Book Review: Deathworld 2

Book Review: 'Deathworld 2' by Harry Harrison

4 / 5 Stars

'Deathworld 2' (151 pp.) was published by Bantam Books in September, 1964, and features cover art by James Avati.

(My review of the first volume in the series is available here.) 

This is the second volume in the 'Deathworld' trilogy, one of Harrison's most enduring and successful franchises. The first volume of the trilogy began as a serialized novel premiering in Astounding Science Fiction in January 1960, and saw paperback publication later that year. 'Deathworld 3' was issued in paperback in 1968. There are softcover and hardcover omnibus editions of the 'Deathworld' trilogy available from publishers such as Orbit and Gollancz.

In the opening pages of 'Deathworld 2' our protagonist, the gambler and soldier of fortune Jason dinAlt, is abducted from the planet Pyrrus by one Mikah Samon, a self-righteous bounty hunter. Samon intends to return dinAlt to the planet Cassylia, where dinAlt is sure to receive a most unpleasant reception.

En route to Cassylia, dinAlt, ever phlegmatic, endures Mikah's pieties and sermonizings and waits for an opportune moment. When this comes, using a well-timed subterfuge, dinAlt cripples the bounty hunter's spaceship. A forced landing on the nearest habitable planet is required. But this leaves the two men stranded in the bleak and foreboding desert of an uncharted world, devoid of much in the way of advanced civilization.

Making things worse, dinAlt and Samon soon are enslaved by the brutish overlord Ch'aka, whose only ambition in life is to send his charges - spurred by blows and kicks - scouring the desert in search of krenoj roots, and the occasional edible piece of carrion. 

Jason, of course, has no intention of remaining Ch'aka's slave. After surviving the remarkably dangerous life forms of Pyrrus, what awaits for him on this primitive planet can't present much of a challenge. 

But Jason dinAlt hasn't planned for the betrayals that are going to sabotage his plans for the future........... 

Well before finishing 'Deathworld 2', I was aware of the writerly things that make Harry Harrison one of the more accomplished sci-fi authors of the postwar era. His prose is direct, unadorned, and deceptively simple. Dialogue is straightforward, and characterization restrained but quite adequate. The fact that the novel is only 151 pages in length means that the narrative moves quickly, with plot turns and twists inserted with just the right frequency to keep the storyline from becoming too static, or alternatively, too complicated.

Unlike 'Deathworld', which was very much an intense adventure novel, the sequel is more focused on Jason dinAlt's gift for sardonic humor under the most trying of circumstances. The only reason I couldn't give 'Deathworld 2' a five-star Rating was the presence of a few too many segments in which dinAlt and his unwelcome companion Mikah Samon engage in philosophical debates. Harrison intends these to represent a rebuke of those burdened with holier-than-thou complexes, but I found that these debates distract, rather than enhance, the narrative.

The verdict ? Like the other volumes in the trilogy, 'Deathworld 2' is an exemplar of the sci-fi action genre as it stood in the 1960s. The novel has aged quite well in the ensuing 58 years, and well is worth searching out. 

Photography Studio LED Lightstand

Photography Studio LED Lightstand
from GSKAIWEN (Shaoxing jingshen Photographic Equipment Co., Ltd.)

I regularly photograph collections of paperbacks, magazines, LP record covers, comic books, and other print media for my posts to this blog. I also post stuff to Facebook. I photograph these items on my dining room table. For a while now I've been wanting to get some affordable, high intensity lighting stands to illuminate my setups, as the overhead ceiling light in my dining room really is inadequate.

I recently purchased the 'GSKAIWEN 180 LED Lighting Stands, available from amazon for $90 (consists of two stands).

These got pretty good reviews at amazon, and I have to say I'm pleased with them. The stands are easy to assemble, and extendable to nearly 80 inches in height, so you can direct the light downwards onto higher tables, and other display furniture. Or you can reduce the height of the stand if that is your preference.

The angle of the LED light panels can be adjusted via a thumbscrew.

Power and intensity for the LED lights is handled by small rheostats.

Below is a collection of paperbacks I photographed on my table using the overhead ceiling light fixture:

And here's the same setup photographed with the same camera and settings, using the LED lightstands:

The only difficulty I've encountered so far with the LED lights is that the stands are plastic, not metal, and thus very light and easily knocked down. Needless to say, you're going to need to step carefully around them when in operation.

If you are a professional or semi-professional photographer I believe you likely will want to invest in a more sturdy set of lights. However, for someone like me the two stands are a good fit.

Book Review: A Stupid and Futile Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever

Book Review: 'A Stupid and Futile Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever'

by Josh Karp

3 / 5 Stars

This trade paperback version (402 pp.) of ‘A Stupid and Futile Gesture’ was published by the Chicago Review Press in 2006. It was the first book published by Josh Karp, a journalist and humorist.

In June, 1969, three young men, all recent graduates of Harvard University, sat down in a room in a Manhattan office building with Matty Simmons, the president of magazine publisher 21st Century Communications. Henry Beard, Doug Kenney, and Rob Hoffman all had worked on the Harvard Lampoon and were excited by the prospect of publishing a monthly magazine derived from the Lampoon’s approach to humor. 

For his part, Simmons, who with co-founder Leonard Mogel had earned success with Weight Watcher’s magazine, was intent on building a portfolio of magazines. For Simmons and Mogel, if any or all such magazines were hipper than Weight Watchers, so much the better. 

From the June meeting emerged the magazine National Lampoon, with Beard, Kenney, and Hoffman serving as editors. Of the three, it would be Kenney who stuck around the longest, from the inaugural issue in April 1970, until late in 1978, at which time the triumph of the movie Animal House launched him into a career as a producer and writer of comedy films.

‘A Stupid and Futile Gesture’ is both a biography of Doug Kenney (1946 - 1980) and a history of the National Lampoon during the abovementioned interval. Along with relating the life and times of Kenney, author Karp provides plentiful anecdotes and observations about the other people who worked at the Lampoon, and the Hollywood players who collaborated with Kenney on the films ‘Animal House’ and ‘Caddyshack’.

‘Stupid’ is a three-star book. I knew before sitting down to read it that it is a hagiography, rather than a biography; the author’s admiration for Kenney is apparent in almost every paragraph. But I was less prepared for the pop psychologizing that Karp too-frequently invokes: 

At twenty-four, he’d [i.e., Kenney] perfected the role that everyone wanted him to play. He was the sensitive child with extrasensory perception for what everyone was feeling at all times, always trying to smooth things over with a laugh. At Harvard he’d shed the nerdy kid persona and become a star. And with that came expectations – the expectation that he’d always be perfect. So as his professional life began to soar and his personal life cam apart, he fell to pieces, not knowing how to be perfect anymore. The failure…..of his marriage must have echoed his inability to fit in as a child, his inability to make his parents understand and love him the way he needed.

These expositions tend to wear after a while. 

Also detracting from the book is the author's insistence that the early years of the Lampoon were its best years. The reality is that in its first several years, the magazine was rarely as funny as it sought to be. There was an over-reliance on lengthy text pieces by Beard and other editors and contributors, that were dull and displayed an abstruse, highbrow approach to humor. This may have been effective in the ivied walls of Harvard and its environs, but were flaccid when compared to the transgressive comedy of the underground comix then sweeping the counterculture.

Looking through my collection of old Lampoons printed from 1970 to 1973, I'm fortunate to find one, rarely two, features per issue that genuinely are funny. And while I agree with Karp that Kenney's pieces are usually among the funnier ones, with a subversive quality that Beard lacked, it's also true that quite a few of Kenney's pieces were duds.............

Where 'Stupid' has value is in its observations about the day-to-day life in the magazine's offices and the perspectives of the staff (which, unsurprisingly, sometimes are at odds with those of Matty Simmons in his 1994 memoir 'If You Don't Buy this Book, We'll Kill this Dog'). 

The book does avoid viewing Kenney's behavior in the last year of his life (when his cocaine use frequently made him unpleasant to be around) through rose-colored glasses. Readers will have to make their own conclusions as to whether, had he lived, Kenney would have progressed in his career, or simply continued on the path of self-destruction that he seemed to embrace at the time of his death in August, 1980.

Summing up, hardcore fans of the National Lampoon likely will find 'A Stupid and Futile Gesture’ to be a rewarding, if at time ponderous, read. But if you are someone who has simply a passing interest in the Lampoon and its unique milieu of 1970s humor, then Matty Simmons's book is the recommended choice.  

Penthouse June 1973

Penthouse magazine June 1973

June, 1973, and the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'My Love' by Paul McCartney and Wings.

Let's open up the June issue of Penthouse magazine and see what awaits us inside, along with the 'Pet of the Year Play-Off' promoted on the cover. 

Featured in this issue is a lengthy article about John Dillinger from Jay Robert Nash, whose book Bloodletters and Badmen was a touchstone 1970s book in the 'true crime genre. Bloodletters also benefited from the Nostalgia Craze then burgeoning in American popular culture.

Nash contends that a man named James Lawrence, not John Dillinger, was shot to death by federal agents in Chicago in July 1932, a contention not embraced by all historians.

One of the more unusual iterations of tobacco products in the 1970s was the sawed-off cigar marketed as the 'Derringer'.

In 1973 hair transplantation was an inexact science, and there was no minoxidil or propecia (finasteride), so Penthouse did an article on the coolness of wigs for men.

Another advertisement touts the benefits of Forum magazine...............

According to Penthouse staffer Gay Haubner's memoir,

An extremely profitable spin-off, the Reader’s Digest-size Penthouse Forum was nothing more than letters too filthy to run in the magazine, accompanied by cheaply reproduced black and white photos of past Pets who had signed away all their rights in perpetuity.

Then there is the launch of Guccione's Playgirl clone, Viva:

A pictorial by '......an intense, studious, easily agitated young man' named Dudley Gray presents young women posing amid Fabrics and Furniture.........

The 1970s Penthouse pictorial style, centered on soft-focus photography, is in full effect for the Pet for June, a lissome young lady named Paula Francis.

Personally, I find this cartoon to be pretty funny.........

The Vietnam War is the subject of two articles. Thomas Buckley's piece covers Al McCoy and his 1972 book 'The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia', which argues that the CIA had a covert but heavy hand in the heroin trade in Southeast Asia, using drug trade-derived profits to fund the Laotian resistance to communist rebels. The first edition of McCoy's book is long out of print and exorbitantly priced; however, a more affordable and updated edition, selling for $33, is available here.

The other Vietnam article, by Jerome Doolittle, claims that decisions to pursue the war were influenced by the status of South Vietnam as a sexual playground for American males, particularly bureaucrats and administrators in the State Department and the Department of Defense. Doolittle argues that the in-country workers in the American government were reluctant to give up access to petite, submissive, Asian women and advocated for persistent U.S. involvement in the war. 

This claim is specious, but Doolittle does make clear that the overwhelming majority of American males in South Vietnam were quite comfortable to convert Vietnamese women into concubines, and the Vietnamese women were quite comfortable with taking large sums of money from the Americans to dispense these favors.

The 'Pet of the Year Play-Off' (the latter term chosen to irritate Playboy magazine, no doubt) features some deserving young women, of both American and U.K. origin. No Instagram face or body filters with these photographs; when they were taken, Instagram didn't exist..........! 

Thus ends our sojourn into the pop culture landscape of 50 (!) years ago. I hope you have enjoyed it. 

Installing Google Analytics 4

As you probably have heard, on July 1, 2023, Google's Universal Analytics, aka GA-3, app will be discontinued. If you want to collect information on traffic to your website, then you will have to install Google Analytics 4 (GA-4).

There is much criticism of GA-4, criticism I find warranted. Google took something that was working fine, i.e., Google Analytics (aka GA-3), and broke it till it wasn't working. But there's no choice: starting July 1 you have to install GA-4 (or rely on some other app) to track visits to your website.

I don't monetize my blog, nor do I operate an eCommerce website. So tracking visits to my blog is not a life-or-death function, it's simply a way of seeing if anyone is paying any attention to what I write. But obviously, people who operate monetized websites are going to have to install GA-4. 

Earlier this month I installed GA-4. It was kind of a pain in the ass, and took me about 45 minutes. Below is a screen clip of GA-4 data for The PorPor Books Blog:

If you're selling auto parts, or widgets, or nudies, or handcrafted pot holders, online, then this type of data analysis and presentation may be of use to you. I can't say the GA-4 data presentation panels are very user-friendly or informative to me, but like I said, I'm not charging advertising rates based on how many visits, over 30 seconds in length, from url addresses in continental Europe, I get on an hourly basis.

ANYWAYS, if you Google 'install Google Analytics 4' you'll get no shortage of instructional pages and videos. I looked through quite a few of these. The ones from Google itself are kind of useless, as they simply give an overview of the process and then tell you to ask your IT manager to do the dirty work. Yeah...........like I have an IT manager. According to one Comment I have seen at YouTube, 

My dev team tried to charge us $7800 to upgrade our GA to GA4. Unbelievable

Of the do-it-yourself videos I consulted, one of the most helpful and easiest is by 'Matt the WP Doctor'. Also of value is this one by 'Analytics Mania'. 

Good luck !

Book Review: Systemic Shock

Book Review: 'Systemic Shock' by Dean Ing

0 / 5 Stars

'Systemic Shock' (298 pp.) was published by Ace Books in June, 1981. The cover art is uncredited. This is the first volume in the so-called 'Ted Quantrill' trilogy, the other volumes being 'Single Combat' (1983) and 'Wild Country' (1985).

I'm not very familiar with the works of Ing (1931 - 2020) who was quite prolific in the 1980s and 1990s with both his own novels, and his entries in the 'Man-Kzin' franchise.

After struggling with 'Systemic Shock' I'm not inclined to try additional novels by Ing. 'Systemic' was so bad, I gave up after page 52.

The novel is set in 1996, and alternates between a technothriller narrative, detailing a war between the US-Russia bloc and the 'SinoInd' coalition, and a storyline involving the adventures of a young man named Ted Quantrill in the post-apocalyptic America generated by the war.

From the opening paragraph I found 'Systemic' to be tough going. The technothriller segments of the novel are related by the author in a clipped, breathless prose overstuffed with awkward metaphors, similes, slang, and jargon. 

Here's an example, dealing with a U.S. military installation that manages satellite defenses:

“Stay at your post or go on report,” Mills snapped, then spoke softly into his throat mike as the chief leaped back to his post. “With enough power, you may be able to get Arctic coverage from echo soda module, I say again echo soda. That’s an awfully shallow angle to penetrate that deep in sea water, but it’s your lasers, Commander. I’m just an elf……Affirm; grid test programs running and green, we’re ready when you are.”

Mills turned the level, heavy-browed stare on the chief. “Pull the test programs, ready ELF grid for main-trunk use at-my-mark-mark ! Chief, we’re losing too many orbital modules, too many bogies are getting through.”

The segments of the novel dealing with Ted Quantrill suffer from stilted prose, too. 

After Quantrill and the boy scouts get too close to the highway, where vehicles don’t slow down when drawing abreast of roadside hikers:

It was much easier to hear your radio estimate megadeaths than to see and hear and smell and – Quantrill swallowed against a sourness in the back of his mouth – taste a single death. Big hearty Tom Schell: one moment a mixed bag of vices and companionable virtues, the next a flaccid bag of skin leaking away into imperturbable gravel, one eye winking as though it had all been a grotesque joke. But the dirt would soak up Tom’s blood without qualm or shudder. Lucky dirt; you die for it, and it doesn’t give a damn. 

'radio estimate megadeaths' ?! Gravel that is 'imperturable' ?! And dirt that is 'lucky' ?! I've read better prose in fanfic.............!

The verdict ? 'Systemic Shock' fails both as a technothriller, and as a sci-fi novel. You're much better off reading John Hackett's 'The Third World War' (1979) or Tom Clancy's 'Red Storm Rising' (1986).

At Bargain Books, Richmond

At Bargain Books, Richmond

I've made a couple of trips now to Bargain Books, a used book shop located at 7228 Hull Street Rd. in western Richmond. 

Located in a shopping plaza, off of Wayside Drive, this is a big store, with long aisles of shelving.

Prices are reasonable:

The store does accept trade-ins for store credit, but the trade-in value is quite low (as compared to, say, McKay's Books in Manassas, Virginia).

Bargain Books has dedicated shelving for vintage paperbacks, which impressed me. These titles are quite affordable.

They have a large section devoted to sci-fi, as well as for mystery, and general fiction. The books tend to be in the Acceptable - Good range, occasionally the Very Good condition, but Like New is rare.

I was able to get an Edge / Adam Steele team-up (!), surely a major milestone in the 'Piccadilly Western' genre. 

Then there was a vintage Bantam copy of Kingsley Amis's James Bond novel 'Colonel Sun'. An old-time Gold Medal title about a 'World Without Women', and 'The Wild One', a teen motorcyclist adventure from 1970. 

I'm not familiar with the Dan Morgan novel, but I have heard that 'On Wheels', the John Jakes novel, is a worthy read (Science Fiction Ruminations gave it a 3 of 5 Star review).

I also found some vintage paperbacks about hot rods, the Vietnam War, a novelization of a low-budget, drive-in, 1977 CB / Trucker film, and......... when 'Me and Jim Luke' tangled with the Ku Klux Klan - ! 

(I had to Google the 'Klan' in order to spell their name right, so I guess Google now has my IP address flagged as belonging to a possible 'extremist' personality).

'Me and Jim Luke' apparently is fetching very steep asking prices on the web, with copies at amazon priced at $31. I was lucky to find a Good / Acceptable copy for under $5.

Anyways, if you find yourself in the Richmond area, you may want to stop in at Bargain Books  !

High Life

Celebrating Pride Month, June 2023

'High Life' by Dennis Parker
from the album Like An Eagle, 1979

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we like to celebrate Pride Month by shining a light on some of the undeservedly neglected aspects of the LGBTQ experience, during the interval from 1968 to 1988. Here, we look at the disco singing career of Dennis Parker.

Dennis Posa was born on October 28, 1946, and grew up in Freeport, Long Island. As an adult he moved to New York City and tried his hand at a variety of professions and occupations, including acting. In the mid-1970s he built on a past history of appearing in gay loops and photo shoots to appear in high-profile adult films, under the stage name 'Wade Nichols'. 

The best-known of Nichols's appearances likely is the 1979 film Love You, starring Annette Haven. The film was directed by the well-known actor John Derek, whose wife Bo Derek assisted with many aspects of the shoot. 

In 1976 or 1977 he met the flamboyant French record producer Jacques Morali, who would later create the disco stalwarts The Village People. In 1978 Morali signed Posa, now using the stage name 'Dennis Parker', to a record deal with Casablanca Records. In 1979, the disco album Like An Eagle was released.

While Parker was a novice at singing, the album had considerable musical talent associated with its production, and it deserves greater recognition as one of the best disco / dance albums to emerge in the late 1970s.

'High Life', one of the tracks from Like An Eagle, is pure disco dynamite !!!!

Like An Eagle was Parker's only foray in music. In 1979, he was cast as Police Chief Derek Mallory in the soap opera The Edge of Night, and remained on the show until October 1984, when increasing ill-health forced him to retire. He died of AIDS on January 28th, 1985.

Book Review: The Camp of the Saints

Book Review: 'The Camp of the Saints' by Jean Raspail 

2 / 5 Stars

The Frenchman Jean Raspail (1925 – 2020) was a prolific author of nonfiction and fiction books, only a few of which were translated into English.

‘The Camp of the Saints’ first was published in France in 1973 as Le Camp des Saints. Several editions of an English translation of ‘Camp’ have been published over the decades, including a hardcover edition in 1975, from Scribner; mass market paperback versions in 1977 from Ace Books and Sphere; and a trade paperback version, issued in 1994 from Social Contract Press. 

All of these editions are out of print and have exorbitant asking prices, partly because the book nowadays is very politically incorrect and no publisher will touch it. For my part, I was fortunate to pick up the Social Contract Press edition for under $20 back in ’94 (it’s currently available at amazon for $113 on up).

I should state at the outset that ‘The Camp of the Saints’ only mildly is science fiction. It is not a near-future eco-catastrophe or overpopulation novel like other early 70s books, such as Christopher Priest’s Fugue for a Darkening Island, or Don Pendleton’s Population Doomsday, or D. Keith Mano’s The Bridge. ‘Camp’ is much more of a polemic wrapped in a ‘what-if’ scenario. Even making allowances for the translation from French to English, the narrative is wordy, and leans heavily on sociopolitical musings.

The plot is simple; in the near-future (i.e., late 20th century) the Third World, ever more squalid and desperate, decides to invade Southern France as the first step in a conquest of Europe. 

The catalyst for this event is the decision by the conscience-stricken Belgian consulate in Calcutta to allow a cohort of impoverished Indian children to take up permanent residence in Belgium. When a mob of rioting Indians besiege the consulate, thrusting babies through the consulate gates, the Belgian government has second thoughts about their seemingly generous act; this ignites a furor among the Indian population. 

In Calcutta, a physically imposing Indian man, known as the ‘turd eater’, allies himself with a malformed dwarf; this duo has sufficient charisma to convince a million impoverished fellow Indians to board a flotilla of decrepit vessels on the Ganges river. In a kind of Hindu version of the wanderings of the Hebrews, the flotilla sets out for the Mediterranean and France, the land of succor and salvation.

As the flotilla makes its slow and utterly wretched transit to its destination, the liberal elites of Europe are torn between acknowledging that the arrival of the ships will be a demographic and economic disaster for France; and their desire to present themselves as ‘woke’ (the term didn’t exist in 1973), and obliged to welcome the starving million. Raspail’s intent clearly is to savage the actions of the liberal elite and their complicity in what is essentially Europe’s suicide.

Interestingly, a character in ‘Camp’ is a Third World immigrant to France, who, as an ‘outsider’, can see through the strictures of political correctness to recognize the disaster to European civilization that will ensue from a decision to allow the flotilla to land. His attitudes are contrasted with the willful blindness of his native-born neighbors, who, cowed by the rhetoric from the political and cultural elites, can only helplessly dither as the flotilla draws ever closer. 

I won't disclose spoilers about the conclusion of 'Camp', save to say that it is in keeping with the book's goal of acidulous satire.

Should you be willing to invest in a copy of this book ? My advice is, no, not at the prices currently being sought by bookjackers and speculators. If an eBook edition ever is issued then that may be the best choice for access. But if you do decide to read 'Camp', be prepared for a novel that is a political tract rather than an 'action' novel. 

National Lampoon June 1972

National Lampoon, June 1972

June, 1972, and 'Candy Man', by Sammy Davis, Jr., is the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. On TV, you could watch 'The Brady Bunch', 'The Partridge Family', and 'Love American Style'. A gallon of gas was 36 cents, and a gallon of milk, 89 cents. A new Ford Mustang retailed for $2,510. 

The latest issue of National Lampoon is on the newsstands. This is a 'science fiction' -themed issue. The cover art is done by Frank Frazetta himself, and sends a clear signal that the Lampoon was an established, and profitable, publishing venture. 

Although some of the ads are what would nowadays be called 'transgressive'...........

Hipsters were cheered by a new album from the group Hot Tuna, who were a sort of cousin to the Grateful Dead. The 'Burgers' album is available for listening on You Tube; the best-known track probably is 'Keep On Trucking'.

The marquee piece in the issue is a four-page color comic, titled 'The Last TV Show', by Doug Kenney and Bruce Jones.

Two fiction entries in this June issue are pretty good. 

Chris Miller's 'Pipe Dream' is about a New York City slacker who finds some truly amazing 'grass'. 'Pipe Dream' mixes stoner and sci-fi themes in a comic fashion. It's a great story that should be an entrant in any anthology covering sci-fi and drugs.

Theodore Sturgeon (aka Edward Hamilton Waldo) contributes 'Pruzy's Pot', one of those few stories that he wrote late in his authorial career. 'Pruzy's' is about a young couple who decide to move to a ramshackle house in the country and get back to nature. However, the landlord insists on installing a most unusual commode. This is a good story, with subtle, but effective, humor. 

Two 'Photo Funnies' pages deliver ........BOOBIES ! 

Modern-day audiences may laugh, but remember that in 1972, as a humor item, the Lampoon was positioned on the racks with other 'mainstream' magazines, while Playboy and Penthouse and other 'skin' periodicals were displayed either in polybags with brown paper covers, or sold from 'under the table'. 

If you were an adolescent male, you could get some nudie action from the June issue of Lampoon !

The last page featured another installment of Vaughan Bode's 'Cheech Wizard'. Printing the strip in color was still a bit in the future, but even in black and white, the message came across....

And that's how it was, in June of 1972.........