Showing posts with label Gardner Fox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gardner Fox. Show all posts

Thursday, December 10, 2020

Kyrik: Warlock Warrior (Kyrik #1)


Kyrick: Warlock Warrior, by Gardner F. Fox
April, 1975  Leisure Books

I picked this one up a few years ago when I was on a sword and sorcery kick; the typically-great Ken Barr cover drew me right in. Barr has always been my favorite of these ‘70s cover artists, and as ever his art completely captures the subject matter. Also if you closely inspect the cover art, as I did, you’ll note that the green-haired babe is fully nude. However Barr’s artwork is more risque than anything in Kyrik: Warlock Warrior; the book is very tame in both the sex and violence departments, more tame even than Robert E. Howard’s original Conan stories. Also I hate to inform you of this, but Barr’s cover is also incredibly misleading: there is no green-haired babe in the book…nor is there a pterodactyl-type flying creature, either. There is a brawny dude with a sword in the book, though, so at least there’s that. 

Speaking of Conan, Leisure Books clearly wanted to follow the trend, hence Fox delivers an intro where he tries to argue that the novel, which takes place in days of old when magic filled the air, could’ve possibly happened in some prehistorical era. His Kyrik is sort of a combo of Conan and Howard’s other creation, Kull, in that Kyrik is a legendary, almost mythical ruler of the past. As the novel unfolds we find that Kyrik’s backstory is a little involved, but here’s the gist of it: a thousand years ago he was a powerful barbarian who took control of a kingdom, a la Conan. But he ran afoul of a black magician and was turned into a statue…and the statue was lost. Now, a thousand years later, the statue is found by a young sorceress, and Kyrik is brought back to life. This first novel details his battle against the descendant of the man who turned him into a statue. 

Aryalla is the young sorceress who finds Kyrik; beautiful and built, with “long black hair, like that of a harlot of the traveling fairs.” Her own involved backstory has it that she was the daughter of the chief mage of Tantagol, the kingdom which Kyrik once ruled. But rival sorcerers plotted to get the ruler of Tantagol to kill her father, and now Aryalla travels around the known world, seeking out the Kyrik statue she learned of through her father. She believes that a reborn Kyrik will help her gain revenge on Devadonides, despotic ruler of Tantagol – and the descendant of the original Devadonides, who had Kyrik turned into a statue a thousand years ago. As the novel opens Aryalla, still in her early 20s, has been searching for a few years or somesuch, and finally comes across the statue in the booth of a travelling salesman. 

Demons are very active in this world; Fox almost implies that all the “gods” people worship are in fact demons. But nothing much is made of this, really, other than Aryalla and others standing in pentagrams when they call forth this or that god or goddess. What’s interesting is that these various gods are clearly not omniscient nor omnipotent; later in the book Kyrik summons his personal goddess, Illis, an Aphrodite-type whose cult has disappeared in the past thousand years. Not only has she lost power on earth because no one worships her anymore, she also often tells Kyrik she’s unable to do this or that thing for him – and, when she appears in human form (as a super hot, super-built blonde, of course), she comes off more like a damsel in distress, displaying no godlike attributes at all. 

Illis no longer having any followers is one of the few ramifications Kyrik experiences a thousand years in the “future.” Humorously, almost nothing has changed in this prehistorical world; there’s even a part where Kyrik reveals to Aryalla that he hid something in a favored tavern…and not only is the same tavern still there, but so is the item Kyrik hid in it! About the most we get out of the whole “thousand years” schtick is Kyrik’s constantly going on about how he hasn’t eaten in a thousand years, or drank any ale, or had a woman – which of course he pointedly reminds Aryalla of several times, though suprisingly the two of them never do the deed. It got to the point where I kept waiting for Kyrik to go to the bathroom so he could boast that it was his “first dump in a thousand years.” 

Well anyway I got ahead of myself; Aryalla finds the statue, summons some demons, and they help her bring Kyrik back to life. He seems pretty blasé about it being a thousand years later, so I guess he didn’t leave a wife or children or any friends behind. But then, the characters here are pretty one-dimensional, and Fox delivers only what is expected of him: a cheap Conan knockoff for a low-rent publisher. But then again this is what elevated Howard’s original stories over all the ripoffs; there was a lot more meat to Howard’s stories. And as mentioned they were more risque as well, despite Howard publishing his stuff over forty years before Fox. We’re sometimes informed that Aryalla has “high breasts” and whatnot, and there’s also a part where she gets hot and bothered by Kyrik’s “Luststone” (a magical gem that arouses lust in whoever looks upon it – the item Kyrik hid in that tavern centuries before), but the two are constantly spurning any opportunity to get busy, as there are “more important” things to do, like the whole thing’s a stupid TV show where they’re constantly putting off the sexual tensions between the male and female protagonists, like that dumbass Lost show, where we were supposed to buy into a love triangle scenario when these damn people had just been in a plane crash and were now stranded on some remote island (which turned out to be about as populated as Manhattan), but it was a loooong-simmer of “will they or won’t they,” while you’d figure in reality any such inhibitions would be tossed aside. Same goes for Jerry Ahern’s The Survivalist series, which took that whole love triangle nonsense into even more absurd dimensions – literally the end of the world and the titular “survivalist” was wondering if he should be unfaithful to his wife (who could’ve been dead, for all he knew) and give it to the hot Russian spy-babe who was in love with him. And this went on for like twenty novels! I remember listening to the Graphic Audio adaptations of the series years ago, during the commute to work, and ultimately banging the steering wheel in frustration over this endless, go-nowhere subplot – I know not once but several times I yelled, “It’s the end of the world, just do it already!” 

But I digress. I bring this up because we’re constantly told Kyrik is a lusty warrior of legendary repute, so you’d think he’d be tossing little sexpot Aryalla into the nearest bed. And he has the opportunity to do so several times. He doesn’t, and it’s an indication that Fox is much more conservative in this regard than Howard; same goes for the violence, which lacks any of Howard’s customary gore. Curiously Kyrik does get lucky, but it’s with newly-introduced Myrnis, a busty vagabond-type beauty who has been living in Kryick’s cabin in the woods – yes, even his cabin is still here, a thousand years later. A love triangle quickly develops, with Aryalla jealous of the attention Kyrik gives Myrnis, and vice versa; luckily Fox doesn’t draw this out for the entire novel, with Kryick finally “getting laid for the first time in a thousand years” (not an actual quote from the book) courtesy Myrnis. Fox leaves the event entirely off-page, as he does Kryick’s few other “encounters” with Myrnis. 

As for the action quotient, Kyrik doesn’t make his first kill until nearly page 50. His customary sword is named Bluefang – it was turned into a statue along with him. As for Kyrik, he’s also a Conan ripoff in physical stature, save that he has “tawny” hair. Otherwise there’s no personality about him, and the “warlock” aspect of the title is seriously unexplored. Indeed, late in the novel Kyrik tells Aryalla that he’ll need her magic in the climactic battle, so any hopes of Kyrik casting spells while waving his broadsword are quickly dashed. But then, even later in the book Fox reminds us that Kyrik is “also” a practicioner of magic, same as Aryalla…not that he does anything to prove it. This “warlock” deal promised to be the only thing that would separate Kyrik from Conan, but I get the impression Leisure just came up with the title and Fox didn’t do anything to exploit it. 

Aryalla gets Kyrik’s aid, after bringing him back to life: they will return to Tantagol and Kyrik will help her vanquish Devadonides – the descendant of the Devadonides who turned Kyrik into a statue. Along the way they encounter various brigands and foot soldiers of the evil king, and Bluefang tastes blood “for the first time in a thousand years.” Along the way Kyrik also “encounters” Myrnis, who initially promises to be a more colorful personality than the mostly-icy Aryalla, but then drops from the text when the trio arrives in Tantagol, only to return at the end so she can ride off into the sunset with Kyrik. About the most she does is darken Kyrik’s skin so that he can pass as a vagabond and enter the city undetected. But immediately after this Kyrik gets in a two-hour bar brawl which promptly gets him tossed into prison. 

Here Kyrik manages to reconnect with his goddess, Illis, who appears to him in human guise – and implies she wants a little lovin’, though curiously once again Fox doesn’t follow through. Instead, Illis spends the rest of the novel in the form of a snake, wrapped around the hilt of Bluefang, speaking telepathically with Kyrik. The confrontation with Devadonides isn’t very memorable, as he’s fat and powerless; the real battle is with the demon he and his chief mage worship. Everyone’s whisked away to a magical lair, where Kyrik supposedly uses his own warlock powers to suss out the demon’s location, but even here the fighting’s mostly done with Bluefang. By novel’s end Kyrik has deposed Devadonides and could regain control of his old kingdom of Tantagol, but instead he decides to hand it over to Aryalla so that he can hit the road with Myrnis and have more adventures. 

Three more novels followed, all published by Leisure and now all available as cheap eBooks, it appears. I found this one pretty tepid, but it must be stated that Fox acquits himself better in the fantasy arena than he did in sci-fi, at least judging Kyrik: Warlock Warrior against Beyond The Black Enigma.

Monday, November 5, 2018

Abandon Galaxy! (Commander Craig #2)


Abandon Galaxy!, by Bart Somers
March, 1967  Paperback Library

The second and final volume of the short-lived Commander Craig series is much better than the first one. It seems that Gardner Fox (aka “Bart Somers”) spent the time between volumes actually figuring out what his publisher wanted; whereas in the first book he turned in a juvenile snoozefest with a too-amorphous threat and a lackluster hero, this time he delivers just what Paperback Library no doubt wanted from the beginning: James Bond in space.

And this is the movie Bond for sure; like Connery’s take on the character, Commander John Craig now sexually harrasses all the hot women he meets (playfully, of course), likes to indulge in the occasional bit of gambling, and goes up against oily, despicable villains straight out of SPECTRE. The exploitative elements have been greatly expanded – nothing too explicit, though – with copious mentions of nude women at the various space-dives Craig frequents, waitresses in “transparent boleros,” man-hungry cougar types, etc. The lead female character is even a super high-class courtesan from a planet named Veneria in which all the women are trained love-artists, boasting that they’ve discovered a hundred and some ways to have sex.

There is only infrequent reference to that previous volume; it’s a short time later, and we are informed that Craig has broken up with his girlfriend, Eva Marlowe. No doubt because Fox has learned the last thing you want to give your swinging intergalactic spy is a steady girl. He’s gotta be stone free, baby! Fox has also learned to truly make the series “intergalactic,” too; no more constant mentions of Earth cities. Instead, Fox has gone overboard in the opposite direction; Abandon Galaxy is stuffed with arbitrary mentions of far-off planets, places, and people, not to mention bizarre alien oaths and curses. My favorite would definitely have to be, “By the nine births of Lamarkaan!”

When we reconnect with Craig he’s already on his latest assignment, which sees him watching over a lovely young museum curator on one of those far-flung worlds. Her name is Irla, and she’s become a target of LOOT – the League Of Outer-space Thieves. (Pretty sure that would actually be “LOOST,” wouldn’t it?) Ultimately we’ll learn it’s because the bastards intend to bump her off, replace her with an android, and use the android to steal a priceless artifact belonging to the Rim Worlds and thus start a war between the Empire (aka the US) and the Rim Worlds (aka the USSR). We see from the outset that there will be more action this time, as Craig takes on the LOOT thugs, even engaging them in an air car chase.

Also, Craig is more brutal this time; he melts sundry faces with his “rayer” gun; the novel is by no means gory, but Fox does often mention exploding blood and flesh, which is a far cry from the juvenile tones of the previous book. And also he appropriately exploits his female characters a bit more; we’re often reminded that hot redhead Irla has one helluva nice body, and she’s often getting nude for various reasons. However Fox does not dwell on the juicy details when the bumping and grinding finally happens – all of Craig’s sexual encounters happen off-page.

After all this, Craig looks forward to a nice vacation on Pleasure Planet, a sort of global resort where vacationers can let it all hang out. But on his way to the planet, riding with other vacationers in a massive cruise spaceship, he’s contacted by his boss, Dan Ingalls. This is one of Fox’s more interesting creations: a gadget that rides over the cosmic waves and allows you not only to hear the person you are talking to, but to feel their emotions as well. At least Craig has updgraded from that stupid “sack” he put everything in, last volume. Ingalls informs Craig that LOOT is up to more trouble; they are planning to plant a megapowerful bomb on – you guessed it – Pleasure Planet itself. Once again the hope is to spawn a war between the Empre and the Rim Worlds.

It's all very much on the Bond tip. Craig figures out that one of his passengers is the secret LOOT agent, and sure enough it’s a smokin’ hot babe who is posing as a sexually insatiable “tigress” headed for Pleasure Planet for some illicit fun. Her name is Kla’a Foster, and she’s met at the Pleasure Planet landing site by an oily, creepy-looking obese man named Alfred Bottom, who will soon be revealed as the main villain. True to the template, Bottom and Craig are soon challenging each other in high-stakes gambling matches, and Bottom is wining and dining Craig in his luxurious villa while a half-nude Kla’a sits at his side, tempting Craig. However the two never get it on, and Kla’a is sort of a dropped ball on Fox’s part, only returning to meet her hasty demise – not at Craig’s hand – in the finale.

The main setpiece of the novel is just as depicted on the cover; Craig takes up Bottom on his challenge to Schiamachy, an ancient, rarely-indulged Pleasure Planet feature in which two contestants vie against one other on a sort of elevated chessboard. Each level has a different challenge, and if the contestants survive to the top they have to fight each other to the death. Only Bottom at the last minute reveals he doesn’t plan to compete himself; the rules allow a stand-in, and Bottom will retain the services of his “bruitor” henchman, a massive alien creature with three eyes and tentacles, giving him four arms to bash his human prey.

It's a cool, pulpy scene, with Craig up against a giant spider, an android, and even an invisible killer plant. The battle with the bruitor is also nicely done. The only problem is it’s over too quickly and the novel sort of pads around for the last half. There are some cool pieces here and there, though, like Craig swimming through a monster-infested ocean to spy on Bottom’s beachfront villa. Craig throughout though is able to spend some quality time with his new lead female character: Mylitta, a “dusky” skinned, “slant eyed” ultra babe from the planet Veneria, which isn’t a planet of nasty diseases but one of high-class whores, of which Mylitta is the best of them all. Craig wins her as part of that Schiamachy duel.

Mylitta proves herself to be a memorable character; initially she’s only concerned with her courtesan reputation and is put off by Craig’s constant refusal to bed her(!). This is because Craig’s more concerned with the attempts on his life he’s sure Bottom is about to make, and his concerns of course are quickly validated. But once they finally get all that out of the way (off-page of course), Mylitta becomes more active in the action scenes, even using her disguise skills to make the two of them look completely different so as to elude Bottom and his men. That being said, there’s actually a part where Craig disguises himself as a janitor, folks, complete with a mop and pail. The future!!

The climax plays out in Lewdity City, to which Bottom, Kla’a, and the other LOOT villains have retreated after Craig, with some governmental help, prevents their ship from leaving the planet. Here upper-class citizens come to indulge in their lower-class tastes, posing as bawdy villagers and the like. It’s all very goofy, as is an arbitrary plot point Fox quickly introduces that allows Craig to rally the villagers to his cause and assault Bottom’s fortress. The climax is unexpectedly brutal, though, with eyeballs getting scratched out, people falling to their deaths, and a knock-down, drag-out fight between Craig and Bottom. Also more exploding flesh and blood thanks to Craig’s rayer.

It’s kind of a pity that this wasn’t the first installment of the series; if it had been, perhaps there would’ve been more than two volumes. I feel that Beyond The Black Enigma did little to engender the interest of sci-fi readers of the day, what with its general suckiness and all. In fact I wonder if this is why that first book was reprinted in 1968, to see if there was any interest in further Commander Craig adventures. Clearly there was not, and that was it for the adventures of Commander John Craig.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Beyond The Black Enigma (Commander Craig #1)


Beyond The Black Enigma, by Bart Somers
August, 1965  Paperback Library

Clearly intended to be James Bond in space, Beyond The Black Enigma was the first of two novels to feature Commander John Craig; Bart Somers was prolific sci-fi author Gardner Fox. The story could easily have appeared a few decades earlier in one of the pulps Fox once wrote for; even the date in which the story occurs, the friggin’ 75th Century(!), gives it the feel of a vintage pulp.

And of course, despite taking place so far into the future, the world Fox gives us feels like the 1960s (or actually the 1940s); it is humorously quaint, with people still smoking cigarettes, writing on paper, even having “writing desks.” Square-jawed men stand around in offices smoking and drinking and discussing “girls.” The “science” throughout is preposterous and the characters have all the depth of Captain Future. None of this really could be seen as a criticism – I mean the only sci-fi I’ll read these days is pulp sci-fi – but the main issue is that Beyond The Black Enigma just isn’t very good. One suspects this is because Fox perhaps retconned some other manuscript into this James Bond-esque template; for in truth, he takes his gadget-wielding, superspy hero, sends him to a boring planet…and has him spelunking through ancient crypts and deciphering the “truth” in various stories from mythology.

Craig is a big blond-haired brawler who works as an agent for Alert Command, part of “the elite Investigation Corps, United Worlds Space Fleets.” He’s just got back from nearly a year of jungle warfare on some planet, and just wants to spend time with Elva Marlowe, his hoststuff main babe who makes her living as a fashion designer around the cosmos (despite which, and despite it being the 75th friggin’ century, Paris and New York are still the fashion meccas of the universe; as I say, this future is very quaint). But he’s summoned by his boss, Commander Ingalls, for a new mission – one that will have Craig fighting a menace “five light years away.”

As you’ll note, both Craig and Ingalls are commanders. This is because Craig apparently received a promotion sometime between the manuscript and publication stages. Craig is sometimes referred to as “the major” throughout, which implies that’s how he started before the publisher (perhaps) decided he should be “Commander Craig.” But for that matter, the novel is rife with typos and grammatical errors; “slowly turning slowly,” and “Craig felt his heart swell in his rib case,” and etc. Indeed, the novel is profoundly stupid, and these typos are really just the icing on the cake.

Craig’s assignment is to take his new ship, made of “densatron” metal and with “nucleatronic engines,” on a five light-year journey to confront the mysterious “black enigma” which has been known about for a thousand years but is only just now being seen as a threat(!). Two splace fleets have been lost in the massive black blob which eclipses an entire solar system, so far away; it’s like the Bermuda Triangle of outer space. For this impossible mission, Edmunds, “chief of Ordinance,” has whipped up a trio of gadgets for Craig.

First there’s the Imp, a metal rod that shoots a ray that causes people to implode. Next there’s a black box that “warps time,” so that if someone fires at Craig and he activates the box in time, it will shoot out a ray that will capture the bullet or ray or whatever’s been fired at him – and thrust it a hundred years into the future (or past; Edmunds isn’t really certain). In keeping with the moronic vibe of the novel, Edmunds fires at Craig point-blank, the shot captured in the box’s rays and thrust into the future, and Ingalls chuckles that someone standing there a century from now might catch a bullet in the face! But it gets dumber: Edmunds next produces “the halo,” a crown-like gizmo that unlocks the full potential of the brain. Slip it on your head and concentrate and you can make something from nothing; Edmunds jokes that the “boys in the lab” have been using it to make eggs, which pop right out of the thin air…tasteless, but edible.

These three items Craig tosses in a “sack” (it’s the 75th friggin’ century, folks, and all the guy has is a damn sack), hops in his ship, and heads on for his encounter with the black enigma. Already we realize the problem, here – our James Bond-esque hero is up against an enigma. Not a SPECTRE-like force or an enemy agent or something tangible that he can handle in his ruggedly virile two-fisted way. Nope, it’s a cloudy mass of nothingness that no one knows anthing about. And talk about underkill…Craig gets there, has a moment of foreboding, and then flies into it…and then takes a nap!!

I don’t know the first thing about Gardner Fox, but I’ve gotta hope that Beyond The Black Enigma isn’t a typical example of the dude’s work, cause this book sucks in a major way. Craig takes his little nap and then gets around to exploring the solar system which has been swallowed by the enigma…he finally settles on the third planet from the sun, figuring it will have life. From here the novel becomes a tiresome, repetitive trawl. Long story short, a vaguely-described alien race called the Toparrs have taken over this planet, Rhythane, enslaving the native folk.

That time-warp stuff isn’t limited to Craig’s box. The Toparrs wear belts which can take them past, present, and future. Craig is shocked when he lands and his ship promptly disappears; it’s because it’s been sent to the future, which is where it develops the two missing spacefleets are. Meanwhile he hooks up with a native gal, named Fiona, a “little pagan” with “faintly slanted eyes.” She’s one of the few native survivors of the Toparrs, and of course falls quick for the rugged Earthman, though it takes a while for Fox to get to the expected sex scene – and even then it’s relegated to nothing more than, “In the quiet night, [Fiona’s] sigh was loud.” Whether that’s a sigh of satisfaction or frustration is something Fox doesn’t elaborate on.

As mentioned, after imploding a few Toparrs with the Imp, which is still in that damn “sack,” Craig spends most of his time studying the mythology of the native peoples, as well as exploring the crypts beneath their fallen and deserted old city. It’s preposterous in how stupid it is…here our hero is, “five light years away,” ostensibly to stop a “black enigma” from swallowing the known universe but also to find out what happened to the missing space fleets sent to research the place, and all he does is basically rob a few graves and then sit around and listen to myths, trying to discern the “truth” in them.

Eventually he’ll get hold of a Toparr belt and send himself (and Fiona) to the future, where he finds the missing few thousand spacemen. They’re being used as slaves by the Toparrs, who worship a computer-god that looks like a “surrealist mobile.” Gradually Craig will learn that the enigma was created by this computer eons ago, and somehow it took on its own life, swallowing planets, even causing the Toparrs to leave their ancestral homeland to come to this one. Craig, armed with a sword he finds when the Toparr computer-god sends him into a sort of promised paradise to sway him over to its side, ends up smashing all the controls and destroying the enigma.

Fox has finally hit his word count; Craig, who had been falling in love with Fiona, basically shrugs her off in the final sentences, figuring his fling with her was just one of those things(!) and that she’ll eventually marry some member of her tribe and have lots of kids…indeed, it’s a “good thing” that Fiona likely thinks Craig is dead(!). Fox doesn’t even give us a reunion between Craig and Elva Marlowe; Craig just plops on his ass and begins waiting for the Alert Command ships which will no doubt soon be on their way, given that their monitors will have detected that the enigma no longer exists.

This book was really a wearying read, so dispirited and juvenile that it became a chore to get through. A cursory glance through the second (and final) installment, Abdandon Galaxy!, would indicate that it’s a more entertaining bit of pulp sci-fi. Surprisingly though, Beyond The Black Enigma actually received a second printing, in 1968. Here’s the cover: