Emergency Skin, by N.K. Jemisin (For- (Berger Books; Dark Horse) “A Strange Uncertain Light” by G.V. ward Collection (Amazon)) Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen, writ- Anderson (F&SF 7-8/19). This classic ghost “For He Can Creep”, by Siobhan Carroll ten by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda story is set in rural England in 1938 and a (Tor.com, 10 July 2019) (Image) century earlier. To say more might be a “Omphalos”, by Ted Chiang (Exhalation Mooncakes, by Wendy Xu and Suzanne spoiler. Every trope seems to be touched, but (Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf; Picador)) Walker, letters by Joamette Gil (Oni with subtle twists, and a strong sense of char- Press; Lion Forge) acters and place with plenty of suspense. It’s Best Short Story Paper Girls, Volume 6, written by Brian K. a close second to the story that won my vote. Vaughan, drawn by Cliff Chiang, My vote: Carpe Glitter by Cat Rambo “And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, by colours by Matt Wilson, letters by Jared (Meerkat). A young woman inherits her grand- Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons, 9 Sep- K. Fletcher (Image) mother’s homes, knowing that her grand- tember 2019) The Wicked + The Divine, Volume 9: mother was both a magician and a hoarder. “As the Last I May Know”, by S.L. Huang Okay, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie She hopes to find treasure in the rooms packed (Tor.com, 23 October 2019) McKelvie, colours by Matt Wilson, Page 12 April 2020 Alexiad

letters by Clayton Cowles (Image) Ann Gry, Chuck Serface, John Coxon Nibedita Sen (2nd year of eligibility) and Steven H Silver Tasha Suri (2nd year of eligibility) Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form nerds of a feather, flock together, editors Emily Tesh (1st year of eligibility) Adri Joy, Joe Sherry, Vance Kotrla, and Avengers: Endgame The G 1945 Retro-Hugo Award Nominees Captain Marvel Quick Sip Reviews, editor Charles Payseur Good Omens The Rec Center, editors Elizabeth Minkel Best Novel Russian Doll (Season One) and Gavia Baker-Whitelaw Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker The Golden Fleece, by Robert Graves Us Best Fancast (Cassell) Land of Terror, by Edgar Rice Burroughs Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form Be The Serpent, presented by Alexandra (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.) Rowland, Freya Marske and Jennifer “Shadow Over Mars” (The Nemesis from The Good Place: “The Answer” Mace Terra), by Leigh Brackett (Startling The Expanse: “Cibola Burn” Claire Rousseau’s YouTube channel, Stories, Fall 1944) Watchmen: “A God Walks into Abar” produced & presented by Claire Rous- Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord, by The Mandalorian: “Redemption” seau Olaf Stapledon (Secker & Warburg) Doctor Who: “Resolution” The Coode Street Podcast, presented by The Wind on the Moon, by Eric Linklater Watchmen: “This Extraordinary Being” Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe (Macmillan) Galactic Suburbia, presented by Alisa “The Winged Man”, by A.E. van Vogt Best Editor, Short Form Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce and and E. Mayne Hull (Astounding Science Tansy Rayner Roberts, producer Andrew Fiction, May-June 1944) Neil Clarke Finch Ellen Datlow Our Opinions Are Correct, presented by Best Novella C.C. Finlay Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane An- Jonathan Strahan ders “The Changeling”, by A.E. van Vogt Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian The Skiffy and Fanty Show, presented by (Astounding Science Fiction, April Thomas Jen Zink and Shaun Duke 1944) Sheila Williams “A God Named Kroo”, by Henry Kuttner Best Fan Writer (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter Best Editor, Long Form 1944) Cora Buhlert “Intruders from the Stars”, by Ross Sheila E. Gilbert James Davis Nicoll Rocklynne (Amazing Stories, January Brit Hvide Alasdair Stuart 1944) Diana M. Pho Bogi Takács “The Jewel of Bas”, by Leigh Brackett Devi Pillai Paul Weimer (Planet Stories, Spring 1944) Miriam Weinberg Adam Whitehead “Killdozer!”, by Theodore Sturgeon (As- Navah Wolfe tounding Science Fiction, November Best Fan Artist 1944) Best Professional Artist “Trog”, by Murray Leinster (Astounding Iain Clark Science Fiction, June 1944) Tommy Arnold Sara Felix Rovina Cai Grace P. Fong Best Novelette Galen Dara Meg Frank John Picacio Ariela Housman “Arena”, by Fredric Brown (Astounding Yuko Shimizu Elise Matthesen Science Fiction, June 1944) Alyssa Winans “The Big and the Little” (“The Merchant Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book Princes”), by Isaac Asimov (Astounding Best Semiprozine (not a Hugo) Science Fiction, August 1944) “The Children’s Hour”, by Lawrence Beneath Ceaseless Skies Catfishing on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer O’Donnell (C.L. Moore and Henry Escape Pod (Tor Teen) Kuttner) (Astounding Science Fiction, Fireside Magazine Deeplight, by Frances Hardinge March 1944) FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative (Macmillan) “City”, by Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Fiction Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee Science Fiction, May 1944) Strange Horizons (Disney/Hyperion) “No Woman Born”, by C.L. Moore (As- Uncanny Magazine Minor Mage, by T. Kingfisher (Argyll) tounding Science Fiction, December Riverland, by Fran Wilde (Amulet) 1944) Best Fanzine The Wicked King, by Holly Black (Little, “When the Bough Breaks”, by Lewis Brown; Hot Key) Padgett (C.L. Moore and Henry The Book Smugglers, editors Ana Grilo Kuttner) (Astounding Science Fiction, and Thea James Astounding Award for the best new science November 1944) Galactic Journey, founder Gideon fiction writer, sponsored by Dell Magazines Marcus, editor Janice Marcus, senior (not a Hugo) Best Short Story writers Rosemary Benton, Lorelei Marcus and Victoria Silverwolf Sam Hawke (2nd year of eligibility) “And the Gods Laughed”, by Fredric Journey Planet, editors James Bacon, R.F. Kuang (2nd year of eligibility) Brown (Planet Stories, Spring 1944) Christopher J Garcia, Alissa McKersie, Jenn Lyons (1st year of eligibility) “Desertion”, by Clifford D. Simak (As- Alexiad April 2020 Page 13

tounding Science Fiction, November The Canterville Ghost — JTM 1944) The Curse of the Cat People “Far Centaurus”, by A. E. van Vogt Donovan’s Brain Memphis, Tennessee (Astounding Science Fiction, January House of Frankenstein August 23-27, 2023 1944) The Invisible Man’s Revenge https://www.memphis23.org/ “Huddling Place”, by Clifford D. Simak It Happened Tomorrow (Astounding Science Fiction, July Nice, France 1944) August 2-6, 2023 “I, Rocket”, by Ray Bradbury (Amazing Best Editor, Short Form http://worldconinfrance.org/en/ Stories, May 1944) “The Wedge” (“The Traders”), by Isaac John W. Campbell, Jr. New Orleans Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction, Oscar J. Friend (On hiatus) October 1944) Mary Gnaedinger Dorothy McIlwraith 2024 Best Series Raymond A. Palmer Glasgow W. Scott Peacock August 8-12, 2014 Captain Future, by Brett Sterling http://glasgow2024.org/ The Cthulhu Mythos, by H. P. Lovecraft, Best Professional Artist August Derleth, and others 2025 Doc Savage, by Kenneth Robeson/Lester Earle Bergey Seattle Dent Margaret Brundage Mid-August 2025 Jules de Grandin, by Seabury Quinn Boris Dolgov Pellucidar, by Edgar Rice Burroughs Matt Fox Perth, Australia The Shadow, by Maxwell Grant (Walter Paul Orban (On hiatus) B. Gibson) William Timmins WORLDCON Best Related Work Best Fanzine 2020 Fancyclopedia, by Jack Speer (Forrest J. The Acolyte, edited by Francis T. Laney and ConNZealand Ackerman) Samuel D. Russell Wellington, New Zealand ’42 To ’44: A Contemporary Memoir Diablerie, edited by Bill Watson July 29-August 2, 2020 Upon Human Behavior During the Futurian War Digest, edited by J. Michael http://ConNZealand.nz/ Crisis of the World Revolution, by Rosenblum H.G. Wells (Secker & Warburg) Shangri L’Affaires, edited by Charles The ConNZealand Committee has an- Mr. Tompkins Explores the Atom, by Burbee nounced that the Worldcon will be virtual. George Gamow (Cambridge Univer- Voice of the Imagi-Nation, edited by For- There were concerns about their having enough sity Press) rest J. Ackerman and Myrtle R. Douglas staffers to do all that was necessary, but this Rockets: The Future of Travel Beyond Le Zombie, edited by Bob Tucker and E.E. solution isn’t very desirable. the Stratosphere, by Willy Ley (Vi- Evans king Press) 2021 “The Science-Fiction Field”, by Leigh Best Fan Writer DisCon III Brackett (Writer’s Digest, July 1944) Washington, D.C. “The Works of H.P. Lovecraft: Sugges- Fritz Leiber August 25-29, 2021 tions for a Critical Appraisal”, by Morojo/Myrtle R. Douglas http://discon3.org/ Fritz Leiber (The Acolyte, Fall 1944) J. Michael Rosenblum Jack Speer Best Graphic Story or Comic Bob Tucker NASFiC Harry Warner, Jr. Buck Rogers: “Hollow Planetoid”, by 2020 Dick Calkins (National Newspaper WORLDCON BIDS Columbus, Ohio Service) August 20-23, 2020 Donald Duck: “The Mad Chemist”, by 2022 http://columbus2020nasfic.org Carl Barks (Dell Comics) Chicago Flash Gordon: “Battle for Tropica”, by Mid-August — Labor Day Weekend CONGLOMERATION 2020 Alex Raymond (King Features Syndi- https://chicagoworldconbid.org/ cate) The ConGlomeration committee has an- Flash Gordon: “Triumph in Tropica”, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia nounced that ConGlomeration 2020 has been by Alex Raymond (King Features May 4-8, 2022 canceled because of the health crisis. There are Syndicate) https://jeddicon.com/ few enough fan-run cons these days and losing The Spirit: “For the Love of Clara De- [YES THIS IS A REAL BID] one, especially here, is bad. foe”, by Manly Wade Wellman, Lou Maybe Montreal was not so bad. Fine and Don Komisarow (Register — LTM and Tribune Syndicate) Superman: “The Mysterious Mr. 2023 Mxyztplk”, by Jerry Siegel and Joe Chengdu Shuster (Detective Comics, Inc.) August, 2023 http://www.worldconinchina.com/index-e.html Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form What she said. Page 14 April 2020 Alexiad

interesting almanac tidbit. I enjoyed Rafael considered the weather, my immediate thought Letters, we get letters Sabatini’s 1922 historical novel Captain Blood, was that it was a fallacy. In that area, there also The Black Swan, The Sea Hawk, .... And were going to be lots of disappearances. thanks to all for the additional background and From: Trinlay Khadro February 8, 2020 follow-up to articles and letters. Lawrence David Kusche talked 1734 S. 56th Street, West Allis, WI to Bill Verity, who had been re- 53214, USA From: Timothy Lane February 24, 2020 ported “lost in the Bermuda Trian- [email protected] [email protected] gle” (The Bermuda Triangle Mys- tery — Solved, page 212). Verity I’ve been busy for several years now I remember reading A Man Called Intrepid. was amazed at the report. making amigarumi critters and selling them at I wondered about how much Sir William seem- con art shows. ed to be affecting events. Now I find I had good I’ve attended Ditto twice, when it was held Lately, I’ve done a few lino prints includ- reason for my doubts. It would be interesting to in Cincinnati. I’ve never made it to Corflu, ing this one of Megumi that I thought you’d compare it to the actual events, but that would partly because only once was it located within enjoy. take a lot of effort. And besides, how much a reasonable distance (Nashville). That one could I remember of it at this point? was inconveniently opposite the Holmes-Doyle I think you’re making an error in French in symposium in Dayton, and we also heard from the title of your review of the mountain climber Tom Feller that it didn’t sound like something Bradford Washburn. The French verb aller we really wanted to attend anyway. means “to go”, and the reflexive s’en aller I notice Lloyd Penney’s struggles with means “to go away”. So “I go away” would be editing. For what it’s worth, one approach I “Je m’en vais” (present indicative) and the take in writing is to go by how it sounds to me. informal singular of “you go away” would be The idea is to be grammatically correct unless “tu t’en va”. The imperative is va t’en. So you it seems overly pedantic, and to see how the started with part of the infinitive or the third content flows. person singular, then appended the second The generic use of fascist as an insult is person singular informal imperative. nothing new. Orwell pointed it out around 80 years ago. That’s the title of the song. One reason for the poor German intelli- gence in Britain specifically was the Dou- An interesting “Joy of High Tech” this issue ble-Cross System. Their few agents all linked From: Joy V. Smith February 21, 2020 even if Rod doesn’t actually discuss any form of up with their main agent, a Welsh nationalist 8925 Selph Road, Lakeland, FL technology. When people talk about “the sci- named Arthur Owens, whose German code 33810-0341 USA ence is settled” on any topic, one can point out name was Johnny. His British code name was [email protected] what Michelson-Morley and other experiments Snow, and he was actually a double agent. By http://www.joyvsmith.com/ to “settled” Newtonian mechanics. 1942, the British realized that every German Lloyd Daub’s discourse on fear was most spy in Britain was a double agent, and this was Thanks for all the reviews — always an interesting. I can share his dislike of false probably true even earlier. education! And they help me make choices. accusations of any sorts, which greatly affects Thanks to Lloyd Daub and Taras Wolansky my reaction to some books, such as Fredric See the review of the book by too. (I read Doctor Little when I was a kid. It’d Brown’s Here Comes a Candle. No doubt this “Nigel West” on Owens; Snow: make a good movie...) And I never knew or goes back to some childhood incident. The Double Life of a World War thought about Yiddish books. I’m glad some The FBI would seem to have early con- II Spy (2011; with producer are being saved. cluded that Richard Jewell was the bomber, and Madoc Roberts, who seems to once they’ve done that any police force will have done much of the research). There are new ones, too, Mi- mostly be concerned with proving their case, I think you have it, too. chael Chabon to the contrary. not making sure they got the right person. — JTM For example, Harry Potter un der That is an amazing charge for books. I filosofisher shteyn — that’s suppose the Blish books, if you have them all in Frederik Pohl (I think it may have been in right, Potter in Yiddish (and trade paperback, would weigh a pound or so. It one of his collaborations with C. M. Korn- “Philosopher’s Stone” to boot). would cost less than $10 to ship them in the US, bluth) dealt with a system based on some form There’s also Der Hobit, oder Ahin I think. of corporal punishment. It didn’t work too un Vider Tsurik [“In a lokh in de I’ve seen Captain Blood (though I haven’t with masochistic criminals, just as systems erd hot gevoynt a hobit.”] read the book, or as far as I recall anything else based on fines work poorly with the very — JTM by Sabatini). The ending, as Peter Blood in- wealthy. That may be why prison is the usual forms his father-in-law of his new post, is a fun punishment for major crimes — when the Lisa: Trumpybear. EEK! Have you seen one. death penalty isn’t used. The death penalty has the Trump toilet brush? Jared Diamond dealt at least somewhat with the virtue that the recidivism rate for executed the issue of invasive infections in Guns, Germs, criminals is zero. No, but at least that serves a and Steel, and as far as I know no one objected. The Holodomor and the Yezhovshchina useful purpose. But that was many years ago, and the outrage may have given the Nazis some ideas, but they — LTM culture has gotten steadily more intolerant since already knew about the Armenian genocide and then. used it as an example. I think it was Hermann Thanks to Rodford Edmiston for the back- I remember reading a short Reader’s Digest Goering who used it as an example of how no ground on Betelgeuse (Is it really pronounced article on the Bermuda Triangle. I had always one remembers such victims. beetle-juice?), supernovas, the universe and assumed it meant some small area near Ber- everything. muda. When I saw how large it was (virtually From: Lloyd Penney March 17, 2020 Letters: Thanks to Timothy Lane for the the entire West Indies as well as Bermuda) and 1706-24 Eva Road, Etobicoke, ON Alexiad April 2020 Page 15

M9C 2B2 CANADA Last night was a fannish pubnight at our some books already on my list. It’ll be next [email protected] local, and it closed until further notice not long month after my pension and Social Security http://lloydpenney.livejournal.com/ after we left. There may not be much entertain- gets deposited. ment for the local fans, with so many conven- George W. Price: Your mention of Rafael Got your warning. It is St. Patrick’s Day, tions cancelling or postponing, but social media Sabatini reminded me of how much I enjoyed but you’d never know it. The premier of On- is the easiest way to stay informed, and pass the his novels years ago. I once had the chance to tario has declared a province-wide state of info along. Best way to keep up with fanzines, purchase what appeared to be a complete emergency. All restaurants and bars (except too. Take care, see you with the next. collection of his works at a used book store. those with take-out facilities) are closed, and But I passed it by as it would have added such closure will be enforced. Thanks to the Conventions are canceling all another pile of books to my already overloaded COVID-19 coronavirus, much of Canada is in over. Fanzines may be the last room full of books. a shutdown state, and we are just beginning refuge of fandom. Sue Burke: Were women just excluded our self-quarantine, self-isolation, social — JTM from Ivy League schools? Where I went to distancing. Some say who knows what we will college from 1951-1955 there seemed to be do, but Yvonne and I know…we have lots to about an equal number of women and men do at home. Two weeks? Right now, I’d take students. three, and we will still have lots to occupy us. Taras Wolansky: What did you think of Like…writing a letter of comment for Alexiad, the grand finale of The Good Place? It re- whole number 109. ceived excellent reviews. After watching it I seemed to be a bit disappointed. But on further Kentucky is racing everyone thought I came to the conclusion that it was a else to shut down places. I have good ending and didn’t really see where they to wonder; what is happening in could have done anything better. those homeless camps? From: John Purcell March 24, 2020 We have adopted a minimalist lifestyle, as 3744 Marielene Circle, College Station, much as we can, mostly because of lack of TX 77845 USA money coming in. Our investments are taking [email protected] a beating, and we have been cleaning out the apartment, to see what we can easily rid our- Hey, lucky you: Alexiad gets the first letter selves of. We’ve already taken about ten bags of comment from me in the current apocalypse. of stuff to the local thrift shops, and more will There is always something unique going on in likely come to be bagged and donated. I still this world, and I guess this is one of them. can’t find work, but I am doing some work Getting into this latest issue, Lisa's opening online for a client of World Vision, so at least salvo about books definitely strikes a bell. Her some cash will be coming in shortly. Like the comment that “the things you own own you” Sheryl Crow song goes, it’s not getting what makes sense, and I do not mind being owned you want, but wanting what you have. From: Robert S. Kennedy March 18, 2020 by books. Heck, that's part of my profession as Most deaths I see here, and in issues of 5301 East Warm Springs Avenue, Apt. a college English professor, so I am constantly Ansible and the File 770 website, depress me. B306, Boise, ID 83716-6205 USA surrounded by books both at home and at work. My own world of SF&F is slowly crumbling, [email protected] And like Lisa notes, one of these days I do one passing at a time. With Christopher need to cull the collection a bit, remove un- Tolkien’s passing, have we truly left Mid- My thanks for Vol. 19 No.1 (February 2020, wanted books that I don't believe need preserv- dle-Earth? I hope not, but I suspect we have. Whole Number 109). ing. Then again, my current collection of sf & Just this morning, I saw reports online Help, I’m trapped in a CCRC and can’t get f is nowhere near as big as it once was back in about Betelgeuse brightening up again. Maybe out. Actually, that’s not really funny. There are the early 1980s. By 1983 I had something on it’s returning to normal, or getting ready to some 300 of we old people here and the the order of 2500 science fiction and fantasy nova, don’t know. All I know it takes our COVID-19 is apparently especially dangerous books in my possession, and I was damn proud mind off worrying about COVID-19. for us. All activities have been canceled. No of it. A cross-country move from Minneapolis The loccol…George Price is discovering more gathering in groups and we are to try and to Los Angeles warranted selling off 75% of it, what much of us in the rest of the world have keep at least 6 feet from each other. How that which raised a lot of money to fund the move. known for some time. With postage rates works for couples I don’t know. No more Now my total collection — all cataloged on the continually rising, we’ve found that purchas- eating in the dining room. We can order meals LibraryThing app on my cellphone — numbers ing something overseas consists of the price of and they will be delivered to our rooms. Very just shy of 600 books. the product, and the postage matching or even difficult to get to medical appoints as transporta- The major difference between now and then exceeding the price of the product. Pretty tion will only take one person at a time. So far is that I am much more selective now in terms typical here. no one here has contracted COVID-19. So, of what I want to have in the collection; 35 to Canada has had legal pot for about a year we’ll just keep our fingers crossed. 45 years ago I was in the peak years of my now, so there are cannabis stores everywhere, “The Joy of High Tech” by Rodford Edmis- “completist” mode of collecting. These days I with mixed reviews and levels of success. ton was enjoyable as usual. We’ll just keep actually read what I buy and shelve either at Legal pot doesn’t seem to be much stronger watching the skies. home or in my office, which is my lending than tobacco, so illegal pot is still fairly popu- Good to see Lloyd Daub with so many library to colleagues who also like reading this lar. The hallways of our apartment building reviews. Keep it up, Lloyd. crazy Buck Rogers stuff. Even so, I might have often have that skunky smell. Cannabis edibles Then there’s Taras Wolansky with his to trim the herd a bit by removing books that are coming soon, too. I am not interested in reviews. have been read and which I consider expend- the smoking part, but I am looking into the But I was especially taken by the review of able. And so it goes. CBD oil part, and how useful it may be as a Joker by Taral Wayne. Based on his review I’m nutritional supplement. going to order a copy from Amazon along with My vision problems led me to Page 16 April 2020 Alexiad

switch to Kindle (Kindle app on an Many years later, in 1987, I had a letter 1) The number of women employed by the iPad) and when I had the cataract published in Chemical and Engineering News new textile mills was much greater than the surgery that cleared that up, I (the house organ of the American Chemical number of hand-weaving artisans put out of stayed with the iPad. It saves on Society) on how to dispose of nuclear power business. space. plant waste. I cited a speech I had heard Pour- — JTM nelle give. He said the solution is simple — it 2) For the women in the mills, this employ- doesn’t require super-secure storage for a mil- ment was a solid step upward, giving them Lisa also noticed something that rankled lion years in deep caverns. All we need is to set both better working conditions and higher my wife and I one night while watching a aside a square mile of desert and put a storage incomes than they had before. (Otherwise, program on a channel we rarely tune into just building at the center. It wouldn’t have to be why would they have taken those jobs? I’ve because it was running a Firefly mini-mara- very big to hold the accumulated wastes of never heard that workers were drafted into thon. Yes, you guessed it: this channel ran centuries. The waste is brought in and handled the new mills.) Trumpybear commercials practically every entirely by standard remote-control machinery. half hour. At first we couldn't believe it, think- And around that square mile, Jerry said, we put 3) Machine weaving made cloth prices fall ing it was a big gag, but no, it's for real. Hard ordinary cyclone fencing — with signs every sharply, and greatly increased the quantity to believe. few feet reading, “If you cross this fence you produced, raising the standard of living for And all this during the COVID-19 pan- will die.” everybody, but especially for the poor. demic. I was fearful of losing a lot of money The magazine published a letter in response (Well, maybe not quite everybody — the as Corflu 37, which I chaired, came close to from a reader living in the desert in the South- artisan weavers had to find other ways to being shuttered by the state, but fortunately west, demanding we find someplace other than make a living. Maybe some of them kept that order did not come from the Governor's “my desert.” I didn’t bother to reply with an on weaving for sale to snobs who would office until the Wednesday after the Conven- offer to avoid the part of the desert that was his pay a higher price for “genuine hand- tion ended. *Whew!* Dodge a big bullet there. private property. But I thought it telling that he -woven cloth,” the way people now pay Still made a little bit of money thanks to the saw himself as the guardian of all the desert. extra for “organic” food which is no more Auction and 33 fine folks showing up. All in nutritious than the cheaper stuff from fac- all it went very well, and attendees told me Many environmental activists tory farms.) that they had a splendid time. Made me feel are against all forms of power gen- good. That is all I really wanted to do: create eration. How they reconcile this Paul Ehrlich (The Population a place where everybody could sit, enjoy, sip, with their use of a great number Bomb) once said that the Japa- eat, and kibbutz to their hearts' content. All in of electric-powered devices is an nese people would have been hap- all, I am glad I did this, even if Greg Benford exercise left to the reader. pier and healthier if they had only questioned my sanity. I did it! So there. focused on producing netsuke (This was before suicidal terrorism became instead of industrial goods. You were better off than the a serious danger. Now that square mile would — JTM organizers of ConNZealand. This need a strong guard force.) will be a very interesting world- To my suggestion that revolvers became con. * * * * * equalizers between men and women, Ms. — JTM Noting my mention of the horrors of gender Burke allows that “it says something sad about in German grammar, Timothy Lane wonders if men that women need to be armed against And I have to say it: I could not have I have read Mark Twain’s “The Awful German them.” Yes, indeed it does. Sad, but true. pulled it off without the help of my wife, Language.” Indeed I have. It was a long time Harvey Weinstein is not a rare aberration. Valerie, who is a brilliant organizer when it ago, but I think that’s where I saw the idea of There are all too many men who will behave comes to practical matters, and Pat Virzi, who the “verb strainer,” which scoops up the verbs in like him when they think they can get away was a font of wisdom and ideas throughout. a German sentence and deposits them at the end. with it. Our “prudish” and “repressed” Victo- Thank you, ladies. I truly could not have done Twain exaggerated, of course — but not by very rian ancestors may actually have known what it without your massive help. much. they were doing when they erected high barri- With that, I believe I am done here. May ers to keep men and women sexually separated you, Lisa, and Grant all be well and make it * * * * * except within marriage. through this latest viral madness. We are all in Sue Burke scores a good solid hit on me, this together, and I wish you all good health. saying: “George Price says that the power loom * * * * * made it possible for women to earn enough to The editor has a note in Taras Wolansky’s From: George W. Price March 26, 2020 be self-supporting. That goes against what I letter commenting on how the Left uses “fas- 4418 N. Monitor Avenue, Chicago, IL know about the history of textiles. Women had cist” not as a real descriptive term, but simply 60630-3333 USA been weavers since ancient times. As artisans to silence opponents. Yes, I’ve noticed that it [email protected] they operated looms they owned, and as profes- has come to mean anything more right-wing sionals they were able to earn a living. The than a leftist can tolerate. February Alexiad: industrial revolution transferred ownership and Let me ask a historical question. Leftist Lloyd Daub’s review of The Best of Jerry operation from artisans to textile mill busi- terminology has prevailed so widely that it is Pournelle brings back old memories. I first nesses, and the results were dangerous working now customary to speak of the Nazis as fas- met Jerry at the 1961 Worldcon in Seattle. He conditions, pitiful wages, and irregular employ- cists. But were they, really? That is, in their was introduced to me by Poul Anderson ment for both men and women (and for a time, own eyes? Specifically, did Hitler think of (whom I already knew). One evening Poul and children).” himself as a “fascist”? He allied with Musso- Jerry had a long bull session with me and my Yes, I expect that’s all true, as far as it goes. lini’s Fascists, but did he ever explicitly say wife in our room. I found Jerry so interesting But it doesn’t go far enough. Not anywhere that his National Socialism was a form of that the next year I invited him to be on the near. Without knowing anything more about the fascism? If so, I’ve never heard of it. Has program at Chicon III (of which I was trea- specifics of the textile industry, I will make anyone else? surer). He joined the panel on “Politics in some guesses (which Ms. Burke can verify or Science Fiction” that I moderated. dispute): * * * * * Alexiad April 2020 Page 17

Taras says that my idea of replacing im- anyway due to a head cold and missed my — they are thick-headed and unthinking. And prisonment with flogging would be unconsti- chance to moan about being forced to stay ‘safer their test was faulty. Meanwhile, they rely far tutional, as “cruel and unusual” punishment. home’ as our governor put it. too much on ‘models’ based on flawed data. No, it wouldn’t be. When the Constitution We are still in the ‘fog of war’ part of the All of Big Science and Government Science is was adopted, flogging was more common than pandemic. People are dying while infected, but guilty of that. imprisonment. The U.S. Army still used the Wuhan isn’t the real cause of death. Or people Reviewer’s Notes — as an author of fan lash during the Civil War — see the movie die from something, but no one checks if they fiction, I do indeed write my own characters, Glory, in which a deserter is shown mercy by were also infected. And thus no one knows if and I do try to be faithful to the original ‘uni- being flogged instead of hanged. the stats are correct any more, because no one verse’ I am writing. But I can understand the Also, if we want to be technical, the Con- knows if regular deaths are being chalked up to worry this can cause the original author, or the stitution forbids punishments that are “cruel Wuhan or not. “Deaths above normal” is what scholar seeking the definitive text. I own a AND unusual,” not “cruel OR unusual.” Cruel some are looking at as a marker. And death copy of a book simply titled Philology, which is permitted as long as it is the usual punish- rates per capita [per 100,000] is their key. begins with seeking that definitive text of ment for that offense. In any case, the Consti- Everything else is fog. Homer and proceeds to a history of the Human- tution can be amended. We do know that all countries make mis- ities in higher education. I also have some- takes, or deliberately publish false statistics. where about a large volume of Biblical pseud- From: Sue Burke March 29, 2020 The more untrustworthy the government, the epigrapha, which may actually be the title of 5415 N. Sheridan Road, Apt. 1711, less trustworthy are the reported stats. Despite that. I did not take it as Gospel, of course, but Chicago, IL 60640-1971 growing incompetence in the bureaucracy here, I was happy I read a lot of it. In passing, you [email protected] it’s also getting clear that the USA is keeping mention deconstructionism, and the primacy of sueburke.site the most reliable stats overall. We’re going to the reader in setting meaning to a text. That semiosispax.com be doing far more testing than anyone else in the happens to be the basis of Japanese poetry in next couple of weeks. I’m guessing that at the the haiku era — that half the meaning of one is Greetings from my Fortress of Solitude. next trip to the pharmacy they make you take it. how the reader understands and interprets it. [I Since I normally work from home, my daily If not then, the next one. Soon. The tests are believe the same principle applies to transla- life hasn’t changed much, although I faced coming out fast. tions, because the translator must interpret a some cancellations: promotional appearances Testing is the key to the stats. Tests con- text before choosing the word from the other and a class I was going to teach, as well as a ducted are the denominator in any calculation of language. Sue Burke is your expert there, but variety of social events, church services, and the danger of the disease. The more tests, the my principle is that the best translation is other optional things to do outside of the more correct positives, and the more we know another one, in order to get closer to the origi- house. “Cancel culture” has a new meaning how likely it is for anyone to get it. The more nal author’s meaning.] When the poem is now. I hope everyone reading this is safe, positives, the clearer idea we have of virulence meant as the hokku to a renga, without that healthy, and minimally inconvenienced. My and the severity of symptoms. We will then interpretation by the reader, there could be no family and friends are doing well, so far. have a clearer idea of lethality and chances of second verse, and so on. Nor could the hokku Thank you, Lloyd G. Daub, for the kind recovery even without treatment. On that basis ever be re-used to start another one, which was review of Interference. I was aiming more at we can better judge lockdowns, shutting busi- always the intention of the author. Your men- adventure than horror, but there is a lot of nesses and requiring the wearing of surgical tion of the twist to the plot in The Last suffering and bloodshed, so “atavistic fear” is masks outdoors. And the caseload will allow Ringbearer is timely. I just received a post on a reasonable interpretation. better controlled testing of treatments. the Pournelle Chaos Manor blog that argued Although my day job continues pretty Testing, tracing contacts from the positive for something we have seen by others — that much as usual, I’ve had time to do a little tester, quarantine of the positives (only). The the real villains in Star Wars were the Jedi. reading, and my reviews of Rogue Moon by pandemic changes names, but not these essential Lying, tyrannical, theocrats is the gist of it. Algis Budrys and of the Nebula-nominated actions to take to contain it. Speaking of pastiches, fan fiction and short stories and novelettes should appear in And planet Earth, let’s face it — until that pseudepigrapha, it’s nice (for him) to see this issue, editor willing. government and culture changes, everyone Nicholas Meyer is still at the task of making Beyond that, I have little to say. Mostly leaving China must permanently be quarantined bad sequels to Doyle’s Holmes stories. The I’ve been transfixed by the news and, as best before being allowed into any other country. one I read was bad enough to swear me off I can, I’ve been enjoying some of the jokes Swine flu, avian flu, SARS, H1N1, Wuhan — them in favor of other, better things. about the pandemic, although I think there is how many pandemics does it take? BTW, the very little remaining humor to be found in market that we know spawned this latest pan- I think I mentioned the polls toilet paper hoarding. demic is open again, with no changes in wares for Best Pastiche and Worst Pas- or procedure. But the Chinese movie theaters, tiche, both won by The Seven Per I have not seen anywhere any- reopened briefly, have been closed again. Cent Solution. one defending the people who buy As for the treatment controversy, I have long enormous quantities of toilet been an advocate of the Do No Harm school Sir Arthur C. Clarke is correct that the truth paper; nevertheless, they per- when it comes to using a known drug on another is stranger than fiction. But after all this time, sisted. illness. I think it is wrong to say that the treat- I still don’t believe a word of any spy book — —JTM ment must prove its value before being used. fiction or non-fiction. Too many times the As long as it is known to be reasonably safe, let ‘authentic full story at last comes out’ faces a From: Lloyd G. Daub March 31, 2020 the doctors and patients make the choice to try new set of revelations in the next decade that 6535 W. English Meadows Drive it. The FDA, alas, is of the “Prove it works” demonstrate how the earlier version had to D205, Greenfield, WI 53220-3995 school. Which means unnecessary deaths every resort to fiction to avoid revealing “sources and USA time. The FDA used to be much more flexible methods.” JRR Tolkien wrote a long piece [email protected] when it comes to “off-label” uses of medicines. (published by Christopher) describing the Rigidity is a sign of decline. That the CDC events just prior to The Hobbit from Gandalf’s Thank you again for another Alexiad. I refused to allow Seattle doctors to test locally, point of view. It ended with a hobbit remark- hope all is well there and among all readers in insisting that they wait for the official CDC test, ing “I don’t suppose you have told us the full this Age of Wuhan. I was self-quarantining is a sign of a sclerotic, even senile bureaucracy story, even now.” To which Gandalf replied, Page 18 April 2020 Alexiad

“Of course not.” was just the best written, or should I say com- chose the same stretch of road to take a break, Of course, to return to Meyer and other posed. the two girls sat up all night with a cheap rifle. pseudepigrapha, that’s exactly why there is fan Review of Protocols by Nicholas Meyer: On Taral Wayne (review of Joker): “the fiction. There’s always more to say. Or some- the one hand, I like the idea of Sherlock Holmes images that lie behind a decaying, modern-day one wants there to be more. investigating a real-life mystery; but on the society already feel dated. … Much of the story LOC George Price: I would not claim to other hand, because it’s a real-life mystery, we of Joker was a remake of Robert De Niro’s have a definitive reason for the sexual dimor- know that his labors will prove in the end to be Taxi Driver, made in 1976.” phism (as it’s called) of the human species. futile. In general, the superhero genre has re- But the evolutionists trace our lineage back The people who need to read this, won’t; mained imprinted on the social trends of the into that of the apes, and the larger size of the and even if they do, well, it’s only a novel. On 60s and 70s, when crime was going up and up, male in gorillas and suchlike comes in handy the other hand, a mass market motion picture and the authorities seemed unable to do any- for fighting other males for mates and protect- might do some good. thing about it. This is what justified the cos- ing the feeding grounds and family. Certain Lisa: “I have resumed the attempt to live a tumed vigilantes we call superheroes. other pithecine characteristics continue in the more minimalist lifestyle.” You are a wise When these trends reversed in the real hominins, and sexual dimorphism is just woman. world (i.e., when the criminal justice system another one. The question more on the minds Trumpybear is the perfect gift for everyone. got tough again), the “lawless streets” contin- of today’s evolutionists seems to be ‘Why are Trump fans will want one, and Trump haters ued unchanged in the comic book world. we still dimorphic? Does there remain a will want one even more, to stick pins into. (Similarity, a lot of animated films, like The selection advantage in Nature for human males (Couldn’t Trump haters just cut a picture of Incredibles, are set in some nostalgic version of to be larger?’ And the answer to that seems to Trump out of the paper?) LTM 1950s America.) come from Darwin’s work on Sexual Selec- Rodford Edmiston: Great article about But about the faux-1980s background of tion. That is, ‘Women seem to like it that Betelgeuse and Eta Carinae. Joker: people tend to gloss over how conten- way.’ See The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and For a minute I thought the giant star in A.E. tious that period really was, and how dark from any number of Hollywood romance movies for Van Vogt’s Mission to the Stars was Eta the viewpoint of many people. The belated examples of the woman selecting for the Carinae, but that was actually S Doradus. crackdown on crime, for example, looked like he-man over the wimp. As always, ‘based on George W. Price: “why women are smaller neofascism to the Left. a true story.’ than men. Has anyone heard of a good evolu- Liberals feared Ronald Reagan would start I think that’s all for this issue. And in the tionary reason for that?” a nuclear war; that’s what motion pictures like immortal words of Scotty at the end of the Darwinian superiority for a woman trans- The Day After and The Terminator were really vastly superior version of The Thing from lates into how well she can pass nutrients about. When he instead won the Cold War by Another World: “Keep your distance. Keep through to her offspring. A large, muscular breaking the Soviet Union economically, this washing your hands!” woman needs to take a lot of nutrients and was a real downer for people who had believed calories to keep herself healthy, before she has socialism was a stronger economic system than “Very superstitious: Wash anything to spare for a developing fetus or capitalism. your face and hands!” nursing baby. When food is short, her small, — JTM plump cousin can still produce healthy babies It seems to me they believe while she can’t. that it was all Gorbachev and be- From: Taras Wolansky April 1, 2020 By contrast, our male ancestors had to hunt sides the Soviet Union wasn’t re- Post Office Box 698, Kerhonkson, NY and engage in warfare and, in general, win ally socialist. 12446-0698 USA status among their peers, or our female ances- [email protected] tors would not smile on them. In addition, a People who see their own time as dystopian large frame may play the same role as a pea- are usually suffering from “temporal parochial- Thanks for the February Alexiad. cock’s tail, displaying general health and fitness ism”, failing to see the present in a broader So New Zealand is to be a virtual world- to the opposite sex. context. Either they are too young or don’t con. Maybe a lucky break for me: after I Sue Burke: “Taras Wolansky recalls seeing remember how bad things used to be. (Or they looked at the hotel situation, I had decided not women in Columbia University in the 1970s. are insufficiently skeptical consumers of propa- to take advantage of my attending member- Those were not Columbia students. .... women ganda; e.g., “a very real chance that the United ship. Exactly how it will work I find it diffi- were only accepted as Columbia students in States is fated to become a right-wing autoc- cult to imagine, however. 1987.” racy”.) I prescribe a dose of Steven Pinker’s Joe: The cracked.com article was very Remember, Columbia University is a whole Enlightenment Now, which is filled with objec- funny, and very snarky. However, I think it’s constellation of schools. Columbia College is tive data about how life has improved in almost a bit of froth and no weight should be put on the selective Ivy I attended, that started admit- every way. it. ting women in 1983, with the Class of 1987. Robert S. Kennedy: Some years ago, I The reason they waited so long is because they had a letter published in the Skeptical Inquirer, A website that is for fan fic- didn’t want to destroy the sister school, Barnard arguing that they should spend time debunking tion won a Hugo. Those people College. It’s like when feminists weren’t ex- dangerous irrational beliefs, not harmless ones. “own” the material they did not actly overjoyed when the Boy Scouts an- To which the author of the article I was re- create. nounced they would start admitting girls. sponding to replied: all irrational beliefs are On the other hand, the Columbia engineer- equally dangerous. Rather than the “Returns from Troy” being ing school started accepting women in 1942, the Which, I think, qualifies as a moderately a kind of fan fiction to the Odyssey, my im- last (!) Columbia professional school to do so. dangerous irrational belief held by an author pression is that the Odyssey is merely the most So the women I met in the freshman dorm who, I am sure, thinks of himself as a skeptic. notable of the genre of “The Returns”, with almost 30 years later were novel only in terms Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell is good; most of the others lost, except for references in of where they were living. but I think it is overshadowed by the epic other writers. Women and guns: Many years ago, my Spectrum on Demand series, Manhunt: Deadly The thing is, Odysseus was not that impor- sister and a girlfriend drove across the West, Games. This covers not only the FBI’s dis- tant, by no means the highest ranking member visiting 26 states. When their car broke down graceful treatment of Jewell but also the pursuit of the Achaean force at Troy. His “Return” on a lonely mountain road, and a biker gang of the diabolical real bomber, Eric Rudolph. If Alexiad April 2020 Page 19 you think the movie made the FBI look bad, meeting in defiance of the ban. And I wonder never going to read, and the otherwise bland the series makes them look like Keystone what is going to happen around Easter, espe- stuff I cannot be bothered with. And I find the Kops. cially for the ZCC, which normally have a current book covers ugly, in a bland way. humongous three day meeting, which about a I was surprised they didn’t million people attending. I got there a few years ago. indict Jewell. They had a profile, So I comment on older books. they had the Press working for There is quite the scandal here — JTM them (as John Douglas recom- about church services. mended), they even had a sort of I am currently re-evaluating my future confession (they had asked him I am still working – have been able to work plans. Something happened in December, and “how it could have been done”). from home. A bit lonely, bit it has a couple of it is affecting me. I need to see what is going to The case would be solved, the benefits. Lack of human contact is not one of happen, but can see a change coming my way. families of the dead and the in- them. I hope that all of you find something good jured and their families would The initial social distancing regulations were to read or watch, and for good enough health. have had closure, and the FBI propagated shortly after I met up with my sister would have another triumph on its at the airport, where she was on her way to the From: John Hertz March 30, 2020 record. Guilty? What’s that got USA, to meet up with her son. He is studying 236 S. Coronado St., N. 409 Los An- to do with anything? there, and they have not met in person for about geles, CA 90057 USA two years. So shortly after she left, we hear that Lloyd G. Daub: Thanks for the review of people from high risk countries will be limited The fellow who could not comprehend Sue Burke’s Interference, though I won’t read in entering the country, and one of the high risk there might be a script, seeming to believe it until after I finish the book. countries is the USA. actors spoke and carried out actions entirely on From your review of Daniel H. Wilson’s My sister appears to have had a good time in their own, was simultaneously complimentary Andromeda Strain sequel, The Andromeda New York, but left much earlier than planned. and insulting. I wish he had been more un- Evolution: “[With a scenario involving] Landing back in South Africa shortly before the usual. deaths numbering in the billions … When that lockdown came into effect. It was complimentary because the actors’ many lives (as a percent of any size popula- Oh, ever since I heard that the people of verisimilitude was evidently effective. In a tion) are lost in a short time, human life con- China calls the disease Wuhan Pneumonia, and sense that’s the impression they devote all their tinues, but civilization must start over.” that the Chinese Communist government hate powers to create. “Start over“ seems too strong an expres- the name, and have been repressing it both It was an insult because it disregarded those sion. After all, most of the information needed locally and internationally, I have made certain powers, and the labor they almost certainly for rebuilding civilization continues to exist, in that it is the name I use. cost. a plague scenario. In Lest Darkness Fall, May I say, even to you, that Thorstein Martin Padway believes he has forestalled the Such a spiteful attitude! Just Veblen would not have approved? Dark Ages by introducing printing technology, because they did not promptly so information exists in too many copies to report it and therefore let it spread I thought it was ultimate lose. across the world? fanboyism, loving the actors so — LTM much that they must be the initia- A record of information is tors of those wondrous deeds. If useless if no one knows how to I have finished watching Star Trek: Picard. I wanted to please Veblen I would read it. This was why Michael I found it to be in some ways an incoherent get tuberculosis and wear an Ventris was so significant in un- mess. With some gems in an otherwise forgetta- elaborate waistcoat, for if you’re derstanding Minoan history. By ble series. Some thoughts: It is chick heavy, and going to have consumption, it way of contrast note the resigna- I do not know if it is in meaningful ways. Self ought to be conspicuous. tion in George R. Stewart’s Earth medicating with alcohol, smoking and swear- —JTM Abides (1949) where the school- ing? Definitely not the STAR TREK I remember. master ends up by closing the Frenzied action making up for story? Not the Too many of us in SF are guilty of a similar school and going out to get him- STAR TREK I remember. fault. I haven’t forgotten the Heinlein cente- self killed. But then, my STAR TREK is Deep Space 9. nary panel at the 65th Worldcon. The panelists — JTM The stepchild of STAR TREK. Yet the one that spent their hour agreeing and disagreeing with every series thereafter tried to imitate in some opinions expressed by characters in his books. From: AL du Pisani April 1, 2020 way or another, without understanding what Finally I said, from the audience, “No one 945 Grand Prix Street, Weltevreden- made the original successful. In many ways ST would notice or care about those opinions if he park 1709, REPUBLIC OF SOUTH Picard tried to tell a DS9 story, without the had not written so well.” AFRICA elements which worked in DS9. The world is feminine — in German, any- [email protected] I have been reading a bit. Currently busy way. So it’s „über alles in der Welt”. reading the Kris Longknife series. Finding it Your title, “You Don’t Know Him” for a We are about 5 days into a three week OK, but for some reason keeping a bit of dis- review of Hutton’s Agent Jack must have been country wide lockdown over Wuhan Pneumo- tance. Unlike, for instance, Pam Uphoff’s Wine inspired. nia. After a two week social distancing order, of the Gods series, which I devour and reread – Skepticism can be overdone too. I like the which, among other things, banned all meet- for some reason it clicked with me. Some of Muslim image of the Bridge to Heaven. At one ings with more than 250 people. And a lot of Nathan Lowell’s Golden Age of the Solar Clip- side is skepticism, at the other is credulity; the meetings with less people than that also per, and associated series, also grab me. Bridge is the width of a razor’s edge; and cancelled themselves. It is strange to go to a bookshop, browse below are the fires of Hell. It is bad when your weekends fall apart – briefly in the SF and Fantasy section, and then No meeting up with friends, no going to drift over to the interesting stuff in the Craft WAHF: Martin Morse Wooster church. I’m worried that the latter is going to section. Because the SF&F section only con- cause trouble – There are already churches tains the stuff I already have, the stuff I am Page 20 April 2020 Alexiad

A man in a brown leather jacket reached out DAY OF THE RED HOOD and grabbed Sciarra. Bond caught up with them Co-Editors: Lisa & Joseph Major and punched Sciarra out. The two men looked Co-Publishers: Joseph & Lisa Major “I won’t be long,” Bond said to the young at each other. Writers, Staff: Major, Joseph, Major, Lisa woman in her hotel room. Outside revellers in His new helper was a stocky, muscular man skeleton outfits danced down the streets of with dark red hair, except for some white in This is issue Whole Number One Hun- Mexico City, but Bond was not there to dally. front. Bond said, “This way,” and the two of dred and Ten (110). He was there on a double-O mission, to take them dragged Sciarra away. out a terrorist named Marco Sciarra. Art: What we are mainly looking for is Gun in hand, he stepped out the window, Bond looked at the ring he had taken off small fillos. Your fillo will probably be scann- and walked along the tops of the buildings, Sciarra. It had a mark that looked like an octo- ed in and may be reused, unless you object to unnoticed by the dancing masses below. The pus. Then he looked at his new assistant. An its reuse. adobe of the city was old and flaking. American! “What were you doing there?” There! Sciarra was in that room. Bond The man said, levelly, “He is a drug dealer. Contributions: This is not a fictionzine. It took a post behind the wall around the rooftop He was running millions of dollars of cocaine is intended to be our fanzine, so be interesting. and listened on the wiretap. Sciarra was not and heroin up to Gotham.” near the window and he needed a clean shot. “He is an international terrorist.” Material in Alexiad is copyright © 2020. He moved. Bond saw his target and fired, “You have to pay for all that somehow.” All rights reserved. Upon publication, all shattering the window, missing Sciarra but Bond said, “What got you on this? I can’t rights revert to the original contributor, but we taking down the man he was negotiating with, see an ordinary bloke getting into covert action. reserve the right to use any item more than then the bodyguard in the next room. He fired Are you DEA, or whatever?” once, unless otherwise specified by the contrib- another shot. The building exploded. “My mother died of taking drugs.” utor. All letters sent to Alexiad become the The wall collapsed and almost hit him. A “Playing with the big boys could get you property of the publishers. Any material by the moment later the building fell in and Bond killed.” editors is available to other fanzines if they was propelled downwards. The man laughed. “I died once. I’m not provide proper credit and send a copy. There was Sciarra! He was unhurt, but afraid of anything.” He took out a pack of fleeing. Bond took off in pursuit and they cigarettes, got one and lit it, offered the pack to Available for The Usual (letter of comment, fought their way through the funereal partiers. Bond, and began to smoke. trade, contribution). Sample issue available He was going to escape! A helicopter was Bond took one. “Very well. My name is upon request. Back issues $1; subscription hovering over the crowd, which flinched James Bond. What’s yours?” $10/year. Alexiad is also available by email in away. It descended, and Sciarra battled his “Todd.” He let out a puff of smoke. “Jason Adobe Acrobat .pdf format. way to the landing site. Todd.” ALEXIAD c/o Lisa & Joseph Major 1409 Christy Avenue Louisville, KY 40204-2040 USA [email protected] http:/efanzines.com/Alexiad/index.htm