Book Review: Moonbane

Book Review: 'Moonbane' by Al Sarrantonio

5/5 Stars

This is a cool book !

On a chilly December night, poet Jason Blake and his son Richie are out in the cornfield near his farmhouse watching a spectacular meteor shower. Some of the meteors are unusually large, and seem almost to be ‘guided’ in terms of their descent; several land in the vicinity of Blake’s property. When he and his son investigate, the meteor turns out to be a small, artificial capsule.

As Blake looks on in astonishment, the pyramid-shaped capsule tears open from within to reveal a miniature werewolf (!) When Richie extends a hand to the mini-werewolf, it promptly bites off several of his fingers (!)

As a frightened Blake carries his son back to the house, the other meteors are revealed as capsules containing yet more mini-werewolves. As they stand in the nurturing light of the full moon, the werewolves soon grow to a height of more than six feet, with gaping, fang-filled mouths and sharp talons (!)

The mature werewolves promptly head for Jason Blake’s farmhouse, and it’s clear that interspecies comity is not on their minds…..

It turns out Earth is under attack by a race of alien creatures: the werewolves of mythology. And with each bitten human condemned to become a werewolf himself, soon the entire world is under siege by growing armies of slavering, homicidal beasts.

Jason Blake undertakes a perilous journey through the monster-filled landscape, one goal in mind: make it to Kramer Air Force base, where a band of scientists have a desperate plan to try and stop the invasion with the aid of the space shuttle……

I’ve read several of Sarrantonio’s short stories, such as ‘The Man With Legs’ and ‘Red Eve’, over the decades in anthologies such as DAW’s ‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories’. I’m not that familiar with his novels, which tend to get mixed reviews at amazon.com.

I can say that ‘Moonbane’ (193 pp., Bantam Spectra, 1989, cover art by Jim Burns) is a very good mingling of horror and sf genres. The book features short chapters and a spare, direct prose style that avoids indulging in the angst-filled character introspectives common to ‘monster apocalypse’ novels. There are plenty of suspenseful moments as the narrator struggles to reach safety with every route endangered by packs of relentless werewolves.

The book’s only weakness is the fact that Blake is a poet; this gives author Sarrantonio opportunities to insert stanzas of bad poems into the narrative every now and then. [The wisdom of having a poet as the protagonist of an sf adventure is not entirely clear to me, but by and large Sarrantonio makes it somewhat believable].

In summary, ‘Moonbane’ is a highly original treatment of the werewolf – wolfman theme, and will be enjoyed by both horror and sf fans.

Book Review: 'Detour' by William Wilson

1/5 Stars
 

I first encountered ‘Detour’ in 1975, when, on a sweltering Summer day, I set out from my house on the 30 minute walk to the public library downtown on State Street. On the shelf devoted to paperbacks I saw Detour, with its cover illustration of two hillbillies – one holding a meat cleaver – looking downright unfriendly (the artist is uncredited, but is apparently George Ziel, who did  a lot of paperback cover art in the 60s and 70s). That was all I needed to decide that Detour might be worth a read.

More than 34 years later I again picked up Detour (Berkley, 1975, 154 pp), this time courtesy of amazon.com, where many PorPors can be had for affordable prices.

Woodsend is a tiny, isolated village in heavily forested part of America (probably the Pacific northwest). Things haven’t changed much in Woodsend, indeed, not for decades. The inhabitants tend to have monosyllabic or disyllabic names (‘Sam’, ‘Henny’, ‘Dee-Dah’, ‘Bobby Billy’). There may be some degree of inbreeding taking place among those citizens given to procreation. There is a humble general store and some beat-up trailers and rustic cabins where the populace make their homes. There is a sheriff named ‘Maybe’, who sometimes takes his red 1930 Cadillac police car out for a drive thirty miles to the east, and to the interchange with the freeway that served to bypass Woodsend years ago.

And there the sheriff blocks the freeway with a barrier that directs travelers to the west, and to Woodsend, with a sign that reads ‘freeway closed; detour’. And the residents of Woodsend, when they hear a car approaching, start to get very excited….

At its heart, the storyline of Detour is quite straightforward and perhaps a better basis for a short story than a novelette. Unfortunately, Wilson’s prose suffers from continuous injections of overwrought existential philosophizing. At these times, the narrative shifts to low gear and the writer digresses into some poetic musings about how unfair life is: 

He shut the door and he was outside, he was outside the car and the womb it represented, he closed the door and he was suddenly different, he was new, it was as though everything he was had been locked away in the airtight car, all his anguish and wonderings,  all the absurd machinations of business and passions of family. He was free and he was exquisite. It wasn’t going to last, it was barely a moment or two of beatitude, but enough, probably too much, a single clear glimpse of something that could be a goal, something he could want and seek or learn. The world’s oldest happiness touched him and babied him, it made calm pleasant love to him, it withdrew the bitter poisons in his mind and the fires in his body.

Whew- ! All this Deep Thought from a middle-aged man getting out of the station wagon within which he is taking his family on their vacation.

These chunks of philosophizing belabor almost every single page of the narrative and make ‘Detour’ a real dud of a suspense novel. So much for treasuring some of those strange novels from my teenage years ….

Amazing Adventures No. 22 with Killraven

Killraven: 'Amazing Adventures' No. 22 (January 1974)

‘Amazing Adventures’ No. 22 (January 1974) features Killraven in ‘Washington Nightmare’, scripted by Don McGregor and illustrated by Herb Trimpe.

The story opens with some great action sequences (excerpted below) as a monster rises from the depths of the Potomac and attacks the tugboat bearing Killraven’s party to the ruins of DC. Trimpe provides a fine double-page spread, calling to mind the memorable Silver Age spreads of Jack Kirby:

The fight with the river creature is a fierce one, observed from the shore by a freelance raider named Sabre.

 

 

The issue ends with yet another cliffhanger, as Killraven gets the worst of his encounter with Abraxas, the human squid of the cover  (and  a name undoubtedly inspired by the Santana album of the same name).

The Killraven story in this issue of Amazing Adventures was only 15 pages in length, a telling indication that, by the late fall of 1973, Marvel’s production problems had become critical. The remaining four comic pages of the book are filled out with a story titled "The Man Who Went Too Far!" which, according to the Marvel Wiki entry for this issue, originally appeared in Journey into Unknown Worlds #56 (April 1959).

In Stan Lee’s Soapbox, the Man Himself admits – in his usual corny blather – that things are not well with the company, and a number of ‘secondary character’ titles are being discontinued – ostensibly to give cash-strapped Marvel readers a chance to purchase comics that stress ‘quality over quantity’.

Of course, Lee – ever quick to take credit for characters and stories authored by other Marvel staffers – declines to say who, exactly, was responsible for the state of affairs in which multiple books (including ‘Fantastic Four’ ) were having to include filler material from the company vaults due to over-extended artists and writers.

One of the strangest things about looking through these old comics are the advertisements. I’ve included one for the ‘Record Club of America’.

Far out…!

 

Among the groovy LPs, 8-track cartridges and casette tapes for offer are those by Hurricane Smith, a middle-aged English crooner with a sandpaper voice who had a big hit with ‘Oh Babe, What Would You Say ?’

And there’s also an LP from the Toronto band ‘Edward Bear’, who had a top 40 hit in ’72 – ‘73 with ‘Last Song (I’ll Ever Write for You)'.

And let’s not overlook the soundtrack to the film ‘Godspell’, a single from which, ‘Day by Day’, was in Heavy Rotation on many AM and FM stations throughout ’73 and ’74 !

Book Review: The Tomorrow File

Book Review: 'The Tomorrow File' by Lawrence Sanders

3/5 Stars 
 

Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book ‘Future Shock’, as well as being a bestseller, exerted significant influence on both the intellectual and pop cultures of the US. 

Not surprisingly, many mainstream and SF authors incorporated elements of Toffler’s depiction of the near – future into their work. Lawrence Sanders (1921 – 1998) certainly did so in his 1975 novel ‘The Tomorrow File’; this is the 1976 Berkeley paperback edition.

The book, at 551 pages, is very much a lengthy 70s novel, akin to those produced by James Michener and James Clavell. This is not necessarily a bad thing; unlike many writers nowadays, those authors were quite familiar with the format of the long novel and were reasonably adept at creating and sustaining a prolonged narrative peopled with a large cast of characters.

‘The Tomorrow File’ is set in 1998, by which time the federal government has grown in size and influence to the point where it supervises and regulates practically every aspect of human life. Social concepts regarded with Future Shock-style trepidation in the 70s, such as eugenics, legalized narcotics, and extremely permissive social mores, are taken for granted, as are technological marvels such as supersonic passenger planes, videophones, and synthetic food and drink.

The first-person narrator is Nicholas Bennington Flair, a bureaucrat in the ‘Department of Bliss’ (formerly the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare). Flair is brilliant and ambitious and determined to ruthlessly apply the principles of ‘scientific’ management to the ordering of American society. In this he is ably assisted by his sometime boyfriend and second-in-command, Paul Bumford (wink-wink).

The first 25 pages of the novel are something of a slog as Sanders giddily burdens the reader with a bewildering variety of sci-fi terms, Newspeak, and slang as imagined to be spoken in 1999. Once these terms are familiarized, the storyline can be grasped a little more easily.

Sanders had previously published the techno-heist thriller ‘The Anderson Tapes’ (1970), and the best-selling, 566 pp. detective novel ‘The First Deadly Sin’ (1973). Similarly, ‘File’ is at heart a high-tech detective story in which Nick Flair and his organization work to expose covert power-plays by unscrupulous government personnel.

The novel features plenty of satirical humor, as the narrator relates, in a deliberately deadpan tone of voice, various aspects of 1999 life that readers of 1975 would find outrageous and unsettling. Many of these outrages are extrapolations of the worst excesses of cultural attitudes as laid out in novels such as ‘A Clockwork Orange’; for example, casual sex with both genders is widespread and guilt-free; the best-selling toy in the world is a doll that defecates; enemies of the state are killed not by execution, but by involuntary participation in underground biomedical experiments; and television channels show nothing but pornography (‘The Twenty-Six Best Positions’) to a narcotized audience of viewers.

There are times when the length of ‘The Tomorrow File’ works against it, even though Sanders takes pains to keep the action constantly moving, shuttling in new characters and new challenges for Nick Flair and his team of operatives. However, Sanders tips the ending well before the last chapter, and I suspect the final few sentences of the book will not surprise many readers.

I doubt many contemporary readers, raised on the near-future settings of cyberpunk, will find much that is innovative or stimulating about ‘The Tomorrow File’; in fact, they will probably find the book’s concepts and mordant tone rather dated and obsolete. 

But those older SF fans who grew up during the 70s, and remember the influence of ‘Future Shock’ on that era, may want to give Sanders’s novel a look, if only for nostalgia’s sake.

Book Review: 'Faerie Tale' by Raymond E. Feist

3/5 Stars 

‘Faerie Tale’ was originally published in 1988; this Bantam Spectra paperback (435 pp) was published in 1989 and features a cover illustration by Chris Hopkins.

Phil Hastings is a successful Hollywood screenwriter who decides to move his family: wife Gloria, a former actress; shapely teenage daughter Gabbie; and twin 8 year-old sons Sean and Patrick – to a stately old mansion in rural Western New York. It’s summertime and the living is easy in their new place, which was previously owned by a German immigrant named Herman Kessler.

Before too long, the twins realize that the landscape around the house is peopled (if that’s the right word) by the daoine sídhe (‘deena shee’): the leprechauns and other fairy creatures from Irish mythology. The leprechauns and sprites are harmless, if a bit mischievous. But others of the fairies lurking in the vicinity are more than a little lubricious where Gabbie is concerned, and some are genuinely malevolent. As the summer wears on, the encounters between the Hastings family and the daoine sidhe become more frequent and even hazardous. A friend with some knowledge of the Spirit World, Mark Blackman, becomes involved with the family’s plight and discovers that Herman Kessler was expelled from Germany earlier in the century for dabbling with Forbidden Knowledge….never a good sign.

As the mysteries of the Kessler house and its relation to the advent of the fairies are uncovered, the darker entities inhabiting the surrounding woods become manifest, and the Hastings family finds themselves on the front lines of a renewal of an ancient feud between the daoine sidhe and mankind. It will fall upon the twins Sean and Patrick to confront the evil clans among the fairy folk…on the latter’s home turf.

‘Faerie Tale’ has an interesting premise and stands as one of the forerunner novels in what today is a highly successful subgenre in fantasy writing, the so-called ‘urban’ fantasy, in which the supernatural world regularly intrudes into our own everyday existence.

At times ‘Tale’ is quite engaging and the cast of characters, both human and fairy, is varied and interesting. However, I found that the portrayal of the more humanoid races of the daoine sidhe tended to evoke some eye-rolling on my part; as Feist depicts them, simply being around such creatures too often tends to reduce the adult human characters to quivering, sobbing masses of mingled lust and awe. In the place of a Darby O’Gill – type figure who is adept at dealing with the fairies on their own terms, we are given Barney Doyle, a forlorn, rather hapless figure who mumbles cryptic remarks about the ‘Good People’. Unfortunately for the Hastings family, Barney can drink, and tell some tall tales, but he can’t dance, a fatal weakness when confronting Irish fairies.

With regard to the narrative, at 435 pages the novel is too long and could have been shortened by a hundred pages. The middle section tends to drag, with author Feist teasing the reader with portents of doom and vague hints of menace; some of the sub-plots lurching to fruition at this juncture really don’t add much to the narrative, and could have been excised without penalty. The book’s final 100 pages do impart new momentum to the plot but at times even this section of the book seems a bit padded.

At its heart ‘Faerie Tale’ is really a novel about two children forced to battle the daoine sidhe in order to save themselves (and by extension The World), while their parents, vaguely disturbed by what seem to be childish nightmares and misadventures, stand clueless and obtuse. In my opinion it could have been a very successful Young Adult novel with just some minor changes in content. But adult readers, for whom the book is intended, will find ‘Faerie Tale’ worth a look.

'Slow Death' Comix No. 2 (1970)

Issue 2 (1970) of Last Gasps’s ‘Slow Death’ eco-horror comic states its manifesto clearly on the inside cover page, with the aid of a pollution-spawned version of the ‘host’ from the EC horror comics of the 50s (which were much admired by the underground comix artists).

This issue featured some good stories by Dave Sheriden with ‘The Sex Evulsors of Technicus’; Richard Corben (‘Gore’) with ‘How Howie Made It in the Real World’; and Jim Osborne’s ‘Routine’, which I’ve posted here. Osborne’s distinctive draftsmanship and art style is well displayed here; it’s a shame he dropped out of the comix field in the mid-70s.

 

 

 

 

In one of those bizarre, only- in -the – hippy -era sort of pop culture collisions, Kristen Carpenter, the daughter of Mercury program astronaut Scott Carpenter, wrote in to complain about the unflattering depiction of her father in a strip (evidently titled ‘Ego-Trip on Babylon’, by a Mr Grimshaw) featured in issue 1 of Slow Death.

In his (somewhat stoned-sounding) response, Grimshaw is less than apologetic, as one might expect of an eco-conscious artist on a political mission in those halcyon days of Power to the People…… although in my opinion, since Kristen was a comix reader and thus quite ‘hip’ and ‘groovy’, rather than an ordinary ‘square’ , she should have been given a more welcoming reception.

Book Review: Tomorrow and Beyond

Book Review: 'Tomorrow and Beyond' edited by Ian Summers

4 / 5 Stars

“Tomorrow and Beyond: Masterpieces of Science Fiction Art”, edited by Ian Summers, is a large-format paperback published in 1978 by Workman Publishing. The striking cover art is by David Schleinkofer. 

At the time, it was one of the few books about SF art available in the stores. Its 158 pages, some of which I’ve excerpted here, provide a good overview of art styles prevailing in the 70s for SF, fantasy, and horror paperbacks.

The images are reproduced with pleasing clarity in full color, and images are presented in a format in which many are given a full-page treatment, while others appear as blocks of two to four images on a page. The images are categorized by topic: astronauts, aliens, spaceships, symbolism, supernatural, etc., so there is a varied selection of genres. Many of the artists represented in ‘Tomorrow and Beyond’ will be very familiar to readers of SF during that era: Carl Lundgren, Brad Holland, Paul Lehr, Richard Powers, Boris, and Michael Whelan. There are examples of both realistic and abstract approaches to SF art, and even some sculpture and mixed-media pieces.

PC-based art creation and design software was still another 15 years away when the book was released, so the use of the airbrush was about as high-tech as one could get in the 70s. But there are some well-composed illustrations, rendered with skill and craftsmanship, in these pages.

The book’s main weakness is that the titles and publishing histories of the images are relegated to an Appendix at the back of the book, requiring the reader to do some back-and-forth page-flipping in order to see what book a particular illustration is associated with.

For readers of SF in the 70s, ‘Tomorrow and Beyond’ will be a pleasantly nostalgic trip back to an era when SF was still something of an oddball genre in the publishing industry, and art directors at the publishing houses had greater creative freedom than they perhaps have nowadays. You’re sure to see some illustrations that may have caught your eye on the store shelves way back in ’74 or ’77, and send you to amazon.com or eBay to look up that forgotten paperback...........

Book Review: The Farthest Reaches

Book Review: 'The Farthest Reaches', edited by Joseph Elder

2 / 5 Stars

‘The Farthest Reaches’ (Pocket Books, 1968) is a paperback reprint of a hardbound anthology first published in 1967. Like Ellison’s ‘Dangerous Visions’, it’s an early effort at showcasing previously unpublished stories with a New Wave SF flavor. 

The cover illustration echoes the film ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, with its ‘trippy’ multicolored blurs speeding past a determined-looking astronaut.

The roundup on the stories:

‘The Worm That Flies’, Brian Aldiss: In the far future, on a desolate planet gripped by entropy, mutated humans struggle with existential angst. I groaned when I saw the words ‘cthonian’ and ‘paraesthesia’ within the first page; a clear signal that Aldiss was yet again trying to write a Speculative Fiction tale designed to emulate his hero, J. G. Ballard. Like all of Aldiss’s efforts in this vein, the story is a dud.

‘Kyrie’, Poul Anderson: one of the more imaginative ‘hard’ SF stories in the collection. A pair of telepaths, communicating over distance by purely mental means, join a starship’s survey team for a potentially hazardous investigation of a black hole.

‘Tomorrow Is A Million Years’, J. G. Ballard: a genuine New Wave tale with its depiction of an existential, sand-covered planet, and a pair of settlers haunted by atavistic visions of ancient seafarers. But unlike so many of his imitators, Ballard takes pains to provide the reader with a functioning plot and a believable resolution, rather than displaying artsy writing for its own sake.

‘Pond Water’, John Brunner: an android assumes control of humanity and institutes a despotic reign. More of a fable than SF, this story is one of Brunner’s less inspired efforts.

‘The Dance of the Changer and the Three’, Terry Carr: on a gas-giant planet, energy-based life forms do seemingly religious things, while a human observer provides commentary. Carr’s effort at a New Wave approach to writing is weak and unmemorable.

‘Crusade’, Arthur C. Clarke: another hard SF tale, in which a silicon-based life form dispatches emissaries throughout the galaxy. The ‘sci-fi’ wording of the tale will probably strike modern readers as unsophisticated, even a bit corny.

‘Ranging’, John Jakes: a straightforward tale of youthful rebellion among the pilots of deep-space probes. The story certainly had resonance for readers back in the late 60s.

‘Mind Out of Time’, Keith Laumer: two astronauts embark on a risky journey in the first warp-drive spacecraft. Entertaining, if not remarkably original.

‘The Inspector’, James McKimmey: a team of Federation investigators examines the unfortunate death of a hero astronaut while he was in orbit around the planet ‘Tnp’. A rather pedestrian tale about Questioning Youth, the expectations of elders, and Need to Be Free.

‘To the Dark Star’, Robert Silverberg: squabbling crewmembers are dispatched on a hazardous mission to record the formation of a black hole.

‘A Night in Elf Hill’, by Norman Spinrad: on the remote backwater planet of Mindalla, a veteran spacer encounters a strange alien artifact.

‘Sulwen’s Planet’, by Jack Vance: feuding linguists spar over the recovery of data from crashed alien spaceships.

All in all, ‘Reaches’ is a modest compilation of New Wave SF tales, better in some ways than ‘Dangerous Visions’, but also lacking with regard to providing real gems. Those readers keen to expand their collection of stories from the late 60s may want to keep an eye out for it.

When a Fanboy Goes Too Far No. 3

When A Fanboy Goes Too Far (third in a series)

Jedi church founder thrown out of Tesco for refusing to remove his hood was left 'emotionally humiliated'

Book Review: Greyhawk Adventures

Book Review: 'Greyhawk Adventures: Saga of Old City' by Gary Gygax 3 / 5 Stars

‘Saga of Old City’ (352 pp.) was published in October, 1985, and features cover artwork by Clyde Caldwell. It's the first volume in the ‘Gord of Greyhawk’ D & D series; the succeeding volume was ‘Artifact of Evil’ (1986). These novels focus on the adventures of Gord of Greyhawk, a thief and soldier of fortune.

Somewhat confusingly, following the publication of these novels Gygax switched publishers, so while TSR issued further volumes in the late 80s in the ‘Greyhawk’ series, many authored by Rose Estes, Gord was not a central character in these novels.

Instead, Gygax continued the ‘Gord the Rogue’ adventures under the Ace Books imprint: ‘City of Hawks’ (1987), ‘Night Arrant’ (1987), ‘Sea of Death’ (1987) , ‘Come Endless Darkness’ (1988) and ‘Dance of Demons’ (1988). If the mixed reviews posted at amazon.com are any guide, the ‘Gord the Rogue’ series eventually began to run out of steam creatively (not surprising in light of Gygax’s frenetic publishing schedule).

In ‘Saga of Old City’ we are introduced to Gord when he is a malnourished child, eking out a precarious living as an orphan in the slum quarter. The squalor and misery of his circumstances are communicated with dark humor.

Gord winds up in the employ of the Lord of the Beggar Guild, and becomes an accomplished thief, and street warfare strategist, by his teenaged years. When war breaks out between the Thieves Guild and the Beggar Guild, Gord is able to turn the situation to his advantage. Gord emerges as the victor of sorts, and embarks on a life of adventure and intrigue in the lands surrounding Greyhawk. His boon companions eventually include a druid named Curly and a barbarian named Chert; together, the trio will investigate a mysterious burial ground high in the mountains, where demons are rumored to guard a treasure of fabulous proportions…...

‘Saga’ is a fast-moving book, and I was, on the whole, pleasantly surprised by Gygax’s writing. The narrative is direct and unencumbered by elaborate literary stylings; Gygax understands that his D & D audience wants sword and sorcery action, and not the angst-riddled psychodrama of, for example, a ‘Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever’ novel.

Gord regularly finds himself in one tense situation after another, and he has a habit of fighting his way out of trouble rather than resorting to negotiations. The storyline switches locales with frequency, and new dangers are introduced on a continuous basis: bandits, monsters, and vengeful magistrates are all in pursuit of Gord at one time or another.

The book contains a number of pleasing gray-scale illustrations by well-known ‘chain mail bikini-wearing pinup girl’ artist Clyde Caldwell.

Gygax stuffs more action into 30 pages of text than most contemporary fantasy authors do in 100 pages. Needless to say, readers looking for in-depth characterization and atmosphere in their fantasy novels will probably be unfulfilled by ‘Saga’. However, those seeking an alternative to the labored, meticulous narratives that constitute much of the epic fantasy novels currently on store shelves will be pleased with ‘Saga’.