Thorgal: The Archers, part Two

Thorgal: The Archers

By Van Hamme and Rosinski

1985

Part Two

Thorgal: The Archers, Part One

Thorgal: The Archers

By Van Hamme and Rosinski

1985
Part One

First published in 1985 as 'Thorgal: Les Archers', this English translation was issued in 1986 by The Donning Company. Printed to the same dimensions as the European versions of Thorgal, on glossy paper with very good color separations, it's a nice book.

'The Archers' features some fine artwork from Grzegorz Rosinski, and a plot from Jean Van Hamme that showcases one of the more sadistic archery contests I've ever encountered......along with double-crossing bandits, for good measure.

I'll be posting this story in two parts.

Book Review: New Writings in SF 1

Book Review: 'New Writings in SF 1' edited by John Carnell

2 / 5 Stars

'New Writings in SF 1' (147 pp) first was published in the UK in 1964; this Bantam Books edition was released in April 1966. The cover illustration, 'Cosmograph #28', is by Photo-Lettering, Inc.

This was the inaugural volume of what would eventually be 30 'New Writings' anthologies. All of the stories in this first volume were written exclusively for the anthology.

In his Forward, editor Carnell invokes the term 'speculative fiction' as a necessary and appropriate substitute for the term 'science fiction'. This is one of the first instances I can recall of seeing this term employed in the sci-fi literature. Carnell states that the New Writings series will serve as a bridge between the older, outdated field of sci-fi and the innovative and forward-looking discipline of speculative fiction.

In reviewing the entries in 'New Writings' I try to adopt a more forgiving attitude, as these stories come from the mid-60s, when the writing skills of the majority of sci-fi authors were not as.........adroidt.........as they were in the following decades.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

Key to Chaos, by Edward Mackin: this novelette features Mackin's recurring character 'Hek Belov', who is something of a con man. Here, Belov teams up with a so-called inventor named Frank Tetchum to swindle a wealthy magnate by selling him a machine capable of manufacturing military hardware.

Even by the standards of 1964, this story is quite lame in its efforts at satiric humor. Reliant on frequent passages of stilted dialogue, 'Key' was a chore to get through.

'Two's Company' by John Rankine (the pseudonym of Douglas R. Mason): Dag Fletcher, a square-jawed spaceman (and a recurring character in Rankine's short stories), is assigned to duty on a planet undergoing terraformation. His co-worker is a stunning blonde named Meryl who - gasp ! - shows no inclination to sleep with him. Of course, by the story's end, this aberration will be rectified. What can I say ? Even by the standards of 1964, this story had an un-Woke character to it.

Man on Bridge, by Brian Aldiss: in a near-future Europe, the Lumpen Proletariat have come into power, and bourgeoise intellectuals are interred in camps. The opening pages are very effective in portraying an Orwellian, dystopian milieu, but as the story progresses the plot takes some unconvincing turns. It's too bad, because this could have been a memorable entry from Aldiss.

Haggard Honeymoon, by Joseph R. Green and James Webbert: the planet Haggard is blessed with an unusually rich deposit of uranium. The problem is, the men who mine it tend to go insane if they are employed for more than five and one-half months......

A competent novelette, although I thought the revelation behind the mystery of the 'insane' miners was a bit contrived.

The Sea's Furthest End, by Damien Broderick: an early novelette from Australian writer Broderick. In the far future, the grim and unforgiving Emperor Malvara seeks to unite the galaxy by force, but his son, Prince Aylan, is adamant that force is counterproductive. Which vision ultimately will prevail ?

This story is very very earnest, and at time overwrought, in its efforts to imbue the 'Galactic Empire' trope with a heavy dose of humanism. The closing passage tries to expand the plot to the 'cosmic' realm, but with mixed success.

Summing up, 'New Writings in SF 1' shows a genre slowly advancing towards the New Wave era and in that regard remains a viable snapshot of sci-fi in a particular time and place. For that reason, completists may want to pick up a copy. 

TISWAS with Robert Plant, 1981

TISWAS with Robert Plant
1981

This is.......bizarre. But very British.

'Tiswas' ('Today Is Saturday: Watch And Smile') was a Saturday morning kid's TV show that ran in the UK from 1974 to 1982. In the clip posted below, the female hostess is Sally James; the mustached man is co-host Gordon Astley. 

It was not at all unusual for British rock stars - including the Clash, Queen, Duran Duran, the Who, Genesis, and Sting ('which town [in America] was Stewart Copeland born in ?') - to come onto the show to promote their projects, as well as participate in the hijinks. 

Some acts would film sketches for later airing. From 1980, here is a surreal clip of The Pretenders singing the TISWAS 'Bucket of Water' theme song..........and then dousing each other ?! When they appeared on set, of course, Pete Farndon, Martin Chambers, and Chrissie Hynde wound up getting pie-ed............

[The show apparently places special emphasis on the 'Midlands' region of the UK, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with Brit culture to know the significance of this.]

 

In this episode from 1981, the tiny set is overwhelmed with kids and adults who are eating cereal and toast (presumably with marmalade on it). 

Robert Plant (!?) is the guest star, who, to his credit, seems to take it all in good fun, even the pie-throwing. Also with him on the set is Cozy Powell (the stage name of Colin Trevor Flooks), a well-known drummer in the UK music scene of the 70s and 80s. At the time this episode was taped, Plant and Powell were working on the former's first solo album, Pictures at Eleven (1982), although both Powell and Plant play it coy when Sally James asks for an inside scoop.

I can't fully grasp the Britishness of the show's content, such as the boys with slogans written on their bare chests (likely would not pass muster nowadays), or Plant's shoutout to the 'Queen's Head Sports and Social Club', or the congratulations to 'Anne Dooley and her husband Bob Welsh on the birth of their baby boy', but I gather they would make sense to Brits.............?

Book Review: The Best of Modern Horror

Book Review: 'The Best of Modern Horror' edited by Edward L. Ferman and Anne Jordan

3 / 5 Stars

‘The Best of Modern Horror’ (403 pp) was published in the UK by Penguin Books in 1990. The cover illustration is by Max Schindler.

The 24 stories in this anthology first were published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction during the interval from 1951 to 1986.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

Window, by Bob Leman (1980): a secret government experiment leads to an astonishing discovery……or so it seems. Featuring a nasty little plot twist, this is one of the best stories in the anthology.

Insects in Amber, by Tom Reamy (1977): after a storm washes out a road in rural Kansas, a group of travelers are forced to spend the night in a haunted house. 

This novelette starts off as a standard haunted house tale but introduces various sci-fi tropes, albeit not very successfully, in my opinion.

Free Dirt, by Charles Beaumont (1955): Mr. Aorta is devoted to getting something for nothing – usually at the expense of others. His comeuppance is due…..

Rising Waters, by Patricia Ferrera (1987): Rory enjoys lazing on the bank of the river and taking the occasional dip. One afternoon he sees something interesting out in the river………….what could possibly go wrong ? Well-written, with a creepy conclusion, this entry was author Ferrera’s first published story.

The Night of the Tiger, by Stephen King (1977): a traveling circus is troubled by a conflict between its lion tamer, Mr. Indrasil, and the mysterious Mr. Legere…….King’s prose gets overly purple at times, but this remains an effective story.

Poor Little Warrior, by Brian W. Aldiss (1958): a variation on the time-traveler-hunts-dinosaurs theme. Aldiss relates this short story using a strange argot of hipster and Beat prose, which makes things truly awful:

Never mind ! Quaff down your beakers, lords, Claude Ford has slain a harmless creature. Long Live Claude the Clawed ! 

Nina, by Robert Bloch (1977): Watch out for those South American jungle girls…..a short, but effective, tale from Bloch.

Werewind, by J. Michael Reaves (1981): struggling actor Simon Drake finds that the Santa Ana winds can have a sinister aspect. Making things worse is the fact that a serial killer, called ‘the Scalper’, is loose in Los Angeles……

Dress of White Silk, by Richard Matheson (1951): a short-short story that essentially recycles the plot of Matheson’s 1950 tale ‘Born of Man and Woman’. 

Gladys’s Gregory, by John Anthony West (1962): Mordant humor regarding obesity suffuses this story.

By the River, Fontainebleau, by Stephen Gallagher (1986): something strange is going on in an impoverished farm in rural France. A disturbing ending makes this story one of the better entries in the anthology.

Pride, by Charles L. Grant (1982): in Oxrun Station, someone has brutally murdered five young men. Lawyer Brian Farrell is convinced it’s not his client, Syd Foster. But then, if Syd isn’t the culprit, who is ? Grant takes care in setting up his plot, but his denouement opts for ambiguity and vagueness, making ‘Pride’ another ‘Quiet Horror’ misfire. 

Longtooth, by Edgar Pangborn (1969): something with sharp teeth and an appetite is loose in the snowy Maine woods……..

While at times overwritten, this novelette, with a well-defined plot and an ending that avoids contrivance, is one of the best entries in the anthology. Pangborn is as good as, if not better, than Stephen King in depicting rural Maine and its people.

Glory, by Ron Goulart (1986): two Hollywood hustlers make a fateful decision to investigate the grave of a Silent Era legend. This story relies on mordant humor, rather than horror.

Bug House, by Lisa Tuttle (1980): Ellen Morrow travels to a lonely, dilapidated house by the ocean to see her aging Aunt May. And something, it turns out, is very wrong with May………an effective tale that lives up to the implications of the title.

Hand in Glove, by Robert Aickman (1978): while touring a strangely arrayed churchyard, a woman contemplates life without her unpleasant boyfriend. Like those other few stories of Aickman’s that I have read, the plot is meandering and the prose style ponderous (the boyfriend’s full name, we are told, is ‘Nigel Alsopp Omasthwaite Ticknor’........).

Stillborn, by Mike Conner (1981): a young, newly-wedded bride is obliged to make friends with the elder women of a 19th century mining town. There is something disturbing about the underground chamber where they gather to socialize………..a competent tale, with a bit of a steampunk flavor.

Balgrummo’s Hell, by Russell Kirk (1967): Rafe Horgan, a self-confident thief, decides to plunder the dilapidated old mansion where Lord Balgrummo, it is rumored, has some very valuable paintings hanging on the walls………Kirk’s ornate prose pads what is, at heart, a rather conventional story. 

The Old Darkness, by Pamela Sargent (1983): when the power goes out, bad things start to happen to the inhabitants of a city apartment complex.

The Night of White Bhairab, by Lucius Shepard (1984): set in Nepal, this story features an American expatriate named Eliot Blackford, who looks after the abode of Mr. Chatterji when the latter is out of town. Things get complicated when a ghost decides to make an appearance. This story is less horror than a humorous fantasy, and seems more than a little out of place in this anthology. 

Salvage Rites, by Ian Watson (1986): Tim and Rosy, an English couple of modest means, take a trip to the town dump…….which, they discover, has its problems.

Set among the depressing landscapes of contemporary Britain, with its horror content surfacing in a deliberate manner, this tale starts off much as a Ramsey Campbell story might. However, author Watson carefully avoids mimicking Campbell’s florid prose and oblique plotting, and delivers a genuinely creepy ending. In so doing, ‘Salvage’ stands as something of a homage to Clive Barker’s style of horror writing, and is one of the better stories in this anthology.

Test, by Theodore L. Thomas (1962): short-short story with an ending I found to be unconvincing.

The Little Black Train, by Manly Wade Wellman (1954): Wellman’s recurring John the Balladeer / Silver John character encounters a cursed abode in the North Carolina Hills.

The Autopsy, by Michael Shea (1980): Dr. Winters travels to Bailey, a Western mining town, to perform autopsies on the bodies of 10 miners who died in a cave-in. However, the circumstances of the cave-in have raised suspicions that something quite unusual has been happening in Bailey…….

This story is considered by some observers as the first true ‘splatterpunk’ story, because of its detailed recounting of the process of performing an autopsy. Be that as it may, this is one of the weaker stories in the anthology: badly overwritten, with passages that are so poorly worded that I failed to understand them even after multiple re-readings. The science-fiction sub-plot is awkwardly introduced in the closing pages, and I found it unconvincing. 

Summing up, there are enough worthwhile stories to give ‘The Best of Modern Horror’ a three-star score. While I wouldn’t go searching for it, if you happen to see it on the shelf, it’s worth picking up.

Second Story Books Warehouse

Second Story Books
Rockville, Maryland Warehouse

During October I took a couple of day trips to the Second Story Books warehouse in Rockville, Maryland.

Second Story is an institution in the metropolitan Washington, DC area. I have fond memories of regularly visiting their store in the Greenmount neighborhood of Baltimore during the late 80s and early 90s, and I was saddened when it closed in the early 90s (the neighborhood was 'transitioning' into a ghetto). 

But the last time I had been to the warehouse in Rockville was February of 2009, so I was way overdue for a visit.

The warehouse is located in an industrial area of Rockville, set back from Parklawn Street. With cooperative traffic conditions, it was about a 2 1/2 hour drive from my house to the warehouse. (But keep in mind that these were mid-week, off-peak trips, and the traffic on I-66 was humane, for the most part.)

The interior is cavernous, with almost every square foot of floor space occupied by shelving, along with the occasional chair or table. You could easily spend the entire day wandering around inside (there is a restroom in the back that is available for customer use; you may want to bring your own toilet paper). Due to Covid-19 conditions, customers are obligated to wear a mask and gloves (they have a box with gloves for you to use if you didn't bring your own).

The organization of books by subject is a bit haphazard, with some subjects occupying different areas of shelving scattered around the confines of the warehouse, rather than all being lumped into one discrete area.

There is a decent selection of science fiction paperbacks to be had. There are large numbers of science fiction hardbacks, which are shelved in multiple areas of the warehouse. You can find quite a few titles from the 60s, 70s, and 80s in the hardback inventory. 

One thing I noted after 90 minutes of shopping is that I didn't see a section dedicated to Horror paperbacks and hardbacks, although on the far side of the warehouse there is a large section of shelving for Mysteries. I also didn't see any dedicated shelving for Westerns or Fantasy paperbacks. 

There is a modest selection of vinyl records and CDs. There is a 'listening station' available so you can check your picks to make sure they are audible before buying.

The days I visited, Second Story offered a 50% discount on 'regular priced' books, but only at this Rockville warehouse location. So the majority of the paperbacks I bought just were a couple of dollars each, and ranged in the 'good' to 'very fine' condition categories.

Below are the titles I picked up during my trips. 

In conclusion, if you are seeking books (and hardbound books in particular) of all genres for bargain prices, then making a trip to the Second Story warehouse in Rockville certainly is worthwhile.