Book Review: 'World's Best Science Fiction 1970' by Donald A. Wolheim and Terry Carr


2 / 5 Stars

‘The World’s Best Science Fiction 1970’ (Ace Books, 1970, 349 pp) is edited by Donald Wollheim and Terry Carr, and features a cover with an abstract design by John Schoenherr superimposed on a rather garish, but attention-getting, pink color scheme. There are interior line drawings by Jack Gaughan. 

All of the stories in this chunky (349 pp., 9 pt type) anthology were published in 1969, many in magazines such as ‘Analog’, ‘Galaxy’, and ‘Fantasy and Science Fiction’.

As one might expect for stories seeing print in the late 60s, the influence of the New Wave movement is strong. The majority of the stories eschew ‘traditional’ SF topics, and instead focus on issues of psychology, anthropology, and sociology, with attendant focus on characterization and mood, rather than descriptive passages centered on technology or hard science. Most of the authors display a conscious effort to adopt a New Wave diction, using figurative, often obtuse, prose styles. Sometimes, this works, but more often, it doesn’t.

My capsule reviews of the contents:

Richard Wilson’s ‘A Man Spekith’: the Last Man on Earth is a hippy DJ aboard a space station. A boring tale that hasn’t aged well.

‘After the Myths Went Home’ by Robert Silverberg: less SF than mythic-inspired ‘speculative fiction’, but the ending gives the story enough of a jolt to be rewarding.

‘Death by Ecstasy’, by Larry Niven: a ponderous effort to meld a police procedural with SF elements. Too long and too dull.

Alexei Panshin’s ‘One Sunday in Neptune’: disaffected spacemen decide to explore Neptune. Tries to say something Profound about the Human Condition, but ends up being Boring.

‘For the Sake of Grace’, by Suzette Haden Elgin: one of the better stories in the anthology; on a planet where women are subjected to appalling social customs, a befuddled patriarch confronts a rebellious daughter. The references to Islam are unsubtle and effective.

James Tiptree, Jr, ‘Your Haploid Heart’: some knowledge of High School genetics required; but in essence a competent adventure story dealing with alien societies, strange approaches to reproduction, and racial conflict.

‘Therapy 2000’ by Keith Roberts: in a near-future, overcrowded society, a man is slowly going insane due to the constant bombardment of noise. The prose is too dense, and the story too slow-moving, to be very memorable.

‘Sixth Sense’ by Michael Coney: in a near-future world in which everyone is telepathic, a bed and breakfast owner on the English coast hosts bickering couples. Well written, although the SF content is light.

Harlan Ellison’s ‘A Boy and His Dog’: still politically incorrect, still mordantly amusing, 40 years after first seeing print.

‘And So Say All of Us’, by Bruce McAllister: A schizophrenic displays esp powers that catch the interest of the Defense Department. A pedestrian story.

‘Shadow Ship’ by Fritz Lieber: an amnesiac, elderly bartender prone to hallucinations encounters intrigue aboard a decrepit spaceship peopled by drug addicts. Lieber’s earnest effort to write prose that’s very arty, and very ‘New Wave’, is in reality clumsy and obtuse.

Ursula LeGuin contributes ‘Nine Lives’, about two irascible miners on an earthquake-prone planet who discover their new work mates are a ‘clone’ consisting of five males and five females. LeGuin’s intent is to explore the psychology of alienation, very New Wave-y; as a straightforward SF tale, the story does work.

The concluding entry is Norman Spinrad’s much-anthologized ‘The Big Flash’, which cynically mixes atom bombs, group psychology, and the power of rock music. Of all the entries, it best represents the New Wave ethos, without sliding too far into self-indulgence or excessive artiness.

Taken all in all, ‘World’s Best SF 1970’ displays the effects of the New Wave movement on the genre and its more salient authors. Some coped with the changes to writing and publishing brought by the New Wave era better than others. There are only three or four genuinely notable stories in this anthology, so I really can’t recommend it, save to those readers with a particular interest in late 60s SF.

Book Review: 'The Hunters' by Burt Wetanson and Thomas Hoobler
3/5 Stars

‘The Hunters’ was first published in 1978; this Playboy paperback edition (223 pp.) was issued in 1979. The cover painting, evoking the box-office hit ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, is by V. Segrelles.

In the small town of Bear Paw, Montana, a strange couple appear in town one day and give a 'Saucer Cult' presentation to skeptical townspeople: a journey to the stars, true enlightenment, and spiritual fulfillment, are theirs for the taking. Many townspeople are deeply moved by the presentation and the next morning, they gather in the town square in preparation for the Journey. An unusual silver bus arrives, and the couple welcome the earthlings aboard. The bus moves smoothly and silently out into the countryside, ultimately arriving at the ruins of a ghost town from the 19^th century. The passengers debark, climb to the top of a nearby hill, and witness an enormous flying saucer.

The people from Bear Paw are amazed and awed by this display of technology and when the vessel lands, they prepare to board, singing hosanahs to the Star People. But it suddenly becomes unpleasantly clear that the aliens aboard the saucer are not benevolent. In fact, they are looking forward to sport….of the hunting kind. And the townspeople of Bear Paw are their quarry.

‘The Hunters’ is a pulp SF novel that was plainly written to cash in on the marketing excitement of ‘Close Encounters’ and the attendant UFO craze of the late 70s, as well as SF thrillers like ‘Alien’. The movie ‘Predator’ was still 9 years in the future, and it’s unclear if ‘Hunters’ influenced Jim and John Thomas, the screenwriters of Predator. Unlike the alien featured in Predator, in ‘Hunters’ the aliens are more humanoid in appearance and possess unique personalities; they also lack the impressive firepower and cloaking technology of the Predator. But they nonetheless remain formidable adversaries.

The townspeople are the usual motley collection of stereotyped individuals. We have some Commune-derived hippies; a quarreling married couple; an Indian couple fond of giving portentous, ‘Black Elk Speaks’ – style speeches to the unworthy Palefaces; a family of crazed Christian fundamentalists; the town drunk; and BadAzz Mofo Sam Tolliver, who can’t pass up a chance to mess with Whitey whenever there’s a lull in the action.

Authors Wetanson and Hoobler have a tendency to write lame passages of dialogue, much of it dealing with homespun philosophy and psychodrama, for the townspeople to engage in at inopportune times. I often found myself exasperated by the witless nature of some of the characters. But the encounters between human prey and alien hunter come with enough frequency and bloodshed to move the story along at a good clip despite these literary drawbacks. In its last 20 pages the narrative is genuinely engrossing, and the authors refrain from tipping their hands in terms of indicating who will ultimately triumph.

Readers interested in an entertaining, if not particularly original, SF adventure may want to give this book a try.

Book Review: 'Omni's Screen Flights, Screen Fantasies' by Danny Peary

3/5 Stars

Omni magazine was started in 1978 by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. As a ‘slick’ magazine devoted to both SF and science reporting, the magazine was an instant success, attracting larger advertisers that may have been hesitant to buy ad space in Penthouse. Omni paid high rates for its fiction, and a number of critically acclaimed pieces appeared in its pages.

‘Omni’s Screen Flights, Screen Fantasies’, edited by Danny Peary, was published in 1984, at the high point of Omni’s success. It’s a compilation of essays and interviews dealing with SF cinema. I’m not sure if any or all of the essays originally appeared in the pages of Omni, or if they were specially commissioned for this book.

‘Screen Flights, Screen Fantasies’ is divided into three parts: ‘Perspectives’, ‘Journeys into the Future’, and ‘The Creators’. There is an introduction by Harlan Ellison. The book is heavily illustrated with b & w stills and has two sections of color plates, which feature stills, posters, and concept art.

Most of the 41 essays or interviews are well-written and interesting. They cover SF cinema from the early, early days- there is an interview with Buster Crabbe about his work in the ‘Buck Rogers’ serials of the 30s – to 1982 and ‘Blade Runner’. There are interviews with Sigourney Weaver, Leonard Nimoy, Michael Crichton, and Ridley Scott, as well as essays by well-known SF authors such as Harry Harrison, Frederik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, and Robert Sheckley. In general, the questions asked of the interviewees are intelligent, well – presented, and devoid of fanboy excess.

It’s possible to learn some little-known tidbits about the making of many famous SF films, such as in Harrison’s essay ‘A Cannibalized Novel Becomes Soylent Green’ in which he reveals that he was a pain in the ass on the set of the movie, handing out copies of his novel ‘Make Room ! Make Room !’ to cast and crew, and urging the producers to make various changes to the film (Harrison was contractually prohibited from making changes to the script, which he had not written). Of course, to Harrison’s regret the ending of the film took an illogical detour from his novel, but it’s a testament to the willingness of the film cast and crew to listen to his suggestions, that the film nonetheless remained a good piece of story-telling.

‘Screen Flights’ is understandably dated, in that the coverage ends ca. 1982 - 1983, but those interested in SF films of the 60s, 70s, and early 80s may want to pick it up.

Book Review: 'The Night-Comers' by Eric Ambler

5/5 Stars

While I remember seeing novels by Eric Ambler on the shelves of libraries during the 60s and 70s I never really paid them much attention, thinking that Ambler was something of a poor-man’s Alistair MacLean or Len Deighton. But I read a recent essay by Theodore Dalrymple in which he praises Ambler for his fiction, and ‘The Night-Comers’ in particular:

The book I wanted was a first edition, not much sought after I should imagine, of a novel by Eric Ambler, the English thriller-writer now nearly, though undeservedly, forgotten, at any rate by people younger than fifty. He was a master of prose, and his writing is worthy of close study by aspiring writers. He could convey the atmosphere of an alien land of which the reader knew nothing in simple, but accurate, euphonious and rhythmically beautiful language. Although – one is tempted these days to say because – he had not attended university, his work is also intellectually astute.

So I thought I would give the book a try:

Steve Fraser is a British engineer assigned to assist with the construction of a dam in the island of Sunda, one of the many in the Indonesian archipelago. As the novel opens, Fraser is on his way to the major Sundan city of Selampang, where he will make arrangements for air travel to Jakarta and from there, back home to England.

The novel takes place in the early 50s, after the Indonesian region has won its independence from the Dutch. The ‘Year of Living Dangerously’ and the sanguinary antics of Suharto and Sukarno are still nearly a decade off, but the political situation in Sunda is hardly stable. A warlord named Sanusi has split with the ruling party of President Nasjah, and set up his own ‘revolutionary’ government inland. It appears that the Nasjah government is incapable of eliminating Sanusi, and an uneasy balance of power is being maintained between the former ‘freedom fighters’. The island of Sunda may seem placid on the surface, but violence and anarchy lurk just below the seemingly normal everyday activities of the populace.

En route to Selampang, Fraser befriends an Australian pilot named Jebb, who offers his apartment for Fraser’s use. Jebb also introduces Fraser to a young Eurasian woman named Rosalie, who works as a ‘hostess’ at a local club. Fraser gets set to enjoy what looks at first glance like a pleasant few days in Selampang. But he hasn’t counted on matters coming to a head between Sanusi, the rebellious commander, and the Nasjah government. And the building where Fraser is staying happens to be the first target for any coup attempt….

‘The Night-Comers’ is a very well-written suspense novel that also says some interesting things about the chaotic world of post-colonialism ca. the early 1950s. The mentality of erstwhile primitive people who suddenly find themselves confronted with the task of governing a nation of differing ethnic and regional groups is communicated with a clarity that could be well studied by legions of doctoral students, and foreign affairs professors, laboring on their own erudite analyses of Third World Liberation:

The first hint of trouble came three days later from the construction department. Captain Emas had attacked and badly beaten-up one of the men working in number three bay of the power house. Questioned about the incident, Captain Emas stated that the man had been insufficiently respectful. The following week two more men were beaten-up by Captain Emas for the same reason. The truth emerged gradually. It appeared that Captain Emas was organizing a construction workers’ union, and that the men who had been beaten-up had shown a disrespectful reluctance to pay dues. The secretary and treasurer of the union was Captain Emas.

***

Sundanese officials are peculiarly difficult to deal with, particularly if you are an English-speaking European. The first thing you have to realise is that, although they look very spruce and alert and although their shirt pockets glitter with rows of fancy ball-point pens, they have only the haziest notion of their duties.

***

“…I know these people. Mostly they are quiet and gentle. In the kampongs you will see a boy of twelve run to his mother and suck her breast when he is frightened or hurt. They smile a lot and laugh and seem happy, though they are also sad and afraid. But some are like those madmen nobody knows about, who have devils inside them waiting. And when there are guns to fire and people to kill, the devils come out. I have seen it.”

***

Of course, in 1956 Ambler had no idea that just nine years later, in 1965-1966, more than 500,000 Indonesians would die in a brutal civil war between the Sukarno government and the Indonesian Communist Party. But he clearly relayed in his fiction a belief that the copious bloodshed associated with the Indonesian war for Independence against the Dutch was not an end, but rather a beginning, of third world revolutionary mayhem. And that Islam, and the desire for an Islamic state, would be a catalyst for violence.

I recommend ‘Night-Comers’ to anyone who is looking for a literate adventure novel, and I’m going to be keeping an eye out for further writings by Eric Ambler.

'Heavy Metal' magazine: May 1979

This month’s cover is ‘The Wizard of Anharitte’ by Peter Andrew Jones, and the back cover is ‘Centaur’s Idol’ by Clyde Caldwell.

I’ve scanned two shorter entries (that hopefully won’t imperil my Blog’s ‘PG’ rating with Google):

One entry is ‘Night Angel’, by Paul Abrams, definitely a trippy ‘stoner’ tale with some moody, effective artwork.

The other entry is one of Philippe Druillet’s occasional non- Lone Sloan pieces to show up in Metal Hurlant, ‘Dancin’ Ball’. (I’m not sure how well the thin-line, rather spidery pen-and-ink artwork will appear onscreen even with a 200 dpi scan, but I want the pages to load in a reasonable length of time). ‘Ball’ is a very cool take on futuristic bikers and wanton violence with a cynical twist of an ending.

Book Review: The Swarm

Book Review: 'The Swarm' by Arthur Herzog
5 / 5 Stars

Arthur Herzog (1927 - 2010) was a prolific author of nonfiction and fiction books from the mid- 1960s on into the late 2000s. His nonfiction works included political and social analyses, as well as 'true crime' forays. His fiction works comprised social satires, and novels featuring mixtures of the science fiction and thriller genres (in a manner akin to the novels of Michael Crichton). 

Baby Boomers likely remember Herzog's Signet paperbacks 'Earthsound' and 'Heat' from the store shelves of the 1970s. His novel, 'Orca' (1977), was made into a feature film, as was 'The Swarm'. Many of the novels and short story collections issued in the later years of his career currently are available as eBooks and Print on Demand titles.

During the early 70s there was considerable alarm (or, depending on how one looks at it, sensationalizing) in the mass media over the forthcoming advent of ‘Africanized’ or ‘killer’ honeybees to the US. This strain of bees had been introduced to Brazil in 1957 and had displaced the native bee population en route to expanding over much of that country. Throughout the succeeding decades the Africans had advanced northwards to occupy Central America, and it appeared that before the 70s ended, the bees likely were to colonize the southern US.

The Africans are better at honey production than native bees, which pleases beekeepers; however, the Africans are also more aggressive in defending their hive and thus more likely to sting (hence the nickname ‘killer’ bees).

‘The Swarm’, which takes as its premise a catastrophic invasion of the US by killer bees, was therefore very timely when it appeared in hard cover in 1974. This Signet paperback edition was published in 1975; the cover features an ominous illustration of bees with glaring yellow eyes and protruding stingers (the artist is uncredited).

‘The Swarm’ appears to have been author Herzog’s first fiction book, and he wisely chose to emulate Crichton's approach towards writing it by adopting a detached, documentary-like prose style and leavening the text with graphs, instrument readouts, computer-drawn maps, and other realistic-looking, ‘scientific’ imagery. The book takes place entirely in the present tense; there few flashback sequences; extended monologues and soliloquies are absent; and the narrative is made to unfold in an unadorned and fast-paced manner.

The hero of the story is an environmental scientist in Washington DC named John Wood, who is the first to recognize that a report of a fatal bee attack in upstate New York is something out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, Wood is unsuccessful in getting his administrators at the National Academy of Sciences to share his trepidation. It’s only when further bee attack reports appear in the media that Wood is allowed to carry out a deeper investigation, which reveals that African bees have in fact colonized the US. 

Following the revelation of the African presence, it’s a race between Wood and his colleagues to come up with strategies to limit the spread of the bees before they expand their range from their isolated bastions in the rural areas to the nation at large. As with Crichton’s ‘Wildfire’ program in ‘The Andromeda Strain’, the scientists in ‘The Swarm’ set up their own research facility in a covert government installation, and much of the narrative in the novel’s middle sections revolves around the researching of methods to combat the bees. 

The situation becomes critical when the bees begin to reproduce at an accelerated rate, and the prospect of enormous swarms of bees emerging from the woods to invade the cities becomes disturbingly real. I won’t give away any spoilers, but it’s clear that the battle between Man and Bee will be a take-no-prisoners affair, and victory over the insects is by no means certain….

‘The Swarm’ is a well-written SF thriller that, like Crichton’s work, both informs and entertains the reader. The underpinning science is stretched a bit for dramatic purposes, but never becomes too contrived or otherworldly. The narratives moves quickly, with chapters short and to the point; remarks on ecological and environmental issues are inserted when relevant, but never subject the reader to tedious hectoring or preaching. There also are passages of dark humor, which I thought were a nice touch.

As for the African / Africanized bees, well, they now are well established in the Southern U.S. and they are indeed stinging people and their pets. Best then to read 'The Swarm' as a worst-case scenario..................so far, that is............?! 

Population Board game 1971

'Population' board game
Urban Systems, Inc., 1971

So, it’s a rainy Autumn night late in 1971. There’s nothing much on the TV, your Carole King ‘Tapestry’ LP record has been played to death, and you’re a bit downhearted after reading, say, Paul Ehrlich’s paperback The Population Bomb. 

What do you do for fun ? Well, you can pull out the board game ‘Population’ and play out a grim scenario of overpopulation and eco-catastrophe in the comfort of your living room !

There’s a lengthy review of the game, as well as some interesting information about the company that designed and sold it, Urban Systems, posted at BoardGameGeek.com. So I won’t go into too much detail over the game. It’s a great piece of early 70’s techno-design, with its futuristic ‘checkbook’ font, and very 'hip' chiaroscuro-inspired cover illustration. 

‘Population’ is an entertaining example at how the over-riding eco-concern of the day was co-opted by the popular culture, but in a rather engaging, and even cerebral, manner.

Book Review: Slow Fall to Dawn

Book Review: 'Slow Fall to Dawn' by Stephen Leigh

3 / 5 Stars

‘Slow Fall to Dawn’ (1981; 165 pp) is the first book in the so-called ‘Neweden’ trilogy by author Stephen Leigh. The other volumes are ‘Dance of the Hag’ (1983) and ‘A Quiet of Stone' (1984). The paperback version of ‘Dawn’ features an artistic picture of two men surveying the fossil skeleton of an extinct animal (but unfortunately the artist is uncredited).

‘Dawn’ takes place on the backwater planet of Neweden, whose sociopolitical structure revolves around an elaborate guild system, representatives of which vie for power in an Assembly ruled by a ‘Li-Gallant’ named Vingi . While the planet has access to high technology items, such as vibro blades, laser pistols, force fields, and anti-grav, it is shabby and quasi-medieval in character, with everyone wearing cloaks, making do with humble buildings constructed of natural materials, and negotiating cramped, trash-strewn cities on foot rather than by personal aircar or hovercraft.

Rather than experience the disruptive effects of war or criminal enterprise, the guilds have agreed to settle serious disputes by use of an assassin guild called the Hoorka. Once a contract has been made, the victim is notified and given 12 hours to evade the assassins; if he or she survives until the following dawn, they are granted their life. About 15 % of the intended victims survive a Hoorka contract, so the odds are in the assassin guild’s favor. Only successful assassinations result in public disclosure of the contractor.

The main character in the novel is the Gyll the Thane, the leader of the Hoorka, a middle-aged man who founded the guild and has steered it into a position of some influence in the politics of Neweden. As the story opens a duo of Hoorka fail to kill their target, a guild chief named Gunnar. The survival of Gunnar necessarily leads to tension with the man who issued the contract for his extirpation: Li-Gallant Vingi. The resultant narrative is mainly focused on the various intrigues and machinations of the Hoorka, their disgruntled client Vingi, and the director of a galactic Federation outpost on Neweden, Dame d’Embry, who has her own reasons for wanting to see the Hoorka gain access to contracts elsewhere in the Federation.

A major sub-plot deals with the Thane’s confrontations with Aldhelm, his protégé, over the future of the Hoorka; as age grips the Thane he becomes less certain of his abilities to lead the guild, but is Aldhelm the best choice for a successor ?

The setting of a senescent world gripped by antiquated politics and religious beliefs, with technology serving as an uneasy accessory to relations with a distant, unsympathetic Federation, readily calls to mind the novels of Jack Vance. This is not a bad thing. Author Leigh writes with an ornate, but very readable, style, and while the book doesn’t possess a particularly action-filled narrative, enough things keep unfolding over its brief course so as to hold the reader’s attention. In this regard ‘Dawn’ offers a better read than many contemporary SF novels twice its length. I finished the book curious to move on to the second volume of the trilogy.

The Checkered Demon No. 3

The Checkered Demon (in Space; No. 3, 1979)

I picked up this copy of The Checkered Demon from ‘Charms Boutique’ in upstate New York in the early 80s. Back then ‘underground’ comix (a variant spelling of ‘comics’) were still regarded as clandestine literature, and you found them on the racks at ‘head shops’ that sold hippie clothes, incense, and ‘paraphernalia’ (i.e., pipes, bongs, and roaches). Interestingly, ‘Heavy Metal’, the closest kin to the comix, didn’t appear in these shops; since it was a ‘slick’ magazine published by the National Lampoon, it was eligible for shelf space among other magazines in more respectable retail outlets.

Steve Clay Wilson (b. 1941) was unique among the underground cartoonists for his intricate drawings and perverted, ultraviolent imagery. Most of his work provoked considerable ire even from those sympathetic to the underground comix scene. Sadly, in November 2008 Wilson suffered a serious head injury through circumstances unknown and is undergoing a lengthy rehabilitation.

Wilson’s favorite character was the Checkered Demon, who usually encountered pirates, lesbians, and aliens in his sanguinary travels. This particular issue No. 3 (it lacks a formal title) was first published in 1979 and sees our hero having all sorts of crazy adventures in outer space. While the front and back covers are reasonably ‘safe’ to post online, it’s difficult to find more than a few interior pages that I can post without earning an ‘Adult Content’ warning from Google Blogger….so, the pages I have posted are PG-13. However, they display Wilson’s peculiar genius to good effect. Along with the Demon himself, the strips feature recurring characters ‘Star-Eyed Stella’ and ‘Ruby the Dyke’.

Book Review: The Bridge

Book Review: 'The Bridge' by D. Keith Mano

2 / 5 Stars
 
‘The Bridge’ was published in hard cover in 1973; this Signet paperback (192 pp) appeared in 1974. It has a luminous green-yellow cover painting (the artist is unfortunately uncredited), a somewhat unusual color scheme (at the time, and even today, paperback marketing personnel consider green to be a ‘slow-selling’ color).

The novel opens with a Prologue set in a near-future USA, with a large armada of people driving dilapidated automobiles to a large religious festival in the New York City region called the ‘Feast of the Eater’. The Feast celebrates a rather eccentric religious doctrine founded by one Dominick Priest, who lived nearly a hundred years ago. It is apparent that the nation is recovering from something called the ‘Age of Ecology’, in which technology and civilization were stymied, if not outlawed; Priest appears to have been instrumental in the downfall of this Age, and in ushering in a new attitude that rejects in favor of eco-humanism.

The novel’s main narrative then commences:

It’s New York City, July, 2035. The United States (and, presumably, the rest of the world) has collapsed due to the coming of the Age of Ecology, and its society is in the grip of Jainism run amok. Mankind is considered a foul disease, a infection loose in the Ecosystem. Any human interference with nature is strictly forbidden. No animal can be killed, no trees chopped down, no lawn mowed, and even mosquitoes must be allowed to feed till repletion if one is not fortunate enough to be wearing a repelling ‘insect suit’. People must drink a synthetic, watery nourishment called the ‘E-diet’, since the consumption of other living things is a moral outrage. One of purposes of the E-diet is the cessation of urination or defecation, acts which pollute the earth with products of Man.

Even breathing is regulated, as it can result in the death of inhaled bacteria, fungi, and viruses; people are forced to wear filter masks and communicate by sign language, since speech is a form of noise pollution.

Dominick Priest is a 40 year-old rebel who remembers the good life he had a child, before the eco-maniacs assumed power. Imprisoned in the ruined grounds of Yankee Stadium for threatening a Guardsman, Priest and his fellow inmates learn they are being freed. However, their freedom is perverse, in that the ruling power has decreed that all inhabitants of the US are to be given cyanide pills and ordered to commit suicide by July 20.

Priest is determined to not only defy the suicide order, but to journey from the crumbling, overgrown ruins of the city to the upstate town of New Loch where he was raised and where, he hopes, his wife Mary and his infant child await his return.

'The Bridge' chronicles Priest’s adventures as he confronts a disintegrating civilization overgrown with vegetation, wild animals, hostile Guardsmen, and swarms of voracious insects. On his trek he encounters people engaged in nihilistic acts of violence and debauchery. Priest is hardly a hero in the traditional sense; he is emaciated, sickly, and partially deranged by the narcotic contained in the E diet (for purposes of maintaining a tractable society). Will Priest succeed in his quest ? How will his experiences lead him to become the leader of the new world order ?

D. Keith Mano had a buzz around him in the early 70s, publishing a number of novels, many available at amazon.com and other used book retailers. Most of his novels dealt with themes of religion, and the conflicts of Believers with increasingly secular, agnostic societies. ‘The Bridge’ is certainly tailored as a satirical examination of eco-worship gone out of control, as well as positing how future Christianity might mold itself in the aftermath of an eco-catastrophe.

Unfortunately, Mano’s writing gets in the way of his interesting premise. Practically every third sentence is larded with similes and metaphors and other instances of overly purpled prose:

Sunlight slanted across the windshield, brushed its tawny film of dust, and made opaqueness.

The decks of the huge stadium hung slack-jawed, astonished.

In those days Helga Priest had been a burly woman, chestnut braids spiraled on her head, the bit of a wide, dull drill.

Eighteen-inch toadstools squatted, boles muscular as hurdler’s calves, caps canted, rouged at the center.

The barn had burned. Its silo seemed a lit flare. Hot gases had accumulated there. The hemisphere cap was shredded; in flame shapes it held an image of the explosion. Sebastian Priest’s house had caught. The roof had been trepanned by fire, then doused by sudden rain; black soot stalactites oozed down the walls.

I’m willing to tolerate a highly figurative writing style in small doses – such as in short stories – but subjecting a reader to a novel’s length of this stuff is punishing.

There is a good adventure novel at the heart of 'The Bridge'; but the reader must work hard to find it under the layers of turgid prose.

Book Review: The Prometheus Crisis

Book Review: 'The Prometheus Crisis' by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson
(Remembering Three Mile Island: 30 years later)
4/5 Stars

Thomas Scortia and Frank Robinson were established fiction writers throughout the 70s, particularly in the SF and thriller genres, and collaborated on a number of bestsellers, including ‘The Glass Inferno’ (1974) (fire in a high-rise building); ‘The Prometheus Crisis’ (1975) (nuke plant meltdown); ‘The Nightmare Factor’ (1978) (disease on the loose); and ‘The Gold Crew’ (1980) (nuclear missile sub psychodrama).

‘The Prometheus Crisis’ was arguably the first widely-read novel since Lester del Rey’s ‘Nerves’ (1956) to address the issue of a disastrous accident at a nuclear power plant. The novel may have been influential in the creation of the 1979 film The China Syndrome, much as ‘The Glass Inferno’ led to the 1974 box office hit The Towering Inferno.

My copy of ‘Crisis’ is an August 1976 Bantam paperback with a double-page cover in which the first cover page features a cut-out to provide a peek at the second cover page illustration, a printing scheme often used for high profile releases at the time. The interior cover painting is certainly luridly effective, depicting as it does a stream of people fleeing a burning nuclear installation, but the artist is (unfortunately) uncredited.

The nuclear plant in question is the Prometheus four-reactor facility located in the fictional California seacoast town of Cardenas. As the story opens, the facility’s manager, a square-jawed engineer named Greg Parks, is doubtful that the plant is ready for safe operation, and his assistant, Bernard Lerner, agrees. However, Western Gas and Electric, the electrical consortium responsible for funding the plant’s construction, is anxious to bring it on line, particularly as the President will showcase the use of nuclear power as an answer to the Energy Crisis. For the book’s first half, the plot revolves around the conflict between Parks and the Western Gas higher-ups over whether Prometheus can be brought ‘on stream’.

There are two subplots that also take share space with the main narrative. One is a 70s Disaster Novel staple: romantic tension between nurse Karen Gruen, a Willowy Brunette, and engineers Parks and Lerner, who are vying in their own uniquely manly ways for her affections. The other subplot deals with a murder of the local physician, its relevance to the Prometheus facility, and the search for whodunit. 

These subplots are the book’s only real weaknesses, as in my opinion they don’t do much other than pad out the novel’s length. Things can seem more than a little contrived when, in the midst of some calamity, the narrative takes a detour to give Parks and Lerner a chance for some verbal fencing over Nurse Karen’s affections.

Indeed, the real disaster action doesn’t take place until almost half-way through the book, as – in the style of 70s thrillers – the authors spend the first half of their novel in taking a deliberate approach to fleshing out their characters and the setting, presumably with a ready eye towards a screenplay for a 2 ½ hour feature film. 

Once things do get into a 70s Disaster Groove (I’m not disclosing any spoilers to say that things go badly wrong at the Prometheus facility and Southern California confronts a destructive cloud of radiation), the narrative becomes genuinely engaging and readers will be turning the pages as they would for any well-written thriller. 

It’s clear from the novel’s first page that there will be a disaster; what will keep the reader engrossed is the fate of the characters and the unfolding of the catastrophe (‘who will survive, and what will be left of them ?!’).

Scortia and Robinson plainly did their homework and the machinations that lead to the Crisis and its aftermath are well within the grounds of reality. The efforts of the plant personnel and the federal government to cope with a nuclear catastrophe are believable, without straying into hyperbole or exaggeration. While overly technical expositions into engineering and physics are avoided, the authors provide enough background material on the principles of nuclear fission and reactor design to enable the reader to understand the hows and whys of the forthcoming disaster. 

The authors also show considerable skill in creating a large cast of main, and supporting, players and letting the narrative deal with their fates as events unfold, without shifting too much attention away from the crisis at the center of the novel.

Today, some 34 years after it was first published, ‘The Prometheus Crisis’ remains one of the best fictional accounts of a nuclear disaster.

'Heavy Metal' magazine April 1979

This April 1979 issue of ‘Heavy Metal’ is noteworthy for featuring a preview of the Fox SF-horror blockbuster ‘Alien’. The film, which had a budget of close to $ 10 million ( a lot of money back in 1979) was due in theatres in early Summer. 20^th Century Fox was obviously hoping to cash in on the momentum generated by ‘Star Wars’, ‘Superman’, and other SF films of the past two years that had yielded unprecedented box-office receipts.

Being chosen to publicize the film was a real coup for Heavy Metal, which had been in print for two years, but was still struggling to gain advertising and some perception of legitimacy among the ‘mainstream’ print media. That Fox executives had decided to give a somewhat obscure ‘stoner’ magazine the licensing rights for their marquee film for the year had to be encouraging to the magazine’s owners, The National Lampoon. Indeed, by selecting Heavy Metal to showcase their film among what would come to be labeled the ‘fanboy’ crowd, Fox was engaging in a marketing practice that was still comparatively innovative at the time. Nowadays, nobody blinks when directors and cast associated with a high-budget SF or fantasy blockbuster appear at various Comic-Con shows to preview clips and take questions from the audience. But the idea of dispatching Ridley Scott or Sigourney Weaver to speak at a geek gathering would have gotten a Fox marketing exec fired back in ‘79.

Along with some pages from the Alien preview, I’m posting ‘Pyloon’, a tongue-in-cheek homage to SF illustration, with art by Ray Rue and a script by Leo Giroux, Jr. I’m sure readers will find at least one archetypal image that they recognize as cribbed from the visual library of pop culture and SF. The art is very good, particularly when one realizes that computer-generated color separations were still years away.

Also posted is a advertisement for a board game, ‘John Carter of Mars’ , by SPI, one of the leading publishers (along with Avalon Hill) of war games, and other hex-based board games, during the 70s. This is what you got when you went ‘gaming’ way back then. ‘Space Invaders’ had still not appeared in my hometown in upstate New York in April of ’79, and the idea of playing games on ‘micro-computers’ was something electrical engineers thought about in their spare time, when they were hypothesizing about home entertainment in the 21^st century.

Rounding out our look at the April ’79 issue are the front cover by Clyde Caldwell (‘The Brain Cloudy Blues’), and the back cover by Larry Elmore (‘Gidget Meets the Squirrel Dogs from Outer Space’).