Showing posts with label Ace Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ace Books. Show all posts

Monday, June 7, 2021

The Girl In The Trunk


The Girl In The Trunk, by Bruce Cassiday
July, 1973  Ace Books

I have this lame tradition I’ve started over the years: each summer I read a grimy ‘70s crime novel – ie, Bronson: Blind RageDeath ListFramed, and etc. And now The Girl In The Trunk, which presents itself as being right up there (or down there) with the rest of them. Ironically I picked this one up several years ago but never read it, and over these past few years when I’ve been searching high and low for some new sleazy ‘70s crime kick, the book’s been sitting there neglected in a box. 

I should’ve known already that the book might have what I wanted: I mean for one thing there’s the striking (and uncredited) cover art, which is enough to raise one’s hackles. Then there’s the back cover copy, which is like Gannon or Stryker in how it tries to warn off potential readers, given the violent nature of its protagonist: “His fellow detectives on the Honolulu force didn’t like Egan. They couldn’t stomach his sick brutality, the unholy glee with which he trapped and roughed-up mugging suspects, and other victims for his sadistic fists.” So yes, we’re certainly in that grimy ‘70s crime paperback sweet spot, only one with an unusual setting: whereas most these types of books take place in New York or somewhere equally grimy, The Girl In The Trunk is set in sunny Honolulu. 

The novel also occurs over the course of a single day, which is another difference from the average crime paperback of the day. Author Bruce Cassiday keeps the momentum moving over the 200+ pages of the narrative, even skillfully working in the mounting tension of a tsunami that’s headed for Hawaii. The book opens with an 8.9 earthquake in Chile, and periodically the narrative cuts over to the officials monitoring the situation and the tsunamis that have arisen in its wake, with one of them bearing directly for Honolulu. And that’s another difference: The Girl In The Trunk, despite being packaged as a lone wolf cop thriller, is actually more of an ensemble piece, focused on a wide range of characters. This makes the book similar to some of the crime bestsellers of the day, a la The Anderson Tapes and The Taking Of Pelham 123

Lt. Jim Egan, a tough cop in his 40s, gets the back cover credit, but really he’s just one character of many: The Girl In The Trunk is more of a police procedural mixed with a disaster story than the gory yarn promised by the cover art and back cover copy. Egan’s story has it that his wife Berenice was murdered by muggers years before, and now Egan, a “freelance” agent for the Criminal Investigations Department, hunts down muggers to even the score. We meet him in this regard, coming out of a bar at 2:55AM on August 7th and being waylaid by a pair of muggers who think he’s a hapless tourist. But then when their knives come out Egan swoops into action, beating them merciless with his fists and feet. His reputation so precedes him that even the muggers are aware who he is, as are the disgusted cops who come by to round up the mauled muggers. Unlike Gannon or Bronson, Egan is still a cop, thus we learn he’s yet to actually kill any of his victims. 

Then there’s Toshi Yonomuro, 51 year-old chief of CID and Egan’s boss; a Hawaiian-born Japanese with an artificial left cheek that was grafted on after some Germans blew the real one off during WWII. Toshi has his share of the narratiev, as do his wife Blossom and their daughter, Lehua, a college-aged “radical” who has big plans for the rally that night, and claims her dad’s warnings of an impending tsunami are just typical “bourgeois fear” to keep the subversives confused. Both of these characters will carry a good bit of the plot, as does another officer, Ki, a 26 year-old who is “the most cerebral” guy on Toshi’s force and ultimately works the titular case with Egan. 

So just to reiterate, the sadistic tale promised by the cover and copy is only partly delivered on; we meet Egan while beating up some muggers, as mentioned, but he kills neither. We learn he’s now beaten 16 muggers since his wife was killed by one, but this backstory isn’t much elaborated on other than to show that Egan is pretty damn nuts. A few times in the story he will start seeing his dead wife’s face and get dizzy and consumed with violent anger. But other than that he’s just a dick, making a lot of racist comments about Hawaiians and “old Hawaii;” Egan came here before WWII, and often goes on how Hawaii was so much better before it became a state – something with which Toshi also agrees. 

For that’s another layer of the busy story: the various tiers of what is and isn’t a Hawaiian. Ie the native Hawaiians, those with Japanese heritage, those with Caucasian heritage, and those that are mixtures of the above. Then there are also lineages of whether one is “native born Japanese-Hawaiian” or whatnot. But as one of the characters muses, none of it really matters. Cassiday clearly was familiar with Hawaii and really brings the locale to life, as well as the festering racial hostilities and resentments. He even graces the narrative with some smatterings of Japanese, most of which reads correctly (fun fact: I studied Japanese in college and spent a semester in Tokyo). But this whole “race” angle is just one of the many subplots: police procedural, impending disaster, escaped convict, and even radical politics. 

The latter element is how Toshi’s daughter plays into the narrative: she’s been dating Danny, the leader of the Young People’s Family, a group of college-age radicals who want to split off from the Mainland and restore the “real” Hawaii. Here we get a peek into the radical movement mindset of the day, as well as the interesting revelation that at this point the hippies now called themselves “Earth people,” or at least so is Toshi’s belief. So Cassiday even works in a generational divide layer to the novel. He also displays how, no matter their age or race, radicals are a despicable lot: Lehua happens to be pregnant, and when she happily reveals this to Danny he responds that he’ll be glad to raise the kid, but he will be a “bastard,” because “the movement demands purity,” thus Danny can only marry a native Hawaiian. Of course this doesn’t go over very well with Lehua. 

As mentioned The Girl In The Trunk takes place over a single day, August 7 (year unstated), so there isn’t any opportunity for seeing how big revelations play out over time. It’s actually curious that Cassiday went for this “single day” setup, as there was plenty of room for him to flesh out the story more, particularly given the many plots. As it is, he injects a mounting tension with frequent cutaways to various one-off characters as they track the impending tsunami and put out the appropriate alerts. Interestingly one of these one-off characters happens to be “the second announcer” at a “hard rock FM station,” but Cassiday buzzkills any opportunity for fun here with the comment that the DJ is “over thirty” and thus “secretly hates hard rock!” 

So the vengeful cop leaving a trail of mauled corpses in his wake is a story that never happens in The Girl In The Trunk. Instead the main storyline has to do with the embezzlement of half a million dollars from a firm called Dill and Fox; the suspected party was a comptroller named Ames, and Egan and Ki will spend the rest of the novel hunting for him. One subplot, gradually minimized due to the impending threat of the tsunami, is that Toshi is concerned Egan’s mugger-maulings will make it into the news, the force of course not needing the bad press, but he still puts Egan on this Dill and Fox case because he’s “a good detective.” 

One questions Toshi’s opinion when Egan – who remember just beat up two muggers a few hours ago – is sent to the home of Ames, where Egan interviews the man’s attractive, middle-aged wife…and gawks over how she’s a ringer for Berenice, his dead wife. Mrs. Ames turns out to be rather poised for someone whose husband apparently just absconded with half a million bucks, and she trades some memorable barbs with Egan. Meanwhile Ki and even Toshi meet with various firm reps, lending the novel much more of a procedural tone than what the reader might’ve been expecting; in fact I wonder if Ace retitled and repackaged Cassiday’s novel to be more in-line with the violent thrillers then populating the bookstore shelves (or spinner racks). 

Indeed, the titular “girl in the trunk” is discovered early on in the novel, by a beach bum who comes upon a Datsun in the Honolulu Air Port parking lot, some stray dog trying to get into the trunk. Inside the bum sees a dead blonde, completely nude, but he rushes off (the dog tagging along), not willing to call in the discovery. Later though it’s found and Toshi and team go out to the airport while the ME examines; Cassiday furthers the procedural tone with a lot of real-world detail on corpse “lividity” and etc. Here we learn that the dead blonde was the mistress of Ames, the runaway comptroller. In the course of their investigation (ie, over the next few hours), the detectives will learn that Ames’s boss at the firm was also involved in an affair…with Mrs. Ames. 

Along the way we also have repercussions from Egan’s opening mugger-mauling; Toshi interrogates the two “victims,” a bit surprised that one of them seems so blasé about his upcoming jail time. Later (ie just a few hours later) the mugger escapes while being transported to jail, lending the novel yet another tangent: the fugitive on the run. This guy runs roughshod through Honolulu, taking advantage of the growing paranoia over the upcoming tsunami – which has now been determined to make landfall by evening. Cassiday throws around all kinds of curveballs here, with the escaping mugger running into various characters from the narrative. He also doles out a surprise reveal that I won’t spoil on who the mugger really is. 

Action is infrequent; other than the opening bit with Egan, we have a tussle or two, and a gory death when the mugger makes his escape during the transport. For a guy presented as so brutal, Egan doesn’t fare very well; there are two parts where his attacker nearly gets the better of him. That said, at one point he gets his hands on a guy and is about to kill him – again flashing on his dead wife’s face – and is only stopped by Ki. But the cops are very skittish about pulling their guns and shooting, even though Egan likes to constantly threaten people he’s about to. Again, it’s all more of a “realistic” procedural than a violent actioner. 

Cassiday loops all the threads in the finale, which of course sees the tsunami making landfall just as our heroes square away the case and apprehend the escaped mugger. Cassiday even works in Lehua’s plight; one of the subplots is her concern over telling her dad she’s pregnant. Our author manages to give this subplot a happy ending, but again we don’t know how much it will pan out, given that the story occurs over a single day. Cassiday’s focus is more on displaying the various dynamics of Honolulu and its people, and in this regard he really brings the locale to life. 

I wouldn’t say The Girl In The Trunk is a sleazy crime yarn along the lines of the others I’ve reviewed here, though you may be fooled into thinking it is by the cover. If anything it proves that Cassiday was a virtual chameleon so far as his writing goes, so prolific that he wrote everything from historical sagas (The Phoenician, which I got years ago but still haven’t read) to the final installments of Mace.

Thursday, January 16, 2020

A Time Of Ghosts (Raven #2)


A Time Of Ghosts, by Richard Kirk
May, 1987  Ace Book
(Original UK edition 1978)

The Raven saga continues with a second volume that seems to be set shortly after the first; Raven and her guru warlock (plus occasional bedmate) Spellbinder are still in the same region in which the previous volume concluded, however now Raven is training some new character named Silver on how to be a warrior in the army Raven’s apparently decided to form. Oh and meanwhile the novel has opened with that same future prologue with some unnamed old guy traveling around a desolate world and telling tales of long ago – tales about Raven. Last time I opined this guy was Spellbinder but I could be wrong.

Anyway in the narrative itself – the prologue and epilogue are the only parts set in this post-disaster future – Raven’s taken on a Conan-type barbarian from the north named Silver, who when we meet him is being trained by the ghost of Argor, the warrior who trained Raven herself a year ago. It’s not really Argor’s ghost, though, but just his spirit or somesuch, magically teleported here by Spellbinder as Argor doesn’t want to venture out of his city. Silver has long black hair and a Conan build, with the novel addition that he’s a mutant who can turn his body into silver, hence his name. Backstory has it that he scaled some magical tower in his homeland, the result of which gave him this supernatural ability. We’ll roll with it.

Now you might think a barbarian warrior with mutant powers is cool enough to warrant his own series, but “Richard Kirk” (aka British authors Richard Holdstock and Angus Wells) doesn’t have much time for Silver: more focus is placed upon two other new characters who become part of Raven’s growing army. Like some primordial Spartacus Raven’s intent is to free slaves, train the notable ones as warriors, and use them as her personal army of chaos. Or something. I’ll admit it’s been a while since I read the first volume, so it’s possible I’ve forgotten some of the finer details of the saga. At any rate Raven and Silver crush a slave caravan, hacking and slashing the slavers, and two of the freed slaves get Raven’s interest: one’s a hotstuff brunette, also from the northern tribal lands, named Karmana, the other’s a tall and lanky guy with pale, haunting eyes named Moonshadow.

Of the two, Karmana is the one to gain the most spotlight, at least initially. Karmana is a proud warrior woman who was captured and enslaved, but worse yet was raped – the memory of wich haunts her. I have to say, speaking from the perspective of our #metoo world, the subject of rape is treated rather delicately here, at least so far as ‘70s fantasy goes (the series didn’t make it to America until about a decade after its British publication…things just moved more slowly then, folks). Whereas other series of the day like Gor had tons of rape-fantasy throughout (I should admit I’ve never actually read a Gor novel), the female characters in Raven struggle with how to cope with the fact that they’ve been raped. Of course, this being a fantasy adventure series and all – plus the women in question being kick-ass warrior babes – the coping method involves gutting, emasculating, and just in general killing their rapists.

All three of these things Raven did to her own rapist, Karl ir Donwayne, at the conclusion of the first volume; thus imagine Raven’s shock when she learns that the man who raped Karmana was…Karl ir Donwayne. Now, my immediate reaction was that maybe Donwayne did this particular raping you know, before he was emasculated and gutted by Raven, but Raven’s immediate reaction is that Donwayne is still alive. This just proves once again that the “Swordmistress of Chaos” knows more than I do, because Raven turns out to be correct, at least sort of – at length she decides to consult one of the apparently-many oracles of her world to find out what the hell is going on. Eventually she and Karmana set off for the Sons of Ulthann, a remote area which is the remnants of a once-great civilization.

There’s a fair bit of world-building here, more than last time, with lots of stuff about the new lands Raven visits, their history, and their people. After many pages have elapsed Raven and Karmana hook up with Moonshadow, who upon being freed by Raven has set off on his own quest – one which coincidentally also involves speaking to the oracle of Ulthann. With his long hair, slim build – so unlike any warrior Raven has ever met – and moon eyes, Moonshadow brings to mind David Carradine, and given the ’78 publication date it’s possible our authors were inspired by Kung Fu. Whereas Silver and his mutant abilities sounds ripe for the exploiting, the authors set their sights on Moonshadow, and he too has a story that could warrant its own series: he appears to be from some other world and is on a lifelong hunt for a force of evil known as the Crugoan. His power is also fueled by the moon: when it’s full he is at the height of his strength, but when it fades away in the sky his energy ebbs to almost nothing and his skin becomes transluscent.

Eventually the trio wind up in the courtroom of Karagan, high prince of Ulthann (the authors still have the unfortunate tendency of giving their characters similar names, I mean “Karagan” and “Karmana” in the same book)…and eventually Raven winds up in the bed of Karagan. Surprisingly, this being Raven’s first bed action in the novel (and we’re almost halfway through), the scene isn’t overly explicit (“When he entered her” and the like). Even more surprisingly, when Karmana shows up and pushes Raven aside for her time with the hunky high prince, the authors not only skip the opportunity to depict a friendly three-way but also leave the ensuing boinkery off-page.

Raven talks to the ghostly voice of the oracle, which tells her that Donwayne is sort of alive, his spirit or somesuch saved by that dastardly necromancer Belthis after the gory denoument of the previous volume. Sadly friends this means that A Time Of Ghosts is a retread of the first volume, given that the two main villains of that one return for this one…even though one of them was soundly killed by Raven in the previous book. The oracle opines where Donwayne might be, and of course this becomes Raven’s new destination; conveniently it’s pretty much where Spellbinder wants her to be, given the main plot thread of the novel – that Gondar Lifebane, the viking ruffian of the previous book, has abducted the fair Kyra, co-ruler of the empire of Altan (and yet another of Raven’s bedmates in the previous volume…as was Gondar himself).

We’re getting pretty well into the book now and there haven’t been any major action setpieces for our heroine. This occurs finally; while aboard a ship taking her to the waiting Spellbinder, Raven and Karmana are attacked by the crew, all of whom want a piece of these two hotstuff, busty, scantily-clad babes they’ve taken on as passengers. So the two warrior chicks start hacking and slashing their would-be rapists, with Moonshadow assisting, proving finally he’s the warrior Raven suspected, despite his frail build. This part features the unforgettable moment in which Moonshadow slips on a trail of gore and knocks himself out. It also features the memorable moment of a friggin’ sea monster coming out of the ocean and attacking all and sundry, only to be stopped by a giant bird Raven calls for help.

Now reconnected with Spellbinder, Silver, and a bunch of other characters the two have drafted in the interim – Raven’s “army” now up to a total of 12 warriors – Raven and her comrades scale the cliffs of Lifebane’s island fortress Kragg, Raven surprising the brawny viking while he’s in the bath. However Lifebane swears he has nothing to do with the kidnapping of Kyra, and that it’s all a setup. He gives Raven one of her ships and it’s off to meet the navy of the Altan to tell the crazed ruler that his sister is not on Kragg. The authors realize they’ve been short on action, thus provide a sequence in which Raven fights the Altan’s “Night Warrior,” a swordsmaster who happens to be invisible. Raven uses her wits and the help of Silver’s shining hands to see the unseen foe – Silver’s hands allowing Raven to see the outline of her opponent.

In a cool sequence Spellbinder sees back in time and their ship follows the ship which abduced Kyra, a few days before. They follow after it over a few days to see its destination, the spell exhausting Spellbinder. Eventually they learn the ship has gone far north, to the Ice Lands, but for some reason they don’t head straight there to kick ass and rescue Kyra. Like last time the plot just jumps everywhere; eventually Raven and army head back to the Altan’s home, which they’re surprised to learn has been overtaken by an “army of millions” comprised of various tribes. Raven stages some campaigns which end up freeing the city, after which she and her comrades finally head up north to free Kyra.

Here the novel gets down to what it’s supposed to have been about from the beginning: of course, necromancer Belthis and zombiefied Karl ir Donwayne were the true abductors of Kyra, and when we finally meet up with them the zombie Karl has just finished raping the poor girl yet again. Silver again comes to the rescue, turning his whole body silver and fighting a bunch of warriors made of ice. The climax has Raven again fighting Karl ir Donwayne, even though we already saw her defeat him last time, but the bastard escapes yet again, annoyingly enough. Belthis isn’t as lucky, as it turns out he is the current vassal of the Crugoan entity Moonshadow has been hunting across worlds. But it escapes, too, pulling itself out of Belthis’s body (the corpse of which is unceremoniously kicked off a cliff) and disappearing into the void, Moonshadow following behind. And meanwhile Raven’s army suffers a surprising loss, but curiously not much is made of it.

And with this A Time Of Ghosts finally comes to a close; at 198 pages of small print it was a longer read than I expected. This was mostly due to the slow-moving nature; whereas Swordsmistress Of Chaos was a bit juicer in the sex and gore departments, this one was downright sluggish, and often faded to black when the goings got good. In fact, Raven manages to hook up with Moonshadow as well, but it too happens pretty much off-page. I’m too lazy to research it but I wonder if this wasn’t so much a case of authors co-writing each volume, but taking turns on them. Meaning, a different writer churned out A Time Of Ghosts than the one who wrote Swordsmistress Of Chaos. Not that the writing seems totally different, it’s just the vibe that has changed, and more importantly while I enjoyed the first one I found this second one a chore to read.

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Paperback Writer


Paperback Writer, by Mark Shipper
October, 1980  Ace Books
(Original private press edition 1977)

This is another one I read twenty-some years ago when I was on a Beatles kick, around the time I first read The Last Days Of John Lennon. This one I didn’t enjoy nearly as much, though; it was lauded by all the industry reviews of the day as the “best rock novel” ever, but I found it mostly tedious and annoying, not to mention the finale bittersweet because it was all about a Beatles reunion that never happened – and never would happen.

The book has always been rather hard to find, whether in the original small-press 1977 trade paperback edition or this Ace Books mass market edition from October 1980 (two months before Lennon’s murder), but it’s another instance in which I stumbled across a copy for cheap. Several years ago I found a mint condition copy at a Dallas Half Price Books for half off the cover price. I dutifully bought it, but didn’t plan to read it again. But recently I decided to give Paperback Writer another shot, and this time it resonated with me a lot more; in fact, I’m not sure if I even read the whole thing back in ’97. I think I just skipped forward to the reunion stuff. This time though I read the full monty and, while it’s certainly no Death Rock, it’s still a mostly-entertaining spoof of the now-sacred Beatles story, taking no prisoners in its acidic tone.

Which is not to say this is a dark comedy masterpiece along the lines of Boy Wonder. Indeed, Shipper’s humor is much more of the “groaner” variety, and isn’t subtle in the least. We’re talking “Plastic Bono Band” sort of unsubtle, ie the group John and Yoko start with Sonny and Cher in this spoofy retelling of the Beatles saga, rather than the real-life Plastic Ono Band. And for that matter, the ill-fated John-Sonny friendship, which is only started because Sonny gives John a reason to scream (this being during his primal scream years, and an otherwise-content John can find nothing else to scream about other than Sonny’s awful singing), is centered around Sonny’s hoarding of a long-discontinued brand of toothpaste.

I mention John Lennon so many times already because he is the protagonist of the tale, with George Harrison and Ringo Starr getting supporting status and Paul McCartney basically a glorified cameo. It becomes clear early on that Shipper is no fan of Paul’s, and it also becomes clear that Shipper was hoping John Lennon himself would read the book. Practically the entire thing is written from John’s point of view, and the absurd skewering of Beatles myths seems to be designed to catch John’s sense of humor. One wonders if Lennon indeed was aware of the book. John also doesn’t come off as poorly as the other Beatles: George is presented as a holier-than-though killjoy, Ringo an empty-headed fool who just wants to improve his skill at billiards, and Paul is a bossy, ego-driven opportunist.

But while I didn’t find the book as laugh out loud funny as others, I did appreciate how it so savagely spoofs the Beatles story. I mean their story has only become even more sacred forty-some years after this Ace publication, thus Shipper’s satire seems particularly irreverent and totally lives up to his declaration in the intro that Paperback Writer intends to capture the fun, punkish spirit of early rock, in which nothing was taken too seriously. In this regard all the familiar events of the Beatles history are taken out of proportion, or out of context: for example, Paul we are informed is already a celebrity in 1961, with his own recording career, and John is pushed by George, drummer Pete Best, and bassist Stu Sutcliffe to recruit Paul, as the Beatles need “a pretty face.”

Shortly after this Brian Epstein witnesses a Beatles gig and decides to give up his lucrative career as a plumber to manage them. Epstein being a plumber is a recurring gag that runs through the novel, as does his increasing reliance upon screenwriter Colin Owen, who charges ridiculous fees for ridiculous opinions. (For example, twenty thousand pounds to come up with the title for a movie that documents the Beatles’s 1966 concert at Shea Stadium…and after a few days of pondering Owen declares the movie should be titled “The Beatles At Shea Stadium.”) We know from the start that this isn’t a book the Beatles scholar should refer to; Epstein pushes the boys (now minus Stu, who dies off page, and Pete Best, who is perfunctorily replaced with Ringo) to record a demo…which features “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” alongside stuff like “Twist And Shout.”

Here we also see that Shipper’s humor is zany; Epstein barges into EMI and tries to talk up the demo to producer George Martin, wanting to record it on cassette tape…only to be informed by Martin that cassettes haven’t been invented yet. The rampant footnotes throughout the novel serve up more zany humor, for example a comment like “This Beatles single still stands up today” receives the footnote “Particularly when it is leaned against a wall,” and the like. As I say, it’s lowbrow humor for sure, and only late in the novel (which runs longer than you’d expect, at 254 pages) does Shipper start to get a little more high-brow. In the first half of the book his focus is more on taking various stages of the Beatles myth and poking fun at them.

I appreciated that Shipper wasn’t too hung up on any one Beatles era; he rushes through all of them, with maybe a little more spotlight here on the early days of their budding fame. Even here John Lennon is the main protagonist; at a club he sees a rival band performing, and it is of course the Rolling Stones, but John’s eye is more on the “mature-looking Oriental woman” at Mick Jagger’s side. Yes, it’s none other than Yoko, though Shipper doesn’t tell us her name for a few chapters; in one of the more acidic of his in-jokes he has that Mick is the one who met Yoko at her famous art happening, not John, after which she was forever by Mick’s side. But John, despite being bluntly turned down by Yoko, pines for her to such an extent that he even agrees to write a song for the struggling Stones (“I Wanna Be Your Man,” of course).

Oh and I should mention, even though the Yoko meeting is much earlier than in reality, John is also already married when he meets his soul-mate, a tidbit Shipper just casually drops. The Beatles don’t have any children in this book and Yoko and Linda McCartney are the only two women who are ever mentioned; we learn Ringo’s married in the late ‘70s section of the book, but his wife isn’t even named. For that matter, when John finally does end up with Yoko, it too happens off-page and we meet up with the duo as they’re headed for their famous bed-in. I guess stuff like this is indication that Paperback Writer is just a satire, a spoof, and one shouldn’t look for actual “novel-type stuff” in it. But it seems like a big miss that Shipper doesn’t even bother showing us how John and Yoko finally get together, particularly given that John’s unreturned love for her serves up several running gags in the first quarter of the novel. 

But don’t get me wrong, some of the goofy stuff really is funny. Like the movie A Hard Day’s Night, which here is a serious dramatic effort, starring Ringo, with no music. This is the first appearance of screenwriter Colin Wilson, and the movie is his brainchild; it features Ringo in a library for the entire runtime, occasionally asking librarians (played by the other Beatles) for such and such a book. We even get a fake industry review of the film – the novel is filled with captioned photos and review excerpts, all of which add to the pseudo-nonfiction vibe of the book. Only the captions are all goofy (like the TWA plane the Beatles flew on their first trip to America being one of the hottest Beatlemania collectables these days), and most of the “reviews” just repeat what Shipper’s already written in the narrative. (Save for a long pseudo-Rolling Stone review of their ’79 comeback album, Get Back, which successfully spoofs the famous RS house style.)

The “bigger than Jesus” incident is summarily satirized, but here George quits the band due to the ungodliness of John’s comment; he only comes back if he can have at least two of his own songs on each Beatles album. The spoofery continues with the album Help!, which here isn’t a movie soundtrack – in this novel the Beatles only ever made one movie, which was a flop – but an album comprised of music written by other musicians. This is because the Beatles were too exhausted to write their own material and sent out ads in music magazines for “help.” Humorously, one of the tracks on this album is written by a young Jim Morrison: “Peace Frog.” The famous India trip is summarily trotted out and spoofed, with John bullying folk singer Donovan and Beach Boy Mike Love buddying up with the Beatles.

Sgt. Pepper’s gets the most spotlight of all the Beatles albums, which makes sense, as at the time of Paperback Writer’s publication it was still considered one of the greatest rock albums of all time. (As if! Hell it isn’t even the best Beatles album – not by a long shot.) John, on location for a bit part in How I Won The War, learns that officers in the British army are given special pepper and salt, and he mentions this to Paul. Months later Paul is still thinking about it, and wants to do an entire album protesting this elitism. The best part of this section is the material about the “Dronees,” ie the hardcore fans who listen to the famous inner groove tone on side 2 of Sgt. Pepper’s that was only audible on manual turntables – which Shipper informs us will play into eternity, or at least until the turntable breaks. An entire cult springs up around this, with activists listening to the tone for days, weeks, and in one notable instance, years.

Otherwise Shipper skips entire albums, not to mention songs – curiously, the song “Paperback Writer” itself isn’t even mentioned – and from Sgt. Pepper’s we go straight into the White Album, which turns out to be the last album the Beatles release as a group. Due to increasing in-fighting during recording of that album, with each Beatle using the others as his veritable backing band instead of collaborating as in the old days, the four are ready to split. This is exacerbated by their desire to get a new manager after Brian Epstein’s passing. John and the others want Allan Klein, and Paul wants the father of his new girlfriend, Linda Eastman. They break up over this, years earlier than in reality, and the ensuing cobbled-together album is titled The Beatles Break Up. It’s sort of an amalgamation of Abbey Road and Let It Be, with Phil Spector performing production duties on it; he strikes up a friendship with John, occasionally doling out career advice in between interminable reflections on his early career.

Post-breakup Shipper gets even more fictitious in his mock history. As mentioned John and Yoko hook up with Sonny and Cher and form the Plastic Bono Band, and this part actually gets a long portion of the narrative. George, much as in real life, uses up the majority of his song ideas with a triple-album release and spirals into a freefall afterwards, struggling to complete albums. The humor is scathing when it comes to Ringo and Paul; for the former, Shipper has him becoming the biggest success of the post-Beatles, with a succession of top ten hits (unless I missed the joke, they’re all songs Ringo merely drummed on in real life, not songs he wrote or sang); for the latter, Paul is roundly mocked as a shell of his former self, turning out albums that no one listens to or buys. Here Paperback Writer really shows its age, as McCartney’s early albums, especially his first self-titled release, have become very well respected. McCartney basically prefigures the lo-fi movement of the ‘90s, some of it sounding eerily like Beck. But then, this could just be Shipper’s own bias; as stated, he clearly has no love for Paul.

As the ‘70s progress, with John again taking up most of the narrative as he briefly becomes involved in revolutionary politics, the fortunes of the Beatles continue to wane. To the point that Linda carries out an intervention on Paul; shortly before their latest Wings tour is to begin, Linda first drops the bombshell that Steely Dan has asked her to join them. (More contemporary bias here with Linda’s musicianship constantly mocked, though in reverse fashion; Shipper often informs us how stellar a keyboard player and singer she is.) She’ll only go on the Wings tour if Paul credits her name above his! This though is her wakeup call; she wants Paul to admit he has been considering returning to the Beatles all along. He sees the light, and calls up the others…more anticlimactic stuff here with John himself already having decided to get back with the others. His musical career too has plummeted…no Imagine exists in this novel, and John’s totally lost his creative edge.

Curiously, we’re given the actual date the Beatles get back together: February 5, 1979. This was actually the future, so far as Shipper’s original ’77 publication was concerned. The reunion occurs at Ringo’s Los Angeles mansion and here, finally, Shipper is free to write an actual sort of novel, now that he doesn’t have to concern himself with detailing various “Beatle moments” to spoof. There’s a nice bit where the first day is just the friends getting back together, ie John, Paul, George and Ringo goofing off, as in the old days, and how this is the actual reunion for the Beatles themselves, not the “Beatles reunion” the fans have clammored for. But after this it’s down to the business of writing music for a new album. Only problem is, they’re all fresh out of ideas.

Many contemporary reviews claimed that this reunion section was likely an accurate prediction of what a Beatles reunion would be like – how the four would be unable to capture their early magic, how the ensuing album might be below expectations, a la the Byrds’s ridiculed (but unsung, dammit!) ’73 reunion LP. What these reviewers failed to mention was that in Shipper’s world the Beatles are at a creative nadir when they reunite in 1979. In reality, John Lennon was about to come out of his brief retirement with a wealth of new material, and Paul was about to again predict the musical future with McCartney II.

In Paperback Writer, John and Paul have to sit and labor over new music; this leads to a very effective scene where Paul tells John to stop worrying over rock perfection. The drive they had as kids in Hamburg is gone, will never return, because they achieved their dreams. Now there’s nothing left but to please themselves. Paul states that he’s known all along his solo songs are no good (again, this is Shipper talking – I love the majority of Paul’s solo output); “Silly Love Songs” in particular is mentioned as a song Paul wrote just to please himself, to feed his own creative drive. John is inspired by this…and then sits down to write a song about Gilligan’s Island. This sequence comes the closest of anything in Paperback Writer to capturing the acidic whit of Boy Wonder, and it’s a shame the rest of the novel isn’t up to the level.

We don’t get much detail on what the new songs sound like; in fact, Shipper never describes the actual music of the Beatles throughout the book, just mentioning the occasional lyrics. We do learn that George Harrison delivers “Disco Jesus,” which caters to his religious impulses as well as the hot new disco trend, and that John has one called “Please Freeze Me,” which is about his desire to be cryogenically preserved upon death. I found this very peculiar, and proof that Shipper knew his Beatles…it would appear that John’s fixation with death was noted even before his murder, or at least that Shipper noted it. Seriously, the guy was often mentioning death or dying, from his Beatles work to his solo output…even in interviews on the day of his actual death…and whether by accident or design Shipper managed to work this into his fictitious Beatles reunion album.

The album is titled Get Back and it’s produced by Phil Spector; it’s released in July of 1979, just in time for a national tour the Beatles have planned. It is a massive critical and commercial flop. Shipper doesn’t dwell too much on the Beatles’s disappointment over this; Paul just gives John another pep talk, reminding him of the discussion from a few months back in which he told John that feeding the creative drive is all that matters, and who cares what the critic or the fans think. However things get even worse – the album’s such a bomb that concert promoters will only take the Beatles if they take second billing to Peter Frampton. The Beatles even have to fight to get co-billing with…the Sex Pistols. We only get to see their first show, which takes place of course in Shea Stadium; the Beatles lose the crowd until they play the oldies, ie their very earliest hits.

John’s the one who sums it all up for us, as the Beatles recuperate backstage; their time as idols is long over. There follows another memorable moment, again played for laughs but having deeper connotations, when all four Beatles spring for cover at the rumble of what they think is an earthquake. However it’s just the fans out there reacting to the entrance of Peter Frampton. John here says let Frampton enjoy his moment, as it won’t last, either. And further, the fans haven’t reacted well to the Beatles reunion because they never really wanted the Beatles to reunite…they just wanted to go back to their youth, and looked to the Beatles as the symbol of their youth. The novel ends here, with the Beatles declaring that they’ll finish out their tour of America, but that’s it – the Beatles are officially over for good.

All of this is more so a commentary on the expectations Shipper and his generation placed on the Beatles, not so much what an actual reunion would’ve been like. Despite Shipper’s intentions to skewer all reunion expectations, it’s absurd to think that these four would together deliver something as miserable as Get Back is described. And I was born like over four years after the group broke up, thus I personally don’t in any way see them as the embodiment of my younger years – I just see them as the defining rock band of their era – so Shipper’s plot rings hollow forty-plus years on. People will probably still be playing the Beatles when mankind migrates to other planets.

It must’ve made for a bittersweet experience for the fans who read this book shortly after the Ace publication. Lennon’s murder casts a depressing shadow over the events of the final quarter, as obviously we’ll never know what a Beatles reunion would’ve really been like. I also wonder if Lennon’s murder is a reason the book so quickly dropped off the radar, receiving this Ace mass market edition and nothing further. More people should be aware of it, though, if nothing but for the irreverent mocking of the Beatles myth. But I still wouldn’t say it’s the greatest rock novel, and not even close.

Shipper too seems to have disappeared; he didn’t publish any more novels. In February 2007 Blog To Comm ran a feature on Shipper’s ‘70s rock fanzine Flash, and Shipper himself left a comment on the post, where he briefly mentions Paperback Writer, stating that he wrote it “to get known, [but] now I prefer not to be known.” If Shipper’s still around maybe he could reconsider, and at least epublish Paperback Writer so more people could have the opportunity to read it.

Thursday, December 5, 2019

Alpha Centauri Or Die!


Alpha Centauri Or Die!, by Leigh Brackett
No month stated, 1964  Ace Books

Here we have another Leigh Brackett novel which started life in the pulps, a decade before; Alpha Centauri Or Die! collects “The Ark Of Mars” (Planet Stories, September 1953) and “The Teleportress Of Alpha C” (Planet Stories, Winter 1954-1955), Brackett presumably tinkering with the narrative to make the two stories into one longish tale. I have the original pulp stories but haven’t read them – I glanced through them, though, and found that for the most part they were basically the same as what’s printed in this paperback. In other words, Brackett didn’t weld together two unrelated stories; the two Planet Stories novellas did indeed feature the same characters in a continnuing storyline.

In this regard Kirby, the ruggedly virile protagonist of Alpha Centauri Or Die! is similar to Brackett’s more famous creation Eric John Stark in that he was a recurring character. However, Kirby’s era appears to be much further in the future than Stark’s. While this tale occurs in Brackett’s familiar populated solar system, with ancient Martians and whatnot, it’s later in the chronology than the Stark yarns, and more in the timeline of the latter stories collected in The Coming Of The Terrans. We know this because “Earthmen” have not only pretty much taken over Mars in this novel, with the frontier-esque outposts of Stark’s time now bustling hive cities, but also because the same overbearing galactic government is here, as seen in very early Brackett stories like “Child Of The Sun.”

Whereas the Stark-era stories feature an almost Wild West Mars and Venus, in that rugged individualists can strike out for themselves in alien territory, the era of Alpha Centauri Or Die! is well after these individualists have been replaced by a totalitarian gloablist government which has straightjacketed man’s individualism and liberty – like her contemporary George Orwell, Brackett seemed to understand the unfortunate direction Western society was headed in. The government of this novel’s setting has so curtailed man’s freedoms that space travel is banned, only robot spaceships allowed to travel the stars.

The book clearly shows its age with this resentment toward automation. Kirby at one point rails at all the things man has become reliant upon – including even time-setting ovens – and his sentiments are hard to understand in our modern era. I mean you wonder what this guy would have to say about smart phones. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t read Brackett or any other vintage sci-fi to judge what the author got right or wrong about the future, I just want to be entertained by the story, but in this regard Alpha Centauri Or Die! certainly seems like the product of an earlier time: the hunter-killer robot ship which is ultimately sent against Kirby and crew is seen as an almost supernatural force, mostly because it can pilot itself.

Kirby’s similar to most other Brackett protagonists in that he’s a brawny, taciturn individualist who just wants to forge his own way. But he’s different in one key element: he’s already married. His wife is Shari, a Martian native who unfortunately is only minimally described; we know she’s pretty, at least, and early in the book she’s topless, “per the Martian way.” Otherwise I believe we learn she has black hair, but that’s it. Brackett’s usually-rich word painting is toned down here, meaning that the novel lacks the typical memorable images of prime Brackett. But by the same token, the novel itself lacks the memorable setpieces of prime Brackett, coming off as rather low-key in the entertainment area as well – though thankfully it’s nowhere as dire as The Ginger Star.

The first half of the novel (ie the first novella) goes a bit into Kirby’s past: he was born on Earth, raised on Mars, and had a previous wife who must’ve been a miserable shrew. She’s dead now and Kirby appears to be much better for it. We never learn how old he is exactly, but he’s old enough to remember a time when there were still human spaceship pilots. But now all those pilots are too old to fly, and Kirby is literally the only guy on Mars who still could take a shot at flying a rocketship into space. We meet him as he and a colleague have stolen some gear from the factory in which they work – a factory near Kahora, a recurring port ciy in Brackett’s Mars – and head home, knowing they’ve crossed the line into full-on rebellion.

Brackett plays it out via the narrative instead of info-dumping at the start, but long story short, Kirby and some fellow individualists have managed to get hold of a ship and they are going to fly it, illegally, all the way to Alpha Centauri, where they’ve learned there’s a habitable planet. There they plan to live out their lives free of the yoke of the government. Oh, and none of the other guys have told their wives and kids – they’re just going to bring them along at the last minute! For a six-year journey in space!

So clearly the setup is hard to buy. But as mentioned Brackett just relays the info to us so that we learn it as the other characters do. Even Shari has been kept in the dark, or at least Kirby thinks she has been. Unfortunately, the lady is a psychic, one of the few Martians with this skill. I can’t recall if any other Brackett yarns make this claim, but so far as this one’s concerned, the odd Martian can read minds, and Shari happens to be one of them. She’s not only aware of the secret Kirby’s been keeping from her, but determined to join him in his quest, even if she’ll be leaving native Mars. She even gives Kirby a gun, something so rare in this era that Kirby has a hard time believing he’s actually holding one in his hands.

He’ll use it in one of the few action scenes in the novel, as some government thugs come to round him up. One of them’s his ex brother-in-law, and there’s no love lost between the two. Brackett here seems to be setting up a subplot – I figured this guy would be coming after Kirby later on – but she doesn’t follow through with it. Instead Kirby shoots one of the government soldiers and then he and Shari commandeer a flyer and escape, chased by one of the government patrols. This leads to one of the more illogical escapes in pulp history; they fly right above the treeline of the area in which they’ve hidden the rocket, and then simply jump out of their flyer to the ground below!

But then this first novella/first half of the novel is illogical throughout. As mentioned these other guys bring along their families with no prior warning for a six-year space voyage, and it’s laughable how unbelievable this is. But then, it’s a man’s world in Brackett’s future, so the guys call the shots…even if they’re gonna get nagged about it throughout an interstellar journey. Brackett also doesn’t much describe the spaceship (the “Lucy B. Davenport”) Kirby and crew have gotten hold of, but it appears to be of the rocket design of the ‘50s, with the storage section converted into a living space. They take off immediately, headed for this unknown planet orbitting far-off Alpha Centauri; Kirby has seen the secret reports from a robot ship that passed the planet, reports which indicated this planet was safe for human habitation.

The first half of the novel climaxes with an R-1 seek-and-destroy robot ship chasing after them. This is probably the highlight of the novel as Kirby, Shari, and a few others suit up, leave their ship, and go out into space to destroy the silent and sleek pursuing craft. They think of the ship as an almost alien presence, but again in our era of drones and the like it’s hard to understand their unease. Shari’s ESP is put to use in a novel way as she tries to communicate with the cold, inhuman mind of the R-1 drone. The colorful cover painting illustrates this sequence, as Kirby et al get into the core of the R-1 and Shari basically makes it go insane; Brackett is a bit prescient here with intimations that the R-1 has artificial intelligence.

The cutover to the next novella occurs on page 64; suddenly it’s six years later and this “reluctant space ark,” which has been travelling “something under the speed of light” is now a mere two hours away from landing. The novella nature of the original stories has robbed the novel of any potential for character building or even world-building; the Lucy B. Davenport is filled with families, including children and babies, but Brackett doesn’t put the spotlight on anyone other than Kirby or Shari (who have no children). While the novel prefigures the generation ship motif Heinlein and others would use, Brackett doesn’t much exploit it. The other characters are almost incidental, and we learn in passing that a few of them died during the long journey through black space.

And we’re even robbed of the tale of the journey itself. Six years in space on a “space ark” could make for a novel itself, a long novel, but the journey happens between chapters and we don’t even get any of Brackett’s typical word painting on the cosmos or anything. Well anyway, they arrive at the destination planet, Kirby after some nervous jitters manages to land the rocket without much fuss, and soon enough they’re all out running around on the verdant fields of this Earth-like planet. Then Shari feels some sort of evil presence in the distant mountains and wants to return to the ship, and doesn’t want to talk about it.

We’re now in the second novella, the hyperbolically-titled “Teleportress of Alpha C,” a title that is a lot more promising than the story Brackett actually delivers. It’s almost a prefigure of Predator, only without the action, suspense, or one-liners, as Kirby and crew slowly realize something is hunting them in this alien jungle. After they’ve been here some weeks, building a little village and working on the land – and Brackett again displays her lack of word-painting with hardly any description of this planet’s flora or fauna – Kirby decides to finally head into those mountains from which Shari picked up bad vibes.

From here it’s more of a suspense thriller as one of Kirby’s crew vanishes, then abruptly reappears, covered in mud and confused about the whole ordeal. Brackett keeps building up the suspense, with a gruff Kirby almost slapping around his men for “acting like girls’ in their growing fright. There’s also the added tension of the government contacting them and stating that an R-3 ship is on the way to pick them up and return them to Earth, where the president vows they will not be imprisoned; he claims that Kirby didn’t read the full report on this planet, and it was indeed deemed unsuitable for human life. Shari’s already picked up some strange hints from the presence she sensed, like that it can see into things down to the atom, so it almost starts to seem that some invisible demonic presence is afoot.

But folks what a copout. Skip this paragraph if you don’t want the surprise reveal of a 65 year-old pulp story to be ruined. Well basically, the presence Shari was sensing was the collective mentality of these baby animals, “stupid” ones at that! In fact their stupidity is so often mentioned by Shari and Kirby that I started to feel sorry for the damn things. But they’re just little dumb animals with psychic powers and have only been reacting to Kirby and the others due to the innate animal fear of anything new. Shari, who is zapped away by one of these animals, spends a few days communing with them, thus info-dumps what’s been going on to Kirby when he finally finds her after trekking through the jungle in his panic to find her. The creatures even use their mass ESP to send back the R-3 that comes to collect Kirby’s crew!

And this is where Alpha Centauri Or Die! ends, Kirby and Shari happily reunited and about to start their presumably idyllic life here on this new world along with a colony of pioneers. Plus they plan to put these ESP animals to work in some fashion. At least it’s a satisfying conclusion to the novel, but there’s no denying that the second half (ie the second novella) just seems to be cut from a completely different cloth than the first. Too bad Brackett didn’t wholly rewrite the second half to be a more satisfying resolution to the first novella, perhaps even with a payoff on the subplot about Kirby’s former brother-in-law. Instead we get like the ‘50s pulp sci-fi version of Lost, complete with even the same sort of unsatisfying cop-out of an ending!

Overall this wasn’t nearly one of Brackett’s best, but then it wasn’t one of her worst, either. Her writing, always of a high caliber, seems a bit subdued, with precious little of the memorable dialog or scene-setting she gave her other work. And Kirby seems less like a rugged individualist than he does a dick; he spends the entire second novella bitching at his crew and calling them “girls” and the like. Shari is much more memorable, but even she is a pale reflection of the typical Brackett female protagonist, so ultimately I’d just recommend Alpha Centauri Or Die! for the Leigh Brackett die hards.

Monday, January 14, 2019

Conan The Freebooter (Conan #3)


Conan The Freebooter, by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague De Camp
November, 1986  Ace Books
(Original Lancer Books edition 1968)

I had a tough time with this third volume of Conan. In fact I read it over a year ago, but at the time I found myself skimming the collected stories, to the point that when I “finished” the book I didn’t have any idea how to review it! So I waited a while until getting back to the series, only to find my interest again sagging at times. I guess the tales here didn’t pull me in like the ones in the previous books did, other that is than “Black Colossus.” But it also appeared that Robert E. Howard himself was bored; in the stories collected here, Conan is usually in a supporting status.

At least the posthumous tinkering isn’t as egregious this time; Lin Carter is a no-show, and L. Sprague De Camp only works his “magic” on two of the tales, where he again demonstrates he has no real understanding of Conan. This is especially true in a story he and Carter later wrote that isn’t actually in Conan The Freebooter but takes place within this time period (or at least this time period as defined by De Camp and Carter), but I’ll get to that one anon. Even the Howard originals here sort of come off like repeats of his previous ones, or vice versa.

“Hawks Over Shem” opens the book, and this is one of the two stories Sprague edited; it was first published in 1955, and De Camp tinkered with a Howard manuscript titled “Hawks Over Egypt,” which featured the character Diego de Guzman. I’ve never looked for Howard’s original, but I wonder if it’s as all-over-the-map as this one is. The plot changes constantly and Conan spends long stretches off-page, providing an early indication of the ensuing stories and novellas.

I like the opening, though, because it reminds me of John Milius’s Conan film; Conan’s slinking through the dingy streets of Asgalun in Shem and runs into a Hyrkanian archer-thief who becomes his best bed. All sort of like the relationship between Conan and Subotai in the movie. After Conan bashes the guy in the head for following him, they become BFFs; he says his name is Farouz. While drinking at nearby tavern Conan exposits (there’s lots of expositing throughout the book) that he’s come here to get revenge on some guy, and Farouz says what the hell, let’s do it now.

So what is initially promised to be the plot of the story is resolved within a few pages; Conan and Farouz break into the royal chamber – Conan’s target, Othbaal, is one of the rulers here – and kill him without much fuss. The storyline then sort of focuses on a busty redhead named Rufia; apparently once owned by Farouz, but then belonging to Othbaal, but now trying to maneuver her way into the graces of nutcase King Akhirom, who rules the city with an iron fist. I suspect the Rufia stuff was more central to the original Howard tale, but here comes off like, well, like material from a completely unrelated story.

Akhirom is at least interesting, a ranting and raving madman with delusions of godhood. Conan takes a break as we focus on Rufia, who doesn’t come off as a very likable character. It’s especially frustrating because the entire narrative seems to build up to Conan meeting her, but this doesn’t happen until the very final sentences and the story ends with Conan hauling her off – he does of course get a new woman each story. Much more interesting than Rufia is Zeriti, a witch in an Anita “The Great Tyrant” Pallenberg sort of vein. She schemes to get hold of Rufia for her own twisted ends, torturing her in the finale.

It’s all just very random and disjointed. Conan returns long enough to arbitrarily decide he wants to track down Zeriti, and of course comes upon her just as she’s torturing Rufia. She summons some creature from the darkness, and our hero Conan just sort of stands around while the other characters deal with everything. He doesn’t even fight the demon, which disappears(!). Then he picks up Rufia and takes off, and here the story mercifully ends.

“Black Colossus” follows, and it’s my favorite in the book by far. This one’s solely by Howard; I read the original version as published in The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian (Del Rey, 2003). This is a very cool tale, even though it has elements from other Conan yarns. But one can see how Leigh Brackett was so inspired by Howard, as this story is quite similar to the Eric John Stark novella Queen Of The Martian Catacombs, particularly in how an ancient menance has risen in the desert and is slowly invading the surrounding areas.

But I’d say Brackett handled the setup a lot better, if only because she kept her protagonist in the action throughout. “Black Colossus” is unfortunately yet another story in which Conan disappears for long stretches. He’s absent until the story is well underway; we get a too-long but otherwise sort of cool opening in which a thief breaks into an ancient Egypt-style crypt, thus unleashing a ghost or malevolent entity or what have you. Then we get lovely Princess Yasmela, ruler of Khojara, having a bad dream – she’s awakened by the ghostly presence of Natohk, the Veiled One, whose army is slowly coming upon Khoraja. He is the spirit unleashed in the opening, and he basically tells Yasmela that her hot little body will soon be his.

This finally leads us to Conan – Yasmela and her maid get nice and nude and pray to the old god Mitra, who tells Yasmella to go out on the street and offer her kingdom to the first man she sees. Sure enough, it’s Conan himself, skulking around the dark streets and looking for a tavern. Howard proves once again that his Hyboria is a strange amalgamation of barbaric and High Middle Ages; Conan, when Yasmella presents him to her slackjawed military leaders, is bedecked in full plate armor. I remember as a young geek this is one of the things that always annoyed me about Marvel’s Conan comics…about the most they’d ever give Conan was a helmet or something.

The tale simmers on and on, with Conan marshalling the army to take on Nahtok’s horde. Strangely though, Howard keeps the climactic battles off-page, for the most part, and even worse when Conan’s around he’s playing general and isn’t even in the fray. Some characters are killed off-page and we only learn about it thanks to Howard’s usual reliance on exposition. But still, it’s all like a pulp version of the Iliad, with lots of chariot battles and the like. I found the finale a bit underwhelming, though, with Conan merely throwing a sword through Natohk. That said, the story ends with Conan about to get some fresh after-battle booty courtesy Yasmella.

“Shadows In The Dark” – This one’s a bonus, because it’s not in Conan The Freebooter. It’s actually in Conan The Swordsman (Berkley, 1978). I only include it here for two reasons – one, because chonologically it takes place right after “Black Colossus,” and two, so as to warn others to avoid it. This short story is L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter at their very worst. Even someone with zero knowledge of Howard’s originals will know something is amiss within the first pages, in which Conan, now raised to a high military rank in Khoraja, stomps about the palace, pouting that Princess Yasmella doesn’t spend any time with him! And when he pleads with her for more time together and Yasmella says the people would frown on their princess consorting with a barbarian, Conan suggests that they get married!!

From there it devolves into the usual cliché fantasy junk these two authors seemed to love…Conan heads out with a small retinue on some mission to free Yasmella’s brother. It goes on and on, with the expected supernatural trimmings and random betrayals. Conan’s ostensibly on the mission so as to free Yasmella’s brother so he can rule and thus Conan and Yasmella can be together more(!), but what’s especially dumb is that by story’s end Conan has had a sudden change of heart and just goes on his merry way, not returning to Khoraja. But yeah, don’t seek this one out.

“Shadows In the Moonlight” is the actual next story in the collection, and is an all-Howard yarn; I read the original version as reprinted in The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian, where it appears under the title Howard gave it, “Iron Shadows In The Moon.” This one has many similarities with the superior “Queen Of The Black Coast,” which is interesting given that it was written directly before it – I almost suspect Howard wasn’t happy with this one and reworked some of the elements in that later tale.

There are also similarities to “Hawks Over Shem,” in that the story opens with Conan promptly getting revenge on some guy he’s been hunting for a while. Along the way he manages to save yet another nubile wench, Olivia, a perennially-distraught type who both clings to and shies away from Conan for the rest of the tale. She’s pretty annoying, but she’s also a princess, same as Yasmella was. As a sidenote, I find it interesting that in his “edits” De Camp never includes minor references to the previous tales, say for example Conan briefly ruminating on what led him here after the events of “Black Colossus.” Obviously such a thing wouldn’t be in Howard’s original, but you’d think De Camp would’ve figured he could tinker with these stories to make the book seem more like one multi-chaptered story instead of a sequence of random short stories.

Making their escape, Conan and Olivia find refuge on an island. Here the story reminds me of the later epic, in that Olivia has a dream – which goes on for pages – about these creatures that once lived on the island and might, gasp, still be here. Then some pirates come along and Conan goes to powow with them, getting knocked out for his efforts. Here ensues another stretch where Conan takes a bit of a break, and we must deal with Olivia, who spends most of her time either worrying or passing out from worrying. She does at least manage to free Conan from the pirates.

This is another one where you get the feeling Howard added a “supernatural” element to appease the Weird Tales editors. The thing that has been following them around the island turns out to be a giant ape with vampire fangs. A humorously-nonchalant Conan (he’s basically like, “Oh, it’s one of those things”) makes short work of it, and then Howard decides the true climax is Conan making himself the new leader of the pirates – that is, after Olivia’s dream has come true and a bunch of castle statues have come to life and gone on the attack.

“The Road Of The Eagles” is next, and this is another non-Conan yarn that De Camp has tinkered with. It’s so lame that on this second reading of Conan The Freebooter it took me over three weeks to finish it – that’s how little I wanted to return to the tale. It too is similar to “Hawks Over Shem” in that it’s clearly several unrelated storylines jammed together; the majority of the tale is about some Zamoran dancer babe trying to free her brother, and meanwhile Conan’s hanging out with some pirates and seeking revenge on a commander who betrayed them. I honestly can’t remember much else about it, other than it’s another where Conan sort of stands around while other characters finish each other off in the finale, clearly because Conan wasn’t even there in Howard’s original version.

“A Witch Shall Be Born” is the mercy shot that finally finishes off this drag of a book; it’s another Howard original, and I read the version featured in The Bloody Crown of Conan (Del Rey, 2005). Considered one of Howard’s best Conan tales, “Witch” provided inspiration for one of the most famous scenes in Milius’s Conan (though to be fair, the scene was originally in Oliver Stone’s script): Conan being crucified. Parts of the plot also appeared in the sadly-lackluster Conan The Destroyer (1984). And yet for all that, this is another Conan story in which the hero barely appears. 

There’s a bit of a “shudder pulp” vibe to this one, mostly due to the cruel horrors bodacious babe Queen Taramis of Khauran endures throughout. First she’s awoken from a nightmare – a recurring image throughout the book – to find a sister she has long thought dead glaring at her. This is Salome, Taramis’s twin, who was born with the sign of the witch (a crescent shape on her breast – which she of course happily shows off), and thus castigated from Khauran per tradition. But, as Salome relates via endless exposition, she was found by a sorceror from Khitai who raised her to be a super-powerful witch for real. Now she’s back for some hot vengeance, baby!

First Salome hands Taramis over to Constantius, evil ruler of a mercenary army; in fact, posing as Taramis, Salome has even opened the city gates to Constatius and his horde. But anyway a leering Salome commands Constantius to lock Taramis up in the dungeon, but allows him to have his way with her first. Eventually we get to one of Howard’s more famous scenes; after a sort of narrative jump-cut to some weeks in the future, we finally come upon Conan as he’s nailed to a tree. Conan, again serving in a mercenary capacity, has been stirring up the army that “Taramis” is not who she says she is – for of course Salome has been posing as her sister.

Unlike in the film, Conan doesn’t die on the cross, though he does take out a vulture looking for an easy meal. In the story he’s saved by a guy on horseback who turns out to be an infamous bandit leader. The guy makes Conan walk through the desert as a test; if he survives, he’ll give him some water. We learn via a letter that seven months pass, and when we meet him again Conan is of course fully recovered, and basically he’s become the leader of the bandits without the other guy realizing it. He dispenses some sweet revenge to the guy – sending him off into the desert – and goes about marshalling the bandit warriors to launch an attack on Khauran.

But this is another one where Conan just sits out large portions of the narrative. There’s even a running subplot about some Khauran native who loves Taramis and is sneaking around the gutters of the city, picking up choice intel – like confirmation that the queen on the throne is an imposter, and the real Taramis is in a dungeon. Speaking of which we get more shudder pulp stuff with occasional cutovers to Taramis enduring some new torture at the hands of Salome. But anyway the big battle is again relayed via exposition, with Salome learning that her much-vaunted warriors have been taken out by a bandit army.

The finale is even reminiscent of “Black Colossus,” with minor characters killing off main characters while Conan’s off-page, but this time Howard doesn’t have the excuse of being posthumously messed with. He once again blows any cool potential with Conan going up against a witch, instead having someone else take care of Salome…who manages to hang onto life long enough to unleash a demon, again like the previous yarn. Even more lame, the demon is killed by some arrows courtesy Conan’s archers. It’s all so anticlimactic, but at least in the end Conan gets to crucify the guy who did the same to him at the start of the tale.

Well, I was happy to be done with this volume of Conan, and I sincerely hope the next one is better.

Thursday, May 31, 2018

The Nemesis From Terra (aka Shadow Over Mars)


The Nemesis From Terra, by Leigh Brackett
No month stated, 1961  Ace Books

The copyright page of this Ace Double doesn’t mention it, but The Nemesis From Terra is actually a reprint of a novel by Leigh Brackett originally titled Shadow Over Mars, which first appeared in the Fall, 1944 issue of Startling Stories and was later reprinted in the March, 1953 issue of Fantastic Story.  This was Leigh Brackett’s first novel, and any worries that it might not be up to par with her later work are quickly dashed. Also, unlike
The Secret Of Sinharat or People Of The Talisman, this one has not been expanded or otherwise changed in this Ace reprint, other that is than a few editorial snafus.

Brackett, despite her recent intro to the world of fiction, is as evocative as ever, her fast-moving pulp tale both masculine and poetic. I mean this one covers everything from dewey-eyed love at first sight to a fistfight in which a dude’s thumb is ripped off…and then later he’s bashed in the face by the severed “trunk” of a corpse! It’s also interesting that Shadow Over Mars (as I prefer to call it – doubtless Ace changed the title because they didn’t want to scare away dweebs who’d get upset over the fact that there’s no life on Mars) has elements which would be expanded upon in later Brackett work.

I get the impression that this one is set later in Brackett’s future chronology than the other tales I’ve read; perhaps around the era of the latter stories in the anthology The Coming Of The Terrans. Terran “exploitation” of Mars is more rampant than in the other Brackett stories I’ve read – and just so you know there’s no fooling, the organization actually calls itself the Terran Exploitation Company. There’s also use of the Banning shocker weapon, which featured in the late-chronology (but also early-written) Brackett yarn “Child Of The Sun.” It appears that Brackett’s early stories, coincidentally or not given that WWII was raging when she wrote them, were more concerned with a despotic galactic government than her later material.

Anyway I’m guessing that Shadow Over Mars takes place at least a few decades after, say, “Enchantress Of Venus,” and perhaps around the same time as the beginning and ending sections of The Sword Of Rhiannon. And speaking of which, there are similarities between that tale (aka Sea-Kings Of Mars) and this one; both feature ruggedly virile but hardbitten bastards of protagonists who are, despite their nefarious nature and crime-laden backgrounds, thrust into prophetic positions as saviors of Mars. 

Such is the case with this novel’s hero, Rick Gunn Urquhart, and I have to say, I do love it that the savior of Mars is named “Rick.” He’s a cynical, tough-talking, Bogart-esque brawler who, we learn, was born in space; the first planet he ever set foot on was Mars. When we meet him, like Matt Carse in The Sword Of Rhiannon, Rick is on the run, but in his case it’s from the “black boys” (aka “black apes”!) of “the Company,” aka the Terran Exploitation Company. Another resemblance to Rhiannon is that this future Mars is filled with splinter strains of native life, such as the winged humans who appear in both novels and the Dhuvian snake-men of Rhiannon. But this I think is the only mention I’ve so far encountered of the “black apes,” aka “anthropoids,” which are used as brainless muscle by the Company.

The title of the novel, at least the original title, comes from an ancient Martian “seeress” whose hovel Rick sneaks into while hiding from the apes. She goes into a trance and declares that Rick’s “shadow” will fall over Mars – uniting its people as one and ruling them. Then, as if in denial of her own prophecy, she comes at Rick with a knife and he takes her out with his “blaster.” Speaking of which there’s more blaster-fighting here than in the other Brackett yarns I’ve read, most of which go for more of a Conan vibe with swords and axes and whatnot.

The action opens in Ruh, an ancient Martian city I don’t believe I’ve encountered before; like all the others in Brackett it’s a decayed fossil of its former self, with an Old Town that’s nearly haunted and a New Town filled with strip clubs and bars and the like. In fact, Shadow Over Mars has the first – if brief – sleazy elements I’ve yet encountered in Brackett, as later in the novel Rick walks through the grungy New Town section with its stripper Venusian girls, 3-D cinemas, and various drug parlors. The Venusians don’t come off very well here, mostly used as muscle or as sex objects by the Martians; we also get the mention that they have greenish skin and blue hair.

The novel features a small core of characters, as ever graced with those Brackett-esque names which would be sort of pillaged by George Lucas: a chief example would be Jaffa Storm, a Star Wars name if ever there was one; he’s a “Terro-Mercurian” with skin burned black by the sun, same as  Eric John Stark. But unlike Stark, Jaffa Storm is a villain through and through, a 7-foot sadist with a limp who is telepathic to boot. He’s the main villain of the novel, though we start off thinking it will be Ed Fallon, heartless owner of the Company. However Fallon’s sort of anticlimactically removed from the narrative. On the female front, there’s Mayo McCall, hotstuff brunette babe who is a spy for a Martian rights movement led by Earthman Hugh St. John and his Martian pal Eran Mak. (Yes, the name had me thinking of former actresses turned sex-slaving cultists, too!)

In true pulp style, Shadow Over Mars veers all over the Martian map; I’ll forego my usual belabored rundown of the plot. Rick is basically traded around for much of the narrative, variably captured by the inhabitants of Ruh – who want him for murdering the seeress – to being captured by the Company. In this latter sequence he meets Mayo, and it’s a love at first sight thing, but bear in mind Rick is very much in the vein of the later Gully Foyle, of The Stars My Destination (another pulp sci-fi novel with some narrative resemblances to this one), so there’s a lot of hostility and distrust in this particular love. That being said, Rick and Mayo are barely in the novel together. Also, Mayo isn’t one of Brackett’s more interesting female characters, most likely because she spends the majority of the novel off-page.

Actually two women love Rick – there’s also Kyra, diminutive winged gal who latches onto him in a more poignant subplot than the entirety of the Mayo storyline. For Kyra loves Rick even though she knows he doesn’t love her back – indeed he refers to her condescendingly as “kid.” Further, she knows he’s in love with Mayo. But Kyra is young and resents that Mars thinks itself “old” and dying; there’s a part late in the tale where she says goodbye to Rick, brining up reincarnation and the planet’s future, and it’s one of those heartbreaking moments Leigh Brackett does so damn well.

She also does action and violence well, and there are several such scenes throughout the novel. Rick (rather quickly) lives up to his prophecy and unites the Martians against the Company – that is, after he’s been captured and escaped a few times – and leads them in a grand battle against Jaffa Storm’s forces, Storm having assumed control of the Company. However Brackett doesn’t give this sequence as much focus as one would assume. The smaller, more private battles are the ones that make the most of an impression, like the aforementioned climactic brawl, or a cool part midway through where Rick escapes via “flyer” to the other side of Mars, lands in Valkis (familiar from other Mars tales), and is captured by olive-skinned desert barbarians.

This part comes off like a prefigure of the later masterful novella “Beast-Jewel Of Mars,” with a drugged Rick put on display in a pit for a group of bloodthirsty Martians (Rick having been set up as a traitor by Hugh St. John and Eran Mak). They watch eagerly as the Earthman trips out in various hallucinations, mostly involving Kyra and Mayo. There follows perhaps one of the few instances in fiction in which cigarettes actually save life; Rick regains his thoughts due to the cigarette burning into his hands, and sees that he’s about to become part of the soil that feeds these hallucination-causing plants. Further, the smoke wards off the effects of the plants and allows Rick to think clearly. So he fires up a fresh cigarette and starts inhaling away, crawling off to safety!

Overall though Shadow Over Mars gives a great view of Brackett’s Mars; you’ll find here everything from the desolate, haunted ruins of its beyond-ancient past, familiar from the Stark tales, to the decadent sprawls of its Earthling-populated areas. There’s even a somewhat arbitrary trip to the polar cap, an area drenched in mystery, where the legendary “Thinkers” lay in suspended animation, their minds moved on to a realm of pure thought. This part has the haunted vibe of the later Brackett story “The Last Days Of Shandakor,” but gradually builds up to the brutal fistfight mentioned above, complete with thumb-ripping and severed bodyparts used as impromptu clubs. This part also reminds the Brackett fan of The Sword Of Rihannon, as here too our Earthling hero comes upon ancient weapons of mass destruction.

All told, a lot goes down in these 120 pages of small, dense print, and Brackett never lets up – something’s always happening, and it’s always entertaining. In a mid-‘70s audio interview I recently discovered, Brackett makes a few disparaging comments about her early work. Hopefully she wasn’t thinking of Shadow Over Mars, because I really enjoyed it, and would rank it as one of my favorites yet. And that audio interview is highly recommended, if only to hear her voice, but unfortunately the majority of it concerns her screenwriting work, with her sci-fi writing only briefly discussed. (Note how she perks up at the sudden mention of Eric John Stark 54 minutes in! But sadly the interviewer asks no further questions about the character or his stories.) And I have to give the lady props for not only claiming she “walked out” on Kubrick’s 2001, but for saying that she thought the movie was “foolish!” Perhaps the only time I have ever seen that particular word used to describe the film!

Thursday, March 8, 2018

The Thirteen Bracelets


The Thirteen Bracelets, by Robert Lory
No month stated, 1974  Ace Books

Taking place in the far-flung future of 1989, The Thirteen Bracelets is a sci-fi yarn that shows the more humorous side of Robert Lory, who around this time was also writing installments of my all-time favorite men’s adventure series, John Eagle Expeditor. (And of course I geeked out when, late in the novel, the narrator-protagonist relays how he’d been “expedited” to the scene of a past assignment…!) Unfortunately though, the novel is a bit too funny (or at least, attempts to be) for its own good; it’s more in the vein of a Ron Goulart novel than what you might expect, given the otherwise-serious back cover copy. 

Anyway, it’s ’89, and our narrator is shape-changing mutant Hari Denver, a spy who, due to being near the nuke blast which separated “White Dixie” and “Black Dixie,” now has the ability to change his appearance, from his face to his entire body – if an arm is chopped off, for example, he can regrow it. He now works as a secret agent for Section, reporting to a crusty boss named Fowler, whose office is in Manhattan. One of the recurring “jokes” is that the US is now so messed-up that most government agencies work out of old corporate buildings in Manhattan, given the mass exodus of businesses from this area in the late ‘70s.

We get a glimpse of the slapstick vibe of the novel in the first pages, as Folwer contacts Denver on a “vidscreen,” telling Denver to “get rid of” the lovely young woman Denver happens to be getting in bed with. Denver responds by hitting the girl beneath the chin, instantly killing her. He explains to a nonplussed Folwer, watching it all on the vidscreen, that the girl was in fact a terrorist, and the subject of the assignment Denver was working on, which is now wrapped up! When Fowler grumbles over Denver’s “unorthodox methods,” Denver responds, “These are unorthodox times.”

Denver hops in his Datsun Super Electric and heads over to Fowler’s office, where he’s briefed on his latest assignment – appeasing the Mudir of Chad, a visiting dignitary whose thirteen virgins, each of whom was wearing an antique golden bracelet, were recently stolen from a boat that was touring Staten Island. It’s a locked room mystery sort of deal, as there was just a small window on the boat and the girls disappeared while the boat was out to sea. Denver’s job is to find those bracelets.

The novel is more of a private eye yarn than a spy story; Denver ventures about the country in his search, following various leads. Actually the novel is more of a satirical look at a whacked-out America that is now separated along outrageously-overdone racial lines. In fact, due to this outrageousness alone, The Thirteen Bracelets is the sort of novel that likely could not be reprinted in today’s santized world. In his picaresque journeys Denver meets every racial stereotype you could imagine, up to and including actual spear-chuckers.

Another of the novel’s recurring jokes is that Hari Denver, no matter what “disguise” he’s fashioned himself into, is always recognized. In the course of the book he changes himself into an American Indian, a Jew, an Eskimo, a black, an old Russian, and possibly some other caricatures I’ve forgotten. Yet in each case someone will immediately know they are dealing with the infamous Hari Denver, in what sort of comes off like a prefigure of the “I heard you were dead!” line everyone greeted Snake Plisskin with in Escape From New York. In fact, many elements of The Thirteen Bracelets are reminiscent of that later film.

Lory’s “predictions” of course didn’t come true – the novel is really more of an over-the-top satire than a serious work of sci-fi – but he does at times hit an eerie note of prescience. Like when Denver informs us of the GPS-type device which is embedded in his neck and called a “hotspot.” Otherwise the novel sticks to racial caricature-type stuff; after ditching the Mudir and his four identical brothers, Denver tracks clues from Chinatown to a series of interstates overseen by American Indians, until finally he ends up in the presence of Obadiah, the “chief wuggum of the New Lesotho,” a giant black guy who wears a leopardskin cape, surrounded by spear-carrying warriors.

At this point Denver has disguised himself as a black as well, bearing a three-foot afro with a gun hidden in it, but per the recurring bit Obadiah already knows it’s really Denver beneath the black skin. Our hero has tracked the missing girls here, but the chief claims not to have them. Meanwhile he’s about to go to war with New Zion (located in what was once Bridgeport); in an impromptu naval skirmish, Denver and the chief are knocked off the chief’s boat, and as he hits the water Denver changes himself to a Jew – prompting one of those pre-PC lines from a New Zionist on the attacking ship: “We scared this one white!”

Denver gives himself a four-inch nose, only to be informed by Obadiah that it’s a bit much; when Denver shrinks it down to three inches, the New Zionists think he’s an Arab. He’s taken into the presence of President Wineberg, a nutcase bearing a .357 he arbitrarily fires at people. The true ruler here is The O’Donnell, an obese fiddler who is in fact Jewish but changed his last name to an Irish one when he began publishing sleaze novels. With the chief out of the picture – once The O’Donnell has had him and his men screw a bunch of syphilis-tainted women the New Lesotho sold them – The O’Donnell becomes Denver’s new traveling companion.

Eventually they get to Washington, which is even more shattered than New York; Lory gets even more spoofy with the revelations that “the Mall” is now “the Maul,” and the Lincoln Memorial statue has been recarved so that Honest Abe is sitting on a toilet. After a too-brief run-in with a former colleague named Jolly Van Cleeve – who turns out to have been involved with the kidnapping of the thirteen virgins – Denver finds himself down in the White Cave, ie the relocated White House, now in the caverns beneath the destroyed structure. Obese president George II, self-styled monarch who goes around nude save for different hats, enters the fray and stays longer than he should, for here the book sort of loses its fun.

Here’s also a good part where I can show the goofy tone Lory maintains throughout the novel. While below-ground Denver runs afoul of various generals who are united against the president. Denver escapes them and engages them in a car chase through the zigzagging, booby trapped tunnels:

At that point, the air boomed with the commander in chief’s command: “Catch him – I’ve changed my mind!” 

At which point, my car took off like a shot. 

At which point, running feet in pursuit stopped and a second car, accommodating four Army brass including General Morg himself who rang the brass bell decorating the front, soared after mine. 

At which point the shooting started.

The novel is written in this same smug, pretty contrived style throughout. However, at 188 pages of big print, it is at least a breezy read. After more turnarounds, Denver next discovers that one of the Mudir’s “brothers” isn’t really a brother at all, but one of his sisters, Althea. Lory doesn’t describe her at all, but we do learn she is ugly, or at least Denver considers her so. Eventually it turns out that this too is just a disguise and she’s a smoking hot babe after all.

It stays down here in the White Cave area for the duration, unfortunately, including an arbitrary bit where Denver is briefly captured by some Red Chinese who force him to play “ping-pow,” which is ping-pong with a bomb instead of a ball. It turns out those missing bracelets contained blueprints for something called a Blight Bomb, sort of a virus-generating bomb, and the Mudir planned to use it on Nepal. Althea wants to stop this. Evetually Denver finds himself posing as an old Russian, and must also have sex with all thirteen of the stolen virgins, one after another, as part of a ruse on the Mudir’s part to suss out who here is really Hari Denver in disguise. But Lory isn’t exploitative at all: “I finished her off fast” being the extent of the sleaze.

The finale continues with the comedic approach; the Blight Bomb plan safely prevented, George II reveals himself to really be a computer, the human form just a puppet, and instructs Althea to go have sex with Hari so as to burn off her hostility! And here we leave our narrating hero. Overall The Thirteen Bracelets is passably entertaining, but a bit too “funny” for its own good, and I’m not just saying that because I normally dislike genre novels that are written in first-person.