Book Review: 'The Oz Encounter' by Ted White and Marv Wolfman
'The Oz Encounter: Weird Heroes Vol. 5: Doc Phoenix' (216 pp.) was published by Pyramid Books in January 1977.
Inaugurated in 1975 by Byron Preiss, 'Weird Heroes' was intended to be a resurrection of the pulp magazine in a paperback book format.
[ My review of 'Weird Heroes' volume 1 is here.]
Eight Weird Heroes volumes were published before the series was cancelled in 1977. Some volumes were anthologies, while others were novels intended to focus on one among a cast of characters. So it was that volume 5 was devoted to 'Doc Phoenix', a super-psychologist who, via exotic instrumentation, can enter the minds of the mentally ill and effect a cure. This concept is not novel to 'The Oz Encounter', as John Brunner used it as the basis of his 1964 novel 'The Whole Man'.
In 'The Oz Encounter', Doc is treating a ten year-old girl named Patricia Wentworth, who lies in a coma, its cause unknown. Patricia's father, an ambitious and well-connected politician named James Wentworth, is anxious to see his daughter recover so that he can embark on a campaign for re-election.
Upon entering Patricia's subconscious mind, Doc Phoenix learns that her love for the Oz novels by Frank Baum has populated her dreamscape with characters and landscapes from those novels. However, the trauma that has rendered Patricia unconscious is manifested in her dreamscape in disturbing ways; fear and violence have come to Oz and one individual, in particular, known as the Shaggy Man, has malevolent ambitions.
Unless Doc Phoenix can foil the evil intentions of the Shaggy Man, the likelihood of Patricia ever awakening from her coma is slim at best. And making things worse, someone is trying to sabotage Doc's efforts, someone with an awareness of what is happening in Patricia's dreamscapes. And they have no hesitation about using lethal force to achieve their aims..........
In his Introduction to 'The Oz Encounter', Preiss indicates that Ted White initially was assigned to write the novel, but when circumstances prevented this, Preiss turned to Marv Wolfman, formerly a writer and editor for Marvel Comics. Wolfman in turn composed a manuscript based on White's outline.
'Oz' suffers from a disjointed, choppy narrative, which is not too surprising given that Wolfman wrote for comics, where transitions between characters and settings are by nature abrupt due to the limited page space allotted for that format. There also are more than a few plot holes that never get filled, and the denouement is so contrived that it takes almost five pages to explain.
One strength of the book is the participation of illustrator Stephen Fabian, who understood what the Weird Heroes franchise was trying to do. Fabian's graytone artwork is ideal for the 'pulp paperback' design concept and played a role in keeping me interested in the narrative's later chapters, when the plotting takes on a strained quality.
When all is said and done, 'The Oz Encounter', like the other Weird Heroes book I have read, is underwhelming. While I sympathize with what editor Preiss was trying to do with the franchise, his editorial policy of closely emulating the diction and style of the Pulp era winds up being too banal to impress the modern-day reader. And for this type of narrative, Wolfman probably was not the best choice to be pinch-hitting as an author. In conclusion, I advise passing on 'The Oz Encounter'.
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