'Heavy Metal' magazine August 1979

The August 1979 issue of ‘Heavy Metal’ featured a cover by Mantxo Algora titled ‘Tan, Don’t Burn’ and a back cover by Martin Springett titled ‘Buz’.

This issue had several good stories within its pages. ‘Free Ways’ by Lee Marks, ‘New Ark City’ by Caza, and ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, a visual accompaniment to the Rolling Stones song, drawn by James Waley, were a cut above the usual material. But the best piece in the issue was ‘Mama’s Place’ by Arthur Suydam, which I’ve posted here.

Suydam was arguably the most impressive of the artists and writers featured in the pages of Heavy Metal during the late 70s. Each of his stories was meticulously drawn, colored, and lettered, and featured an original (and genuinely creepy) approach to SF and horror topics.

Suydam is best known to contemporary readers for his covers for Dark Horse comic’s ‘Alien’ titles, and Marvel’s ‘Zombies’ series.

Book Review: 'Second Nature' by Cherry Wilder
2 / 5 Stars

‘Second Nature’ (1982; 254 pp.) is a paperback original from Pocket Books’s 'Timescape' imprint. The cover illustration (the artist is uncredited) depicts what appears to be a Lovecraftian monster; in reality this is one of the ‘Vail’ featured in the text.

Two hundred and sixty-five years after the spaceship Rho Maryland crash-landed on an unnamed planet orbiting the star Delta Pavonis, the descendents of the ship’s crew have managed to eke out a successful, if low-tech, society devoted to agriculture and fishing. The central outpost of the human society is the city of Rhomary, where lives the main character, a scholar named Maxim Bro. Rhomary supports a complex ecology of religious sects and professional guilds, some members of which possess quasi-telepathic abilities. Native herbivores serve as the primary means of overland transport, while wooden sailing ships ply the large seas. There is lingering angst over the departure, decades ago, of the Vail, a race of enormous, benign aquatic creatures.

The stories of their spacefaring ancestors and their wondrous technology are dwindling into mythology, but still there is a mystical hope that other vessels may someday make planetfall. When Maxim Bro learns that red streaks have been seen across the night sky, and meteor fragments of some sort have fallen to the earth, he sets out on a journey to the Gann Station, a community alongside the Western Sea, where a Captain LaMar has recovered what appears to be a chunk of a spacecraft from the water.

Soon an android is recovered from the sea; a religious cult reacts unfavorably to the news. The narrative focuses on the reaction of various characters, including Maxim Bro, to the revelation that contact with Earth and its space vessels may be within reach.

Reading ‘Second Nature’ is a laborious experience. Author Wilder (the pseudonym of New Zealand writer Cherry Barbara Grimm) has a tendency to adopt an elliptical approach to disclosing key features of the narrative. Too often, people, places, things, and historical antecedents are introduced to the reader with little in the way of accompanying exposition. The reader regularly is forced to infer what is taking place from oblique stretches of dialogue and descriptive passages. At the same time, Wilder will lavish an adjective-rich, almost poetic approach to describe things of ancillary importance to the main narrative.

The book’s Prologue is an example of the drawbacks of Wilder’s too-stylized writing. It relates an early encounter between a human colonist and one of the Vail. The first-person narrator is in fact a Vail, while the ‘minmer’ it mentions is its wary human contactee. This information is related to the reader with little in the way of explication; to make things worse, sections of italicized text inserted into this Prologue deal with an independent story thread with dim relevance to the main narrative. I had to re-read this section several times in order to finally figure out exactly what was taking place.

I suspect few readers, when confronted with this rather inaccessible start to the novel, will be willing to push on. If they do, they will find a novel with flashes of adventure, but on the whole, suffering from too diffuse an approach to storytelling.

'Slow Death' Comix No. 6 (1974)

‘Slow Death’ No. 6 (1974) features on its cover President Nixon, aboard an alien spaceship and negotiating with its crew – drawn with care to call to mind the classic EC SF comics of the 50s - for access to their oil. In the background, some aliens are dining on something suspicious.

Most of the stories in this issue (‘The Long Sleep’ by George Metzger, ‘Raw Meat’ by Rand Holmes, and ‘White Man’s Burden’ by Jaxon) cannot be posted to a ‘G’ or ‘PG’ rated blog site, but Charles Dallas’s ‘Call of the Wild’ should qualify. I’ve posted the story in its entirety; it’s a creepy tale of caged animals getting a chance to even the score.

The depiction of ‘Miss Miller’, the elderly woman who manages the ‘nature museum’, brilliantly resembles the nasty old WASP shrews and spinsters I encountered growing up in a small town in upstate New York. Outwardly, paragons of virtue; upstanding citizens of the community; members of the DAR and the Shriner's Lady Auxilliary; inwardly, vicious and bitter towards small things like animals and children.

Killraven: 'Amazing Adventures' No. 19 (July 1973)

‘Amazing Adventures’ No.19 (July 1973) is the second installment of the ‘War of the Worlds’ narrative. This issue’s story is the ‘Sirens of 7^th Avenue’ by Gerry Conway, with art by Howard Chaykin. Chaykin’s art still has a rushed quality (he was assigned to the book with short notice – not an unusual occurrence for the Marvel staff during the 70s) but he manages to draw the Sirens with a sufficiently groovy, early 70’s fashion-rich detail.

Unfortunately for the Sirens- Earth women genetically engineered to manipulate rogue males into ready submission to their Martian overlords – Killraven is immune to their charms. So a squadron of mutants, including what seems to be a canine-human cross, is let loose with orders to rend him limb from limb.

With this issue the frenetic pacing that marked the series becomes more prominent. Within the span of just twenty pages there are battle with a monster lizard, a Martian Tripod, and a Super-Mutant all within the ruins of what used to be New York City.

Book Review: 'The Starless World' by Gordon Eklund

2/5 Stars

By the mid-70s Paramount had finally begun to realize that the pop culture phenomenon that was Star Trek had only begun to be harnessed for profit. When Bantam exhausted the novelizations of the show scripts in its bestselling series by James Blish, Star Trek – Star Trek 12, new content was clearly necessary. Thus the ongoing juggernaut of novelizations began, and continues to this day. ‘The Starless World’, by Gordon Eklund, is one of the early novelizations and appeared in 1978. The cover artist appears to be Vincent DiFate.

The Enterprise is on a routine survey mission to map black holes within the vicinity of the Galactic Core when it is approached by a shuttlecraft affiliated with the Rickover, a starship that disappeared from Starfleet records 11 years previously. The pilot of the shuttlecraft is a deranged man named Thomas Clayton, a former friend and student along with Captain Kirk at the Starfleet Academy. Clayton babbles nonsense about a Sun God named Ay-nab.

Soon after its encounter with the shuttlecraft, the Enterprise finds itself trapped by an immeasurably powerful tractor beam, which pulls the ship into a Dyson Sphere: an enormous artificial globe that harbors within its interior an Earth-like planet named Lyra. Lyra is the size of Jupiter, with artificial moons, and a sun, orbiting its bulk. The Enterprise takes up orbit around Lyra and Kirk and company Beam Down to the surface to investigate.

Not only do the Enterprise crew discover that the planet contains a small city, Tumara, but it is populated by furry little humanoids who utter the sort of enigmatic banalities that all simpleton aliens habitually make in Star Trek stories. This of course makes Kirk’s job of finding out what it going on harder than usual. Add into the mix some stranded Klingons; some zombie-like wayward Rickover crew members called ‘Strangers’, and the fact that sooner rather than later the Dyson Sphere and its contents are going to collide with a black hole, and you have what seem to be the ingredients for a memorable drama.

Unfortunately, ‘The Starless World’ disappoints. Its 152 pages really fail to offer much in the way of excitement or suspense. To be fair to author Gordon Eklund, plots for a franchised property like Star Trek need to follow strict guidelines (this isn’t Slash Fiction, after all) but much of ‘World’ revolves around themes that are derived from several of the series’ original episodes (‘The Apple’, ‘For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky’, and ‘The Paradise Syndrome’ come readily to mind). The narrative tends to expend its energies meandering from one puzzling encounter to another, all the while trying to set things up for a closing Revelation that is more than a little contrived.

I can’t recommend ‘The Starless World’ to general-audience SF readers, and I suspect that even Trekkies will find it underwhelming.

Comic Review: 'The Thing From Another World' (PartTwo) Dark Horse Comics (1991)


In the second issue of this two-parter features another stellar cover by John Higgins.

In the pages I've excerpted, MacReady meets up with Nauls, the other survivor from the American Antarctic Research station ravaged by The Thing. The problem is, MacReady can't tell if Nauls has been infected or not...and to complicate matters, representatives of an Argentine research station have decided to enter the picture....

This two-part series is one of the better handlings of a licensed property by Dark Horse comics (something they do not always do with their other licensed properties), with superior art and story, and well worth searching for in the used comic marketplace.

Book Review: The Last Wish

Book Review: 'The Last Wish' by Andrzej Sapkowski 3 / 5 Stars

I don’t usually pick up contemporary fantasy titles, but I decided to get ‘The Last Wish’ (originally printed in 2007; this Orbit books paperback, 359 pp., was released in 2008) after having played the computer game ‘The Witcher’, which is based on the character created by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.

Geralt of Rivia has been raised from a young age to be a Witcher: one who tracks and kills monsters for a fee. He plies his trade in a medieval world where humans are the dominant race, and dwarves and elves are relegated to eking out a living in the slum districts. Magic is carefully rationed and primarily the responsibility of the Wizard caste, although Geralt can use certain spells if needed. While his Witcher training has given Geralt superhuman powers of combat and endurance, his pale complexion, mutant eyes, and cynical disposition often lead other humans to regard him with suspicion and mistrust.

The Last Wish is a collection of episodic adventures, linked by an overarching storyline (‘The Voice of Reason’).

The first episode, ‘The Witcher’, introduces Geralt and sees him tasked with eliminating a woman transformed into a striga, a bloodthirsty monster from Eastern European legend. 

In ‘A Grain of Truth’, Geralt encounters a beast with refined manners and a violent girlfriend. 

‘The Lesser Evil’ pits our Witcher against a vengeful bandit girl, and ‘A Question of Price’ deals with the fulfillment of vows spoken in extremis. 

‘The Edge of the World’ takes place in a remote rural district where a demon has been harassing some peaceful farmers. The final story, ‘The Last Wish’, involves a genie loosed from a bottle, with fateful consequences.

Overall, ‘The Last Wish’ offers well-written, if slow-paced, tales that depart from the fantasy clichés that so dominate the publishing market these days. Sapkowski demurs from siting Geralt in a ‘traditional’ fantasy landscape driven by Epic Quests involving the Fate of the World. Rather, The Witcher’s adventures take place in mean small towns, ruins crumbling along the sides of little-used dirt paths, and castle dinner parties hosted by conniving royalty. The confrontations Geralt finds himself involved with are small-scale, never involving legions of Orcs facing off against squadrons of Heroes, but nonetheless bitter and intense.

I intend to read succeeding volumes in the Witcher Saga; I hope that the Eastern European mythology and culture that make understated appearances in the first book will expand over time, as they help give the novel a bit of unique flavor. Readers looking for a fantasy character and setting that stand apart from the formulaic material displayed on the retail shelves may find ‘The Last Wish’ worth investigating.

Book Review: 'The Day Before Tomorrow' by Gerard Klein

1/5 Stars

Gerard Klein (b. 1937) is a French SF writer. This novel was originally published as Le Temps n'a pas d'Odeur (‘Time Has No Scent’) in 1963 (1967 ?). The DAW books (No. 11) version was titled ‘The Day Before Tomorrow’ and issued in 1972. The translation to English was done by P. J. Sokolowski, and the cover illustration was done by Josh Kirby.

Far in the future, the galaxy is ruled by an authoritarian Federation. One of the means by which the Federation retains power is to utilize time travel to disrupt the course of civilization on those worlds that may, at some time in their development, threaten the Federation’s hegemony. To accomplish this, teams of seven men, wearing super-spacesuits and carrying ray guns, use time-travel technology to arrive in the past of the targeted planet. There the ‘time team’ uses covert tactics such as assassination, hypnotic control, or simple sabotage, to ensure that no rival to the Federation will ever emerge from the hapless planet.

On the most recent Federation mission, a time team headed by Coordinator Jorgenssen is dispatched two hundred and fifty years into the past of the planet Ygone. Since the planet is inhabited by a human-like race of lotus eaters at a rudimentary level of technology, Ygone seems hardly equipped to pose any threat to the federation. But the time team intend to carry out their orders destroy the planet’s capital city of Dalaam.

However, once on-planet, the team finds itself subjected to ambush from an unseen enemy wielding technology too advanced for the Ygonians to have developed. Barely escaping the ambush, the team finds themselves stranded, their equipment inoperable, with no way to return to the Federation. Jorgenssen makes a decision to visit the city of Dalaam and speak with the residents: what, exactly, is the mystery underlying Ygone and its inhabitants ? How did a people lacking any sort of technological prowess manage to deactivate the advanced weaponry of the time team ? Is there a link between Ygone and the long-vanished inventor of time travel, Archimboldo Urzeit ? Will Jorgenssen and his time team find themselves forced to choose between saving the Federation, or saving their own lives ?

‘The Day After Tomorrow’ starts off with a reasonably entertaining premise, but from the book’s mid-point on to the final sentence, whatever momentum the narrative has achieved begins to dissipate as the author engages in labored philosophical discourses. What initially seems like a time travel adventure promising some degree of technical ingenuity quickly lurches into a ponderous exposition on the nature of reality, destiny, and free will. The reader gets barraged with insipid stretches of dialog that try too hard to be Profound:

“But reality can include everything, even paradoxes. Or, rather, in reality there are no paradoxes.”

I won’t disclose much else about the plot in this short (128 pp) novel, so as not to spoil things. But ‘Day’ didn’t do much for me: author Klein was trying to cook up something like a Herman Hesse novel with SF machinations, and the result was half-baked…..

Killraven: Amazing Adventures No. 18

Killraven: 'Amazing Adventures' No. 18 (May 1973)

Through the magic of eBay, I’ve been able to get the Amazing Adventures comics from the early – to – mid 70s that featured ‘Killraven’ and the ‘War of the Worlds’ storyline. I’ll be excerpting selected pages from each issue, No. 18 thru No. 39.

I’ll start things off, naturally enough, with Amazing Adventures No. 18 (May 1973) which introduces the 'War of the Worlds' narrative and the character of Killraven. Gerry Conway wrote the script, and Neal Adams and Howard Chaykin shared the artist duties.

I’m posting some of the pages that depict how the ‘second’ War of the Worlds came about, and led to the Martians' conquest of the early 21^st century Earth…I remember reading these pages while thumbing through the book way back in the spring of 1973 at the 7 - 11 in Elmira Heights, New York. 

'War of the Worlds' had a very downbeat, intense approach when compared to most of the other books on the rack in those Comics Code Authority days.

Book Review: The Thing novelization

Book Review: 'The Thing' by Alan Dean Foster

5 /5 Stars 

Back in July 1982 I went to see John Carpenter’s The Thing at the Ritz Theater on Clinton Street. The film had rather quickly gone from the first-run theaters to the second-run theaters like the Ritz, which offered admission for –if I remember correctly – only $ 2. Part of the reason for the film’s lack of success was the fact that ‘E.T.’ was out at the same time and everyone was going to see the kiddie film with the lovable alien, rather than the gross-out spectacle of The Thing. In today’s era of Saw movies the blood and guts aspect of The Thing may seem a bit subdued, but back in ’82 they were considered pretty intense .

Ironically, in the decades since its release Carpenter’s film has emerged as a classic of SF cinema while ET has dwindled in reputation. It’s fine with me; I thought The Thing was a great movie, and second only to Escape From New York among Carpenter’s best films.

Allen Dean Foster’s novelization of The Thing was released in both hardcover and softcover editions. In the Summer of 1982 I bought the Bantam Books paperback edition (196 pp.). The book has a suitably creepy cover, by an uncredited artist, depicting the creature pushing itself up through the snow.

I won’t divulge much about the storyline in order not to spoil things for those who have yet to see the movie. The novelization offers some expansion on various scenes in the film, as well as depictions of minor events not present in the film. There’s a bit more exposition on the possible nature of the creature and its spaceship, and the first possession of a camp member by The Thing occurs differently from what is depicted on screen. Some of this extra material could have been excised without harming the narrative. But overall the novelization remains true to the filmed version.

Unfortunately, both hardbound and paperback copies of The Thing, being more than 40 years out of print, have exorbitant asking prices. I can't advise spending $40 or more for the book, but if you can find it for a cheaper price, it's worth picking up.