Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Reviews
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1966
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1967
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1970
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1970
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1971
- The Village Voice, September 9, 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1971
- College English, 33:3, December 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1972
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1973
- Village Voice, June 16, 1973
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1973
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1974
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1976
- Frontiers, III:3, fall, 1978
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, April 1, 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, May 9, 1979
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1979
- The Feminist Review, #5 [in The New Women's Times, 5:14, July 16–19, 1979]
- Frontiers, IV:1, 1979
- Frontiers, IV: 2, 1979
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, January 24, 1980
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1980
- Sinister Wisdom, 12, winter 1980
- Frontiers, V:3, 1981
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, May 10, 1981
- Essays
- Letters
- Index of Books and Authors Reviewed
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1971
from Reviews
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Reviews
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1966
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1967
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1968
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1969
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1970
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1970
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1971
- The Village Voice, September 9, 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1971
- College English, 33:3, December 1971
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1972
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1973
- Village Voice, June 16, 1973
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1973
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1974
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1975
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1976
- Frontiers, III:3, fall, 1978
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, April 1, 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, May 9, 1979
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1979
- The Feminist Review, #5 [in The New Women's Times, 5:14, July 16–19, 1979]
- Frontiers, IV:1, 1979
- Frontiers, IV: 2, 1979
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1979
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, January 24, 1980
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1980
- Sinister Wisdom, 12, winter 1980
- Frontiers, V:3, 1981
- “Book World,” The Washington Post, May 10, 1981
- Essays
- Letters
- Index of Books and Authors Reviewed
Summary
The Bed Sitting Room. Richard Lester (movie). First Flights to the Moon. Ed. Hal Clement (Doubleday, no price). SF: Author's Choice 2 (Berkley, 75¢). One Step from Earth. Harry Harrison (Macmillan, $5.95). The Cube Root of Uncertainty (Macmillan, $5.95). Time Rogue. Leo P. Kelley (Lancer, 75¢). Operation Ares. Gene Wolfe (Berkley, 75¢)
Movies don't belong in a book review, but Baird Searles (our new film reviewer) will probably never have a chance to see Richard Lester's fine science fiction film, The Bed Sitting Room, and I want to call readers' attention to it. The film was released some time ago and seems to have died so quietly that no one I know even heard about it. I saw it last summer only by accident.
The Bed Sitting Room (we would say “one-room apartment”) is a familiar story of England ravaged by the Bomb, but the world of the film has suffered a weird shift into the ultraviolet, so that the familiar incidents one would expect are represented not by themselves, but by absurdities that are only half metaphorical. Plague? Sir Ralph Richardson not only fears that he will turn into a bed-sitting room, but actually does so (in an unfashionable part of London). There are the young lovers – Rita Tushingham, seventeen months pregnant, who announces herself as “Penelope, the celebrated fiancée,” and complains to her lover, Alan, that they really ought not to eat Dad, who has been metamorphosed first into an intelligent parrot and then into a barbecued chicken. The perversion (a gentleman who has spent a decade in a bomb shelter after shooting his wife and mother-in-law as they tried to get in) is of a kind that would astonish Krafft-Ebing. In a very British clinging to business-as-usual, a Mrs. Ethel Noakes (the nearest to the throne) has become Queen; at the end of the film everyone sings:
God save Mrs. Ethel Noakes,
God save Mrs. Ethel Noakes,
God save Mrs. Ethelnoakes.
(Then they add her address.)
Mrs. Noakes appears, royally dressed and mounted on a horse under an arch made of junked refrigerators; radiation is declared unnecessary and despair un-British, the sky turns blue, the grass springs up, Penelope's monster-baby turns to a real baby; and it is declared that everything is now hotsy-totsy.
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- The Country You Have Never SeenEssays and Reviews, pp. 52 - 57Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2007