Book Review: Candle in the Sun

Book Review: 'Candle in the Sun' by Robert Wells

1 / 5 Stars

‘Candle in the Sun’ (158 pp) was published by Berkley Books in June, 1971. The cover art is uncredited, but likely is by Paul Lehr.

Robert Wells (b. 1929) is a UK writer who published a number of sf novels in the 60s and 70s, including The Parasaurians (1969), Right-Handed Wilderness (1973), and The Spacejacks (1975).

‘Candle’ was a struggle to finish....I routinely gave up on reading it, only to reluctantly pick it back up again so I could complete this review.

The plot is straightforward: on an un-named colony planet, a flood of Biblical proportions forces the entire population to flee via ‘space arks’. The main character, Robert Gascon, is trapped by intelligent dolphins (?!) on the sea floor, and misses the evacuation. When he finally escapes captivity and reaches the surface, he discovers he is the last man left on the planet. He sets up a meager existence in a suite of rooms in one of the taller buildings protruding from the submerged ruins of the major city.

Gascon, by now partly deranged, spends his days sending out radio communications in the desperate hope of contacting someone still left on the planet. In the course of doing so, he receives a garbled answer from a woman named Clavelle. 

Elated, Gascon travels to a ruined subway station and gets aboard a still-functioning train, anticipating a rendezvous with Clavelle. Instead, he discovers that he has been abducted by the residents of Arcadia, a subterranean complex populated by the survivors of a crashed space ark.

Subjected to constant surveillance, Gascon must pretend to comply with the wishes of his captors, who – beset with mutations due to radiation – harbor a scheme to use him as the progenitor of a reborn human race, destined to live underground in perpetuity. Gascon uneasily participates in the scheme, but when the moment comes, he breaks for the surface - and freedom. 

But the Arcadians have no intention of giving up so easily…..

One of the reasons why ‘Candle’ is such a trying read is its prose style: author Wells uses an awkward combination of traditional pulp prose mixed with a self-conscious effort to adopt the 'modern' diction of sf’s New Wave writing.

This leads to frequent segments of clumsily rendered stream-of-consciousness text that is difficult to understand, and unrewarding to wade through. For example, early on in the novel, Gascon converses with a mutant; the two pages chronicling this conversation are made entirely up of text interspersed with ellipses. An example:

The eye opened and stared at Gascon, trying to remember. “I…will…show you a…quietthink…a thing…un…a…a”

“A secret ?”

“Ahh…hhh…Yes…a seacret ?”

Gascon is prone to talking to himself aloud, and he often gives vent to some of the more tortured outbursts I've ever read in the sf literature:

“I hope your reptile skins peel off and the sea boils you alive when it strikes up there !”

(addressing the intelligent dolphins who captured him)

“Scram, you bloody lepidopteric sheep !”

(addressing some mutants in Arcadia)

“Damned, poisonous, gut-rotting slime.”

(after eating a unique species of fungus)

“Come here, you damn beetle !”

(addressing still other mutants)

“Don’t tell me they built walki-talkie dolls that RUN on fruit !”

(addressing a robot)

A steady diet of these phrasings and literary contrivances make ‘Candle in the Sun’ a chore to read. You’re better off passing on this novel.

Heavy Metal magazine December 1985

'Heavy Metal' magazine December 1985

December, 1985, and in heavy rotation on MTV and on the FM radio is 'Broken Wings' by Mr. Mister, which was released in September of that year. The song made it to the number one spot on the Billboard pop chart in December.

The latest issue of Heavy Metal is out, with a cover by Ajin. Inside, editor Julie Simmons-Lynch announces that a 'new' Heavy Metal is debuting in January of 1986....

This 'new' Heavy Metal will be published only four times a year, on a quarterly basis. According to Simmons-Lynch, this change is necessary to provide readers with "....a bigger, more handsome, even more exciting quarterly edition....there will be no continued stories."

Readers with a less naive frame of mind might well conclude that given that moving to a quarterly publication schedule is something magazines do when their circulation and sales revenue fall to a level that cannot sustain a monthly schedule. Whether or not this is the case with Heavy Metal, one thing already has changed: the 'Dossier' section is absent in this December issue.

The good news about the December issue is that it features a great little strip by Caza, 'The Trial of Marlon Malone', which I have posted below.

Book Review: Epicenter

Book Review: 'Epicenter' by Basil Jackson

4 / 5 Stars

‘Epicenter’ first was published in 1971. This Berkely Medallion Books paperback version (223 pp) was published in January, 1973. The cover artist / designer is uncredited.

[Jackson, a Canadian author, wrote several other novels with a 'disaster' theme throughout the 70s, including ‘Rage Under the Arctic’ (1974), ‘Supersonic’ (1975), ‘The Night Manhattan Burned’ (1979), and ‘Spill !’ (1979).]

The novel is set in the early 70s. When an earthquake strikes eastern Canada, it affects refueling operations at the nuclear power plant in ‘Fairfield’, 20 miles east of Toronto. The tremors deform a chute, within which some spent fuel rods are being slid down into a waste tank in the lower section of the reactor building. The rods stick in the chute, a potentially dangerous development.

After some examination, the plant managers discover that the fuel rods are stuck in a portion of the chute that is accessible via a large panel. A plan is hatched to open the panel, and use a steel pole to poke at the stuck rods and free them. The attempt fails.

The management decides to employ a different tactic: dismantle the multiple layers of concrete shielding the area of the reactor core where the chute is located, and yank the rods out via crane. This is a more hazardous operation, but Richard Johnson, the plant’s chief engineer, gives the go-ahead.

Disaster strikes mid-way through the procedure. The core is exposed to the outside air, and radioactive particles are vented into the atmosphere. With Geiger counters reading exposure to potentially lethal amounts of radiation, Johnson orders the plant to be evacuated.

And soon, 250 square miles of Toronto will have be to evacuated, too….as a nuclear catastrophe unfolds over the unforgiving winter landscape of Ontario……

Basil Jackson did his research prior to writing ‘Epicenter’, and the result is a better-than-average nuclear disaster novel. For example, early in the narrative, a man is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation, and his demise is related in harrowing, but realistic, detail.

While the circumstances of the accident seem a bit contrived, the novel’s descriptions of mass evacuations, devastating fires, the exposure of the populace to hazardous quantities of fallout, and the strategy behind desperate measures to contain the radiation release, all have a high degree of plausibility and realism. 

To some extent, ‘Epicenter’ reflects the popularity of the ‘Airport’ novels, which were the forerunners in the late 60s and early 70s of what was to come to be known as the Disaster genre. In ‘Epicenter’ the emphasis throughout large sections of the novel is less on the technical details of the catastrophe, and more on the personal and psychological melodramas involving the lead characters.

When all is said and done, however, ‘Epicenter’ remains one of the better entries in the Nuclear Disaster sub-genre, and is worth picking up by those with a fondness for that category of sf / speculative fiction.

The Art of Horror by Stephen Jones

The Art of Horror: An Illustrated History
Edited by Stephen Jones

Every year at Christmastime I try and review a 'coffee table' book that offers something noteworthy in terms of being a gift for the sci-fi / fantasy / horror fan. 

Some years there's not much to choose from, while in other years, there might be a number of worthwhile candidates.

This year, there is no doubt: the choice is 'The Art of Horror', edited by Stephen Jones.

If you know someone who is a sci-fi, fantasy, or horror fan, then you can be confident they will love seeing this coffee table book under their Christmas Tree.

'The Art of Horror: An Illustrated History' was published in September, 2015 by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. At 10 x 0.8 x 11.2 inches and 256 pages, this book is too big to fit entirely on my scanner. It's a very well-made hardbound book, with a heavy cloth cover and quality stock paper. 

The reproductions of the artwork are high-resolution - even those of long-ago pictures, cinema advertisements, and magazine and book covers.

The book covers the field by topic, rather than chronologically.

The book's format wastes no space - the use of small font allows for several illustrations on each page, with the periodic placement of some striking full-page art here and there throughout the contents.

Readers with any familiarity with horror-themed art and commercial illustrations will undoubtedly recognize more than a few of the images in this book, but there are many that were new to me, and signal that editor Jones, and his contributors, know this material, and the intended readership, very well.

The book's coverage of horror media is primarily centered on the USA and Europe, which may disappoint some readers.[To be fair, however, the field is so large that it probably will take another volume to cover horror art from outside those areas.]

The book covers horror media from the 19th century, on up to the present-day.

As the best books of this type are wont to do, you're sure to see old paperbacks and magazines that you don't have in your collection, and - your interest piqued - you'll be making arrangements to procure that stuff....

  

Perusing the pages of 'The Art of Horror', I was struck again and again by the inclusion of offbeat, obscure little gems of artwork and illustration. So even hardcore fans of horror art are sure to find novelties throughout the pages of this book.

Summing up, 'The Art of Horror' belongs on every fan's shelf. At $25 or less (not including shipping) from your usual online retailers, this book is good value for the money.....and an affordable purchase, too. 

Get it !

Epic Illustrated December 1985

Epic Illustrated
December, 1985 No. 33

Issue 33 of Epic Illustrated, released in December 1985, was the next-to-last issue of the magazine, which had debuted in the Spring of 1980. 

In his answers to letter-writers aggrieved over the cancellation, Editor Archie Goodwin was cryptic about the reason for the magazine's ending, but it was quite evident that Epic, which was birthed as an effort by Marvel to capture some of the readership of Heavy Metal, had never really succeeded as an alternative to that magazine. This was due to Goodwin's less than inspired editorship, and to the fact that Marvel's management was reluctant to run the explicit T & A and violent content that so engaged the stoner fans of Heavy Metal.

Indeed, looking at the contents of the December 1985 issue of Epic, one is struck by the presence of too much material that tries to achieve either a kind of offbeat, kooky humor ( 'Dr. Watchstop','Snicker's - That's Entertainment'), or instead a faux-profound Sense of Artistry ('Ein Heldenstraum') that, either way, comes across as insipid and trite.

There are, however, some good stories in this issue of Epic Illustrated, and one of them is 'Fish Story', by Mike Baron (plot) and John Totleben (art). I've posted it below.

The Vampires are Coming

The Vampires are Coming
by Doeg Moench (script) and Isidro Mones (art)
from Vampirella No. 29, November 1973

An atmospheric tale of vampires loose in the Revolutionary War. 

'Munes' was the pseudonym used by the talented Spanish artist Isidro Mones, who did a lot of memorable work for Warren magazines in the 1970s.

Book Review: Inner Eclipse

Book Review: 'Inner Eclipse' by Richard Paul Russo

3 / 5 Stars

‘Inner Eclipse’ (376 pp) was published by Tor in February 1988; the cover artwork is by David Mattingly.

This was the first novel for author Richard Paul Russo, who is nowadays a well-recognized, award-winning sf author, mainly for his ‘Carlucci’ trilogy of novels that mix the cyberpunk and detective story genres.

The protagonist of ‘Eclipse’ is Benedict Saltow, a young man with a mutation that enables him to feel the emotions of others at a distance. The rarity of such ‘First Order Empaths’ in the Federation makes them sought-after individuals who are valued as advisors for all manner of political and economic undertakings – particular those of the clandestine kind.

As the novel opens, Saltow is adrift in a prolonged state of self-pity on the planet Triumvirate, a sort of world-spanning city-state. A previous assignment has gone bad, and left Saltow with post-traumatic stress disorder that manifests as crippling seizures (in the 80s, PTSD was a very ‘in’ thing with which to afflict characters in sf novels and short stories).

Saltow is hoping for something – anything – to happen to break his self-imposed passivity. This is accomplished when he is contacted by a corporate mercenary named Ryker, who offers Saltow a unique job: accompanying Ryker on an expedition into the trackless jungle of the planet Nightshade, there to determine if rumors of intelligent, alien, humanoid life are true.

Despite his mistrust of Ryker, Saltow agrees to accompany him on the expedition. In due course, Saltow and Ryker travel to Nightshade, and there link up with other two members of the team: a smuggler named Renata, and the backwoods trader named Gerad.

As the expedition sets off into the hinterlands of Nightshade, it becomes clear to Saltow that Ryker is utterly amoral, and as much a danger to the lives of the team members as any outlaws and narco-barons in the jungle. But Saltow’s obsession with First Contact overrules his misgivings…..and when violence begins to coalesce around the expedition, Saltow is obliged to put his trust in Renata and Gared. But they have their own reasons for wanting to find the aliens……reasons that may not guarantee safety for Benedict Saltow……..

In terms of its prose style, ‘Eclipse’ is a well-written novel, particularly for a first novel, but it suffers from the lack of a compelling plot. Most of the narrative is preoccupied with staging one scene after another in which Saltow finds himself pondering his existential anomie, an anomie resulting from his empathic gift (or curse) and his struggles to overcome the psychological barriers that inhibit his emotional exchanges with other people. These scenes are often cast in a Blade Runner aesthetic marked by continuous rain, mist, and moody contemplation.

The expedition that forms the centerpiece of the plot doesn’t even get underway until the last third of the novel, and its denouement has an underwhelming, perfunctory character that really doesn’t justify wading through the first two-thirds of the novel and its labored documentation of Benedict Saltow’s efforts to identify, and overcome, his profound personal alienation from society.

Summing up, many of the themes and ideas that Russo explores in ‘Inner Eclipse’ are those that are also examined in his latter novels, such as the Carlucci series; but those novels also provide more engaging plots, and I recommend them over ‘Eclipse.’

Operation Omega by Denis Sire

Operation Omega
by Denis Sire 
from the October, 1977 issue of Heavy Metal magazine

The French artist Denis Sire (b. 1953) began publishing his work in Metal Hurlant in 1976. 

When its American counterpart Heavy Metal launched in early 1977, Sire's strips were translated into English and regularly featured, primarily through the loosely connected episodes of the 'Diabolical Planet / Great Trap' (Menace Diabolique) series, starring the hero Maurice Leblanc (translated into 'Morris White' for American printing).

Sire's comics in the late 70s issues of Heavy Metal, with their striking use of black and white linework, stippling, and shading, and an Art Nouveau / Retro stylistic sensibility, were instantly recognizable. And, needless to say, Sire's incorporation of pinup imagery into his reimagining of the 'Flash Gordon' sf adventure tale also appealed greatly to the magazine's stoner readership and signaled that here was something very new in American comics.

[In the early 80s his color comics series, Willy's Wood, also became a regular Heavy Metal feature, but I found it disappointing, being an obsessive depiction of Betty Page - inspired, softcore porn.]

Here's the standalone story 'Operation Omega', scanned from the original magazine pages at 200 dpi.