1941 by Dave McMacken

 '1941' by Dave McMacken

advertisement in the January 1980 National Lampoon

Dave McMacken (1944 - 2019) was an American artist who had a very successful career in commercial art. He provided album covers for major artists such as the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, Cat Stevens, Kansas, and AC/DC, and advertisements for films, beverages, and video games. Later in life he ran his own studio, Ratz and Company, in Astoria, Oregon, and did commercial art for local marijuana growers (!).

His advertisement for the 1979 film 1941 also was used for the November, 1979 paperback novelization, authored by Bob Gale, from Ballantine Books.

Sadly, not a lot of McMacken's art is available online. Some of it can be accessed here; a video of him recounting some of his more famous assignments is available here. I for one would welcome a book devoted to his art.

Floating Shelves from Wayfair

Floating Shelves from Wayfair

With the advent of Spring comes the desire for Home Improvement, and while I'm no bonded and licensed contractor, I can do the more minor household fixes and advances. 

For Spring 2022, I wanted to find an affordable way to shelve my paperbacks (most of which are in boxes in my basement) but at the same time, not further clutter my floorspace with traditional standing bookshelves.

I recently visited the website of VICE, that online Mecca for Millenial Hipsters ('The Best Protective Hairstyles for Black Women to have Sex In', 'How to Stock Your Nightstand with Lubes for Every Sexual Occasion', 'What It’s Like to Grow Up With Extremely Strict Parents'). 

There I read an article by Mary Frances Knapp about affordable alternatives to the 'floating' shelves marketed by the celebrated interior design company Vitsœ.

Says Knapp:

Vitsœ (pronounced vit-sue) is an iconic Danish furniture and design company that was founded by the über-chic, often-turtlenecked Niels Vitsœ in 1959. The futuristic brand soared to popularity thanks to its trademark modular bookshelves, which Vitsœ calls “the bookshelf that will outlive you.” (How bold—how Scandi noir!) In the words of one reviewer, “They are the utility equivalent of the kind of wine you drink on special occasions.” They just look so effortlessly cool with every kind of decor, and seemed perfect for my fantasy of covering an entire wall in books. 

Unfortunately, just as I resolved to smash that order button on my Scandi babies, I realized the price tag: Over $100 per shelf [balloon deflates]. So I did a bit of sneaking and sleuthing—and that’s where Wayfair came in, as it always does, with some promising metal look-alikes.

I thus shelled out $172 for the 'Daizee' 8 Piece Floating Shelf package from Wayfair.

My journey to installation is documented below.

First, each shelf comes with four wallboard anchors, four screws, and - coolest of all - inch-long mini-levels.

If you install the shelf on wallboard, its carrying capacity is 15 lb, while if you attach it to studs, it can hold a max of 25 lb.

The wallboard anchors are metal and go into the wallboard without too much trouble.

The mini-levels make it surprisingly easy to adjust the shelves to be nice and level. 

I very much recommend using an 8-inch Phillips head screwdriver, because you're going to be placing screws right next to the interior side of the shelf - there is little room for maneuver.

It took me about 90 minutes total, over two days, leisurely to install all 8 shelves.

The photo below gives an idea of how many paperbacks one shelf can accommodate.

The verdict ? In terms of cost-effectiveness, the floating shelves are more expensive, and less commodious, than traditional bookshelves. Indeed, you can buy a Sauder brand five-shelf standing bookcase for $150, for example. However, the floating shelves don't take up floor space, and I agree with VICE's Mary Frances Knapp that they definitely add a note of stylishness and hipness to your interiors..............

Book Review: Darby O'Gill and the Good People

                                    

Book Review: 'Darby O'Gill and the Good People' by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh 

4 / 5 Stars

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we like to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by reviewing or showcasing a fiction or nonfiction book that deals with Ireland and the Irish. For St. Patrick's Day 2022, our selection is 'Darby O'Gill and the Good People' by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh.

Kavanagh was born in the UK in 1861 and later migrated to the United States, where she wrote stories for children based on Gaelic folklore. These stories first were published in McClure’s Magazine in 1901-1902 before being compiled into the book ‘Darby O’Gill and the Good People’ in 1903. Kavanagh wrote a second book, ‘Ashes of Old Wishes and Other Darby O'Gill Tales’, which was published in 1926. 

The story goes that Walt Disney, upon making trips to Ireland, conceived of the idea of a film involving a leprechaun and used Kavanagh’s books as the inspiration. Disney’s 1959 movie ‘Darby O’Gill and the Little People’ was well received and boasted some of the more advanced special effects for its time.

This trade paperback edition of ‘Darby O’Gill and the Good People’ (182 pp.) was published by One Faithful Harp Publishing Co., Scranton, PA, in 1998. It contains the stories ‘Darby O’Gill and the Good People’, ‘Darby O’Gill and the Leprechaun’, ‘The Convarsion of Father Cassidy’, ‘How the Fairies Came to Ireland’, ‘The Adventures of King Brian Connors’, and ‘The Banshee’s Comb’.

The stories are set in rural Ireland in the late 19th century and involve the eponymous Darby, his wife Bridget, the King of the Fairies, Brian Connors, and various other personages. Most of the stories are comic in nature. However, the final entry, ‘The Banshee’s Comb’ does a good job of endowing itself with a ‘spooky’ sensibility, involving as it does Irish beliefs about the dead……and the dangers visited upon those who find themselves out and about on Halloween night.

Author Kavanagh renders much of her dialogue phonetically, in a kind of Gaelic-accented English, so readers will encounter words like ‘dacint’ (decent), ‘giont’ (giant), ‘kittle’ (kettle), ‘divil’ (devil), etc., etc. These phonetic renderings make for slow going at first, but after a while become a bit more tolerable.  

What makes the book work as a retelling of Gaelic folklore is Kavanagh’s care in depicting the myriad characters as ‘real’ people. Darby O’Gill is hardly a heroic figure, but rather, a self-centered, at times pig-headed man who will grumble and protest en route to grudgingly doing the right thing. As well, his wife, friends, and acquaintances have their own foibles and faults, these often serving to drive storylines (as Bridget’s careless boasting at a women’s sewing circle triggers the events of ‘The Banshee’s Comb’). For the people of Darby O'Gill's Ireland, superstitious beliefs are an integral part of their agrestic way of life.

I finished ‘Darby O’Gill’ aware that Kavanagh had imparted a subtle undertone to her book. She depicts her human characters as the common people of a society still recovering from periods of great privation. For all its jollity and humor, the book presents poverty, sickness, and death as commonplace among rural people of limited means. While Darby’s desire for material wealth may at first seem particularly greedy and grasping, there is an understanding that the actions of the Darby and his fellow Irishmen are driven by the presence of a ‘racial memory’ of famine and impoverishment. Indeed, when Darby has a wish granted, and strolls into the main hall of his own grand castle, Kavanagh takes care to describe the abundant foodstuffs arrayed on the dining tables. 

Summing up, those with a fondness for the folklore of the British Isles and Celtic myths, as well as younger readers, will find ‘Darby O’Gill and the Good People’ a short but engaging read. 

Book Review: Dangerous Visions #3

Book Review: 'Dangerous Visions #3' edited by Harlan Ellison

1 / 5 Stars

Let's take a trip back to 1967, and the release of one of the New Wave era's most significant anthologies, Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions. The 520+ pages of the hardbound edition later were partitioned into a three-volume set of mass market paperbacks, all published by Berkley Books in 1969, with cover art by Don Ivan Punchatz. All three volumes retain the interior black-and-white illustrations made by Leo and Diane Dillon.

My review of volume #1 is here. Someday I'll get around to reading and reviewing #2.

Volume #3 (224 pp.) was published in July 1969, and features a new Introduction from Ellison in which he does some advance marketing for the follow-on anthology Again, Dangerous Visions.

For some time, I have adopted what I like to think of as a more forgiving attitude towards reviewing sci-fi content from the 1960s. Many of the creators of that content lacked the prose competencies that were to become more prevalent in later decades, so I am reluctant to niggle over pulp-style word-spinnings in material from the 1960s. At the same time, I feel a duty to warn readers as to whether a book is worth their time or not. If the reader is obliged to deal with characters who rasp, hiss, boom, snarl, or deliver any form of dialogue whatsoever accompanied by a verb, then they should be warned..........

So I will try to balance these aims in my critiques of the stories present in 'Dangerous Visions #3'.

My capsule reviews of the contents:

If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister ?, by Theodore Sturgeon: square-jawed troubleshooter Charli Bux visits the mysterious colony world of Vexvelt, where he finds an idyllic society in which gorgeous women happily provide him with Free Love. But Vexvelt has a very strange and disturbing secret to its happiness..........

This story vies with Keith Laumer's (below) for worst in the anthology. To pad the story to novelette length, Sturgeon loads it with long stretches of inane dialogue, and sociological pontificating that is contrived even by the standards of 1967. 

What Happened to Auguste Clarot ?,  by Larry Eisenberg: humorous goings-on in 19th century France. What this story is doing in a sci-fi anthology is anyone's guess. Maybe Ellison just wanted to show he could be Eccentric.

Ersatz, by Henry Slesar: Ellison's Introduction to this short-short story is a remarkable display of self-indulgence. Fortunately, Slesar's story, about privation in a post-apocalyptic America, is effective.

Go, Go, Said the Bird, by Sonya Dorman: post-apocalyptic hard times mean hungry, hangry people. Its 'shock value' has receded with time, but in 1967, this was strong stuff.

The Happy Breed, by John T. Sladek: in 1987, there is no pain, no want, and no worry for the narcotized population of the world. A satirical piece by Sladek.

Encounter with a Hick, by Jonathan Brand: a parable about the creation of the world, related in a kind of 60s hipster argot that comes across as painfully contrived. This was the third, and last, story ever published by author Brand.  

From the Government Printing Office, by Kris Neville: childhood education in a dystopian future. A bit too oblique to be effective.

Land of the Great Horses, by R. A. Lafferty: aliens bring the Gypsies home. Unremarkable tale from Lafferty.

The Recognition, by J. G. Ballard: a down-at-heels circus arrives in an English town and with it, revelations about human nature. I suspect that most readers will recognize the allegorical thrust of this tale well in advance of the ending. However, in terms of being a well-written piece, with carefully crafted prose, it's head and shoulders above all of the other entries in this volume.

Judas, by John Brunner: variation on the 'What if a Computer was God ?' theme. The dialogue passages which constitute the majority of the story's prose have a stilted, almost amateurish, quality.

Test to Destruction, by Keith Laumer: on a near-future Earth, a freedom fighter battles the malevolent dictator Kolso; some aliens look on with interest. This story is embarrassingly bad, with a prose style that was more at home in 1957 than 1967. Laumer's effort to add New Wave trappings, in the form of alien 'dialogue' passages that contain ALL CAPS and italicized font, just make things worse..........

Carcinoma Angels, by Norman Spinrad:  Harrison Wintergreen is the man who has everything.....so why not a cure for cancer ? The emphasis in this tale is on ironic humor.

Auto-da-Fe, by Roger Zelazny: bullfighting, reimagined. One of the better stories in this volume.

Aye, and Gomorrah...., by Samuel R. Delany: in the future, neutered 'spacers' have a combative relationship with the 'frelks' who are their groupies. I suppose modern-day reviewers would say that this story was ahead of its time in addressing the complexities of Gender and Self-Identity. I just know the story is a dud.......... talky and inane. 

Summing up, it's the stories by Slesar, Dorman, Ballard, and Zelazny that imbue this third volume of Dangerous Visions with value. The other entries suffer too much from trying too hard to present as 'speculative fiction'; in so doing, they have discarded meaningful plotting, dialogue, and exposition in order to deliver transgressive experiences. As such, while they may have succeeded in upsetting bourgeoise sensibilities in '67, inevitably their novelty has dissipated with the passage of time.

Key Club by John Workman

'Key Club' by John Workman
from Wild Things (Metro Comics, 1986)

Promotion: 'Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985'

No, I'm not getting compensation in any form for doing this, but right now, PM Press is offering 20% off its trade paperback edition of Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, normally priced at $29.95. 

Use the code word INTERVIEW at checkout to get the discount.

I gave Dangerous Visions and New Worlds at 3 out of 5 star score, noting that while a few too many entries had a determinedly Academic attitude, the book will appeal to those with a fondness for the sci fi novels and short stories of the New Wave era.

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…