X AND WAT JUST j THE OTHER PAT z“~~7x RICHARD AMD I WERE \ I A&REE TOTALLY! j \ gJ?0W5WG THRU THEj I JUST *— > LITTLE TVAiK WoP LOVE POPULAR LATFLV I'VE < povW AT BfOWM BE£|V GETTING \ I CULTURE-/ H TH... T»U XNOW THfc SWJ'T VbU ? iMTo Puerto ! ptfE ? — G^D .' -VtELLl RICA*/ CULTURE / \ . WE GOT THE DAEtiMGEST OUTRAGEOUS < ... VERY <V i I MF AH, fT5 ^MILLER EEEp. CfiLE^DLILy I colorful amd\ ISjU'T /T? SO &EWU|M£, FROM ,.. fOr- X QUITE CREATIVE] TUST TEW POLLARS.J PRPTTV SOOL \ REALLY I IN IT'5 OWN / s WE FELT IVF WERE <C AVERAGE FOLKS \ > WAT, TOO. VF.^.T LUCg'/ WHAT A ZJKE TUS7 ToAf'J AHO I ARb^ ( WITH THE WAY PRICES , WOiJ'T BE fi®L£ j r EXPLORING SOME |^ • TO AFFORD -’• ” OF THE DANISHJ -'S' Are DOUBZ./MG amp? [TE|PE/M(5 THESEy^- WLU-Ai? CULTURE STt^EFROtJTS "A V DAVT!{ AaHOWOEE/ ____ AMP FlHDIMC> A L—v. LOT OF SURPRISES! TEE HEE ’ /MORE GRASS AtfftWg ? MEAN/WHILE , IN ME 1/V VOFLK Starling #25 was edited and published by Hank and Lesleigh Luttrell, at 525 W. Main #1, Madison, Wisconsin 53703. It is available with 50^ or 3/$l» fanzines or other publications in trade, or with contributions of artwork, a letter of comment, or anything else which you can convince us is worth publishing. Back Issues: 16, 23 and 24 are available at W each. June, 1973. Starling is published quarterly; the next deadline is mid August. Weltanshauung Publication #60 cover — JAY KINNEY Notebooklings (Editorial) -- Hank Luttrell ...... ...3 The Worst from Wastepaper — Grant Canfield’.................................... 5 With Malice Toward All (A column about Books) — Joe Sanders..............................12 The Frisbee Players of Triton — A. M. Schneider..............................................................17 When Britain Led the Space Race —- Andrew Darlington ........................ .20 Miss Tey Considered — Lesleigh Luttrell ..........................................................................24 Words from Readers (Letter Column)................................... 29 backcover — TOM FOSTER INTERIOR ARTWORK Sheryl Birkhead 2 Grant Canfield & Tim Kirk 11 Grant Canfield 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, Jack Gaughan 14- ’ 12, 16, 17 Mike Gilbert 21 Grant Canfield & Jay Kinney 31. 33 Doug Lovenstein 25, 29 3 + Hank Luttrell + NOTEBOOKLINGS Since the last issue of Starling, summer has at last come to Madison. In my last issue’s editorial, I allowed as how we were probably going to survive cur first winter up here in the frigid north. After that issue was published, we had a huge late snowfall — but we survived- that, too. I must admit that I'm glad that summer is finally, definitely, here; Winter is so long in Wisconsin; Not too long ago some of the Couches came up to visit us, and mentioned that some spring flowers that have l ong since vanished in Missouri are still around here in Madison. All of this tends io make me look forward with enthusiasm to Fandom’s Summer Festivals which are to take place very soon in Cincinnati, better known as the Midwestcon. The affair will probably have come and gone before you get this Starlingj but I do hope you were e.fle to come and worship the sun with the rest of us. The rest of our convention plans for the year-can be briefly stated: Torcon. We’ve been in Toronto once before, in 19?0 when the fact that the Worldcon was held in Germany precluded our attending the Worldcon; we went to Toronto's Fan Fair instead. We enjoyed that trip immensely -- the convention was great, and we also liked Toronto, and we are looking forward to returning. We arrived in Toronto early for the convention and among other things spent a great deal of time in their museum —- a splendid place, I recommend you spend some time there. STARLING CONSUMER REPORT First of all, I’d like to report that we’ve certainly been fine; upstanding consumers lately, that is, we’ve purchased one of ultimate consumer oddiments, a color television. A friend of ours works in a video studio for the university, so when we began thinking about buying a set, we asked him what sort he would recommend. '■Buy the best,1’ he said, “Sony,” The Sony color receivers; it seems, are technically far ahead any of the US models, as they use only one electron gun rather than the three required by older processes. The result is that they Sony's not only tend to have a better picutre, but they tend to be more reliable. Our old set was a tiny black and white Sony which we had gotten second hand from Ray Fisher; who had bought it only to view the first space walks. The Sony wa^renty is much superior to any offered by domestic brands, a fact which more or less finally decided us upon gettirg the Sony, Our new set is a 15-inch set, rather than the top-of-the-line 17-inch set; but after our old television this one seems huge. I’ve never been much of a television watcher, actually. When. I was very young, I can recall attatching myself to the screen for most of Saturday morning (which I called “Cowboy day”) to watch old western movies — such as those featuring Hopalong Cassidy, one of my favorites — and a few made for television horse opera series. Apparently in those days westerns were considered standard Saturday morning kiddie orogramming, rather than the cartoon yardgoods that are broadcast today. Eventually this steady diet must have lead to a surfeit, because by high school I. couldn’t be dragged to watch a western, either on television or at a theatre. It is only more recently that a strong interest in American movies, particularly fine directors like John Ford and Howard Hawkes, has lead me to an appreciation of the western film genre, . During my high school days, I was contemptuous of television, and considered almost all of it a waste of time. I believe I allowed myself to watch "Twilight Zone,” but very little else. I’m sure I missed lots of enjoyable programs -- but I was busy, tucked away in a corner reading science fiction? during my later high school days I became increasingly active in fandom. When I went away to university, there was little opportunity to watch television, but it was during this period.that I began to develop an increasing interest in movies. Eventually* after Lesleigh and I were married, it was this interest, basically, that led us to.purchase that 8-inch Sony. Then, having purchased it, there was'constant frustration that there weren’t more movies being broadcast. One of the few advantages of living in a huge city must be the fact that the many TV stations will broadcast a large number of films. We soon developed the habit of watching network and local news — or at least turning on the set and listening to it.while making dinner, and watching anything which seem­ ed particularly interesting. Very little network programing managed to hold our interest for very longi We made it a point of watching ’’Laugh—In-5 for.a while, bu soon grew tired of it. Some of the adventure shows are okay if there isn’t anything else to do?"Ironsides" in particular we seemed to watch fairly often. Jack Webb-, produced shows are always good for a camp laugh or two, but I don’t often feel like wastin’’ my time that obviously. Last summer there were two replacement shows that we thought were greats "The Copy Cats" and "The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine." The Feldman -show in particular was brilliant — I understand that it was sort of a watered down version of the British "Monty Python" series. It certainly made US attempts at television humor — even "The Copy Cats?, which was pretty good look pale. Our television in Columbia was often a focus for small get togethers while we clust­ ered in front of our set for some dreadful movie — dreadful movies at least'provided lots of opportunities for interesting conversation? in fact conversations become necessary to compensate for the movie’s lack of interest. Not all of them were dreadful, though, come to think of it. The W. C. Fields series was splendid, though the Mae West films which accompanied Fields were sometimes not as good. The Universal horror film, series was sometimes fine, with things like Bride of Frankenstein, and sometimes horrible, with a never ending supply of "Inner Sanctum" movies. We get some interesting movies here in Madison. The local PBS channel broadcasts ‘a fine series of "art" movies, plus a locally originated series of RKO features, which range from "Citizen Kane" to "King Kong" to the Marx Brothers and Vai Lewton horror films. On our old set, it was impossible to read the subtitles on foreign language films broadcast on PBS. This was very frustrating. It got us thinking about a set with a bigger screen. We’ve always enjoyed watching color television at friends and relative’s houses, • .so here we are. In order to get some use out of our new in­ vestment, if nothing else, we’ve been watching a little more network program- lately. .there still isn’t too much which holds our interest for very long; per­ haps we just haven't watched the right shows yet. Some time last summer I discovered, as we all have at one time or another, that I had fallen drastically behind in my correspondence. Being a fan of both Courage and Per­ spicacity, I determined that the easiest way to rectify the matter would be to pub­ lish, in time-honored tradition, a one-shot letter substitute.