Book Review: Barking Dogs

Book Review: 'Barking Dogs' by Terence  M. Green

2 / 5 Stars

‘Barking Dogs’ was first published in hardcover by St Martin’s Press in 1988; this paperback version (214 pp) was released in January 1989, and features a cover illustration by Brian Kotzky.

‘Barking’ is set in Toronto, 1999. Policeman Mitch Helwig is becoming more and more frustrated, and more and more despondent, by the fact that law and order is losing the war on crime. Violent crime is spiraling out of control, and the underpaid, ill-equipped, and undermanned police force is unable to staunch the bleeding.

Mitch decides to use extralegal means to bolster his own patrols of the mean streets: investing in a 'Barking Dog', a high-tech, portable lie detector with 99% accuracy. While the police force is officially prohibited from using the Barking Dog, Mitch soon finds that his clandestine use makes a difference. 

As does his coming into possession of a protective vest and a late-model laser pistol....

Armed with the latest weaponry, Mitch sets out to clean the scum off the streets of Toronto. But when Helwig’s investigations lead him to the operation of the ‘Archangel’, a Mafiosi boss who owns people on the police force, and the mayor’s office, the war on crime takes a dangerous turn. For the Archangel doesn’t take kindly to the idea of a beat cop leaning on his action…..

The cover blurbs for ‘Barking’ reference ‘Dirty Harry’ and ‘Robocop’, and the book does indeed borrow plots and themes from both movies. However, author Green chooses to write his novel with a stereotypical, pulp-police procedural style, chock-full of clumsy metaphors and similes. At times Green’s writing is so steadfastly tough-guy that it verges on self-parody.

It doesn’t help matters when the middle section of the novel turns its attention to a burgeoning melodrama between Mitch Helwig and his wife; the action is placed on hold while the reader is subjected to passages centering on marital angst. 

Toss in too-frequent flashbacks, in which we learn about the special bond that Mitch and his former partner, Mario, shared – that special bond that comes only to the men in blue who risk life and limb for each other, every day they are out patrolling the city – and ‘Barking Dogs’ gradually collapses under its own awkward weight. By the time I reached the novel's climatic last pages, I was motivated by a sense of duty towards completing my review, rather than out of any engagement with the characters.

Unless you’re a reader who is adamant about taking in everything and anything with a ‘Robocop’ flavor, this novel can be safely ignored.

'Light of Other Days' by Gene Colan and Mike Esposito

written by Tony Isabella

adapted from the short story by Bob Shaw
from Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction (Marvel / Curtis) issue 1, January 1975

'Concorde' by Caza
from the June 1982 issue of Heavy Metal

'Burning Down One Side' by Robert Plant

from the album Pictures at Eleven (June 1982)

Released in the US on June 28, 1982, Robert Plant's first solo album, Pictures at Eleven, featured a number of strong tracks, including 'Burning Down One Side', 'Pledge Pin' (my favorite), and 'Ship of Fools'.

The video for 'Burning Down' was in heavy rotation on MTV as the Summer unfolded. The closing scene, where Robert is stuck in traffic, decides to park his car by the side of the road, and just chuck it all while walking off into the sunset, is something I'm sure everyone has entertained doing at some point of severe frustration in their lives....

Book Review: Men Like Rats

Book Review: 'Men Like Rats' by Robert Chilson

2 / 5 Stars

‘Men Like Rats’ (Questar, 212 pp., March 1989) features a striking cover by Barclay Shaw.

‘Men’ is essentially a treatment of the theme introduced into SF by A. Bertram Chandler’s ‘The Giant Killer’ (1945) and William Tenn’s story ‘The Men in the Walls' (1963, later expanded into the novel ‘Of Men and Monsters’, 1968). 

Basically, mankind finds itself reduced to roach-like scavenging among the habitations of aliens vastly superior in size and intellect.

‘Men’ takes place in the future, when some vaguely described calamity has resulted in mankind occupying a vast series of rooms, or chambers, of alien design. The main function of these rooms seems to be as storage places or waypoints for an endless stream of packaged goods, conveyed from location to location by seemingly magical energy fields, elevators, and conveyor belts.

Toting spears, dressed in clothing salvaged from the textiles scavenged from the bales of goods flowing from one room to another, men have set up small fiefdoms or tribes among the various chambers in this alien warehouse.

As the novel opens, Rick, an experienced wanderer among the chambers, is seeking his fortune, and a chance to meet up with female tribals, among the cans and bales of one of the sections of the warehouse. Life among the chambers is not easy; the Sentiences that have erected the warehouse are becoming increasingly exasperated with the depredations of the humans, and a bevy of predatory animal, boobytraps, and robots have been seeded into the warehouse in an effort at vermin control. 

As he journeys deeper into the alien labyrinth, Rick stumbles on disturbing evidence that some of the tribes ruling selected cargo bays may in fact not be human....but they have a liking for human flesh.....

On the whole, ‘Men’ is a fast-moving, at times humorous tale that follows the adventures of Rick among the various tribes in the warehouse. There are plenty of stone-age battles, and violent encounters with monsters, as Rick makes his way to the territory of the most affluent and influential of tribes.

Unfortunately, the novel's backstory suffers from inadequate exposition. Author Chilson's passages devoted to the alien logistical system, however descriptive in nature, are resolutely presented from Rick's POV; and as a  member of a stone-age Cargo Cult, Rick's knowledge of his surroundings are vague and child-like.

There is no omniscient narration that discloses to the reader the exact nature of the landscape in which our hero is cavorting. 

As the novel progressed I became increasingly tired of the diffuse character of Chilson's prose: is the strange green terrain the alien equivalent of synthetic turf ? Are the giant colored blocks stacked in the cargo bays an alien child's toy ? Are the enormous boxes filled with edibles the equivalent of alien MREs ?

While less allegorical in nature than Tenn's 'Monsters', 'Men Like Rats' also will strike some readers as too opaque in nature. It's a workmanlike effort, but not much more, at this sub-genre of sf.

Hunter episode 1 from Eerie No. 52

'Hunter' from Eerie magazine (Warren)

 

'Hunter' was a recurring character who initially appeared in a run of six episodes in Eerie magazine, issues 52 (November 1973) to 57 (March 1974). 

All six 'Hunter' episodes were combined into a special issue for Eerie #69 (October 1975), in (yet another) display of publisher James Warren's niggardly habit of repackaging and reselling previously published material to hapless Eerie fans.

Further installments of the Hunter franchise appeared as 'Hunter II' in Eerie issues 67-68 and 70-73, with one-shot episodes in Eerie 87, 100, and 121. 

Hunter's last appearance came when he participated in a team-up with other Warren characters (including Vampirella, Shreck, Exterminator One, Dax, Child, and Rook) in Eerie 130, released in April 1982, in the waning months of the Warren franchise.

Needless to say, 'very fine' to 'like new' issues of these old Eerie magazines go for $15.00 and up on eBay, so assembling the entire run of 'Hunter' can be an expensive proposition.

Luckily, as part of their licensing deal with the New Comic Company to reprint the Creepy and Eerie catalogs, Dark Horse issued all the 'Hunter' stories in this hardbound compilation, released in April 2012.

This book has dimensions (11 x 8.5 inches) a little bit smaller than that of the original magazine, but the quality of reproduced pages is very good (note this volume is entirely black and white / screentone). 

All 15 of the dedicated Hunter stories are provided within this volume, save the Warren team-up issue of Eerie #130. Somewhat disappointingly, episode 6, which originally appeared in Eerie #57 and was reproduced in color in Eerie #69, stays black and white in this compilation. But that's really the only fault I could find with 'Eerie Presents: Hunter'.

Artist Paul Neary handled the initial run of 'Hunter' and he used a very ornate, stylized approach to his artwork, often incorporating Zip-A-Tone patterns. Nowadays, of course, manga are the only major graphic media where screentone effects are a part of black and white illustrations, but back in the 70s, Zip-A-Tone effects were a major component of the techniques commonly used by graphic artists. Of course, other Warren artists, such as Sanjulian, Al Sanchez, and Alex Nino, brought their own special touch to the strip, too.

The plots for most of the episodes of 'Hunter' were of good quality, and even today, when most major publishers routinely issue four-color comics featuring graphic violence and sexual content, their themes remain downbeat and disturbing. But all adhered to the premise of Demian Hunter as an offbeat hero in a post-apocalyptic landscape scarred by conflict between the survivors of the nuclear war and a race of radiation- spawned, mutant, 'lizard people', labeled as 'demons' by the superstitious populace.

Below I've posted the inaugural episode of 'Hunter', from Eerie #52, November 1973. 

Future installments will be posted here at the PorPor blog.

If the strip appeals to you, you may want to think about picking up 'Eerie Presents: Hunter'.

Heavy Metal magazine June 1982

'Heavy Metal' magazine June 1982

 

It's June, 1982. And my family has just subscribed to 'expanded' cable, which not only means we now have an extravagant 30+ channels to view, but one of them is this newer channel called 'music television', or 'MTV'.

MTV has been broadcasting for about a year, but only in the Spring of 1982 has it begun to grow in viewership and influence. My brothers and sisters and I are immediate fans of MTV, avidly watching it for hours each day, tolerating the crappy videos because, after all, you're only a few minutes away from the possibility of a better one commencing.

Among the large number of UK-supplied videos in continuous rotation in those early days, I remember seeing this video from the British group The Members: 'Working Girl'. Early-eighties New Wave fashions and hair styles at their finest !

The June, 1982 issue of Heavy Metal magazine is out and on the stands, with a front cover by Page Wood titled 'A Girl and Her Dog', with a back cover by Tony Roberts titled 'Isn't She Lovely ?'

There are some full-page adverts for what are now classic SF films: The Thing, and The Road Warrior. 

This issue features yet more installments of Corben's 'Den II', 'Incal Light', by Jodorowsky, Chaland, and Moebius; 'At the Middle of Cymbiola', by Renard and Schuiten, and 'Nova 2' by Garcia. Portfolios include a look at the forthcoming Ridley Scott film Bladerunner, and 'H. R. Giger's New York'.

The Dossier features 'Rok' Critic Lou Stathis ripping bands like Quarterflash and The GoGos for being superficial and unhip; homages to film noir; an overview of men's adventure novels (The Destroyer, Mack Bolan, etc.); and tepid reviews of StarTrek 2: Wrath of Khan and Grease 2.

The June issue also features the next installment of Christin and Bilal's 'The Voyage of Those Forgotten', which I've posted below.

Book Review: Voyagers in Time

Book Review: Voyagers in Time', edited by Robert Silverberg

 

3 / 5 Stars

‘Voyagers in Time’ first was published in 1967 in hardback by the Meredith Press. This Tempo Books paperback (208 pp.) was issued in July 1970. 

The stories in the collection all first appeared in various sf magazines and digests from 1937 to 1957.

If ‘Voyagers’ could be said to provide an overarching theme, it's a theme with a cautionary note about time travel.

The best-known entry is David Masson’s ‘Traveler’s Rest’ (1965), about a planet where time travels faster the more closely one approaches the equator. While the concept is certainly imaginative, the story’s prose is overly dense, and suffers from some contrivances; for example, author Masson uses a deliberately clipped style of dialogue when recounting events in the northern latitudes; once his character moves further south, conversations become more expansive.

Another of the better entries is Michael Moorcock’s ‘Flux’ (1963), in which troubleshooter Max File is sent forward in time in an effort to save a dysfunctional European Union from collapse (a concept quite prescient when regarded from my vantage point of 2012).

Editor Silverberg’s ‘Absolutely Inflexible’ (1967) takes an ironic look at preventing paradoxes. Larry Niven’s ‘Wrong-Way Street’(1965) is a middling tale of an astronaut who tinkers with an alien spaceship.

Wilma Shores’ ‘A Bulletin…’ takes a humorous approach to time travel; when a contemporary scientist succeeds in snatching a witless Everyman from 2061, back to his laboratory in 1961, frustration ensues.

Some of the Old School tales hold up rather well. P. Schuyler Miller’s ‘The Sands of Time’ (1937; travel to the age of the dinosaurs), William Tenn’s “Brooklyn Project’ (1948; tampering with the future might change the present), C. M. Kornbluth’s ‘Dominoes’ (1953; exploiting stockmarket data from the future), and Poul Anderson’s ‘Time Heals’ (1949; cryogenic preservation) all are reasonably interesting.

The less impressive entries include Alfred Bester’s ‘The Men Who Murdered Mohammed’ (1964), which suffers from too-forced an effort at humor. Lester del Rey’s ‘And It Comes Out Here’ (1950) adopts the rarely used second-person narrator, but this only burdens an already clumsy plot. 

The verdict ? Of the 11 stories in this anthology, there are several worth reading. This may be enough justification to pick ‘Voyagers’ up from the used-book shelves.

'Questar' magazine August 1980: interview with Robert Bloch

 

While the bulk of the August 1980 issue (which actually was on newsstands in late June) of Questar magazine was devoted to the film The Empire Strikes Back, there also appeared an interview with writer Robert Bloch. I've posted it below.

Bloch had some interesting observations on writing for a living during the depths of the Great Depression; the prose styles of the New Wave movement; the lack of critical applause for Bloch's work; and the burden that comes with being best known as the author of the novel Psycho.