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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 6, 1966] The World is Ending (Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison)

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by Jason Sacks

The Earth is starting to collapse.

Smog fills the air of our greatest cities, species are dying throughout the world, and the global population continues to increase geometrically, threatening our very existence as human beings on this planet. Half the people in the world live in extreme poverty while most of the other half worry about falling into poverty. Famine threatens much of the world, even as the world’s arable land decreases due to over-farming.

If things keep going as they have been, we will be facing unparalleled destruction by the end of the century.

Rachel Carson and her important book

Our great thinkers are stepping up to warn us about global destruction. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring is a terrifying description of environmental degradation, while Ralph Nader’s 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed is a timely reminder the government doesn’t always look out for the interests of everyday people. John Kenneth Galbraith stated the roots of the problem well in his 1958 book The Affluent Society, most people are blind to the destruction we’re creating:

The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered, and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wire that should long since have been put underground. They pass into a countryside that has been rendered largely invisible by commercial art… they picnic on exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream and go on to spend the night at a park which is a menace to public health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings. Is this, indeed, the American genius?

Galbraith’s fictional family is all too real, all too likely to overlook the terrible ways we’re destroying our planet. The worst part of his scenario is a sad truth: all these issues are likely to compound, to become worse and worse over time. Eventually these trends will become so powerful, there will be no way to reverse them. If we don't reverse them, our planet is doomed.

Population growth vs the rate of food production, from a Malthusian perspective

Add to those problems the massive impact of the Mathusian theory of population growth, which states (to simplify it dramatically) that population growth is exponential while increases of food, water and other key commodities is linear. Anyone extrapolating out Malthus’s theories will discover our world population is fast outstripping our ability to feed and clothe them. Malthusians believe we’re facing a ticking population bomb – and they also believe too many people are ignoring that bomb.

A new science fiction novel has come around to remind us of that the bomb exists and is ticking.

Make Room! Make Room!

Make Room! Make Room is a major departure for author Harry Harrison. Harrison is probably best known for his Stainless Steel Rat series, which are light and silly action-adventure stories. In this book he shows his versatility with one of the most compelling and downbeat speculative fiction novels I’ve ever read.

Harrison takes the destruction of the planet to its logical conclusion. By 1999, on the edge of the new millennium, Earth is ravaged. Thousands of species of animals have gone extinct. The world’s population has exceeded 7 billion and continues to grow. Meat and vegetables are commodities more precious than gold. All the oil has been mined from the planet and all the trees have been chopped down.

As Make Room! Make Room! begins, we learn New York City is massively overpopulated. Some 35 million people live in the metropolis, and thousands of people living on the streets. Thousands more live in abandoned cars, now made useless by the lack of oil in the world. Police officers are barely paid, and they live in tiny apartments powered by batteries whose generator is a man riding a bicycle.

Only a small wealthy class of people continue to live in the city, residing in air conditioned, spacious apartments, showering with rare and precious clean water and enjoying the occasional cherished strip of black market steak.

In this world we follow police officer Andrew Rusch as he tries to track down the murderer of a rich man who lives in one of those spacious apartments. We watch Rusch fight through his wretched world to find the killer, find a new love, lose an old companion, and fight like hell to acquire even the most basic things he needs to survive. Even the pathetic SoyLentil steaks are a rare, delicious luxury. Harrison puts us in the well-worn shoes of his characters, forcing us to understand their privations and pain on a personal level.

Make Room! Make Room! is a combination cautionary tale and hard-boiled detective novel, as if Raymond Chandler and Rachel Carson had a child who they gave to Philip K. Dick to raise. Like Dick’s brilliant Dr. Bloodmoney (my favorite book from 1965), Make Room! Make Room! takes place in an anti-utopian society which has experienced a profound collapse in every one of its structures. Unlike Dick’s masterpiece, however, there is little or no catharsis or heroism in Harrison’s book. Everything is misery in Make Room! Make Room!.

Every aspect of Harrison's world brings emotional, financial, or physical pain to the people who live there. The mere act of existing in this anti-utopia is pure torture. And the true sadness of this book is that Rusch and his new girlfriend Shirl only sometimes see this world for the hellhole it is. Other times they wander through the world, like goldfish never seeing the water they’re swimming in.

Young Mr. Harrison

Harrison does a compelling job of extrapolating out the effects of environmental degradation, and he does a masterful job of portraying governmental breakdown. Despite the presence of police, the world seems nearly lawless, with civil servants shown as woefully unable to help in the world and with rebellions cutting off aqueducts into the city. While politicians argue endlessly about stupid things, bureaucrats cut back on food and water rations. Rioting breaks out in the streets and the police are unable to do anything about it. I’m not sure if Harrison is a libertarian, but his portrayal of government here shows a deep distrust of the net the current presidential administration has endeavored to create for all of us.

Another of Harrison’s main ideas is the blindness most people have to the events they’re part of. In one powerful scene late in the book, the government orders a large family to move into the apartment Andy and Shirl are sharing. The family is huge, with ten kids, a couple who have died and a few more on the brink of death. The family are filthy and pathetic, loud, obnoxious and self-involved. They have no class, which bothers Andy and Shirl deeply. But more than class or loudness, the family is horrible to live with because they are representative of the larger, broken society in which they live.

They have too many kids. Those kids get a maximum of three years education. Nobody can find a job. The family live on government rations. They have nothing to look forward to, nothing to strive for, no reason to think things will ever improve for them. Life is misery and eventually you die. If you’re rich and connected, perhaps the police will track down your murderer. If not, you’ll just die like the hundreds who die each day, unloved, unmourned, just another boring statistic in this Malthusian wasteland.

Make Room! Make Room! is a professionally written, powerful novel which took me to a place I don’t want to visit again. Harrison creates a rich and compelling anti-utopia extrapolated from the pages of The New York Times. He shows us a frightful future that seems all too likely to happen. Maybe this book will do a little bit to spur readers  to fight for our ecology and to keep population growth low. Malthus would approve.

3.5 stars.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 18, 1966] Rocannon and the Kar-Chee

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by Jason Sacks

One of my favorite sci-fi publishers these days is Ace Books. We've talked about their double novels a lot on the Journey, so I'm sure you're well aware of them, but I'd like to take a moment to consider just how delightful their line has been over the last decade-plus.

For the last 15 years or so, Ace's flip books, or tête-bêches if you want to get all French about them, have presented a wide spectrum of science fiction from some of the grand masters. Asimov, Brackett, deCamp and Dick have all been published under the Ace banner along with more modern writers like John Brunner, Kenneth Bulmer and Damon Knight. And while some of these little novels haven't been great –  Agent of the Unknown, to choose one at random, has a fun cover but an uninspiring story – others are thoroughly delightful.

And best of all, all these little novels are all short! Most are 120 pages or less: a quick couple hours' read while on the bus or after school.

Whether delivered as an opportunity to repackage Ziff-Davis novels, or a chance for a young writer to experiment with his or her craft, or a chance for an older writer to burn off an unpublished tale, the reader gets real value from his or her 35¢ (in the '50s) or 50¢ today. And whether the reader discovers a nice treasure or total drek, the low price point and quick-read style of the books seldom leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

The biggest thrill for me with these Ace novels is to get to see a growing science fiction talent spread his or her wings a bit and deliver a terrific first novel. Rocannon's World is exactly that kind of thrill. Written by up-and-coming author Ursula K. LeGuin, this expansion of an earlier Amazing Stories tale shows a passion for alien cultures that demonstrates a unique and intriguing viewpoint.

Rocannon's World is a kind of sci-fi/fantasy hybrid. Our protagonist is Gaverel Rocannon, an ethnologist on a mission to explore the biology of the planet Fomalhaut II. Though Fomalhaut II is nominally under an exploration embargo by the League of All Worlds, the League's enemy establishes a base on Formalhut to battle them.

If you're thinking this sounds like the launch of one of those novels all about the lone hero fighting and defeating a staunch enemy, you're both right and wrong. Eventually Rocannon is able to win, but he only does so after a long and arduous — and exciting — journey, and only after causing himself great trauma and pain.

Formalhut is an intriguing planet, and LeGuin gives this planet an clever sort of fantasy feel. Rocannon and his native companions fly on "windsteeds," giant flying cat creatures, he encountrers dwarflike Gdemiar, rodent like Kiemhir, elven Fiia, even nightmarish creatures just called Winged Ones. It all feels like a bit of lesser Tolkien, and that gives this brief book a lot of its charm.

The author Ms. LeGuin

But charming as this book is, LeGuin wrote something more interesting and complex than a simple story about a battle on another planet. Rocannon goes through an archetypical journey to his heroism. He starts a bit feckless but soon learns the importance of his journey. After enlisting the help of newfound friends, Rocannon gains confidence and trust. His moment of transformation happens when he goes into a mountainside cave. While in the cave, he encounters "the Old One", a strange entity who grants Rocannon "mindspeech", or telepathy, in exchange for giving himself to the planet.

That mindspeech is a blessing and curse, granting Rocannon the ability to win his war but also granting him the chance to psychically feel the pain of all the beings he has killed.

All of this is heady stuff that expands on the considerable promise Ms. LeGuin has shown in her short stories. Though the novel has some flaws, most of them are tied to its abbreviated length. There's a feeling throughout of playing with key ideas and concepts, a kind of authorial exploration of her own mind. I hope we get to return to this world, but even more I hope the author has more good novels in her.

Rocannon's World 3.5 stars

[Note: This novel appears to be a sequel of sorts to Dowry of the Angyar, reviewed in these pages two years ago (ed.)]

I was surprised and happy to discover I liked the flip side of this double novel nearly as much. I've never been a big fan of Avram Davidson's stories in the mags, finding them a bit wordy and dull. Somehow, though, this novel clicked in for me much more than his short stories usually do, and I found myself intrigued and captived by a lot of The Kar-Chee Reign.

Kar-Chee takes place in a far-future Earth. Hollowed out by over-mining and ecological collapse, Earth has been abandoned and forgotten by her children who have long since settled on distant planets. Only a small number of humans remain on the planet, eking out a small subsistence lifestyle. Those humans, though, are imperiled by an insectlike alien race called the Kar-Chee, out to strip Earth of its few remaining minerals, for reasons completely unknown to humans.

As with the LeGuin novel, you can probably guess how Mr. Davidson's story will play out: a group of humans rally their forces, gather up their courage, build smart weapons and begin to beat back the invaders and reclaim Earth's birthright.

The author Mr. Davidson

Like Rocannon, the pleasure in Kar-Chee lies in its journey, not in its destination. Davidson delivers large amounts of expository text in this book, giving readers the background of Earth's downfall in a lyrical style that feels as evocative as stories told around a campfire. Those sections of this novel have a suprising power and I found myself missing the expository elements when the book settled back into its action-packed elements. I wonder if Mr. Davidson has any interest in writing a future history chronicle, because I would love to read something like that.

The Kar-Chee Reign: 3 stars

The April '66 Ace Double turned out to be… well, aces, or at least a Jack and a Queen. Who knows what the next publication will bring? I'll be haunting the paperback rack at my local Woolworth's till the next book arrives.




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Comics

[February 24, 1966] Is 1966 the Best Year Ever for American Comic Books?

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by Jason Sacks

Is 1966 the best year ever for comic books? Yeah… maybe!

Based on the articles I’ve been seeing in newspapers, magazines and fanzines, Batman appears to be the runaway hit tv program of 1966. After 12 episodes, this show has exceeded expectations for fans and non-fans alike. Who would have expected Batman to be so true to the comics, with appearances by the Joker, Mr. Freeze, the Mad Hatter and even an obscure character like the Riddler (who hadn’t appeared in any comics between 1948 and 1965!).

The show has been a delight, and has prompted this house to buy a brand new color TV to enjoy it in its full splendor (well, that, and we had to see the exotic locations in Man from U.N.C.L.E. in color, too). And gosh, what a tremendous show this is for its bright and shiny design elements. The costumes of Batman, the Joker and Robin all look spectacular on our new Admiral set!

I know there has been some grousing about how the show mocks the Caped Crusader and his faithful pal, but I frankly love it. Maybe I’ve been desperate for a superhero TV show since Superman left the air a decade ago, but I dig the clever ways the show’s producers incorporate comic book elements into every scene of the show. The “BIFF! BANG! POW” elements during fight scenes may annoy some viewers who want more seriousness in their superheroes, but to me these are like comic book panels writ large on my 25” screen, thrilling reminders of their roots while also giving TV viewers a clever motif to groove on. Others complain that the characters seem self-mocking, calling it “camp” (a phrase I’ve never heard in this context before), but I wonder if those complainers read the Batman comics I wrote about last year. Until very recently, Batman was a moribund character fated for cancelation, so I’m delighted to see him get any attention at all.

And I groove on the deathtraps these characters find themselves in every Wednesday prior to the Thursday conclusions. Ma Bell likes it too, I think, because my friends and I call each other every week to try to figure out how our heroes can escape from the amazing perils the villains place them in.

I’m starting to see a rise in the interest in super-heroes at my local newsstand, perhaps prompted by the success of the TV show. It also helps that so many of the comics being released today are absolutely great. Not only are Marvel and National releasing lines of comics that are more intriguing than they have ever been, but new and revived publishers are putting out some comics that are outstanding (and some that are less than great, but hey, that’s just the law of averages at play, I think).

A lot of the thrill these days has been at Marvel, as some of their comics are reaching unparalleled new levels of excellence. For instance, the work of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee on both Amazing Spider-Man and the “Dr. Strange” strip in Strange Tales has been outstanding. Peter Parker has graduated high school and enrolled at Empire State University in Spider-Man. Pete seems to be shedding his nature as a nebbish since he joined college, making new friends while having new (and more sophisticated) problems. The three-part “Master Planner” saga which ended in ASM #33 was a storyline nonpareil, a thrill a minute journey with a spectacular denouement. (I’m including the payoff below, but please try to find all these issues if you can, because the leadup is just as spectacular).

Ditko and Lee’s “Doctor Strange” is in the midst of an astonishing long saga which journeys to strange, mystical realms to bring readers scenes we’ve never seen before. This lone hero fights impossible obstacles, issue by painful issue, to save a humanity who have no idea of his heroics. These two Ditko-illustrated comics are breathtaking – and, as I’ll soon discuss, this prolific artist is working on more than two comics lately.

Those two series are two of the three best comics being released in 1966, but the third greatest comic of our year has to be Fantastic Four. Stan Lee and the incomparable Jack Kirby (King of the Comics) are delivering the most astonishing thrill-ride in comics history. Reed Richards married Sue Storm in the 1965 FF Annual, but the couple's life has been no honeymoon since their big event, as they’ve fought an incredible “Battle for the Baxter Building”, before meeting and fighting the astonishing Inhumans. But this month has produced perhaps the finest comic Marvel has ever printed. In this month’s FF #50, the heroes found themselves in conflict with the mysterious cosmic villain Galactus, who wants to eat the Earth simply to stay alive. Readers are swept away with the desperation of our heroes and their valiant battle to save our planet, a story only Jack Kirby could have drawn. It also features the character I believe will be the breakout hero of 1966, the star-spanning Silver Surfer.

Marvel’s also producing some other great comics. Thor has moved out of the old Journey Into Mystery anthology into his own comics title, and Lee and Kirby are delivering a godlike battle there which shakes the cosmos. In X-Men, Lee and artist Jay Gavin keep playing and have delivered an intriguing new hero-villain called the Mimic. Lee and new artist John Romita have been doing terrific work on Daredevil (Romita might be a good substitute for Ditko if the latter ever has to take a month off; it’s hard to imagine Ditko leaving the character permanently). And comics like Avengers, Sgt. Fury, Two-Gun Kid and Tales to Astonish are continuing to deliver satisfying action stories, with the shattered romance tale "Killed in Action" in Fury #18 a real standout.

At National, which some people call DC, the line has adopted a new set of “go-go checks” at the top of their covers. Besides being hep and fun, these checks also help the comics stand out at my local drug store rack – a smart decision if you ask me.

Inside their comics, National continues their solid comics storytelling. Editor Julius Schwartz’s line is consistently entertaining. The Atom, Batman, Detective Comics, Hawkman and Green Lantern are all standouts for both story and art. Meanwhile, action heroes like the Metal Men, the Challengers of the Unknown and the Sea Devils all continue to deliver fun excitement, and Doom Patrol is always an irreverent treat. New series Teen Titans promises to be fun, and what teen or pre-teen wouldn't groove to the tales of sidekicks joined together?

I was disappointed to see Adam Strange, Space Ranger and Rip Hunter… Time Master lose their ongoing strips, though I'm anxious to see what replaces them.  And though Wonder Woman seems to continue to wander in its own mediocre wilderness (now set in the passé 1940s), the National line seems to be consistently entertaining each month. Of course, it’s hard to project how the massive success of Batman on TV will affect the comics, but one hopes the publisher won’t adopt those “camp” elements fans are so mixed about.

But some of the most exciting news in comics is happening outside of these two dominant publishers.

Gold Key Comics, primarily known for their comics featuring adaptations of TV series as diverse as Top Cat, Flipper and My Favorite Martian as well as their Disney line, is continuing their adventure comics line and even expanding the line. In fact, Super Goof set Mickey's pal Goofy as a super-hero in a delightful series of adventures as Super Goof!

Gold Key is the former sister publisher to Dell Comics, and it can often be hard to tell the two companies apart from each other despite their differences in editioral staffs. Their line also mainly consists of adapted titles like The Beverly Hillbillies and The Outer Limits along with a handful of original titles like Ghost Stories and Air War Stories. That line included a few new originals, including the gross-out Melvin Monster (which seems to be done by the same staff who deliver the delightful Thirteen Going on Thirty series) and the super-hero Nukla. I was also surprised to see a Black cowboy comic on the stands from Dell. Lobo is the stor of a buffalo soldier accused of a crime he didn't commit, and the first issue is pretty terrific! This may be the first comic featuring a solo Black character in his own title in many years (I believe there were a couple published by small companies in the 1940s), which is a nice sign of progress for the Great Society.

For many years, Charlton Comics have been considered at the bottom of the barrel, with their comics consistently delivering hackneyed and dull stories. Making things worse, Charltons seem like they’re printed on a cereal box press, with a strange paper texture, jagged edges on some of their pages, and even an odd smell to some of their comics.

Thankfully, though their printing quality doesn’t seem to be improving, Charlton’s comics are indeed improving. New series Peter Cannon… Thunderbolt launched early this year and has been fun. With art (and story?) by the mysterious PAM, these stories combine a surprising Eastern influence with New York gangsters. This is a series to watch.

Even more exciting is Captain Atom. You may remember the good Captain as an early sci-fi superhero from 1959 and 1960. Forget what you read before. The great Steve Ditko is now drawing Captain Atom’s adventures, and, let me tell you, they are as good as the stories Ditko is drawing at Marvel. Ditko’s Captain Atom is dynamic, fun and gorgeously illustrated. You’ll get bragging rights among your friends for recommending these comics to them.

I wish I could recommend Archie Comics’ line of superheroes to you, but they are painful to read. For many years now Archie has been publishing The Fly, but now the character has been renamed Fly Man in his own series (maybe to confuse Spider-Man fans?) and is also part of a new super-team called The Mighty Crusaders. That new team comic might be the worst comic of 1966, even worse than Wonder Woman.

The Archie heroes are written and drawn in a painful pastiche of the Marvel style, with “hip” dialogue and “fun” captions that read like a grandfather desperately trying to connect with his goatee-wearing grandkids. These comics aren’t just groan-inducing, they’re downright painful. Ignore them.

On a happier note, new publisher Tower Comics has been a very pleasant surprise. Their flagship title is THUNDER Agents, a fun mix of super-heroes and spy agencies that sets super-heroes No-Man, Dynamo, Menthor and Lightning against the evil Warlord.

So far, each issue has been double-sized, which means it’s packed with great and dynamic stories. Best of all, it includes illustrations from some of my beloved masters of comic book art, including Wally Wood, Reed Crandall,  Gil Kane, George Tuska, Mike Sekowsky and others. These have been terrific comics, well worth seeking out. According to the fanzines, Tower has been doing well and should be available most everywhere, but if not, remind your local newsstand owner that he should make higher profits at 25¢ retail per issue.

Superheroes continue at American Comics Group as well. ACG comics always seem to range from “ok” to “weird as can be.” In the former category are Nemesis in Adventures into the Unknown and Magicman in Forbidden Worlds. Both those series read like mediocre Marvel or National comics, which is just fine.

But if you’re not picking up an occasional issue of Herbie, you’re missing one of the strangest, most inexplicable comics on the stands today. Just look at that cover above if you don’t believe me. I don’t even want to try to describe this unprecedented series to you because it’s just so surreal and delightful. I laugh more at this comic than I ever will at a year's worth of Archie hero comics. I promise you that Herbie and his lollipop will burrow into your brain.

The most unexpected premier of the last year has been the appearance of Captain Marvel on the newsstands, but it's not the Captain Marvel you'd think of. Newcomer publisher M.F. Publications has launched the adventures of a completely new Captain Marvel. Instead of shouting "Shazam", this Cap screams "split" and splits off his hands, legs and head so he can fight multiple criminals at the same time. Yes, it's all as odd as it sounds, made even odder by the fact that apparently the series is written and drawn by Carl Burgos, the man who created the original Human Torch back in the early 1940s!

The last stop in our journey through comics in 1966 takes us to the magazine rack. On the cheaper area of some racks we might find magazine-sized comics from M.F., including their wretched seridss Weird.  The less said about the terrible stories and art in Weird the better. Thankfully next to Weird,where we will find Warren Magazines. You might remember Warren from my article about the late, lamented Help! Magazine, which sadly recently saw its final issue on the newsstand. Thankfully publisher James Warren has filled that gap with two great horror comics and an even better war comic.

Warren started publishing horror anthology Creepy in late 1964, and that mag has built a deserved reputation as one of the finest horror comics ever published, a worthy successor to the classic EC Comics. In fact, that comparison is appropriate because Creepy and its new sister title Eerie have published great horror tales drawn by the likes of Al Williamson, John Severin, Reed Crandall and Johnny Craig – EC legends all. Even more thrilling, those brilliant artists have been joined by modern counterparts like Gene Colan, the astonishing Alex Toth and, yes, the brilliant Steve Ditko. I told you Ditko gets around! With brilliant writing by the always adept Archie Goodwin, these comics are a tremendous treat.

I’m also a huge fan of Warren’s war comic Blazing Combat. Also written by Goodwin, the three issues thus far include brilliant artwork accompanying piercing and terrifying war tales that tell the gritty truth of war as it really is. They are the second best war comics ever published, behind only the truly great war comics written and edited by Harvey Kurtzman at EC. I’m sure BC doesn’t sell well, so I beg all comics readers to pick up this magazine while they still can. It costs three times as much as a standard comic, at 35¢ per issue, so I understand peoples' reluctance at picking up issues of this amazing series.

Whew! You can see why I say comics may never have been better than they are today. Truly, any trip to the comics rack will bring you some delightful treasures no matter what sorts of comics you like.

One final note: here in my native Brooklyn, there seemed to be some strange event over Mt. Sinai Hospital today. We saw some storks on the roof of the hospital. Anybody with any information on the events at the hospital that day, please contact this magazine.

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well! If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article! Thank you for your continued support.




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Movies

[December 16, 1965] Two Creepy Terrors (Die Monster Die! and Planet of the Vampires)

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By Jason Sacks

Last weekend I took my girlfriend down to our local drive-in theatre, the good ol' Puget Park Drive-in, to catch a delightfully moody double feature of sci fi scares. Die, Monster, Die and Planet of the Vampires are perfect drive-in fodder. Both films offer atmospheric adventures accentuated with dread and tension, presented in vivid color that adds to the fear created in each scene. We were surprised by how much we enjoyed both of these flicks and I hope I can persuade you to catch them when they come to your town.

The Puget Park Drive-in. It doesn't look like much, but it's brought plenty of thrills over the last few years.

Die Monster Die!

The first movie on our double bill was Die Monster Die! This flick, released by our good friends at American International Pictures, is apparently a loose adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story "The Color Out of Space" and co- stars a cadaverous Boris Karloff along with Nick Adams and Suzan Farmer in a thoroughly entertaining, moody tale that has some powerful moments influenced by the horror master of Arkham, Massachusetts.

When American Stephen Reinhart (Adams) travels to Arkham, England to visit his fiancée Susan Witley at her family's strange mansion, he clearly has no idea the kind of bizarre adventure he will find there. From the moment Reinhart leaves the train, he meets surprising resistance to his getting to the Witley home. A taxi driver refuses to take his fare, a bike shop owner refuses to rent him a bike, and Reinhart is snubbed by villagers for even suggesting he wants to travel to visit his fiancée's family. The countryside around Arkham is scorched with a deep crater, and it's pretty clear the crater has left scars in the villagers' minds along with their town. Is the crater related to the fear of the pariah Witley family? As we'll soon discover, there is ample reason for the villagers' fears.

Stephen marches to the Whitley mansion on foot. When the intrepid American finally arrives at the house, he begins to understand why the villagers think him crazy for wanting to spend time there. The once-stately home has fallen into a state of deep disrepair. Its gate is rusted, plants grow wild in the yard, and the whole place seems to need a new coat of paint. This slow unfolding of deepening confusion transitions the viewer into a sense of dread about what Stephen will find at the house, and makes the viewer concerned about the people living there.

Meandering quietly into the house, Reinhart nearly stumbles over the wheelchair-bound patriarch Nahum Witley (Karloff), who tries desperately to frighten our American hero away. Karloff is wonderful here, with a deep sense of gravitas, but he also carries some real sadness, as his advanced age and significant medical problems are clearly on display. Nahum keeps his reasons vague, but his words make it clear that there are true horrors there, including dread creatures that imperil everyone.  Just as it seems Nahum is ready to literally push Stephen out of his house, his lovely daughter intervenes. Susan Witley (Farmer) is the opposite of her father: welcoming, kind and optimistic.

It's obvious from the first moment we meet Susan that she and Stephen will soon find themselves in opposition to Nahum. Less obvious is the looming presence of Susan's mother Letitia (Freda Jackson), a woman seemingly at death's door who speaks to Stephen in foreboding murmurs about meteors and monsters, bewildering descriptions of seemingly indescribable objects and events that leave our hero deeply confused. Letitia's body also appears to be rotting away, and perhaps Stephen wonders if her mind is rotting as well. To  show her physical rot, we get a few weird glimpses of Letitia's body, including a hand that seems to lose its flesh the longer we watch it.

Good ol' Boris Karloff, trying to scare Stephen away from his house. Run away, Stephen!

The movie cuts from Letitia to Nahum and his trusty aide Merwyn (Terence De Marney) as they wander into the basement of the mansion — and it is in this scene that the horror starts to become clear. Amidst smart set decorations of distended faces and glowing neon colors, it's clear that Nahum and Merwyn have a deep and dreadful secret, tied to the strange glowing thing locked in that basement, the thing that alternately scares and interests Nahum.

From there, the movie begins to really take off into its own creepy territory, a smart mix of Lovecraft with the darkest work of Edgar Allan Poe along with a few AIP stylistic flares. If you've seen the trailer for Die Monster Die!, you've seen the wonderfully strange monster below which indeed seems to come right from the typewriter of the great Mr. Lovecraft.

This definitely looks like something out of Lovecraft

I was legitimately creeped out by that otherworldly monstrosity and the eerie keening noise it made. As the secrets of Nahum's home become more and more evident, this monster proves to be just one of the many horrors living there. We encounter living plants, see a shockingly dark end to Letitia's life and eventually get another chance to see the great Mr. Karloff made up to be a frightening killer. By the time we witness a strongly Poe-influenced ending to the film, viewers have witnessed some real strangeness on screen.

My girlfriend and I both really enjoyed this flick. Karloff is at his classic best here, providing his character with real depth and pathos. Despite his obvious illnesses, Karloff frankly thoroughly out-acts his counterparts on the screen. Adams and Farmer are an attractive couple, but they are two-dimensional. We learn little or nothing about either one of them, and Stephen mostly exists in this film as a plot device rather than a real character. Similarly, Susan was a character with great potential as a woman with one foot in the supernatural world and the other in our human world, but she is never given much to do beyond being Stephen's sidekick.

Karloff showing his inner glow

I also would have loved to see more about the villagers' fears, and explore the meteor's impact more, but all of my complaints about depth are kind of moot here. As the front half of a double-bill, Die Monster Die! had to be about an hour and fifteen minutes long. And as a movie of that length, it triumphs. The photography is excellent, Karloff is loads of fun, and the monsters are spooky.

Planet of the Vampires

After grabbing some popcorn and jujubes, we got back in the front seat of my Mustang for the second film of the evening. Planet of the Vampires was the perfect film companion to Die Monster Die. Both movies are spooky, atmospheric tales with lovely colors and intriguing acting.

Nothing on this poster matches the movie but I didn't mind!

In fact, most everything I enjoyed about Die Monster Die! is done even better in Planet of the Vampires. The great Italian director  Mario Bava (maybe best known in the US for his brilliant and terrifying debut film Black Sunday) journeys into space to deliver one of the most deeply upsetting movies I've seen in a while.

Two ships, the Argos and the Galliot, are exploring deep space together. When the rockets receive a distress signal from a nearby planet, they must land on that planet to investigate. On the way down to the planet, the ships' crews begin to go crazy, as if possessed by an alien force, and try to kill each other. The captain of the Argos, Captain Markary (Barry Sullivan), keeps his wits about himself and is able to force sanity and stop the fighting on his ship. The other ship… well, we shall soon see their fate.

The Argos lands on a strange planet. Dig that colorful sky!

Both ships land on the surface of the planet, and what a strange surface it is. Eternally shrouded in fog, with glowing rocks and mysterious sounds, the planet seems wrapped in deep mystery, and as the crew investigates the planet and the fate of the Galliot, terrible horrors begin to bedevil both crews in their ships and on the planet itself. We soon discover the bodies of the Galliot's crew, shredded and bloodied. But despite their seemingly life threatening damage, the bodies rise again and begin walking around. The bodies even go outside the spaceship and spread their terror to both crews.

Bava does a brilliant job with many elements of this movie, elements which add smartly to the viewer's deep feeling of disquiet. The astronauts' uniforms are beautiful. The cast wears well-fitting leather jumpsuits with high collars that seem practical but also strange. The cockpits of the ships are surprisingly spacious, with a lot of open space on them, which gives a strange sense of alienness to anyone used to cramped rocket capsules. The film is also deeply, eerily quiet, with just a few electronic noises to accentuate the horror. The deep silence seems to accentuate the tension, making viewers feel a deep sense of unease.

I think these uniforms are about the most beautiful in sci fi.
There's one sequence in which Bava's artistry really shines. In one intriguing set-piece, Captain Markary and his right-hand assistant Sanya (Norma Bengell) discover an enormous spacecraft which appears to have been trapped on the planet for seemingly thousands of years. Bava does brilliant work with perspective in these scenes, emphasizing the miniscule size of the humans in the midst of this bizarre alien craft. And as befits a master of horror films, Bava presents the craft as looking incredibly strange and dislocating for both the viewers and the crew.  It's old and looks decayed, with paint peeling and nature taking over the edges of the ship. Their exploration leads to a fascinating deathtrap unlike any I've seen before in film. It also makes the viewer wonder, profoundly, that if creatures this large can be killed by the residents of this planet, what chance do humans have?
The giant alien on the strange abandoned ship

The creatures on this planet aren't vampires in our usual sense of the word (perhaps they're energy vampires or body possessors or something else slightly ineffable). But that lack of definition makes the creatures more frightening. These vampires are a constant, eerie threat that both viewers and crew can't quite understand. We all know a cross and stake will kill Dracula, but we have no idea how to kill these vampires. That uncertainty makes the film more frightening. There seems to be no easy way out, and the ending helps reinforce that concept.

In fact, Bava and his crew also do something delightful in this movie: they deliver a twist ending, then another twist, and then yet another twist.  Each of the twists feel earned because they are well foreshadowed and yet completely surprising. I want you to be surprised, too, so I won't ruin the fun. I will say this, though. For my money the best twists are the ones that leave the viewers giggling, and my girlfriend and I laughed our heads off at the twists.

The alien planet looks spookier because of all the fog

It seems the budget for this movie was incredibly small (a piece in last month's Famous Monsters reports it cost roughly $200,000 in American dollars to film this movie in Italy). It's intriguing how director Bava worked with his international cast. There are actors from Brazil, Italy, the US and Spain, and each spoke their native languages on set. Bava's team then dubbed their lines in the local language for prints distributed around the world. Brazilians heard Portuguese, Spaniards hear the movie in Spanish and Americans in English. Because everyone spoke a different language on set, the movie has an often dreamlike feel, as if the actors are speaking around each other. That feel helps give this film its unique and wonderful energy.

And though Bava didn't spend a lot on the sets or ships, he gets real value for his lira. Maybe it's the eternal fog that makes the planet surface so compelling, or maybe the colored lights, but the planet of the vampires looked way better than it should have. I felt pulled into the mystery of this movie because of its low budget. Now I want to see more Bava films!

Driving Home
On our way to her home from the drive-in, my girlfriend and I couldn't stop laughing about all the fun we had watching these movies. There's a certain thrill to finding out a movie is way better than you expect it to be. In fact, we had that excitement with both movies last weekend and I think you will, too.

I don't care how popular they are. I love my Mustang!

Hop in your Chev, Plymouth or Pontiac and catch these flicks at your local drive-in while you still can.




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 22, 1965] Foul! (September Galactoscope)

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This month's Galactoscope features a mixed bag of mixed bags: one Ace double and one Gamma that barely manages a solitary single…


By Jason Sacks

We, the Venusians, by John Rackham

I picked up the latest Ace Double Novel at my local Woolworth's the other day, and had to share my opinions of the two novels with my fine science fiction friends.

On one side of the double was the deliriously wacky cover shown below, which actually is a scene in John Rackham's meandering but intriguing new novel. By my reckoning, this is at least the third Ace double this prolific author has delivered over the last two years, and though I haven't read either Watch on Peter or Danger from Vega yet, this slim novel – a true Ace double at 137 pages – makes me want to try them out too.

The main character of We, the Venusians is Anthony Taylor, a man who feels himself out of place on a future version of Earth. Though the timing of that future isn't revealed in the novel, it's clear he lives in a bit of a dystopian world. Advertising is pervasive and unavoidable, commerce and greed rule the world, and the arts are trivialized and mocked.

This all matters because Taylor is an accomplished musician and the owner of a small club in which he plays Liszt, Schubert, Bach and the other classical artists to an ever-diminishing tribe of listeners. He is truly a man on the outside of his time. That's why he has a mixed reaction when a strange man wanders into Taylor's club and offers an obscene amount of money to travel to the Terran colony on Venus to play music, Taylor is both intrigued and repulsed by the opportunity.  He is intrigued by chance to get rich quick and the chance to make a new start. Taylor is also repulsed by the idea because he has a secret he fears will be revealed on his new home: though his skin appears human color, he is actually a Greenie, a green-skinned Venusian native.

Through a series of plot machinations, Taylor does end up journeying to Venus along with two other musicians, one of whom, named Martha Merrill, is a beautiful woman who possesses an unbelievable singing voice. They also discover that the human colonists have enslaved thousands of apparently mindless Greenies to do menial labor in order to keep the colony buzzing along. Taylor and Merrill escape the human domes into the native lands, and both performers literally go native – Martha is also secretly a Venusian.

Though Merrill soon dies, Taylor finds his destiny among his own people and ends up becoming a force for revolution among his adopted people against the colonists.

One of the most intriguing elements of the book is the beans which grow on Venus and provide nutrition and energy for the people living there. While the Venusians protect their precious resource carefully, the humans try to exploit the beans and export the incredibly valuable food back to Terra. This element of the plot had an intriguing post-colonial feel to it. It's easy for the reader to substitute tobacco or silk as the exploited resource in our own history. It's a smart choice by Rackham to bring in that idea, as it adds resonance and contrast to the human/greenie struggle.

We, the Venusians is full of interesting ideas, from its resonances to the Civil Rights movement of today to its treatment of Indians in the west to the ways pop music overwhelms classics. Rackham keeps his story focused on character, and that keeps the reader involved in this novel. I enjoyed reading how Anthony Taylor grows and changes as this book goes along, and that growth gives this book a lot of its energy.

That said, the book rambles and wanders a bit too much and seems to frequently lose its focus. I know it's anathema to us fans of Ace doubles, but another 20 pages of meat would have made this book's bones stronger.

3 stars.

The Water of Thought, by Fred Saberhagen

Fred Saberhagen is another science fiction writer who has settled into a journeyman status at this point. He's appeared in a number of the science fiction magazines in recent years, and his "Berserker" stories have started to gain more attention from aficionados. My colleague David Levinson has praised Saberhagen's ability to pull off modern fiction within the framework of space opera, and that skill is well on display in The Water of Thought.

Like We, the Venusians, Saberhagen's novel takes place on an alien planet on which native peoples are in conflict with Terrans. The planet Kappa is a kind of garden of Eden, a paradise and perfect place for rest and relaxation for exhausted Space Force planeteers. It's also the home to native peoples and a type of water which provides amazing changes in people. When a planeteer named Jones samples the water, he goes crazy and disappears from the colony. Planeteer Boris Brazil must follow to investigate.

Jones becomes megalomaniacal under the influence of the "water of thought", and rapidly becomes an addict. Jones is constantly seeking his next drink, like a heroin addict looking for his next fix. When Jones forces Brazil to drink the water, it has a different effect on him. Brazil is nearly paralyzed and loses his free will while in proximity to Jones, but does not become addicted. The battle between the two men, and the story of the humans and natives caught in the middle, is an important part of the book.

Like We the Venusians, this book has a natural resource as a key point of conflict between humans and Kappans as the water is seen by some as a resource to be exploited for personal gain. The human mayor of Kappa sells the water as a drug, trying to earn a neat profit off of a local resource. Meanwhile a human scientist has slightly more noble goals: he believes the water may help the local hominid species gain intelligence and gain their freedom from slavery by the natives.

The Water of Thought is a more complex book than it seems at first glance, and reveals some of the shallowness of Rackham's world. Where Rackham draws a pretty clear line between humans and greenies on Venus, Saberhagen presents Kappa as a more complex world. Kappa is a place where the lines between hero and villain are somewhat unclear, where everybody is exploiting each other in some ways, and in which the precious natural resource has ambiguous effects.

This book adroitly shows Saberhagen's skills at mixing space opera elements with a psychological and philosophical elements. The Water of Thought feels contemporary for our year of 1965, a time in which the smartest people are embracing ideas of the past but providing new approaches to those ideas.

4 stars.

Gamma #5: The Worst Sci-fi Magazine Ever Published?


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Back in the early 1950s, when the market was flooded with magazines, there used to be plenty of forgettable magazines that would crank out terrible stories. Whilst it may be possible my memory is cheating me, I cannot recall a single issue as awful as this issue of Gamma:

Gamma Cover

This terrible issue of Gamma starts as it means to go on with another lurid cover from John Healey. I had hoped the style from the last issue was just due to it being a special edition calling back to the 30s, apparently this is the direction the magazine is going, with it illustrating the lead novella.

John Healey himself is a talented artist apparently working on shows like Johnny Quest, so I more question the editorial choice than his skill.

Now, take a deep breath, and let us all work together to get through this issue:

Nesbit, by Ron Goulart

Taking up nearly half the magazine, the perpetually disappointing Ron Goulart returns as, apparently, the editors simply cannot resist his writing. Once again, I find my eyebrow raised at this assertion.

This novella follows an attempt to shoot a pilot for a “jungle series”. When the Hollywood lot turns out to be in use Tim McCarey goes to visit Vincent Belgraf’s estate, to convince him to let them use his transplanted jungle for the shoot. However, on arriving he cannot get ahold of Mr. Belgraf and the other residents tell him it is not for rent.

Tim believes something else is amiss and finds a gorilla running around the estate in a soldier’s outfit. It turns out that this is Nesbit Belgraf. After being attacked by his own private army he had his brain transplanted into that of a gorilla, so he will be strong enough to become emperor of the United States and battle the unseen forces secretly controlling everyone’s lives.

Whilst Tim does not agree with this fascist conspiracy-minded gorilla and his family, he agrees to help with his propaganda efforts in exchange for being able to use part of the jungle for filming. However, Nesbit is very emotional and has difficulty keeping his cool.

I have trouble working out what Goulart is trying to do with this piece. If it is a satire on fascism and right-wing conspiracy theories, it fails. For, apart from Nesbit being a gorilla, it feels more like a documentary piece, as I am fully aware of the existence of those who believe in Jewish-Communist conspiracies controlling the world. It never does anything to really contradict what the Brelgrafs say, nor even to particularly suggest that their plans to put all non-white people into concentration camps or exterminate them, is as horrific as it really is.

If it is trying to be just an adventure story, it also fails. Intelligent gorilla stories are two-a-penny in comic books but are usually mindlessly enjoyable. This is incredibly dull and padded, full of side details that another might make charming, yet Goulart makes unbelievably tedious.

I could imagine many interesting ways a more skilled writer could have taken this piece, but instead Goulart produces something truly dreadful.

An exceptionally low One Star.

Policy Conference, by Sylvia Dees and Ted White

Peter and The Chief meet in the latter’s office to discuss how they could improve “interregional relations” for their boss Old Nick (I offer no prizes for guessing who that actually is).

Whilst this story is more supernatural than science fictional it weirdly has the same conceit as the previous tale, of someone having to work on PR for a monster. It just helps highlight how unoriginal a concept this is. Mercifully, this one is very short.

One Star

Gamma
We get the return of the unrelated sketches. Depressingly they are better than the actual text.

Auto Suggestion, by Charles Beaumont

Returning from the earlier issues of Gamma (publishing the best story in issue 1) The Twilight Zone writer brings a story of automobiles. Unfortunately, this is definitely not his best work.

Abnar Llewellyn, a nervous driver, suddenly finds his car talking to him and it encourages him to be a more aggressive on the roads. It also starts to interfere in other areas on Abnar’s life, asking out women for him and instructing him on how to commit crimes.

I have gone on record saying I am no lover of cars, and so tales like this generally leave me cold. However, even accounting for that, I felt the story was bad. It is painfully overwritten to the point of being juvenile:

A truck’s air horn began some car lengths away. A frightening sound, a terrible sound, like the scream of a wounded elephant, and it led other smaller cars to renew their anger, shrill now beneath the dump-truck’s might below, shrill and chittering, like arboreal creatures gone mad.

Even Lovecraft would probably tell him he needed to cut out some description!

It also ends up not doing anything particularly interesting, just being a story where the protagonist does unpleasant things and may or may not be insane.

One Star

Welcome to Procyon IV, by Chester H. Carlfi

This is not a new writer to these pages but, rather, another story by longtime editor Charles E. Fritch, contributing his 4th story to the magazine.

In this vignette, Jameson and his wife are the last people left alive on the dead world of Porycon IV, with humans having wiped out the natives and disease killing the rest of the human population. On his ancient radio Jameson hears a human expedition coming but when they come to in to his cabin they discover a terrible truth about Jameson’s wife.

This feels like a pale imitation of Ray Bradbury’s Martian stories. It is more competent than the previous two pieces in the magazine, but a lot remains heavily unexplained. Also including a genocide in one line without any further thought left a bad taste in my mouth.

One and a half stars

Interest, by Richard Matheson

Cathryn is to be married to Gerald Cruickshank, yet find his parents and their house terrifying. However, she cannot work out why that is.

As stated in the introduction, this is a Poe-esque tale, although the purpose of it escapes me. Feels more like a derivative work you would find in a bad fanzine.

One Star

Gamma
Another sketch, holding my interest much more than Matheson’s story did.

Lullaby and Goodnight, by George Clayton Johnson

In the aftermath of a nuclear war, an outpost of shelters is setup outside of an unnamed city. Our narrator (also unnamed) talks about the trouble Sarah Hartman is having with trying to keep her baby Adam alive in the radiation-soaked world.

This vignette marks a short foray into the New Wave from the usually conservative Gamma. It is not the best example, but the melancholic atmosphere raises it above the rest of the stories here.

Three stars

Gamma
An ad for Jack Matcha’s “adult novel”

A Careful Man Dies, by Ray Bradbury

This is a reprint from New Detective Magazine from almost 19 years ago and, unfortunately, it shows.

It narrates the story of a haemophiliac author, named Rob, who keeps being sent sharp objects in the mail, in an attempt to stop his book from being published.

I know Bradbury is popular right now, but do we have to reprint everything he did in his early days? The truth is he has evolved as a writer and most of his work before 1950 is simply not that good!

This is not really a science fiction or fantasy piece, but I suppose it could be classified as uncanny horror. Unfortunately, it lacks anything interesting, it seems more like a sequence of unusual events, like reading someone’s disconnected nightmare.

The story is written in a pale imitation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled style along with a second person narration. Whilst I do like experimentation this one fails for me.

Two stars

The Late Mr. Adams, by Steve Allen

Another reprint, this time from the publisher’s own collection, Fourteen for Tonight. This is my first experience with Mr. Adams' writings myself, although I hear he is big television personality in the United States.

This is a very silly life-story of a man who is always late. Really, that is all there is to it.

One Star

Wet Season, by Dennis Etchison

Etchison is generally a middling new writer. Shows promise but I am still waiting for a story that astounds me. Unfortunately, this is not it.

In a town there have been an unusually high number of drownings and the women seem to be acting strangely. At the same time rainfall levels are apparently increasing. After Madden’s daughter dies his Brother Bart comes to tell him of his suspicions.

Etchison really seems to like his Puppet Masters style stories and this is another one in that mold. I am willing to concede that it has a good atmosphere but that is all I am going to give.

A low two stars

Gamma Image 5
I love this illustration. Why couldn’t this have been one of the pieces inside?

Summing Up

This issue of the magazine is truly terrible. Some stories are not as bad as the others, but it would be a stretch to say anything is actually good.

I am beginning to feel foolish that I took out a subscription from issue 2, as I have already paid for more of these. However, if the quality continues like this, I find it hard to imagine this magazine continuing much beyond that.

That's all for today, folks! Join us next month for another exciting Galactoscope!

and…

Our next Journey Show: At the Movies, is going to be a blast!

DON'T MISS IT!




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Comics

[August 12, 1965]: No Help for Help!

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By Jason Sacks

A Tale of Two Help!s

Yesterday I had the special pleasure of seeing my favorite band on the big screen once again. Of course, I'm talking about the Beatles and Help!. You gotta see it. Let me tell you, folks, the film is a laugh riot. I giggled all the way through the silly tale which has Ringo Starr chased throughout the world because he possesses a ring which is a sacred relic for a Far Eastern cult. The music is wonderful, of course, but it's also a tremendously silly flick, wackier than A Hard Day's Night. I know you've already bought the LP (which, sadly, is only about half by the Fab Four) but great as the album is, the movie is so much better. Go see Help! while you can! I certainly plan to watch it again.

Sadly, while the Beatles' Help! rides the top of the world's music charts and marks another high point in the career of the Beatles, another Help! is breathing its last and represents a low point in another man's career. Thankfully both versions of Help! have brought me a lot of laughs.

Maybe you've seen Help! magazine on the stands next to Redbook and Look and were curious about this strange-looking mag. Maybe you even picked up an issue, perhaps the May 1965 issue with the humorous cover below, and giggled at the weird and wonderful material inside it. Sadly, the latest issue of Help! will be its last. The death of this very special mag has an interesting history well worth sharing. I hope you'll read along and discover why you should seek Help! magazine in the back issue bins and join me in mourning its passing.

MADman Harvey Kurtzman

Before we talk about Help! itself, let's talk about its editor, a genius by the name of Harvey Kurtzman. Kurtzman created, edited and orchestrated the glory days of MAD magazine as published by the late, lamented E.C. Comics. Under Kurtzman, MAD was a brilliant skewering of American comics, TV series, movies and life in general. Who can forget his absurdly silly "Superduperman", which skewered the Man of Steel with delighted glee and the so-many-jokes-you-have-to-squint-to-read-them-all art by Wallace Wood and Will Elder or any of a hundred equally scathing and brilliant satires?

The first 23 issues of MAD were published in comic book form by E.C., before moving to the familiar magazine format. Reportedly, MAD is one of the bestselling mags in the country these days, but, sadly, Kurtzman was unable to share in the profits from his creation. According to interviews with Kurtzman and his peers which appeared in E.C. fanzines, the editor had a falling-out with publisher William M. Gaines which resulted in Kurtzman abandoning his creation and creating a mag closer to his own vision.

Or, to be more precise, Kurtzman created a series of mags closer to his own vision. The first of those new magazines, dubbed Trump, was a gorgeously printed magazine, featuring slick and art (often painted in oils) on glossy paper. Published by Hugh Hefner of Playboy fame, Trump was a smart, sophisticated publication. Sadly, it fell victim to a cash crunch in Hefner's business and went out of business after only two issues. A second, similar mag, named Humbug, was self-funded but failed to find an audience, perhaps because it was poorly printed on cheap newsprint.


Thankfully, help came to Kurtzman from an unexpected source. Philadelphia-based James Warren, publisher of Famous Monsters and similar mags, was a big fan of Kurtzman's work. After a brief negotiation, Kurtzman had his fourth shot at creating a humor mag, though he would have to make some compromises. Budgets were tighter and production values shoddier than Humbug. But making a virtue of necessity, the great editor was able to produce a magazine unique on American newsstands.

Help for Tired Minds

Premiering with an issue cover-dated August 1960, Help! offered a different vision from Kurtzman's  previous mags. For one thing, Warren's budgets forced compromises which clearly both pinched and intrigued the expert editor. Instead of drawn covers, for instance, Help! often featured photos of comedians on their covers doing silly things. With well-known celebs like Ernie Kovacs, Sid Caesar and Jerry Lewis on the first three covers, the mag made a clear and simple implied pitch: if readers enjoyed these stars on TV, they would also enjoy reading Help!.

Inside the magazine, readers were treated to a hodgepodge of different material. Help! was a freewheeling magazine in which every page turn provided an unexpected treat. Some features were immutable. Every issue had a fumetti, or photo comic strip, in which actors (as well as Kurtzman, his assistant Gloria Steinem, Chicago comedian and radio personality Jean Shepard, and actors such as young Brit John Cleese) played parts in a comedy sketch presented like a comic strip. Some of those fumetti were goofy and some were strange, but Kurtzman deserves credit for trying something very different from the norm in order to fill his pages.

That said, Help! also included work every reader would expect, including outstanding strips by some of America's funniest cartoonists. Jack Davis worked for Help! at the same time he worked for the ongoing MAD. So did Arnold Roth, and Will Elder, and John Severin, and the list went on. Many issues featured some of their finest comics work. The staff wasn't limited to Kurtzman's old pals, either. Young cartoonists included Gilbert Shelton, who brought his manic "Wonder Wart-Hog" strips from the University of Texas newspaper to this mag.

Some of the finest work in the magazine was provided by Kurtzman himself. His "Goodman Beaver" strips, the tales of a young
naïf adrift in the baffling corporate world, is a legitimate side-splitter as well as a scathing satire of American professionalism and greed. "Beaver" can also be read as a hilariously bitter spit in the eye of a world Kurtzman dreamed of inhabiting but for which his own hubris would not allow him to experience.

As if that wasn't enough, Kurtzman also included a generous collection of text humor. Works by Jean Shepard, Paul Dehn, William Price Fox, and many others, appeared every issue. One of the most important features of the mag demonstrated Kurtzman's commitment to the younger generation. The ongoing "Help!'s Public Gallery" feature included art by artists who were building their skills. I was especially impressed by the energy and verve of above page by young R. Crumb, who looks like he will be going places. I've also enjoyed work in the Public Gallery by such new artists as Jay Lynch, Skip Williamson and Terry Gilliam.

No More Help from Harvey Kurtzman

Sadly, though, a circulation of roughly 115,000 copies per issue was just not enough to keep Help! alive. With issue number 26, on stands this month, Kurtzman's latest passion project has faded away like his previous projects. Thankfully it went under with perhaps the finest issue so far, which includes a shockingly hilarious satire of southern bigotry called "Brother, Have You Stomped a Nigra" by Terry Gilliam and Dave Crossley.  This humor has a vicious bite and perfectly encapsulates the influence Kurtzman has had over the younger generation of cartoonists. It seems to speak to the times we live in, the struggles over the Civil Rights Act, and the never-ending power of Dixie. Hopefully the racism mocked here will be gone in the next few years. It's hard to imagine systematic racism surviving the next 20 years, let alone the 20th century.

Help! was a worthy failure, but a failure nonetheless. Reports have Glliam moving to England,  perhaps to work on a project with Cleese, while Kurtzman will continue his Little Annie Fanny strips for Playboy. Meanwhile, publisher James Warren is replacing Help! with a new horror mag named Creepy. Issue #4 of that mag was also recently released and features work by some of Kurtzman's follow alumni. But that's a story for another column.

Hmm… wonder if there's still time to catch a matinee today of the Beatles film…



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 4, 1965]: Hoode Hoode Hoo (Doctor Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick)

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By Jason Sacks

With a Bang

Today is Independence Day, traditionally celebrated with a dazzling pyrotechnic display. And so it is appropriate that the book I'm sharing with you today deals with the biggest bang humanity can make: the atomic bomb.

Doctor Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick is an astonishing book.

I use astonishing in all its meanings: it's surprising, it's impressive, it's full of constant surprises, and Dr. Bloodmoney left me a bit breathless when I finished it.

This is also a weird book. Even for Philip K. Dick, who has written some of the oddest science fiction books in recent years (heck, just look at my review of his Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich for one very recent example), this book is… well, very strange indeed.

But that strangeness makes it endearing, and a compulsive page turner, and, oh heck, let's just dive into my uncategorized thoughts.

How We Got Along Before the Bomb

Many of Philip Dick's short stories and novels start after the atom bomb is dropped and mankind is looking to pick up the pieces. For instance, his outstanding Penultimate Truth delivers a post-atomic world of claustrophobic underground  burrows and vast overground demesnes.

Dick takes a different approach with Dr. Bloodmoney, setting up the world before the bomb drops with three chapters depicting what seem to be rather prosaic events. We witness a strange man visit a psychologist, see a vaguely annoyed salesman, watch a phocomelus achieve his dream job of fixing TV sets. All this scene setting feels  normal and yet also weirdly off-kilter, as if the world is about to change and as if all this seeming normalcy is about to get swept away and as if the characters, deep in their beings, need that normalcy to be swept away in a way that it will never be resurrected.

As always with Dick, however, that apparent normalcy is an illusion, a lie people tell themselves to prevent themselves from madness. Dick's characters are almost always miserable and complicated. They are obsessed with existential doubt and a general frustration at their positions in the world. For one relevant instance, the man going to the psychologist is named Bruno Bluthgeld, who has good reason to need help. As his psychologist realizes in a moment of epiphany:

This is Bruno Bluthgeld, the physicist. And he is right; a lot of people both here and in the East would like to get their hands on him because of his miscalculation back in 1972. Because of the terrible fallout from the high-altitude blast, which wasn't supposed to hurt anyone; Bluthgeld's figures proved it in advance.

The salesman, Stuart McConchie by name, is also deeply unhappy for reasons around envy, ambition and stymied luck due to race (McConchie is black, a fact the book dwells on to its detriment). Dr. Bloodmoney opens with McConchie sweeping the sidewalk in front of the shop he works at. All the while he ponders the misery of Bluthgeld and feels vague jealousy for the happiness of the phocomelus.

That Thalidomide baby is named Hoppy Harrington, and we soon find out he's one of the few characters in this novel who's not filled with miserable existential doubts. Hoppy seems to have telekinetic powers like Manfred Steiner in Dick's great Martian Time-Slip, and we see him fix appliances without having to use his cumbersome metal arms.  Hoppy's powers will take on more importance after the inevitable atom bomb drops.

How We Got Along During the Bomb

Dick's depiction of the events while the bombs are dropping is typical for him: weird, astonishing and striking for its subjective way of depicting the nuclear holocaust.

As the bombs are dropping over Dick's beloved Berkeley, we witness each character's reactions to the events. I was especially struck by this interior monologue from the psychologist Doctor Stockstill:

And then, in the middle of his cursing, he had a weird, vivid notion. The war had begun and they were being bombed and would probably die, but it was Washington dropping bombs on them, not the Chinese or the Russians; something had gone wrong with an automatic defense system out in space, and it was acting out its cycle this way — and no one could halt it, either. It was war and death, yes, but it was error; it lacked intent.

Even as people flee the city in terror, have a final, quick, end-of-the world-so-why-not sexual fling in the back of a car, and consider their futures, still it is clear to these characters that this calamity is the result of a simple accident. It seems to be random chance, a bug in the military's ENIAC that triggers the bombs. Considering we all have the near-death experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis in our recent memories, this "friendly fire" experience is even more terrifying.

And yet, this is a Phil Dick novel we're talking about here, so nothing is quite as simple as it seems.

How We Got Along After the Bomb

In the world after the bomb drops, the most astonishing thing is how normal things feel for readers — at least at the beginning of that segment of the story. It is seven years after E Day, as the people call the day of the holocaust, and the world has been changed in innumerable ways.  Rats are smart, cats gather in gangs, dogs can talk, and the people are barely getting by on a subsistence basis.

This section of the book focuses on a small community in Marin County which includes most of the characters from earlier in the book. McConchie is part of the town, still working as a salesman, and is miserable (we witness a deeply humiliating failure he has trying to buy electronics early in this segment of the story). Dr. Bluthgeld is in the town, under an assumed name, living with his existential misery. The couple who had furtive sex, Bonny Keller and Andrew Gill, also live in the area. Gill has become a kind of cigarette magnate while Keller has become a kind of civic leader. Bonny became pregnant during her tryst with Andrew, and she gave birth to a very strange set of twins who become central to the story's plot.

Hoppy Harrington is also in Marin, working as the town's all-around fix-up man. In a weird way, the Bomb has made Hoppy's disabilities more normal. In a world in which few people escaped deep scarring from the bombs, Harrington is no longer an outcast as a man with no arms or legs. Instead, as a trusted oracular figure, he's able to be content and grow arrogant in his place in the world. It's striking that one of the few characters in this novel – heck, one of the few characters in Dick so far – who is genuinely happy  turns out to be the antagonist of the novel.

Central to the novel is the one character outside of the small Marin County village. Walt Dangerfield had been on his way to Mars when the bombs fell. Trapped orbiting the Earth, his folksy way of speaking ("Hoode Hoode Hoo! Now let me give you a tip on how to store gladiola bulbs all through the winter without fear of annoying pests.") and love of sharing reading to a world desperate for entertainment, Dangerfield unites the world to listen to his voice like FDR used to unite us all with his fireside chats.

It's in this section of the novel that I found myself more and more enraptured in the world Dick creates. In his beautifully flat and unadorned style, Dick is brilliant at conveying character with just a few words. Emotions, motivations, passions and fears seem to radiate off the page from these characters. It feels like Dick wrote in a frenzy, these characters living in three dimensions in his vastly creative mind. Characters grow, change, evolve. McConchie slowly becomes content; Hoppy slowly becomes resentful; the twins grow from being an oddball curiosity to the moral centers of this tale. There's a sense of plot, character and setting oozing out between words, a parallel universe Dick sees through his imagination's gateway. Though this is a short book, it carries the heft of a book twice its length, and in the West Marin township, Dick slowly and shambolically leads to a fascinating conclusion in which Hoppy's ambitions prove to be his tragic fall like a Greek hero too filled with pride.

Some readers may not love the way the main plot of the story mainly wraps up offscreen, but the events leading up to it are rendered so beautifully by Dick that I scarcely cared. There is a scene near the end of this novel, depicted through the eyes of an owl, that was so lyrical that for a moment I thought I was reading Ray Bradbury instead of Philip K. Dick.

In The End

This is the fifth Dick book to be released in the last 18 months. It appears the man's work continues to improve. I was deeply moved and impressed by this novel. The characters are vivid, the events powerful, and Dick's wonderfully subjective way of showing action is unique in my experience. Dr. Bloodmoney is an astonishing achievement.

5 stars, and for me this is the leading candidate for the Hugo Award for Best Novel so far this year.

Above I described Dick's writing as beautifully flat and unadorned, and that's true, but this book also ends on a lovely note which speaks to the curious optimism and faith in the human spirit which runs throughout this book.

The business of the day had begun. All around her the day was awakening, back once more into its normal life.

In the wake of an atom bomb, life slowly returns to its new normal. Humanity will bounce back from even the worst we can imagine. It's hard to get more optimistic than that. In these troubled times, we all need to be reminded to be optimistic.

On the subject of books, please go to this article and give it a read. It's as important now as it was when it was posted — perhaps more. It's been a tough few months.




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[June 26, 1965] Disappointing Duo (June Galactoscope #2)

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by Rosemary Benton

Modern Man, Primitive Man (Robert Nathan's The Mallot Diaries)

The Mallot Diaries is a new science fiction drama from novelist Robert Nathan. The author, best known for his 1940 fantasy mystery novel Portrait of Jennie, is a highly prolific individual whose style primarily balances satirical allegories with poetic waxing on the transient nature of the world.  

Given that he has some stories which have been categorized as supernatural/horror and generally fantastical, I was eager to pick up what I thought would be a merger of high literary talent exploring themes commonly found in popular literature. A story about modern man interacting with a species lost out of time? Now that’s a fruitful area for an author such as Nathan! What The Mallot Diaries turned out to be was far more unsettling.

 

First Contact

The book takes place in the present day within the remote regions of Arizona. It is written from the titular firsthand accounts of an Associate of Anthropology at Meriden College named Professor Mallot. He, along with his fellow academic Professor Osgood, Curator of the Archaeological Wing of the Museum of Natural History in Yuma, set out to look into rumors of an elusive tribe of indigenous peoples who have resisted contact with the outside world. Their inquiries with a local Apache man quickly lead them to the very people they seek. Having made contact with the tribe, they soon deduce that the people are actually the remnants of a Neanderthal group who are part of the Bear worshipers that Mallot is studying.  

The elected leader of the tribe welcomes them after they provide reassurances that the purpose of their visit is neither to kill his people or "take away their god".  This tribal leader, or "Jefe", declares that the two men may stay with them in order to act as historians who will document the history and culture of the People of the Bear. Things quickly get messy, however, when the internal power struggles of the tribe begin to draw the outside observers in – both due to their desire to document the People of the Bear, and because of their own weaknesses of the flesh.  

The World Before Recorded History

The modern-day discovery of a lost tribe of Neanderthals is a solid enough base for a good story. Nathan does an admittedly decent job of working in the wonder and respect that his main characters feel as they begin to understand the world of their hosts. It’s refreshing to read a story in which the modern world explorers would be able to appreciate that the only real differences which separate modern humans from their primitive roots are as superficial as looks or clothing choices.  

It’s pessimistic, but Nathan writes on page 73, "I often think of Professor Osgood's remark, that man has not changed in a hundred thousand years. He is still a scoundrel". To this point he again and again drives home the facts that things such as wealth, status, lust and ambition are as alive and well in the predecessors of homo sapiens as they are in modern man himself. At times these parallels come off as a little too trite, however.  

The Youth Revolution

Perfect examples of this are the implications within the buildup to the children's revolution at the climax of the book. This plot thread is clearly a thinly veiled satire of today's youth culture. Under the current leadership of the tribe, children (meaning anyone under the age of 21) are not subjected to any forms of rules or consequences for their bad behavior.

The Jefe indulgently dismisses rude or violent acts as just youthful arrogance. Ultimately this lack of discipline for any crimes, from adultery to assault, results in the 109 children of the tribe taking up spears and killing the elders.  

Heavy handed satire aside, by far the worst flaw of Nathan's book is the sensuality with which young girls are described and the societal sexualization of the youths in the tribe, some of whom are as young as eight years old.

As the story progresses and the anthropologists learn more about the internal politics and social structure of the tribe, both of Nathan's protagonists develop very disturbing feelings for two of the young girls, one of whom is twelve and the other is between the ages of fourteen and sixteen.  

Highly Disturbing

This attraction is in part explained as being an effect of the two professors integrating into the tribe. Thirteen is the current age of consent amongst the Neanderthals and young girls and boys are not strictly forbidden from sexual exchanges, but it’s still a very disquieting turn in the story that comes into play over and over again.

The touting of pedophilia as romantic, cute and "basic human nature" frankly ruins the experience of reading The Mallot Diaries, and because of it I can’t recommend this book at all. 

If Nathan was trying to write the next Lolita he has not succeeded. I have to give this book only a half star. Even with the pointed realizations about humanity which Nathan occasionally drops during the plot, the fetishization of young girls as well as the repeated attempts to write blatant pedophilia off as star crossed love makes The Mallot Diaries a book that is best avoided at all costs.  


By Jason Sacks

On a much lighter note…

Sometimes it's exhilarating to read a book that seems to be positively overflowing with ideas, a book where the author seems thrilled to share a whole universe of concepts and drag an empathetic reader along in a journey that feels complex and rich, even if the book is short.

And sometimes it's just exhausting to read a book like that.

The Martian Sphinx, by Keith Woodcott

The Martian Sphinx, by journeyman science fiction author Keith Woodcott, is an exhausting book.  It's full of clever moments, great excitement, and some intriguing alien races. Sadly,  in this case, the whole of this brief 160-page Ace novel is not greater than the sum of its parts.

The Cork Floats to the Top

The protagonist of this novel is a graduate student named Jason Lombard, who is attending the finest college in Africa but who is ostracized due to his European birthplace. Lombard may be part of a miserable minority, but his brilliance wins the day. Despite his neurotic worries, Lombard is a genius level scientist who has thought through the deeply troubling problem of the Earth's decaying orbit around the sun.

Lombard comes across as a compelling character in the early chapters of this book, albeit in the Philip K. Dick tradition. Jason is a worrier, an outsider, a man who feels deeply ostracized from the university he's attending. It's hard not to see in Lombard echoes of the children integrating Southern elementary schools and college these days, though filtered through a different sort of personality.

I would happily have read a whole book exploring Lombard's world, with its overpopulated Europe and the advancement of the Red Chinese to the top of the world's most advanced societies. Sadly, Woodcott wanders elsewhere before exploring that theme enough to satisfy the reader's curiosity. I wish he had taken a stand to explore the problems of overpopulation, as that problem seems richly deserving of exploration in sci-fi.

The Power of Gravi

A second intriguing theme in The Martian Sphinx depicts how the world has moved beyond its dependence on fossil fuels and has learned to use a safe and endless source of power which is all around us. Gravipower sends a spaceship into space, provides all the energy the world needs, and essentially acts as a magic handwaving plot device to move the story along.

Again, the development of gravipower would alone have been enough for an entertaining book, because its effects on the book's characters is intriguing. But, again, we just don't get to spend much time considering what is essentially only a plot device.

First Contact

Instead, the heart of the book is a trip Lombard and a team of astronauts take to Mars to investigate a strange alien contraption dubbed "The Martian Sphinx." I'll get to the "Sphinx" in a paragraph or two, but first I should mention the aliens who are also questing after the object.

Two races swiftly land on Mars when the Terrans land there, and both alien races are bizarre, unique and totally fascinating in their vast differences from mankind. One race attacks the other, and the effects of the battle make up some of the most passionately written sections of the novel. Though these creatures are as different from people as insects are from us, readers are still made to feel the aliens' pain and fear. I was legitimately moved by a scene in which a number of the beings slowly die due to the battle.

In a way, their very alienness added to the pathos of those those scenes. Readers feel themselves in the boots of Lombard and his companions, struggling to make sense of the cryptic, unexplained war that lands on humanity's doorstep and the terrible toll that war takes on everyone involved. Again, this section alone might make for an intriguing novel of its own, maybe as a parable for our deepening conflict in Vietnam.

Not this Sphinx…

The Sphinx

Lastly, at the heart of the book but far from the center of its action is the "martian sphinx" of the book's title. An alien obelisk on our nearest planetary companion, the sphinx is a perplexing object which bespeaks of a long-lost alien civilization and seems to promise a fascinating future for humanity.

Woodcott makes the sphinx intriguing but it ultimately delivers mostly riddles rather than answers. Though that makes its name appropriate, the sphinx also deserves more than the space it receives here to begin to reveal its secrets. It's a rich enough idea for a whole series of novels, and I hope Woodcott can write those novels.

One of Mr. Woodcott's previous novels

Few Riddles Answered

The Martian Sphinx is Woodcott's fourth published novel and it overflows with ideas. Sadly, perhaps due to the brevity of this book, none of those ideas pay off in fulfilling ways. It's easy to ponder how a writer like Philip K. Dick or John Brunner might explore these ideas which read similar to some of their best work. Sadly Woodcott is no Brunner and this novel just doesn't fulfill its considerable potential.

3 stars.

[I am looking forward to the interesting mail we receive in regard to Jason's last statement. I suppose Woodcott is no Brunner much like Winston P. Sanders is no Poul Anderson and Cordwainer Bird is definitely no Harlan Ellison…]



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Comics

[June 10, 1965] Comics Go James Bond

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By Jason Sacks

Secret agent mania is everywhere these days. After the gilt-edge success of Goldfinger last year, the passion for dashing, daring, handsome men of action has reached a fever pitch. I’ve been picking up paperbacks of Matt Helm, Nick Carter, John LeCarre and even Doc Savage at my local Woolworths, devouring the thrilling adventures of these men of action, ready with a quick shot, a fast woman and a speedy sportscar.

I’ve also been passionately watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on NBC. I love so many of the quirks of that show – setting the entrance to UNCLE HQ inside a flower shop, for instance, as well as the dashing agents Solo and Kuryakin and the whole larger-than-life setting of it all.

Comics have had their share of secret agents over recent years, too, from “John Force, Magic Agent” appearing in the back pages of American Comics Group’s Unknown Worlds late last year to the spy adventures of Charlton’s new Sarge Steel (which includes impressive art by an up-and-comer named Dick Giordano – watch that name, folks) to a two issue DC pilot spotlight on spy King Faraday in last year’s Showcase #50 and 51 (albeit reprints from 1950, in the latter case – DC has never been a company known for their innovation).

But no comics company has fully jumped on the spy trend, not in the way it cries out for.

Until, that is, this month’s issue of Strange Tales, starring a super spy named Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The great Stan Lee and Jack Kirby deliver one of the most intriguing, exciting, whizzbang first adventures of any comic story in recent memory, full of bizarre gadgets, nasty villains and a dynamic dollop of mighty Marvel action.

As if they felt constrained by their small twelve-page allocation in this issue, Kirby and Lee deliver a story in which everyone seems to be moving at top speed, showing off cool gadgets, discussing nasty spy rings, showing flying cars and flying aircraft carriers and all the other trappings of a great adventure tale. Even in large set-pieces, like the scene above (which looks oddly like a key location in last year’s film Doctor Strangelove), it seems every character has their own bit of business to take care of, their own set of a million tasks to accomplish and no time to complete them. These are busy, important men on the mission to save the Earth, and they will work together with everything they have in order to defeat the evil organization Hydra.

At the center of it all is good ol’ Nick Fury, twenty years removed from leading the Howling Commandos, now promoted from sergeant all the way up to colonel, with an eye patch over his left eye and an everpresent stogie in his mouth. Fury acts as the reader proxy in the story, leading us to discover just what in the world he is getting himself involved with – heck, even as he’s strapped into a bed with wires taped all over his nearly naked body, Fury is wondering “what in blazes is going on?”

What is going on, Col. Fury, is that you’ve been recruited to a super spy agency, the Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division by name – ignore that extra “E” please. SHIELD seems constantly under attack – as we discover on page three of this all-out action thriller, in the space of seven seconds, robot versions of Fury are attacked by evil doers – including one who has a gun hidden in a mailbox (I would hate to be the mailman working that route!) We soon witness Fury’s car attacked by a fiery missile before the wheels of the sports car transform into jets which transport our hero to an astounding floating fortress.

And those villains! Hydra seems to be an equal match for SHIELD, with astonishing technology, a vicious hatred for humanity, and – seriously – the greatest motto I can remember at a spy agency (and evil women, too – wonder if Nick Fury can turn Agent H to the good side!

Lee and Kirby have been growing a reputation for unstoppable, hurtling action but this tale takes that energy to a whole new level.

I do want to briefly mention that this story only takes up half the issue, and if “Agent of SHIELD” is an extrovert’s delight, “Doctor Strange” is just as much an introvert’s thrill. Drawn by Kirby’s opposite, Steve Ditko, this issue finds our sorcerer supreme on the hunt for the mysterious meaning of “eternity.” Just check out that gorgeous splash page below and contrast its brooding intensity with the dynamic thrills of the Nick Fury splash. Both are amazing work by men at the top of their talent but they each offer very different visions.

Fury’s world is one of men walking, talking and shooting. The men in that story look around – often to the reader – with a sense of purpose and energy. In Strange’s world, however, men and women look around furtively, live in almost unknowable strange worlds, are communicating secretly. If Nick Fury is like James Bond, Stephen Strange is like a hero from a Philip Dick or John Brunner novel, cursed by his greater knowledge and abilities to fight a lonely war.

Together, these two series provide about as dramatic a contrast in styles as any comic I can remember. What a welcome and unique issue. Strange Tales #135 is a good example of why I'm quickly becoming more and more inclined to Make Mine Marvel! 




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[May 24, 1965] Two faded stars (May Galactoscope #2)

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May's second Galactoscope reviews the latest works by two of the field's titans. Sadly, it looks like their best contributions are behind them, as the following article will demonstrate:


by Rosemary Benton

Mind Barriers and Mental Talents (Andre Norton's Three Against Witch World)

Andre Norton is a gem among authors. She is able to write everything from short stories to novels in quick succession, continues to be picked up by publishers (no small feat in the writing world), and has been able to carve out a reputation for herself as an author who can write extensive background lore into her stories.

That being said, I feel like Norton is in a bit of a writing funk lately. It hasn’t slowed her down, but her writing is starting to feel unbalanced. In particular, the trait that once was her strength – world building – is starting to weigh down her work. By the end of Three Against the Witch World, the third and newest short novel in the Witch World series, Norton successfully introduces better character development with respect to the earlier entries, but the world building is still too overpowering.

The Next Generation

Three Against the Witch World begins with a very condensed introduction to the early lives of Simon Tregarth and Lady Jaelithe's triplets. Told from the first-person narratives of the children, we learn that the first two decades of life have not been easy for anyone in the nation of Estcarp.

After the destabilization of Karsten at the conclusion of Web of the Witch World, a warlord stepped up to fill the power vacuum left by the former ruler Yvian and his extra-dimensional allies, the humanoid beings called The Kolder. Between the Alizon nation, the remains of Karsten and the formidable Falconers, Estcarp is locked in a long term guerrilla war that is slowly bleeding them dry.

Amazingly, despite marrying Earth man Simon Tregarth and thereby disavowing her role as a Witch, Lady Jaelithe still retains traces of the innate magic known (allegedly) only to be accessible in select virginal women. Unsurprisingly, given that Simon is also a Power user (albeit one from another planet), the couple's triplets Kyllan, Kemoc, and Kaththea are also born with strong magical tendencies.

They are soon left on their own after their parents depart on vague and mysterious missions. Kyllan, Kemoc, and Kaththea must contend not only with the front-line defense of the Estcarp nation, but with the jealousy and hostile machinations of the power hungry Witch Council. The Women of Power are determined to undermine the influence of Simon and Jaelithe, and the best way to do that is to take their daughter Kaththea for their own ranks.

By 20 years old the triplets are adrift in a highly unstable time with no nearby allies in all of Estcarp. Upon the ruthless kidnapping of Kaththea by the Witches, Kyllan and Kemoc decide to journey forth into the larger world to gain information and allies crucial to reclaiming the safety of their family.

What follows is a journey across all mapped nations, even into the twisted and nebulous eastern regions of the world – a massive mountain range interspersed with magically tainted creatures. It is literally a place which people are incapable of imagining due to a powerful collective compulsion in the human population. It's a race against time to save Kaththea, save Estcarp and prevent a horrific ancient accident from being repeated in the name of protecting their homeland.

The Witch World Lives On

Sounds like an amazing story, right? It's certainly an interesting premise with a solidly entertaining, if grandiose, climax. But is it a good read?

As I've noted in my review of Norton’s Witch World(1963) and its subsequent installment, if you like fiction liberally layered with lore and societal structures you will find this series intriguing. But just like before, Three Against the Witch World leaves the audience wanting a deeper connection to the main characters.

My, Oh My, Is It Ever So Dry

Stories that sacrifice character development for world building only engage their audience for so long before boredom begins to surface. With Kyllan, Kemoc and Kaththea as the beacons through Three Against the Witch World, it is a comparatively less tedious task to read through the extensive world history of Norton's realm. Three is still massively overwritten, but at least we have the enjoyment of seeing some of the cast grow instead of remaining stagnant cardboard cutouts.

Admittedly the triplets are not completely unique. They are rather standard fantasy warrior, scholar and sorceress/witch characters, but they are given more individuality than the previous protagonists of the series. Kyllan and Kemoc's strategics get much keener via increasingly difficult obstacles they face. Limitations are realized for Kemoc as he pieces together the knowledge held in Lormt, ancient bastion of scholarship, and Kaththea has to adapt to her increasing power.

However, Norton continues to hold her characters at arm's length. Her writing in general has been suffering of late because of this tendency: she is much more prone to showing her characters in action rather than letting us into their heads. Thus, the changes we see the triplets go through still have but a superficial connection with the audience. In short, within Three Against the Witch World we see that the series is still tripping over itself to engage with its audience.

Three Strikes and You're Out

At three entries into the series, the Witch World books continue to feel like Norton is far more interested in telling us about the mechanics of her world rather than the people living within it.

For existing Witch World fans, Three Against the Witch World offers new races and mysterious god-like entities, and I did appreciate Norton's attempts at expanded characterization. Nevertheless, that's not enough to save the series. After reading three books in the same series, I should have more than the shallowest of connections with the main characters. I should have a strong desire to continue to read further installments about their lives. The fact is, after reading Witch World, I don't. I know that Andre Norton is capable of better as a word smith and a story teller. Unfortunately, Three Against the Witch World is only worthy of a two and a half star rating.

Subspace Explorers, by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

By Jason Sacks

I was never a fan of E. E. “Doc” Smith.

Okay, that’s kind of unfair. It’s not that I read the man’s work and didn’t like it. Instead, I decided at a relatively early age that I didn’t want to read his juvenile sci-fi novels.

While some of my closest sci-fi loving middle school friends loved Smith’s Galactic Patrol stories, I never read any of his work, and the one time I borrowed one of his books from a friend I just never got around to cracking the cover. Maybe I felt an odd sort of aversion because I wanted to defy my pal Danny Alvarado’s deep love for Smith – you know, the way boys create friendly rivalries over nothing.

But that may be psychoanalysis after the fact. More likely I didn’t read Smith because I always wanted to read above my age group. Why read juveniles when there was so much great material being published by the likes of Asimov, Dick and Clarke?

Since I had never read any Smith as a kid, now seemed the perfect time to try out ol’ Doc’s work. I’ve grown older and mellowed a bit in my tastes in the last few years. So when my fine editor offered to have one of us staffers review a limited edition publication of Smith’s latest novel, Subspace Explorers, I jumped at the chance. Why not try a classic author, albeit one in the twilight of his career? I could either validate my pal Danny’s passion or smugly smile at myself that I made the right choice to skip Smith.

Well, young Jason is vindicated.

Subspace Explorers by E.E. Smith
The rather bland cover of Doc Smith's latest novel

Subspace Explorers is an odd book. It’s breakneck space opera sci-fi juxtaposed against a sort of exploration of psionics which in turn is juxtaposed against a kind of screed about a battle between virtuous business leaders and corrupt trade unionists. If you’re wondering how these odd elements all fit together in the space of some 200 pages, well, the answer is that they don’t.

The sci-fi and psionic stuff works the best in this book. The first chapter sets the stage with a disaster in space and the few survivors of that battle. This section speeds along in a kind of hurtling, breathtaking tumble of events in which the action seems never to stop, no matter that readers don’t have much of an idea who these characters are.

Once all the action begins to play out, we find there are nine survivors of the accident: four mafiosos, a genius, two officers, and two women. One of the women has the amazing psionic ability to detect any metal in space. After the mobsters are defeated, the women and officers very quickly get married and each of the couples have a baby after a pregnancy which is elongated by their time in space. Their kids inherit the psionic abilities and form a union of explorers who drive the rest of the book.

Right there in that quick summary of the crazily energetic beginning, you can see the joys and flaws of this book. It’s got energy and thrills. It’s got oddball ideas and puzzling events. It’s got thin characters and arbitrary plotlines. It’s got a lot of good and a lot of bad and I’m not sure I want to get into the discussions of labor unions which might embarrass Barry Goldwater in their stridency.

Even there, I might have enjoyed this book either as a grouchy polemic or the rambling of “an old man screaming get off my lawn,” as they say. But the shambolic plot, which seems assembled from several half-finished novels with the barest plot threads to connect them all, left me more baffled and annoyed than thrilled. If Doc wanted to produce a fun throwback space opera, why add the strange political notes, and if he wanted to write a screed, why include classic cardboard characters with psionic powers to muddy the waters?

Doc himself

Publisher Canaveral Press is well known for their lovely Edgar Rice Burroughs reissues, most with lovely art by Roy Krenkel and J. Allen St. John. This book boasts of the same high production values as the Burroughs books. It’s just too bad this book isn’t nearly a match for those classics.

Maybe Smith can pull his disparate storylines together if he writes a sequel to Subspace Explorers, but for a book released in hardcover in a limited edition with a matching grand cover price, this is a tremendous disappointment. Sorry Danny. Hope we can still have lunch together and discuss more pleasant things.

2 stars.




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