Book Review: From the Heart of Darkness

Book Review: 'From the Heart of Darkness' by David Drake

4 / 5 Stars

'From the Heart of Darkness' (320 pp.) was published by Tor Books in November, 1983, with cover art by Michael Whelan. 

The book is long out of print and copies in good condition have steep asking prices. I was able to find a rather beat-up copy for an affordable price.

'Heart' compiles short stories Drake wrote over the interval from 1974 to 1983; these appeared in publications such as Omni, Whispers, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. One story, 'Out of Africa', is original to this anthology.

The book features an Introduction by Karl Edward Wagner, who provides details on Drakes' career as a writer, and remarks:

Drake's fiction usually has a very strong effect upon the reader. Some readers find his work extremely unpleasant- enough so to write angry letters to the editor or inveigh against him in reviews. 

Of course, by the standards of the 'quiet horror' aesthetic that dominated horror fiction during the 1970s and most of the 80s, Drake's stories did have a more gruesome edge to them. 

But it's also ironic to note that as a co-editor of Whispers, Drake was less than welcoming to submissions that had a transgressive quality. This also was true of Wagner's editorship of the DAW Books series The Year's Best Horror Stories...........

Anyways, my capsule reviews of the contents of 'From the Heart of Darkness':

Men Like Us (1980): in post-apocalyptic America, not all settlements are particularly welcoming to strangers.

Something Had to be Done (1975): one of a number of tales in the anthology that uses the Vietnam War (in which Drake served) as a backdrop. In this story, a team sets out to deliver bad news to a soldier's family.

The Automatic Rifleman (1980): some anarchists are up to no good.

Than Curse the Darkness (1980): Lovecraftian hijinks in deepest, darkest Africa. The prose is painfully stilted; this is the first time I ever have encountered the simile '......like an ant run blown by carbon disulphide.'

Firefight (1976): U.S. soldiers fighting in Vietnam choose a bivouac location with a disturbing history.

The Red Leer (1979): sometimes Indian burial mounds are better left alone. A decent 'monsters on the loose' tale.

The Shortest Way (1974): a 'Vettius' story set in the days of the Roman empire. Our hero elects to travel on a road that the locals take care to avoid. An atmospheric tale, and one of the best entries in the collection.

Best of Luck (1978): Dog Company seems to be getting the worst of it in firefights.

Dragon's Teeth (1983): another Vettius story, this one, involving Sarmatians (Eastern European nomads), and sorcery of a particularly dangerous nature.

Out of Africa (1983): hunting big game in the swamps of the Dark Continent can be dangerous. 

The Dancer in the Flames (1982): Lieutenant Schaydin is troubled by disturbing hallucinations.  

Smokie Joe (1977): this first appeared in the 1977 Corgi Books anthology More Devil's Kisses, edited by 'Linda Lovecraft' (Michael Parry). The Devil's Kisses series, which were the very first so-called 'erotic horror' anthologies, have since passed into Paperback Fanatic legend: copies of More Devil's Kisses were seized by Scotland Yard, and Corgi was threatened with prosecution, for violating obscenity laws. Existing copies of the Devil's Kisses series have steep asking prices. 

[ The whole controversy over More Devil's Kisses, the involvement of Scotland Yard, and - believe it or not - The National Lampoon, is so entertaining that I made it the topic of a post here at the PorPor Books Blog........ ]

'Smokie Joe' is the only horror story I am aware of that features a particularly unpleasant venereal disease as a major plot point. Is it Proto-Splatterpunk ? I'd like to think so !

Children of the Forest (1976): who knew Bigfoot roamed German forests ?!

Blood Debt (1976): overly purple prose weakens this story about Judson Rigsbee, who lives in the suburbs and practices black magic.

The Barrow Troll (1975): Ulf Womanslayer, a Viking warrior, gets wind of buried treasure and decides it should be his, even though it's guarded by a very nasty troll............

The Hunting Ground (1976): people are disappearing from an urban neighborhood in North Carolina. Lorne, a Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, decides to investigate. One of the better stories in the anthology.

Summing up, while Drake's prose style can at times be awkward, 'From the Heart of Darkness' is a good example of horror short fiction of the 1970s and early 80s, by a practitioner who was able to sidestep the editorial taboos on 'explicit' content that governed the genre. As such, horror fans of the 'Whispers' and 'Year's Best Horror Stories' era will find it rewarding.

Beat up paperbacks

Beat Up Paperbacks
February 2022

Last month I went into a little local bookstore, that primarily has paperbacks in its inventory, and acquired some volumes in a variety of genres. 

At only $2 each, I don't mind some bent corners and pages, and small tears and rips, and maybe some magic marker stains, and some cracking of the binding......

The good thing about these old paperbacks is that, with the exception of 'Jitterbug', they're all short (under 300 pp.).

In the upper right corner, the book 'Black Bitches Dancing with Charlie', by Chuck Bianchi, was published by Pinnacle Books in 1989. It's a novel that is based on the real-life experiences of a man named Robert Jackson, who served in the Vietnam War. It has one of the most attention-getting titles of any paperback I've ever seen !

132,000 Roman Catholics

132,000 Roman Catholics
from National Lampoon, May 1974

An entertaining satire of the 'army men' advertisements that appeared in comic books during the 60s and 70s................

Book Review: The Bladerunner

Book Review: 'The Bladerunner' by Alan E. Nourse

5 / 5 Stars

I first wrote this review in September, 2008 and posted it to amazon.com soon thereafter. It stayed up for a good six or seven (?) years before abruptly being taken down for violating amazon's 'community guidelines'. I never was told why, but I suspect my reference to William Burroughs being a pervert (below) may have been the Trigger.

Anyways..........

‘The Bladerunner’ first was published in hardback in October 1974 by David McKay. A mass-market paperback version (213 pp.) was issued by Ballantine in December 1975, with cover art by Karl Swanson. 

Sadly, both the hardcover and paperback versions are long out of print, and have steep asking prices. An eBook edition is available from Prologue Books. 

Alan E. Nourse (1928 – 1992) published a sizeable collection of SF short stories and novels, most of which were aimed at juveniles (the term ‘Young Adult’ wasn’t really in use in that era) throughout the 50s, 60s, and early 70s. A physician, Nourse often addressed medical themes in his works. 

I well remember purchasing his short story collection ‘The Counterfeit Man’ (1963) as one of the perennial SF titles offered to kids as part of the Scholastic (paperback) Book Club purchasing program.  I suspect most of my fellow Baby Boomers also will remember ‘The Counterfeit Man’ from their own childhoods.

‘The Bladerunner’ has a confusing history with regard to its title. A screenplay based on Nourse’s novel, and written by William Burroughs, failed to attract attention from the major studios when shopped in the mid 70’s; subsequently the screenplay was adapted to a novelette and published in 1979 as ‘Blade Runner: A Movie’. 

From what I remember from reading 'Blade Runner: A Movie' back in '79, it too-clearly reflected Burroughs’s fixation with pederasty, and even the more ‘progressive’ studio execs probably felt uncomfortable with the thought of catering to the fantasies of a pervert, however great his standing in the literary world.

I’ve no idea if Warner Bros. paid any sort of licensing fee to Nourse or Ballantine / Del Rey for using the title for its 1982 film adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ?’. If not, they certainly should have, because ‘The Bladerunner’ is a good novel in its own right despite having the misfortune to share a title with one of the most influential SF films of the past 50 years.

‘The Bladerunner’ is set in approximately 2015, after the 1994 ‘Health Riots’ marked the economic collapse of the American health care system. Anyone seeking treatment in any facility may find themselves subjected to sterilization under Eugenics Laws designed to reduce the incidence of disease in the population. Unsurprisingly, many elect to have their medical needs met at home using a clandestine system of care performed by idealistic MDs who disagree with the System. 

‘Bladerunner’ refers to young men who serve as couriers for contraband drugs and surgical supplies between patients and the doctors, most of whom have entirely legitimate practices in hospitals and clinics in the wealthier sections of the city. 

Billy Gimp is one such Bladerunner, working for surgeon ‘Doc’ John Long and his able nurse Molly. The trio sets out several times a week to lower-income neighborhoods of New York and its surrounding environs to conduct kitchen-table tonsillectomies and other surgical procedures. Billy and his companions must be watchful for surveillance by the Big Brother-ish Health Control police, since a conviction for providing black market health care can result in imprisonment for Billy, and the loss of a license for Doc.

When Billy does find himself under surveillance,  he quickly learns that it is not unique to his own bladerunning operation, but rather, has expanded to the entire underground medicine infrastructure. Does the increased scrutiny by the authorities have anything to do with the ‘Shanghai Flu’ ? Could the Flu be the start of an epidemic of a new and lethal disease, and his clients in the black market the medical equivalent of canaries in a coal mine ? Can the authorities set aside their ideology to ally with the bladerunners, and stop a catastrophe from snuffing out half of the population of the United States ?

In my opinion ‘The Bladerunner’ is a very readable exemplar of first-generation cyberpunk SF. It shares with the genre the near-future setting, the psychological backdrop of paranoia and alienation from ‘conventional’ society, an urban megalopolis subject to pervasive government oversight, and a sense of the ‘street finding its own use for things’. 

Billy Gimp is a prototypical cyberpunk ‘hero’, with his club foot, trashed apartment, and contempt for authority sharpened by a life of deprivation in the grimy alleys of the Lower City. The novel lacks the emphasis on sex, (illegal) drugs, and rock n’ roll found in the cyberpunk Canon (this is a novel intended for young adults, after all), but it serves as a kind of predecessor to ‘Neuromancer’, still a decade away from hitting the bookstore shelves. 

And….. I guess it’s just coincidence that there’s a Molly in 'The Bladerunner', and a Molly in 'Neuromancer' ? ….hmmm…

Supernature by Cerrone

Cerrone
Supernature
February 1978

Marc Cerrone (b. 1952) is a French musician and composer who released a number of influential disco / electronic dance albums during the 70s and early 80s.

Among his best-known albums was 'Supernature', released in November 1977. The eponymous title track was released as a single in the U.S. and reached position number 70 the week of February 11, 1978 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It reached the number one slot in Billboard's 'Hot Dance Club Play' chart that same week.

Despite its 10 minute length, it's a cool song (I defy you to stay motionless while listening to it !) and I still remember dancing to it at the disco in the Summer of '78...........!!!!

'Supernature' featured sci-fi themed lyrics by the eccentric US singer Lene Lovich.

Once upon a time
Science opened up the door
We would feed the hungry fields
'Till they couldn’t eat no more

But the potion that we made
Touched the creatures down below
And they grew up in a way
That we'd never seen before

[Supernature, supernature, supernature, supernature]

They were angry with the man
‘Cause he changed their way of life
And they take their sweet revenge
As they trample through the night

For a hundred miles or more
You could hear the people cry
But there's nothing you can do
Even god is on their side

[Supernature, supernature, supernature, supernature]

How can I explain
Things are different today
Darkness all around
And nobody makes a sound
Such a sad affair
No one seems to care

[Supernature, supernature, supernature, supernature]

Better watch out
There's no way to stop it now
You can't escape it's too late
Look what you've done
There's no place that you can run
The monsters made, we must pray

[Supernature, supernature, supernature ]

Maybe nature has a plan
To control the way of man
He must start from scratch again
Many battles he must win
Till he earns his place on earth
Like the other creatures do
Will there be a happy end
Now that all depends on you

[Supernature, supernature, supernature, supernature]

Coming in August 2022

Coming in August 2022: The Art of Ron Cobb

Ron Cobb (1937 - 2020) was one of the most imaginative and accomplished artists working in the field of sci-fi during the 70s and 80s. Till now, the only book that showcased his art was Colorvision, a 1981 trade paperback that is long out of print, and quite expensive.

However, the lack of a comprehensive overview of Cobb's life and work is going to be rectified in August 2022, with the release of The Art of Ron Cobb by Jacob Johnston, from publisher Titan Books. Suggest retail price is $60. 

If you are a fan of the sci-fi media of the 70s and 80s, you'll want to have this book on your radar. 

New Wave SF Zoom Zymposium

New Wave SF Zoom Syposium

Hosted by the City Lights Bookstore and PM Press

February 26 and 27, 2022

I'm on the PM Press email distro list - for having purchased Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction - and I have gotten notice of a 'virtual', Zoom-based symposium that is being hosted by the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. 

The symposium has an all-star lineup (below) of well-known sci-fi authors, and the contributors to Dangerous Visions.

I'm not sure how many of my blog readers would be interested in this symposium, but I thought I'd promote it.

Here is a hyperlink to the website to register for the symposium. 

[ The organizers seem to me to be a little over-optimistic in arranging something this large, with speakers in different countries and different time zones, over Zoom, but, well..........guess we'll see........ ]  

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction Saturday, February 26th and Sunday, February 27th City Lights in conjunction with PM Press present a weekend-long symposium exploring the radical currents of Science Fiction and celebrating the launch of Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, edited by Andrew Nette & Iain McIntyre. Featuring an all-star cast of presenters including Samuel Delany, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Michael Moorcock, Cory Doctorow, Marge Piercy, Maitland McDonagh,  Annalee Newitz, Jonathan Lethem, Shelley Streeby, Mike Stax, Karen Joy Fowler, Nick Mamatas, Ann VanderMeer, Matt Bell, adrienne maree brown, Daniel Shank Cruz, Lucy Sussex, Mimi Mondal, Vandana Singh, Rebecca Baumann, Meg Elison, Terry Bisson, Andrew Nette & Iain McIntyre Free (Registration Required)

Start It All Over from February 1982

Start It All Over
by McGuffey Lane

February, 1982

McGuffey Lane was a country rock band founded in 1972 in the Columbus, Ohio area by Terry Efaw and Steve Reis. In 1980 they released their first album, titled McGuffey Lane, on their own label, Paradise Records, and garnered enough attention subsequently to sign with Atco Records. In 1981 they released the album Aqua Dream, with 'Start It All Over' as the single.

'Start It All Over' debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 the first week of February 1982, at position 99. It peaked at number 98 after spending three weeks on the chart. The band subsequently signed with Atlantic Records and released the album Day By Day in 1984. While successful with the country listenership, the band failed to resonate with rock / pop audiences, and was dropped by Atlantic in 1985. 

Band members continue to perform in Columbus-area summer festivals and shows, often as part of the 'Zachariah's Red Eye Reunion' shows associated with a beloved country rock music hall located on the Ohio State University campus.

McGuffey Lane's songs are available at YouTube and are well worth a listen, as they showcase good musicianship and composition. I like to think that had they debuted in the 'modern' area, with greater outlets for music distribution, they might have gotten the wider recognition they deserved.........

Book Review: If You Don't Buy this Book, We'll Kill this Dog

Book Review: 'If You Don't Buy this Book, We'll Kill this Dog' 

Life, Laughs, Love, and Death at National Lampoon

by Matty Simmons

5 / 5 Stars

'If You Don't Buy this Book, We'll Kill this Dog: Life, Laughs, Love and Death at the National Lampoon' (335 pp.) was published by Barricade Books in 1994. It's one of seven books authored by Matty Simmons; others include The Diner's Club Drink Book (1961), The Credit Card Catastrophe: The 20th Century Phenomenon That Changed the World (1995), and Fat Drunk and Stupid: The Making of Animal House (2012).

Simmons was born in Brooklyn on October 3, 1926 (he died of covid-19 at age 93 on April 29, 2020). His father was the owner of the Flatbush Sign Company. Simmons worked as a copyboy for the New York Telegram, and later, as a reporter, prior to being drafted. He spent his service time in the U.S. Army at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where he produced shows for the troops and contributed to the Fort's newspaper. Upon his discharge in 1946 he embarked on a career as a publicist for New York City restaurants and clubs. During this time he met Leonard Mogel, a salesman for a printing company.  

In 1950, as he relates in The Credit Card Catastrophe, the 23 year-old Simmons's public relations work brought him to the attention of Fran McNamara and Ralph Schneider, two businessmen who were interested in starting a credit card designed to be used by corporate employees for business lunches and dinners. 

McNamara and Schneider called their endeavor the ‘Diners Club’. Initially reluctant to get involved in what he saw as an unlikely business model, Simmons eventually joined McNamara and Schneider and handled marketing and promotion for the Diners Club. Simmons brought Mogel aboard and the two supervised a house magazine, called Signature: The Diners Club Magazine, which was very successful. 

In 1967 Diners Club was bought by a large insurance firm and Simmons and Mogel decided to quit and start their own magazine publishing endeavor, called Twenty-First Century Communications. After Simmons met with Weight Watchers chairman Al Lippert, they entered into an agreement to publish Weight Watchers magazine. The first issue, published in 1968, sold 300,000 copies; by the early 70s, circulation reached one million.

Simmons and Mogel were looking for more hip, cutting-edge outlets for Twenty-First Century. In 1968, Simmons's friend, the publishing magnate Harold Chamberlain, called to tell him that some 'kids' from the Harvard Lampoon were looking to published a humor magazine. Simmons subsequently sat down with three recent Harvard grads: Doug Kenney, Henry Beard, and Robert Hoffman. 

After some tough negotiations and an agreement to buy the three out after five years (a decision which Simmons later would regret) he agreed to team up with the Harvard grads to issue a new magazine, called National Lampoon. The first issue, released in April 1970, didn't set the world on fire, but by the end of the year, the magazine was on its way to becoming a pop culture icon.

'If You Don't Buy this Book, We'll Kill this Dog' covers Simmons's years with the magazine from its inauguration in 1970 through 1991, when, having been purchased by James P. Jimirro of 'J2 Communications', it went into a steep decline, and then, sadly, extinction. 

The book is filled with anecdotes and narratives about the staff of the magazine, some of whom, such as Doug Kenney, were brilliant, but deeply troubled. The book also has quite a few insights into the magazine publishing business as it was conducted in the 70s and 80s, as well as some trenchant observations about the movie business (these derived from Simmons's productions of Animal House, and the Lampoon's Vacation films). 

The closing chapters can't help but take on a depressing note as Simmons struggled, and succeeded, in turning around the fortunes of the magazine in the mid-80s, only to see his efforts ultimately undone when the team of Dan Grodnik and Tim Matheson (who played 'Otter' in Animal House) took over the Lampoon with the assistance of David Batchelder. Grodnik and Matheson had no experience in running a company, let alone a magazine, and when Batchelder's support turned out to be more in the line of moral support rather than dollar support, the Lampoon took a downward turn that it never has recovered from.

Simmons only devotes a couple of pages in all to Heavy Metal magazine, which in its early days was edited by former Lampoon staffer Sean Kelly before Simmons made his daughter Julie Simmons editor. 

The business side of Heavy Metal was more or less run by Leonard Mogel, and Simmons notes that even when the Lampoon was not doing well financially, Heavy Metal was profitable. It even thrived during the hapless management of Grodnik and Matheson, and only was sold - to Kevin Eastman in 1992 - because James P. Jimirro and J2 Communications were desperate for cash.

Summing up, 'If You Don't Buy this Book, We'll Kill this Dog: Life, Laughs, Love and Death at the National Lampoon' is an entertaining read, particularly for Baby Boomers, and those with nostalgia for the 70s and 80s and the media and movies of that era. Accordingly, I give it a '5 Star' rating.

Book Review: The School on 103rd Street

Celebrating Black History Month 2022

Book Review: 'The School on 103rd Street' by Roland S. Jefferson

4 / 5 Stars

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we celebrate Black History Month by reading a book - fiction or nonfiction - that illuminates the black experience.

For Black History Month 2022, our selection is 'The School on 103rd Street' by Roland S. Jefferson.

Jefferson was born in Washington DC, grew up in Los Angeles, and later returned to DC, and Howard University, to receive his medical degree. In 1974 he arranged with the vanity press publisher Vantage to publish '103rd Street', and his methodical self-promotion of the book led to a sell-through of the first print run. Subsequently the L.A.-based publisher Holloway House released a paperback edition in 1978 (which now, like many Holloway titles of that era, is impossible to find). 

In 1997 '103rd Street' (194 pp.) was released as a trade paperback by W. W. Norton, as part of its Old School Books imprint.

Jefferson has authored several additional novels, many set in a medical milieu; details are available at his website.

'103rd Street' is set in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in August of 1974. As the novel opens the protagonist, Dr. Elwin Carter, a physician at the neighborhood ghetto clinic, is contacted by two teenaged boys from the 'hood, Buddy Giles and Leon Davenport. Their friend Jimmie has been murdered, and while the police report the killing as gang-related, neither Buddy nor Leon believes that story. According to Buddy and Leon, Jimmie found out something that made him very frightened......something having to do with the School on 103rd Street.

Elwin Carter, his girlfriend Sable, and their BadAzz Mofo acquaintance Mathis team up to investigate Jimmie's murder. In so doing, they draw unwanted attention from The Man, who is not happy about black folks poking into his business. 

Can Elwin mobilize the Brothers in response to the provocations of Whitey ? Or will the grim truth about the School on 103rd Street be withheld from the unsuspecting people of Watts......and the black people of the United States.......?  

'The School on 103rd Street' is a solid 4-Star novel and deserves its status as an entry in the Old School pantheon. 

It does have its weaknesses; after the initial chapters and their focus on a disturbing crime and its implications, the narrative digresses into a rather lengthy segment detailing the daily life and times of protagonist Elwin Carter, and only gradually does the author return his attention to the eponymous School and its mysteries. And the closing chapters adopt a frenetic 'Hollywood thriller' scenario that seems out of place considering the more deliberate pacing of the rest of the novel. 

Where '103rd Street' is strongest is in its affectionate, but critical, exploration of the black bourgeoise and their struggle to succeed in a larger society that is hostile to their ambitions. The depiction of Los Angeles during the heyday of Black Power culture retains its authenticity, and Jefferson displays his skill at crafting believable characters and dialogue. All of these features are communicated in less than 200 pages, giving the novel a spare, declarative prose style that makes for an easy read.

Summing up, those with a fondness for the literature of the Old School, and those wanting an engaging look at black America as it was in the mid-1970s, will want to have 'The School on 103rd Street' on their shelves.